The Constant Queen

by Joanna Courtney

  Elizaveta found herself watching her rival throughout the feast, seeing how she picked at her food and only supped her wine when Kalv’s health was drunk. Of Finn there was pointedly no mention – he was a traitor now. Elizaveta drank her own wine but it tasted somehow sickly. The rest of the courtiers were shedding their grief with their roast duck but Elizaveta had little appetite for revelry today. When, therefore, Tora made her excuses and fled to her chamber the moment the sun set, Elizaveta took her own chance to withdraw too. It was a rough, damp night and she hastened towards shelter and Greta’s everkindly care.

  With this being Arnasson land she had brought her pavilion. It looked respectful not to demand a room in the farmhouse and, more importantly, it gave her space to avoid the tight-knit northern families. Whenever their petty sniping got too much for her she could retreat into the safety of her own walls, embroidered with patterns of her own choosing and sit on her own stool to play her own precious viol. Now she felt her fingers itch for the comfort of the strings, the way they would take her pent-up emotions and turn them into something sweet and purposeful.

  Greta welcomed her in and fussed around her, settling a soft fur around her shoulders and plumping up the cushions at her back. Elizaveta was grateful but for once Greta’s kindness irritated her; she just wanted to be alone.

  ‘That’s all, thank you, Greta,’ she said, picking up her viol.

  ‘You’re sure, my lady?’

  ‘Quite sure.’

  Greta bobbed a curtsey but made no move to leave.

  ‘You may go.’

  ‘Yes, my lady, of course. Only . . .’

  ‘What is it?’ Elizaveta asked impatiently, lifting her bow from its case.

  Greta gestured nervously to the door and to Elizaveta’s great surprise she saw her steward standing there.

  ‘Did you follow me here, Aksel?’

  ‘Of course, to make sure you were safe, my lady.’

  She smiled. These two, these gentle servants who had known her longer than most, were ever-watchful and she should be grateful.

  ‘I am quite safe, Aksel, thank you. Why don’t you escort Greta to the hall for the dancing? I’m sure it will be no hardship for you.’

  He blushed.

  ‘Of course, my lady. But there is one more thing.’

  Elizaveta bit back rising irritation.

  ‘What is it, Aksel?’

  ‘My father wishes to speak with you.’

  ‘Halldor? Now?’

  ‘If it suits you, my lady?’

  It did not but Aksel so rarely asked anything of her that she did not feel she could refuse.

  ‘Very well.’ She tried for a smile. ‘Best fetch wine then.’

  Aksel bowed low and moved to the door and, to Elizaveta’s surprise, ushered Halldor straight in.

  ‘Were you waiting outside, Hal?’ she asked, peering at the rain squalling in through the flap. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘What isn’t the matter on this dark day, my lady?’

  Elizaveta frowned and ran a longing finger down the strings of her viol, making them cry plaintively.

  ‘Spare me the dramatics, Hal, please. I am tired.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  She forced herself to put down her instrument and patted a seat at her side. Halldor edged forward to take it, fiddling with a frayed hem on his best tunic. Aksel and Greta stood behind him, close but not touching, both leaning slightly forward. Elizaveta waited, curious now.

  ‘I am tired too, my lady,’ Halldor said eventually. ‘I want . . . Begging your pardon, truly, but I want to go home.’

  ‘Home, Halldor?’

  ‘To Iceland, my lady.’

  Elizaveta felt as if her already-reeling body had been punched full on.

  ‘To Iceland?’ she repeated dumbly. ‘For a visit?’

  ‘For good, my lady.’

  His head was down and he looked like a man confessing a crime, not begging leave for an honestly deserved retirement.

  ‘Have you spoken to Harald of this?’ Elizaveta asked him gently.

  His fingers picked faster at the tunic edge and Aksel shuffled behind him. Elizaveta looked to her squire.

  ‘You knew of this?’

  Aksel’s eyes were all misery.

  ‘Father has been restless for some time, my lady. He is past his fortieth year now and ready for his farm.’

  Elizaveta groaned.

  ‘You Norsemen and your farms!’

  Halldor half-smiled.

  ‘I am hardly a city dweller, am I, my lady? A half troll like myself is best in the forests.’

  ‘Oh Hal – you are no troll. That is but a jest.’

  ‘And like the best jests it is half true. I am half of half a troll.’

  ‘And as I told you once, my mother told me all manner of wonderful things about trolls.’ She considered the grizzled warrior, sat so humbly before her whilst the rain lashed down on the linen roof above them. ‘You wish then,’ she said, touching his knee, ‘to dig your hole beneath Iceland’s trees?’

  Halldor shook his head.

  ‘But you said . . . ?’

  ‘Iceland has no trees, my lady, or at least none with roots big enough for a fat old warrior like myself to dig beneath.’

  ‘Really?’ Elizaveta leaned forward, intrigued despite the uneasy conversation. ‘No trees at all?’

  ‘Very few.’

  ‘Then Norway must be as strange for you as it is for me.’

  ‘I have cherished my time here, my lady.’

  ‘But that time is over?’

  He bowed his head.

  ‘I have been blessed in life, my lady, for I have loved serving Harald, but you remember how I could not bring myself to leave his service and retire to farming when Aksel here was born?’ Elizaveta nodded. ‘Well, now I find I am ready.’

  ‘I see. And you want me to ask Harald?’

  Halldor looked uncomfortably down and it was Aksel who replied.

  ‘Persuade him perhaps, my lady?’

  Elizaveta looked to her squire. He was a big man now, his young limbs long and strong, his jaw square, his beard full-grown. Greta looked neat and small at his side, though very comfortable. Cold dread flooded through her.

  ‘And you, Aksel?’ she asked, her voice squeaking. ‘Do you wish to go with your father?’

  His eyes filled and he looked at Greta, who almost imperceptibly nodded him on. So they had talked of this together? When? Elizaveta felt her heart flutter ridiculously in her chest. Aksel and Greta were the only ones bar Harald and Ulf who remembered her homeland, her family – was she to lose them too?

  ‘You may speak,’ she told Aksel.

  ‘I wish to serve you, my lady.’ Her heart leaped; thank God! ‘But I fear for my father travelling alone, building his farm alone.’

  ‘I see.’ She would not cry; she would not. This wasn’t over yet.

  ‘And you, Greta?’

  Her maid looked at Aksel then suddenly ran forward, clasping Elizaveta’s hands in hers.

  ‘I will stay, my lady, if you wish it.’

  Of course she wished it. She could still remember Hedda suckling Greta on the very night Harald had first come to Kiev. She had known her maid longer than she had known her husband, but this wasn’t about her now. She saw Aksel straining forward, yearning to touch the girl, and remembered sharply how she had felt about Harald when they had first been courting.

  ‘I wish you to be happy,’ she said. Greta looked back to Aksel and the twist of her body spoke more than any words. ‘Go,’ Elizaveta urged her. ‘Marry Aksel and go to Iceland and maybe I will persuade Harald – seeing as you seem to think that is so easy for me – to bring me to visit this strange, treeless country and to eat in Halldor’s lovely farmhouse.’

  ‘Truly? Oh my lady!’

  To Elizaveta’s great surprise, Aksel threw himself at her feet beside Greta, clasping his arms around her legs and holding on as if he might tumble off a cliff without her.

  ‘A
ksel. Aksel, please.’

  He did not seem to hear and it was Greta who, with a gentle smile, prised him away. They rose and Halldor put an arm around them both, a firm, solemn threesome.

  ‘We only leave, Elizaveta,’ he said, ‘because Harald is secure. No one can threaten his throne now and he has you to keep him safe.’

  ‘Not just me.’

  ‘Pah!’ Halldor almost spat onto her Greek carpet but caught himself just in time. ‘That Tora woman is not a taper to your oil lamp, my lady, not gruel to your venison, not a sparrow to your eagle, not . . .’

  ‘Thank you, Hal.’ She put up a hand; she just wanted them to go now; to release her to be sad. ‘I think maybe I should sleep now.’

  ‘What? Oh yes, of course. And you’ll talk to Harald?’

  ‘I will. Good night.’

  ‘I’ll stay,’ Greta offered, her cheeks pink, but Elizaveta shook her head.

  ‘Don’t worry, Greta, I can manage alone.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘I can manage. I might play a little. Good night.’

  Elizaveta pointedly picked up her viol and they went at last, bowing their way out. She lifted her bow to the strings but they sounded harsh, discordant. They needed tuning but she had not the heart for it now and thrust the instrument aside. Halldor leaving? Aksel and Greta too, and this on top of the loss of Finn? It felt as if the world was turning upside down and she was no longer sure who to hold onto to keep upright.

  She moved to the door of the pavilion, taking in deep gulps of night air. The rain had stopped at last but it hung heavy in the dark sky and sat in rough puddles all across the grass. She could hear Halldor and Aksel’s heavy treads sloshing back towards the farm and could just make out Greta’s slim form pulled tight against the young man who had once followed Elizaveta around as if a string ran between them. Tears stung at her eyes.

  She longed to hold her daughters but they would be tucked up safe and warm in the nursery and it was not fair to wake them. She could go to bed and await Harald’s strong arms but the men had been settling to the ale barrel when she left the hall and she doubted he would be in for hours. She thought of her sisters but they were far away across foreign seas and a letter took weeks to reach even Anne, now happily in Paris with King Henry. She held all three of them dear in her heart but right now she needed someone to talk to.

  Elizaveta looked across the meadow to the farmhouse. The glow of the fire in the main part of the building was strong and she was about to turn away when she noticed a dim light burning in the small window-opening of Tora’s chamber. She stared at it, mesmerised by the tiny spark behind the lumpish shadows of the pavilions. Was the other woman as sad as she on this dark night? Could she go to find out? Should she? Elizaveta shook her head – who cared about should?

  Picking up her skirts she trod determinedly out into the mud. When she reached the farmhouse porch, however, she avoided the riotous hall to the left, ducking instead into the slim corridor to the right and heading down towards the sleeping chambers at the far end.

  ‘My lady?’

  A maid, sat half-asleep in the doorway of Tora’s chamber, leaped to her feet, all astonishment.

  ‘Is your mistress asleep?’ Elizaveta asked. The girl glanced nervously back and she took that as a no. ‘Thank you,’ she said firmly and, tapping gently on the door, slid it open.

  It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the low light and even then she heard rather than saw Harald’s handfast wife. Tora was on the bed, a crumpled heap of clothing amid the covers, and she was shaking with grief.

  ‘Tora?’

  Elizaveta touched her shoulder and the other woman sprung up as if stabbed and scrabbled backwards.

  ‘Why are you here?’

  Elizaveta shrugged.

  ‘Why indeed! You are sad, Tora.’

  ‘How observant of you.’

  ‘And I am sad too.’

  ‘You? Why?’

  ‘Halldor is leaving. Aksel and Greta with him.’

  ‘Oh. Why?’

  ‘You sound like Maria.’ A glint of a smile ghosted across Tora’s face and Elizaveta seized the chance to sit on the edge of her bed. ‘We have little reason to like each other, Tora, I know, and far more to hate.’

  Tora wiped at her eyes.

  ‘I have never been good at hating.’

  ‘And I, perhaps, have been too good at it. Though with you . . . You remind me too much of my mother to truly hate.’

  ‘I do?’ Surprise made Tora sit up straighter. ‘In what way?’

  ‘You look just like her. I know it’s hard to believe but, aside from my littlest sister, Agatha, I am the odd one in my family. The rest are like you, like my mother – womanly, blonde, beautiful.’

  ‘Nay, you are far more beautiful than me, Elizaveta.’

  ‘Oh don’t start that, Tora. Maybe we can’t be friends but we do have a mutual interest.’

  ‘Harald? I’m not sure he’d like it if we . . .’

  ‘It’s not up to him.’ Tora looked startled and Elizaveta grabbed her hand. ‘Look, Tora, you’ve lost Finn . . .’ Tora’s eyes welled up and Elizaveta cursed herself. ‘For which I am very sorry, truly.’

  ‘Me too. He was always very good to me in his own way.’

  ‘And Aksel and Greta to me. They are only servants, I know, but we have been . . . close.’

  ‘So you want me as your servant now instead?’

  ‘No! I’m not doing this very well. Truth is, Tora, I don’t know what I want or why I’m here, save that I looked out of my pavilion and I was alone and you were alone and it seemed . . . foolish.’

  Tora picked up a cushion, pummelling it gently.

  ‘It is foolish,’ she agreed eventually, low-voiced.

  Elizaveta rose and wandered across the room, surprised to see Olaf sleeping in a cot in the corner. She tiptoed over to look in at him sleeping peacefully, unaware of the swirls of alliances formed, broken, and reformed around him. She touched his tiny face.

  ‘I have three sisters, you know,’ she said quietly. ‘Back in Kiev when we were young, we were always fighting.’

  ‘I bet.’

  ‘But I miss them every day. They have daughters themselves now– so many girls in our family– but I have never seen them.’

  The other woman pummelled the cushion some more, then coughed awkwardly.

  ‘You can have him, you know – Harald. At night, you can have him.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If you want him. If you . . . can?’

  Elizaveta found herself blushing; it was an odd sensation.

  ‘I can.’

  The midwives had shown her how to use moss to keep out his seed. Aksel had collected it for her but who would get it now? For a moment she felt dizzy then she looked at Tora, puffy-eyed with grief, and pulled herself together. She could take Maria and Ingrid moss-gathering. Maria would think it a great adventure to go into the forests, and quiet little Ingrid was already showing a remarkable understanding of plants and healing and would relish the chance to pick what she could. But if she did not bear Harald children . . .

  ‘Surely you must have his heirs?’ she said awkwardly, crossing back to Tora.

  The other woman looked at her, her pretty head tipped on one side, and suddenly her eyes sparkled with more than just tears.

  ‘I think he has enough heirs,’ she said with a trace of laughter.

  ‘Not if he wins Denmark and England – then he will need kings to put in both.’

  ‘That is his plan? Really?’

  ‘So he says – he needs another prince.’

  Tora, however, shook her head, pushing her blonde hair back out of her drying eyes.

  ‘Nonsense,’ she said, ‘Maria could rule any country. She even has the sword for it.’

  Elizaveta laughed.

  ‘Perhaps, though I pity the poor husband who’d have to go along for the ride.’

  ‘She is very like you.’

  ‘I suppose she is.
Is that terrible?’

  Tora tipped her head on one side.

  ‘Not terrible, no, though a little . . . scary perhaps.’

  Laughter burst from Elizaveta, surprising herself as much as Tora, and suddenly they were both laughing, clutching at each other and shaking with tears and merriment and relief and release. They laughed, unheard by the men huddled around the fire, unheard by Harald, or by their sleeping children, or by anyone under the cloud-clamped moon save each other, but that suited them. It was a strange new alliance but one that might just help them both.

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Sognafjord, Western Norway, March 1057

  ‘This is Norway!’ Elizaveta watched as Harald, feet planted on the great law-rock, flung his arms out wide to the blue fjord behind him and the hills looming beyond. ‘This is our Norway and she is thriving.’

  The cheers of the crowd rang around the rocky valley and up into the bright skies above. It was the day of the Western Assembly out on Norway’s evening-facing shores and spirits were high. People had trekked from far up and down the jagged shorelines to see the king and his court and to hear justice being dispensed. Some had brought grievances, some prisoners to be tried of crimes greater than the local lords could penalise, but most had just come to see government in action.

  Their tents were all across the grasslands behind, rough versions of the elaborate royal pavilions clustered on a low ledge at the base of the hillside. There would be feasting tonight. The people would dance, marriages would be made and sealed in the welcoming crevices of the rocks, and when the moon was at its highest, the bravest – or most foolhardy – would dive from the law-rock into the ever-clear waters of the Sognafjord below.

  Every year that Elizaveta had watched this tradition she had yearned to try it for herself but the custom was to dive naked and as queen – even her own, wild-edged version of queen – this was one step too far. Not dignified. She tore her eyes away from the crystal waters and back to the law-rock where Harald was addressing his nation, his great figure silhouetted against the dipping sun. His raven banner hung, as always, above him, though to Elizaveta it looked limp and almost purposeless in the still evening air.