Harald’s eyes widened with sudden horror.
‘Well? Of course she’s well. Why would she not be well?’ He looked to Tora. ‘Why would she not be well, Tora?’
Tora spread her hands.
‘She’s been very busy with organising the race, Hari. I’ve hardly seen her these last few days. Perhaps it just got too much for her?’
Even as she said it, though, it sounded wrong. Nothing ever got too much for Elizaveta. She’d looked rather flushed these last few days, yes, but not in a feverish way, more with something like excitement.
No!
Tora pushed the dreadful thought away but it came leaping back at her.
‘She wouldn’t,’ she whispered.
‘Wouldn’t what?’ Harald demanded. ‘She wouldn’t what, Tora?’
‘The flag!’ the crowds called impatiently. ‘They’re on the start.’
They were looking expectantly to Harald, who had little choice but to lift the hammer, though Tora could see his hands shaking. She leaned close.
‘I do not think she is ill, Hari. Mad maybe, but not ill.’
‘Mad?’ Harald swung the hammer into the gong and the low note echoed up the mountain to the boats at the start. ‘Mad,’ he repeated, his eyes following the sound upriver before he turned, horrified, to stare at Tora. ‘No!’
‘Let’s hope not,’ was all Tora said, for whatever was happening in the starting pool, it was too late to stop it now.
‘Go!’
The first canoes leaped forward, over the lip of the pool and down through the cascading water, battling for position. Elizaveta let them go. She glanced at the race-leader and saw relief cross his face, poor man, before she launched herself after them, pushing her paddle into the water with all the force she could muster to shoot herself free of the first little waterfall.
She landed safely in the centre of the rushing current and forged after the rest, queen no more, woman no more, just a rider pitting herself against nature and against time. And now she could feel it again, as sharp as if she were ten years old – the surge of water through the thin skin of the tiny canoe, the sparkle of spray in her eyes, the rush of warm air against her face and, above all else, the roar of her heart as, again, she crested the rapids.
Elizaveta battled with the water, steering herself into the stream and willing herself to relax and let it carry her down, down towards the jetties of Oslo below. The great pines high up to her right were leaning in as if willing her on or, perhaps, waiting for her to fall but she would not fall, not this time. She followed the other riders – still less than a boat-length ahead – through the next little pool and over the waterfall, larger this time, so large that for a moment she felt she were cresting air not water. And now she could see the sun-blurred faces of the crowds hanging over the bank, all wide eyes and open mouths; their calls of encouragement scattered on the light breeze and were lost in the roar of the endless, treacherous, glorious run of blue water before her – hers to master. She dug in her paddle and, breathing tight, forced her way into the rapids.
‘It’s her,’ Tora whispered to Harald as the boats came into view and the crowd surged forward. ‘I swear that’s her, at the back.’
‘Can’t be. She wouldn’t do that, Tora. Surely she wouldn’t?’ They looked at each other. ‘Why do you think that one’s her?’
They looked back to the river where the canoes were battling down the lower reaches of the rapids.
‘Have you ever seen anyone that slight ride the rapids before?’ Tora asked and now others were noticing, pointing.
Harald pushed forward to the rail, elbowing courtiers aside. He leaned forward and Tora forced her way in beside him, straining her eyes to try and make out the face of the rider at the back. At that moment, however, his – or her – canoe hit a whirlpool and spun. Tora caught her breath as the boat swirled helplessly but somehow the rider dug in a paddle and pulled it out again. Water flew up over the canoe but it came safely out the other side, though the rider’s cap had fallen off in the frenzy and now sleek, night-dark hair fell, glossy and wet, down her – definitely her – back.
‘The queen!’ The whisper ran around the crowd, rapidly gaining in volume. ‘The queen. It’s the queen – the queen is riding the rapids!’
The crowd were delighted but Harald did not seem to hear them. He was fixed on Elizaveta’s tiny figure as she turned the canoe between two rocks and headed for the last stretch of rapids. She was gaining on the boat in front of her and as everyone watched, the lead riders forgotten in the unfolding drama, the other rider’s canoe caught the jagged edge of a rock and flew into the air.
‘No!’ Harald cried, but Elizaveta shot beneath him, ducking her head down to skim past as the netters dragged him to safety.
‘She’s going to get hurt,’ Magnus gasped. ‘Mama – Elizaveta is going to get hurt.’
‘No she isn’t,’ Tora said, more in hope than belief.
Her son was not fooled.
‘You have to stop her, Father,’ he insisted, tugging on Harald’s gilt-edged tunic.
Harald looked to Tora, panic in his eyes.
‘Do I?’ he asked. ‘Do I have to stop her?’
Tora thought of Elizaveta kicking against the complacency of the Western Assembly. She thought of her haunted look when she’d talked of journeying and her wild eyes these last few days.
‘Don’t stop her.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Sure. Don’t stop her, Hari. It will break her heart.’
Harald nodded and clasped her hand for a second and then he was leaning out over the parapet, so far she thought he might tumble in after his Slav wife, and screaming like a peasant boy: ‘Go on, Lily! Go on!’
The lead racer shot over the finish line to a mild cheer but all eyes were fixed further back as Elizaveta’s little canoe tipped through the last of the rapids and she dug her paddle into the open waters of the fjord, pushing for the line. She would be last – save the poor man scrambling, red-faced, from the nets above – but there was a joy in her eyes that Tora swore she would never forget.
That, then, was why Elizaveta fought so hard at life – that elation, that consuming passion, that need for more. Tora looked at Harald and saw fierce, stupefied, dazzled pride written wide across his scarred face. She was the third in this strange triumvirate of theirs, she knew that today more than she ever had before, but if riding rapids was what it took to be first, she’d settle for being third.
Elizaveta shot over the finish line feeling as if her whole body might erupt. She’d done it. She’d ridden the rapids all the way to the end. She’d conquered them. She felt painfully, joyously alive as she circled in the finishing pool. The others riders were looking at her incredulously, belatedly terrified of hurting her but she just beamed at them.
‘Well ridden,’ one said and she clung to the words in delight. Well ridden!
Drawing in deep breaths, she turned her canoe and paddled for the shore and there was Harald, arms folded, legs wide, brow so low his scar seemed almost to dangle from it. She swallowed, attempted a wave. Still his arms were folded and she paddled slowly to the shore.
‘I had to do it, Hari,’ she called up to him, not caring who heard.
His words came back to her, loud and clear: ‘I know you did, Lily, but could you not have won?’ And then he was sweeping her up out of the canoe and lifting her high through the crowd as everyone went wild around them.
‘Why, Lily?’ he whispered into her hair. ‘Was it a dare to shock me? Was I not paying you enough attention? Did . . .’
‘None of that, Hari,’ she assured him, squirming in his arms to bury her face in his neck. ‘No dare, no whim, no cry for attention or accolades, just a desperate need, like an itch in my soul. Does that make sense?’
‘An itch in your soul? Lily, my sweet – that’s exactly what you are to me. And I love you for it.’
She looked up at him, his dear, scarred face filling her vision.
�
��Can I then,’ she asked, ‘come journeying with you?’
‘I think,’ Harald agreed ruefully, ‘that for your own safety it would be best if you did. Now stop dripping on me and present your poor winner with his cup.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Myvatyn, Iceland, July 1057
Elizaveta drew in a long, deep breath of tangy air and then let it slowly slip from her body as she looked around the wide bay of Reyjavik. This, she thought, was peace and she raised a prayer of thanks to God in his endless heavens that she had been privileged to come here to Iceland. Around her, Harald’s men were rolling up the sail and shooting the long oars through the portals to guide them into the smart jetty on which Elizaveta could see Halldor, his squat frame square, his arms held wide in greeting. Behind them stood a couple who could only be Aksel and Greta, and Elizaveta suddenly felt as giddy as a child at Christ’s mass. As soon as they pulled alongside, both she and Harald scrambled to disembark.
‘Halldor, you old troll!’ Harald cried, grabbing his friend in a wrestle of a clasp that, for all its outward show, was pure affection.
Ulf bounded up at his side and Elizaveta smiled to hear the three bluff warriors laughing like children. Leaving them to their raucous greetings, she turned to Aksel, drinking in the sight of him after seven long years away. Although now a man of twenty-three, he looked exactly as she remembered, save for a stronger shape to his shoulders and a line or two in his open face. Greta, too, had the same sweet face, though her hips were perhaps a little wider and she had four children around her knees. They scattered like chickens as their parents knelt before Elizaveta but she hastily raised them, beckoning their brood back in.
‘Please, you are not my servants now.’
Aksel smiled.
‘We will always be your servants, my lady.’
‘Elizaveta.’
‘Elizaveta, my lady.’
He and Greta both looked flushed and she turned to the children to spare their embarrassment.
‘And who do we have here?’
‘I’m Evert,’ a bright-eyed boy told her, his voice gruff with the Icelandic inflection, ‘and this is Mina. She’s younger than me.’
‘Only by a few minutes,’ the pretty girl objected.
‘Twins?’ Elizaveta asked Greta, charmed. Greta grimaced.
‘’Fraid so, my lady. Two sets.’
‘Two?!’
She looked to the younger pair and saw two miniature versions of their father as he’d once been when he’d sat at her feet in Yaroslav’s grand hall in Kiev.
‘That’s Josef,’ Evert told her, pointing to one, ‘and that is Filip.’
‘Filip?’ Elizaveta choked, looking to Aksel. ‘Like the toad?’
‘What toad?’ Evert demanded eagerly.
‘No toad,’ Aksel told him quickly, though to Elizaveta he said with a wink, ‘I’ve liked the name ever since that day. Is Maria well?’
‘Very well, though furious not to be journeying with us. Ingrid too, even after I’d told her Iceland has little in the way of herbs. We have had to promise to bring them when they are older but Magnus is here.’
Tora’s son had clambered out of the boat behind them and now she drew him forward. He gazed up at Aksel, then back to Elizaveta, who nodded him forward to shake hands.
‘He longs to see Iceland’s wildlife,’ she said to Evert. ‘Well, here they are,’ Aksel offered to squeals of protest from his children.
‘I can take you up into the hills to see the reindeer if you like,’ Evert offered.
Magnus looked again to Elizaveta. ‘Can I?’
‘Of course. Maybe tomorrow if Evert is free?’
‘And me,’ Mina said.
‘No way,’ Evert told her. ‘It’s too dangerous for girls.’
‘Is not. Anyway, I’m braver than you. You’re the one that cried when the whale jumped over the boat.’
‘It was a very big whale.’
‘A whale?’ Magnus’s eyes shone. ‘When? Where?’
And they were off, chattering away, leaving Elizaveta to greet Halldor, who was talking like a man possessed as he, Harald and Ulf caught up on too many years apart. Together, they all moved towards the low buildings around the harbour that seemed to constitute Iceland’s premier town.
‘Magnus looks to you for guidance, Elizaveta?’ Greta asked curiously as they fell in behind the men.
‘He does and I promised Tora I would watch out for him.’
‘Promised Tora?’ Both she and Aksel spluttered at the notion and Elizaveta laughed.
‘It’s not just out here that things have moved on. We are friends now; it’s easier that way.’
‘As I recall, my lady,’ Greta said lightly, ‘you were never much inclined to make things easier.’
‘Maybe not but now I am old and staid.’
‘Never,’ Aksel said gallantly. ‘And besides, if you are feeling your age at all, Iceland will make you young again.’
He spoke true. Over the next few days as they journeyed gently across the island, stopping with smiling farmers along the way, Elizaveta felt herself unfolding. The place was magical. It moved and spoke as if it were alive – as if somewhere below the craggy surface lay a huge lung that, like her, drew in the rich air and then teasingly sent it out again through the bubbling pools and swirling springs and frothing waterfalls that poured through the whole landscape.
Halldor had been right that there were very few trees but the rocks seemed to grow instead, pushing up towards the clouds in strange twisting formations and Elizaveta could see why Harald’s loyal warrior had yearned to return. Men sat easily in Iceland’s busy geology, a natural part of the shifting seasons rather than a dominating force. Even their houses huddled into the hillsides, melding with them.
‘Troll houses!’ Ulf exclaimed delightedly as, on the third day, Halldor proudly led them up a gentle rise to his vast farm on the shores of Lake Myvatn.
Elizaveta looked where Ulf indicated and instantly saw what he meant. The buildings of Halldor’s household were set deep into the hill, dug out of it who knew how far back, with only triangular porches jutting forth to mark the doors.
‘There are no trolls in Iceland, fool,’ Halldor told his old friend, swinging out of the saddle as they all drew up in the centre of the magical semicircle of doorways.
‘Maybe one,’ Ulf suggested and Halldor punched his arm.
‘Not even one, my friend.’ And in truth, in his homeland Halldor stood tall and straight, his brow clear and his shoulders square, as if he had become permanently his storyteller self. ‘Out here on the edge of the world,’ he went on as the rest of the party drew up, ‘we have lighter creatures than trolls. We have fire pixies, so small you could mistake them for normal hearth sparks until they burrow into your tunic and bite at your heart.’
‘At your heart?’ Elizaveta gasped, encouraging him, for hearing his stories again was every bit as refreshing as seeing his world.
‘At your heart,’ he confirmed darkly, ‘as fearsome as love.’
‘Oh, Halldor . . .’
‘You know it to be the truth, Elizaveta, and when that happens the only cure is to find the water sprites.’
‘Water sprites?’
‘Yes. For they slide across your heated skin like the breath of a maiden . . .’
‘Still with the maidens, Hal?’
‘Of course,’ he agreed with a wink, ‘everyone loves a maiden. And they smother the fire pixies and send them screaming back into the bowels of the earth from whence they came.’
‘Fire beneath the ground? Really, Hal?’
At that, though, Halldor became solemn.
‘Really,’ he said, his voice dropping its storyteller’s lilt for a moment and becoming more solidly Icelandic. ‘There is fire beneath Iceland, Elizaveta. It keeps our waters warm and our land fertile even up here in these dark winter lands. It nurtures us but every so often it bursts out, to show us who is truly in charge.’
‘Bursts out? Where?
’
‘In the hills. It blows the tops off and comes out in choking clouds and burning rivers.’
Elizaveta looked frantically around and Halldor laughed.
‘We are safe here, my lady. The nearest one is a day’s ride away. We feel it shake the ground a little sometimes but its tongues have never licked Myvatn. Fear not; the gods will not play with you in my home.’
‘Gods, Halldor?’
‘Forces if you prefer. I am no pagan, my lady. See our church.’ He indicated a beautiful low structure, the only building not tucked into the hills. It was made of precious wood and carved and painted all over so it glowed. ‘But I know why our ancestors were. Nature is a part of us here. Sometimes it makes mischief, sometimes it soothes, always it inspires. There are no gods, no creatures with a will of their own, but sometimes, even now, it feels as if there might be. I do not worship that, Elizaveta, but I embrace it.’
Elizaveta recalled Harald talking of the core truth of Valhalla and shivered.
‘As you embrace the water sprites and the fire pixies?’ she suggested lightly and a gleam came back into his eyes.
‘Ah no, my lady,’ he chuckled, wagging a finger at her, ‘never embrace a fire pixie. Now, let me welcome you to my home.’ And what a welcome it was. Halldor’s farm, if farm it was, ran so far into the hillside that surely only his precious gods could have dug it out.
‘Not gods,’ Halldor said cheerfully as she suggested this, ‘men; my men. They work hard – I feed them well. We’re all happy.’
Over the next few hours Elizaveta was well able to believe that was true as dish after dish was served to their royal party in Halldor’s mole-hall. The space was vast and lined with richly painted stone behind which, Halldor told them, moss and peat was stuffed to seal out the cold of the earth. The fire – also mainly peat, because wood, fished from the sea, was scarce – burned low but strong and the stone walls drew in the heat and held it so that you could lean back upon them and feel stroked by natural warmth. Light came from tunnels dug up to the surface and as night eventually fell, if you angled yourself carefully you could see the stars peeping in at you. Elizaveta loved it. Even more than the hall, though, she loved her bedchamber.
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