The Constant Queen

by Joanna Courtney

  ‘Come back,’ she begged. ‘Come back, Maria. We need you. I need you. Papa needs you.’

  The word caught in her windpipe, tangling with her earlier protests at Maria’s desperate climb. She looked down at her daughter, into her dark, unseeing eyes, and pictured the sudden jerk of her white throat at the top of the broch – Maria had felt something.

  ‘No!’

  Elizaveta threw back her head and hollered. She sensed the others at Maria’s feet, heard their cries, their tears, their prayers to a God high above the careless Brough, but she knew now that her dear Maria was not the entirety of their grief, just its beginning.

  ‘Hari,’ she whispered. ‘Hari, my love.’

  She pulled Maria’s limp body as tight against her as she had pulled Harald that golden dawn before he sailed for England. She’d begged him to promise to return, but he had not promised and he would not return. It had all been for nought.

  Slowly she stroked the dark tangles of Maria’s hair away from her beautiful face and kissed her young eyes closed. For a moment she thought she saw a line across her cheek, the shadow of a scar, and she traced it desperately with her finger, longing to find Harald in his daughter’s flesh, longing for this to be Stikelstad again – the start, not the end. But the lines across her own old hand told her that could not be.

  ‘No!’ she cried again, tossing her defiance over the cliff as if it might somehow pull Harald back to mourn their daughter with her. But he was gone and the word was whipped uselessly south – chasing her love, chasing her dreams, chasing her soul across an empty ocean.

  Twenty Norwegian ships sailed back into Scapa Flow; twenty of the three hundred that had sailed so hopefully out of the mouth of the Sognafjord. They brought Harald’s body, Otto’s beside him, and Elizaveta laid them both by Maria’s in the little stone church at the base of the Brough of Birsay. Even before they’d returned, she’d ordered the broch torn down and its treacherous stones hurled over the cliff to bury any glint from the sword Harald had gifted Maria, and only the healing company of Ingrid, her quiet, golden little Ingrid, stopped Elizaveta hurling herself after them. But when the ships came, she was glad she had not. For on board the first vessel was Aksel, scarred but whole, and with him Tora’s Olaf.

  Elizaveta ran, as Greta ran to Aksel, and Olaf clasped her in his arms as if she were his own mother, as, in part, she was.

  ‘He fought so well,’ was all he could say. ‘They trapped him, Lily, trapped him with only half his men and they barely armed, but still he fought so well. Right to the end.’

  ‘Did you see him die?’ Elizaveta asked.

  Olaf nodded and his face clouded.

  ‘From afar. I was with the ships and barely made it to the battlefield in time for the final stand but I saw Father die and Lord Tostig too. With them gone, we had little choice but to surrender. Harold Godwinson pardoned me, released me. He was a noble opponent, truly.’

  ‘A worthy king after all?’

  But at that the boy shook his head.

  ‘He is dead too, slaughtered by Duke William.’

  ‘The brigand Norman?’ Elizaveta choked out, Harald’s words echoing down to her, still rich with his dear tones.

  ‘Now King of England.’

  It was a harsh end to all their hopes. Elizaveta thought of Agatha. She would be in danger. King William would not want Edgar around as a threat to his stolen throne. If they stayed in England the boy might die, as his father had died ten years before, and she prayed that someone, somewhere, was helping them to escape this island of death.

  Her thoughts strayed mercilessly on to the other Harold’s queen – Edyth. Was she in flight too? She must have been wed to him to hold England together, but instead England had torn her life apart, as it had torn Elizaveta’s. Queens, it seemed, were made to be broken.

  ‘Ambition is a disease,’ she mumbled bitterly but at that Olaf caught her hands.

  ‘No. No, do not believe so. I saw Father die and it will scar my soul forever, but before that I saw him fight. I do not think, Elizaveta, that I have ever seen a man more alive than in those last few minutes of the battle. He fought so well.’

  ‘You said.’

  ‘And he died in glory.’

  ‘As he wanted.’ She drew in a long breath. ‘Come,’ she said to Olaf, taking his arm and looking over to Aksel, lost in Greta’s embrace, ‘you must rest and then we must sail. We must take those we have lost home and we must return you to your mother. She will be waiting for us. Tora will be waiting and we must go to her.’

  She pictured her friend, stood on the jetties still, waiting to draw them into the safety of Norway’s rugged harbour, and for the first time since that terrible day a smile tugged at Elizaveta’s lips. Turning her head into the wind, she felt memories whisper across them like a kiss from her lost husband – battles and fights of their own, but passion too, and love and a life lived fully. Lived together.

  EPILOGUE

  Today, when she closes her eyes against the mourners lining the streets to honour Harald’s great coffin, Elizaveta can feel it still – the headlong, giddy challenge of pitting herself against the world – and she is, once more, lost in the rush of that far-off race. She can feel 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, she can feel the roar of her heart as, at last, she crests the tumbling river.

  The walls of the city, high on the cliff, mingle with dark pines and sparkle in the sharp light as they lean in willing her on or, perhaps, waiting for her to up-end. The sun-blurred faces of the crowds hang over the bank, all wide eyes and open mouths, their calls of encouragement scattering on the light breeze. And then there is the blue of the water; the endless, treacherous, glorious blue of the water – hers to master.

  She shudders, as years and sense fall away beneath the crash of life’s current, and she loses her grip on the paddle. It catches a rock and is pulled from her, splintering against the jagged surface and flying into the air. She ducks but it is gone already and the boat rushes on, spinning wildly. She sees the dark cloud of the saving net but she is moving too fast now, shooting too swiftly down the frothing current with no way of controlling her path.

  She puts her hands to her eyes, watching her own fate between them as the canoe, giddy with freedom, dives into a sharp edge, smashing the craft apart and sending it whirling into the sky in a splintering of strakes and bones. For a moment she is mid-air, flying freer than ever before, then she thuds into the water and is sucked down, down into its clawing grasp until there is no breath and no beat and no sound.

  The swirling current stills. Her scudding heart slows. The water catches her arms and legs and for a moment she is lost, but then, slowly, it warms as if a volcanic heat is surging through it. Then, in a liquid haze, she sees the ripple of a warrior before her, his strong body sinuous in the flow, his coffin cast aside, his scar washed away, and his hair, caught in the last spin of the bubbles, shining golden in the sunshine.

  HISTORICAL NOTES

  As with The Chosen Queen, the first book in The Queens of the Conquest series, I have loved doing the research for this novel. The battle has been more about what to force myself to leave out than what to include. I have done my very best to keep the plot within the bounds of the known facts but in the end I did not seek to write a summary of the period, but Elizaveta’s story. As a result, some of the amazing characters and places that I discovered during my research could not be allowed much space within the final novel.

  I am aware that there will be misinterpretations within my work but here at least are some explanations of areas where I chose to bend the facts a little for the sake of the narrative, as well as some added details that may help curious readers to explore this fascinating period of history further.

  Elizaveta’s Neck Chain

  This is a product of my imagination, but based on a key piece of information from a known love poem by Harald himself,
written during his service in the Byzantine Empire and reported by Snorri Sturluson (an Icelandic saga-writer, author of King Harald’s Saga, written in the twelfth century) as referring to Elizaveta. It includes the verse: Yet the goddess in Russia / will not accept my gold rings, which can also be translated to describe Elizaveta as Harald’s bracelet goddess or necklace goddess. The Morkinskinna (an early thirteenth-century Norse saga telling the history of the Norwegian kings) suggests that Harald had spoken with Yaroslav during his first time in Rus, requesting to marry Elizaveta, only to be rejected because he was not yet wealthy enough. During his mercenary work in the Byzantine Empire he seems to have regularly sent his gains to Yaroslav’s vaults for safekeeping and from these shadowy facts I derived the idea of Elizaveta becoming his ‘treasure-keeper’ and their romance progressed from there.

  Harald’s Raven Banner

  It was traditional for war leaders in this period to have a personal flag or banner carried before them into battle. Harold of Wessex was known by his ‘fighting man’ and King Olaf fought beneath a dragon, as described in the novel. The traditional Viking flag, however, was known as the ‘landwaster’, for obvious reasons, and usually bore a raven – the bird of the battlefield. This classic symbol is the one Harald chose to use for himself.

  There is a tantalising possibility that a part of Harald’s banner still exists, in the form of the legendary ‘fairy flag’ of the chiefs of Clan MacLeod. This tattered and fragile 46cm2 piece of yellow-brown silk is kept in Dunvegan Castle in Scotland. The silk is believed to have come from the Far East and when it was examined in the early twentieth century, it was suggested that it may have come to England with Harald, believed to be an ancestor of Leod, the first leader of the MacLeod clan.

  Later this flag was associated with a whole range of myths about its magical properties, including the belief that it extinguished a fire at Dunvegan Castle in the mid-twentieth century, and that it brought luck to servicemen flying bombing missions in the Second World War. We will probably never know the truth of its origin (or its magical properties!) but it is very pleasing to imagine that it might be possible to stand before the very banner that Harald carried into the terrible Battle of Stamford Bridge and I could not resist weaving its creation into Elizaveta and Tora’s stories.

  Harald’s Return to Norway

  Harald married Elizaveta in early 1043. The marriage probably took place at the time of the Winter Festival (see below for more on this midwinter celebration) as suggested rather dramatically in the novel. The pair moved from Kiev to Novgorod and then at some point on to Ladoga to make the sea crossing to Scandinavia but they do not seem to have actually set sail until 1045. This gap of two whole years remains unexplained.

  It is certainly possible that, as I suggest in Chapter Seventeen, they were detained helping Vladimir fight rebels in the north as this was a perennial problem. It is also true that in this period Magnus was locked in bitter battles with Svein, who had seized Denmark, and Harald may have been hoping that they would kill each other, leaving the way clear – or, at least, clearer – for him to take the throne.

  When they finally did sail, their return to Norway was not as simple as I have – for the sake of not labouring or clogging the narrative – suggested here. Harald’s acceptance as joint King of Norway with his nephew was peacefully made in 1046, but only after some classic medieval raiding and looting to impose his terms on Magnus.

  In fact, when Harald and Elizaveta arrived in Sigtuna, Svein was also there, in exile from his wars with Magnus. He and Harald allied (at least superficially) and raided Denmark all summer before Magnus’s men secretly approached Harald to offer him a share in Norway in return for his help against Svein and a share of his vast treasure. At this, Harald unceremoniously ditched his tentative ally and left for Norway, where negotiations were almost certainly held, as I have described, in the borderlands and the uneasy joint tenure began.

  The Solstice Festivals of Midsummer and Midwinter

  The Viking (and Anglo-Saxon) year was still, in this period, ruled by divisions into seasonal quarters, with the summer and winter solstices on the longest and shortest days and the equinoxes in between. These ‘quarter days’ were often when servants were hired and rents paid so they had a vital influence on daily life and were marked with celebrations.

  Much of this also tapped into pagan practices as the early church was careful to adopt ancient ceremonies and adapt them into Christian ones to ensure continuity and therefore encourage people to move easily to the new religion. Thus, Easter grew out of Mithras and Christmas out of Yule, and the other divisions of the calendar were also cunningly tied into key feast days on the quarterly divisions of the calendar.

  Much of this assimilation was cleverly managed but the two solstice celebrations could, for the Christian church, be considered as ‘the ones that got away’ and they remain (bar maybe Halloween) as the most pagan of all celebrations.

  Midsummer

  It is at this festival, celebrated on the beach at Giske in Chapter Six, where we first meet Tora. I hope this scene captures the very natural feel of this ancient day. Although 24 June was proclaimed as the feast day of St John the Baptist and the observance of St John’s – or Sankt Hans in Norse – was accepted, it remained as much a celebration of nature as of religion.

  In England Mayday became the predominant summer festival, as shown in Chapter Twenty-nine of The Chosen Queen, but in Scandinavia, where the solstice in most places means a twenty-four-hour daytime, this was the key celebration. It remains so important even now that in Sweden the government are still considering changing their national day from 6 June to Midsummer’s Eve.

  Midwinter

  It is at this mirror festival, celebrated on the Dnieper, where Harald finally secures Elizaveta’s hand with his dramatic proposal from the burning dragon-ship in Chapter Fifteen. This celebration has its roots very firmly in pagan tradition, echoing the classic cremation of great chieftains in their ships, accompanied by all their belongings to see them comfortable in Valhalla – the great feasting hall in the sky. It also draws on the ancient practice of sacrificing a ship to welcome the sun back as the days begin to lengthen and to ensure the gods’ favour on travels for the coming year.

  Readers who wish to know more of this would do best to visit the Shetlands in January as the festival of Up Helly Aa, held in Lerwick on the last Tuesday of that month, still upholds many ancient Viking traditions, including Viking dress, torchlit processions and a burning ship.

  Norwegian Assemblies

  At the start of Part Three, Harald addresses a great assembly of his people and these governmental meetings, much like those of the ‘Witan’ or royal council in England, were central to Norwegian rule in this period. In Norse they were called ‘Things’ but for ease of comprehension (as ‘thing’ is clearly a common word in English with a very different meaning), I have referred to them simply as assemblies.

  Smaller Things operated at a local level, but there were three supra-Things led by the king for higher-level law cases and crucial issues of law and government. The Eidsivathing was for central Uppland about Lake Mjosa (in the east). The Eyrathing was near the mouth of the River Nid for Trondelag (in the north). The Gulathing (as seen in the novel) was for Sogndal, Hardaland and the fjords just south of the mouth of Sognafjord (in the west). It seems to have been the model for the great Icelandic Thing around which the world’s earliest-known democracy was established and I was delighted to be able to take Elizaveta to this amazing country in Chapter Thirty-two. I very much hope that including this scene shows the reader that the Vikings, at least by this late period, were not just bloodthirsty raiders but also settled men of intelligence, rational organisation and culture.

  The Rapids Races

  These great races, both in Kiev and subsequently in Oslo, are, I must confess, a product of my own imagination, though based on geographical possibility. The rapids of the Dnieper were legendary. The river was only navigable in a s
hort window during the early summer, after the winter thaws had dropped enough to calm the raging currents, but before they dropped so far as to expose the great rocks on the river bed.

  Viking traders always gathered in Kiev in spring to collate the goods collected from all over the lands of the Rus during the winter tribute gathering and to load them onto boats at the docking station at Vitichev (a few miles south of the city) ready for the great trip down to Constantinople once the water level was deemed navigable. It is therefore, I hope, more than likely that some form of race could have marked the readiness of the waters for this vital trading run.

  Winter Tribute Gathering

  Prince Edward of England, Prince Andrew of Hungary and Harald are all mentioned in the novel as taking part in Grand Prince Yaroslav’s winter tribute gathering. This was a punishing task that involved riding all over the vast lands of the Rus to collect tax from the various remote tribes in the form of goods – often furs. This collection was made during the winter because the simplest way to travel was up the frozen rivers. The tribute-gatherers and their considerable armed guard would ride on horses wearing specially spiked shoes to grip the ice and would draw sleds to transport the goods. No doubt the collected furs were more than welcome in Russia’s freezing winters!

  Halldor’s Tales

  All of Halldor’s extravagant tales are based on known facts, as discussed below:

  Darkness at Stikelstad

  In Chapter Two, Halldor tells how, in the Battle of Stikelstad, darkness fell at the crucial point in the fighting. His interpretation of it as King Cnut sending ‘a devil with a black cloak across the sun’ is clearly imaginative, but there was a recorded solar eclipse in that year. It took place on 31 August 1030, rather than the traditional date of the battle, 29 July. Dates at this period do not seem to have been as vital as they are to us now and are often confused and there is a clear oral tradition that the battle was fought in darkness. The eclipse started at 13.40, becoming total by 14.53 and over by 16.00, so it may well have overshadowed the battlefield at a crucial point.