The Constant Queen (21 page)

He’d lain awake trying desperately to picture Tora naked beneath her cloak but every single time an image of Elizaveta spitting fury at him in front of all Kiev had intruded and proved
many times more erotic. Elizaveta wouldn’t be just a wife but a partner and he’d wondered time and again how he’d let some stupid, ill-thought-out public argument rob him of all
that. He drank again.

Halldor drank too but then he said: ‘When Elsa died I wanted to take my dagger and plunge it into my own heart.’

Harald looked at him, shocked.

‘But that’s . . .’

‘A sin?’

‘Not that so much as . . .’

‘Cowardly? Inglorious? I know. I hated myself for it but I hated the world without her in it more. And I might have done it too if it hadn’t been for Aksel.’

Harald rubbed at his eyes as if he might be dreaming.

‘Truly, Hal?’

‘Pathetic?’

‘Pathetic.’

Both men drank again. Neither spoke until eventually Halldor added: ‘I still think of her, Harald. Every single day I think of her and it may be pathetic but I can’t help it and in a
funny way it keeps me going. I think, maybe, some women are just special. Elsa was one and it seems to me that Elizaveta is another.’

Harald rounded on him.

‘I have a betrothed in Norway.’

‘I know. You are a greedy man, Harald Sigurdsson, but I do not see you setting the sails to get to
her
. Instead we’re all kicking our frozen heels in Novgorod waiting for you
to get up the balls to go back to Kiev and apologise.’

‘You think that’s why we wait?’

‘Do you not?’

‘No! There’s the ice and the troops and the . . .’ Even drunk Harald heard how useless his excuses sounded – how pathetic. ‘She won’t have me,’ he bit
out instead.

‘Maybe not.’

‘She hates me.’

‘It’s a good sign.’

‘This isn’t a story, Hal.’

‘Of course it is. It’s
your
story, Harald, so you should write it the way you want it. Her father’s fleet sailed for Miklegard and it was a disaster. They limped home
just as you said they would and the young Prince Vladimir barely escaped with his life. Elizaveta will know now that you are not a coward, but a wise general.’

‘Wise? Come now, Halldor.’

‘You’re right. I get carried away with words. Moderately sensible – is that an improvement?’

Harald clapped his friend on the back.

‘I think maybe, Hal,
you
are the wise one. You think she might have me still?’

‘I think it’s worth a chance and, besides, if she does not, you have your spare in Norway.’

Harald pulled a face at his crinkled friend and drank again, trying desperately to disguise the smile creeping across his face. Could he ride?

‘You crossed the chain at Miklegard,’ Halldor’s voice whispered into his ear. ‘You fried pirates on the Greek sea. You braved the empress in her lair and came out alive.
Surely you can ask a girl to forgive you?’

Surely he could, Harald thought, but it seemed far harder than anything he’d done before.

Podol, Kiev, January 1043

E
lizaveta felt the rush of heat across her face as, with an animal roar, the men of Kiev flung their torches into the great galley ship set on the
thick ice of the Dnieper and it flared proudly. The flames balled briefly in the very centre of the old vessel before licking out along the rowing benches and dancing along the gunwales towards the
great dragon head high up on the prow. The crowd in the crazy streets of the Podol cheered madly and Elizaveta, stood in the royal grandstand with Anne and Agatha, felt as warmed by their joy as by
the heat.

‘This bit makes me sad,’ a voice said behind her.

She turned to Jakob, the master boatbuilder who was honoured as part of the royal party at this special fire festival, and smiled.

‘The ship was old, Jakob.’

‘But beautiful.’

‘They all are, and you will build more.’

Jakob sighed a harsh, rasping sigh.

‘I built many last year, Princess, just to send them to the bottom of the Greek sea with your brother, God bless him.’

‘Vladimir did not sink, Jakob,’ Elizaveta said sternly, looking for her father who, thankfully, was absorbed in the fire as the ice cracked beneath the ship and it shifted, keen to
be off on its final journey.

Her pagan ancestors, not so many years back, had believed they were sending it to Valhalla to win favour for the year’s trading and raiding ahead and she was sure many of the wide-eyed
watchers in the Podol still clung to that belief. Many young men were making dangerous runs across the melting ice to fling gifts – rings, horseshoes, gowns, drinking cups, all the symbols of
their individual trades – into the flames. They did it more to impress the young women of Kiev than any lingering gods, but the superstitions were still strong beneath the whole ceremony. It
was the sort of night, were they in the northern lands of their forefathers, when the trolls would be roaming free.

Elizaveta shivered, despite the heat of the blaze. Would Harald be celebrating the winter fire festival in Norway? Would he be watching his own galley burn, no longer needed now he was secure at
home, with King Magnus on one side and his blonde Norwegian wife on the other?

‘Don’t think of it,’ she told herself, as she had done all winter.

Her family had been very kind in the wake of Harald’s dramatic departure. Agatha and Edward had taken her out riding, driving the horses hard to force her mind off her troubles. Anne had
brought her a book of prayers, beautifully inscribed ‘for my courageous sister’ in her own golden lettering, and even Anastasia had seemed genuinely concerned, though perhaps it was
just jealousy at her dramatically tragic status.

Ingrid had secured the services of a talented viol player from Bavaria to help her develop her music and it had been a blessed distraction. Yaroslav had bought her jewels and taken her on a tour
of the ever-growing Snake Ramparts and then, at Christ’s mass, invited a dozen eligible young counts and princes from neighbouring tribute-lands to pay her court. It had not gone well.
Elizaveta had tried her best to be polite but, truly, they had all been simpering idiots compared to . . .

‘Don’t think of it,’ she told herself again.

Vladimir, home from the terrible expedition to Miklegard, had returned to Novgorod where he had married the daughter of the previous count. Ivan was betrothed to a princess of Miklegard, as part
of the prolonged peace negotiations following their defeat, and Yaroslav had finally given in to Agatha’s determined entreaties and offered her to Edward. The earnest prince, now into his
thirties, had been delighted but embarrassed, repeating what he had oft told Elizaveta – that he had little chance of ever paying his exuberant benefactor back. Agatha, however, had
pronounced firmly that her happiness was all the thanks Yaroslav needed and the wedding was set for next year when she turned fifteen.

In the meantime, an ambassador from no less a court than France had been dancing attendance on Anne, looking for a wife for the widowed Henry I, and it felt to Elizaveta as if all of
Yaroslav’s older children were doing their part in extending his web of influence, save her. It hurt, though not enough to encourage the pale-livered princes on offer.

‘In the spring, Elizaveta,’ Yaroslav had told her on Twelfth Night, barely curbing his rising impatience, ‘we will choose a husband. If
you
cannot then
I
will
– and you will accept my choice graciously. You are twenty-four, daughter, and we must marry you before your womb shrivels and no one wants you at all.’

He was right of course, but as Elizaveta watched the flames grasp the neck of the great dragon-prow she felt sudden sympathy for the poor ship. She had loved Harald. Recklessly and foolishly she
had loved him, and that love had burned her as the dragon-ship was burning now.

She watched sadly as with a strange, sucking sound the last of the ice around the ship melted away and it bobbed on its self-created pond. Soon its charring strakes would split apart and it
would sink beneath the surface where, before morning, a thin crust would already have formed over any floating remains, trapping them until the spring thaws sent them spinning south.

To the left of the grandstand an impromptu band had struck up. Elizaveta spotted her viol teacher at the heart of them and looked for the tug of the music inside her but it did not come and she
stood sombrely at Jakob’s side, the two of them fixed on the sinking vessel as the rest of Kiev began to dance. Then, suddenly, a call ripped through the crowd from the people furthest
upriver.

‘A spirit!’

‘A spirit from Valhalla, come to claim his ship!’

‘Nonsense,’ Yaroslav said quickly but he, like the rest, moved forward to look up the Dnieper where many fingers were now pointing and from where, over the crackle of the flames, the
night air was filled with the sound of spiked hooves pounding the ice. Into view came a horseman, riding up in the stirrups of a huge stallion, wearing a scarlet cloak and a helmet fixed with
ceremonial wings on either side. He did, indeed, look like some warrior spirit as he took the bend in the solid river and bore down on the ship.

‘Who is he?’ the crowd asked each other, delighted.

‘He’s a dead man if he rides any closer to the ship.’

‘Spirits cannot die!’

All eyes watched as the figure galloped alongside the galley, a huge, dark shape against the orange glare, his mount’s hooves seeming to skim the dangerously thin ice. Then, just as it
looked as if he would pass on down the dark Dnieper, he flung himself from the horse and landed square on the dragon’s head so that the insistent flames reached eagerly up to devour his
boots. The crowd gasped and pressed forward as the man – if man it was – held up an arm.

‘I am here to die with this ship,’ he proclaimed. ‘To die for my sins against this glorious nation of the Rus, as I justly deserve.’

‘No!’ the crowd protested.

He silenced them with a hand.

‘Only one thing can save me . . . the love of a woman.’

The crowd ooh-ed, delighted at this living story.

‘What woman?’ they called, volunteers already squirming keenly to the front.

‘The Princess Elizaveta,’ came the reply, then the heroic figure swept the helmet from his head and a curtain of ice-blonde hair fell over his scarlet cloak.

‘Harald!’

Elizaveta could hardly believe it and didn’t know whether to berate him as a fool or embrace him as her hero. The crowd, however, were in no doubt and all looked keenly to Yaroslav to
release their ‘spirit’ from his hellish flames.

‘You abandoned us, Harald,’ Yaroslav called across the river.

‘I know it, though I did so with all honest intentions. You have seen, I hope, that I advised you out of my small warrior’s wisdom and not pride or cowardice?’

The flames were eating into the dragon’s neck now and Harald climbed a little higher, clutching at the beast’s carved ears as the crowd clutched at each other.

‘I will make reparation, Grand Prince,’ Harald went on. ‘I will make your beautiful daughter Queen of Norway and then of Denmark and of England too. Together, Yaroslav, we will
rule the north, I swear it, but I must have Elizaveta as my queen. I beg this of you.’

The ship creaked. The fire at the centre had burned through the base and now one side splintered, sending the whole vessel rocking. Within minutes it would fold in on itself, dragging the prince
into the inferno and down to death in the Dnieper.

‘Grant it!’ the crowd begged their own prince.

Elizaveta saw Yaroslav’s eyes flicker across the dying ship and knew that, as much a showman as Harald, he was judging the time he had left.

‘You will treat her with all honour?’ he demanded as, with a shriek of tearing wood, the mast fell, slamming into the ice and sending the ship tipping wildly.

‘I will,’ Harald called and now Elizaveta caught real panic in his voice.

‘Serve him right,’ she muttered, ‘for his damned hero tricks,’ but her heart was in her mouth and she stepped up to take Yaroslav’s arm.

‘You consent, daughter?’ her father asked her, one eye on the ship.

‘I consent,’ she agreed, as loudly as she could.

‘Then, Prince Harald,’ Yaroslav called, ‘come and claim your bride.’

Harald stilled, bowed his head a moment, and then leaped from the dragon. He landed on the ice with a thud and skidded towards the bank where eager hands waited to lift him clear just as the
ship burst. The dragon’s head seemed for a moment to rear up before collapsing backwards into the flames as the water frothed around them. Elizaveta put a hand to her chest to keep her heart
within, for it was beating like a blacksmith’s hammer against the anvil of her bones. Now, though, Harald was being brought before her, lifted onto the grandstand on the shoulders of the
people of Kiev and her sisters were pushing her keenly forward. She must compose herself.

‘A grand entrance, Harald,’ she said drily as he knelt before her.

He looked up through his curtain of hair, the golden flecks sparkling in his soft grey eyes.