The Constant Queen (25 page)

T
ora, painfully aware of the woman stood just above her on the royal dais, forced herself to keep her head high and her eyes up as she greeted
Harald. Even after sixteen years, it was unmistakably him, but he looked so different. He was even taller than he’d been at fifteen and much broader. His arms alone looked twice their
previous width and she hated to imagine the number of sword-swings it had taken to build so much muscle. His face, once so smooth, was lined and weather-worn and down one side, as if the devil had
drawn across him, was a long trace of a wound, faint, but to Tora’s eyes as livid as if it were new-won.

‘Stikelstad?’ she whispered, stepping forward and putting up a hand but not daring to touch.

Harald’s own fingers went to his cheek and he nodded. For a moment the word seemed to shimmer between them, laden with memories, and then, as if snatching it away, he said: ‘Much has
changed since then.’

Instinctively Tora looked over his shoulder to his new wife.

‘And many promises have been broken,’ she said sharply.

Goodness, the Rus girl was beautiful – so slim and fragile, like a sprite, and with such fine features. Her eyes were as dark as her night-time hair, her skin an alluringly dusky shade and
her lips full and inviting. She was the opposite to big, blonde Harald in every possible detail and for a second Tora could almost see them entwined between the sheets. She blinked the rogue image
away. This girl was the total opposite to herself too and if this was the sort of beauty that had captivated Harald down in the south she stood no chance. Never had.

‘I am truly sorry, Tora,’ Harald was saying, his voice low, ‘if you had . . . expectations of me.’

Tora had so much to say to that, so much she wanted to remind him of, to demand answers for but not now, not here with all of Norway watching on.

‘You must introduce me, Harald, to your wife,’ she said loudly, cutting through his attempt at intimacy.

Harald looked stunned and Tora was glad; she was not here to make him content – not now.

‘Of course,’ he agreed, recovering. ‘Er, Lady Tora Arnasson, this is Queen Elizaveta.’

‘Of Kiev?’ Tora asked, taking a single step forward.

‘Of Norway,’ the dark girl said stonily, taking a mirrored step.

Elizaveta did not hold out her hand and for that, at least, Tora was grateful for she could no more have kissed it than she could a weed-strung toad. Instead, they both bowed their heads in a
curt greeting, more for the eagerly watching Norwegians than each other.

‘And how,’ Tora asked, ‘do you find your new country?’

‘Very agreeable,’ came the swift reply, laced with an exotic southerly inflection, but Tora saw the edge of Elizaveta’s full lips twitch and knew she’d hit a nerve.
Good.

‘It must be very quiet after the bustle of home,’ she suggested.

Elizaveta’s eyes narrowed.

‘This
is
home,’ she shot back, ‘and I welcome the quiet – it is good for the babe.’

One of her slim hands rested pointedly on what Tora now saw was a swelling belly. Damn. She’d heard tell of a miscarriage, maybe more than one, but news of this new pregnancy had not
reached her. She stared at Elizaveta’s hand. Was that a wedding ring? It was the finest jewel Tora had ever seen and anger, at last, flared inside her. This slip of a creature had
Harald’s love, his wealth and now his child too.

‘Of course,’ she forced out. ‘I’m sure we would all hate you to lose
this
one.’

It was a nasty thing to say, she knew, and a part of her hated herself for it, but why should she not be nasty? She had thought, after the sufferance of her marriage to Pieter, that God had seen
fit to reward her with Harald’s return but Elizaveta of Kiev had stolen him. She was not going to make that easy for her.

‘Thank you,’ Elizaveta said as sweetly as if the feeling had been honestly meant, though Tora did not doubt that, despite the differences in their language, she had understood her
true intent. ‘And you are right – I should sit. Excuse me.’

She turned then and sank gracefully into the beautifully carved seat that marked her out as queen, placing a proprietorial hand on the arm of Harald’s seat at her side.

‘Please be seated, Lady Tora,’ Harald said, waving her towards a gap on the bench as he slid in beside the Rus traitress.

Unable to refuse, Tora found herself between a peculiar squat man and a bright-eyed soldier with a mop of wild curly hair.

‘My comrades-in-arms,’ Harald said proudly, as if they were meant as some sort of pleasure for her, ‘Halldor Snorrason and Ulf Ospakkson. We have fought many battles together
but they, like me, are ready to settle now.’

‘I’m not,’ the gruff one called Halldor said. ‘I seek no wife, Hari, so do not go finding me one.’

Tora jumped at his tone and Ulf leaned towards her.

‘Don’t mind him, my lady. He’s half troll.’

‘Sorry?’

Ulf smiled.

‘He wouldn’t know beauty if it jumped out at him with a sword.’

Tora looked into this Ulf’s eyes, big and brown, trying to fathom him out. Was he being nice to her? With his strange accent – a mixture of tongues that told of much travelling
– it was hard to tell.

‘You have been with Harald for a long time?’ she asked cautiously.

‘Since Stikelstad.’ She felt herself wince and he saw it too. ‘’Twas a terrible battle,’ he admitted. ‘I was newly come from Iceland with my brother, Bjorn,
and thought I’d landed in hell itself. I lost Bjorn that day but I found Halldor and together we helped Harald flee the field. They have been my brothers ever since.’

‘That’s good.’ It was a stupid thing to say. Good?! What was ‘good’ about a friendship forged in the mud and blood of a battlefield? ‘I mean . . .’

Ulf put up a gracious hand.

‘I appreciate your sentiment, my lady. We three have shared more blood than had we been born of the same womb. It binds us.’

His dancing eyes stilled for a moment and Tora thought of Harald’s first words to her – ‘much has changed’. Harald and his men had seen places and people and battles that
were beyond her imagination. Did the Rus princess understand more?

‘You have spent much time in Kiev,’ she said lightly as servers brought round the first course. ‘Is it a very grand place?’

‘Oh yes and growing grander every day. It stands upon a great mountain range, the whole city spreading out across the plateau and all enclosed within walls three men high. It has
twenty-one churches inside and . . .’

‘Twenty-one? In one place?’

‘Yes, my lady.’

‘Why so many?’

‘Well, I suppose because there are ten thousand people living there and they all need somewhere to worship.’

Ten thousand! Tora felt faint. Were there even that many in the whole of Norway?

‘You will be bored here, then?’ she stuttered.

‘Me? No. No, I am ready to build a farm and find a wife.’

Ulf looked intently at her and anger fired inside her again. So this was the man to whom Harald would see her ‘wed with great dignity’. No way. No way was she being forced into
marriage with one of Harald’s warrior friends as some sort of consolation prize.

‘I am bound by a long-established contract,’ she said stiffly.

Ulf nodded slowly, his crazy curls bobbing.

‘I heard,’ he said, ‘but I do not think that contract stopped you marrying before?’

‘That was not my choice.’

‘I see. But your “choice”, Tora . . .’

‘Lady Tora.’

‘Your choice,
Lady
Tora, is surely no longer available to you.’

‘And you consider yourself an adequate replacement?’

Ulf laughed.

‘Clearly you do not.’

Tora shook herself. She was acting the stranger again and she did not like it.

‘I’m sorry. I do not mean to be rude.’

Ulf shrugged then pointed at Halldor, deep in conversation with the Rus impostor.

‘Halldor there had a woman once, a slave girl. He loved her very dearly but she died giving him a son.’

Tora’s eyes opened wide. She looked to Elizaveta’s belly and back to Ulf.

‘What on earth are you saying?’

He followed her gaze and flushed.

‘Not that! Lord, no. May God keep Queen Elizaveta safe. I was simply saying that Halldor has never found anyone to replace her.’

‘Oh.’ Tora felt ridiculous. Was this big, bluff soldier pitying her? She looked awkwardly past him and was grateful to see her sister being shown into a seat on his other side.

‘Ah, Count Ulf,’ she said hastily, ‘meet Johanna, my little sister.’

He looked around.

‘Not so very little,’ he said admiringly as Johanna turned her big eyes up at him and suddenly Tora found herself free of her awkward conversation. Indeed, of
any
conversation.

She looked across at Harald. Finn was standing, leaning easily on the back of the new king’s seat, the two men chatting as if nothing had happened between them, as if Harald had not
betrayed their family by bringing home this darkly beautiful Slav bride. And now they looked over at Ulf and Johanna and it was clear from their nudges and nods where that was going. Tora was being
smudged out already, painted over, left to rot as the court wound its fickle way onwards.

‘No!’ she said into her meal, making the troll-man jump.

Tora hastily stabbed a piece of elk and stuffed it into her stupid mouth but the word rang round and round in her head all the same – no, no, no, no, no! She wasn’t going to
disappear; why should she? She cleared her throat.

‘You must come and visit us at Austratt, Harald,’ she said clearly. The top table looked her way. ‘Must he not, Uncle?’

‘Of course,’ Finn agreed, though he was regarding her warily.

‘I hope you might like it there, my lady,’ she said directly to Elizaveta. ‘It is not Kiev but as a key trading post it is a little livelier than here.’

Elizaveta glanced at Harald.

‘That’s very kind, Tora,’ he said. ‘We would enjoy that, would we not, Elizaveta?’

Elizaveta looked back to Tora who held her in her gaze, willing her to crumble, but the damned woman just took Harald’s hand and, toying openly with his big fingers, said: ‘We would,
Hari.’

Hari! Since when had he become ‘Hari’? Was that a Rus affectation? It made him sound more like a dog than a man.

‘Lovely,’ Tora managed through clenched teeth. ‘Perhaps for Whitsun? That would give me time to source some special dishes to give you a true taste of Norway.’ She looked
to Finn. ‘We could dig up the shark perhaps, Uncle?’

‘Dig up?’ Elizaveta asked faintly.

Tora smiled at her.

‘Shark meat is poisonous so it has to be left under large stones to crush the toxins from it.’

‘For . . . for how long?’ The Rus girl’s wretched olive skin had gone pleasingly green.

‘About three months.’

‘But how does it stay fresh?’

‘Fresh? Oh, it doesn’t stay fresh but a little fermentation adds to the flavour. It used to be Harald’s favourite dish, did it not, Harald?’

‘Maybe,’ Elizaveta said, leaning across him, ‘his tastes have changed.’

‘Or maybe,’ Tora shot back icily, ‘he’s just forgotten how good his old favourites were.’

‘If his tastes ran to rotten fish,’ Elizaveta flashed, ‘I somehow doubt it.’

‘It’s a very mature flavour. One he may have lost in the sickly dishes of the south. It lingers.’

‘So I see – or should that be
smell
?’

Tora glared at Elizaveta who glared back but now the eyes of the court were turning their way and Finn slid himself between them.

‘I hear Count Halldor tells a wondrous tale,’ he said loudly. ‘Perhaps he would entertain us with something from the golden city?’

‘I’m sure he would,’ Harald agreed. ‘Halldor?’

The troll-man grunted but rose and, to Tora’s astonishment, a sudden smile transformed his wizened face and his hunched body unfolded as he moved out before the crowd.

‘’Twas a night of a thousand stars . . .’ he began and everyone turned contentedly his way, but all Tora could see now, with an empty space between them, was her rival.

‘You think you’ve won, don’t you?’ she hissed at her.

Elizaveta just smiled a slow, infuriatingly beautiful smile.

‘I know I have. Harald loves me.’

Tora nodded slowly. She’d be a fool to deny his infatuation with this girl, but they were in the north now and the new queen stood out like a reed amongst pines.

‘Perhaps,’ she agreed, with a smile of her own, ‘but he needs
me
.’

Bymarka, May 1046

‘Y
ou will be polite to the Arnassons, Lily?’

Elizaveta looked up from her viol practice as Harald came so close as to obstruct the movement of her bow. She stared at him, surprised. Usually he loved to watch her play,
especially when, as on this deliciously warm evening, she was doing so naked.

‘I will be every bit as polite to them as they have been to me,’ she said curtly.

‘That’s what I’m afraid of.’

Harald turned away and reluctantly she put down her instrument and went after him as he paced up the side of their ‘bedchamber’, a dark, windowless room dominated by a magnificent
bed. It had carved wooden sides and a pile of feather mattresses and furs so soft she’d slept surprisingly well every night. Harald told her it was all the ‘fresh’ air of Norway
and if by fresh he meant crisp and salted and endless then he might be right.