The Constant Queen (29 page)

‘Your child is safe born, Sire, and . . .’

‘Where is she? Where’s my wife?’

‘The queen just needs a little time. She just . . .’

But Harald had heard enough. He pushed her aside and stepped in.

‘Lily?’

Elizaveta was on the bed, lying there so pale it looked as if every drop of her blood had been drained from her and maybe it had, for the sheets were soaked and her poor naked legs were caked
red where they poked from her sodden shift. Greta was tending to her but seeing Harald she stepped back, bloody rags clutched to her chest. Harald’s hands went to his mouth. He dared not
move.

‘This surely,’ he whispered to Halldor at his shoulder, ‘is not normal?’

Halldor’s strained ‘no’ seemed to scratch at his very soul and he flung himself forward.

‘Lily?’ Her eyes flinched open. ‘Oh, thank God. Lily, I thought you were . . .’

‘Don’t say it, Hari. I thought I was too but I am here.’

‘You are here.’

‘The babe?’

‘The . . .’ He looked around, confused. ‘I almost forgot.’

‘Hari! I go through all this and you almost forget?’

Her voice was faint but he heard the teasing within it and his spirits soared. Then, suddenly, she sighed and it seemed to shake her whole body.

‘Lily – what’s wrong?’

‘It is a girl, Hari. I . . . I’m sorry.’

‘Sorry? You’re
sorry
? Oh my sweet – never be sorry. Where is she? Where is my princess?’

The second midwife brought forward a tiny bundle of white cloth and, taking it, Harald peeled back the warm folds and looked upon his daughter. Two big, dark eyes, so exactly like her
mother’s, blinked up at him and to his astonishment and horror he felt tears well in his eyes. Tears!

‘She’s beautiful,’ he managed, blinking ferociously.

‘Hari – are you crying?’

‘No.’

Elizaveta laughed softly and he went back to her and sat gently on the side of the bed. Greta had pulled a fresh sheet over the mess and all looked pristine but he hadn’t got so soft as to
be fooled.

‘Has the bleeding stopped?’ he demanded of the midwives.

‘We believe so, Sire, but she must rest.’

Harald looked at Elizaveta. She’d put out a hand to the baby but her eyes were closing and he felt the damned tears rising again. He stood up firmly.

‘We shall call her Maria,’ he said.

‘Maria?’

The midwives exchanged glances at the strange Latinate name.

‘Maria,’ he repeated, ‘to honour her Rus heritage and in praise of Maria, Mother of Christ, that she may keep Elizaveta safe.’

‘’Tis a noble Christian name,’ one of them volunteered.

‘For a noble Christian king,’ Harald agreed, adding wretchedly to himself: ‘who has – who
can
have – only one wife.’

He glanced back at Elizaveta but she looked little more than a shadow in the stained bed and he prayed, as he had never truly prayed before that, despite his many sins, God would look down on
him today and bring her safely back.

Oslo, Christ’s Mass 1046

‘W
e were trapped!’ Halldor’s voice rang out around the packed hall. ‘Trapped in a fog that wrapped itself around us as if
our own dragon-prow were breathing fumes; trapped in a fjord as narrow as a maiden’s passage and as steep as the granite walls of hell; trapped with Danish ships in an arc across our only
escape route like a sickle of death.’

Elizaveta smiled. She had not heard one of Halldor’s tales for some time and, despite the dark content, she welcomed it as a sign that all was well again. Harald had told her little of the
men’s bitter campaign against Svein this summer, dismissing it as ‘a disaster’, but listening to Halldor now it sounded a triumph. It seemed that even the worst events could be
polished up by the funny warrior’s rhetoric and she wondered what gloss he might find for her own travails.

If he ever told it, she did not want to hear. Living through the pain of Maria’s birthing and the endless, terrifyingly slow days of recovery, had been bad enough without ever hearing it
recounted, but live through it she had and for that she was unendingly grateful. She had held fast to fortune’s wheel and fortune had lifted her out of the mire.

She and Harald had moved south once she had recovered, both to escape the prying eyes of the northern jarls and to look for the perfect site for their new city. They had found it on the banks of
the river Lo and Harald had set his troops to building the great hall in which the courtiers were all now gathered.

The northern jarls were taking great pleasure in grumbling about its basic comforts but though it was true that it was rough at the moment, they had great plans for it. Some of the commanders
had commissioned their own dwellings nearby and it gave Elizaveta great pleasure to see the city they were calling Oslo starting to take shape. She felt desperately proud of it and had personally
supervised the plans for a great church. For now, they worshipped in an ancient wooden chapel, but new foundations had been laid and dedicated to Our Lady to give thanks for Elizaveta’s
survival and for their own little Maria.

She looked fondly across to her daughter, now a lively three-month-old and cradled in her father’s big arm, her little hands waving and her dark eyes following Halldor’s every
exaggerated movement, though always her head flicked up if her father spoke. Maria was never happier than when she was with Harald and Elizaveta felt the accustomed whip of sadness that she was not
a son, able to train with him as she grew. She forced it aside – why wish war on any child?

‘It seemed,’ Halldor intoned, arms high, ‘that we were doomed. We had played the water-gods one too many times and they were sick of us.’

‘Halldor,’ Harald warned quietly.

He was still pursuing the devout Christian-king role that Elizaveta had long since realised was aimed at avoiding the handfast ceremony constantly demanded by the relentless Finn. She sighed. It
had taken Harald weeks to admit to her that his wretched northern mistress was bearing him a second child and Elizaveta had seen no reason to make it easy for him, for it was as painful as hellfire
for her.

‘Just you and me’ had been a blissful dream, remembered on a haze of birthing pain, but she’d soon seen that it would not now be possible and much as she hated that fact, she
had learned to accept it. What other choice was there? She’d recalled her mother’s laughing words about wishing Yaroslav would take a concubine and had tried to be glad that someone
else would have to go through the horror of producing an heir for Norway. But it was hard and, despite her best efforts, her eyes narrowed as she glanced down the table to where Tora sat, her pale
skin rosy, her blonde hair glossy and her belly as round as a full moon and every bit as pleased with itself.

Elizaveta rubbed at her beautiful finger ring, nervously tracing the pattern of Harold’s love in the inset jewels. The Arnassons had come to Oslo two weeks ago and were housed in a
sumptuous set of pavilions on the far side of the meadows – though not nearly far away enough for Elizaveta. All through the Yule period the damned woman had been wearing gowns specially cut
to exaggerate the swell of her bastard babe and her damned uncle had paraded her on his arm everywhere they went as if she were some sort of jewel – which Elizaveta supposed for her family
she was.

She had envied Tora for birthing in her own land with her mother close, until Harald – in one of their rare, awkward conversations about his mistress – had told her Tora’s
mother had died when she was still small. For a moment Elizaveta had almost felt sorry for her rival, and then she’d reminded herself that Tora had both a sister and a brother nearby and of
course her devoted, pushy uncle to ever watch her back, and had returned to hating her, stoking her anger to avoid another uncomfortable truth – that, blooming in the seventh month of her
pregnancy, Tora Arnasson looked more than ever like Ingrid and Elizaveta, cherishing her own hard-won child, yearned, with a sorrow that made her feel uncomfortably vulnerable, to be with her
mother. Now, she tore her eyes away from Tora and, closing them, sent her thoughts across sea and downriver to Kiev.

Ingrid had sent gifts for Maria, Yaroslav too, and, more precious than the fancy toys and cups, ivory teethers and rich silks for tiny gown, a letter:

I wish so much I could be with you and your daughter, my own dearest girl,
Ingrid had written,
and can only hope that she brings you as much joy as you have brought me – and
perhaps a little less trouble.
Elizaveta had smiled through her tears at that and even more so at her mother’s parting words:
say hello to the trolls for me
.

Her family seemed, these days, to be little more than a shadow on vellum. Anastasia had sent a brief note in a neat hand that Elizaveta knew was not her own, though the words had been sincere.
She had praised the value of daughters, saying her own Adelaide was a delight to her but Elizaveta had heard the unspoken regret that Anastasia had not, as yet, produced a son either and had felt
for her proud sister. Anastasia had always longed to produce kings; it must be hurting her to have so far failed to do so.

Agatha had written too, a long, rambling missive, full of praise of Edward and funny tales of Hungarian society and with word that she, too, was pregnant. It seemed Yaroslav’s
grandchildren were entering the world fast. Anne remained unwed, though the emissaries from France had returned to Yaroslav and he was negotiating her dowry. She’d written that Kiev was quiet
these days and that she had heard much praise of Paris, the French first city, and Elizaveta had sensed how she yearned to move on. How far away was Paris, she wondered sometimes? Or Buda? Close
enough to visit? She’d vowed to look into it, for in those long days recovering from her vicious childbed she’d felt very alone with just Greta and Aksel – and, of course,
Harald.

For if Harald was seeing the woman bearing his next child, he was doing so very briefly and very secretively. Tora, so Elizaveta had learned from Greta, had a pavilion all to herself but she
must be alone in it most of the time for Harald slept every night at Elizaveta’s side and sat at every meal with her. In return, if occasionally he was gone from view for an hour or two
Elizaveta let her passions loose on her viol and managed not to snipe or even comment on his return. She was secretly rather proud of herself – this, she hoped, was what her mother would
finally recognise in her as ‘dignity’. She blinked and forced herself to return to the present moment.

‘What did you do?’ someone called out to Halldor, though whether for dramatic effect or to hurry him out of the metaphors that seemed to grow longer and grander as he grew older, was
hard to tell.

Halldor put up a hand.

‘What
could
we do? We were . . .’

‘Trapped,’ his audience provided.

‘Exactly! Trapped as a bug beneath a goblet, as a . . .’

‘As an audience before a poet,’ someone supplied and Halldor frowned.

‘Very well. I shall cut to the chase. If we could not run and we could not dodge, we had to coerce. First we threw barrels full of the finest ale from Odense into the sea to tempt them.
One boat went skittering after but it was not enough so we released caskets of treasure. We kept the treasure back, mind, all save a chain or two, artfully draped out of the clasp – Danes are
easy to fool!’ This won him a roar of approval which he acknowledged with a grin. ‘They dived for those, losing formation and we edged forward, poised to duck through the gap, but Svein
hollered them back and pressed on with the attack. We were, it seemed, doomed.’

Halldor paused dramatically and, hearing a gasp behind, Elizaveta glanced back to see her squire leaning eagerly forward as if physically pulled into his father’s vivid story. She smiled.
Aksel was twelve now and too old to sit at her feet but he had positioned himself, as ever, at her shoulder, poised to serve. The young man had sat at the door of her chamber as much as Harald
after Maria’s birth – nay, more, for no one had called him to kingly duties as they had her poor husband. Once she was sitting up, he had brought her fresh flowers to make her chamber
smell sweet, and pestered the cooks for delicacies to tempt her pathetic appetite, and always been there to offer her his arm when she wished to try and coax her feeble legs back into action.

‘My son is sweet on you,’ Halldor was always teasing her.

‘No, Hal,’ she’d correct him, ‘he is just sweet.’

In truth, she had a suspicion that it was Greta he was sweet on, for there had often been flowers and pastries for her maid too, but since they had come to Oslo, Halldor had drawn his son into
training with the men. Looking at his eager face now, Elizaveta supposed it was time but she would miss him if he went raiding in Denmark next summer, and fear for him besides if Halldor’s
tales were even half true.

‘There was only one thing for it,’ the Icelander was crying gleefully, ‘prisoners. No general can refuse to help his own men so over they went, screaming and yelling in their
soft southern accents. Some we tossed high – you should have seen them cutting holes in the mist with their flailing arms and legs. Some we sent out on an oar balanced over the gunwale,
teetering and tottering like infants learning to walk until their fat arses overbalanced them and they tumbled into the deep. Some we even drove up the mast at sword-point and made them jump from
the very top like our landwaster raven flying high above, only without the wings!’