The Constant Queen (3 page)

‘Not ours,’ Elizaveta answered. ‘Trolls dwell in Norway and every winter they dig deep below the trees to avoid the ice and suck sustenance from the roots until they grow so
fat they divide into two and twice as many come out in the spring.’

‘Truly?’ little Agatha asked.

‘I know not,’ Elizaveta admitted, kissing her dark curls. ‘But one day I will travel to Norway and find out for you.’

‘To Norway? Nay, Lily, it’s too far.’

‘Not for me – nor for you either, little one. You could come with me and hop across to see your precious England.’

Agatha’s eyes grew big as moons.

‘Could I, Lily? Could I really?’

Ingrid swept in, nudging Elizaveta firmly aside as she tucked the covers around her youngest daughter with a crisp ‘We’ll see,’ but her words were cut off by a great knocking
at the south gates.

The sound was clearly made with a heavy staff or, more likely, a sword hilt, and it echoed around the princely courtyard like a thunder-clap. The girls, even the smaller ones, were up to the
window in an instant, clambering out onto the rooved wooden walkway beyond. Ingrid and Hedda tried to stop them but all around others were doing the same – clerks and maids and nurses were
emerging from the living quarters above the three great halls that, with the church on the fourth side, formed the central section of the kremlin. The women’s quarters were on the furthest,
west side and Elizaveta looked to the perpendicular south hall where her brothers were scrambling keenly along their own balcony towards the great kremlin gates at the end of it. They were all
there, Vladimir, Ivan, Stefan, Viktor and Igor, every one of them blonde as the harvest and all pushing at each other for the best view.

‘Can you see?’ Elizaveta called to Vladimir who, as eldest, had grabbed the best view.

He leaned right out over the gates but shook his head. The visitors, whoever they were, must be close up against the far side, hidden by the high gate-towers. The guards were holding a furious
discussion with them and now the Grand Prince, Elizaveta’s father, was striding out of the church and down the wood-paved pathway to take command.

‘Who visits Kiev at this hour?’ he demanded, his body as slight as Elizaveta’s own beneath his long embroidered overcoat but his power still clear in his tone.

The answer from the guards was frustratingly quiet but, at a wave from Yaroslav, they turned to crank open the vast gates and the men were revealed. Three leaders rode through on high-stepping
horses, followed by a troop of some fifty soldiers.

‘Varangians,’ Ingrid breathed at Elizaveta’s side.

Elizaveta’s heart quickened. Varangians – elite Viking soldiers from the northern lands. Her sharp eyes fixed on the three at the head of the procession as they swung themselves out
of the saddle to bow low before the Grand Prince.

‘Who is
he
?’ Anastasia whispered, pointing a quivering finger at the man in the centre.

All three men were broad with the muscular shoulders and thick arms of trained warriors but the central one was so tall that, even kneeling, his head, topped with hair brighter and blonder than
any Elizaveta’s envious eyes had ever seen, came almost level with their father.

‘’Tis Harald Fairhair himself,’ Anne gasped.

‘Nonsense,’ Elizaveta said, ‘he died years ago,’ but even so she pressed a little closer to her mother as the man spoke, his voice – despite a few unfamiliar words
of a Norse tongue older than their own – so clear and fluid it carried easily around the courtyard and up to the parapets.

‘Greetings, Grand Prince. We come in peace, seeking refuge. We are exiles from Norway where my brother, the sainted King Olaf, was viciously slain in battle. This is Ulf Ospakkson, this
Halldor Snorrason and I am Harald Sigurdsson, Prince of Norway.’

‘Prince Harald!’ Anastasia said, delighted.

‘Of Norway,’ Elizaveta emphasised. This wasn’t the Harald of her mother’s stories but even so her heart beat faster as she turned to Ingrid. Perhaps now she would find
out more about the evil battle and the fate of the Norse lands that so fascinated her. ‘Please, Mother,’ she begged. ‘Please can we go down now?’

E
lizaveta walked into the hall behind her mother, for once grateful to have Anastasia at her side, for the vast room – some fifty strides
long – felt cramped and close with the whole of the Grand Prince’s
druzhina
pushing for a sight of the visitors. This huge space was the heart of Yaroslav’s palace.
Normally it was flooded with light, reflecting off the mosaic flooring and the frescoes along the lime-washed walls, but today it was so packed that the window openings were obscured, as if the
encroaching night had already fallen.

Servants were rushing to kindle the oil lamps along the side columns and on free stands, but the crowds were blocking both their way and the light of those flames they had managed to strike.
Even as Elizaveta walked in, there was a scuffle in the corner as a minor count, climbing a stool to look over the myriad heads, collided with another on the same mission, sending both sprawling
into a servant with a lit taper. One cloak caught and, in a cry of alarm and a crackle of smouldering wool, its owner darted for the doorway, a path clearing rapidly before him, and dived into the
fountain.

‘Try not to laugh, girls,’ Ingrid murmured, though her own lips were pressed together to contain her mirth.

Now, though, they had been noticed by the courtiers who fell deferentially back to let them through. Elizaveta forced her head up and, resisting the urge to tug her headdress over her escaping
raven hair, followed her mother as calmly and elegantly as she could up the centre of the hall to Yaroslav’s grand marble throne at the top.

‘Ah my love, my Ingrid. You grace us with your golden presence.’

Yaroslav leaped down from the dais and held out his hand to his wife. Elizaveta watched, fascinated as ever by her parents’ public face. Always Yaroslav treated Ingrid was if she were the
most precious thing in the world and now he handed her carefully up to her seat at his side, though she was both taller and broader than him, especially in her advancing pregnancy.

Everything the Grand Prince did, from eating, to pronouncing laws, to departing for the privvie, was done with a flourish, a flamboyance designed to impress his confidence and grandeur upon his
subjects, but he seemed to genuinely love Ingrid and she him. Anastasia was always sighing about how beautiful it was. Elizaveta wasn’t so sure about that, but it certainly felt right,
reassuring – as if a partnership so solid at the head of a nation would inevitably make the nation solid too.

Now she crept across to Vladimir – the only one of the princes permitted down to dinner – as Yaroslav introduced his wife to the visitors and they made their obeisance. They were a
curious trio. The first, Ulf Ospakkson, was tall, though not as tall as his prince, and had a mass of curly hair tumbling down into a matching beard that he had tried – and failed – to
tame into a plait below his chin. His mouth could hardly be seen through the bush of it, save when he laughed, as he seemed to do often, and it opened up like a pink cavern to reveal fine white
teeth. His eyes, in contrast, were huge and dark, tilled-soil brown, and seemed to take everything in at once.

The second, Halldor Snorrason, was a squat, heavyset man, nearly as broad as he was tall. His head was hunched into his massive shoulders so he looked less like a man and more like one of the
Byzantine turtles Vladimir kept in a tank in his chamber. He was older than the other two, his hair sparse on top so that it seemed as if his forehead, sitting low on a heavy brow, had sought
escape up onto his head. His remaining hair was caught up in a leather band at the back of his neck and his long beard was neatly combed and drawn into a forked shape with two similar bands. His
tunic was almost black, an unusually dark shade for the colour-loving Vikings, with the edges picked out in assertive swirls of gold thread. Elizaveta thought him quite the strangest man she had
ever seen and only pulled her eyes away when Prince Harald stepped in front of him.

She drew in a breath. Close up, Harald Sigurdsson was even more striking than he had been from afar. Although clearly no more than two or three years her senior, he stood almost a head taller
than any other man in Kiev’s great hall, his immaculate hair so blonde as to be almost white. He wore no beard at all, though his moustache was long and neat, and up the side of his
clean-shaven face, from lip to eyebrow, ran a raw scar that seemed to Elizaveta to enhance the pale clarity of the rest of his skin. She edged forward, intrigued, and her father spotted her.

‘Ah ha – my eldest daughter. This, Harald, is the Princess Elizaveta. Come forward, my dear.’

Elizaveta tried to compose herself as she stepped up onto the dais but her dress caught in the embroidered tip of her boot. For an awful moment she thought she might fall but then Harald was
reaching out his hand and her fingers found his as he drew her securely up at his side.

‘Thank you, my lord.’

‘A pleasure, Princess, and is this your sister?’

Elizaveta was forced to agree that it was, seething quietly as Harald’s hand left hers to raise Anastasia up at her side.

‘You’re too kind,’ Anastasia simpered, batting youthful eyelashes up at the Norwegian prince, but as soon as she was steady Harald dropped her hand and turned back to
Elizaveta.

‘Your father is very gracious to receive us.’

His language, although much the same as theirs, was tinged with a soft inflection that made Elizaveta think deliciously of the snowy northern pines and knife-edge fjords her mother had often
described. She glanced towards Yaroslav, who was deep in conversation with Ulf.

‘He loves visitors,’ she told Harald, speaking with care, ‘especially such honourable ones.’

‘Ah, as for that, I fear I come without honour for I have fled a battle.’

Elizaveta caught something pass through Harald’s pale grey eyes, like a glacier shifting beneath the surface, and longed to know more. He did not look like a coward so why had he fled? She
looked at him carefully, recalling asking Yaroslav about his lost princes when she’d been younger and less careful with her questions.

‘But Father,’ she’d said, ‘are they not “lost” for a reason?’

‘How do you mean, daughter?’

‘Are they not weak men to have got lost at all?’

Yaroslav’s ready laughter had died in his throat and he had pulled Elizaveta closer to him.

‘Perhaps, Lily. It is possible, yes, but the world is a harsh place. It throws many things at men, especially young men. Fortune’s wheel, my sweet one, turns relentlessly. It can tip
you down when you least expect it and the bravest are the ones who hold fast – who cleave to life and to hope – and who are still holding when she turns upwards again.’

‘And if a man helps them to hold on . . . ?’

‘They will owe him for the rest of their days. Yes.’

Elizaveta had swallowed, unsettled.

‘Have you had to hold fast, Father?’ she’d asked nervously and he’d smiled again.

‘Many times, Lily, and so will you.’

‘I will hold?’

‘You will, I know it.’

She had thought over those words many times since, praying for the strength to prove her father right, but now she felt as if she were looking straight at a man who was holding on and it
fascinated her. Before she could ask more, though, he had turned back to Yaroslav.

‘We will not be a burden, Sire,’ he told him earnestly. ‘We are warriors and willing to do you whatever service you see fit.’

‘I doubt it not,’ Yaroslav agreed easily. ‘My little empire has been all but built on Varangian service. Norse soldiers have never let me down yet and, besides, I believe I
have your kin at court. Vladimir!’

He waved at his eldest son and Vladimir dutifully turned to look for young Magnus. Elizaveta sighed. The seven-year-old Prince of Norway was the youngest of her father’s current exiles
and, in her opinion, much the dullest. Quiet and studious, he was happier at his desk or his prayer-stool than outside, even when the sun was shining. Yaroslav had told Elizaveta that he was an
‘admirable example of piety’, which she supposed he was, but it wasn’t an example she would choose to follow.

She preferred the English prince, Edward, for though he was also quiet, he at least liked to ride and was happy to talk about the bible rather than just burying himself in it. She’d had
many lively discussions with him and his fellow exile, Andrew of Hungary, a suave, handsome young man, newly converted to Christianity and ringing with zeal. Edward hung on Andrew’s every
word and Elizaveta wished he’d recognise that his own ideas, though not as flamboyantly expressed as Andrew’s, were far more thoughtful and meaningful. She’d tried on several
occasions to talk to him about England but he had been spirited away as a baby, fleeing the conquering King Cnut, and knew less than she did of his native land.

Now she watched as Edward ushered little Magnus forward and Vladimir, grabbing his hand, dragged him unceremoniously across to greet his newly arrived uncle. Prince Harald leaned down to shake
Magnus’s hand, talking quietly to him, presumably of his lost father, and Elizaveta felt suddenly mean. The poor boy had been forced to flee his homeland, aged five. He had been separated
from his stepmother, Queen Astrid – Ingrid’s sister – who had been left in Sweden with her kin, and now he had also lost his father and with him any chance of returning home. Even
as she thought about that, though, she heard Harald telling Magnus: