The Constant Queen (34 page)

‘Why?’

‘Because he is the heir to Norway.’

‘Why?’

Why was Maria’s favourite word. Usually Harald found it endearing but that day with all of Norway looking on he had wished her, for once, a more passive child.

‘Because he is a boy,’ Kalv had told her, eyes narrow with patent hatred.

‘And I,’ Maria had fired back, ‘am the eldest.’

Kalv had laughed nastily.

‘That counts for nothing, Princess. Can you defend your country? Can you fight for it, as a ruler must?’

‘I can fight better than him,’ Maria had said, pointing disparagingly at Magnus, who’d obligingly shrunk back.

The crowd had started to laugh and, recognising the danger of that, Harald had quickly gathered Maria up, kissing her loudly. It had not mollified her and damned Elizaveta, whose sympathies were
so clearly with her outspoken daughter, had done nothing to help.

‘I will bring you fine jewels if you are a good girl and don’t make a fuss,’ Harald had whispered to Maria.

‘Don’t want jewels.’

‘What then, sweetheart? What do you want?’

‘A sword.’

He’d promised her – what else could he do? – and if Elizaveta didn’t like it, it was her own fault. Except, he recalled now, that Elizaveta had liked it; had laughed and
called Maria her little warrior. He shook his head as the thought of his beautiful wife made him ache with longing; why did he waste summers away from her?

‘To win Denmark,’ he reminded himself fiercely, ‘and after Denmark, England.’

It was a far-off dream but were they not the best sort? Elizaveta often received news of England. Ever letters flowed in and out of her rooms, as if she and her sisters were weaving a web of
words across the world and so far King Edward of England had no heir, though there was worrying talk of the bastard Duke William of Normandy paying court to the old king.

Now an adult, William had miraculously dodged all his would-be assassins to take full charge of his duchy and had recently wed Matilda, daughter of the powerful Baldwin of Flanders. But William
was a brigand, a petty power-hunter whose only experience was with his own back-stabbing nobles; he, Harald Hardrada, would make England a far more competent king. First, though, Denmark.

He looked to the beach. They had to attack now. If they had taken the locals by surprise they should capitalise on that and not bob out here like seals waiting to be hunted. And if it was an
ambush they should draw it out or, rather, Kalv should.

‘He’s a nasty man, Papa,’ Maria had said to him by way of parting.

‘But a good fighter,’ Harald had told her, putting her down to shake open, solemn hands with little Magnus. Well now they would find out
how
good.

He put up his arm to Kalv to signal an attack.

‘You lead,’ he called across the soft murmur of the light waves. ‘We’ll fan out to back you up when we see the lie of their troops – if there even are
any.’

Kalv looked uncertain.

‘To you the spoils,’ Harald reminded him.

The lead ship always took the first choice of plunder and already the jarl’s men were leaping eagerly to their oars so Kalv was left with no choice but to urge them on. Behind him, Harald
commanded his central ships into a line parallel with the sloping shore, with Finn commanding the two rearguard vessels further out at sea. Harald watched from his dragon-prow as Kalv gave the
order to up the rowing pace and his sleek warship shot through the gentle breakers and rammed onto the sand. Instantly his men were out, swords and shields to hand, scrambling through the shallows
and onto the beach, coming together in a tight arrowhead formation with Kalv’s patterned helmet clear just behind the tip.

For a moment it seemed as if nothing would happen, as if they would be able to march up the beach, shaking the sea from their boots as they went, and over the horizon into the first village to
claim their spoils. But then suddenly a blood-curdling yell rang out from behind the dunes and the sea grasses came alive. Hundreds of soldiers – more than any local militia could ever
command – flew out and poured down the beach, swords swinging.

‘Massacre!’

The whisper went round Harald’s boat like a death prayer and instinctively the rowers reversed their stroke, pushing the boats away from the carnage on the sand. The Danes reached
Kalv’s unit, coming at them from both sides, and crashed into their flanks. The Norwegians had closed into a tight shield wall but they were hopelessly outnumbered and could only last a short
time without relief.

‘Attack!’ The cry came from the rearguard ship, hoarse and urgent. ‘You must attack, Harald, or they will die.’

‘But if we attack,’ Harald said to Ulf and Halldor, ‘we will surely
all
die? They have archers – see! They will be ready for us in the shallows and will have us
down before we can even get over the gunwales.’

With a raven cry, the Danes split one side of Kalv’s arrowhead and Harald caught the acrid tang of fresh blood on the seaward breeze. For a moment he recoiled from it then he dug his
fingers into the whorls of his dragon’s red neck and stood firm. Hardrada – ruthless.

‘Retreat,’ he called, putting up a hand to his trumpeter. ‘Sound the retreat.’

The men in the ships did not need the horn’s plaintive cry to respond. Already they were turning to the steer-board side, heaving the ship round for all they were worth. Within moments
they were round, their fellow ships with them, and all five sails grabbed at the wind and took over, driving the boats towards the rearguard, which had not moved.

‘Attack,’ the cry came again, ‘attack, you miserable cowards!’

Harald saw Finn pounding the gunwale as he roared the command, his ageing face purple with rage, but no one paid any attention, not even his own crew, and quickly the main fleet drew level with
his two craft.

‘You are leaving them to die, Harald,’ Finn screamed across the water.

‘No,’ Harald corrected him calmly, ‘I am saving everyone else.’

‘You sent him on purpose.’

‘Who?’

‘Kalv. You sent Kalv to his death on purpose.’

The men looked back. The Norwegians were flattened, carrion already, as the Danes scrambled over their savaged corpses to lay greedy hands on their deserted ship.

‘Jarl Kalv asked to lead,’ Harald said. ‘He knew the risks and, as a noble Viking, he embraced them. He has died in glory.’

‘He has died for your cowardice.’

Rage shot through Harald, as sharp as if a Danish archer had skewered him with it.

‘I am many things, Jarl Finn,’ he roared across the rising wind and the triumphant cries of the Danes on the beach, ‘but I am
not
a coward.’

‘Worse then – a murderer. Of your own men.’

‘Have I murdered these men? Or will that, Finn, be your doing when the blood-drunk Danes come after us in our own ship? There was nothing I could do.’

‘No,’ Finn called back, ‘you
chose
to do nothing. You have robbed me of a noble brother, Harald, and I no longer consider you my son, or my king.’

‘Finn, no . . .’

But Finn was ordering his bewildered men towards the bloody shore, his gnarled fingers clutching at the gunwales in a sort of madness. Harald saw the soldiers looking at each other, torn between
obeying their king or their captain, but in the end a good Viking always did as his immediate commander instructed and Harald wasn’t surprised when they picked up their oars.

‘You will die,’ he called. ‘Finn, please – I don’t want you to die.’ It sounded weak, pathetic almost. He could see the men exchanging sardonic glances but he
didn’t care. Finn Arnasson had raised him, had supported him as King of Norway. He could not lose him now. ‘What about Tora’s boys?’ he demanded. ‘Your future
kings?’

Finn, however, was in a mist of his own making.

‘Good luck to them,’ he growled, turning back to his vessel. ‘Row!’

He struck the first oarsman with the flat of his sword and the man began to row, the others following in a bedraggled, reluctant mess of white water.

‘We will not die,’ Finn was calling to them, ‘but live to serve a true master who does not sacrifice his own. We will live to serve Svein Estrithson.’

And as Harald watched, horrified, his foster father – his ever-devious but ever-loyal foster father – ran a white flag up to the top of his mast and made for the heart of enemy
territory as, on the dunes, a sparky young man in a shining crown appeared. Svein! Ulf nudged at Harald’s arm.

‘Hari, we must go – now. If Svein is there himself he will not be slow to use this. We could be trapped.’

‘As an audience before a poet,’ Harald said, his head swimming.

Kalv was gone, yes, but with him Finn and all Harald had to show for his fifth summer raiding Denmark was another ‘bold escape’ for the mead-hall’s entertainment.

‘Not so much “ruthless”,’ he told himself bitterly as the sails filled and they sped out into the sapphire-blue ocean, ‘as useless.’

Maybe from now on he should concentrate on Norway and creating a solid, secure country for his children to grow up in – to inherit. It was a worthy aim, surely, but even as his ships
limped away from Danish shores he was not sure it was one he could keep to. He was a Viking after all and his veins were only half blood. The other half – the itchy, fast-running, glorious
half – was all sea.

Austratt, September 1051

T
he court stood sombre in the lashing rain as the choir, water streaming down their faces and into their mouths, drowning their notes, sang a
requiem for Jarl Kalv and his men, lost in the service of the country to which he had so recently returned.

‘I feel as if this is Finn’s funeral too,’ Harald whispered to Elizaveta, his fingers grinding into hers.

‘More so,’ she whispered back.

In truth no one would miss Kalv but even she would feel the lack of loud, lively Finn and she knew it stung Harald like a barb beneath his skin. She clasped his hand tight, trying to squeeze out
the pain. Throughout the service he had stood dutifully at Tora’s side, an arm around her shoulders, but now that the monument to mark Kalv’s passing was being blessed, his handfast
wife had stepped forward without him, taking just her two sons for company. Elizaveta watched Tora, her head high and her blonde hair bound up in a dark headdress, clutching Olaf to her hip and
Magnus to her side, and knew that she, too, was mourning the loss of Finn, her beloved uncle, more than Kalv.

‘Surely Finn will return,’ she murmured to Harald. ‘He would not leave Tora alone.’

‘She is not alone.’

‘No. She has you.’

‘A bit of me, maybe.’

‘Too little to be of real comfort,’ Elizaveta said honestly.

She hadn’t as much of her husband as she would choose but she had more than Tora and somewhere along the twisting path past her thirtieth year she had learned to be grateful for that. Was
that dignity, or just compromise? Or did they, in the end, come to the same thing?

Tora, standing before everyone with water running off her headdress, was the picture of dignity. She always had been and Elizaveta felt something dangerously like admiration for her rival.

‘I will send messages,’ Harald was saying, still whispering as the choir struggled to the end of their requiem and the court looked longingly towards Kalv’s great farmhouse,
lit up in the mid-afternoon gloom and sending warm, meat-scented air out of the doors in steaming clouds. ‘I will beg his forgiveness, even though I see nothing to forgive.’

‘You acted as you had to.’

‘Yes and yet . . .’ He leaned in to Elizaveta, so close his wet hair tangled in hers. ‘I wonder, if it had not been Kalv spearheading that first troop, would I have acted
differently?’

‘Harald, hush! Of course you would not.’

‘No,’ he agreed, kissing her cheek. ‘No, you are right – of course not. But, Lily, the loss of Finn pulls at my heart. Perhaps I am growing old – old and
soft.’

Elizaveta squeezed his arm, taut with muscle.

‘You are not soft, Harald, or only occasionally.’

She looked pointedly at Maria, stood fiercely upright with her new sword strapped defiantly over her dark gown. It was made of blunted steel with a hilt set with amber and Maria wore it always,
so that she would be ready to ‘fight for Papa whenever he has need of me’.

‘Maria is under my skin,’ he admitted with a fond smile. ‘But she makes me proud. And teaches me strength besides.’

Elizaveta smiled.

‘This has just been a setback, Hari, like when Einar and Kalv came for Magnus. Kalv was plotting, I am sure, as Einar was plotting back then.’

‘You told me I was stupid to kill Einar.’

‘Maybe I was wrong. What’s past is past. Come, the choir is finally done and you should lead Tora out of this hellish rain.’

Harald kissed her again.

‘You are sending me to Tora, Lily? Perhaps it is
you
growing old and soft?’

‘Perhaps it is.’

Elizaveta reflected on Harald’s words as she took her place in the hall, accepting a soft linen cloth from Aksel to dry herself as best she could. This should have been a
day of triumph for her with both senior Arnassons gone. Only Tora’s brother Otto, now a man of thirty-two, was left to muster the northern jarls and he had been long in Harald’s service
and was devoted to him. Tora still had her precious princes but they were so very young and must be more a burden than a support.