The Constant Queen (41 page)

‘It’s hot.’

‘As a bath, my lady.’

Greta came in behind her, holding a lantern high, her eyes dancing with mischief.

‘As a bath,’ Elizaveta repeated. ‘Can we . . . ?’

‘We can.’

‘But what will we wear?’

‘Wear?’

Elizaveta’s eyes widened and she turned to Harald as he scrambled in beside her and gazed around him, awed.

‘We’re going to swim,’ she told her husband, ‘naked?’

His eyes gleamed.

‘All of us?’

Greta laughed.

‘All of us, yes, but not together. This is the men’s pool. Elizaveta, we ladies are through here.’

‘Shame,’ Harald objected but Greta was already tugging Elizaveta along the rocks and beneath a low archway through to a second pool.

Elizaveta looked around. The rocky roof was so low she could reach up and touch it and as she did so the soft mist gathered upon her fingers, coalescing into water that ran like a lover’s
stroke down her arm. Through the archway a splash, then another, told her the men were not hesitating and, with a nervous glance at Greta, she reached for her brooches. Three more ladies joined
them and together they shed their gowns, laying them carefully over a rock.

‘Shifts too?’ Elizaveta asked.

‘If you are happy to, my lady. I brought a spare in case you wished to preserve your dignity.’

‘Dignity?’ Elizaveta laughed and the sound carried around the little cavern. ‘Dignity is not something I am known for.’

Elizaveta cast off her shift and plunged into the water. It was deliciously warm, warmer than even the most hastily filled bath could ever be, and it moved around her as the others jumped in.
Ducking beneath the surface, she opened her eyes and, though it stung a little, she saw her own dark hair floating before her and the bodies of the others fragmented by the shifting water, and she
felt like one of Halldor’s mystical water sprites. She was hidden here in the breathing depths of this mystical island, miles away from anything as cumbersome as titles or responsibilities or
ambitions, and as her breath caught at the thought, she broke the surface, sucking in air.

‘A miracle, Elizaveta?’ she heard Halldor’s voice calling through.

She laughed again and called back: ‘A miracle, Hal. It is the most stunning place I have ever seen.’

‘I’m glad,’ Halldor replied, his voice softer now. ‘It is my gift to you and to Harald too for releasing me to return here.’

They bathed there, beneath the earth, for a time too hazed to count and then, as Elizaveta floated contentedly lost in the waters’ embrace, she heard: ‘Lily.’ She jumped
– the waters were whispering her name. ‘Lily, in here.’

She cast around, confused, and suddenly Harald’s face popped up through a crack in the back wall of the pool. With his hair slicked back by the water and his scar hidden in the low,
flickering light of the lanterns he looked somehow boyish and she swam over to him, casting a quick, guilty glance towards the other ladies gossiping at the far edge.

‘How did you get here?’ she asked but Harald just dipped away.

She felt a gentle tug on her leg and, gazing down, saw a hole through the rock beneath the water. Taking a last look back at the others, she ducked through.

‘Hari.’ She kissed him. ‘You’re mad.’

‘For you, yes.’ He pulled her against him and she felt him hard beneath the water. ‘I’m so glad we came here, Lily. Who cares for law courts and mints and
churches?’

‘Well, they are important, just . . .’

‘Just not
that
important.’ Harald pulled her onto him so the waters sloshed against the rocks. ‘I feel alive again, Lily – alive and purposeful and
adventurous.’

‘So I see,’ she giggled, sensations rising irresistibly inside her.

‘I’m glad you’re with me.’

‘And I, or who knows which poor lady you would have set upon?’

‘Lily – be serious.’

He stilled, holding her close and the world receded until there were no rocks, no cave, no water, just Harald, her Harald, and she knew that the fire pixies had bitten deep into her heart
– too deep even for the water sprites to cure.

‘I will always be with you,’ she told him, as he had told her once before. ‘Always.’

The Brough of Birsay, The Orkneys, May 1058

E
lizaveta pressed herself against the rough stone wall, desperately seeking shelter from the sharp onshore wind. Where was Harald? She had not
sailed west with him just to spend long days pacing a wild seashore alone. She drew her cloak closer around her body for, although it was fully springtime, the sun held little power and the winds
seemed ever to cut through any slight warmth. She was weary of battling them out here on this lonely bunch of islands and longed for Norway.

Elizaveta had loved the Orkneys when they’d sailed into the elegant harbour of Birsay last autumn. Jarl Thorfinn, as big and hairy as a bear, had welcomed her, and his wife, Idonie,
Finn’s daughter, had showered her with hospitality and endless questions about the father she had not seen for years. Confessing he had shifted allegiance to Svein of Denmark had been hard
but Idonie had taken it steadily.

‘Kalv was ever a troublemaker. We were glad when he left us to return to Norway. A good soldier but a hard man.’

Elizaveta had nodded.

‘That’s true but I am sorry we lost your father.’

‘Men are ever easy to anger,’ Idonie had said simply and something about the kindly woman – the turn of her nose, the timbre of her voice, the soft blue of her eyes – had
been so like her cousin Tora that Elizaveta had felt at least partway home in her care.

The islands, too, had felt like a miniature Norway. She’d loved how the knife-edge cliffs gave way to soft, rolling hills and how you could see the sea all around. She’d loved
Thorfinn’s courtyard of buildings, the curving timbers rising up out of the foundations of an ancient settlement built many, many years ago by Pictish natives. Most of all, she’d loved
the way they were set on the Brough – a promontory that curved up out of the sea and was cut off from the mainland by the swirling tide for all bar two hours of every day.

Thorfinn and Idonie’s palace was on the lower edge of the Brough, nudged up to the sheltered harbour where the jarl kept his small but very smart fleet of ships. Behind it the land rose
steadily up to the high point where Elizaveta now stood, leaning in against the stone broch, or tower, that was the only remaining Pictish structure on this part of the isles. The broch was the
width of three men laid head to toe at the base, but it narrowed as it rose so that if you stood inside and looked up it seemed as if it might drop in on your head at any time. It had stood,
though, for a thousand years, maybe more, and despite the few crumbling stones around the top it seemed unlikely it would pick Elizaveta’s lifetime to cave inwards.

Idonie had told her that no one knew exactly what the ancient peoples had used it for but it was believed to have been a watchtower and certainly that was why Elizaveta was drawn more and more
to its proud side – watching, always watching for Harald’s ships to appear on the wide western ocean, his raven flying proudly before him. He had been gone nigh on three months and
without him the days were stretching as far as the clouds above Orkney. His stated intention had been to sail with Thorfinn to Ireland to have talks with King Diarmid of Dublin, but Elizaveta had
known his true purpose and the length of his trip should not surprise her – he had gone to England.

News had been waiting for them from Agatha when they’d sailed into the Brough – terrible news. She’d sent copies of the letter, so she’d said, to Iceland, the Shetlands
and Norway in the hope of catching her sister somewhere on her travels but she must have crossed with the first for the news had already been months old and it had torn at Elizaveta’s heart
to think of little Agatha suffering whilst she had feasted obliviously on Iceland’s delights.

Edward, Agatha’s dear Edward, was dead. Elizaveta had seen the words shaking on the vellum and pictured poor Agatha trembling as she wrote them, unable to believe they were true. All had
been well at first, her sister had written. They had sailed into London in triumph. The people of England had lined the banks of the Thames to cheer them in and King Edward himself had been at the
docks to greet them. He had clasped her Edward in his arms, acknowledging him before the whole crowd as his chosen heir, and she had wanted to weep with joy. Three days later she had been weeping
indeed, but over her husband’s dead body.

Why?
Agatha had raged, the words splodging with grief.
Why bring us all the way to England just to strike us down?
Elizaveta had felt her own anger rising but Agatha’s next
words had been confused. Edward had fallen ill, she’d said. A sudden fever. Several of the crew of their boat from Flanders had suffered too and Agatha admitted that it could have been a
natural illness, though she clearly did not believe so. Edward had not felt very well on the journey, she’d said, but he’d gained colour and vitality the moment his feet had met the
soil of England – his inheritance. Only no more.

Elizaveta had longed to see Agatha. Her little sister had never been alone. Always, even these last years as a married woman, she had been near Anastasia and of course ever since she could
remember she’d had Edward. Stuck in a foreign country with just three small children for comfort, Elizaveta feared she might be crumbling. Young Edgar had been declared
‘aetheling’ – throne-worthy – in his father’s stead, but he was just six years old. The court had made them welcome, Agatha had reported dully, but England was
disappointed.

‘Disppointed?’ Elizaveta had raged, furious for her little sister. ‘Has England lost a husband, a friend, a father – the life they’ve always known?’

Harald’s eyes, though, had sharpened at the news and once Elizaveta’s initial grief had played itself out he’d spoken.

‘I have a claim.’

Elizaveta had rounded on him, shocked.

‘You said you would not pursue it.’

‘
If
Edward inherited. I said I would not pursue it if Edward inherited.’

It was true and Elizaveta’s stomach had swirled with an uncomfortable mix of emotions. She could not condone stealing a throne from her own nephew and yet . . . If Harald were King of
England she would be with Agatha.

‘Queen in her place,’ she’d reminded herself sternly and brushed the idea aside, though sometimes, especially in the dark of the lonely Orkney nights, it crept back, tormenting
her with its promise. Agatha was staying in England for the sake of her son, but it was clear from her letters that her bruised heart was no longer alive to the country of her dreams. Was England,
then, where Elizaveta had truly been journeying ever since she’d lapped up stories of the jewelled isle as a child? Had Norway just been a stopping-off point? Why not? She had easily trimmed
her Rus Norse to its Norwegian version – English would be no more of a challenge.

‘I will not invade if Edgar is pronounced king,’ Harald had said before he’d sailed, but they’d both known that this was an unlikely prospect. King Edward grew old. He
was unlikely to last the years it would take for Edgar to mature enough to take the throne of a country like England, especially with the threat of Svein of Denmark and William of Normandy, not to
mention Harald himself. He had gone to England, she was sure of it. He had murmured to her that he might ‘take a reckoning’ of this much talked of land and she had closed her ears to
what she knew that meant. Harald would be testing the strength of the opposition in the way he and his Viking warriors knew best – with the sword.

She cast her eyes across the mercilessly empty waves and ran her precious ring round and round on her finger, slimmer after the tough winter so that ever she worried the jewel might fall. She
was beginning to fear he was not coming; to fear that these skin-freezing winds had not filled his sails but had tossed him into the depths. Someone in England had, surely, got rid of
Agatha’s poor Edward; why would they not do the same to Harald?

Elizaveta moved around the tower to look east. Somewhere out there was Norway and her children. It had been close to a year since she’d seen Maria or Ingrid and her heart ached for them.
She had feared sometimes that she was an inattentive mother, always looking to the window for something more lively than children’s games, but she felt right now as if she would happily sit
in the bower all summer long if she could only have them at her side.

They had sent letters – long, careful ones from Ingrid, assuring her mother they were safe and well; and short, impatient ones from Maria, mainly protests at how little she was allowed to
do. Elizaveta worried that her fiery elder girl would turn twelve without her and wondered how much time she spent with Otto, left behind to assist Tora as Harald’s regent. Maria would always
be close to her father but as she grew older she would understand the charms of other men and, although that was natural, Elizaveta feared it for her daughter as she had never done for herself and
was grateful Tora was there to keep an eye on her.