The Constant Queen (14 page)

‘Me?’ Magnus asked, swelling visibly. ‘You have come for me?’

Again Kalv glanced at Einar but the other man did not even flinch.

‘Yes, Sire.’

Yaroslav put up a hand.

‘On whose authority? Was not Cnut’s son, Steven, ruling Norway? Why has the throne not been left to him?’

Einar looked shifty.

‘It was, Grand Prince, but Steven did not understand the ways of the Norwegians. The people made their displeasure known and, wisely, he fled.’ Yaroslav moved to protest but Einar
rushed on: ‘Harthacnut is proclaimed king in Denmark and Harold of the Harefoot in England. Cnut has sons enough on the thrones of his kingdom; there is room for Olaf’s ancient line in
Norway.’

‘Do all the jarls support this move?’

‘They do. We bear writs to prove it and with your noble permission we will escort King Magnus to his stepmother, Queen Astrid, in Sweden and from there into Norway to be
crowned.’

Yaroslav still looked uncertain, but twelve-year-old Magnus puffed out his scrawny chest and flung back his slender shoulders. He looked imperiously around his foster family.

‘It seems God does help those who devote themselves to his service,’ he said, touching his fingertips piously together.

It was too much for Elizaveta.

‘No!’ The word burst from her mouth before she could stop it and, as the two Norwegians turned their calculating eyes upon her, she felt Vladimir tug on her gown.

‘Lily, hush.’

But she could not.

‘Harald is the rightful king.’

Kalv flinched but Einar was already up and advancing on her and the other jarl was quick to follow.

Elizaveta felt them loom above her, dark and menacing, but stood her ground. Let them try and threaten her – she was a princess and this was her hall. She would be heard.

‘Prince Harald is King Olaf’s brother,’ Elizaveta asserted boldly.

‘Half-brother.’

‘Yes and legitimately born of the ancient line of Yngling, unlike Magnus, the son of a concubine.’

‘Elizaveta,’ Yaroslav warned but Einar just gave a curled smile.

‘A son is a son, Princess. But you know much of our country?’

Yaroslav coughed.

‘My daughter is betrothed to Prince Harald.’

‘She’s what?’ Kalv demanded, clearly startled, but Einar seized his arm.

‘My comrade here begs your pardon, Princess. He is just surprised, that is all, as we in Norway know the Prince to be betrothed to another – Jarl Kalv’s niece, Lady Tora, a
Norwegian noblewoman of some standing.’

Anger ripped through Elizaveta’s chest like a pain. Harald had lied to her. Or, she reminded herself hastily, this prowling man before her was lying now. She must not be too quick to judge
and she definitely must not give them the satisfaction of hurting her.

‘Oh, I know of her,’ she said, letting her own lip curl a little. ‘A childhood game, no more.’

Kalv’s eye twitched and, with relief, Elizaveta knew she had hit her mark. Einar leaned forward. His cloak dripped snow onto her soft indoor boots but she refused to step back.

‘And where, pray, Princess, is your betrothed?’

Elizaveta swallowed and looked to her father.

‘Harald has ridden south,’ Yaroslav supplied. ‘He serves the Byzantine emperor and has won much praise in his army.’

‘And much gold too, I hear,’ Einar agreed easily. ‘He always was a ruthless fighter.’ He rolled the word ‘ruthless’ round his tongue as if relishing it.

‘Effective,’ Elizaveta substituted defiantly.

‘If you wish, Princess,’ Einar said, ‘though sadly not effective enough to claim Norway now.’

‘No,’ Elizaveta protested again, ‘you are wrong. That is exactly what he fights for. He is a bold and committed warrior and he will make you a valiant king if you can only wait
a little.’

Einar looked at Kalv.

‘Sweet,’ he said. Elizaveta’s eyes narrowed and Vladimir tugged harder on her gown. ‘But the trouble you see, Princess, is that we need a king
now
. Norway’s
throne is empty and an empty throne is a dangerous thing. If Harald were here . . .’

Einar spread his hands wide as if they were discussing a pleasure ride or a trip to market.

‘Harald
will
be here,’ Elizaveta said desperately. ‘I will send for him.’

Again Kalv seemed to hesitate and she took a step towards him but Einar cut in front.

‘All the way to Miklegard? In these snows? ’Tis a long trip, Princess, and a longer one back. Harthacnut of Denmark could have seized Norway by then and we cannot allow that.
Besides, I am sure Prince Harald will be delighted to see his own dear nephew on the throne.’

‘He will,’ Magnus agreed eagerly in his silly, reedy voice.

It grated across Elizaveta’s fury like a whetstone across a blade and she could contain herself no longer.

‘You,’ she said, stabbing Jarl Einar in his broad chest, ‘want Magnus for your king because he is small and young and ineffectual. You want him to play kings for yourself. You
want . . .’

‘Elizaveta – enough!’ Yaroslav’s voice thundered around the chamber and killed her protests dead in her throat. ‘These men are our honoured guests, come to offer
our dear foster son a route home, something we have all prayed for on his behalf, have we not?’

Elizaveta dropped her head. She would not answer; could not answer. It was so wrong, so very wrong. Could her father not see these men for what they so clearly were – power-hungry
opportunists braving the Rus ice in pursuit of their own personal glory?

‘Have we not, Elizaveta?’ Yaroslav’s voice was low with warning but Elizaveta could take it no more.

‘I have prayed, indeed, Father, for the rightful king of Norway to be restored to his throne but this – this is not right and God will know that. Good day.’

She swept a curtsey, yanking Vladimir’s hand from her gown as she did so, and then departed the room, ignoring her father’s furious calls and the gratingly obsequious reassurances of
the men who had come, she knew, to steal Harald’s dream.

The walls of Kiev, November 1036

‘H
ow can you say that, Harald?
You.
How can you be so . . . so pathetic?’

‘Pathetic?’

Harald looked surprised, amused almost, and it fanned the anger that had been smouldering inside Elizaveta all summer long. Magnus had ridden out of Kiev barely days after the Norwegian jarls
had come for him, escorted by a royal guard which had included Prince Vladimir, bound, to his huge delight, for Novgorod. Elizaveta, confined to the bower and glad of it, had watched Magnus go from
her window, his stupid slim frame all rigid and proud on a magnificent black stallion that had dwarfed him and that she had prayed would throw him to the ice.

She could not blame young Magnus. Edward had patiently explained to her, on his return from tribute collecting, that the boy would be a fool to turn down this thunderbolt of an opportunity and
she knew it to be true but Magnus had not so much held onto fortune’s wheel as let it roll right over him.

‘He is young,’ Edward had said. ‘What did you expect of him? He cannot ride out as Harald can.’

‘Nor rule as he can.’

‘That may be true, Lily, but Harald’s time will come. Some men are made for greatness.’

He’d looked sad then.

‘Your time will come too,’ Elizaveta had assured him, thinking of the rich little island of England that had cast him out so long ago.

‘I fear not.’

His eyes had swum and Elizaveta had been grateful when she’d heard Agatha’s cheery voice calling his name outside.

‘Agatha looks for you.’

‘She is very sweet. Everyone here is so very kind but I fear I will never be able to pay your father back.’

‘You do not know that, Edward. Men came for Magnus; perhaps one day they will come for you.’

He’d bitten back a harsh laugh and she’d quashed her anger about Norway for his sake but she was furious at her parents for taking Einar’s substantial bribes –
‘payments for your care of our royal lord’ – and letting him go so easily. And she was even more furious at the hood-eyed men who must have been laughing all the way up the
Dnieper at their seizure of such easy prey. She was sure that Norway would not thank the Grand Prince for letting those two loose on their government and had yearned for Harald to return so they
could ride north to make good his own claim. Now, though, he was telling her, as if she were some simpleton peasant girl, that it wasn’t ‘as easy as that’.

‘What are you afraid of?’ Elizaveta challenged. ‘Einar Tambarskelve and his bully soldiers? Or is it the Arnassons? Is that the issue, Harald? Jarl Kalv told me of your
betrothal. He seemed very sure of it.’

‘Did he?’ Harald’s hand shot out and grabbed her wrist, trapping the neck chain she had drawn from its casket for this, his first night back in Kiev, and pressing the sharp
edges of the keys into her flesh. ‘Why then, Elizaveta, if I was his sworn kin, would he take Magnus instead?’

‘I think he might indeed have taken you, Harald, but you were not here and Einar was swift to pounce on Magnus instead.’

‘I could not help that.’ His face was so close to hers that she could see the groove of his scar where the sword had cut deepest. ‘I was out fighting to further my
cause.’

‘Or maybe just to fill your pockets. Do you truly want Norway, Harald? Is it truly seawater in your precious Varangian veins or something softer – like honey? Do you secretly like it
down there in the south with its warm air and its exotic food and its pliable concubines?’

‘Stop it!’

Harald grabbed at her other wrist and pulled her tight against him, sucking the breath from her. Elizaveta glanced over her shoulder but they were alone on Kiev’s walls. She had brought
him here to plot their journey to Norway but it had not worked out that way.

‘Why are you not angry, Harald?’ she asked desperately, fighting his grasp.

‘Oh Lily.’ Harald leaned down and dropped a kiss on her forehead, so soft and so sweet she was surprised into stillness. ‘I am furious,’ he whispered. ‘My belly
feels as if it has Greek fire inside it and my heart as if it might crawl out of my chest and take up a sword itself, but what good does that do?’

‘What good?
Every
good, Harald. A man must have passion to reclaim his throne – that’s what you told me. A man must believe and must make others believe. He cannot just
give up because some beardless youth got there first.’ Harald laughed softly and suddenly he was kissing her again, on her forehead, her nose, her lips. Elizaveta pushed him furiously away.
‘I know not what you are used to from your Byzantine women, Harald, but I am a Princess of Kiev and am not to be won with kisses.’

He sighed.

‘How can I make you see that I am in the empire fighting, Elizaveta, not whoring?’

‘You have never been with a whore?’

Harald hesitated and her anger bubbled crazily inside her so she could almost feel it prickling her skin from within. She yanked away and strode off down the wall, clutching her cloak around
her, though more for protection from his touch than the Rus cold. Why could no one else see how terrible this was? Why was she alone in her fury?

Her father had persuaded himself that her outburst had been one of love and chosen to overlook it as a girlish fancy. Her mother, close to giving birth to her eleventh child, had been grateful
at this chance of familial peace after a few tense days and only Anastasia had looked to keep Elizaveta at bay longer than a week. With the spring, though, had come a vicious Pecheneg attack, right
on the very plateau beyond the Grand Prince’s kremlin, and with Yaroslav visiting Vladimir in Novgorod, it had been Andrew who had led the defence, turning all her sister’s thoughts to
her heroic general.

The Kievan forces had defeated the tribal attackers in a huge battle, played out before the eyes of the city, and Elizaveta had watched with the rest, momentarily distracted from her own bitter
concerns by the violent cut and thrust of the waves of death lapping at the walls of her dear home. Prince Andrew, she’d had to admit – though no way near so loudly or effusively as
Anastasia – had shown strong leadership and within days the war had been won and all had been triumph and feasting.

As the autumn leaves had covered the rotting corpses, however, and the first snows had fallen over their remains, Elizaveta had taken to pacing the walls looking for Harald’s return. The
landwaster banner she’d been working on so long with her ladies had finally been finished and looked magnificent with the swooping raven dark and challenging against the regal gold of the
silk. It had cost her many hard, dull hours and endless pricked fingers but it had been worth it. She’d longed to present it to him and her frustration had mounted with every day he did not
come.

She had written to Vladimir in Novgorod, telling him she would soon be there to visit on her way to the Varangian Sea, and even to her Aunt Astrid in Sweden, saying how much she longed to see
her. She’d persuaded a young traveller to teach her the Norwegian forms of their language and badgered him endlessly for information on towns and customs. She had ordered her seamstresses to
make new gowns in the warmest, richest fabrics she could squeeze out of her newly benevolent father and, like a little girl again, had begged her mother for tales of the north.