The Constant Queen (18 page)

Letting go of the bars, Harald turned back into the cell, his long legs physically itching at their confines. His hand went to his pocket in which he kept the missives that had arrived all too
often from Finn Arnasson. He’d half-hoped the guards would take them with his comb but they had just laughed at the strange lettering and stuffed them back in the leather pouch at his belt,
cracking the birch but not the messages it held. They’d been wiser than they knew, for those letters more than anything else, save perhaps this damned imprisonment, were shaking his resolve
to bid for the Byzantine Empire.

Harald leaned against the wall, grateful for the cool of the stones through his sticky tunic, and pictured him – Finn Arnasson, the man who had brought him up from the age of twelve; the
man who had taught him the art of war and of courtship; the man who had taught him how to be a man. His own father, Sigurd, God bless him, had been a gentle soul, happiest, despite his royal
lineage, with his sheep and Harald had been nearly as restless on their Ringerike farm as he was now in this hell-hole of a cell. His mother, Asta, had luckily been made of more ambitious metal and
had secured him his place with the Arnassons. With Finn.

Harald stared into the empty air, much as Halldor did, and for once saw images of his own. Finn had brought him to life. His raucous, wild household had been heaven after years of sheepshearing
and Harald had thrown himself into his martial training with fervour. From Finn and his top warriors he had learned skill, poise and cunning, and from Finn also he had learned the joy of the
battlefield. Sigurd had liked to talk of peace and Finn, too, embraced it as an ideal but it was when he spoke of war that Harald’s foster father’s eyes lit up. For Harald that had been
the greatest release of all. He’d been born to battle, he knew it, but it was Finn who’d shown him how to embrace that desire and how to
use
it. He owed him much.

His fingers rasped across the letters, written not on birch twigs but on the bark – a flatter, wider surface where words could be not just commands but expressions of feeling. Finn had
told him of Einar’s increasing power and of Kalv’s banishment. Harald had felt a momentary flicker of pleasure that the slyest Arnasson was gone, for Kalv had ever worked to get him
into trouble as a youth, but he had soon seen past that. Magnus was a fool. If Kalv had dealt Olaf his death-blow it was a hurt, certainly, but one that he could have used to bind the man to him,
not to cast him out where he could plot and scheme. Besides, much as Harald disliked Kalv he could see that he had only been obeying orders and if you started punishing that you had nowhere left to
go. Magnus was not a soldier, that was the problem. He ruled with his pampered exile’s heart; no wonder Einar was in charge.

If you have any ambition for Norway,
Finn had written to him,
you should come now. Einar grows dangerous and, unchecked, will have Norway on her knees. We look eagerly for you, son. We
would welcome you. Tora, especially, would welcome you as I know she has welcomed you before.

Harald pulled his fingers from the pocket as if it might suddenly bite him. Tora! He owed her much too. He had heard tell she was married and had felt the news as a release, but now it seemed
she was widowed and her tenacious uncle was harking back to their supposed childhood alliance. He thought of his erstwhile sweetheart. If he strained, he could still see her standing in the doorway
of his pavilion; could still see her voluptuous body unveiled from the thick cloak; could still feel himself harden at his first sight of female beauty.

He could see too now, too many years later, how she had held herself – guarded, fragile. He had not noticed it then, had seen only her ripe breasts and the inviting tuck in her pubic hair.
He did not blame himself – he’d been fifteen and about to ride to his first battle so he had not so much questioned why she was there as revelled in the joy of it. Now, though, the
questions ran round and round in his head.

‘We are betrothed,’ she’d said to him. That, too, he had barely regarded, his mind focused on more immediate needs, but it haunted him now, in this cell full of memories and
too much time to think. He’d hoped that with her marriage she had forgotten him, moved on, as he had moved on. He would not be a good husband to Tora Arnasson. If his wanderings drove
Elizaveta wild, they would kill the quiet Norwegian woman.

His fingers went instinctively to the ring Elizaveta had sent back. He’d been furious when Ulf had returned it with her message. He had railed against her arrogance and denounced her pride
and vowed he would forget her and her damned father besides and sail for Norway on the morrow. He’d stormed through the war camp outside Syracuse, tearing strips off his men and setting extra
training for all and working himself into a lather with swordplay until Halldor had calmly taken him aside and suggested he ‘look at it from her point of view’.

Harald had thought him mad. He had little truck with other people’s points of view. They were rarely as clear or as focused as his own and would only weaken him as a leader. This time,
though, with Halldor fixing him in his funny, wizened stare and his men panting behind, he’d tried. Or, at least, he’d listened as Halldor elaborated it for him in his usual fancy
way.

He’d seen how frustrating it must be for Elizaveta, shut up in Kiev never knowing when he would come for her and now, imprisoned in this damned cell, he understood it better than ever. It
was not, though, Halldor’s persuasive stories that had made him string the ring on a leather cord around his neck but just the very thought of her. He did not need to understand Elizaveta to
want her. She nagged at his soul. She would make a terrible wife – Yaroslav had said as much at their betrothal – for she would be all rebellion and demands, but so was life.

‘You’re right,’ he said out loud. ‘It was my fault. I chose to stay and I was wrong.’

Ulf rose.

‘It’s good to hear you say so for once, Hari, but truly you were not to know that one of the plots was against
us
.’

‘But I should have done, Ulf. I have a soldier’s daring, not a politician’s cunning, and now look where we are. We have to get out.’

‘So you keep saying, but how?’

Harald kicked the wall again. This time it did not even yield a flake of stone, just sat there solid and uncaring. And now his toe hurt.

‘Bribe the guards?’ he tried.

‘With what?’ Ulf asked. ‘Sexual favours?’

Harald shuddered.

‘Promises,’ he suggested. ‘Halldor can do it; he’s the wordsmith. You could spin them a tale, Hal, surely – tell them what riches and honour will be bestowed upon
them if they aid us to overcome the evil emperor?’

He looked to Halldor but his friend was up and pressed against the bars, straining forward.

‘Looks like he’s going to try biting his way out,’ Ulf laughed but Halldor put up a hand.

‘Hush a minute, you two – listen.’

‘What is it, Hal?’

‘Listen!’

Harald and Ulf moved up to stand at his side. Harald closed his eyes on the murky cell and the murkier corridor beyond and did as he was asked. Halldor was right – there were noises and
not just the usual heckles of market, but shouting, cursing. And now he heard bells ringing out, clattering a wanton tune as if their ropes were pulled in haste – or desperation.

‘Riot?’

‘I think so,’ Halldor agreed. ‘It’s been coming.’

Harald and Ulf turned on him.

‘How do you know?’

‘Because, unlike you two, I only speak when there’s something worth saying. The rest of the time I listen. The guards talk.’

‘In Greek.’

‘Which I have learned.’

‘Really?’ Harald looked at his old friend, impressed. Most of the nations they met with – Swedish, Danish, Rus, Norman, even English – spoke a form of Norse, developed
differently but still recognisable as the same tongue. The Greeks, though, were different and their words sounded to Harald like the cackle of hens. ‘When did you learn Greek, Hal?’

‘Just picked it up. I like words.’

‘As do I,’ Harald objected.

‘And I like meanings. They say that the new emperor has overreached himself. They say he plots against the great Empress Zoe herself.’

‘Against the empress?’ Harald asked, impressed again at Halldor’s understanding. ‘The people will not like that.’

‘No indeed.’

Halldor’s gaze flicked out of the bars again and now they could all hear the unmistakable chant of ‘Zoe, Zoe, Zoe!’ growing louder every minute. Whatever force was on the march
out there, it was coming their way.

‘Shout!’ Halldor urged. ‘Make those useless lungs of yours count for once.’

Ulf and Harald needed no second asking and the three men clung to their prison bars and yelled. No guards came and, encouraged, they yelled louder. Harald felt as if his chest might burst but
there was no way he was being left to rot in this locked casket of a room. He would ten times rather crawl from a battlefield with a sword in his chest and his own blood pumping a path for him than
waste ignominiously away unnoticed, especially if there was a riot to be had.

‘Here!’ Harald called. ‘In here. Help!’

It probably sounded foolish but so what? He could hear the guards down the corridor now, panicking, begging for mercy in sharp, high-pitched cries that were cut off with a gurgle as
someone’s knife slit blood across their dying vocal cords.

‘Pray whoever it is likes us,’ Ulf muttered and then suddenly the corridor was filled with the rebels and, to the three men’s huge astonishment, the foremost amongst them were
women.

‘Your harem, Harald?’ Ulf asked drily.

‘If only,’ Harald threw back but now Halldor was talking to the women as one of them fumbled a big key into the lock.

‘Sweet nothings, Halldor?’ Ulf teased.

Halldor glared at him.

‘I asked them why they’re fighting,’ he said.

‘And?’

‘They say everyone is fighting. The emperor has had Empress Zoe shorn and sent to a nunnery. It is too much, they say. Zoe has ruled Constantinople as consort for fourteen years; she
cannot be cast aside. They say it is the duty of every woman in the Byzantine Empire to rise for her.’

Harald blinked but now the doors were wide and he cared not who had opened them. This was no time for debate but for action. He dived out into the golden city to find the mob ruling the streets.
They surged between the houses, pushing down fences, cracking pavements and setting upon any official foolish enough to get in their way as they drove towards the vast imperial palace at the heart
of the city like a wrecking tide. There was nothing golden about Miklegard tonight.

As Harald joined the throng he pictured the city as he had first seen it, rising up from the aquamarine of the Bosporus in a wondrous jumble of towers, spires and cupolas like a vast playground
for the old gods. He remembered his awe at the open harbour, row upon row of jetties and every one clean and ordered and policed by officials in dazzling white tunics emblazoned with the imperial
crest. He remembered the streets, wide enough for two wagons to pass and paved in stone ground smooth so no wheel caught.

He remembered being shown into the palace complex, a succession of buildings, each one larger than the last, that seemed to have been carved from giant blocks of marble and dipped in gold. He
remembered the mechanical tree at the heart of the complex that moved by hidden pulleys and cogs and in which metal birds of all colours somehow sang songs sweeter than their real fellows outside.
And he remembered the imperial rooms, decorated in the rich purple that gave the great dynasty their title – Porphyrogenita.

Harald saw now, though, cut dark across the faces of the furious mob, how foolish he and his men had been to think they could challenge such a rule. Empress Zoe might be in her sixty-second
year, she might have worked her way through more husbands than was natural in her desperate quest for an heir. She might keep poisoners in her retinue and sorcerers to keep her young. She might be
mad as a monkey in season, but she was born in the purple and nothing could replace that. Not some Rus prince, self-styled as ‘grand’ and certainly not some jumped-up Varangian from way
above the snowline with only a few ounces of royal blood.

‘The empress!’ Harald roared. ‘We must protect the empress.’

Grabbing Ulf and Halldor he turned east, off the main avenue to the imperial gates and round the back to the Bucoleon Palace – the headquarters of the emperor’s Varangian guard.

The three of them were greeted with delight. The men were in chaos, uncertain which side to take and needed a leader.

‘No sides,’ Harald ordered, blood surging round his body at the chance to act at last. ‘We take no sides. We keep order and we keep Zoe safe. She is the lynchpin; let the rest
play out as it will.’

It was a mantra they kept to through a long, dark night and it was Harald who was stood on the shore at dawn to see the Empress Zoe, rescued from her momentary exile, safely back to her
people.

‘Thank you, Varangian,’ she said as he handed her personally into a chariot, as dignified in sack-cloth and with head shorn as she was in full imperial garb. ‘I shall see you
rewarded.’

But Harald did not want reward. Not now. Harald did not want this world of hot-headed factions; he had been insane to ever think he did.

‘We must go home,’ he told Ulf and Halldor as they followed close alongside the chariot, keeping the eager crowds back from their returning mistress.

‘Home?’ Halldor queried and Harald’s heart ached as he was not used to it doing save when Elizaveta yanked at it.

‘Home to Norway,’ he elucidated.

‘Though first to Kiev.’

‘To claim your bride?’

Harald thought guiltily of Tora but dismissed the idea. She had married once; she could do so again. He would find her a good husband once he was king. Ulf should settle down. Yes, uncomplicated
Ulf would do nicely for Tora and she would get more joy of him than of a man enslaved to a dark-haired Rus Princess.