The Constant Queen (44 page)

‘What is it?’ Harald snapped.

Finn’s words had shaken him. It was stupid; they were the ramblings of a bitter old man, no more. Finn was probing for a weak spot, a chink in Harald’s armour, but he would find
none.

‘It’s Svein, Sire,’ Ulf said, his voice low, and Harald froze; his old friend never called him by his formal title.

‘What of him?’

‘They say that he is not dead. They say he escaped in a skiff and is setting up camp even now.’

Ulf gestured to shore, to the spot Finn had been fixed upon, and Harald saw in the trees high up on the hillside Svein’s banner flying crazily in the summer winds as if signalling the
start of a Rapids Race.

‘It could be a trick.’

‘It could.’

They both knew it was not. Harald looked from Finn, smiling like a madman, to his huddled commanders, to his marshal. He brought his injured hand down so hard across the gunwale that the golden
ring around the rowlock portal below sprung out and fell to the sea, spinning dizzily in the sun.

‘Your men saw him die!’ he roared.

‘So they thought, but it seems, Sire . . .’

‘Hari, Ulf – you call me Hari. You cannot get away from me that easily.’

‘Sorry. It seems, Hari, that he dressed another man in his armour.’

‘Another man?
Another
man? Svein let some poor stooge take his death for him?’ He rounded on Finn. ‘And this is the sort of coward king you wish to follow?’ Finn
looked to the floor and Harald spun away. ‘Let him go then. Let him limp off to his treetop king to play make-believe if that’s what he desires. I want only
real
men in my
fleet.’

His ‘real men’ cheered loudly and Harald felt warmed by their approval. He spun away from Finn and marched up the centre of his ship towards them. He could not let Finn’s
sniping comments bring him down – he was a leader and he would lead, at home and abroad. If that was ambition, so be it. He would have Denmark yet and after Denmark, England.

The Gault-Elf River, May 1064

E
lizaveta looked around her companions and felt, despite the strange nature of their evening, a deep contentment. She, Ulf, Johanna, Tora and
Harald were sitting in the royal pavilion, set in meadowland outside Lilla Edet. This small boating station, halfway up the Gault-Elf River, the border between Norway and the Danish mainland
province of Skaane to the south of Sweden, had been chosen to hammer out a truce. Just outside the door-flap Harald’s ship and its four flanking vessels were moored on the bank, tied to land
with great ropes and guarded by highly suspicious soldiers. For on the far bank, similar vessels were tied up, those of King Svein of Denmark.

Two more years of fighting had achieved nothing but a loss of ships and men on both sides and with news coming from Agatha that King Edward of England was ailing, Harald had reluctantly proposed
this truce. Such negotiations did not, however, come naturally to him and though they were ostensibly here to broker a peace, there was every chance that, on a turn of a temper, the negotiations
could descend into war.

‘Peace,’ Harald grumbled now, curling his lip disdainfully.

‘You make it sound like a wart, Hari,’ Elizaveta told him.

‘It
is
. I have never made peace in my life, save with those I have conquered.’

He looked to Ulf for support and his marshal gave it with a raised goblet.

‘Feels strange,’ he agreed, ‘negotiating without a victory to stand upon. Turns my stomach somehow.’

He glanced towards the door, though the sun had given way to the moon some time back and there was little to see of the old ship anchored in the centre of the river to host the peace talks.

‘It feels good,’ Johanna said gently, refilling his wine. ‘Your stomach turns too often these days, Ulf – you eat too well. And did you and Harald not make peace with
Magnus when first you came to Norway?’

‘We agreed not to make war,’ Ulf said carefully.

‘Which is the same thing,’ Johanna countered, ‘is it not, Tora?’

Tora looked up from her embroidery and nodded.

‘Truly,’ she said, ‘however strange it may feel, this peace is for the best. Denmark is surely of little interest to us anyway? Better to concentrate our energies on
Norway.’

Harald looked at Elizaveta and they shared a smile.

‘Or on England,’ he said, taking her hand and squeezing it.

‘When the time is ripe,’ she reminded him, trying not to look at the Nisa scar across his wrist, a match for the Stikelstad one on his face.

This new wound troubled her far more than the earlier one for Maria had complained half last summer of an ache in her own arm, turning her hand endlessly round and round, seeking to ease it.
Elizaveta had suggested it was overuse of her precious sword and still believed – hoped – that had been the reason.

Maria had begged Harald for years to bring her a bigger blade now she was full-grown but he had told her the original was perfect as a ‘woman’s weapon’ and compromised by
letting her have it sharpened. Her favourite trick was to slice the dinnertime bread with it, slashing it into strips in swift, precise movements. Last summer, though, she had used it little and
her complaints about her wrist had ceased only as Harald had healed. Cease they had, though, and now Maria was as eager as any to talk of England.

‘When the time is ripe,’ Harald agreed easily now, but at his side Ulf shifted.

‘Will it ever be so?’

Elizaveta and Harald looked to the big marshal in surprise.

‘You do not like the idea, Ulf?’ Harald asked.

‘England is a long-established country.’

‘Long established by
our
forefathers.’

‘Three hundred years ago, Hari. I suspect they’ve changed a little.’

‘Of course,’ Harald allowed, ‘but come, Ulf, we had little trouble breaking them down when we raided from Wales.’

Elizaveta shivered. ‘Breaking them down’ – what did that mean? She remembered Greta talking on Orkney about Harald targeting common farmers and fishermen, but her maid had said
herself that she was innocent of the world. Even tonight she was safely in the pavilion with Aksel and their children, unencumbered by the wider decisions to be made here. Rulers could not get
bogged down in such minute detail; it obscured the wider scope of the fresco.

‘True,’ Ulf was conceding now, ‘but we had Earl Alfgar to direct us.’

‘Alfgar was about as much use as a wooden cooking pot,’ Harald scoffed.

‘As a fighter, maybe, but he knew the land, Hari.’ Harald leaped up at that and snatched the wine jug, sloshing more into his goblet before banging it back down on the side table.
‘I am not opposed,’ Ulf said quickly, though Elizaveta saw him clutch at his belly as if the words hurt him and wondered if he spoke the truth. ‘I am simply saying that we need to
plan carefully before committing good men to such a risky venture.’

‘As we will, Ulf,’ Harald snarled. ‘As we always do.’

Elizaveta saw Johanna sidle closer to her husband and rose to join Harald, knowing his old friend had put his experienced warrior’s finger on the same issue that, for perhaps the first
time in their married life, was keeping Harald awake at night. She had rarely known him to pace the bedchamber as he had taken to doing recently and certainly never to refuse the distraction of any
of her finest seductions. She did not think she had lost her charms for him. Indeed, just a few weeks back he had taken her aboard his new flagship, fronted by her very own eagle-prow, to
‘christen’ their joint creation as if they were youngsters, so the proposed invasion must be truly preying upon him.

‘What bothers you so, Hari?’ she’d begged him the other night when he’d pushed past her playing her viol naked, to get to the maps and sketches strewn across his
desk.

He’d looked up, preparing, as always recently, to brush her concern aside, but something had changed his mind – perhaps the threatening way she’d pointed her bow at him, or
perhaps the sight of her in his favourite outfit, or perhaps just the pressure of his worries finally growing too great, like the fire in an Icelandic hill.

‘I do not know the land, Lily,’ he’d admitted. ‘I cannot take England in a sea-battle so I shall have to conquer her cities. I shall have to fight in her fields and they
will know them so much better than I. They will know the slopes, the woods, the hiding places and the vantage points. That makes me vulnerable and I do not like being vulnerable.’

‘No man does, Hari, nor woman neither.’

‘Oh, I don’t know about that.’ He’d pulled her onto his desk, pushing the maps aside. ‘You don’t seem to mind.’

He’d grinned wickedly at her then as if, problem admitted, it already haunted him less, and she’d wrapped her legs around him, setting her viol aside to play with her husband
instead.

‘You did not know my body, Hari, when you first took it but you seemed to find the way.’

‘I’d found my way around enough women, my Lilyveta, to work you out.’

‘As you’ve found your way, my love, around enough battlefields.’

‘You compare yourself to a battlefield?’

That had stopped her for a moment.

‘I fear I have, perhaps, put up something of a fight at times,’ she’d admitted but he’d caught up her hand and kissed it.

‘And I have loved you all the more for it. Now, though, I need you to fight
with
me.’

He had not meant in earnest, of course, weapon in hand like a shield-maiden of old, but he did need her support and she meant to give it wholeheartedly. The thought of him invading England made
her every bit as fearful as Ulf, but Harald was alive with it and for that alone it meant the world to her. And they were making progress too. Already he had taken several keys from her neck chain
and it was growing lighter as the mouth of the Sognafjord began to thicken with warships.

Boatbuilders all over Norway were delightedly receiving commissions and word was spreading through the mercenary community, bringing eager soldiers to Oslo in the hope of a share in this, the
greatest mission west since King Cnut had set his own sails for England. Elizaveta embraced their spirit but as rulers they needed more; they needed plans, tactics. She drew Harald back to his seat
beside Ulf and leaned between them.

‘Svein, don’t forget,’ she said quietly, ‘was born and raised in England.’

Both men looked up at her, eyes wide.

‘Of course!’ Harald cried. ‘Svein knows England. You are suggesting, Elizaveta, that we share this invasion?’

She put up a hand.

‘That would be for you to decide, Hari. I am simply saying that in all these negotiations Svein has something we want.’

‘He also has a claim on the English throne himself,’ Ulf warned. ‘Stronger, perhaps, than our own, for he is Cnut’s nephew whereas Harald’s claim is based on
Harthacnut’s inheritance pact with Magnus. What if he joins our mission then steals it – as he stole Denmark from Magnus when the poor fool granted him the regency?’

‘He seems,’ Tora said mildly, ‘to have been content with Denmark all these years. Mayhap he’d think invading England was foolish.’

Harald squinted at her.

‘Mayhap
you
think invading England is foolish, Tora?’ Tora looked hastily to her embroidery and Harald turned with a sigh to Elizaveta. ‘And you, my sweet?’

Elizaveta looked down at him. She had written to Agatha, expressing sorrow for her loss and concern for her wellbeing. She had suggested, in veiled terms, how lovely it would be for them to see
each other again and Agatha had written back all enthusiasm. If only Lily could be with her in England, she had said, everything would feel so much easier. Neither of them had dared speak openly
for fear of seal-breaking spies but she could only hope that Agatha had understood and that she welcomed Harald’s challenge.

‘I think,’ she said stoutly now, ‘that England would be very lucky to have you on her throne.’

Harald smiled, a slow smile that gained in power, like the sun rising, then suddenly pulled her onto his knee, spilling her wine down her gown.

‘Hari!’

‘Oh, don’t mind that, Lily. You have to spill a little scarlet to win, but you are right – is she not, Ulf?’

Ulf inclined his greying head.

‘In that, Hari, she is definitely right.’

‘Good. So let’s make peace with this rogue of a Danish king and set our sights west.’