The Betrothed Sister

by Carol McGrath

  ‘No, it has frozen.’

  ‘We shall be there soon.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Thea said. ‘I shall be glad to lie down.’

  ‘You will not have long to wait now, Lady Thea.’

  A wide gate drew open. Through the parting in the curtain Thea saw a sprawling farmhouse with two storeys. A collection of snow-sprinkled wooden buildings was set in an orderly semi-circle about it. Trees stood around the farm yard, their branches shivering in the wind. Then she made out figures wrapped in heavy cloaks chopping wood, carrying pails and lifting straw with pitchforks from an open cart. Their wagon drew to a halt in the yard. Grooms ran forward to hold the horses steady as the girls dismounted. Two smiling figures appeared in the yard and a moment later, a broad-shouldered, heavily cloaked man stepped forward.

  ‘Good to see you, Princess Gunnhild.’ He bowed graciously. ‘And you too, Theodora Gytha, welcome to Søderup. I am Jarl Niels. My wife, Lady Ingar, will make you comfortable while I see that these dolts of grooms do the same for the horses.’ He waved for his wife to come forward and meet King Sweyn’s cousin. Moments later, after friendly greetings were given and received, Lady Ingar ordered servants to carry the girls’ belongings to their chambers. She ushered the three girls into the hall where flames danced brightly in a central hearth. Servants took their mantles, hung these on pegs close to the entrance, and Lady Ingar settled them by the fire and sent for possets and cakes.

  ‘When the king comes here he throws himself into the life of his farm,’ Jarl Niels said and looked over at Princess Gunnhild who sat closest to the hall fire, clutching a cup of hot milk laced with honey. ‘Is this not so, Gunnhild?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  Lady Ingar, her warm brown eyes glowing below her wimpled brow said, ‘Now, Gunnhild, no sulking. Here we all work for our bread. Last time you were here you enjoyed learning to make cheese.’

  Jarl Niels nodded at Thea. ‘The king wants life to be ordinary here. His message insists that I am to address you as Thea. You will observe that Princess Gunnhild is referred to here as Gunnhild.’ The steward of Søderup continued, ‘I am Jarl Niels. You will use my name in full when you address me, Theodora Godwinsdatter. My wife is Lady Ingar. Remember that. My daughters,’ he broke off to wave a hand at two neat, plain-faced women in their twenties who were dropping spindles across the hearth. ‘Now, Thea, look at how modest my daughters are and how busy their hands remain. They are Elizabeth and Mary – called so for the holy family. Their husbands – well, you will learn their names in time.’

  ‘Yes, Jarl Niels,’ Thea said, too tired to think. ‘If I may, I must lie down.’

  ‘Nonsense, no one lies down before supper is served.’

  ‘Jarl Niels,’ Lady Ingar began, ‘I think tonight is an exception. Thea’s maid can bring her soup up to her. She has been ill. I do not wish to be responsible if she relapses.’

  Jarl Niels softened. ‘Well, well, if you insist, dear wife. You know best. Take her to her chamber.’

  ‘Thank you, Jarl Niels,’ Thea said as she set her milky drink aside and thankfully rose to her feet. ‘Come with me, Gudrun.’ She was thankful when she found out that she was to have her own bedchamber that was reached by an outside staircase.

  Thea stood in the middle of her new chamber. The rafters reached down towards the floor from a high point in the roof and the floorboards were scrubbed. The room was plain but it would do, and she did not have to share it with Gunnhild. Its walls were lime-washed but undecorated except for a carved Christ with enormous eyes hanging from a wooden cross. At the bottom of this cross, instead of a weeping Madonna, a snake-like creature was carved into the wood. It had one foreleg. She recoiled from it. It was hideous. If she could, she would ask for a replacement. Surely that cross was not Christian? She told Gudrun to take it down and hide it under the bed. She could not bear to look at that every day. Instead she hung a little ivory cross that had belonged to her mother in its place.

  For a week Thea kept to her room, sending excuses down the stairway daily, until Lady Ingar came to her one morning, whipped the padded cover from her bed and tossed her a work gown of rough wool. ‘Today, you must join the other women who are spinning in the hall. In the afternoon you will work in the dairy making cheese. Everyone here is expected to work. If you do not work you will not eat.’ Lady Ingar seized Gudrun’s arm. ‘You too, my girl, enough tripping up and down the stairway with bread and honey and titbits from the kitchen. You will assist Lady Thea in every one of the tasks we give her.’ She turned back to Thea. ‘You will eat with the rest of us today in the hall below.’ She looked at the tiny ivory cross on the wall and arched one of her eyebrows. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Under the bed, Lady Ingar. The snake is a frightening, pagan image,’ Thea said, shuddering. ‘I could not sleep with that snake at the cross’s foot ready to reach out and snap at me.’

  ‘Nonsense, it is the way our craftsmen work and it is a warning to sinners. Nonetheless, if it disturbs you I shall have it removed from under your bed.’

  ‘If you would, my lady, I thank you,’ Thea said, reaching for the work gown.

  Gudrun was visibly shaking with fear as Lady Ingar stomped down the stairway in her great boots. These, Thea remarked, looked more suitable for a man than a woman. Climbing down from the high bed, she said, ‘We have no choice. We have to join the other women. I hope they are kinder than the princesses were.’ She sniffed the gown. ‘At least it is clean. Come on, Gudrun, help me,’ she said and they pulled the itchy gown over her shift.

  Thea decided not to hurry. She drained her cup of buttermilk and ate her bread roll. Concealing her hair under a linen coif she was dressed as simply as a peasant who had always worked on a farm. Over the past few days she had been thinking about Prince Vladimir again, as the terrible memory of her fever-inspired blood-red wedding had faded. Instead, when she dreamed of her wedding, she wore a pale blue overgown of samite silk and blue slippers of the softest leather. She was as pure as the Virgin, a perfect beauty with her pale skin and golden-red hair, her veil as delicate and transparent as a skeleton leaf. What would her prince think of her today? She shook her head. Ready to face whatever Lady Ingar demanded of her with stoicism, she descended the staircase into the icy cold of the yard.

  She had had no idea of the bitter December cold that had gripped the outside world in the week she had lain in her warm bed, missing her grandmother or thinking about the Prince of Kiev. ‘This cold is biting,’ she complained, hugging her arms about her body.

  ‘It is no worse than during the siege we suffered in Exeter, my lady. That was a hard winter too,’ Gudrun said as she trailed after Thea into the hall.

  ‘It was, I shall never forget it, nor do I want to suffer it again, ever.’

  Thea wrinkled her nose on entering the hall. The smell of damp wool mingled with the unwashed smell of many busy bodies. The women stopped working and looked up at her.

  ‘Sit here,’ Lady Ingar said, moving over on a bench close to the hearth. ‘Here, take this and this.’ She handed Thea a spindle whorl and a handful of soft, oily wool from a basket. ‘Gudrun, you will help your mistress.’ Lady Ingar glared around at the others, who included Princess Gunnhild, and signalled to them to continue working.

  Thea lifted the spindle and wool and began the work of teasing wool into thread. As she finished one lot Gudrun handed her more wool to spin. She was glad that she had done this task before in Grandmother Gytha’s hall. Soon the knack of dropping her spindle returned to her and she noted the admiration and surprise in the eyes of Princess Gunnhild as she swiftly produced woollen threads that Gudrun nimbly wound into skeins.

  There were no unkind comments or snide looks on the women’s faces. They concentrated on their task and as they worked they conversed. Soon a sense of togetherness developed between them as they asked Thea about England and said how they were all welcome here at Søderup. Princess Gunnhild, away from her sisters’ influence, smiled at the conversation as she
worked, although she was not as nimble-fingered as they were and often broke threads.

  As the dinner hour approached and candles were lit the morning’s work was cleared away into huge baskets. Servants pulled out trestles and laid them with food. The men came into the hall and soon the hall was full of people. Servants bustled around setting out bowls of the steaming meat stew that had bubbled all morning in a cauldron over the central raised hearth. They brought in freshly baked bread from the outside kitchen and cheese from the Søderup dairy. Thea discovered that she was very, very hungry.

  It was at that dinner time that Thea noticed how Padar smiled across from the men’s trestle at Gudrun. She observed too how Gudrun’s eyes seemed to light up like glowing stars when he looked her way. Gudrun had turned fifteen on the day they had arrived in Søderup but she had been too tired and miserable to mark her name day. She must make her handmaiden a belated gift, perhaps a belt purse, if there was felt to be had at Søderup. And, she mused as Padar’s twinkling eyes looked across the hall towards them, Gudrun was old enough to admire and be admired. She must speak to the girl, find out what had been going on while she had lain in bed thinking of her grandmother and her brothers; worrying about her brothers’ long sea journey back to Dublinia so late in the year; missing Grandmother Gytha whom she loved with all her heart, dreaming her own dreams of longing and love. She bit her tongue to stop the tears welling up as she thought of her grandmother now. This was life and she must just get on with it. Swallowing back her longing, she bent her head over her bowl and scooped up another spoonful of stew.

  Thea had no time to think again about Padar and Gudrun. That afternoon they worked in the dairy, hanging sharp-smelling cheeses to drip over vats. When their day ended and darkness brought an end to their work they processed into the tall wooden chapel where she shivered through a candlelit Vespers. Supper followed. She glanced about the candlelit hall, remembering Padar’s smiles for Gudrun, searching deep into the shadows, seeking him. He was not present this time so she said to Lady Ingar, ‘Where is Padar tonight, my lady?’

  ‘Oh, Padar, well, my dear, the skald has been called back to Roskilde. He took an early supper and galloped away from us for the coast.’

  ‘He is my skald. He has gone without a word to me.’

  ‘He will return soon,’ was all that Lady Ingar said. ‘There was no time to explain anything to you and besides, I gather that his mission is secret. Your three house coerls remain. You are well protected here.’

  Thea glanced over at her protectors, all three men deep in conversation with Jarl Niels. She wondered if they too had to earn their supper. There was a frown on Jarl Niels’ face. She caught him looking over at Lady Ingar and signalling for her to join him in the private chamber behind the hall. A little later, as plums were served, both master and mistress took their leave of the company and disappeared through the leather curtain that divided the back chambers from the manor hall. As Thea supped on her plums and thick cream, she wondered if the secret conversation between Jarl Niels and his wife had anything to do with Padar’s departure.

  ‘Come with us, Thea,’ Mary said to Thea after the empty dish of stewed plums had been removed from the table. ‘We shall embroider for an hour before we go to our rest.’

  Thea followed Mary and the other women into an alcove, far from the central hearth but warmed by its own brazier. Mary pulled forward an embroidery frame that Thea had only given a cursory glance at before. The frame before her was such a feast for the eyes, she forgot all about Jarl Niels’ abrupt departure at supper.

  She peered closely at it, bending her head, gently touching the threads. Shapes were marked out in charcoal for them to work on. A part of the work was completed already. She made out the central picture first, a tree that sprouted many branches and oak leaves and to either side two ships in full sail, both with miniature warriors aboard them. The ships faced each other across the tree. There were crosses on the ship masks and one of the vessels seemed to possess a dragon figurehead at both its prow and stern. The other was simpler with an anchor balanced at the stern. At the prow stood a strange creature that she thought must be a griffin. Her eyes followed the embroidery to its borders where she now saw a patterned band and below that a series of interlocking oak leaves.

  ‘It is the story of Olaf Haraldson and his brother Harald of Norway, Queen Elizaveta’s first husband. We are embroidering it for the queen’s chapel at Schleswig – a gift.’

  ‘Harald of Norway was another thief after my father’s kingdom,’ Thea said crossly.

  ‘He did not win this time either.’ Mary laughed and pointed to the ships. ‘This is the story of Olaf’s sailing race. You see they raced their ships to Trondheim to win the crown of Norway. They were half-brothers. Olaf,’ she indicated a figure with a bow, ‘won the race and so swiftly that he was able to take part in the church service, reaching the church before the arrow that he shot from that bow during the voyage had arrived.’

  ‘Impossible,’ Thea said.

  ‘We think God smiled on Olaf who was a well-respected king and a good Christian. Look, Thea, at the way we show the waves. The ships look as if they really move. Many now say Olaf should be a saint.’

  ‘And the tree?’

  ‘The tree of life. We do not displease the fates.’

  ‘Which bit do you wish to work on Thea?’ Elizabeth said brightly.

  ‘Not the dragon prow. I am working on that,’ Princess Gunnhild squawked up.

  ‘I am happy to work on the waves,’ Thea said dreamily. ‘I like the sense of moving forward with the tide.’

  ‘Good, let us sort out needles and wool for you. And, you, Gudrun, run into the main hall and fetch us a sconce to see by. These tallow candles won’t provide enough light.’

  Once Gudrun returned and the sconce was secured in a wall bracket, they settled on sewing stools to stitch. Waves, oak leaves and dragons, the anchor and a great billowing sail all took on life from the women’s nimble fingers. Thea forgot Padar. She forgot everyone as she drew her needle with its woollen thread in and out through ink-coloured waves, until she remembered other warships that had crossed the narrow seas carrying the duke who was intent on stealing her father’s kingdom. She glanced up at the tiny arrow set in Olaf’s bowstring and cursed the thief King of England and all his kin.

  It was not until she was contentedly tucked up beneath her fur covers that night that she wondered again where Padar had gone and how Ingar and Niels had glanced over at her as they retired from the hall after supper.

  What did it all mean? She turned onto her side and curled up as if she were a small creature like a kitten and fell asleep pondering the mystery. Her last thought was that maybe Padar’s disappearance was connected to her future, though she could not fathom how or why it was a secret. If it was not a secret there would be more explanation and fewer furtive glances between Niels and Ingar when she had asked for him.

  9

  Novgorod, Russia, Winter 1068-1069

  There was snow in the heavens. Breathing in the crisp air after a week at sea, Padar huddled into his sealskin cloak and followed the king’s messenger from the ship and along the wharf. He had no idea what King Sweyn wanted with him, though he suspected that this summons concerned Lady Thea.

  His thoughts, as he walked, turned to the girl for whom he was beginning to have feelings, and whom he had left behind in Søderup. ‘Pray God I can return soon,’ he muttered as he trailed through cold streets behind the king’s man.

  He had never felt such interest in a girl before. When he had first spoken with Gudrun a year ago in Exeter she had seemed wise beyond her years, one who thought before she spoke and who weighed her words carefully. In another world she would be betrothed or married already, but her future had disappeared with her father’s death at Hastings and her mother’s demise from a broken heart soon afterwards. Now that Gudrun was growing into a woman he found that he had an affection for her and he did not know what to do about it.

&
nbsp; As he walked through fluttering flakes of virgin snow, a wisp of hope began to surface. There had been women before. They had passed into his life and out again as fast as a candle burned down, a short time snatched and easily forgotten. There had never been time in his life before for love. His had been a life of service to the Godwin family, but now that his life was changing, he was changing too. If Lady Thea travelled to Russian lands to marry one of their princes, since he had promised Countess Gytha that he would look after her granddaughter’s interests, it made sense that he planted roots in that distant land too and, of course, if Lady Thea travelled to Russia her handmaiden would accompany her.

  Almost thirty years old and he was in love, and he wondered at it. Gudrun with her little swelling breasts, her golden hair and eyes that were such a deep blue that they looked like the sea on a summer’s day. St Olav’s whiskers, I could be her father. She is only fifteen to my twenty-nine summers. He drew the hood of his cloak over his head and hurried after the messenger. Her father was a thane and she has nothing now. If times were settled, if I had a trade, I would ask for her. I have nothing. I am just a poet, a warrior and a spy, unless of a sudden, riches fall from the sky and that is unlikely. He sighed as he walked on the wooden walkways through the merchant quarter and past the silent cathedral to the king’s house.

  The king’s man left him at the palace entrance. Just inside the hall, Padar shook snow from his mantle and stamped slush from his boots. He glanced around the king’s receiving hall to where groups of Sweyn’s house coerls stood in knots, talking quietly. Since the little pox had stolen lives, a worried hush had descended on the palace. They seemed subdued rather than boisterous as they often were. Pungent smoke, herb-infused wafts of it that was intended to stave off the pox, floated towards the rafters.

  As his eyes became accustomed to the hall’s dim rush light his attention was drawn to a pair of bearded men seated over a game of strategy in an alcove close to the raised dais. He peered through smoke that was curling from braziers towards holes in the rafters. Both men seemed familiar. His eyes searched through the spirals of smoke into the alcove again and this time recognised the two men hunched over a Hnefatafl board. One was Merleswein, once the most important Dane in York; he could not forget the man’s disdainful laugh, and heard it now. Sitting on a stool opposite the arrogant thane was Bjorn, a burly bodyguard. What were they doing here?