These ran mainly along the banks of the Ros, an east-to-west tributary of the Dnieper and a natural extension of the ramparts. They provided both a border post for guards and a rich farming community to grow grain and raise livestock for Kievan tables and Yaroslav was fiercely proud of them. They were populated with forest people from the north and, more recently, prisoners from a war with Poland that had broken out earlier in the year and had been won, thanks in great part to Prince Harald and his fearsome Varangians.
Word had it that the prince’s personal troops had grown to over two hundred men as ambitious soldiers flocked to his leadership and, with the war over, Yaroslav had put Harald in personal charge of establishing the mass of civilian prisoners in his new villages. He was waiting, they’d been told, to welcome them to the area and Elizaveta was keen to see him and assure him his treasure was secure.
Harald had scarcely been back to Kiev in his first year of service for Yaroslav, moving from the northern wars into the harsh round of winter tribute-collecting along the frozen rivers of Yaroslav’s kingdom, not even joining the druzhina for Christ’s mass. He had returned with the first thaw, though, and Elizaveta had hoped to see him ride the rapids but news of the Polish attacks had come days before the event and he had been gone almost immediately, his Varangians with him. It had been a poor race in their absence, though Vladimir had won and been so delighted that Elizaveta had almost forgotten her chagrin at being stuck on the bank.
Now, though, she would see Harald again and she prayed he would notice that, at fourteen, she was a woman at last. She had grown so fast that her mother had twice had to set the seamstresses to sew extra trim to the bottom of her skirts and, praise the Lord, she was taller than Anastasia again. Her breasts had also grown full, though her hips remained as slim as Vlad’s – slim enough, were she only allowed, to fit in a canoe.
Elizaveta smiled at the thought and waved to the crowds of villagers who were pressing forward against the row of guards keeping the wood-paved streets clear. She could not, however, prevent her eyes drifting past her father to the little square at the heart of the settlement where a small dais had been raised, on which stood a man tall and blonde enough to look into her confused dreams.
Children were throwing petals into their path and one caught on the light summer breeze and whirled up into her eye, jabbing it in the corner so that she yelped. Elizaveta put up a hand to wipe furiously at the sharp tears it had drawn, blinking against the pain and praying her damned eye did not redden. Yaroslav had pulled up at the front of their parade and Harald had stepped forward to personally hold his bridle as he dismounted. Yaroslav clasped his captain warmly by both shoulders as Vlad and Ivan swung their legs free of their stirrups to jump down and still Elizaveta’s tears came. Closing her stinging eyes desperately she let the warmth of the sun on her eyelids soothe her and the happy calls of the crowd wash over her.
‘Dignity,’ she reminded herself, then she felt a check on her horse and a warm hand on her ankle and a thrill, like the crackle from iron on a stormy day, rushed up the very centre of her body. She opened her eyes and there was Harald, his face level with her new curves, so close that she could – had she dared – have leaned down and run a finger along the scar on his cheek, less raw now but still a clear mark of his harsh warrior life.
‘Princess Elizaveta, welcome.’
‘Prince Harald, I thank you.’
‘May I assist you to dismount?’
She nodded and his hand tightened around her ankle to steady her, though the tips of his fingers seemed to ripple across the stockingless skin above her boots, making it feel somehow overripe. She swung her second leg hastily over the back of her horse and now his other hand was resting on her waist, lightly and just for the moment it took her to drop to the street, but more than enough time to let her body know it liked it. Long enough, too, for her mind to recognise that, whatever her protestations to her nosy family, she wanted to be so much more than a treasure-keeper to this Varangian prince.
‘Thank you.’
‘My pleasure. I must speak with you, Elizaveta. I have fresh keys for your chain, if you will accept them?’
‘Of course.’
‘But I must wait, I fear, for first there is much ceremony to endure . . . enjoy.’
He was already turning to help her sisters down but not so fast that she missed the quick wink he sent her way. It tugged at his scar, sending his face slightly askew, and somehow drawing his other, unmarked eye closer so that she felt pulled right into the swirls of gold in their grey depths. Then he was gone and she was being whisked up onto the dais and someone was pushing little Agatha’s hot, sticky hand into her own and the moment was lost. But it would come again. Surely, she prayed, casting her eyes down the tumbling Ros to the rolling plains and God’s shimmering horizon far beyond, it would come again?
Elizaveta had to wait for what felt like an eternity, through speeches and a tour of the houses – built on firm foundations with neatly fenced plots that the displaced prisoners seemed content to own – and a service in the little stone church. Then there was a simple but, to Elizaveta, ridiculously long feast in the village square before, at last, the tables were pushed back and a bonfire lit. Musicians struck up a jig that pulled all the villagers out to dance and finally Harald was stepping her way.
‘You are free, Princess?’
‘To dance?’
Elizaveta looked warily at the rough-and-tumble peasants’ reel. Agatha had dragged the long-suffering Edward into the steps and it did look fun but she feared her precious ‘dignity’ might suffer if she attempted to join in.
‘If you wish,’ Harald said, ‘though in truth I have not learned many dances.’
‘You have not, I imagine, had time to do so.’
‘No,’ he agreed, drawing her aside into the shadows just beyond the firelight. ‘I’m afraid all my dancing has been with swords, but this is no time for such talk, Elizaveta. I have a new key for you – two new keys.’
‘Two? Your wars in Poland, then, went well?’
‘They did. I won safe borders for your father and much gold for myself – for Norway. You will keep it safe?’
‘You may trust me with that.’
‘Oh, I do. Here . . .’
He produced a parcel wrapped not this time in silk but in hemp. He grimaced as he handed it into her pale hands.
‘It is not as pretty as the last, is it? I apologise. Ulf found me the silk – he is a smoother courtier than I.’
‘It matters not,’ Elizaveta assured him. ‘The keys are the important thing.’
She hastily opened the parcel to reveal, as promised, two golden keys and between them a new charcoal-black charm.
‘Your fee.’ She flinched at the mercenary word and Harald must have seen it, even in the edges of the flickering firelight, for he leaned in and said, ‘And to show my appreciation, Elizaveta. I chose it especially for you. See.’ He lifted it up. ‘The stone is jet, all the way from Whitby in England. I bought it from a Saxon trader for it is as dark and shining as your hair.’ Elizaveta frowned and Harald’s brow furrowed in reflection. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
She looked down at the scuffed ground.
‘I hate my hair.’
‘You hate it? Elizaveta, why? I think it quite the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.’ Elizaveta laughed bitterly but he persisted. ‘I jest not. It shines like a river of night.’
‘Like a witch then?’
‘A witch? Ah, Elizaveta, there is more to the night than witchcraft, I promise you.’ His voice had grown husky and she felt it like a touch across her skin, a kiss even. ‘Truly,’ he said, stepping closer yet, ‘I think your hair is beautiful. Look . . .’
He gently reached out and separated one of her dark locks from the flower-encrusted plaits, then did the same with his own ice-blonde hair. He twisted the two strands together so they lay in a twirl of contrast, pulling their heads close.
‘It is a pretty pattern,’
Elizaveta allowed, staring at it. ‘Yet if I were blonde like my mother, you would not see the difference at all.’
He ran his fingers down the interlinked strands.
‘And where, Elizaveta,’ he asked, ‘would be the joy in that?’
She lifted her eyes to his. They were so close now that she could feel his breath on her cheek.
‘You may be right,’ she conceded, her voice low.
They had both somehow stepped further from the light and she could see very little beyond his face. The scar seemed to stand out and she could not resist putting up a finger to touch it. He jolted back and their joined hair tugged.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. It is a part of me, I suppose, albeit an ugly part.’
‘It’s not ugly. It’s . . . art.’
‘Art! Warrior art?’
‘Exactly. It tells a story.’
‘A bitter one.’
‘Did you get it at Stikelstad?’ He nodded in response. ‘Can you tell me?’
‘I have not Halldor’s skill.’
‘I need it not.’
He let their hair drop and glanced towards the villagers, rioting shadows against the leaping flames, then back to her.
‘I will tell you, Elizaveta, if you promise not to hate your hair any more.’
‘My ugly hair?’
‘As ugly as my scar?’
She smiled.
‘I promise.’
‘Then I will tell, though there is not much to it. I had fought before Stikelstad, of course. I’d trained with my brother’s great friend Finn Arnasson and he had led me out many times, but just in scuffles and sieges. Stikelstad was my first pitched battle and I was so proud of myself. I led seven hundred of my father’s men to meet Olaf and I felt like a king at their head – fool that I was.’
‘You were young.’
‘Fifteen.’
Elizaveta calculated; that made him seventeen now, hardly old, and yet he was a seasoned warrior already.
‘What happened?’
Harald shrugged.
‘It was as Halldor said. We seemed to be winning. Our troops were hammering theirs and then the darkness came. It was evil, Elizaveta, truly. I was cut from my horse and from then on I was just fighting in the blackness, lashing out at any who assaulted me, friend or foe. I did not even see my brother cut down, nor his banner torn.’
‘You can make a new banner, raise a new dragon.’
He shook his head and she looked at him in surprise.
‘Not a dragon, Princess. I will have a raven – ravager of the battlefield. I will never be weak in a fight again. I know not when I took this wound, nor the others that mark me beneath my clothes, but at some point my legs would carry me no more and I had to crawl through the fighting and curl under a bush like a woodland animal. It was pathetic, truly.’
‘It was not pathetic,’ Elizaveta countered, ‘for if you had not escaped you would not be here today and there would be no one to reclaim Norway.’
‘That is true but that, too, is down to Ulf and Halldor more than myself. A day and a night I lay under that bush, till the enemy had done feasting and taken hostages and departed the field and the wounded had drawn their last pained breaths and gone to God all around me. I was barely sensible but Halldor found me, somehow, and he and Ulf carried me to a peasant’s farm up the valley from the battlefield. They saved me.’
‘They are true friends.’
‘That they are. The others had fled over the Kjolen Mountains into Sweden and Harald and Ulf could have gone too but they chose to remain. All winter they worked that peasant’s land. They ploughed up new fields and dug drainage and built a byre in exchange for my nursing until, in the spring, they had created the finest farm around and I, I had my life. I owe them everything.’
‘You are a good lord to them.’
‘I try, for a lord is nothing without his men, a king even less. I value them as highly as the treasure you hold for me and I will need them every bit as much as I need it to take Norway back.’
‘Then you must keep them as safe as I keep your gold.’
‘I must. Elizaveta . . .’
But whatever he intended to say was lost as a heavy clap on the back sent him sprawling forward and Elizaveta’s father stepped up at her side.
‘Plotting in the shadows, Harald?’
‘Nay, Sire,’ he said, recovering, ‘just taking the chance to offer your daughter two more keys to my treasure troves.’
Elizaveta proffered the parcel but Yaroslav barely glanced at it.
‘My daughter is a treasure richer than any gold or jewels, Varangian.’ His voice was low and Harald bowed to it.
‘That I know, Grand Prince.’
‘Do not presume to what you are not entitled.’
‘Father!’ Elizaveta protested but Harald held up a hand as the Grand Prince nudged them back towards the light of the fire.
‘I presume to nothing, truly, bar her kindness as my treasurer.’
‘Good, though were you to offer her not just caskets but a crown . . .’
Elizaveta’s protests stuck in her throat and Harald simply bowed again.
‘I swear I will rule Norway one day, Sire.’
‘You will?’ It was a new voice, a thinner, higher one, and Elizaveta groaned as Magnus joined them. He, like her, had grown in the last year and his gangly frame intruded awkwardly on their group. ‘I am King Olaf’s heir, Harald Sigurdsson,’ the boy said, squaring up to his uncle, though Harald cast twice his shadow against the flames.
Harald looked down at him.
‘How do you know?’ he asked mildly. ‘Were you at his side when he died?’
‘You know I was not. Had I been, I might have protected him better.’
Harald bristled and Yaroslav stepped quickly between them.
‘Come now – you are kin, joined by blood and a shared aim. You must fight your enemies, not each other. You can rule together, as I ruled with my own brother for several years.’
Elizaveta shifted. Her uncle had been the last of Yaroslav’s eleven brothers to meet an early death and the thought of it made her uncomfortably aware of the harsh secrets of a man’s world.
‘If you wish to rule,’ Harald said, ‘you need men and for men you need gold. I am gaining gold, nephew, but where is yours?’
‘God will see me safely to my rightful place,’ Magnus returned easily.
Harald growled.
‘I told you, Magnus, God helps those . . .’
‘Who strive for themselves? You did, but maybe, Harald, God helps those who devote themselves to his service? How can we know?’
‘I am sure,’ Yaroslav said hastily, ‘that God loves all men who serve in whatever way they can and I pray that he sees you both safe in your homeland.’
‘As kings?’
‘If it is your destiny, yes.’
‘With queens at our side?’ Magnus looked slyly up at Harald. ‘You are betrothed, are you not, Uncle?’
‘No.’
Harald’s answer was quick; too quick. Elizaveta looked at him but he had let his blonde hair fall forward and his eyes were shaded by it.
‘No?’ Magnus echoed in his stiff little voice. ‘But weren’t you promised to Finn Arnasson’s daughter?’ He turned to Elizaveta. ‘The Arnassons are very great jarls in the north of Norway, Princess. They hold much land and much power.’ He smiled thinly and Elizaveta shivered.
‘Then it will be a useful alliance for you, Prince,’ she said stiffly to Harald.
‘There is no alliance,’ he replied, pushing back his hair and looking straight at her. ‘There is no promise. Magnus knows not what he is saying. It was talk, nothing more – you know how it is?’
Elizaveta drew in a long breath as she considered this. Her father was always dangling betrothals before the young men of the druzhina, as he had indeed just done with Harald.
‘I know,’ she agreed quietly and her fingers clasped tight around her keys and the
little black charm. ‘And now, you must excuse me, gentlemen. It seems you have much to discuss and I think my mother looks for me to see to Agatha.’
It wasn’t true. She’d seen her littlest sister being carried furiously away by Hedda some time back, but her joy in the evening was gone. She felt confused, lost even, and for once she longed for the peace of the ladies’ bower. She curtseyed, then turned and strode away, past the bonfire and towards the comfort of the church that was to stand as their accommodation that night.
‘Elizaveta!’
Reluctantly she turned back to see Yaroslav pursuing her.
‘Father?’
‘Do not let this boyish posturing upset you, my sweet.’
‘It has not.’
‘Indeed? Good.’ He tucked a finger under her chin and lifted her face. ‘Men will seek you, Elizaveta.’
‘Because I am a Princess of Kiev?’
‘Yes, but more than that – they will seek you for your spirit. A man needs a wife with spirit if he is to succeed in life.’
‘As you have, Father?’
‘I am blessed, Elizaveta. I married your mother for my nation but I have grown to love her for herself. I hope you find such fortune too and will do my best to make it so.’
Elizaveta opened her mouth to try to thank him but he was gone, back to his dais to look over his people, and she was left to retreat to her bed, strangely comforted by his awkward words but no less confused.
CHAPTER FIVE
Banks of the Dnieper, April 1034
‘Elizaveta stepped up onto the grandstand beside her sisters and felt the usual mix of elation and envy that the Rapids Race always set swirling inside her. With Yaroslav richer than ever on the trade and territory Harald and his Varangians had brought him, he was planning a huge celebration and the competition area below Kiev looked magnificent. The race was always run at the height of the snowmelt when the river shot down the tight path through the forest cliffs, twisting between rocks, through pools and over little waterfalls until it hit the open water at the bottom.
The two grandstands were stood down there on stilts either side of the fastest run of the current, and this year they were bigger than ever and decorated all along their wood-tiled roofs with scarlet pennants edged in gold. There were raised walkways leading to both, the one on the far bank stretching a long way round as the floods were high this year, forcing the lower section of the river so far out across the plains that it sometimes seemed, especially in the morning mists, as if the sea itself had come to Kiev.
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