They took the first turn around the rocks almost together, Vlad pressing hard and then suddenly the top of the Prince’s canoe clipped the other boat and Gregor slewed wildly sideways and disappeared. The crowd gasped.
‘Where is he?’ Elizaveta asked, grabbing Harald’s hand without even thinking.
Vladimir’s boat wobbled on the edge of a tricky whirlpool. The stern tipped and shivered and then, thankfully, he righted it but still Gregor was nowhere. Elizaveta scanned the river desperately and then suddenly Harald pointed to the far side where, miraculously, the young count’s canoe had popped up below the rocks, barely a hand’s breadth behind Vladimir. The boy was soaked to the skin and shaking his head wildly to throw the water from his eyes but he pushed on, his paddle flashing in the spray, and now he was gaining on Vladimir. Vladimir sensed the danger and picked up his own pace but he was too late. Gregor shot between the grandstands to a hero’s roar and beneath the rope to victory.
‘How did he do that?’ Elizaveta gasped.
‘Nerve,’ Edward said admiringly, swinging Agatha down to the floor. ‘Nerve and not a little luck. He must have caught an undercurrent through the channel. And look, here comes Ivan in third. A good day for your family.’
‘Indeed,’ Elizaveta agreed softly. Agatha was bouncing excitedly, Anastasia had seized the chance to fling her arms around Andrew, and even solemn Anne was clapping, but it all felt dreamlike. Had Harald really spoken of marriage? Had he truly asked for her hand or had she just been mixed up in the race?
‘Will you excuse me?’ Harald said, strangely formal. She had imagined it. ‘I must seek out your father.’
‘Now?’
‘Whilst he is in a good mood and likely to look favourably upon an exiled prince. You are sure, Elizaveta?’
He had spoken.
‘Sure,’ she squeaked.
‘Then I shall go.’
Harald bowed low and began to fight his way towards the Grand Prince. Elizaveta watched his fair head weave through the crowd and hugged her arms around her chest. The canoes were gathering at the finish and she was glad to be distracted by them and pleased to see Vlad slapping Gregor on the back and towing him to the bank, for the lad was shivering violently. Men helped them onshore and threw great fur cloaks around them as slaves pulled the canoes to land and then they were brought to the grandstand to receive their prizes from Yaroslav.
‘A great race,’ the Grand Prince proclaimed. ‘Perhaps the greatest ever and a worthy victory by Gregor the Seal.’
The crowd roared in delight at this byname and Gregor beamed. He was trembling too much to take the cup but he beckoned up Lady Beatrix, his voluptuous young fiancée, to accept it on his behalf. She did so and then, to even more uproarious approval, kissed the victor full on the lips before them all.
‘Must be catching,’ Elizaveta said quietly, feeling the recent imprint of Harold’s lips on her own.
Anastasia squinted at her.
‘What must be?’
‘Oh, nothing.’
‘What, Elizaveta? What’s catching? What’s happening?’
‘The feast, I think,’ Elizaveta said wickedly. ‘Shall we go?’
She turned down the walkway, falling into step with Halldor Snorrason.
‘True love?’ Halldor grunted, nodding to the victor and his clinging woman.
‘I don’t know, Hal,’ Elizaveta threw back with a smile. ‘I hear you are the expert on such matters these days.’
Halldor grimaced.
‘It makes fools of us all.’
‘Happy fools,’ Elizaveta said, watching Gregor depart with both Beatrix and his trophy beneath his cloak. Behind them Harald was escorting Yaroslav along the walkway and Elizaveta’s heart lurched. What if her father said no?
‘Mayhap,’ Halldor was agreeing and she turned gratefully back to him.
‘Elsa is here?’
‘She is. She has been watching from the far bank. I asked her to accompany me into the grandstand, but she insisted she knew her place.’
‘Her place is at your side, Hal. You should marry her.’
‘Marry? Nay, I’m not one for ceremonies, Princess. I have pledged her my troth and it is enough. Besides, she carries my child.’
Elizaveta spun round to face him.
‘That’s wonderful news, Halldor – you will be a father.’
‘I will, poor mite. ’Tis a good job he will have such a fine mother.’
‘Oh, Hal,’ Elizaveta chided, ‘do not underestimate yourself. He or she will have the finest bedtime stories of any child on God’s earth. Elsa will go to Miklegard with you?’
‘She will.’
‘She is lucky then.’
‘You think serving women freer than princesses, Elizaveta?’
‘No, I am not so foolish nor so arrogant as that. I know myself to be very lucky but Elsa is, I think, blessed too.’
‘I hope so,’ Halldor said, his eyes fixing on the girl, who was now in sight, standing at the end of the walkway, her slim hands over her swelling belly as she waited quietly for him. ‘Happy fools,’ he echoed, trying it out. ‘’Tis true, Princess, yet love is a fearful business.’
‘Fearful?’
‘A terrible admission for a Varangian, is it not? But it is true. Loving Elsa has made everything seem more worthwhile but it also means there is more to lose. My own life is more precious now and that is both a blessing and a curse, especially in battle.’
He looked so earnest, so troubled, that Elizaveta longed to kiss his funny, wrinkled brow but she feared embarrassing him so instead took his arm and led him towards his mistress.
‘Best then,’ she suggested, ‘if you make the most of every moment of it – especially in peacetime.’
Halldor laughed at that, a big, open belly-laugh, and patted Elizaveta’s arm.
‘You are wise, Princess. And I hope,’ he added, ‘that you can heed your own advice. You will come to Norway with us, I think?’
There was little point dissembling.
‘I hope so, Hal,’ she admitted, glancing forward to where Harald and Yaroslav were taking the steps up to the kremlin together. ‘I truly hope so.’
CHAPTER SIX
Giske, Norway, Midsummer 1034
Tora Arnasson dug her toes into the rough sand and looked out across the rolling sea to the muted mainland beyond. Behind her, up on the cliff, the elders were lighting the beacon and she could hear the crackle of the tinder and the low shout of approval from the men as she caught the first sparks reflected in the frothing sea’s edge. Within minutes the fire would be ablaze, sending out its burnished path across the water like a miniature sun to call the Arnassons’ people to feast.
Glancing nervously up the cliffs, Tora saw three heavy figures silhouetted against the nascent flames. In the centre was her uncle, Jarl Finn, the man who had taken command of the Arnasson family when her own father, Thorberg, had been lost to an enemy sword. Already widowed, Finn had raised Tora and her siblings, Otto and Johanna, with his own daughters, Idonie and Sigrid. He was a tough man but Tora had always found him fair and certainly far more so than his hot-headed younger brother, Jarl Kalv, stood brooding dangerously to his right.
She shivered and looked the other way, but there was no comfort to be found there either, for to Finn’s left was the equally dangerous Einar Tambarskelve, the only great landholder in the north who was not of her father’s kin. Einar’s family were less deeply rooted in the land than the Arnassons and he was ever on the alert for opportunity, political or military, to advance himself. When Cnut, already king of Denmark and England, had first driven King Olaf out of Norway six years ago, Einar had cleaved to him and gained himself much power as a result. Recently, though, Einar had been mithering about Cnut’s regent in Norway, his son Steven by his English concubine, and Tora feared he would draw the Arnasson men into his plotting.
She cast her eyes back out to sea, searching for the bobbing mast-lanterns of the first fishing craft that would bring the
locals from their lonely farms along the coast to see out the midsummer night on their jarl’s beach. Long trestle tables had been set up on the high sand where the sneaky sea could not lick at legs, and in a cluster of pavilions in the lee of the cliff servants were preparing the feast. A huge fire had been set in a circle of stones and Tora could hear grunts as porters lifted a vast iron sheet across it on which the fish – fresh-caught this morning – could be fried and served straight onto the bread trenchers sat beneath linen on a table behind.
Over another fire, a lamb was turning on a spit and on a third bubbled a large pot of honeyed apples, flavoured with spices traded in from the orient and spiked with firewater from Kalv’s own brew house. The same had provided the barrels of ale which were sat in the shade of a cavern for it had been a hot day and promised to be a warm evening. The sun would not sleep tonight, nor the people of Norway either, and the air bristled with anticipation.
‘There!’
Tora’s younger sister Johanna ran to the water’s edge, pointing eagerly outwards.
Following her finger, Tora saw three lights bobbing with the swell of the rising tide coming from the western end of the mainland.
‘They are on their way,’ she agreed with the calm befitting her nineteen years, though she could not prevent herself leaning into the half-night to try and catch the voices of the revellers as memories battled inside her.
Harald had come like this back in 1027. His had been the first boat into the bay and he had sailed it himself, though he was – like her – but newly turned twelve and recently fostered into Finn’s household from his own home in the south. Wearing a wolf’s mask fashioned from a real skull, he’d put back his white-blonde head and howled to the moon-sun as he splashed through the shallows.
‘I am come to hunt you, Tora Arnasson,’ he’d called, catching sight of her, and she’d run, sand spraying up behind her scrabbling feet as he’d given chase. ‘I will catch you, Tora – you know I will.’
‘And what will you do with me then?’ she’d called back over her shoulder, ducking round the fires and making for the cliff path.
‘I will eat you,’ Harald had said and her heart had scudded and her steps faltered and within moments he’d caught her ankle and tumbled her onto the sand.
‘I will not taste good,’ she’d protested, squirming to escape.
‘I will risk it.’
He’d flipped her onto her back, the sand catching in her loose blonde hair, and crawled up over her, his big body shadowing her slimmer one, though he’d held himself up on his muscular arms like the haunches of the very wolf he was pretending to be.
‘Don’t eat me,’ she’d whimpered, feeling his breath hot on her neck and his hair tickling her cheek and his maleness like a fever across her pale skin.
‘Why should I not?’ he’d growled, dipping lower.
‘Because, pup, she is my niece!’
And with that, Harald had been lifted by the scruff of his neck high up into the air and flung aside.
‘Sorry, Jarl Kalv, sir. I’m sorry. ’Twas just a game – just midsummer foolery.’
‘You’re too young for such games,’ Kalv had snapped back, ‘or maybe too old. Get up, Tora, and wipe yourself down and try, for once, to behave like a jarl’s daughter and not a peasant girl.’
That had stung, the scornful ‘for once’ pricking at her summer-hot skin like a barb, as if she’d been some sort of disgrace to her dead father’s memory and not the ridiculously well-behaved girl she’d half-despised herself for. It had lit something inside her, or maybe simply fanned the flames Harald’s wild chase had sparked.
Simple sense had dictated a need for caution, at least until the sun was low enough to make the beach more shadows than light. But as the ale had flowed and the fish had been picked to the bones and the men had taken their wives on their knees around the fire leaving the youngsters with the darker reaches of the sands, Tora had looked again for her wolf.
‘You have feasted well, Harald?’
‘That I have.’
He’d thrown off his wolf cloak and had stood before her in just a linen shirt, his torso, despite his youth, already muscular and clearly defined through the thin fabric.
‘You are, then, full up?’ she’d asked cheekily.
‘I may have a little space, if something especially tasty were to tempt me.’
‘A honeyed apple perhaps?’
‘No. No, not that – too sweet.’
‘Some crisped skin from the lamb then?’
He’d stepped closer.
‘Too dry.’
‘Some ale from my uncle’s barrels?’
‘I have had plenty of that.’
She’d tipped her face up to his.
‘What then, wolf?’
He’d smiled in the half-light.
‘The lips of a jarl’s daughter,’ he’d whispered, then his hands had been on her waist and his lips against hers, and she’d felt as drunk as if she’d drained the apples of their pungent juice.
‘Oi! Harald Sigurdsson!’
‘Not again,’ Harald had groaned against her lips and, though fear had spiked inside her at the sound of the call, she’d giggled.
‘Is that my sister you’re chewing on?’
They’d both relaxed and Harald had spun round, hands still on Tora’s waist, to face their accuser.
‘I was not “chewing”, Otto,’ Harald had objected. ‘I was far more delicate.’
‘Were you indeed?’ More of the local youngsters had been gathering and Otto had drawn himself up tall. Although barely eight, he’d been a tall, confident lad and had enjoyed the audience. ‘Well, with our father gone, I am the guardian of her honour and I say that if you wish to chew on her – delicately or nay – you must first be betrothed.’
‘Oh yes,’ Johanna had clapped, ‘a betrothal. Come, Tora, you must have flowers in your hair.’
‘No, Johanna, I . . .’
But already Johanna, Idonie and Sigrid had been pulling her away and plucking clover from the cliff side to thread into her wind-tangled hair.
‘And you, Harald,’ Otto had gone on, ‘you must, must . . .’
‘Dance!’ someone had supplied. ‘Dance like the wolf you claim to be.’
‘Wolves don’t dance,’ Harald had objected.
‘And they don’t kiss either, southern boy,’ Otto had retorted, ‘but this is midsummer so normal rules don’t apply – now dance!’
Tora smiled at the memory. That night, as Harald whipped the crowd into joy, she’d been able to cast off the grief of losing her father at last and it had felt so good. Now, she put a hand to her fair hair as if the clover might still be clinging to its fine strands and sighed.
The boats were landing. The westerly three were first but already others were sailing in from across the sea and around the coves of the jagged coastline. Men were leaping out, pulling their craft up onto the shore and lifting their womenfolk to the dry sands, calling greetings to their neighbours and blessings on their jarls who had made it down to the beach and stood, feet planted wide in the sand, with Einar still just a step away.
Everyone was half-merry already, though the barrels had not yet been broached. It was a lonely existence farming out on these wild coasts and families could go weeks without seeing anyone beyond their own farmsteads, so they were all disposed to enjoy every last sociable minute of the feast. Tora was glad to see it but as the final boats pulled up she knew, with a sinking heart, that once again he – Harald – would not be arriving.
‘Lady Tora, good evening.’
The man before her, bone-thin with age and his clouded eyes unusually bright as they drilled into hers, could not be a greater contrast to her previous suitor on this beach.
‘Lord Pieter,’ she said guardedly, crossing her hands involuntarily over her chest as he drew close – too close.
‘Such a pleasure to see you.’
‘And you,’ she forced out, unpeeling her hands as she caught her uncle nod
ding her to take the proffered arm.
Lord Pieter owned extensive fertile lands on the isle of Giske and Finn had recently opened marriage negotiations with him. The thought of being shackled to this skeleton of a man tore at Tora’s heart as, more sharply still, did the knowledge that such a match would cut her tenuous ties to Harald. But, then, Harald was not here.
She had not expected it, not really. He was in the land of the Rus, fled from King Cnut’s oppression, and was as likely to sail a boat into this bay for midsummer as a real wolf, but a tiny part of her always looked for the miracle anyway on this strange night where the old magic – if there was any left – was most likely to cast its spell across Norway.
Reluctantly, Tora allowed Lord Pieter to escort her towards the tables where, all around, people were being ushered to their seats. Servers were bringing round jugs of ale and men and women alike were eagerly unclipping their cups from their belts. The first fish were on the great cooking platter and their smell caught the air and roused a cheer as the jarls looked benevolently on.
‘Must just, er, relieve myself,’ Pieter said, dropping her arm and scuttling into the shadows of the great cliffs at the back of the beach.
Tora hung gratefully back, relishing the space he left at her side, before suddenly becoming aware of her uncle standing close by.
‘We are too good to them, Finn,’ Kalv was saying to him.
She glanced over and saw the younger jarl watching grumpily as his precious barrels were broached.
‘’Tis once a year, Kalv,’ Finn replied. ‘If a few barrels of ale secure their allegiance until the next one it’s a price well worth paying. And besides, ’tis a hell of a party. Have you seen the farm girls, brother? I swear they grow prettier every year.’
‘Or you older, Finn.’
‘And blinder!’
The brothers laughed but now Einar stepped forward.
‘Blinder for sure, for you cannot see what is going on under your own nose in Nidaros.’
Instinctively Tora shrunk back but she did not move away.
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