‘Cost him a month’s wages, I heard,’ Elizaveta caught a woman telling her neighbour as she moved down the packed hall.
‘Ah, but I heard that his wages are only the half of it. He has more treasure than the Arabian Caliph himself.’
‘And more balls besides,’ the others returned, ‘lucky girl,’ and with that they melted into giggles.
Elizaveta forced herself to keep her head up but inside questions were flying around it. ‘I should like to see that key,’ Harald had told her and suddenly she was picturing him unfastening her gown and easing it off her shoulders and parting her silken tunic. Her whole body tingled with spiky longing and it was all she could do to keep walking.
Halldor looked up at her, confused, as she approached. He started to rise but the little boy shifted in his sleep and he hesitated.
‘Please,’ Elizaveta said quickly, ‘stay seated.’
He sank gratefully back down and Elizaveta slipped into a space at his side, hastily vacated by a lowly count.
‘Why are you down here, Princess?’ Halldor asked, gesturing towards the high table.
‘To see you, Halldor. I am so truly sorry that you lost Elsa.’
He turned his soft hazel eyes on her.
‘Not as sorry as I.’
‘I know that and my heart aches for you. She meant much to you.’
‘More than a slave girl should?’
‘Nonsense. Who has said that?’
‘Camp gossip, I’m sure. They think I am weak. They think I am mad not to have taken another into my bed; nearly as mad as I am to keep the boy with me.’
‘Aksel is lucky to have you.’
Halldor grunted. ‘I don’t know about that. I am a rough and ready sort of a father.’
‘You have no choice.’
He laughed bitterly.
‘Of course I do. If I was a truly decent man I would give up running around the Greek sea like a wild thing, take my share of Harald’s booty, and buy a farm back in Iceland. That’s what a child needs – a secure home, land of his father’s to run about on, and milk from his father’s beasts on which to grow strong, not a ship that turns on the tide and the remnants of a whore’s cooking pot.’
‘I agree.’
Halldor looked startled.
‘You think I am a poor father?’
‘No! No, not that, Halldor, definitely not that.’ Elizaveta looked at the boy sleeping trustingly in the crook of his father’s big arm. ‘But I think you are right that he needs a home.’
‘I should buy a farm? I knew it really, I . . .’
‘No farm, Halldor – not yet. Harald needs you and you would be wasted behind a plough. Leave the boy with me.’
‘With you, Princess?’
‘Yes. Well, with Hedda in the royal nursery. Aksel will be safe with her and well cared for until such time as we sail for Norway.’
‘We?’ he teased, his voice lightening slightly. ‘Harald is a lucky man, Princess.’
‘I only hope he can love me half as much as you loved Elsa, Halldor. Will you let me take care of her boy?’
Halldor smiled at last.
‘If you do, you will be a treasure-keeper indeed, for he is dearer to me than any gold.’
‘I will care for him as I will my own sons.’
‘May God bless you with many. I accept – if you are certain, Princess?’
‘Elizaveta, please, and yes, I am certain, on one condition – that you tell us of Miklegard and of your adventures on the Greek seas. Harald has spoken of it but he is a poor poet besides you.’
‘You want a tale?’ Halldor tried to keep reluctance in his voice but Elizaveta could hear his ready imagination bubbling up through it.
‘Please, Halldor – consider it my Yule gift and Harald’s too for there are men here from Norway and we must send them home with news of the great man who will one day be their king.’
Halldor smiled wider.
‘I see that in you, Elizaveta, Harald has won himself brains as well as beauty.’
‘Please, Hal,’ Elizaveta protested, embarrassed, ‘save your honeyed words for the tale.’
She grabbed his hand to tug him up and, pausing only to unfasten his bear-fur cloak to wrap around his sleeping child, he allowed her to lead him up to Yaroslav.
‘I bring a tale, Father,’ she said, ‘an adventure tale for the Yule court.’
All heads were turning their way now and Yaroslav, spotting his moment, stood.
‘Our Varangians are returned from the Byzantine Empire,’ Yaroslav pronounced as a hush fell over the great hall. ‘They have brought gold – enough gold to win back their leader’s crown in Norway, home of our forefathers. Enough, indeed, to also win their leader a wife – though I wish him luck with her, for she is an unruly one indeed.’
Yaroslav nodded Elizaveta furiously back to her place and she retreated as Harald rose to take her hand, to the applause of the gathered druzhina.
‘My lords and ladies,’ Yaroslav proclaimed, his voice ringing sonorously out of his slim chest and around his great hall, ‘I give you my daughter Elizaveta and her betrothed husband-to-be, Harald of Norway.’
The crowd, already merry on Yule ale, roared their approval and Elizaveta felt it like the warm rush of sauna-steam across her skin. Hotter yet, though, was the touch of the man at her side.
‘Now that it is official,’ Harald whispered over the clapping, ‘may I kiss you?’
‘Later,’ Elizaveta told him and saw his eyes darken wickedly.
‘Later?’
‘Yes, if you are lucky – but for now you must hush for we have a story.’
‘Unruly indeed,’ Harald muttered, though he did not sound cross and as Elizaveta sat down, she was very aware of her hand still clasped in his.
She watched, as calmly as she was able, as Halldor stepped up onto the dais and lifted his arms wide, casting his sorrow from him – for this moment at least – as he had cast off his cloak to make a bed for his motherless child. The druzhina took some time to settle but he waited patiently until all eyes were turned his way.
‘’Twas the middle of the Greek sea,’ Halldor began, his voice lilting across the expectant crowd, ‘a sea as blue as Our Lady’s gown and as clear as any maiden’s conscience.’ Someone tittered and Halldor raised a hand in acknowledgment. ‘The sun lay ahead, heaving in the hot skies, the seabirds rested on our mast and even the flies buzzed only about the smelliest sailors.’ More titters but then Halldor broke across them: ‘Then suddenly, over the edge of the world, like a spear piercing the heart of the hazy peace, rose a ship – a ship flying the black sail of piracy like the wings of a raven over a battlefield.’
The crowd gasped obligingly and Elizaveta saw Halldor’s head lift a little further as if their appreciation was blowing life back into him. Her own heart soared at his words for she had managed to save a large rectangle of the silk from her tunic and, with a little help from ladies more skilled and more patient than herself, was stitching a huge raven into the centre. It would be Harald’s new banner – his battlefield ravager under which he could recover Norway – and it was all she could do to contain herself from telling him about it. She smiled delightedly and forced herself to focus on the tale.
‘Were we afeared?’ Halldor was asking, his voice rising.
‘No,’ came a call from the back.
Halldor smiled.
‘Oh, but we were. Pirates have hearts as black as their sails. They fight to no rules and they acknowledge no laws, neither of God nor of man. We were afeared and we will be afeared again but our leader, our Prince, would not let that stop us for we were there on those aquamarine waters to keep them safe for the emperor’s own boats to sail and he knew his duty.’
Halldor paused, letting his eyes drift to Harald who inclined his head graciously and, beneath the table, squeezed Elizaveta’s hand.
‘We were to arms immediately,’ Halldor said, drawing the crowd back into his spell. ‘We clipped the sail tight and rod
e the side winds towards the foe, turning hard on the steer-board to come round flank-on to her evil crew. We could hear them laughing – twisted mirth from their twisted pirate mouths – for they’d seen our boat, gifted us by the emperor, and they thought they had the measure of us.’
Halldor paused again, pacing the dais, leaning forward as if sharing the secrets of the beginning of time.
‘They are small, the boats in which they ask us Varangians to ride the waves. They are long, yes, but narrow – so narrow that only those sailors as skilled as Prince Harald can handle them without tipping into a watery grave and yet so narrow too that, handled right, they can outpace any other craft – nay, outpace dolphins, God’s own water horses, at full leap. And they have magic in their bows . . .’ Halldor looked around the hall, his eyes gleaming, ‘they have Greek fire.’
More gasps. Everyone had heard tell of the hellish weapon but no one in Kiev had seen it for themselves – until now.
‘We sailed close, my friends, so close that we could smell their rotten breath and see the whites of their scarred eyes and the black tar-stumps of their hacked limbs as they leaned forward, grapple-hooks in what hands they had left to them, ready to mount our boat and kill us. Fools.’
His voice dropped.
‘Greek fire lives in a barrel, specially soaked and girded thrice round with iron. Whilst it is sealed it lies as quiet as olive oil but unleashed . . . ah, it can set the clouds themselves aflame above your heads! Prince Harald swung himself up into the mast.
‘“Say your prayers, pirates,” he called, “for we have God’s own fury in our hold!”
‘“There is no God,” the pirate leader called back, his voice a rasp through lips as dry as snakeskin, “save perhaps myself.”
‘Then he threw back his dark, salt-encrusted locks and gave a screech of a laugh and his men bobbed and roared and waved their cutlasses as we crept closer still and then, as they lifted booted feet onto the gunwales ready to make the leap to our boat, the Prince cried, “Unleash the fury,” and, with the roar of a dragon, the flame shot from the bowels of our boat and fried them before our very eyes.’
Halldor paced the front of the dais, all eyes following him. Elizaveta noticed Anne with her hands to her delicate mouth, and Agatha leaning so far forward she was almost atop the table. Even her brothers, the older ones almost men now, looked nursery-young again, caught in the tale.
‘I will never,’ Halldor cried, ‘forget the sight of pirate eyeballs sizzling at the edges and then popping from their unworthy sockets to burst on the tips of the spewing flames. I will never . . .’
‘Thank you, thank you, thank you!’ Grand Prince Yaroslav leaped to his feet and clasped Halldor’s hand, pumping it up and down. Several of the ladies of Kiev – not used to Viking tales – were pressing linen squares to their brows or hiding their faces in their husband’s cloaks. ‘Thank you indeed, Halldor Snorrason. Here – an arm ring for your eloquence.’
‘But . . .’ Halldor started and then, with a glance at a giggling Elizaveta, subsided. ‘You are too kind, gracious prince.’
‘And you too vivid, my lord. You must be thirsty.’
Halldor bowed low and allowed himself to be drawn round to Yaroslav’s side for a drink. Elizaveta turned to Harald.
‘’Twas a good tale,’ she said, ‘though for myself I would have liked to hear the end. Is it true?’
‘As true as it ever is.’
‘But the Greek fire . . . ?’
‘Oh that is true. ’Tis a fearsome substance.’
‘And you hanging from the mast?’
‘Less true,’ Harald allowed with a grin. ‘It would upset the balance of the ship dreadfully, though it does wonders for the balance of the tale. But now that Halldor has made a hero of me, may I claim my kiss?’
Elizaveta looked around. The druzhina, enlivened by Halldor’s story, were rising, stepping away from the tables, recharging their coloured Yuletide glasses and moving towards the minstrels, Anastasia and Andrew at their head. Hedda, ignoring their loud protests, had whisked the younger ones away with her own Greta. Yaroslav was talking earnestly to an energised Halldor, Anne and Vladimir with him, and the rest of her siblings were gratefully escaping the confines of the table. Even Ingrid had disappeared, as she so often did, poor woman, to the latrines. No one would miss them.
‘You may,’ she agreed, her face all Greek fire of its own as Harald led her to the small door behind the dais that Yaroslav used to make a grand entrance but which also served well as an unseen exit.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked.
‘To look at Norway.’
‘She is calling you still?’
‘A little – come.’
Harald led her behind the hall and up the staircase in the west tower to the top of the city walls. A guard strode towards them as they topped the wooden walkway but, recognising their faces, he bowed low and scurried into the corner tower, leaving them alone with the night.
Harald drew his cloak – a huge wolf-pelt lined with marten and padded with wool – around them both, pulling her close against him, and led her along above the city walls towards the northerly side. To her left Elizaveta could look down into the neat fenced plots of the artisans and merchants rich enough to afford land within the kremlin and to her right the snowy pine forests dropped away to the iron ribbon of the frozen Dnieper below. Her breath cut the air like the dawn mist and her face tingled with it, though not as much as her body against her bethrothed’s. Suddenly Harald stopped.
‘See there,’ he said, ‘the North Star.’
He pointed to the brightest of the thousands of stars, shining as fiercely tonight as if announcing the Christ child all over again.
‘I see it,’ Elizaveta agreed, looking up at him.
‘Beneath it lies Norway, Elizaveta – Norway and our thrones.’
‘Our . . . ?’ she breathed.
‘Our,’ he confirmed softly, turning her in towards him so their bodies were pressed together. ‘You hold the key, my Princess.’
His hand ran up from her waist and brushed lightly across the chain at her breasts. She gasped and suddenly his lips were upon hers and he was pulling her up against him so that her feet almost left the ground and she had to clasp her hands around his neck to hold on or, perhaps, to draw him closer yet, her breathing quickening as his hands tightened.
‘Elizaveta.’ Her name bruised against her own lips as it was forced from him. ‘Oh Elizaveta, it will be a long year. You will wait, my love?’
‘Of course,’ she agreed huskily. ‘Of course I will wait. Now hush and kiss me more.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
Kiev, February 1036
Winter lay over Kiev like a kitchen dog over a rat. It had clamped the city between its icy jaws and the city was helpless beneath it. The royal log store was getting lower and the trunks of the great pines beyond the walls were so gripped by the endless frosts that even the hardiest axeman could not break them. Every day servants cleared the snow from the paths across the courtyard and every night more fell. The fountain at the centre had frozen unexpectedly one harsh night before Yule and sat in a perpetual cascade, never moving but never ceasing to move. Even Yaroslav’s bronze horses seemed to paw at the throat-ripping air more in desperation than triumph.
The kremlin was still and empty. The lords and ladies of the Yule court had retreated to hunker down on their farms and see their servants kept their stock alive until the blessed thaws released the shoots from the ground. The artisans were holed up around their braziers, trying to keep their fingers warm enough to work goods for the great spring trading run, and the merchants and soldiers were out on their sleds and their skates and their skis, traversing the frozen rivers that formed the winter pathways across Yaroslav’s lands. Over the hardest months of the year they would go between the outlying tribes and villages, collecting tribute and buying goods to bring back to the eager denizens of the ever-expanding city, and it was very quiet without their bu
stling presence.
The royal family were left with their sparse personal druzhina of less than a hundred guards, servants and officials and life was unbearably calm. They rarely ate in the great hall now, preferring Ingrid’s cosier receiving rooms and leaving the servants to enjoy the warmth of the big kitchens for their own meals. Ingrid, after five health-restoring years without bearing a child, was weighed down with the last stages of an unexpected pregnancy and liked it quiet. Yaroslav, too, was content to see out this iron month in relative privacy, but Elizaveta was bored. Harald had ridden back to the emperor’s service, and was even now fighting Norman predators in Southern Italy, leaving her with little to do save twitch at the loom or at tedious needlework and she longed for spring to bring the men back to the hall.
Even the lost princes had gone. Andrew had announced his intention of joining the Grand Prince’s troops in the punishing winter tribute gathering and Edward had hastily – if not altogether eagerly – followed. Elizaveta had pitied his painful need to prove he was as brave as the Hungarian and missed his earnest company. As for little Agatha, she had seemed lost for weeks until Anastasia, now fourteen and pining dramatically for the glamorous Andrew, had begged Elizaveta for music.
Playing the viol was tough in winter. If she played too far from the fire, her fingers would not work the strings as they should, and if she moved too close, the wood of the precious instrument warped and wrecked the sound. Having Anastasia at her mercy, however, had been too hard to resist and so she had lifted it carefully from its case and let her lightest notes loose.
Her reward had been the sudden spark of fun in little Agatha’s trusting eyes; the sight of fierce little Anne putting down her pen, her feet twitching beneath her desk; and the thanks – genuine thanks – from proud Anastasia. Even Hedda’s little daughter, Greta, usually kept quietly in the shadows, had joined in.
The sisters had danced loudly and laughed louder and before long their brothers had run across the courtyard to join in. For a brief time they had been merry but it had not been long before the quarrels had broken out. They all needed new company and it was with delight, therefore, that Elizaveta greeted the messenger slipping and sliding across the courtyard to their rooms one dark afternoon. Such haste could only mean one thing – visitors.
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