The Constant Queen Read online

  For Emily, Rory, Hannah and Alec, the best kids in the world.

  Sometimes, when she closes her eyes, Elizaveta can feel it still – the headlong, giddy challenge of pitting herself against the world – and she yearns to recapture it. Even through the river-mist of too many years past, she can still feel the surge of water through the thin skin of the tiny canoe, the glitter of spray in her eyes, the rush of warm air against her face. And, above all else, she can feel the roar of her young heart as, at last, she crested the tumbling Dnieper.

  It was a beautiful day for the Great Kievan Rapids Race. The walls of the city, high on the cliff, sparkled in the sharp light as they leaned in, willing her on or, perhaps, waiting for her to up-end. The sun-blurred faces of the crowds hung over the bank, all wide eyes and open mouths, their calls of encouragement scattered on the light breeze. And then there was the blue of the water; the endless, treacherous, glorious blue of the water – hers to master.

  Girls weren’t allowed. Too dangerous, they said, but she’d known that was foolish; she was brave enough to race and skilled enough too. She’d often sneaked out of the palace at first light with her brother, Vladimir, when the rest of the royal household were snoring in their feather beds and the guards on the walls were too blurry-eyed to spot their slim figures slipping down the steps in the dawn mist. She’d known how to spot the vicious downward suck of a whirlpool, the dark shadow of a rock too close to the surface, and the eerie light of a sandbank. She’d known how to find the current that would carry her, swift and true, to the great rope strung between the grandstands on the lower plains to mark the finish line. She’d known it all and she’d been determined to rise to it.

  Elizaveta shudders, even now that years and sense have taught her how little such a petty triumph should matter, as she recalls the jolt. She ducks the pain as she remembers the dark cloud of the preying net, its sticky, grasping fingers yanking her up and back, ripping her from her craft which, unpiloted, twisted, lurched and smashed onto the rocks, whirling into the air in a splintering of timbers, drawing a collective gasp of delighted horror from the massed onlookers.

  ‘How dare you?’ she shrieked at her captors, fighting the clawing hold of the net and the sharp, bitter grip of humiliation. ‘How dare you stop me?’

  But the poor guards glanced downriver to the Grand Prince, her father, standing a livid, ugly red at the centre of the finest grandstand, and simply said: ‘How dare we let you continue?’

  Later, though, when one of them – the younger one – sneaked some food to the bedchamber in which she was incarcerated in disgrace, he turned the question back on her: ‘How dare you, Princess? How dare you ride the rapids?’

  Elizaveta just shrugged. It had been no dare, no whim, no cry for attention or accolades, but rather a deep need, like an itch in her soul.

  ‘I wanted the adventure,’ she told him and he shook his head ruefully and thrust the stolen soup and ale towards her and said, ‘Next time, Princess, please adventure on someone else’s watch.’ At that she smiled. She smiled all the long, hungry night and the lonely days of her imprisonment that followed. She smiled because he’d said ‘next time’ and it was enough.

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  EPILOGUE

  HISTORICAL NOTES

  CHANGED NAMES

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  Kiev, April 1031

  ‘Tell us a story, Mama – please.’

  Elizaveta smiled at Anne’s request. Sometimes little sisters were useful. At twelve years of age she considered herself way too old to be begging for bedtime tales but she loved to listen all the same, especially to her mother. For Ingrid told of the north, of the lands over the Varangian Sea where ice covered the hills all year round, and the sun never set at midsummer, and trolls still roamed the great forests. Ingrid knew about it because she had been born there, a princess of Sweden, and had been betrothed to King Olaf of Norway before her father had decided Grand Prince Yaroslav of Kiev would be a more lucrative match and shipped her south.

  ‘Do you wish you’d gone to Norway, Mama?’ Elizaveta had asked her once.

  ‘Of course not, Lily,’ Ingrid had laughed. ‘I am happy here in Kiev – who would not be? It is a glorious city with a glorious future and there is nowhere in Norway that’s as grand or as forward-thinking as Kiev.’

  She’d sounded so certain and yet Elizaveta had been convinced that she’d heard a tiny, wistful hesitation in her mother’s voice and she remained intrigued by the northern land that had so nearly been Ingrid’s destiny. Now, Elizaveta sank onto the window seat on the courtyard side of the great stone hall that housed the elaborate women’s chamber and bowers and tried not to look too eager as her mother settled five-year-old Anne and two-year-old Agatha into their carved cot beds and composed herself for a tale.

  ‘There was once a great king,’ Ingrid started with a smile, ‘called Harald Fairhair because he had the lightest, brightest hair anyone had ever seen and everyone said that it shone like Christ’s very halo.’

  ‘Except,’ Elizaveta interrupted, ‘that they were pagan then, so how would they know to say that?’

  Ingrid eyed her sharply.

  ‘You are right, Lily,’ she conceded, ‘but many have said it since.’

  ‘Many who did not actually see him?’

  ‘Maybe so.’

  Ingrid looked briefly to Hedda, the plump nursemaid who was suckling her baby in the corner. Little Greta would be six months old when Ingrid birthed and Hedda would switch from feeding her own child to feeding the new prince or princess, as she had fed all of the others. Vladimir called her the ‘royal cow’, though only when she was out of hearing for her slap was as sharp as her milk was plentiful. Elizaveta saw Hedda smile at her mother as she drew in a patient breath.

  ‘Very well,’ she said slowly, ‘everyone said it shone like Thor’s hammer.’

  ‘Was that not iron though?’

  ‘Elizaveta!’

  Elizaveta huffed and looked away; fair hair of any sort was a sore subject for her. Ingrid, even now she was past her thirtieth year, had hair as blonde as overripe corn. Her husband, Grand Prince Yaroslav, liked her to wear it loose at feasts and would wrap it around his fingers, stroking it as if it were spun gold. He called Ingrid his ‘sunshine’ and frequently invited foreign ambassadors
to match his metaphor with others of their own making. All too often Elizaveta had watched them fighting each other with words until even Ingrid was embarrassed by the rain of praise.

  Two of Elizaveta’s sisters, Anastasia and Anne, had both inherited their mother’s bright locks and nine-year-old Anastasia in particular spent hours brushing and styling hers until Elizaveta longed to hack it all off with her eating knife. Once, when she was younger, she’d dared to cut a few strands whilst Anastasia slept. She’d only wanted to try it against her own face in the copper looking-glass but there’d been such a fuss that she’d had to throw her precious treasure off the great city walls into the dark pines below. She’d mourned the loss for weeks and resented Anastasia even more.

  Elizaveta had not so much as an ounce of gold in her own hair. It did not shine brightly around her face but lay black as a midnight shadow against her olive skin. Her father called her his ‘beautiful little Slav’ and said she was truly his own Rus baby, but Elizaveta yearned for Norse gold and wore her dark locks covered as often as she possibly could. And it wasn’t just her hair that marked her out from her smug little sisters. She was short – Anastasia was already grown past her – and as slight as a peasant child but however many courses she devoured at the table, she never seemed to fill out into anything approaching her mother’s soft voluptuousness. She was all angles, with elbows as sharp as spearheads and knees as bumpy as forest fungi and no sign whatsoever of breasts or hips.

  ‘Maybe you’re a boy, Lily,’ her eldest brother, Vladimir, would sometimes tease her.

  ‘I’m a better boy than you, Vlad,’ she’d throw back and then strive to beat him at whatever game they were playing, but the words would scamper around her head when the oil lamps were all blown out and she was alone in her bed.

  ‘I’m not a boy,’ she’d mutter fiercely into her goose-down pillow but always her own voice would seem to creep back out of it: ‘Maybe, but you’re not much of a girl either.’

  ‘So this King Harald, late in life, had a son,’ Ingrid was continuing, ‘a son called Hakon and, fearing his older brothers would keep him from power, Harald sent him into England to be fostered by his friend, King Athelstan. And there he became a good Christian.’

  She looked pointedly at her eldest daughter but now two-year-old Agatha was bouncing up and down in her bed, calling: ‘England, England.’

  Elizaveta smiled at her littlest sister, cursed, like her, with dark hair and with a tangle of curls besides. Agatha had learned the name of the land of the Anglo-Saxons just last week and was fascinated by it. There was a lost English prince called Edward at Yaroslav’s court – one of myriad exiles their father liked to harbour – and much to everyone’s amusement Agatha had taken to following the poor young man around like a pet dog. Elizaveta didn’t laugh though. England, along with Norway and Denmark, was ruled by the great King Cnut, Emperor of the North, and by all accounts it was a rich jewel of a country; Agatha was right to be fascinated.

  ‘Why keep these exiles, Father?’ Elizaveta had asked Yaroslav once. ‘Why house all these lost princes?’

  ‘Why?’ Yaroslav had laughed fondly. ‘Only a fool would not. These “lost princes” are only lost for now, Lily. If they find themselves again – if they find their thrones and their kingdoms – then think what they will be worth. How grateful will they be to the one man who did not abandon them in their need? And what does gratitude mean?’

  She’d considered.

  ‘Money, Father?’

  Again the laugh – wide, indulgent.

  ‘Eventually, yes, but first, daughter, alliances and alliances mean protection, trade, marriages. Your dear mother may have given me sons to rule after me, but she has also given me daughters and with daughters, Lily, I can weave my influence across the known world. As you know, though, if you have paid any attention to your needlework lessons at all, any fabric starts with small stitches.’

  ‘Your exiles are stitches, Father?’

  ‘Exactly! Small ones, yes, and ones that may be dropped without trace, but possibly ones that take hold and sew us into the very fabric of the vast kingdoms beyond the lands of the Rus.’

  Elizaveta could almost hear her father’s ambitious words now, echoing around the soft bedchamber, and she turned to look longingly out of the window to his grand courtyard below. The fountain at the centre of the princely kremlin splashed carelessly against its mosaic surround. Guarding the four paths outwards, the great bronze horses her grandfather had brought back from war reared proudly up, their gilded backs catching the last rays of the sun and shimmering rosy pink. To her right, the Church of the Holy Mother was glowing too as the light of a hundred candles flickered through the vast coloured windows, defying the coming dusk.

  The sound of choral plainsong drifted out of the open church doors but Elizaveta knew that soon Vespers would be over and Yaroslav’s druzhina – his courtly household – would flood out and across to the hall, opposite her own bower, to dine. Mother had said that if she was good she could join the courtiers and she had on her best gown in anticipation. She had persuaded the seamstress to pad the dress out a little to hide her spiky bones and a glance in the looking-glass earlier had almost pleased her.

  The rich red wool suited her stupid olive skin and the pearls around the neck of her pleated linen undergown brought some light to her face. Not as much as blonde hair might have done but enough to make her smile just a tiny bit at herself. Now her feet itched to tread the stairs out of the stuffy bower and she reached down to run a finger inside her calfskin boots, dyed red to match her dress, as if she might physically scratch the urge away.

  ‘Patience, Elizaveta,’ Ingrid said softly, interrupting her tale to smile at her eldest daughter.

  ‘Elizaveta has no patience,’ Anastasia said primly. ‘She cannot sit still for a minute.’

  Elizaveta glared at her pious sister. Just because Anastasia liked endlessly stabbing ivory needles into scraps of fancy fabric, she thought she was so dignified. She only did it because she wanted prettier dresses than Elizaveta but if that was the cost, she was welcome to them. Anne was the same, ever working on her letters though she had not yet turned six, trying out fancy inks and scripts as if there was a whole world at her desk and not out of the window, waiting to be explored. Elizaveta couldn’t understand it at all. She could only truly sit still when playing her treasured viol, for then, at least, her spirit was dancing free, riding the rise and fall of the notes like a bird in the sky, or an acrobat at a feast, or a boy on the rapids. Elizaveta bit back sudden angry tears.

  ‘Tell us about the trolls, Mama,’ she suggested sharply. ‘The trolls who live in looking-glasses and leap out to bite the noses off little girls who stare at themselves for too long.’

  Agatha giggled but Anastasia was up in an instant and flying across the bower, nails out ready to scratch her sister’s words from her throat. Elizaveta, however, despite her slightness, was strong and held her easily at arm’s length as she kicked and spat.

  ‘Girls!’ Ingrid pulled them furiously apart. ‘There is no way you two are coming to dinner behaving like this.’

  Elizaveta yanked away.

  ‘She attacked me,’ she protested.

  ‘Only ’cos she was horrid about me,’ Anastasia cried, flouncing back to her own corner by the mirror.

  ‘What makes you think I was talking about you, Stasia?’ Elizaveta threw after her.

  ‘Girls!’ Ingrid snapped again. ‘Honestly, how will I ever make marriageable women of you like this?’

  Elizaveta sniffed and turned back to the window. More talk of marriages – ‘alliances’. Whatever her father’s grand plans, she couldn’t see herself as a bride; the poor groom wouldn’t get much for his troubles. Anastasia, however, looked mortified.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mama. She’s just so mean.’

  ‘A princess should be able to ride over taunts, Stasia.’

  ‘You are right, Mama, and I will. Shall I have a great husband, do you think?�
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  Elizaveta rolled her eyes to the darkening skies beyond the bower; her future husband was far and away Anastasia’s favourite topic of conversation.

  ‘I’m sure your father will find you a worthy prince,’ Ingrid assured her.

  ‘Like yours did for you?’

  ‘Yes, Stasia. I was very lucky.’

  ‘But you should have married a king, should you not?’

  ‘King Olaf of Norway,’ Elizaveta agreed – she liked to hear her mother talk of this. ‘But when her father sent her to Kiev, her sister married Olaf instead.’

  ‘Astrid,’ Ingrid agreed, ‘yes, God bless her, for with Olaf dead she is back in Sweden with our brother.’

  Elizaveta leaned in – this was better than talk of marriage. King Olaf of Norway had been in Kiev last year and his young son, Magnus – Astrid’s stepson – was here still as another of her father’s pet exiles. Many of Yaroslav’s troops had returned to Norway with Olaf, only to be bitterly defeated at the Battle of Stikelstad. A few had limped home, muttering darkly of an evil enemy, but most were either dead on the field or had given themselves to Cnut’s service. Elizaveta had tried to find out more but the men had been unusually reticent.

  ‘Surely,’ Anastasia said, pretty head on one side, ‘Aunt Astrid will marry again?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Ingrid agreed, waving away Elizaveta’s groan of protest.

  ‘She must. If she has been a queen once she must surely long to be a queen again? I know I would. Oh, I would so love to marry a king and have sons by him so they will be kings too.’

  ‘That would be a fine thing,’ Ingrid agreed.

  Elizaveta groaned again, louder this time.

  ‘What?’ Anastasia demanded.

  ‘Is that all you want for yourself – to produce kings?’

  ‘It seems a worthy aim. Why, what do you want, Lily, that’s so much better?’

  Elizaveta stared at her sister, her father’s talk of the ‘fabric of vast kingdoms’ jittering in her head; Anastasia had such a narrow view.

  ‘I’d like to be a queen,’ she asserted, ‘a queen in my own right who can help my husband rule and shape a nation as Mother is helping to shape the Rus.’