Tostig’s scowl seemed to deepen. ‘Why did he take a second wife?’
Styrkar shrugged. ‘To bear him sons. After Elisevett bore him the two princesses, she could no longer conceive. Haraldr said that he had known two women condemned to offer their love on the altar of state, and he would not permit that for his daughters. So he got the bishop to accede – he has great influence over the church, as you have seen – and wed the eventual mother of his sons without a divorce from Elisevett.’
‘Yes, I have met her. Tora. A noble woman.’
‘Elisevett still has precedence. You saw how he allowed her, and of course Maria, to sail with us as far as the Orkneys, while Tora had to bid him farewell in Nidaros. He loves Elisevett the best of his wives,’ Styrkar grinned. ‘And she loves him the best of her husbands! But it would take an Irish scribe to trace the jealousies that separate them.’
‘They say he has always loved a Greek woman.’
‘That was before I knew him. It may be one of those tales invented by the skalds.’
The King walked ahead for a long while, alone, as if drawn to Stamford Bridge by the sun-coloured butterflies darting before him rather than the imperative of the impatient armies at his back. The day was his vindication, his … resurrection.
There had been so many times through these long years when he had wondered why fate had taken Maria and spared him. The constant quarrels with fractious Jarls; the long, bitter, inconclusive war in Denmark; the guilt he felt about Elisevett – circumstances that never would have come about if he were only a man and not a king. So many times he had thought of Halldor and his friend’s strange renunciation, and he wondered if Halldor had been perhaps the wisest of them all. It was Halldor who had never really recovered from that night so long ago, who had always been haunted by the burned and broken body of the one woman he had never made love to. Halldor had helped Haraldr regain his throne, and then he had gone back to Iceland, to live quietly on a farm. Haraldr wondered if Halldor had received news of Ulfr’s death yet. The road of life, so many turns.
And yet now that road had levelled into a glorious autumn. Today would at last consummate what he had so long ago dreamed of with her. For her. This would have been Maria’s Empire, she who had left behind her own Imperial legacy to join him in what had then been only a promise, what for her had meant only death. He wondered if she approved of him now; he knew there had been many times over these years when she had not. That, too, was one of life’s strange paths, the route her spirit had taken through his life. Sometimes he could reach out and touch her; at other times he could not even remember her voice. He could never see her in her entirety, but often he could recall distinctly the parts of her, the incandescent irises, the gull-wing eyebrows, the soft white inside of her thigh. He thought of the Maria who had taken her place in his life; she was as distinct as his hand before him, not only the young woman she was now, but the infant, the child, the adolescent, every phase of her life. Even the first Maria never could have been that close, to have been created by him, to become a woman as he watched in wonder. And yet his daughter Maria could never share with him the supreme intimacy that the other Maria had shared with him. Perhaps, he often thought, the two Marias, the daughter and the lover, were different aspects of the same soul, that through him his first Maria had so deeply touched her namesake that she lived again, to restore that joy to his breast. There were times when the two Marias were that much alike, or so he remembered, and yet times when they did not seem alike at all. There were even moments, albeit fleeting, when he thought of Elisevett as the first and greatest love of his life. In the world as it was, not as it had seemed to be so long ago beside the Bosporus, what more could a man ask from a wife, except to know that from time to time he loved her above all else? And Tora, who had given him sons and love, how could she be denied her claim to his heart? Perhaps they were all aspects of the same soul, of the great love that only youth can know, just as an old man’s shattered dreams are all fragments of the single, pure, incandescent purpose he had imagined as a young man. The dream seemed pure and whole again today, but he would give it away to the young men who could truly believe in it. But the love was not the same as the dream. The dream had faded and crumbled, and had now been restored. But the love had never faded. It was only in many different places now. She had been the source of the light, and as best he could, he had shared it with many.
‘Let them raid the cattle,’ Haraldr said to Styrkar, his voice edged with annoyance. ‘I will pay for whatever they plunder. But if they begin to molest the peasants, I will send my house-karls down after them.’ Haraldr watched the Norse warriors wade the reed-choked shallows of the languid Derwent, then scatter over the broad, very gradually sloping meadows on the west side of the river. Several bowshots to the north, where the little river narrowed and the banks steepened, stood Stamford Bridge, a simple structure of wooden trestles and rotting planking. The King and his retinue stood on a grassy flat about thirty ells above the dull silver water. The sun was at its zenith, the heat oppressive. Haraldr wished the wind would come up and evaporate the sweat from his soggy silk tunic.
‘What is that?’ asked Styrkar. He pointed to a thick haze visible at the western horizon, just above a ridge line about eight or nine bowshots distant.
Haraldr shaded his eyes with his palm. ‘I imagine it is the people of the countryside come out to see us,’ he said. ‘They will find we are no different from them.’ Haraldr turned and watched his house-karls wager on spear tosses. He remembered that he had played the same game with Olaf’s house-karls on the magic, innocent day before Stiklestad had sent his destiny gyring. I will never have more courage than I did the day before Stiklestad, thought Haraldr. No man who has seen battle can ever be as brave as one who has not. And yet I can be proud that in every one of my fights, while I was always afraid, I never turned my back. Of course I have never met the ultimate test of courage, either, as so many of my foes have. As Maria and Ulfr and Olaf and Jarl Rognvald and so many of my comrades have. Each of them showed the valour I have yet to prove. And the woman had been the bravest.
‘I hope the next battle is my last,’ he told Styrkar, his voice musing, distracted. His marshal lifted his fine golden eyebrows in surprise. ‘When we go south to meet King Harold Godwinnson,’ clarified Haraldr. ‘When he is defeated, that will be the end of my wars of conquest. You and Eystein Orre can settle with my remaining enemies. I wish to govern. I have fought my entire life and I have seen too many terrible battles. I will soon have grandchildren.’
‘You showed no reluctance to fight five days ago,’ said Styrkar. ‘The fashion in which you drew the English vanguard on, holding back your strength, and then crushed them at the centre and rear. I learned a lesson that day.’
‘I learned that lesson from a Greek. His name was … It is impossible I could have forgotten. I can see his face before me. I will remember it before the day is over. He was a friend of mine.’ Haraldr frowned. ‘Nicon Blymmedes. Domestic of the Imperial Excubitores. He was transferred to Italia. I should have liked to have known what happened to him.’
‘If he lives, he has heard of you,’ said Styrkar, intending no flattery. Styrkar looked west again. ‘Are those our men that far off?’ he asked.
Haraldr looked towards the ridge and saw, through a rising haze of dust, the glint of sun off steel. ‘Those are not our men,’ he said. ‘Bring Tostig to me.’
A few moments later Tostig came to Haraldr’s side. A broad front of armoured men had begun to spill down from the ridge, a descending wall of ice-of-battle. Tostig stared out and then turned to Haraldr, his eyes sharp with frustration and rage. ‘English,’ he said. ‘You have perhaps risked too much today.’