But on this night she would escape that fate. On this night she would journey, go away for ever, right here in the very cathedral where they had so often paraded her, dressed like a jewelled, silk-wrapped little rusalka doll, for every gaping miuzhi and liudi in the entire world to stare at in slack-jawed wonder. No, tonight would not be at all like that. Tonight she would kill the little doll.
‘Come here’ she said. ‘You can see the lights by the river.’ She turned. ‘Come here.’
Haraldr looked back through the low, arched entrance of the tiny storage room on the third floor of the Church of the Tithe, praying that the cathedral was indeed empty. He squeezed awkwardly into the window seat. He had never been this close to her before. Her sandy hair, pulled back and tightly coiled on either side of her head in the Greek fashion, seemed streaked with gold. He could smell her rose-water scent and hear her breathe. He tried to suck air into his constricting lungs. He could not imagine what the touch of her would do.
‘Look at them.’
Haraldr watched the points of light swirl like fireflies as the workers moved among the blunt prows of the beached river ships. The dark forests beyond the left bank of the Dnieper stretched off to an eerily orange-fringed horizon, the corona of thousands of camp-fires. Haraldr shuddered. The Pechenegs were on the land.
‘Jarl Rognvald told my father you are not going down the river with him. My father was not pleased. Why are you staying?’ Elisevett leaned away from Haraldr and ran her fingers over the luminous pearls that studded her high silk collar, taunting her earnest Nordic swain to answer the question she knew he would not. While she observed his torment she considered how extraordinary it was that Christ – she doubted that the Lord’s sinless Mother would have interceded on her behalf in this matter – had answered her prayers by providing the hapless detskii, Haraldr Nordbrikt. He was a suitable vision, of course, tall and silky golden and so broad in the chest and shoulders, with those dazzling blue eyes and that interesting scar that pulled his right eyebrow up slightly. But then rakish Nordic giants were a plague in Rus these days, due to her father’s relentless ambitions. No, what was truly wonderful and extraordinary was the manner in which Haraldr Nordbrikt affected her mother and father. She saw the way her father glared and gasped; if this mere detskii in his Lesser Druzhina offended him so much, why didn’t the Great Prince just send him off against the Pechenegs and be done with him, instead of keeping him around Kiev to collect tolls? And her mother. She all but reached out and caressed Haraldr with her eyes, not in a leering fashion as an older woman might but with this strange glimmering ember deep within. But if Haraldr were her mother’s lover, then her father would also send him off against the Pechenegs. Or could he? How mysterious. And how wonderful it would be if Haraldr Nordbrikt were her mother’s lover.
Elisevett lowered her thick, dark, resin-coated lashes, an utterly feigned expression of modesty. ‘I think you are staying because of me.’
Haraldr wanted to clutch desperately at this great secret that had just been wrenched from his breast, and yet its leaving also filled him with immense joy and relief. Nothing will ever take me from you! his head sang triumphantly. But dry chalk seemed to fill his throat, and he had to strangle a pathetic, creaking whimper.
Elisevett silently acknowledged this initial milestone on her journey and forged ahead. She removed a tiny folded parchment from the sleeve of her tunic. When Haraldr recognised the scrap, he became vertiginous with panic, and for a moment he imagined himself pitching forward through the window and plunging to his death. Elisevett squinted over the awkward Slavic script. ‘What is “gold-wreathed goddess”?’ she asked.
Haraldr raised his hand in the feeble gesture of a dying man and finally forced a syllable out. ‘Your . . .’ His palm fluttered near the ornate gold bracelets that twined her arm. ‘Arm rings. You are wreathed in gold.’
‘I did not say for you to point at me as if I were a serving maid.’ Elisevett snapped ‘My father could have you flogged in the Podol Square if he knew you sent verses to me.’ She lowered her head for a long moment and wondered what she would see when she arrived at her destination. It did not matter, as long as it was not this. She wondered if he would be fearless – and foolish – enough to follow.
Elisevett looked up at Haraldr again, her smoky-blue eyes wide. ‘The embassies have come since I was four months old. Three weeks ago the Prince of Hungaria. Last autumn a king of Langobardia. I am the third daughter of the Great Prince, to be auctioned off like some shackled kholopy in the Podol market in order to bear the swinish brood of some petty tyrant with filthy habits. The gifts they have sent my father already fill a chamber.’ Her voice lowered to a mysterious, wistful sigh. ‘You are the first to send me something forbidden.’ She hissed conspiratorially. ‘Your own verse.’
Haraldr’s heart rose in his chest like a desperate caged bird. The life that had ended four years ago at Stiklestad could begin again. Gold-ringed, cherished, snowy vision. I am not worthy of you but you have accepted my verses.
‘Touch me.’ Like some wizard’s conjuring, the scarlet robe slinked fluidly past her knees to reveal several inches of firm, pale thigh. Her whisper was like cat’s fur. ‘Touch me.’
Haraldr inhaled sharply; even the damp air seemed to stick in his throat. Not in this holy place, and with the axe her father, Yaroslav, held over his head.
‘If you don’t, I will tell my father that you did.’
Haraldr was conscious only of a bead of sweat rolling down his back. He watched his trembling hand reach out with the sickening fascination of a boy watching his first execution. Elisevett’s eyes were spikes. But his hand crept closer, more assured of its desire.
Her thigh was like a rose petal, summer-plush, smooth and warm. Her white hand pulled his higher. His insides were liquid and his skin was pelted with sleet. Higher, downier, softer. If he went farther, his heart would stop.
‘Stop.’ Elisevett pressed her legs together and slowly pulled his hand from between them. She knew now that he would have to go with her. ‘You could die for what you just did,’ she told him. She brought her lips closer, and her eyes were fierce, manic. ‘You know what we must do now.’ She pressed Haraldr’s face with her silky hands. Her heavy lashes folded down and her face turned up in bitter triumph. It would be over soon.
Haraldr watched her eyes pulse beneath her pale, almost translucent lids. Her wine-red lips twitched. He distantly remembered one of Olaf’s skalds using the word dangerous to describe a woman.
Like an attacking beast, her arms were around his neck, overwhelming his senses: the smell of her, the petal-soft cheek, the hot breath. He spasmed at the first lancing touch of her lips against his, and then flesh melted and fused. They held, gasped, teeth grinding. Then she pushed him away, her high breasts heaving beneath her silk. This was the moment. Her eyes found his and made certain that he would obey. ‘You know I am as pure as the Mother of White Christ,’ she said. ‘You must teach me.’
The rest was a dream. In a pile of white priests’ vestments, silk sliding, hard lilac nipples, probing the hot, downy centre, each contact excruciating. She was so slick, like curiously hot ice – one slip and he would be gone.
It ended suddenly, with consummation still in progress.
Haraldr could not believe the paralysing surge in his gristled loins. Before, with the whore Jarl Rognvald had purchased for him, all the ale he had consumed to prepare for his initiation had dulled him sufficiently to allow for what had then seemed a lifetime of wondrous exploration. But with love and without ale, love-making was clearly different.