The Constant Queen
Read The Constant Queen Online
Authors: Joanna Courtney
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
ART
O
NE
Kiev, April 1031
‘T
ell 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.