The Betrothed Sister Read online

  When she complained to Countess Gytha, Gytha drew her close, stroked her hair with her skeletal fingers and said, ‘Thea, raise your head and ignore them. Wait your time for action with patience. When it arrives you will outshine them all. If you do you must have a degree of humility and elegance. There must be no childish tit for tat. Now smile.’

  ‘Yes, Grandmother. I promise to behave with decorum. I shall try.’ She smiled, though tears filled her eyes as she did.

  Thea had never felt so alone. She prayed to St Theodosia daily that her situation might change; even hoping that Sweyn might find her an acceptable husband very soon so she could escape.

  After a week of prayer her saint answered her plea. No husband in the offing, but the talk was of their removal to a royal palace at Roskilde. It was apparent that this was where the princesses spent their winters and, since Roskilde was an island, soon they would be making another sea journey. Then, thrilling news reached the sewing chamber. As they prepared to leave, the princesses announced that a visit from the court of Kiev was imminent.

  Thea stopped sewing. She looked towards the closed circle as the girls’ chatter became even more interesting. Prince Vsevolod, brother to the Grand Prince of Kiev and brother to Queen Elizaveta, sought a wife for his son, fifteen-year-old Prince Vladimir.

  ‘He is exactly my age, well, probably a few months older,’ Thea ventured, attempting to join in the conversation.

  The princesses haughtily looked her way. The eldest of them said, ‘She speaks. Well, Thea, he will seek a rich dowry.’

  ‘I doubt you have a dowry,’ Ingegerd said, throwing a supercilious glance in her direction. ‘Any silver your grandmother possesses will go to my father as payment for your brothers’ ships. Much good has that done them.’

  ‘My brothers will reclaim our kingdom,’ Thea said, trying hard to swallow her fury. She decided impulsively that she wanted this prince. He was young and he would without doubt be handsome. Elizaveta, who was his aunt, was a very handsome woman. So it went without saying the family were too. Aloud she remarked quietly, ‘It is just a matter of time. My brothers intend to capture the north.’

  ‘So I hear,’ said the Danish princess. ‘But if my father helps them he will expect the crown of England for one of my brothers or maybe for the English Aetheling, Prince Edgar, as my father’s under-king. So you see, we have great wealth and shall marry well.’

  ‘Of course, maybe Prince Edgar would have you to wife, Thea,’ the second eldest princess added. ‘He is as penniless as you are. You could live on gruel in the Scottish hills.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Thea said, remembering the gangly prince from Uncle Edward’s days, a pasty looking boy with little to say. ‘I have no doubt that the English will not accept a young man with no fighting skills, one with no experience of government and who hardly speaks English, a prince who has lived most of his life in exile.’ She made one more careful stitch, looked up and added, ‘My brother would be a competent king, like my father was.’

  The princess shrugged. ‘Godwin has experience, does he? I doubt that. Besides, I don’t think the Prince Vsevolod of Kiev will want an impoverished exiled princess for his son. He will choose one of us.’

  Thea bit back her retort. She had been ordered by her grandmother not to speak of their treasure coffers. She had overheard Godwin whisper to Countess Gytha, ‘Our goods, including my sister’s third portion, are stored away in a safe building with strong doors, a guard and secure locks.’ Padar and Gytha were not alone in their mistrust of King Sweyn.

  ‘Good,’ Gytha had whispered back. ‘I do not know my nephew’s mind yet. It is for the best he does not know our wealth. Godwin, bring me a golden cup as a gift for him. There is a ruby-studded chalice in my chest, find it, and a psalter too, the one with St Luke’s gospel. Its cover is emerald-studded. You will discover that amongst your father’s collection of books on hawking. I shall present it to Bishop Vilhelm when we remove to Roskilde for the winter. Oh, and, Godwin, bring me a jewelled arm bracelet for Queen Elizaveta. Choose that gift well. It is a peace offering. Harold was responsible for the death of her first husband.’

  ‘She deserves nothing. Her first husband attacked my father’s kingdom,’ Godwin had retorted, then reconsidered, adding, ‘Grandmother, consider it done.’

  Ingegerd was saying, ‘My uncle, Vsevolod of Pereiaslavl, and his two brothers, my other uncles, are the richest princes in Christendom. They will choose appropriately for their sons.’ Taking Thea by surprise, she rose from her sewing chair, glided like a swan to the widow seat, lifted Thea’s embroidery, and cast a sharp eye over a line of uneven red stitches. Holding it up, she spun around with it for the others to see. They raised four pairs of eyebrows. ‘I think you must unpick that, Thea, my dear,’ Ingegerd said, turning back. ‘Your cross-hatching work is wanting.’ Thea felt her face colour when Ingegerd dropped the sewing back into her lap and handed her a small pair of silver scissors. ‘Keep them. I have others. You will have need of them here.’

  At those words the four Danish princesses smirked. Thea felt her face redden with anger. She bent her head over her needlework but could not resist commenting as she undid her row of embroidery, easing out the stitches carefully with the point of the silver scissors. ‘The prince will never choose shrews for his son’s wife. He will consider a woman who is refined and gentle.’

  Thea’s sarcasm had not missed its mark. The four princesses looked haughtily away as if she was not worth the effort of a comment. They began to discuss the gowns they intended to wear when they were presented to the ambassadors from Kiev.

  Thea held her work up and examined her re-worked, now perfect, stitching, turning it over as obviously as she dared, allowing the others to see her neat work. She handed the scissors back to Ingegerd. ‘Thank you, Ingegerd. I have no further need of these today. My grandmother has many that are sharper than yours.’ Ingegerd snapped them up and returned them to her belt purse without a word.

  Placing her embroidery carefully into the work basket by her chair, Thea raised her head proudly and said to Gudrun, ‘Come, Gudrun, let us seek pleasanter company. We shall go and see if Padar is in the hall. I want him to teach me a new tune for my flute. His music will be sweeter than the air in this chamber.’ With those words she had drawn her sword.

  Thea swept from the sewing room, adjusting her veil to hide her escaping tresses. She knew that the moment she departed, the princesses would discuss her. She smiled to herself. Her dowry would surprise them but, more importantly, it should please Elizaveta’s brother and his son. She longed for a prince such as this one. He was young and surely he would be kind. ‘Vladimir.’ She whispered his name to herself as she left the chamber. ‘Prince Vladimir and Princess Gytha.’ She used her formal name. It sounded right. As she tripped down the staircase into the hall with Gudrun, she thought of the beautiful Godwin christening gown which Elditha, her mother, had given her when they were departing from Exeter and which she kept wrapped in soft linen in the bone-plated silver box set amongst her own treasures safely at the bottom of her travelling bag. One day it would be used for a prince. ‘Wait and see, my lady Ingegerd. I shall wed my prince.’

  6

  Roskilde, October 1068

  Church bells began to ring, obliterating the sounds of the street, the hawkers selling trinkets and merchants selling spices, eels and bread. The countess rose from her chair and gently closed over the shutters. ‘I have something to say to you, Thea, so listen carefully.’ She returned to her chair.

  Thea glanced up from her embroidery. She was glad to spend a morning with Grandmother at last rather than in the sewing room. ‘Oh?’

  ‘Our visitors from Kiev seek a bride. Queen Elizaveta thinks they will select one of her stepdaughters.’ Thea took in a deep breath. If only he was to be her prince. The countess lowered her voice. ‘But this marriage is dynastic!’ And I am highly connected myself and wealthy.’

  Grandmother was plotting, but what and how? Thea wonder
ed at her old grandmother whom she so loved for a moment. ‘And?’

  Gytha’s thin lips relaxed into a smile. ‘King Sweyn is organising a grand reception. You will, of course, be presented with the other princesses. You must behave perfectly.’ Thea’s embroidery slid from her knee onto the floor planks. This was her chance. She must seize it. She would hold onto this opportunity as she now held onto her stool, grasping it with both hands. Her heart battered hard against her rib cage.

  Gytha raised a thin eyebrow. ‘Sweyn’s daughters are well connected to royal houses throughout Europe,’ she remarked. ‘But none can hold a candle to you, Thea.’ She gripped the head of her stick and seemed to concentrate hard. ‘And our visitors from Kiev shall see you at your best.’ She clicked her tongue against the few yellow front teeth she had left to her. Thea gasped at Gytha’s forthrightness. And why should she not consider a brilliant marriage? She had put up with much unpleasantness here from those princesses with great patience. Not only was this her big opportunity to win a prince, it was also her chance to escape them, all of those smug, rude and spoiled girls.

  As if reading Thea’s mind Grandmother Gytha said, ‘You have put up with slights from those princesses. I have intended speaking with Elizaveta since it became obvious that they have been cruel in their behaviour towards you but she only sees goodness in Sweyn’s daughters.’

  Thea nodded, there was never proof. The girls were subtle.

  ‘So we shall work together on this. It is time we removed you elsewhere.’

  ‘I have no gown in which I can be presented, Grandmother. There is not enough time to have a seamstress make me one.’

  ‘We can make you look elegant and beautiful. In my travelling chest there is a valuable silk gown, tunic, and an equally fine matching ermine-trimmed mantle. Perhaps the gown and its tunic can be adjusted to fit you.’ Gytha creased her brow into thin pleats. ‘Though I may have shrunk with the passing years, like you I was tall in my youthful days.’ Gytha rapped her knuckles decisively on the arm of her chair. ‘The tunic may not need adjusting, just the gown’s bodice and side seams. You are very slim, my child, too slim. You eat like a bird.’

  The more Gytha described the gown, the more Thea longed to wear it. It had been so long since she had worn beautiful clothes. The blue gown had a tunic of damask silk, its borders encrusted with pearls and decorated with silver embroidery.

  ‘Now let me see. What else will you need, shoes? No you must have slippers, slippers with embroidery to match the gown. And there is a long veil stitched with silver threads hidden in my travelling chest that surely can be cut into a more fashionable shorter veil. I believe there may be a jewelled fillet as well, to hold it in place. Once we find them, hang them, stitch them, brush them, you will look like the princess you truly are, my little bird.’

  Gytha rattled on. There was the question of Thea’s dowry. She was sure that Sweyn suspected her wealth after she had given him and Elizaveta expensive gifts. But her nephew was much too preoccupied with the delegation from the lands of the Rus to ask her about a dowry for Thea. He wanted the prince for one of his daughters. Again Gytha’s voice fell into a whisper. ‘It is well our treasure chests are placed in a warehouse under constant guard because we shall have your dowry to hand.’

  Gytha lifted up Thea’s chin so that Thea found herself looking with wonderment into Gytha’s smiling eyes. ‘Did you know, Thea, that noblewomen in Russia are expected to glide like swans? So Elizaveta says. Ingegerd may have a cunning look about her, but her elegant manner of walking, head held high, moving forward as if she barely touches earth is to be commended. You, my granddaughter, will walk in an equally stately manner tomorrow.’ The countess lifted her little tinkling bell and rang it. When Lady Margaret bustled into the chamber from the next room, a tiny antechamber where she slept, Gytha told her to seek out the garments for Thea from amongst the clothing she kept in her travelling chest.

  Lady Margaret nodded and without hesitation, hurried to the clothing coffer and did as the countess commanded.

  Bending over the opened chest, she began to search for the silk gown her mistress had described, scattering long-unused, fennel-scented mantles and robes all over Gytha’s bed. Thea jumped off her stool and ran over to help Lady Margaret.

  ‘My lady, I should shake these out, brush them all and hang them on the pole behind that curtain,’ she offered.

  Lady Margaret stretched up again, this time holding a woollen mantle lined with squirrel fur. ‘Here, Thea, take this and shake it over there.’ Thea diligently took the mantle and hung it over the clothing pool and began to beat at it with a rod, creating clouds of fine dust. Lady Margaret lifted up a pair of felt mittens from the chest. ‘Winter is coming, Countess. You will soon need these again.’

  ‘Leave them out.’ Gytha rose stiffly from her chair and tapped her way over to the chest. She pointed with her stick and poked at a roomy grey gown that Lady Margaret was now holding up. ‘Grey, dull. Drab, but then drab I am, too old for the bright silks the young can wear.’ She bent over the chest. ‘Keep looking, Margaret. I know it is in there.’

  ‘This may be it,’ Lady Margaret exclaimed as she lifted out a linen bundle.

  ‘Ah, good,’ Gytha said. ‘So it is.’ She withdrew the dress and tunic from the linen clothing bag and held both up to the light. ‘They will suffice,’ she remarked, letting her aged arms fall again. She allowed the silk and damask garments to drop onto the clothing lying on her bed. She examined the silk gown again. ‘Nothing your needle cannot do.’ Thea was striking the dusty cloak with a stick and at the same time watching the contents of the coffer as they appeared. As the overgown slid onto the bed she had felt a surge of anticipation. Grandmother leaned heavily on her stick and smiled. Then she rapped the top of her clothing coffer in a decisive manner. ‘Close the lid, Margaret. Thea, leave off thumping at that mantle. You will have us choking with dust soon. Come over here, girl. We have your gown.’

  Thea, to her relief and pleasure, possessed her own chamber at Roskilde. She rose when she wanted and avoided the princesses as much as was acceptable and now felt increasingly thrilled about the arrival of the ambassadors who hailed from a snowy, forested land. Russia seemed as distant as Jerusalem and as unfamiliar as the far away countries to the east where spices were purchased.

  It was like something out of the stories she had told the children during the siege of Exeter. She would be that magical princess. What was her prince like? How could she find out? Perhaps Gudrun could find out about him from a servant attached to the ambassadors. There were English servants amongst them, she had heard, girls whose fathers had taken them into exile after the Great Battle. She must enquire.

  Gudrun at first resisted. But a few days later she came rushing into their chamber carrying a basket overflowing with their freshly laundered undergarments. She dropped the basket onto the floor. She was out of breath. Her words came rushing forth. ‘My lady, I’ve done as you asked. A girl called Greta who washes the ambassadors’ personal linens approached me in the laundry …’

  Thea jumped up. ‘What, you know his appearance, Gudrun. Is he dark? Is he handsome? Is he tall, as tall as me? What does he do all day? Is he generous? Is he kind? Does he have a hunting dog and a hawk? Has he taken a mistress …?’

  ‘Too many questions, my lady. I cannot find out all those things. It would be too bold.’

  Thea folded her arms and tried to look nonchalant. ‘Well, I don’t really care. But what did you discover that made you race back here and tumble the laundry onto the rushes?’

  ‘Well, my lady, he is tall and he is courageous, so says Greta, who has only seen him once. He is proud of bearing and he speaks many languages. He is dark and his eyes are velvety brown. His skin is clear and he is neither fat nor thin and his hair is black and glossy.’ Gudrun looked down at her toes and up with a mischievous smile. ‘She says that everyone admires him and that the young Rus noblewomen all want him to husband.’

  ‘Oh,’ fro
wned Thea.

  Gudrun said quickly, ‘He has fought in battles since he was fourteen summers.’

  ‘Gudrun, you have done well. If you find out anything else …’

  ‘My lady, I shall tell you the moment I discover it.’

  On the morning of the ambassadors’ reception, Thea hummed an old English song about love and blackbirds to herself as she bathed in a tub of tepid water carried by servants up two narrow staircases in heavy wooden pails. As she dried her hair with a linen towel by the opened shutters she could glimpse the church steeple and the thatched lower roof of Bishop Vilhelm’s two-storeyed palace building. If she leaned out and peered around the sides of the window opening she could see an image of a cow’s head carved on one gable, a dragon’s head on another, a bird, a stork on another and a golden swan rising up in the distance. Elizaveta said that Russian noblewomen glided like swans. Well if they could, she could also and, after all, her mother had often been compared to a swan. She would be as a golden swan with her gold-red hair, long neck like her mother’s and her mother’s fashionably pale skin. Thea touched her throat. I am like a swan. I am gold, I am rich and I am told that I am handsome. Pray God, I shall win my prince today and he will love me and in return I shall have his children and help him rule his lands as a princess must.

  The pearl-encrusted silk gown and tunic lay across her bedcover. Lady Margaret had neatly and expertly adjusted the gown. Brushed and scented, the old fabric was as well preserved and as bright as it must have been twenty years ago when Grandmother Gytha wore it at King Edward’s court in Westminster. She cherished the hope that the sapphire-coloured material would reveal its subtle sheen in the hall’s candlelight. She touched the silver circlet studded with sapphires and the delicate, transparent veil that lay beside it. Queen Elizaveta had insisted that at this private reception she should not wear a veil. Her hair would be her only adornment.