The Betrothed Sister (7 page)

Grandmother was plotting, but what and how? Thea wondered 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,' frowned 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.

In that moment Thea decided that she did not like the idea of being surveyed by strangers alongside the Danish princesses, her tresses loose as if they were in a slave market. Gytha's shortened veil was delicate and it would frame her hair to advantage. She would wear it.

Gudrun broke into her thoughts exclaiming, ‘The princesses will never compete with you no matter how they dress this afternoon.'

Thea dropped the veil on top of the gown. ‘I hope it does not give them any more cause to dislike me than they have already.'

When King Sweyn had confirmed yesterday that the Russian ambassadors expected to see the recently arrived Saxon princess whom they called Gita, the Danish sisters had been openly rude, repeating that Russian princes liked Danish princesses. Danish princesses knew every household task so that they could oversee their household servants. What did Thea know of bee keeping and cheese-making, brewing and baking cakes?

Thea had coolly replied, ‘Nothing that cannot yet be learned.' At this retort the princesses had looked away with scowls on their faces, and she was sure she had heard one of them mutter ‘Shrew,' beneath her breath.

When Elizaveta had entered the sewing chamber she admired the embroidery on Thea's napkin. The four princesses had smiled sweetly at their stepmother and nodded. Ingegerd remarked that, thanks to their help, Thea was improving her embroidery skills. Thea had bit back her angry retort. Elizaveta was blind. How could she not see through her stepdaughters' behaviour? How could she not see that her own daughter was lying? Thea was teaching
herself
the colourful Danish embroidery, though any possible enthusiasm for Danish embroidery had been quelled by the Danish princesses' cruel behaviour.

‘My lady, I am always delighted to learn new skills,' she said to Queen Elizaveta with a smile playing about her mouth. The princesses had the grace to look away. Ingegerd raised a haughty eyebrow and said, ‘She learns our ways very well, Mother.'

‘And Thea is a lovely young lady, always gracious.' Elizaveta frowned at her stepdaughters. ‘I am sure you can learn much from Thea too.' Dutifully the girls nodded. ‘Yes, my lady,' the eldest of them said, speaking for them all. Thea managed her most gracious smile at them, though she did not feel in the least courteous.

The princesses were to demonstrate a dance for the ambassadors and they would present gifts to them. Thea knew that in this she could excel. She could outdance them all and if they were asked to play music, Padar had taught her an intricate and haunting tune on the flute. She asked her grandmother if she would present a gift too. ‘No, Thea, but I shall on your behalf and it will be a great gift. I shall present them with a relic for the Patriarch of Novgorod.'

Thea wondered if the countess had stripped the Exeter minster of all its precious relics. When she asked, Gytha replied, ‘Only the three that I had given to the Exeter minster. I had no intention of them ending up in a Norman cathedral.'

‘May I comb out your hair, Lady Thea? I think it is almost dry,' Gudrun was saying, lifting a comb from Thea's little table.

‘I think you may, Gudrun. I shall sit on your stool so that you can reach.' Thea replaced the silver and sapphire fillet and gossamer-thin silk veil carefully on her bed as Gudrun scrambled from her seat.

The royal family attended midday prayers. When afternoon arrived, Thea felt her heart hammering against her ribs. She took a deep breath to steady her nerves. The royal princesses swept from the chapel and entered the porch that opened into the great hall, led by their governess, Lady Eleanor, a strict woman just returned from France, where she had remained all summer with her own noble family, attending her mother's funeral, helping her younger sisters by settling two of them in a nunnery and the third into a marriage with an aging widower who kept the neighbouring lands. Her only brother was young and her father was surely dying, she told them with sadness in her eyes.