Geirmund's Saga

by Matthew J. Kirby

  It was larger than Ancarig, but like Ancarig, it too had been put to fire, though not so recently. Geirmund assumed it to be Medeshamstede, the place Fasti had mentioned having a stone temple, but as he rowed the length of the settlement he saw that not every building had been burned, and not every Saxon had been slaughtered. A few round huts remained standing, off in the trees, and people moved about near the waterline, washing, filling jugs and basins, and taking to the river in boats. They looked up at Geirmund’s passing, but their eyes were hollow, their empty stares too defeated to hold either interest or fear.

  He soon came to a wooden wharf built in the same manner as the causeway at Ancarig, where it seemed traders and travellers landed when visiting Medeshamstede or its Christian temple. Geirmund decided to make a brief stop there, to buy food if the townsfolk had any to sell, and perhaps learn how he might journey to Readingum. He rowed up to the dock and tied his boat there, then felt for Völund’s arm-ring beneath his tunic to make it secure.

  A worn track led him from the wharf, through a wood of alder and willow, to a broad meadow, and over that place towered what was left of the stone temple. Its roof had burned and fallen in, but its walls, though blackened and scorched, rose high and firm upon the building’s heavy foundations.

  An encampment lay beside the temple near its arched doorway, and Geirmund recognized the men there as priests by the robes they wore. There were five of them, and three Saxon men who looked to be warriors of a sort, as well as a young fair-headed boy. One of the priests worked with hammer and chisel at a large block of white stone, filling the meadow with the sharp chime of his regular strikes, but Geirmund was too far away to see what he carved.

  Another of the priests shouted an alarm at Geirmund’s approach, and then a third stepped forward, flanked by two of the Saxons, both bearing cudgels. The priest approached Geirmund holding up his open, empty hands, but shook his head in anger, the hair of which had been shaved like a crown.

  “No, no, no,” he said. “The Danes have stolen all our silver. They have plundered our food stores and taken the lives of the abbot and every monk, save us few and that novice boy. What more do you want of us?”

  “I am no Dane’s mouthpiece,” Geirmund said.

  “What do you want?” the priest shouted.

  “Two things. First, I would buy food and ale…”

  The priest’s mouth hung open. “You–you would…” He blinked, and then raised his voice. “Look around you, Dane! Look what your people did! And you come seeking trade and hospitality? We will sell you nothing!”

  “You have nothing to sell?” Geirmund asked. “Or you won’t sell to me?”

  “The answer to either is the same to you. You are a pagan and a devil, and you will find no comfort here. Be off with you.”

  Geirmund was hungry, thirsty, and tired from rowing. “I can see you have lost much,” he said. “But you could yet lose more, and you would be wise to mind your tongue.” The Saxon warriors at the priest’s side glared at him, and Geirmund wished he had more than a knife. “I come to you in peace, priest, to deal fairly. When I found one of your kind thirsty, I gave him water–”

  “I care not.” The priest pointed a finger at Geirmund. “The only water you will get from me is the water of baptism.” He paused. “In fact, yes.” He glanced back towards his encampment, nodding to himself. “If you renounce your pagan gods and become a Christian, right here and now, we will gladly share what we have with you.”

  Geirmund didn’t know if the priest offered the bargain sincerely, or if he’d said it expecting Geirmund to refuse, but in reply he simply laughed and asked, “What does your companion carve in that stone?”

  The priest stood up taller. “The image of Christ Jesus and his followers.”

  Geirmund glanced at the burnt temple. “Why does he honour your holy man that way? Your god failed to protect his own temple, and the lives of his priests. Why would I pray to such a deity?”

  The man’s face turned red. “We are few, but we can surely kill one swordless Dane, and we would be doing God’s work.”

  Geirmund did not believe any of the priests there could kill him, but the warriors would surely try, and if he would get nothing from them, it would be foolish to tarry overlong in that place when Odmar might even then be pursuing him. He bowed his head and backed away, hands raised. “Calm yourself, priest. No more blood need be spilled.”

  The priest said nothing, but stood his ground, willing to let Geirmund go. So he left the meadow and returned through the wood. Before he reached the river he heard someone rushing up from behind in the trees and wheeled round, ready to fight. But it was only one of the other priests, holding out a piece of bread.

  “It’s hard as stone,” he said. “But it is yours if you want it. I won’t even demand that you become a Christian.”

  Geirmund peered into the forest and listened, but neither heard nor saw anyone else. He stepped towards the man and took the bread, which would need to be soaked before he could chew it. “Why do you give me this?”

  “My god commands that I feed the hungry.”

  “My gods do not, but I thank you.”

  “You’re clearly no Dane,” the stranger said. “Are you from Finnland? Bjarmaland?”

  “My mother came from Bjarmaland.” Geirmund now looked more closely at the priest, somewhat surprised at his knowledge. He was a small man, with short brown hair, smooth cheeks and a nose like the edge of an axe. “How do you know of Bjarmaland?” Geirmund asked.

  “I have read about it, as many have. Your features match the description of the people who live there, but also of the Finns.”

  “I am no Finn. I come from Rogaland.”

  “The North Way?” His expression darkened a shade. “Not a Dane, but as evil as a Dane, they say.”

  Geirmund grinned. “Worse.”

  “I am called John,” the priest said.

  That was a common Frakkar name. As Geirmund remembered the traders from the south that he’d met, he saw some of their features and manners in this priest. “And you are no Saxon,” he said.

  “I am Saxon,” John said. “But I come from Frankia, so I am called an Old Saxon. What is your name?”

  “Geirmund.”

  “Welcome to Medeshamstede, Geirmund of Rogaland.”

  “There is no welcome here,” Geirmund said. “Even your god seems to have abandoned this place.”

  John tipped his head slightly, and though he made no reply, he smiled, as if enjoying the taste of his words rather than the sound of them. “Back in the meadow, you said you came here for two things. Firstly, to buy food, but what was the second?”

  “I wish to learn the way to a place called Readingum.”

  “In Wessex?” John frowned. “You are nearly one hundred miles from there.”

  “You know the way?”

  He nodded. “I do. If you follow this river west for another five miles or so, you will come to–” He paused, and then he looked over his shoulder, back towards the meadow. “Wait here. I’ll return shortly.” Then, without another word, he ran off, back through the trees.

  Geirmund watched him go, somewhat bewildered. He saw no threat in this Old Saxon priest called John, but he had little patience to offer any Christian, even a friendly one, and resolved not to wait for him.

  A few moments later, as Geirmund stood in his stolen boat, ready to push off, John came rushing from the trees for the second time, now carrying a leather sack. He called to Geirmund, waving as he ran towards the river, and then his boots thudded on the wharf.

  “I asked you to wait for me,” he said, panting. “I am travelling that way. I’ll go with you and show you the road.”

  His offer surprised Geirmund, and he nodded in the direction of the temple. “They will let you go?”

  “Let me go?” John turned to look, his brow furrowed.
“Oh! No, they do not count me among their number. I am not a monk.”

  “A monk?”

  “Yes, a monk. Those men at the abbey are monks. Think of them as priests who often live and pray together in the same place until they die.”

  That suggested the priests at Ancarig had been monks. “Then what are you?”

  “I am a priest who may come and go wherever God sends me.”

  “And where does your god send you?”

  “Often, it is not until after I have arrived at a place that I realize I have been sent there.” He tossed his leather sack into the Saxon boat. “But at this moment I am sure he sends me with you.”

  Geirmund had wanted a boat and a guide when he first entered the fenland. Now he had both, so perhaps it was not the priest’s god who sent him but fate. “Get in,” Geirmund said.

  John bowed his head in thanks. Then he stepped from the wharf into the boat, tripping as he clambered to settle himself on the middle thwart. “Your boat is in possession of an excessive number or oars.”

  Geirmund pushed off from the wharf, into the river’s current. “A boat goes nowhere without oars.”

  “Quite true.” John tipped his head to the side in the same manner as before. “Five days ago, a large company of Danes left Medeshamstede in several boats like this one.” He looked at the rest of Odmar’s oars. “It seems they go nowhere.”

  Geirmund set his arms and back to rowing. “Let us hope not.”

  “May I ask where have you come from this morning?”

  “Ancarig.”

  “That is a holy place,” John said. “How do those monks fare?”

  “Worse even than here,” Geirmund said. “All slain, except for one in a hut. He is called Torthred.”

  “Torthred? I’ve heard of him. A godly man, by reputation. He had a brother, I believe, Tancred, and a sister, Tova. Did you see either of them?”

  “I saw no other priest,” Geirmund said, thinking that if he had seen the sister, he had wasted a piece of good silver. “Torthred was alive when I left him, but I think not for much longer.”

  “Is he the thirsty priest you spoke of?”

  “He is.” Out on the open, wide river, Geirmund felt the heat of the rising sun on his brow. “But he is also a fool. He should have left his hut to be a free priest, like you.”

  John was silent, and then he sighed. “This conquest by the Danes is as the coming of an evil night. But there are candles burning in the darkness, casting what light they can to push it back.”

  Geirmund didn’t know if the priest referred to Torthred as a light, or if he referred to himself, or even if he thought of Geirmund as one of the candles, but he didn’t ask. “What is five rests from here?”

  “Five…? Ah, yes.” He pointed upriver, over Geirmund’s shoulder. “The Romans called it Durobrivæ. It was a small walled city, and a fortress, but it is no more. Much of its stone was plundered to build the abbey at Medeshamstede.”

  “Why do we go there?”

  “Because the Romans also built roads, and now the Danes use them. Durobrivæ is where you will meet with Earninga Street, which will take you south towards Readingum.”

  “I see,” Geirmund said. “Thank you.”

  John glanced up into the sky, which seemed bluer and clearer to Geirmund than it had been over the marsh, and as he rowed the land to the north and south of the river seemed to be drying out, opening into a country of heath and forest.

  “It is I who should perhaps thank you,” the priest said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I would like to travel with you.”

  Geirmund paused for a moment in his oarstroke, taken aback. “I have not been long in England,” he said, “but I think it is rare for a priest to seek a pagan for a travel companion.”

  John nodded. “That is true. But this land is changing. I left Northumbria because it has become overrun with Danes, and by the time I reached East Anglia it also had been conquered. I fear Mercia will fall next, and then only Wessex will remain. I am beginning to think that one day soon the priest who won’t travel with a pagan will travel alone.” He tipped his head to the side. “But I would not ask to travel with just any pagan.”

  “Only the swordless ones,” Geirmund said.

  “Ah, yes, about that.” John reached for his sack and fished around inside it. “I think you will make better use of this than I will,” he said, and pulled out a seax in a leather sheath that was both long for a knife and short for a sword. It had a wooden handle and a simple pommel of iron. “The blade isn’t Frankish steel, but it will cut.”

  With each moment Geirmund spent with this priest, the less he understood the man and the more he believed him possibly mad. “You would give a blade to your enemy?”

  “I didn’t realize you were my enemy.” John rested the seax across his thighs. “Saxons and Danes might be enemies, but that does not mean John and Geirmund need be foes. I consider no man my enemy.”

  Those words struck Geirmund. John seemed younger than his father Hjörr by many summers, but he spoke with the wisdom of an old man. “You remind me of a skald I know,” he said. “Bragi Boddason is his name.”

  “Is he a friend?”

  That was not the word Geirmund would have chosen to describe Bragi, but it wasn’t wrong. “A kind of friend, yes.”

  “And what would Bragi Boddason advise you to do?”

  Geirmund pulled a few strokes on the oars, considering his answer before giving it. “He would remind me that I have no sword, and that you are offering me one, and he would say you are likely a fool, but also that you mean me no harm.”

  “Most of that is true,” John said, and then he nodded. “The seax is yours.”

  A small hawk lifted out of the grass to the south and shrieked at them before flying off. Geirmund watched it go, wishing he could see through its far-reaching eyes. “If you mean to travel with me,” he said, “you should know I go to do battle with Saxons.”

  “I may be a fool, Geirmund of Rogaland, but I assumed as much. That is why I do not plan to go to Readingum with you. Two days south of here lies a crossroads at a place called Roisia, where you will take the Icknield Way to Wessex. I will continue south to Lundenwic.”

  “Lunden? What awaits you there?”

  “A ship, I hope, that will carry me to my home in Saxony. Unless God has plans to send me elsewhere.”

  “I suppose you will know when you arrive.”

  “I usually do,” John said.

  The river curved and swung around several times in wide arcs, back and forth, before they came in sight of Durobrivæ, and the priest had been right about the state of it. From the river Geirmund could see that the city walls, which may have been impressive when first built, had been reduced to a height that wouldn’t keep sheep in pasture. But as he brought the boat around the last bend in the waterway and landed it against the south shore, he saw that the useful Roman bridge, at least, had survived. They pulled the boat deep into the reeds and left it behind, then climbed the embankment.

  They paused there in the shadow of the bridge, and chewed on some of the hard bread John had given him. Then Geirmund tied the seax to his belt, John slung his pack over his shoulder, and together they stepped onto the road.

  To the right, the street crossed the river over the bridge and continued north–all the way to Jorvik, according to John. To the south, the road passed under a lonely arch, white as bone, that appeared to have been a gate in the city walls, and then it cut through the abandoned town, right down the middle, straight as a bowman’s arrow.

  “Have you seen Roman handiwork before?” John asked as they entered the ruins.

  “Never,” Geirmund said quietly.

  Though none of the buildings remained whole, he could sight their foundations in the bushes and trees that had returned to reclaim the lan
d. The lines and shapes of those walls almost seemed to form enormous runes in the ground, speaking of what had been in a tongue that Geirmund could barely comprehend or believe. It seemed that some of the Roman halls there had been larger than Hjörr’s, supported by stone columns as thick as trees. The city covered at least fifty acres, and John had said it was small. Even the street they walked on was unlike any road he had travelled. It was six fathoms wide, made of crushed stone packed hard, and where there were ruts, they were shallow. As Geirmund moved through the city, he felt the vanished builders surrounding him, and in their presence he kept his steps light and his voice quiet, fearing to wake the dead that still dwelt there.

  They walked for nearly half a rest before reaching the southern end of the ruin, and as they left through its gate Geirmund sighed, relieved of an oppressive and weighty dread, glad to leave that place behind.

  “If you had been to Rome, as I have,” John said, looking back, “you would see this for the small way station it is.”

  Geirmund wanted to call him a liar, but John did not seem like that sort of man. “It is a haunted place,” he said instead.

  “Do you believe the dead can harm you?” asked John.

  “I do,” Geirmund said. “Do you not?”

  “No.”

  “But you said the Danes use these Roman roads.”

  “And so they do. What of it?”

  “Then it seems the dead Romans do you harm by speeding your enemy closer.”

  John smiled and nodded. “So they do. And perhaps that should not be surprising, for the Romans were once pagans, too.”

  11

  The Romans had cut their road along the western edge of the great fenlands, through a flat country of heath and forest. As they walked, Geirmund learned that his path through the marsh had been a fortunate one, for he had crossed the fenland north of its true vastness. If he’d gone directly south from the bay where he had washed up, he would have been snared for many days in a territory some forty rests in length. He saw this for himself as they travelled south, and the fenlands pushed their bogs westward, at times within sight and reach of the road.