A moment later, the door opened, and his mother stood before him.
Instant recognition opened her eyes wide. “Geirmund!” she cried out and pulled him into her arms, where she repeated his name against his chest several more times, weeping and squeezing him hard. “Can this be true? Is it really you?”
“I am here, Mother.” He couldn’t stop his own tears from rising at the sight of her and the feeling of her embrace. “I am here.”
She leaned back to look up at him, smiling, laughing, crying, and shaking her head. “Hjörr!” she called. “Our son has come back to us!” Then she took his hand in hers. “Come, come inside!”
She pulled him through the doorway into the house, which was warm and dry after his journey on the river and his walk through Jorvik in the rain. Thick rugs covered the wooden floor, and a calm, steady fire burned in the hearth. Geirmund looked up at the sound of footsteps above, and saw his father coming down a narrow flight of wooden stairs from the upper floor, looking thinner than Geirmund remembered him.
“I don’t believe it,” Hjörr said, and then he rushed towards Geirmund and hugged him the way his mother had done. “We feared we had lost you, boy.”
“Hello, Father,” Geirmund said.
“By the gods.” Hjörr stepped back and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “Thank the gods.”
“It is good to see you both.” Geirmund bowed his head, his earlier anger nearly forgotten in the presence of their joy and his own surprising happiness at seeing them. “Where is Hámund?”
“He took to the whale roads,” Hjörr said. “He trades and forms alliances. He said he wanted to make his own way.”
Though Geirmund felt some disappointment that he would not see his brother there, it gladdened him to know that Hámund had struck out to find his path, rather than accepting a life in Jorvik, but he hoped that Yrsa had spoken the truth, and that their entwined fates as brothers would one day bring them back together.
“I wish him well,” Geirmund said. “I will make offerings to Rán to keep him safe upon the seas, and Njǫrd to favour him with luck and wealth.”
“Let me hang your cloak where it can dry,” his mother said, and after Geirmund had removed it she shook it out and laid it over a bench near the hearth. Then she motioned him towards a nearby table. “Sit, sit.”
Geirmund let her usher him into a chair, and then he watched her as she set a pitcher of ale, cheese, bread, and smoked fish before him. He thought she looked older, with more silver thread in her black hair and more creases around her eyes than when he had last seen her. She eased into the chair at his right, and then his father took the seat to his left. Hjörr also seemed older, his eyes duller, his chin and shoulders lower. A moment went by, and no one touched the food.
“Is that a scar?” His mother suddenly leaned towards him and reached to touch his temple. Geirmund smiled and tipped his head closer, then felt her fingers gently pushing his hair aside to better look at his injury.
“A Saxon warrior gave me that at a place called Garinges,” he said, ‘right before he sent me for a swim in the River Thames.”
“This was an evil wound.” Her poking and prodding turned a bit rougher. “And the healer could have done better work with the scarring.” She withdrew her hand, frowning.
“I am certain you would have done better,” Geirmund said. “But I am healed, Mother. You need not worry.”
She reached for the pitcher, still frowning, and poured them each a cup.
“You were in Wessex?” his father asked.
“I was.” Geirmund took one of the ales.
“With Halfdan and Guthrum?” his father asked.
Geirmund nodded and took a drink. “There is much land there. Good land.”
His mother pushed a cup towards his father. “There is good land here also,” she said.
“I don’t doubt it,” Geirmund said. “But Wessex will soon fall to Guthrum. I was at his side when he slew Æthelred. Now that he is a king, he has said he will make me a jarl and give me lands.”
“Then it seems you were right to go with him,” Hjörr said. His voice held bitterness, and also anger, but it wasn’t clear what he was angry about, or who he was angry with. Geirmund’s mother looked at her husband from across the table, eyebrows raised in concern, and it seemed she wanted to catch his eye, but Hjörr stared into his ale.
“But Wessex hasn’t fallen yet,” Geirmund said. “Æthelred’s brother is king now, Ælfred, and he is a cunning man.”
“Cunning often wins the day,” his father said without looking up. “More than strength, and more than honour, it is cunning that holds the field and makes a king.”
The house had lost some of its warmth as outside the rain fell harder and rattled louder against the roof. A damp chill settled over Geirmund’s shoulders, mostly caused by his wet clothing, but also by the mood at the table. A stranger listening might think Hjörr had just foretold Ælfred’s final victory over the Danes, but Geirmund hoped his father hadn’t meant his words in that way.
“I have just come from Ravensthorpe,” he said. “Eivor sends her friendship and her high regard for you both.”
“We are lucky to count Eivor as an ally,” Ljufvina said. “She has been a great help to us and to the people of Jorvik.”
“How so?”
She shook her head and waved off his question. “Nothing to go into now. But I’m glad you visited her settlement. I hear Ravensthorpe is a–”
“I must go.” His father stood, knocking his seat to the floor with a loud clatter. Cheeks reddened, he then stooped to right his chair and push it up against the table. “There are council matters I must deal with,” he said. “But I shall return before dark.” Then he placed his hand on Geirmund’s shoulder. “It is good to have you returned to us, son.”
“It is good to be here,” Geirmund replied.
With that, his father marched from the house, and after he was gone Geirmund’s mother sat back in her chair with a deep sigh. “Eat, Geirmund,” she said.
He did as he was told and ate, and while he ate they spoke little. His mother sipped her ale, and he chewed his food, and the rain fell. Unlike the empty silence between strangers who have nothing to say to each other, the silence at that table bore the oppressive weight of too many unspoken things, and, as with summer floodwaters held behind a melting glacier, Geirmund felt it best to leave those words undisturbed for now.
“What council does Father go to?” he asked.
“King Ricsige’s council,” she said.
“Ricsige?”
“The king of Northumbria.”
“But I thought Halfdan ruled Northumbria.”
“He does, through Ricsige.” With her fingertips she slowly spun her cup of ale upon the table. “The Danes have learned that to rule the Saxons in peace it helps to have a Saxon king on the throne, so long as that king understands who truly rules. Before Ricsige, a man called Ecgberht was king, but he became obstinate. Hjörr is part of a council put in place to make sure Ricsige does what Halfdan and the Danes want him to do.”
“So my father serves a Saxon king.”
“Yes, I suppose he does.”
“Would he consider leaving Jorvik?” Geirmund asked. “Would you?”
“Where would we go?”
“Wessex,” Geirmund said. “If Father fights for Guthrum, we–”
“For Guthrum?” She sat up straighter, her eyes alight with a fire he knew well from Avaldsnes, but which he realized he had not yet seen in her there until that moment. “You would have us fight for the Dane who took our son from us?”
“He didn’t take me,” Geirmund said. “I chose to go–”
“You forgot who you were. Who you are. Your father is Hjörr Halfsson, the rightful king of Rogaland, and you are his son.”
“I have never forgotten
it,” Geirmund said in quiet resentment.
“But you speak of fighting Wessex for Guthrum. Does this mean you plan to return to him?”
“I am still sworn to him,” Geirmund said. “I have warriors sworn to me. As soon as Guthrum parts ways with Halfdan, I will return to fight for him.”
If she wondered why he had to wait for the two Dane-kings to divide, she said nothing. Instead, she tucked her arm close, like a wing, and rested her chin and lips in the heel of her palm. She shook her head. “I thought you had come home.”
“This is not my home.” He glanced around the house. “Jorvik isn’t my home.”
“Perhaps it could become–”
“No.”
“But we are here,” she said. “That makes it your home–”
“No, it doesn’t. In truth, Avaldsnes was never even my home. It was simply where I was raised.”
He saw a rim of tears form in her eyes. “If not us… where is your home, Geirmund?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was it–” She paused for several long moments, as if struggling to speak, before she finally managed to simply whisper, “Her?”
“Who?”
She had begun to tremble. “Ágáða.”
Geirmund could not remember the last time she had uttered that name, nor allowed anyone else to say it, and the pain and regret he could hear in her voice seized him by the throat. That she would mention Ágáða now spoke to how far from Avaldsnes she had fallen.
“No,” he said.
She closed her eyes, pressing out her tears, and he knew that was the answer she had hoped to hear him say, but that was not why he’d said it.
“Mother, I left Avaldsnes to seek my fate,” he said. “I seek it still.”
She nodded and wiped her cheeks and her eyes with both palms. “I would not hold you from that.”
The rain had lessened by the sound of it, and Geirmund decided he needed to breathe in the open air. “Jorvik may not be my home,” he said, “but if it is to be yours, I would like to know it better. I think I’ll walk now and see more of it.”
She nodded again, and then she left her chair to fetch his cloak. “You will need this,” she said. “Jorvik can be cold even without the rain.”
The coarse wool remained damp but felt warmed by the fire as he pulled the cloak around himself. “Thank you, Mother.”
“Go on.” She turned away from him and busied herself with clearing the table. “Try not to get into too much mischief.”
He smiled as he left the house, and once he stood outside he looked up into the grey sky and inhaled deeply several times. He had tried to avoid the flood of unspoken things, but a few of them had broken free, and now that they had been said he felt relieved of their weight and burden. Much still remained unsaid, perhaps more than could ever be fully told, but he would take them in their time.
From that vantage he could look out over most of Jorvik, much of which remained hidden by the mist. The Ouse crawled out of the fog to the west and turned south where it met the northern wall of the town. The shadowy ruins of a Roman coliseum towered over the buildings to the south, while elsewhere a Christian temple and a great Dane-hall each stood watch over half of the city, one on each side of the river.
Geirmund assumed the hall to be that of Ricsige, and he decided to wander towards it, thinking he might meet his father there. He passed back down some of the same streets he had already walked, but with the rain’s easing he found more people about, especially in the market. In Jorvik it seemed that Danes and Saxons lived, worked, and traded alongside each other, and if that peace resulted from Northumbria having a Saxon king, then Geirmund began to understand what his mother had meant.
He had to cross a stone bridge to reach the hall, and then pass under the pale and broken statue of a Roman woman wearing thin robes, her features somewhat worn away by age, wind, and weather. When he finally reached the hall of Ricsige, he found it to be as high and great as his father’s hall had been at Avaldsnes, and perhaps even larger. A strong stake-wall surrounded the building, and warriors stood guard at its entrance, both Saxon and Dane. They hailed Geirmund as he approached to learn his purpose.
“I am Geirmund Hjörrsson,” he said. “I am told my father is here.”
“Hjörr?” one of the warriors said. “I haven’t seen him today.”
“Are you sure? He said he had to meet with the council.”
Another warrior shook his head. “Not today. There is but one way in, and we would have seen him.”
Geirmund nodded, feeling confused and frustrated. “I thank you,” he said and turned back towards the bridge.
“You might find him at the river,” one of the warriors said. “Just outside the north wall.” He pointed off towards Geirmund’s right. “He often goes there.”
“Thank you again,” Geirmund said.
He walked the way the warrior had directed him and found his way down to the river, which he then followed north along its embankment and wharves until he reached the Roman wall. He saw no gate there, but a section of it had fallen near the waterline, not enough to weaken the town’s defences against an army, but wide enough to climb up, over, and through.
Geirmund slipped past the wall, then down and up the sides of a deep trench, and found himself outside the town, facing a rugged land of hills and valleys broken by the winding of the wide river as it came down from the north. Forest and woodland reached only as close to Jorvik’s walls as the Danes allowed for defence, creating a broad meadow of grass that turned thick and reedy near the water. Not far from Geirmund, an old stubby wharf still clung to the riverbank, and his father stood upon it looking north, as unmoving as the Roman statue.
Geirmund sighed and cut across the edge of the meadow towards him, and he called a greeting when he drew close enough for his footsteps to be heard. His father turned.
“You said you had council matters,” Geirmund said, but his father made no reply until he’d joined him on the wharf, which wobbled and creaked over the lapping and gurgling of the current beneath.
“I did,” his father said, turning again to face upriver. “I needed counsel with myself.”
“May I ask what about?”
“I’m sure you can guess,” he said. Then he inhaled a long breath through his nose and lifted his chin. “This place. Right here. It almost reminds me of a narrow fjord, as if I am back in Rogaland.”
Geirmund looked again at the river and the hills, and he saw what his father meant. The features of that land shared just enough in common with Rogaland to stir memories, though they could never fully imitate or replace the North Way. “There is beauty in England,” he said.
“Yes, there is.” Hjörr sighed, then turned his back to the water and faced Geirmund. “You may ask me now.”
“Ask you what?”
“The question that has been on your mind since you spoke with Eivor.”
Geirmund’s father still knew his mind well, and Geirmund knew which question his father meant.
“Why did you surrender?” he asked.
“Yes, that’s the one.” Hjörr looked south, towards the walls of Jorvik. “That is the question I often come here to ask of myself.”
“And what do you answer?”
His father said nothing for several moments. “Harald is cunning. More cunning than any of us knew. The other kings and jarls, we tallied our warriors and thought we could defeat him. But then he surprised us by sending all his warriors and ships into the Hafrsfjord for a single battle.” He held up his finger, pointing it at the sky. “A single victory. In the end that was all Harald needed. The Hafrsfjord gave him Stavanger, the Boknafjord, and the entrance to the Karmsund. After that, he controlled all trade.”
Knots tightened in Geirmund’s gut. “He cut you off.”
His father nodded. “He had already secu
red the loyalty from several kings and jarls to the north and the east, with promises of silver, marriage, and trade. Others swore to him the moment they heard of his victory, hoping to gain his favour.”
“Could you have fought him?”
“A warrior can always fight until death.”
“But could you have defeated him?”
Hjörr turned and gazed north again, and for some time he said nothing. “What sort of king surrenders his kingdom?” he finally asked, quietly. “Does a good king fight a hopeless war until the last of his warriors has fallen? Or does a good king choose to be a king no more to avoid needless bloodshed and death?”
Geirmund did not know how to answer that, but he realized that he had twice faced a similar dilemma, first on Guthrum’s ship and then in Lunden, and both times he had sacrificed his own life and honour for the sake of his warriors. He realized then that he may have been too quick to judge his father’s choice.
“I assume you will return to Guthrum.” Hjörr glanced at him sidelong. “Your mother will not like it.”
“She knows I am still sworn.”
“And you are a man of honour, as you have always been.”
Geirmund studied his father as he stood on that wharf in regret and longing for the land that he had lost, and he found he was no longer angry, or, at least, his anger had been tempered by a greater understanding.
“Come with me,” he said.
“Where?” His father turned to face him. “To Wessex?”
“To Guthrum,” he said. “Fight with me. You are Hjörr Halfsson, and you are meant to be more than a minder for a Saxon king.”
It seemed that thought appealed to his father, for his shoulders lifted a little, and he grinned as he said, “Your mother would not like it.”
“She is as much a warrior as you or me,” Geirmund said.
Hjörr chuckled. “That is true.”
“You came to Jorvik in defeat,” Geirmund said. “Let Wessex be your victory, a chance to reclaim the honour you fear you have lost.”
A few moments passed in which it seemed they both imagined what it would be like to fight together in battle, to stand shoulder to shoulder in the shield-wall, but then his father’s thoughts appeared to shift as his smile faded.
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