by Jason Born
The king spun on his heel and marched down the old dock. “Throw the lines. We’re off.”
Tyrkr came back with the confused drivers just as Aoife and I jumped about Charging Boar. I watched the English army begin to form up over and around the dead bodies of the soldiers we’d slaughtered that very morning. They stood impotently watching us row out to sea through thick smoke which was not unlike the dense fog in which we’d arrived.
We’d gone to Wales and gained men and treasure from King Maredubb. We’d come to England and took life from the nobles Goda and Strenwald as well as coins from Aethelred.
But as I’d done when I was a mere baby and lost my mother, as I’d done twice when Freydis publically abandoned my advances for marriage, as I’d done when I was banished and had to leave behind Thjordhildr, my second mother, I’d lost yet another woman. Well, this one wasn’t yet a woman, but she was as spirited as any fine woman ought to be. Aoife was just a nasty thrall, angry and precocious. But she had been mine for just a few moments. And I’d lost her to a greedy, reaching king.
PAR
T III – Dal Riata!
CHA
PTER 8
Godfrey Haraldsson was indeed blessed. I didn’t know if it was from his ancestors such as his father, Harald of Bayeux, and all the work they’d done or the seed they spilled into broad-hipped women. I wasn’t certain if his blessings came from Thor. Thor was the most human of gods. He was one of us. He fought for us. I wondered if King Godfrey, with his somewhat reckless ways and headlong approach, engendered Thor’s compassion. Perhaps it was Thor who plucked us from grim situations and made them magnificent. A turn of a blade here, a shift of a man’s foot there could sometimes be the difference between victory and defeat. Thor could and would do that for a man. The oral tales said that our god of thunder had sympathy on the young lad who’d sucked the marrow from his goat’s bones so that when Thor resurrected the beast, it had a malformed leg. Instead of hammering the boy and his family to death with his mjolnir, Thor took the boy on as a servant. The two went on together and had many adventures. Perhaps Godfrey was that modern-day boy.
Or, I did not know if the king was blessed by this One God, so in vogue. Killian called it Providence when God’s all-powerful hand came down and presented a way out of a situation or gave a man a gift as fundamental as his life or as basic as a loaf for his supper.
Whether it was quality breeding stock of the generations that came before him, or because of habits learned at the foot of a famously strong father, or because of favor with Thor, or from God’s graceful Providence mattered little to me in those days. Now I know that all goodness comes from the hand of the One True God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and me. I’ve read it on the vellum pages of a book and experienced it in my life. Back on the Isle of Man, after our twin successful raids in a span of less than three weeks, what mattered and what was sure in my mind was that Godfrey carried heaps of blessings on his back and walked on the high seas of luck. He danced on the outstretched oars of a longboat, extended like a shelf and parallel to the sea. He skipped from one oar to the next, never fearing of a misstep, never worrying that he’d fall into the deep.
King Godfrey was blessed.
I now understood what the life of a hero could be like. Since easing into the docks of Man, celebrations had carried on and on. They began on the shingle before many of us had even exited the longboats. Parties with ale-swilling men erupted all the way up the hillside to the walled town. The constantly muddy streets were tilled by the jubilant dancing feet of her residents. A parade spontaneously started when the king crossed into the gates. Broad-shouldered young men hefted Godfrey into the air. He sat across two of them waving to his joyful subjects. And make no mistake about it; they were now truly his subjects. In most men’s minds, the name Ketil was forgotten. Such were the benefits of quick victory. By the time the jolly men had carried Godfrey into his great hall at the parade’s terminus, musicians had appeared, eligible maidens sprung from the earth eager for a now-wealthy warrior to choose them over rivals, and men, even those who had decidedly wished to stay home and avoid Godfrey’s fights just weeks earlier, rushed from their work to cheer the king. Ketil who?
My mind’s eye could see no end to Godfrey’s growing power. I was intoxicated without taking a sip from the ale barrels. Determination, divine intervention, good breeding, ambition, wealth, and power were in Godfrey’s grasp. He’d reached his outstretched arm for just one more penny and came back with a host of them. The king would build his army and his kingdom. Today the Isles were his. Tomorrow he could claim Wales. Next month he could take the small Norse community in Ireland and take over the entire land. Next summer Scotland would ally with us. By the following year, mighty and rich England would pledge fealty to my king. In three years time, even all of Midgard would be too limiting for our power. Godfrey would find himself in league with Thor himself. They’d fight Hel and her frost giants as equals.
I had found my path to happiness, I thought. Temporarily, I gave up all ideas of a normal life raising stock and breeding a strong woman. My new way to delight wound through strandhoggs where we would take livestock, food, and women. The road was traveled by an omnipotent Godfrey. It ended at riches and splendor. My mind waxed fat.
It’s all the shit of goats, of course. It’s the runny utterings of a young dung-beardling to believe any of what I’ve just said. Yet, I trusted that fame and fortune would be mine through Godfrey. It is true that his was my first set of raids. It is true that all of what I know about the subject began in those days. So in many ways I owe all of what followed in my life to King Godfrey – successes and failures.
None of it played out as I expected it would in those heady days.
I should have guarded myself against optimism. Huh! Optimism is just a manner of thinking that brings one grief. A friend tells you he has the perfect maid for you. She’ll be plump with a dress that tugs at all the right places. She’ll be smart, but not too smart. The maid will make a fine woman and she’ll manufacture finer children. He tells you all this and you begin to think about the subject. You turn it in your mind. Soon, before you’ve ever laid your orbs on her, you’re convinced her hair is as red as the blood of a newly killed doe. It cascades down from her head like the water lazily bounds down a rocky ledge. The locks just cover her ample tits. She’s comely and ready to wed. Her father is rich and ready to pay you huge sums to take her off his hands. The maid is perfect.
Then you see her and she has plain brown hair with a nose that is longer than her arms and a neck as skinny as a spear shaft. Her teeth, rather than two pretty rows of newly shorn sheep, more closely resemble the crooked path cut by a fence constructed on an eroding hillside. Do you see what optimistic expectations bring? I’ll answer in case you do not, nothing but grief. Pessimism seems to be the way that a man ought to live. It is certainly my experience in life that what I want or hope for does not happen. That which I don’t want, happens.
I should have known with absolute certainty that we’d all die by following after King Godfrey. Had I held that belief, no matter the outcome, I’d be pleased. If we did not perish, what a blessing that would be! If we did breathe our lasts, I suppose that my expectations would be met. There would be no unhappy surprises.
The norns were twisting the cords of my life, tighter and tighter. All the while they coiled, my prospects appeared bright. I followed a king who carried fortune in a pouch on his belt. Whenever he needed some luck he could apply it like salt to a meal. Thor was in his pocket. Odin was on his shoulder. The One God walked around with him in the person of Killian. But one day, the norn of what is, Verdandi, or the norn of what will be, Skuld, would let the twisted twines of my path go. The threads would burst free, unwinding in a rapid, uncontrollable manner.
In the process I’d be tossed like a rudderless ship lost at sea.
. . .
The party waned. It was dark outside the hall. Inside, the central hearth burned down to embers.
Its light was diminishing so that our eyes, made heavy from lack of sleep and too much ale, drooped.
A skald told the familiar story of one of Thor’s many adventures. It was the one about the famous race, I think. My eyes were closed and my mind was foggy. I heard the man’s words, perhaps every other word. In the endless space between the words I could understand, I inserted those of my own making so that the tale he told became a mixture of my life story and Thor’s, of cleaning up the manure of a horse and of valiant battle.
The king’s hand shook me awake. In my confusion I reached for my saex. Godfrey’s curiously strong grip held the weapon in place. “This is all you’ll need,” the king whispered. In his other hand he held a wooden shovel. It had a small steel tip, the likes of which I’d never seen. Godfrey hauled me to my feet and placed the tool into my hand. He picked his way over his followers, clingers, friends, and a few enemies to the main doors at the hall’s end. That was when I realized that I had been asleep long after the last poem from the skald.
Leif and the rest of our company rested next to the thrones. Gudruna slept with her arms wrapped around my young friend. She wore the small gold amulet we’d taken from the king’s skeleton on Anglesey and nothing else. Leif curled up under the bear hide we’d stolen from Maredubb’s bed. It had been a blistering celebration. It was like those of old. My head ached.
I traipsed after the king, falling onto Tyrkr. The thrall ignored the assault with a snort and rolled over. The king was waving me forward as he held the door. What was he up to?
Going into the dark street provided no further answer. The square was empty. Even the fire ring in its center was silent. A lone lamp light illuminated a tiny window in the church on my left where Killian worked late into the night on his studies. When Killian wasn’t raiding with his king, he studied his Lord’s word and when he wasn’t reading, Killian held services in his church or roamed the countryside looking for souls to save and mouths to feed. I thought of the churchman as a good one.
Godfrey walked around the side of the hall opposite the church. We passed the stone with the carved symbols of Odin and Christianity. Once we were through the small grove of trees we came to two carts that were hooked to two sets of oxen. The beasts looked at us through half-open eyes. Even they wished they were sleeping.
“What are we doing?” I asked. The contents of the carts were covered in large sheets of coarse cloth.
“Bring that,” said Godfrey, referring to the second cart. He took a thin switch and lightly flicked the rumps of the first pair of oxen. If oxen could sigh, they did. I think one yawned before they tepidly stepped forward. Godfrey clicked his tongue. The beasts woke up further and moved more lively. I followed with the other cart.
Though he led us through the streets at a leisurely pace, Godfrey clearly had a purpose. We came to the main inland gates to the walled town. There, instead of the normal set of sentries, stood Randulfr and Brandr. I peered up at the raised walkway that skirted around the entire palisade and noticed that it was left unguarded.
“Are they ready?” asked Godfrey as we passed by his trusted duo.
“Four, just as you asked. Two Welshman, a Norseman, and a Greenlander,” said Randulfr. “No Manx”
Godfrey nodded, passed through the gates, and led us down the dirt path. As I could have predicted, and perhaps by now you could have predicted as well, a light rain began. It always seemed to rain on those islands. I followed Godfrey. Randulfr and Brandr walked somberly after me. I peered over my shoulder at them. When they’d fully exited the gates, someone from inside slowly pushed the doors closed. I heard the many timbers fall into place as if those inside prepared for a siege. Randulfr and Brandr followed us just so far, forty ells, stopped, and turned to guard the village. Their backs faced us as we drew away.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Where does a king hold his treasure?” asked Godfrey.
I thought he was being clever, so I answered him as such. “A king’s treasure is his sword so he holds it in his belt. Or, a king’s treasure is his men, so they are in his longboats. Where else would such riches be?”
Godfrey turned and walked backward next to his cart. He studied my face, smiled, and turned to again face forward. He nodded to himself in the rain as if he was pleased with a decision he’d just made. We took a turn off the main road, climbing a hill.
“I see that I’ve chosen wisely in bringing you, of all people, out here. But, faithful Halldorr, I don’t mean my sword or my army, or my fleet, or anything like that. I meant the question quite literally. Where does a king take the coins, the hacksilver, the gold necklaces, and fine stones he’s won?”
I had never served a king. Erik, my second father, had molded himself into the jarl of Greenland. His wealth was larger than any man I’d ever known, but still paltry compared with what Godfrey had accumulated in such a short time. Erik had kept his riches buried in two places. One was under the stones of his central hearth, as if no one had ever thought of that. The other was in a hole under his sleeping platform; again, it wasn’t unique. But the kings of Europe seemed to have other ideas on where to store their wealth. Maredubb kept his hacksilver and jewel-encrusted goblets in a stone keep behind a guarded curtain wall, which, itself, was behind a tall wooden palisade behind a ditch. Aethelred seemed to keep his wealth spread all over his kingdom. We’d found a mint in an isolated outpost a few days’ ride from his capital. Where Godfrey had placed his or would hide it was beyond me. I shrugged. “In your hall, I suppose.”
“Halldorr, that is why, though you may be brave and strong enough to lead men into the fray and stench of real battle, you’ll never be wily enough to fight the war of minds between kings. You’ll never be a chieftain.” Little did King Godfrey know that I’d lead a most foreign people for many decades.
I wasn’t sure what he was getting at, but I did not like it. Godfrey didn’t know of what I was capable. He knew only that I had fought and bled for him. Even now I was still hobbling from my broken toes.
“I bet you remember from your time growing up in the fatherland of Norway, Halldorr, that your father or maybe a rich uncle buried his treasure. Well, those old ways are the best ways and that is what I mean to do. You see, a king, take Maredubb, puts his faith in a series of walls and men. In the end, though, we all know where the storehouse is and so his enemies put pressure there. Aethelred puts his mints behind earthen and stone walls, but he might as well place a sign out front in large Latin or runes. I know the wealth is there and I can take it if I am smart enough or brutal enough. Usually it takes both.”
So I was right. Godfrey didn’t know it, but I knew that a man should bury his wealth. The Christians among you will likely take umbrage with such a thought. Nonetheless, recall that I was not yet a member of the One True Faith. I had not yet heard Christ’s talk about the talents.
I reached a hand to the tarpaulin covering my cart and peeked under. It hid most of Godfrey’s spoils from our raids. The other cart would carry the same.
We descended the other side of the hill. There we found four men, bound, blindfolded, and gagged by the side of the road. The king and I helped them to their feet and, with a long rope, tied them to the back of my cart. Godfrey said many encouraging words to them while we ushered them into place. They didn’t fight or moan or otherwise argue. Soon we again made our way down the path.
That night was spent turning onto ever smaller trails. When we came to just the place Godfrey had picked out, we freed our four helpers and dug a great hole. A portion of the treasure was placed inside the hole and buried. Then we rebound and blindfolded our willing accomplices and moved to the next place. Each place resembled the last. It was always out of sight, inside a small grove of trees. It was always on a hilltop that overlooked the sea as if the King of the Isles wanted to pay homage to the method of his raiding.
“Why am I not blindfolded?” I asked as we walked from one of our spots to the next.
Godfrey ignored my qu
estion which annoyed me. I thought about running ahead of my oxen and cuffing the king on the side of the head. Of course, I controlled myself. For whatever reason, Godfrey had decided that he trusted me to never reveal the locations of his treasure more than he trusted the other four helpers.
The dawn was breaking when we set the last crate of hacksilver into the final pit. “Rest,” ordered the king. Not a grumble answered. We plopped down around the lip of the hole.
Then I grumbled. My head still ached from the last several days of ale. My stomach roiled for want of breakfast. “Couldn’t we just fill in the dirt and be done with it before we sit? Wouldn’t it be better to cover the fresh dirt with sticks and leaves like we have the previous ones? It’s best to do it before the light of day comes and someone spies us?”
“Halldorr,” called Godfrey from the carts.
It sounded like he scolded me. I sighed. My fellow workers sniggered.
“Come, get the men some bread. It was made from my own stores of wheat.”
All four workers chattered happily. Bread made from wheat was soft. It was a near delicacy to the common man who subsisted, at best, on bread from barley, which was harder and sometimes bitter.
I pushed to my feet and went to the far side of the king’s cart where he was fiddling with a few loaves of bread. There was cheese and ale, enough for all of us. I announced as much to the men. They cheered and talked loudly, poking fun at one another. The king heaped portions into wooden bowls he had brought from the village. Godfrey was a generous king.
He pinched my arm and brought me down to his level. He whispered into my ear. “The old gods need their blood. These men were told that they were blindfolded and would therefore live. They were told that you were not and would die. Quite the opposite is my plan. You are here to protect me should things get tight. You will prove your worth now or die along with them.” Godfrey tucked a dagger under one of the bowls and turned to carry it toward the men.