Viking Hostage

by Warr, Tracey;

  ‘We hold deep-minded women in great esteem,’ Tofa scolds when Aina teases me with the name, ‘unlike flightly Frankish princesses.’

  Thorgils and his drengir set sail to raid on the mainland, burning the great cathedral up the coast at Saint Davids, bringing back more gold and silver booty and towing oak beams to mend the ships, but no more slaves as there are enough. ‘Our way is wolfish. We need to keep our sword-arms in use,’ he says, giving Aina and I each a gift of jewellery from his haul.

  One morning Toki Barelegs comes at a run into the hall and shouts up its length to Thorgils, ‘Lookout’s sighted an enemy boat!’

  Thorgils runs out and we rise and follow him, watching his swift progress up the hill to stand beside the lookout, shielding his eyes. ‘It’s just one small craft, bearing a white flag. A parlay,’ he tells us, striding down again past us and moving towards the beach where a boat is approaching, still small on the horizon. There are just four men on board, short in stature and darkhaired. They look around them nervously at the tall Norse, their hands on their dagger hilts. Two stay with the boat and two come on to the longhouse to speak with Thorgils, one leading a donkey loaded with beautifully carved wooden chests, which we glance at curiously under our eyelashes.

  As we wend in procession up the path, one of the slave girls working in the woods suddenly breaks away from the work party with a joyful yelp and comes running towards the dark-haired Bretar who is leading the donkey. Toki draws his whip and looks ready to berate her but I see that the two know each other, and stay his arm. At first Toki looks down at my hand fiercely but then remembers himself, that I am his drottinn’s honoured sister and he nods to me and puts his whip back in his belt. The girl has her arms laced around the man’s neck and is sobbing and speaking fast in the Bretland tongue. The man looks around him fearful and unsure what to do.

  ‘Allow her to come with us,’ I say to Thorgils who nods his agreement. I hold out my hand and the Bretar man gently unlaces the girls’ arms and she takes my hand. I hear her swift breathing and feel the fast pulse of her blood in my palm.

  In the hall when they have been offered ale, and Thorgils is seated on the high seat with the two visitors before him, the man who had been greeted so ecstatically by the slave girl speaks. ‘I bring greetings from King Maredudd ab Owain of Gwynedd, Deheubarth and Dyfed.’ His Norse is terrible but we have the general idea of what he is saying. ‘King Maredudd offers you silver not to raid his kingdom.’

  ‘How much silver?’

  The man gestures and the second man brings forward the chests and opens them. They are both filled to the brim with silver coins.

  Thorgils raises his eyebrows.

  ‘This is one silver penny from every person in the kingdom,’ the man tells him, ‘as tribute to you, Jarl Thorgils.’

  ‘Kind gift,’ Thorgils says, ‘but I have many mouths to feed here and ships to repair.’

  The man nods. ‘King Maredudd asks if you will come to him when his court rests at Milford, the haven at the mouth of the Cleddau, and there will be more to discuss to your advantage if you will live alongside us in peace and not raid and burn our towns and churches more.’

  Thorgils is silent considering and then pronounces his agreement to this bargain. Toki and Gormr remove the chests and Thorgils confirms that he will accept King Maredudd’s invitation to a parlay at Milford soon and bids the two men farewell. I see the man’s eyes go in grief to the slave girl.

  ‘Brother,’ I say softly. I do not wish to undermine him in front of his men or these visitors, but he knows what I am thinking.

  He puts a hand up to stay the two men who are preparing to leave and beckons to the girl to come forward. ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Elen, Lord.’

  ‘Do you know this man?’

  She nods, and then speaks up. ‘I was betrothed to him before I was taken and came here two years ago, master.’

  Thorgils considers them both and for a longer time, considers me. ‘Do you hold to this betrothal?’ he asks the man.

  ‘I do, Jarl, yes,’ the man speaks fast, looking wildly back and forth between the girl and Thorgils.

  ‘Take her then. I free you Elen. Take care of her,’ Thorgils says and looks to me.

  I smile broadly at him and then at the girl who has seen that it was me who interceded for her. She throws herself to her knees embracing my legs, sobbing. ‘Thank you.’

  I raise her up and give her hand to the Bretar man, who looks shocked and happy and we accompany them down to the boat.

  ‘I can always change my mind about raiding again, next year,’ Thorgils tells me as we watch the Bretar boat sail out of the bay, and I wave to Elen and her man. ‘And I can’t free too many slaves, Sigrid.’

  ‘You should free them all,’ I say, uncompromising, my mouth a tight line.

  ‘Tell me about Norway,’ Aina begs Thorgils at night in the hall. She asks many questions but she is learning Norse rapidly.

  ‘There are many thousands of islands off the coast of the mainland and the waters squirm with fish, large and small, jostling each other. Tall, thin pine trees curve their skirts just above the ground and line the long, slender waters of the fjords. Silver rivers run straight in deep ravines. Norway is a landscape of wolves and sea-eagles,’ Thorgils says and Aina’s eyes glint silver-grey in the candlelight. ‘The sea-eagles create a mound of shit at the edge of the sea before they set off into the void so that it will be a marker to them on their return, to guide them home.’

  ‘I hope you don’t do the same!’ says Aina and he laughs long with her, slapping the table, his eyes watering.

  When he has recovered from laughing, Thorgils tells her, ‘In the summer, the light does not fade from the sky and the sun and the moon stand together in full view.’ Aina shakes her head in wonder. ‘But as winter comes on the sunrays brood low near the horizon and we see little light for many months, snow and ice grip the land and our lungs, our thighs are red and chapped with the freezing winds.’

  ‘Is that horrible, so dark?’

  ‘No,’ Thorgils says insouciantly. ‘You can see to move about by the light of a million stars and moonlight. Many babies are made during the winter.’

  Aina smiles, her eyes cast down at the table.

  The following morning I find Thorgils has been teaching Aina fupark – our runic alphabet, and he is trying to tell her how to make a kenning in drottkvaett poetry. ‘What’s this one? River-bone,’ he asks her.

  ‘An animal’s bone in the river?’

  ‘No, no. It’s a stone. River-bone, stone. See? How about corpse dew?’

  ‘Blood?’

  ‘Yes! You’re getting the hang of it. Necklace support?’

  Aina shrugs and shakes her head.

  ‘Woman,’ says Thorgils, as if it were obvious. ‘One more: foe of boughs.’

  Aina frowns and then exclaims: ‘Fire!’

  ‘Right.’ Thorgils is nodding enthusiastically. ‘You try one for me.’

  Aina screws up her nose and one eye, pondering hard. ‘Hawks’ stand?’

  ‘Arm!’ She is laughing and nodding. ‘That’s good, very good, Lady Aina. Poetry is Odinn’s mead.’

  ‘And blood-thirsty is best,’ says Aina, who drank in all of Halfrod’s poetic performances at the feasts while Olafr was still here, ‘and verses should be about war, sailing or gold.’ She stands and holds her arms to her side, looking up at the ceiling, her cheeks and neck are flushed pink, her wine-red hair swings loose behind her. She draws a great breath and pitches her clear voice to resound the length of the hall:

  ‘The song of the spears

  Brings the ravens to feast.

  Snake sword bites down on skin.

  The shields smash into faces.

  Corpse liquid drips from hair bowls.

  The eaglets sup on eyes.

  Wolves wade red there,

  Where corpses pile the field.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Thorgils raises one sandy eyebrow comically, ‘well
perhaps we will make a skald-maiden of you.’

  At dusk the seabirds gather in great rafts off the coast waiting to come back to their nests under cover of darkness to conceal their secret entrances from the predators. Other birds whirl feeding on late insects. The puffins gossip on the cliff tops tapping their orange, yellow and blue bills together and making strange groaning sounds. As the sun falls below the cliff edge, the night island begins to emerge: a rush of wings, birds crying out like lost souls in the pitch darkness of moonless nights, brilliant tracks of glow worms in the air and an owl’s yellow eyes in a tree. If it has been raining a sliver of moon shows the path covered in big olive-coloured toads that we have to step around carefully. On clear nights the vast expanse of black sky is freckled with stars and you can twist around and around, and crane your neck and not manage to see it all. And always there is the perpetual shifting of the sea.

  16

  Charroux

  June, 989

  ‘Guy, I know you cannot undertake it now, but I want you to know that I earnestly wish to accept Audebert’s offer of marriage if he should make it to you again during your visit to Charroux.’

  Guy nodded but Adalmode knew he was distracted by a great many other cares and preparations for his journey and did not press her point further. He knew her heart and that was enough. Guy had been summoned by Archbishop Gunbaldus of Bordeaux to be in attendance whilst a special council of bishops met to discuss peace at Charroux Abbey, in Audebert’s lands. She and Guy had never been forced to encounter their father’s wrath at their disobedience when Adalmode went to Brioude. Guy came to fetch Adalmode back with the news that their father lay dangerously ill. Gerard died a few days after her return at midwinter, before the beginning of the Christmas feasting and Guy took on the Viscounty, along with the terrible news of the kidnap of his betrothed wife by Viking raiders at Saint Michel en l’Herm.

  With her father recently dead, and Guy weighed down with so many new responsibilities, she knew it was too soon for her brother to think of arranging her marriage. No ransom demand had come for Aina. Guy in Limoges, and Lady Melisende in Ségur, waited in great anxiety, hoping that the riders Guy sent to the Norman court might bring them some comforting news of her. Although Adalmode dearly wanted the opportunity to see Audebert, she had agreed to stay in Limoges to manage Guy’s household in his absence, during this visit to Charroux.

  The narrow road into Charroux was lined either side with high stone walls and the entry arch was topped with a high square tower looming above his head. Guy looked up and squinted at the sun glinting on a cockerel weather vane. The Archbishop had called this Peace Council in Charroux probably because it was one of the principal seats of Audebert of La Marche and everyone knew the main threat of war and violence might well be coming from that direction.

  The Benedictine monks at the Abbey bustled around greeting their visitors, finding room for them in the guest house and for their horses in the stables. This Abbey, with its cloisters set around neatly laid out herb gardens, had been built by Guy’s ancestor, Roger of Limoges, two hundred years before, a fact that he should record in his Annals. Guy intended to go and look at the wonderful relic that Charlemagne himself had bestowed on the Abbey: the foreskin of Christ. Charroux and its Abbey had become part of the holdings of the Count of La Marche only sixty years ago when the Capetian king Rudolph created that county. Guy’s father had regarded the Counts of La Marche as upstarts who had leached yet more property rightly belonging to Limoges, but despite the enmity there had been between the two families, Guy found himself liking Audebert. In any case, now he was Viscount, he intended to deal with how things were at present and not with how things had been. Audebert was a major force in the region. It would be a good alliance for Adalmode to marry him, and it would bring closure to the feud between the families since Helie’s attack on Brosse and the blinding of Benedict.

  Guy moved through the Abbey Refectory, greeting people he knew and being introduced to others as the new Viscount. He strained to remember their voices, listen to news, feeling vulnerable without Adalmode at his side. All the lords of the Poitou were gathered there and many others besides. The bishops: Gilbert of Poitiers, Frotarius of Périgueux, Abbo of Saintes, Hugh of Angoulême and Guy’s brother, Hildegaire Bishop of Limoges – they were all gathered for the Council and there was much talk of the End of Time and the need for all to purge themselves of sin in readiness. There were other clergymen from monasteries in the region. Many had brought the relics of their patron saints to the Council and these were reverently given temporary housing in the Abbey Church.

  Cadelon, Viscount Aulnay, brother to the Duke’s mistress, Aldearde, greeted Guy. ‘What do you think of it?’ he said. ‘It strikes me that it is not the business of priests to be dispensing laws and justice, interfering with our traditional and long-held rights. They think to cow us by rattling saints’ bones at us!’

  ‘Perhaps some have abused these rights too greatly for too long,’ Guy said.

  Cadelon frowned, not getting the response he wanted and moved on. Guy’s brother Hildegaire approached. He had put on more weight and was a hulking presence in a splendid red silk robe. ‘What do you think of the Duke’s son?’ he asked. ‘He looks to be as weak as his father, both of them ruled by the iron fist of a woman, Duchess Emma.’ Hildegaire kept his voice low, jerking his head slightly towards the Duchess’ party who stood with Archbishop Gunbaldus. ‘It’s not what we need here at a time like this with a Capetian newly on the throne, one who looks towards Aquitaine and the Limousin as new spoils for himself, eh?’

  Guy shrugged. ‘We must hope that the Duke’s son is more like his mother and that King Hugh Capet is kept busy in the north with the fractious lords there,’ he said diplomatically. Now that he was here, he sorely wished he had brought Adalmode. It was a struggle to ensure his eyesight did not betray him into some grave error. He heaved a sigh of relief, blooming into a smile, recognising the shout, and eventually the face of his brother, Aimery. Hildegaire lifted a hand in benediction and moved off to more important conversation. Guy and Aimery clasped each other with real affection and Aimery cheerfully gave Guy a commentary on their neighbours milling around them.

  ‘Viscount Acfred of Châtellerault is standing there, see, with the Viscount of Maillezais and his brother, Odalric who are rumoured to be in great dispute with their younger brother, Alduin. No doubt the dispute has something to do with the vast sums of money exchanging hands for the building of the Duchess’ great Abbey in their vicinity.’

  Aimery raised his eyebrows in query and Guy nodded agreement that this seemed likely. He looked in the direction that his brother was indicating but aside from Aimery himself, standing close to him, the Refectory held a sea of indistinguishable faces, clothes and noise for Guy.

  ‘That’s the new Viscount of Thouars,’ Aimery said, indicating a different direction and Guy shifted his head and gaze as indicated. ‘Aldearde’s son you know,’ Aimery said, a quizzical note in his voice. Guy wondered along with many others there, whether the Viscount of Thouars was in fact the son of the Duke of Aquitaine rather than her first long-suffering husband Arbert.

  ‘And,’ said Aimery, hurriedly, under his breath, ‘Here is Hugh, Sire of Lusignan, bearing down upon us, who has built a great castle fit for a king on his lands, much to the irritation of the Duchess.’

  The brothers exchanged polite greetings with Hugh. ‘These priests are more interested in protecting their lands and treasure chests than in peace,’ he said, but getting only diplomatic responses from Guy, he too moved off to accost the Duchess herself.

  Guy listened carefully to Aimery’s sketches of the Poitou nobility and to the conversations around him. Many men were sceptical of the Council and the intentions of the bishops. The new Count of Angoulême was there. His father, Lady Aldearde’s second husband, was gravely sick and ceding his title to his son, had entered the monastery of Saint Cybard’s.

  ‘The news is that the old Count of Ang
oulême will die at Saint Cybard’s soon,’ said Aimery. ‘His son has taken Fulk of Anjou’s sister, Gerberga, as his wife.’

  ‘Yes,’ Guy said. ‘I was at Angers for Fulk’s coronation when that betrothal was announced.’ The brothers raised their eyebrows together but said nothing. The match had made many of the Poitou lords uneasy. The Anjou-La Marche alliance now seemed to corral them within a long, curving flank from Angers in the north through La Marche, Périgord and now Angoulême. Only the Touraine and Tours interrupted the noose of Fulk and Audebert’s allegiances around Poitiers, and Limoges too was in the path of that curve. The recent Viking raid on the Poitou coast which Aina had been so grievously caught up in, had shown the backs of the Poitevins were also still exposed at the Atlantic seaboard.

  The Duke of Aquitaine’s heir, shouldered through the throng of men, his shortness and stoutness compared to many of them noticeable as they made way for him. ‘I’ll see you later,’ Aimery said hastily, moving off. Guillaume stepped to Guy’s side. The bray of voices raised in greetings and exclamations around them was so loud they had to stand close to hear each other and Guy at a gangling height above Guillaume had to bend to his voice. ‘Congratulations Viscount on your accession.’

  ‘Thank you Lord Guillaume.’

  ‘I hope it is clear to you, Viscount,’ said Guillaume, ‘that I am strongly opposed to any marriage between your sister Adalmode and Count Audebert.’ Guy inclined his head, not looking at the youth. Damn! He had hoped to evade this subject altogether and it was the only thing the Duke’s son had to say to him. All he could do was buy time, let the topic march in one spot for a while, and hope he could resolve it according to Adalmode’s wishes. He said nothing in response to Guillaume’s statement, and politely made an excuse to move away, saying that he must give greeting to their host, Abbot Adalbald.