Viking Hostage

by Warr, Tracey;

  ‘I will go now to perform this,’ Thorgils told him, increasingly uncomfortable in the presence and odours of fast approaching death. ‘To steal a march on those who might prevent it,’ he excused himself.

  Maredudd nodded slightly. ‘Thank you, Jarl.’ His words were expelled softly, painfully, with his breath.

  ‘Don’t speak anymore. I will call your family and servants back about you.’

  In the hallway the slender girl, Angharad, hovered anxiously with the crowd of ejected servants and doctors. ‘You can go back in to your king, now,’ Thorgils said, imperceptibly taking hold of the crook of Angharad’s elbow as she passed him and preventing her from going in, bearing her with him down the passage instead and whispering to her. ‘Your father commands me to take you to safety, to Powys.’

  ‘I cannot leave him now,’ she said looking up at him with distressed brown eyes.

  ‘I am sorry,’ he said, ‘but you must. If you wait it will be too late. There will be those who will come to try to claim you and with you the loyalty of the nobility here. The sons of Meurig in Gwynedd, those jumped up nobles here who want your father’s crown for themselves, even your cousins.’

  ‘No!’ Angharad said in horror at his last suggestion.

  ‘Come, princess, please. It is your father’s wish.’

  Her mouth crumpled. Tears rolled down her face but she nodded her agreement. She collected a long warm cloak from her room, threw the hood up to conceal her hair and face, and stood looking into the room, indecisive on the threshold.

  ‘Nothing else princess. I am sorry,’ he said, ‘but your most valuable possession is your life and yourself now.’

  Again she nodded and followed him to his waiting horse.

  ‘My wife is waiting for us at Kelda Ey,’ he said, ‘with a ship readied, and we will travel together and she will give you comfort.

  31

  Limoges

  1000

  I am puzzled but overwhelmed with gratitude to Freyja that there has been no sign of the threatened letter from Olafr or the Duke of Normandy coming to expose me. I have resolved that I will not run until I am sure that I must. A sudden evening breeze bangs the shutters and doors that have stood open all day cooling the chamber. I lean out to take a last look at the river before closing up. The slight wind blows a scatter of tiny yellow leaves along the surface of the water. Swifts and bats swoop and circle. I think of Aina and Thorgils at this time of the day, wondering about their life. Is Aina doing just this herself – closing the shutters against the cold and the dark? I think too of Lord Audebert dead and Guy’s poor sister, Adalmode, wed against her will to the Duke.

  ‘Couldn’t that have been avoided!’ I asked Guy flabbergasted when he returned from Roccamolten with news of Adalmode’s profoundly reluctant marriage to Guillaume. ‘I thought you loved her dearly.’ I wished back my words as soon as I saw the pain on his face.

  ‘I do … it was the only way to safeguard her …’

  ‘Oh I’m sorry Guy, forgive my barbed tongue. I know you will have done what you could for Adalmode.’

  I grieved for Audebert, the dynamic but kind man I met long ago in Brioude, and in the weeks that followed I thought often of how deeply Adalmode must feel his loss, and then to be forced to this marriage with Duke Guillaume … Perhaps she would grow to love him as I had grown to greatly love my own husband, but I doubted it.

  In the morning when I open the shutters, trees have shed piles of white fluffy seeds into the river and they collect in crevices and catch on sunken branches. I watch two large brown rats swimming flat to the water’s surface, along the edge of the bank, one eye each above water watching out for predators or food. There is a small heron that fishes on the weir every morning and I take his unwavering presence as a sign that all will be well that day.

  Our eldest son Ademar has had his seventh birthday and is ready to go to train in another household. I am thinking of a way I might aid Adalmode, although at some risk to myself. Adalmode’s and Audebert’s son, Bernard, has arrived in our household as our foster-son. He is a sweet-tempered boy with the open, frank expression of his father. I love him dearly for their sakes and his own, and I write often to Adalmode of his progress.

  ‘Guy, why don’t we send Ademar to Poitiers, to Adalmode as a foster son.’

  ‘Clever Aina!’ he says his face alight with his sudden smile. ‘Yes, this will please my sister well and be a good place for our son too. It would give her the opportunity to come and visit Bernard here.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say smugly, since this was my intention. I smile at Guy’s agreement but begin to think of the excuses I will have to concoct to be absent when she visits.

  Hilduin is a fly in our ointment, regaling us with with his gloomy ideas and prognostications. ‘Brother I beg you to consider on your consanguinity,’ he says one morning, when Guy and I had been feeling particularly cheerful. I put down the fresh bread that had been touching my lips.

  ‘Hilduin, Bishop,’ Guy says for Hilduin has objected in the past to Guy talking to him as simply a brother, without ceremony, ‘I have told you before that I wish you to desist in speaking on this subject. My marriage has been blest by the Church and I am blest in my marriage.’ He smiles warmly at me.

  ‘Alas, brother, you are complacent. As you know King Robert himself has been excommunicated for this very sin of consanguinity with his Queen Berthe and now there is fresh news,’ he says lugubriously.

  ‘And what is that?’ Guy asks reluctantly.

  ‘The excommunicate royal couple have reaped their reward. The Queen has delivered a still-born son.’

  ‘That is a disgusting imputation …’ I begin, sorry for the woman, although I do not know her, that she must suffer not only the loss of a child but this ridiculous prating on the subject also. By all accounts the King and Queen are unusually fond of one other.

  Guy holds up a hand to still me. ‘Aina!’

  I clamp my mouth shut. He is right. Past experience has taught us that to argue with Hilduin only prolongs the great irritation of having to listen to the man.

  ‘Sin surrounds us, brother. We are swimming in its filth. There is news of more adultery.’

  ‘There is no adultery here!’ Guy says, getting irate himself now.

  ‘No, no,’ says Hilduin in a placatory tone, ‘but close at hand and contamination seeps into the soil.’

  ‘Hilduin speak plain,’ Guy groans.

  ‘The Count of Anjou has burnt his wife for her adultery with a goatherd,’ he says bluntly, and adds, looking at me, ‘in her wedding dress.’

  ‘Fulk of Anjou?’ I say astonished, thinking of the boy I had seen with Audebert.

  ‘This does not concern us,’ Guy says and leads his brother out through the doorway with a gentle but firm hand in the small of his back. ‘Thank you for your thoughts. Goodbye!’ he says slamming the door, that is usually always open, except when the wind blows cold.

  ‘What does he mean Guy about Fulk?’

  ‘Unfortunately it is true, that he has burnt her at least. Whether she committed adultery – well we do not know the truth or no of that.’

  ‘What happened?’ I say horrified.

  ‘She was near twenty years Fulk’s senior you know, Elisabeth of Vendôme, poor woman. And their marriage has produced only one child living in seven years, a daughter. This is more likely the reason.’

  I shake my head, distressed.

  ‘He has taken a second wife, Hildegarde, and there are rumours that she was pregnant before the marriage, so there is another reason for you. And both Elisabeth and her father had taken arms about Fulk, so there’s a final reason. There is no mercy in the man. We are blessed with our four sons, Aina, more than we could think.’

  ‘To take life so horribly for these reasons is wrong,’ I say.

  Guy looks at me and says simply, ‘Yes.’

  ‘And every word that Hilduin speaks is wrong,’ I say.

  ‘Well,’ Guy smiles anxiously, ‘I’m not s
ure I can go that far with you, wife. Sometimes you make me a little alarmed for your soul but I know that it is a generous one.’

  32

  Kelda Ey

  1000

  The times were uncertain with Maredudd dead and the struggle over who would succeed to his throne beginning. Bishop Morgeneu had been killed up the coast at Saint Davids Cathedral by Irish Vikings, and resentments against the Norse settlers were freshly kindled. Aina argued for many days with Thorgils that they prospered here and no further threat against them came from Olafr. They should stay and not trust themselves to unknown waters and lands. ‘Besides,’ she said, ‘if Sigrid should be exposed and need our help what help could we be on the other side of the ocean?’

  Thorgils looked thoughtful at her final argument, but he could waste no time now. They needed to be on the water where he felt most in control. They had heard from Sigrid that there was no sign of Olafr’s letter and she was for now safe from exposure. Perhaps Olafr relented and did not send the letter, Sigrid wrote, but Thorgils frowned at this and shook his head. If Olafr said he would do something, then he did. It was a mystery why the letter had not arrived.

  ‘Perhaps it did arrive,’ said Aina, ‘but Guy loves Sigrid so much he doesn’t care and threw it away?’

  Thorgils shook his head again, his face a picture of astonished disbelief. ‘I fear the real world is not as romantic as the world in your head, my Aina.’

  Two days after Thorgils’ return to Kelda Ey with Angharad, the family embarked and set sail from the beach, with Thorgils’ two main ships. The Sigrid was broader in the beam than The Orm, not so sleek and fast, but it would cope with a long distance sea voyage better and gave them room to stow their provisions. Aina looked back to the crowd of friends on the beach waving and wondered if she would ever return. She had disguised Angharad as one of her maids and only she and Thorgils knew her identity.

  Thorgils took them up the Bretland coast as far as Abermaw and then they entered the estuary of the river Mawddach, sandy beaches and blue-green mountains rising on either side. Part-way up the river the ships were anchored well away from the villages at the head of the estuary. Two of Thorgils’ Bretar-speaking men ventured inland to buy horses. When they returned Thorgils, these two men and Angharad, took to the saddle and Thorgils commanded that nobody should leave the boats whilst he conveyed the princess safely to the Powys court of Seisyll further inland at the fort of Mathrafal. He was gone four days and then they were on the sea again. With his duty to Maredudd and Angharad completed, Thorgils set a course to Mann from where he planned to sail to Lewis and then to Greenland. He spent time making measurements and watching the sea. Aina thought of their silver hoard buried under the earth, with curlews nesting above it, waiting for them to return to their life on Kelda Ey and feel safe again.

  Aina watched the island of Mann loom on the horizon. They rounded its southern tip, sailing up the western coast to the river Neb and the port of Holmtown, where a wooden castle was under construction on the tip of a causeway. Some buildings in the town itself were made from a deep red sandstone. The port was thronged with fisherman and with many Norsemen who carried news that Olafr was preparing a great fleet to confront King Svein and Jarl Erikr.

  Thorgils went very quiet when he heard this news and hardly spoke a word to Aina for two days whilst he oversaw minor repairs to the ship, but eventually he came to her, knelt and put his two big hands on the sides of her knees and spoke in great anguish. ‘I cannot bear Olafr’s hatred of me, his brother, his sworn drengr,’ he said. ‘I cannot bear that he should sail into the greatest battle of his life without me. I must go to him Aina and ask for the return of his love, offer him my swordarm.’ He stopped.

  Aina knew this was a long and heartfelt speech for Thorgils. She did not want him to go and feared that Olafr would not forgive her husband and would execute him. The stories of Olafr’s brutality were ringing around them, tripping off every tongue. Why should he not treat Thorgils in the same fashion, and beyond that fear, Aina was thinking of a great sea battle where he was like to lose his life in defence of Olafr’s. Yet she knew that Thorgils had grieved every day since Olafr spurned him and told him he was nidingr. She knew his agony over the deceit of his foster-brother and lord, so she tugged gently on his beard, drawing his face closer to hers, and said, ‘I know you must go, my love, but come back to me,’ and then she tried so hard not to cry, but the tears would gather in her eyes and they would trickle down her face and drip on the top of his red head where she was leaning and after a while she stopped trying to fight them.

  ‘Go back to Kelda Ey,’ he told her when she was calmer, ‘in The Sigrid and I will take The Orm and the best fighting men onto Olafr. I will return to you if Odinn wills it.’

  ‘Do not be food for the eagle,’ Aina sobbed loudly against his chest as he held her. She remembered the stories he told her in winter nights and she reached out to the cloth covering the table, scrunched up a corner, blew her nose, wiped her face, stood drawing herself up tall and straight, and said, ‘You must go, man, to your king and fight bravely at his side and not flee, and do not return to me until you have gorged the raven.’

  Aina could see that Thorgils was in two minds whether or not to laugh at her but he remembered it was not a laughing moment and grew solemn, thanking her for her strength and for being his true wife.

  As soon as The Orm was out of sight and Thorgils gone, Aina wept and wailed, screamed and cried like a small child, and Ragnhild and Naerfi held her to stop her from falling against the barrels and harming herself.

  33

  Poitiers

  1000

  Adalmode watched the bustle around her listlessly. She looked down at the blood between her legs staining the sheets, at her own poor pale body, clammy with sweat, as if it belonged to another person. This was Adalmode’s second miscarriage and she had been married less than a year as yet. She turned her head away towards the window and the shouts coming from the courtyard or the marketplace beyond. Poitiers was a busy populous city that was growing familiar. She could glimpse parts of the ruined vineyard through the narrow window in the chamber. A hailstorm, with ice shards the size of Adalmode’s fist, had recently devastated the field and vines.

  She had contrived to delay her marriage to Guillaume, first claiming a widow’s right to grieving time although the law gave her a mere month for that, then prolonging negotiations over the fostering of her son with Guy and Aina and the regency of his birthright with Boson, then negotiating back and forth regarding her dowry, but eventually it had come to it and there was no more delaying. The delay had won Adalmode precious time to find strategies to calm her mind distraught with the loss of Audebert, but the delay had also inflamed the desire and the resentment of her new husband. He knew full well that she married him unwillingly and that she did not bring him love.

  She looked around her chamber. Guillaume showered her with lavish gifts and admiring speeches in the early days of the marriage, but the golden rings and brooches in the carved chest at the foot of her bed and the piles of expensive gowns laid on top of it meant nothing to her. He hoped in time she would grow to at least like him he said, but Adalmode doubted even that would ever be in her gift.

  The man irritated her. Physically, he was not attactive. He was short, round, fleshy and prematurely old for his age. He had no notion of how to romance or seduce a woman, and when his softnesses failed to warm her, he could only fall back on harsh commands. Observing him with his mother, Adalmode saw, that Emma had engendered in him both a fear and a dislike for other women. He spoke in a soft-voiced and unbelievably slow manner that Adalmode found perhaps more unbearable than his hands upon her. It was almost impossible to hold a sensible conversation with him because his long drawn out mode of speech meant that whenever Adalmode tried to interject a comment or response, she discovered that Guillaume was still developing his thought and was not to be interrupted. The man thought, spoke, moved at the slimy pace of a damaged snail.r />
  His jealous possessiveness isolated Adalmode since he resented any contact she had with another person, and he made this clearly known to everyone. He cared overmuch for his appearance, unimpressive though it was, and he cared even more for his status. He evinced piety but Adalmode saw only his own appetites excused and concealed there, rather than any true love for God or humility. He was insecure around all other men and paid others for his insecurities in petty cruelties. Adalmode found some common ground with him in their mutual love of the books and scrolls lining the Poitiers library shelves and trestles, but it was not near enough to balance out the rest, by God, it was not near enough.

  Last week she brought a physician into the castle to look to Guillaume who was suffering from intense pains in the upper-right side of his abdomen and had been vomiting for several hours. He had been drinking heavily and feasting on venison and other meats from the hunt. The doctor prescribed that everyday he must drink four glasses of pure apple juice and have applesauce on his food prepared with five more apples. This excess of apples had to be consumed in this way for five days, then Guillaume had fasted briefly, and finally he had to drink large quantities of lemon juice mixed with olive oil before he went to bed. The next morning, he passed a number of small green and brown pebbles into his piss pot and the pains had ceased. Nevertheless the fuss he was still making about this illness eclipsed any care for Adalmode as she felt her womb grip with a vice-like pain and discovered the red stain spreading rapidly in her lap. Two of the men in the hall had lifted her swiftly and carried her, weeping and writhing to the bedchamber, but now it was over.

  She carried this child for three months and it was impossible not to grieve for it, yet part of her was also glad at the loss of the baby. She did not want his child. He had taken everything from her – Audebert and Bernard gone, her independence and the joy of her life, gone. There was no proof to support Fulk’s guess, that Guillaume had sent the assassin to seek out Audebert, but Adalmode found proof enough in the characters of this man and his mother as she grew to know more of them. His mother, at least, vented her angry aggression on the surface, whereas Guillaume’s was surreptitious and sly. She found the proof also in some secret guilt he always carried, unable to look her in the eye, planning ambitious annual pilgrimages to atone for what sin?