“And, knowing Harald, he’s planning to step into Sveinn’s shoes. Maybe there’s something here we can use.”
“Exactly! See? You are thinking.” Stavko reached across and punched my shoulder encouragingly. The wounded one. “Ach, sorry! Look, drink up. Time for you to go visit Varangians. I show you the way.”
The barracks was a looming three-story building with an iron fence around it that filled a whole city block. We could hear the sounds of a carouse in full-swing before we even turned the corner.
“I leave you here,” said Stavko, “and I go to church now and pray to all the saints for you.”
I didn’t find this remark as encouraging as he meant it to be. I gave my name to the sentry, who led me up a broad staircase to the second floor and down a corridor. Along the way, we passed dormitories, where the men lived ten to a room and slept two to a bed, and an enormous, smoky kitchen. The dining hall—what can I compare it to? Like the hall of some powerful chieftain at home, only twice the size and made of marble instead of timber and thatch. Long trestle tables occupied the middle of it; shields, axes and banners hung on the walls. But it was a pigsty. Puddles of wine on the floor, dogs snarling over bones, servants running back and forth with steaming platters and bowls. Dozens of the Emperor’s Wineskins (plainly the name was well-earned) drinking, laughing, shouting; some of them already passed out. And not only the men. There were a fair number of women, all seeming as drunk as their menfolk and a few of them half-naked. The din was enormous.
And in their midst, Harald, a head taller than all the rest—just raising a goblet to his lips when he saw me come through the door.
“Churillo.” He waved me over. “Clear a space here.” He shoved a sleeping man off the bench beside him. “Sit down. Pour yourself something to drink. Churillo, these are my men, the Fourth Bandon.” He took in half the room with a sweep of his arm. “Mates, this is Ambassador Churillo Igor—Ig—what was it?” Then he laughed and shook his head. “Damn me, I’m not the smooth liar that you are, Odd, I can’t carry it off. Never mind, your secret’s safe with us. We don’t talk to the Greeks and they don’t talk to us, except to give us orders. My friends, meet Odd Thorvaldsson, known as ‘Tangle-Hair’, which just look at that shaggy head of his and you’ll see why. Known each other for ages, Odd and me. A fine poet and a good friend, served with me at old Yaroslav’s court. Odd, say hello to my men—Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, Rus, and a few Icelanders like yourself. Maybe you know some of these lads from home? Halldor, Bolli? Or Ulf?”
Indeed, I did recognize Ulf, though I shook my head, no. Stavko had pointed him out to me on our journey down the Dnieper. Young Ulf, I was to learn, was not overly bright but had a doglike loyalty to Harald. And he looked hangdog at the moment; Harald had obviously berated him for his recent stupidity.
“Pleased to meet you,” Ulf muttered, gazing at me from under beetling brows.
“Thorvaldsson, you say? Where from in Iceland?” This was the man called Halldor, suddenly leaning forward and putting his face close to mine.
“From the South Quarter,” I answered. “Rangriver under Hekla.”
“Black Thorvald’s son? The heathen? Christ, with those dark looks you must be.”
My skin went cold. “And you, friend?” I said in a low voice.
“No friend of yours. I am Halldor of Helgafel, son of Snorri-godi. And this,” he touched the man sitting beside him, a short, balding man with a pointed beard, “is Bolli Bollason, his son-in-law.”
Before the thought even formed in my brain, I pulled my knife and climbed across the table to get at him, knocking cups and plates everywhere. I heard the howl of a wild animal in my ears: it was me. We rolled over on the floor, clawing at each other while men jumped out of our way, giving us room. Bolli hit me from behind with something heavy and dragged me off Halldor but I brought my elbow back in his face and he staggered away streaming blood from his nose. Then Halldor was up and had his sword out. I had no sword—the Greeks don’t let foreigners carry arms in the city—but I picked up a bench to protect myself. He slashed, hacking off a leg of it, slashed again making splinters fly, while I backed up step by step. Wielding his sword with two hands, he swung low, missing my leg by a whisker. He drew back for another blow, which might have killed me when suddenly Harald stood between us. Halldor was a strong man but Harald seized his wrist and twisted it until he cried out and dropped his sword. I, in my frenzy, threw down the bench and ran in again with my knife but Harald’s long arm shot out, and delivered a blow to my chest that sent me staggering back. Two of his men grabbed me from behind, threw me down and sat on me, as I cursed and screamed.
“Enough!” Harald roared. “Tangle-Hair, you troll, have you gone clean out of your mind?”
My chest was heaving, tears of rage filled my eyes, blood pounded in my temples. Halldor, panting, glared at me with murder in his eyes, but he obeyed when Harald ordered him to back away.
“What’s this all this about?” Harald demanded.
Between sobs of breath I tried to explain. Back in Gardariki I’d never said much to him about my past and he, caring nothing for anyone’s problems but his own, had never asked me. But now I told him how Strife-Hrut Ivarsson and his men had raped and murdered my sister, Gudrun Night-Sun, and how I had killed one of his sons in revenge. How Hrut had retaliated by charging my brother Gunnar and me with murder at the Althing, and was backed up in his suit by the powerful Snorri of Helgafel, a man who hated my father because he would not turn Christman when all the other Iceland chieftains did. How they won a verdict of banishment against us and then, before we could even leave the country, came to burn us out—and Snorri was there to watch it, oh yes, though he tried to hide himself. And only I lived to get away and now my dead ones waited in Hel for the day when I would avenge them. This day!
Meanwhile, Halldor and Bolli kept screaming, “Liar! Burn you out? Snorri couldn’t be bothered to piss on you, you heathen filth, you devil’s child. You deserved what you got.”
Harald rounded on them angrily. “Stop it, the both of you. That is an order. You too, Odd. Let Iceland feuds stay in Iceland. Kill each other at home if you want to, not here.”
“He’ll go for us again,” Halldor shot back. “You see what he’s like. You can order us but you can’t order him.”
“Let go of him,” Harald told the men who were holding me down. He squatted down beside me and laid a heavy hand on my shoulder, where blood was seeping through my tunic. “What’s this, did Halldor do this? Goddammit, if there’s blood drawn then I don’t know what to—”
“Pecheneg arrow, two weeks ago. It went deep.”
“And you thought you wouldn’t mention that to me?
“Never tell an enemy your weakness.”
“And I’m your enemy, is that is?” He shook his head. “I’ll have one of our surgeons look at it, they know their business. Tangle-Hair, I don’t know if you’re brave or just stupid. D’you understand that you’re alone here, friendless, no comrades at your back. Halldor and Bolli are tough men, and so are Ulf and Kolskegg and Mar and the other Icelanders here, who probably don’t like your family either. Someday, if the Norns will it, you’ll settle scores with them, but right now you’re of no use to me dead and perhaps very useful alive. You think I can’t tell you what to do? One word from me to the Logothete that you’re not who you say you are and you’re liable to find yourself in a dungeon cell. Your trouble, Tangle-Hair, is that you want to kill everyone. Choose your enemies more carefully. Promise me you’ll let this business go.” He looked at me hard. “By Christ, I know what it feels like to want to kill a man you hate. But sometimes you have to wait. Come now, I want your word on it.”
I nodded. It was the most I could do.
“Now then, if we can all behave ourselves,” he looked around the room and met everyone’s eye, “we’ll forget this little unpleasantness and have dinner.”
Well, he was right, I suppose. And this wasn’t my finest hour.
&n
bsp; The food was good, as promised, although still strange-tasting to my palate; a casserole of meat, cheese and vegetables doused with fish sauce and pungent spices. Halldor and Bolli stalked off and sat at another table, surrounded by their mates. Every now and then I saw them looking in my direction. “What exactly am I useful for?” I asked Harald.
“That’s for another time. One thing you learn in this fucking city is to watch what you say within four walls; someone’s always listening. In the meantime, you go on playing the ambassador as long as Inge’s paying you. I don’t mind. Let her wait and wonder and stew. Yelisaveta will marry me when I’m ready to take her to Norway and claim my throne. Nothing you do will change that.”
“Why go back at all?” I looked around at all this luxury. “What has Norway got to compare with all this? Let little Magnus have it. You’re already a captain, you say you’ve got plenty of money. What else do you want?”
“You only see a part of it, Tangle-Hair,” he said with a frown. “Endless hours of sentry duty in that mausoleum of a palace. Months, years can go by between campaigns. The Greeks are insufferable, they despise us and don’t make a secret of it though we spill our blood for them. Little things start to bother you: no beer, no butter, everything tastes of olive oil—I hate the filthy stuff.” This was a rather different story than he’d told me last night. “Still,” he went on, “there are plenty who do spend their whole lives in the Guard—and you know what happens to them at last? When they’re too old and too crippled to serve anymore and they’ve squandered all their money they’re thrown out in the street to beg. That’s not for me. The smart ones go home while they can still walk and chew their food, and they live like kings. And I will not only live like a king, I will be a king.”
“Then go home now. What keeps you here?”
“No, not yet. I’m not nearly as rich as I aim to be.”
“And what will make you so rich?”
“As I said, we’ll talk again when we’re alone. Need you—make you rich. You’re a good fellow, Odd. Need someone I can trust.” He was drinking deeply, his tongue was loosening.
“You don’t trust your Varangians?”
“Of course I do. Trust’em with my life, but they don’t see farther than the tips of their noses. Haven’t got your wits.”
I didn’t like where this conversation was heading. I had come to kill Harald, not become his cat’s paw again in some mad and dangerous scheme. And now I had Halldor and Bolli to worry about too. I didn’t doubt they’d try to kill me if they saw their chance. I needed to go away and think. At that moment a pretty young woman, naked to the waist, pushed between us and sat on Harald’s lap. “You don’t pay no attention to me,” she pouted.
He bounced her tits in his hands and kissed her neck. “Tangle-hair, you want a girl? Help yourself.”
I shook my head. “I’ll say goodnight now.”
“Heh? So soon? Go on, then. We’ll talk again.” With that, he buried his face in the hollow of the girl’s neck and made her squeal.
By this time the crowd in the hall had grown less, as men staggered off to their sleeping quarters with their arms around their women, or just slumped over where they sat. I was fastening my cloak around me when a Varangian tapped my shoulder. “A moment of your time, friend?” he said. (Where had I heard that shy, husky whisper before?) “I thought I heard Harald say you fought with his army at Stiklestad? And I just wondered if maybe you knew my brother.”
I looked at him closer. By the raven! The resemblance was uncanny. The same thick neck and massive shoulders; the same broad, meaty face, with a bow of a mouth, and yet the eyes, bright blue and cheerful, lacked that haunted, animal look I remembered so well. “He went off with King Olaf’s army when they marched through Sweden—six, seven years ago—and we never heard from him again. Finally, our old father put up a stone with his name on it.”
“Glum?”
“The same. You knew him, then! I’m Gorm—Gorm Rolfsson, his older brother.” He gave me an open, cheerful smile, in which his two front teeth were missing.
I gripped his arm. “How glad I am to meet you. Who would’ve thought—yes, he served aboard my ship. He’s dead, I’m sorry to tell you. Struck by lightning in a storm while he howled and brandished his ax. What a fighter he was. I say, you aren’t … I mean—”
“A berserker? No,” Gorm smiled apologetically, “Odin’s spear touched only him. Just as well, too. No family could afford two of those. The blood money we had to pay for his killings just about ruined us, and we weren’t very popular with our neighbors. That’s why he left when he got the chance. Dead, you say? But feasting and fighting now in One-Eyed Odin’s great hall. Well, it’s a relief to know it. He was always more suited to Asgard than to Midgard.”
“You talk like a believer in the old gods, friend Gorm.”
He lowered his voice. “A lot of us Swedes still are, though we keep quiet about it. A word of warning to you: it don’t suit to have Odin too much in your mouth here.”
“I’ll remember it. And what is your own story, Gorm?”
“Oh, I’m one of six brothers—well, five after Glum left home—but still too many of us to divide up our father’s little farm. Like Glum, I had the wanderlust and so I joined up with some other fellows of the district, some of them are here now—Eystein, Thorir, Ermund, Ingimund, and some others—and we fared East to seek our fortunes, following the Varangian Way, first to Gardariki and then to Miklagard, like yourself. And we’ve done well, those of us who are still alive. There’s plenty of silver for the taking here if you have a strong arm.”
“And Harald’s your captain?”
“He is. He’s a good man in a fight and he looks after us well. But as for all his airs and boasting about how he’s the rightful king of Norway and he’s going to marry a princess of Rus, well we’re all sick and tired of hearing about that. And there are plenty of the older men who resent how fast he’s risen in rank and grumble that someone higher up is doing him favors, though we don’t really know.”
“The Icelanders support him?”
“They’re Christmen. Take it pretty seriously, some of them, like Halldor. And Harald is always going on about how his half-brother’s practically a saint. But that cuts no ice with Swedes or Danes.”
“And Norwegians in the Guard?”
“Not very many altogether. Three or four in the Fourth Bandon, which is us, and they don’t seem to care much for Harald.”
“Interesting.”
He looked into my eyes. “Odd Thorvaldsson, you were a friend to Glum. Let me be your friend. If you stay here long you will need one.”
“With all my heart, friend Gorm.”
I left the Varangians’ hall with my head in a whirl of emotions. To have come so close to taking vengeance for my slaughtered family and then to have it snatched away. And then to meet Glum’s brother here at the ends of the earth. And what memories that brought back! Stig and Kalf Slender-Leg and Einar Tree-Foot and all the rest of them, sailing away in our own ship bound for the viking life. Never mind that it ended in disaster. And all of them dead or vanished. Would I ever see them again? And what should I do now? Harald was right; I had too many enemies, and maybe Harald not the worst of them. My brain grew weary just thinking about it. I wandered back to the hostel through streets still thronged with revelers and drank until I passed out.
6
A Visit to the Perfumery
I had fallen asleep in a state of weary confusion. I awoke to one of the most remarkable days of my life. I opened my eyes to find an old man bending over me, prodding me to wakefulness with a bony hand. He was richly dressed in a long, silk caftan with pearls at the collar and cuffs. A dry brown leaf of a man, his skin was the color of tallow and infinitely wrinkled, and his chin was hairless. I had learned by now to recognize such creatures as eunuchs—half men. (I will tell more about them in another place.) Seeing me wake, he introduced himself as Sgouritzes, an attendant of the Sacred Bedchamber of the Empre
ss Zoe. He produced from his sleeve a scroll of purple vellum covered with writing in silver ink and, in a piping voice, read that I was requested to call upon the Empress this morning in her apartment in the Daphne palace. Groggy and ill-tempered as I was, it took Sgouritzes and Piotr between them to get me washed and dressed and fed to where I looked presentable and felt almost human.
The Daphne is the heart of the Great Palace, reached by paths that wind endlessly through gardens and pavilions, watered by fountains and shaded by poplars. It is a lovely building where the Emperor and Empress each keep a suite of rooms. Few outsiders ever see it. The mosaics that cover its walls and floors are not the pained faces of saints but rather fields of flowers bursting with color, and scenes of hunting and of children playing. But the closer we got to the Empress’s rooms the stronger grew the smell—heavy, cloying, sweet, almost physically sticky, hanging in the air like a fine mist of honey. The eunuch smiled at me with a look of anticipation—an aged grandparent taking a child to see some secret treat. Two beardless guards flanked the silver-paneled door. They stood aside for us and we entered upon a scene indescribably bizarre. It was a huge room, dimly lit, and filled with steaming copper cauldrons sitting on charcoal braziers, each one big enough to boil a sheep in. The heat hit me like a blast from an oven, the air was unbreathable. Men and women, dripping with sweat, stirred these cauldrons while others ladled out the content—some of it amber-colored and thin, some of it white and viscous—sniffed it or rubbed it between their fingertips, and either poured it back or took it to a long table where other workers decanted it into little flasks, careful not to waste a drop. Still others sealed the flasks with glass stoppers and melted wax and attached labels to them. Over our head hung baskets and bunches of dried herbs and flowers. One of the women set aside her ladle and turned toward us. She was plump, short, aged about forty, I guessed, with a generous bosom. Her brown eyes were large and set wide apart, her skin was as smooth as a ripe apricot, and her blonde hair hung in damp tendrils on her neck. She drew a sleeve across heavy eyebrows of dark gold. She wore only a sheer cotton shift that clung to her body. I found myself staring at her nipples. Sgouritzes dropped to his ancient knees and touched his forehead to the floor. I did the same.
The Varangian Page 4