“I did,” said Shef. “But he would have thanked me for it if he could. I told Ivar that what he did to the king was nithingsverk.”
“On so much we agree, then. The thing is, can I have peace with you? Or must we fight?”
“Have you asked your priests?” said Thorvin in his slow, careful English.
The young man smiled. “My brother and I have found that whenever we ask them anything, they demand money. Nor will they aid us even to keep off the likes of Ivar. But I am a Christian still. I believe in the faith of my fathers. I hope one day even you warriors of the North will take baptism and submit to our law. But I am not a Churchman.”
“Some of us are Christians,” said Shef. “Some of us are English.”
“Are they full fellows of your army? With full rights to share?”
Brand, Guthmund and Steinulf looked at each other as they grasped the sense of the question. “If you say they must be, then they are,” said Shef.
“So. You are English and Norse. You are Christian and heathen.”
“Not heathen,” said Thorvin. “Wayman.”
“But you can get along together. Maybe that is a model for us all. Listen, all of you. We can work out a treaty: shares and taxation, rights and duties, rules about wergilds and freedmen. All details. But the center of it must be this:
“I will give you Norfolk, to rule under your own law. But you must rule fairly. Never let in invaders. And the one who becomes alderman, he must swear on my relics and on your holy things to be the good friend of King Ethelred and his brother. Now, if that is to happen, who shall the alderman be?”
Brand's scarred hand reached out, tapped Shef. “He it must be, king's brother. He speaks two languages. He lives in two worlds. See, he has not the mark of the Way on him. He has been baptized. But he is our friend. Choose him.”
“He is a runaway,” yelled Alfgar suddenly. “He is a thrall. He has the marks of the whip on his back!”
“And of the torturer on his face,” said Alfred. “Maybe he will see to it there is less of both in England. But console yourself, young man. I shall not send you back to King Burgred alone.”
He waved a hand. From somewhere behind them came a flutter of skirts. A group of women were led into view.
“I found this party left behind and wandering, so I brought them along lest worse befall. I hear one of them is your wife, young noble. Take her back to King Burgred and be grateful.”
His wife, thought Shef, staring deeply into Godive's gray eyes. She looked more beautiful than ever. What could she possibly think of him, covered in mire, stinking of sweat and worse, eye sunk in its socket? Her face showed utter horror. He felt a cold fist close round his heart.
Then she was in his arms, weeping. He held her tight with one hand, looked round. Alfgar was on his feet, struggling in the grip of two guards, Wulfgar bellowing from his box, Alfred rising with alarm on his face.
As the tumult ceased, Shef spoke. “She is mine.”
“She is my wife,” shouted Alfgar.
She is his half sister too, thought Shef. If I said that the Church would intervene, take her away from him. But then I would be letting the rule of the Church shape me and the law of the Way. The land of the Way.
This is the price the old draugr demands for his gold. Last time it was an eye. This time it is a heart.
He stood still as the attendants pulled Godive from him, drew her back to incest—her husband—and the bloodstained birch.
To be a king, to be a leader, demands things that cannot be asked of an ordinary man.
“If you are prepared to return the woman as a sign of good faith,” said Alfred clearly, “I will take Suffolk into my brother's realm, but recognize you, Shef Sigwardsson, as alderman of Norfolk. What do you say?”
“Do not say ‘alderman’,” said Brand, cutting in. “Use our word. Say he will be our jarl.”
Jarl
Chapter One
Shef sat facing the crowd of supplicants on a plain, three-legged stool. He still wore a hemp tunic and woolen breeches, with no signs of rank. But in the crook of his left arm rested the whetstone-scepter taken from the mound of the old king. From time to time Shef ran a thumb gently over one of its cruel carved, bearded faces as he listened to the witnesses.
“…and so we took the case to King Edmund at Norwich. And he judged it in his private chamber—he had just returned from hunting and was washing his hands, God strike me blind if I lie—and he decided that the land should come to me for ten years and then be returned.”
The speaker, a middle-aged thane of Norfolk, years of good living swelling his gold-mounted belt, hesitated for a moment in his tirade, unsure whether the mention of God might not count against him in a Wayman court of doom.
“Have you any witnesses to this agreement?” Shef asked.
The thane, Leofwin, puffed out his cheeks with grotesque pomposity. Not used to being questioned, or contradicted, evidently.
“Yes, certainly. Many men were in the king's chamber then. Wulfhun and Wihthelm. And Edrich the king's thane. But Edrich was killed by the pagan—was killed in the great battle, and so was Wulfhun. And Wihthelm has since died of the lung-sickness. Nevertheless, things are as I say!” Leofwin ended defiantly, glaring round him at the others in the court: guards, attendants, his accuser, others waiting for their cases to be heard and decided.
Shef closed his one eye for a moment, remembering a far-off evening of peace in the fen with Edrich, not so very far from here in space. So that was what had happened to him. It might have been guessed.
He opened it again and stared fixedly at Leofwin's accuser. “Why,” he said gently, “why does what King Edmund decided seem to you unjust in this case? Or do you deny that what this man says is what the king decided?”
The accuser, another middle-aged thane of the same stamp as his opponent, blanched visibly as the jarl's piercing gaze fell on him. This was the man, all Norfolk knew, who had begun as a thrall in Emneth. Who had been the last Englishman ever to speak to the martyred king. Who had appeared—God only knew how—as leader of the pagans. Had dug up the hoard of Raedwald. Defeated the Boneless One himself. And somehow had gained the friendship and support of Wessex as well. Who could tell how all that had come about? Dog's name or no, he was a man too strange to lie to.
“No,” said the second thane. “I do not deny that was what the king decided, and I agreed to it as well. But when it was agreed, the understanding behind the decision was this: That after ten years' time the land in question should revert from Leofwin to my grandson, whose father was also killed by the pagans. That is to say, by the—by the men from the North. In the state in which it was in the beginning! But what this man has done”—indignation replaced caution in his voice—“what Leofwin has done ever since is to ruin it! He has cut the timber and planted no more, he has let the dykes and the drains go to ruin, he has turned ploughland into a watermeadow for hay. The land will be worth nothing at the end of his lease.”
“Nothing?”
The complainant hesitated. “Not as much as before, lord jarl.”
Somewhere outside a bell rang, a sign that the dooms-giving was over for the day. But this case must be decided. It was a hard one, as the court had heard already at tedious length, with debts and evasions of them going back for generations, and all the parties in the case related to each other. Neither of the men present today was of much consequence. Neither had seemed of special note to King Edmund, which was why they had been allowed to live on their estates when better men, like Edrich, had been called to service and to death. Still, they were Englishmen of rank, whose families had lived in Norfolk for generations: the sort of people who had to be won over. It was a good sign that they had come to the new jarl's court for judgement.
“This is my doom,” said Shef. “The land shall remain with Leofwin for the rest of his ten-year lease.” Leofwin's red face brightened into a beam of triumph.
“But he shall render an account of his
gains each year to my thane at Lynn, whose name is—”
“Bald,” said a black-robed figure standing by a writing-desk to Shef's right.
“Whose name is Bald. At the end of the ten years, if the gain on the property seems more than is reasonable to Bald, Leofwin shall either pay the extra gain for the whole ten years to the grandson in this case, or else he shall pay a sum to be fixed by Bald, equal in value to the worth the land has lost during his stewardship. And the choice shall be made by the grandfather, here present today.”
One face lost its beam, the other brightened. Then both faces took on an identical expression of anxious calculation. Good, thought Shef. Neither is altogether happy. So they will respect my decision.
He rose. “The bell has struck. The dooms-giving is over for today.” A babble of protest, men and women pushing forward from the waiting ranks.
“It will begin again tomorrow. You have your tally-sticks? Show them as you enter and cases will be heard in proper order.” Shef's voice rose strongly above the babble.
“And all mark this! In the court of the Way there is neither Christian nor pagan, neither Wayman nor Englishman. See—I bear no pendant. And Father Boniface here”—he pointed to the black-robed scribe—“priest though he is, he bears no cross. Justice here does not depend on faith. Mark it and tell it. Now go. The hearing is over.”
The doors at the back of the room swung open. Attendants began to urge the disappointed litigants outside into the spring sunshine. Another, the hammer-sign stitched neatly onto his gray tunic, waved the two disputants of the last case over toward Father Boniface, to see the jarl's doom written out twice and witnessed, one copy to remain in the jarl's scriptorium, the other to be torn carefully in two and divided between the litigants, so that neither could present a forgery at some future court.
Through the rear doors there stalked a massive figure, head and shoulders above the people pushing out, in mail and cloak, but unarmed. Shef felt the lonely gloom of judgement suddenly lighten.
“Brand! You are back! You come just at the right moment, when I am free to talk.”
Shef felt his hand gripped in one the size of a quart tankard, saw his own beaming smile answered.
“Not quite, lord jarl. I came two good hours ago. Your guards would not let me through, and with all those halberds waving and never a word of Norse among the lot of them I had not the heart to argue.”
“Hah! They should—No. My orders are to let no one interrupt court of doom except for news of war. They did right. But I am sorry I did not think to make an exception for you. I would have liked you to attend the court and say what you thought of it.”
“I heard.” Brand jerked a thumb behind him. “The head of your guards there was a catapulteer and knew me, though I did not know him. He brought me good ale—excellent ale, after a sea-voyage, to wash out the salt—and told me to listen through the door.”
“And what did you think?” Shef turned Brand about and strolled with him through the now-cleared doorway into the courtyard outside. “What did you think of the jarl's assembly?”
“I am impressed. When I think of what this place was like four months ago—mud everywhere, warriors snoring on the floor for lack of beds, never a kitchen in sight and no food to cook in it. And now. Guards. Chamberlains. Bakeries and brewhouses. Woodwrights fixing shutters and gangs painting everything that doesn't move. Men to ask your name and business. And writing it down when you tell them.”
Then Brand frowned and looked about, lowered his enormous voice to an unpracticed whisper. “Shef—lord jarl, I should say. One thing. Why all these blackrobes? Can you trust them? And what in the name of Thor is a jarl doing, a lord of warriors, listening to a couple of muttonheads arguing about drains? You'd be better off shooting catapults. Or in the forge even.”
Shef laughed, looking across at the massive silver buckle holding together his friend's cloak, the bulging purse on his sword-belt, the ornamental waist-chain of linked silver coins.
“Tell me, Brand, how did your trip home go? Were you able to buy all you meant to?”
Brand's face took on a hucksterish look of caution. “I put some money in safe hands. Prices are high in Halogaland, and folk are mean. Still, when I hang up my axe for good, it may be there is some small farm for me to retire to in my old age.”
Shef laughed again. “With your share of all our winnings, in good silver, you must have bought up half the county for your relatives to look after.”
This time Brand grinned too. “I did pretty well, I admit. Better than ever in my life before.”
“Well, let me tell you about the blackrobes. What none of us has ever realized is the money the stay-at-homes have. The wealth in a whole county, a rich county of England, not a poor stony one in Norway where you come from. Tens of thousands of men, all tilling the soil and raising sheep and trimming wool and keeping bees and cutting timber and smelting iron and raising horses. More than a thousand square miles. Maybe a thousand thousand acres. All those acres must pay something to me, to the jarl, if it is only the war-tax, or bridge-and-road money.
“Some of them pay everything. I took all Church land into my own possession. Some of it I gave at once to the freed slaves who fought for us, twenty acres a man. Wealth to them—but a fleabite compared to the whole. Much I leased out straightaway, to the rich men of Norfolk, at low rates, for ready money. Those who got it will not want to see the Church come back. Much I kept in my own hand, for the jarldom. In future it will make money for me, to hire workers and warriors.
“But I could not have done it without the blackrobes, as you call them. Who could keep all this land, all these goods, all these leases, in his head? Thorvin knows how to write in our letters, but few others. Suddenly there were many lettered men, men of the Church, with no land and no income all of a sudden. Some now work for me.”
“But can you trust them, Shef?”
“The ones who hate me and will never forgive me, or you, or the Way—they have gone off to King Burgred, or to Wulfhere the Archbishop, to stir up war.”
“You should have just killed them all.”
Shef hefted his stone scepter. “They say, the Christians, that the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church. I believe them. I make no martyrs. But I made sure that the angriest of those who left knew the names of those who stayed. The ones who work for me will never be forgiven. Like the rich thanes, their fate now depends on mine.”
They had come to a low building within the stockade that ran round the jarl's burg, its shutters open to the sun. Shef pointed inside to the writing-desks, the men conferring quietly, writing on parchment. On one wall Brand could see hung a great mappa: a newly made one, devoid of ornament, full of detail.
“By the winter I shall have a book of every piece of land in Norfolk, and a picture of the whole shire on my wall. By next summer not a penny will be paid for land without my knowledge. And then there will be wealth such as even the Church has never seen. We can do things with it that have never been done before.”
“If the silver is good,” said Brand dubiously. “It is better than up North. I have been thinking this: It seems to me that there is only so much silver in this country, in all the kingdoms of the English put together. And there is always the same amount of work for it to do—land to buy, things to trade. Now, the more that there is locked up in the coffers of the Church, or traded for gold, or made into precious things that do not move, the more the less that is left—No, the harder the less that is left…”
Shef floundered to a halt, neither English nor Norse adequate to explain what he meant.
“What I mean is, the Church took too much out of the Northern kingdom and put nothing back. That is why their coins were so bad. King Edmund was less kind to the Church, and so money here was better. Soon it will be the best.
“And not only the money will be the best, Brand.” The young man turned to face his massive colleague, his one eye glittering. “I mean this shire of Norfolk to be the best
and the happiest land in the whole of the Northern world. A place where everyone can grow from child to graybeard in safety. Where we can live like people, not like animals scratching for a living. Where we can help each other.
“Because I have learned another thing, Brand, from Ordlaf the reeve of Bridlington, from the slaves who made my mappa and led us to the riddle of Edmund. It is something the Way needs to know. What is the most precious thing to the Way, the Way of Asgarth?”
“New knowledge,” said Brand, automatically clutching his hammer-pendant.
“New knowledge is good. Not everyone has it. But this is just as good, and it can come from anywhere: old knowledge that no one has recognized. It is something I have seen more clearly since I became the jarl. There is always someone who knows the answer to your question, the cure for your need. But usually no one has asked him. Or her. It may be a slave, a poor miner. An old woman, a fisher-reeve, a priest.
“When I have all the knowledge in the county written down, as well as all the land and the silver, then we shall show the world a new thing!”
Brand, on Shef's blind side, glanced down at the taut tendons in the neck, the young man's trimmed beard now sprinkled with gray.
What he needs, he thought, is a fine, active woman to keep him busy. But even I, Brand the Champion, even I dare not offer to buy him one.
That evening, as the woodsmoke from the chimneys began to mix with the gray twilight, the priests of the Way met within their corded circle. They sat in the wort-yard, the garden of a cottage outside the jarl's stockade, in a pleasant smell of apple-sap and green growth. Thrushes and blackbirds trilled vigorously about them.
“He has no idea of the real purpose of your sea-trip?” asked Thorvin.
Brand shook his head. “None.”
“But you passed the news?”
“I passed the news and I got the news. The word of what has happened here has gone to every Way-priest in the Northern lands, and they will tell their followers. It has gone to Birko and to Kaupang, to Skiringssal and to the Tronds.”
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