Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS)

by John James

  There were a few days of frantic trading, carrying up Amber and ivory from the ships, and valuing it in silver. Then we sold them what they wanted, bronze and iron, cloth and pottery, jars of wine and casks of dried fruit. Most precious of all was glass, more precious even than silver plate embossed with Gods and cupids.

  On the last night, our own Gods and cupids, our gold and silver plate came out for a last feast. We pushed in more chairs at the top table to seat the Kings on either side of Njord.

  Then when the whetstone lay in front of Njord, and the gold boar stood in front of Frederik, but before ale had been poured, I rose and banged my fist on the table. Then Bragi walked up the hall, carrying a tray of small silver cups that we had found at the back of the silver store; they had not sold because the Germans had nothing strong enough to be worth drinking out of them. These cups he set before the Kings and before the Asers, before Baldur and One-handed Tyr as well. Then Ingelri gave Bragi a jug, and he filled the cups.

  We all eight drank. And seven of us had never drunk anything like it before, and seven of us didn’t believe it. And you, of course, will never have drunk anything like it, unless you have been initiated to one of the secret Gods. It gives a glow inside, rather like drinking a charcoal brazier. You don’t get it like that with wine, or from draughts of black bitter beer, even if you make the beer hot in a cauldron as the Germans like doing. When the coughing was over, I told Bragi to set them up again. We soon had two cheerful Kings and five very happy Asers.

  Then Njord, who was after all not a King, though he was richer than ten Kings together, felt that with two Kings at his table he must make some kingly gesture. He flung wide his arms – well, the liquor was more than he had bargained for, and we set him on his legs again – and he made a more restrained gesture and began to speak.

  ‘Votan Whitehair, Votan Aser, for this gift of yours, this – what d’ye call it? Honeydew? – Votan, for this Honeydew ask of the Asers any gift you like.’

  This was the time to strike, and to strike with finesse, with ceremony, straight to the heart.

  ‘Njord, great Lord of the Asers, Father of all who guard the Amber Road, as an Aser I ask of the Asers the gift of an Aser. I ask for Freda.’

  Njord looked a bit taken aback. I motioned to Bragi to fill up the cups again, and to Ingelri to get another jug ready.

  ‘This is a great thing you ask,’ faltered Njord. ‘To marry Freda … and there is Loki … I thought …’

  Rather than have him stumble on till he sobered, I pushed in,

  ‘Loki is married to Outgard, he would only take her from you. Do I not dwell here in Asgard, to see that you are not cheated? When did Loki bring you silver to double your last year’s takings? Do I not heal the strains of your joints and sing you songs without number? Have I not promised a Golden House, and will I not teach you writing? The Honeydew I have poured out here, to loosen your tongues, to grant visions. Freda I ask for my bride, for my own, and in earnest I give her presents.’

  And I put the ivory chain around her neck, and I fastened the bronze and stone brooch into her dress, and on her finger I put her ring, that I won from a Friesian at dice, in Orm’s place, pale Irish gold with a cameo, Leda and the Swan carved on a sardonyx.

  And then I might not have done it. Frederik and Sigmund sat together looking puzzled, fuddled rather, and a fine handsome pair of blockheads they were. But Tyr stood up and flung his one arm around my shoulder, and Baldur called out in that high-pitched voice of his which always irritated me,

  ‘Oh, bother Loki, he’s got so tiresome lately.’

  Then Siggeir spoke, the great heavy Goth King, blue scars on his arms and face, and the authority of twenty ancestors behind him.

  ‘You offered, Njord, you offered, you must keep your word. If the girl is willing she must go. And he shall stay here in Valhall for ever, and be an Aser till the end of time, to keep your goods and count your silver heaps.’

  And Sigmund, of course he couldn’t be outdone by Siggeir, and he was too stupid to think, even, of any bargaining, but only thought he ought to say something like a King, he got up and said:

  ‘You have spoken, great Njord, before two Kings you have promised, and your daughter, the Lady of Valhall, you must give Votan.’

  Unfortunately, having both overeaten and mixed the Honeydew with great horns of beer, he chose that moment to be sick, all over Frederik. Frederik had made an especial effort to be elegant that night, and had let us know it; he was never so friendly to Sigmund after.

  Siggeir ignored this interruption, for he was a King, a real one.

  ‘Now Lady Freda, turn and face this man. Will you take him till the end of time, to be your husband? And if you will, then tell us all the day.’

  Freda didn’t give a clear answer. She just stood and said,

  ‘I must have time to weave my bridal sheets, and make a bed, and heap it high with furs. There’s beer to brew, and sausage, pies and ham … how is it there is never enough ham … I cannot do it under twenty days.’

  There was a huge roar throughout the hall at this reluctant bride, and with a final effort at solemnity Siggeir stood again and said,

  ‘Bridal gifts will I bring to you, gold and Amber and ivory, walrus tusks and sealskin cloaks and knives with handles of horn. But you, Votan, you have no shield. I have a shield, of limewood and leather, bossed and bound with bronze, painted and gay with colours and marked with a raven, a bird of bronze and enamel to shine in battle. A shield to protect your bride, to ward off the weather, made by a master, a shield fit for heroes, a shield fit for Votan.’

  They were still trying to revive Sigmund, so Agnar Volsungson stood up. Twice the man his brother was, I was quite sorry the following year when Lyngi Siggeirson and a party of Goths and Black Danes caught him on the Amber Shores, somewhere beyond Outgard, and killed him under an ash tree. And there lie his bones to this day, and the adders crawl through his skull, for they neither stripped him nor burnt him, but left the body, mail shirt and helmet and sword and buckler, as an offering … well, to me I suppose. And that very night in Valhall I saw Lyngi look at him, and mark him down for death, even while Agnar said,

  ‘We will bring gold and bronze work, that the men of old made and buried on Bornholm. We the Volsungas of all the Burgundians are bold to burrow for bronzes.’

  What he meant was that only the Royal House were allowed to rob graves in Bornholm.

  Then Njord, obviously feeling that he had been thoroughly compromised, called for a toast to the happy pair. Siggeir, sweating from the strains of speechmaking, relaxed from a King into a slightly drunken middle-aged gentleman, and turning to Freda began,

  ‘Now I remember, long ago, I was young then, going hunting with your grandfather Bor Burisson, and we raised this boar …’

  On my other side, Tyr and Lyngi were having a technical discussion as to whether a mail shirt was worth wearing for the protection it gave, being so heavy, or whether it were not better to follow the Gaulish custom and go into battle stark naked and helmless, trusting to speed and skill with sword and shield to keep your skin. The following year, of course, it was naked that Lyngi went in against Agnar, and gutted him, much, the Danes told me, to Agnar’s surprise.

  As a result, relieved of any necessity for conversation, I was able to look at my reflection in my beer, and say to myself,

  ‘Well, Photinus, what have you done now? You must be mad!’

  And to tell you the truth, I was mad the whole time I was beyond the frontier, and I knew it, and I knew that every single thing I did and said would have been unthinkable to any sane man.

  This would have been unthinkable to ask for Freda in marriage, to marry a savage. Why did I do it? Well, to start with, Freda was really the first clean woman I had seen since Julia, and certainly the only clean woman in Asgard, the only young woman in Asgard. Then I was stealing a march on Loki, and that put me in everybody’s good books, Asers, traders, even some of his own Vandals. Most of all, I had
to live, and out there on the edge of the world, there were only two ways for a stranger to live, as a noble, or as a beggar. Marrying Freda, marrying an Aser, made a noble, an Aser, of me for certain.

  But why should Freda have married me? She had leapt over the fire on Midsummer Eve, and asked the Gods to send her a man. The obvious man was Loki, but was Loki more than half a man? Ask Baldur.

  Then I was a novelty. I was clean, to start with, I wore my pig fat with an air. I was a stranger, mysterious in many ways, with tales of far countries. And in those days, I didn’t look too bad, in spite of my white hair. My face had filled out after the time on the tree, and I combed my beard. And though I walked like a young man, I had an old man’s head. I had read everything any Greek had written, I knew all that any Greek ever knew, and that made me, in the eyes of the north, a man of great and unfathomable wisdom, a man of experience that no one man could collect in one mortal life.

  As I thought that in taking Freda, I was taking power in the north, so Freda thought that she was taking power in me, power of a kind that was never seen in Asgard. But I wasn’t powerful. I was mad! Mad! And I knew it.

  Ten days later, the third Amber Fleet came in, the Black Danes’ fleet from the islands up in the shallow sea. King Sweyn Halffoot came himself. They had called him Sweyn Olafson till a Saxon cut off a slice of his left foot with an axe in a sea fight. Since then he had limped, but that made his hand no less heavy, and his temper was uncertain. It was as well not to mention Cutha Cuthson to him, since the Danes were pushing now toward the Saxon shores, and thought it uncivil of the Saxons to object. There was no Saxon Fleet; the Saxons, on the whole, are incompetent sailors.

  Sweyn decided to stay for the wedding, after he had sent the fleet home, and he produced a gift for Freda, a necklace of pearls; not the fresh water mussel pearls, but real oyster pearls from Britain.

  Now we had a dozen boys watching the honeydew pots as they bubbled. Ingelri and a dozen of his apprentices beat, beat, beat all day at the gold, beating the Roman coins into great sheets, thin as silk.

  Bragi was making two great chairs, thrones, one for me and one for Freda. The frames were of oak, and the panels were of limewood, the back panels and the side panels beneath the arms, carved on either side. I had Leda and the Swan on the back panel, carved from Freda’s ring, and on the other side of that panel, against my back, Danae and the shower of gold, which symbolised what I was doing for Asgard. On each side piece he carved the tree, leaves and branches and acorns, and the bees and the bear and the snake in it. The end of each arm he carved into a wolf’s head, snarling, life size.

  On the back panel of Freda’s chair, he carved Myself in the Tree, with the wolves dancing around me, and it was much admired and craftsmen came from far away to see it and copy it. The other side of that panel he worked with an Amber ship, and a distaff and a spinning wheel on the arm panels. Above each of Freda’s shoulders rose the pillars of the chair, and each of the pillars ended, like the arms, in the life size head of a maiden with streaming hair. The pillars of my chair were bare.

  10

  How many kings will come to your wedding? Listen, how many kings came to mine.

  No Vandal king came. The Vandals were poor, a few thousand starving families, too poor to afford a king. But the whole horde of Vandals came, hoping for a free meal, and we fed them all on the shore, men and women and all the children.

  Two Lombard kings came. They themselves were very poor. One owned a sword, and looked down his nose at the other who carried only his big axe. The latter spent his time talking to any other king who would listen about the importance of keeping up the old traditions like this of having one trouser knee always patched in an odd colour. But I noticed that when Baldur gave him a new pair, he wore them, without a patch. Both tried to persuade the wealthier kings to buy mercenaries from them.

  A king of the Cherusci came, from beyond the Lombards. He took great pride in being sophisticated. He had once been a sergeant in an auxiliary regiment, and knew the military roads and the inns nearly as far as Milan. He spoke rather bad Latin, slowly, and he kept trying to practise it on me, which made the other kings jealous.

  A king of the Friesians came. A rich king this, rich on the herring trade with Britain. He swaggered and clinked with gold chains. He threw chains around my neck and Freda’s with a lordly gesture, but with one eye on the Cheruscan, who brought a hundred jars of wine. He swore it was Falernian, but it was only that filthy Gaulish stuff, not much better than ration red. Still, I don’t think he knew the difference himself.

  The Saxon king didn’t come. He sent one of Cutha Cuthson’s men with a very tactful message, saying I would understand if he did not sit at the same table as Sweyn. And since he had heard that I always wore grey, he sent me a bridal suit of dove-grey silk, and gold combs set with garnets on which he hoped that Freda would pile her hair.

  Sweyn himself stayed. He rarely moved, he spent most of his life sitting on his throne or on his ship and here he always had a chair on the jetty. As a result he had grown now so fat that no horse would bear him. His main interest was in food, and he would sit all day watching the ships and chewing sausage and salt herrings to work up an appetite for supper.

  Sigmund did not come. He sent another of his brothers, Gylfi; he died the next year, too, more’s the pity. Sigmund, for all he was the eldest, was the runt of that litter. He asked pointedly to be excused since he was needed at home to defend Bornholm in case of an attack by Siggeir.

  Siggeir came. He came with only three fast ships, having left all his other ships under Lyngi in case the Burgundians should raid Scania. He brought his Queen, Signy, and this in itself was a wonder, for the Ladies of the north seldom travel, except to their own weddings, and never by sea. But Signy said that it was unthinkable that Freda would be married with no one better than Skirmir’s wife to attend her. As if Freda had not governed all the household of Asgard herself for years.

  Siggeir also brought a little yellow man who was, he said, a king of the Scrawlings. This peculiar creature spoke no word of any known language, except a few conventional phrases like ‘Fill ’em up’ or ‘Pass the herrings’. Siggeir told me that at home this man ate nothing but a kind of tame deer that gave him milk and meat and horn and leather and served him for both horse and cow. At any rate he wore clothes and shoes of deer skin, and brought us great robes and cloaks of the same material. His name sounded like Jokuhai-inen. A thin man, he ate as much as Sweyn, but it never seemed to do him any good.

  Siggeir brought me the shield. A round shield, covered in leather, it had a rim of bronze worked in dragons’ heads with garnet eyes. The boss was of iron, and we gilded that ourselves later, with some of the gold leaf we had over after we covered all the pillars of Valhall. Above the boss, in bronze and enamel, flew the raven Siggeir spoke of; below the boss in enamel and bronze crawled a dragon.

  Loki did not come.

  On the wedding day, we did everything. We leapt over the fire, and broke the jar, we killed the cock and rode the white horse, and ate bread together. We stood under the crown and we shared the cup, and followed every rite anyone present could remember. Where I should have sworn on the sword I swore on Gungnir’s point, and seven kings and a queen stood witness.

  When all was over we went into the hall. For the first time the kings saw the thrones. For Freda and I sat at the centre of the top table, with Tyr at my side and Signy to support the bride. But now on each pillar of my chair, one above each shoulder, were the eagles I had fetched from the Heath. All looked at them, and the Cheruscan king, who knew well enough, said in his barrack-room grunt:

  ‘What d’ye call those? Tom tits? or black-cocks?’

  And it was on the tip of my tongue to say ‘carrion crows’, but then I remembered the great Goth shield that hung on the wall behind me, and I said,

  ‘No, ravens.’

  So ravens they were called ever after, and they might well have been just that, for they were tarnished and bl
ack with age, and the filth of a century propped beneath a tree. King Jokuhai-inen got very excited, and babbled away in his peculiar language, and though none of us could understand a word we realised at last that he had names for the birds. The best we could make of what he said was Hoogin and Moonin, and under these gibberish titles the birds were known ever after. And all the better in that they had no meaning or history except in the mind of a Wizard King who could raise the wind when he wished; he showed us, later.

  We all sat down together to the wedding feast. No expense had been spared. We had even hired a minstrel so that Blind Hod, who usually sang at our feasts, could join in the banquet without worrying about the effect of beer on his voice. We drank Honeydew from silver cups, with gold-mounted horns of beer or wine for chasers. One Lombard king drank beer, to show how he clung to the old customs. The other drank wine to show he was modern in his ideas.

  We ate as I never ate before in Germany. We had oysters from Britain, that came up through Friesia, and Freda found a pearl in one of hers, which was thought to be a sign of luck. We had salmon from the land of Norroway, and eels preserved in a kind of jelly, and stewed seaweed, though I did not care to try this.

  There was whalemeat, and that was strange because it was more like beef than fish, but with a rank taste to it. And a strange thing, for the whale, that huge fish that a man may take for an island at sea, has no fat at all in its body. I, who have eaten the meat, tell you that for truth.

  There was wheat bread and rye bread and barley bread.

  By special arrangement, a bowl of wheat porridge, legionary ration style, was served to the Cheruscan sergeant-king. He threw it at the Friesian king, but missed him and it splashed over Sweyn, who licked it off his sleeve and said it was very good and please was there any more?