Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS)

by John James

  Never before or since had I sung the Mystery of the Lord Adonis with more fervour or to a more willing audience.

  ‘Go shout on the shore and say to the forest, call it from village to village and hill to hill, the glorious news that we shall never more despair. Baldur who died at our feet shall die no more. Baldur who died at the Yule shall live at the Spring. No more need we fear death for him who died. For ever shall we see him walk amid our fruitful woods and fertile fields. Baldur the Beautiful is dead, yet shall he live.’

  All the crowd dissolved into paroxysms of joy mixed with their grief. Yet there were some who kept their composure. Bragi got together a handful of his apprentices.

  ‘Snorri, get in there now and measure him. Length and breadth, and don’t forget depth. I’ll go over to the stores and get enough cowhides and linen for lining, and coffin handles, if we have any. The rest of you, fetch your adzes and get up to the timber yard. I don’t care how cold it is. Get some pine billets for light, but be careful you don’t set fire to the place. There are half a dozen elm logs in the north-east corner; elm’s best, remember that, it takes the best polish. Pick out the two biggest, and start shaping, but don’t overdo it till Snorri comes up with the measurements. Go on, get started!’

  Freda was getting, beating, her kitchen maids together. She was more shaken than Bragi, but still capable.

  ‘Get me a count of hams … yes, hams, you can’t have a funeral without ham, you always bury them with ham, why don’t we ever have enough ham? Then we need to bake bread for … let’s see, yes … Asers and kings, wheat bread for about a hundred and fifty … peasants and suchlike, rye bread for about … six thousand … yes, and make that one-third ground acorn. Get every woman you can find on to grinding. No, I don’t care if they have to grind all night. And ham, get me a count of hams …’

  I went to bed. They seemed to be doing well enough, to me, working on the details. They knew how a German funeral went, and I didn’t. So I slept. The next morning, of course, I was the only Aser fresh enough to receive the first Kings. Freda was furious, called me a lazy heartless brute, a shirker, callous. There were moments when I almost wished myself back with Bithig.

  5

  In the morning, of course, things were getting on famously, even though most of the Asers were dropping with fatigue. I sat at the gate with Heimdall, waiting for visitors and watching a party of Vandals hauling up on to the ridge a boat, called Ringhorn, in which Baldur had gone fishing several times that summer.

  ‘Is that where they will have the pyre?’

  ‘Pyre?’ Heimdall answered. ‘Why should there be a Pyre? We bury Baldur as an Aser.’

  ‘I thought the dead were burnt in Germany.’

  ‘Peasants are burnt. Kings and nobles and traders are burnt. Some are not burnt.’

  ‘Who are they who are not burnt?’

  ‘Who should know better than you? and yet how should you know? All who are sacrificed to the Gods, those who are hanged up between heaven and earth, those whose throats are cut to let their breath pass out to the air it came from, they are not burnt. Some are thrown into the mouths of the earth, into the bogs that suck and suck and are never satisfied. Some are left on the earth to rot away, open to the sky and the stars, and the beasts and the birds do not feed on them.’

  ‘And the others?’

  ‘Long, long ago, when the Mother ruled the land, before men had iron swords, the Great Kings of the North were buried in barrows. Wealth was wrought for the tomb, in gold and silver and in Amber. Then the King was a God, and the Amber shone as a sign of his Godhead.

  ‘Yet every Aser shadows Godhead forth, and his whole life is a sacrifice to the God. Every Aser is himself a God, whether he knows or not of the Godhead in him. Truly you told us of Baldur risen again, how he lives on. All the Asers shall live although we die.

  ‘So an Aser is buried as a sacrifice. With treasure we fill the tombs, with gold the graves, in glory we go back to the dust we are made of.

  ‘Each Aser must choose his grave. Baldur chose his. Do you see the smoke rise there beyond the hill? There they have swept away the snow, and they light great fires to thaw the ground, where they will dig the grave. Bragi is fitting runners to the boat. We will take Baldur to his grave across the snow.’

  6

  So the Kings came to Asgard across the snow and across the frozen sea. The Lombard Kings came, for the sake of the ham. Sweyn Halffoot leaned on Edwin’s arm. Siggeir walked with Sigmund. Asers and Kings walked over the snow to Baldur’s grave. Njord came out of Asgard, and passed the Standing Stone and never did it more.

  Loki did not come.

  Over the snow we went to Baldur’s grave, across the forest to a meadow by a river. Feet had trampled the snow, and hands had swept it. The ground was black with charcoal, and the earth from the grave was spread about and trampled down into a hard floor. The smell of burnt wood hung in the air, though the fire had no part in what we did. Yet the memory of those great fires we lit to that the earth entered deeper into men’s memories than the grave we dug.

  Kings came and merchants came, Lords and Princes and Asers came. And the peasants came, men without surnames and without fathers, men who till the soil and are of no account. As a Danish King drives out a Saxon, and the Goth king drives out the Black Dane, so the peasant calls himself Saxon or Dane or Goth in turn, and copies their fashions of pots or clothes or speech. Yet the peasant lives always in one place, and the wars go over his head and over his land, and he has not the wit to change.

  And the peasant thinks only of his crops and never of glory or love or wisdom or change, he worships only the Mother. And that is why, of all the Asers, only Baldur who, two-sexed and gentle, was Mother and Father and God to them, was ever mourned by the peasants. They came to his grave and stood in rows about it.

  When the boat Ringhorn was drawn by oxen to the side of the open grave, two coffins, Baldur’s and an empty coffin, were placed at the edge of the pit. Then Skirmir’s wife stood on a wagon and shouted:

  ‘Baldur the Beautiful is dead, is dead. Alone he rides before us to Hell’s Gate. Who rides with Baldur?’

  Her voice streamed to nothing over the silent crowd and the frozen plain. A woman pushed her way to the front and said:

  ‘I go.’

  She was a fine woman, about twenty, and her name was Nanna. She lived in a village a little way from the grave field, and indeed it was because of this that Baldur had chosen it. It was to her house, where she lived alone, that Baldur came at the mid point of his every ride. For three years the country people had spoken of her as Baldur’s wife, and for his sake, unasked they had brought her food and cloth and fuel enough and to give away to every beggar that passed. Now on that bitter day, Nanna stood out before the Kings and Asers and all the people and said:

  ‘I go with Baldur to pour his beer and warm his bed as I have done these years past. Who else but I should go? Who has more right than I? Those who led him into evil ways?’ She shot a bitter glance at Hod, who, blind, did not see it, and still stood looking dimly before him.

  ‘I go with him where no one else dare follow.’

  And she laid herself down in the empty coffin, and while she did so, and Skirmir’s wife helped her, a Vandal packmaster named Hermod, whom we never thought of except as a hanger-on of Tyr’s, stepped to the graveside and began a song he had made on Baldur.

  Baldur the Beautiful is dead, is dead.

  Baldur is stricken.

  He lies on the floor of Valhall in his golden blood.

  Down in the straw, where the rats rummage for the crumbs of the feast.

  Baldur rises, he goes out of Valhall,

  He mounts the horse that waits, the white mare of the dead.

  He rides from Asgard, the hooves ring on the wood.

  On the planks of the causeway, as he goes above the marsh.

  The mist is about him, the smoke of the burnt reeds.

  The eel and the frog, the worm and the toad await
him.

  He comes to the Standing Stone of the Men of Old.

  He comes to the Gate of Hell, to the Door of the Dead.

  He comes to the Threshold of those below.

  He strikes the stone, he summons those below.

  ‘Must I die?’ asks Baldur. ‘Must I die?’

  ‘Must my mouldering bones be clad in rotten rags?

  ‘Must my eyes fester from my head?

  ‘Must my lips and my ears and my tongue rot from my face?

  ‘Must I, blind, deaf and witless, gibber among the dead?

  ‘Must I be a scarecrow to set the frightened girls giggling?

  ‘Or startle the shepherd boys at the before-winter feast?

  ‘Let me live again, let me walk on the dry earth.

  ‘Let me feel the warm flesh on my bones, the warm sun in my blood.

  ‘Let me sense and reason and think and love as a living man.’

  Those Below answered, ‘Aye, Baldur may live,

  ‘Let him live if every live creature wants him to live,

  ‘If nothing living on earth would wish him dead.’

  The grain of wheat said, ‘Let Baldur live,

  ‘Though I am cut down and ground to powder,

  ‘And thrust in the oven to roast, yet let him live.

  ‘For if Baldur had not ploughed the land and limed it

  ‘And fenced it to keep the cattle out,

  ‘Would I ever have lived to cover the earth?’

  The Ox said, ‘Let Baldur live.

  ‘He gelded me, and set me to draw plough and cart,

  ‘Day through, year through.

  ‘Yet all the winter I was fed,

  ‘He gave me shelter from the winds.

  ‘When I was young, no wolves took me.

  ‘If when I die, he takes my horns for drinking,

  ‘My flesh for food, my skin to wrap his feet

  ‘Or wrap his corpse,

  ‘What, then, is that to me? Baldur gave me Life.

  ‘Let Baldur live.’

  The very lice that crawled among his hair

  Said ‘Let Baldur live. He gave us his blood,

  ‘He gave us food, to us he is our living,

  ‘What use is he dead? Let Baldur live’

  Then the old crone that lives under the mountain,

  The bearded hag, that feasts on snails and slime,

  Said, ‘Let him die.

  ‘I have no pleasure in life, nothing gives me joy

  ‘Since Joy left us. Why should he have joy,

  ‘Why should he walk as a man in the summer fields,

  ‘When we must all go down to the place of the dark,

  ‘And no man ever know what we were, that we were?

  ‘He did the proper work of a man, he ploughed the earth.

  ‘All things living had cause to bless him.

  ‘He was all that I am not.

  ‘Let him die!’

  That was the bearded hag, that was Loki,

  Two-faced, two-sexed, the back-and-front man,

  He sent Baldur to die.

  Those Below said, ‘Come, Baldur, Come!

  ‘Long have we waited for you here at our feast.

  ‘We sit to feast on you … on you … on you …

  ‘Out of your body we have drained the breath, the blood.

  ‘Out of your mind we will suck the life.

  ‘That is our food. On lives of men we feast,

  ‘We feed, and are no better off than before,

  ‘For we are still Below.

  ‘Come down to us, Baldur,

  ‘Come down,

  ‘Baldur,

  ‘Come!

  ‘Remember, even Loki will come at the last.’

  Baldur is dead.

  Below the earth you go.

  What though we give you gold and Amber,

  Food and the kindly precious earth of our fields,

  All memory of them will rot away.

  As brain and heart rot, so will fade all thought,

  All memory of what you are, what you have been,

  Of what you have done.

  Memory at last will fade that you were Baldur.

  Only at last in the empty bones will linger,

  Thought, suspicion that you were once a man.

  What man is not recorded.

  Only a man …

  And that at last will dwindle.

  Baldur is dead.

  We will not see him again

  Urge on the plough team, walk the Corn Mother in,

  Or hear him sing at the Feasts.

  He may be with us in the bursting buds,

  Or in the winds that blow across the cornfield,

  Or even in the bubbling Barley mash,

  But we will never see his face again.

  Baldur is gone from us

  Gone …

  Gone …

  Loki will follow!!

  When this was over, Skirmir’s wife, who was the only woman in all that crowd of men, stood over the coffins. She struck Nanna through the heart with a sharpened alder stake, and when the struggles were over, without another word she made straight the limbs. Tyr and Heimdall folded the cowhides over the two dead faces, Baldur cold and dead, Nanna not yet cold.

  Peasants took the ropes and lowered the coffins into the grave. Then each of the great ones, Asers and Kings, came near and threw into the grave their gifts. Freda’s gift was already on Baldur’s finger. It was a great gold ring, too big for her, that some man had stolen from a barrow. It was well known in the north, its name was Draupnir, and I had won it from Siggeir at dice. Njord threw in a gold chain, Tyr a drinking horn, and Heimdall another, though these were not a pair. The Kings too brought gifts; Hoenir I saw place very gently on the coffin a glass cup, the only piece of glass he then had ever owned. Cups, plates and rings they threw on the coffin, Kings and nobles. Then the richer farmers came with jugs of ale and loaves of bread, roast shoulders of mutton and legs of pork and ribs of beef.

  After the rich, the poor threw in what they had. Each man had brought a handful of earth from his corn field, or a turf from his pasture, and there were enough to fill the grave and more than fill it; and the rest was spread over the field where we stood. They raised no grave mound, and the snow kept on falling and covering everything. In the spring they ploughed the field and planted it with corn, that no one might find the grave again and rob it. But ever after the barley grew taller above Baldur.

  Baldur’s chestnut horse we killed above the grave, and a black mare for Nanna, and the heads we left, but the bodies we roasted at the fire we made when we burnt the ship Ringhorn. We stood beside the fire, Kings and Asers and peasants, and we took our bread and beer and ham, and we ate our funeral feast. But do not think we had forgotten the main purpose of the Asers, and the cause for which Baldur had died, and Bors and Mymir before him. On each of the paths that led from the grave, about a mile from it, our Vandals had built booths of branches, and lit great fires.

  By the time a man had walked or ridden a mile from the grave, then the heat of the fire and of the ale had worn off, and he was pleased at the chance to buy beer, or hot sausages, or even a heavier cloak or a blanket. Many of them were happy enough to spend a night in a hut by the fire safe from bears or wolves, and they paid for it; of course, the noise of our crowd had frightened all the beasts far away. Nor were there any bandits about, and men who would not have gone near a Vandal village slept happy enough guarded by Vandal swords.

  It wasn’t only food and clothes we sold them, but brooches in lead, Mendip lead, in a shape we said was sacred to Baldur, and plaits of straw that had touched his coffin. What man would go home to his wife without something of the kind? And by what we sold, you would have thought that corpse had lain an hour at a time in every hayrick in Germany. That spring Baldur dead brought us in more silver than ever did Baldur living.

  7

  It was a day and a night and half a day again from Baldur’s grave to Asgard. The night we
spent in a palisade where the packtrains stopped, and the fleas thought summer had come again and swarmed out to feast on us. The night on the return was decidedly more cheerful than the night we had had there on the way out. Conversation had been difficult with that ox-wagon and its burden in the courtyard, with the frozen Vandals standing guard round it, changed every half hour. Still, one of them died of the cold, and so did fifty peasants coming to or from the grave, besides the four who succumbed to an excess of religious feeling during the burial. And it was at that cold graveside that Njord caught his death, months though it was in coming.

  After dinner that night, Siggeir drew me aside and got very confidential.

  ‘I’ve had enough of Sigmund. I can trust you, Allfather, I always could, you know how things work, no sham. Next spring I’m taking Bornholm, and I’ll clear the shallow sea. After that, when I can, I’m coming ashore on this side. I’ll not harm the trade, but I tell you this, I’ll not deal with Outgard. Do you know what Loki did? Before he killed Baldur, not after?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘He sent one of Sigmund’s brothers to Jokuhaiinen to suggest that he lend the ships, and the Scrawlings the men, to raid Asgard.’

  ‘And Jokuhaiinen answered …?’

  ‘He didn’t. He asked my advice. He said he wouldn’t mind killing Njord, or you, especially you, but he has some kind of blood bond with Donar. In the end I persuaded him it would be more profitable if he went for Sigmund when I attack Bornholm.’

  Sweyn followed Siggeir.

  ‘There’s something you ought to know, Allfather. Starkadder Eightarms saw me before I came.’

  ‘Indeed. Why didn’t he come to the funeral?’

  ‘And face Donar? Be serious. One of Sigmund’s brothers came to him, and offered him land.’

  ‘What land?’