King's Man

by Tim Severin

  'Welcome aboard, councillor. What do you have to report?' Harald demanded as if I had seen him only yesterday.

  'I have visited both Magnus of Norway and Earl Estrithson, my lord,' I began, when Harald interrupted me.

  'We have already met the Danish earl. He came north to ask help from the Swedes in his conflict with Magnus, and by chance we encountered him. How did he impress you?'

  I paused, not wanting to sound pessimistic. But there was no getting round my opinion. 'He's not to be trusted,' I said bluntly.

  'And my nephew Magnus?'

  'My lord, he seems to be well regarded by his people.'

  It was a tactless thing to say, and Harald rudely turned to look out across the sea, ignoring me. I suppose he felt that I was hinting he might not be so popular. Meekly I crossed the deck to join the other councillors.

  Halldor commiserated. 'He needs someone to tell him the true facts from time to time.'

  'There's more,' I said. 'I wanted to give him a warning, but now is not the moment.' 'What's the warning?'

  'A dream I had recently, a portent.'

  'You were always an odd one, Thorgils. Even when you first came to my father's house, my brothers and I wondered why he took you in and gave you such special treatment. Is it to do with your second sight? What have you seen?' 'Harald's death,' I answered.

  Halldor shot me a sideways glance. 'How will it happen?' 'An arrow in the throat during a great battle.' 'When?'

  'I don't know. The dreams are never precise. It could happen soon, or many years from now.'

  'You had better tell me the details. Together we might be able to persuade Harald to avoid an open battle, if not now then at least for some time.'

  So I told Halldor what I had dreamed. I described the fleet, the invading army, the tall man, the march across a dry land under a blazing sun, and his death.

  When I finished, Halldor was looking at me with a mixture of relief and awe.

  'Thorgils,' he said, 'my father was right. You really do have the second sight. But this time you have misinterpreted your vision. Harald is safe.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'It was not Harald you saw die. It was Maniakes, the tall Greek general who led us in the campaign in Sicily.'

  'But that's not possible. I haven't seen Maniakes for years, and in all that time I've never given him a thought.'

  'Why should you,' said the Icelander. 'You've been in the northlands these two years past and you could not know the news. A year ago Maniakes rebelled against the new Basileus. That man-eating old empress Zoe had got herself married for a third time and handed over most of the power to her new husband, and Maniakes tried to seize the throne for himself. He was commanding the imperial army in Italy at the time, and he led an invasion into Greece. That's the parched landscape you saw. The Basileus assembled all the troops he could muster, including the garrison of Constantinople, and marched out to confront him. The two armies met - and it was on a hot sunny day on a barren plain -and there was a great battle which was to decide the fate of the empire. Maniakes had victory within his grasp, his troops had the enemy soundly beaten when a chance arrow struck him in the throat, killing him. It was all over. His army fled, and there was a great slaughter. This took place just a few months ago. We heard the news in Kiev just before we left to come here. Maniakes, not Harald, was the man in your vision.'

  I was dumbfounded and relieved at the same time. I remembered how very alike the two men had been in height and manner, and that I had never seen the face of the dead commander in my dream. It had all been a mistake: I had been spirit-flying. At various times in my life I had been in the presence of certain seidrmanna, the seers of the northlands who were capable of leaving their bodies while in a trance and flying to other regions far away. That was what had happened in my dream. I had been transported to another place and another time, and there I had seen Maniakes die. It had never happened to me before. I felt bewildered and a little dizzy. But at least I had not made a fool of myself in Harald's eyes by telling him of my fears.

  Yet I failed to ask myself why Odinn had brought me to Harald's ship, if indeed it was Maniakes's death I had seen. Had I posed myself that simple question, matters might have turned out differently. But then, deception was always Odinn's way.

  ELEVEN

  WHAT WAS IT like to be councillor to the wealthiest ruler in the northlands? For that is what Harald became in less than three years.

  Initially he had to accept his nephew's offer to share the throne of Norway, but it was an uneasy arrangement and would certainly have ended in civil war, had Magnus not been killed in a freak accident when he was out hunting. A hare leaped up in front of his horse, the horse bolted, and a low branch swept Magnus out of his saddle. He broke his neck. The hare, like her cats, is another familiar of Freyja, so I thought at the time that the king's accident was a sign that the Old Gods were acting in my favour, because Magnus's death left Harald as the sole ruler of Norway. But I soon had my doubts when Harald's elevation to the undisputed kingship changed him. He became even more difficult and high-handed.

  I measured his change through his treatment of Halldor. The bluff Icelander had been at Harald's side throughout his foreign travels, and in Sicily had received a face wound which had left him badly scarred, yet his record of loyalty did not protect him from Harald's vainglory. Halldor had always been outspoken. He gave his opinions without mincing his words, and the more powerful Harald became, the less he liked to hear blunt speaking, even from a favoured adviser. One example will suffice: during one of Harald's frequent seaborne raids on Earl Svein's Danish lands, Halldor was the lookout on the foredeck of Harald's longship, a position of honour and great responsibility. As the vessel sailed along the coast, Halldor called out that there were rocks ahead. Harald, standing near the helmsman, chose to ignore the warning. Minutes later the longship crashed upon the rocks and was badly damaged. Exasperated, Halldor informed Harald that there was little point in serving as a lookout if his advice was ignored. Angrily Harald retorted that he had no need of men like Halldor.

  There had been countless incidents of a similar nature, but from that time forward relations between them cooled, and I was sorry to see how Harald took pleasure in baiting Halldor. It was a rule at Harald's court that every member of his entourage had to be dressed and ready for attendance upon the king by the time the royal herald sounded the trumpet announcing that the king was about to emerge from his bedchamber. One morning, to make mischief, Harald paid the herald to sound the trumpet at the crack of dawn, much earlier than usual. Halldor and his friends had been carousing the night before and were caught unprepared. Harald then made Halldor and the others sit on the floor of the banqueting hall, in the foul straw, and gulp down full horns of ale while the other courtiers mocked them. Another royal rule was that at meals no one should continue to eat after the king himself had finished eating. To mark that moment, Harald would rap on the table with the handle of his knife. One day Halldor ignored the signal and continued to chew on his food. Harald called out down the length of the hall that Halldor was growing fat from too much food and too little exercise, and once again insisted that the Icelander pay a drinking forfeit.

  Matters came to a head on the day of Harald's coinage. This was the occasion each year on the eighth day after Jol festival when the king gave his retainers their annual bounty. Though his wealth was still vast - it took ten strong men to lift Harald's treasure chests - Harald paid Halldor, myself and his other sworn men with copper coin instead of the usual silver. Only Halldor was bold enough to complain. He announced that he could no longer serve such a penny-pinching lord and preferred to return home to Iceland. He sold off all his possessions in Norway and had an ugly confrontation with Harald, when he demanded that the king pay the proper price for a ship he had agreed to buy from Halldor. The whole sorry affair ended with Halldor storming into the king's private chambers and, at sword point, demanding that Harald hand over one of his wife's gold rings
to settle the debt. Then Halldor sailed off for Iceland, never to return.

  His departure saddened me. He had been a friend from the first, and I valued his good sense. But I did not follow his example and leave Harald's service because I was still hoping that Harald would champion the Old Ways, and, in some matters, Harald was living up to my expectations. He married again, without divorcing Elizabeth, his first wife. His new bride, Thora, the daughter of a Norwegian magnate, was a robust Old Believer. When the Christian priests at court objected, claiming that Harald was committing bigamy, Harald bluntly told them to mind their own business. Equally, when a brace of new bishops arrived in Norway sent by the Archbishop of Bremen in the German lands, Harald promptly despatched them back to the Archbishop with a curt message that the king alone decided Church appointments. Unfortunately for me, Harald also displayed Christian tendencies whenever it suited him. He refurbished the church where the bodies of his half-brother 'Saint' Olaf and his nephew Magnus lay, and whenever he dealt with the followers of the White Christ he made a point of reminding them that St Olaf was his close relative. It was to be several years before I had finally to admit to myself that Halldor had been right from the beginning. Harald was serving only one God — himself.

  Yet I persevered. Life at Harald's court was the closest to the ideals that I had heard about when I was a child growing up in Greenland, and I reassured myself that Harald genuinely respected the traditions of the north. He surrounded himself with royal skalds and paid them handsomely for verses which celebrated past glories. His chief skald was another Icelander, Thjodolf, but his other poets - Valgard, Illugi, Bolverk, Halli, known as the Sarcastic, and Stuf the Blind — were almost as deft at producing intricate poems in the courtly style, whose quality Harald himself was capable of judging for he was a competent versifier himself. For lighter moments he employed a court dwarf, a Frisian by the name of Tuta, who had a long broad back and very stumpy legs and who made us laugh by parading around the great hall of the palace dressed in Harald's full-length coat of mail. This armour had been specially made for him in Constantinople and was so famous that it even had its own name — 'Emma'. Harald himself always dressed stylishly, sporting a red and gold headband when not wearing his crown, and on formal occasions the glittering sword that he had been awarded as a spatharokandidatos in Miklagard.

  Regrettably, the sword and mail coat were not the only reminders of his days at the Basileus's court. In Miklagard Harald had observed how to wield power pitilessly and to remove rivals without warning. Now I watched as Harald eliminated one potential threat after another, suddenly and without mercy. A nobleman who grew too powerful was summoned to a conference and rashly entered the council hall without his own bodyguard in attendance. He found the hall in darkness — Harald had ordered the shutters closed - and was murdered in the dark. Another rival was promoted to command of Harald's army vanguard and sent to lead an attack on a strong enemy position. Harald then delayed his own arrival on the battlefield so the vanguard and its commander were slaughtered. Before very long those who called Harald a 'hard ruler' were outnumbered by those who knew him more plainly as 'Harald the Bad'.

  This, then, was the man I continued to serve faithfully, and to whom I acknowledged myself as 'king's man' while I clung stubbornly to the hope that he would stem the steady advance of the White Christ faith and lead his people back to the happier days of the Elder Way. Had I been more honest with myself, I might have admitted that my dream was unlikely ever to be realised. Yet I lacked the courage to change my way of thinking. The truth was that my own life had reached a plateau and I was set in my ways. I was forty-six when Harald ascended the Norwegian throne, but instead of accepting that I was at a time of life when most men would have been considered to have entered old age, I still felt I might have a hand in shaping events. And Runa was keeping me young.

  For six months of every year, I put Harald's court behind me and went back to my beloved Vaster Gotland. I timed my arrival for mid-autumn when it was time to harvest the meagre crops grown in the rocky fields wrested from the forest around our settlement, and my return soon acquired its own small ritual. I would come home on foot and dressed in sombre travelling clothes, not my expensive court dress, and in a leather pouch I carried a special gift for Runa - a pair of gilt brooches worked with interlaced patterns to fasten the straps of her outer tunic, a silver belt, a necklace of amber beads, a bracelet of black jet cunningly carved in the likeness of a snake. The two of us would go inside the small wooden house that I had built for us close beside her sister's home, and, the moment we were away from curious onlookers, her eyes would sparkle with anticipation. Handing her the present, I would stand back and watch with delight as she unwrapped the item I had folded inside a length of coloured silk which later she would sew into trimmings for her best garments. After she had admired the gift, Runa would reach up and give me a long and tender kiss, then she would carefully put the item into the treasure casket that she kept hidden in a cavity in the wall.

  Only after that reassuring welcome would I report to Folkmar and ask what farm work needed to be done. He would set me to cutting grain, helping slaughter and skin cattle for which we would have no winter feed, or salting down the meat. Then there was firewood to be cut, gathered and stacked, and the roofs of our houses had to be checked for wooden shingles that had come loose or needed replacing. As a young man I had detested the repetition and stern rigour of this country life, but now I found the physical labour to be reinvigorating, and I enjoyed testing just how much of my youthful strength remained, pacing myself as I worked, and finding satisfaction in completing the tasks allocated to me. In the evenings as I prepared to go to bed beside Runa, I would say a prayer of thanks to Odinn for having brought me from an orphaned childhood through battle, slavery and near death to the arms and warmth of a woman that I deeply loved.

  To my surprise I found that my neighbours regarded me as some sort of sage, a man deeply learned in the ancient wisdom, and they would come to me for instruction. I responded readily because I was beginning to understand that the future for the Old Ways might not lie with great princes like Harald, but among the ordinary country folk. I reminded myself that 'pagan', the word the Christian priests used disparagingly to describe non-believers, meant no more than someone who was of the countryside, so I taught the villagers what I had learned in my own youth: about the Gods, how to observe the Elder Way, how to live in harmony with the unseen world. In return my neighbours made me a sort of priest, and one year I came back to find that they had constructed a small hof for me. It was no more than a little circular hut set in a grove of trees, a short walk from the house where Runa and I lived. Here I could sacrifice and pray to Odinn undisturbed. And once again Odinn heard me, for in the eighth year of Harald's kingship, Runa delighted me by informing that she was with child, and in due course she gave birth to a boy and a girl, both healthy and strong. We named them Freyvid and Freygerd in honour of the Gods who were also twins.

  BEFORE THE TWINS had learned to walk, Harald sent me on a mission which was a foretaste of his grand ambition - nothing less than to become a second Knut by achieving mastery over all the Norse lands. He summoned me, alone, to his council room, and stated bluntly, 'Thorgils, you speak the language of the Scots.'

  'No, my lord,' I answered. 'As a youth I learned the language of the Irish when I was a slave among them.'

  'But the Irish language is close enough to the Scots tongue for you to conduct secret negotiations without the need for interpreters?'

  'Probably, my lord, though I have never put it to the test.'

  'Then you are to travel to Scotland on my behalf, to visit the King of the Scots, and sound out whether he would be willing to make an alliance with me.'

  'An alliance for what purpose?' I dared to enquire.

  Harald watched me closely for my response as he said, 'To conquer England. He has no love for his southern neighbours.'

  I said nothing, but waited for Harald to go on
.

  'The king's name is Magbjothr, and he has held the throne of Scotland for fourteen years. By all accounts he's skilled in warfare. He would make a powerful ally. There's only one problem: he mistrusts the Norse. His father fought our Norse cousins in the Orkneys, when Sigurd the Stout was earl there.'

  Harald's mention of Sigurd the Stout brought a twinge of pain to my left hand. It was an involuntary response to the familiar stiffness of an old wound.

  'I fought at Earl Sigurd's side in the great battle of Clontarf in Ireland, where he died trying to overthrow the Irish High King,' I said, choosing my words carefully. I refrained from adding that I was the last man to hold aloft Sigurd's famous raven banner, and had received a smashing blow to my hand when the banner's pole was wrenched from my grasp.

  'It's England's High King I plan to overthrow this time, with

  Magbjothr's support,' Harald declared. 'Your task is to persuade him to make common cause with us. There's a vessel ready to take you to Scotland. It's only a two-day sail.'

  I arrived in Scotland expecting to find Magbjothr at his stronghold on the southern shore of what the Scots call the Firth of Moray, but when I got there, his steward told me that the king was on a royal progress around his domains, and not expected back for several weeks. He added, 'The queen has gone with him. May the Lord preserve her.' I must have looked blank because the steward went on, 'She's been getting worse these past few months, and no one seems able to help. And such a fine lady, too. I'm not sure she's fit to travel.'

  Finding that my spoken Irish was readily understood, I made discreet enquiries and learned that the queen, whose name was Gruoch, was suffering from some sort of mysterious illness. 'Elf shot,' was how one informant put it, and another said flatly, 'Demons have entered her head.' Everyone I spoke to made it clear that Gruoch was highly esteemed. Apparently she was a direct descendant of Scots kings, and by marrying Magbjothr had greatly strengthened his claim to the throne. Magbjothr was also of royal blood, but had held the lesser rank of Mormaer of Moray, a title equivalent to Earl, before he came to the throne by deposing the previous king in circumstances that my informants were reluctant to describe. Some said he had defeated the king in open battle, others claimed that he killed him in a man-to-man duel, while a third account hinted that Magbjothr had treacherously assassinated his king while he was his guest. Listening to their conflicting stories, one thing became clear: Magbjothr was a man to be reckoned with. Not only had he won the throne of Scotland through violence, but he had also acquired his wife by force of arms. Gruoch had been married to the previous Mormaer of Moray, who was burned to death along with his retinue of fifty men in a dispute with Magbjothr. What made the outcome all the more remarkable was that Magbjothr had married the widow, and then agreed that her son by her previous husband was to be his heir. The King and Queen of the Scots, I thought to myself, must be a very unusual pair.