One day she would repay them all for her humiliations, for the shrieks of the men who galloped on her flesh, the groans of labor that issued forth slick, greasy babies, the insults of womanhood among those who believed themselves made in the image of gods. Already she had much of southern England sinking. When she had taken enough, the whole kingdom would collapse, giving her more room, more reach. She smiled, thinking of it. Her gaze slid sideways, toward Aethelstan, and she caught him looking at her. She gave the smile to him.
He turned away. Handsome, brave, but innocent. Innocence was not so much what she desired.
Another innocent, his brother Edmund, sat beside him, thin as a lathe.
“So, Edmund,” she called. “I heard you were a gallant knight in the battle lost.” She giggled, Emma’s giggle, and reached for the wine. It was fun to tease Edmund, who still blushed like a baby. “If you fought so well, why did you get captured?” His brother frowned at her. She lifted the cup again, drinking.
* * *
The Jomsviking chief Thorkel the Tall drummed his fingers impatiently on the table; he had been waiting in this cramped little room a while now, and he was a restless man by nature. He reached for the cup of ale, bitter and watery. The bread they had brought him too was coarse and poor, and there was not much of it.
Yet this was the King’s own hall. The Danes had devastated England, this time perhaps too well: Sweyn had said he would not strike again until he could live off the country, and that might take years. Thorkel tapped his fingertips on the table. He needed a war to keep his men, crew his ships, push the power of the Jomsvikings into every court. Sweyn, though, had forbidden him to raid in Norway or Denmark, and east of there was nothing worth the taking. Iceland was too far, and it was poor anyway. There was Ireland, but the Irish King was throwing out the Danes. There was Orkney, but its great Jarl protected it.
The door opened, and the man he was waiting for came in.
He was alone. Thorkel stood, startled, having expected Eadric Streona again. Instead, here before him, pulling out the bench and sitting, was the King of the English himself.
Ethelred looked well fed, when his people starved. A belt of fine braided gold circled his large belly; the gold crown sat on his long, thinning hair. He settled himself on the bench, glanced quickly around the room, and said, “I am glad you have come, Thorkel. I greet you as a master warrior, chief of the Jomsvikings, a king of the sea.”
His voice was too quick, his words brittle, as if he was in a haste to get through this. He gave another quick glance around the room. Thorkel said, “I greet the King of the English.” I have beaten you, he thought, and you might as well admit it. He thought, I’m as good a king as you.
Ethelred was hurrying on. “Hear what I have to say to you, lord of the Jomsburg, and you will be a rich man.”
Thorkel said nothing. He needed money – he always needed money – and the English King was rich. But he had something else in mind for a reward.
The King laid his hands on his belt. “My son plots against me. He is well loved among the people, and I need an army that will fight him in my name. Give me your pledge, that you and your men will come into my service when I need you, and I will pay you twenty thousand pounds of silver.”
Thorkel said, slowly, “You are a generous man, my lord.” He smiled.
“Is it then an agreement?” Ethelred said. “I would have you come next summer, or perhaps the summer after. When the fighting begins. By then I should know much more about Aethelstan’s designs.”
Thorkel said, “You think the famine will be over by next summer?”
Ethelred tossed one hand in the air. “There is no famine for kings.”
Thorkel nodded, trying to look as if he were weighing this in his mind, although he had long since decided. Yet if there were no famine for kings, there was certainly hunger for their armies, and he had to make sure he could keep his men here. “How strong is Aethelstan?”
“Bah. You saw yourself, in the last war: He has no heart for a good fight. You will mow him down like a scythe.”
Thorkel remembered the fighting somewhat differently than this. Aethelstan, he thought, had given the Jomsvikings the worst of it for a while in among the downs to the west. He said, “Who are his friends?”
“Morcar of the Five Burhs. Sigeferth. I don’t know if Thurbrand of Lindsey will join him. Uhtred of Bamburgh, damn him, who failed me this last time. Perhaps a few others.”
“What about Jorvik?”
Ethelred’s whole body moved, pushing this aside. “I said Uhtred. There is no more Jorvik.” His face paled. He glanced around the room again; Thorkel wondered what he was looking for.
Thorkel said, “I have forty ships. All my men are great warriors, each one worth two ordinary men.”
“Good.” Ethelred smiled, stiff cheeked. He was already starting to get up. “Then it is agreed.”
“Agreed,” Thorkel said, and put his hand out.
Fighting for Ethelred, he could keep his men here. And he had heard the opposite of what the King told him: that Aethelstan could not bring himself to rebel. It would be easy work, then, especially if Sweyn was not coming back.
On the other hand, if Sweyn came back, they might be on opposite sides.
He cleared his throat. At least he could take this chance to rid himself of one long-standing annoyance. “I will serve you, but there is something I must do first. And in the summer I will come with forty ships.” He put out his hand and clasped Ethelred’s.
* * *
After sunrise the tide ran up the Humber, and the Jomsviking dragon left the shore. The crew had spent the night carousing in the tavern at Brough, and the men settled slowly to the work. Finally they were rowing westward along the river Ouse. The broad Humber fell into the distance behind them. Soon the big dragon glided through the channel called Uhtred’s Ditch. The lift and swing of the oars and the warble of the water past the dragon’s hull were like songs to the yellow-haired boy sitting in the sterncastle behind Thorkel, who was steering.
The boy had spent his life on ships or in camps – not a long life, but ever since he could remember. Ever since he could remember, he had hated Thorkel. Now he bit his lips and kept his mind fixed on hating Thorkel to keep from crying.
The pilot was also in the stern, an old man they had taken on board back at Brough. He sat on a bench with his arms folded over his chest and said, “Now steerboard,” or “now backboard,” here and there.
Thorkel leaned on the tiller bar. He said, “Is it true this is wizard country?”
The pilot gave him a wide-eyed look. He said, “I am native to this place, sir. I must live here. I know only what I must.”
Thorkel said, “I have heard, in Jorvik, you can trust nothing. No one. Nothing will be as it seems.” The tall man turned his hook-nosed face back toward the boy in the stern. He smiled, which made the boy cold. He had seen Thorkel smile so just before he beat the boy half-dead with a truncheon.
The pilot said, “Jorvik is as it has always been. Mind, the river is a little different.” He got up abruptly and went forward, talking to the oarsmen.
Thorkel laughed. “Well, let’s see what we find.” He glanced at the boy again. “In any case, I’ll be rid of one problem. Hunh. Hah? Knut! Will you be glad to be rid of me?”
The boy could not speak. Around him, gliding by, was ordinary countryside, some trees, broad meadows, sheep. The oarsmen stroked north. Ahead of them, somewhere, lay Jorvik, where he would be abandoned.
* * *
Raef sat under the oak tree, where he gave the law now, and heard people’s complaints and arguments. Goda and some other men of Jorvik who cared to gave him counsel on this. On the day that Thorkel came, he was listening to the sheepmen complain that they paid too much tax to him. They paid very little, but they liked to complain, and he listened, which was all they really wanted anyway.
While they argued and wheedled, trying six different ways of saying the same thing, he watched
the Jomsvikings walk up from the river. There were five men and the tall, scrawny yellow-headed boy who was their purpose here. In the lead was Thorkel the Tall. Raef folded his arms over his chest.
The Jomsviking came up before the oak tree, and the massed townspeople saw him and fell still, abashed. Thorkel looked around him and faced Raef.
“I have heard there is nothing left of Jorvik, but I see that is not the case.”
“Whoever told you that is misled,” Raef said. “Come into my hall, where we can talk.”
He led them along the flagged path to his hall. Thorkel and his men came after him.
When they went inside, all the people there turned to see them. Leif was sitting by the fire with Gemma on his knee, playing some game with her, and down at the far end Laissa sat at her loom with Mini and Edith and another widow who had come to live there with her children. Raef’s other carls were lounging around by the high seat drinking the ale, and with a jerk of his head Raef sent them off down the hall. He climbed up the step to the high seat and sat.
Thorkel stood facing him, the table between them, and his men all gawking around them. The jug was on the table, with a cup, and Raef waved his hand at it.
“Drink. You must be thirsty.”
Thorkel was staring at him, unblinking. He gestured, and the boy came up and filled the cup from the jug and brought it to him. Thorkel took a long drink of it.
His eyes widened. He passed the cup to his men. “Such ale as this I have not tasted in a long while.”
“Nor will you again, save here,” Raef said mildly. “Drink all you wish; there is plenty of it.”
The boy took the empty cup and filled it again, and it went around again, was filled again, and went around. The boy looked suspiciously at the jug, but Thorkel never stopped staring at Raef.
“We have crossed paths before.”
“That is true. A long time ago,” Raef said.
“Yes. I remember that. When I saw you last you had two ears.”
Raef shrugged. “A man can hear as well with one as two, I suppose.”
“And ten fingers.”
“Eight are as good as ten.”
“You are right, it was years ago. You were on a ship in the fleet my brother Sigvaldi led against Jarl Hakon, in Hjorunga Bay.”
“Yes. The last I saw of you was your back, running away, and leaving the rest of us to Hakon’s mercy.”
Thorkel jerked his head back, annoyed at that. “Well,” he said, “you are here now, and the story of that is told in every camp and hall in the world, although usually your brother is the hero.”
“Conn Corbansson was the hero. Come to your business, I have much to do.”
Thorkel shrugged, as much with his eyebrows as his shoulders. He said, “Well, I have come here to give you something. This you may find useful or not.”
Raef already knew what he intended, but he said only, “I am listening.”
“I have given my pledge and the pledge of the Jomsvikings to King Ethelred, and in the coming summer, or maybe the next, we will go into his service.”
“Well,” said Raef mildly, “this is a turn.” Leif had sauntered up the hall and stood there to one side, watching with keen eyes.
“Fate is full of turns. Yet this puts me in somewhat of a difficult position,” Thorkel said. “Since it may come of this that I must fight Sweyn Tjugas.”
Raef scratched his beard. His gaze flickered toward the boy, standing there with his head hanging, his hair tangled, his face grimy. “I have no problem with Sweyn Tjugas, either for or against.” On the other side of the hall, Laissa had drawn closer to listen.
“I’m glad to hear that,” Thorkel said, and smiled. “Since I have stood foster father to his second son here. Therefore I am giving him to you, to get him out of the way, in case.”
He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and pushed him forward. “There, Knut. I hope you find this place more to your liking than mine.”
The boy mumbled something. Thorkel cuffed him again. “And perhaps learn some better manners while you’re here, brat.”
The boy snarled at him. Raef said, “Well, I accept, then.” He was smiling at the boy, who refused to meet his eyes and kicked the straw and hunched his shoulders. “And in return I will give you two pieces of advice, Thorkel.”
“Ah,” Thorkel said, startled.
“The first,” Raef said, “is that you stay as far as you can from the Queen of the English.”
“The Queen,” Thorkel said. “I have no interest in her.”
“Good. Take none.”
“What else, then?”
Raef said, “That you have until the sun goes down to get beyond my reach.”
Thorkel’s head jerked up, and his men stirred, looking with a sudden apprehension around them. The Jomsviking snorted. “I do not see you bear a sword or an axe or any weapon.”
“Thorkel.” Raef swiveled his gaze toward him. “You know nothing.”
“Maybe. In any case I shall be gone.” Thorkel reached out and smacked the boy again. “This should be interesting, Knut. Greet your new father.” He strode away, out of the hall, and his men followed him, leaving the boy Knut behind.
Raef said, “Well, then, Knut Sweynsson. Welcome to my hall.”
The boy looked up. He was only half-grown, and his hands and feet were too big and his neck too long, and his ears stuck out of the uncurried mane of his hair. He said, “I will not be welcome. I don’t want to be here. I hate Thorkel for betraying my father, and I hate you too.” Then he burst into tears.
* * *
Laissa said, “That is an insult, isn’t it? Getting you to foster someone else’s child?”
Raef was watching the boy walk away. Leif had collected him, was taking him around the hall, showing him his place there. Outside, in the city, the older Jomsvikings were all hurrying down to their ship. He had it in mind to topple a tree on them if they didn’t get down the river fast enough.
He said, “Oh, he’s a good boy.”
Laissa grunted. “He’s a nasty, bad-mannered cur – you can see that just in the way he walks.” She turned back away from Raef to go to her loom again.
He followed her. She took a great pleasure in this work, in weaving together the separate strands, and he loved to watch her do it. She said, over her shoulder, “We’ll see how he repays you for your kindness in taking him in.” She sat down at the weaving and picked up her shuttle.
Raef fingered the stray hairs at the nape of her neck, his gaze going to the boy, who sat by the fire, and he could not keep from smiling. He knew what Thorkel had so carelessly cast aside. He had seen this boy before, on the occasion when he lost his fingers, older by a good ten years, with Danes and Saxons all giving him homage and the crown of England on his head.
* * *
Against his will, Knut liked the hall. There were only a few people, it was warm, and it smelled good, unlike the great hall in the Jomsburg. The one end particularly was very light. He looked up and saw beams and thatch, but it was very sunny here. There were women here, and there had been none allowed in the Jomsburg.
He remembered what Thorkel had said, on the way, that the place was bewitched, and how the pilot had refused even to talk about it. Trust nothing, he thought. Believe nobody.
The fat old man showed him where to sleep, which was a fine, wide bench all to himself with a bearskin on it, and then the fat man brought him over to the fire and got him some bread and meat and another cup of the ale. The fat man’s name was Leif. He told the boy some of the other people’s names, but then the wizard at the other end was calling and Leif went away.
The boy sat chewing the bread and thinking about the ale. He wondered if it would put him under the wizard’s spell to drink his ale, but in a moment he had found several reasons why that was probably not so and drunk a lot. A man came by him to put wood on the fire, and two women began to unhook the spit from the uprights. There were little children, who were playing a game down by the
looms, and more women weaving, but he saw no warriors.
That surprised him, and he looked around more carefully. There were signs of other men – likely they were all gone now, like the king and his fat old friend – but there were not many of them. There were no weapons lying around, no shields or war chests. Neither the King nor his fat friend had worn any gold.
A little girl, not even a year old, watched Knut curiously from the other side of the fire. She smiled at him. He found himself smiling at her, but then a woman called “Gemma,” and the baby turned away.
The woman gave Knut a harsh look. She was the slender, fair-haired woman who had come up beside the wizard-king: his wife, Knut supposed. She wore no crown nor coif, her yellow hair gathered up on her head in a twist of wool.
It struck him that Raef was no king at all. Thorkel had dumped him into the care of a lowborn carl with no warriors and no gold. Knut was the son of a king. That meant he did not have to obey Raef or heed him or ever call him father. That settled him. He knew his place here now. He went down to the fire to get something else to eat.
Chapter Sixteen
Winchester. Some Years Later.
The white nuns had their house on the edge of Winchester. Emma went there in the spring; she had brought many more girls to take the veil. She sat watching as the long white row of women walked away, and she smiled.
The abbot came to her, bubbling her praises for giving all these brides to Christ. Emma bowed her head modestly. She wanted to rid herself also of her sons; they were growing older, unpleasantly close to her. She would get Ethelred to send them into Normandy, on pretext of educating them. She kneeled before the abbot, her hands together, to be blessed for all she had done for them.
* * *
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