“Something this new and strange is seldom easily grasped. You know how I myself thought about it for months before choosing it. And I don’t make much of it in front of anybody, nor forbid anyone in my household to worship as he likes. That would merely earn me ill will and lessen my usefulness to you, King.”
“But we can’t leave everything to a few scattered holy men. We have our own share to take in their work.”
“A king’s work lies in this world. Men uphold you—and take your Faith—because you’re doing it well.”
“Oh, yes, peace at home, strength against outsiders, law—Law.” Haakon’s eyes widened until the wind whipped tears from them. His voice shivered. “I am the king. I can make new law.”
“Some new law, my lord, for which folk find themselves ready. But for one thing, this business you’ve spoken of, that we must rest all day Sunday. Everybody will ask about work that needs doing every day, like feeding the livestock. And indeed, how can they make their livings if they’re idle one whole day out of seven?”
Haakon sighed. He walked on for a while unspeaking. The hall and its outbuildings loomed ahead. A few fisher boats were coming up the fjord, homebound. Their catches gleamed silvery. It was stiff rowing, the crews chilled by the sweat and sea-spray that soaked their clothes.
“Even so,” Haakon said, “I can make certain changes. Can’t I? I’ve been thinking. And Sira Eadwin, the priest now down in Rogaland, he gave me a rede. Yuletide—” As he recalled last year at Hladi, an inward shudder passed through him. Thorleif saw it, and also saw him win back at once to himself.
“You’ll not get them to stop offering at that season, King,” warned the older man. “Too many would fear the sun won’t come back. Besides, in the bottom depths of the gloom, who could do without this firelit cheer?”
Haakon nodded. “I know. It’s as true in England. But—but if we make the feast go on longer than three days, won’t they like that? And then they’ll have time to do more than slaughter, gorge, and swill. Time for—for peace and—holiness—to find them.”
“Hm.” Thorleif stroked his fluttering beard. “Not a bad thought, lord, no, not bad. If, say—hm—the law was that every man must brew a barrel of ale and keep the Yuletide hallowed while it lasts— There’s not too much work to do at midwinter. A law that they don’t only give to the gods, but make merry on their own, yes, I think most of them would obey that.”
“Then,” Haakon said happily, “they ought to go along with a bidding that Yule begin not at midwinter but on the birthday of the Christ. Sira Eadwin thinks that’ll plant a seed in at least some breasts.”
“Well—maybe, seeing how close those days are to each other. The heathen will only keep a lengthened Yuletide. Let’s think on this, and get the thoughts of others.” Thorleif was silent for a few strides. “My lord, you’re young. You’ve many years ahead of you, m-m, God willing. The stronger you become, the more you can do. But you’ve yet to finish laying the groundworks of that strength, let alone build it higher.”
Haakon did not stiffen at such frankness, as Harald Fairhair or Eirik Blood-ax would likely have done. Here spoke a friend. He had enough foes, and knew he would get more. “I’m seeing to our defenses as best I can.”
Thorleif nodded. “I know, lord. But the true strength of a king lies in the love his folk bear for him. King Eirik found that out. It wasn’t weakness that brought him down; it was his high-handedness. Do not break law, lord. Give it. This Yuletide business may help, but it touches lives rather slightly.”
Haakon flushed. Thorleif was talking almost as if he stood on the same footing as the king.
Well, but they were not out before any gathering; they were walking together, in a wind that blew their words away from the guardsmen at their backs. As he often did, Haakon felt how new he was in Norway, how far away England lay—two or three days’ sail in a fast ship, nevertheless dream-far away. “What have you in mind?” he asked.
“A seed or two of another kind, King, for you to let sprout if you wish. These are not undertakings to go into lightly.
“Folk are growing in numbers. Their lives are changing in other ways too. Some old laws ought to be mended or ended. Some new ought to be made. Now, from the hunters and trappers of the North to the farmers and traders of the South, those lives are unlike. Each part of the land needs a Thing with laws fitted to its dwellers. Your grandfather King Haalfdan set forth his Eidsvold laws, which work well down there. Elsewhere, though— We here in Sogn could do with a renewal at our Gula Thing.”
It blazed in Haakon. “Yes!” he cried.
“Slowly, carefully, lord,” Thorleif said. “We can look further into it, you and I, while you’re here. But you’ll want the well-thought-out redes of many more. And then, north in Thraandheim, their Frosta Thing— For that you’d better work with Sigurd Jarl and other wise Thraands. This will take years.”
“But at last—” Haakon gazed ahead, past the buildings, into the sky, beyond the clouds and wind to the sun. He laughed aloud, almost as a boy laughs in sheer gladness.
His feeling lasted through the day’s big meal, when the leading men of the neighborhood ate and drank with him. The mead glowed in his blood.
Afterward Eyvind Finnsson rose to stand before him and give a poem. This skald had been with Harald Fairhair, had kept aside while Eirik Blood-ax overshadowed the elder king, but come forward again; he was among those who saw in the newcomer a Harald reborn. He was tall and thin, his dark locks beginning to grizzle. But his voice rang.
“I have nothing new as yet, King, that would be worthy of you,” he said. “However, lately a work from Iceland has reached me. Parts of it hark far back; parts are fresh. The whole is wonderful. I’m not sure who wove it together, but gifted he is.”
Dusk was setting in. Lamps shone. Longfires leaped, crackled, and sparked. Their light wrestled with shadows stealing inward through the smoke. Warmth, chill, and smells of burning pinewood twisted among each other.
To Haakon, who had drunk a bit more than maybe he should, Eyvind seemed half in, half out of the world of men. “It deals with how everything came to be and how it shall end,” said the skald. “The words are of a seeress whom Odin raised from the grave to soothsay for the gods.”
No, thought Haakon through the buzzing in his head, he, the king, should not forbid this, wreck the mood, turn these men around him against him. Rather, let him listen and learn.
The hall grew very still. Only the sputtering fires and the wind outdoors sounded in their ears—they, and the chant.
“A hearing I ask
from the holy kindred
and Heimdall’s offspring,
highborn or lowly.”
Yes, Haakon recalled, didn’t the tale go that Heimdall, the watchman of Aasgard, once went over the earth to beget the first thralls, yeomen, and jarls? He’d heard mere snatches of it. How little he knew, how strange it was to him, this land he had gained.
“You want me, Warfather,
well to say forth
all I can tell
of olden time.”
Odin, Warfather, Father of the Slain, those whom the valkyries bore to his Valhall to feast and fight until Ragnarok cast down all that was.
“So I remember
the mighty ones
of whom I was born
in bygone years.
Nine homes, nine worlds
I knew in the tree
whose roots run deeply
down in the mold.”
The staves went on, full of strangeness, glimpses through shadows.
“I know where Heimdall’s
horn lies hidden
under the high
and holy tree.
Over it falls
a flowing stream
from Warfather’s pledge.
Do you want to know more?”
Yes, Haakon had heard, Odin plighted an eye for a drink from wisdom’s well. And the Roaring Horn waited for the day when it would call the
gods to their last strife—those gods who knew themselves foredoomed but stayed undaunted. How strong were they in this their homeland?
Harald Fairhair, greatest of kings in Norway, Haakon’s father, had given them their honor. He rested now in undying honor of his own.
VIII
A wind from the north went astray in the twisting lanes of York, milled about between walls and hissed under eaves. Most stenches scattered before its sharpness. Thatch, turf, and shakes blocked sight of the morning sun, but light spilled down from the wan blue. Wild geese were on the wing. Their honking blew faint through hoofbeat, footfall, creak, clang, mumble, all the manifold racket below.
The train that left the hall went on horseback, above the muck and mire of the streets. First rode a half score picked guardsmen, their chief Arinbjörn at their head. Helmets gleamed; cloaks rippled in rainbow hues back from rustling byrnies whose every ring had been shined. King Eirik and Queen Gunnhild followed, side by side. He wore a gold-embroidered black tunic trimmed with marten, blue breeks that flared over kidskin boots, a hat with a silken band above the wide brim, gold coiled at his throat and on his arms. The skirts draped past her leggings were of white wool. Leaves, vines, and beasts tumbled entwined through the weaving of the panels that hung from turtle-shaped brooches at her shoulders, under a heavy amber necklace. The cloth that covered her dark hair was red silk. After them came their sons and daughter, little Sigurd on the saddlebow of a warrior. Ragnhild’s chestnut braids fell free beneath a silver headband set with garnets. A dozen more guards brought up the rear. None would need their weapons today, but never would their lord fare meekly.
It was no mean town through whose streets she passed. For all the war and woe that had gone by, it had grown strongly under the Danes. Even this late in the year ships crowded its wharfs, come up the River Ouse—on whose west side newer buildings now also clustered thick—from the Humber and the North Sea with goods to stuff the warehouses. Cargoes lay ready for them to take home. Beneath the crowding houses, many of them two or three stories high, often with overhanging galleries, some built wholly of wood and their posts bountifully carven, well-burdened wagons made a way through throngs—workmen, chapmen, sailors, fishers, farmers, herders, wives, children, hawkers, priests, thralls, beggar, now and then a whore or maybe a wandering ragged singer, surely thieves, and who could say what else? Doors stood open on workshops, everything from a stinking tanner’s or dyer’s or the noise and smoke of a smithy to a room where costly metals and stones were made into wonders. Inns brawled. The swine that went about rooting for scraps were seldom hungry.
And it was the heart of Yorkish Northumbria, whose broad plowlands, meadows, woods, and waters bred a stalwart folk, Danes, Norse, and English already melting together into one, a bedrock for the house of a king.
And Eirik had made himself that king. Yes, Eadred elsewhere in England called him an earl; but Eadred had not risked coming here. An ealdorman had taken Eirik’s oath. Neither lord could look on it as binding. The one grip on southern Northumbria was that of the king from Norway.
The last street through which Gunnhild rode gave on a marketplace. Sellers and buyers alike drew back against the booths while the horses went past. Their bustle and chaffer died away. They stared as others had done, leery of the newcomers. Gunnhild saw no hatred, though, and a few raised an arm in bashful hailing. Arinbjörn had said it was understandable among the lowborn, after such strife as had gone to and fro, plunder and fire and death across the hinterland. They prayed to their God that this latest master would clamp down a peace that lasted awhile, and not be too overbearing. If that came about, said Arinbjörn, Eirik would begin to hear cheers.
On the far side of the market a low stone wall marked off a big close. There, behind the cathedral, stood most of the Roman works that were left. Though time had gnawed at their stone and brick, they were still in use by the Church and the city fathers. She had thought how they and the other remains must scorn the earthworks and palisades that today warded houses made of timber and clay. Would such might ever be seen again?
She lifted her head. The olden builders were dust. She had heard how their Romaborg was mostly wretchedness and wreckage. Their Miklagard still gleamed rich and strong at the eastern end of the Midworld Sea, but those folk did not even speak the same tongue. Here, today, were life and strength enough to raise a new greatness.
Her heed went to the cathedral before her. Hoofs rang on flagstones as the troop rode into the close. Stone too—the softly yellow limestone of York—was the church. Three goodly buildings flanked it, but seemed almost humble in its nearness. Nowhere in Norway, Denmark, or Svithjod rose anything as high or as cunningly made as this. The pillars of the porch were like menhirs set up by giants, but plank-smooth. The round-arched doors behind them stood open on hugeness. Yet Gunnhild had seen the leafy tendrils chiseled into their jambs; and the tower reached for Heaven.
Eirik drew rein and sprang from the saddle. He lifted a hand to help her down. When she leaned on its steadiness, a thrill shot through her, well-nigh lustful. He grinned. “You’re not afraid, are you?” he whispered. “It doesn’t hurt, and it’s done me no harm.”
She grinned back, she-wolf to he-wolf. “Nor has it mildened anybody I know of,” she answered. “Do you really tell your sins to the priest? I should think you’d likelier boast of them.”
“He shrives me. He’d better. Not that I’ve gone to him more than twice.” The second time had been yesterday, because the archbishop held that God would be offended if the king did not when his queen and children were about to be christened. Eirik had thought that refusing would make more trouble than it was worth, and maybe bring bad luck.
Behind Gunnhild’s face her soul thrummed. This was no small god to whom she went to give honor. His worshippers filled every land southward to the Midworld Sea and the Moors, eastward to the Wendish marches. More and more of them were to be met in the North. True, vikings looted his halidoms and cut down his holy men, without suffering more than everybody was sooner or later bound to suffer. But neither did those who forsook Odin. And Christians fought no less well; here in England, they had first halted the Danes, then battle by battle brought those former strangers under their king and into their Church. Their net of trade, and the wealth streaming along it, drew many to them. All the best swords were of their forging. The wise ones among them had lore going wider and deeper than she could fathom. Already in the short span since she came here she had seen and heard enough to know that.
She would not let awe daunt her. She would find her own way forward. Until she understood the White Christ better, she would not openly scoff, nor very openly break his laws. It might turn out that the best hope for her blood was indeed with him.
Yet she had known too much of the unknown, and felt it, not to walk wire-taut beside her man toward the house of the Christ.
Their brood came after, unwontedly quiet. The guards could not doff helms and byrnies without spoiling the show. Arinbjörn posted them along the wall. He put himself in the entryway, a spear upright in his hand. The rabble were not going to gape at this.
Three priests in white robes waited to welcome the kingly family. They smiled; they raised hands in blessing. Suddenly, as in nightmare, Gunnhild remembered how she had lured the Finns to their death. If only Thorolf— No, Thorolf was dead too, fallen in this same England, buried by his evil brother Egil. Aalf, then. At her back she had Gamli and Guthorm, her sons, blooded warriors by now, but how young they still were! If only her brother Aalf, the stout and steadfast Shipman, were here. But he had stayed behind in Orkney, saying that he was doing well enough. Besides, the king should have a man there to speak for him, with crews of his own on hand, lest Thorfinn Skull-splitter get above himself.
And, he had not said, should things go awry for his sister and her family, he would be able to take them in and help them.
Gunnhild sent that bat-thought off into the darkness whence it had fluttered. How had it found her? Wh
y, unless Odin, the Father of Witchcraft, was spiteful?
What need had she today of any man other than the one at her side? Together they crossed the threshold.
In the vestibule Eirik and his sons unslung their swords and stood them in a rack. An angel painted on the plaster watched over it, his blade drawn, like a victor. As they entered the high-vaulted nave, a choir broke into song—song in the Latin tongue, rising and falling, as eerie to her as a Finnish spellcasting. The organ began to moan and thunder. It was as though sea and stone had become the skalds of Christ.
Light through window glass overwhelmed the candles on thirty altars. Saints stared stiffly from the walls. Though the wind blustered outside, baffled, the stones gave their hush and chill to the air. Incense sweetened it. Leading men of the city and hinterland watched their new king and his kin go slowly past. Some smiled. They had not been unwilling to help a fellow Northman take over, instead of a far-off Englishman to whom their own laws and rights meant little. Later today he would give these witnesses a feast, and gifts. Gunnhild looked forward to that. Thus far she, a woman, had barely met any of them.
Priests and monks, acolytes and novices were ranked on either side of the transept. Wulfstan’s vestments glowed against their drabness. The archbishop of York stood before the high altar. His aged hand would take the holy water and sign the holy Cross on the brows of Gunnhild and her get.
He spoke solemn words, in which she did not find much meaning. Her boisterous sons had gone awkward. This grandeur and gravity came over their unhardened souls like a tide. Well, she thought, it would not wash Eirik Blood-ax’s blood out of them. He and she would see to that.
Her gaze roved. Among those on her right she spied a young fellow she had met. Brihtnoth, his name was. Of middling height, sturdily built, he yet seemed boyish, with his round pink cheeks, curly brown hair, and shy way of speaking to her. Otherwise there was little to mark him out, unless one looked closely at a ring he wore, small but of lovely workmanship.
Mother of Kings Page 23