“And then you’ll not find the house of Eirik Haraldsson unthankful. But first we must do it.” She sighed. “Well, the warfaring’s not for me, a woman. Nor, they say, is the planning of it. But a woman does look at the world otherwise than a man. She may sometimes see what he does not.”
Unwonted wariness showed on Arinbjörn’s blocky face. “And you are the wisest of women, Queen. You ken far more than most of us.”
He was thinking of spellcraft, she knew. Best lead him from that at once. “What I hope to get from you today is riot what my son King Harald doubtless did, thoughts about troop arrays and outfitting and suchlike. Nor do I want a tale of blows and brags. Leave that to the skalds. I’m after the feel of things, what it was like to go there and be there.”
“I, I’m not sure what you mean.”
She smiled. “Take your ease, Arinbjörn. You’ve earned it.” She signed Kisping to refill his horn. “Remember aloud. Let your words wander. It may bring back something—” She dropped her voice to a murmur. “—something unheeded by others, maybe by anyone wakeful, something such as comes to us in dreams.”
“Well, I—” Arinbjörn grabbed the horn from the footling and gulped. “The gods, uh, the saints know I’m no soothsayer, not any kind of wizard, only a man.”
“That’s enough.” A man who had been close to Egil Skallagrimsson. He was bound to have felt, however unwittingly, a breath from out of this world—elven or hellish or whatever it was—and it would have left a mark on his heavy soul, like a frostbite scar that ever afterward twinges at touches too light for hale flesh to be aware of. “What I seek is nothing witchy, nothing forbidden, only a fuller understanding of how things are.” What she might later do with it was not his business. “If nothing else, those were my sons who fared thither, a son of mine who fell. Share it with me.”
“How, my lady?” he asked, bewildered.
“Sit back, old friend of ours. Drink. Talk.”
Thus did she draw him out, unsure herself of what she was searching for: the landward steeps and fjords, the waiting for a wind, the challenges back and forth, the fighting back and forth—
Slowly she began to see, to take in, the truth of what she had gropingly guessed, how Haakon breathed his own battle gladness into his men and how much they loved him. It would not do merely to drive him out of the land as Eirik was driven out. While he lived, the Norse would not yield to any other king. So his death would be shattering to them, if his death could be wrought.
Curses, poison—no, not from afar, not when Norse witches and maybe even Norse gods must be watching over him, whether or not he wanted it or knew it. Besides, the folk would disown her sons, who would themselves disown her, if ever she got their names linked to seid.
She hid her thoughts and led Arinbjörn onward. It was close to mealtide at the hall when she let him go. “You’ve been more than helpful,” she said. “You’ve soothed my grief a little.”
“I’m glad if I have, Queen,” he mumbled.
He donned his cloak and walked off into the rain.
She sat down again and brooded. It was as if the darkness closed in on her. Haakon must fall in battle, as Guthorm and Gamli did. But how, when he seemed, like his father, to bear victory in his blood?
The wind keened outside. Where beyond it were they who once lay as bairns at her breast? They died in their sins, which were not small, as lustily as they had lived. Odin would have made them welcome. Dag’s last poem for Eirik smote through her. But these had been Christian men. Had they not? If only a song and a drum could make them one with earth and heaven—but she had put that behind her. Had she not?
She’d better be off to the hall herself. They’d soon dine there, and she must be its lady. At least she could return here when the unseen sun was setting.
From the night on the other side of it drifted a fog-wisp of thought. She snatched. Her fingers closed on nothing they could grasp. Yet—
She straightened in her chair. “Kisping,” she said.
His lean frame leaped to stand before her. “Yes, my queen?”
“I want you to start learning the use of bow and arrow.”
She had seldom seen him gape. “What? But, Queen, I’m no warrior.”
“There’s no haste. I’ll keep you busy, never fear. However, in between,
you’ll work on marksmanship. I may someday find it called for.”
He hooded his eyes. “As the queen wishes.”
It was not at all clear to her what she wished. She had only a sudden, shapeless foreknowledge, which might or might not be meaningful. But she felt somehow that when her sons again went after Haakon’s life they would have her spellcraft secretly behind them.
XXVII
Time passed. The sons of Gunnhild went raiding. By turns, they harassed Norway. Otherwise they saw to their Danish holdings and households, horses, hawks, hounds, their ships above all. They visited, guested, feasted, sported, made merry, and begot brats whom, heeding her warning, they did not set on their knees.
Nor did she find the wheeling seasons dreary, however much she yearned ahead. She fared often across Denmark by wain or by water, to call on her sons, King Harald Bluetooth, and other men great in the land. Some she could charm; some were a little afraid of her, hiding it as well as they could; all would uphold her and the Eirikssons or, at worst, not speak against them in council and at the Things.
At the hall near Aalborg she spread her ever-growing net to catch tidings from far and wide, but she got them straightforwardly too. News throbbed along trade routes running west to Iceland; north to Finnmörk and Bjarmaland; east through Svithjod to Aldeigjuborg and Holmgard; south to the Midworld Sea and Serkland; southeasterly to Kiev, Miklagard on the Golden Horn and its empire, the depths of Asia. She drank of the knowledge—the whole wonderful world—as thirstily as heroes in Valhall drank the ale of the Aesir. It was not to gain power; it was for its own sake, her mind flying free.
Off in Orkney, Ragnhild still seemed glad of her new husband, Ljot Jarl, though she had not borne him a child. However, he must needs be much away from home. His brother Skuli had gone to Scotland, whose king gave him the rank of earl. Thence Skuli returned to Caithness, where he gathered a host and led it over the straits to overthrow Ljot. That became a stiff battle. Ljot had the victory and Skuli fled back to Scotland. Ljot came after him, stopping in Caithness to add to his own strength.
Skuli rode north again with an army lent him by the king of Scotland, an earl at his side. The brothers met anew in the Dales of Caithness. Ljot went in the forefront of his men, smiting till the Scots broke and scattered. Skuli stood his ground with a handful. They were hewn down.
Ljot brought Caithness wholly under himself. This sat ill with the Scots. He must look for a troublous morrow.
King Eadgar ruled an England peaceful from the North Sea to the Welsh marches. Few vikings had the recklessness to harry it any longer. Pickings stayed better in Ireland, where the olden kingdoms were more at war with each other than with the Norse, who gained by making shifty alliances among them. Meanwhile the shores and rivers were apt to lie unguarded.
Gunnhild’s kinsman Walking Hrolf had cloven a way for settlers in what was now called Normandy. His grandson, young Duke Richard, married a daughter of the French Duke Hugh. While the Norman lords were vassals of the king of France, they ran their domain as they chose. Nothing was left of Northern law and right; farmfolk were beginning to seethe.
Though his overbearingness made him foes, Egil Skallagrimsson stood high in Iceland. He had had children by his wife Aasgerd, two sons and two daughters who lived; lately she had borne him a third son, but then the second-oldest took sick and died. Good, thought Gunnhild. Let him know what such a loss felt like.
On the plains sweeping south from Wendland, Mieszkoi, of the ancient house of Piast, conquered everything between the Oder and the Warthe rivers. So did he become the first king of Poland. He was receiving Christian missionaries.
North of Danish Skaan
ey, Bleking, and Halland, the king of the Swedes ruled strongly and quietly. Each spring a hallowed woman drove a wain bearing an image of Frey in a closed shrine around the land to bless it. Twice yearly, at the turnings of the sun, folk flocked to the huge halidom at Uppsala, where fires smoked high and men as well as beasts were hanged on trees, pierced by spears, offerings to the gods. Riches flowed through such marts as Birka and Helgo. In Gardariki, across the Baltic, traders went down the rivers to Kiev, or even onward to Miklagard.
Kiev was the strong heart of a commonwealth that grew and grew. Svyatoslav was its new king. He was mostly off fighting the wealthy Khazars, the wild Pechenegs, and other tribes. The real ruler was his widowed mother Queen Olga. She bloodily avenged her husband Igor on the Drevlyans who killed him. She changed the slow and risky gathering of scot to a tax. She stretched Kievan sway north to Holmgard, which she called Novgorod, and south to the borders of the Greek Empire. She visited Miklagard herself, became a Christian, and tried to convert her folk—though she would not acknowledge the Eastern Emperor her overlord, but rather sent west to Germany for missionaries. This was her only failure. Hardly anybody took the Faith. When Bishop Adalbert arrived, Svyatoslav booted him out. Several of the bishop’s following got slain on the way home.
Gunnhild had had worse defeats. She wished she could meet Queen Olga.
The Saxonian King Otto was crowned Holy Roman Emperor and set about enlarging his realm. His dealings with King Harald Bluetooth were uneasy.
Down in Spain, the kingdom of Castile was growing apace, while a new Caliph of Cordoba was bulwarking his Moors. The Greeks wrested Crete back from the Arabs. Near their frontier, the Magyars raided into Bulgaria, leaving a broad wasteland behind them. Then worthless Emperor Romanus died and, after some trouble, Nikephorus Phokas mounted the throne. He was a man of war and of iron will. Soon he regained Cyprus.
Meanwhile the English bridged the Thames at London. Monks in the Alps founded a hospice to help travelers across those mountains. Often something else that somebody had heard and happened to remember flitted by Gunnhild, a few words to tell of Arabs who were writing about the stars and Jews who were writing about speech itself— Her lust to know more must go unslaked.
As for Norway, traders spoke of peace and good years. Sometimes, though, a swallow winged yonder.
XXVIII
King Haakon and Sigurd Jarl had always kept in close touch. The last Yuletide they would ever share, Haakon spent at Hladi. Later he rode around the Thraandlaw, showing off his might but mainly giving gifts, righting wrongs, and whatever else he could do to keep the folk and their chieftains his friends. Returning to Hladi, he stayed there in the best of fellowship till spring. When at last he went back south, the jarl’s oldest living son sailed with him—he who, newborn, had been given the king’s name and sprinkled with water by the king’s own hand.
He was now a young man, wide-awake and witty, who had already traveled peacefully about in Norway and in viking abroad. Nevertheless Sigurd asked if this Haakon could now come along. “You can still use a little polishing,” said the father with a smile, “and it will be helpful for you to see something of kingcraft at first hand.” He turned grave. “You two need to know and understand one another, so when I’m gone you can trustfully work and war together.”
Already Haakon the king and Haakon the jarl’s son felt a liking. Their voyage down the coast went blithely.
When the crews saw Harald Fairhair’s barrow loom against heaven, they stood in from the sea and lay to at Körmt. A hard-rowed karfi had gone ahead with a message; everything was ready for them. Guards who had waited by turns at the landing raised spears and a shout before they warped the king’s ship against the wharf. Though the hall was not far off, other men came at a gallop, leading horses for the foremost of the newcomers to ride.
This was a day cool and sweet. Grass glowed newly green. A wind laden with earth-smells as well as sea-tang soughed through pine boughs. Birds filled the blue with wings and cries. Before debarking, the Haakons had donned good clothes from their chests; but for the king the horse herders brought a gold-embroidered tunic, and for his guest a red mantle trimmed with marten.
“That was well done, lord,” said the latter as the saddle leather creaked beneath them. “You must have an able steward.”
“It was my queen, surely,” answered the former with a slight shrug. “She knew I’d return here, and told me she’d arrive well ahead of time.”
“A thoughtful, lady, then, worthy of her lord.”
Although merely courteous, the words jarred King Haakon a little. Was he being unfair to his Gyda? Harking back, he remembered how seldom she was with him. He fared too much, too hard, from end to end of his kingdom.
Men swarmed in the yard to roar their greetings. She had invited everyone of mark from far and wide to feast with him. Springing to earth and striding forward, he saw her at the front door between two roofposts carven with twining vines and gripping beasts. Her gown was of the finest white linen under richly hued woolen panels, her headcloth embroidered. Gold rings coiled on her bare arms. But at her belt hung the bunched keys of a housewife. As Haakon neared, the round face lighted up.
On either side of her stood the highest-ranking guests. Closest on the right was a lean gray man whose voice pierced the hubbub: “Hail and welcome, King!”
“Oh, ever welcome,” said Gyda, almost too low to be heard.
“I bring an outstanding man with me,” said the king, “my namesake Haakon, son of the great Sigurd Jarl.”
They looked at the stranger. Like his father, he was of middling height, but more powerfully built, wide shoulders and thick arms. His face was handsome, broad, high in the cheekbones, hawklike of nose, the neatly cut hair and beard midnight black. Above a ready smile, the greenish-gray eyes were always watchful.
“So this is our queen.” His speech flowed as smoothly as his gait. “Glad I am to meet you, my lady—queenly indeed.”
Gyda flushed. “In, in my lord’s honor,” she faltered. Mostly she dressed like what she had been, a woman of the well-off yeomanry.
“I can hardly give you everybody’s name at once,” said the king. “However, here—” He went through them, they answered in seemly wise, till he came to the gray-haired man. “This is Eyvind Finnsson.”
“Of course!” cried young Haakon. “The famous skald. I was only a boy, off in the corners, when I saw you at Hladi, but never have I forgotten. Later I was unlucky enough to be elsewhere each time you came, but how I do know your poems. All men do.”
“I couldn’t go with the king on this journey, being ill when he left,” Eyvind sighed.
“You’re well now, I hope, as I hope to hear the staves you must have been making.”
“What else should I do than praise my king?”
Guthorm Sindri, another skald, who had gone along, bristled and snapped, “First I will tell of how he traveled in splendor.”
Eyvind stiffened. “King,” he said, “you know I was with your father King Harald Fairhair while Guthorm was still a younker on a farm.”
The older Haakon chuckled. “Two skalds are like two cats in the same house.” Then, earnestly: “You are both good men. How can I set one above the other?”
Haakon Sigurdarson took the word. “If I may, my lord, let me offer a way out. Since they can’t both speak their verses at once, why not let sheer happenstance choose? That can’t shame either of them.” Everyone stared. A hush spread slowly across the yard. He put his right hand behind his back. “Watch, whoever stands at my rear. I’ve spread either two or three fingers. Eyvind, as the elder, will you guess which? If you’re right, you shall go first, otherwise Guthorm; but both shall have the same honor, and skald-gifts of the same worth; and he who is second today shall be first tomorrow. King, is this your will?”
“It is,” said Haakon Aethelstan’s-foster.
Cheers rang. Even the skalds nodded and smiled. Eyvind lost the guess but took it well: “It may be that tom
orrow I’ll have something to say forth about you too, Haakon Sigurdarson, if it please the king.”
“I also, ere you leave us,” said Guthorm hastily.
Guests then streamed into the hall, where the ale casks waited. They would drink before the dining boards were set up, and drink onward after these had been taken away. King Haakon got Haakon Sigurdarson aside as they went in. Queen Gyda stayed close to them.
“That was cunningly done,” said the king. “I must remember the trick.”
The young man grinned. “Well, my lord, I’ve gathered that it doesn’t pay to affront a skald. King Eirik and Queen Gunnhild made a bad mistake when they did it to Egil Skallagrimsson, no?”
“You shall have a reward of me—not big, for this had better stay between us, but what would you like?”
Tongue licked lips. “Frankly, lord, a woman for my bed while I’m here. It’s been the only lack, sailing south.”
Yes, he was a lustful one, thought the older Haakon, however wise beyond his years he might be. The king turned to his wife. “Gyda, can you see to that?” he asked. “A maidservant, but not a thrall—freeborn and willing.”
“I’ll deal kindly with her, my lord and lady,” young Haakon promised.
“She’ll have my thanks too,” said the king, “and something more besides,” for pleasuring the son of the man who made him what he was, counseled him and helped him and stood by him through everything.
Gyda reddened, bit her lip, but nodded. Too late, her husband thought this was a lowly thing to make her do.
Nevertheless she soon joined him in the high seat. Haakon Sigurdarson sat across from them in the honor seat. The benches were full. Talk livened as the women went to and fro bringing drink.
“What’s gone on lately in the South?” asked the king.
The lawman of the shire, sitting nearby, told him: “Some days ago, three warships went by Lidandisness—only three, but dragons and fully manned. This early in the year, they must have come from Denmark. Likeliest Jutland, for if they were out of Skaaney or Sjaelland, they’d have been seen passing Vikin. The ship-levy turned out, but by then they were gone.”
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