Mother of Kings

by Poul Anderson

  She went to Egil’s bedroom. “Open the door, Father,” she called. “Both of us shall go the same way.” He did. She trod in, latched the door again, and lay down on the other bed.

  “It’s good of you, daughter, to follow your father,” said Egil dully. “Great is the love you show. How could it be looked for that I live after such a grief?”

  They lay in silence.

  After a while Egil asked, “What, daughter, are you chewing on something?”

  “I’m chewing seaweed,” she told him, “for I’ve heard it makes you worse. Else, I fear, I’ll be too long about dying.”

  “Is it harmful, then?”

  “Very harmful. Would you like some?”

  “Why not?” He took it from her hand and crunched it.

  After another while she rose, opened the door a crack, and called for water. A maid brought her a filled horn. “That’s what seaweed does,” said Egil. “It makes you even thirstier.”

  “Do you wish a drink, then, Father?”

  He sat up, took the horn, and drained it.

  “They’ve tricked us, Father,” said Thorgerd. “That was milk.”

  Egil bit a shard out of the horn, as deeply as his teeth went, and dashed it onto the floor.

  “What now shall we do, Father?” said Thorgerd. “It seems to me our will has been thwarted.” He sat as if stunned. She gathered her breath. “Well, Father,” she said, “I think we ought to live long enough for you to make a poem in memory of Bödvar. Then we can die if we still want to. If your son Thorstein must make the poem, it won’t happen soon. Bödvar should not lie unsung, the more so if we aren’t here to help drink his grave-ale.”

  Egil shook his big bald head. “I couldn’t,” he mumbled, “not even if I tried.” Her look did not let go of him. At length he said, “Well, I’d better see what I can do.”

  He lay back, stared beyond her ken, and shaped the staves.

  At first they went slowly, like men who bear a coffin to burial, but little by little they took on life.

  “Toilsome it is

  to move my tongue.

  A stone on the breast

  will stop the breath.

  It’s hard to wage

  the witchcraft of words

  when a storm overthrows

  the house of thought.

  “The skaldic gift,

  worthy of gods,

  above all others

  since olden time,

  is locked away;

  it will not leave

  the hoard of the soul

  because of sorrow.

  “Hastily, happily,

  words long heeded me;

  the weapon of wit

  was kept well sharpened.

  But the surf now surges

  to smash my boatshed

  and beats on the door

  of my father’s barrow.

  “For now my family

  nears its finish,

  like a woodland

  laid waste by wind.

  That man has lost

  his merriment

  who’s seen his dearest

  borne dead indoors.

  “First I mind me

  my father’s ending.

  Soon my mother

  was missing too.

  In the inmost soul

  a memory is

  of those, the old ones,

  endlessly.

  “That hole the billow

  broke in the ancient

  fence of my father’s

  family grieves me.

  But the wound of my son

  slain by the sea,

  I know it will always,

  always be open.

  “Of much has Ran,

  the sea, bereaved me.

  Alone is the one

  whom no one loves.

  The sea has cut

  my cords of kinship

  and broken the thread

  of life in my breast.

  “Could I but seize

  my rights with a spear,

  then the destroyer

  would soon be done for.

  Could a mark be made

  on that wet thief-murderer,

  gladly I’d fight

  against the sea.

  “But I have found

  my powers too few

  to battle against

  the bane of my son.

  Open it is

  for all to see

  how the old

  sit helplessly.

  “Of much has Ran,

  the sea, bereaved me.

  Woe at kin-death

  is late overwon,

  latest when he,

  the hope of our blood,

  is taken off hence

  to a brighter home.

  “I know myself

  that in my son

  no mark of meanness

  was ever made.

  Strength and soundness

  would have been seen,

  had not Odin

  laid hand upon him.

  “Always were he

  and I as one,

  whatever else

  others might do.

  My house

  he upheld,

  the prop

  of its pillars.

  “Often I felt

  the lack of a fellow.

  Bare is the back

  of the brotherless.

  This truth I recall

  when trouble arises:

  long are the eyes

  of a man alone.

  “Shake, if you will,

  the shire in searching,

  there lives not a one

  on whom to rely.

  Here they’ll barter

  a brother for wergild

  and make revenge

  a merchandise!

  “They say, and it’s so,

  if a son is lost,

  no regaining is given

  but begetting another,

  nor is there hope

  of filling the hole

  left by a brother

  with the first and broadest.

  “I do not care

  for crowds of men.

  Peace brings nothing

  but priggishness.

  My boy who is dead,

  a bit of his mother,

  he has fared hence

  to the home of his fathers.

  “The foe of the ships,

  the foaming one,

  the slayer of men,

  stands against me.

  Strengthlessly,

  when sorrow drives,

  blunders the heavy

  burden of thought.

  “My other son,

  struck by sickness,

  wasted away

  and wended hence.

  He was a boy

  without a blemish,

  not by anyone

  ill bethought.

  “With the lord of life

  I lay at peace.

  Most carefully

  I kept the pact,

  till Odin himself,

  the owner of dooms,

  freely and willingly

  ended friendship.

  “I readily offered

  to All-Father Odin,

  the first of the gods,

  since folk are wont to.

  Yet must I find

  for the father of skalds

  that which is more

  than might, in mishap.

  “From the bane of the wolf,

  old shedder of blood,

  I got some faultless

  featlinesses,

  therewith a soul

  that soon turned some,

  lurkingly envious,

  to open foemen.

  “Hard am I hit.

  Now stands Hel,

  the unforgiving,

  out on the ness.

  Yet I will gladly,

  in goodness of heart,

  abide the day

  when I sha
ll die.”

  After the poem was done, Egil said it forth for Aasgerd and Thorgerd and the household. Then he left his bed and took his high seat. Soon he ordered a grave-ale, which followed all the best olden usages. He sent Thorgerd home with gifts and got on with his life.

  As Gunnhild thought further on this, the chilly feeling of rightness left her. Yes, Egil too had lost sons. But his memorial to them would outlast their bones. What was there for hers?

  X

  Both she and Harald gave Sira Aelfgar as much money as they could spare from their coffers here, buying masses for the repose of Sigurd’s soul. They meant to give more elsewhere. The priest tendered words of comfort and the hope that lived in Christ, but to Gunnhild they rang rather hollow. He must feel that Sigurd brought the killing on himself. She said nothing aloud about that. It was true, after all. Ever had Sigurd been reckless, without thought or feeling for anybody else.

  No, twisted in her like a knife, that wasn’t really so. Not quite.

  She went to the church at a time when it would be empty. Rain wept softly. Mist smoked in the raw air, blurring walls and roofs, hiding the land beyond, muffling sounds. She left her guard in the porch to keep others out, hung her wet cloak in the vestibule, and went on alone.

  The nave was cold and dusky, almost nightful. Two candles burned at the altar. They barely picked out him on the Cross, more shadow than shape. She took no cushion, but knelt on the floor at the rail. It made her knees ache; it was a sacrifice. She tried to drive out memories of herself kneeling on a cord, but they would not flee; they skulked around the rim of her awareness while she strove to pray.

  “Lord,” she whispered into the hush, “I know not if you know what is in my heart. You can if you want, of course, and surely your Father does, for they tell me he knows everything. But why should he tell you? There’s so much else that must mean a great deal more. And why should you look? My heart may well be an ugly sight in your eyes, hard and heathenish. I don’t know myself all that’s in it.

  “For I have lived by another law than yours. And I will for as long as I must. Afterward, if I’m still on earth— I cannot foresee what then, for I cannot tell what is truth, what to believe, or even if there is only one truth.

  “Thus you see, Lord, at least I do not mock you with lies or meaningless fulsomeness. I’ve hoodwinked many, but I come honestly before you. And I ask no more than this, a boon that a mighty king can grant out of his honor to a lesser queen.

  “I ask that you let me speak for a while, a short while, to your mother. You can easily bid her listen, can’t you, Lord? I think she’d be glad to. She was once a woman. I’ve never heard other than that she’s a wellspring of mercy, who knows well what sorrow is. Will you give me this, Lord?”

  Nothing sounded; nothing stirred. The candleflames flickered not in the least. Gunnhild murmured an Ave. She felt cold and weary. The pain in her knees and the memory of a candle burning on a skull nagged her. They neither frightened nor awakened remorse. It was merely that she could not get rid of them.

  Well, she ought not keep the Queen of Heaven waiting.

  “Holy Mary,” she said low, “will you hear a few words from one who is also a mother? Oh, yes, your son is the Son of God, and you a stainless maiden. My children have been men, and a woman; I got them in lust; sin was inborn in them. They’ve done their share of ill deeds, or maybe somewhat more than their share. But often they were driven to it; need lashed them, and the blood that runs in them would not let them cringe under that whip. No, they fought back. And never was any as wicked as you may well think I am. Whatever else they do that may be bad, it is not calling on heathen gods or working black witchcraft.” Her voice stumbled. She bit her lip. “Or if my daughter Ragnhild does, a wee bit, very seldom—I don’t know that she does—don’t forget how she’s been left in an unchristian land with never a priest to guide her.”

  Gunnhild lifted her head. “Holy Mary,” she said, “for myself I ask naught of you. I’m here on behalf of my newly dead son Sigurd.

  “Yes, he was the wildest of the brood. He broke God’s law again and again, he trampled on the rights of those beneath him, he fell at last on his own misdeed, unshriven, and I fear he never was as worshipful as he might have been. See, holy Mary, how I lower myself for his sake. I will not forgive those who brought him down. But that is my sin. You must find it all the worse because I cannot bring myself to believe it’s wrong. I tell you this, freely, so you can know I’m honest when I say it has nothing to do with Sigurd. Always he loved me and honored me, his mother. Should that not be reckoned to his good?

  “You understand. You are a mother. Oh, your Son was holy.” Gunnhild uttered a shy laugh. “Mine have hardly been that. But they were, they are, dear to me, like yours to you. And did yours never, never worry you? Was there no childish mischief, no boyish foolishness, nothing to make you fretful or even a touch angry? He was God, but he was flesh too, wasn’t he?”

  Gunnhild sighed. “At least, we’re told how you grieved to watch him die on the Cross and be laid in his grave. Why, if you knew he would soon rise and live forever? Because he was suffering, wasn’t that why? You must have stood there recalling how blithely he skipped about you in your home when he was small. I don’t have the same foreknowledge about my Sigurd—only fears about his doom. But I remember him, three years old, dauntlessly stumping down the gangplank when we took ship from our kingdom for Orkney.

  “He used to bring me his happinesses and woes. For a while, now and then, I could hug him and cuddle him. Of course, erelong he deemed this unmanly. And what a cocky little man he was! How gladsome to see him shoot up, romp, sport, gain skill after skill, till he was indeed a young man, knowing himself born to be a king— Was it like that for you, holy Mary?

  “Then I pray you to understand that my Sigurd was not evil. Not in his heart. He was brash, reckless, thoughtless. He would not stop to think ahead; he went forward, straight as a flung spear, whatever might come of it. He drank too much, and this was what brought him to his death. He would have learned some wisdom in later years, but they were not given him. I loved him nonetheless. I always shall. Holy Mother Mary, my son needs a lesson, but his is not a bad soul. He has not earned unending fire. I ask you to think on this, and then, if you will, say a word in Heaven for my Sigurd.

  “Now I’ve kept you long enough. I thank you for your kindness in hearing me out. Farewell, Mother of God.”

  Gunnhild bowed her head over folded hands and said another Ave.

  After a while she said three Paternosters, whereupon she lifted her gaze to the Christ and spoke aloud.

  “Lord, let me end by talking once more to you, not as a beggar but as your scot-queen. I’ll make the words few, not to try your forbearingness.

  “The kingship over Norway belongs to the house of Harald Fairhair. So you chose, when he brought the whole land under himself and made it strong. The sons of Eirik are his rightful heirs. Who else is left? Sigurd the Giant never bestirred himself beyond his Hringariki shire; his son Haalfdan grows old as slothfully; his grandson Sigurd bids fair to be no more, merely a landholder who farms his fields and troubles nobody. Even if they wanted it, could such as these hold the kingdom together? Would they do anything at all for the Faith?

  “Yes, it became sadly needful to do away with some others.” Gunnhild frowned, sought words, and turned wry. “Well, Lord, I said I won’t lie to you. My man Eirik and my sons did the work with scant sorrow. But anyway, done is done. Harald Grenska fled for his life, he has no strength in Norway, and besides, he’s hardly more than a boy.” She was about to add that Olaf Tryggvason was a sprig, and a thrall abroad if he lived, but her tongue locked at the name. She hurried on:

  “We’ve made our mistakes, Lord. My Sigurd’s was the worst thus far. He’s paid for it. Must the rest of us pay too? Must the kingdom, and the Faith my sons would plant firmly in it? Who would gain from that, other than the haughty Thraands and their fiend-worshipping jarl? Would it not be better
that you help us, enlighten us, and bring us to full victory?

  “Lord, here is my offer. If you think it unworthy, be angry with me, not my sons. They know nothing of this. But if they win through, break altogether all their foes, gain the peace that comes with unshakable might, and if—if we get good harvests and good fishing again—then I will know you are God, the only god. I’ll forswear heathenness, cast my things of witchcraft into the sea or the fire, confess every sin I can remember, and do whatever penance is laid on me.

  “Lord, I’m thinking less of my soul—truly I am—than of what use I could be to the Faith. I know many things, many folk, and many of the ways of darkness. I can put your hounds on the spoor. My worldly redes have often been shrewd too. Haven’t they? What if I gave them to the priests and bishops of your Church? Poor Haakon Aethelstan’s-foster could only fumble, until he crumbled. It would go otherwise with the sons of Eirik and their mother.

  “There you have it, Lord. My help for yours. I think it’s a fair offer. Anyhow, it’s the best I can make. If what they say is true, you made me what I am and thus you can fathom me. Do as you see fit, Lord. Now your scot-queen will go.”

  She crossed herself, said a last Paternoster, and went out into the slow rain.

  XI

  Passing through the yard on the way back to her house, she heard a sudden racket. Glancing toward it, she made out man-shapes dim in the rain and mist. They shifted about. Somebody yelled. A thud followed, and a roar that stopped the jabber. It seemed to be a scuffle among fewer than ten men, maybe a fight between two workers that somebody of higher rank called a halt to—nothing worth lingering for.

  Striding onward, she felt the aches dwindle and a new strength rise. Whether she had gained anything for Sigurd, for any of her children, was unknowable. But that she had taken her stand and tried lifted her heart.