Mother of Kings

by Poul Anderson

  When summer waned over Orkney, it was apt to become the loveliest time of year. Light spilled past a few fleece-white clouds, to play on wavelets that rippled and chuckled in bewilderingly changeable blues and greens. Green also were the islands above their steeps, with foam at their feet and around the strewn holms, skerries, and stacks. Seafowl in hundreds wove a web of cries through the soft breeze.

  Ragnfröd must have given an order, for his rowers bent their backs and the ship leaped ahead of the rest. The sail was down but the mast still up, a white shield at the top. Other shields hung along the sides, colorful, peaceful. Squinting against the glitter, Gunnhild, aboard Gudröd’s, thought she could make out how the ranks ashore eased. Though it was getting hard to see things close to her clearly, her sight across long reaches had sharpened. Sometimes she wondered whether this meant she was beginning to drift from the earth, on into whatever waited beyond.

  Oars backed water. Ragnfröd’s longship lay broadside to the land, a few yards off. Tall on the foredeck, he bared his red head, waved, and shouted. Halloos rang in answer. A man at the forefront stepped from the banner to call and beckon. They knew this son of Gunnhild.

  Home again, she thought bleakly.

  The ship moved on to an empty berth. Mooring lines were flung; willing hands made them fast; a gangplank shot forth. Ragnfröd bounded up it onto the wharf. The leader went to meet him. They clasped hands and broke into swift, hard-edged talk.

  Gudröd’s craft followed, likewise docking. He pushed his way down the crowded hull to her. “You shall walk beside me, Mother,” he said.

  She felt it as a breath of warmth after the cold winds, colder waters, and flung spindrift of the sea. Yes, they had made the crossing quickly, but that was because they took no slower ship. Aboard a knarr she had had at least some damp, cramped shelter. Here they could only rig a ring of homespun for her to try to sleep, or do what else she must. A sailor dumped her pot overside; he took care not to say anything or look at her.

  Well, she would have suffered more than that, not to be left behind for Haakon. He might have had her killed. He might have kept her always under guard, which would be much worse.

  “This is good of you, Gudröd,” she said.

  “No, it’s merely your rightful honor. The jarl shall know from the outset that you’re his queen.”

  Her clothes hung clammy, grubby, smelly. Her headcloth was no better. She opened a chest and took a cloak of scarlet silk, marten fur around the hood, as well as a silver brooch in the shape of a dragon, to drape over herself and pin at the throat. Gudröd waited, smiling. He lent her a hand up the gangplank and, on the wharf, his arm.

  The ground swayed underfoot. It would take a while to get her land legs back—longer than when she was young. Leaning on him, she could walk steadily at his side, queen with king.

  The Orkney troopers had loosened their array and stood listening if they were nearby, chatting if they were not. Townsfolk crowded and gabbled behind them. Ragnfröd and the leader stopped their own talk and turned. “King Gudröd my brother, Queen Gunnhild my mother, here stands Hlödvir Thorfinnsson, jarl of Orkney and Caithness. True to the olden oaths, he makes us welcome.”

  The other was strongly built, rugged of face, dark amber of hair and beard, better-looking than his father. Helm and byrnie, sword slung at shoulder, shield in the hands of a youth at his side, told what a fight he would have given if he must.

  A bit jerkily, he lifted hand to brow and nodded his head. “My lord, my lady,” he greeted. “I know you, of course, King Gudröd, though you haven’t visited us very often.” His voice went flat. “And I remember you well, Queen, though I was but a stripling when you last dwelt among us.”

  Twenty years ago, she recalled. Already?

  She felt how his gaze ransacked wrinkles, sallow skin, flesh thin over skull, stray wisps of gray hair, and he still in the fullness of manhood. She hardened her backbone and gave him stare for stare.

  “Bad are your tidings. We’ll do what we can to help you toward a better day,” he said. “If you wish, Queen, I’ll have some guardsmen take you straight to the bower, where you can refresh yourself before you come to the hall—unless you’d rather have food brought to you and then go to bed.”

  “My thanks, Jarl,” she said, unsmiling the same as he. “My own men will carry my chests. First I want to bathe.”

  Gudröd laughed. “We could all use that.”

  “Yes, yes, the bathhouse fires shall be lighted and stoked at once,” Hlödvir promised. “But would the queen like to rest tonight in the bower? Tomorrow I’ll find you a worthier abode, and handmaidens to tend you.”

  Handmaidens—and others—to keep watch on her, Gunnhild knew. “You are kind, Jarl,” she said. “It will need a room that can be shut off when I sit in council with my sons.”

  Hlödvir could not hide his dislike of that. “I hope this doesn’t have to happen, Queen. King Ragnfröd tells me he means to return to Norway next year. We hope King Gudröd will too, but he’ll decide for himself. Whatever he chooses, King Ragnfröd and I will be busy planning and readymaking—man-work, the queen understands.”

  Gudröd opened his mouth. Gunnhild nudged him to stay silent. She made a smile. “Jarl, I’ve learned when I can be helpful and when I’d only be in the way. I ask merely that I be able to give a rede within four walls if somebody would like one. He need not follow it.”

  Hlödvir flushed. “The queen is wise. It shall be as she wishes.”

  Her heart stumbled, though she spoke evenly. “Now tell me, how fares my daughter Ragnhild, sister of kings?”

  “The last I heard, she was doing well enough.” It was clear that Hlödvir didn’t care to say more.

  From Denmark and later from Norway, Gunnhild had tried to keep up with what happened. That was through seamen, for Ragnhild herself sent never a word. After the death of her third husband, Ljot, the new jarl, Hlödvir, had given her a steading at Rackwick on the island Hoy. North, south, and east of that cleft in its cliffs reared the highest uplands in the Orkneys. The dwellers there were few, visitors from outside fewer yet.

  “She must be lonely,” Gunnhild said.

  Hlödvir’s answer went like shears cutting a thread. “I told you, Queen, she’s well enough off. I had nothing better for her.”

  Gunnhild knew why. It was half hatred, half fear.

  He was the last of the Thorfinnssons. There had been no hiding Ragnhild’s unwillingness to wed his brother Arnfinn, and much pointed to her having brought about the murder. There was no question but what she had wrought the death of her second husband, his brother Haavard. Nevertheless she snared a third brother, Ljot. They two got along. However, folk believed she had much to do with egging on the strife for the jarlship that led to the slaying of the fourth brother, Skuli. This in turn launched war with the Scots, in which Ljot got his death-wound. Belike Ragnhild had not wanted that. By then, though, men shuddered. It was as if she, otherwise barren, bore death after death.

  Hlödvir could have done worse by her than he did. But she was, after all, sister to his overlords, the kings of Norway.

  And daughter to Gunnhild, who herself had bred far more slayings and, folk muttered, was an outright witch, no mere house-witch but one with night at her beck.

  In high cheekbones and eyes of a gray-green never twice quite the same, they two even looked somewhat alike.

  “We’ll call on her, Mother,” said Gudröd. “I’ll take you there.”

  “Why stand we here?” cried Ragnfröd in a gust of raw merriment. “Let’s be off to the hall and the ale!”

  XXIV

  From Scapa Bay on the southern side of the neck of Mainland, out into Scapa Flow, then westward past Graemsay to Hoy Sound, rounding Hoy, and southward to Rora Head, was no great ways. Lustily rowed by a dozen men at a time, the skuta that Gudröd used made it in less than half of a late-summer day. Yet to Gunnhild it felt like a crossing between worlds.

  When the prow turned east, the headland
on her left, stretching some two miles out into the sea, and the shoreline on her right sheered up in cliffs at whose feet surf raged over rocks and reefs. The one break in them lay before her, a narrow dale slanting down from the inland heights. While it was green—a green all the deeper and brighter against that stark shoreline—she spied only a few buildings here and there. Wind tattered the smoke from them.

  Clouds scudded low, so that light flashed off the water and then it went gray again. The wind whistled and bit. Spindrift flew salty. Waves rushed white-maned to crash against the land. The cormorants were many. She remembered how the Norse fisherfolk around Ulfgard and the Finns believed that sea-wights could take the shape of those black fowl.

  Aft was nothing but sea, to worldrim and beyond. Scattered in it lay the Hebrides, the Shetlands, the Faeroes, and Iceland. She had heard of a sighting farther on, from a ship blown off course, maybe fifty years ago, lucky enough to win back. But if sailors bore straight west from here it would be into the utter unknown.

  Here dwelt her daughter.

  Stones had been piled out from the strand to make a small mole and breakwater. Planks had been fastened on top to give mooring and footing. Gunnhild wondered how long the tides would take to break it asunder if men stopped tending it. A lifespan, she guessed. The skuta was coming in at low ebb, stiffer rowing but safer than at another time.

  No warriors kept watch. A shepherd or someone like that must have seen the craft from above, for a handful of men had gathered. They owned no mail, only spears or axes and one rusty kettle helm. They looked readier to flee than fight. Gudröd signed peace. The three boldest came slowly down to help him dock. Then the rest hurried after them, big-eyed and stammering.

  Gudröd picked a guide from among them, left his crew to talk and chaffer with the rest, and took his mother up a path near a stream. Both wore goodly cloaks. Gunnhild’s hip was hurting. She helped her gait with a staff. Gold bands ringed its upper end, which was topped with a little silver man’s head.

  They soon came to the house they sought. Its roof and thick walls were of turf but not of mean size. Lesser buildings lay behind it, barn, byre, shed, and the like, with a half-underground hut where the lowly slept crammed together. Haystacks were for a few milch cows, maybe a horse or two, now at graze in a haugh fenced by driftwood rails. But this was not really a farm. It and most of the land around belonged to the jarl. Whoever lived here was his overseer, getting foodstuffs, wool, and so forth from the tenant crofters. Hlödvir had not been too niggardly when he turned it over to Ragnhild.

  That was a shrewd move, Gunnhild thought. He did not want one whom he looked on as a troublemaker and bearer of woe anywhere near him. To have her stealthily killed would have been risky, and a nithing’s work—her kind of deed, he must have sneered to himself. And, in a way, he did owe his jarlship to her. At Rackwick she was not poor, but she was cut off from him and his. In his place, Gunnhild thought, she might have done the same. That did not mean she must meekly abide by it.

  An awed thrall met her and her son at the door. They passed through an entry to the main room. There sat her daughter.

  Greetings and other seemly speech went stiffly back and forth. Then Gudröd said he had better go see to his men. They would take their big meal here every day, of course, as Ragnhild’s honor called for, during their short visit. But the house was no hall. He did not want to clutter it with a score of snorers. Nearby farmers would gladly give them shelter—new faces, new tales, from as far away as Norway! He would return at eventide with none but the Orkneyman pilot, bearing gifts.

  Gunnhild had asked him to do so, after she had found out more or less how things were here. Now Ragnhild told her housefolk to bring mead and begone. The two women sat alone, side by side in the high seat.

  It had no carven pillars or the like, it was only raised slightly above the benches along the walls; but embroidered cushions rather than sheepskins lay on it. Doors and the shutters of the two windows stood open to let in the restless daylight, also a chill that a low-burning peat fire did not do much to hold off. A stone-weighted loom stood near the entryroom door, the best-lighted spot, with a big half-woven cloth in the frame. Rushes covered an earthen floor. The benches could seat about two dozen. There would seldom be that many, only such freemen as worked on the grounds. While this visit lasted, most of them would have to eat elsewhere.

  Yet Gunnhild had never seen tapestries more craftily made than the ones hung on these walls. Worthy of a king’s hall, they were—though what they showed was unlike anything else she had ever met, uncanny— She heard a mewing. Four cats were curled near the hearth or draped on a bench. One had come over to the high seat. Ragnhild made a kissing sound. The cat sprang up onto her lap. She stroked it lovingly. Did she love anything else anymore?

  “So we meet again,” Gunnhild said, to make a beginning.

  “When we bade farewell, you told me you had a feeling we would.” Ragnhild’s words were low and slow. Her gaze dwelt on a hanging across the room, in which were shapes that might be trolls.

  Gunnhild turned her head to look more closely at her daughter. Ragnhild sat in a finely made gown. The panels over it and the cloth over her ruddy braids were cunningly embroidered. But she herself was thin, the hand bony that played with the cat, the face haggard.

  “I hoped then it would be sooner and happier than this,” murmured Gunnhild. Ragnhild’s wan mouth stayed shut. “Tell me in truth, how do you fare?”

  “I’m the lady of the household, the tenants, and the land.” Still Ragnhild stared at the trolls. “Callers are far between, hardly ever anyone but smallholders on small business. They don’t linger.”

  “Hard must it for you to live alone, who was wife to the jarl of Orkney and Caithness.”

  At that Ragnhild gave her mother a glance, eyes as green as the cat’s. “You too have fallen.” A smile barely flickered. Did it gloat?

  Gunnhild sat straight. “I—Gudröd, Ragnfröd, and I—we’ll take back what is ours.”

  “I don’t know whether to wish for that or not.”

  It hit like a knife. “What?” Gunnhild whispered. “How can you say such a thing?”

  Ragnhild’s free arm waved about the room. “You brought me to this, you know.” Gunnhild caught her breath. Ragnhild’s fingers crooked. The cat jumped off her lap. “When you gave me to the Arnfinn swine,” Ragnhild hissed. “And needless that was. Hardly had it been done but you were off to the Dane-king.”

  “That, that was not foreseeable.”

  “Why not? They call you a witch. Aren’t you even a spaewife?”

  Gunnhild braced her soul. “No man escapes his weird, nor any woman either,” she said. “Don’t feel sorry for yourself. You won at last to happiness, didn’t you?”

  Ragnhild spoke more evenly, though no more warmly. “With Ljot? Well, it wasn’t bad. It might have become better, had he lived. His other two wives and I didn’t like each other, but I was getting them in hand.”

  “Had you borne him a son—” Gunnhild bit it off when she saw the sudden pain behind the mask.

  Ragnhild looked away again. “That did not happen,” she said.

  After she shut her womb against her first two men, if that was what she did, why had she not gotten children when she wanted them? Did Christ punish her sins? Did Freyja disown a woman who had kept herself barren? Had her doings by themselves dried her wellspring of life?

  “And then Ljot died,” she ended.

  Gunnhild nodded. “Grief falls on everyone. In England, I lost your father.” Eirik, Eirik! She could still wake in the middle of the night from dreams of him. She could still feel him in the wind or see him when a hawk stooped on its prey. Her words went soft. “Oh, Ragnhild, my road has been as stony as yours, longer, darker, and too much of the blood spilled on it was dear to me.”

  The other grinned. “It’s led you back to Orkney.”

  Pride lifted. “I told you we shall win home anew.” Tenderness returned. “And then, Ragnhild, w
e’ll send for you.”

  “Is this the first time you’ve thought of that?”

  “We didn’t hear in Norway how you lived. You could have let us know. One of your brothers would have come for you.”

  “What tales I heard were of such unrest that I saw scant gain to be had.” A laugh rattled. “I was right.”

  They sat unspeaking for a span. The flames shivered, the light from outside sickled between sun and shadow. Yet it seemed to Gunnhild that her daughter eased somewhat beside her, that the scorn left her lips—as if, having spat forth a bitterness long locked away, she was not unwilling to talk with her mother.

  “Then you aren’t altogether wretched here,” said Gunnhild carefully.

  Ragnhild shrugged. “I’ve grown used to it.”

  “How do you pass your days? I can’t believe you do nothing but oversee a house and a few crofts.”

  “I weave, sew, and embroider. That’s my work you see.”

  “It’s wonderful. I’ve never known anything quite like it.”

  “Yes, my own insights. Come.” Ragnhild stepped lithely to the floor. Gunnhild limped after, not wincing when it stabbed in her hip. Ragnhild led her around the room, pointing at the eerie figures, talking fast. “See, here’s Ragnar Hairybreeks dying in the pit of adders. Here’s Sigurd Faafnir’s-bane, murdered in his bed but killing his killer. Here are Odin and the Fenris wolf, Thor and the Midgard snake, Frey and Surt, Heimdall and Loki, in their death-fights at the Wreck of the Gods.”

  Here was hatred writing with skillful fingers, Gunnhild thought. Nevertheless, “Work such as this would make lordly gifts,” she said.

  “Now and then I send things to Hlödvir and his wife—though the kind they like is dull to do—and he sends me stuff I can use or trade off.”

  “But you never meet with him?” Gunnhild reached toward the slight openness she believed she felt, longing to do so with her arms. “Are you always lonely?”