“I am faring well, and I have more than enough to suffice me as long as I have my sword to kill the men that I do not care for.”
At dawn the fog lifted and the castaways found themselves on a stony outcrop in a cluster of skerries off a rocky shoreline, yet not very far from land. Among them was an old seafarer who claimed to recognize the place, saying that it was Ireland. They did not hold out much hope of making it to shore, spent as they were. Nor could they light a fire on the skerry, and they lacked both food and water. They took turns standing and waving a cloth on the outcrop’s highest point, whence they could clearly see thin lines of smoke ascending from people’s dwellings on land, the buildings reflecting in the air as the sun warmed it. They beheld what they thought were fair castles, topped by towers with shimmering crosses. Yet it seemed very much as if the land’s inhabitants had more pressing things to do than attend to castaways. When it was Þorgeir Hávarsson’s turn to wave the distress flag, the others called on him to do so, but he replied:
“It will never be reported of Þorgeir Hávarsson that he flapped a kerchief to plead for help. I would rather be left to die on a skerry than live as a starveling. It was never foretold to me that I would suffer the misfortune of having to live off another man’s mercy. Therefore I will die here, rather than endure abasement.”
Three days and three nights passed, and the castaways had neither food to eat nor water to drink. Sitting there, they watched as the corpses of their comrades drifted up onto the skerries around them, and soon their own numbers began to dwindle. Numbness overcame them as they sat through the nights on the rocks – and then death followed.
When the sun rose on the fourth day, three men remained alive on the skerry: Þorgeir Hávarsson and two merchants. On that same day, however, a boat was launched from shore. Three men rowed out to the skerry, led by the eldest of them. They were all covered in carbuncles, and their faces were disfigured with sores and boils. The eldest was the most hideous of them all, his face and skin looking like a lion’s scalp turned inside-out. These men gazed ceaselessly toward heaven and exchanged antiphons as they rowed. They now brought their boat up alongside the sea-battered rocks. Clutching his cross, the old man stepped unsteadily onto the skerry and bade the castaways welcome, but they had been numb for so long that they were barely able to return his greeting. The old man addressed them in various tongues, lastly in Norse, asking who they might be. They said that they were merchants whose ship had wrecked – some of their fellows had drowned, while some sat there on the skerry, frozen and lifeless. Two had given up the ghost that night. The elder begged their pardon that better haste had not been made to come to them on the skerry and see to their needs. “For the past three days and nights,” he said, “we have been enormously occupied, holding observances in honor of the tooth of St. Belinda, our patroness, hardly ever desisting from prostrating ourselves in tearful adoration and praise of this blessed, most glorious tooth. We celebrate such commemorations for three consecutive days and nights four times a year. Yet now that these days of thanksgiving are over, we have made it our priority to come to you and invite you who are still alive to become our masters, and we will become your servants for the sake of Christ, son of Mary, the god whom we Irish name Josa mac De. As for your departed, we shall sing offices as needed.”
The merchants said that there was little need to sing over men who were dead, but much more to tend those who still bore signs of life. Þorgeir Hávarsson said:
“For certain, I will not abandon these comrades of mine who still have life. I must inform you that I am a Norseman, from Iceland, and we cannot be bought with beneficence. You shall have little thanks from us for saving our lives if we are not as free as before to do as we please. And if you wish to have peace from us, I advise you to kill us at once.”
As Þorgeir Hávarsson spoke, the elder raised his rood ever higher, and responded by singing an antiphon from Holy Scripture, beginning “Love thine enemies.” He then kissed the warrior tenderly and bade him welcome from the land where, trustworthy books had told him, night was so bright with sunshine that folk saw clearly enough to pick lice from their kirtles. The castaways had nothing more to say for now, and they boarded the boat as the monks sang them welcome with a lordly hymn of praise from the Psalter, before taking hold of their oars.
As they drew near land, the dwellings turned out to be much less stately than in their hazy reflections. They saw the ruins of many old houses, while the only ones still standing were ramshackle at best: mainly miserable, dome-shaped hovels of piled rocks that seemed far better suited for storing stockfish. The only building there of any note was a low church, with a conical spire topped by a wooden cross. The clerics dwelt in hovels scattered over the surrounding hills. There were no cattle, but goats grazed on the scrub and bleated. The castaways were led into a cold, dim, drafty hall, where they were served goat’s milk in wooden bowls and coarse bread of unmilled grain – and that was all the fare they received. Upon finishing their meal, the monks said that Christ required their song and that they could do no better for the castaways at present, though they were welcome to rest against the hall’s south wall and pick out their lice.
Now that their lives had been saved, the merchants began to complain: they had given all they owned to purchase the cargo that was now sunk, and each bewailed his loss louder than the next. The one had a wife in Shetland, the other children in the Orkney Isles – and they were so far away from their friends. Þorgeir Hávarsson said that he bemoaned only one thing in his heart: that he had not yet found a king who was so grim and mighty that he never spared the life of a woman or a child and sank merchants in bottomless bogs. He said that they would be far better off ridding themselves of sorrow by focusing on the disgrace of the monks watching their shipmates languish on the skerry for three days, before kneading bran and chaff for the living and inviting them to loll beneath a wall. It would be manlier, he told them, to demolish the monks’ temple and kill them than to lament what was lost.
Although the merchants were more naturally inclined toward peace and quiet than Þorgeir Hávarsson, they grew weary of their long idling by the house wall, seeing no other living thing but goats and hearing only the chirping of the birds. They got up to see whether anything of value was to be found in this place, or whether any weapons were hidden anywhere, but they found nothing of any use. Each hovel had a rood made of two rough pieces of wood, set cross-wise and wound with bast at the intersection, and one wooden bowl. For beds, the hovels had only low earthen mounds covered with slabs of rock, and stones for pillows. As they peeked through the temple doorway, they saw the monks sitting in the sanctuary, chanting. The comrades found the chant rather dull, and had little idea what it meant. The monks chanted for a large part of the day, as the visitors stood at the door and pondered what to do next.
Finally the monks had chanted their fill and started trickling out of the temple. They were cheerful of countenance, though thin and bony, swollen with putrid sores, and soiled with filth and pus. Each of them vanished into his own hovel, like bugs crawling beneath rocks.
Last from their church came their master, the elder who had come to retrieve the merchants from the skerry that morning. He greeted the visitors kindly and invited them to his hovel to share his evening meal, and they accepted his invitation gratefully. His hovel was extremely forlorn – the wind slipped in through its walls, and its only furnishings were rocks. A ragged monk served them. The master asked how they felt now at day’s end. Þorgeir answered for them, saying that their lice were drowned. The meal was served in two bowls: one containing dulse, and the other, water. As the monk served them, he chanted and genuflected. The master received his share with an antiphon in gratitude to Christ, a blessing, and other laudations. He then took a handful of dulse and set it aside for the poor, and invited his guests to eat.
The merchants ate what was served them rather than go hungry, spitting out scuds and worms, yet Þorgeir Hávarsson sat apart, moodily,
and declared that he was no dulse-eater. The master gulped down his meal with the greatest relish, like an epicure popping delicacies into his mouth from a rich man’s banquet table. He gobbled the dulse fronds with all the bugs and vermin clinging to them, lecturing to his guests non-stop about Holy Scripture as he did so, pointing out in particular how Christ filled the bellies of five thousand people with three loaves of bread and two fishes, and had twelve baskets left over. The merchants listened courteously to his chatter, until Þorgeir Hávarsson said:
“I am not here to listen to old stories, but instead, to take your life and possessions or fall dead by your hand. All that others own, I count as mine unless they defeat me. Now, if you have a life-egg or rune-stick or other such talisman, I order you to hand it over, and I will destroy it – but any treasure that you are hiding from us, you are to reveal.”
The elder asks: “What do you want from us, brethren?”
Þorgeir said: “Silver and gold and ivory.”
The elder said: “We have treasure enough in our souls, which Josa mac De ransomed from the Enemy and remitted to the mercy of God, but we have nothing resembling ivory, apart from the tooth that was taken from the mouth of the virgin Belinda, which we venerated and glorified of late. Today we concluded our homage and laid it in its shrine, where it will remain until Christ’s Mass.”
“What weapons do you have?” asked Þorgeir Hávarsson.
“Only one,” said the monk. “Yet it is a weapon to which each and every conqueror must bow – namely, poverty in Christ.”
Þorgeir asked what proof he had of this.
The monk said: “Before the Romans, who ruled the greatest empire in the world, hung Christ on the gallows, they first ripped apart his kirtle and shared it among themselves. Yet at the moment that Christ was hung naked on the cross, he became not only the vanquisher of the Roman Empire, but also the Lord of all creation.”
“I never heard my sworn brother Þormóður say anything about this,” said Þorgeir Hávarsson, “despite his being a skald and knowing many a fine tale. And I find it hard to see how you could defeat anyone in battle.”
The elder said: “There was a time when we had the richest church and most splendid monastery in Ireland, until the sons of Lochlann arrived here under bark-colored sails: Norsemen whom we called monsters and brutes. They wrecked our monastery and murdered all of the brethren, and in a single hour burned all of the books that we had collected over five hundred years. They broke or smashed every holy relic in the brethren’s possession, and ran off with anything of monetary worth. The sons of Lochlann wreaked the same havoc eighteen separate times. Finally, the brethren and I grew weary of rebuilding our church, and we had even begun to doubt whether Christ was the true King of Heaven and Earth, when he did not raise a finger despite his friends suffering such persecution, until he sent down from the Kingdom of Heaven the angel who has been named Michael, to strengthen our hearts. Michael told us this: ‘Let it be known to you that the sons of Lochlann, who sail in black ships, have as little control over you as the color of the hairs on their heads. Rather, Christ made them the hammer that he used to wreck this temple eighteen times, when its brothers were sluggish in honoring his love. He has proclaimed that if any of his friends on Earth seek to exalt themselves above the poor, they shall be called his enemies, and their houses, however gloriously they are constructed, shall be the gates of Hell, and Christ will tear them down. And their books, however wisely they are composed, from great erudition, shall be burnt. And though you vaunt the bones of the saints that have been the staunchest of the Lord’s stewards to kings and dukes, and gloated over your purchase of splinters of the Holy Cross, you shall be granted no relief as long as you pride yourselves on your name and rank above those who have nothing. Disperse your holy relics to heathen lands – the best that you own – that they may beget works of the Almighty and miracles among evildoers and heretics, and take every bell and image, every book and cross, chalice, and coffer and bury them deep in the earth. Take your cows and slaughter them for those in need. Yet you shall purchase naught for yourselves but the tooth of the virgin whose name is least known of all God’s holy maidens. When she was defiled at the age of twelve, on the anniversary of the Assumption of the Mother of the Lord, she sunk this tooth into the nose of her defiler. This tooth is revered in the Kingdom of Heaven above all other teeth, it being three inches long and four wide. The maiden’s name is Belinda.’ ”
The merchants were greatly in awe of this story, and said that it must be an extraordinarily well-made tooth, and asked how much silver the brethren would demand for it.
The elder said: “The excellence of this tooth can easily be told. A year after we brethren had abandoned our possessions and bought the tooth, Norsemen came calling once more, and when they found nothing here of any worth – nothing at all, in fact, apart from barefoot men – they beheaded the adults among us, tossed our bodies over the cliffs to feed sharks, and sailed away with our heads, because they believed that without our heads, we would never meet Christ, our savior. As for those of us who were still in our youth, they shackled us, transported us to other lands, and traded us for merchandise. After the sons of Lochlann departed that time, there was nothing left of this place, where we stand now, but for our blood on the rocks – and the tooth of Belinda, the holy maiden.”
When the merchants heard that the tooth was not enough to guarantee victory, they began to harbor doubts. “How did you manage to return here, then, you monks,” they ask, “when they had sailed away with your heads?”
The master replied: “The archangel Michael appeared to us once more, after we had been beheaded. He delivered to us a lengthy discourse, interspersed with antiphons and hymns, saying: ‘No holy relic is mighty enough to shield a man who trusts in himself, his vigor and prowess, beauty or health, wisdom or learning – he who puts most faith in these things will be first to fall. For there is only one who is truly beautiful and hale, wise and learned, stouthearted and vigorous, and his name is Josa mac De. You brethren have either been made shorter by a head and thrown to sharks, or men have bartered you in foreign lands – some of you have been traded for honey, and others for tar. That is how it goes for those who put their trust in what is of least value to mortal men. Yet, since Christ looks amicably upon you, he has sent me to pledge to you, on his behalf, the grace that alone will open to you the gates of Heaven.’ ”
The merchants asked what this grace was, and whether, with its help, one might establish a profitable market.
The elder said: “I will now answer your previous question, concerning how we returned here, despite having been either beheaded or bartered. In brief: the same men who buy us tonight, we shall sell tomorrow – and the poor men whom you behead at sundown, each and every one shall rise again with two heads at dawn. Those men whom you shackle now shall shortly be borne on wings. Mortal men shall defeat their enemies only by first offering to Christ their wealth and fame, beauty, health, and vigor, wisdom and learning, and courage. When we brethren once again raised a temple over Belinda’s tooth, the angel smote us with the sores named leprosy, the most precious of Christ’s graces, for by their power, the gates of Paradise were opened to the poor man Lazarus, on the very same day that a rich man burned. No son of Lochlann has ever again ventured upon our shores.”
At the conclusion of this story, Þorgeir Hávarsson stood up and walked out. He wandered aimlessly among the hovels for a time, before eventually finding a path leading out to open country. He took it as an evil omen when black goats bleated at him as he headed down the path.
22
ENTERING THIS story now is a man named Thorkell Strutharaldsson, nicknamed “the Tall.” Thorkell led a band of Vikings and commanded a fleet of ships. Some historians place him with the Jomsvikings, but English books state that he was a Swede. Thorkell had traveled far and wide with his men and fought many battles, either on his own initiative or in the service of foreign kings and dukes, fighting for them again
st any enemy whatsoever. Thorkell and his men demanded their pay in advance and a share in the booty when the victory was won. Whenever it looked likely that the king they supported would be worsted, they would ally themselves with their enemies and fight against their former friends as vigorously as they had supported them – and they took pains to be present when the spoils were divided.
Thorkell the Tall was always victorious in battle, and numerous lesser chieftains and other small fry sought to join his force – men who had few ships and little means to harry well-defended places. Thorkell’s band often lacked in numbers – his men’s lives being briefer than their fame. Many of them died of fatigue and hardship, besides the manifold ailments that beset seafarers. Some were killed during raids or taken prisoner, and many deserted the band. Thorkell constantly had to send men abroad to recruit new forces to fill the gaps. Norse landlopers were their preferred recruits – those who pursued adventure and glory, but had little or nothing to live on. Thus was Þorgeir Hávarsson, coming from Ireland, drawn into Thorkell the Tall’s band.
Wayward Heroes Page 12
