Harold and his brother Gyrth had been brought to stand before William. They were a contrast, the tall, red-haired, blue-eyed, well-built Englishmen before the short, portly Norman. But with his face shaved and the jet black hair at the back of his head scraped to the scalp, William glowered with menace. At the altar stood Odo, bishop and half-brother to the Bastard. In his expensive vestments Odo was a sleeker copy of his corpulent brother. He held a leather-bound Bible, and a small gilded box.
Sihtric, with the avid ears of a courtier, picked up the mutterings of the English in the crowd. William had sprung the trap he had evidently been planning all along. The box held by Odo contained a holy relic, the finger of a saint. Now William required Harold to swear allegiance to him, an oath to be sworn on the relic - and Harold was to promise to uphold any claim William made to the throne of England.
Orm, astonished, realised that he had been catapulted into the eye of a storm that might engulf a kingdom.
Harold, his face like thunder, glared around. When he saw Sihtric he beckoned him. The priest was shocked and frightened, but when he was allowed to pass he hurried forward, and Orm and Godgifu followed.
‘I think I need some holy advice, priest,’ Harold muttered.
‘I am here to serve, lord.’
‘I can’t believe the arrogance of the man. This blustering brute demands such an oath of me. Well, it is a trap into which I have fallen. What should I do? If I make the oath and keep it, William will surely take the throne. You saw his methods, what he did in Brittany. I will not have that befall England. But to take the oath and break it would be a sin.’ The oath was the very foundation of the law, binding kings and lords as well as free men. Oath-breaking was a grave offence - and to break an oath sworn on holy relics was graver yet. ‘But if I fail to take the oath at all—’
‘Then we will all be cut down, brother, here and now,’ Gyrth said grimly.
Orm saw Harold’s hand move towards his sword, and the tension in the church tightened even further. ‘At least we can die fighting.’
Sihtric spoke rapidly to Harold in English, perhaps hoping that William could not hear. ‘You are twice the man the Bastard is, ten times. In your wisdom you are a man of the future; William is nothing but aggression and greed, a throwback to a darker past. You must think of the greater good, lord.’
‘The greater good? You’re saying I should take the oath to stay alive, knowing I will not keep it?’ Harold looked agonised. ‘But my soul, priest,’ he said. ‘My soul.’
Sihtric said, ‘An oath made under duress is not binding, and no sin.’ But even Orm the pagan knew that he was lying.
Odo advanced with the Bible and the reliquary. Harold, his expression torn, placed a hand on the reliquary, faced William the Bastard, and gave his oath.
V
Under a bleak winter sky the Norman ship sailed cautiously up the crowded river. The ship was one of a small flotilla belonging to a Norman lord, Orm’s current employer. With its mast lowered, driven by its oars, it passed under the single bridge which united Lunden, north and south of the river.
It was early January, in the Year of Our Lord 1066.
Orm Egilsson stood at his place in the prow and peered out curiously. On both river banks wharves and jetties crowded to the water like the snouts of pigs to a trough. Further away buildings rose like a stony wave to cover the hills. Centuries after the last legionary had left his post the famous Roman wall was huge and unmistakable, a brooding mass of concrete and worked stone.
Orm’s nostrils twitched at a stink of wood smoke, broiling meat, and sewage. Even the water was strange, black with filth, its surface littered with turds, ashes, scatterings of dead fish - and a few bloated human corpses. The city’s sprawl and bustle and sheer scale dwarfed the petty towns of Normandy. Lunden was the hub of England’s trade with Europe, and huge quantities of wool, England’s principal export, flowed out of here to the continent. But there were green swathes of farmland within the walls. Nearly two centuries after King Alfred had ordered the reoccupation of Londinium, the English had still not filled up the old Roman space.
Today the city was even more crowded than usual, and the Norman ship had trouble finding a berth. Lunden was hosting the Christmas court of the King Edward, a ritual that was a descendant of the old witan meetings, and two archbishops, eight bishops, eight abbots, all five earls of England and all the nobles of the court, each with his or her retinues, had crowded here to turn the city into a nest of diplomacy, intrigue and gossip.
And, according to a letter sent to Orm by Godgifu of Northumbria, this year the Christmas court was an even more intense affair than usual - for, it was rumoured, Edward King of England was dying.
The ship berthed, and its crew and passengers disgorged into the narrow streets. The sailors left behind to watch the ships noisily ordered their companions to bring back only decent ale, maggot-free bread, and virginal whores.
Orm set off to find Westmynster, where Godgifu had promised to meet him. He had to ask directions several times, and the responses were in English or Danish, or a rough mix of the two. After centuries of immigration and invasion a new language was emerging from the rough argot of traders and soldiers, a rich mix of the vocabularies of the two tongues, all complexities in the grammar rubbed away.
Situated close to an enormous bend in the Tamesis, Westmynster turned out to be an island of gravel, cut out of the river bank by two tributary streams. Godgifu’s letter said that the old name of this place was the Isle of Thorns. Here, supposedly, Caesar had forded the river during his first assault on Britain. Now the island had been drained, and Edward, in the course of his long reign, had established a royal palace, and an abbey.
And in recent years he had set about commemorating his pious reign by building a mighty new church here in the continental style. Still incomplete, its lead roof shining, it was a vast box of stone that made the English buildings nearby look rude and half-finished.
The streets around the abbey precinct were even more crowded than elsewhere. Somewhere in there, Orm supposed, great men were circling over a king’s deathbed like buzzards. But Orm was a mere soldier of fortune, and his destination was not a palace - at least, not for now.
He skirted the abbey’s walls until he spotted a tavern, a broken-down wooden building whose blackened thatch indicated it might once have been a smithy. It was unremarkable, save for the standard that fluttered in the smoggy breeze. The woollen tapestry, done in red and yellow, was a crude imitation of the Fighting Man standard of Harold son of Godwine.
And it was under this flag, just as she had promised, that Godgifu waited for him.
VI
‘You look well.’
‘So do you,’ she said mockingly.
In Normandy and Brittany eighteen months before, as she rode with the warrior princes of Normandy and England, Godgifu had worn mannish clothes. Now pins studded her hair, and she wore a long dress tied tight at the waist, with heavy, expensive-looking brooches and clasps. She was dressed for court, not for the field. She was not beautiful. She was too short, her face was too square, her nose too long, her blue-eyed gaze too direct for that. But Orm was stunned by her mixture of femininity and strength. This was a woman to have at your side, he thought, when you won your land, and carved out your life. And, he saw, his own interest was returned in the lively warmth of her gaze.
‘I haven’t seen you since Normandy,’ he began. ‘Bayeux, that business of Harold and the oath.’
‘Well, I know that.’
In the tension and confusion after that murky oath-taking, Orm, expected to stand beside his Norman lord, had lost track of Godgifu and her brother. And he had not seen her from that day to this.
‘I was glad you wrote to me. I thought we might never see each other again. And we have unfinished business.’
She grinned, almost lascivious. ‘So we have, Viking.’
‘And we have business too,’ said Sihtric. The priest came bustling from the tavern
bearing a brimming tankard. ‘Although I’m not interested in the contents of your trousers, Orm, but of your head.’
‘For a man of God you’re crude sometimes, priest.’
‘Not crude but truthful, and God has no problem with that.’ And he downed half his ale with a gulp. Sihtric was clean-shaven, his tonsure and eyebrows neatly plucked, and he wore a white tunic which glittered with golden thread. He was putting on weight too; he had a pot belly comically protruding from the front of his slight frame. He was evidently doing well. And yet the slyness and ambition Orm had discerned in the young priest he had met in Brittany was, if anything, even more striking.
‘So what do you think of our new cathedral of Westmynster, Orm?’
‘It is an impressive building.’
‘Yes. The first cruciform church in all England, you know, and bigger than anything they have in Normandy -’
‘I hate it,’ Godgifu said with surprising strength. ‘It’s a Norman box. A coffin for God. It has no place in England.’
Sihtric grinned at Orm. ‘You’ll have to forgive my sister. Lacks sophistication sometimes. The cathedral is a sign of how the church has prospered under Edward. As, indeed, have I.’
Orm said, ‘In her letter Godgifu told me you’re closer to Harold now.’
Godgifu nodded. ‘He has been ever since that business of William and the oath.’
So Sihtric had seen his chance and taken it, Orm thought. He said, goading, ‘I’m surprised. I thought you were Earl Tostig’s man. Aren’t you loyal? Didn’t you follow your master into exile?’
Both Godgifu and Sihtric glanced around nervously. Apparently the tensions surrounding the fall of Harold’s brother were strong.
‘Come,’ Sihtric said. ‘Not here, you never know who’s listening. Let’s drink and talk.’ He led them both into the tavern, and fetched more ale.
‘I am destined to meet you two in taverns, it seems,’ said Orm.
‘My brother likes his ale,’ said Godgifu.
‘My only vice,’ said Sihtric, ‘unlike poor Tostig.’
Harold’s brother had been appointed Earl of Northumbria a decade before. It was a difficult realm, full of English who pined for the great days of their own kingdom, and of Danes who dreamed of the restoration of the Viking kings of Jorvik. For seven or eight years, though, Tostig looked secure. Then he murdered a few rivals, and, worse, tried to raise the Northumbrians’ taxes.
Sihtric was slightly drunk. ‘The thegns and ealdormen wouldn’t have it, oh no, Tostig could murder their sons if he liked, but for him to come between them and their purses ...’
The crisis had come in October, just three months ago. Tostig had been in the south, hunting with Edward, when the thegns had occupied Jorvik, slaughtered Tostig’s officers and his housecarls, and sacked his treasury. And then they had called for a new earl: Morcar, brother of Edwin the Earl of Mercia, son of Siward the old rival of Godwine, a scion of the only great English family strong enough to challenge the sons of Godwine.
It had been a genuine crisis. King Edward had backed Tostig, who was his appointed earl. But Harold had ridden north, unarmed. And he recommended to the King that the demands of the rebels be met. Edward reluctantly backed down, Morcar was installed, and the crisis was passed.
But the cost for Harold was an irreparable breach with his brother. Tostig sailed off to exile in Flanders; rumour had it that he was plotting.
‘Harold, you see,’ said Sihtric, ‘sacrificed his brother for a greater good - he did it once before, with another troublesome sibling called Swein who seduced a nun - although he let Tostig live, and I believe that was a mistake. Harold is a great man who will put the interests of peace even before his family - a remarkable man.’
‘And,’ Orm said, ‘you who were Tostig’s man are now welcome in Harold’s court.’
‘In Normandy I heard Harold’s confession,’ Sihtric said piously, ‘for taking an oath he doubted he would ever be able to keep.’
Godgifu snorted. ‘You weren’t just there when Harold took the oath. You urged him to do it. Harold sees you as a witness to his sin, I think. Or perhaps even the demon who goaded him to it. That’s why he keeps you close.’
‘Providence shapes all our lives. If I were not close to Harold I would not be able to bring him the Menologium.’
‘The what?’
‘His prophecy,’ Godgifu said dryly. ‘You remember. Comets and kings and dubious poetry.’
‘He still believes all this?’ Orm said.
‘Oh, yes,’ Godgifu said. ‘He’s even been writing to Moor scholars in Iberia to have them check his calculations of the dates. ’
Sihtric said, ‘I have found an astronomer in Toledo, who has some philosophies about the comet.’
‘What comet?’
Sihtric’s face remained impassive. ‘The one that will appear in March, according to the Menologium. Or rather reappear.’
Everybody knew that comets, hairy stars, were bad omens. But as signs in the sky they were quite unpredictable; they came and went according to the whim of God. ‘If a comet appears in March, priest,’ Orm said, ‘I’ll swallow my own sword whole.’
Sihtric glowered darkly. ‘Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Viking.’
Godgifu said, ‘Oh, don’t be so pompous, Sihtric. He has a rival, you know.’
‘A rival?’
‘There is another sibyl hanging around Edward’s court. A monk called Aethelmaer.’
Sihtric said, ‘A buffoon who dreams of marvellous machines—’
‘And who speaks of comets,’ Godgifu reminded him. ‘In laughing at him the thegns are learning to laugh at you too, brother.’
Sihtric snorted. ‘I’ll deal with Aethelmaer. Of course the challenge is interpreting the Menologium. I told you it couldn’t be a coincidence that you are involved, Orm, a descendant of Egil. Now I think I have worked out how you can help me interpret the Menologium, and to persuade Harold to accept its advice.’
Orm frowned. ‘You’re going too fast, priest. Perhaps you should show me this prophecy of yours.’
Sihtric raised his eyebrows. ‘Can you read?’
‘I find it helps when some wily cleric in the pay of an illiterate Norman count puts parchments in front of me to sign.’
The priest had a small leather bag under the table. ‘I have a copy of it here ...’ He drew out a parchment and unrolled it on the sticky tabletop. Orm saw the stanzas of the Menologium, neatly transcribed, but tangled in a thicket of notes and arrows, all in a crabbed hand that Orm presumed was the priest’s. ‘I told you it remains cryptic,’ Sihtric sighed. ‘Even after a lifetime’s study. But look here ...’ He read the ninth stanza aloud.
The Comet comes/in the month of March.
End brother’s life at brother’s hand./A fighting man takes
Noble elf-wise crown./Brother embraces brother.
The north comes from south/To spill blood on the wall ...
‘A bit of nice symmetry about those lines, don’t you think?’
‘I’m no skald,’ Orm growled. ‘So a brother slays a brother. Why do you think it refers to Harold?’
‘Who else? What fraternal rivalry matters in England save the feud between Harold and his fuming, exiled brother?’
‘And what about the rest of it? What’s all this about fighting men and elves?’
‘That doesn’t concern you,’ Sihtric said dismissively.
‘The truth is he doesn’t understand that bit himself,’ Godgifu said.
Suddenly all this talk of prophecies and politics was too much for Orm. He regretted coming. He longed to be free of this place, this cramped city, free of this grasping, manipulative priest with his entangling words - free to be with Godgifu. ‘Just tell me what you want from me.’
‘It comes here.’ Sihtric pulled his parchment across the table. ‘The seventh stanza. I need to understand these words.’
Orm glanced at the stanza: ‘The dragon flies west./Know a Great Year dies/Know
a new world born.’
‘I believe this stanza hints at the ultimate prize,’ Sihtric said, his face flushed. ‘That in our grasp is not just England, but a new world.’
Orm looked at Sihtric. ‘What new world?’
The priest smiled. ‘Vinland.’
A young man in a drab black habit came into the tavern. Squinting in the gloom, he spotted Sihtric, hurried over, and whispered in his ear. Sihtric nodded, stood and hurried out.
Orm and Godgifu followed his lead. Orm called after Sihtric, ‘Where are we going?’
‘The King is dying, the doctors confirm it. And he has asked for Harold.’ Sihtric seemed full of energy, as if this news had burned off the drink. ‘The world pivots, this dismal afternoon.’
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