Conqueror

by Stephen Baxter

  Some of the Menologium’s stanzas seemed to have been inserted to give a historical anchoring to the timeframe, and they were only becoming clear with the passage of time. Sihtric quoted stanza eight: ‘“At the hub of the world/Match fastness of rock/against tides of fire” ...’

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘Everybody has heard of the great burning of Rome, in the year 993. In this stanza, the “hub” is Rome, the “rock” refers to Peter, after whom the cathedral of the Vatican is dedicated. And the year-date embedded in the verse is the year 993, the year of the fire. My Moorish colleagues have confirmed the calculations. This is a prophecy that can even foretell disasters befalling the eternal city itself.’

  Harold frowned, considering this.

  Orm imagined that Harold disliked such mystical talk as much as he did. But he couldn’t help be perturbed by the prophecy’s evident power.

  The King said, ‘Tell me this, priest. How can there be such things as prophecies at all? I have a calendar; my priests read it to me every day. It is a litany of feast days and remembrances - God’s design of the world, embedded in the cycle of each year. How can we look beyond that holy cycle? What right do we have to try? I have discussed this business of yours with Archbishop Stigand. “The future is locked and lightless. The Lord alone knows it.” That’s what he says. Is it sacrilegious even to talk of such matters?’

  ‘Look at it this way, lord. We are not seeking to control history but to improve it. A perfect history must be possible, because it must be conceived of by God. Our Fallen world is imperfect, but it may be made more perfect by our manipulation of events. And so to follow the warnings of the Menologium is clearly obeying God’s will.’

  Harold scowled. ‘Stigand would argue with you, I think. I’m sorry I asked; I’ve never had much time for theological sophistry, unlike my predecessor. Get to the point. What is the purpose of all this prophesying?’

  Sihtric drew himself up. ‘I believe,’ he said, ‘that the Menologium is a plan - a scheme, that “lights step by step/the road to empire” - just as it says. And if fulfilled it will see you, Harold Godwineson, installed not merely as King of England, but as ruler of a northern empire. Spanning oceans!’

  Harold didn’t seem terribly impressed. ‘So I will be a new Cnut?’

  ‘Greater than Cnut,’ Sihtric breathed. ‘Far greater.’ He spoke of stanza seven, which described the discovery of Vinland and the other new lands across the western ocean. ‘Nobody knows how extensive those great domains are ...’

  Harold listened, expressionless. ‘I hear the ice makes the passage to Greenland difficult.’

  Sihtric said, ‘But from England’s more southerly ports the ice can be evaded. The Vikings who tried to settle Vinland could not defend themselves against the skraelings. But imagine how it would be to equip a new expedition, from an England united with the northern countries: the wealth of the English, the shipbuilding and navigation skills of the Vikings. We could challenge the skraelings - learn how they hunt for seals and for bears - take the women who sew their skin boats. “‘Across ocean to east/And ocean to west/Men of new Rome sail/from the womb of the boar.” We can take this new world. It’s all in the prophecy.’

  Harold frowned. ‘The boar, though? What can that mean?’

  ‘Of that detail I’m not sure—’

  ‘Jorvik,’ Godgifu said suddenly, and they looked at her. ‘I’m sorry, lord. But it just occurred to me. The city’s English name is Eoforwic, which means the place of the boar.’

  Sihtric’s eyes gleamed, startled by her intervention, satisfied as another bit of his puzzle was solved. ‘Jorvik, then. It is the fate of our generation to build a new empire spanning oceans, reaching from Vinland in the west to the Baltic in the east, with its hub England - and its capital will be Jorvik. It won’t end there. The German states will be drawn to the huge volumes of trade passing to the north, turning away from the Latin south—’

  Harold held up a hand. ‘Enough. Just tell me how we reach this promised land.’

  ‘It is all in the prophecy,’ Sihtric said. ‘“Step by step.” The fifth stanza describes the coming of the Vikings to Lindisfarena. The copiers in the monasteries laboured for centuries to preserve the Menologium for you, lord, and the Menologium’s own words gave the monks a chance to save it from the fire of the Northmen - which they did.

  ‘That achieved, the Menologium survived to be presented to Alfred - and proved to him that he would prevail against the Danish force, when all must have seemed lost. Another step completed. And with that achieved, we come to stanza nine.’

  ‘Which describes this very year,’ Harold said, intrigued, disturbed. ‘Which you claim predicts my actions.’

  ‘Yes.’ And the priest read again: “‘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.”’

  ‘Brother slaying brother,’ Harold growled. ‘We’ve discussed this before. I won’t have Tostig killed, priest.’

  Sihtric returned his glare steadily. ‘But it may be necessary. The fighting man, the elf-wise - isn’t that clear now? It was your duty to take the throne of Alfred.’

  Harold glared at him. ‘Move on, move on,’ he snapped. “‘Brother embraces brother.” What does that mean? Must I forgive Tostig now?’

  ‘No,’ Sihtric said firmly. ‘I have puzzled over this phrase, lord. It’s not to be taken literally. I believe it means you must embrace the Northmen.’

  ‘What, Harald Hardrada?’ Harold laughed.

  Sihtric pressed, ‘Make your peace with him, lord, before he has a chance to strike for the crown.’

  Harold glowered, clearly not liking what he was hearing. ‘And then what?’

  Sihtric took a deep breath. ‘And then, when William comes, you will be ready. “The north comes from south/to spill blood on the wall.”’

  ‘Ah. You think this means the Normans? Northmen who will attack us from the south. Their blood spilled on our shield walls.’

  ‘Yes! You have it, lord. English and Norse together will face the Norman Bastard, and crush him. And that will be the conclusion of the programme of the Menologium - the fulfilment of all these steps across the centuries - and the Rome of the north will be built.’

  ‘And if not,’ Harold said gloomily, ‘if England falls to the Normans, what then? England will turn south, not north, I suppose, and will fall under the sway of the Popes. And the butcher of Normandy will be loose in our land ... But I can’t make peace with Hardrada. It would be like tupping a wild bear.’

  Sihtric was sweating now, as he saw the prize was all but in his grasp. ‘But we are brothers now,’ he said. ‘We and the Northmen. After two centuries of blood spilled and blood mixed - you yourself, King of England, are half Danish. And consider this.’ He turned to Godgifu and Orm. ‘My own sister, this Viking warrior - lovers! Here is the proof.’ And he produced a scrap of blood-stained sheet. ‘I don’t preach omens, lord. But what is this but a symbol of the unity to come?’

  Orm tensed. He was weaponless, here in the King’s chamber, but he felt he could throttle the priest with his bare hands. But Godgifu held his arm, silently urging him to be still.

  Harold, watching this, said evenly, ‘I doubt your sister will forgive you for this, priest.’

  Sihtric, sensing he had made a terrible blunder, rowed back. ‘Lord—I only meant to show you that—’

  ‘Put that disgusting rag away, you fool.’

  Sihtric did so, and stood, tense. ‘My case is made, lord.’

  ‘Is it indeed? Well, I’ll tell you what I think—’

  The door crashed open, and a thegn rushed in. ‘Lord - I am sorry - there is news.’

  It was Tostig. The exiled brother had gathered a fleet and had sailed from Flanders. It appeared he was heading for the English south coast. Harold threw down his mead cup and walked out without another word.

  Sihtric hurried after him. ‘
You should have killed Tostig,’ he said, panicking. ‘This is not in the prophecy. Everything could unravel. Even now, all could be lost ...’

  But the King did not look back.

  XII

  When Orm and Godgifu left the palace, it was evening. It had been cloudy for some days, but now the sky was clear, and a pale light filled the sky - the moon, perhaps.

  ‘I grow sick of this place,’ Orm said, his face tight. ‘The stink of compromise. The hypocrisy. These fools who follow prophecies like gullible old women. And I am sick,’ he said harshly, ‘of your brother.’

  ‘Well, I sympathise with that. What will you do?’

  ‘I’ll go back to Normandy. In training the English thegns’ sons to fight I consider I have discharged my debt to Harold, and I tire of the disdain of these flabby men. At least with William you get a good clean war, and I am respected by his followers.’ He studied her. ‘Are you shocked that I’m thinking of joining the enemies of Harold?’

  She looked into her heart. ‘No. In fact,’ she said slowly, coming to the decision even as she spoke, ‘I’m thinking of going to join Tostig myself. My father was his thegn after all. I have a place there. Everything is too murky here. And I too would like to get away from my brother, after today.’

  ‘So we are separating.’

  ‘It’s a year of war, I think. Not of love. When this is over, one way or the other—’

  ‘We’ll find each other.’

  But she wondered if that could be true.

  He turned, and in a moment was gone into the dark, narrow streets. She returned to her lodging-house, and prepared for bed alone.

  In the middle of the night she was woken by Sihtric. He had received a new letter from Ibn Sharaf in al-Andalus. Sihtric brandished this before her, his face round in the spectral moonlight that filtered through the unglazed window. ‘He has seen it,’ he breathed. ‘The comet. It has appeared in the southern skies of Iberia ...’

  Too impatient to light a lamp, he had her throw on a cloak, and they went outside to study the letter by the moon’s glow.

  ‘The comet was faint - and perhaps not visible from our latitude, or under our murky English skies. But it first appeared in March, just as the Menologium promised. It has come true! Now the empire of the north longs to be born—and Harold must do as I say.’

  Godgifu felt chilled at this talk. ‘You are arrogant, Sihtric. A priest who would command a king.’

  Sihtric said, ‘But even Harold is a mere tool to enable the fulfilment of the grand scheme of the Menologium.’ His eyes were bright in the eerie light.

  Not for the first time she wondered at the motives of the agent who was truly behind all this: the author of the Menologium, the Weaver. What kind of being was he, who dreamed of establishing an Aryan nation in the north?

  And then she saw the King himself, standing by the wall of the church. Harold’s tall figure was unmistakable, as he stood with close companions, a couple of housecarls and an archbishop or two, and peered up at the sky, revealed for the first time in days.

  She looked up, the way they were looking. And her skin prickled with cold.

  ‘Ah,’ Sihtric breathed, staring at Harold. ‘He looks every inch a king. See how the gold thread of his tunic glitters in the moonlight.’

  Godgifu looked at Sihtric. In his grimy nightshirt, his tonsured hair tousled, he looked oddly vulnerable, much younger. ‘You really are unworldly,’ she said. ‘You have obsessed over this comet all your life, and yet you don’t even look up at the sky, do you? Sihtric, that isn’t moonlight.’

  Now he looked up, and saw a glowing silver cloud suspended in the sky, with tails like lengths of hair washing away from it. He gasped, and mumbled a prayer.

  Godgifu explored her own emotions. For all Sihtric’s elaborate interpretations she had never really believed in the Menologium. But with the comet in the sky, this was no longer just an intriguing game played out by an eccentric young priest. The prophecy’s fundamental truth had been demonstrated. Everything was different now, she thought.

  And while Lunden lay silent under the comet’s unnatural light, to north and south fleets were being assembled, armies massed, vast forces stirring. She wondered if the Weaver was content.

  XIII

  On his return to Normandy, Orm went back to the household of his last Norman employer, a man called Guy fitz Gilbert.

  Fitz Gilbert was a minor landowner and third son, seeking his own fortune from William’s latest campaign, as Norman nobles had done for generations. But, through layers of hierarchy, fitz Gilbert owed his allegiance to Robert Count of Mortain, who was one of William’s half-brothers through his mother the tanner’s daughter. And soon after his return in May, Orm found himself moved to the household of Robert himself. He got an increased purse and there was some kind of compensation for fitz Gilbert - and more responsibility for Orm.

  Orm had no illusions about his capabilities. He knew he was a good warrior, and had commanded units of ten or a dozen men, but he was out of his depth with generals. But, decisive, intelligent and, more important, literate, he was recognised as able to contribute to the vast logistical exercise that consumed the whole of Normandy that summer: the preparations for invasion.

  So Orm was in a position to watch, fascinated, as William drew up his plans against England.

  William first had to persuade his own counts to follow him. Few of them had even ventured across the ocean before. England was strong and formidably organised, and Harold was well known to be a competent general. An expedition against England would be orders of magnitude more difficult than an adventure against Maine or Brittany.

  But if England was powerful it was also rich. And it was the wealth to be won in this gamble of a lifetime that seduced William’s warriors. One by one, strong-armed, cajoled and bribed by William, they came round.

  Meanwhile William sent embassies to the Pope in Rome. In an elaborate scheme to seek the Pope’s backing for the war, William was able to point to Edward’s promise of the throne, and Harold’s own broken oath; Harold was a perjuring usurper. Not only that, he was portrayed as complicit in the crimes of his father, including the murder of Alfred, Edward’s older brother.

  Orm the pagan had always thought that Christ was a prince of peace, and he found it hard to understand why the Pope would back an unprovoked military assault. But the Pope had his own ambitions; he wanted more control over the English church. Even Bishop Odo was cynical, though. ‘God guides us all, but it does no harm to back a winner, even if you’re the Pope.’ Anyway William’s embassy worked. Harold was actually excommunicated, and Odo was proudly able to display a papal banner for William’s forces to carry into battle.

  All this may have been a pious justification for a vast act of robbery. But the strange thing about William was that he needed to believe it, utterly. For all his achievements, Orm saw, the Duke seemed to have a grievous fear of death and the punishment of God that could follow. He genuinely needed a holy pretext to justify the blood he spilled. In this, brother Odo was useful. The bishop provided the reassurances that helped the Bastard sleep at night.

  With the Pope’s backing secured, William was able to present his expedition not just as a Norman adventure but a holy reconquest of a fallen Britain by a European coalition. William borrowed troops from the rulers of Flanders, Brittany and Aquitaine, and cast his net wide for mercenaries. Soon it seemed to Orm that every second son, bastard, murderer and rapist in Europe was drawn to William’s banner - all of them hard, experienced fighting men, and few of them with anything to lose.

  The force assembled in the estuary of the river Dives, facing England, lodging in tent cities. There would be two thousand cavalry, eight hundred archers, three thousand infantry and a thousand sailors, supported by another army of servants, cooks, carpenters and carters. Three thousand horses would be shipped over. The landing might be opposed, and so stores to feed the army for a month would be carried; for the horses alone there would be ship-loads o
f hay and grain.

  Orm was involved in training the multinational force in how to obey commands in the Frankish tongue, and to respond to the bugles and horns. Orm was a foot-soldier and he concentrated on working with infantry troops. But he watched the cavalry training, as tightly knit teams of a dozen men wheeled across the chalky grass. Orm had seen the use of horses in Brittany. In their petty assaults on farmers the knights had never known defeat - but they had never been tested against a shield wall, and Orm was sceptical how much use they would be. But the cavalry was certainly an inspiring sight, that long Norman summer.