“But that very night, God help me, I sinned again, and for days after that I couldn’t find the courage to make my confession. When I did go again to the church, it was the hour of Mass and the bishop was preaching a sermon. Oh, Odd, if you could have heard him! ‘Put away drunkenness and gluttony and whoring,’ he said. ‘War against the body, for it is there that sin enters.’ He bade us live like the blessed monks and hermits, all alone in caves, on mountaintops or islands. Satan sends his army of demons to tempt them with visions of ale and meat and naked women, but they only pray harder, and the demons run away howling, burnt by their prayers.”
“Pah! You mean like those scrawny wretches who lived in Iceland when our forefathers arrived? We sent them away howling!”
“No, Odd, they have power. They heal, even raise men from the dead—not with witchcraft, but by the grace of God. Odd, I want to be one of them, and I will be! But oh, there is so much wickedness in me.”
He put his hands to his head as if he would pull out his hair. I thought I knew something about madness, but I had never seen the like of this. I didn’t know him.
“Kalf Slender-Leg, it’s all nonsense. Healing and raising the dead—how can you believe such stuff? Only the Valkyries of Odin can raise the dead, and maybe not even them anymore.”
“You see!” He turned on me with a look of triumph. “You doubt the power of the old gods yourself. Wake up, Odd, before it’s too late. There is but one God. Believe in Him!”
Sudden fury took hold of me. “Why, Kalf? Why only one? This is what I cannot understand about you Christmen. Why must everyone be wrong but you? Maybe your bishop can cure souls, but surely the noaidi cured mine. There’s room for all—your wooden Virgin, the wooden Thor that once stood on our land at home, and even Nunna’s rough wooden fellows. With what right do your priests order us to turn our old friends out?”
“Nunna! When I think of that deviltry we did with him, the sacrifice. Oh, Christ, I want to cut off my right hand. God breathed on my neck when I picked up the knife. I felt Him, but I did it anyway because it was you who asked me, and because I hadn’t even Otkel’s courage to walk away from it. Oh, I’m far worse than you, Odd. You’re unbaptized and in darkness, but I denied Him knowingly. And God help me, I still do. The pure will have eternal life, Odd. But for me, there is the Fire.”
“Damn you, don’t speak to me of fire! I’ve been in a fire, and I know the good Christmen who set it, too.”
“Odd, it was a sign, that fire, a warning of what you must suffer hereafter. Heed it.”
“Why must I fear anything hereafter? Why must anyone burn for the love of women and ale and every other good thing? These starving fools of yours on their islands and mountain tops will pine someday for what they’ve missed when it’s too late to enjoy it.”
I struggled to hide my anger, but could not. How could my truest friend—who followed me in everything, who had twice saved my life, and to whom I had sworn brotherhood—how could he, knowing what the Christmen had done to me, turn on me like this?
“Slender-Leg,” I forced myself to smile, “you’re too sensible a fellow for this rubbish. That priest has done you some mischief, but you’ll soon be yourself again. Come now, and let’s not quarrel. Aren’t we brothers? Come back to the inn with me, and we’ll pour down a horn of ale together.”
He stopped suddenly and faced me. We had been walking all this while, talking too loudly and drawing stares from passers-by. He took my hands in his, and tears shone in his eyes. “No, Odd, you come to the church with me, and we will kneel together and beg God’s forgiveness for our sins. I ask it on my knees, Odd. Unless we become brothers in Christ, we can never be brothers at all.”
I hit him so hard that he staggered back against the wall of a shop, upsetting a pyramid of wooden bowls. We stared at each other in dumb pain.
Just then, from somewhere in the next street there came the whinny of a horse and a man’s voice shouting. Next instant, horse and rider burst around the corner, the horse’s hoofs scrabbling on the slick paving planks. They pounded up the street toward us—the animal was lathered and snorting, the man mud-spattered from helmet to boot. A pig leapt squealing over a wattle fence, and a flock of terrified geese flew straight up in the air, making the horse rear and nearly flinging the rider off. He kicked it savagely, yanked its head around, and came on again.
With the other human traffic, I pressed up against a house wall to give him room as he thundered past. Everywhere, people poured out of shops and houses to run after him up the street toward the cathedral square. Glad to turn my back on Kalf, I ran with them.
In his right fist, the rider brandished the war-arrow, and in his mouth was the name of Olaf, the king.
18
The Return of the King
Of course, we knew by now why smoke rose no more from Olaf’s royal hall. His history, as I gathered it from Bergthora and others, was, this:
Norway had had kings since time past remembering but had never submitted to them easily. Jarls and yeomen alike preferred the pleasures of lawlessness.
After Olaf Tryggvason died, unlamented, in the year 1000, the throne remained vacant for the next fifteen years. In the meantime, southernmost Norway fell subject to the Danes while the rest of the country reverted to a patchwork of petty ‘kingdoms’, none larger than a single fjord or valley.
One of these was ruled by a certain Harald, who could claim a distant connection to the ancient royal line of the Ynglings. His son was Olaf.
At the age of twelve, Olaf went off a-viking, plundering the coasts of Frankland and England. And sometime during these years he turned Christman—not one of your starving and meditating sort of Christmen, but rather of the fierce variety, in keeping with his character. At the same time, he decided to make himself ruler of Norway.
In the year 1015, he sailed for home with a force of one hundred and twenty men in two leaky tubs. He was met, at first, with little enthusiasm, except in the more populous and Christianized south, where his own people came from. But before the year was out, he had defeated the most powerful of the northern jarls and was able to sail along the whole coast of Norway, hailed everywhere as king. He was just twenty-two years old.
Like his predecessor, Olaf Tryggvason, this Olaf made the northern town of Nidaros his capital, despite—or maybe because of—the fact that his popularity was thinnest there. And also like that earlier Olaf, he set about to convert the region to his new religion, even if he had to shed an ocean of blood to do it.
In that same year, oddly enough, another twenty-two year old viking gained a throne. This one was fated to be Olaf’s doom. His name was Canute and he became, upon his father’s death, king of Denmark and soon thereafter, of England, too.
Even an ignorant Icelander like me had heard the name of Canute the Rich, who bestrode our northern world as no king before him ever had, and whose ambition was as boundless as his luck. It was inevitable that Canute and Olaf would collide.
Olaf began it by attacking Denmark in 1028. But Canute’s double kingdom was immensely richer, and his power far better founded than his rival’s. His spies reported the restlessness of the Norse jarls, especially those of Trondelag, and a judicious use of silver did the rest.
When Canute’s splendid long-ships—each one mounting on its prow a great gilded bull’s head whose horns flashed in the sun—approached the Norwegian coast, Olaf found himself suddenly deserted. Without striking a blow, this stern, intolerant king was forced to flee over the mountains to Sweden—and, in time, much farther than that, as I will tell in its place, though nothing was known about these other adventures then.
Like plucking an apple from a bough, Canute added Norway to his empire. He was hailed as king everywhere he went—and nowhere more enthusiastically than in the eight shires of Trondelag. After appointing Jarl Haakon of Lade to oversee the country for him, he went home to London. The Tronder jarls were well pleased with their obliging absentee ruler.
But Jarl Haakon, t
he overseer, drowned in a shipwreck the very next year, and word of this somehow reached Olaf in his distant exile. In the autumn of 1030, he re-crossed the mountains with a hired army to take back his throne.
The jarls were alerted. A fast ship, no doubt, was already speeding the news to London, just as gallopers, brandishing the war arrow, were carrying it to every Norwegian village and farm. Olaf was encamped at a place called Stiklestad, at the head of Trondheimfjord. The jarls called upon every able-bodied man to oppose him and his army of Swedish freebooters.
†
Now, in the crowded streets of Nidaros people milled about the square, talking in worried voices and cursing the Fat Man (for so the king was called by those who didn’t love him). If Olaf the Stout had any friends in that crowd, they kept their voices low.
After loitering for a while, overhearing conversations, I decided to go back to Karl’s Doom and console myself with a jug and a girl. I already felt wretched about my quarrel with Kalf.
Entering the inn yard, I heard the excited voice of Ogmund Pot-Belly, whom I had seen in the square just a while ago. He was digging furiously in his sea chest, throwing things out to left and right, while he ranted at Stig, Starkad, and Bergthora. They watched him with amusement.
With a grunt, he hauled from the bottom of the chest a large and heavy sword in an old scabbard, and fumbled with the belt, which barely closed around his middle. It had been a long time, I imagined, since a sword had swung from his hip in place of his precious scales.
“Odd Tangle-Hair!” he called out. “Thank Heaven! You heard, didn’t you? I appeal to you—will you not join me and command your men to do the same? Our King Olaf needs every Christman’s sword.”
“Fight for him?” I thought I must have heard wrong.
“Of course, for him. Dear God, man, don’t listen to what these northern savages are saying. Oh, they’ll burn for it one day!”
“Now then, Master Ogmund,” warned Bergthora, standing in front of him and giving his sword belt a wrenching tug. “Fight for the Fat Man if you like, but your opinion isn’t the popular one, and I don’t care to have it shouted from my rooftop. It’s bad for business, if you know what I mean.”
Ogmund slapped a fist into a soft palm. “Some things matter a deal more than your business or mine, Bergthora. It was our King Olaf who brought this country out of darkness, throwing down the filthy heathen idols with his own hands wherever he went. And when mice and snakes would scuttle out from underneath them, he’d tell the people, ‘That’s what you’ve been feeding with your milk and bits of meat.’ He brought ’em to Christ by the hundreds. There are plenty in the south who bless his name for it. But these ignorant Tronders of yours—half of ’em out-and-out heathens and the rest not much better.”
“Now really, Ogmund,” Bergthora stopped him firmly, “’T’isn’t near as simple as you make it out—heathen against Christman. Why, I’m a Christian woman myself, more or less, but Olaf was too harsh, and there’s the truth of it. Too many heads and hands lopped off, too many hangings and eye gougings when people came slow to be baptized—and him a foreigner from the south to boot. And it isn’t only heathens who oppose him. King Canute’s a good Christian as I’ve heard, and so are our Tronder jarls, Christian to a man.”
Ogmund spat. “Your jarls are fools. They’re playing Canute’s game, and the day will come when they’ll regret it.”
“Why, he’s left us alone so far.”
“Look you,” cried Ogmund exasperated, “if a man stands with one foot in Denmark and the other in England and pisses, who gets wet, eh?”
“Well, you’ve a quaint way of putting it, Master Ogmund, and maybe you’re right. All I know is, when war starts, silver goes into the ground, and that’s bad for my trade. As for the Danes, they drink beer like other men—and piss like other men, too, I daresay.”
Stig and I laughed while Ogmund rolled his eyes. “God save us. Only a fool disputes with a stone! Odd Tangle-Hair, I appeal to you again, will you and your men offer your swords to the king?”
I took a thoughtful pull from the ale horn. “D’you know the old saying, Ogmund, ‘When wolves fight, the sheep rejoice’? No? Well, I just made it up. It means I don’t care for your Christian king or your Christian jarls.
“I see,” he said stiffly. “You speak for all your men, do you?”
“I won’t see them cut to pieces for no good reason.”
“Would there be profit in it?” wondered Starkad.
“Not likely,” answered Stig. “Farmers on the one side and vagabonds on the other—wouldn’t have enough loot between ’em to make the trip worthwhile.”
“In that case,” said Starkad with a wide yawn, “I’m content to stay here.”
At that moment, in walked Kalf. Without a word to any of us, he went straight to his sea chest. A worried look came over Bergthora’s kindly face. She went and laid an arm on his shoulder. “You look bothered, young Slender-Leg, what have you been up to?”
“Looking for Bishop Grimkel.”
“Whatever for, at a time like this? ‘T’isn’t the Sun’s Day, is it?”
“To ask his blessing. I’m going away.” Stig and Starkad looked up in surprise, first at him, then at me, but they said nothing. “But the church is empty,” he went on, “not even a deacon about, and I could find no one to tell me where the bishop has gone.”
“No mystery there,” replied Bergthora. “He’s gone up-fjord to join up with the king. He’s not lost a minute. I shouldn’t be surprised if he secretly had some word from Olaf before now. He’s the king’s man.”
“He is indeed,” seconded Ogmund. “If you want his blessing, lad, then come with me to Stiklestad.”
“They say there’s to be a fight there.”
“So there will. Are you afraid?”
“I would fear nothing, standing by that holy man.”
“I’m glad to hear you say it. Any man who fights in Olaf’s cause will surely have God’s blessing.”
“And remission of sins?”
“I shouldn’t doubt it. What d’you say, lad?”
“I’ll go!”
Thor’s Billy goat! I thought. Kalf’s no fighter. He’ll lose his life for sure, and it’ll be my fault if he does. What an ungrateful dog I am. When I lost my wits, did he hit me? Did he curse me? Did he abandon me? Now, I have a chance to repay him. Until he returns to his senses, I’ll keep him safe, even if it means tying him to a tree, just as he tied me to the mast.
“Ogmund Pot-Belly,” I said, “I’ve changed my mind. I’m coming with you.”
“Don’t,” said Kalf sharply, not looking at me. “What’s this to do with you?”
“Well, I’m a poet, aren’t I. And poets sing of battles, don’t they? Now, isn’t it disgraceful that I’ve never even seen a battle—not a real one, I mean.” I could see he didn’t believe a word of this.
“Suit yourself,” he shrugged.
“What’s happened between you two?” asked Stig at last, giving me a hard look.
“Nothing, Steersman, not a thing.”
“Shall I round up the lads and come with you, then?”
“By no means. This is Kalf’s business and mine. We’ll be back in a few days, I with my poem and he with his blessing, and both of us safe and sound. Master Ogmund, we’ll find ourselves a small boat—shouldn’t be hard—and row up. Bergthora, we’ll need provisions. How many days rowing is it to the top of the fjord?”
“I haven’t the faintest, and I doubt you’ll find the place without a guide.”
“We’ll find it.” With luck, after the battle’s over, I added to myself. “Today’s almost spent. We’ll leave at sunup tomorrow?”
Ogmund nodded, puzzled but grateful. Kalf gave me a long, searching look, as did Bergthora and Stig. Not caring to have my purpose questioned anymore, I made myself scarce for the rest of that afternoon and evening.
†
Above Nidaros, the high bluffs of Trondheimfjord give way to gentler hills
and long stretches of flat land where the trees grow down to the water’s edge, broken sometimes by a stretch of watery meadow or a tooth of granite thrusting up from the bones of earth.
Kalf and I pulled at the oars while Ogmund held the tiller. The day was hot and windless, and we soon shed our mail coats, laying them in the bottom of the dinghy beside our arms and rations.
Ogmund sensed the coolness between Kalf and me, and after trying for a time to keep up a conversation, lapsed into silence.
We stopped once to ask our way when we spied a woodcutter’s hut by the shore. Ogmund hallooed was anyone at home and did they know where the king’s army lay? The door opened a crack and a sallow-faced woman put out her head. A naked child peeped from behind her skirt. “To ficht agin ‘im or wi’im?” demanded the woman in a dialect I could barely make out.
“To defend our rightful king, of course,” said the merchant in his lofty way.
“Bad luck to ‘ee then. My man’s gone agin’im.”
The door banged shut, leaving Pot-Belly fuming.
Night found us stiff and weary from rowing, and still far from our destination. To make short of it, we blundered about for two more days, stopping every so often to let Kalf scamper up a tree and look for the smoke of campfires. At last, with our food nearly gone and nightfall once more coming on, he sang out from the top of a tall pine that he could see a smudge of smoke on the horizon.
“Praise God!” cried Ogmund. “How many campfires do you make it?”
“Ten thousand!” was Kalf’s ecstatic answer.
But there were far fewer campfires than that when we stood on the shore an hour later and looked across the plain of Stiklestad.
The field was shaped like a giant hoofprint pressed into the earth, the round end ringed by a wooded ridge that comes down to the water on both sides. Only one army so far was encamped there, in a disorderly sprawl of lean-tos and campfires that spread along the tree line to our left, fronted by a palisade.
In its midst a ragged banner hung from a standard, white with a golden cross: the arms of King Olaf Haraldsson. My two companions were for racing up straightway, but I insisted we first pull the dinghy into the underbrush at the edge of the field and cover it with boughs before anyone noticed it. I wanted it handy if we should need it in a hurry. Call it second sight, if you want.
Odin’s Child Page 18
