“Bravo!” cried Harald, when I had done. “A capital story! And nearly came away rich—bad luck! If I’d been there, I’d not have let that silver slip through my fingers, storm or no. For it’s money, after all, that matters most, friend Odd, isn’t it? Money makes a man’s fame. I tell you someday I will be rich. Devil skin me, I will!” He began to glance around him with an intensity that seemed extraordinary and his voice got steadily louder. “Mark me, the day will come when Canute the Rich, Prince Yaroslav, even old Charlemagne in his grave, will gnaw their knuckles for envy when Harald’s name is spoke!”
He was no longer talking to me but to the whole room, and he was answered with a thunderous pounding on the tables and shouts of “Aye!” and “Brave Harald!” from every Norwegian throat. With his face screwed into a warrior’s scowl, he stood up and showed himself to them while they cheered and cheered.
But Jarl Ragnvald, I noticed, seemed about as comfortable as a man shitting a stone, while Dag—and this intrigued me most—looked as though he might at any moment make an ungraceful leap for the door. What was he afraid of?
Harald, taking his seat again finally, turned back to me. His face was flushed. “You hear that—how they cheer me? They love me! For how many have done what I’ve done already at my age? If you were there, Odd Thorvaldsson, then you saw it for yourself—a boy of fifteen, but I hewed the legs off a dozen warriors before some troll caught me with a spear through the lungs. Hah!”
“Indeed, I saw it,” I replied, “and am still wondering how you come to be here now.”
It was none other than his elegant kinsman, Dag, he explained, who had saved his life by pulling him from under the heap of bodies and dragging him from the field. Commandeering a farmer’s cart, Dag had taken him, more dead than alive, to a cottage deep in the woods and left him with the family there to be nursed. And there he had lain, too weak to move all winter long, while the remnant of Olaf’s faction was hunted down by Canute’s Danish warriors, who now occupied the king’s Hall in Nidaros.
“At last, with the coming of summer, my strength returned and, guided by the cottager’s son, I got across the Keel into Sweden, where Dag had gone before me. Then it was just a matter of rounding up our scattered friends, finding a ship, and here you see me!—You there, pour, damn your eyes…” He held out his empty horn to the young cupbearer who stood behind him.
Aye, I thought, I see you. But there were two youths carried half-dead from that field, and the better of them must drag out his life a cripple while you prance and posture. It’s a true saying that “fated and fair keep poor company.”
But I told him it was a brave story, returning his praise of mine, and added for good measure, “More Tronders than you might guess will rejoice to hear it, for it didn’t take them long to decide that the Danes weren’t to their liking. By the time I left Nidaros this spring, they were missing your half-brother and telling each other of his miracles.”
“Ah, of course!” exclaimed Dag. “Being enslaved in Finland all these months you’ve not heard the most recent news. The king’s body is found! We learned of it some weeks ago. And I myself sent word ahead to the jarl here, and to Prince Yaroslav. They say a young cripple, inspired by God in a dream, led Bishop Grimkel right to the spot. And the body was uncorrupted! Can you imagine what that means?”
It means, I smiled to myself, that friend Kalf has played his part well, and they shall hear nothing from me about what really happened.
“It means,” Dag answered himself, “that he is a saint—Rome is bound to confirm it—the first from our country!”
This remark produced a solemn moment, as Harald, followed by everyone within hearing of us, blessed themselves and mumbled prayers—myself included, I hasten to say, for it’s sound advice, when you’re thrown among wolves, to howl like one.
But I did just steal a glance at young Harald. What thoughts ran around that head so piously bowed? Surely he had hated Olaf—that much was common knowledge in the camp. But his future rested in the hands of Olaf’s hirdmen now, and he knew it. He was playing his part well.
“But if you were safe in Sweden, Harald,” I asked, “what brings you now to the country of the Rus?”
“You know surprisingly little of King Olaf for one who claims to have fought for him.” It was not Harald but Jarl Ragnvald who spoke, turning on me sharply. He had been deep in conversation with his wife and the priest, and I hadn’t thought he was even listening. I promised myself not to make that mistake again.
“Do they never mention the Lady Ingigerd’s name in Norway?”
“Never that I heard, Jarl.”
He affected a smile of pity, like one speaking to a half-wit. “Know, then, that she is the sister of the present king of Sweden and daughter of the old one, wife to Yaroslav, Prince of Novgorod, and my own cousin.”
“My dear Jarl,” said Dag in his most ingratiating manner, “tell my friend her history, and don’t be modest about your own part in it.”
Ragnvald did not strike me as a modest man, and he had taken on a quantity of drink besides, which is generally a loosener of tongues. Still, for my benefit, he took the trouble to look put-upon.
The story he told was a complicated one. I will give it as simply as I can. The gist of it was that some ten years ago King Olaf, hearing of Ingigerd’s beauty, had asked the Swedish king for her hand, despite the fact the two countries had long been at war. Olaf sent his skalds to press his suit and they praised the king so highly that Ingigerd fell in love with him sight unseen. They also gained the support of Ingigerd’s cousin Ragnvald. But Ingigerd’s father flew into a rage and said he would never consent to the marriage of his daughter to his hated enemy. At about the same time, an offer for her hand came from Yaroslav, Prince of Novgorod. Now Ragnvald did a rather daring thing. He took it on himself, without the Swedish king’s knowledge, to arrange a marriage for Olaf with Ingigerd’s younger sister, Astrid. When the king found out, he threatened to hang Ragnvald. But Ingigerd saved him. She would consent to marry Yaroslav, she said, only if she could take her cousin with her and install him as jarl of Ladoga. And that is what happened.
Then a year ago who should appear on their doorstep but Olaf—older and stouter, but still a handsome man. He had been driven from his throne by the mighty King Canute of England and fled to the court of Yaroslav and Ingigerd. His only claim on their hospitality was his marriage to Ingigerd’s sister, although interestingly, he had neglected to bring the Lady Astrid with him. Was it perhaps a more intimate connection with Ingigerd that he sought to trade on? The rekindling of an old flame?
I interrupted Ragnvald to pose that innocent suggestion.
The Jarl’s expression congealed; even Dag’s pleasant face hardened. Only on Harald’s lips was there, perhaps, the faintest flicker of a smile.
“You do not take my point,” Ragnvald said icily. “My cousin is a most religious woman, while Olaf was a man who had already shown marks of Our Lord’s favor. It was only natural they should admire one another. The testimonials to Olaf’s piety during the few months he was with us at court are an inspiration to all of our Faith. One time, I recall, at Princess Ingigerd’s personal request, he cured a child of a boil by the laying on of his hands. Another time when, on the Sabbath he had absent-mindedly picked up a stick to whittle, seeing with horror what he had done, he burnt the wood shavings in the palm of his hand for a penance.”
“Having met the man myself,” I said gravely, “I can well believe it of him.” Indeed, I could believe it of that brutal fanatic. Ragnvald, assuming that I had meant it in praise, favored me with a bleak smile.
Poor Yaroslav, I thought. His wife, seeing at long last the man she once had loved, finds him still to her liking—and who could believe that it was only Olaf’s piety that fluttered the heart of this willful woman? What to do? The first thing he did was offer to make Olaf king of the Bulgars—at quite some distance from Novgorod. But when Olaf decided finally to try to regain his throne instead, Yaroslav
was delighted to shower him with money, give him leave to raise troops, and wish him Godspeed back to Norway.
“Needless to say,” the Jarl continued, “the court went into deep mourning when word reached us of the tragic outcome of Stiklestad. Indeed, the Princess took it—” He looked away blinking, allowing us to picture this dismal scene for ourselves.
“Well, at any rate,” I said, “they must be cheered to know that his brother still lives.”
The compression of Ragnvald’s bloodless lips suggested otherwise. “We were delighted,” said he, fixing me with a very chilly stare, “delighted to learn that there was a half-brother,”—(I noted the emphasis)—“though his existence, I must say, took us all by surprise. No one has been able to recall Olaf ever mentioning the young man.” He looked wickedly at Harald. “Of course, the Prince and Princess look forward to receiving him, knowing how anxious he must be to embrace again his little nephew, Magnus, King Olaf’s son and heir—”
Came the eruption.
“Magnus!” Harald flung out an arm, sending cups and candlesticks flying. “My brother’s bastard, you mean! Whelped under the stair by some concubine. Sickly little Magnus, who pukes in his nurse’s bosom? ‘Nephew’ is not one of the words I call him!” He finished up leaning across the table and bellowing this in Ragnvald’s face.
A crashing silence followed, while the jarl, teeth clenched and jowls aquiver, stared straight ahead of him. With an effort, he forced a little dry laugh.
“Self-control’s a hard lesson for the young, is it not, friend Dag? I will do you the favor of not repeating his remarks to my cousin—they would only distress her. Olaf, as of course you know, left his son—his acknowledged son—in her care when he returned to Norway, and she and Yaroslav love the boy like one of their own, he being the only thing that remains to them to remember the father by.”
Well, well, I thought, our proud young Harald isn’t quite what he seems. Not important enough to have accompanied Olaf to Yaroslav’s court, and distinctly not his heir. What then, are he and Dag after?
“Ragnvald, my dear friend,” Dag spoke urgently, pressing his host’s arm. “I will not permit us to quarrel like this. Harald and I have come to Gardariki seeking only refuge and a chance to serve those who served our king so well. Nothing more. When the princess has had an opportunity to know him, she will esteem Harald, too. He is an accomplished young man—”
“I can ride,” the Unnatural Weed burst out in a truculent tone, “I can sail, ski, shoot a bow, harp, and rhyme. And I take second place in these to no runny-nosed baby!”
I saw Dag’s fist, lying in his lap, clench, and the knuckles turn white. I imagined I could hear him screaming to the young fool to shut up.
“Can you rhyme, then?” I asked pleasantly. I hadn’t grown up in my father’s house without learning how to manage those intimate family occasions that veered toward mayhem.
He looked at me sharply. “I said so.”
“Let me hear something.”
“Hear this then. I made it last winter, while I lay half-dead on that cottage floor.” He turned his eyes again on Ragnvald, and looking his fiercest, began:
There was I where shields were shattered,
Blood ran red from murd’rous blows;
Now in holes I hide me, hunted,
without honor—yet, who knows
what wide word-fame my Luck will bring me,
what pale terror to my foes?
“It’s well-turned,” I said truthfully.
“You’re skilled in such things?”
“As it happens, I am. My father, in his day—”
He shot out a line of verse and commanded, “Give it back using none of the same kennings.”
It was a line composed ages ago by Bragi the Old, where he refers to a warrior as ‘mast of the sail of the sword’ because, as a mast holds up the sail, so a warrior holds his shield. Without hesitating, I gave him the line back, substituting a kenning made famous by Olaf’s own skald, Thormod: “feeder of the swan of the crashing wave of wounds,” by which he means to say “feeder of the raven of the battlefield.”
“Not bad,” he conceded, cocking that one eyebrow of his which was higher than the other and casting his mocking expression my way.
“And shall I try you in turn?” I asked.
“If you like.”
I decided to give him a verse of my own—the knottiest I had ever composed. (My brother, Gunnar, had gotten in such a muddle when I tested him with it that he stamped off in a temper.) “Listen, then: the slinger of the fire of the storm of the troll of the protecting moon of the boat house’s steed! Interpret it.”
“Heh? You think I can’t?” A smile spread over his face and he rocked backwards on the bench, his eyelids half closed in pleasurable thought, the anger of a moment ago apparently all forgotten. “The ‘boat-house’s steed’ is a ship—that much is obvious.” He touched one finger. “The ‘protecting moon,’ that’s the shield hanging on the gunnel, no? Now, the ‘troll of the shield’ must be a sword—that’s original, I like that—and, of course, the ‘storm of the sword’ is battle. Then, the ‘fire of battle’ is sword again, and the ‘slinger’ is a warrior. Done!” He threw back his head and laughed.
After that we settled down to test each other in good earnest, and for a full ten minutes capped lines: ‘Sun of the deep’ for ‘fire of the wave,’ ‘corpse-sea’ for ‘wound-dew,’ ‘necklace tree’ for ‘sewing Valkyrie,’ ‘fjord-elk’ for ‘sea king’s ski’…
The room watched us in silence. Men who knew their poetry nodded and smiled. Dag was one of these. But the jarl, it seemed, was not. His eye swung back and forth between us, catching none of the fire.
Harald was good—he put me on my mettle—and as he warmed to the contest, I wondered if I could be looking at the same bragging bully who had sat there a moment before. In his place was only a boy, eager, quick-witted, and in love with the dance of the word-music.
Dag saw it, too, and looked at me thoughtfully along his eyes.
After a time, Harald said, “Enough of this playing at poetry, friend skald. Have you ever composed a poem for a high-born person?”
“No,” I replied, “for I’ve never met one.”
“You have tonight. Will you shape a verse in my honor?”
“Shall it tell how skillfully you guided the ‘Sea-king’s ski’ on the Neva two days ago?” I kept my eyes on his and waited.
His shoulders tensed. So did mine. And then he slapped the table with the flat of his hand. “Ha! Ha, ha! Christ, that’s blunt enough! They say an Icelander will tell you the truth! So you’ve nothing to praise me for, eh? All right, fair enough. But one day, my friend,” he brought his face close to mine, “one day it might happen that you’ll compose an ode that will honor us both.”
“It might,” I answered carelessly.
“What do they call you familiarly, Odd Thorvaldsson?”
“Tangle-Hair, and you?”
“Nothing. Not yet. When the time comes I’ll choose a name that suits me.”
(And, of course, in time he did, for the world knows him as Harald the Ruthless.) Then he surprised me. “Odd Tangle-Hair, come with me to Novgorod!”
“Novgorod—what for?”
“Why d’you think? To be my skald, of course. A nobleman must have one and I have none. My brother had half a dozen. They all died at Stiklestad, singing his fame. How shall I have honor when no one sings mine. Will you come, Tangle-Hair? For I swear, you’re the best fellow in all the world!”
I stared at him—longer than I should have—perplexed how to say that I would as soon lay my head on a chopping block as go off to Gardariki in the retinue of this noisy beggar boy.
“Well—? Is it every day you’re offered the friendship of a king’s brother?” His color began to darken. I dared not shame him here.
“Harald, I am by nature a fellow who chews things slowly, and this is too great a matter to decide on a moment’s whim.” He’s drunk, I though
t. By tomorrow it will all be forgotten. “Let me call on you in the morning with my answer.”
But here Ragnvald broke in: “Tomorrow you will find us gone hunting. I would offer you a horse, but my stables are not large and, as you see…” His hand took in the room.
“But surely, Ragnvald,” Harald began angrily.
“Thank you, Jarl,” I said quickly. “I’ve had more than enough exercise lately. I’ll find quieter amusement in the town.”
“I am sure you will,” he murmured. The voice was noncommittal, the words might have meant anything.
“In the evening, then,” said Harald to me, sounding none too pleased at being thwarted even in the smallest thing.
“In the evening. Jarl Ragnvald, Lady,” I said, standing up, “I thank you for my dinner. My time is never wasted when I learn some new thing, and tonight I have learned many.”
Ragnvald smiled sourly. “I’ll send a man with you to light your way.”
But Dag was on his feet already. “Don’t trouble your people, Jarl, I’ll see him back. His father, you know….”
With a firm hand on my arm, he steered me toward the door.
35
A Hard Choice
The ground glittered with a dusting of snow as we walked through the icy night air. The sounds of feasting grew fainter as Dag and I picked our way down the path to the harbor.
“Odd, you never said how you came to be in Olaf’s army.”
I was prepared for that question. For the most part I told him the truth—why shouldn’t I? Except that I spared him my true opinion of his dead king, nor did I say anything about my accidental role in smuggling the saintly corpse away from the battlefield.
“And you saw Harald there? And me, too? By Christ, I wish I had known it, I would have invited you to fight at our side.”
I made a vague sound of agreement.
“Odd, how do you find Harald, now that you know him a little? Would you make him your friend?”
“I make friends only to lose them. I’m resolved to make no more.”
“Good God,” he laughed, “what a thing for a young fellow to say! And you sound as though you meant it, too. But make an exception of me, at least. I’m your friend, as your father was mine.”
Odin’s Child Page 41
