The Widow Queen

by Elzbieta Cherezinska

  “Daughter,” he greeted her softly, and it was enough to awaken hope in her breast. “Did Birger sort out everything he needed to in Wolin?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Good. I’m so happy that I can rely on you.” He spoke slowly, as if sifting his words. “Possibly more so than on any other of my daughters…”

  She should have felt proud, but instead fear clutched her heart.

  “Astrid, I have another task for you. One which may seem obvious, but those are only appearances.” He cocked his head and studied her, with more attention than ever before. “The fate of daughters is to marry…”

  Her mouth went dry. Hope leaped to her throat. Olav’s pale eyes gleamed in her memory, as if he were standing in front of her now.

  “Yes,” she said, her voice trembling.

  “The fate of my daughters is to marry as well as they possibly can.”

  Świętosława to Sweden, and I to Norway, she repeated silently, again and again, as if that could make it so.

  “You’ll make my dream of a powerful fleet come true.”

  “Yes!” The word escaped her, because he couldn’t have spoken any clearer.

  Mieszko laughed, and added,

  “My daughters surprise me. Do you mean to say that, like Świętosława, you have seen through my designs? I know they say you can see the future, but to this extent? Unless you heard of Sigvald’s arrival while you were in Wolin, hmm?”

  “Sigvald?” The fear was back in a single heartbeat. “You want me to marry the Jomsviking?”

  “Who else did you think I meant, child?”

  “Olav Tryggvason,” she said, honestly and helplessly.

  Mieszko laughed lightly. “Much time will pass before Olav wins back the Norwegian throne. I like him, I won’t deny it, but Sigvald is a far better choice. By joining you with him, we’ll end the Danish influence in Jomsborg, and we’ll gain the iron boys, an ocean army. You, my daughter, Dalwin’s granddaughter, Wolin’s viceroy, as the wife of the jarl of Jomsborg—it’s the perfect solution. See it, my clever Astrid.”

  “My prince, Sigvald lost to Jarl Haakon. He has no chance of being chosen as the chieftains’ leader. After such a defeat? The reputation of coward and bad luck will stick fast to him. Someone like that will not become the jarl of Jom…”

  “They will choose him,” Mieszko interrupted her firmly. “When they see that I have supported him by giving him my daughter.”

  “No.” Astrid disagreed with the duke for the first time in her life. She didn’t believe she could sway him, but she had to try.

  “Yes. Listen to me, and learn. Sometimes it pays to back a loser, because by winning their eternal gratitude you can gain even more. Sigvald’s fate will depend on me and you, remember that. And he’ll do everything to make the most of this opportunity. He’ll snatch Jomsborg from Danish influences and give it to us, do you understand? The dreams I have dreamt for so many years will finally become reality. What I fought Count Wichman and Hodo for. No one will threaten my reign at Odra’s estuary. Do you know what that means for the entire country? Just think!”

  She gathered all the strength she still had left and for the first time called him “Father.”

  “Father, please, I’m begging you as I have never begged you before. Marry Sigvald to Geira. Please, so long as it isn’t me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I cannot find a shred of respect for him inside of me. To me, he is nothing but a coward.”

  “Even better,” he replied coldly. “Instead of loving him, you can control him.”

  “Father…”

  “I have made up my mind. Geira will marry Olav.”

  Astrid felt those words like a kick in the gut. She didn’t think the next ones could hurt her even more.

  “The young Tryggvason is worth backing. I’ll wait until he has a son with your sister, then I’ll let him sail to get the riches and men that he cannot win his throne without. I’ll ensure he and Sigvald are friends, too, loyal to one another. The Jomsvikings will aid Olav in his fight against Norway in a few years. Eric, Świętosława’s husband, will also be useful in that battle. All this to smother Denmark, my daughter. You must understand this. The faraway Sweden and even more distant Norway pose no threat to me, to us. Only Denmark, and that’s precisely why I am solving that problem. Even if Sven, after his father Harald’s imminent death, claims power in an expansive Denmark, he will end up in a country as small as a fishing village.”

  Astrid began to shake. At first, she thought she would burst into tears, like a child. Then, she felt something strange happening to her entire body. Her fingers went numb, as if she’d shoved them into ice.

  “You’re mistaken…”

  “Stop it, don’t be childish. It doesn’t suit you, Astrid. Wisdom, strength, the gift of foresight, those things suit you.”

  “You’re mistaken…”

  “I know what I’m saying. I’ve watched you for so many years, my child. Get Olav out of your head. You wouldn’t be happy at the side of a man who dreams of another. Świętosława has stolen Olav’s heart. He has asked me for her, and I denied him. Can’t you see? She asked me for him, too, and I denied her as well. I’m not such a tyrant as you might think. I have to deny all my children what they want, to give them what they need instead.”

  “You’re mistaken, Father…” The words slipped from her lips for the third time, and she knew that though her voice was speaking them, the words were not hers. She flinched. She moved her hands. She grabbed Mieszko’s hand and bowed to him.

  “I will do as you command, my lord. I feel that you are wrong, but I don’t know what about.”

  PART II

  TO ALL THE CROWNS WE WILL WEAR

  The First Crown

  986–995

  12

  SWEDEN

  Spring trilled, like birds in their nests. It gleamed with the bloody glow of cold sunsets, cool sunrises, and the warm breezes which arrived in daytime. Flowers bloomed wildly, and grasses rose from dead, strawlike stems with green, arrogant offshoots. The snow had melted and the gray of winter gave way to the boldly arriving spring. Spring walked between the islands in Mälaren Bay with a confident step, the pale-eyed ruler of the sun, so sure of herself that, busy commanding Nature, she misses the moment that she turns into summer.

  * * *

  Świętosława held the child in her arms. The red, wrinkled baby had finally fallen asleep. She hadn’t been able to get a good look at him while he’d screamed, all she’d seen were toothless gums and the open abyss of his mouth. He was all shout, as if he were furious he’d been born at all.

  “What a wonderful child!” Thora, Jarl Birger’s wife, had praised a moment earlier. She’d delivered the baby. “Beautiful and strong, like our king.”

  “You think Eric is beautiful?” Świętosława had asked, forced to raise her voice to be heard over the boy’s cries.

  Thora moved away from the pail where she’d been washing blood from her hands. Servants handed her a towel. Drying her palms, she stared at Świętosława as if she’d never seen her before.

  “Don’t you think so, my lady?”

  Świętosława swept sweaty tendrils of hair from her forehead and lost herself in her thoughts. While sailing aboard the Haughty Giantess to Uppsala, she’d seen Olav every time she’d closed her eyes, white-haired and bright-eyed. Young and beautiful. His image was with her in every moment, in every breath and heartbeat. But the journey didn’t last forever, even if she’d secretly hoped it would. They sailed into Mälaren Bay to the sound of horns echoing off the water. Three ships led them in, moving together in a row. A golden wild boar shone on the sail of the middle one, and Eric stood at the bow. Broad-shouldered, bearded, and bald. Completely bald. The sun bounced off his smooth skull. He was terrifying, but she was meant to be his wife, so she couldn’t fear him.

  “I think that he’s strong, but it would never have occurred to me to think of him as beautiful.”


  “That’s what a man’s beauty is though, my lady! Strength! And you hold the evidence of his prowess in your arms. He will bring you another when he returns from the expedition. He promised he will be victorious when he faces Styrbjorn, and he will give it to you!” Thora let out a clear laugh.

  She wasn’t Christian like her husband, Birger, and everything she said about Eric was laced with a pagan devotion to the king.

  Pagan? Świętosława thought. The people adore Mieszko just as much.

  A few of her ladies from her family home had made the journey with her, but Świętosława had known the first thing she’d have to do in her husband’s land was to befriend the powerful and wealthy who surrounded Eric. She had to build her own alliances in this new country. If her primary concern when choosing allies was faith, all she’d be left with was Jarl Birger and a few servants. She’d decided to start with Thora. And Thora, at least when it came to the birth, had done marvelously.

  “Rest now, my lady. I’ll come back when I hear your son has woken.”

  “Son,” Świętosława whispered after the other woman left, and she took another look at the child.

  A purple-red body, long and thin. Fists no larger than plums, in which, in just a few years, he would want to hold his first wooden sword. He breathed strongly and deeply. She rolled him carefully over onto his stomach. He had a patch of soft hair on his lower back.

  “Just like your father,” she muttered, tracing it with a finger. “And you’re bald like him, too. God, I hope you grow hair on your head and not just on your back!”

  She touched his elongated skull and let her thumb pause on the back of his head.

  “What do you have here? A birthmark? I need to have a look at you in the sun. It’s dark in here.” She swaddled him as she spoke.

  She hated the old royal manor in Uppsala as much as Eric loved it. It was large and vast, that was undeniable. Comfortable, too, with an enormous hall that could hold a hundred guests, and private chambers in both wings. Nothing, however, could change the fact that it was eternally dark. The smoke holes in the high ceilings were sunlight’s only way in, and gloom fell on the entire mansion as soon as the fires or lamp flames dimmed. “You’ll appreciate it in winter, my lady,” Eric laughed when she shared her feelings with him. “You’ll be as warm as a vixen in her den.” She was, but that wasn’t enough. Not for her.

  The gloom of the royal manor was found even beyond its walls, in something far more dangerous and powerful—in the shade of the giant royal cairns, the sacrificial trees, and the enormous temple. Jarl Birger had tried to prepare her for what awaited them during their journey, but her imagination hadn’t been able to match the reality of what she found on the Swedish shore.

  Yes, Eric’s residence lay in a fertile valley, whose vibrant green was a joy to see. But this was the illusion of the north. A ridge of burial mounds stretched out to the south. The tall, green hills weren’t a part of nature, but the creation of human hands. The cairns of long-dead kings.

  “Imagine green hills when you look at them, and don’t think about the fact that they hide the remains of burned rulers, the ashes of their boats, horses, dogs, and wives,” Jarl Birger told her, trying to reassure her. Yes, that wasn’t too difficult. It got harder to keep his words in mind, though, when she let her gaze drop from the peaks of the hills to their bases. Because between the range of mounds and the royal manor stood an enormous pagan temple, surrounded by sacrificial trees.

  Each of the nine trees was as large as the oak that grew in the cemetery of her forefathers in Gniezno. But there, the oak was the green lord of the forest, while here it played the part of the somber gallows. The remains of horses and people, sacrifices to Odin, hung from its branches. The crows wouldn’t leave the crumbling corpses alone, and Świętosława heard their calls every time she stepped outside her husband’s manor. Even now, as she gazed at her son’s face, born just that dawn, she heard a flock of the sinister birds. They flew over the manor, ever hungry for more of their cadaverous banquet. She wrapped her arms around the child instinctively, protectively. It didn’t matter that he was as bald as Eric, red and ugly. He had come from her womb.

  “My son.” Świętosława kissed him for the first time.

  He opened his eyes. Small and dark blue. He wrinkled his nose, as if trying to catch her scent.

  “I’m your mother,” she told him. “I’ll teach you my language. I’ll teach you my faith. I’ll teach you my true name. Your father cannot pronounce it. He’s a bald king, headstrong, and with a stiff tongue, that’s why he named me Sigrid Storråda.”

  At the sound of this, the child began to cry. Świętosława covered its mouth with her hand. She wanted to be with her son alone, she didn’t want Thora and the servants to come running. Dusza appeared beside Świętosława then and parted the nightshirt on her chest. She delicately pulled Świętosława’s hand from the child’s mouth and moved him to her mistress’s breast. He bit and began to suck without closing his eyes. Dusza stepped quietly back to the chair beside the bed.

  “I’ll tell you everything, my son. I come from a beautiful country beyond the sea. My mother was born even farther south, and though only rivers run through her country, she knew this curse, From another side of the sea! She taught it to me when I was small, and when I lost her, I swore at the ocean frequently, never knowing that that’s how I would reach my husband. Perhaps that’s why I have met such evil here? Maybe I have cursed it for myself? I took with me, as a wedding gift, the lightning steel from my father, your grandfather, the sword made of metal which fell straight from the heavens. His name is Mieszko. He has a dark, pointy beard with a single gray stripe. There is a hawk on his shoulder that cannot be fed by anyone other than Father. Not even his wife, the evil duchess Oda. I have a brother, Bolesław, who will inherit our great kingdom from Father, and two half sisters, Astrid and Geira. I used to love them both, but now I only love Astrid. For Geira, I now feel a hatred so strong that if I confessed it to Father John, he’d never forgive me this loathing, because there is no desire in me to be rid of it. But Father John has remained in Poznań, and the chaplain I’ve been given didn’t survive the journey; the poor man died on board the Haughty Giantess and now there is no one at my side who could save my soul. There are only the corpses of sacrifices hanging from oaks and the temple of your fathers’ gods. I won’t tell you anything about them. You won’t suck out Eric’s dark faith with your mother’s milk. Am I strong enough to change him? I don’t know, my son. Old people don’t change, and your father carries the weight of four decades on his shoulders. He has gone south now to hunt his nephew, Styrbjorn. I’ll give him a beautiful battle, he boasted as he sailed to the sound of horns. He promised a few things when he asked for my hand. Firstly, that he would kill Styrbjorn.” She tickled her son’s nose.

  “He’s doing it for you, my little one, so that no one dare take away the power you have a right to. Secondly, he promised to annihilate Denmark’s strength. It’s a gift for my lord father. He promised me that he’d never stand between me and Christ. And that I would never want for anything. But he demanded just as much in return.” The boy let go of her nipple and looked at her as if he was about to start crying. She quickly gave him her other breast. “Listen, I’m not done yet.” He began to suck, his eyes never leaving her face.

  “He took me to bed and believe me, little one, I had no desire to laugh then. I didn’t moan like Oda with Mieszko. I howled, and bit into the polar bear fur he had lain me down on. I can still taste it. Your father is an axe in bed, like the axe he never parts with. Heavy, sharp, fat, and never rusty. Don’t worry, this isn’t your problem and never will be, my little one. Listen to what happened next. He brought me morgengold in the morning, in payment for my virginity. He valued me highly. Thora says that I could have bought three boats with armed crews for the treasures in that chest. It’s good to know that, isn’t it? But then he announced during the feast that he is changing my name, and from that moment everyone
was to call me Queen Sigrid.

  “I told him, I have learned your tongue, husband. You learn my name. True, perhaps I shouldn’t then have added, What, will the holy name not pass your pagan throat? Wash it down with water, not mead—come on, try it. And he choked at this, and his people began to laugh and shout, ‘Sigrid! Sigrid Storråda!’ and so it has remained. Your father, by calling me Sigrid Storråda, thought to irritate me, to prove I was now his, and Sweden’s, but you know what? He’s a fool. Because he doesn’t know someone has called me Storråda before him.” She gave the child a warning look.

  “This will be our secret, remember! Only you and I know about this, son. And Dusza. Dusza doesn’t speak any language, so it’s as if she spoke all of them. Isn’t that right, Dusza? Take him from me. I’ve told him enough for a first time. I hope the child’s smart enough to remember.”

  Dusza rose swiftly and reached her arms out for the child. Świętosława gave her the boy and stretched her stiff body.

  “Do you think I can get out of bed yet? Thora says I should lie down, but I gave birth in the morning and it’s probably noon now, I’m tired of lying down … Can you hear that?”

  Dusza rose and walked to the bedchamber door with the child in her arms.

  “No.” Świętosława shook her head. “I thought it came from outside, a commotion or…” She trailed off, and Dusza’s face gave nothing away.

  The servant shook her head.

  “Strange.” Świętosława shrugged. “I do hear something, though, you don’t? Maybe I just thought I heard it … Thora!” she called out. “Thoraaaaa!” she shouted, louder.

  Dusza opened her mouth warningly, and the child began to wail.

  “Oh, I need to learn to be quiet around him,” Świętosława observed unhappily. “Do something with him, Dusza. Children have wet nurses…”

  A moment later, Thora appeared.