The Widow Queen

by Elzbieta Cherezinska

  She said nothing. Zgrzyt got up and walked over to Birger lazily. He sniffed the man’s knees, then rubbed his head on them.

  “What does it matter now, Jarl?” she asked once the silence following Birger’s revelation had stretched on for as long as she could bear.

  “The boys I mentioned are twins. The sons of a woman called Thordis, the only daughter of the wealthiest merchant in Birka.”

  “I see,” she said. “I suspect Thordis also has many brothers who would happily reach for their weapons to fight for their nephews’ inheritance?”

  She remembered how confident she had felt the day Olof was born. How she’d believed that from that day on, nothing would threaten her position. How she and Eric had celebrated Styrbjorn’s defeat together, the only potential contender to the throne—or so she’d believed.

  “Does my husband have any other sons, apart from Thordis’s twins? Bastards?” she used the insult, though it brought her no relief.

  “Not that I know of, my lady. But there is something else you should know.”

  This time, Wrzask woke up, and put his head in her lap. Yes, now I’m afraid, she thought, sinking her fingers into the lynx’s warm fur.

  “Speak, Birger.”

  “The merchants in Birka didn’t like the idea of a new manor being built in Sigtuna. They fear the loss of profits if trade moves here, since the king now lives in Sigtuna.”

  “I see. And Queen Sigrid, the foreign Christian queen, will be held responsible. They think they will lose profits from trade because of me, as well as any chance of Eric acknowledging Thordis’s sons as his heirs. Do you know what I think, Jarl? I think I should confirm their worst fears.”

  She patted the lynx’s head. Wrzask caught her fingers in his teeth lightly. She grabbed the lynx’s jaw firmly. He growled, but didn’t bite the hand that fed and caressed him.

  “Do you see, my friend?” she said cheerfully. “Placing your hand in the mouth of the beast is safer than waiting for an attack. Tell the merchants from Birka that the queen will celebrate the harvest in the new manor in Sigtuna, with her king. And that I invite them to join us. Along with the, I suppose beautiful, Thordis and her sons. I wish them to come and pay homage to little Olof. And add that traditional gifts are welcome, but we don’t need any more horses.”

  She rose and pulled on the leash. The lynxes set off in front of her. Zgrzyt and Wrzask were in the mood for a hunt.

  “You did the right thing, my lady,” Wilkomir said to her when she had let them off the leash in the woods. “I wouldn’t have been able to guarantee your safety on the island.”

  “I was touched, the first time I heard about Birka,” she confided in him. “I thought of Ostrów Lednicki. The womb of the Piast dynasty, hidden on water. Our nest, connected to land only by the bridges. But, as it turns out, I was mistaken.”

  “If the merchants refuse the queen’s invitation, they will reveal themselves as enemies. And if they come, they will be forced to bend the knee to your son in front of witnesses. Unless they choose open warfare with Eric, but that will, once and for all, take any chances for Thordis’s sons off the table.”

  “I don’t want to give those pups anything, Wilkomir,” she said. “I don’t yet know what makes the better weapon here: generosity or ruthlessness. But I will be thinking on it.”

  The lynxes returned, one after the other. The first carried a hare in its jaws, the second a marten. They placed their catches at her feet and sat down, licking blood off their muzzles. Zgrzyt and Wrzask. Her new people found the names impossible to pronounce, thus ensuring no one could try to tame them apart from her. She distinguished them by their shapes. The markings on their sides were different. And their eyes. Wrzask’s were like boiling molten gold, and Zgrzyt saw the world through melted spring green. She stroked their heads. She picked up the hare and marten and sniffed both. They smelt of fresh blood, fur, and the sickening scent of fear. She returned the catches to her beautiful hunters. Streaks of warm blood stayed on her fingers.

  “They belong to you,” she said, and the lynxes busied themselves with ripping their prey apart.

  She turned back to Wilkomir. “I don’t know what else to do, but I’m reassured knowing you and Great Ulf guard me. Two wolves and two lynxes. Wrzask and Zgrzyt.” She tried not to think of her husband’s words in his bedchamber, A man must die when he’s in full strength. It’s none of your concern, Sigrid. Or of Eric’s bastard sons, and their mother, and all those who would see her son thrown from his first horse.

  She raised her hand to her lips and licked the blood from her fingers.

  23

  SWEDEN

  Świętosława had fallen in love with Sigtuna and, when it was finally ready, with their new royal manor which sat on a hill overlooking Mälaren Bay.

  Gracing the entrance were imposing doors that wood-carvers had been working on since spring. Thanks to their chisels and hammers, an entire world had come alive in the heavy wood. A majestic ash had been carved, Odin’s sacred tree, Yggdrasil, but no corpses hung from its branches, as they did at the grave near Uppsala’s temple. Instead, Yggdrasil pulsed with life, providing shelter for deer, a goat, a squirrel, a falcon, and even snakes. She promised herself that she might ask someone, perhaps Thora, Jarl Birger’s wife, to tell her the story of the ash with its three great roots.

  There was still a grove nearby where the locals made sacrifices to their gods, but it was far enough away that she didn’t see it when she looked out her window, and she didn’t have to pass by it on her way to the chapel.

  The chapel Eric had promised her before his journey to Denmark wasn’t part of the manor, as in Poznań’s palatium, but a small separate building. It didn’t stand out by being particularly pretty, there was no comparison with the cathedral in Poznań, but it was hers. It was Świętosława’s chapel. And if it was small? Well, Jarl Birger and herself were probably the only people who would pray there anyway. She had waited for it for so long that the mere thought of crossing its threshold brought her joy.

  When the chapel’s construction was nearly complete, she received even more joyous news—there would also be a monk, to tend to the chapel and tend her own Christian soul. Eric had brought one back from Denmark, as one of his many gifts for his wife. Jewels, materials, furs, and a monk called Ion. Except that the jewels and furs suffered little throughout the journey, while Ion was seriously ill and recovered only a month later, after the chapel had been completed. Świętosława knew after their first meeting that this monk was a gift as valuable as he was strange. A carefully shaven head and smooth cheeks which hadn’t lost their chubbiness even after his illness. Lively eyes that blinked often. A tattered but clean habit. He introduced himself as a Benedictine, and when she asked him to tell her about himself, he began to speak without pausing for a breath.

  “I was in Italy at Saint Apollinaris of Ravenna, my queen, in a monastery as big as a mountain, with a port nearby, miracles, my queen, miracles, three lambs on the church’s ceiling, John, Peter, and Jacob, ah, the happiest days of my life when ordo et pax, and why, why was I tempted? I left as the fourth with Romuald, the Venetian doge Peter Orseolo, and abbott Guarin—four is the apostolic number—we traveled to the south of France, to Saint-Michel de Cuxa, huge mountains, my queen, the Pyrenees, and it wasn’t that bad there, hours and psalms and a monastic lifestyle, but that’s where Orseolo went mad in the woods and set up a hermitage. And Romuald and Guarin went with him, and so I had to follow. But, my queen, I’m a man of labor and prayer, ora et labora, yes, yes, God, but not roots. Roots, my queen, distanced me from God, and the seclusion of the hermitage was the final Roman nail in the Savior’s cross, knock, knock…”

  “Father Ion, what did you do in Denmark?” she interrupted this frenzied stream of words.

  “I ran away, my queen. From Romuald’s horrible anger. He and Orseolo don’t accept any weakness in a man. They didn’t understand that I can worship God with a goblet of wine and smoked ham. Baked ham, too
. Whereas they could only do it with roots and water. And it doesn’t stand for me when all I had were roots…”

  “From what I know of monks, it doesn’t have to, Ion.” Świętosława wondered if Ion was one of the mad monks she’d heard about in Poznań, or if his insanity had nothing to do with his vocation.

  He looked embarrassed, but only a little.

  “It doesn’t have to, but it can. The Lord values self-denial highly, and we don’t accept cripples into monasteries. My queen understands that by a cripple, I mean a man whose privates refuse obedience.”

  “Jarl Birger, what do you think of Father Ion?” she asked, studying the monk critically. Even his clean hands now seemed suspect to her.

  “It’s not for me to judge a clergyman, my lady,” Birger replied uncertainly.

  “Do you really think he’s traveled so far? That he’s actually visited all the places he speaks of?”

  Birger raised his eyebrows, but didn’t have time to respond before the monk began talking again.

  “I’ve been elsewhere too, which I haven’t had the chance to tell my lady about. But I will openly admit that I’ve never met a queen who leads two lynxes on a leash. I am quite afraid of them. Though, as I understand it, if Lady Sigrid is a Christian queen, then her monstrous cats won’t throw themselves onto a clergyman?”

  “Ion, if you can convince my lynxes that you’re an authentic priest, then you have nothing to fear.”

  “No, no, my lady.” He waved his arms as if trying to drive something away. “Just don’t ask me to speak to wild beasts. It was another reason for which I had to leave the hermitage. Howling wolves would approach our flimsy shelter at night, because my brothers would pray to the Lord for challenges which they could face to prove their faith. And what can I do about it if my faith is strong enough that it doesn’t need to be challenged to prove itself? No, punish me, cruel queen, but don’t ask me to speak to beasts. Besides, I never said I was a priest. I am a mere monk, a Benedictine.”

  “Are you saying that you can’t say mass in the chapel my husband has built me?” Anger was rising in her at this chattering man in a clean habit.

  “Of course not, my lady.” He bowed. “I have not been ordained. Monastic vows are something else entirely.”

  “And the sacraments? Can you absolve me, can you give me the Body of Christ?”

  “No, my lady, but I can accept it.” He jutted out his chin proudly.

  “From whom, Ion? There is no one with Holy Orders in my husband’s country, has that not reached you yet? We are on pagan soil that belongs to Odin, Thor, and their Freya.” She was furious, because she realized now that the gift Eric had brought her was a useless one.

  A hint of unease graced the monk’s smooth features.

  “Then I’m afraid that your chapel is as blessed as a shack on a ship. It stands on unhallowed ground, and, I gather, it hasn’t been consecrated by a bishop.”

  “Where do you suggest I find a bishop in a country where the king sacrifices prisoners to his gods once every nine years?”

  “Prisoners?” he asked her uncertainly.

  The lynxes, asleep at her feet and unmoved by the shouting until now, chose this moment to raise their heads and cock their ears, which were decorated with brushes of hair at their tips. They could sense Ion’s fear.

  “Yes,” she replied. “But don’t be afraid, monk. You are not a prisoner here. For the time being. And the last ritual took place at Uppsala in the year I arrived, so there’s two more years until the next.”

  “Two years.” He blinked, and something occurred to him, because he pointed a finger upward and shouted cheerfully: “My lady, the goddess Freya, whom the people here worship just like the Danes do, and I spent some time among them, count among their traditions one where she has the right to half of all plunder brought back from wars. When the winged Valkyrie steal the souls of the best warriors from the battlefield, half find themselves in Odin’s Valhalla, and the other half in Freya’s palace, known as … known as … Sessrumnir, that’s what it’s called. The Place of Many Seats. So, if your husband is like Odin, then you, my lady, are like Freya … my point is, when the time comes, let Ion find himself among your host, stepping after you, step, step…”

  She burst out laughing.

  “I’ll tell you, monk, what I already know of you. You’re a glutton who cannot fast, a drunkard, you chatter endlessly, and you’re a stinking coward. My lynxes can sense your fear.”

  “God loves his children,” Ion replied, entirely unfazed. “He sent his beloved Son to earth to stop them from knowing fear.”

  “My husband wanted to give me some pleasure by bringing you to me. You have turned out to be useless, but I can’t yet say if you are worthless. I give you two years to prove your worth to me.”

  “Only two years?” Ion looked worried. “Wine, my lady, tastes better the older it grows…”

  “But you aren’t wine, although you might end up being consumed in much the same manner. You’re not a brave soldier, either, to be collected by the Valkyries. And I’m not Freya, Ion. I don’t take prisoners. You’ll return when I send for you.”

  * * *

  The new manor was bright and clean and smelled of fresh wood. Two thrones stood on the platform in the grand hall. These were the only pieces in the entire house which weren’t newly built. “My grandfather and grandmother rested their hands here,” Eric said with pride, pointing to where the dark wood had been smoothed by their fingers. Between the royal thrones, Świętosława ordered a third, with a seat as high as theirs, though a smaller back. A place for Olof.

  Fresh skins were laid on the benches for guests, wreaths of rowan berries decorated the tables alongside baskets of rosy and golden apples. Her own bedchamber was crowned with a present from her lord husband—a new bed, lavishly wide and welcoming. A place of comfort and respite for his queen. What his bedchamber looked like, she would find out that evening.

  First, a feast awaited them, celebrating the end of the harvest and the beginning of new mead, a celebration not unlike those held for the shearing of the first sheep of the year, or as thanks for a bountiful harvest. A large vat had been prepared, into which she and Eric were to pour the traditional jug to begin the new mead celebration. Also prepared were Wilkomir and Ulf, who never let their eyes off her. The merchants of Birka had accepted the queen’s invitation.

  “I wasn’t expecting them,” Eric muttered when he’d heard that Thordis and her sons, as well as her brothers and father, were to participte in the feast. He said nothing more.

  Świętosława had chests full of wondrous clothes and loved this time of year, the beginning of autumn, when the cool air allowed her to wear as many as three layers. Tonight, a royal purple dress, flowing freely to the floor, highlighted the line of her shoulders. She put another dress over it, green, tight, and sleeveless, held together by gilded brooches in the shape of animal heads. The goldsmith had intended them to be wolf heads, but Świętosława pictured her lynxes as she donned the gilded ornaments. A servant attached a cloak to these same brooches, more of a coverlet really, that made her figure look ethereal. She allowed Dusza to do her hair; no one could rival her skill in braiding. She created wreaths, crowns, and endless spirals from her curls, leaving some plaits free so that they fell onto her back in gleaming golden strands. For this occasion, Świętosława asked Dusza to pin back her hair with a band she’d brought with her from Poznań, a magnificent piece decorated with thirty of the most beautiful temple rings.

  “My lady, you look like a queen,” her servants exclaimed.

  “That’s because I am one.” She shrugged, and the cloak moved proudly.

  But today, I must prove it yet again, she thought, and wondered, To whom? Thordis, who has two sons with the king while I only have one? Or the powerful merchants from Birka who stand behind her? Or maybe Eric himself? Jarl Birger? Who?

  The feeling of ease and contentment that had been growing within her was gone. In Uppsala, every feas
t was accompanied by toasts to her, glasses raised to Queen Sigrid Storråda, but this was her first feast in Sigtuna. Had she awoken some dark power by demanding a new home away from the horrific mounds? By wanting to escape the shadows of the sacrificial grove, had she turned the old gods against her?

  “Bring Ion to me,” she told a servant. She was meant to be welcoming guests at Eric’s side any moment now, but she needed to see the monk. “And tell him to hurry.”

  He appeared swiftly. “The queen looks like Freya today,” he said, openly looking her up and down.

  “Ion. Are you here to attend your queen, or would you like to spend time with Wrzask and Zgrzyt instead?” He was still terrified by her lynxes, and Świętosława knew this.

  “I did not mean to disappoint you, my lady, I just wanted to give words to what my eyes perceived.” He bowed humbly, the top of his smooth-shaven head gleaming.

  The sound of horns welcoming guests reached them from the yard outside. Great Ulf shifted on his feet nervously. The servants cast glances at the entrance.

  “Tell me, monk, does Christ still retain his power here, on unconsecrated ground?”

  “If we had all night to talk, I’d start by saying that God is omnipotent, then tell you the visions I’d been recounted by hermit priests. But I know that my queen is in a hurry, therefore I will confine my answer. I don’t think that the Savior’s power has reached this country. But through your baptism, you are a vessel which carries His Light in the dark night. Don’t be afraid.”

  “Thank you, Ion,” she said, moving to the front of her procession. It was time to face the dark night.

  “At your service, my queen,” she heard as she stepped over the threshold.

  Even if she had angered the local gods, she told herself, she could not be frightened by a power she didn’t believe in.

  * * *

  She and Eric sat on the raised platform. Their dark-haired boy took his place between them. “When I was young, I had locks of hair just like his,” her lord husband would often say with pride in his voice. The king and queen had already poured the jug of mead into the great tub, and now the lords were approaching one by one, adding the mead they’d brought as a gift.