The Widow Queen

by Elzbieta Cherezinska

  * * *

  “God bless the food we eat thanks to His grace,” the bishop said when they were seated for dinner that evening, and they began to eat.

  “Are you feeling all right?” Oda looked at the duke’s untouched plate with a watchful eye. “Aren’t you hungry, lord husband?”

  “No,” he replied shortly.

  “Maybe some mead?” Oda suggested, and nodded to a serving girl.

  He took a sip out of politeness. Mead hadn’t agreed with him recently. Instead of clarity of thought, it brought confusion, and today, more than anything, Mieszko wanted to be sober and reasonable. He felt the hawk’s weight heavily on his shoulder, and summoned a servant to move the bird onto a perch.

  “It’s time for my will,” he said.

  His wife paled and dropped her goblet. Mead flowed over the table. His sons looked at him with fear as well.

  “Don’t be scared.” He laughed. “I’m not dying yet. I’m only saying I need to think about what should happen to the country once I’m gone.”

  The bishop said nothing. He was glancing discreetly between the duke and Oda.

  “Husband,” the duchess said, recoverimg her wits swiftly, “I hope that writing a will isn’t premature. I do agree, though, that things cannot be left to chance. You’re the duke of a grand country, and you have not one, but three sons, and that means that you must be farsighted and cautious…”

  “Silence, woman.” He shrugged. “I know what I must be.”

  I should be firm, he thought, looking at his sons’ pale, scared faces. And do something that no one before me has ever done. But none before me had been a Christian duke, no one had faced a choice like this. Damn it! He swore to himself, and at that same instant one of the torches burning at the top of the hall went out.

  “What’s that?” Oda said with surprise, and paled. “A draft?”

  The devil doesn’t sleep, Mieszko thought, watching a column of smoke rise from the torch. He wiped beads of sweat from his forehead. Or perhaps it’s a sign that I’m taking the wrong path? That I’m lost?

  The servants exchanged the torch, and the new one burned with a bright, cheerful glow.

  “Father John, read us the Bible, please,” Oda nodded at the chaplain.

  Sometimes the nun in her rears her head, Mieszko thought fondly. When we dine, she must hear readings. She’s given me so much joy in these past ten years, so much bliss. It’s hard to believe that if it hadn’t been for my war with the empire, she’d be a nun until this day. Or an abbess.

  Father John was reading in monotone:

  “Some time later God tested Abraham … ‘Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.’”

  Mieszko felt cold.

  It’s a sign, he thought. It’s a sign that I’m doing the right thing. Only my firstborn son is capable of making a new, great dukedom from the lands he won in the south. These two are little boys, children still … they can’t do it, they must be protected. Oda is right, we must protect them … Yes, that’s right. The eldest should inherit from his father, and the younger ones can conquer their own lands. They are little children, while he’s an eagle, a predator who’s already caught Upper Silesia and the great Moravia. He’s strong …

  “Bishop Unger.” Mieszko stopped the avalanche of his own thoughts. “Do you have ink and parchment with you?”

  “I do, my duke.” Unger’s dark eyebrows were drawn tightly together.

  “Do you want to write your testament today?” Oda asked, her fear apparent in her voice. “Now?”

  “No. I will go and rest now. I’ll send for you when I am ready.”

  He stood up heavily. Witosz helped him walk to his bedchamber and lie down.

  “Where’s my hawk?” Mieszko asked.

  “Here.” Witosz gestured toward the sculpted bedframe. “At your feet.”

  “Ah. I didn’t see it. It shouldn’t sit there like a crow over a corpse. I’m not dying yet, I’m still thinking. Go now, old friend. I want to take a nap. But cover me with something, it’s cold in here…”

  He fell asleep as soon as Witosz left the bedchamber. He dreamed that he was old Abraham, climbing Mount Moriah with difficulty. I must do it, he kept telling himself, tripping over stones, for the good of the family, the country. He’ll understand, he’s as much a hunter as I am. He doesn’t have to inherit a nest, because he can make his own, a larger one, and rule the whole country from it … He, Mieszko-Abraham, fell to his knees in his dream and sobbed when he reached the mountaintop. From this height, he would have seen far-off lands if his vision hadn’t been blurred by tears. What should God say now? he thought as if in a fever, and sobbed. He remembered those words, he knew them, though they didn’t come to him in the dream. Instead he, Mieszko-Abraham, heard the hiss of a snake, the laughter of a girl, and the tempting scent of fruit. “The sin has been conceived.” Rocks fell on him suddenly, a massive one pressing down on his chest. Abraham died in his dream, but Mieszko gasped for breath with dwindling strength and woke himself up.

  “Ah,” he groaned, clutching his heart.

  The hawk was perched on his chest. The duke sat up heavily, pushing the bird off.

  “You scared me, you knave,” he reprimanded the bird, but not harshly. “Because of you I had a nightmare. What was it?” He brushed sweat from his forehead. “I think I was climbing. A tree?” He blinked. Suddenly, he realized his face was wet not from sweat, but tears. “I’m an old man,” he said to himself, then called Witosz. “Only old men cry for no reason. Friend, tell Oda and the bishop to come to me. And tell Unger to bring ink and parchment with him.”

  25

  ENGLAND

  Olav often dreamed of the night he and Astrid had spent in Poland after Geira’s death, and the words she’d uttered over the bones she’d cast. Word and water, she’d said. Wisdom and strength, west of Poland. She’d seen a bare rock and a dog and, eventually, finally, his throne. His birthright as the last of the Ynglings, the last of the Norwegian kings.

  And so, he and his troops had gone west, to plunder England and fill their coffers while he earned the gold and men needed to fight for his crown. That winter, they gathered on the Isle of Wight. Olav took over the entire northern shore of the island, along with the other chiefs of the sea bandits, known as Odin’s Sword.

  Separated from the southern shores of England only by the Solent, it was the perfect base ahead of their spring campaign. Jostein and Guthmund, two chiefs who had been working England’s shores for a long time, welcomed Olav and his crews happily, and soon after, Sven joined the sea bandits too. He’d freed himself from his imprisonment at the Jomsviking stronghold, but he could not return to Denmark, which was now ruled by Eric and the Swedes. And so, Olav and Sven, who had only recently faced each other in war, unexpectedly found themselves on the same side.

  They controlled the strait from four large camps so carefully that even the splash of a big fish would not go unnoticed. In the south, east, and west of the island they stationed sentry garrisons, and they had nothing else to do but mend their ships, clean their weapons, heat up mead in cauldrons suspended over fires, and entertain themselves with local girls.

  At first, the chiefs planned to make their housing in the ruins of the Roman keep on the hill, but Olav and Sven refused, preferring to remain with their crews. Guthmund and Jostein had no choice but to follow in their footsteps.

  When the warm weather came, the bandits claimed victory after victory in their summer campaigns. They had plundered Folkestone first, following Jostein and Guthmund’s advice, then Sandwich and Ipswich. When they reached Maldon, they leveled Earl Byrthnoth’s army as a storm destroys a fishing boat. Olav led the attack, and his faithful Varin killed the earl. Since then, he had been known as Varin the Ealdorman Slayer, rather than Painted Fangs.

  They celebrated for three days and three nights after their victory, then set out along the
entire length of Kentish shores, at Sven’s request, attacking settlement after settlement relentlessly. Barely a month had passed before King Ethelred’s messenger arrived, waving a white flag and suggesting a ransom.

  The four chiefs negotiated with the representatives of the king and the local archbishop. They began at one thousand pounds of silver. Jostein had had enough at three thousand. Sven got bored at five. Guthmund at seven. Olav was still talking, counting on the archbishop’s representatives rather than the king’s men, and eventually he forced Archbishop Sigeric himself to attend the peace talks with the “Norman hungry for knowledge,” as the archbishop soon called Olav. Tryggvason allowed the bishop to say his piece, listening to his stories about God with interest, a God who punishes the evil and rewards the good. He asked to hear about the evil ones. He asked about Lucifer, hell, and other spirits the bishop referred to as unclean. He was intrigued by the devil’s names; he repeated each one after Sigeric, pronouncing with pleasure the one which seemed to swell on his tongue: “Beelzebub.” “Devil, Ruler of Hellish Fires, Snake!” Sigeric shouted. “Snake?” Olav asked, surprised, and said: “I’m the last Yngling. The king whose sigil is a snake.” He negotiated ten thousand pounds of solid silver in return for ending their invasion. They were paid immediately.

  The chiefs of Odin’s Sword then stood on the shores, the four of them, looking at the packhorses walking from land toward the docks, the never-ending line of heavily stepping animals. Each one carried a hundred pounds of silver, straight to their ships.

  “A hundred times a hundred.” Jostein smacked his lips, brushing beautiful but impossibly filthy dark locks from his forehead. “And I wanted to stop at three.” He handed Sven a horn filled with mead.

  “I gave up at five,” Sven admitted. “I thought, I prefer to fight than count, but I take it back. I prefer to count.” He drank, and the mead flowed down his beard. He passed the horn to Guthmund, who drank and burped.

  “I counted to seven,” he said, “because I don’t know any higher numbers. And now I look at seven times seven and again, seven times seven, and still I see more horses carrying our loot. Tryggvason, you’re the youngest of us all, but your hair is as white as an old man’s, or like the one from the drunken bard’s songs. We should call you Silver Ole, that’s what.”

  Olav took the horn and finished it.

  “Do you know what I think, chiefs of the sea bandits?” he asked.

  “Not the bandits, chief.” Guthmund burped again. “We’re Sword Odin.” He pounded his chest with pride.

  “Odin’s Sword, you boar,” Sven corrected him. “Let Silver Ole speak. Though I think I know what the bishop vanquisher will say.”

  “Archbishop,” Olav corrected him kindly. “I think that if they could pay ten thousand up front, they can afford much more.”

  Sven laughed so hard it felt as if his belly would burst. Jostein and Guthmund joined him. Olav passed the horn to back to Sven and stepped away to empty his bladder.

  “Hey, Silver Ole!” Jostein called after him. “Wait, I need a piss, too.”

  “Me too,” Guthmund burped.

  “Meeee!” Sven sang. “Let’s piss here.”

  “No,” Olav protested. “I will not piss on the river of silver which is flowing toward our ships.”

  The ships were now on the shore and shipwrights stood around them, mending holes that looked like battle wounds. And the warriors lay by the fires on sheepskins and drank their hard-earned silver. Even if they drank themselves into a stupor, they wouldn’t go through half of what they got. Olav asked his men if they wanted to take their shares and go back to their wives. They didn’t. The vision of multiplied silver, as if it were a grain thrown on the ground for the harvest, excited them. And the island women fulfilled their desire for love. Warm and willing, not unlike their wives if they wanted them to be. Olav himself had no one to go back to.

  The one he loved and desired was Eric Segersäll’s wife. The queen called Sigrid Storråda. Residing behind a wall of her husband’s shields. And the woman he’d married lay in the cold ground, along with the son he’d fathered. A clear sign that if he sowed anything, it was death.

  That’s why the Isle of Wight, known as the Island of Misty Visions, was perfect for him. He didn’t drink his large, chief’s share of the silver. It stood, enclosed in a chest, and waited for the right time. Silver to silver. It wasn’t a seed that could grow in the ground and offer a branch to destructive hail. And not seed he’d leave inside a woman, waiting to see if it led to a daughter, son, or dead fetus. It was cold, hard silver which would grow when spring came, the time for battles. And autumn, when he’d collect his bloody harvest. He’d sow seeds with his sword for as long as it took to grow a silver field in his tent. And then he’d take it all onto his ships and sail to Lade, where the lords of the north dwelt, Norwegian jarls who held the power he had a rightful claim to due to his birth and blood. There, he’d cut them down and sit on the throne of the Ynglings even if it meant having a bouquet of their heads at his feet.

  The flaps of his tent moved aside and Varin the Ealdorman Slayer looked in.

  “King, Chief Sven is here to see you,” he announced, and his dark eyes gleamed like two narrow lines painted on with dry blood.

  “Ask King Sven to come in,” he said with emphasis. No matter the titles that the others bore, Varin would refer only to Olav as king.

  “Olav, I’ve brought wine. It’s thick and red, like blood.” Sven’s step revealed that he’d already drunk some.

  “Come in,” Olav said, discreetly signaling to Varin that he should keep his wits about him. Sven had a sword and long Saxon dagger at his belt. The rules of royal feasts did not apply in this camp. They walked around armed, from dawn till dusk, until they collapsed in a drunken stupor.

  “Do you like wine?” Sven’s long red hair danced in the air when he placed the jug on the bench. The Dane had stopped trimming his beard even before their victory in Maldon, plaiting it instead into two braids, which now stuck out like a fork.

  “Sven Forkbeard.” Olav laughed and took out a cup, tugging one of the horns of his comrade’s beard. “Sit, Sven. I prefer mead, since you ask. Wine doesn’t agree with me.”

  He’d had it at Vladimir and Allogia’s feasts, and at his wedding to Geira. It tasted of debts and forced gratitude, a taste he loathed.

  “So you won’t drink with me?” Sven asked truculently.

  “I will,” Olav replied, “but I’ll join you with my mead.” He pulled his jug closer.

  “Which of my men did you kill at Rügen?” Sven asked, taking a gulp and beginning the conversation that had been hanging between them since they’d met on Kentish shores.

  “Frorik on Gorgeous Gunhild,” Olav replied. “Forgive me, it was a matter of honor.”

  “Why?”

  “Do you not know who Gunhild was?”

  “My aunt. That swine Harald’s sister.” He bared teeth that shone. “My father’s.”

  Olav was too sober to call her a sow.

  “Do you know what she did to my father?”

  “Gave him a quick death? It would be like her.” Sven laughed. “Do you know that they call her ‘Demon Gunhild’?”

  “Only a demon would send men after a pregnant woman. She hunted me afterward.”

  “All right, Olav.” Sven leaned over the bench and poured himself more wine. “Screw the demons who led us here. We have our own problems, don’t we? A few things that cannot be taken back.” Lifting his cup, Sven met his eye. “I remember, every day, that you were the chief of the fleet which defeated my ships at Rügen’s shores. One of the ones who forced me to run from my kingdom and leave the throne I had waited for, for so many years.”

  Anger burned in Sven’s irises. He breathed heavily. His lips trembled, like a wolf about to bare his fangs in a snarl.

  “Stop,” Olav replied. “Your misfortunes are not my fault. I was one of the chiefs of Eric’s great fleet, you know how many ships I commanded. I fough
t in Mieszko’s name, and you happened to be my father-in-law’s enemy, that’s all.”

  Sven laughed unexpectedly. He could burst out with a laughter as violent as fire.

  “Silver Ole. Screw all this. We’ve left them behind and sailed here to claim solid silver. We earned it with our swords in Maldon.”

  “Don’t lie, Sven. Not to me. You’ll earn your share and return to win back your throne from Eric in Denmark,” Olav said.

  “And you, Silver Ole, you’ll take your share and sail to kill Jarl Haakon, for the Norwegian crown,” Sven growled.

  “Haakon, who your father considered to be his viceroy. Old Harald, whom you hate even in death, enslaved my country. Your people and that false leader Haakon made Norway into a Danish province. And his sweet sister, widow Gunhild, helped him. What, my red-haired friend? What am I supposed to think about on aimless winter days? That by plundering England side by side, we are raising funds for a war we will fight against each other when each of us attains his goal?”

  They both drank, finishing what was in their cups. This confession had reached the gnarled roots of their conflicting desires.

  Wine calmed Sven down. Mead lulled Olav. They clinked cups, and droplets of the liquids splashed together. Olav looked at the wine which stained his mead with crimson. Sven watched the golden puddle on the surface of his wine’s redness.

  They both remained silent for a long time, until Sven spoke in a mocking voice:

  “Enemies yesterday, allies today. Tomorrow we shall be enemies once more. It’s a rather weak conviction to have when entering an alliance.” He stroked the stiff braids of his beard and laughed. “Unless we sweeten it with all of England’s silver.”

  “That’s what I’m aiming for. Another two or three well-planned campaigns, spring to autumn. Three well-aimed thrusts of Odin’s Sword under the leadership of the four chieftains…”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier if it were two?” Sven cocked his head and watched Olav, studying his reaction.