The Widow Queen

by Elzbieta Cherezinska

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want to be God’s child?”

  “I do.”

  “Do you surrender to the baptismal waters, the waters of a new life?”

  “I’m a sailor. Water is my element. I want to enter the Kingdom through it, and sail with the Word in my sails.”

  “Then step into the water, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

  “Amen,” Olav replied, walking into the holy water.

  “From this day forth, you’re God’s child,” Sivrit said. “Serve Him, and He will give you a new life.”

  Olav’s new life howled like a torch thrown onto dry wood. Fire danced in the water, turning it to a boiling surge in which the iceberg melted. Mountains which revealed a cross from beneath their rocks. Two lynxes jumping to the throats of the unfaithful. A message burned into skin like a brand. A snake that slithered into a throat, following fire. His knees buckled.

  “Lord, I am not worthy…” he whispered.

  “You’re not,” Sivrit said harshly, but as if to reassure him, he added, “No one is. And yet he still sacrificed himself for us.”

  “But only say the word and my soul shall be healed…”

  Blood flowed from his knees when he stood. Sivrit leaned down and plucked out three thorns.

  “Our Lord was given a crown of thorns,” he said. “King Olav, this is a sign that He has chosen you.”

  34

  SWEDEN

  Świętosława wrapped her arms around Eric’s thick neck. Her lord husband had laughed and drunk, praising their son’s cunning and agility at the feast. “They call him Skinny Ole because Olof isn’t as strong as other boys his age,” he told her in private. “But he’s superior to them in brains and courage. That’s a good sign. You can work in the training yard to increase your muscles. You get your mind from your parents. And one must be born with courage. Our son has it.” They were in her husband’s bedchamber now, and Świętosława welcomed the silence after the noise of the welcome feast. Eric threw off his shirt. He stood before her, tired and naked. His eyes asked her for love, and she very much wanted to give it to him. For the first time, she didn’t want to act like Oda, she didn’t want to conquer, force her will on him, or negotiate. The time of his absence, and Birger’s sharp words, You haven’t talked to him. You know nothing, had been difficult to bear. She needed this moment with her husband; she needed to know what it was Eric had promised his gods. Did that mean she was once again stepping into the bed to glean information?

  She kissed his thick lips. She ran her fingers along his hard chin, hidden under the waves of his flowing beard. She placed her small hands on his cheeks and caressed him gently with her thumbs.

  “Come, husband,” she whispered. “I want love.”

  Something shone in his eyes, but it couldn’t have been a tear. They made love in long, heavy thrusts, which gave her pleasure, not pain. In the arch of Eric’s eyebrows as he leaned over her body. In her sigh when he massaged her breast in his large hand. He remembers, she thought, as Eric nipped her lip at the end of their kiss. And he remembered this … she thought, when he began to kiss her ear. He remembered what brought her pleasure sometimes, and to realize this meant more to her than anything else they had shared.

  “Sigrid,” he purred into her ear as he kissed it. “You’re my love…”

  “And you’re my joy, my lord,” she replied. “We have so many years to bring each other pleasure … Ah!”

  Her hips lifted to meet her husband’s next thrust.

  “We don’t have years, my lady,” he panted, looking in her eyes. He was so close she felt he might swallow her whole. “But we have days…”

  “What are you saying?” she whispered, finding strength to arch under his weight.

  “We have days…”

  She didn’t hear what he said next, as her body was wracked with shivers she couldn’t control, and didn’t want to. She felt like Wrzask or Zgrzyt when they tore their prey apart. She felt something warm and red behind her eyes. Blood? Ah …

  Eric arched above her and made a sound like a wild animal. Like a wolf. His face, seen from below, was terrible, like the image of a beast in an attack of pleasure.

  “We have the whole world,” she said, pulling him close as her body continued to shiver.

  “No, my love. We have but days,” he said, collapsing onto his back beside her. “The One-Eyed Lord will take the rest.”

  He was breathing heavily, and Świętosława couldn’t gather her thoughts. She felt shaky still, but she had heard what he’d said.

  “What have you done?” she whispered, rolling onto her front.

  “I paid for our victory. For your and Olof’s peace,” he said, lying on his back and staring into the smoke hole through which a stream of gray rose from the fire.

  “Who have you sacrificed to your god?” she asked, placing a hand on his chest. “I know that you made a bloody sacrifice. Tell me who it was? Styrbjorn, your nephew? Or an important prisoner from your war with Sven?”

  “I’m not a coward, my lady. I won’t hide behind someone else’s life. I gave myself.”

  She stiffened.

  “In return for defeating Styrbjorn, I promised myself, in nine years time. I knew that that would be enough to raise our son and strengthen his and your positions at court.” He stretched out an arm and clenched his fingers to make a fist. And then he straightened it, looking at it for a moment. He let his hand fall with a heavy sigh. “I didn’t know then that I would fall in love. I liked you from our first meeting on the waters of Mälaren, but it’s normal for a man to like a beautiful young woman. But then, year by year, day by day … sometimes I despised my weakness for you. An old warrior, and I melted in your hands like snow … I regret every day we won’t spend together, every night doubly so, but … I don’t regret any moment we have lived.” He reached out and pulled her to him.

  Her initial reaction was fury. She shrugged him off and began to beat his chest.

  “You think only of yourself! This is—this is horrid…” She flung the words like they were stones, and hoped they landed on him as painfully. “Die, what could be easier? You’re leaving me! Styrbjorn is dead, but your mistresses and children prey on me from every corner … ah!”

  “They are mere shadows that vanish when the sun comes up again,” he said, stroking her head.

  She lay down on his chest then and cried. As the anger faded, her courage returned. She mounted Eric and began to make love to him again, whispering:

  “This is what you want to leave? This is what you want to give up?”

  “Stop.” He kissed her. “Stop…”

  “No. You stop scaring me with death. Change your mind. You’re a king. Give Odin someone else.”

  He laughed and gave himself up to love.

  “Don’t you have prisoners?” Świętosława asked, after they had finished for the second time. “Then move your arse to war and get some. Maybe that’s what you need? Another victorious war?”

  “Maybe,” he admitted eventually, as dawn rose. “I go to Uppsala the day after tomorrow, messengers from Denmark await me there.”

  “Yes.” She clung to the thread he offered. “Let’s board the Wave Queen and sail to Roskilde together. We should have done it long ago, let’s do it now. You can settle the unrest among the Danish commoners with your sword and feel the blood course through your veins again.”

  “I feel it already, my lady.” He kissed her and fell asleep.

  She too gave in to sleep, and when she awoke, Eric wasn’t beside her. She could hear his voice from the hall, how he laughed with his chieftains and roared at the servants to bring more meat, because he was as hungry as a wolf. She stretched out in his bed. Yes, this was good. The fears of the night had evaporated. As she rose and dressed, she thought that Eric might be a king, but he was also a simple, ordinary man. A bed, good food, mead, and the vision of victory.

  * * *

  Świętosława didn
’t want to go to Uppsala with him. She hadn’t had a bright manor built in Sigtuna only to return to the darkness of the old house.

  “Take Olof,” she advised him. “Let him learn how to rule beside his father.”

  “That’s good advice.” He nodded.

  It wasn’t long before they were ready to leave.

  She bid them goodbye in the bright light of the early spring sun. Olof had switched from ponies to full-sized horses a long time ago. He seemed too big on horseback. How fast he’s grown, she thought as she watched him ride away.

  When they were gone, she summoned Wilkomir:

  “The lynxes want to hunt. Zgrzyt, Wrzask!” she called, and her cats understood they were about to give chase.

  Świętosława wanted to forget this long and dark winter that was finally ending, to lose it in the horse’s canter. Thora’s death. The old healer’s strange visions. Birger and his ominous advice. The image of Odin’s sacrifice, which Eric had scared her with a mere two nights before. She knew that now, with each day growing longer, things would only get better. That it was the darkness of winter which brought out the worst instincts in people, and now brightness and warmth were coming. Ion had promised her that they’d meet in the chapel in the king’s absence, the chapel he usually spoke of as being no more sacred than a boathouse.

  “But, as the Holy Scriptures say, the place where two people meet in my name, there am I also, my lady. So, let us meet in your hut in God’s name, and at least I can read you the Bible which our good king has stolen from the church in Roskilde.” The servants she had brought with her from Poznań ten years ago, though they now dressed like local women and had adapted to most of the local traditions, still prepared painted eggs at Easter, and she knew they were already coloring this year’s batch with melted wax. She promised herself she’d make at least one, and give it to Eric. She laughed. Her husband ate only raw eggs.

  She felt flushed after the ride. Wrzask appeared first with the hare he had caught. Then came Zgrzyt, with two young foxes. They returned at a walk, they didn’t need to fly anymore. She had outrun her dark thoughts and left them behind. But as they approached, she noticed Birger in the yard. The jarl was obviously waiting for her, and his expression betrayed the importance of the news he bore. She gave her horse to a stable boy, attached the leashes to her lynxes, and called out to him cheerfully:

  “Wait for me, Jarl, I’ll take the cats inside and come out to you.”

  Ion was pacing in the hall, and his usually self-satisfied face was unsettled.

  “My lady … I must tell you something…” He almost caught her sleeve as she walked past.

  “Speak.”

  “Not here. Privately. It’s important.”

  “Jarl Birger is waiting for me. I’ll speak to him first.” She gave the leash to Dusza and walked back toward the exit.

  Ion crept behind her.

  “My lady…”

  “Either speak now, or wait, monk,” she threw over her shoulder.

  “I’ll wait, my lady.”

  The usual hubbub met her in the yard. A pig with bound legs, led under the axe, was squealing.

  “My queen…” Birger appeared beside her so suddenly that she flinched. “Did I startle you?”

  “No. The squeal of that animal … Can’t they do it somewhere else?”

  He called out loudly, ordering the servants to leave. The animal was led behind the manor, to which it reacted with an even more terrified bleat.

  “I will be meeting Ion to read the Holy Scriptures,” she told the jarl. “Would you like to join us? It’s Easter.” She nudged him with her shoulder, laughing, trying to lighten the somber mood he carried with him.

  “Yes, but I’m afraid I have more pressing matters, my lady. There is less and less time—”

  “Stop!” she interrupted him angrily. “I spoke with my husband. He promised to deal with the matter differently than planned.” The details of that night and the discussion between king and queen were not the jarl’s business.

  He nodded, as if agreeing, then whispered,

  “The girls won’t cause us any more trouble. I’ve done what was necessary.”

  The frightened wail of the dying pig reached them from behind the house. She began to feel sick.

  “I don’t know what you mean, Jarl,” she whispered.

  “Yes, you do, my lady,” he replied. “But you’re right, not everything needs to be spoken aloud. I only wanted you to know that you can depend upon me unquestionably.”

  Her mouth was dry. She wanted to say something, but for the first time in her life her voice refused to obey her. In the same moment, dogs barked and a procession appeared in the yard.

  “Olof?” she couldn’t believe her eyes. Her son had left for Uppsala with his father at dawn to meet the Danish messengers.

  She ran toward them.

  “Where’s the king? Why have you returned?”

  “My lord father has sent me back to you. We received news on the way that the messengers hadn’t arrived as expected, and my lord father ordered me to come back.”

  It wasn’t true. The messengers were already in Uppsala, she’d heard Eric and Birger discussing their arrival the day before. Her heart beat so hard she was sure it would break her chest apart.

  “And the king? Where did the king go?”

  “To Uppsala, lady mother.”

  Her son’s dark eyes were honest. Olof told her what he knew, having no idea what was truly happening.

  “It’s begun,” Birger said in her ear, and she felt cold.

  “Why didn’t he take you with him?” She grabbed Olof’s horse by the reins.

  “He said he wanted to carry out a ritual in Odin’s great temple and that you’d prefer for me not to be there.”

  “Great Ulf!” she screamed so suddenly that Olof’s horse whinnied in fear. “Wilkomir! Gather a squad. We are going to Uppsala, to the king. My son comes with us. A horse!”

  She turned around and saw Birger’s solemn face.

  “It has begun, my lady,” he repeated.

  “Stay in Sigtuna, Jarl. I charge you with care for the manor.”

  He went down on one knee in front of her and kissed her hand.

  “I won’t let you down, my queen.”

  They had to make one short stop on the way to avoid exhausting their horses. Olof was unsettled, and he ran over to her as soon as they dismounted by a stream.

  “Mother, why are we going? What’s happening?”

  “You’re all grown-up, my son…” She didn’t want to hurt him with careless words. What was happening? Even she wasn’t sure. Had Eric told Olof the truth and sent him away so the boy wouldn’t participate in the ritual, or …

  “Your lord father promised me something,” she said. “We’re going to see if he keeps his word. I know that if he sees us both, it will be important to him, and he will be … more likely not to break his promise.”

  They entered Uppsala after dark. Her mare was exhausted from the mad ride, but Świętosława couldn’t slow down. Instead, when she saw the torches burning along the path between the mounds, she urged her mount forward.

  “More, more, my little one, my fast one,” she drove her.

  “Who goes there?” A guard on horseback barred her way.

  “Queen Sigrid. Out of my way! Where is my husband?”

  “In the temple, my lady.” The guard rode away at the last moment, when it became clear she had no intention of slowing.

  God Almighty! I have never crossed the threshold of this house, and now … She was already riding between the mounds. She looked to the left. There wasn’t a single sacrifice hanging from the branches of the great tree, but crows were gathering in bleak expectation. She felt a cramp in her belly, as if her stomach wanted to lurch out of her. The lights of the old manor appeared in the distance. She took a sharp right, to the temple. She glanced over her shoulder. Her riders were right behind her, as was Olof. He manages so well in the saddle, she thought, as
if this mattered right now.

  A great fire had been lit in front of the temple. A large crowd had gathered around it. Women, men, some children. They looked at her mistrustfully. She stopped and dismounted.

  A man walked out to meet her, who she recognized as the temple’s guardian. They’d seen each other when she’d still lived here, once or twice. After that, he’d stayed out of her sight.

  “My lady, what brings you to us?” he asked. “Would you like to abandon your Christ and cross over to our gods?”

  “No,” she replied curtly. “Where’s my husband?”

  “In the temple.”

  “I want to see him.”

  “You cannot.”

  “You speak to the queen!” she shouted angrily. “Ulf, stop this man. Wilkomir, come with Olof and me.”

  “It’s not a good idea,” Ulf said quietly. “You cannot enter the temple during a ritual.”

  “I have to do this,” she whispered back, and said loudly: “This is Olof, Eric’s son. And I am Queen Sigrid Storråda, your lady. I’m going to meet my husband in Odin’s temple.”

  “You have to swear, my lady,” the guard spoke, “that you won’t interrupt the ritual. Otherwise, you might die.”

  “Don’t threaten the queen,” Wilkomir growled loudly, and whispered to her what Ulf had already observed, “My lady, this is a bad idea.”

  “I don’t have a better one,” she whispered back. And, louder, she added: “I won’t interrupt your rituals.”

  “Do you swear it?”

  “I do,” she said, and pulled Olof with her.

  People stepped out of their way reluctantly. She saw unfriendly faces. Glum men and women who wanted to tell her: “This isn’t your place.” She walked faster, pushing them aside. She was afraid of every moment lost. When she was close, she heard singing from within the temple. No, not singing. Someone was reciting the ‘Song of the Mighty’ loudly, but it wasn’t her husband’s Icelandic bard. There were fewer people directly in front of the temple. She was almost running, pulling Olof by his hand. He asked no questions, but his palm was sweaty. She had maybe twenty steps left when the temple doors were thrown open and the most beautiful old man she’d ever seen stepped out. Tall, powerful, broad-backed, with long white hair that flowed down his shoulders. His gray beard looked like silk. He was dressed in a wide gray cloak, with the hood thrown over his shoulders.