The Widow Queen

by Elzbieta Cherezinska

“Maybe my sister is expecting a child?” Bolesław asked happily, looking at her.

  Child, rape, intrigue, war … it’s all the same to them, she thought bitterly.

  “You’ll have to ask Sigvald about that,” she told her brother sharply.

  Bolesław did turn to her husband then, but it was to ask a different question.

  “You say, Jarl, that it would be a reason for war? Then I hope that none of the Jomsviking swords have rusted.”

  “No, my lord.” Her husband smiled. “Our weapons have never been more ready.”

  49

  DENMARK

  Świętosława weaned Harald when it was still winter. Melkorka found her a wet nurse.

  “Her name is Heidi, Queen,” she introduced the girl. “But everyone calls her Goat.”

  Indeed, the reason for the nickname was apparent. Goat Heidi had large breasts, carefully covered by a wool shawl, and her pale, almost white hair was plaited at the top of her head in two braids which stood on end like horns. Harald was already sucking on her nipple greedily, so there was no fear he might not accept the wet nurse’s milk.

  “Is my lady preparing for a second child?” Melkorka asked.

  Sven was growing increasingly persistent with his demands for her presence in his bedchamber, but the real reason she wanted a wet nurse was her son’s endless hunger.

  “Harald is my second child, Melkorka,” she replied, thinking longingly of Olof.

  “I’m sorry.” The housewife bowed clumsily. “I’d forgotten.” Her red fingers fidgeted with her apron nervously.

  “It’s all right. Is your back in pain? Perhaps you should rest?”

  “There is nothing wrong with me, my lady, nothing wrong at all. I can work and carry out my duties.” She blushed, and her hair, pulled into a too-tight bun, seemed completely white. But Melkorka was the type of person who was more content when working than when at rest. Though unfortunately, when it came to her duties in the kitchen, she was quite inept.

  “Of course,” Świętosława dismissed her. “Thank you for bringing a wet nurse.”

  After Olof was born, she’d learned all the shades of a child’s shouts and cries. Olof screamed the house down, which made Eric happy, because he saw courage in the noise his son made. But there were no shades of nuance to Harald’s cries; he only ever wanted to be fed. If he wasn’t eating, he was crying. Women at court said one could never overfeed a baby, and little Harald must have been born with similar views. He ate, and ate, and ate.

  “Now it’s your worry, Heidi,” she told the wet nurse.

  The girl laughed cheerfully.

  “Ah, what haven’t I fed! Though this is the first time I have a royal son at my breast. Oooh, he sucks like a blacksmith’s son. He has pincers in his mouth. I’ll manage, your majesty.”

  The first thing Świętosława had done when Dusza had handed her the red little body was to see whether he had the mark on his skull. He did. She kissed him there, on his “Piast mark.”

  I’m like a bitch sniffing its litter to tell apart my own from a changeling, she thought later. The little one had a head covered with pale red fuzz, which made Sven just as happy as did the fact that it was a boy.

  “You gave me a son,” he laughed, lifting him above his head.

  “I’m not giving you anyone,” she replied indignantly. “He’s as much mine as he is yours.”

  Their marriage still resembled a battle. Sven provoked her, and she irritated him. When one of them wanted to bury the hatchet, the other decided to attack. They could fight about everything, and making peace was an uphill battle; what they achieved was more of a cease-fire. There were also days when they were simply in each other’s way. She learned quickly that to get anything from him, she had to ask for something other than what she wanted. Or pretend she didn’t care about it. Endless games. Sometimes, during feasts, Sven and Jorun would talk about the English invasion of the Two Kings. During those times, she could listen to stories about Olav with no repercussions and, if they were drunk enough, she could even ask questions. She just had to be careful not to let her emotions show. She realized quickly that Sven had spies in Norway. He met them outside of the manor, so she couldn’t find out their names or faces, but he spoke of the news they brought at feasts with his noblemen. Since Heidi was taking over Harald’s feeding, Świętosława could begin attending them once more.

  * * *

  “Should I serve yet?” Melkorka asked, her cheeks flushed. “I prepared the wild geese that the king brought back.”

  “Yes, bring them out. I love roasted geese.”

  “I boiled them, Your Grace.”

  “That’s all right, too. I think I wanted them boiled.” Świętosława smiled to the cook and walked out of the kitchen to the great hall.

  She heard the clank of iron in the dark passageway. Chains? She looked around. Arnora. The regal old woman. My enemy’s wife, Sven had said. Świętosława walked over to her.

  “Are you coming to the feast, Arnora?” she asked, a rare feeling of shyness coming over her as she spoke.

  The woman turned to her so haughtily, it seemed that she was the mistress here.

  “I am, Queen,” she replied.

  Świętosława had watched her from afar more than once. The old woman always sat in the corner of the hall, and never responded to her nods of greeting.

  “Will you take my arm?” Świętosława suggested, seeing the chain that connected to the ones on her legs drag.

  Arnora didn’t deign to answer. She shuffled her feet, though she held her back straight. She finished her step and paused. Świętosława lost herself in the network of wrinkles and lines on her face. Arnora’s eyes shone with a pale, intense blue hue.

  “That’s how I imagined you,” she said, after a moment of staring at Świętosława.

  “Why do you say that? You’ve seen me at every feast.”

  “Ah, youth,” she said, something akin to amusement in her voice. “I don’t see people from afar, but mere shadows.”

  “That’s why you never answered my greetings?” Świętosława asked, feeling suddenly relieved. She didn’t know why, but on hearing that this woman had not been scorning her, Świętosława felt a warm twist of joy in her stomach.

  “Do you like to play hnefatafl?” the old woman asked. “Do you like to lose?”

  “No one likes losing,” Świętosława replied, and felt awkward once again.

  Arnora continued to stare; there was no intrusiveness in her eyes, but Świętosława still felt as if the woman could see past her carefully constructed exterior.

  “Who chooses to play must be prepared for any result. And rulers must always be playing.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “If you’d like to have a game with me, you know where to find me. Come, and bring your lynxes. I’d like to touch them. Your quiet servant can come with you, too. But I don’t want that oaf in my hermitage.”

  “Great Ulf is my guard.”

  “It’s not him I speak of, but the fat monk. Go now, Thorn Queen. Your husband summons you to the feast.”

  “Thorn Queen?” Świętosława repeated, her heart thudding in her chest.

  “I told you that I see well up close,” Arnora laughed. The chains clanged, and she continued her laborious journey. “Only don’t get lost when you come looking for me. There is more than one hermitage in this manor.”

  Her conversation with Arnora had thrown Świętosława off-balance. When she walked into the torchlit hall, she wasn’t herself.

  “Gunhild, how good it is to see you.” Sven rose from the platform and moved toward her. “Will you drink with me from the long horn?”

  Jorun handed him the horn as he passed. It was indeed longer than most. He gave it to her and whispered straight into her ear:

  “I’d like you to stroke my horn tonight.”

  She blushed. Yes, she wasn’t herself. She took a big gulp and regained her strength.

  “All right, so long as J
orun won’t be putting yours in my mouth.”

  Now Sven blushed, and so did his friend. She took her husband’s arm and let him guide her to her seat.

  “We have guests from the north with us today,” he said, motioning toward a few men standing off to one side. “They stopped at Lade on their way to Iceland, and they bring interesting news.”

  She nodded to them, and they bowed back. Are they Sven’s spies? she wondered. He’s never met with them in Roskilde. Or are they simply merchants or sailors, adventure hunters?

  “Dusza, the lynxes,” she called out, to draw attention away from her interest in the guests. “My cats are so tame that they are meowing for the feast to begin. They have had enough of feeding our son.”

  “Your lynxes are tame?” Ragn of the Isles asked indignantly. “They almost took off my hand yesterday.”

  “Then you must have reached for something I commanded them to guard.”

  The guests laughed, and Ragn quickly hid his face in a cup. No, she wouldn’t reveal his secret. Ragn of the Isles, since her wedding night, seemed to suffer from a peculiar need to touch her cloak. Wrzask had indeed scared him a little when he’d tried to take the garment she’d thrown on a bench.

  “Let’s drink to my son and his beautiful mother,” Sven exclaimed.

  “More than once,” Stenkil called out.

  “I hope,” the red-bearded king smiled, “it will be more than once. Let my queen give me many sons.”

  Melkorka’s kitchen procession brought in the bowls. Świętosława was hungry. Her appetite left her for a moment when she spotted Arnora walking into the hall. A band of boar fangs rested on her long, silver-white hair. I didn’t see it in the dark, or did she go back to her hermitage to put on that strange crown?

  Fair-haired Vali placed a bowl in front of Świętosława.

  “Specially from Melkorka, since the queen loves wild geese,” she smiled prettily.

  Not like this, Świętosława groaned inwardly, looking at the gray, overcooked meat in a wreath of wilted onions.

  The cook stood in the doorway and watched her tensely. Sven leaned over to her and said quietly, “Wash it down and you’ll manage. Red wine can save even Melkorka’s cooking.”

  She did as he suggested, but still felt as if she were eating rawhide.

  “Should I send her to the country?” Sven asked.

  “No, please don’t. I’ll think of something,” she replied, chewing the stringy meat. She nodded to Melkorka to indicate her satisfaction, and smiled to Sven. “Have you any more wine left?”

  When the cook disappeared into the kitchen, Świętosława discreetly threw the goose under the table. Zgrzyt made short work of it.

  “… since he baptized the northern lords in Lade, Jarl Haakon’s old settlement, they call him the ‘beast with the cross,’” one of the newcomers was saying.

  Sven turned to her and said quietly, “Olav has always had a tendency toward cruelty.”

  But he wasn’t the one to threaten me, she replied silently. You were.

  “He burned Odin’s temple, after he’d chopped its last priest to pieces inside…” the traveler continued.

  “I told you,” Sven muttered. “He’s a monster.”

  “So how did you survive three years of conquering side by side?”

  “I’m not afraid of the beast.” He shrugged, not hearing the mockery in her voice.

  “I understand that Christianity is spreading in his country like wildfire,” she said to their guests.

  Sven understood the joke and laughed. The newcomers exchanged uneasy glances.

  “Queen Sigrid Storråda has had some experiences with fire,” Skuli the bard explained. Seeing they were still confused, he waved a hand. “I’ll explain once we’re a few more drinks in.”

  “One could say,” the guest continued, “that Olav has baptized most of the country. Everywhere he’s been, the noblemen have accepted him. Though he undoubtedly faces some troubles…”

  “I’ll say,” the second of the men offered, “that whoever sees him bends the knee.”

  I know something about that, she thought, and realized she’d have to be more on her guard than usual this evening. She couldn’t let her heart rule her thoughts in front of her husband and these men.

  “Speak more clearly,” Sven ordered.

  “Hamingia, my king. The powerful spirit which comes before him…”

  “You speak like an enchanter,” Świętosława said with a disdainful laugh. She must have been convincing enough, because Sven laughed as well.

  The spirit that comes before him, Bork had said—the priest of Odin who had first killed her husband, then protected her and their son. He had warned her in Sigtuna a moment before everything had ended.

  “Forgive me, my lady.” The traveler wasn’t embarrassed by the king and queen’s apparent skepticism. “It’s difficult to describe it otherwise. He walks among a crowd of armed noblemen, his enemies, he says a few words, and those who claimed they’d never bow to him before he arrived, fall to their knees.”

  “What does he say?” Sven asked, saving her the trouble.

  “He says, ‘I am your king. The Yngling heir. I have come to give you baptism and faith in the lord Christ, and to take the crown. My name is Olav Tryggvason.’”

  I can picture it so clearly, she thought. His pale, translucent eyes, his almost white hair swept backward …

  “… and they shout, ‘No, we have our gods, we don’t need kings.’ That’s when he replies, without even raising his voice, ‘I’m already your king.’”

  “We saw it with our own eyes,” the last of the travelers joined in. “That’s what happened.”

  “A servant girl in an inn we later stayed at summed it up most accurately. The woman had seen Olav from behind, from afar, and said, ‘Even from behind he looks like a king.’”

  “Nonsense,” Sven said, angrily banging his goblet on the table. “Women’s nonsense.”

  You’re wrong, husband. The servant is right.

  “But the truth is…” the one who had spoken first continued. “The truth is that in the far north, in the country of northern lights and the isles, he has powerful enemies. Those are the regions that the king’s influence doesn’t reach. The places that require weeks on a sleigh to reach, where the sun never sets in summer or rises in the winter. The country ruled by jarls who make sacrifices to Odin, wealthy men who own the largest herds of reindeer…”

  “The time for the north is coming, though,” one of the others interrupted. “No one believes that reindeer lords can stop a ruler like Olav Tryggvason.”

  “That’s enough stories for one night,” Sven said, cutting off the litany of Olav’s praises. “Enjoy yourself as my guests. Skuli, take care of the travelers.”

  The bard understood at once that he was to get them drunk away from the king. He pulled them to a table in the far corner of the hall.

  Sven gave a sign to his jarls to sit closer.

  “His strength is growing,” Thorgils of Jelling observed, tapping a nail against his cup.

  “If he only has the reindeer lords left to convince, then one might say all of Norway is already his,” Haakon of Funen added somberly, taking a gulp of mead. “There are few lords that far north, and their ties with the country have always been weak.”

  “In your father’s time,” Gunar of Limfiord began carefully, “those from the farthest north didn’t pay tribute either. They lived in the wilderness, and when Harald sent his tax collectors, only three out of the twelve returned. They said later that the rest had been lost in canyons of ice, and they never found those famous reindeer lords at all, or any other living soul.”

  “They spoke of impossible things.” Ragn of the Isles spat.

  Świętosława looked at him sharply, and he realized he hadn’t behaved as he should. He smeared his saliva with his boot, embarrassed.

  “I don’t give a shit about the reindeer lords,” Sven roared. “I care that Olav’s power is growing.
He did what he set out to do, the bloody second king.”

  “It’s a bad thing that Tryggvason ever left England,” Thorgils of Jelling said, his words cold and calculated.

  Sven clenched his fists over the arms of his chair, glaring at the chieftain from Jelling.

  “You weren’t there, so be silent,” he replied.

  Jorun moved closer to Thorgils and said, “You have a small imagination, Jarl of Jelling, if you think that Olav could have been killed without beginning a war. The army known as the Two Kings did not appear from thin air. King Ethelred would have been ecstatic if we’d started fighting among ourselves and killed one another, doing exactly what his armies had failed to do.”

  “Forgive me, King.” Thorgils lowered his head, but his humility was obviously feigned. “I merely made an observation. I had no intention of criticizing any of your men, or suggest that Olav might have been removed after you took the danegeld … at sea, for instance … or an accidental death … a fall from a rock…”

  “Thorgils.” Świętosława’s voice sounded sharp and clear. “My husband is a man of honor. I am certain that he’d never commit such a crime.”

  Christ, I want to believe that, she thought.

  Sven placed his hand on hers. It was cold. He squeezed lightly.

  “The queen is right. I’d much prefer to defeat Olav in an open battle than in an unworthy game.”

  Why do you want to defeat him at all? she wondered feverishly, and shuddered under Sven’s cold touch. Leave him in peace, in peace.

  “There are wars which are waged either at sea or on land,” Uddorm of Viborg, silent until now, spoke. “And there are those which never begin if you adequately plan the little battles in the bedchamber.”

  His heavyset face revealed a man who enjoyed the pleasures of life.

  “Our beloved queen and brave king are the best example of that. Let’s face the truth head-on. If you hadn’t fallen in love so explosively and hadn’t tied the marriage knot, we’d have had a war, destruction, and death. Corpses at sea, burned ships, orphans crying for their fathers. And now? We rejoice in the blossoming of two kingdoms. Our merchants sail safely, multiplying the treasures in their royal chests.” His moist lips stretched in a smile.