by Tim Severin
At his signal, the five of us and the two horses moved forward cautiously. We emerged into an area of the forest where the trees thinned out. To our right, between the trees, I glimpsed a movement, and then another. It was a red-deer hind and her companion. Then I saw the little group – the stag and his four hinds.
‘Now we go across the face of the deer,’ Kjartan whispered to me. He clearly wanted me to appreciate the subtlety of the chase. I heard the brief creak of leather and to my astonishment one-legged Gisli unfastened his special leather belt, slid out of the saddle, and dropped to the ground. I noticed that he landed on the side of the horse away from the deer, shielded from their sight. He stood grasping the stirrup leather in one hand to keep himself upright as he strapped on his wooden leg. He did not carry a crutch, instead he had a heavy bow in his hand. Edgar moved up to stand beside him. He too was behind the horse and hidden from the deer. When Edgar gave his next signal, the two horses moved out in the open, three men riding and two men walking alongside and hidden from the deer. The stag and his hinds immediately raised their heads and watched our distant procession. Now I understood. The deer were not alarmed by men on horseback, provided they rode gently and quietly and kept their distance. They were accepted as another form of forest animal. I noticed how Edgar and Gisli timed their paces on foot so that they moved with the horses’ legs.
‘Not quite another Sleipnir,’ I whispered to Kjartan. He nodded. Sleipnir, Odinn’s horse, has eight legs so that it can travel at tremendous speed. To the deer, our horses must have looked as if they each had six legs.
Fifty paces further on I realised that one-legged Gisli was no longer with us. Glancing back, I saw he was standing in front of a young oak tree, motionless. Dressed in green, he was almost impossible to see. He had let go of the stirrup leather just as the horse passed the tree, used his bow as a crutch, and was now in position. A few paces further on, Edgar did the same. He too was almost invisible. We were setting an ambush.
Kjartan, Aelfric and I rode on, then began to circle to the right. We reached the far side of the clearing and at the edge of the trees Kjartan said quietly, ‘Thorgils, this is where you drop off. Stand in front of that tree there. Stay absolutely still. Only move if you see the deer heading your way and not towards Edgar and Gisli.’ I slipped off the horse and did as I had been ordered, waiting quietly as Kjartan and the servant rode on.
For what seemed a long time I stood, not moving a muscle, and wondering what would happen next. Then I heard it, a single faint sound – chkkk! Very, very slowly I turned my head towards the noise. I heard it repeated, softly, almost languidly from far away. A moment later I heard the gentle crack of a twig, and into my line of vision walked one of the red-deer hinds. She was perhaps twenty paces away, moving gently through the forest, stopping now and again to snatch a mouthful of food, then moving on. Then I saw another hind and caught a glimpse of the stag itself. All the animals were on the move, unhurried yet heading in the same direction. Chkk! Again I heard the strange sound, and behind the deer I saw Kjartan on his horse. He was riding on a loose rein, barely moving, drifting through the forest behind the deer, not hurrying, but turning his horse this way and that as if the animal was feeding. The sound was Kjartan softly clicking his tongue. A moment later I glimpsed the second rider, Aelfric, and heard a gentle, deliberate tap as he struck his saddle lightly with a willow switch. The soft sounds made the deer move forward, unalarmed. Directly ahead Edgar and Gisli waited.
With excruciating slowness the quarry moved forward. As they drew level with my position, I hardly dared to breath. Slowly I turned my head to look for Edgar. He was so motionless that it took me a moment to detect his position. He was standing with his bow pulled back and an arrow on the string as the leading deer approached him. An elderly hind, she was almost upon Edgar when she realised that she was staring straight into the eyes of her hunter. Her head came up suddenly, she flared her nostrils and tensed her muscles to leap away. At that instant Edgar loosed. From that short range I clearly heard the thunk of the arrow hitting her chest.
Now all chaos broke loose. The stag and other hinds awoke to their danger and began to run. I heard another thump and guessed that Gisli had shot an arrow. A young hind and the stag turned back and broke away towards me. They came bounding through the trees, the stag taking great leaps, his antlers crashing against the branches. I stepped forward so the deer could see me and raised my arms. The hind swerved in panic, slipped on the greasy ground, scrambled to her feet and darted away to safety. But the great stag, fearing that his flight was blocked, doubled back and headed to where Edgar stood. By then Edgar had a second arrow nocked to his bow string and was waiting. The stag saw Edgar, accelerated and veered past him. Smoothly Edgar swivelled at the hips, his bow pulled so far back that the arrow’s feathers were at his right ear, and he loosed just as the prey sped past. It was a perfect passing shot, which brought a shout of approval from Kjartan. The arrow struck the great stag between the ribs. I saw the beast falter in its stride, recover, and then go bounding away through the bushes with a great thrashing of branches which dwindled in the distance until the only sound was the patter of twigs and leaves falling to the ground.
Gisli’s shot had also hit its mark. Two hinds, his and Edgar’s, lay dead on the forest floor.
‘Good shooting,’ called out Kjartan as he rode up to the ambush.
‘Lucky the stag broke to my left,’ said Edgar. He was trying to sound matter of fact, though I knew he was delighted. ‘Had he gone the other side of me, it would have been a more awkward shot, swinging away from my leading foot.’
Aelfric had already run off to retrieve Cabal and the dog swiftly picked up the scent of the wounded stag. The trail of blood was hard to miss, and after a couple of hundred paces we came across Edgar’s arrow, lying where it had fallen from the wounded animal. ‘Gut shot,’ said Edgar, showing me the metal barbs. ‘You can see traces of his stomach contents. This won’t be a long pursuit. Bright clear blood would mean a superficial wound and a long chase.’
He was right. We tracked the stag for less than a mile, and found it dead in a thicket. Losing no time, the servant began to skin the carcass and butcher the meat, and Edgar rewarded Cabal with a choice titbit.
‘Located the big stag without trouble, Gisli,’ Kjartan called out as we arrived back to where Gisli was standing at the ambush site. The one-legged huscarl had been unable to join the pursuit. ‘Five deer found and three killed. That was a nice shot of yours. Fifty paces at least.’
‘One advantage to losing a leg, my friend,’ Gisli replied. ‘When you use a crutch to help you hobble around, it strengthens the arms and shoulders.’
THREE
WE DELIVERED THE venison to the burh, where the earldorman’s cooks were preparing the great feast which, by Saxon custom, celebrates the binding of the harvest sheaves.
‘The royal huntsman is always invited and gets an honoured place,’ Edgar said to me. ‘And so he should – he provides the best of the festival food. As my assistant, Thorgils, you’re expected to be there as well. Make sure you’re suitably dressed.’
So it was that I found myself at the door of the burh’s great hall five days later, wearing my purple tunic, which had been freshly cleaned by Edgar’s wife, Judith. I was having difficulty in controlling my excitement. Aelfgifu must surely be at the banquet, I thought to myself.
‘Who’s going to be at the high table?’ I asked a fellow guest as we waited for the horn blast to signal that we could enter the hall.
‘Ealdorman Aelfhelm is the official host,’he replied.
‘Is he Aelfgifu’s father?’ ‘No. Her father was executed by that fool Ethelred on suspicion of disloyalty long before Knut came to power. Aelfhelm is her uncle. He has an old-fashioned view of how to conduct a banquet so I expect Aelfgifu will be a cup-bearer.’
When the blaedhorn sounded, we filed into the great hall to find our places. I had been allocated to sit at a long table facing towards
the centre of the hall, which had been left clear for the servitors who brought our food and for the entertainment to follow. A similar long table had been placed on the far side, and to my right, raised up on a platform, was the table at which ealdorman Aelfhelm and his important guests would dine. Our humbler board was set with wooden plates, mugs and cowhorn spoons, but the ealdorman’s guests had an embroidered linen tablecloth and their drinking vessels were expensive imports, goblets of green glass. We lesser folk had just taken our places when another horn blast announced the entry of the ealdorman. He came in with his wife and a cluster of nobles. Most were Saxons, but among them I noticed Gisli and Kjartan, wearing their gold-hilted huscarl swords and looking much more dignified than the green-clad hunters I had accompanied five days earlier. Still there was no sign of Aelfgifu.
The ealdorman and his party took their seats along one side of the high table, looking down at us. Then came a third horn blast, and from the left-hand side of the hall appeared a small procession of women. Leading them was Aelfgifu. I recognised her at once and felt a surge of pride. She had chosen to wear the same close-fitting sky-blue dress in which I had first seen her at Knut’s Easter assembly in London. Then her long hair had hung loose, held with a single gold fillet. Now her hair was coiled up on her head, to reveal the slender white neck I remembered so well. I could not keep my eyes from her. She walked forward at the head of the procession, looking demurely down at the ground and holding a silver jug. Stepping up to her uncle’s table, she filled the glass goblet of the chief guest, then her uncle’s glass and then the noble next in rank. Judging by the colour of the liquid she poured, their drink was also a luxurious import – red wine. Her formal duty done, Aelfgifu handed the jug to a servant and walked to take her own seat. To my chagrin she was placed at the far end of the high table, and from where I sat my neighbour blocked my line of sight.
The cooks had excelled themselves. Even I, who was used to eating Edgar’s game stews, was impressed by the variety and quality of the dishes. There were joints of pork and mutton, rounds of blood sausage and pies and pastes of freshwater fish – pike, perch, eel – with sweet pastries too. We were offered white bread, unlike the everyday rough bread, and of course there was the venison which Edgar had contributed, now brought in ceremonially on iron spits. I tried leaning forward and then back on my bench, attempting to get another glimpse of Aelfgifu. But my immediate neighbour on my right was a big, hulking man – the burh’s ironworker as it turned out – and he was soon irritated by my fidgeting.
‘Here,’ he said, ‘settle down and get on with the meal. Not often that you have a chance to eat such fine food –’ he belched happily – ‘or as much to drink.’
Of course, we were not offered wine, but on the table were heavy bowls made from local clay, which gave a deep grey sheen to the pottery. They contained a drink which I had not tasted before.
‘Cider,’ commented my burly neighbour as he enthusiastically used a wooden scoop to refill his wooden cup and mine. He had an enormous thirst and throughout the meal gulped cup after cup. I tried to avoid his friendly insistence to keep pace, but it proved difficult, even when I switched to drinking mead flavoured with myrtlewort in the hope that he would leave me alone. The leather mead bottle was in the hands of an overly efficient servant, and every time I put down my cup he topped it up again. Gradually, and for almost the first time in my life, I was getting drunk.
As the banquet progressed, the entertainers came on. A pair of jugglers skipped into the open space between the tables and began throwing batons and balls in the air and doing somersaults. It was uninspiring stuff, so there were catcalls and rude comments, and the jugglers left, looking cross. The audience perked up when the next act came on – a troop of performing dogs. They were dressed in coloured jackets and fancy collars and had been trained to scamper about in patterns, to duck and roll over, to walk on two feet and jump through hoops or over a bar. The audience shouted with approval as the bar rose higher and higher, and threw scraps of meat and chicken into the arena as rewards. Next it was the turn of the ealdorman’s scop to come forward. He was the Saxon version of our Norse skald, and his duty was to declaim verses in praise of his lord and compose poems in honour of the chief guest. Remembering my time as an apprentice skald, I listened carefully. But I was not overly impressed. The ealdorman’s scop had a mumbling delivery and I thought that his verses were mundane. I suspected they were stock lines which he changed to suit the particular individual at his lord’s table, filling in the names of whoever was present that day. When the scop had finished and the final lines of poetry died away, there was an awkward silence.
‘Where’s the gleeman?’ called down the ealdorman, and I saw the steward hurry up to the high table and say something to his master. The steward was looking unhappy.
‘The gleeman’s probably failed to show,’ slurred my neighbour. The cider was making him alternately cantankerous and genial. ‘He’s become very unreliable. Meant to travel from one festival to another, but often has too much of a hangover to remember his next engagement.’
The steward was heading towards a small crowd of onlookers standing at the back of the hall. They were mostly women, kitchen workers. I saw him approach one young woman at the front of the crowd, take her by the wrist and try to bring her forward. For a moment she resisted and then I saw a harp being passed to her from somewhere at the back of the room. She beckoned to a youth sitting at the far table and he got to his feet. By now an attendant had placed two stools in the middle of the cleared space and the young man and woman – I could see that they were brother and sister – came forward and, after paying their respects to the ealdorman, sat down. The young man produced a bone whistle from his tunic and fingered a few experimental notes.
The crowd fell silent as his sister began to tune her harp. It was different from the harps I had known in Ireland. The Irish instrument is strung with twenty or more wires of bronze, while the harp the girl was holding was lighter, smaller, and had only a dozen strings. When she plucked it I realised it was corded with gut. But the simpler instrument suited her voice, which was pure, untrained and clear. She sang a number of songs, while her brother accompanied her on his whistle. The songs were about love and war and travel, and were plain enough, and no worse for that. The ealdorman and his guests listened for most of the time, only occasionally talking among themselves, and I judged that the stand-in musicians had done well.
When they finished, the dancing began. The young man on the whistle was joined by other local musicians, playing pan pipes, shaking rattles and beating tambourines. People left their benches and started to dance in the centre of the hall. Determined to enjoy themselves, men coaxed women out of the crowd of onlookers, and the music became more cheerful and spirited and everyone began to clap and sing. None of the august guests danced, of course, they merely looked on. I could see that the dancing was uncomplicated, a few steps forward, a few steps back, a sideways shuffle. To escape from my drunken neighbour, whose head was beginning to loll heavily against my shoulder, I decided to try. A little fuddled, I rose from my bench and joined the dancers. Among the line of women and girls coming towards me, I realised, was the girl harpist. She was wearing a bodice of russet red and a skirt of contrasting brown, which showed off her figure, and with her brown hair cut short and lightly freckled skin, she was the picture of fresh womanhood. Each time we passed she gave my hand a little squeeze. Gradually the music grew faster and faster, and the circles whirled with increasing speed, until we were short of breath. The music rose to a crescendo and then stopped abruptly. Laughing and smiling, the dancers staggered to a halt and there in front of me was the harpist girl. She stood before me, triumphant with her evening’s success. Still intoxicated, I reached forward, took her in my arms and gave her a kiss. A heartbeat later, I heard a short, loud crash. It was a sound that few people in that gathering could have ever heard in their lives – the sound of expensive glass shattering. I looked up and there was A
elfgifu, standing up. She had flung her goblet on the table. As her uncle and his guests looked up in amazement, Aelfgifu stalked out of the hall, her back rigid with anger.
Swaying tipsily, I suddenly felt wretched. I knew that I had offended the woman I adored.
‘WAR, HUNTING AND love are as full of trouble as they are of pleasure.’ Edgar launched another of his proverbs at me next morning, as we were getting ready to visit the hawk shed, which he called the hack house, and feed the hawks.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked, though I had a shrewd idea why he had mentioned love.
‘Our lady’s got a quick temper.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Come on, lad. I’ve known Aelfgifu since she was a skinny girl growing up. As a youngster she was always trying to get away from the stuffiness of the burh. Used to spend half her days with my wife and me down at the cottage. Playing around like any ordinary child, though she tended to get into more mischief than most. A real little vixen she could be when she was caught out. But she’s got a good heart and we love her still. And we were very proud when she was wed to Knut, though by then she had become a grand lady.’
‘What’s that got to do with her bad temper?’
Edgar paused with his hand on the door into the hack house, and there was a glint of amusement in his eyes as he looked straight at me. ‘Don’t think you’re the first young man she’s taken a fancy to,’ he said. ‘Soon after you arrived, it was clear that you were not cut out to be kennelman. I began wondering why you were brought all the way from London and I asked the steward, who told me that you had been included in my lady’s travelling party on her particular instructions. So I had my guess, but I wasn’t sure until I saw her tantrum last night. No harm in that,’ he went on, ‘Aelfgifu’s not been so well treated these past months, what with that other queen, Emma, and Knut being away all the time. I’d say she has a right to her own life. And she’s been more than good to me and my wife. When our daughter was taken by the Danes, it was Aelfgifu who offered to pay her ransom if she was ever located. And she would still do so.’
