While we talked, the servant lads came cautiously out of the trees some distance behind us, leading their horses and still carrying the hooded falcons.
“Why didn’t you help us, you dogs?” growled Harald, shaking a fist at them.
“Leave them be,” said Ingigerd, “they don’t understand a word you’re saying.”
“Useless, then, to ask them what they might have seen,” said Dag to no one in particular.
“What should they have seen, Dag Hringsson? If you have a thought, please say it plainly.”
But at that moment Harald groaned and toppled over like a felled tree. The right side of his tunic was sticky with blood and a dark stain was spreading. Under the tunic, there was so much blood we couldn’t find the wound.
“Spear,” he grunted. “Went in deep.”
“Not as bad as the one you got at Stiklestad old fellow,” said Dag lightly. “Just you lie still now—you’ll be all right.” But to me he showed a grim face.
“He can’t sit a horse,” said Ingigerd, going to her grey, which stood nearby trailing its reins. “I’ll ride to Gorodische and send back help.”
But Dag was quicker and seized the bridle before she could mount.
“I can’t allow you to do that, Princess, not with the woods so full of pagan marauders.”
“I don’t fear those dogs.”
“Really? I wonder that you don’t. I fear them, I confess, and I will feel much safer if you stay with us. Much safer. It’s nearly dark now and I don’t think they’ll risk the chance of killing you by mistake.”
“Who do you mean—the pagans?”
“Why, of course. Who did you think I meant?”
“Let go of my bridle, damn you!”
They stared hard at each other but Dag didn’t flinch.
“Very well,” she said at last. “You may be right.”
She’d been beaten in this test of wills. It must have been an unaccustomed feeling.
“Thank you, Princess. Now, tell one of your boys to ride to Gorodische and return with bandages, and a sledge and team. The other two must ride straight to Novgorod and inform the prince what has happened, and ask him to tell Harald’s hirdmen to row up to Gorodische at first light tomorrow. He’s to say the order comes from me. I want Harald taken to his own dvor at Menevo without delay, and in his own ship.”
“And if my servants are waylaid by the heathens?”
“Then, Lady, we will stay here and defend ourselves as best we can until we’re found.”
She issued curt orders in Slavonic to the youths, who saluted and galloped off.
And we four sat in watchful silence as night spread over the lake.
8
A Council of War
In due time we were fetched back to Gorodische and Harald put to bed in Ingigerd’s own chamber. And the next morning his dragon ship arrived and tied up to the landing slip. One hundred and twenty Norwegians poured over the side, demanding angrily to see their young chieftain. Almost unnoticed in this crowd were Yaroslav and Einar Tree-Foot.
“What a business, what an outrage!” lamented the prince as he leaned anxiously over Harald’s prostrate form. “Eilif and the whole druzhina are out scouring the countryside at this very moment. He insisted on it himself and rode out before it was even light—uncommon early for him. He’ll pull their roofs down over their heads, have no fear.”
Yaroslav, prepared for any eventuality, had brought along both a priest and a physician—the latter being, like Jarl Ragnvald’s, a Greek from Miklagard. But Einar shoved his way to the front, and swore, by the Raven, that no one knew more about blade wounds than a Jomsviking. After some dispute, he was allowed to take charge of the patient.
“Boil me six onions cut up in a little water,” he ordered.
A serving woman was sent in haste to prepare this dish. While we waited, he studied his patient. The blood had by now been washed away, revealing a black-encrusted stab wound about three fingers wide.
“The question is,” said Einar tugging his beard, “are his guts pierced? Those other giblets don’t matter a fart in the wind so long as the guts ain’t pierced. If they are, start digging his grave. Now, youngster, drink this.” The onion soup had arrived; he held the bowl to Harald’s lips.
“Someone count to a hundred slowly. By the Raven, must I do all!”
Yaroslav being, by everyone’s admission, the best educated among us, offered himself for this service.
As the count neared its end, Einar bent over the wound. “Easier when she’s fresh, but it can’t be helped,” he muttered, and with his fingers pulled apart the crusty flaps of skin, ignoring Harald’s groans. A trickle of bright red blood began at once, but Einar put his nose next to the wound and sniffed.
“Can’t smell a thing; he’ll live,” was all he said, straightening up. He left it, as a task beneath his interest, to the Greek to patch up the wound.
That very afternoon, by Dag’s order, Harald, swaddled in furs, was laid gently on the deck of his ship. I took the helm and put her about. We rowed past Novgorod and downriver another ten miles to Harald’s dvor—the one he had been given by Yaroslav. He had visited the place once already and purchased some slaves for it, including one lovely young girl that Stavko let him have for a song.
That evening Dag and I sat beside Harald in his bed-closet, with the door shut, and held a council.
“Sunsets!” Dag swore. “Nightingales! And the whole time leading us into an ambush! The first time we passed Perun’s grove must have been to alert their lookout; she didn’t take us that way just to argue religion with Odd here—which, by the way, my young friend, had better not happen again. Personally, I don’t care if you dance naked under the moon, but keep it to yourself. This is a Christian court, as you may have noticed, and talk like yours has a way of getting to the wrong ears.”
“Yes, Dag, all right—but an ambush? You’re not serious.”
“Never more. Why—you think she isn’t capable of it? No, dammit, everything fits. Have you ever seen a battle with no dead left on the field, not so much as a single weapon dropped? Believe me, I looked. They left nothing behind that could be traced to them.
“And then back comes Eilif the next day without a single prisoner to show for his efforts, but with five wounded of his own, and claiming to have won a battle with the ‘pagans’, after which he hanged all the survivors, says he, and burnt down their village. Which I don’t doubt—the hanging and burning—to make it look good. But those casualties were none other than the men we wounded, being smuggled back into town.”
“And all this was done for the purpose of killing Harald?”
“And you and me, yes. And they damn near succeeded.”
“You’re forgetting the princess was wounded too.”
“A sham. Self-inflicted. For a heathen, friend Odd—if that’s really what you are—you seem strangely anxious to pin the guilt on them. Or does the fair Ingigerd’s guilt disturb you even more? Don’t set your foot on that path, my friend, it’s a slippery one.”
“Don’t worry about me.”
“I worry about everyone.”
At that point Harald, who was so weak he could barely talk, gritted his teeth and raised himself up on an elbow. “I blame you for this, Dag Hringsson!” he said between clenched teeth. “You persuaded me to take refuge in Gardariki—refuge, you said. And what do I find but swords drawn against me! I’m as sore wounded as I was on the field of Stiklestad and it’s your fault! Now, I want that woman dead—you hear me? I want her palace burned to the ground, I want her head brought to me on a pike, and Magnus’s head with it! I’ve got six score Norwegians here ready to die for me, and every one of them a match for five Swedes. Now, you see to it, goddamn you, or it’ll be your head on a pike, you hear me … ahh!”
He fell back, clutching his belly; fresh spots of blood showed through the bandages.
Dag leaned forward and said in an earnest voice, “You’re right, my friend, I underestimated her
. I blame myself. I simply didn’t expect her to move so soon. Now listen to me carefully, Harald. I wouldn’t have brought you here if I didn’t think the prize was worth the hazard. What happened today won’t happen again. From now on we guard you well—a dozen of our best men with you at all times—waking, sleeping, shitting, drunk, sober. But as for Ingigerd, we smile and do nothing—no violence, no threats, no accusations—nothing. We bide our time. She has enemies; I know who they are. More important, we have a friend. Yaroslav. He favors you already, soon he won’t be able to do without you. He must realize that he put his head in a Swedish noose the day he married that vixen. She and her relatives have just about stolen his country from him. And that’s where we come in. We’re the lesser of two evils, and not just to Yaroslav—the boyars will see it that way too.”
“Then let’s waste no time,” I said. “I’ll pay a visit on the mayor and arrange a parlay. It’s a skald’s job.”
“Good. Do it at once,” said Dag. “But disguise yourself somehow. Ingigerd has eyes everywhere.”
Harald roused himself again. “I’ve never heard Dyuk Osipovich speak Norse. How are we to parlay with him?”
“I’ve been hard at work on my Slavonic,” I said. “I’ll manage.”
“You—” he said with an expression that seemed to convey equal amounts of wonder and exasperation. I didn’t like his tone of voice. We looked hard at each other.
After an uncomfortable moment, Dag resumed. It would take time, it would need caution. But when the moment was right we’d settle accounts with Ingigerd, Eilif, Ragnvald, Magnus—the lot. “But hit back wildly, Harald, like a blind man dueling, and we lose everything. As for our Norwegians, they must continue to believe in the pagan ambush for a while longer; I want no brawling with the Swedes, not yet.”
“How do we explain the bodyguard to them?” he asked.
“Your dignity requires it, that’s all. You’re practically a boyar, aren’t you?” Dag folded his arms and leaned back against the wall, his handsome face frowning. “Now you know what you’re up against and you know my plan. If it doesn’t suit you, say so and you’ll see the last of me.”
There was a long pause—too long. Harald gave him a sullen nod.
That night I sat up late, chewing over the events of the past few days. The last thing I wanted was for Harald to be killed—on his success rested all my hopes. And I was more than half persuaded that Dag was right about Ingigerd, and that, having failed once, she would try again. And with what result? If she didn’t succeed in killing Harald, he would surely kill her, whatever Dag said. The leash that held him in check was growing more frayed every day; sooner or later it must snap.
The thought of Ingigerd’s death sent an unexpected rush of feeling through me, and left me with my heart beating fast.
A second thought came on its heels. Why, in the ambush, had I only been knocked down? Why had I escaped death, unless my attacker’s purpose was not to harm me but to keep me out of harm’s way? And, if so, on whose orders? Who cared so much that I should live?
That night, as if Perun of the Silver Face still watched from his Russian sky and muttered some warning to me, it thundered.
9
The Holy Fool
Not long after our return from the hunt, Mstislav and his warriors set off in their log boats up the Volkhov, bound for his capital of Chernigov. Without his booming voice, the dvor seemed unnaturally quiet. The stillness was soon made deeper by a blanket of snow that smothered everything. A damp cold gripped the country and, though the palace ovens blazed day and night, still the walls were icy to the touch and we wore our fur coats to bed.
The cattle and horses that grazed in the prince’s yard were brought inside now and lodged on the ground floor, where they and the slaves burrowed for warmth in the same straw. Snorting, lowing, bleating—all the various conversation of animals—together with their warm and comfortable smells rose through the floorboards to our quarters above.
By the end of November the rivers and lakes had become one great highway of ice reaching from the Varangian Sea to Lake Ilmen and beyond. As the ice sealed Novgorod off from the sea, it opened it to the land, for a horse can pull a sled over snow and ice at twice the speed that it can pull a wagon over a dry road. Thus, farmers from far and wide brought their goods to market more easily now than earlier in the year. Whatever cattle they hadn’t the fodder for, they slaughtered, and on any day you could see in the market place heaps of rock-hard carcasses stacked with their legs sticking up in the air.
Four-footed beasts of a less welcome sort appeared in the city too. Packs of wolves and wild dogs, driven by hunger, prowled the streets, even in broad daylight, killing livestock and the occasional child.
Dag and I were constantly on the alert for any new threat against Harald. Our warriors stood guard around his bed day and night while he recovered from his wound. But nothing untoward happened. Instead, life in Yaroslav’s dvor settled down to a routine.
We rose every day before sunrise, following which the prince and princess, with others of the court, would hear mass sung in the cathedral of Saint Sophia. Following mass, the prince and his boyars would busy themselves with various affairs of state. At midday we sat down to a sizable dinner, the company consisting of the prince and princess and the senior druzhiniks, as well as an elderly sister of Yaroslav’s and a great number of cousins who lived off his bounty.
After dinner, it was our habit to nap for an hour and then seek our own pleasures for the remainder of the day. Often we spent the time out of doors, riding, sledding, and skiing for exercise. It wasn’t long before Harald was able to join in, although I think he was in more pain than he would admit.
Yaroslav, however, generally spent this time shut up with his books—he owned twenty-two volumes, more than I would have guessed existed in all the world. For this reason, he was known as ‘The Wise’. Whenever he tired of solitary study, he would seek the company of priests and monks, to whom he was devoted. He delighted in posing biblical conundrums to the bishop, which, so I was told, frequently confounded that holy man.
At sundown we ate supper, which, in this frugal court, consisted mostly of the leavings from dinner. However, there was generally some sort of entertainment worth attending. We might have music played on tambourines and pipes by a troupe of wandering entertainers; or else Boyan, one of the Rus druzhiniks, a truly inspired man, would strum his gusli and sing heroic lays in the Slavonic tongue, which I was beginning by now to understand more and more of.
As the weeks went by, Harald began to spend much of his time in the company of Yaroslav, observing at close hand his manner of ruling. He would ask him questions, which the old man—delighted to find a willing audience—would answer in the most tedious detail, on everything from taxation, to the minting of coin, to the drafting of laws. All this Harald was storing up for the day when he would reign over Norway: for he was determined to be not only a king but a very thorough king.
Once a week the prince gave up his afternoon of study to meet with the Duma—the council of boyars. In this council sat (or, more correctly, stood) all his senior men whether Rus, Slav, or Northman. Harald, who had not yet received the title of boyar, although he paraded himself like one, was permitted as a special favor to be present at its meetings and also to bring me along. He needed me with him because of the babble of languages. Even among the prince’s household, Slavonic was the preferred language except when talking to Northmen. (Yaroslav’s children floated easily between the two tongues, using sometimes one, sometimes the other, and often combining them in a jargon that only they understood. I thought it doubtful that their children would speak the old language at all.)
I was making good progress in Slavonic, but Harald, like the typical Northman—even including Dag—had learned just about nothing of it. He spoke Norse to everyone alike, whether they understood him or not, only shouting louder when he met with incomprehension. Because meetings of the Duma were conducted mainly in Slavonic, I s
erved as his interpreter.
It was in the Duma that we began to grasp how great a role Ingigerd played in everything that went on. She sat at her husband’s side and never hesitated to give her own opinions, and attack those of others, whether the subject was hiring fresh levies of mercenaries, endowing a monastery, arranging a royal marriage, or even conducting a military campaign.
And boyars who would have knocked their own wives head over ass for a lot less presumption than that, often wound up grudgingly taking her advice because it was the best. Among themselves, however, they wondered aloud why the prince never beat her for her impudence. The conclusion was that either he feared her or loved her excessively: either way a disgraceful condition for a man to be in. It was even whispered about that she used spells, taught her by her old nurse or some local witch, to un-man her husband and make him submissive to her. In fact, it quickly became plain to us that no one at court had much admiration for Yaroslav. His crippled foot, his piety, his bookishness, his stinginess, and, last but not least, his wife were all counted against him. There wasn’t a man in the druzhina but would rather have served under jolly and generous Mstislav if he could.
Here we saw our chance to undermine Eilif and indirectly attack Ingigerd, his patroness.
Harald was granted membership of Yaroslav’s druzhina, but at the same time insisted that Dag and I and the one hundred and twenty Norwegian warriors who had come to Gardariki with him were his druzhiniks, to be kept separate from the others.
Harald had no sooner arrived in Novgorod than he bargained with Yaroslav over our conditions of service, insisting that each of us should have a slave woman to sleep with; should receive the unheard of salary of five ounces of silver each month; and should be given for rations a gallon of ale, four pounds of bread, a pound of meat (except on fast days), a half a pot of honey, and ten ounces of butter every day. Further, he asked that a new hall be built for us, larger and better made than any one of the five barracks halls that housed Eilif’s men.
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