Yaroslav the Pinchpenny groaned, but agreed to it all. Why? Because, just as Dag had predicted, he was beginning to see in Harald the counterbalance to Eilif, whose surly incompetence was growing more intolerable every day. And the son of Ragnvald could do nothing but chew his lips in futile anger while he watched his authority over his men, little enough to begin with, collapse under the weight of one humiliation after another.
It was in this atmosphere that I conducted our secret negotiations with the mayor, as I had proposed to Dag and Harald. He and many of his fellow boyars deeply resented Ingigerd’s power because her Swedish clique dominated their city and their prince. It was decided, then, that they would marshal support for Harald in the Duma.
Our plan bore fruit almost at once. A gang of bandits under a chieftain named Solovay had harassed the countryside for years. The druzhina, under Eilif’s indifferent command, had made a show of chasing him, but always without success. Now Dyuk and his friends in the Duma urged that Harald be given a chance at him and Yaroslav leapt at the idea, ignoring, for once, his wife’s objections.
Fifty of us on horseback tracked the bandit through snowy woods for a week, ran him to ground at last, and in a battle fought in a swirling snow storm captured him and brought him back alive. For his crimes, the man was publicly flayed and his skin nailed to a tree.
Suddenly Harald’s name was on everyone’s lips: villagers brought him gifts of trussed hares and geese, wealthy merchants invited him to dinner, and I composed a long poem in honor of his victory. It was all happening just as Dag had promised. Harald’s star was rising, to the great satisfaction of us all. At about this time—hard as it was to believe when you looked at him—Harald celebrated only his sixteenth birthday.
I should say here plainly that there was much I admired and even envied in him—his ambition, his single-mindedness, his gift for leadership and skill at arms. I wished mightily to have more of those qualities myself. But, for all that, I knew that I could never be his friend.
He was, for one thing, dangerously unpredictable—alternating arrogance with bouts of despondency. Oftentimes he talked as though there was nothing in the world he couldn’t do, and expressed a deep belief in his own luck: he could not lose a battle, no ship could sink under him, no horse could stumble. But there were other times, most often when he had spent the day drinking, when he would be irritable and gloomy and would pace the floor all night, tortured by the thought that Eilif, or Magnus, or anyone at all, might be preferred to him. At such times, the smallest setback or embarrassment (as I shall narrate later) would send him into a wild rage, during which it was neither pleasant nor safe to be around him.
(You may say, remembering my own outbursts on various occasions, that I am not the man to condemn Harald. The fact is, I found myself becoming less temperamental the more I was with him, owing to a feeling that one of us, at any rate, must be in control of himself.)
Harald was especially hard on the women he kept. I saw the bruises on them—not that this sort of thing stirred much comment. Once one of them came to me in terror of her life and I kept her with me until he cooled down.
At bottom it was anger and deep resentment and a sneaking feeling of unworthiness that drove Harald. His need for constant praise was more than I could cope with, and after a time I began to despise the hackneyed verses—even when they were deserved—that I churned out at his command.
My growing estrangement from Harald was not the only thing to vex me during those winter days of 1031.
One day, not long after our return from the hunting expedition, Dag came looking for me in the palace kitchen, took me aside, and informed me in a low voice that my ‘interesting views on religion’ had recently come to the prince’s attention—thanks, no doubt, to Ingigerd. But worse than that, Father Vorobey had charged me with being possessed by a demon. Yaroslav had told Harald, Harald had told Dag, and now here was Dag to tell me: something must be done.
I have not yet mentioned Father Vorobey.
He was what the Christmen of Gardariki call a starets, a holy fool. He lived in a tiny hut behind the palace, crammed with icons and tiers of candles that burned day and night. His matted hair and beard hung to his waist, his feet and chest were bare in every kind of weather. He lived on nothing but water and black bread, and he clanked when he walked on account of the chains which he wore under his ragged cassock. His age might have been anything from thirty to sixty. And he never washed.
Though he spent most of his time in prayer, he had the run of the dvor and would pop up at the most unexpected times and places—sometimes to stare in silent ferocity at whomever he chanced to meet, at other times to dance about, howling like a berserker, and then, just as suddenly, vanish. Yaroslav was in awe of the man and consulted him about his dreams and all sorts of other matters.
Vorobey and I had our first encounter just a day or two after my arrival in Novgorod. As Einar and I were prowling about the palace, getting the lay of it, he sprang upon us suddenly in a deserted corridor and commenced to leap about, pointing at us—or was it only at me?—with his bony finger, while screaming some incomprehensible gibberish.
I was dumbfounded, never having seen such a thing before. But Einar, nothing daunted, shouted his war-cry and advanced on the fellow with his sword drawn, whereupon the lunatic fled. We had seen nothing of him since and I had just about put him out of my mind.
But he, it seemed, had not forgotten me.
My demon, so he insisted to the prince, was the size of a small child, black, with hoofs and a long tail, and sat upon my left shoulder, making hideous faces at all who came near it. In the holy fool’s opinion it was a heathen god—possibly Volos, though he couldn’t be quite sure on that point. (Like most Christmen of my acquaintance, he believed that the old gods were real enough, but that they were creatures of evil—demons, in fact—who had tricked mankind into worshiping them.)
“So you see how it is, my friend,” said Dag in his most engaging manner. “God only knows why Vorobey has picked on you, but I warned you there’d be consequences sooner or later, and now you really have got to face it. Christmas will be here before we know it and the whole druzhina hears mass on Christmas day. And the prince simply will not permit heathens with demons on their shoulders to spoil the proceedings. You must be exorcised and that’s flat.”
“And what must I do to be exorcised?”
“Whatever Vorobey says; he’s the expert.”
“And what then? Must I be baptized too for Harald’s sake?”
“Not while the water in the font is solid ice,” he smiled, “but in the spring—at Easter—yes, I think you’d better be. Would that be so very bad?”
“I will not do it.”
“Dammit, Odd, I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important! You’ve become an embarrassment to Harald; we can’t have that.”
“Ah. And why doesn’t Harald tell me this, himself?”
“I don’t know, I suppose he thought it might sound better coming from me.”
“He thought, or you did?”
“Odd, this isn’t getting us anywhere. Will you do as I ask?”
“I can’t, Dag. My father worshipped the old gods—”
“Everybody’s father worshipped the old gods! Times change, and we must change with them.”
“It’s different with me somehow—he’s a part of me still. Maybe I am possessed. Do you think I am?”
“By a stubborn streak as broad as Thor’s belly, if by nothing worse. Now look, Easter’s a long way off. For the moment it will suffice to have you exorcised and prime-signed. Will you do that much for me?”
I recalled that my brother Gunnar had let himself be prime-signed when he began to trade with the Christian merchants on the coast of Iceland, because many of them pretended that a heathen’s word wasn’t to be trusted (as if theirs were any better). In itself it was a small thing—yet I hesitated.
“This Vorobey—he says the demon on my shoulder is Volos? What is Volos god of?�
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“How the devil should I know that?”
“Because you know everything, Dag. Tell me.”
He shrugged. “Oracles and poetry, I seem to recall someone saying.”
“Poetry! Then just as Perun the Thunderer is their way of naming Thor, by Volos they must mean Odin.”
“I suppose, if you want to look at it that way—”
“This starets sees truer than I gave him credit for! I am a poet and Odin is my god. I made up my mind to that a long time ago.”
“Well, why don’t you and Odin just have a good chin-wag about it then, and let me know what you decide!”
“Dag, don’t get angry. I know this is important to you and Harald and all of us. If it is Odin, he’ll give me a sign. And if he allows me, I’ll do as you ask. There, I’ve said it.”
“Well, I thank you for that much anyway,” he sighed. “We’ll talk again?”
“Surely.”
He started to clap me on the left shoulder, as he often did; stopped, and made a wry face instead at the imp who squatted there.
That night, before I went to sleep, I prayed for a dream, and I awoke in the middle of the night with the feeling that I had dreamt, though I could remember only a fragment of it. I was back in Iceland, a little boy again, and my father, looking stern but not unkind, was offering me his knife and a bundle of sticks, holding them out to me. That was all there was. But the meaning of it was plain.
Dressing quietly in furs, hat, and boots, and taking with me a lamp and a knife, I climbed over the bodies of my sleeping comrades and went outside. The moon was near full and the snow glittered like glass as I headed south along the river bank, leaving the city behind me. Across open fields I tramped until, at last, I came to a little copse of birch and rowan that grew by the riverside.
Fixing my lamp in the notch of a tree, I cut from one of the rowans sixteen slivers of living wood and scratched on each one, as well as I could in my mittens, one of the sixteen runes of the futhark. Then, putting the slivers in my hat, I shook them while I asked Odin to tell me by means of a sign whether I should obey Dag’s command.
I drew one slip out and held it close to the guttering flame. It was ‘yr’, the last rune in the third aett, signifying the wood of the yew, which has the power to bestow wealth, favor, and protection: the best of all signs! Who can comprehend the mind of a god? But like it or not, I must accept his judgment, and my father’s. I would do as Dag asked.
The next morning found me kneeling before the altar in the church of Saint Sophia. The prince and princess, the bishop, Dag, and Harald were there; Einar, too, keeping his gimlet eye fixed on Vorobey, while that man, with the most bizarre grimaces and gestures, stalked round and round me.
“Away with thee, O unclean demon!” cried he. “Take fright, leave, flee, depart! Depart to a waterless desert and untilled land where no man dwells!” Oh! it was making hideous faces at him and screaming blasphemous words. And, look there! it had jumped down from my shoulder and gone in my mouth, hoping to hide inside my belly. This was one of the cleverest demons, swore the starets, that he had ever matched his strength against.
“Out in the name of Christ!” he cried again, now gripping my shoulder from behind and pounding my back with all his might. “Volos, I command thee! Go from this man, from this house, from this city! Ah, listen, d’you hear its screams? It’s in agony for we know its name! Out, Volos, out I say!”
I was the one who was in agony as he continued to thump my back and shake me until I thought my head would fly off my shoulders. Kneeling on the ice-cold floor with nothing on me but a white shirt, I began to shiver and suddenly sneezed.
“See, see! It flies from his mouth—d’you see it?”
Yaroslav ducked as though it were coming straight at him, and he and the others hastily made their cross.
“There it goes, ha, ha, ha!” laughed Vorobey shrilly, while pointing to the ceiling and pretending to follow it with his finger. “It’s looking for the way out, for it hates churches! There you wicked, unclean thing, d’you see the door—there, out with you now! See? He’s going—he’s gone!”
The Holy Fool made a farting noise with his lips and pantomimed kicking the demon’s ass. Then he mopped his sweaty forehead with his sleeve and sank upon his knees. “Volos is vanquished,” he said in a portentous whisper, “the victory is God’s. Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet, praise Him with psaltery and harp!”
The prince beamed at Vorobey, and the two men mumbled prayers together for some minutes, until the starets, leaping up suddenly and barking like a dog, dashed away out the door.
For myself, I do not believe that anything flew from my mouth, nor did I ever fear that Black-Browed Odin would be bested by such a creature as Vorobey. But I kept those thoughts to myself. Dag clapped me on the shoulder—without hesitation this time—and so did Harald: both of them, I thought, looking a little embarrassed; after which the bishop prime-signed me by touching my forehead with oil and making the cross over me.
And that, for the moment, was that. I can’t say I felt any different for the experience, and almost my first act was to break one of their commandments. For it was on the very next day that Putscha came swaggering up to me to deliver a summons from Princess Ingigerd to attend her at her estate on the shore of Lake Ilmen.
10
I Observe an Old Custom
A fog hung low overhead, caught in the skeleton fingers of the passing trees. My sleigh horse trotted briskly along the bank of the frozen Volkhov, and the jingle of his harness bells was the only sound to be heard in all that silent landscape. The cold was sharp enough to cut your ears off.
Putscha would say only that his mistress was enjoying a few days’ solitude at Gorodische and that I was requested to drive out an hour before sunset in a sleigh which he would provide. I was to tell no one where I was going and I was to come alone, or I would find the gate shut in my face. To all my questions he only shook his handsome head and kept his lips shut tight.
The possibility of a trap occurred to me at once. Finding Harald too well guarded, she and Eilif had decided to get at him through me. I nearly told Putscha to take himself off and tell his mistress that I was not a man to be summoned here and there at anyone’s whim. On the other hand, I thought, what kind of an adventurer is it who declines the adventure when offered? So I accepted.
As daylight faded from the sky, I arrived at her gate and drove my prow-nosed sleigh up the path that led to the house. As a groom ran up to take my horse, the door at the top of the stairs opened and Ingigerd stepped onto the balcony.
“Thank you for obliging me, Odd Tangle-Hair; come up and warm yourself.”
Inside, I asked her pointedly the reason for my invitation.
“Yes, of course, you’re curious,” she said with a very pretty smile, “but first, there’s a small ceremony to be gone through. It’s a custom of the Rus to offer a visitor a steam bath when first he arrives. If I’m not mistaken, you’ve been owed this hospitality for some time now.”
“Princess, my welcoming bath was a dunking in the Volkhov. And since then, I’ve not waited for an invitation, but have bathed every Laugardag as all Icelanders do.”
“Still, it’s a custom worth upholding. Will you humor me?”
A servant came up behind her and draped a robe of silver fox skins around her shoulders. She already had her boots on.
The bath was some hundred paces from the house: a little log cabin with two doors in its front, a water barrel next to the wall, and, nearby, a bonfire where two men were heating a pile of stones.
The Rus have taken up the steam-bath from the Finns, who once were numerous in this part of the country. This bathhouse so much resembled the sauna at Pohjola, where brave Ainikki lost her life, that the sight of it stirred a rush of memories and sent an arrow of pain through my heart. Yet, to my surprise, I found that I could not clearly see Ainikki’s face any more. Had all those things really happened? Had there been such a girl and had
I loved her? The thought of her now held only the sweetness of a half remembered dream.
“Are the stones ready, Blud?” Ingigerd’s voice broke in upon my thoughts. Her Slavonic had a charming Swedish lilt to it.
Blud was an ugly brute with frostbite marks on his cheeks and a hatchet in his belt. He looked up from the fire and answered that they were.
“Excellent, then begin.”
Blud and his companion, using wooden spades, levered three big stones onto a gridiron to which carrying poles were attached on either side. With the sweat running down their faces from the terrific heat, they carried the stones inside and tipped them into a trench that encircled a wooden platform in the center of the little room. They made several trips before all the stones lay in the trench.
“Go in, Odd Tangle-Hair,” said the Princess. “Hang your clothes on the pegs just inside and mount the platform. Blud will see to the rest.”
‘Blud seeing to the rest’ was what had me a bit worried. Yelisaveta’s story about how her great-grandmother, Olga, had burned up the Drevlyan ambassadors in just such a steam-bath presented itself vividly to my mind. I saw no latch on the outside of the door, but it was only necessary to wedge a log against it and I would be trapped. Not for the first time, the fear of being burned alive stirred in my bowels.
Nevertheless, I squared my shoulders and stepped inside, trying my best to look at ease.
“There’s a lamp burning so you can see to undress,” the princess called after me. “Do be careful of the stones. Enjoy your bath.”
The door closed behind me.
I put my ear to it. Did I hear a noise? But this was absurd, what could she gain from my death? I went ahead and undressed.
I had no sooner sat down on the platform than water, poured in from outside, sluiced through the trench and over the hissing stones. Steam erupted all around me, filling the chamber, and, despite my nervousness, I felt myself yielding to the heat. Rivers of sweat ran down my sides; I stretched out full length on my stomach and let a pleasant torpor creep over me.
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