by Jorvik- A thrilling tale of Viking Britain (retail) (epub)
Ragnhild showed glee, but was to be discommoded by his next remark.
‘You and Grimkell will no doubt enjoy having Peseholme all to yourselves.’
His mother could not believe this great insult. ‘Live here, whilst you go off to live alongside Jarl Siward? Nei! We come with you!’ She was balanced on a stool, one bare leg crossed over the other as she pulled a woollen stocking up to meet her knee-length breeches. Her skin was white and marbled with veins. ‘Live here, indeed!’
Sigurd’s heart fell; in one respect he would be glad of the company but he hoped his mother would not be forever pestering him to take a wife. ‘Then I must look for a tenant.’
‘Look no further than your old heart-friend.’ Stockings in place, Ragnhild tugged her dress down to cover them.
‘Ulf?’ Sigurd laughed and cupped his hand as if to exclude Grimkell from the conversation but only out of fun. ‘Even though you are married you still try to tempt the beardless one near you. I know not whether he will leave the responsibilities he has made for himself.’
‘Eric’s widow? What is to prevent her and the children coming too?’
Sigurd agreed it was commonsense and early next morning rode out through the Forest of Galtres to speak to Ulf. He took a few men with him but rode some way ahead, wanting solitude; his heart was heavy for his dead child today. The dark wood compounded his mood and he was most glad when he came out of it to find Ulf in one of the fields about to begin spring ploughing, alone but for his team of oxen and a boy slave.
‘Ah, I would welcome some help,’ said Ulf by way of greeting, whilst thinking how gaunt his friend looked.
Sigurd dismounted. ‘I come not to soil my hands but to bring a gift.’
Ulf examined him. ‘I see none.’
‘Only because it is far too large for me to carry. I come to offer you my house at Peseholme.’
Ulf looked impressed. ‘Will not Ragnhild be aggrieved?’
‘She does not want it – it is not good enough for her now.’ Sigurd grinned.
The sunken eyes were cynical. ‘I wondered why ’twas offered to me. What of your reeve, would it not make a fine home for him?’
‘It would, that is why I offer it.’
Ulf looked at him sharply. ‘Do I take this to mean that you offer me the reeveship again?’
‘Yea.’ After all this time Sigurd had now begun to use English pronunciation. ‘My reeve has just fallen dead. I would sooner the post goes to my dearest friend. Will you not reconsider your past decision? Have not the years lent you wisdom to know it is not beyond your skills?’
Ulf glanced beyond him; a woman and four small girls were coming towards the men. ‘I will have to ask the opinion of Eric’s wife.’
Sigurd turned to watch the female’s approach. ‘She looks well. You must be taking good care of her.’ Ulf nodded and began to check that the oxen were correctly yoked to the iron plough. ‘What else could I do when ’twas I who got her man killed?’
Sigurd turned back to look at him. ‘Do not carry it all upon yourself. I am equally to blame. I am to blame for many things.’ He paused for a while, watching Ulf run his hands over the oxen’s quivering skins and under the harnesses to check for burrs. It made him hanker for a woman. Deep in thought, he eventually said, ‘I have decided to liberate my thralls.’
Ulf gave no reaction. ‘Shall you not require more hands for this wondrous new house of yours?’
Sigurd wrinkled his nose. ‘I will keep those most recently acquired but the others are becoming a burden. They have found mates, had children – dozens of them. Their shrill voices, they grate upon my ear, remind me of…’ He tightened the muscles of his jaw and was glad that Eric’s widow chose that moment to arrive. He greeted her, said how well she looked and gave her the news about the reeveship. ‘I would welcome your help in persuading our stubborn friend to accept. Do not worry that it will take him away from your land, for you and your daughters are welcome to use the house with him. Let another have this hard work.’ Eric’s widow was quick to accept for Ulf and thanked their benefactor. Sigurd looked at the tray she carried which bore a flagon and a cake. ‘You must have known that I am come.’ He reached for the cake but she swerved away.
‘Nay! Wouldst rob us of a good harvest? This is for the Earth Mother.’
‘A thousand pardons, dame, but could I not steal a crumb?’
‘If you would take my place behind the ploughshare.’ Ulf offered him the reins.
Sigurd declined and leaned against his horse to watch the ceremony. The cake was broken, a piece given to Ulf, some to the oxen, the lady herself ate a mouthful and the rest was crumbled over the earth to be ploughed in. Each partook of the flagon, the remainder being trickled over the oxen and the plough. ‘Now all will be fertile,’ said Eric’s wife with satisfaction. When Ulf did not begin ploughing immediately she gave him a look that was worthy of Ragnhild, told him to ‘Go to it!’ then turned to Sigurd. ‘Will you come back to the house and take meat with us?’
Sigurd agreed and together with the girls they went off, leaving Ulf to his work.
When Sigurd returned to Peseholme he assembled his thralls and told them of his decision. ‘Those who have lived here for five years or more step forth.’ When they did so he continued, ‘You have worked hard, and so I have decided that you have earned the right to buy your freedom…’
‘And just how does he think we’ll do that?’ Black Mary queried her nephew who clung terrified to her ragged skirts as Sigurd proceeded to explain.
‘…I intend to grant each of you five acres of land. You shall continue to work for me during the daytime, some of you as house thralls, others in your separate trades, but in the evening and on every Wodnesdaeg of the week you have my permission to work upon your own land and thus earn the money to buy your freedom.’
‘Isn’t he the generous one,’ breathed Mary. ‘Sure ’tis dead I’ll be afore I can earn half the amount he’ll ask for my freedom.’ She was the last surviving woman of that Irish raid ten years ago and was almost thirty now. Only half the female population reached her age, and certainly not many of them were slaves! But if willpower could keep death at bay she had promised to outlive her captor. Grasping Murtagh’s thin body, she hugged him into her side. He looked up at her, a question in his dark eyes – then reacted with fright as his name was mentioned.
‘There is one whom I will never free.’ Sigurd was looking straight at the boy who tried to camouflage himself with the drab skirts of his aunt. ‘The one called Murtagh, son of the murderess, you are not worthy of freedom. You shall live as a dog for the rest of your life. That is all – be gone!’ At their rapid dispersal, he went into the house.
Black Mary stared after him, unable to disguise her hatred. With one hand he gave her freedom, only to snatch it back with the other; how could she go and leave Murtagh? She looked down at the cowering little wretch and gripped him protectively. ‘Ah, don’t you worry, my darling. I’ll not leave you, ever.’
* * *
The finished house was magnificent. Its gabled timbers encompassed a great hall with a door set into each of the long sides. Both inside and out the supporting pillars terminated in the heads of mythical beasts. There were carved panels: one depicting a continuous snake intertwining with itself, another of birds, serpents and animals biting each other. The walls were clad in gold-threaded tapestries and shields. Around these walls were elaborately carved benches, a table massive enough to accommodate all Sigurd’s friends and visitors, and a chair for himself that looked remarkably like a throne.
The kitchen was an entirely separate building, far grander than most citizens’ houses, equipped with every possible artifact. There was a salthouse and an outbuilding where entrails and feathers could be removed without having to foul the kitchen. The house had an upper storey from where its lord and master could admire the view of the river through glass windows and where there was a bed with sumptuous mattresses, eiderdowns and curtains.
But there was no one to share his heart’s dream; no wife to recline with him on embroidered cushions by the hearth on a winter’s night; no child to listen spellbound to his tales of battle; only two old folk, a company of housecarls and the odd pedlar who drifted through.
Fortunately, Sigurd’s position as ealdorman prevented a relapse into melancholy. If he was not required to serve on the King’s witan then there was always some thief or adulterer to deal with at the shire court. Today the line of such cases before him had been longer than usual. When the time came to deal with the last perpetrator he had grown short-tempered and correspondingly imposed a heftier fine than he might otherwise have done.
Ulf, as his reeve, was there to aid him and, at the gasp of shock from the defendant, leaned to whisper in Sigurd’s ear: ‘My lord is a little harsh with his judgment today. The woman was only the wife of a churl, not a noble. A fine of a hundred shillings is excessive.’
Sigurd was unresponsive. ‘Then it will teach him not to go stealing another man’s wife.’
‘Sigurd, do you wish to lose your reputation of fairness just because you are in a foul mood?’
‘I am not in a bad mood! I am merely bored by these petty feuds that come before me time after time… oh, very well!’ He looked into Ulf’s reproving face and gave way. ‘I grant that you are right – the fine is reduced to forty shillings!’
The defendant dropped to one knee clutching his hat. ‘You are a fair and generous lord! I repent of my crime and submit to your judgment.’
‘Repent of his crime!’ scoffed Sigurd, as he and his friend rode home through town, saddlebags laden with the fines exacted. ‘He’ll be there before me next month charged with tupping someone else’s wife.’
‘How else would you come to own such wealth if not for men such as him?’ joked Ulf. Sigurd was entitled to exact a portion of the fines for himself.
Laughingly Sigurd agreed, then asked as they were almost nigh to Earlsburh, ‘Will you eat with us tonight?’
Ulf looked unsure. ‘I have three executions to arrange – then there are those stolen cattle to trail…’
‘Oh, stay. The condemned men will thank you for a few extra hours and so would I. My mother and Grimkell are not exactly the best of conversation fellows.’
‘What about your housecarls?’
‘They are fine as shoulder-comrades but their words are limited to tales of the battlefield.’
Ulf gave a rare laugh at this. ‘You are a fine one to talk!’
Sigurd shook his head, looking misunderstood. ‘Oh no, Ulf, I love to fight but I see no merit in talking about it.’ He turned waspish. ‘But if you do not wish to stay…’
‘Of course I will stay, though if your mother begats any ribaldry…’
‘I shall lock her up,’ promised Sigurd as they reached Earlsburh.
Whilst they ate supper the conversation hung around the King’s decision to send his illegitimate son Swein to rule Norway in place of Earl Hakon, who had recently drowned. Aelgifu, the young man’s mother who had insulted Sigurd all those years ago – a thing which he had never forgotten – had gone with him. ‘A foolish decision,’ Sigurd dubbed it, through a mouthful of warm, fresh bread. ‘He is not the man his father is – none of them are. All that work Cnut did to retrieve Norway and it will soon be lost again, mark my words.’
Ulf was bitter. ‘I was not aware that the King did all the work alone.’
Sigurd caught his drift. ‘Yea, I know, ’tis hard to imagine that Eric’s sacrifice will be for nought.’
‘You do not know that that will be the case,’ argued Grimkell.
Sigurd passed a condescending glance at Ulf; Grimkell was an old man with little experience of kings. ‘I know Swein. He is weak. Olaf will see this as his chance to grab his crown back.’
‘Why must you always be right?’ asked a discordant Ulf, when news came to Jorvik that this was exactly what had happened.
Sigurd assumed an air of false modesty. ‘I try so hard not to be, Ulf, I just cannot seem to help it.’
‘I do not need to ask if you will go.’
‘Just as soon as I gather a fleet.’
‘You do not even like Swein,’ put forth Ulf.
‘I do not do it out of loyalty to Swein but to his father,’ corrected Sigurd. ‘Calm your worries, Ulf, I shall not get myself killed.’
‘It will happen one day, my friend.’ The hollow eyes looked unusually grave. ‘But I pray that God be with you for a safe return.’
* * *
Whilst Olaf and his half-brother Harald advanced through the forests and mountains of Norway, Sigurd was at a huge gathering in Nidaros with all those whom Cnut had bribed to win back this country. If Olaf was allowed to return they were doomed – yet theirs was not the only resistance; the peasants had no wish to return to Olaf’s barbarous rule either. The army that met him at Stiklarstadir was vast: nearly fourteen and a half thousand men and Sigurd amongst them. Olaf with barely a third of these could not hope to win, but fought with valour on that bright sunny day in July with no thought of retreat.
Beneath the golden sun and blue sky Sigurd wielded his axe with the usual unfeeling precision, cutting down all around him, taking fathers, brothers, sons as if they were logs of wood. At the end of the day Olaf was dead and his fifteen-year-old brother Harald was compelled to escape with what remained of the army. Sigurd joined the triumphant chase across the green fields until all tired of the fun, whence he cheered and hooted after the fleeing Harald, little knowing that their paths would cross again in years to come.
During the next five years Sigurd devoted much of his time to one battle or another, however far afield. Battle was the one time he felt like the young man he was. What irony that only when embroiled in death could he himself feel alive. Knowing this, Ulf quashed the urge to lecture him, promising only to deputize in the ealdorman’s absence.
‘Ah, you are a good man, Ulf,’ Sigurd thanked him, then offered a note of philosophy. ‘Why is it that men such as you and I do not have sons? We would breed much finer rulers of Norway than that weakling of Cnut’s.’
‘I beg you not to be so outspoken, friend,’ warned Ulf.
Sigurd did not care who overheard him. ‘Well, it is true! I am only surprised that Swein has managed to hold on to his crown for so long. Have you heard the latest news from Norway? It is the strangest thing you will ever hear: the King whom they once called tyrant is now sanctified! They say that someone collected blood from Olaf’s wounds after battle and that blood is now being used to cure the blind and maimed! The fools are now saying that they regret killing Olaf for he was a great ruler compared to Swein – well, they are not so foolish, for anyone would rule better than Swein – but someone is doing their best to oust him and Aelgifu by spreading gossip of their badness, and I fear they will be successful. For Cnut’s sake I must go and help the wretch.’
But even Sigurd Einarsson was unable to counter the massive uprising that finally deposed Swein and put Olaf’s son Magnus on the Norwegian throne; both he and the vanquished Swein were forced to flee to Denmark and seek refuge with Cnut’s other son, Harthacnut, where Swein died some months later. No argument from Sigurd could induce Harthacnut to avenge his half-brother’s death. Discouraged by the feebleness of Cnut’s offspring, Sigurd remained only long enough to re-equip his fleet, then sailed home to Jorvik.
‘I feel that I have let Cnut down,’ he told Ulf, who coincidentally was there to greet his arrival at Earlsburh.
‘No man can say that you did not do your best.’ Ulf seemed preoccupied.
‘That is true.’ Sigurd handed the reins of his horse to a servant and began to walk towards the house. ‘Well, come you in, friend, and have some wine with us.’
Ulf stopped him. ‘I have just been in and must go for I have many duties to perform, but first… I have bad news to impart, friend.’
Alarmed, Sigurd grasped him. ‘Is it Mother?’
‘In a way – no, she is not dead!’ Ulf frown
ed at himself for frightening his friend thus. ‘It is Grimkell.’
Sigurd looked at first relieved, then sad. ‘Poor mother, I must go and comfort her. When did it happen?’
‘Shortly after you left for Norway and… I fear that it has affected Ragnhild greatly. You may find her changed, Sigurd.’
Sigurd furrowed his brow. ‘In what way?’
‘You will see what I mean when you meet her.’ Ulf seemed ill at ease.
The ealdorman ran a thoughtful hand over his mouth. ‘Thank you for warning me. Must you go immediately?’ All at once he was reluctant to go in.
‘I fear so.’ Ulf patted him before moving off. ‘But I shall come over to visit just as soon as I catch these wretched poachers.’
Sigurd watched him leave, then rather hesitantly went into the house. Ulf had told him true: Ragnhild was nothing like the bombastic woman he had left behind several months ago, but had an air of vagueness about her. Over the coming weeks he was to witness more evidence of her malady. She had become forgetful, told Sigurd things that she had told him only a moment ago. Out of the blue she would take it upon herself to cook his supper as she had not done for years; though the result was often appalling he indulged her, for she was very old. Tonight, though, her ingredients were even less palatable. He spat out the mouthful of fish and rinsed his mouth with wine.
‘Mother, art trying to kill us!’
Ragnhild lifted confused eyes from her own meal.
‘Do not eat it!’ Sigurd grabbed the platter of fish from under her nose and tipped it at the hearth. ‘By the gods, that fish must be as old as I! Where did you buy it – and more importantly, when?’
The old Ragnhild returned, lips pursed with indignance. ‘I bought it fresh this morn at the market. See!’ She hoisted her gown and withdrew a fish from her breeches. ‘There is nought wrong with that.’
Sigurd lost his patience. ‘Mother, why do you carry a fish in your broks?’
