The Viking Hostage, page 19
Blanche paused in her dictation and raised her eyebrows expressively in the direction of the midwife and Adalmode, who both knew there had been no such thing. ‘An easier birth I never witnessed,’ muttered the midwife and Blanche’s laugh chimed contagiously. She continued her dictation:
… great labours and pains, which I know that you, as the mother of sons, will commiserate with me upon. And here is my trespass. I had great need, in my fearful time, of my dear friend, Lady Adalmode of Limoges, but she told me she could not come for you had commanded her presence. Will you forgive me? I wept and wailed and wrung my hands and said I should be dead in childbed if she did not come, and so she did. With all felicitations etc etc, fill that part in.
She waved away the clerk. ‘Will that do?’ she asked Adalmode, who simply nodded her head, for she was laughing helplessly and could not speak.
15
Kelda Ey, 988
We were at sea for two days, stopping briefly on dry land for only a few hours when the men foraged for provisions. We are sailing again up and down the slopes of the sea and sleeping on and off in the rocking boat. On calm days, the gentle swell licks perpetually at the ship and on other days the crew and the boat fight rough waves. The battered sail is soaked and the ship we are in is slower than its companion. The collars and chains Aina and I wear chafe and pain us. I keep an eye on the blond man. I do not trust his intentions toward my mistress.
‘He’s a king’s son, so they say,’ one of the men says to me, attempting a rough approximation at Occitan and misunderstanding my interest in the blond leader.
‘What’s his name?’ I ask.
‘Olafr.’
‘Olafr ... whose son?’ I am suddenly urgent in my questions and switch to Norse.
He raises his eyebrows in surprise. ‘Olafr Tryggvason.’
I sit very still, staring at the blond man, and Aina places her hand on my arm. ‘What is it?’
I shake her off and stand abruptly, my chains clanking, calling out loudly, ‘Olafr Tryggvason!’
‘Sigrid?’ says Aina at my elbow, alarmed. ‘What ...’
The blond man turns and regards me. ‘That is my name and ...’
‘I am Sigrid Thorolfsdottir.’ I take a quick breath. ‘We were separated at the slave market in Tallinn many years ago.’
Olafr’s mouth drops open. ‘Sigrid?’ then he looks quickly to where the pilot is staring in our direction. ‘Sigrid!’ he says to the pilot, pointing at me.
‘What ...’ Aina tries again.
But now all eyes in the boat turn to the pilot as he sits down abruptly and hard causing the boat to lee precariously and the men to all shift to cope with his sudden movement. ‘Sigrid, Sigrid,’ the pilot moans, staring at me. ‘Yes, Sigrid, I thought, I knew ...’
‘Ware the boat, Thorgils,’ shouts one of the men. ‘You’ll capsize us with your Sigrid, Sigrid.’
Aina opens her mouth to ask ‘What?’ again but looks with astonishment as the pilot lurches to me and the boat lists dangerously again and the men call out in dismay at this untoward behaviour. I throw my arms around Thorgils’ neck and he embraces me like a great bear, flattening my eyelashes and nose against him and taking the breath from my lungs. Then he puts me back from him and we look at each other in silence, oblivious to everything around us. He cups my cheek and his eyes are wet. I think of him, still a boy, shouting to me to be brave in the slave market, a great red collar of sores and bruises circling his neck. Now that I know it is him, I see it is him. Tears sluice down my face and drip unregarded from my chin. He unlocks the fetters on my wrists and at my neck. ‘No more slavery, Sigrid,’ he mutters as he does it. We begin speaking to each other in my old language and we are weeping and smiling. Thorgils is a good head’s height taller than me, more than six foot I am guessing. The promised muscles of his boyhood have filled out with his life as a sailor and fighter. I see now the boy I was torn from, in the freckles that still splatter his ruddy skin, in the pale red of his hair and the blue-green of his eyes with white crinkle lines at their edges amidst his sunburned skin. I trace his features with the palm of my hand, shaking my head in wonder.
Olafr swings lithely around the mast and crosses the swaying boat to join our embraces, touching my hair with astonishment and saying, ‘It’s obvious now. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.’
Eventually I turn to Aina. ‘Oh Aina,’ I say gasping for breath as if I have climbed a mountain, ‘it’s my brothers. It’s Thorgils,’ I gesture to the pilot, ‘and Olafr.’ I pat the arm of the blond leader. ‘My brothers!’
‘Sigrid,’ she exclaims. ‘That’s wonderful!’ She holds up her fettered wrists and I persuade them to remove her chains. After all, what could she do if she did wish to escape? The only escape is in the cold depths of the sea.
We camp on shore that night and while some men set to building the fire and securing the ships, others slide off silently into the woods to forage. The fire is crackling and warming us when some of the men return, one carrying a sheep carcass slung over his shoulder. ‘It’s all we could get without waking the shepherds. The flock was well guarded,’ he says, throwing it down, where the cook’s boy immediately sets about skinning it and preparing it for the fire. ‘We could get more if we attack them?’
‘No, this is enough. We need to keep moving,’ Thorgils tells him.
Two other men return with their helmets full of rattling seashells. One helmet is a haul of limpets, the firelight catching the brown circle of glistening meat inside the shells. ‘I had to sneak up on them,’ the man holding this helmet tells me in a theatrical whisper, ‘so that they didn’t feel the vibrations of me coming for them, because then they clamp down real hard onto the rock and are a bugger to get off. But if you are quiet and creep, you can knock them off easily with a small rock or your foot.’
The other man’s helmet is full of the grey snail-like shells of periwinkles, and he dumps them into a soapstone bowl of water standing boiling in the hot embers. Thorgils shows Aina and I how to scrape off the black foul-tasting blister at the top of the limpets with a knife and just eat the wood-smoke flavoured meat. He gives us thorns to pluck the periwinkles from their shells. The men pass around a bowl of soured beer and pepper to dip the warmed shellfish into. We feast hungrily on the tiny meat, knowing there will be a long wait before the sheep is cooked and ready.
Sitting around the cracking fire with its light playing on the circle of faces, Thorgils tells us the story of what happened to them since we were last together, so long ago.
‘When we lost you at the slave market, Sigrid, Olafr and I were bought by a man named Reas, and we stayed in Estonia for six years, working hard and growing to men,’ Thorgils begins. ‘All the while, my heart ached for my little sister and that I did not know what had become of you.’
His men are all looking at me with admiration and finding the likenesses between him and me. It feels strange after all these years of being a slave, a mere servant in the background, to be the centre of such attention. With every minute, I feel I am slowly growing back into who I once was, the daughter of a jarl, the sister now of a jarl, the old playfriend of a king’s son, for Olafr’s father who was murdered long ago, had been king of Viken. I sit up straight and do my best to do credit to Thorgils and Olafr, under the curious glances of their crew.
‘One day,’ Thorgils continues, ‘in the marketplace, a grand lord was curious to see Olafr’s fairness and asked who he was. Olafr, seeing this was a man of Norway, told him proudly he was Olafr Tryggvason. The man was astonished, telling us he was Sigurd, brother to Olafr’s mother, in the service of King Valdamar of Holmgard. Sigurd treated with Reas to free us and took us back with him to Holmgard.
We were chopping wood outside the house when we were sick to see Klerkon, the Eistland pirate, the man who killed our father and enslaved us, Sigrid, strutting down the street toward us. Before I realised what he was about, Olafr strode to Klerkon, called him a murderer and slaver, and buried his hand axe into the man‘s brain.’ Thorgils pauses for the grunts of admiration and agreement with this act to die down. Olafr is sitting with his arms crossed and his face modest.
‘They are slavers!’ Aina whispers in my ear, and I frown her to be silent.
‘For such a killing without legal permission,’ Thorgils tells us solemnly, ‘the law of Holmgard decreed Olafr should hang, and a crowd came to take him, but the queen gave him shelter, paid his blood-fine and he became her favourite.’
I watch Olafr smile slyly at that, his gaze still modestly on the ground.
‘We lived there, in the close friendship of brothers laid in the same cradle, until we reached manhood.’
Olafr says, ‘I lay my thoughts bare before your brother, Sigrid, and listen to his advice. He has been my shoulder-companion through slavery, misfortunes, storms and battles.’
Aina is agog with excitement, not understanding all the words, although I translate a few for her here and there, but thrilling to the drama of the evening and the men’s responses to Thorgils’ tale. She stares overmuch at Olafr. He was a handsome boy, and he is a handsome man now.
Thorgils continues the tale. ‘Of Norway, the lands that are Olafr’s patrimony, we heard that King Harald of Denmark sent warriors who killed Harald Greycloak and drove out Gunnhild and her other sons who murdered Olafr’s father. The feeder of wolves became food for the ravens.’ Thorgils pauses, receiving the admiring shouts that greet his epitaph for Harald Greycloak. ‘In Holmgard, King Valdemar made Olafr a captain of his warriors and he fought ably for the king.’
‘You, too!’ says Olafr.
Thorgils shrugs, smiling. ‘But then people muttered that Olafr was becoming over-great and was the queen’s favourite and the king should feel jealousy, so the queen advised us to leave, saying that wherever we went, men would admire Olafr’s prowess. So we began viking!’ There is a shout of approval from the men who clash their horns of ale together and slap their sword hilts.
Aina laughs nervously beside me, and I see both Olafr and Thorgils look at her with admiration. ‘You should cover your head,’ I tell her, but instead she shakes it and the firelight shines on her glorious hair. ‘What then?’ I ask Thorgils, to distract them from Aina.
‘We gathered our drengir,’ Thorgils says, looking around at the circle of faces and naming them. ‘Toki Barelegs, Leif Hairy Breeks, Sibbi, Geiri, Gormr, Skogi, Eimundr, Asjborn, Erra, Asvaldi. We had just one ship in those days, The Orm. We raided Bornholm and took booty. We parted Danes from their war-sarks south of Hedeby and then we were driven in a gale to seek haven on the coast of Wendland, where Queen Geira heard about us and invited us to her court. She was young and beautiful and in no time at all,’ laughs Thorgils, ‘she was smitten with Olafr and he took her as his wife!’
Olafr smiles his smile to himself again.
‘Halfrod the Troublous Skald will speak it,’ says Thorgils, gesturing to a man who I had noticed did not row the ship, and I had wondered if he were a godi or a shaman.
Halfrod stands up slowly, arranging his robes around him, clearing his throat and then pronouncing in a loud, melodic voice:
On the spring tide,
bountiful Queen Geira of the dark forest land
tested Olafr Tryggvason, warrior from the north.
* * *
Becoifed in a golden helmet,
he rode the steed of the sea across the billows,
dyed the grass red with the blood of her foes
He gave his Queen the brown blood of Frisans,
the flesh of Walloons.
Hundreds were pressed beneath the claws of the carrion bird.
Halfrod sits down abruptly, drinks deeply from his replenished horn and the men mutter their approval. Aina has opened her mouth in amazement at Halfrod and is still staring at him long after he has resumed his seat. I, however, am a little disappointed. I thought there would be more from Halfrod, but then Thorgils resumes the tale.
‘In Denmark, King Harald had seen a Christian priest named Poppo put his hand in a fire.’ The group of men scoff loudly. ‘King Harald became a Christian and ordered all the people of Denmark and Norway to put aside our gods and accept Christ.’
The men hiss and Aina is startled, looking around her as I whisper a translation and she remembers she is among pagans. Thorgils holds up his hand and I admire what a good storyteller my brother is, like me, I think, and dab a finger to the corner of my eye where tears of joy keep gathering.
‘War continued in Norway, in the lands that rightly belonged to Olafr. The dead lay in heaps on the battlefield and Odinn took the brave to Valhalla.’ There are more mutters of approval from the group of men.
‘Alas,’ declares Thorgils, ‘we were three winters with Queen Geira, when she fell sick and died and Olafr had no more pleasure for living in Wendland.’
The men bow their heads in sorrow at the passing of Olafr’s wife and are silent for a moment. Aina turns to me with a questioning expression. ‘Olafr’s wife died,’ I say abruptly, trying to damp down her fascination with Olafr in the disapproval of my tone.
‘So,’ says Thorgils, slowly, ‘we found we must go viking again.’ There
is another clashing of metal at his words. ‘We plundered in Frisland and Saxland and Flanders. We sailed for England and around the coast of Scotland and plundered well there.’ The men nod and murmur their agreement. Thorgils’ aquamarine eyes glint in the moonlight. ‘We were the terror of the islands of the Hebrides and of the Isle of Mann, of Bretland, and now we are famed even unto Frankland.’ Thorgils ends with a flourish of his arm and the men stamp their feet and shout their approval, and he looks warmly to me.
I look round at the men, mostly golden-haired with gold rings on their muscled arms, mostly long-shanked and broad-shouldered, and I remember my childhood and feel at home. Most of all I look at Thorgils and Olafr, my chest heaving up and down, at the strength of emotion I feel, reunited with them, but I am saddened to hear grief and destruction are their way of life. Like Aina, I could ask Thorgils how could he be a slaver when he has been a slave, but I know the answer. He and Olafr are dispossessed, landless in Norway. The sea is their only homestead and the plunder of its shores are their crops.
* * *
We sight another coast. ‘Engaland,’ Thorgils tells us. He has threaded his way with expert sea-lore between the coast and the islands scattered alongside it, his eyes creased against the sun and the wind. ‘Syllingar islands,’ he gestures to them. He often spends time looking at the shadow cast by the sun at midday and at night he holds out his arm, measuring the height of the Pole Star above the horizon with his hand and thumb.
Aina boldly seats herself next to him. ‘Ask him: How do you know where to go?’ she says to me.
‘I can understand you,’ he tells her in pigeon Occitan. ‘I have spent enough time raiding here and staying at the Norman court. A pilot studies the sun and the stars and the landmarks visible on the coast to keep on the right heading.’
‘But now,’ says Aina, looking around us, where ocean stretches in every direction.
‘Now,’ he says, ‘I look at the birds and sea-creatures, the cloud formations and the colour and currents of the water, the driftwood and weed, the feel of the wind.’
Aina laughs, assuming he is joking, but sees his expression is serious, and looks at the water around us anew, straining to see what he sees.
‘Don’t worry,’ he says, seeing her frown, ‘I won’t take you to Ragnarok. The world’s end,’ he adds, guessing she doesn’t know what he means.
‘That crewman there,’ Aina says, pointing at a man with black spots on his bare calves, ‘he needs to eat fresh meat or he will sicken and die.’
‘Is that so?’ says Thorgils, looking at her with a mixture of surprise and scepticism.
‘It is so,’ she says. ‘My father was a merchant trading in your lands and those of the English, the Irish and the Rus. He told me about this illness. Has he been having nosebleeds, lost any teeth?’
Thorgils raises his eyebrows some more and regards her from narrowed blue-green eyes. ‘He has, as a matter of fact.’
‘It’s urgent then,’ she says.
‘Thank you, healer,’ he says with pleasant sarcasm. ‘I will see to it. Would you leave me in peace now to steer the ship?’
* * *
A few hours later and what had been a sunny, blue sky suddenly darkens like night and rumbles above us. The surface of the water becomes black as charcoal and lightning flashes on the horizon. Thorgils gives orders and the men lash down loose barrels and show Aina and I two loops of strong leather nailed to the side of the ship, telling us to hold on there.
‘A storm is coming?’ Aina says unnecessarily, so no one answers her.
The clouds open as if slit with a long knife and unburden themselves, watering the sea in great long curtains of rain sweeping vertically in front of us. Aina and I hold on to the wrist straps for dear life and throw our hoods over our heads, but we are drenched nonetheless by rain and seawater. There is a great tearing as the sail rips again where it had been patched and it flaps uselessly in the gale. The waves are high enough to swallow the ship and drag us all down to the bottom, but the crew calmly wear the storm, trusting to the ship and their pilot. Sibbi and Geiri, following Thorgils’ shouted commands, take down the shredded sail. The ship ploughs the sea roughly, rising up and down nauseously on the swollen billows that shake the dragon-headed stem. Thorgils shouts above the wind that the bilgewater is too high and Skogi and Gormr bail furiously, close to our feet, but it seems as fast as they throw the water out, the rain-gorged sea throws it back in at us. My fingers holding the strap are red and frozen and pained with the imprint of the leather. There is a crack above my head and Leif and Geiri jump up swiftly just in time to avoid being brained by part of the yard arm breaking off and dropping with a thump and bounce to the deck, its jagged edges spitting splintered wood. Thorgils shouts to bring down the rest of the precarious yard and mast and when Eimundr and Asbjorn have done this, everyone hunkers down holding onto straps and ropes to ride out the raging storm.
