A fortnight later Erling set out south on horseback, by appointment to see his wife's kinsman Sigurd Eriksson south at Opprostad. Outside harvest-time Sigurd rarely left his chosen place at the king's side, and the king lived in a year-round progress from one to another royal farm through the length and breadth (such breadth as Norway has) of the land.
In any case Sigurd had sent word to Erling to meet with him. They'd grown middling friends since the wedding, though the old blood-quarrels still rankled.
But that made Erling all the more eager to show goodwill whenever he honorably could. He'd also found it prudent to pass news and appeals to the king through SigurdSigurd was as careful as he in doing right by his former enemy. He was also the man Olaf trusted best, even more than the bishop.
I came along, not to visit the Opprostad folk, but to see my friend Helge of Klepp, who lived not far north of them. I'd only met him at Erling's wedding, and had I known him earlier I'd perhaps not have judged Jaeder so backward and heathen as I had. I liked Helge much for himself, but I must be truthfulhe owned a thing I lusted over and loved to put my hands on.
Erling's sister Sigrid came with me. She'd become my shadow in the past year, keeping by me like a colt with her dam. I wasn't sure what to make of this. Mostly it pleased me but I feared her fear. I hoped I'd not be her crutch for life. She was about seventeen years old then, slender and tall and fair of face like all her family, but she showed no interest in marriage. Sometimes she spoke of taking the veil, but it never came to anything.
With her came Freydis Sotisdatter, who clung to Sigrid as Sigrid clung to me. Fourteen years old now, plump of figure and large of eye, she had uncanny moods, and sometimes could be found staring into space, whispering to unseen confessors.
And because Freydis came, Lemming must come too. He bore the sword Smith's-Bane at his hip, a gift from Erling for high service.
Lemming had only two frets that I could see in those dayskeeping watch on Freydis' fancies and putting up with Asa and Arnor, who built their lives around not looking at him.
So in that company we took the road, such as it was, south. It took two days due to the bad going (the trouble between neighbors had strangled commerce) and we put up at a farm along the way. A trip by sea would have been faster, but Jaeder was niggling for harborage. The Opprostad folk themselves, great as they were, had to keep their ships in the Gandalsfjord to the east and cart their goods and folk overland to get to them.
Lemming and I and the girls rose early the second morning and set off by ourselves on foot to Klepp, ahead of the main party.
It's even flatter around Haa and Klepp than around Sola. The distance to Klepp wasn't long, and the morning was fair with only a whisper of autumn. We had a merry walk along the higher ground, past the meadows stone-walled to keep the grazing animals out of the home fields. Seagulls called out over the sea, and cranes swooped down onto Orre water ahead of us. In some places the barley was being cut already by thralls with sickles.
The sky turned gray and began to curl at the edges, like parchment in a fire.
I closed my eyes and shook my head. When I looked again, it was blue and clear, unremarkable as the shining firmament painted by God on the second day of Creation always seems. I wondered if I were taking sick.
"Hard to believe it will all burn in less than two years," said Sigrid.
"You mean Bishop Sigurd's Judgment Day?" I asked.
"The Lord's Judgment Day. It's coming, in the one-thousandth year after the birth of our Lord."
"You shouldn't put too much faith in dates," said I. "Our Lord said no man knows the day or the hour."
"The bishop explained all that. He says no one knows what day it will be, but we can be sure of the year. There are seven ages in the world. The first was from Adam to Noah. The second was from Noah to Abraham. The third is from Abraham to . . . David? Yes, David. Then from David towell, I forget, but anyway the sixth is from John the Baptist to the Judgment Day, and it lasts one thousand years and the thousand years are up soon. The Lord will come in the sky with His army of angels, and He'll punish the wicked, and the seventh and last age will begin, the Kingdom of God. You respect the bishop, don't you?"
"I respect the bishop above all men. But I think he may be wrong in this. I've talked to farmers who say they don't plan to plant that spring. Let the bishop's calculations be just a year off and we could see famine."
"The bishop says many who do not watch and pray will be left outside the Kingdom."
"I don't lack faith in God. I lack faith in this particular teaching."
"But it's the bishop's teaching! He's God's prince."
"Aye. But bishops have been wrong before."
"I don't understand. If the bishop can be wrong, how can we be sure what God says?"
Before I could answer, Freydis said, "The world we know will end in the year One Thousand."
I sighed. The child was always saying things like this, and the worst part was that her augurings were so foggy you weren't sure what she meant, and so could never prove her wrong. Either she was a little mad (which would be sad if not surprising), or she had the Sight as her mother had (which would be worse).
"What do you mean by that, child?" I asked, confident it would do no good.
"I don't know," she said.
If you want to be thought a great soul, always talk in riddles and never explain. I've used the trick myself.
"Of course you have to have the year right," said an unfamiliar voice in a strange accent.
We looked around to find that a stranger had joined our party. He was a long, fit-looking man, roughly dressed and unarmed except for his staff (a thing unknown among free laymen). He was no Norsemanhis dark skin, hook nose and raven hair marked him as a man of the great southern sea.
"Who are you, pilgrim?" I asked.
"Just a wanderer, a singer of songs and a teller of tales, uninvited guest at every house." The stranger smiled, showing white, white teeth.
"I'd say you're a long way from home."
"And I could say the same of youor am I wrong in thinking I hear the music of Connaught in your voice?"
This man was very good.
"What do you mean about the year, friend?" I asked.
"I happen to know that Jesus Christ was born a few years before the year you call One. So the thousandth return of His birthday has passed, and if He were coming back on the bishop's schedule, he'd be walking among you now."
"Are you a Christian?" I asked the man. "A Greek, perhaps, or an Egyptian?"
"I don't think you could call me a Christian."
Freydis walked up beside him and put her hand in his. "I love you," she said.
He stopped and placed his free hand on her head. "I love you too, child. But I'd want to be first in your heart, and you love all the same." Lemming, always careful of his chick, moved up to them, hand on sword hilt, but the stranger only smiled at him and he relaxed.
"We go to visit Helge of Klepp," I said. "He's a great man, and always welcomes strangers, especially those with tales to tell."
"I know of Helge, and will see him in time," said the dark man. "But not today. I've other errands just now. God bless you all, and give you a good day."
And he set off downslope, carried away from us at remarkable speed on a pair of long legs.
So we came to Klepp, which is a hard place to describe except in terms of what it isn't. It's on a hill in a place not hilly, and it isn't quite as grand as Sola, but it was kept every bit as neatlya rare thing in Norway. We followed the lane up the low rise into the steading, and there found Helge, sitting at peace on a bench in a sunny place along the south wall of his hall.
Helge was not a big man, but sturdily built and strong. He had a squarish head, and his whitening yellow hair receded from a sloped forehead. And if you wonder why a strong man, old but not feeble, should be sitting at leisure in the sun in harvest-time, it was because of the liverish sword-scar that ran at an angle across his forehead before slashing down to ruin his left eye.
Helge was blind. After the left eye had been destroyed, he'd told me, the right one had endured but awhile before dimming out of loneliness.
"Hello, Old Bear!" cried Sigrid as she and Freydis ran together to plump down on either side of him on the bench and hug him as he stroked their hair. Helge beamed. He adored the girls, though no more blind to their faults than I.
"Where Sigrid and Freydis come, Father Aillil and Lemming cannot be far behind," he said.
"We're here," said I. "You'll have to take my word about Lemmingyou know his closed mouth."
"But I know his footstep as well as yours. You are welcome, all of you. I give you joy of the day, and a sweet one it is. Can you say mass for me in the morning, Father?"
"Yes, we'd planned to stay the night if you'll have us."
"Well, I'm not sure I've food enough in the stores for these two gluttons, but I suppose we can all take our belts in a notch."
Helge called a thrall to bring the particular chest, and the man came a few minutes later with my heart's darling. He opened the lid, and I took out the Gospel of Matthew, parchment cased in brown leather with brass furniture and a single ruby in the cross on the cover. I kissed the cross.
"What will you read today?" asked Helge.
"In view of our talk on the road, there's a passage along here I want," said I.
I translated Latin to Norse:
"But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left.
"Watch therefore, for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come. But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up.
"Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh."
"You see?" said Sigrid. "Not a word about the year."
"I think the year is implied, daughter. It's never wise to be too clever with Scripture, finding shadow meanings against the plain sense."
"But the bishop is very close to God. If God has a new thing to say, He'll tell the bishop."
"God is also One who keeps His Word. If a man is shamed to deny his own word, you can be sure God would not do such a thing."
"So you say you understand better than the bishop?"
I had no answer for a moment. It doesn't pay for a priest to backbite his bishop, especially in the presence of children who shed words as a dog sheds hair.
Helge said, "The bishop is not a lord. There are no lords in the church. The bishop serves the church, and is subject to God and His Word. You know the bishop, and you know as well as I that he's a very humble man. Ask him sometime whether he can be wrong."
I silently blessed Helge for that speech, though I'm not sure the bishop would have put it quite that way. But it satisfied Sigrid for the moment.
After the girls had gone to pick flowers (with Lemming to shepherd them), I told Helge about Eyvind Ragnvaldsson. "He says the world is an illusion, subject to shaping by those who've trained themselves in secret truths. It's heresy, of coursebut that knife passed straight through his body. I saw it. It jarred me, friend. I'll say this to you, and to no other living man: Suppose we misunderstood our Lord? Suppose He rose from the dead because He knew that the world of things is but a dream and so was able to impose His will on the dream?"
"That's easier to believe, I think, when you live by sight. For me, who must meet the world by ever barking my shins on it, it's hard to shrug off bodies so lightly."
"But suppose we can't trust any of our senses?"
"Then why believe what you saw Eyvind do? The knife that passed through him cuts both ways."
"You're right, of course. I never thought of it so."
"But it goes further. You must decide what you believe. Do you believe that our Lord spent three years with His disciples, and they learned nothing from Him at all? Absorbed not an inkling of His real teaching? If so, He was the worst teacher ever born. Can you really believe that?"
"No. No, I can't."
"There's a place we must all come to, my friend, somewhere in life. It came to me the day I awoke to find my box-bed full of fog, and I opened the door to let the fog out, and the fog had filled the world.
"There's good newsthat is that the world is real.
"But there's bad news toothe world is in the power of the evil one, and is full of enemies. That places each of us in the shield wall, and makes of each a warrior or a traitor."
"Yes. I saw that when I went inside the mountain to take Sigrid away. I thought I'd learned the lesson."
"We never learn. Not in this life. We have to remind ourselves every day. That's why I'm so glad to have my gospel book, even if I can't have it read to me as often as I'd like."
"I envy you that book."
"You have your psalter, and the plenarium the bishop gave you. I'm happy with things as they areit keeps you visiting me."
"I'd visit you anyway."
"I know you would. Did you know that the bishop offered me two marks of silver for my gospel?"
"Really?"
"He thinks it unfitting that a layman own the Scripture. I told him the only person who can read it to me is a priest, so that seemed to soothe him. But I wonder. I'm not sure the Bible was written just for shaven men. Surely Paul's letters at least were written to ordinary folk."
"Well, one sees his point. Can you imagine if every cottager and fisherman had a Bible and thought himself fit to dispute with his priest about it? It would set an axe to the world's roots."
"Or perhaps the blind would receive their sight, the lame would walk, the lepers would be cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead be raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them."
"Words from your own gospel book. But if you'd grown up with the poor as I did, you'd have less hope of them."
"You're forgetting again, Father."
I was suddenly very afraid. "You lead me into dangerous thoughts, Helge. Perhaps the bishop was right about that book."
The day after we returned to Sola I found Arnor in Lemming's smithy, discussing horseshoes with him. I started at finding him there, then regained my voice and asked, "I thought you couldn't look at a smith, to keep the sky from falling. And lookyou're wearing shoes now."
"That was before we had the tree," said Arnor.
"Tree?"
"We found a spirit-tree."
I raised my eyebrows. "And what is a spirit-tree?"
Arnor said, "Go ask Asa. She'll show you. I've business to do."
As I left the smithy I noticed that both Thorliv and Fredis were hanging about, near the door but distant from each other. Had Freydis set her eyes on Thorliv's sweetheart? Not a fair contest, that, for all Thorliv's higher birth. Freydis had a way about her, women's skills unsuited to her age.
I walked through the yard to the house by the stable. I found Asa standing on the sunny side of the house, working her loom, which she'd leaned against the wall.
"Arnor says you found a spirit-tree," I said to her. "What in Heaven's name is a spirit-tree?"
She set her beater down and turned to face me, a smile on her delicate face. The pleasure it gave me troubled me. I'd found a woman to love once, and she was another man's wife now, and I'd never looked to care about a woman again. I was a priest, after all.
"I'll show you," said Asa.
She led me north outside the wall to the two ancient burial mounds called Big and Little Melhaug.
"This is an evil place," said I. "There's a dragon sleeps under Big Melhaug. The dragon is an underground-woman, and I've seen her face. She's kept low since Erling's wedding, but I'd not disturb her needlessly."
"Jaeder wasn't always treeless," Asa answered. "There was a time long since when forests covered this land. Trees have ghosts, like men, and trees dedicated to the gods, where sacrifices hung, have mighty spirits. We have found such a god-tree, and it grew once on this mound. A spirit-tree is just as good as a living one for keeping the sky from falling."
"Do you really believe these things?" I asked, shaking my head. "Do you really think there's a tree here that you can't see?"
"Of course. Look up. What do you see?"
I looked up then, and the shock was like a tumble out of bed.
For there, white against the gray clouds, suspended from nothing at all, hung a dead chicken, its neck wrung, its feathers red where it had bled out.
A sacrifice to the gods, upheld by nothing but faith.
Title: | The Year of the Warrior |
Author: | Lars Walker |
ISBN: | 0-671-57861-8 |
Copyright: | © 2000 by Lars Walker |
Publisher: | Baen Books |