The Gulathing broke up at last. Aside from acclaiming Olaf king, they made one change in the law that amused me. From that time on, when the land was attacked, thralls were compelled to take up arms.
When I bid the bishop farewell I spoke to him in private. I said, "My Lord, would you be offended to receive the counsel of a man poor in wisdom but rich in scars and bruises?"
He gave me smiling permission to proceed.
"Lay down the iron and steel," I said. "Do the Lord's work the Lord's way. Don't build His house on sand."
I left him with tears in his eyes and no words in his mouth.
Once we returned and gave Ragna the news she'd hoped for, that Erling would marry the king's sister, she began taking her food again and there was no more talk of convents. Like an old king called out to use his life's skills in one last battle to defend his realm, she threw herself into the task of preparing food and drink, finery and bedding for the largest wedding ever seen in Jaeder. "I'm too old for this; I should be sitting close to the fire and knitting mittens," she told me, but she loved it all. I laughed secretly at first, until one evening in the hall I got to talking to Steinulf and learned that he was Ragna's brother. I don't know why I'd never learned this beforeit made sense. The maternal uncle always keeps a wing over his nephew in Norway as in Ireland, and who better to lead your bodyguard than the man who, next to your father, made a warrior of you?
"It's a wonder Ragna has a life at all," he told me. "She was the oldest of us children, and our father's only daughter. Our father was a strange man. You could probably say he was mad, though a son shouldn't speak so. When our mother died, he was still young enough to take another wife, but he didn't even take a leman. He just turned all his love on Ragna. I don't mean he did anything improper to her. I never saw any sign of that. But he thought of her as his wife rebornin fact he changed her name to Ragna because it was Mother's. In the old religion, we believed that if you gave a child the name of a dead relation, the dead one would live again in the child. And he did a very queer thing to make sure she would never leave him alone. An evil thing, when you look at it straight on. He told her she was ugly.
"Now you and I know that even today she's not a bad looking woman. She wasn't as beautiful as Astrid Trygvesdatter or Halla Asmundsdatter, but she was a handsome girl who could have brought a rich dowry to a husband as well. But Father didn't want her to marry. So every day, almost whenever he saw her, he'd say something like, `You're a good girl, Ragna. It's a pity you're ugly as a troll, because otherwise you'd make someone a fine wife.' I should have tried to tell her otherwise, I suppose, but when did you ever see a younger brother build up a sister? I'm afraid I joined in the game.
"Then came Thorolf Skjalg. Aside from his squint he was a handsome young man, and rich, and from the day he came to buy horses from our father and saw Ragna, he swore he'd have her. He sent kinsmen to Father and made suit, offering a generous bride-price, and Father refused, saying Thorolf must be a squinter indeed if he thought Ragna fair. Thorolf sent his kinsmen back, naming a richer price, and still Father refused. When he made his third offer, it was so highhigh enough for a king's daughterthat our uncles came and threatened to thump Father if he said no. So Ragna was married at last. The day of her wedding she told me, `I looked at my reflection in a bowl of water this morning and asked myself, "Is this an ugly woman? This woman who has brought the highest bride-price ever known in our family? No, no one pays such a price for an ugly woman." ' And from that day she walked with her head high, and she was fairer to look on than I'd thought she ever could be."
"It must have hurt her to lose Thorolf," I said.
"You've no idea. It's a wonder she didn't try to rope Erling to her in Father's manner. She's lost four children over the years, between illness and adventures. It must have been agony to her every time she watched Erling sail off in Fishhawk, her treasure floating on a wood chip out where the great serpents play."
"Little wonder this wedding means so much to her."
"Erling is all her hope."
The wedding was set for a day near Midsummer, in June by the Christian calendar, and I'd made sure to check the notches on the stick calendar I'd kept against Bishop Sigurd's so that we'd have no confusion.
If you love ships you'd have loved our neighborhood the day before the wedding. They anchored them in Hafrsfjord so that you'd swear it was a winter forest from all the masts; they even anchored some latecomers up in Risa Bay and drove them overland in wagons to Sola. When they arrived Thursday the guests found a freshly painted hall and garlands of summer flowers everywhere. Pipers and harpists played loudly if not elegantly, and everyone danced. There was food and ale for all, and masses morning and evening. My church had been whitewashed within, and there were golden candlesticks and beeswax tapers, gifts from the bishop.
Olaf and his following, a couple hundred people, made a handsome procession from the jetty to the hall, even more gorgeous than they'd looked at the Gulathing. I'd like to tell you how the bride looked but she'd been veiled against bad luck. Olaf headed the company, looking like a man who had come through blood and steel to take what he wanted from the world, who knew he was living in a saga and was proud of it. I heard someone whisper as he passed, "A kingyes, that's a king." The Erikssons were there too, and Olaf's bent mother, and Aslak Askelsson, looking proud of his new wife, the grave and graceful Halla.
Halla went straightaway to speak with Erling's sister Sigrid, who was looking more beautiful than I'd ever seen her, but had not smiled as far as I could tell since she'd come out of the mountain.
When he got to the steading, Olaf unstrapped his rich swordbelt and handed the weapon to Erling. "I declare the wedding-peace," he said, and then all his company gave up their arms to thralls, who carried them off for storage. Erling and Olaf embraced, and everyone went inside, the men in the great hall, the women in a couple of the other buildings, to begin the business of feasting.
There was food in plentyporridge and wheaten bread and four kinds of fish and pork and ham and beef, and angelica stalks in honey for a sweet, and there were oceans of ale and mead. The more fighting there is at a wedding, the luckier for the bride and groom, they say. They also say it's a shameful thing to go home from a wedding sober. Not to mention unlikely.
"Organization!" cried Olaf Trygvesson from the high seat, a horn in his hand, barely heard above the arguing and calls for ale. "Organization is what I mean to bring to Norway. Think of the length of the countryfrom the green fields of the Vik to the icy headlands of the North, where mists shroud the end of the world. A man from the Vik can barely understand the speech of a Halogalander, if at all. And do they think of themselves as Norwegians? Never, unless they're talking to some Englishman who's ignorant enough to call them Danes. They think of themselves as Vikers or Halogalanders. If we're to be a real nation, like England, we must have one king, one faith, one law.
"The land will be divided into regions. Over each region I'll place a jarl, who'll be my representative and collect my taxes, of which he'll keep a part. Under him will be hersirs, keeping watch on the districts and ship levies."
"And the tithes," said the bishop. "Churches must be built, and monasteries and convents."
"Of course," said the king. "I'm going to build a town up on the Nid River, in the Trondelag, and in that town there'll be a cathedral. I'll build it there because the Tronds are the strongest heathens in the land, thanks to Jarl Haakon. They've acclaimed me king, but they've not been christened yet. They won't like it, but it will be done."
"The cathedral or the christening?" asked Erling.
"Both. The Tronders are as good as Christian already. I'll save them if I have to kill them all to do it."
I saw Olmod the Old smiling and nodding in his seat. This new religion was turning out much to his liking.
"What about going a-viking?" someone asked. "Are we to raid no more, now that the English and the Irish are our brothers?"
Olaf took a long pull from the horn. "There's little I can say about what men do when they sail out of the land. If they try it here I'll hang them by their own guts, but I can't be expected to ward Ethelred's land as well as my own. I'd prefer that men find honest livings, but I fear it'll take time to wean Norsemen from raiding."
"The king was a great Viking himself in England," said someone else, and then he launched into one of those endless, riddle-packed songs. While he sang, two men challenged each other to climb up into the rafters and race about on them. Both fell, being tipsy, and had to be carried out. Then Olaf grabbed the eating knives of two neighbors and juggled them and his own, to a storm of cheers and table thumping.
"Every king must be a juggler," he said when he sat down again. "He must juggle three thingshis own struggle against sin, his struggle against lawlessness in the land, and his struggle against the enemies of the land."
"Yes," said the bishop, "but all these enemies are twofoldthere is sin born in the heart and sin born in Hell. There is earthly lawlessness and spiritual lawlessness, such as heathendom and heresy. And there is the foreign king, only a man like you and me, and the king of Hell, whom none of us can fight in our own strength. That is why the church must guide the king's counsels."
"Yes, the power of the old gods is not broken yet," said old Bergthor. "Even here at Sola, where we've had a church for years, there's still a troll who lives in the wastes and comes to steal chickens or lambs sometimes. He's been seen haunting the outpastures and you can hear him howling nights."
"A troll?" asked Olaf. "That would be something to see. I wonder how you'd hunt a troll."
"If the truth were known, it's probably just a wolf," said Erling.
"No wolf ever sounded like that," said Bergthor. "I've heard plenty of wolves in my time."
Then a marvel occurred. I can only describe it by saying that the colors in the hall changed. Everything that was brightthe weaving in Halla's tapestry of David and Goliath, the red and yellow paint on the high seat pillars, the reds and blues and greens of the guests' shirtsall grew brighter, as if in sunlight, while all the dull thingsthe unpainted wood, the sooty rafters, my robeseemed to darken almost to invisibility, as if at dusk.
And there was the elf-woman, in a gown of green, her eyes as large as a cow's but more fair, her golden hair drifting over her slender shoulders. Not a man breathed.
She glided to the high seat and stood before Olaf. "I have a plea to set before the king," she said. Her voice was like the call of a birdan evening bird, sweet and unseen.
"Are you of God or the Devil?" he countered. I won't say he looked frightened, but he was pale.
"Does everything have to be one or the other?" she asked. "Do you ask this question of the horse you ride or the dog you hunt with? I am not of your raceyour Christ did nothing for me."
"What are you?"
"Your neighbor. Are you not commanded to do well to your neighbor? I bring a plea."
"Have her seized and burned," said the bishop. "This creature is evil. All spirits that will not name Christ as Lord are of the Devil."
"Am I a spirit?" asked the elf-woman. "Do I not have a body? Look" and she took a piece of bread from the king's table and ate it.
"This proves nothing," said the bishop. "Spirits can deceive our eyes."
"Will the king hear my plea?"
"What is your plea?" asked Olaf. His eyes had not left her.
"Some time ago a neighbor of mine began to annoy me. He was ever trying to get me into his bed, but he was old and ugly and I did not want him. So I flayed a calf from neck to tail, and left its skin dragging behind it, and I fed it strong herbs mixed with dead men's blood until it grew mightier than a sea gale, and I sent it to haunt my neighbor. Whenever my neighbor left his house, the bull would run to him, invisible, and throw him with its horns. And whenever he went to bed my bull would lie upon him and smother him. Soon my neighbor died.
"But now the bull has turned upon me, and it follows me wherever I go, and I have all I can do to master it. So I beg you, give me some of your holy water, that I may pour it on the bull and kill it at last."
"You've earned the fitting reward for your witchery," said the bishop. "Before the king can consider your plea, you must answer me a riddle."
"We never refuse a riddle."
"The body. The human body. Is it good or evil?"
The elf-woman smiled, spread her arms, and swayed gently before us, and there were sighs from every side. "The body," she said, "is goodvery, very good."
"Wrong," said the bishop. "The body breeds pains, and illness, and weakness leading to temptation, and it grows old and dies and rots, and makes mockery of our hopes. Guess again."
"I suppose you'd say the body is evil," she sneered.
"Wrong again. Our blessed Lord came in a body, and it was a true man's body in every way. Since there was no evil in Him, the body cannot be evil."
"Then there is no answer!"
"There is an answer, but you cannot know it."
"I speak to the king. What is the king's word?"
"I want to lie with you," said the king. The words fell heavy as a man from a masthead. I smelled that mare smell again, as I had in the heathen shrine.
"Renounce Christ. Worship Thor and Odin," said the elf-woman. I wanted to speak, but my mouth was dry as a shinbone a hundred years in the sun.
"I will renounce Christ," said Olaf.
The elf-woman smiled. It was glorious to see (How odd, now I think of it, that I remember her smile. I was sitting on Erling's bench, behind her).
"TO HELL WITH YOU, THING OF EVIL!"
It was the bishop who cried out, and with one motion he snapped the chain of the crucifix from about his neck and sent it flying at the elf-woman.
This is what we saw then. Every man who was there will tell you the same:
The elf woman began to sink down, to shrink in size before our eyes, and her whole body flattened as she sank, from the crown of the head downward, until she was two flat pink disks, the smaller atop the larger.
And then the two disks began to rise again, and there was a white, rounded mass pushing up beneath them, poking up and up from the earth. It rose before our eyes, a hill of white, soft and quaking, towering ever up.
"A breast!" someone cried. "A woman's breast, as big as a house!"
The woman followed the breast, clambering out of the earth, bracing hands the size of ships to pull herself up, elbowing the benches out of her way. And at last she stood free and towered naked above us, and shattered the roof as her head broke it through.
She was a hugely fat woman, as white as milk, with jutting globes of breasts and wide expanse of quaggy hips, and her hair was a mass of black ringlets falling past her shoulders, and her eyes were round as moons and much the same size, and thick, black blood poured with men's dismembered limbs from her gaping mouth.
She screamed, and she was gone, and the hall was as it had been.
The bishop reached out to Olaf, who sat unmoving in his seat. "Bring ale!" he shouted, and a horn was passed, and the bishop poured it down the king's throat.
Olaf coughed and spewed the ale out, then sat for some time with his hands braced on the table, looking down and shuddering.
"I have sinned," he said at last. "Erling, my host, forgive me. I must go to the church and speak with my bishop. The rest of you, carry on with the feast, and pardon me."
These were uncommonly humble words from Olaf, and no one spoke as he made his way out, the bishop holding his elbow, and for many minutes we only sat and stared at each other, wondering.
At last Bergthor said, "This bodes ill, but whether for the king or the wedding I cannot say."
"No," said Erling. "It bodes well. No man attacks another unless he either fears him or knows he has something of value. When the enemy lays on most fiercely, then we know we are dangerous to him, and treasured by God."
"What I can't understand," said someone, "is, if our God is so much more powerful than the old gods, why do all the wonders seem to come from their side?"
A voice said, "Because a marvel is like a sword." Strangely, the voice was my own. "Or like torture. There is no answer to it. The Beloved prefers to woo."
Where did those words come from? I've no idea to this dayI know I'd never thought them. But I pondered them all night, in my bed, until I slept.
I sat on my patch of earth, alone. My children had matured at last, and once mature they had run away from me, with barely a goodbye, and never returned.
I saw a shadow and looked up to see the abbot in his Black Axeman guise.
"Do you forgive me?" he asked.
"Of course," said I.
"Have you done and seen all here that you need to do and see? Are you ready to pay the toll and cross the river?"
"I don't know what I've done and I don't know what I've seen," I said. "I've learned that God pitches camp in the place of pain and danger. Does that mean that evil is good, and God depends on the Devil? Is there no joy without sorrow; no right without wrong? I seem to remember that was heresy."
"And so it is. It's not the evil we need, nor the pain. But we need the risk. The risk we cannot do without. It was God's risk to make the world, and to give Man a choice. All love is risk, and salvation the most dangerous thing of all."
"A man will do anything rather than die. The Lord isn't opposed to that. He's made self-slaughter a sin. Yet the road leads finally to a place where He says, `Hold still while I kill you.' "
"It's the Death He wants to kill, son. It's your Death you've been clinging to from the day you first popped from the womb and shut your eyes and screamed against the light. Lay the thing down at last."
"It's no easy task. Even Death wants to go on living."
"I didn't call it easy. It's nothing at all He wants from you; but sometimes nothing at all is the hardest thing to give."
"I'm not a hero. I'm not the kind who laughs while they cut his heart out. He says He sees the sparrow fall; but it seems to me He cares only about eagles."
"Aye, it's a thing for heroes, to lay down your right to your safety. Great and small; free and slave; we're all made heroes in the end, or we go to Hell."
"I haven't that to give Him."
"It's not a thing to give. It's a thing to receive. Bow your head now."
I bowed my head. I barely felt the slice of the steel.
The next thing I knew there was golden light, and I was riding again, and the white hind was my steed and we flew over the fair green land, barely touching the ground, steadily approaching a far-off, white-robed figure. Even at infinite distance I knew the faceof all faces in the world most beautiful, most Beloved.
Title: | The Year of the Warrior |
Author: | Lars Walker |
ISBN: | 0-671-57861-8 |
Copyright: | © 2000 by Lars Walker |
Publisher: | Baen Books |