King's Man (45 page)

I realised that I made a strange sight: an elderly priest in a long black gown, his bald pate showing stubble, and wielding a broken wooden pole. The other looters had moved away from Harald's corpse and were forming up in a circle around me. I was trembling with anger and exhaustion.

'Let me have the body,' I shouted. My voice was thin and wavering.

'Come and get it,' jeered one of the men.

I ran at him, using the pole as a lance, but he dodged aside. I pulled up and turned to see that his comrades had again taken up their positions around me and were laughing. I lunged again. The pole was heavy in my hands, and the long skirts of my monkish gown hampered me. I tripped.

'Over here, grandad,' taunted another voice, and I spun round to see someone dangling Harald's scarlet headband from the tip of his dagger. 'You'll need this,' he jeered.

The sweat was running down into my eyes so that I could scarcely see. I lumbered towards him and tried to snatch the headband, but it was whisked out of reach. I felt a thump in my ribs. One of my tormentors had struck me with the flat of his sword. I reeled away, trying to approach Harald's body. A foot reached out and I tripped headlong into the dust. The blood pounding in my ears, I picked myself up, and not knowing who or where I was striking, I swung Land Ravager in a circle, trying to keep my tormentors back. I heard their scornful laughter, then someone must have come up behind me and hit me, because I felt a terrible pain in my head as I slumped forward on my knees and then down on to my face.

Slowly everything began to go dark, and in the last fading moments something came into my mind which had been troubling me since the opening moments of the great battle. The hair rose on the back of my neck, and an icy cold shiver prickled my skin as the certainty came to me that the Old Ways were finally gone. As I slipped away into darkness, I recalled the prophesy of my own God, Odinn the All-know
ing. He had foretold that Ragna
rok, the last great battle, would be heralded by the sound of a harp played by Eggther, watchman of the giants, and that Gullinkambe the rooster, perched in Yggdrasil, the World Tree, would cry his final warning. Since the beginning of the world Gullinkambe had been waiting in the branches to announce the time when the forces of evil were unleashed and on the march. Together the two sounds, the harp and the rooster's crow, would herald the last great battle and the final destruction of the ancient ways.

SIXTEEN

T
ostig rallied the
remnants of our army, so
I
was told later. One of our men picked up Land Ravager from where
I
lay on the earth, apparently lifeless, and brought the banner to Tostig, who was grimly fighting a rearguard action. He set up the flag as a mustering point, and those of our men who were still on their feet — less than a fifth of our original force — gathered there and formed a final shield wall. Seeing their plight, Harold Godwinsson offered them quarter. Defiantly, they refused. The English closed in and cut down all but a handful. Soon afterwards the Norwegian reinforcements from the fleet arrived, too few and too late. Most had made the same mistake of leaving behind their armour so that they could run all the faster from the ships. They appeared on the battlefield in small groups, disordered and out of breath. There was no doubting their courage, for they flung themselves on the English troops. The lightly equipped archers, first on the scene, did such damage that Godwinsson's troops quailed under the arrow storm. But when the archers had exhausted their stock of arrows, they lacked armoured infantry to protect them and were overwhelmed by the huscarls' counter-attack. The remaining stragglers of the relief force met a similar fate, finding themselves outnumbered by an enemy already flushed with triumph. By the end of that catastrophic day, the Norwegian force was virtually

wiped out. The mounted huscarls harried the survivors back to the landing beach, where a handful saved themselves by swimming out to those ships which had been warped out into the river for safety. The remaining vessels were set ablaze by the victorious English.

I heard the details of the calamity in dribs and drabs, for I was on the point of death for many weeks and not expected to survive. A priest from York found me on the battlefield where he had gone the day after the great battle to pray over the dead. Scarcely breathing, I lay where I had fallen in the English battle line, and he presumed I had been with Godwinsson's men. I was brought back to York on a cart, along with the badly wounded, and nursed to health by the monks of the minster.

It took almost a full year for me to regain my strength because I had been badly hurt. There was a gaping gash on my skull — how I acquired it, I do not know — and it led my healers to suppose that my wits were addled by the blow. I had the good sense to encourage their error by pretending that I was not yet sound of mind and speaking little. Naturally I used the interval to watch and listen and acquire the information which allowed me to present myself as an itinerant pr
iest swept up in Harold Godwins
son's lightning advance to the battlefield at a place called Stamford Bridge. This deception was made easier by my advanced years, for all the world knows that old people mend more slowly than the young, and later, when I made mistakes in my pretended guise, the errors were ascribed to an approaching dotage.

This prolonged convalescence gave me ample time to marvel at the gullibility of the monks of York. Not only did they think I was a devout and maundering colleague, but they readily swallowed the pap of misinformation fed to them in the official accounts of what had happened in the struggle for the throne of England. Frequently my tonsured companions would assert that all good Christians should give their unstinting support to the new king, William, because Christ had clearly shown him
self to be on his side. Apparentl
y William of Normandy - no one called him William the Bastard now —
had disposed of Harold Godwins
son on the battlefield further south, in Hastings, just as effectively as Godwinsson had crushed Harald Sigurdsson nineteen days earlier. The proof of their God's favourable intervention, according to the monks, was that William's invasion fleet was held back on the north coast of Frankia by a headwind until 'by the grace of God' the wind changed to the south and allowed his barges to cross the sea unscathed to a landing unopposed by Godwinsson. I knew, of course, that 'the grace of God' had nothing to do with it. William the Bastard stayed on the Frankish coast until he knew his stratagem had succeeded and Harold had marched away to face the Norwegian army. In short, King William was not a virtuous believer rewarded for his piety, but a sly double-dealer who betrayed his ally.

But then, history - as is well known — is written by the victors, if it is written at all. It was with that commonplace in mind that I began to pen this account of my life which is now nearly at an end, and I suspect that Odinn himself had long prepared me for this task. It cannot have been entirely coincidental that I met the imperial chronicler, Constantine Psellus, when I was in the Varangian guard and observed his passion for telling an unvarnished history of the rulers of Miklagard. And I must admit that I enjoyed posing as a royal chronicler when I was on my way across Normandy to Duke William's court, even though that imposture was brief before I was exposed as a fraud. Now it amuses me that my deception is reversed: I find myself a genuine reporter of events, but one who writes in secret and cloaks his identity behind a monk's humility.

A question which has been puzzling me as I write my chronicle was answered as I composed these final pages. I used to wonder how the ways of the White Christ, apparently so meek, came to overwhelm the more robust tenets of my Elder Faith. Then, only yesterday, I was present when one of the local monks — it was the junior almoner - was recounting with breathless wonder how he had been in London and witn
essed the court ceremony when a
local magnate swore allegiance to the new sovereign, our pious and amulet-wearing William. The monk mimed the ceremony for our benefit: the solemn entrance of the nobleman, the king seated on the throne, the approach between ranks of courtiers, the bending of the knee, and the kissing of the regal hand. As the monk went down on his knees to illustrate the moment of homage, I noted the easy familiarity of his action. It was a gesture he repeated each day before the altar, and I recalled my lord Harald prostrate in submission on the marble floor before the throne of the Basileus, a ruler also declared to be a chosen instrument of that same God. Then I knew: the worship of the White Christ suits men who seek to dominate others. It is not the belief of the humble, but of despots and tyrants. When a man claims he is specially selected by the White Christ, then all those who follow that religion must treat him as if they are revering the God himself. That is why they go down in obedience before him. Often they even clasp their hands together as if in prayer.

This is a contradiction of all that the God is meant to stand for, yet I have witnessed how, among rulers of men, it is the truly ruthless and the ambitious who adopt the Christian faith, then use it to suppress the dignity of their fellows. Naturally this opinion would horrify the inoffensive monks around me, and some of them are genuine and selfless men. But they are blind to the fact that even here, within the minster, they bow the head in obedience to their superiors, whatever their quality. How different it was for those who followed the Elder Faith. As a sworn follower of Harald of Norway, as his king's man, I never had to bend the knee to him, either in an act of submission or to acknowledge his leadership. I only knew that he was more suited to rule than me, and that I must serve him as best I could. And when I was a priest of the Elder Faith among the Old Believers of Vaster Gotland, I would have been shocked if those who came to me to ask for guidance or to intervene with the Gods had believed that I was divinely appointed. I was judged only for my knowledge of the ancient lore.

So this is the ultimate power of the White Christ faith: it is a belief suited to despots who would curb men's independence.

I will never abandon my devotion to Odinn, though some might say he has abandoned me, just as he and the Gods have forsaken all those who followed the Elder Faith. Our world may have come to an end, but we never expected our Gods to be all-powerful and eternal. That sort of arrogance is reserved for the Christians. We knew from the very start that one day the old order would collapse, and after Ragnarok all would be swept away. Our Gods did not control the future. That was ordained by the Norns, and no one can alter the final outcome. While we are on this earth, each individual can only live his life to the best of his ability, strive to mould daily existence to best advantage, and never, like the unhappy Mac Bethad of the Scots, be duped by outward signs and appearance.

Still, it grieves me that the body of my king Harald was taken back to Norway and placed in a Christian church. He should have received a true funeral in the old style, been burned on a pyre or interred within a barrow grave. That is what I had in mind when I tried vainly to rescue his body from the battlefield. I know that it was an old man's folly, but at the time
I
was sure that the Valkyries had already carried away his soul to Valhol, or that Freyja's servants had selected him and he was now in her golden hall, Sessrumnir, as befits the warrior whom some are already calling the last of the Vikings.

I myself do not expect to go to Valhol nor to Freyja's hall. Those palaces are reserved for those who fell in battle, and — truth be told — I have never been a warrior, although I did my military training with the brotherhood of the Jomsvikings and have been present at the great battles: in Clontarf when the Irish High King fell, when the great Greek general Maniakes smashed the Arabs in Sicily, and of course at the bridge in Stamford. But I was never really a fighting man. When I took up arms, it was usually for self-defence.

The thought of Sessrumnir has reminded me yet again of the twins, Freyvid and Freygerd. What has happened to them, I wonder? The last report
I
had was when their uncle Folkmar took them and fled for safety into the fastnesses of Sweden. It is too late for me to go to seek them, but in my bones I feel sure that they have survived. Once again I believe this is Odinn's wish. He taught that after Ragnarok, when all has been consumed by fire and destruction, there will be two survivors, twins who have sheltered beneath the roots of the World Tree and survived unscathed. From them will spring a new race of men who will populate the happier world that emerges from the ruins. With that knowledge I can console myself that my line may again bring the return of the Elder Ways.