The Long Ships (19 page)

All the spectators afterwards agreed that it was only a few seconds after receiving the second spoonful, and before the priests had had time to complete a verse of the hymn, when the King suddenly closed his eyes and went rigid. Then he opened them again, spat out the potion, gave vent to a deep sigh, and roared for ale. Brother Willibald stopped singing and leaned anxiously toward him.

“Is it better, Your Majesty? Has the pain ceased?”

“It has,” said the King, spitting again. “Your medicine was sour, but it appears to have been effective.”

Brother Willibald threw up his arms for joy.

“Hosanna!” he cried. “A miracle has occurred! St. James of Spain has answered our prayer! Praise the Lord, O King, for better times are now beginning! The toothache shall no more cloud your spirit, nor shall anxiety dwell in the hearts of your servants!”

King Harald nodded his head and stroked the corners of his beard. He seized with both his hands a large vessel that a page brought to him, and raised it to his mouth. At first he swallowed carefully, evidently afraid lest the pain might return, but then drank confidently until the vessel was empty. He ordered it to be refilled and offered it to Orm.

“Drink!” he commanded. “And accept our thanks for the succor you have brought us.”

Orm took the vessel and drank. It was the finest ale he had ever tasted, strong and full-bodied, such as only kings could afford to brew, and he drank it with a will.

Toke watched him and sighed; then he said:

“In my throat there is a feeling
Of dry rot most unblest.
Do physicians know the healing
For me, that ale is best?”

“If you are a poet, you shall drink,” said King Harald. “But afterwards you will have to compose a poem about your drink.”

So they filled the vessel again for Toke, and he put it to his mouth and drank, leaning his head farther and farther backwards; and all those present in the King’s bedchamber agreed that they had seen few vessels emptied more smartly. Then he reflected for a while, wiping the froth from his beard, and at length declaimed, in a voice stronger than that in which he had made his request:

“Thirsting I rowed for many a year,
And thirsting did good slaughter.
All praise to thee, Gorm’s gracious heir!
Thou knowest my favorite water!”

The men in the bedchamber praised Toke’s poem, and King Harald said: “There are few poets to be found nowadays, and few of those are able to turn out verses without sitting for hours in cogitation. Many men have come to me with odes and lyrics, and it has vexed me sorely to see them while the winter away in my halls with their noses snuffling up my ale, producing nothing whatever once they had declaimed the poem they had brought with them. I like men to whom verses come easily and who can give me some new delight each day when I dine; in which respect, you, Toke of Lister, are more fluent than any poet I have heard since Einar Skalaglam and Vigfus Viga-Glumsson were my guests. You shall both spend Yule with me, and your men too; and my best ale shall be provided for you, for you have earned it by the gift you brought me.”

Then King Harald gave a great yawn, for he was weary after his troublesome night. He wrapped his fur more closely around him, snuggled himself into a more comfortable position in his bed, and lay ready for rest, with the two young women on either side of him. The skin rugs were spread over him, and Brother Matthias and Brother Willibald made the sign of the cross above his head and mumbled a prayer. Then they all left the room, and the groom of the bedchamber strode into the middle of the palace yard with his sword in his hand and cried three times in a loud voice: “The King of Denmark sleeps!” so that no noise should be made which might disturb King Harald’s slumber.

GREAT men from all over the north came to Jellinge to celebrate Yule with King Harald, so that there was less than room enough for them at the tables and in the bedchambers. But Orm and his men did not complain of this overcrowding, for they had received a good price for their slaves and had sold them all before the festival commenced. When Orm had divided up the proceeds of the sale, his men felt rich and free indeed, and they began to yearn for Lister and to know whether Berse’s two ships had come home, or whether they themselves were the only survivors of Krok’s expedition. They offered no objection to staying in Jellinge, however, until the festival was over, for it was regarded as a great honor, and one that added luster to a man’s name for the rest of his days, to have celebrated Yule with the King of the Danes.

The principal guest was King Harald’s son, King Sven Fork-beard,
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who had arrived from Hedeby with a large following. Like all King Harald’s sons, he was the child of one of his father’s concubines; and there was little love lost between him and his father, so that in general they avoided each other as much as possible. Every Yule, though, King Sven made the journey to Jellinge, and everybody knew why. For it often happened at Yule, when the food was richer and the drink stronger than at any other time in the year, that old men suddenly died, either in bed or on the drinking-bench. This had been the case with old King Gorm, who had lain unconscious for two days after a surfeit of Yuletide pork and had then died; and King Sven wanted to be near the royal coffers when his father passed over. For many Yules now he had made the journey in vain, and each year his impatience increased. His followers were a rough crew, overbearing and quarrelsome, and it was difficult to keep the peace between them and the men of King Harald’s household, all the more so now that King Harald had turned Christian and many of his men had followed suit. For King Sven still clung to the old religion and made spiteful mock of his father’s conversion, saying that the Danes would have been spared all this folly if the old man had had the sense to know when he had lived long enough.

He did not trumpet his opinions too openly when he was at Jellinge, however, for King Harald was easily roused to anger, and when this happened he was liable to do anything to anybody. They wasted no words on each other once they had made formal salutation, nor, from their seats of honor in the great hall, did they toast each other more than the conventions of politeness absolutely required.

There was a snowstorm on Christmas Eve, but it passed, and the weather grew calm and cold; and on Christmas morning, while the priests were singing Mass and the courtyard of the palace lay shrouded in good steam from the preparations afoot in the kitchens, a great long-ship rowed up from the south and made fast to the pier, its sail tattered and its oars glazed with ice. King Harald was at Mass, but they sent a messenger to inform him. Wondering who these new guests could be, he went up the stairs to look at the ship. It was steeply built, with a red dragon’s head poised arrogantly upon a curved neck at the prow, its jaws caked with ice from the cruel seas it had passed through. They saw men climb ashore wearing garments barked with ice, among them a tall chieftain in a blue cloak and another, of equal stature, clothed in red. King Harald scanned them as closely as he could from where he stood, and said: “It looks like a Jomsviking or perhaps a Swedish ship, and it is boldly manned, for its crew approach the King of the Danes with no shield of peace upon their masthead. I know of but three men who would dare to come thus: Skoglar-Toste, Vagn Akesson, and Styrbjörn. Moreover, they have brought their ship alongside without removing their dragon-head, though they know well that the trolls of the mainland do not love dragon-heads; and I know of but two men who do not care what the trolls think, and they are Vagn and Styrbjörn. But I see from the ship’s condition that its captain disdained to seek shelter from last night’s storm, and there is but one man who would have refused to bow to such a tempest. It is my guess, therefore, that this must be my son-in-law Styrbjörn, whom I have not seen these four years; one of them wears a blue cloak, moreover, and Styrbjörn has sworn to wear blue until he has won back his inheritance from King Erik. Who this other with him may be, the man who is as tall as he, I cannot surely say; but Strut-Harald’s sons are taller than most men, all three of them, and they are all friends to Styrbjörn. It cannot be Jarl Sigvalde, the eldest of them, for he takes little pleasure in Yule celebrations now, because of the ignominy with which he stained his name when he rowed his ships away from the battle at Jörundfjord; and his brother Hemming is in England. But the third of Strut-Harald’s sons is Thorkel the Tall, and it may be that this is he.”

Thus King Harald surmised in his wisdom; and when the strangers reached the palace and it became evident that he was right, his spirits rose higher than they had been at any time since King Sven arrived. He bade Styrbjörn and Thorkel welcome, ordered the bathhouse to be heated for them at once, and offered mulled ale to them and all their men.

“Even the greatest of warriors,” he said, “need something to warm themselves after such a voyage as you have endured: and there is truth in the old saying:

Mulled ale for the frozen man,
And mulled ale for the weary:
For mulled ale is the body’s friend
And makes the sick heart merry.”

Several of Styrbjörn’s men were so exhausted by their voyage that they were hardly able to stand: but when tankards of mulled ale were offered them, their hands proved to be steady enough, for not a drop was spilled.

“As soon as you have bathed and rested,” said King Harald, “the Yule feast shall begin: and I shall go to it with a better appetite than if I had only my son’s face to look at across the table.”

“Is Forkbeard here?” said Styrbjörn, glancing around him. “I should be glad to have a word with him.”

“He still cherishes the hope that some day he will see me die the ale-death,” said King Harald. “That is why he has come. But if I ever should die at a Yule feast, I think it will be because I am sick of looking at his misshapen face. You will have your chance to speak with him in good time. But tell me one thing: is there blood between him and you?”

“No blood as yet,” replied Styrbjörn, “but as to the future I cannot say. He has promised me men and ships to help me against my kinsman in Uppsala, but none have yet arrived.”

“There must be no fighting in my house during the holy festival,” said King Harald. “You must understand that at once, though I know that you will find it tedious to keep the peace. For I am now a follower of Christ, who has been a good ally to me; and Christ will tolerate no strife on Christmas Day, which is His birthday, nor on the holy days that follow.”

Styrbjörn replied: “I am a man without a country, and as such cannot afford the luxury of being peaceful; for I would rather be the crow than his carrion. But while I am your guest, I think I shall be able to keep the peace as well as any man, whichsoever gods are presiding over the feast; for you have been a good father-in-law to me, and I have never had cause to quarrel with you. But I have news to bring you: namely, that your daughter Tyra is dead. I wish I could have come with more joyful tidings.”

“That is sad news indeed,” said King Harald. “How did she die?”

“She took it amiss,” said Styrbjörn, “because I found myself a Wendish concubine. She became so wrathful that she began to spit blood; then she languished and, after a time, died. In all other respects she was an excellent wife.”

“I have noticed of late,” said King Harald, “that young people cling less keenly to life than old people. But we must not allow this grief to weigh down our spirits during the Yule feast; and in any case I have more daughters left than I know what to do with. They are a fine-spirited bunch and will not marry any man who is not of noble birth and high renown; so that you need not remain a widower for long if you should find any girl among them who takes your fancy. You shall see them all—though I fear that, when they hear that you are single again, they may have some difficulty in keeping the Yule peace.”

“Something other than marriage is uppermost in my mind just now,” said Styrbjörn, “but we can speak of that later.”

Many glances were cast at Styrbjörn from doorways and loopholes, as he went with his men to the bathhouse; for he rarely accepted hospitality, and was held to be the greatest warrior that had been seen in the north since the days of the sons of Ragnar Hairy-Breeks. He had a short, fair beard and pale blue eyes, and men who had not seen him before murmured with surprise at finding him so slim-built and narrow-waisted. For they all knew that his strength was such that he cleft shields like loaves of bread and split armed men from the neck to the crotch with his sword, which was called Cradle-Song. Wise men said that the ancient luck of the Uppsala kings was his, and that it was this that gave him his strength and success in every enterprise he undertook. But it was also known that the curse of his family and their ancient ill luck had in part descended on him, and that it was because of this that he was a chieftain without a country; and that it was for this reason, too, that he was often afflicted with a great heaviness and melancholy. When the fit attacked him, he would shut himself away from all company and sit sighing and mumbling darkly to himself for days on end, unable to endure the presence of any of his fellow beings, save for a woman to comb his hair and an old harpist to give him ale and play him sad music. But so soon as the fit passed from him, he would be eager to go to sea again, and to battle, and then he would bring the strongest of his men to weariness and despair by his recklessness and his bad weather-luck.

So he was feared as no other chieftain in the north was feared, almost as though something of the power and majesty of the gods dwelt in him; and there were those who believed that some time in the future, when he reached the zenith of his might, he would sail to Miklagard and crown himself emperor there, and voyage in triumph along the round edge of the earth with his terrible navies.

But there were others who claimed that they could see it written in his eyes that he would die young and unlucky.