The Long Ships (53 page)

Orm praised Toke for the way in which he had told his story, and assured him that he need have no fears about anyone hearing it from his lips. “I should like,” he added, “to hear these poems that were written about you; but no man enjoys repeating lampoons directed against himself.”

Father Willibald emptied his cup, and announced that stories of this kind, dealing with feuds and jealousies, with spear-thrusts delivered in this place or that, revenge and lampoons and the like, gave him little pleasure, whatever Orm’s attitude toward them might be.

“And you can be sure of this, Toke,” he said, “that I shall not run around gossiping to people of such matters, for I have more important things to tell them. If, though, you are a man who is willing to learn from events, you may yet gain some profit from this distressing experience. From the little I saw of you in King Harald’s castle, and from what Orm has told me about you, I know you to be a bold and fearless man, sure of yourself, and merry in your disposition. But in spite of all this, you have only to undergo some misfortune that causes foolish people to laugh at you, and you at once become cowardly and downhearted, so that you had to flee from your home district as soon as you found that you could not bully your enemies into silence. We Christians are more fortunate, for we do not care what men think of us, but only what God thinks. I am an old man and have little strength left in my bones; nevertheless, I am stronger than you, for no man can scare me with mockery, because I care not a jot for it. He who has God behind his back flinches from no man’s ridicule; and all their smirks and gossipings trouble him not at all.”

“Those are wise words,” said Orm, “and worth pondering; for, be sure of this, Toke, that this priest possesses more wisdom in his small head than we in our large ones, and it is always a good thing to mark his words.”

“I see that the ale is beginning to work on you both,” said Toke, “for you would not address such nonsense to me if you were sober. Is it in your mind, little priest, to try to make me a Christian?”

“It is,” retorted Father Willibald purposefully.

“Then you have set yourself a difficult task,” said Toke, “and one that will cause you more trouble than all the other religious duties you have ever performed.”

“It would be no shame for you to turn Christian,” said Orm, “when you consider that I have been one for these five years. I am not less merry than of old, nor has my hand weakened, and I have never had cause to complain about my luck since the day I received baptism.”

“All that may be true,” said Toke, “but you are not a skin-trader, as I am. No skin-trader can afford to be a Christian in this land; it would arouse distrust in the minds of all my customers. If he changes his gods, the Virds would say, who can rely on him in other matters? No, no. For our friendship’s sake, I would do much for you, Orm, and for you too, little priest; but this I will not do. Besides which, it would drive my woman, Mirah, crazy, for she retains this characteristic of her countrymen, that she hates Christians above all things else; and, to my way of thinking, her humor is brittle enough already, without whetting it with ideas such as this. It is therefore useless for you to try to convert me, little priest, though I am your friend and hope to remain so.”

Even Father Willibald could find no good answer to this argument; and Orm yawned, and said that the night was growing old and that it was time to seek sleep. They parted from Toke with many expressions of friendship; he and Orm were delighted with their luck at having once again found each other, and vowed to meet often in the future.

Orm and Father Willibald walked back to their camp. There all was peace and stillness, and in the moonshine men lay snoring under ribbons of pale smoke from the dying fires. But one of Orm’s men was sitting awake, and he lifted his head as they approached.

“A message came for you both,” he said sleepily. “See, here, this bag; the owls have not ceased to screech since the moment I received it. I was down at the brook, drinking, when a man came from the Finnvedings’ camp and asked for you, Orm. I told him that you had gone to the Virds. Then he threw his bag across the water, so that it fell at my feet, and shouted that it was a gift for Orm of Gröning and his long-nosed priest. I asked him what the bag might contain. Cabbage-heads, he replied, and laughed and went away. It is my belief that it contains something worse. Here is the bag; I have not touched the strings.”

He dropped the bag at Orm’s feet, laid himself down, and fell asleep at once.

Orm stared darkly at the bag and then at the priest. Both shook their heads.

“There is devilry here,” said Father Willibald. “It cannot but be so.”

Orm untied the strings, and shook out the contents. Two human heads rolled on to the ground, and Father Willibald fell to his knees with a groan.

“They are both shaven!” he cried. “Priests of Christ, murdered by heathens! How can human understanding comprehend the will of God when such things are allowed to gladden Satan?”

He peered more closely at the two heads and flung his arms toward the sky.

“I know them, I know them both!” he cried. “This is Father Sebastian, a most pious and worthy man, whom our crazy magister was to release from his slavery. Now God has released him and has set him high in heaven among the blessed martyrs. And this is Brother Nithard of Reims, who was at one time with Bishop Poppo at King Harald’s court. From there he went to Skania, since when nothing has been heard of him; he, too, must have been made a slave. I know him by his ear. He was always ardent in his zeal and passion for the true faith; and once, at the Emperor’s court, he had an ear bitten off by one of the Empress Theofano’s monks from Constantinople, that city which Northmen call Miklagard, during an argument concerning the nature of the Holy Ghost. He used to say that he had given his ear in the fight against heresy, and that he was ready to give his head in the fight against heathendom. And now his words have been fulfilled.”

“If he wished it to be so,” said Orm, “we should not weep; though it is my belief that the Finnvedings did not render these god-men headless as an act of favor, however holy they may have been, but that they have done this deed and sent their heads to us as an insult and to cause us grief. This is our reward for having baptized Östen and his two men and allowed them to go in peace instead of killing them when we had them in our power. Perhaps you now regret, as I do, that we acted thus mercifully.”

“A good deed remains good and should never be regretted,” replied Father Willibald, “whatever consequences it may bring with it. These holy heads I shall bury in my churchyard, for from them much strength will come.”

“A stink is coming from them already,” said Orm darkly. “But you may be right.”

Then, at Father Willibald’s bidding, he helped to gather grass and leafy branches, with which they stuffed the bag. Among these, with great care, they placed the two heads, after which they refastened the strings.

THE NEXT morning twelve men were chosen from each of the three border tribes, the Virds, the Göings, and the Finnvedings; and these men went to the places traditionally reserved for them, in a half-circle facing the Stone, with each twelve seated together. The rest of the men grouped themselves behind their chosen representatives to listen to what these wise men had to say. The twelve Virds sat in the center of the half-circle, and their chieftain rose first. His name was Ugge the Inarticulate, son of Oar; he was an old man, and had the reputation of being the wisest person in the whole of Värend. It had always been the case with him that he was never able to speak except with great difficulty, but everyone was agreed that this was a sign of the profundity of his thinking; it was said that he had been marked out as a wise man even in his youth, when he would sometimes sit through a three-day Thing without uttering a word, only now and then slowly shaking his head.

He now advanced to the Stone, turned to face the assembly, and spoke.

“Wise men,” he said, “have now gathered here. Very wise men, from Värend and Göinge and Finnveden, after the ancient custom of our fathers. This is good. I greet you all and pronounce that our decisions shall be received peacefully. May you judge wisely, and to the advantage of us all. We have come here to talk about peace. It is the way with men that some think one thing and some another. I am old and rich in experience, and I know what I think. I think that peace is a good thing. Better than strife, better than burning, better than murder. Peace has reigned between us tribes for three whole years now, and no harm has come as a result of this. Nor will any harm come if this peace is allowed to continue. Those who have complaints to make shall be heard, and their complaints judged. Those who wish to kill one another may do so here at the Stone, for such is the law and ancient custom of the Thing. But peace is best.”

When he had finished his speech, the Virds looked this way and that, for they were proud of their chieftain and his wisdom. Then the Thing-chieftain of the Göings rose. His name was Sone the Sharp-Sighted, and he was so old that the two men who were seated next to him took hold of his arms to help him get up; but he brushed them angrily away, hobbled nimbly forward to the Stone, and took his stand beside Ugge. He was a tall and scraggy man, desiccated and bent crooked with age, with a long nose and thin wisps of mottled beard; and although the day was fine and the late summer sun shone warmly, he wore a skin coat reaching to his knees, and a thick cap of fox fur. He looked immeasurably wise and had had a great reputation for as long as anyone could remember. His sharp-sightedness was famous; he could find where hidden treasure lay, and could look into the future and foretell the bad luck that lay there. In addition to all this, he had been married seven times and had twenty-three sons and eleven daughters; and it was said that he was doing his best to get round dozens of both, which made him much admired and honored by all the Göings.

He, too, pronounced peace upon the assembly and spoke in fine words of the peaceful intentions of the Göings, which, he said, were proved by the fact that they had undertaken no campaigns against either the Virds or the Finnvedings for four whole years. This, he continued, might be taken by foolish strangers to signify that weakness and sloth had begun to flourish among them; but if anyone thought this, he was wrong, for they were no less ready than their fathers had been to teach manners with point and blade to any man who sought to do them wrong, as could be testified by one or two people who had made the effort. It was also wrong to suppose that this peaceful attitude was the result of the good years they had enjoyed recently, with rich harvests, lush pasture, and freedom from cattle sickness; for a well-fed Göing was as doughty a warrior as when starvation cramped his belly, and of as proud a temper. The true cause of this desire for peace, he explained, was that men of wisdom and experience now prevailed, their counsel being accepted by the tribe.

“So long as such men are to be found and their advice listened to,” he concluded, “we shall prosper. But as the years pass, the number of wise men grows less, and I think that, of those men whose judgment can be fully relied upon, no more than two are alive who are likely to survive much longer, Ugge and myself. It is therefore more than ever necessary that you young men who have been chosen to represent your tribes, though you have not yet any streak of gray in your beards, should listen carefully to what we say and thereby glean wisdom, which as yet you lack. For it is a good thing when old men are listened to and young men understand that they themselves have but a small measure of understanding.”

A third now joined them at the Stone. He was the chieftain of the Finnvedings, called Olof Summerbird; and he had already won himself a great name, though he was yet young. He was a finely proportioned man, dark-skinned, and with piercing eyes and a proud look. He had been in the Eastland, having served in the courts of both the Prince at Kiev and the Emperor at Miklagard, whence he had returned home with great wealth. The name Summerbird had been given him on his return because of the splendor and bright color that he affected in his dress. He himself was well pleased with this nickname.

All the Finnvedings, both the chosen men and those who sat behind them, shouted with pride and triumph as he strode forward, for he looked in sooth like a chieftain; and when he took his place by the other two in front of the Stone, the difference between himself and them was manifest. He wore a green cloak, sewn with gold thread, and a shining helmet of polished silver.

After pronouncing peace upon the assembly, as the others had done, he said that his belief in the wisdom of old men was perhaps not fully commensurate with their own. Wisdom, he thought, could sometimes be found in younger heads; indeed, there were some who thought that it more often resided there. He would not disagree with the old men when they said that peace was a good thing; but everyone ought to remember that peace was nowadays becoming more and more difficult to keep. The chief cause of this, he said, was the unrest that was being aroused everywhere by the Christians, who were very evil and cunning men.

“And, believe me,” he continued, “when I speak of the Christians, I know what I am talking about. You all know that I have spent five years at Miklagard, and have served two Emperors there, Basil and Constantine. There I was able to see how the Christians behave when they are angry, even when they have only one another to vent their spite upon. They clip one another’s ears and noses off with sharp tongs, as revenge for the smallest things, and sometimes geld one another. Their young women, even when they are beautiful, they often imprison in closed stone houses and forbid to have intercourse with men; and if any woman disobeys, they wall her up alive in a hole in the stone wall and let her die there. Sometimes it happens that they weary of their Emperor, or that his decrees displease them; and then they take him and his sons and bind them fast and hold glowing irons close to their faces until their eyes sweat and so go blind. All this they do for the glory of Christendom, for they hold it to be less of a crime to maim than to kill; from which you may gather what kind of men they are. If they behave so toward one another, what will they not do to us, who are not Christians as they are, if they should become strong enough to attack us? Everyone should therefore beware of this danger, that it may be met and stifled before it grows greater. Have we not all witnessed how, in this very place, a Christian priest only last night forced his way to this Stone and committed murder here, in the full sight of the Vird women? He had been brought here by the Göings, perhaps so that he might commit this foul deed. This is a matter between them and the Virds, which does not concern us Finnvedings. But it would surely be good if the Thing could declare that any Christian priest who appears among the Göings, the Virds, or the Finnvedings shall instantly be killed and shall not be kept alive as a slave, much less be permitted to practice his witchcraft undisturbed; for otherwise much mischief may be caused and strife be provoked.”