Hrolf Kraki's Saga (12 page)

“I have no honor wherewith to repay King Helgi,” said Olof in a flat voice.

Yrsa bridled. “Little honor did you show me when I dwelt in your land.” Yet eagerness leaped in her. She leaned forward, reached as if to take the older woman by the hands, and said not altogether steadily: “I wonder … can you tell me about my kindred? I’ve thought it may not be such as I heard—”

Then Olof smiled. “Why, yes, my dear. It’s not impossible I could tell you something about that. In fact, I made this journey hither mostly because I wanted to make the truth known to you.” She drew a deep, tasting breath. “Tell me, are you happy in your marriage?”

Bewildered, flushing, Yrsa nonetheless answered with gladness. “Yes, I must say I am, I who have such a brave and famous king to husband.”

Shuddering for joy, Olof spoke forth, that men might hear not merely down in the hull but on the wharf: “You’ve less reason to be content than you think. He is your father, and you are my daughter.”

One scream did Yrsa let out.

Thereafter she shouted that this was a filthy lie and Helgi would burn everything on Als to cleanse his honor. Olof pressed in, unrelenting. She had had years to make ready her words. She had brought along as a witness the midwife who drew Yrsa from her and heard how that name was given; she had even brought the skull of the dog.

Guardsmen saw their Dane-Queen sink to the deck, riven by weeping, while the Saxon woman stood above her and grinned. They hefted their weapons and shuffled forward. “No, hold, hold,” mumbled their captain. “I fear … this is nothing … we can kill. O all bright elves, help us this day!”

But naught flew over Yrsa save sea-mews.

At length she rose and gasped, “I think my mother is the worst and most heartless who, who, who ever lived. This thing is unheard of. It will—will never be forgotten.”

“You can thank Helgi for that,” said Olof.

And, astounding those who stood there under the sun, she stepped forward, took her daughter in her arms, drew the tangle-tressed head onto her bosom, and said: “Come home with me, Yrsa. Come home in honor and respect, and I’ll make everything as good for you as I can.”

Yrsa drew free. She waited until she had gathered strength, then answered evenly: “I know not what the outcome of that may be. But here I can stay no longer, when I know how impossibly I am placed.”

Turning, she left the ship, mounted her horse, and rode back at an easy gait. She was a Skjoldung.

The tale does not say what passed between her and Queen Valthjona, or her and Hrolf Helgisson.

Nor does it say just what Olof did. No doubt she held further talks with her daughter, and a tongue made cunning by years of kingcraft urged over and over that Yrsa
come back to Als. In truth, if she forsook her husband, where else might she find shelter? A woman alone is booty. At the same time, belike Olof lingered no great while. Word would have gotten to Helgi, and he would be killing horses on his way home. The Saxons must soon have rowed off. Their best plan would have been to lie to beyond the strait which links Roskilde Fjord and Isefjord, so that they could readily flee out into the Kattegat.

The tale says little more than that Helgi and Yrsa met. This would have been under four eyes, not even small Hrolf on hand to be frightened by his father’s wrath and grief. She would have sent maidens, carls, and guards out of the bower-building where he and she slept, and where once she had sat singing at her distaff while she waited his return to the news that she bore his child.

Their room was on the upper floor. Doors gave on a gallery where a man could stand, overlooking hall and courtyard and the life which swarmed there, his glance faring onward to town and bay, sweep of deep-green meadows where cattle grazed, tall rustling trees, grain-fields white for harvest, roofs asmoke from nothing worse than hearthfires, on and on to a ridge and a dolmen. Clouds loomed like snowpeaks, a hawk soared, a lark sang. Sunbeams streamed in onto sand-scrubbed planks, glowed darkly in wainscoting and carven furniture, stroked the skin of a bear he had tracked down and spear-slain only to give her a warm blanket, called cedar smell forth from the chest where she kept some clothes of fine foreign make that he had likewise offered her.

Helgi bulked helpless above his love and stammered, “Foul and heartless she is, your mother. But let everything be between us as it was before.”

“No, no, that can’t be,” she begged of him, and drew back when he would lay arms around her. “You—I—No. Helgi,” she well-nigh wailed, “what luck can it bring to a land, that the king lies with his own child?”

Then he was the one who sank. Blighted fields, murrain on the stock, sickness sweeping through a starveling folk, Denmark the haunt of naught but ravens and wolves,
cutthroats and madmen, until an outland ax hewed down the tree of the Skjoldungs—surely that dread left him felled and speechless.

“Yrsa,” he got out at last; but she was gone.

She may have dared kiss her son farewell. She may have had a man row her in a boat, forth across the bay, through night and rain, till she found the ships of her mother.

VII

Yrsa spent three years on Als. Her mother treated her righteously if coolly. She was much alone, and in company talked little. Her least unhappy days were when she went sailing in a boat she owned, as she and Helgi had been wont to do. Even then, nobody ever heard her sing.

Though Olof’s standing made Yrsa the best of queenly matches, no kings came wooing. That was mostly because they were unsure whether Helgi would fetch her back, or whether he would take it ill did she wed another.

But he never stirred. He had raved to Hroar, after his brother joined him, about leading a fleet and a host to seek his wife. “You speak nonsense, and well you know it,” snapped Hroar. “We’re not ready to fight half Jutland, which warfare against Als would bring on. And what could you gain? A girl, your own daughter, who’d have to be kept caged lest she flit from you—and surely the gods turning their backs on us, when you wittingly did such a thing. No!”

Crushed, Helgi spent a long while abed, staring at emptiness. Afterward he was moody, harsh, and nearly always drunk. When he took women he could do nothing with them—the whisper went that Frigg herself had smitten him—and at last he stooped trying. He built a shack in the wilds and often stayed there, quite alone, for weeks on end.

Hroar and Valthjona reared Hrolf. Whatever bane lay in his parentage did not seem to have touched him. He was a sunny-tempered lad who won the hearts of the motherliest serving woman and the starkest guardsman.
Good at those boy’s skills which grow into a man’s, he was likewise given to thinking, asking questions, wondering aloud if the answers he got held the whole truth: even as his uncle had been at that age.

In the third summer a fleet came to Als under the white shield. Never before had Olof guested so big and splendid a troop. At its head was Adhils the Swede-King. He had fared hither straight from his burg of Uppsala.

Olof received him with utmost respect. In his guest quarters she put the best of everything she owned. Yrsa was merely polite, and soon went back to the separate house where she dwelt. That evening Olof and Adhils drank together in the high seat.

“I have heard about your daughter,” he told her, “and I see the tales were true about how fair she is and how strong the kindred she stems from. Lady, I ask for her hand.”

Olof regarded him closely. Adhils was a young man, tall and broad though already running somewhat to fat. His hair and beard were long, amber-hued, and greasy; he kept running his freckled fingers through those whiskers. A sword-sharp nose looked out of place between his wide red cheeks. While he walked in gold and the finest linens, these were not as clean as they might have been; a sour smell hung around him.

Withal, he was no butt for laughter. His voice rolled heavy as North Sea surf. The little ice-pale eyes sunken beneath his brows were unwavering. He was known to be deep into wizardry. His folk felt the weight of his greed and grimness, but he steered them with a cunning beyond his years. Svithjodh was the biggest kingdom in the North, reaching from the hills of the Götaland marches to the endless wet wildernesses in Finland. Scores of under-kings and tribal headmen paid scot to Adhils. Thus he had at least as much wealth and as many warriors at his beck as did the Skjoldungs.

“You know well how it is with her,” said Olof slowly. “However, if she herself wishes this, I will say naught against it.”

“I should hope not, my lady,” said Adhils unsmiling. And while the night was warm and fires burned high, Olof shivered a bit.

Still, she thought, granted him for an ally, she needed no longer fear Helgi or anyone else.

Next day Adhils sought Yrsa. She sat outdoors, on a bench under a willow tree in a herb garden behind her dwelling. A pair of girls helped her sew a gown. She kept only a small household, and not a single thrall. Quietly though she lived, she did not lack for hirelings, because they knew they would be kindly treated.

Today she was clad as usual in a plain dress and no ornaments. Sunlight scattered through shade to waken ruddy hues in her braids. The air lay hot and moveless, full of the smells of herbs for cooking or healing—sharp leek, chervil, wormwood, wintergreen; milk-souring sorrel; bitter rue; sweet thyme; shy cress. A pair of swallows darted woad-blue on a mosquito hunt. When gravel in the path scrunched beneath Adhils’s feet, Yrsa looked up. “Good morning, my lord,” she said dully.

“We missed you at the feast yestereven,” he rumbled.

“I am not one for merrymaking.”

“I had hoped to make you a gift. Here.” Adhils held forth a necklace. The servant girls squealed. Those links and plates of burnished gold, those blinking jewels, could buy a longship.

“I thank you, my lord,” said Yrsa, troubled. “You are too kind. But—”

“I will hear no buts.” Adhils dropped the thing into her lap and flapped a hand at the maidens. They scampered off, to gossip out of earshot with the squad of Swedish warriors who had followed their king. He lowered himself beside her.

“Your mother is a rich queen,” he said. “You should not have to lead as lonely a life as you do.”

“It’s my own choice,” said Yrsa.

“You were happier once.”

She whitened. “That’s my business.”

Adhils turned his head to spear her on his glacier eyes. “No, you’re wrong. What a lord or lady does is the busi
ness of the whole folk. Not so much because they want to pry. Their lives hang on us.”

She tried to draw away from him without seeming either rude or frightened. “I have left that,” she whispered.

“You cannot leave your blood,” said his slow, hammering voice.

“What do you seek, King Adhils?”

“You for my wife, Queen Yrsa.”

She tautened. “No.”

Adhils’s smile barely touched his lips. “I am not such a bad match.”

She leaped to her feet and flared: “Here there’s nothing good for me to choose. Well do I know how hated you are!”

“I am feared, Yrsa,” he said, shakingly unshaken.

She handed him back the necklace. “Go. I beg you, go.” Wildly, she waved at the storks’ nest on her rooftop. “Those birds are supposed to bring luck and children. I’ve gotten none. You don’t want a barren queen.”

“You have slept alone here,” he reminded her.

“And I always will!”

He raised his hulking frame to block her off from the leaves. “You may well have gone barren since you bore that child you never should have,” he said bluntly. “No matter. I’ve begotten others. Between your mother and her Saxon friends as allies, and you as my wife, the Skjoldungs ought to behave themselves toward me.” He pressed the necklace into her clasp. “Moreover,” he said, “you’ll be a brighter ornament to my house than this.” He did not speak merrily, as Helgi would have done; rather it was like something he had put together and learned beforehand.

“I would not cause trouble, I do not want to insult so … so great a king,” said Yrsa. Sweat stood forth upon her; and did tears mingle? “Yet go.
Go.”

He turned and walked calmly off. When he was out of sight, Yrsa cast the necklace down, huddled on the bench and struggled for air.

Olof learned what had happened and came to see her
in her home. That was after sunset. Dusk brimmed the room. Yrsa called for no fire to light a lamp. The two women saw each other as shadows where they sat. A window stood open to coolness. Now it was bats which darted about, and somewhere an owl hooted.

“You’re a fool, Yrsa,” snapped Olof. “An utter, rattle-headed fool. There’s none like King Adhils.”

“There is—there was a better one for me,” mourned the daughter.

“Yah, an unshorn tosspot who dens all by himself!” Olof jeered. “You’ve heard what Helgi has become.”

“You lost no chance to gloat over it.”

“You lay by your own father—the same horn which gored me bloody, Yrsa. That you’ve not been smitten dead or blind … that now the mightiest lord of the lot comes wooing you, yes, gives you a gift which could be the Brisingamen itself, that you let fall in the dust—”

Yrsa tossed her head. “To get the Brisingamen, Freyja spread her legs for four foul dwarfs.”

“You need only go, hallowed and in honor, to a great king.” Olof was still for a time, until: “My hankering was never toward men; no, my loathing was. You’re otherwise. I heard from afar how your hand in his and your gaze upon him told the whole world how glad you were with Helgi. In these years here, I’ve marked how you’ll smile at naught I can see, or hug to you a blooming dewy apple tree by moonlight, or—don’t gainsay me!—let your look stray across a handsome youth. Yrsa, you need a man.”

“Not that man.”

“That very one. I was saying—in spite of your coupling aforetime, like that bitch I named you after; in spite of your treating him today in such wise that he could rightfully bring war—Adhils is patient. This has to be more than luck. A Norn stands nigh, and your doom is to become the queen in Svithjodh.”

Hoo-hoo
went the owl. Yrsa cowered as if it were her that it hunted.

“Much worse could that doom be,” Olof pursued. “Much worse will it be, if you let your folly grow into
madness. I have no heirs, Yrsa. The Alsmen will not take you to rule them when I’m dead, nor could you if they did. What would you rather be, the prey of some viking, the willy-nilly leman of some grubby little chieftain, or the lady of high Uppsala? What’s worthy of a Skjoldung?”