Sworn Brother (2 page)
It all happened so suddenly. I had arrived in London with my master Herfid only ten days earlier. He and the other skalds had been invited to a royal assembly held by King Knut to announce the start of his new campaign in Denmark, and I had gone along as Herfid’s attendant. During the king’s speech from the throne, I had been aware that someone in Knut’s entourage was staring at me as I stood among the royal skalds. I had no idea who Aelfgifu was, only that, when our eyes met, there was no mistaking the appetite in her gaze. The day after Knut sailed for Denmark, taking his army with him, I had received a summons to attend Aelfgifu’s private apartments at the palace.
‘Greenland, Iceland, Ireland, Scotland … you are a wanderer, aren’t you, my little courtier,’ Aelfgifu said, ‘and I’ve never even heard of Vinland.’ She rolled onto one side and propped her head on a hand, so that she could trace the profile of my face, from forehead to chin, with her finger. It was to become a habit of hers. ‘You’re like my husband,’ she said without embarrassment. ‘It’s all that Norse blood, never at home, always rushing about, constantly on the move, with a wanderlust that wants to look beyond the horizon or incite some action. I don’t even try to understand it. I grew up in the heart of the English countryside, about as far from the sea as you can get. It’s a calmer life, and though it can be a little dull at times, it’s what I like. Anyhow, dullness can always be brightened up if you know what you are doing.’
I should have guessed her meaning, but I was too naive; besides, I was smitten by her sophistication and beauty. I was so intoxicated with what had happened that I was incapable of asking myself why a queen should take up with a young man so rapidly.
I was yet to learn how a woman can be attracted instantly and overwhelmingly by a man, and that women who live close to the seat of power can indulge their craving with speed and certainty if they wish. That is their prerogative. Years later I saw an empress go so far as to share her realm with a young man - half her age - who took her fancy, though of course I never stood in that relationship to my wondrous Aelfgifu. She cared for me, of that I am sure, but she was worldly enough to measure out her affection to me warily, according to opportunity. For my part, I should have taken heed of the risk that came from an affair with the king’s wife, but I was so swept away by my feelings that nothing on earth would have deterred me from adoring her.
‘Come,’ she said abruptly, ‘it’s time to get up. My husband may be away on another of those ambitious military expeditions of his, but if I’m not seen about the palace for several hours people might get curious as to where I am and what I’m doing. The palace is full of spies and gossips, and my prim and prudish rival would be only too delighted to have a stick to beat me with.’
Here I should note that Aelfgifu was not Knut’s only wife. He had married her to gain political advantage when he and his father, Svein Forkbeard, were plotting to extend their control beyond the half of England which the Danes already held after more than a century of Viking raids across what they called the ‘English Sea’. Aelfgifu’s people were Saxon aristocracy. Her father had been an ealdorman, their highest rank of nobility, who owned extensive lands in the border country where the Danish possessions rubbed up against the kingdom of the English ruler, Ethelred. Forkbeard calculated that if his son and heir had a high-born Saxon as wife, the neighbouring ealdormen would be more willing to defect to the Danish cause than to serve their own native monarch, whom they had caustically nicknamed ‘the Ill-Advised’ for his uncanny ability to wait until the last moment before taking any action and then do the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time. Knut was twenty-four years old when he took Aelfgifu to be his wife, she was two years younger. By the time Aelfgifu invited me to her
bedchamber four years later, she was a mature and ripe woman despite her youthful appearance and beauty, and her ambitious husband had risen to become the undisputed king of all England, for Ethelred was in his grave, and - as a step to reassure the English nobility - Knut had married Ethelred’s widow, Emma.
Emma was fourteen years older than Knut, and Knut had not bothered to divorce Aelfgifu. The only people who might have objected to his bigamy, namely the Christian priests who infested Emma’s household, had found a typically weasel excuse. Knut, they said, had never properly married Aelfgifu because there had been no Christian wedding. In their phrase it was a marriage ‘in the Danish custom’,
ad mores danaos -
how they loved their church Latin — and did not need to be set aside. Now, behind their hands, they were calling Aelfgifu ‘the concubine’. By contrast Knut’s earls, his personal retinue of noblemen from Denmark and the Norse lands, approved the dual marriage. In their opinion this was how great kings should behave in matters of state and they liked Aelfgifu. With her slender figure and grace, she was a far more attractive sight at royal assemblies than the dried-up widow Emma with her entourage of whispering prelates. They found that Aelfgifu behaved more in the way that a well-regarded woman in the Norse world should: she was down to earth, independent minded and at times - as I was shortly to discover - she was an accomplished schemer.
Aelfgifu rose from our love bed with typical decisiveness. She slid abruptly to the side, stepped onto the floor — giving me a heart-melting glimpse of her curved back and hips — and, picking up the pale grey and silver shift that she had discarded an hour earlier, slid the garment over her nakedness. Then she turned to me, as I lay there, almost paralysed with fresh longing. ‘I’ll arrange for my maid to show you discreetly out of the palace. She can be trusted. Wait until I contact you again. You’ve got another journey to make, though not nearly as far as your previous ones. Then she turned and vanished behind a screen.
Still in a daze, I reached the lodging house where the royal skalds were accommodated. I found that my master, Herfid, had scarcely noticed my absence. A small and diffident man, he wore clothes cut in a style that had gone out of fashion at least a generation ago, and it was easy to guess he was a skald because the moment he opened his mouth you heard the Icelandic accent and the old-fashioned phrases and obscure words of his profession. As usual, when I entered, he was in another world, seated at the bare table in the main room talking to himself. His lips moved as he tried out various possibilities. ‘Battle wolf, battle gleam, beam of war,’ he muttered. After a moment’s incomprehension I realised he was in the middle of composing a poem and having difficulty in finding the right words. As part of my skald’s apprenticeship, he had explained to me that when composing poetry it was vital to avoid plain words for common objects. Instead you referred to them obliquely, using a substitute term or phrase — a kenning — taken if possible from our Norse traditions of our Elder Way. Poor Herfid was making heavy weather of it. ‘Whetstone’s hollow, hard ring, shield’s grief, battle icicle,’ he tried to himself. ‘No, no, that won’t do. Too banal. Ottar the Black used it in a poem only last year.’
By then I had worked out that he was trying to find a different way of saying ‘a sword’.
‘Herfid!’ I said firmly, interrupting his thoughts. He looked up, irritated for a moment by the intrusion. Then he saw who it was and his habitual good humour returned.
‘Ah, Thorgils! It’s good to see you, though this is a rather lacklustre and empty house since the other skalds sallied forth to accompany the king on his campaign in Denmark. I fear that I’ve brought you to a dead end. There will be no chance of royal
patronage until Knut gets back, and in the meantime I doubt if we’ll find anyone else who is willing to pay for good-quality praise poems. I thought that perhaps one of his great earls whom he has left behind here in England, might be sufficiently cultured to want something elegantly phrased in the old style. But I’m told they are a boorish lot. Picked for their fighting ability rather than their appreciation of the finer points of versifying.’
‘How about the queen?’ I asked, deliberately disingenuous. ‘Wouldn’t she want some poetry?’
Herfid misunderstood. ‘The queen!’ he snorted. ‘She only wants new prayers or perhaps one of those dreary hymns, all repetitions and chanting, remarkably tedious stuff. And she’s got plenty of priests to supply that. The very mention of any of the Aesir would probably make her swoon. She positively hates the Old Gods.’
‘I didn’t mean Queen Emma,’ I said. ‘I meant the other one, Aelfgifu.’
‘Oh her. I don’t know much about her. She’s keeping pretty much in the background. Anyhow queens don’t employ skalds. They’re more interested in romantic harp songs and that sort of frippery.’
‘What about Thorkel, the vice-regent, then? I’m told that Knut has placed Thorkel in charge of the country while he is away. Wouldn’t he appreciate a praise poem or two? Everyone says he’s one of the old school, a true Viking. Fought as a mercenary, absolute believer in the Elder Faith, wears Thor’s hammer as an amulet.’
‘Yes, indeed, and you should hear him swear when he’s angry,’ said Herfid cheering up slightly. ‘He spits out more names for the Old Gods than even I’ve heard. He also blasphemes mightily against those White Christ priests. I’ve been told that when he’s drunk he refers to Queen Emma as Bakrauf. I just hope that not too many of the Saxons hear or understand.’
I knew what he meant. In Norse lore a bakrauf was a wizened old hag, a troll wife, and her name translates as ‘arse hole’.
‘So why don’t you attach yourself to Thorkel’s household as a skald?’ I insisted.
‘That’s a thought,’ Herfid said. ‘But I’ll have to be cautious. If word gets back to Knut that the vice-regent is surrounding himself with royal trappings, like a personal skald, the king may think that he is putting on airs and wants to be England’s ruler. Knut delegated Thorkel to look after the military side of things, put down any local troubles with a firm hand and so forth, but Archbishop Wulfstan is in charge of the civil administration and the legal side. It’s a neat balance: the heathen kept in check by the Christian.’ Herfid, who was a kindly man, sighed. ‘Whatever happens, even if I get an appointment with Thorkel, I’m afraid that there won’t be much of an opportunity for you to shine as my pupil. A vice-regent is not as wealthy as a king, and his largesse is less. You’re welcome to stay on with me as an apprentice, but I can’t possibly pay you anything. We’ll be lucky if we have enough to eat.’
A page boy solved my predicament three days later when the lad knocked at the door of our lodgings with a message for me. I was to report to the queen’s chamberlain ready to join her entourage, which was leaving for her home country of Northampton. It took me only a moment to pack. All the clothing I owned, apart from the drab tunic, shoes and hose that I wore every day, was a plum-coloured costume Herfid had given me so that I could appear reasonably well dressed at court. This garment I stuffed into the worn satchel of heavy leather I had stitched for myself in Ireland when I had lived among the monks there. Then I said goodbye to Herfid, promising him that I would try to keep in touch. He was still struggling to find a suitable substitute phrase to fit the metre of his rhyme. ‘How about “death’s flame”? That’s a good kenning for a sword,’ I suggested as I turned to leave with the satchel over my shoulder.
He looked at me with a smile of pure delight. ‘Perfect!’ he said, ‘It fits exactly. You’ve not entirely ignored my teaching. I hope that one day you’ll find some use for your gift with words.’
In the palace courtyard Aelfgifu’s entourage was already waiting, four horse-drawn carts with massive wooden wheels to haul the baggage and transport the womenfolk, a dozen or so riding animals, and an escort of a couple of Knut’s mounted huscarls. The last were no more than token protection, as the countryside had been remarkably peaceful since Knut came to the throne. The English, after years of fighting off Viking raiders or being squeezed for the taxes to buy them off with Danegeld, were so exhausted that they would have welcomed any overlord just as long he brought peace. Knut had done better. He had promised to rule the Saxons with the same laws they had under a Saxon king, and he showed his trust in his subjects - and reduced their tax burden - by sending away his army of mercenaries, a rough lot drawn from half the countries across the Channel and the English Sea. But Knut was too canny to leave himself entirely vulnerable to armed rebellion. He surrounded himself with his huscarls, three hundred of them all armed to the teeth. Any man who joined his elite guard was required to own, as a personal possession, a long two-edged sword with gold inlay in the grip. Knut knew well that only a genuine fighter would own such an expensive weapon and only a man of substance could afford one. His palace regiment was composed of professional full-time fighting men whose trade was warfare. Never before had the English seen such a compact and lethal fighting force, or one with weaponry so stylish.
