The Long Ships (37 page)

Gudmund agreed that this was a great misfortune. “But all men have their worries,” he said, “and ours is: when are we going to get the silver?”

King Ethelred scratched his beard and glanced at the Archbishop.

“You have asked for a considerable sum,” said the Archbishop, and not even great King Ethelred has that amount in his coffers. We shall have to dispatch messengers throughout the land to collect the balance. This may take two months, or even three.”

Gudmund shook his head at this. “You must help me now, Skanian,” he said to Orm, “for we cannot wait as long as that; but I have talked myself dry in the mouth.”

Orm stepped forward and said that he was young and poorly qualified to speak before so great a monarch and so wise an assembly, but that he would explain the case as well as he was able.

“It is no small matter,” he said, “to make chieftains and soldiers wait so long for what has been promised to them. For they are men who quickly change their moods and are little inclined toward meekness, and it sometimes happens that they grow weary of the tedium of waiting when they are still hot with the flush of victory and know that good plunder lies ready for them to gather whithersoever they choose to turn. This Gudmund whom you see here is a mild and merry man as long as he is content with the way things are going, but when he is angry the boldest chieftains of the Eastern Sea quake at his approach, and neither man nor bear can withstand his fury. And he has berserks among his followers who are scarcely less fearful than he.”

All the assembly looked at Gudmund, who went red in the face and cleared his throat.

Orm continued: “Thorkel and Jostein are men of similar mettle, and their followers are fully as ferocious as Gudmund’s. Therefore I would suggest that half the sum due to us should be paid immediately. This will enable us to wait more patiently until the balance has been collected.”

The King nodded his head, glanced at the Archbishop, and nodded again.

“And since,” continued Orm, “both God and yourself, King Ethelred, find it a cause for rejoicing that so many of us have come up to Westminster to be baptized, it might perhaps be a wise thing to allow all such converts to receive their share here and now. If this should happen, many of our comrades might be driven to wonder whether it would not be beneficial to their souls, also, that they should become Christians.”

Gudmund declared in a loud voice that these words exactly expressed his own feelings on the matter. “If you do as he suggests,” he added, “I can promise you that every follower of mine who is encamped outside this town will become a Christian at the same time as I do.”

The Archbishop said that this was capital news, and promised that skilled instructors would be sent immediately to prepare the men for conversion. It was then agreed that all the Vikings who had come to London should receive their share of the silver as soon as they had been baptized, and that the army at Maldon should have a third of its silver dispatched without delay, the balance to follow in six weeks.

When the meeting had concluded and they had left the hall, Gudmund thanked Orm warmly for the help he had given him. “I have never heard wiser words issue from the mouth of so young a man,” he said. “There is no doubt that you were born to be a chieftain. It will be very advantageous to me to get my silver now, for I have the feeling that some of those who are going to wait till later may experience some difficulty in obtaining their full amount. I do not intend that you shall go unrewarded for this service; so when I receive my share, five marks of it shall be yours.”

“I have observed,” replied Orm, “that, despite the measure of your wisdom, you are in some ways an excessively modest man. If you were a common or petty chieftain, with five or six ships and no name to speak of, five marks might be regarded as a proper sum to offer me for the service I have rendered you. But, seeing that your fame stretches far beyond the frontiers of Sweden, it ill befits you to offer me so niggardly a sum, and it would ill befit me to accept it. For if this were to become known, your good name might suffer.”

“It is possible that you are right in what you say,” said Gudmund doubtfully. “How much would you give if you were in my place?”

“I have known men who would have given fifteen marks in return for such a service,” said Orm. “Styrbjörn would have given no less; and Thorkel would give twelve. On the other hand, I know some men who would not give anything. But I have no wish to sway your own judgment in this matter; and, whatever the outcome, we shall remain good friends.”

“It is not easy for a man to be sure just how famous he is,” said Gudmund, troubled; and he went his way buried in calculation.

The following Sunday they were all baptized in the great church. Most of the priests were anxious that the ceremony should be performed in the river, as had been customary in former times when heathens were baptized in London; but both Gudmund and Orm asserted vigorously that there was to be no immersion as far as they were concerned. The two chieftains walked at the head of the procession, with their heads bared, wearing long white cloaks with a red cross sewn on the front of each; and their men followed, also wearing white cloaks, as many as there were enough for in so large a company. All of them carried their weapons, for Orm and Gudmund had explained that they seldom liked to be parted from their swords, and least of all when they were in a foreign land. The King himself sat in the choir, and the church was thronged with people. Ylva was among the congregation. Orm was unwilling to let her show herself in public, for she now appeared to him more beautiful than ever, and he feared lest someone might steal her away. But she had insisted on coming to the church, because, she said, she was curious to see how reverently Orm would conduct himself when the cold water started running down his neck. She sat next to Brother Willibald, who kept a close eye on her and restrained her when she would have laughed at the white cloaks; and Bishop Poppo was also present and assisted with the rites, though he felt exceedingly feeble. He himself baptized Orm, and the Bishop of London Gudmund; then six priests took over from them and baptized the rest of the Vikings as expeditiously as possible.

When the ceremony was over, Gudmund and Orm were received privately by the King. He gave each of them a gold ring and expressed the hope that God would bless all their future enterprises; also, he said, he trusted that they would, in the near future, come and see his bears, which had now begun to show a marked improvement in their dancing.

The next day the silver was paid out by the King’s scribes and treasurers to all the baptized men, which caused great jubilation among them. Orm’s men were somewhat less jubilant than the others, because each of them had to pay his chieftain a penny; none of them, however, chose the less expensive alternative of challenging him to combat.

“With the help of these contributions, I shall build a church in Skania,” said Orm as he stowed the money safely away in his chest.

Then he put fifteen marks in a purse and went with it to the Bishop of London, who, in return, bestowed a special blessing upon him. Later that afternoon Gudmund came aboard carrying the same purse in his hand, very drunk and in capital spirits. He said that all his share of the money had now been counted and stored away, and that, all in all, it had been an excellent day’s work.

“I have been thinking over what you said the other day,” he continued, “and I have come to the conclusion that you were right in saying that five marks would be too paltry a sum for a man of my reputation to give you as a reward for the service you rendered me. Take, instead, these fifteen marks. Now that Styrbjörn is dead, I do not think I can be valued at less.”

Orm said that such generosity was more than he could have anticipated; however, he said, he would not refuse such a gift, seeing that it came from the hand of so great a man. In return he gave Gudmund his Andalusian shield, the same with which he had fought Sigtrygg in King Harald’s hall.

Ylva said she was glad to see that Orm had a good head for collecting silver, for it was not a task at which she would shine, and she thought it likely that they would have a good number of mouths to care for in the years to come.

That evening Orm and Ylva visited Bishop Poppo and bade him farewell; for they were eager to sail for home as soon as possible. Ylva wept, for she found it hard to part from the Bishop, whom she called her second father: and his eyes, too, filled with tears.

“Were I less feeble,” he said, “I would come with you, for I think I could, even now, perform some useful work in Skania, old as I am. But these poor bones can endure no further hardships.”

“You have a good servant in Willibald,” said Orm, “and both Ylva and I delight in his company. Perhaps he could come with us, if you yourself cannot, to fortify us in our beliefs and to persuade others to do as we have done. Though I fear he is not greatly enamored of us Northmen.”

The Bishop said that Willibald was the wisest of his priests and a most zealous worker. “I know of nobody more skillful at converting heathens,” he said, “though, in his own zealous enthusiasm, he is occasionally prone to be somewhat uncharitable toward the sins and weaknesses of others. I think it best that we should ask him his own feelings in the matter; for I do not wish to send an unwilling priest with you.”

Brother Willibald was summoned, and the Bishop informed him what they had in mind. Brother Willibald asked, in vexed tones, when they were intending to sail. Orm replied that he wished to depart on the morrow if the wind remained favorable.

Brother Willibald shook his head gloomily. “It is ungracious of you to give me so little time to prepare myself,” he said. “I must take many salves and medicines with me when I depart for the shores of night and violence. But with God’s good help, and if I make haste, everything shall be ready; for I am loath to be parted from you young people.”

ORM went to Gudmund and bade him greet Thorkel from him and tell him that he would not be rejoining the army, as he was sailing for home. Gudmund was grieved at this news and tried to persuade him to change his mind, but Orm said that his recent luck had been too good to last much longer.

“I have nothing more to perform in this land,” he said, “and if you had such a woman as Ylva with you, would you house her among an army of idle soldiers whose tongues slobber out of their mouths at every woman they see? My sword would never be in its sheath, and it is my wish to live with her in peace. And that is her wish also.”

Gudmund admitted that Ylva was a woman fit to tempt any man who caught the briefest glimpse of her to wander from the path of discretion. He himself, he added, would like, if he could, to sail home to Bravik without further delay, for it made him uneasy to have so much silver about him. But this he could not do, for he must return to the rest of his men whom he had left at Maldon and must, besides, tell Thorkel and Jostein what agreement they had come to regarding the distribution of the silver.

“My men here are being plundered by quick-witted women,” he said, “who swarm like flies round their silver and steal it from their very belts and breeches, once they have made them sufficiently drunk. Therefore I think it best that I should row down the river with you today, if I can get my crew assembled in time.”

They went to King Ethelred and his Archbishop to bid them farewell, and saw the bears dance miraculously on their hind legs. Then they ordered the horns to be blown, and the men took their places at the oars, where many of them performed very clumsily at first as the result of fatigue and drunkenness. They made swift progress down the river, however, and this time the watch-ships did not bar their path, though there was a lively exchange of repartee between the crews. They spent the night at anchor in the estuary. Then Gudmund and Orm parted and went their separate ways.

Ylva was a good sailor; nevertheless, she hoped that the sea voyage would not take too long, for she found it very cramped in the ship. Orm comforted her by assuring her that the weather was usually good at this time of the year and would not be likely to delay them.

“The only detour we shall need to make,” he said, “will be to a certain hill near Jellinge; and that should not take us long.”

Ylva was not sure whether it would be a wise thing to try to regain the necklace now, since nobody knew what the situation was in Jutland or even who sat upon the throne at Jellinge. But Orm said that he wanted to get this business settled by the time he reached home.

“And, whoever sits at Jellinge,” he added, “whether it be King Sven or King Erik, I do not think it likely that we shall find him there at this time of the year, when all kings like to fight. We will steal ashore at night, and if all goes well, nobody need know that we have come.”

Brother Willibald enjoyed being at sea, though it disappointed him that nobody fell ill during the voyage. He liked especially to squat beside Rapp when the latter was at the steering-oar and to ply him with questions concerning the southland and the adventures he had had there; and though Rapp was somewhat scant in his replies, these two seemed to be becoming good friends.

They rounded the Jutland cape and headed southwards, encountering no other ships; but then the wind turned against them, so that they had much hard rowing to do, and on one occasion they had to seek the shelter of the coast and wait for the gale to lessen. It was night as they rowed up toward the mouth of the river below Jellinge, but the sky had already begun to grow green with dawn when Orm finally beached the ship, some distance below the castle. He told Brother Willibald, Rapp, and two good men from the crew to follow him; but he bade Ylva to remain on board. She was unwilling to obey, but he said that it was to be so.

“In such matters as this, it is I who shall decide,” he said, “whatever may be the case later. Brother Willibald knows the place as well as you do; and, if we should encounter anyone and there should be fighting, which is possible now that it is growing light, it will be better that you should be here. We shall not be gone for long.”