The Long Ships (54 page)

Thus spoke Olof Summerbird, and many nodded thoughtfully at his words.

He and the other two chieftains now seated themselves on the three chieftain-stones, which rested on the grass bank before the Kraka Stone, and the Thing began. It was an ancient custom that those quarrels should first be decided which had originated in the arena itself, so that the first case to be debated was that of the magister. Ugge demanded compensation for the death of Styrkar, and wished to know to whom this Christ-priest belonged, and why he had been brought to the Thing. Orm, who was among the chosen twelve of the Göings, rose and replied that the priest might be regarded as belonging to him, though he was in fact no slave, but a free man.

“And one would have to travel far,” he added, “before finding a more peaceable man. He has no appetite for violence, and the only things he knows how to do are reading manuscripts and singing and winning the favors of women. And he came here on a mission which he will never, now, as things have turned out, be able to fulfill.”

Orm then told them about the magister and his mission; how he had been sent from Hedeby to offer himself in exchange for a priest who had been enslaved by the Finnvedings, but who had now been killed by them. “Which matter,” he said, “will doubtless be discussed later. But as regards the manner in which Styrkar met his death, those who saw it happen can testify. For my part, I do not think this priest capable of killing a grown man.”

Sone the Sharp-Sighted agreed that those who had witnessed the affair should be heard. “But whatever the judgment of the Thing shall be in this matter,” he said, “it shall not result in a feud being declared between the Virds and the Göings. You, Ugge, shall judge this case alone. The man is a foreigner, good for little, and a Christian to boot, so that he will not be missed much, whatever your decision. But you cannot demand compensation from us Göings for something that has been done by a man who is a stranger to our tribe.”

The witnesses were now heard. Many men had seen Styrkar topple backwards from the Stone with a loud cry; but whether anyone might have struck him from the farther side of the Stone, none could say. Not even Toke Gray-Gullsson, who sat among the Vird twelve and who had been the first to arrive at the scene of the crime, knew for certain; but he declared that the cross which the Christ-priest had been holding in his hands, and which had been his only weapon, was made of such frail twigs that it might have served as a good instrument to kill a louse with, but would have made little impression on such a tough-hided old fox as Styrkar. It was his belief, he concluded, that the old man had slipped and had broken his neck in the fall; but the people who knew best what had happened, he added, were the women, for they had been on the spot and must have seen everything; provided, he said, some means could be found of persuading them to speak the truth.

Ugge sat for a while deep in thought. At last he said that there seemed to be nothing for it but to hear what the women had to say.

“According to our ancient law,” he said, “women can be regarded as admissible witnesses; though how such a decision ever came to be arrived at is more than a man can guess. It is not our custom to use women’s evidence where we can avoid it; for while to look for truth in a man can be like looking for a cuckoo in a dark wood, to look for the truth in a woman is like looking for the echo of the cuckoo’s voice. But in this case the women are the only persons who saw exactly what happened; and the murder of a priest on holy ground is a matter that must be investigated with care. Let them, therefore, be heard.”

The women had been waiting to be called, and now appeared, all together, the young ones who had danced round the Stone and the old women who had assisted with the ceremony. They were all wearing their finest apparel and ornaments, bracelets and necklaces and broad finger-rings and colored veils. At first they appeared somewhat bashful as they walked forwards into the space between the judges and the semicircle of chosen men. They had the magister with them, looking woebegone, with his hands tied and around his neck a rope, by which two of the old women led him, as they had led the goats to the Stone on the previous evening. A great shout of laughter arose from the assembly at the sight of him entering thus.

Ugge cocked his head on one side, scratched behind his ear, and looked at them with a worried expression on his face. He bade them tell him how Styrkar had met his death; whether their prisoner had killed him or not. They were to speak the truth and nothing else; and it would be a good thing, he said, if no more than two or three witnesses should speak at the same time.

At first the women were afraid of the sound of their own voices and whispered among themselves, and it was difficult to coax any of them to speak aloud; but before long they were persuaded to overcome their shyness and began to testify vigorously. Their prisoner, they said, had gone up to the Stone and cried in a loud voice and had then hit Styrkar over the head with his cross, causing the latter to cry also; then he had dug his cross into Styrkar’s stomach and pushed him off the Stone. On this they were all agreed, though some said that the priest had struck once, and some twice, and they began to quarrel about this.

When the magister heard them testify thus, he became white in the face with terror and astonishment. Raising his bound hands toward heaven, he cried: “No, no!” in a loud voice. But nobody bothered to listen to the rest of what he had to say, and the old women gave a tug on the rope to silence him.

Ugge now said that this evidence was more than sufficient, for even the speech of women could be regarded as credible when so many of them said the same thing. Whether the murderer had struck once or twice did not affect the issue; here, he said, they had before them a clear case of priest-murder committed on holy ground.

“This crime,” he proceeded, “has been regarded ever since the most ancient times as one of the foulest that it is possible to perpetrate, and occurs so rarely that many men sit through a whole lifetime of Things without ever having to judge an instance of it. The penalty for it, which is also of ancient prescription, is, I think, known to no one here save us two old men, Sone and I; unless, perhaps, you, Olof, who reckon yourself to be wiser than us, also know it?”

It was evident that Olof Summerbird was displeased at this question; nevertheless, he answered boldly that he had often heard that the penalty for this crime was that the culprit should be hung by his feet from the nethermost branch of a tree, with his head resting on an ant-hill.

Ugge and Sone beamed with delight when they heard him give this answer.

“It was not to be expected that you would know the correct sentence,” said Ugge, “so young as you are; for to attain wisdom and knowledge takes longer than you would like to think. The proper punishment is that the murderer shall be handed over to Ygg, which in former times was our fathers’ name for Odin; and now Sone will tell us the manner in which the presentation is to be made.”

“Twenty good spears shall be found,” said Sone, “with no rot in their shafts; and to each spear, just below the end of the iron shoe, a crosspiece shall be fixed. Then the spears shall be driven into the ground to half their length, close together with their points facing upwards. On these the murderer shall be cast, and there he shall remain until his bones drop to the ground.”

“Such is the law,” said Ugge. “The only detail you omitted to mention is that he shall be cast so as to land on the spears on his back, in order that he may lie with his face toward the sky.”

A murmur of satisfaction passed through the whole assembly as they heard this punishment described, which was so ancient and rare that nobody had seen it. The magister had by now become calm and stood there with his eyes closed, mumbling to himself; the women, however, received the news of his sentence much less placidly. They clamored that this was a crazy punishment to condemn him to, and they had not intended, when testifying, that anything like that should happen; and two of them, who were related to Ugge, pushed their way through the crowd toward him, called him an old fool, and asked why he had not told them of this penalty before they had testified. They had, they said, given the evidence that he had heard because they wished to keep the Christ-priest, whom they liked and held to be more potent than Styrkar, fearing that if he was acquitted, he would be set free and go back to the Göings.

The most vehement protests came from one of the old women, who was Styrkar’s niece. Eventually she succeeded in quieting the others so that her voice might be heard alone. She was large and coarse-limbed and shook with fury as she stood there before Ugge. She said that in Värend no decision was taken about anything until the women had passed judgment, and that old men there were put out to play in the woods.

“I have nursed Styrkar, troll that he was, for many years,” she shrieked, “gaining my livelihood thereby. How shall I live now that he is dead? Are you listening to me, you crookbacked imbecile? Another priest, young and beautiful, and, from his appearance, wise and tractable also, has come and killed him, and nobody can deny that it was high time that somebody did so. And what do you suggest we should now do! Throw this young man upon the points of spears! What good will that do to anybody? I tell you that he shall be handed over to me, to replace the priest I have lost. He is a fine priest, and when the dance round the Stone was finished he performed to the satisfaction of us all; in nine months the whole of Värend will be able to testify to the efficacy of his magic. The services of such a priest will be sought by many, and all who come will bring him gifts; and I shall thereby be compensated for my loss, whether I have him as husband or as slave. What purpose will be served by throwing him upon spears? It would be better if you sat on them yourself, for it is plain that your age and learning have driven you crazy. He shall be mine, as payment for the murder he has committed, if there be any justice in the world. Do you hear that?”

She shook her clenched fist in front of Ugge’s face and appeared to be considering whether to spit in it.

“She is right, she is right! Katla is right!” cried the women. “Give him to us in Styrkar’s place! We need a priest of his mettle!”

Ugge waved his hands and shouted as loudly as he could in an endeavor to quiet them; and beside him Olof Summerbird was near to falling backwards from his stone in his delight in the wise man’s discomfiture.

But Sone the Sharp-Sighted now rose from his stone and spoke in a voice that made everyone suddenly quiet.

“Peace has been pronounced upon this assembly,” he said, “and it is a quality of wise men to endure women patiently. It would be an ill thing if we should allow the peace to be broken, and particularly ill for you, women; for we could then sentence you to be birched before the assembly, with good switches of birch or hazel, which would be sadly ignominious for you. If that were to happen, all men would snigger at the sight of you for the rest of your days, and I think none of you would wish that to happen. Therefore let there be an end to your screamings and vituperations. But one question I would ask of you before you depart from this place. Was Styrkar struck by the Christ-priest, or was he not?”

The women had now become calm. They replied with one accord that he had not so much as touched Styrkar; he had merely shouted something and raised his cross, at which the old man had fallen backwards and died. This, they declared, was the pure truth; they could, they said, tell the truth as well as anyone, if only they knew what purpose it would serve.

The women, including Katla and her captive, were now ordered to leave while Ugge debated with his chosen twelve over a suitable sentence. Several of them thought that the priest ought to be killed, for there could be no doubt that he had slain Styrkar by trollcraft, and the sooner one got rid of a Christ-priest, the better. But others opposed this argument, saying that any man who had managed to troll the life out of Styrkar was worth keeping alive. For if he had succeeded in doing this, he must also have been able to perform efficaciously upon the women; besides which, there was the old woman’s argument to be considered, for, as she had asserted, it was true that no compensation could be claimed from the Göings for the loss of her man. The end of it was that Ugge declared that Katla should keep the Christ-priest as a slave until the fourth Thing following this one, extracting from him as much service as she could during that period. Neither Sone nor anyone else had any fault to find with this judgment.

“I could not have judged the matter better myself,” said Orm to Father Willibald when they were discussing the case later. “Now he will have to get along with the old woman as best he can. He was reckoning on becoming a slave of the Smalanders anyway.”

“For all his weaknesses,” said Father Willibald, “it may be that God’s spirit was upon him last night when he went up to denounce the heathen priest and his abominable practices. Perhaps he will do great works now, for the glory of God.”

“Perhaps,” said Orm, “but the best of it is that we are now rid of him. When a man is campaigning or a-viking, it is only right that he should indulge his lust for women, even if they belong to someone else; but it seems wrong to me that a man of his mettle, a Christ-priest and a good-for-nothing, should cause women to lose all sense of decency as soon as they set eyes on him. It is not right; it is unnatural.”

“He will have plenty of opportunities to atone for his sins,” said Father Willibald, “when that old crone Katla gets her claws into him. Certain it is that I would rather be in the hungry lions’ den with the prophet Daniel, whose story you have heard me recount, than in his clothes now. But it is God’s will.”

“Let us hope,” said Orm, “that it will continue to coincide with our own.”

The Thing continued for four days, and many cases were judged. The wisdom of Ugge and Sone was praised by all, save those who received the wrong end of their decisions; and Olof Summerbird, too, showed himself to be a shrewd judge, rich in experience despite his youth, so that even Ugge was forced on more than one occasion to admit that he might, with the passing of the years, attain some wisdom. When difficult cases arose, in which the parties refused to come to any agreement and the representatives of the tribes involved in the dispute could not agree, the third judge was called upon to help them reach a decision, such being the ancient custom; and on two occasions, when the dispute lay between the Virds and the Göings, Olof Summerbird officiated as the impartial judge and acquitted himself with great honor.