She looked at him, and recalled the neighborhood louts she knew; and suddenly the headlong blood overran her. Crying and laughing, she came to him.
They sought shelter together. She knew a spring where trees gave murmurous lee and summer had mellowed the grass into hay.
Helgi abode in the woods, not wanting anybody to pry and leer. She sought him daily, smuggling along food which neither of them truly tasted. They in the hut marked that something had come over her, but she slipped free of their watchfulness. Not that that was very much; nobody hereabouts would take to wife a girl whose belly did not show she would give him children.
At the right time, Helgi went away. He told her not to be frightened if a ship came. When that happened and everyone else fled, she stayed. The richly clad man who leaped ashore told her he was the Dane-King. “I wouldn’t have cared if you were only a gangrel,” she gasped, and fainted.
Afterward she found her foster-folk and coaxed them back. Helgi gifted them lavishly before he sailed off with Yrsa.
He could not leave his fleet, which he had told to stand by at Fyn. Men would scorn him, did he give up his yearly faring and moon lovesick ashore. So he turned Yrsa over to his brother Hroar and then put out to sea. For him and her alike, the next months were weary.
Said Queen Valthjona to her husband: “I think she’ll be more than just another of Helgi’s doxies.”
“Maybe.” Hroar tugged his beard and scowled. “Ill is this. A thrall-born crofter-brat!”
“No, now, she’s a sweet girl,” Valthjona said. “Besides, for the good name of the Skjoldungs, I’ll have to take her in hand.”
There was much that a lady must know: everything about the running of a big household; arts such as weaving and brewing; good dress, good manners, good speech; the lore and rites of the high gods and the ancestors; who her man’s friends were, who his unfriends, and how to deal with each. Yrsa could not learn it all in a day.
“Yet she’s willing,” said Valthjona to Hroar, “and had I begun that lowly, I’d have mastered what I must slower than she does.”
Aside from missing Helgi, Yrsa was a gladsome soul, every day singing while she flitted about her tasks. She kept many beasts, dogs and horses and birds, and made much of them. She did not like to go hunting. On the other hand, in a boat she was as deft and gleeful as any boy. Young herself, she frolicked amongst the youngsters at Hart. Humbly reared, she was friendlier toward hirelings and thralls—even listening to their long-drawn tales of woe and trying to help—than Hroar or Valthjona, though these were reckoned kindly.
“And yet,” said the queen to the king, “she knows their work so well, having done it herself, they don’t twice try cheating or slacking on her. Not that she has them whipped. She asks in the mildest tone if they’d rather serve someone else. Of course they wouldn’t.”
“Hm, yes, I’ve come to like her myself,” Hroar said.
“She’s of good stock,” Valthjona said. “Her mother may or may not have been a thrall as was told her. But if so, I swear she was a highborn woman taken captive. And her father, why, he may have been a king.”
When Helgi came home and saw Yrsa in linen and furs and gold, the keys of his household at her belt, graciously greeting him, he stood as if hammer-smitten. Toward dawn of that night, he said that being his bedmate was not good enough for her. He would make her his queen.
And thus he did. Their wedding feast was talked of for years.
Hroar took that chance to befriend his new-caught islander chieftains. He invited them, and by gifts and fair
words he bound them to the Skjoldungs. “Yrsa’s brought us this, at least,” he remarked to Valthjona.
“Do you hold it against her that she stands in the way of Helgi making a more useful marriage?” she asked. “Why, he can take as many wives as he pleases.”
“None other do please him,” said Hroar. “He doesn’t even keep lemans any more.” He smiled at Valthjona. “Ah, well, I’m like that myself.”
Yrsa kept on learning how to be a lady, until folk said that young though she was, Leidhra had seldom had so fine a queen. They marked, too, that Helgi grew more and more mild. He began to spend his summers in Denmark, doing Hroar’s kind of work. If less patient than his brother, he was equally just. Men became happy to give their lawsuits into his hands. They thought he talked things over with Yrsa and that she softened his sternness.
Young she was, however. For two years she got no child. In the third year she had a boy.
That was a long and hard birth, upon Yule Eve to boot. Helgi sat in his hall, drinking, hearkening to a skald, talking to his men. What he said made scant sense; and ever he turned his head doorward, as if to strain through the storm outside to hear cries of pain in the lady-bower.
At last the midwife came. In a huge hush, save for the roaring of fires and gale, she walked, bearing a bundle which she laid on the earth before the high seat. Helgi sat still. Sweat gleamed on his brow and cheeks, reeked from his clothes.
“I bring you your son, King Helgi,” said the midwife.
“And Yrsa?” croaked from him.
“I hope she does well, my lord.”
“Give me our son.” The hands shook which Helgi lifted, to take the baby and put him on his knee.
Next day, being sure Yrsa would live, he slaughtered a herd of horses and oxen in the holy shaw, and called men to a feast only less mighty than his wedding. Himself he poured water upon the boy and named him Hrolf. Warriors who had fared beside him from end to end of
the known world, clanged blade on shield and hailed their atheling.
Yrsa was slow to get back her full health. She never bore another child. Nonetheless she and Helgi stayed happy together. They rejoiced in their Hrolf. He was small but handsome, merry, quick on his feet and quick of wit.
Those were quiet years for Denmark. Still, the brothers held a close eye on Götaland and Svithjodh, where much was happening.
The Göta-King Hugleik—maybe in search of fame to match Helgi’s—took a war-fleet past Jutland and Sax-land, to Frankish country. There he harried about; but the Franks trapped him and his, and he fell in battle. Among the few Götar to win free was Bjovulf, who swam in his byrnie out to their ships. Sad was his homecoming. For this doughtiness, the Götar would make him their lord. He refused, and himself raised Hugleik’s son Haerdredh before the Thing. However, as the strongest headman after Ægthjof died, Bjovulf must needs steer the land in all but name.
At that time, the Swede-King in Svithjodh was Egil. Like other Ynglings, he was a spendthrift offerer to the gods, and a wizard besides. Maybe a spell of his went wrong; anyhow, once a bull which he was about to give broke loose, gored its way past the thralls already hanged in honor of Odin, and escaped to the wilderness. Long did it roam, wreaking harm upon folk. King Egil led huntsmen after it. He rode from them in those leafy reaches, and suddenly came upon the beast. He cast his spear. The bull shook loose the barb, thundered forward, laid open the king’s horse and tossed him to earth. Egil drew sword. The bull got in first. A horn stabbed him to the heart. Then the king’s men arrived and did away with the brute. Afterward they bore Egil away and buried him at Uppsala.
He had had a brother named Ottar. Now strife over the lordship broke out between Egil’s son Aali, and Ottar’s sons Asmund and Adhils. It raged in Svithjodh for years. Asmund fell, and a beaten Adhils fled into Göta
land. The Götar, under King Hærdredh, backed him. But when their host entered Svithjodh, Aali was again victorious and Hærdredh himself met death.
The Götar took Bjovulf for their new king, as they had wanted to do all along. He called on his kinsman and friend Hroar, who sent warriors. In another fight, on frozen Lake Vänern, Aali died. Adhils rode to Uppsala and was hailed King of the Swedes.
Hroar and Bjovulf thus had hopes of a lord in Svithjodh who would be thankful to them. Furthermore, this was no warlike man. Rather, Adhils went deeper into spellcraft than any Yngling before him. Having gained what he wanted, he left the world in peace as far as he was concerned.
Even so, when the Skjoldung brothers helped him they made a mistake. They did not know this right away. Other sorrows came upon them first.
Seven years had passed since the day that Helgi found Yrsa on the strand, when Queen Olof came for her revenge.
VI
The crofter dared do no otherwise than seek out Olof and tell her how a seafarer who said he was the Dane-King had borne off the girl she gave him. She sat unmoving until, very faintly, she quirked a smile. From then on she was always eager to hear news from Denmark. It did not come readily, because she never let on that anything had changed and folk still feared speaking to her of Helgi Halfdansson. But in this way and that, she learned how he and one Yrsa, whose parentage was unknown, were happily wedded.
“You shall get grief and shame, Helgi, where today you have honor and gladness,” she vowed, alone with her ghosts.
Time passed, though, for she could not fare off at once like a man. Moreover, she found joy in thinking about what anguish lay in her bestowal. Foremost was her need to make sure he would not strike back. To that end she
wove a web of alliances, both with other Saxons and with Jutes to the north. After what had happened in the islands, these lords knew they must stand together if they wanted to stay free. But Olof worked and waited until she was certain their greed and quarrelsomeness could not be used to pry them apart.
At last she made known that she would fare to Denmark in quest of understanding with the Skjoldungs. Folk liked this. It would much help trade if the dread of war could be lifted. She had only three ships. Therefore none thought it odd that she chose a month when she knew Hroar and Helgi would be away from home, making their round of the shire-Things. She could establish herself with their queens, sound those women out, win their friendship and thus a good word to their husbands.
The Saxon craft came down Roskilde Fjord and moored at the docks before the town. A number of merchantmen were already on hand. It bustled around warehouses and the gaily decked booths which traders had set up—men, wives, horses, dogs, cattle, swine, children atumble among the livestock, here maybe a whore, yonder maybe an outlander from as far off as the Frankish realms, a broiling racket and a swirl of colors. High rose the stockade behind, at each corner a watch-tower where gleamed the helmets and byrnies of warriors on guard, and the heads of outlaws moldered on stakes. Above that wall could be seen the sod roofs of many houses, green and flower-flecked now in summer. Smoke drifted savory toward the gulls which shrieked in a snowstorm of wings.
On either side the land rolled back from sun-glittery water, cleared save for woodlots, plowed and planted, rich and peaceful. High on a hill, ringed by a holy oaken-shaw, a shingle-built temple lifted roof upon roof. Nearby, mighty amidst its outbuildings, the hall called Hart raised antlers which flamed with gold.
“They’ve done right well, yon brethren,” said her skipper to Olof.
She stood on the foredeck, fists clenched at her sides: a small woman, her gown sea-stained, gray streaks in her
hair and lines graven deep in a face where the broad bones stood stark, nonetheless stiff of back and haughty of look. “Maybe they won’t forever after,” she said, and beckoned the marshal of her household troops. To him she gave a most exact message. He and several of his men strode to Hart, in mail they had carefully polished, spears aloft, cloaks of red and blue blowing off their shoulders.
While Helgi was gone, Yrsa’s custom was to bring her son Hrolf and stay with Valthjona. Those women liked each other. Besides, Hroar’s dwelling was better than anything in Leidhra. Olof had learned this.
Her men asked to see Yrsa alone. She received them in a bower where she sat spinning with her maidens. The girls made big eyes when the shaggy Saxons trod into their room.
“Welcome,” smiled Yrsa. “Talk has buzzed, how three more ships have docked this day. Whence come you and what would you?”
“I hight Gudhmund, lady.” The marshal’s way was as rough as his form of the Northern tongue. Folk had not the manners at Olof’s little offside court which they did here. “I bring you greeting from my queen.” And he told who she was.
“Why, how wonderful!” Yrsa clapped her hands, though she reddened as deeply as any of her maidens. While the tale of her husband’s doings long ago in Als was not common talk any more, she had heard it. “Olof would at last be our friend? Of course, of course! Let her come at once.” She turned to a girl. “Thorhild, go find the cooks—”
“Hold, lady,” said Gudhmund. “My queen told me to tell you, she would on no account be a guest here.”
Yrsa frowned. “What?”
“She has a word for you, lady, if you will come to her.”
Yrsa’s scowl deepened. Queen Valthjona might have warned her to refuse so insulting an invitation, had Valthjona been there. But Yrsa felt she had better learn what this was all about. She took time to dress well: in a
white gown embroidered with green vines and leaves, linen headdress, golden chain around her neck and golden coils on her arms, shoes of kid buckled with silver, a scarlet cloak trimmed with ermine. She summoned guardsmen to ride along. Almost, she let the Saxons walk, then at the last moment thought they should not have to be humbled just because their queen was bitchy, and ordered horses saddled for them.
In color and clatter, between gaudy shields and under bright spears, Yrsa rode forth to her doom.
At the dock she dismounted, left her men ranked, and herself sprang lithely onto the foredeck of the ship. For a while she and Olof clashed eyes. The crowd ashore, goggling at the sight, grew still. Only the gulls cried, a breeze whittered, wavelets clucked on strakes, tackle creaked.
“Welcome to Denmark,” said Yrsa slowly. “Why would you not be our guest?”
Still Olof stared at her. In seven years, the barefoot strand-lass had become a woman. Not tall either, Yrsa likewise walked straight and supple; bronze hair, gray eyes, gently molded face were good to see; small dimples made by laughter edged her lips. Even today she could not really glower.