The Ice Queen (33 page)

“You see, Kalv Arnesson?” Harald sneered. “Here's loyalty! Here's good faith! Look at 'em—they know who's the rightful king in this room!”

But one man went and stood by Kalv.

Then another.

When the third man stepped forward, Harald tried to drag him back, but while he struggled with him two others crossed over. Then the formation dissolved entirely. In a mass they crossed over to Kalv's side and, clashing their swords against their shields, hailed Magnus as their new king. Finally, only I and six others, shiftless men who were not greatly liked by their comrades, remained with Harald. I could see I was in bad company.

“Tangle-Hair!” It was Dag's voice. “Come over, you'll be welcome among us.”

But I stood hesitating. Why should Magnus welcome me? Skalds a-plenty, not tainted by Harald's service, would be competing for his favor. He might even despise me, for it's a rare thing that a skald deserts his lord for any reason short of death.

Nonetheless, I almost took that step.

But at that moment Inge flung out her arm at Harald and shrieked with crazed laughter, “Harald Sigurdsson, you too must swear allegiance to your king, God damn you—you upstart, you thrall, you pig farmer's son! Crawl to him, water his feet with your tears, plead for your very life! Beggar! Murderer! Seducer of little girls! You refuse? Then take your shameless face from my hall and let the earth swallow you up, if it has
the stomach for you! By God, you'll live in Hell as surely as Olaf lives in Heaven!” Her voice was cracked, her breath came in sobs.

But Harald was every bit her equal in fury. Words burst from him like red hot stones from a volcano's mouth: “Whore! Adulteress!”

“Eh?” said Yaroslav, who had gone unnoticed for some minutes now. “What does the captain of my druzhina say?”

I felt the blood drain from my heart.

Shoving men left and right, Harald plunged through the crowd to stand face to face with the Grand Prince. “Yaroslav Vladimirovich, God only knows how many men your wife has slept with—half the druzhina would not surprise me—but I know for a fact that Odd Thorvaldsson, whom I called a friend, has plowed her furrow a hundred times—the two of them laughing at you and me all the while!”

“Liar! Filthy liar,” screamed Ingigerd.

“Will you call your own daughter a liar, Princess? Eight weeks ago her dwarf, Nenilushka, went to your apartment looking for her father. She entered your chamber but, seeing you asleep, she was just turning to go when who should come walking in but our good friend, Tangle-Hair! The girl was afraid and hid herself in her father's place. All that she witnessed—my lusty skald pounding away on you fit to break his breeches, she told next morning to her mistress, your daughter; and she came straight to me with it!”

My thoughts raced back to that night. It was the daughter in the room with us! And Putscha really hadn't known why I was angry with him when I met him on the stair.

No sooner had Harald finished speaking, than Putscha, his handsome features twisted in rage, drew his wooden sword and ran at his daughter. But before he could harm her, Harald caught him by the scruff of his neck, lifted him high in the air, and flung him down on his head. Nenilushka, with a cry, rushed over to him. The scene that followed, in which she tried to tend her injured father while he did his best to thrash her with his toy weapon, and both of them so puny and deformed that neither one could subdue the other—this scene, I say, was found by many in the audience to be so droll that, despite the high drama of the moment, they laughed out loud. Harald put an end to it by banging their two curly heads together and kicking each in a different direction.

At the same time, Inge demanded of her husband, “Yaroslav, will you
permit this elongated freak to slander me on no better grounds than the ravings of a simpleton?”

“Simple she is,” Harald shot back. “She barely understood what she had seen but, by God, she did not make it up!”

“But the whole thing's absurd, outrageous!” stammered Yaroslav. “My wife and young Odd? I warn you, gospodin Harald, if you're pulling my beard, you shall feel my anger. What proof have you?”

“Torture, Grand Prince—torture will provide all the proof you need. Put them to the trial of water and the trial of hot iron. Start with that little abomination, Putscha. Look at him, his guilty knowledge is written all over his face. Then Thordis, the nurse—there were no secrets kept from that troll-hag.” A feeble cry escaped the old woman's lips. “And if that doesn't satisfy you, then here, here is one whose word you can't doubt. This one here, whom we both called friend, my own skald. Torture Odd Tangle-Hair. And when you've squeezed everything out of him, you have my leave to hang him!”

With a blood red haze before my eyes, I drew my sword and charged at him. I was nearly on him when two of his men tackled me. While they held my arms, Harald hit me in the face and drove his other fist into my stomach. I dropped to the floor gasping and he kicked me two or three times in the kidneys for good measure.

I describe the rest of this scene with a detachment I did not feel at the time.

The bishop had looked as stunned as everyone else by Harald's words, but in a twinkling he saw his chance to deal a death blow to the princess. Yefrem was of a boyar family and he shared their hatred of Ingigerd.

“Fornication!” he thundered. “Fornication, Grand Prince, is a sin which only God is fit to judge. Yaroslav Vladimirovich, why has your wife gone more than a year without conceiving? It is because she uses magic to avoid bearing her lover's child and so cannot bear yours! You are too lenient with her, Grand Prince, and always have been. If you had beaten her as a husband ought, you would not find yourself betrayed by her now—by her, I say, never mind this foolish youth,”—touching me with his shoe—”for it is always the woman, tainted with the sin of Eve, who is most abandoned to lust and corruption!”

With a groan, Yaroslav shrank back in his throne.

Sensing that he'd hit the mark, Yefrem soared higher. Ingigerd and
I had made a special point, he cried, to fornicate on Easter Sunday, on Epiphany, and other holy days. We had used positions which God intended only for brute animals, and had done other lewd things which a Christian could not decently name. (What a fertile imagination this bishop had! He was only guessing, of course, but he was doing pretty well.) “And the crowning blasphemy, Prince, is that she stood godmother to her lover at his baptism. O, Woman”—he turned his fiery eye on her—“were you so sated with fornication that you must spice it with incest! Yaroslav, are you a faithful son of the Church, and do you submit yourself to Her authority in all things touching on morals?”

The prince could only nod.

“Then, you must—must, I say, check the anger that swells in your bosom; stifle the sense of outrage which urges you to draw your sword and strike off this Bathsheba's head. It is a hard thing, I know, but I ask it of no ordinary man. You must leave her to be judged by God alone—that is, by His representative on earth—His anointed bishop!”

At this, there were shouts of approval from the boyars in the hall. Yaroslav looked like he was ready to faint. He had no desire to slay his wife with his own hands; he hadn't the nerve for it. Now the bishop offered him a way to let his cowardice look like strength.

“As—you say, Bishop,” he assented in a voice barely audible.

Then for the first time I saw fear in Inge's eyes.

“Now Yaroslav, see here.” It was Ragnvald, jowls a-quiver, shouldering the bishop aside. He looked frightened, and with good reason. What would become of him if his cousin Ingigerd fell from grace? “In God's name, let us not be hasty here—”

He got no farther than that for now Dyuk bustled forward, commanding his militiamen to seize Ingigerd and take her to the convent of St Mary's outside the city. “The rest of you arrest the dwarf and him”—he pointed at me—”and lock 'em up in the jail.”

But now Yngvar and his Swedes—Ingigerd's countrymen—made their presence felt. They would kill to defend her.

“Back away, you men!” ordered the mayor, drawing his sword. “We've slaughtered Swedes in Novgorod before now.” His boyars, too, reached for their swords.

“In God's name,” croaked Yaroslav, “no bloodshed, I beg you. If my wife and Odd Thorvaldsson are innocent they have nothing to fear.”

Reluctantly, the Swedes stood back.

“Thank you, Grand Prince,” said Dyuk. “I expected no less from Yaroslav the Wise. Take them away.”

Harald's eyes met mine as my jailers hauled me to my feet. Not a glimmer of apology in them. I expected none. His own hopes in ruins, what more natural than that he should want to bring down the rest of us out of sheer malice. I remembered Einar Tree-Foot's words to me: You're in a cage with two wolves who want to tear each other to pieces; mind they don't rend you instead.

What pained me even more than Harald's treachery was the face Volodya turned to me—cheeks burning with shame, and tears in his eyes, though he fought them back: because I, his mother's lover, had betrayed his friendship and cheapened his honor. And I had. There was no denying it and no room for pardon. Someday, if I lived long enough, he would come to kill me.

My last sight as they dragged me away was of little Magnus, looking lost and bewildered, his lopsided crown held up by one large ear, and flanked by the nine rapacious jarls, any one of whom could have made a mouthful of the child.

As for the Tronder jarls, they appeared delighted, and why not? Not only had they gotten a king and made a great deal of money on the side, but they had been treated to an absolutely cracking good show. Nothing this entertaining had ever happened in Nidaros!

The Rus jail is a unique structure, consisting of a single high-walled wooden cell with a small barred window in it but no door. It is entered by climbing a ladder to the top—speeded by the point of the jailer's spear—and lifting up one side of a heavy iron grating, about four foot square, that covers an opening in the middle of the flat roof. A prop placed underneath the grating allows just enough room for a body to squeeze through. The drop to the floor is eight or nine feet.

First I and then Putscha landed hard on the straw-covered floor. The vacant-eyed wretches who were our fellow prisoners (two skeleton-thin men and a woman with her filthy child) barely looked up as we thudded into their midst.

The jailer dropped the grate and fastened it with an iron bolt. He pressed his ugly face against the bars. “Take your ease, gentlemen,” he chuckled. “Being as it's summer you'll be tolerable cozy, unless it rains. In winter they always dies within a day or two. As to vittles, a pan of gruel is sent in through the little window down there and the slops go out the same way—and not a great amount of difference between 'em, ha, ha! Good day to you.”

The place of our confinement was not Yaroslav's jail (he had one on the palace grounds) but My Lord Novgorod's own, maintained for the city by the mayor and his men. It stood in the Nerev End, close by Dyuk's house. A dozen of the Novgorod militia had marched us here and now stood guard outside.

My situation, from whatever angle I considered it, was grim. At the very least, I would be tortured into admitting my affair with Inge. But more likely I would never live that long. Ragnvald, of course, would want me dead. His Swedish countrymen had backed off today, but he, with his deep purse, would soon screw up their courage. And then there were the Norwegians. Little Magnus now had an army at his command and he was devoted to his foster-mother; he would not want me to slander her in court. Either group, and most likely both together, could overpower the Novgorod militia.

Putscha said nothing but his eyes followed me as I paced the cell. It was anger, not fear, that had the upper hand with me. Harald had violated the bond between a lord and his skald. Without a thought, he threw away my life for the sake of his grudge against Ingigerd. That made me his enemy. If I lived—if I lived—I would kill him. Where Ingigerd and Eilif had failed, I would succeed. We Icelanders are patient men when it comes to vengeance.

The little patch of sky overhead darkened gradually to the deeper blue of a midsummer's night. Outside, Dyuk's militiamen still kept guard. Putscha turned his face to the wall and slept. I could not. Who would strike at me first? How would it come? Finally, I must have drifted into sleep.

Towards morning, we were roused by the bump of the ladder against the wall and the creak of the jailer's steps. His face came in view again as he propped the grating up and lowered a knotted rope ladder which he fastened with a hook. If we would not climb up of our own will, he said, he would send the guards down to persuade us.

Moments later, the dwarf and I stood together in the dark street, ringed by armed men. Nearby a cock crowed. Presently, the mayor, leading a fresh company of militia, arrived to take charge of us.

After much time and temper were lost in a fruitless search for the manacles and leg-irons (it was hard to keep these items from being stolen by boyars who used them on their private prisoners) we were marched up Sherkova Street to the northern slope of the citadel where Saint Sophia's thirteen lofty spires stood out black against the sky.

Close by the cathedral was the bishop's palace, a large and handsome dvor not much inferior to Yaroslav's own. Filling up the broad expanse in front of it were several hundred armed men—the combined forces of
the Rus boyars and the city militia. They were here to see the detested Ingigerd paid back at last for her foreign, high-handed ways, and to make sure that no one—not even Yaroslav himself—interfered to save her. More Rus fighters lined the river bank below the citadel and guarded the nearer end of the bridge against an attack from the outlanders' quarter.

There was a surge of excitement in the crowd when we came in view. Dyuk was greeted with cheers. Some shouts were aimed at me—mostly inquiring how the princess was in bed. There seemed to be more raillery than real anger in them. But it was different with Putscha; the jeers aimed at Ingigerd's lackey were vicious. He stolidly ignored them.