The Ice Queen (4 page)

These unfortunates had now begun to creep, crawl, and stagger towards us, uttering piteous cries and reaching out their bony hands for alms. Stavko, with an expression of alarm, hurried us away. At that moment, we heard the loud pealing of a bell coming from the market side across the river. Up and down the street people stopped and turned toward the sound, while in the houses shutters were thrown open and heads thrust out. From all sides people poured into the street and soon a river of them was streaming toward the bridge.

“Assembly bell,” said Stavko, betraying some annoyance. “No doubt a
prank. Bell rope is there for any drunken fool to pull who wants to make spectacle of himself. Ignore it, friends, let us continue walk.”

I gave Einar a questioning look. What weren't we supposed to see?

From up ahead of us, with a jingle of harness and the clatter of hoofs on the paving logs, there came in sight a troop of horsemen, forcing their way through the mob and making likewise for the bridge. At their head rode a handsome man whose black beard rippled over his scarlet-clad breast. Stavko, like everyone else, snatched off his hat and bowed low as the figure passed. If I hadn't known otherwise, I would have taken him for the prince himself.

“Thinks himself nearly as great,” said Stavko under his breath. “Dyuk Osipovich, Mayor of Novgorod. He leads boyar faction; is no friend of ours.”

“In that case, friend Stavko, we must certainly follow him.”

The crowd bore us along while Einar, hanging on my shoulder, struck out viciously with his crutch at every hapless Novgorodets who jostled us. Once across the bridge we found ourselves back near the spot from which Einar and I had set out that morning: in the market next to the palace, or, more precisely, in a long cleared area between the two, big enough to hold many hundreds of people.

“The assembly meets on Yaroslav's doorstep?”

“Prince and his loyal subjects prefer it so,” Stavko answered coolly. “Troublemakers may say what they please, but they know who listens.”

“Is there so much rebellious talk, then?”

“We are turbulent people,” he shrugged. “If prince is bad, into mud with him!' is common saying of ours.”

“Is that likely to happen now?”

“Oh no, is all just talk and grumbling. With Yaroslav and druzhina away, boyars think to frighten Princess Ingigerd. How little they know her spirit! She will stamp foot—they will run away like mouses!”

I had for some time been puzzled by this attitude of his. “Stavko Ulanovich, you yourself are not Swedish—”

“Me? I am Rus! As pure-blooded as any.”

“Then how is it you're so warm for Ingigerd and her countrymen?”

“Business,” he shrugged. “Swedish merchants encourage trade and we all profit.” True enough, and yet I couldn't escape the feeling that there was something else, some more personal reason that he was not telling
me—perhaps because he didn't know it himself. Was it possible that this man who dealt in women's flesh—bought and sold, owned and used it as he pleased—was it possible that he longed to believe in a woman stronger than all those others, stronger, in fact, than himself? A woman who could own and command him? Was the slave-master offering the princess his humble adoration?

We listened for a time, while Dyuk the Mayor and other boyars took turns haranguing the crowd—mostly in Slavonic, in which I could only detect occasionally the name of Ingigerd. But at every mention, it was greeted with groans and catcalls from all over the audience. This, said Stavko, was merely their hired claque. Looking about me, I wasn't so sure.

Leaning close to my ear, he interpreted: “They are proposing law to limit number of Swedes and other Northmen in city, levy head tax on them, forbid them to own land.”

“What will happen if it passes?”

“Impossible! Prince, too, has friends among boyars, and princess knows very well how to use them.”

Suddenly and without warning fists began to fly all around us and we found ourselves pushed and pummeled on every side at once. “Dear me,” said Stavko, “it seems we're voting already.” We were alternately yanked apart and dashed together again in the heaving crowd. “—forgot to explain—vote with fists—turbulent people—bridge!”

It was that very place towards which the crowd carried us. First Stavko and then Einar disappeared in separate swirling battles. Now I was on the bridge, and giving as good as I got.

Great One-Eyed Odin! It felt fine after so many weeks of sickness, idleness, fretting, and regretting—just to hit a face! Life pounded in my veins. It was great fun until some troll lifted me off my feet with one hand around my neck and the other on my belt, held me for a moment over his head, and lightly tossed me.

I bobbed in the freezing river, gasping for breath, while scores of other bodies plummeted all around, sending up geysers of water.

Then with a wave and a cry of thanks to all My Lord Novgorod's peculiar citizens, I struck out for the shore.

Einar and I stumbled into each other on the bank, both of us bruised and wet but otherwise sound. Stavko got a blow on the forehead, which kept him in bed for three days, nursed by the lovely Jumayah. The fist fight—vote, that is—on the ‘Swedish question' was inconclusive, he told us when we went to call on him. He was quite sure nothing more would happen now before Yaroslav's return.

As the following days succeeded each other, time began to weigh on me with nothing to do but roam about the palace. I soon knew every corner of it.

The lowest story of the building served as store room, stable, and slaves' quarters. The second story, reached by the outer stairs, consisted of a wide vestibule (as I have already said), which gave onto a banqueting hall large enough to feast a hundred men at one time. In the middle of one wall sat a pair of carved and gilded thrones for Yaroslav and his princess.

As in all Rus houses, there was no open hearth for cooking or warmth, but instead, a huge clay oven decorated with tiles, which occupied one whole corner of the room. As the nights grew colder, we spread our bedding out beside it and even on top of it. Beyond the great hall on one side was a big kitchen, while on the other there extended a maze of little rooms linked together by corridors. Some contained beds in which four or five could sleep side by side, but others were bare. On every wall of the great hall and of the smaller rooms, too, I found painted scenes of hunting
and war, or sometimes row upon row of bright red cockerels and other birds, or again, twining vines and flowers.

As I think I have mentioned, the only part of the palace which was built of stone was a tower three stories high that was entered by a door leading off the hall. Here, I was told by a servant, the princess and her children had their private quarters and I was warned to stay out.

To conclude my description of the palace, I must say that it was not very clean—and I speak as a plain Icelander, not some fastidious Greek. Bones and the debris of old meals lay in corners where they had been thrown and forgotten; broken crockery was everywhere (for the Rus, when they are drunk, love to break things), and the floors here and there were puddled with beer or piss.

On my wanderings I caught occasional glimpses of Ingigerd coming or going, always to the sound of rustling brocade and the tramp of many feet: deep in discussion with a circle of men, and followed by a train of servants, pages, and by a sleek greyhound bitch who was never out of her sight.

The children, too, I saw sometimes, scurrying here and there, accompanied by dwarf, nurse, or tutor (though never by their mother). The older ones were much taken up with their lessons. This servitude was invented by the great Vladimir, their grandfather, who valued learning highly—not alone for the royal children but for those of the boyars as well, and for girls as much as boys. Yaroslav, his son, took after him in this respect (if in no other) and was reputed to be the greatest scholar in the land—a prodigy who could read books in five languages. Needless to say, his own children were kept hard at it. Even little Anna, who could not have been more than eight, I watched laboring for a whole morning with her stylus over a strip of birch bark, engraving their peculiar letters on its soft pulp.

When not occupied with schooling, however, they went where they pleased, ignored by the grownups, wheedling food from Cook in the kitchen, or playing the sort of noisy games I had first seen them at. Even the baby, whose name was Vsevolod, crawled everywhere on his fat knees, brushing with disaster in a hundred different forms, noticed at the last moment by Nurse, snatched away, spanked, scrubbed, or fed with honey, set down again, and again forgotten.

And sometimes I would see Magnus sitting alone on a corner seat in the vestibule, gazing out of a little window that overlooked the river.
I spoke to him once when Einar was with me. He was greatly impressed with the old Jomsviking's wounds and his bloodcurdling stories, and would not let us go. Anyone could see that the boy was lonely. Orphaned, cut off from his home, resented by Ingigerd's children because of the very intensity of her love for him, the reasons for which he could not fathom. And now, on top of all, threatened by Harald, who was enough to scare anyone, let alone this little mite.

It was not hard to feel sorry for him, even though he was a petulant, moody, and unappealing child. We had been talking together a long time before he asked innocently who we were. With some hesitation I confessed that we belonged to Harald's retinue. Instantly he turned his face away and would not say another word.

The following day I received a summons to wait upon Princess Ingigerd.

It was delivered by a dwarf—a man past middle age whose ungainly little body supported a large and noble head, perfectly formed and covered with crisp, silver curls. I had seen him already among the princess's attendants. He walked with a swagger, as much as his misshapen legs would allow, and stuck out his barrel chest like a bantam cock. He was richly dressed in fur-trimmed cloak, yellow-dyed boots, and a ruby earring in one ear. An enormous bunch of keys on a big ring jangled at his waist as he bustled along, and he was never seen without his weapon—a wooden short sword, quite cunningly carved and painted, which he wore stuck in his belt. His Norse was even worse than Stavko's. “Gospodin,” he said, using the Slavonic title by which anyone of the warrior class or above must be addressed, “come tower.”

His message delivered, he stalked away, not deigning to look back to see if I followed.

We mounted the spiral staircase to its second story and entered an antechamber where several young women sat gossiping and laughing while they worked at their needles. The grand little man scowled at them and they fell silent at once and began to stitch with great concentration. Halting before an oaken door on the farther side of the chamber, he knocked with a wrought iron knocker which had been placed at a height
convenient for him.

A woman's voice bade us come in.

We found ourselves in a large room whose furnishings consisted of a tall chest against one wall, a couple of chairs and a table, a broad bed, and the indispensable oven. On the wall above the bed, a row of gilded icons reflected the light of candles. Otherwise, the room was lit only by a splash of afternoon sun that filtered through the mica panes of a high window. Beneath the window sat Ingigerd. She was speaking in rapid Slavonic to a secretary who scratched away furiously on his strip of birch bark. She looked up as we entered, and the dwarf spoke a few words to her.

“Thank you, Putscha,” she answered him in Norse. This was a courtesy she rarely omitted, to speak only Norse in the presence of Northmen. “I may need you later.”

He bowed himself back into the angle formed by the wall and the clothes chest and shrank into its shadow. He had a little stool there that he sat upon, so that his head did not show above the chest, but the effect was exactly as if he wore one of those magical caps that old stories tell of and had vanished into thin air. When I thought of it later, it struck me how remarkably easy it was to forget he was there at all.

“Sirko, stay!” This was to the greyhound bitch that had bounded forward to growl at my feet. Obediently it retreated to her side and sat on its haunches, panting, its muscles trembling under its glossy hide. Another word of command sent the scribe away; he closed the door softly behind him.

“Odd Thorvaldsson,” she addressed me, “you must think us very rude, but there are always outlanders coming and going here and no one knew who you were until Magnus mentioned it to me. Accept our apologies.” She motioned me nearer. “Come sit beside me, I want to talk with you.”

If she recognized in me the shabby spectator of her recent battle with her daughter, she gave no sign of it; and I didn't remind her.

I have not yet described Ingigerd. Her forehead was broad and high, her grey eyes large and slightly protruding—which added to the impression they gave of seeing very deeply into things. Her lips were full, her teeth clean, and her breath sweet. It was a face both less and more than beautiful: no feature of it perfect, yet in a room full of pretty women it was she you would notice first and remember longest. Though she was
somewhere between thirty and forty, and the mother of five children, she was still slim, as high-strung women often are. Her worst feature, some might say, was her hands, which were big for a woman, with long strong fingers. Like any married lady, she covered her head with a kerchief to hide her hair from all but her husband. Her head cloth was white linen, held in place by a circlet of gold.