The Ice Queen (43 page)

Odd and I had been working since sun-up. The sun was now at his highest when the door flew open with a bang and Gizur stormed in, his face as dark as a thundercloud.

“Found you at last! God's belly, what a day! We've ridden round the district for hours hunting for this godforsaken little cranny. Mother is exhausted; she would come along, although I need no help for what I mean to do. Collect your things, Teit, you're coming home.”

I was like someone deep in a dream who is suddenly startled awake; I clung to the shreds of it.

“No, Gizur, not yet. He's just now sailing into the harbor of Golden
Miklagard to search out his enemy, Harald. And, Odd, you stayed in Miklagard, didn't you, and rose to fame and fortune.”

“Miklagard?” sneered Gizur. “Then he's the only Icelander who ever went there and came back poor. What, no silk-lined cloak, fellow, no jeweled scabbard, no belt of silver links? Perhaps you'd like to tell us why you choose to live in squalor.”

I had asked Odd the same question once, with the same sneer in my voice. He had frowned and turned his head away then, but not before I saw the pain in his eyes. And after all these many weeks with him, I still did not know the answer.

“Speak up fellow,” said Gizur, “or has your flood of words suddenly run dry?”

“I have my reasons, priest, they don't concern you.” Odd spoke quietly, but his black brows drew together.

Gizur, as he often does, began to fume and sputter.

Meanwhile my mother, with a pained expression on her face, had gone poking all about the room, blackening her fingertip on a sooty wall, sniffing at the pantry. “When was the last time you had a proper meal, Teit?”

“I don't know; yesterday there was some porridge, I think.”

“When was the last time you had a wash, for that matter?” said Gizur, returning to the attack. You smell like a goat. And so does your friend here—his customary condition, no doubt, living no better than an animal.”

“Gizur, have a care,” I warned. “Don't judge him by what he is now. In his time he was a great skald, a brave warrior, the secret lover of the Grand Princess of Novgorod. You must address him as gospodin Odd.”

“Gospo—what? My ears must be deceiving me; did I just hear you praise a man for being an adulterer? You, who are so much purer in heart than all the rest of us put together!”

“Not praise him—but you must understand that he was ensnared by a sensuous and vengeful woman. The first time he lay with her she—”

“Enough! Stop at once before you pollute our mother's ears! What have you been learning in this pagan hell-hole?”

“You're too hasty, brother. He's not quite a pagan, as we all thought, not really. He was baptized—admittedly by the Greek rite, but still, that counts for something.”

“Not with me it doesn't. Listen, Teit, you have a responsibility to the
family; you aren't just anyone's son. What would our flock think of us if it should ever get about where you've been and what you've been doing? Or does the family's position mean nothing to you anymore?”

“Ask that of our father, Gizur, this was his idea. He ordered me to record Odd's story.”

“Well, his eccentricities must be borne with, but not yours. He told you to spend two or three weeks? Very well, you've had the three. But not a day more. Now, for the last time, Teit, are you ready to leave?”

“No, Gizur, I'm not!” I was astonished at these words of mine. Where did they come from? “Gizur, rant as much as you please, I'll leave when my task is done and not a minute sooner. What I'm recording now is exactly the part of Odd's saga that concerns King Harald of Norway. Alas, we were sadly deceived about that man. Granted he was a brave warrior, but in every other way detestable. I know that won't please father but it's the truth.”

“I don't care if it's the truth or not!” shouted my brother. He turned on Odd: “Now, look you, you've done some mischief to Teit. I can hardly believe I'm speaking to the same boy. If there's magic in this, you had better watch out, my friend. I'm warning you, there's the drowning pool for people like you. Or, you might just find your house burned down around your ears one fine day!”

“Gizur, in the name of God,” I cried, “don't
you
be a house-burner! Yes, Odd's a blasphemer, but he's shown me something of life that I can never learn at home, things I ought to know. I think father understood that when he brought me here. I'll be a better priest for it—if I decide to be one.”

“If?” said Gizur with a stunned expression. “If, he says! I've had enough! Give me that book and all the loose sheets; these, at least, I will burn, and then, brother of mine, I will drag you home by your ears!”

But at that point our mother said firmly, “No, Gizur, I forbid it. Your father gave his blessing to this enterprise, for whatever reason, and you shall burn nothing before he returns from Rome.”

He glared at her, but backed down a step. “All right, but Teit is leaving with us now and that's flat.” He took me by the arm but I shook him off. Again he laid hands on me and in a sudden flash of anger—it shames me to say it—I hit him on the chin with all my strength and knocked him down. He sprawled on the floor with his cassock up around his knees.

There was shocked silence.

Odd was half out of his seat, with his hand on the hilt of his dagger. His eyes searched me from top to toe as though seeing me for the first time—or so it felt—and the hint of a smile touched his lips. I can scarcely describe my own feelings: horror and thrilling excitement all at once.

Gizur got slowly to his feet and touched his mouth, where a trickle of blood was starting. In a husky voice he said, “Well, brother, let us thank God you didn't have a sword or an ax in your fist or I would be lying dead in this filthy straw. He stabbed his finger at Odd: “For this we have you to thank!”

Odd's gaze swung from me to Gizur and back to me again. “You do amaze me Teit Isleifsson,” he said, “I didn't suspect I had let such fighter into my house.” He sank back slowly onto his bench. “And now I'm going to tell you something: go home with your brother.”

“What? No, Odd, I won't be bullied. I was bullied into coming here when I didn't want to. I won't be bullied into leaving.”

“Go home, Teit,” Odd said again. “Obey your brother. If you stay I'll not speak another word to you.”

“Why, Odd Tangle-Hair? You don't fear the likes of Gizur?”

“Oh, but I do,” he said softly. “He doesn't threaten lightly, your brother, and I'm too old to survive another house-burning. My father turned cowardly at my age. It's in the blood. Now go and leave me in peace.”

I, who had not cried since boyhood, felt hot tears on my cheeks. Silently, I went at once and gathered up all my papers and stuffed them into my satchel. I didn't say good bye when I went out the door, and didn't look back.

I thought sorrowfully to myself: Farewell Odd Tangle-Hair that was. I will never walk the streets of Golden Miklagard with you now. And farewell Odd that is. You will sink into decrepitude and madness, like your father before you, and not a soul will mark your passing.

But then I thought: No! Impossible. I don't accept it! God will not let this happen—you hear me, Odd Thorvaldsson? With God's help we'll manage it somehow. We aren't done with each other yet, you and I.

The tenth to eleventh century was the Age of Conversion for northern and eastern Europe, which until that time had been almost untouched by Christianity. Saints Olaf and Vladimir
¹
stand out as major figures in that momentous process. Unfortunately, the written sources for this age are often little better than works of fiction themselves
²
.

Among the major characters, Odd, Stig, Stavko, Putscha, Einar Tree-Foot, and Dag are fictitious. The historical characters are as follows:

Teit Isleifsson, Odd's amanuensis, grew up to become the greatest Icelandic scholar of his generation. Turning the family seat of Skalholt into a school, throughout a long lifetime he taught Latin and theology to the grandsons of viking warriors. It is only my fancy, however, that his father Bishop Isleif contemplated writing a biography of Harald. It would be another two centuries before Snorri Sturluson and his contemporaries composed biographical sagas of the Norwegian kings.

Yaroslav the Wise, as he is depicted in the Russian Primary Chronicle, is noted for his piety, his learning, his promotion of education, and his fondness for the company of monks. His personality is conveyed best by comparison with his brother, Mstislav. The latter, according to the Chronicle, was strong, brave, ruddy-faced, boisterous and generous—qualities which are never imputed to Yaroslav. We read there also that the prince had a deformed foot—a fact which has been confirmed by examination of his skeleton, entombed in the Church of the Holy Wisdom in Kiev.

Of Ingigerd the Chronicle relates nothing but the bare fact of her death in A.D. 1050, four years before that of her husband. Far more interesting are the Scandinavian sources. In one, The Tale of Eymund, the Princess appears as willful, fearless, and conspiratorial; capable of plotting the assassination of a traitorous captain of the druzhina. While her attempts on Harald's life are fictitious (as far as we know), they are, at least, not out of character. Ingigerd is depicted, with her daughters Yelisaveta and Anna, in the murals which decorate the interior of Yaroslav's Church of the Holy Wisdom in Kiev, but the stylized Byzantine portrait displays her true features as little as it reveals her secret thoughts.

Jarl Ragnvald and his son Eilif are historical (though it is only my notion that the former was loathsome and the latter stupid). It would seem that the concentration of power in the hands of Ingigerd, Ragnvald, and Eilif, backed by their foreign mercenaries, constituted a sort of Swedish ‘mafia' at court. The growing preferment of Harald, culminating in his receiving joint command of the druzhina with Eilif, must have gone down hard with them.

The plot of
The Ice Queen
springs from the constellation of Ingigerd-Yaroslav-Harald-Magnus-Yelisaveta: all historical figures, and yet no contemporary source gives a believable interpretation of the relationships among them. For the present attempt I claim nothing more than psychological plausibility.

Since Harald's gigantic stature is, to my mind, so much a factor in the way others react to him, it is worth noting that references to it in the Icelandic sources are many and clear. For comparison's sake we may note that Tsar Peter the Great, whose diet was, if anything, less wholesome than a Norseman's, attained a height of six feet seven inches, was immensely strong, and was at age eleven mistaken by a stranger at court for a sixteen year old.

I note a few other particular points below.

The embassy of the Tronder jarls seeking Magnus for their King is factual (excluding, of course, Odd's part in it) and coincides pretty nearly with Harald's departure from Novgorod. It is not hard to see a connection between the two events. Cheated of the crown he believed himself entitled to, Harald was forced to seek his fortune elsewhere. His career in Miklagard is narrated in
The Guardsman
, the next volume of this series.

The question of what language, or languages, the Rus spoke in Yaroslav's
day cannot be decided with certainty. Russian scholars have generally sought to eliminate the Norse element in Rus culture, while Westerners have perhaps exaggerated it. It is well-known that the Vikings, wherever in Europe they settled, quickly abandoned their language for that of the people they lived amongst. To take the best known instance, it is unlikely that William the Conqueror and his Norman (that is, Northman) knights, in 1066, still spoke their native Danish. Why should the same not be true for the Rus, whose forefathers, according to the traditional account, came with Rurik the Dane in the eighth century to rule over the Slavs? On the other hand, Yaroslav's mother was Scandinavian; his wife, of course, spoke Norse as her mother tongue; and, in general, the prince surrounded himself with Swedish expatriates, with whom surely he could converse. For my purposes, I have taken the middle ground: that while Slavonic was the general language of the court, Yaroslav and his family, as well as other Rurikids like Mstislav, were bilingual. Beyond that narrow circle, some Rus perhaps spoke Norse poorly and most of them not at all. All scholars are agreed that by the generation following Yaroslav's, at latest, the Norse language was entirely extinguished in Russia.