The Ice Queen (5 page)

“Princess,” I began at once—I had been rehearsing this speech—“before any words pass between us, there is something that must be put right.”

“Oh?”

“You think you are speaking to a hired spy in your service, for I suppose your cousin lost no time in sending word to you about our ‘arrangement'.”

She colored just the slightest bit and looked at me intently.

“I won't deceive you; I am no such thing.”

Reaching into my purse, I took out two gold ounces—all that remained of the sum Stavko had given me—and held them out to her.

“You will find ten coins missing: nine of them went to my old crew to refit our ship. With a half of one I bought a slave girl from Stavko and let her go”—she cocked an eyebrow slightly at this—“and with the other half, less a little silver, I bought the clothes you see me in. I do not feel obliged to you for what I spent, and I herewith return the rest.”

Since the time I'd first set eyes on her, I had, without precisely knowing why, made up my mind to do this.

“How very convenient, to spend a great deal of someone else's money and yet feel no obligation.” The voice was lightly mocking, not angry. “No, don't protest. I agree with you. The money was given in a bad cause and used—I don't doubt—in good ones. You owe me nothing.”

“Thank you, Princess. I hoped you would say so.”

“Ragnvald is a loyal friend, but a man of no subtlety. Have no fears on that score, I shall ask nothing dishonorable of you. Putscha?”

The dwarf emerged from his dark corner, took the coins from my hand and vanished again. As I happened to gaze after him, I was startled to see a man's face looking back at me from the wall.

Ingigerd, following my glance, began to smile. “It's a mirror. You mean to say you've never seen your reflection before?”

“Only in the eyes of others, Princess.”

“Well, and what do you think of it?”

She unhooked the polished bronze disk from its nail and put it in my hands. A troll with a gaunt face, deep-set black eyes, a mane of black hair and ragged beard glowered back.

“As I feared, not very handsome.”

“No,” she looked mock-serious, shaking her head, “not very. I think I can guess your nick-name, let me try. Black-Beard. No? Dark-Brow, then. No again? Curly-Hair.”

“Close enough, Lady. Odd Tangle-Hair, at your service.”

“You can smile! I was beginning to fear you never would. Well, Odd Tangle-Hair, tell me how you've been spending your time with us so far.”

“Seeing the town with Stavko.”

“With whom?”

“Stavko Ulanovich, the slave-dealer. A very warm supporter of yours—”

“Oh, yes, of course. Him. A useful little man if you can bear his manners.”

(What cold repayment for his devotion, I thought.)

“We attended the assembly and found it most entertaining.” I ventured this with a smile, at the same time touching a bruise on my cheek that was still livid after a week.

But the princess was neither sympathetic nor amused. “Yes, I know all about that. Because the town militia fight like old women and the boyars would rather doze beside their ovens than take the field, we are forced to rely on mercenaries—thank God we have the wherewithal to pay for them. I only wish we could afford more!”

I shrugged with feigned bewilderment. “I couldn't follow the argument very well—your name was mentioned …”

“I should feel neglected if it weren't. The woman, the outlander, the Catholic. So easy to make me the butt of all their little grievances. Only let some poor Swedish soldier take an apple from the market without paying for it, and it's my fault. They prefer to forget that my husband began enlisting warriors from my country before he ever married me, just as his father, the great Vladimir of whom no ill can be spoken, did before him. But don't worry, I know how to deal with these malcontents, and they know it!”

I'd only meant to test her a little, not provoke her to rage. “I believe
it, Lady,” I said quickly. “That you are no ordinary woman, I've seen and heard already.”

“Have you?” She relaxed a little, leaning back in her chair. She was silent for a few moments, as if weighing what she would say. “As a girl at my father's court I had absolute freedom to speak and act as I pleased. And I made it plain to my husband-to-be that I would accept no less here. Are you a man, Odd Tangle-Hair, who believes a woman's only business is with her distaff and loom? For if you are, we shall never be friends.”

“I'd not looked for that favor in any case, Princess.”

She waved this aside and said, “Let us be frank and honest with each other, it saves so much time. For instance, what exactly do you know of me?”

This was sailing near the wind. Choosing my words carefully, I replied that her intelligence and piety were ever on her cousin's lips, and that I understood her to have been a friend to Olaf of Norway, whose death I happened to have witnessed—

She put her hand on my arm with a suddenness that startled me. “You knew him?”

“Purely by accident. Harald has probably told you already—”

“Harald has said little about anyone but himself. You tell me.”

And she made me narrate the battle and Olaf's death from start to finish in every grim detail: the leg chopped off, the neck nearly severed, the fight over his corpse in which it was dragged this way and that until it nearly came apart. By the time I was done, her cheeks were wet.

“Your feelings are strong, Princess,” I said. “And since we're being frank, I will say that I find it curious—to be so warm for a man you'd never seen in the flesh before a year ago?”

“But you saw him! You felt his courage, his strength, his passion for the Faith. The whole northern world rang of it. So, when he came to us at last, seeking refuge from the Danes who had driven him from his throne, I knew what to expect—and I was not mistaken!” She passed her hand over her eyes. “He had already sought my hand in marriage—did you know that? Years ago he had sent his skalds to my father's court, and they praised him in such language that I would have married him gladly; but my father, who was his enemy, forbade it. He favored a more advantageous match, here in Gardariki. Well. All for the best. It was God's hand at
work. As Princess of Novgorod, I could see that Olaf got the money and soldiers he needed to regain his throne. But then so soon to see him go! And then to learn of his death! But he left with my husband and me a part of himself—Magnus, his son, to foster like our own. An obligation we will honor—with our blood if need be.”

She swallowed hard and looked away.

What an extraordinary speech. These were the words of a woman in love. And though she was careful to say ‘we', I suspected that Yaroslav had little to do with it.

In a moment she was herself again. “Tell me now about this Harald whom you serve, for I have hardly been able to form an impression of him; no sooner does he arrive than he goes off on campaign. What is he like? Is he a man or only an elongated boy?”

“He is fast becoming a man, Princess, and a hard one to deal with.”

“And why do you attach yourself to him?”

“It serves my own purpose and costs me little.”

“Little so far.”

“What do you mean?”

“You expect to rise with him; very well, but you must be prepared to fall with him, too, unless you're the kind of man to whom treachery comes easily. Are you?”

“My empty purse should answer that.”

“Yes, of course,” she laughed. “Putscha?”

Again the dwarf materialized at her elbow.

“Odd Haraldsskald, I will put you to a test. You will need money for women, and drink, and so forth before your lord returns. Will you do me the favor to take back one of these gold ounces—just one, mind you—as a gift of simple friendship and nothing more? For we are agreed you would not take it otherwise.”

“I will take it with gratitude, Princess, and repay it when I can.”

“Repay? Ah me, what does he say? Does he mistrust me still?” She put on a sad expression though her eyes belied it. “Take it under what terms you like, then, and I vow that Harald is a luckier man than he knows to have you in his retinue. And now I have work to do. Putscha, see my friend out and bring back the scribe.”

“Princess?” I said.

“Yes?”

“It's nothing—I feel like a fool asking.”

“What, for heaven's sake?”

“Since I walked in your door I've smelt wildflowers or heather, I could swear it, though there's none about.”

“You smell this.” Smiling, she motioned to the dwarf, who brought from her table a vial of blue glass. She unstoppered it and held it under my nose. “Distilled from the crushed petals of roses, a flower you've never seen, I think. I put a few drops of it on my body every day. It comes all the way from Golden Miklagard, where they have the skill to put a field of flowers inside a little bottle, and it cost my husband a stack of kuny—of marten pelts—this high.” She held out her arm at shoulder level. “How he moaned! Do you like it?”

“I—yes.” It reminded me, in fact, of those delicious scents that clung to the girls in Stavko's establishment, but I thought it best not to say so.

“You're blushing! Whatever for?”

“First the mirror, then this. I have much to learn.”

She laughed—not as people do when they show you up for a bumpkin, but gently. “I should be the one to blush, Odd Tangle-Hair. At this rate, you'll soon know every secret we women have. Where do you come from that they have neither mirrors nor scent? You're not Norwegian?”

“An Icelander, Princess.”

“Ah? And you didn't like it there?”

“I liked it.”

“But—?”

“There was some trouble. I had to leave.”

“The old story. You men are never happy unless you're murdering each other. Well, I hope you will like it here with us, Odd Tangle-Hair. And now, my friend, good day.”

I took a solitary walk that afternoon and held conversation with myself. I had been prepared to dislike Ingigerd for any number of reasons. But I found her a very different woman from the one I had imagined. A woman of fierce loyalties, passionate, intelligent. A woman who did not marry, I calculated, until she was far into her twenties, and then only by
order of her exasperated father. Was it because she secretly loved a fierce viking, who sent her poems?

Despite all the blather about his virtues, this affair was passing strange. Perhaps, just because she had never seen him in the flesh, she could turn him into a figure of fancy that no other man—certainly not her husband—could hope to live up to. Could Olaf himself live up to it when they finally met? What really had happened between them? Had they consummated their love, or had she offered herself and been spurned? Olaf's piety was, by all accounts, as excessive as his bloodlust. But clearly her whole existence centered on him. Only now she had transferred that passion to little Magnus.

Often in the days that followed, having nothing else to occupy me, I found my thoughts going back again to my conversation with the princess.

I asked myself why Fate had so arranged things that at every turning I encountered Bloody Olaf: first the living man, then his corpse, then his memory. I of all people. It was decidedly unfair. I'd had to endure a year of my friend Kalf's mooning over him while I bit my tongue and kept silent. Now must I hear it all over again from Ingigerd? I almost felt as if his ghost were stalking me.

What was the man's secret? How had he fired the passions of these otherwise level-headed people? Was it possible that Kalf, Ingigerd, Dag, and so many others were wrong and I alone was right? I nearly began to doubt myself … but, no! Olaf, the terror of pagans, gouger of eyes, chopper off of hands, was my natural enemy. The broken bodies he left in his wake could just as well have been mine, or my father's, or Glum the berserker's, or Einar's. No. Let him haunt me to the last day of my life, let him infect the whole world around me with this strange enthusiasm, he would still not have my willing prayers!

And I remembered, too, I was not completely alone. There was one other—I was convinced of it—who shared my hatred of Olaf, although for other reasons. His half-brother.

If young Harald could learn to lie so smoothly, well, by the Raven, so could I.

These were some of my thoughts.

At other times they revolved around Ingigerd herself. I'd expected some mannish monstrosity in woman's dress. I found instead a woman full of charm and pleasantry—laughing sweetly, smelling of flowers.

Yet deep-minded. One who would not give up all her secrets in a day. What other loves, hates, ambitions, longings lurked behind those wise grey eyes? I made up my mind to try what I could learn.

An interesting puzzle, I said to myself. At the time it seemed no more to me than that.