Tim Severin - King's Man

Yet I persevered. Life at Harald's court was the closest to the ideals that I had heard about when I was a child growing up in Greenland, and I reassured myself that Harald genuinely respected the traditions of the north. He surrounded himself with royal skalds and paid them handsomely for verses which celebrated past glories. His chief skald was another Icelander, Thjodolf, but his other poets - Valgard, Illugi, Bolverk, Halli, known as the Sarcastic, and Stuf the Blind — were almost as deft at producing intricate poems in the courtly style, whose quality Harald himself was capable of judging for he was a competent versifier himself. For lighter moments he employed a court dwarf, a Frisian by the name of Tuta, who had a long broad back and very stumpy legs and who made us laugh by parading around the great hall of the palace dressed in Harald's full-length coat of mail. This armour had been specially made for him in Constantinople and was so famous that it even had its own name — 'Emma'. Harald himself always dressed stylishly, sporting a red and gold headband when not wearing his crown, and on formal occasions the glittering sword that he had been awarded as a spatharokandidatos in Miklagard.

Regrettably, the sword and mail coat were not the only reminders of his days at the Basileus's court. In Miklagard Harald had observed how to wield power pitilessly and to remove rivals without warning. Now I watched as Harald eliminated one potential threat after another, suddenly and without mercy. A nobleman who grew too powerful was summoned to a conference and rashly entered the council hall without his own bodyguard in attendance. He found the hall in darkness — Harald had ordered the shutters closed - and was murdered in the dark. Another rival was promoted to command of Harald's army vanguard and sent to lead an attack on a strong enemy position. Harald then delayed his own arrival on the battlefield so the vanguard and its commander were slaughtered. Before very long those who called Harald a 'hard ruler' were outnumbered by those who knew him more plainly as 'Harald the Bad'.

This, then, was the man I continued to serve faithfully, and to whom I acknowledged myself as 'king's man' while I clung stubbornly to the hope that he would stem the steady advance of the White Christ faith and lead his people back to the happier days of the Elder Way. Had I been more honest with myself, I might have admitted that my dream was unlikely ever to be realised. Yet I lacked the courage to change my way of thinking. The truth was that my own life had reached a plateau and I was set in my ways. I was forty-six when Harald ascended the Norwegian throne, but instead of accepting that I was at a time of life when most men would have been considered to have entered old age, I still felt I might have a hand in shaping events. And Runa was keeping me young.

For six months of every year, I put Harald's court behind me and went back to my beloved Vaster Gotland. I timed my arrival for mid-autumn when it was time to harvest the meagre crops grown in the rocky fields wrested from the forest around our settlement, and my return soon acquired its own small ritual. I would come home on foot and dressed in sombre travelling clothes, not my expensive court dress, and in a leather pouch I carried a special gift for Runa - a pair of gilt brooches worked with interlaced patterns to fasten the straps of her outer tunic, a silver belt, a necklace of amber beads, a bracelet of black jet cunningly carved in the likeness of a snake. The two of us would go inside the small wooden house that I had built for us close beside her sister's home, and, the moment we were away from curious onlookers, her eyes would sparkle with anticipation. Handing her the present, I would stand back and watch with delight as she unwrapped the item I had folded inside a length of coloured silk which later she would sew into trimmings for her best garments. After she had admired the gift, Runa would reach up and give me a long and tender kiss, then she would carefully put the item into the treasure casket that she kept hidden in a cavity in the wall.

Only after that reassuring welcome would I report to Folkmar and ask what farm work needed to be done. He would set me to cutting grain, helping slaughter and skin cattle for which we would have no winter feed, or salting down the meat. Then there was firewood to be cut, gathered and stacked, and the roofs of our houses had to be checked for wooden shingles that had come loose or needed replacing. As a young man I had detested the repetition and stern rigour of this country life, but now I found the physical labour to be reinvigorating, and I enjoyed testing just how much of my youthful strength remained, pacing myself as I worked, and finding satisfaction in completing the tasks allocated to me. In the evenings as I prepared to go to bed beside Runa, I would say a prayer of thanks to Odinn for having brought me from an orphaned childhood through battle, slavery and near death to the arms and warmth of a woman that I deeply loved.

To my surprise I found that my neighbours regarded me as some sort of sage, a man deeply learned in the ancient wisdom, and they would come to me for instruction. I responded readily because I was beginning to understand that the future for the Old Ways might not lie with great princes like Harald, but among the ordinary country folk. I reminded myself that 'pagan', the word the Christian priests used disparagingly to describe non-believers, meant no more than someone who was of the countryside, so I taught the villagers what I had learned in my own youth: about the Gods, how to observe the Elder Way, how to live in harmony with the unseen world. In return my neighbours made me a sort of priest, and one year I came back to find that they had constructed a small hof for me. It was no more than a little circular hut set in a grove of trees, a short walk from the house where Runa and I lived. Here I could sacrifice and pray to Odinn undisturbed. And once again Odinn heard me, for in the eighth year of Harald's kingship, Runa delighted me by informing that she was with child, and in due course she gave birth to a boy and a girl, both healthy and strong. We named them Freyvid and Freygerd in honour of the Gods who were also twins.

BEFORE THE TWINS had learned to walk, Harald sent me on a mission which was a foretaste of his grand ambition - nothing less than to become a second Knut by achieving mastery over all the Norse lands. He summoned me, alone, to his council room, and stated bluntly, 'Thorgils, you speak the language of the Scots.'

'No, my lord,' I answered. 'As a youth I learned the language of the Irish when I was a slave among them.'

'But the Irish language is close enough to the Scots tongue for you to conduct secret negotiations without the need for interpreters?'

'Probably, my lord, though I have never put it to the test.'

'Then you are to travel to Scotland on my behalf, to visit the King of the Scots, and sound out whether he would be willing to make an alliance with me.'

'An alliance for what purpose?' I dared to enquire.

Harald watched me closely for my response as he said, 'To conquer England. He has no love for his southern neighbours.'

I said nothing, but waited for Harald to go on.

'The king's name is Magbjothr, and he has held the throne of Scotland for fourteen years. By all accounts he's skilled in warfare. He would make a powerful ally. There's only one problem: he mistrusts the Norse. His father fought our Norse cousins in the Orkneys, when Sigurd the Stout was earl there.'

Harald's mention of Sigurd the Stout brought a twinge of pain to my left hand. It was an involuntary response to the familiar stiffness of an old wound.

'I fought at Earl Sigurd's side in the great battle of Clontarf in Ireland, where he died trying to overthrow the Irish High King,' I said, choosing my words carefully. I refrained from adding that I was the last man to hold aloft Sigurd's famous raven banner, and had received a smashing blow to my hand when the banner's pole was wrenched from my grasp.