Tim Severin - King's Man

'We must warn King Harald that he faces the English army on his own,' I exclaimed, queasy with the knowledge of what a fool I had been. Then, to hide my humiliation, I added bitterly, 'So now, Skule, you will learn what it's like to face the huscarls and their axes.'

William, Duke of Normandy, had used me as a pawn.

FOURTEEN

THE VOYAGE NORTHWARD to warn Harald was a misery for me. I spent my time regretting how gullible I had been, then tormenting myself by imagining how I should have seen through William's subterfuge. Worse, now that I knew the extent of the duke's guile, his next move was clear to me: Godwinsson would have his spies in the duke's camp, and the duke would make it possible for them to relay to their master the news that, for the time being, the Norman invasion was at a standstill. Thus, as soon as Harold was confident that the Normans posed no immediate threat, the English king would head north to beat back the Norwegian invaders. The prospect of what might follow a Norwegian defeat filled me with despair. From the day I had first met Harald of Norway long ago in Miklagard I had imagined him as the last, best champion for the Old Ways of the north. Often he had disappointed me, but he still retained an enduring quality. Despite his arrogance and his despotism, he remained the symbol of my yearning that it might be possible to restore the glories of the past.

'Our fleet crossed from Norway to the Shetlands late in August,' Skule Konfrostre confirmed as we journeyed, adding to my discomfort. 'Two hundred longships we were, as well as smaller vessels, the largest fleet that Norway could muster. Such a

spectacle! Harald has staked everything on this venture. Before we set sail, he went to the tomb of his ancestor St Olaf and prayed for success. Then he locked the door to the tomb and threw the keys into the River Nid, saying he would not return there until he had conquered England.'

'If you are a Christian, my friend, you may well find yourself fighting other Christians,' I retorted grumpily. 'If Harald overwhelms the English, then his next enemy in line will be Duke William and his Norman knights, and they are convinced that the White Christ is on their side. The duke himself constantly wears a holy relic around his neck, and his senior army commander is a bishop. Mind you, he's the duke's half-brother, so I don't suppose he was appointed for his religious qualities.'

'I'm not a Christian,' said Skule stubbornly. 'As I said, Harald left nothing to chance. He did not forget the Old Gods either. He made sacrifices to them for victory, and he cut his hair and nails before we sailed, so that Naglfar will not benefit if we fail.'

I shivered at the mention of Naglfar, because the young Norwegian had touched on my darkest premonition. Naglfar is the ship of corpses. At Ragnarok, the day of the final dread battle when the Old Gods are defeated, Naglfar will be launched on the floods created by the writhings of the Midgard Serpent lying deep within the ocean. Built from the fingernails of dead men, Naglfar is a monstrous vessel, the largest ever known, big enough to ferry all the enemies of the Old Gods to the battlefield where the world as we know it will be destroyed. If Harald the Hard Ruler had trimmed his nails before sailing for England, then perhaps he foresaw his own death.

Our grey-bearded skipper's opinion only added to my dejection. 'The king should never have sailed in the first place,' he interrupted. 'He should have heeded the omens. Christian or otherwise, they all point towards disaster.' The skipper, like many mariners, was swayed by omens and portents, and my silence only encouraged him to continue. 'Harald himself had a warning dream. St Olaf appeared to him and advised him not to proceed. Said it would result in his death, and that's not all.' He looked at me, still in my black and white gown. 'You're not a White Christ priest, are you?'

'No,' I replied. 'I am a follower of Odinn.'

'Then let me tell you what Gyrdir saw on the very day the fleet sailed. Gyrdir's a royal officer, and he was standing on the prow of the king's ship, looking back over the fleet. It seemed to him that on the prow of every vessel was perched a bird, either an eagle or a black raven. And when he looked towards the Solund Islands, there, looming over the islands, was the figure of a huge ogress. She had a knife in one hand and a slaughtering trough in the other, and she was chanting these lines:

'Norway's warrior sea king

Has been enticed westward

To fill England's graveyards

It's all to my advantage

Birds of carrion follow

To feast on valiant seamen

They know there will be plenty,

And I'll be there to help them.'

I felt sick to my stomach. I remembered the words of the message that I had sent to Harald. I had referred to him as 'the feeder of eagle of sea of carrion vulture'. I had meant that Harald was the sea eagle, the image that I had held of him from the day I had first set eyes on him in Constantinople. Now I realised that the words in my letter could be interpreted to mean that he was the one who would deliver the carrion flesh of his own men to the ravens and eagles. If so, I was the one who had enticed him and his men to his doom with my letter from Normandy.

'You said there were other portents?' I asked shakily.

'Several,' the seaman replied, 'but I can remember the details of only one. Another of the king's men dreamed it. He saw our fleet sailing towards land. In the lead was King Harald's longship flying its banner, and he knew that the land they were approaching was England. On the shoreline waited a great host of warriors, and in front of them was an ogress - perhaps it was the same one, I don't know. This time she was riding a gigantic wolf, and the wolf held a bleeding human carcass in its jaws as easily as a terrier grips a rat. When Harald and his men came ashore, both sides joined battle, and the Norwegian warriors fell in swathes. The ogress collected up their corpses and hurled them, one by one, into the mouth of the great wolf until its jaws ran with blood as the beast gulped down its feast of victims.'

Now I knew for certain that my own power of second sight, dormant for so many years, had returned. When I had composed my report in Normandy, I had referred to Harald as a sea eagle and hidden Duke William's identity under the guise of the wolf which the ogress Yggr rides. In doing so, I had touched unwittingly upon the future: every death among Harald's men would be sustenance for the wolf, the name I had chosen for Duke William. Failing to recognise my own augury, I now quailed at the prospect that my premonition would prove correct. Should William emerge victorious, I would have helped put on the throne, not a possible champion of the Old Ways, but a voracious follower of the White Christ.

Even the weather conspired to depress me. The wind stayed as a gentle breeze from the south-west, so our ship ran speedily up the narrow sea between England and Frankia. I knew the same wind was ideal for William to launch his invasion, yet when we passed the port of St Valery and our skipper took the risk of sailing closer inshore to look into the roadstead, we saw the great assembly of William's ships still riding quietly at anchor or securely hauled up on the beach. Clearly, the Duke of Normandy had no intention of making the crossing until he heard that Harold Godwinsson had turned his attention to countering the threat from Norway.

Thanks to that favourable wind we made a near-record passage, and my hopes of averting disaster rose when we encountered one of King Harald's warships. It was patrolling off the river mouth into which Harald had led his fleet less than three days before. There were a few shouted exchanges between the two vessels, and Skule and I transferred hastily to the warship. Her captain, understanding the urgency of our mission, agreed to navigate the estuary at night and row up against the current. So it was that, a little after daybreak on the twenty-fifth of September, I came in sight of the muddy river foreshore where Norway's massive invasion fleet lay anchored. To my relief, I saw that the fleet was intact. The river bank swarmed with men. Harald's army, it seemed, was safe.