Tim Severin - Sworn Brother

Again, I was being sparing with the truth. I did not tell Aelfgifu that my father Leif, known to his colleagues as 'the Lucky', had never been married to my mother, either in the Christian or pagan rite. Nor that Leif s official wife had repudiated her husband's illegitimate son and refused to have me in her household. That was why I had spent most of my life being shuttled from one country to the next, searching for some stability and purpose. But it occurred to me at that moment, as I lay next to Aelfgifu, that perhaps my father's luck spirit, his hamingja as the Norse say, had transferred to me. How else could I explain the fact that I had lost my virginity to the consort of Knut, ruler of England, and royal claimant to the thrones of Denmark and Norway?

It all happened so suddenly. I had arrived in London with my master Herfid only ten days earlier. He and the other skalds had been invited to a royal assembly held by King Knut to announce the start of his new campaign in Denmark, and I had gone along as Herfid's attendant. During the king's speech from the throne, I had been aware that someone in Knut's entourage was staring at me as I stood among the royal skalds. I had no idea who Aelfgifu was, only that, when our eyes met, there was no mistaking the appetite in her gaze. The day after Knut sailed for Denmark, taking his army with him, I had received a summons to attend Aelfgifu's private apartments at the palace.

'Greenland, Iceland, Ireland, Scotland . . . you are a wanderer, aren't you, my little courtier,' Aelfgifu said, 'and I've never even heard of Vinland.' She rolled onto one side and propped her head on a hand, so that she could trace the profile of my face, from forehead to chin, with her finger. It was to become a habit of hers. 'You're like my husband,' she said without embarrassment. 'It's all that Norse blood, never at home, always rushing about, constantly on the move, with a wanderlust that wants to look beyond the horizon or incite some action. I don't even try to understand it. I grew up in the heart of the English countryside, about as far from the sea as you can get. It's a calmer life, and though it can be a little dull at times, it's what I like. Anyhow, dullness can always be brightened up if you know what you are doing.'

I should have guessed her meaning, but I was too naive; besides, I was smitten by her sophistication and beauty. I was so intoxicated with what had happened that I was incapable of asking myself why a queen should take up with a young man so rapidly.

I was yet to learn how a woman can be attracted instantly and overwhelmingly by a man, and that women who live close to the seat of power can indulge their craving with speed and certainty if they wish. That is their prerogative. Years later I saw an empress go so far as to share her realm with a young man - half her age - who took her fancy, though of course I never stood in that relationship to my wondrous Aelfgifu. She cared for me, of that I am sure, but she was worldly enough to measure out her affection to me warily, according to opportunity. For my part, I should have taken heed of the risk that came from an affair with the king's wife, but I was so swept away by my feelings that nothing on earth would have deterred me from adoring her.

'Come,' she said abruptly, 'it's time to get up. My husband may be away on another of those ambitious military expeditions of his, but if I'm not seen about the palace for several hours people might get curious as to where I am and what I'm doing. The palace is full of spies and gossips, and my prim and prudish rival would be only too delighted to have a stick to beat me with.'

Here I should note that Aelfgifu was not Knut's only wife. He had married her to gain political advantage when he and his father, Svein Forkbeard, were plotting to extend their control beyond the half of England which the Danes already held after more than a century of Viking raids across what they called the 'English Sea'. Aelfgifu's people were Saxon aristocracy. Her father had been an ealdorman, their highest rank of nobility, who owned extensive lands in the border country where the Danish possessions rubbed up against the kingdom of the English ruler, Ethelred. Forkbeard calculated that if his son and heir had a high-born Saxon as wife, the neighbouring ealdormen would be more willing to defect to the Danish cause than to serve their own native monarch, whom they had caustically nicknamed 'the Ill-Advised' for his uncanny ability to wait until the last moment before taking any action and then do the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time. Knut was twenty-four years old when he took Aelfgifu to be his wife, she was two years younger. By the time Aelfgifu invited me to her

bedchamber four years later, she was a mature and ripe woman despite her youthful appearance and beauty, and her ambitious husband had risen to become the undisputed king of all England, for Ethelred was in his grave, and - as a step to reassure the English nobility - Knut had married Ethelred's widow, Emma.

Emma was fourteen years older than Knut, and Knut had not bothered to divorce Aelfgifu. The only people who might have objected to his bigamy, namely the Christian priests who infested Emma's household, had found a typically weasel excuse. Knut, they said, had never properly married Aelfgifu because there had been no Christian wedding. In their phrase it was a marriage 'in the Danish custom', ad mores danaos - how they loved their church Latin — and did not need to be set aside. Now, behind their hands, they were calling Aelfgifu 'the concubine'. By contrast Knut's earls, his personal retinue of noblemen from Denmark and the Norse lands, approved the dual marriage. In their opinion this was how great kings should behave in matters of state and they liked Aelfgifu. With her slender figure and grace, she was a far more attractive sight at royal assemblies than the dried-up widow Emma with her entourage of whispering prelates. They found that Aelfgifu behaved more in the way that a well-regarded woman in the Norse world should: she was down to earth, independent minded and at times - as I was shortly to discover - she was an accomplished schemer.

Aelfgifu rose from our love bed with typical decisiveness. She slid abruptly to the side, stepped onto the floor — giving me a heart-melting glimpse of her curved back and hips — and, picking up the pale grey and silver shift that she had discarded an hour earlier, slid the garment over her nakedness. Then she turned to me, as I lay there, almost paralysed with fresh longing. ‘I’ll arrange for my maid to show you discreetly out of the palace. She can be trusted. Wait until I contact you again. You've got another journey to make, though not nearly as far as your previous ones. Then she turned and vanished behind a screen.

Still in a daze, I reached the lodging house where the royal skalds were accommodated. I found that my master, Herfid, had scarcely noticed my absence. A small and diffident man, he wore clothes cut in a style that had gone out of fashion at least a generation ago, and it was easy to guess he was a skald because the moment he opened his mouth you heard the Icelandic accent and the old-fashioned phrases and obscure words of his profession. As usual, when I entered, he was in another world, seated at the bare table in the main room talking to himself. His lips moved as he tried out various possibilities. 'Battle wolf, battle gleam, beam of war,' he muttered. After a moment's incomprehension I realised he was in the middle of composing a poem and having difficulty in finding the right words. As part of my skald's apprenticeship, he had explained to me that when composing poetry it was vital to avoid plain words for common objects. Instead you referred to them obliquely, using a substitute term or phrase — a kenning — taken if possible from our Norse traditions of our Elder Way. Poor Herfid was making heavy weather of it. 'Whetstone's hollow, hard ring, shield's grief, battle icicle,' he tried to himself. 'No, no, that won't do. Too banal. Ottar the Black used it in a poem only last year.'