Tim Severin - Sworn Brother

By then I had worked out that he was trying to find a different way of saying 'a sword'.

'Herfid!' I said firmly, interrupting his thoughts. He looked up, irritated for a moment by the intrusion. Then he saw who it was and his habitual good humour returned.

'Ah, Thorgils! It's good to see you, though this is a rather lacklustre and empty house since the other skalds sallied forth to accompany the king on his campaign in Denmark. I fear that I've brought you to a dead end. There will be no chance of royal

patronage until Knut gets back, and in the meantime I doubt if we’ll find anyone else who is willing to pay for good-quality praise poems. I thought that perhaps one of his great earls whom he has left behind here in England, might be sufficiently cultured to want something elegantly phrased in the old style. But I'm told they are a boorish lot. Picked for their fighting ability rather than their appreciation of the finer points of versifying.'

'How about the queen?' I asked, deliberately disingenuous. 'Wouldn't she want some poetry?'

Herfid misunderstood. 'The queen!' he snorted. 'She only wants new prayers or perhaps one of those dreary hymns, all repetitions and chanting, remarkably tedious stuff. And she's got plenty of priests to supply that. The very mention of any of the Aesir would probably make her swoon. She positively hates the Old Gods.'

'I didn't mean Queen Emma,' I said. 'I meant the other one, Aelfgifu.'

'Oh her. I don't know much about her. She's keeping pretty much in the background. Anyhow queens don't employ skalds. They're more interested in romantic harp songs and that sort of frippery.'

'What about Thorkel, the vice-regent, then? I'm told that Knut has placed Thorkel in charge of the country while he is away. Wouldn't he appreciate a praise poem or two? Everyone says he's one of the old school, a true Viking. Fought as a mercenary, absolute believer in the Elder Faith, wears Thor's hammer as an amulet.'

'Yes, indeed, and you should hear him swear when he's angry,' said Herfid cheering up slightly. 'He spits out more names for the Old Gods than even I've heard. He also blasphemes mightily against those White Christ priests. I've been told that when he's drunk he refers to Queen Emma as Bakrauf. I just hope that not too many of the Saxons hear or understand.'

I knew what he meant. In Norse lore a bakrauf was a wizened old hag, a troll wife, and her name translates as 'arse hole'.

'So why don't you attach yourself to Thorkel's household as a skald?' I insisted.

'That's a thought,' Herfid said. 'But I'll have to be cautious. If word gets back to Knut that the vice-regent is surrounding himself with royal trappings, like a personal skald, the king may think that he is putting on airs and wants to be England's ruler. Knut delegated Thorkel to look after the military side of things, put down any local troubles with a firm hand and so forth, but Archbishop Wulfstan is in charge of the civil administration and the legal side. It's a neat balance: the heathen kept in check by the Christian.' Herfid, who was a kindly man, sighed. 'Whatever happens, even if I get an appointment with Thorkel, I'm afraid that there won't be much of an opportunity for you to shine as my pupil. A vice-regent is not as wealthy as a king, and his largesse is less. You're welcome to stay on with me as an apprentice, but I can't possibly pay you anything. We'll be lucky if we have enough to eat.'

A page boy solved my predicament three days later when the lad knocked at the door of our lodgings with a message for me. I was to report to the queen's chamberlain ready to join her entourage, which was leaving for her home country of Northampton. It took me only a moment to pack. All the clothing I owned, apart from the drab tunic, shoes and hose that I wore every day, was a plum-coloured costume Herfid had given me so that I could appear reasonably well dressed at court. This garment I stuffed into the worn satchel of heavy leather I had stitched for myself in Ireland when I had lived among the monks there. Then I said goodbye to Herfid, promising him that I would try to keep in touch. He was still struggling to find a suitable substitute phrase to fit the metre of his rhyme. 'How about "death's flame"? That's a good kenning for a sword,' I suggested as I turned to leave with the satchel over my shoulder.

He looked at me with a smile of pure delight. 'Perfect!' he said, 'It fits exactly. You've not entirely ignored my teaching. I hope that one day you'll find some use for your gift with words.'

In the palace courtyard Aelfgifu's entourage was already waiting, four horse-drawn carts with massive wooden wheels to haul the baggage and transport the womenfolk, a dozen or so riding animals, and an escort of a couple of Knut's mounted huscarls. The last were no more than token protection, as the countryside had been remarkably peaceful since Knut came to the throne. The English, after years of fighting off Viking raiders or being squeezed for the taxes to buy them off with Danegeld, were so exhausted that they would have welcomed any overlord just as long he brought peace. Knut had done better. He had promised to rule the Saxons with the same laws they had under a Saxon king, and he showed his trust in his subjects - and reduced their tax burden - by sending away his army of mercenaries, a rough lot drawn from half the countries across the Channel and the English Sea. But Knut was too canny to leave himself entirely vulnerable to armed rebellion. He surrounded himself with his huscarls, three hundred of them all armed to the teeth. Any man who joined his elite guard was required to own, as a personal possession, a long two-edged sword with gold inlay in the grip. Knut knew well that only a genuine fighter would own such an expensive weapon and only a man of substance could afford one. His palace regiment was composed of professional full-time fighting men whose trade was warfare. Never before had the English seen such a compact and lethal fighting force, or one with weaponry so stylish.

So I was surprised to observe that the two huscarls detailed to escort Queen Aelfgifu were both severely maimed. One had a stump where his right hand should be, and the other had lost a leg below the knee and walked on a wooden limb. Then I remembered that Knut had taken the huscarl regiment on his campaign in Denmark; only the invalids had been left behind. Even as I watched the huscarls prepare to mount their stallions, I was already revising my opinion of their disabilities. The one-legged man limped to his horse, and though he was encumbered with a round wooden shield slung across his back, he bent down and removed his wooden leg and, with it still in his hand, balanced for a moment on a single foot before he gave a brisk, one-legged hop and swung himself into the saddle. There he tucked the false limb into a leather loop for safe keeping, and began to tie a leather strap around his waist to fix himself more firmly in place.

'Come on, stop fiddling about. It's time to ride!' he bellowed cheerfully at his companion, who was using one hand and his teeth to untangle his horse's knotted reins, and getting ready to wrap them around the stump of his arm, 'Even Tyr didn't take so long to get Gleipnir ready for Fenrir.'

'Shut up, Treeleg, or I'll come across and knock that stupid grin off your face,' came the reply, but I could see that the one-handed man was flattered. And rightly so. Every Old Believer knows that Tyr is the bravest of the Old Gods, the Aesirs. It was Tyr who volunteered to put his hand into the mouth of the Fenrir, the hell wolf, to lull the beast's suspicions while the other Gods placed Gleipnir, the magic fetter, on the hell wolf to restrain him. The dwarves had made the fetter from six magical ingredients — 'the sound of a cat's footfall, a woman's beard, a mountain's roots, a bear's sinews, a fish's breath and a bird's spit' — and Gleipnir did not burst even when the hell hound felt his bonds tightening and struggled with a fiend's strength. Meanwhile brave Tyr lost his hand to the hell wolf s bite.