Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS) (14 page)

That took till nearly midday. I went into the kitchens of Asgard, and found Freda. I asked her,

‘Who does your brewing?’

‘I do, who else? Why?’

‘I want some mash.’

‘Take your pick. Here’s the barley mash for the beer, but over here I’ve got some honey fermenting, and the cranberries are nearly ready.’

I sniffed around and I decided that the honey mash, in great bronze cauldrons, was the best choice. I had it all carried off to our little place behind the ridge, Freda complaining bitterly that she hadn’t meant me to take so much.

Two days later the pots were ready, and the piping, and we had got a good supply of charcoal carried in. I found a couple of boys from the village to watch the pots, and we began to make … well, it’s a temple secret, really. The trouble I had making sure
that no one person ever saw all the process! It was difficult with the honey mash, up till then I’d only seen it done with grapes, but by hard work we had three jugs filled and sealed when the Amber Fleet came in.

There were three Amber Fleets that year. One came from Scania, across the Eastern Sea, and was led by Siggeir, King of that land and of its people, who called themselves Goths. But some of the Goths, a few generations before, had settled on an island, named Borg, and from there had spread across into Germany, on the coasts above Outgard. They called themselves after their island, Burgundians, and their Amber Fleet came in the next day, under their chief, Sigmund Volsungson.

He called himself a king, though there was a certain reluctance in some quarters to acknowledge the title, and there was, to say the least, a coolness between Siggeir and Sigmund. The Goth King resented the independent airs of the Burgundians, and there was some trouble between the two men, over a woman of course, though I never heard the details. Volsung himself had been killed in battle against Siggeir.

But in Valhall, none bore arms, and in Asgard no men might quarrel. There was no fighting or quarrelling on the quays, either. The stockade in the village was full, but not of traders. Vandal spearmen, and Lombard warriors with great axes had been dribbling in from the forest for weeks. It need never take us more than a few days to raise a small army of these hungry men, eager to earn a few pieces of silver, or, better still, grain and salt fish and cloth to help them through the winter. But without them to keep the peace, I would not have given young Sigmund’s life more than two minutes’ purchase, nor that of his little nation either, if Siggeir and the Goths had ever gone at them in earnest. Still, I thought, some day it might be worth knowing that Siggeir and Sigmund might so easily be brought to fight.

From Siggeir I bought a necklace carved out of ivory, walrus ivory of course, though he swore it was elephant, images of birds
all joined together with gold wire. One of Sigmund’s men sold me a brooch, a strange piece, not Roman, but from farther east, beyond the Scythians or India or the Silk country. The fool thought it was Gaulish, bronze was bronze to him, he sold it by weight, and stone was stone and worthless. It had a stone, not a gem, but hard stone like marble, all carved into a bird and a flower, as plain as if it were written with a pen on that stone the size of my thumbnail. Hard stone, ten years of a man’s life went into carving that, and a drunken Burgundian sold it for two denarii and a horn of strong ale.

There were a few days of frantic trading, carrying up Amber and ivory from the ships, and valuing it in silver. Then we sold them what they wanted, bronze and iron, cloth and pottery, jars of wine and casks of dried fruit. Most precious of all was glass, more precious even than silver plate embossed with Gods and cupids.

On the last night, our own Gods and cupids, our gold and silver plate came out for a last feast. We pushed in more chairs at the top table to seat the Kings on either side of Njord.

Then when the whetstone lay in front of Njord, and the gold boar stood in front of Frederik, but before ale had been poured, I rose and banged my fist on the table. Then Bragi walked up the hall, carrying a tray of small silver cups that we had found at the back of the silver store; they had not sold because the Germans had nothing strong enough to be worth drinking out of them. These cups he set before the Kings and before the Asers, before Baldur and One-handed Tyr as well. Then Ingelri gave Bragi a jug, and he filled the cups.

We all eight drank. And seven of us had never drunk anything like it before, and seven of us didn’t believe it. And you, of course, will never have drunk anything like it, unless you have been initiated to one of the secret Gods. It gives a glow inside, rather like drinking a charcoal brazier. You don’t get it like that with wine, or from draughts of black bitter beer, even if you make the beer hot in a cauldron as the Germans like doing. When the coughing was over, I told Bragi to set them up again. We soon had two cheerful Kings and five very happy Asers.

Then Njord, who was after all not a King, though he was
richer than ten Kings together, felt that with two Kings at his table he must make some kingly gesture. He flung wide his arms – well, the liquor was more than he had bargained for, and we set him on his legs again – and he made a more restrained gesture and began to speak.

‘Votan Whitehair, Votan Aser, for this gift of yours, this – what d’ye call it? Honeydew? – Votan, for this Honeydew ask of the Asers any gift you like.’

This was the time to strike, and to strike with finesse, with ceremony, straight to the heart.

‘Njord, great Lord of the Asers, Father of all who guard the Amber Road, as an Aser I ask of the Asers the gift of an Aser. I ask for Freda.’

Njord looked a bit taken aback. I motioned to Bragi to fill up the cups again, and to Ingelri to get another jug ready.

‘This is a great thing you ask,’ faltered Njord. ‘To marry Freda … and there is Loki … I thought …’

Rather than have him stumble on till he sobered, I pushed in,

‘Loki is married to Outgard, he would only take her from you. Do I not dwell here in Asgard, to see that you are not cheated? When did Loki bring you silver to double your last year’s takings? Do I not heal the strains of your joints and sing you songs without number? Have I not promised a Golden House, and will I not teach you writing? The Honeydew I have poured out here, to loosen your tongues, to grant visions. Freda I ask for my bride, for my own, and in earnest I give her presents.’

And I put the ivory chain around her neck, and I fastened the bronze and stone brooch into her dress, and on her finger I put her ring, that I won from a Friesian at dice, in Orm’s place, pale Irish gold with a cameo, Leda and the Swan carved on a sardonyx.

And then I might not have done it. Frederik and Sigmund sat together looking puzzled, fuddled rather, and a fine handsome pair of blockheads they were. But Tyr stood up and flung his one arm around my shoulder, and Baldur called out in that high-pitched voice of his which always irritated me,

‘Oh, bother Loki, he’s got so tiresome lately.’

Then Siggeir spoke, the great heavy Goth King, blue scars
on his arms and face, and the authority of twenty ancestors behind him.

‘You offered, Njord, you offered, you must keep your word. If the girl is willing she must go. And he shall stay here in Valhall for ever, and be an Aser till the end of time, to keep your goods and count your silver heaps.’

And Sigmund, of course he couldn’t be outdone by Siggeir, and he was too stupid to think, even, of any bargaining, but only thought he ought to say something like a King, he got up and said:

‘You have spoken, great Njord, before two Kings you have promised, and your daughter, the Lady of Valhall, you must give Votan.’

Unfortunately, having both overeaten and mixed the Honeydew with great horns of beer, he chose that moment to be sick, all over Frederik. Frederik had made an especial effort to be elegant that night, and had let us know it; he was never so friendly to Sigmund after.

Siggeir ignored this interruption, for he was a King, a real one.

‘Now Lady Freda, turn and face this man. Will you take him till the end of time, to be your husband? And if you will, then tell us all the day.’

Freda didn’t give a clear answer. She just stood and said,

‘I must have time to weave my bridal sheets, and make a bed, and heap it high with furs. There’s beer to brew, and sausage, pies and ham … how is it there is never enough ham … I cannot do it under twenty days.’

There was a huge roar throughout the hall at this reluctant bride, and with a final effort at solemnity Siggeir stood again and said,

‘Bridal gifts will I bring to you, gold and Amber and ivory, walrus tusks and sealskin cloaks and knives with handles of horn. But you, Votan, you have no shield. I have a shield, of limewood and leather, bossed and bound with bronze, painted and gay with colours and marked with a raven, a bird of bronze and enamel to shine in battle. A shield to protect your bride, to ward off the weather, made by a master, a shield fit for heroes, a shield fit for Votan.’

They were still trying to revive Sigmund, so Agnar Volsungson stood up. Twice the man his brother was, I was quite sorry the following year when Lyngi Siggeirson and a party of Goths and Black Danes caught him on the Amber Shores, somewhere beyond Outgard, and killed him under an ash tree. And there lie his bones to this day, and the adders crawl through his skull, for they neither stripped him nor burnt him, but left the body, mail shirt and helmet and sword and buckler, as an offering … well, to me I suppose. And that very night in Valhall I saw Lyngi look at him, and mark him down for death, even while Agnar said,

‘We will bring gold and bronze work, that the men of old made and buried on Bornholm. We the Volsungas of all the Burgundians are bold to burrow for bronzes.’

What he meant was that only the Royal House were allowed to rob graves in Bornholm.

Then Njord, obviously feeling that he had been thoroughly compromised, called for a toast to the happy pair. Siggeir, sweating from the strains of speechmaking, relaxed from a King into a slightly drunken middle-aged gentleman, and turning to Freda began,

‘Now I remember, long ago, I was young then, going hunting with your grandfather Bor Burisson, and we raised this boar …’

On my other side, Tyr and Lyngi were having a technical discussion as to whether a mail shirt was worth wearing for the protection it gave, being so heavy, or whether it were not better to follow the Gaulish custom and go into battle stark naked and helmless, trusting to speed and skill with sword and shield to keep your skin. The following year, of course, it was naked that Lyngi went in against Agnar, and gutted him, much, the Danes told me, to Agnar’s surprise.

As a result, relieved of any necessity for conversation, I was able to look at my reflection in my beer, and say to myself,

‘Well, Photinus, what have you done now? You must be mad!’

And to tell you the truth, I was mad the whole time I was beyond the frontier, and I knew it, and I knew that every single thing I did and said would have been unthinkable to any sane man.

This would have been unthinkable to ask for Freda in marriage,
to marry a savage. Why did I do it? Well, to start with, Freda was really the first clean woman I had seen since Julia, and certainly the only clean woman in Asgard, the only young woman in Asgard. Then I was stealing a march on Loki, and that put me in everybody’s good books, Asers, traders, even some of his own Vandals. Most of all, I had to live, and out there on the edge of the world, there were only two ways for a stranger to live, as a noble, or as a beggar. Marrying Freda, marrying an Aser, made a noble, an Aser, of me for certain.

But why should Freda have married me? She had leapt over the fire on Midsummer Eve, and asked the Gods to send her a man. The obvious man was Loki, but was Loki more than half a man? Ask Baldur.

Then I was a novelty. I was clean, to start with, I wore my pig fat with an air. I was a stranger, mysterious in many ways, with tales of far countries. And in those days, I didn’t look too bad, in spite of my white hair. My face had filled out after the time on the tree, and I combed my beard. And though I walked like a young man, I had an old man’s head. I had read everything any Greek had written, I knew all that any Greek ever knew, and that made me, in the eyes of the north, a man of great and unfathomable wisdom, a man of experience that no one man could collect in one mortal life.

As I thought that in taking Freda, I was taking power in the north, so Freda thought that she was taking power in me, power of a kind that was never seen in Asgard. But I wasn’t powerful. I was mad! Mad! And I knew it.

Ten days later, the third Amber Fleet came in, the Black Danes’ fleet from the islands up in the shallow sea. King Sweyn Halffoot came himself. They had called him Sweyn Olafson till a Saxon cut off a slice of his left foot with an axe in a sea fight. Since then he had limped, but that made his hand no less heavy, and his temper was uncertain. It was as well not to mention Cutha Cuthson to him, since the Danes were pushing now toward the Saxon shores, and thought it uncivil of the Saxons to object. There was no Saxon Fleet; the Saxons, on the whole, are incompetent sailors.

Sweyn decided to stay for the wedding, after he had sent the
fleet home, and he produced a gift for Freda, a necklace of pearls; not the fresh water mussel pearls, but real oyster pearls from Britain.

Now we had a dozen boys watching the honeydew pots as they bubbled. Ingelri and a dozen of
his
apprentices beat, beat, beat all day at the gold, beating the Roman coins into great sheets, thin as silk.

Bragi was making two great chairs, thrones, one for me and one for Freda. The frames were of oak, and the panels were of limewood, the back panels and the side panels beneath the arms, carved on either side. I had Leda and the Swan on the back panel, carved from Freda’s ring, and on the other side of that panel, against my back, Danae and the shower of gold, which symbolised what I was doing for Asgard. On each side piece he carved the tree, leaves and branches and acorns, and the bees and the bear and the snake in it. The end of each arm he carved into a wolf’s head, snarling, life size.