The Ice Queen (17 page)

Bishop Yefrem turned a lovely shade of purple—being Orthodox, you see, and hating the Catholics—but he suffered it in silence.

As did Ingigerd also. From the expressions that crossed her face, I could just about guess her feelings: first, astonished mirth at the very
nerve of him; then dismay as he seemed to be actually getting away with it (the table pounding of the druzhiniks, including even the Swedes, was thunderous); and last, cold fury as the realization dawned that she could not afford to oppose him and, in fact, must publicly congratulate him for these pious sentiments.

Hating her as I did—oh, yes, I had hated her for weeks now, did I forget to say so?—hating her as I did, I delighted in her twitching lips and stumbling words. At last this proud and foolish woman had taken a fall!

All in all, the tables had been turned very neatly. Not only was Harald not divided from his men—quite the contrary—but Ingigerd and Eilif came out of the affair looking very bad. For Eilif it was a disaster. Offering a scurrilous insult to Harald in the first place, then letting himself be floored without striking a blow, and, to top all, being fined forty grivny for his pains—it stripped him of the last shred of authority. Oh, he went on posing as captain of the druzhina, but from that time on he had no influence with the men at all, and they, held in check by neither a prince nor a captain whom they respected, soon got completely out of hand.

As for the famous silver pig which started it all, taken and hidden by Yelisaveta and passed from child to child, it finally came back to Harald, who showed it off to everyone as if it were a badge of honor. Altogether, very neat.

Curiously enough, it was the very next day that, happening to visit the palace latrine and happening, for some reason, to glance at our ‘message tree', I saw a red thread tied to its twig.

You recall that I just said I hated Inge? My heart leapt to see that red thread! Leapt as if nothing else mattered in all the world but her; leapt and went on leaping the closer to Gorodische I came, for I commandeered a sleigh and set off on the instant.

To my knock the door flew open and Inge, my lovely Inge, threw herself into my arms, buried her head against my chest, and through her tears told me how miserable she had been and how we must never, never quarrel again, and without a second's delay drew me into her bedroom and began to pull off my clothes, and as we made love and she neared the climax, cried, moaning, that she loved me.

Well, I mean to say—how often do one's daydreams come true?

The next day I will always remember for pure, free, careless joy. Never mind what came afterwards—I would not part with the memory of it for anything. I drove our sleigh over dazzling fields of snow, with Inge, swathed in ermine, on the seat beside me—red-cheeked, snow crystals on her lashes, laughing as we tore along at a breathless pace, and Sirko raced beside us. Afterwards, we dined at her lodge on caviar, goose, and venison, and in the evening drank wine and made love. During the whole time we never spoke the names of Harald, Eilif, or Yelisaveta. As it drew towards night, I took my leave of her with many kisses and set off homewards. (She would remain at Gorodische one more day, we decided, for appearance's sake.)

As I entered the Norwegians' barracks, Dag sprang upon me as if he'd been watching out for me all day long, and asked me, in a tone I didn't quite like, to take a walk with him.

“Just how long have you been romping on the princess's belly?” he asked straight out. Never a one to mince words, Dag.

“What? Don't be absurd. I don't know what you're—”

“Save your breath. It was a suspicion and you've just confirmed it. You're a bad liar, Odd, it's one of the things I like about you.”

“How did you guess?”

“One notices things—especially when the lovers have quarreled.”

“Who else knows?”

“Do you think you'd still be alive if anyone else knew?”

“I see. And what do you plan to do now, tell Harald?”

“Oh, I like you much too much for that, but you must earn my silence, Odd. Ingigerd will try again to kill him and keep on until she succeeds. I don't underestimate either her malice or her resources.”

“Nonsense! I know she'd like to see his backside going away, but you haven't a speck of proof that she ever tried to kill him.”

“Jesu! What a performance she must be putting on for you, I'd love to see it. But the facts, my friend, are otherwise, whether you care to face them or not. Now, setting aside your tender heart, I have to know what she plans to do next.”

“If you're asking me to spy on her—”

“Asking you? I'm telling you. It's that or face Harald—who will not be pleased.”

This was bluff. Harald would raise such hell that all Novgorod would
know about it by morning, which was the last thing Dag wanted. We'd all have to pack up our kit and leave.

“Then, tell him and be damned! I haven't betrayed the smallest confidence. She asks me nothing about him.”

“How would you even know, you innocent! Can you account for everything you've said to her? Every word—what he likes to eat, whom he sleeps with, the hours he keeps, who guards him at night.”

“No, nothing!”

He stopped to look at me long and hard. “Give her up, Odd.”

“No.”

“What d'you think—that she loves you?”

“What I think is none of your business.”

“You are a stubborn lad, as I begin to see.”

“I could have told you that.”

“It won't last, you know. Sooner or later Harald or Yaroslav will find you out; either way it'll be the end for you, and probably for us all. What am I going to do with you?”

“I should have me killed, Dag Hringsson, if I were you. There's nothing else for it.”

He let out a sigh that hung frozen, a little cloud of ice, in the air.

“It may come to that. In the meantime do me, at least, the favor of keeping your mouth shut and your ears open. You owe me that much. And for the rest, God help us.” He turned abruptly and walked away.

Poor Dag. What a task he'd cut out for himself: making Harald and me—his two trained bears—dance the steps he gave us. I saw weariness in his eyes and the beginning of fear. Fear, I think, that he was building on sand and that the first strong tide would wash us all away.

The coming of spring to Novgorod is announced by the river with sudden loud cracks, as the solid center breaks up into jagged floes, and softer clicks as the floes dissolve in a myriad tinkling pieces—bobbing and whirling away downstream between the ice-bound banks. When the last ice is gone, then the boatmen go down to their vessels, which have lain stuck fast in the river all winter, and haul them out to careen and re-rig them.

Now the rain comes in crashing thunderstorms that wash the snow down in torrents from the hillsides and make the river overflow its banks. It's a rare spring that sees no houses swept away in low-lying parts of the town. Even the ground floor of the palace is often awash, although they have installed gigantic pipes made of hollowed tree trunks to drain it.

Rain and melting snow turn the ground into such a quagmire of sucking mud that a horse or man will sink in it up to his knees. Not until mid-May do the fields dry out sufficiently for the ‘black people' to get on with their planting.

The spring is an unhealthy time of year as well as an uncomfortable one, with pestilence and fevers common. I was spared a second bout of my fever, but many others in the town fell sick. Magnus, just past his ninth birthday, fell ill and for a while looked like dying. Ingigerd, haggard and red-eyed, kept vigil at his bedside until the crisis was past.
Yelisaveta said bitterly, not caring who heard her, that her mother would not have wept half so much over one of her own.

Easter, and the day of my baptism, were not far off. Einar had decided to be baptized with me and was looking forward to it, for the reason, he said, that he wanted a new suit of clothes. Why, he'd known a man once that was baptized four times just for the white clothes they gave away!

As the day approached, he and I, together with some warriors newly arrived from the heathen parts of Sweden, were ordered to take instruction in our new Faith under the tutelage of Father Dmitri. Hollow of cheek, long of nose, and thin of hair, he took his place before us in one of the palace rooms, leaning upon a lectern, while we sat before him on rows of benches.

We were but rude, simple men and had no idea what a great deal of explaining we were in for.

Right at the start he ambushed us with the three gods who were One, and the Son who was half god and half man. But soon, seeing some of us begin to stretch and others to yawn, he paused to assure us that as soon as we were proper Christmen, God would answer our prayers.

I was overjoyed to hear this for I had a number of prayers all ready—the chief of them being that Yaroslav should never catch me in bed with his wife. Some others in the audience, impatient of waiting for the glorious day, began to shout their prayers aloud, much to the priest's dismay, seeing that most of them had to do with ‘sticking a sword into that bastard Svein', or ‘getting their hand up Grushenka's skirt'. We got merrier and merrier, with each of us trying to outdo the prayers of the others, until the priest could scarcely be heard above the din. Only after shouting and flapping his arms for some time, was he able to recapture our attention for his next topic, which was the Creation of the World.

He read us the verses about God creating the world and placing Adam and Eve in the Garden, and added that all this had taken place exactly six thousand five hundred and thirty-nine years ago in the month of September.

“Now really,” said I, raising my hand, “I'll believe the six thousand and so forth if you like, but how can you know it happened in September?”

“Easily explained, my son,” he replied, looking down his long nose at me. “Didn't Eve give Adam an apple? All right, and aren't apples picked in September?”

Well, everyone laughed and I felt like a fool, so I kept quiet for a while.

From describing the Beginning of Things he skipped right to the End. In the Last Days, he said, mankind would be beset with continual wars and plagues. Antichrist would appear on earth. At the same time there would come four Kingdoms of Beasts and the giants Gog and Magog would fight against the true Christmen in a great battle at a place called Armageddon. After this, Christ would descend from Heaven, for the second and last time, to pass judgment on us all. Thereafter, the wicked would spend eternity in Hell, with molten pitch, sulfur, lead and wax being continually poured on their heads. But those who enlisted in Christ's druzhina—here he lifted up his eyes—would have eternal life in Paradise.

“Doing what?” one fellow in the back wanted to know. “D'you mean fighting all day, as they do in Valhalla, and, when you're killed, coming to life again next day to fight some more?”

“Good God, no!” He'd meant no such thing. “Paradise—,” he said, “Cherubim and Seraphim—throne of God—harps—”

“Pah!” the questioner spat. “You call that life?”

There was much laughter at this, but the priest, scowling and wagging his finger at us, warned that we were already living in the Last Days! For how else to account for the Infidel Arab enslaving half of Christ's earthly empire, and what could that portend but the beginning of the End?

That put a stop to the merriment.

But we Norse, I thought to myself, have no need of Christmen to teach us about the end of things. Why, change a few details and it's the same story my father used to scare me with when I was a boy and we took those long rambles together in the night: Ragnarok—the doom of the gods—when Loki, and the Giants, and Fenris Wolf storm the towers of Asgard and bring them crashing down. And since our religion is plainly much older than theirs—for Odin the All-Knowing walked the earth long before Jesus—it must be from us that they got the story and now pretend they thought of it themselves!

As I turned this over in my mind, a wave of memory surged through me with such intensity that for a moment I felt again the chill of those long-ago nights and my father's rough hand on mine. Fear and longing filled me both at once and suddenly I shivered with the uncanny feeling
that he was near me. Strange how this priest's words stirred feelings in me just the opposite of what he'd intended.

Having given us a proper scare, Father Dmitri proceeded to instruct us how the White Christ would save us from our wickedness, and how even a fool could see that he was the True God, because didn't it say so right here—and here—and here? And he began to read us some verses of old prophecies. But it was all such a jumble of foreign names and obscure arguments that we pretty quickly got confused; especially when he said that these prophets, by whom he put such store, were all Jews, but that the cursed Jews themselves refused to believe a word it!