The Ice Queen (18 page)

I won't tire you with all the rest of our first day's lesson. He told us about how Jesus commanded us to love our enemies, so that if a man hit you on the one cheek you were to offer him the other also instead of splitting his skull for him as he damn well deserved. One grizzled warrior asked sarcastically, “What's Yaroslav paying us for, then—to kiss his enemies?”

That plainly was a hard one for Father Dmitri. He started to say one thing, then started to say another, rolled his eyes in despair and raced on to the subject of miracles.

Making the blind to see and the lame to walk, and even raising folk from the dead—why, Christ and his druzhiniks had done all that just as easy as anything—not to mention those many saints who came along afterwards right up to our own day.

But here I couldn't keep myself from asking, “Excuse me, but what about Father Vorobey? He was still as cold as yesterday's mutton after three days trying to resurrect him.”

That seemed to be another hard one for the priest, and he could see that we were getting restless, being active men not accustomed to sitting for very long at a time, so he went straight on to the Crucifixion.

Now this story, too, the Christmen have stolen from us. Again, my thoughts flew back to Iceland and I heard the sound of my father's voice shouting these words of Odin All-Father's to the echoing hills:

Nine nights hung I on the wind-whipped tree,

Whose root sinks deeper than man's knowing.

I, Odin, by a spear transfixed,

A sacrifice to Black-Brow'd Odin:

Myself to myself.

They gave me neither bread nor drink,

Yet down into the depths I looked,

Down, down I reached and grasped the runes,

Screaming, grasped them, flung them up

And then fell back.

Well, you can see the similarity at once, except that Odin, through his suffering, gave us the runes and, with them, poetry and divination, while the White Christ, so far as I could see, gave only a license for one half of mankind to persecute the other half.

But to come back to Father Dmitri's lecture, he was describing the murder of Christ by the Jews with such liveliness and emotion that suddenly Einar Tree-Foot could stand it no longer.

“By the Raven,” he cried, jumping up and brandishing his sword, “none would've dared touch him if my Jomsvikings had been there!”

Instantly the room exploded into shouting and stamping, and many others drew their swords and swore that, by the gods, let 'em just see some Jews anywhere about and they'd send 'em away holding their heads!

Well, the scene got wilder and wilder until, at last, Father Dmitri just gave up and fled the room, hugging his book to his chest.

That night a mob of Swedes ransacked and burned some shops near the market, which were said to be owned by Jews. The flames spread quickly and came so near the palace that there was panic inside and everyone rushed about with buckets, wetting down the roof and walls. Even so, it was only a sudden change in the wind that saved the dvor from going up in flames.

Yaroslav was as frightened as anyone. He shouted for Eilif to take charge and do something, but, when they located the captain of the druzhina, he was lying drunk in bed with a slave woman. His rival then was sent for. Mind you, they might easily have found young Harald in the same condition as Eilif on any given night, but his luck saved him once again: he was reasonably sober and not otherwise occupied.

He called out the Norwegians, half of them armed for battle and the other half with buckets and blankets. The rioters were dispersed in short order but our best efforts could not prevent the fire from raging out of control. It leveled the Market Side all the way from Carpenters' Brook
to the Mound, destroying four churches and sixty houses before it was done—and that, despite the red roosters that all Novgorodtsi paint on their doors to protect them from the ever-dreaded flame.

Two days later, Yaroslav, backed by Harald's strong arm, cashiered thirteen of the ringleaders without pay and banished them from the city. No matter how justified might be a Christman's hatred of the Jews, he lectured them, arson could simply not be tolerated in a city built of wood.

At the same time he rewarded Harald with the gift of a fine silver-inlaid battle ax and extra rations for our men. And I commemorated the event with a poem in which I devised kennings for ‘fire' more elegant and obscure than any ever heard before. As for Eilif, he didn't show his face at court for a week.

After things had had time to settle down a bit, we were recalled to our catechism. This time Father Dmitri, carefully avoiding anything to do with the Jews, spoke about Saint Vladimir and the conversion of the Rus, concerning which I had heard something already from Stavko.

“Now Vladimir, my children,” the priest began, “was, in his early life entirely given up to lust, for he kept eleven hundred concubines—far surpassing the number that even Solomon had—and was married to five wives. One day, however, God put it in his heart to renounce his heathen ways and seek a new religion. Now, being ignorant of all other religions, he did not know how to choose one and so he sent his four most trusted boyars on a long journey for the purpose of investigating the various religions of men.

“They traveled first among the Volga Bulgars, who are followers of Mohammet, but returned, saying that they found no joy among them, in particular because strong drink was forbidden by their holy law. Vladimir was appalled. ‘The Rus', he said, ‘cannot live without strong drink'.

“Next, the four envoys visited the Germans, who are Papists, but returned saying, ‘Their churches are cold and there is no beauty amongst them'. Last of all, they journeyed all the way to Miklagard, which is both New Rome and New Jerusalem, and whose Emperor is God's viceroy on earth. And this time, when they returned to Kiev, they could scarcely tell of the wonders they had seen, for words failed them. ‘When we entered the Cathedral of the Holy Wisdom', they told the Grand Prince, ‘we did not know if we were on earth or in heaven. Surely God dwells there'. Vladimir believed them and on the spot chose the holy Orthodox religion for himself and his people.

“Soon after making his decision known in Miklagard, he received in marriage Anna Porphyrogenita, daughter of the Emperor Romanus and the sister to the Emperor Basil. Never before in the whole of history was a foreign prince so honored as Vladimir was, and all because he embraced the True Faith. Immediately, he sent away his concubines and his other wives, cleaving only to Anna, and he and the whole population of Kiev were baptized together, rejoicing and praising the Lord, in the river Dnieper. This was in the year six thousand, four hundred and ninety-six from the Creation, or, as the Papists call it, Anno Domini 988.

“After that, Vladimir easily overthrew the demons, whom some of the people in their ignorance still worshiped—Svarog, Dashbog, Stribog, Khors, Yarilo, Lad, Volos, and Perun—especially Perun. Him he ordered to be tied to a horse's tail and dragged to the river while men walked alongside flogging the idol with sticks.

“Then in Novgorod, too, the idols were overthrown, whipped, and flung into the river. And the people, seeing how feeble were these gods, who could not even defend themselves, went joyfully to be baptized in the Volkhov.”

“All, Father Dmitri?” I broke in. “All of them joyfully? None held back?” I hadn't come to the lesson intending to quarrel, but anger suddenly flared up in me.

“Well, I mean to say, no, of course not; there were some so depraved by superstition that they hung back.”

“What was done about them, Father Dmitri?”

“They were dragged down by the scruff of the neck and thrown in! Why, d'you think they deserved better? Did God ask Lucifer politely if he would be so obliging as to leave Heaven? No, gospodin, he did not. He commanded St Michael, the general of his host, to take the Evil One by the heels and fling him into the pit, him and all his fallen angels! And should we do less wherever we find Satan? Does that answer your question, you, whoever you are?”

“He's Harald the Norwegian's skald,” someone in the audience called out.

“Well, he should know better, then, shouldn't he?” said Dmitri. “Anything else you want to know, my inquisitive friend?”

Inwardly I thought, What have we done that we should be plagued by the Vladimirs and Olafs of this world? But to his question I answered,
“No, Father, nothing else.” What was the use of talking? They would have it their own way in the end.

Smoothing his ruffled feathers, the priest continued: “And so we Rus hold Grand Prince Vladimir in pious memory and we treasure his relics—his foot, his skull, his jaw bone—all are preserved in the Cathedral at Kiev, or in other places, and their power is great.”

It always amused me to hear Vladimir's name spoken with such reverence at court, seeing that Yaroslav had been in open revolt against him at the time of his death (out of resentment, so it was said, to the wrong done his mother when the Grand Prince took a Greek princess to be his single lawful wife). It was only the old man's death that prevented a bloody civil war between father and son, Kiev and Novgorod.

“And now, my children,” Dmitri concluded his sermon, “before I release you, for I can see the hour is getting late, I deem it most important to remind you of how blest, how fortunate you are to be baptized into the Holy Orthodox Faith and not the accursed Church of Rome. For you must understand that the Latins are heretics, who believe that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son instead of from the Father alone; they are baptized in only one immersion of water instead of three; they do wrong also to take the Host in an unleavened wafer instead of in bread as Christ instructed us; they despise the flesh in that they require their priests to be beardless like eunuchs and deny to them the blessings of marriage—with the result that they all take concubines instead!

“Why, it is even said of them by no less an authority than that learned monk of Kiev, Feodosy of the Caves, that they eat lions, wild horses, asses, bears, and beavers' tails, and are unclean in all their habits. This same Father Feodosy instructs us to avoid their communion, nor eat or drink from the same bowl with them; but if we must, out of Christian charity, give a Catholic food from our bowl, we must wash it out immediately afterwards and ask God's pardon.

“And now, my children, go and pray earnestly to God, asking him to make you worthy of this sacrament—its day is fast approaching—from which you will arise new men in Christ.”

Father Dmitri sent us away to pray and meditate. And I did meditate.

I had been all through this in my mind before now. My mother had been Christian and so had Kalf Slender-Leg, the dearest friend of my boyhood. I could say nothing against them. But I had seen also how lustily these Christmen could hate—and hate not only the heathen or the Jew but each other! I'm a good hater too, but I don't lie and call it Godliness. No, I will receive their baptism because it is a writ of entry into the great world, where I must make my way. When I am among them I will swear ‘by Mary' and ‘by Christ' as they all do. But I will not believe what they teach; and, in the secret place of my thoughts, I will still pray to Odin All-Father and the other gods of olden time—if only so that I may not affront my poor, mad father's ghost.

Came the day.

Dressed in our gowns of snowy white, we stood barefoot in a line before the font, ready to ‘put off the old Adam and put on the new', as Father Dmitri expressed it. Thanks to his efforts, we were all able to recite our Creed, if not much else. We had each been given a new name, too: mine was John, for the saint whose feast day this happened to be. (Fortunately, it was not generally the custom here to call someone by his baptismal name—Yaroslav's, for instance, was George; Ingigerd's was Irene—so that I could continue to be ‘Odd' to my friends.)