The Ice Queen (9 page)

“Your back!” I shouted.

Harald crouched and spun as Eilif's blade whistled over his head. Its point slit the cheek of one of the boyars' sons who was too slow in getting out of the way. Dropping Magnus, Harald grabbed a chair to defend himself with. Volodya, seizing the chance, dashed in bravely and pushed Magnus out of the room.

In less time than it takes to tell it, Harald's back was up against the wall and the chair in splinters as the captain of the druzhina, wielding his sword with both hands, rained blows on him from every side. No one—certainly not I—had the hardihood to step between Harald and that lethal windmill.

So this is how it ends, I thought. Good-bye, Harald, good-bye fortune.

But Yelisaveta shrieked, “Eilif, you filthy coward! Cut him and I swear by Christ Almighty I'll slit your throat on our wedding night!”

This warning had the unmistakable ring of sincerity to it. Eilif paused in mid-stroke. A mistake. In the blink of an eye Harald thrust the splintered chair leg in his enemy's face and drove his knee hard into his balls. As Eilif doubled over, Harald gripped his sword arm and cracked it at the wrist. Eilif rolled about on the floor, groaning.

Yelisaveta's face was flushed and her breathing came quici; and there was in the way her glittering green eyes watched Harald something like exhilaration, or triumph, or the first stirrings of passion.

“Hold, in God's name!” cried Yaroslav, appearing suddenly in the doorway with Volodya at his side, and Mstislav and Dag close behind them.

Needless to recount all the various conversation that followed. It was pretty quickly agreed by everyone except Eilif (who was speechless) that Magnus was most to blame for making a remark that Harald was bound to resent. As for the rest of it, no one was dead, so that was all right, but Harald and Eilif had better steer clear of each other from now on and consider their feud at an end. That was an order.

But, of course, it wasn't as simple as that. Harald had been on the point of murdering young Magnus and doubtless Ingigerd was hearing it from the boy's trembling lips at this very moment. Here was no cause for celebration.

And soon things took an even nastier turn.

The sun glowed like a copper penny in the mist. It was a bleak morning in October. “Best weather in all the world for hunting!” swore Mstislav.

Our horses stood in the stable-yard, exhaling plumes of steam, while the grooms put on the bridles and tightened the saddle girths. The huntsmen struggled to hold back their wolfhounds, boarhounds, elkhounds, and mastiffs—nearly a hundred dogs in all—that yapped and strained at the leash.

We were at Yaroslav's estate at Rakom, a much larger residence than his dvor in Novgorod. Here he kept his stables, kennels, and mews.

“Ho!” bellowed Mstislav, striding about. “The sweet smell of horses and sweet cry of hounds!” He had already taken a quantity of ale on board and his face was red and jolly.

His brother, by contrast, looked uncomfortable. Yaroslav hunted the same way he went to war, earnestly and dutifully—because it was expected of a Rus Prince, but with no real joy in the thing. He sat a horse well, though, and you soon forgot about his deformed foot.

We were a large party which included Bishop Yefrem (not in his priestly garb, of course), several boyars with their retinues, and favored druzhiniks of both royal brothers.

Eilif was absent, still nursing his hurt pride and fractured wrist. Only four days had passed since his fight with Harald.

Einar Tree-Foot, too, had begged off with the excuse that he found
riding too hard on his old bones—which surprised me because it was the first time I'd ever heard that tough old man plead his age for any reason.

Ingigerd was not the only woman among us (a few boyars' wives were present), but she was the only one dressed as a man—in a coat and trousers of forest green, with boots of crushed leather, a hunting knife in her belt, and her hair, without its matronly head cloth, plaited in one long braid wound around her head.

In Iceland it is not absolutely unheard of for a woman to dress up as a man, though it can be grounds for divorce if the husband objects. In Gardariki, too, it caused tongues to wag. Bishop Yefrem looked askance and held conversation with his beard, in which the words ‘God', and ‘ordained', and ‘differences between the sexes' could be heard pretty clearly.

Yaroslav, feeling that his wife needed some defending on this score, blurted out, “In God's name, Bishop, take off her trousers and you'll find her still as the Almighty made her!”

Yefrem, in some confusion, thanked him but declined. Of all of us who overhead this exchange none laughed louder than Ingigerd herself.

We mounted up. The princess rode a dappled grey mare with harness and saddle of green leather and green ribbons braided in its tail and mane. A groom held her stirrup while gospodin Putscha knelt down and made his back into a step of exactly the right height for her to put her booted foot upon.

(Of the Rus horses, I should say that they are short-legged and shaggy, very like our Icelandic ones. I chose for myself a black stallion that reminded me of Grani, my beautiful horse that had been maimed in the stallion fight at Thingholt—the cause of my family's doom. It hardly seemed possible that that was only three years ago.)

Our way took us first through the little village of Rakom where the ‘black people' in their rough coats and bark shoes doffed their caps as we trotted by. Once past the village, we cantered across a stubbly meadow, then slowed to a walking pace as we came to the dense wood on the other side.

I had never hunted much (there being no large game in Iceland) and was an indifferent rider. Harald, too, was a novice—he sat his mount awkwardly, and the animal seemed absurdly small for him though it was the biggest in the stable. The Rus, on the other hand, all of them, even Putscha on his pony, rode as if they were sewn to the saddle.

The forest around Novgorod is full of marshes, shallow lakes, and
myriad little streams, but an early frost had hardened the ground so that we could gallop where we pleased. We struck down by the river and held our course that way, riding south towards Lake Ilmen through stands of pine, dark with the shade of overhanging boughs, and oak trees, covered trunk and twig with a glittering sheath of ice.

“My dear, you're not too cold?” Yaroslav inquired of his wife, who rode beside him, just ahead of me. “Your mittens—where are they? In God's name put them on, your little hands will soon be frozen! And pull up the collar of your coat, never mind that it hides your pretty neck. That's better. You women, ha, ha! You women!” He chuckled and shook his head. After a pause, he resumed. “I wonder, shall we find the lake frozen clear across? No, of course not; no, you're quite right. I was thinking, my dear, we should stop tonight at the country house of Dyuk Osipovich—yes, yes, I know, My Love, but he has offered and I can't very well refuse him, now really, can I? And we'll finish up at your estate on the lake, does that please you? I thought it would—one's own familiar things around one, there's nothing to compare with it! Ah, if only God sends herds of animals across our path—enough to satisfy even Mstislav—then we shall soon be home again, soon home again with our dear little ones around us. I'm praying for it, believe me.”

With such conversation did fond Yaroslav beguile his Lady. While she favored him at intervals with a nod.

When the woods gave way again to open land where we could ride several abreast, Dag, Harald, and I rode alongside the couple, and the conversation became general and quite merry.

Dag was at his wittiest and Ingigerd laughed at every sally. Even Harald managed a few awkward pleasantries, muttering them into his bosom so that he would not seem to be addressing her in case she chose to ignore him. But, on the contrary, she answered him very pleasantly.

I suggested to Harald that we play the game of kennings, challenging her and Yaroslav to guess the meanings of the knotty phrases that skaldic poets employ: ‘Fjord elk' for ship; ‘wound dew' for blood, and the like. Her delight and wonder at our cleverness knew no bounds.

What a number of faces this woman wears! I thought to myself. With her daughter, severe; with her husband, aloof; with me, at first, charming, but afterwards, cool; with Harald, until now, not even that. Yet here, dressed in men's breeches and a coat too large in the shoulders, she seems,
strangely enough, most girlish and gay. And which of all these faces is truly hers—or, have we even seen the true one yet?

The prince's forest teemed with game of every kind and it was decided to hunt a different sort of beast each day. And so it went: on the first day, boar; on the second, wolf; and on the third day, bison. This is an animal I had not seen nor even heard of before. It is like a bull but shaggy, with its head covered by a mass of wool, and a woolly beard hanging from its chin. The Rus hunt it on horseback with the bow, which they have learned to do from the steppe dwellers.

Mstislav's Pecheneg bodyguard—a silent, watchful man named Kuchug—brought down one, galloping alongside it with the reins in his teeth and shooting it until it bristled with arrows. Mstislav wounded one, but his horse stumbled and it got away. And Yaroslav actually killed one, though he gave the credit to Saint George to whom he had prayed as he loosed his arrow. Bishop Yefrem killed one too and was quite happy to take the credit for himself.

That evening we lodged at Gorodische, an estate of Ingigerd's about three miles from Novgorod by the shore of Lake Ilmen where the Volkhov leaves it.

Our three day excursion had taken us round the lake and we were nearing our starting place. Harald, out of his element, with no opportunity to shine and nothing to show for his pains, had gotten more irritable every day until now he was sunk in a very black mood. After picking at his dinner, he wrapped himself in his furs and went quickly to sleep, or pretended to.

The rest of us stayed up, stretching our legs to the oven, while Mstislav, as he worked the burrs out of his wolfhound's coat, entertained us with stories of hunts gone by and dwelt lovingly on each of his narrow escapes from death.

The next morning Ingigerd went out of her way to be charming to Harald, asking him how he had slept and refusing to be put off by his mumbled replies. She declared her intention to go hawking that day, for Lake Ilmen, she said, was home to thousands of birds. “That is the quarry I prefer, gospodin,” she said. “Am I right in guessing that you're as bored as I am with all this chasing after bison, wolves, and pigs? Let the others go their own way—what is it to be today, husband, elk? Wild horse? Well, never mind, but please do me the favor to come with me, gospodin Harald.
Dag and Odd too, unless they would find a woman's company tedious. I keep a well-stocked mews. Come choose whatever bird you like.”

Harald could not very well refuse her pretty invitation, and Dag and I, after an exchange of wary looks, agreed also. Yaroslav, I thought, looked as though he would much rather be coming with us than keeping his brother's company for another day. But Ingigerd had quite pointedly not invited him.

The mews was a long, dimly lit shed that smelt of feathers and droppings.

“Speak softly,” she whispered. “Make no sudden movements. Their nerves are as taut as bowstrings.”

On perches along both walls they sat—perfectly still until they sensed us. Then a current of excitement ran through them, audible in shrill cries, in the fanning of wings, in the tinkling of the bells on their jesses. Pairs of glittering eyes followed us in jerky movements. It was a thrilling feeling to be in the dark, unprotected, amongst these sensitive killers.

“You may choose among eagles, gyrfalcons, goshawks, sparrow hawks,” Ingigerd said in a low voice, “but the best are my little peregrines.”

I recalled how Harald had bought gifts for the royal couple in Aldeigjuborg: a falcon for him, a reliquary for her. Funny that he had got their tastes exactly backwards.

Pulling on a horsehide gauntlet, she took a small brown bird on her fist.

“My favorite. She has the courage of an eagle, this one. I fly only females, they are the great killers—larger, stronger, braver—oh, much braver—than their mates. See the thighs, how muscular they are. It's not strength of wing alone that counts in a falcon. Come, now, and choose.”

Dag and I followed her advice and chose peregrines. Harald chose an enormous eagle.

Outside, the morning light was dazzling—the weather having improved over night. We mounted our horses (Putscha, as always, performing the office of footstool for his mistress) and the grooms handed up our hooded birds onto our gauntleted fists.

“Hold the jesses between your fingers, so,” Ingigerd said, indicating the strips of leather that hung from each leg. “That way you won't lose her.”

We left Gorodische and cantered over the stony ground by the lakeside, followed at a discrete distance by three mounted servants, leading a pack horse with food and drink for the day's excursion.

Ilmen is a big lake. Ice had formed already round its edges. In a few weeks more you could drive a sledge and team straight across it.

As we slowed to a foot pace, the princess instructed us how to let the right arm ‘float' so as to cushion the jolting of the horse's gait, which falcons dislike. Meantime Sirko ranged ahead of us, sniffing out quarry. That dog, I reckoned, with its delicately shaped head and body so lean you could count its ribs, had a keener intelligence than all of Mstislav's brawny mastiffs put together.

We rode four abreast, talking of this and that. Somewhat to my surprise the name of Olaf was never mentioned, not even when the subject touched on religion, as it did when we passed by the ancient cult center of the Slavic thunder god, Perun.

This was a close, thick, shadowy grove by the lakeside, full of gnarled trunks and twisted boughs. Dead fowls hung from the branches there and, dimly seen among the trunks, stood a wooden post carved in the rough likeness of a man. Sirko bounded into the trees, barking excitedly. She had found an unexpected quarry.