Jorvik Read online

  Jorvik

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Publisher’s Note

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Author’s Note

  Place Names

  Glossary

  Bibliography

  Copyright

  This book contains views and language on nationality, sexual politics, ethnicity, and society which are a product of the time in which the book is set. The publisher does not endorse or support these views. They have been retained in order to preserve the integrity of the text.

  For James Andrew Robbins

  Chapter One

  13 November A.D. 1002, St Brice’s Day.

  None of them knew that they rode towards massacre. The whispers had not yet filtered into the northern lands from whence they came. They knew, of course, that all was not well in Ethelred’s England; almost fifty years had elapsed since the fall of Eric Bloodaxe and the dissolution of the great Viking kingdom of Jorvik, but in the latter years the triumphant achievements of King Alfred’s line had been despoiled by a monarch who was as cowardly as he was foolish. Encouraged by Ethelred’s capricious reign, the Norsemen had reinstigated their plunder. Throughout the last two decades the king’s ineffectual method of coping with the viking scourge was to pay them massive amounts of Danegeld. Now, even the most English of Englishmen had begun to wonder if life might be easier under the shrewd King Swein Forkbeard, rather than being bled to death by their own fitful monarch… These mutterings had reached the court. In fear for his life, Ethelred saw treachery even from those Danes who had served him well for years. This led to his rashest decision so far: he ordered a massacre of all the Danes in England.

  However, the family who rode south on that St Brice’s Day was not privy to these machinations. Ahead lay gaiety, several days’ feasting and a comfortable bed. Since mooring their boat in the Treante when the water changed course, they had ridden for days over tangled heath and moorland, wild marshy plains and sections of Roman road overgrown with weeds. In between these long stretches of isolation they would happen upon a stockaded town or village where Einar would blow his trumpet to warn of their coming. With luck, there would be another such haven before nightfall. The densely-forested route they travelled now was no place to camp; only the distant thud of a woodman’s axe bespoke another human presence. They had not encountered a soul for the last twenty miles.

  Einar, his wife Ragnhild and their three small children were on their way to a feast at the house of Ragnhild’s sister, Estrid, in celebration of her firstborn. Estrid and her husband had temporary residence in Wessex; they were amongst a group of hostages taken by Ethelred after the last payment of Danegeld with the aim of ensuring the cessation of Viking raids on the country. Forkbeard’s sister and her husband were held captive, too. In keeping with Ethelred’s past decisions this was met with contempt by Einar, who was one of those ready to accept Forkbeard on the English throne – even though he was a Dane. Einar, a Vestfolder by heritage, could not abide the Danes, and it made him furious when some ignorant oaf of an Englishman lumped all Scandinavians together under this same title; the Danes were a much inferior breed to the people of Norway. Even so, now that Forkbeard had won Norway from Olaf Tryggvason, and just as brothers might squabble amongst themselves yet become as one in times of family strife, so the bond of Norse tongue and cultural unity led Einar to accept the Danish king in favour of Ethelred.

  Unlike his wife, who had emigrated from Norway with her family as a girl, Einar was the second generation to have been born at Jorvik. His parents were dead now, as were Ragnhild’s, but the couple kept links with Norway and often visited those siblings who had chosen to return to the fjords. Indeed, each considered their estate at Jorvik to be merely an extension of the family’s Norwegian homeland. Nevertheless, they had assimilated well with the native population to build a thriving Anglo-Scandinavian centre of world trade.

  However, the part of England into which they ventured now was like a foreign country, and Einar came well-armed into Wessex, keeping his horse near the wooden wagon that conveyed his family. In addition to his own axe and sword, he brought five sokemen who were well-equipped for danger, for although the hostages were permitted to go about their everyday affairs, they were under close watch and there would be Anglo-Saxons at the feasting. Only the thrall, or slave, who drove the wagon had no axe to protect himself, the law forbidding him to carry arms.

  At thirty-five, Einar was ten years his wife’s senior, though by no means past his prime. The voluminous cloak that draped not just his flanks but those of his mount, the density and richness of its cloth, the fur hat and neatly-trimmed beard, the array of weapons, all shouted nobility; ’twas a very rich man who carried a sword.

  His wife, too, was swathed in tiers of luxury, only her round healthy face at the mercy of the weather. Ragnhild, heavily pregnant, had qualms about making the long trip beyond the safety of the Danelaw, and it was merely out of affection for her sister that she did so. With Einar the Short – a jocular title as he was six foot four – and his bodyguards to protect her, she had few fears about wild animals or outlaws, but what use would they be if the jolting cart encouraged her child to be born? She shifted in discomfort, rousing the sleeping infant whose head was on her lap. With tender hand she petted him back to slumber, gazing fondly at her other children, both of whom also slept, cushioned against the November frosts by a pile of hides and straw.

  A chaffinch gave fluid call to warn his tribe of intruders. They rose as a cloud, but soon dropped back to the forest floor pecking for beechmast as the wagon rumbled on. Ragnhild’s clear blue eyes rolled upwards through the branches, some completely bare, the oaks still well-clothed. This morning the sun had shone but now in the mid-afternoon the light was failing and the snatches of sky were grey. One of the cumbersome wooden wheels hit a tree root, jarring her yet again and setting the unborn child squirming. She prayed to Frigg, mother of the gods, to hold the child safe and make the journey over soon.

  ‘Want to pee-wee!’ A thin wail emerged from beneath the goatskins calling a halt to the journey.

  Ragnhild sighed and donned a helpless expression. ‘What a place to choose. Husband, can you…?’

  ‘Sling the pigling to me!’ boomed Einar, but he was smiling as he threw back his cloak, dismounted and hoisted his three-year-old daughter from the cart. Still drowsy, she was held out to perform her task. ‘With luck such as mine there will come a hundred outlaws screaming for blood when I have my hands thus full.’ When nothing happened immediately, Einar began to whistle. Shortly, the pattering of droplets onto rotting leaves accompanied his tune and both were enveloped in steam.

  Disturbed from their nap, the six-year-old boy and his younger sister examined their location whilst their mother gulped water from a kidskin. During those few moments whilst the horses rested, the intensity of the silence became unnerving. Ragnhild’s flesh crawled and she wished herself somewhere less hostile. The thrall used this interlude to flex his muscles, tensed against the cold
, but to little effect. Still aching, he hunched into his threadbare wrap and raked at a fleabite with grimy nails. Of all the travellers he was the darkest. Whilst the sokemen varied in colouring, their lord’s family was pure Nordic – five shades of blond ranging from Einar’s dark yellow to the youngest’s silver-white.

  ‘Finished?’ asked Einar. ‘Shake off the drops then.’ And he swung her back into the cart where the occupants made grumbles of complaint as a draught swept under the goatskin yet again. The thrall urged the horses into movement and once more the wagon-wheels crunched over beechmast and bark. ‘By the gods, my arse aches!’ Einar winced and shifted in his stirrups. ‘I hope this feast is worth it.’

  ‘Are we nearly there?’ whined the boy, Ragnor.

  ‘Ja, soon be there,’ soothed his mother. ‘Einar, tell them some riddles to entertain them.’ With vociferous accord, the children became more animated.

  ‘Hmm, let me see.’ Einar took one hand from the reins to pull at his beard. ‘What has skin but cannot hold water?’ They failed to guess.

  ‘Gunnhilde!’ he told them. The little girl sulked at the laughter which her incontinence provoked and buried her head under the covers.

  ‘I’ve got one and you won’t guess it,’ piped up her sister. ‘What has teeth but cannot bite?’

  ‘That’s easy, ninny,’ scoffed Ragnor. ‘’Tis a comb. I have a better one. What has a mouth but cannot speak?’

  Einar rubbed his chin, swaying to the horse’s gait. ‘I cannot guess – you must tell me.’

  ‘A river!’ The boy was pleased at outwitting his father.

  ‘But a river does speak,’ objected Ragnhild, seeking to put the boy in his place for his cocksuredness. ‘It whispers, it argues, it roars…’

  Her husband interjected: ‘What stinks but is not a pig, can walk and run but cannot sit?’

  After much puzzlement the children could only come up with, ‘A cow?’

  ‘No – a Dane with piles!’ Einar’s sokemen laughed heartily.

  ‘What are pi…’

  ‘Your father is a gowk!’ Cuckoo, Ragnhild called him as she pruned the child’s question. ‘Tis best he gets his foolery over before we reach polite company.’

  Einar forced his mouth into a serious angle. ‘One last riddle. What cuts but cannot kill?’

  ‘Mother’s tongue!’ laughed the children, who had heard this a dozen times before. Einar laughed too as his wife swung an arm at him. ‘Methinks I should rest my own tongue now before it is ripped out.’

  When they emerged from the forest they met with a party of southern Danes, also on their way to the feast, which gave Ragnhild new reason to be nervous. She whispered a warning for her husband to adopt his best behaviour and for the moment he reserved his wit, but she knew that when the horns brimmed with drink he would be unable to constrain his impishness. Already Ragnhild was rehearsing excuses to her hosts in order to leave the feast early and so miss the inevitable fight.

  Night was falling and frost beginning to sparkle on the goatskins when, to her relief, they reached their destination. The merry sound of lute and pipe wavered out to meet them, but Einar was wary before entering the large timber house, first checking behind the door and then counting the number of Anglo-Saxons present. On establishing that there was insufficient number to offer threat, he relaxed. The guests were welcomed into the torchlit hall by the proud new parents with their baby son, given bowls of water and towels and treated with the utmost hospitality. The children were handed to the charge of a female slave who, after feeding them, put them to bed. Despite constant napping on the journey they were exhausted and were soon asleep.

  Ragnhild was tired, too. Smoke from the central fire billowed around the room seeking an outlet in the thatch. In no time at all her eyes became red, her chest tight. Far from soothing her, the music aggravated her headache. She had little appetite for the gargantuan meal of meat, fish and fowl laid out in the feasting hall. At home she ate frugally, and even Einar had a modest appetite for such a big man. Watching him now through the pall of smoke and flickering candlelight, his wife wished he would be as moderate in his liquid consumption. Einar imbibed freely of the horn which, by nature of its shape, was impossible to put down until drained.

  Mead and wine flowed. Einar behaved abominably, unable to withhold his jokes even before the meal was over, but his neighbour seemed to find the big man uproariously entertaining – probably because he did not understand half of the Northern dialect. Would his reaction be the same when Einar began to joke at the expense of the English? Ragnhild did not wish to find out. Begging her sister’s understanding, she excused herself and went to the sleeping quarters at the end of the hall. Before retiring, she examined her three children, all of whom slept. Shivering against the cold, she laid on the sleeping bench attached to the wall and pulled the eiderdowns over her head. But the moment she closed her eyes she was once again jarring up and down in the wagon, and each time she prepared to slip into unconsciousness, the roar of drunken men would jolt her awake. Her advanced state of pregnancy brought restlessness, too. The child was unusually active, grinding its head into her bladder. With a sigh, she heaved her bulk from the mattress and, trembling with cold, groped her way outside to relieve herself.

  Whilst she fumbled and squatted in the pitch-black latrine, a stealthy procession of feet trod by. Preoccupied with cold and discomfort Ragnhild ignored it. The din from the hall increased; there was pandemonium now. The ghastly screams warned Ragnhild this was more than drunken revelry. Clutching her belly she made an impulsive rush at the doorway and came upon a shambles.

  Fuddled by drink and outnumbered, the Norsemen had had no time to unsheath their weapons. A score lay dead already while others struggled on, trying to wrest the swords from their attackers. Even Einar’s bodyguards, ever alert for danger, had been lulled by the hospitality and were now battling for their lives. Heart thudding, Ragnhild searched wildly for her husband but could not see him. Her children! She wheeled towards the room in which they slept, just in time to see their assassin emerge with reddened sword. Her lips parted but nothing emerged. Too numbed to scream, she backed away, trying to escape the carnage, but the fighting engulfed her. Her passage through the flailing arms was clumsy; she tripped and continued her escape on all fours, balking as her hand encountered a bloody puddle but not daring to stop. Her only salvation lay in the hope that the attackers were too engrossed in their killing to look down and notice her. Sobbing, she reached the door, scrambled to her feet and lurched out into the night.

  With the most casual of actions a passing soldier employed his sword. Too shocked to feel pain, Ragnhild instinctively protected her abdomen. The Englishman tugged his weapon from her left shoulder, crimson spouted, Ragnhild fell and knew no more.

  It was a blessing. Unconscious and presumed dead, she was spared the sight of her children massacred in their beds, her husband with his arms hacked off as he tried to prevent the murder of his family, the rest of her kin dead too. When she came round the house was ablaze, the air thick with the stench of burning flesh, and the perpetrators gone. Using her last ounce of energy she dragged herself from the encroaching flames, before fainting again. Revived a second time, she found herself being carried away by those thralls who had hidden at the first sign of trouble, away to the house of a bondsman where, bawling in agony and grief, she was delivered of a son. The labour was mercifully short. Sapped by loss of blood from her wound, Ragnhild could not have endured a lengthy travail.

  Now, watching the child suckle under her bandaged shoulder, she chose a name worthy of his victorious fight for life: Sigurd. In years to come this precious babe would be the one to exact blood-money from the English as payment for his family’s slaughter; his mother would ensure that.

  * * *

  Vengeance did not have to wait on Sigurd’s adulthood. Enraged by the death of his sister Gunnhilde and thousands of Scandinavian men, women and children at the hands of Ethelred, King Swein Forkbeard launched a p
unitive mission into Wessex and East Anglia, wreaking dreadful retribution. Until then, Ragnhild and her son had remained in hiding; ignorant over the extent of the butchery, she was too terrified of a return to Jorvik, convinced she would find similar carnage there. Even when a pedlar brought news that the Danelaw was largely untouched, its Scandinavian populace too dense to incur attack from their English neighbours, she retained her obsession that it was just another plot. Besides, if the pedlar’s other information were true then there was no reason for her to return: Ethelred had confiscated all Einar’s property and had given it to one of his henchmen. On Swein’s departure from the coast, Ragnhild and her baby son escaped with him, and with only her skills as a midwife to earn her a living, settled in the Vestfold region of Norway, the family homeland.

  The small community in which they lived had once been a marketplace, but now the traders passed it by in search of more favourable ports. Nestled at the head of a small bay that formed a ready-made harbour, it was for the most extent protected from pirate raids by numerous islets amongst the shallow waters at its mouth, and by the mountain range behind. Between mountains and shore was a sloping meadow where the visiting traders had once camped, their ships laden with pelts of marten and bear, sealskins, walrus hide and ivory that had been bartered for silver and soapstone vessels hewn from the local rock. The folk who lived in the scattered buildings at the foot of the mountains still crafted their bowls and hammered out jewellery, but their main occupation was farming. It was here in this region of deep forests, secret lakes and lush vegetation that Ragnhild and her son led their bucolic existence.

  Dispossessed, Ragnhild was permitted to live in the home of her brother Olaf and his wife, but it was a sad decline. From being the wife of a chieftain she was now reduced to peasantry, her hands red from menial work. For the first couple of years Olaf tried to persuade her to marry again; this annoyed her. ‘It is a hard thing when my own brother wants to be rid of me!’