Swords From the North Read online

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  1. The Chamberlain

  2. Empress and Emperor

  3. Maria and Theodora

  4. The Varangers

  5. The Axe Game

  6. Harald’s Song

  7. The New Emperor

  8. Council Chamber

  9. The Gold Chain

  10. The Sailing

  11. The Corsairs

  12. Wulf’s Kinsman

  13. Goose-woman and Quarrel

  14. Battle Plans

  15. The Turcopoles

  16. Harald’s Pact

  17. The Wall of Mosul

  18. The Greek Spy

  19. The Gathering Host

  20. The New General

  21. Ill Luck

  22. The Three Breakings

  23. The Emir and Hauteville

  24. Gyric’s Call

  25. The Caliph’s Pact

  26. The Hunt Begins

  27. The Tunnel at Licata

  28. The Other Brothers

  29. The Great Darkness

  30. The Darkness Lifts

  31. The Dress-fitting

  32. Olaf’s Counsel

  33. Jerusalem

  34. The Bronze Brooch

  35. ‘We Shall be Dead!’

  36. The Second Song

  37. Trial and Judgement

  38. The Tower Prison

  39. Euphemia

  40. Polota-svarv

  41. The Harbour Chain

  42. The Parting of the Ways

  Introduction

  This is the story of the famous Norseman, Harald the Stern (Hardrada), between the years 1034 and 1044, which he spent in Constantinople - or Byzantium, or Miklagard - as captain of the Greek Emperor’s guard. Harald is of special interest because in 1066 he came to England with three hundred longships in the hope that he could become our king. Instead, beside the river Derwent at Stamfordbridge near York, he was struck dead by an arrow on Wednesday, 30 September. So many of his warriors were slain on this day that only twenty-four longships were needed to take the survivors back home to Norway. In many ways Harald was the last of the great vikings and, though a stern man, was a brave and honest one according to the codes of his time.

  The framework on which this story is built is the Heims Rringla or Sagas of the Norse Kings, written between 1223 and 1235 by an Icelandic chieftain-poet named Snorri Sturluson, himself a descendant of that Wulf who plays such a large part in this book.

  Snorri was not a historian in the sense that we use the word today; he had little access to accurate documents and much of what he says may have come to him by family tradition. However, a saga is first and foremost a story to be enjoyed for its own sake and so, in retelling this one, I have not tried to correct Snorri’s history but instead have attempted to interpret and to set down in more modern terms his picture of those heroic and sad times.

  Henry Treece

  1. The Chamberlain

  The two Icelanders stood back to let Harald go first up the twenty grey stone steps that led from the wharfside to the street.

  He had been to great trouble, combing his long yellow hair and his stubbly beard before coming ashore, and now the crowd which lined the railings began to call out in admiration. A dark-skinned girl carrying a basket of green melons on her shoulder cried, ‘Here comes their king! They must be rich folk in the north. Look at his golden bracelets!’

  Everybody sighed or laughed but Hardrada pretended not to see them though his pale blue eyes missed nothing.

  Behind him Wulf whispered mockingly, ‘Go on, Harald, give the poor cattle something to remember. They don’t see a viking come ashore every day, I’ll be bound.’

  Haldor slapped the broad iron of his axe and laughed in the bright sunshine. ‘Perhaps that is just as well,’ he said.

  Now Harald was almost at the top of the stairway and the crowd began to draw back to let this warrior pass.

  A light breeze caught his spun-gold hair, flaring it out below the bronze-bound black leather helmet. His long cloak of heavy dark red wool fringed with silver tassels lifted a moment to show the great ivory-hafted longsword in the untanned calf-skin scabbard at his left hip.

  The Syrian girl with the melons put her basket down and, with her thin dark hands placed together, rolled up her eyes and sighed, ‘Oh, to think of such a sweetheart!’

  But the men in the crowd did not hear her. They were looking with envy at the Northman’s hide shirt, stitched all over with links of dull iron; at the silver-studded belt around his slim waist; at the twisted thongs of deer-hide that bound his blue linen breeks to the shape of his strong legs.

  One old man, leaning on a stick, pointed a shaking finger and said, ‘This is a fighting man, my friends. You don’t get a scar like that one, from temple to chin, sitting by the hearth-fire.’ For a moment Harald was tempted to tell the old man that this scar had come from nothing more deadly than an apple-bough he had ridden into by night above Trondheim; but just then there was a sudden blare of silver trumpets and along the street clattered a half-squadron of horsemen, riding on either side of a gold-draped litter surmounted by a tall palm tree carved from ebony and bearing leaves of thinly-beaten gold.

  ‘The empress comes!’ cried a small boy. ‘Look, old lady Zoe has come down herself to greet the white wolves!’

  Then all at once the three Northmen realized that the crowd had turned away from them as though they were not there, to gaze at the approaching cavalcade.

  Only the little melon-seller still sighed, her eyelids closed, her hands clasped tightly in her dream.

  Haldor said to Wulf, ‘So, brother, now you know how much a viking is worth in Miklagard.’

  Harald stood stern-faced and still. Then he said in a voice like an old iceberg crunching along a rocky headland, ‘But they will learn, comrades. They will learn. The price is about to go up at any moment now!’

  Yet it was not the empress who had come down to the wharfside after all. The slaves set down the gold-draped litter and out of it stepped a thin-faced bent old man who leaned on an ebony staff. Wulf said with a sigh, ‘The silver thread the sewing-women used when they embroidered that man’s robe would keep a family of five up in Iceland for a year.’

  Harald slapped him on the back and answered, ‘Aye, maybe. But if you try to snatch it off his back, brother, you will get stuck so full of lances I shall think we came to Miklagard with a hedgehog as sailing-mate!’

  They had no chance to say more, for now the old man was tapping his way towards them, his large dark eyes searching them, weighing them up, as he came; and when he was within three paces of the brothers he said in a high voice, ‘Which of you is Harald Sigurdson, half-brother to Olaf the Saint?’

  Harald moved forward a little way and stroked his golden beard. ‘I am that one,’ he said. ‘Have you come to collect my taxes already? We have only just set foot in your famous city. Come back later in the day to the longship called Stallion. By that time we may have had luck betting on one of the horses racing at your Hippodrome.’

  It was meant to be a joke but the thin old man did not smile, and after he had stared into Harald’s face for a long while the viking began to wish he had not spoken. He shuffled his great feet and said lamely, ‘I spoke in jest, you understand. Now I look more closely I can see that you are not a tax-collector.’ That also was a joke of sorts, but the old man’s keen stare continued. Then at last he let his thin lips curl into a sort of smile and said bleakly, ‘I am familiar with Norwegians and their jokes, Sigurdson. We have been entertained by such jokes for ten generations here in Byzantium. I recall that your kinsman Olaf attempted a few of them in his time as captain here. But I am not with you to discuss jokes at
this time. I am a Chamberlain of the Court, as you will no doubt come to learn, and my purpose is to take you direct to that Most Serene Majesty, our Empress Zoe.’

  Wulf blew out his red cheeks and said, ‘What, to be invited to the palace on our first day! We are in luck, Harald!’

  But the Chamberlain did not laugh at this either. He stood back a little way and bowed his head, indicating the litter with his ebony wand. ‘Have the goodness to seat yourselves,’ he said. ‘The empress has never been kept waiting by anyone and it is unlikely that she will change her habits now because a shipload of Northmen come into harbour looking for easy pickings in the Varangian Guard.’

  Harald was about to reply to this too, but held his words back at the last moment. Then bending low so as to fit his great bulk into the litter he lay back on the scarlet cushions beside his friends. The Chamberlain entered last and drew the heavy curtains close shut.

  Haldor said merrily, ‘Nay, nay, Chamberlain! We have come far to see Miklagard. Open the curtains, my friend.’

  The old man leaned on his black stick and clenched his teeth for an instant. Then he said in a voice that might have made many men shiver, ‘This is the imperial litter, seafarer. Its curtains are never left open. Here we have always acted according to ancient custom according to precedent. Because the Serene Majesty has thought fit to give you an audience it is no reason why she should also change the laws concerning the curtains of her litter. Or are we all wrong in Byzantium, my dear man? Is the empress wrong in keeping her curtains drawn, do you say?’

  The three vikings lay back in the heat gazing at him speechlessly. They had not met such a man before though they had been in kings’ halls in the north. He was more like a snake than a man, they all thought at the same time. So they said no more but let themselves be jolted along avenue after avenue, alley after alley, until at last they were set down and, when the curtains were drawn open, saw that they were in a great inner square tiled with red and gold and blue. Near to them a fountain made of dull silver threw many jets up into the air. The water came from the open mouths of seven lions whose staring eyes were formed with great rubies.

  Harald whispered to Wulf, ‘Don’t say it, or we shall find ourselves in their dungeons before this day is out! Look at the birds and keep your thievish thoughts to yourself.’

  And truly the birds were worth looking at. They were of a dozen colours, all fluttering and cheeping high in the gilded dome, kept from escaping by a great net hoisted on ebony poles about the square.

  Wulf shuddered and said softly, ‘T hat is how I feel now, Harald. I would let them shave off my beard even, if only I could be back in Stallion along the Dnieper, blow the wind how it might.’

  Harald only said, ‘Courage, Icelander, courage! Have we come so far to let an old man with a black stick, and a few poor chirruping birds, put us to fear?’

  So they followed the Chamberlain along many dim passages and into the presence of the Empress Zoe.

  2. Empress and Emperor

  In the vast dim chamber the air was so heavy, so thick with the scent of incense that the vikings almost sneezed. At first all they could make out was a tall throne of some dark wood, its back carved like the fanning tail of a peacock and its sides rising in the shape of palm trees.

  The Chamberlain whispered sternly, ‘Go forward and kneel.’

  But Harald said aloud, ‘What, is this a church? I see no altar.’

  The Chamberlain struck his wand on the glazed tiles in annoyance, but just then a woman’s voice said, ‘Leave them be, Primikyrios. You know these Northmen, they pray as our forefathers did to Zeus, standing upright.’

  Harald said, ‘We are not praying, lady, we are looking round to see what pretty things you have which we might want to take back with us up the river to Kiev.’

  Even Wulf and Haldor gasped at this, but the woman’s voice sounded amused. She said, ‘Yes, you are of the northern breed, young man. But allow me to tell you that the pretty things in the palace are only distributed when the emperor dies; and even then only to the sworn members of his Varangian Guard.’

  Harald said lightly, ‘Then swear us in now, lady, and let us be off.’

  The black robed Primikyrios snorted with fury behind him at this and even began to raise his wand as though to strike the viking. But the empress came forward from the dusk of the great throne and halted him.

  She was more than middle-aged, they saw, and was not the most beautiful woman they had met on their travels. Yet in her flowing robes of pale blue and crimson silk and with her auburn hair piled thickly on her head, she was striking. Harald cast his eye over her and noted the painted eyelids and the long darkened lashes. He noted the gold bracelets that seemed to reach from wrist to elbow, jangling as she moved. But most of all he noted the white watchful face and the cruel bend of the nose. About her floated a musk-like perfume which reminded him of some predatory animal, a leopardess, perhaps.

  She seemed to flare out her nostrils, gazing directly into his face, then said, ‘When you address me again, viking, you must call me Your Most Serene Majesty. Do you understand that?’

  Harald wiped his broad brown hand across his ruddy face to clear it of moisture in that stifling room. Then he said, ‘Shall we do as she says, brothers? Or shall we just call her “lady”, as we do our own queens?’

  Before the two Icelanders could answer the Empress Zoe cried out sharply, ‘Primikyrios, draw the curtains to let in more light, then leave us. I have my silver whistle in case I need you again.’

  And when this was done and the Chamberlain had bowed out backwards from the throne, the empress struck Harald lightly on the cheek with a small ivory spatula that she held in her right hand. Her blow was no more than the fluttering of a butterfly on his bearded face. But he did not like it all the same.

  She said smiling, ‘Nay, do not look like a lion at me, Sigurdson. There are ten thousand men in Byzantium this minute who would count it the greatest honour of their lives to be so struck by me.’

  Harald said dourly, ‘In all my life no one has ever struck me unless a second blow followed the first, and that second came from me.’

  The Empress Zoe sat back on her great throne still smiling. ‘Then strike me now, viking,’ she said. ‘I would not wish to break the pattern of your destiny.’

  But Harald only fingered the place where her little stick had touched and then said slowly, ‘That I cannot do, lady, because when I strike the second blow it is the last that is struck, for who receives it needs no other.’

  She began to laugh so shrilly then that curtains seemed to twitch here and there in the great room, as though men were behind them wondering what was happening and waiting to run in.

  Wulf nudged Haldor and whispered, ‘Be ready. Swing your sword round in your belt so that we can hold them off.’

  But the empress shook her head and said softly, ‘Oh, you Northmen! Always suspecting that we of Byzantium are about to ambush you! You are like great children, my friends. Yes, great children.’

  Then Harald said sternly, ‘Lady, in the north we learn to be men at an age when the rest of the world are children. If you do not understand us by now that is your misfortune. We come here to sell you the hire of our swords, no more; and after our term with you is done, we shall go back to Norway and sit on our own stools and eat our own food. Nothing more. I bring thirty rovers into haven here, all good men who have stood under the arrows in twelve battles. Will you employ them or not? If your answer is “No ”, then we shall sail out again by the late tide and seek another master, in Sicily or Africa, or wherever the sea takes us. It matters little to us as long as the pay is fair. But once we have given our oath we never break our word. We give good value, lady.’

  The Empress Zoe sucked the end of the ivory spatula and said solemnly, ‘I’m sure you do, Northman. Yes, I’m sure you do. But, as you see, I am only a weak woman and am not a good bargainer as you fierce men are. Give me until this evening so that I can discuss this matter with
my High Constable, the Contostavlos. Now, in the meantime, sit on those cushions that you see before you and tell me something of the north. You know, we in the south, we kings and queens, do not travel much; but we always wish to know what is happening in the world, and sometimes the spies we send out do not report the truth correctly to us.’

  Harald said, ‘You should whip them if they do not earn their pay’

  The empress glanced away. ‘We sometimes do worse than that,’ she said. ‘But it does not make them better spies, not to have eyes to see with.’ Then she smiled and looked back at the men. ‘Tell me your story,’ she said. ‘Tell me how you brothers came together, for I can see well enough that you are not true brothers from one mother - but are, as you say, battle-brothers. Tell me.’

  So Harald told her how he had stood beside his half-brother Olaf at Stiklestad against the Danish invaders, until Olaf fell. He told her he was only fifteen at the time and was glad of the help of Earl Rognvald to get away from the battlefield and to make his way to Novgorod, where his kinsman Jaroslav the Grand Duke sheltered him and betrothed him to his young daughter Elizabeth.

  The empress looked amused at this. ‘Is she a pretty girl?’ she asked.

  Harald shrugged his bear’s shoulders. ‘She is comely,’ he said. ‘I am no great judge of that sort of thing. She will do well enough when the time comes. By then she will learn to keep her tongue reined.’

  The empress clucked and nodded. ‘What if you do not go back to Novgorod and claim her?’ she asked.

  Harald said, ‘I see no reason why I should not go back. The dowry that goes with her is good. Besides, when the throne of Norway is empty again it is my turn to sit on it. And that I mean to do. Well, a king needs a queen at his side and Elizabeth will make a good queen. Her father is training her well. Yes, I shall go back.’

  The Empress Zoe fanned herself with a bunch of peacock feathers. She smiled. ‘Ah, well,’ she said, ‘we shall see. We shall see. It could be that a fine young man like you might find a throne and a wife for himself here in the south. Surely that would be the good sort of bargain that you vikings look for?’