The Sea Queen Read online

  “I’m sorry, Monkey,” Svanhild said. Svanhild had seen a monkey once in Spain and thought Eystein, with his long limbs, big eyes, and tendency to cling, could be one of those strange creatures who looked at her with such intelligence. “It’s warmer in the tent, and there you can play with Katla.” Katla was Svanhild’s servant, a Norse-Irish girl who feared storms.

  “But I will not see Boddi again,” said Eystein. His words made Svanhild cold beyond the touch of rain and wind. He had walked too close to death since the moment of his birth, when the midwife had to breathe into his little mouth to start his lungs. Svanhild kept a close watch on any sign that death stalked him still. She had named him after her father, for though he had been killed when Svanhild was only five, what she remembered most about him was how intensely alive he had been. Eystein would benefit from a portion of his grandfather’s spirit.

  “Look, the storm is passing,” said Svanhild. The ship moved more smoothly over the water as the waves subsided and the wind grew steadier. Men sheltering under benches with cloaks drawn over their heads began to unfold themselves. Ulfarr glanced at her, waiting to see if she wanted the sail raised again. She shook her head. She would keep it half-reefed until morning, or until Solvi ordered otherwise. She looked over her shoulder and thought she saw the shapes of ships in the distance, but did not try to count them, not yet. She did not want to think about further losses.

  * * *

  When the wind slackened near dawn, the remaining four ships drew together. Tryggulf’s ship had torn off half its lines in the storm. Solvi’s men passed some replacement rope over to him. A good wind carried them to the east coast of Iceland a few days later, past narrow beaches of black sand, but it was not until late evening, the sun no more than an orange glow on the horizon, that Solvi found a beach of black pebbles wide enough to pull up the ships safely. A huge brown stone, mottled with lichen and moss, stood alone a little offshore. In the dim light, it looked like a giant’s head peering up, the rest of the body still buried in sand.

  Svanhild stumbled down from her ship, light-headed from hunger and exhaustion. She did not notice Solvi approaching until he put an arm around her. He pulled her close and kissed her temple. “You did well, my sea queen.” His arm pressed into the space between her ribs and hip. “You’re so skinny.”

  She tried halfheartedly to pull away. On the voyage from Frisia to the Faroes she had lost what little fat she carried and did not have time to replenish her reserves before Hakon’s forces pressed them on. She always lost flesh when they were at sea. “We must feed you well in Iceland,” Solvi added.

  “Yes,” said Svanhild. “I remember the fat cows, and streams full of salmon. I want nothing more than to eat myself bursting every night and grow plump and happy and bear you another child.” Solvi pulled her closer, though he said nothing. She knew he blamed himself that she had not carried a child to term since Eystein. If she could stop moving for a year or two, she would catch a healthy child again, she felt certain. Eystein would be better off if she could give him a younger brother, someone to protect and be bold for.

  Solvi would like another son, one more like him. He loved Eystein, in his way, though Svanhild sometimes caught him watching his son in the same way that Eystein watched the little creatures of shore and grass, as if peering into a world that interested him, but that he could never understand. Solvi still thought that one day Eystein would love his ships, and crave adventure the same way he did.

  “Who was on board that ship?” Svanhild asked.

  “Besides Thorolf?” Solvi asked, naming a young captain who had shown enough promise for Solvi to give him a ship to command only a few weeks earlier. “His wife and children traveled with him. Some of Snorri’s kin, I think.”

  “Perhaps they survived. They were nearest Hakon’s ships,” said Svanhild. Solvi did not answer. Svanhild knew what he thought of her hopes: she lived in a dream world, while he inhabited the true one. They had fought often enough about how she saw bright glimmers where he saw only shadow. “I need to make camp,” she added. Eystein would not sleep well without his favorite blankets, and a tent on even ground. As she walked up the beach, her toes caught on small stones, and she stumbled. The ground swayed beneath her as she fought to maintain balance on a surface that did not move as she expected it to.

  Eystein had fallen asleep against a rock by the time she had the tent set up. She had to drag him inside and settle him next to her under the wet, itchy wool of her blankets. It had grown still darker when she woke to the warmth of Solvi’s chest against her back. Eystein’s small body, curled in the hollow of her own, vibrated with his shivering, even in sleep.

  Solvi pulled her close and buried his face in her hair. “I believed we would stay in the Faroes for the winter,” he said to her. Svanhild longed to rest, but she knew that Solvi could only voice his doubts in the middle of the night, while she lingered at the gates of sleep. Perhaps some nights he told her sleeping form his secrets and she never heard them except in dreams.

  “Hakon claims the Faroes,” said Svanhild. “He has done so since your father’s time.” She did not mind returning to Iceland. The Faroe Islands had even fewer trees, only mountains and rocky fields where sheep grazed. The inhabitants built their homes out of turf, living low and in the dirt, in barrows even before their deaths. Many had fled there to escape Harald’s taxes, only to find that Hakon’s demands bit just as deep.

  “Is there nowhere a man can go that Hakon or Harald does not claim?” Solvi asked. “Is not my Maer enough for them?”

  “Hush, you will wake our son,” said Svanhild. She did not want to speak his name for fear it would draw him from sleep. “Iceland is still free. It will be a good home for us.”

  “I do not speak of a home,” said Solvi. “You and I have never had a home together, not since Hakon took my land for his sons.”

  “That is why we must make our own home together,” said Svanhild. “We can claim land here in Iceland, and build a farm to pass on to our son.” More quietly, she added, “You know he is no sailor.”

  “And I am no farmer,” said Solvi. He had said the same when they left Vestfold together, when Svanhild had been pregnant with Eystein, wearing a gown that was Ragnvald’s last gift to her. She thought of her hand around a cow’s teat rather than the steering oar, of combing a sheep’s wool until all the fibers lay straight in a well-ordered cloud—the calming repetition of it, of all the little tasks that must be performed to run a farm. Not so different from managing a ship.

  “Promise me,” she said. “Promise me that we will stop for a time so our son can grow strong.” She yawned; she could not help it. The pebble beach had shifted under her body to make a cradle for her, comfortable after days of sleeping on a narrow rowing bench.

  “Sleep, my love,” he said. “I promise you, our son will have his birthright.”

  “What does that mean?” Svanhild rolled over to face him. “Does that mean we will stay in Iceland for a time?” Eystein stirred, woken by her movement.

  “Perhaps. I would rather he grow up in Tafjord.”

  Solvi had said that before, and each time Svanhild had tried to turn his ambitions elsewhere. “I know, but that is not possible.” She reached out to touch Solvi’s face. “We need to find a new land for him.”

  Solvi pulled away. “There is a difference between what you think is impossible and what you fear to attempt.”

  Eystein sat up. “Mother, is it—do we have to flee again?”

  Svanhild turned again and pulled him back to her. “No. Hush now. Sleep.” She stroked his shoulder the way he liked until his breathing grew even. She would continue this argument with Solvi in the morning.

  * * *

  The convoy rested for a day on the beach. Eystein chased shorebirds across the shallows and dug for clams that hid below the depth of the birds’ beaks. Svanhild showed him how to roast them open on the campfire’s coals. As she packed up the tent, Eystein came running up to her. His fine russ
et hair was still rumpled on one side from sleep, and his face was dirty at his hairline, though he had washed it. He liked to be clean, and Svanhild looked forward to bringing him to a hot spring once they reached the settlement. He had been too young the last time they came here to remember the bliss and lasting warmth that the waters provided.

  “Mother, come, I have to show you something,” he said. Svanhild had taken the tent down, and spread out all the items within it so she knew where everything was before she packed. She hated to leave her work now, when a gust of wind might scatter it all, but Eystein’s eyes shone bright, and she did not like to resist him.

  “Come on,” he said again, rocking back and forth on his feet. Svanhild held out her hand to take his—gritty, cold, and clammy with seawater—and walked with him up the beach past the ships. On the marshy shore to the east, two white swans cast off into the water, with four gray cygnets between them.

  “Swans,” said Eystein. “Like you.”

  “Yes,” said Svanhild, watching the stately birds. They swam in a perfect line, even the young ones, moving across the still water like ships in a steady breeze. “It is a good omen, Monkey, a swan family to welcome us home.”

  * * *

  The next day was mild, so Svanhild rode in Solvi’s ship while his young apprentice Thorstein captained the ship she had guided through the storm. The ships hugged Iceland’s southern coast. An arctic wolf lifted its head from a bloodied seal carcass and met Svanhild’s eyes as the ships passed. The light from the low sun made its white fur look gold. Svanhild turned away, reminded of Ragnvald’s prophecy that Harald was a golden wolf who would either burn up or burnish all he touched, a prophecy that had further buttressed Harald’s claim to be king over all Norway. Ragnvald’s golden wolf should stay in Norway. Iceland was a land without kings.

  Fog filled the air as they approached the settlement at Reykjavik—Smokey Bay. Solvi ordered men to the oars and lowered the sail. He never liked approaching through a dense fog that could hide friend or foe, or simply a rock that might punch a hole in a ship’s hull.

  “It’s a strange place,” he said as the settlement emerged from the mist, a small collection of houses on plots of green farmland ridged by the stumps of the dwarf forest that had stood for a thousand years before the Norse arrived. Twisted stretches of black rock surrounded the strands of green. Above the farms, the mountains rose up sharply, snowcapped and smoking. Skalds said that gateways to the underworld of dragons and dwarves opened into those mountains, and Svanhild believed it.

  “Rich farmland,” said Svanhild. “And all of it for the taking.”

  “And clearing, and farming.” Solvi laughed. “I don’t mind the taking part.”

  A party assembled on the dock to greet them. Ingolfur Arnasson, who claimed to be Iceland’s first settler, was the first to greet Solvi when he stepped down from his ship. Ingolfur had fled Vestfold when Harald outlawed him for murdering his neighbor in a feud that had lasted three generations by the time he inherited it. He had grown rich from trade and raiding, and set out with his family for the rocky shores of Iceland.

  In the tale Ingolfur told, and paid his skald to repeat, he and his brothers threw the pillars of the high seat of their ancestral hall into the sea and decided to settle where they washed up onshore, which seemed to Svanhild the height of foolishness. The pillars stood behind Ingolfur in his hall, a reminder to everyone that no matter how many kings and jarls settled in Iceland, Ingolfur had arrived first.

  “This is a lot of men you have here,” Ingolfur said to Solvi as Svanhild climbed down the ship’s ladder onto the stone dock. Ingolfur stood no more than average height but carried himself with such weighty dignity, his solid stomach leading the way through any crowd and his long mustache announcing how important he found himself, that Svanhild always thought of him as a tall man.

  “Women too,” said Svanhild.

  “That is good.” Ingolfur squinted down at her. “Still, you have many people, with winter coming on.”

  “The sun still shines for most of the night,” said Solvi.

  “And every day is shorter,” Ingolfur replied. “Too short for clearing, planting, and harvesting enough food for your followers, even if you claim land.”

  Solvi gave Svanhild a look that she read well enough. Ingolfur wanted them gone, and Solvi would echo him later. When Svanhild frowned at Solvi, he turned back to Ingolfur. “Are you denying us hospitality?”

  “Of course not,” said Ingolfur. “Yet guests bearing gifts are the most welcome guests of all.”

  “When you give us welcome, we will give gifts.” Solvi gave Ingolfur one of his sharp, dangerous grins.

  “We have lost friends and family in this voyage,” Svanhild added. “A funeral feast would show the gods they are not forgotten, even in this faraway land.”

  Ingolfur’s mustache drooped. “Your woman has the right of it,” he said. He put his hand on Svanhild’s shoulder and left it there. “My wife would be happy to make a feast for your fallen friends—in two days’ time?”

  “The gods will be pleased,” said Svanhild, “and we will show our appreciation for your generosity.” She bowed her head, and slid closer to Solvi’s side, freeing herself from Ingolfur’s touch.

  “I will send thralls to help unload your ships,” said Ingolfur. He bowed and walked stiffly back up the beach.

  Solvi watched him go. “We had already gifted for a winter’s lodgings in the Faroes. This will beggar us.”

  Ulfarr stepped up behind them and Svanhild pressed herself against Solvi. “Send me to get more gold,” Ulfarr said. “Iceland has too few women for my taste.”

  “There are plenty of Irish thralls,” said Solvi. Svanhild had seen them among the curious who came down to the dock when she and Solvi arrived: short figures wearing homespun, with close-cropped hair that blurred the differences between men and women.

  “Pah—all their men want to marry them—”

  “And won’t take kindly to you raping their future wives?” Solvi said with a laugh. “You can get us gold and punish Hakon too—you said Heming Hakonsson does not defend Tafjord well?”

  “Not the last time I was there,” said Ulfarr. “I stole his armband and his favorite concubine last year!” Svanhild remembered a beautiful, sad-eyed woman who had tried to escape in the Faroes and washed up, her corpse pummeled by the waves, on a beach a few days later. Svanhild had not asked where the woman had come from. She tried to think about Ulfarr’s women as little as possible.

  “Go back,” said Solvi. “Hakon’s gold is inexhaustible.”

  “His patience with raids against Heming may not be,” said Svanhild. “Why tweak his tail? Hakon could easily follow us here from the Faroes.” She spoke to the space between Ulfarr and Solvi, hoping not to anger either of them with her doubts.

  “Let him,” said Solvi. “Go, my friend, and tweak his tail as much as you wish. And if you kill Heming, I will give you a jarldom.” Ulfarr grinned at him, ignoring Svanhild, nodded, and walked away to find his favorite warriors and plan their attack.

  “I did not know you had sent Ulfarr to raid Tafjord before,” said Svanhild. This was another thread to pick up from their abandoned argument. Solvi’s followers came and went, exercising the freedom that would be denied them if they swore to Harald or his subject kings. Solvi shrugged and began directing the unloading of the ships. She did not know what jarldom Solvi could promise—he had always said that his kingdom was his ships and his subjects anyone who chose to sail with him for a time, in the way of the sea kings of old.

  * * *

  Svanhild oversaw the setup of her larger tent, the one that she could arrange almost as a small house, and then took Eystein, along with a few of Solvi’s guards, to visit her friend Unna, who had a farm on the hill above the settlement. Unna knew everything that happened in Iceland, better even than Ingolfur and his wife. She would know who in the settlement could shelter the families that traveled with Solvi, and who could not, and wher
e the best farmland could be claimed.

  Unna was a widow with iron-colored hair who had come to Iceland from Scotland after the death of her husband and son to a sickness there. She brought with her five stout thralls and a young man named Donall who had a shocking red beard, spoke a strongly accented Norse, and, it was plain, shared her bed. When he and Unna spoke together, it was in a language Svanhild could not make out. He was at least fifteen years younger than Unna, and she was no beauty. The planes of her face made Svanhild think of an ax carving, severe and expressive. But Donall obeyed her every word and hardly looked at the maidens of Iceland who were closer to his age. He did not give Svanhild admiring glances, though songs of her beauty and the battles it inspired usually drew the attention of men in every land she visited.

  Unna’s farm spread over a notch between two hills, and was full of thick green grass that rippled with wind that carried cold and the strange sulfur breath of the volcanoes down from the mountains. Over the crest of a hill, the roof of another house spilled smoke from a cook fire into the air. The scent made Svanhild’s stomach growl.

  Unna nodded when she saw Svanhild walking with Eystein across the grass, as if she had expected Svanhild to come today, though they had not seen each other for a few years. She suffered Svanhild’s embrace and acknowledged Eystein’s bow to her, and then looked Svanhild up and down. “You should stay this time, I think. You will not bring a babe to birth unless you keep your feet in one place for a while. Children like to be born onto solid ground, not a tossing ship.”

  “I hope to,” said Svanhild. “I might convince Solvi. He said he wants Eystein’s birthright in Maer, but we could claim a new one for him here.”

  She left Eystein with Donall so she and Unna could walk alongside the rock wall that marked the edges of the farm. She told Unna of her travels since their last meeting, while Unna, in her turn, related the business of her farm and the settlement. Many new families had arrived all summer, she said, fleeing Norse battles.