Havelok the Dane Read online

hearsay, will write them wronglyand in different ways, whereof will come confusion, and at last nonewill be believed. Wherefore, as he will not set them down himself, it isbest that I do so. Not that I would have anyone think that thepenmanship is mine. Well may I handle oar, and fairly well axe andsword, as is fitting for a seaman, but the pen made of goose feather isbeyond my rough grip in its littleness, though I may make shift to use asail-needle, for it is stiff and straightforward in its ways, and noscrawling goeth therewith.

  Therefore my friend Wislac, the English priest, will be the penman,having skill thereto. I would have it known that I can well trust him towrite even as I speak, though he has full leave to set aside all hardwords and unseemly, such as a sailor is apt to use unawares; and wheremy Danish way of speaking goeth not altogether with the English, he mayalter the wording as he will, so long as the sense is always the same.Then, also, will he read over to me what he has written, and thereforeall may be sure that this is indeed my true story.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Now, as it is needful that one begins at the beginning, it happens thatthe first thing to be told is how I came to be Havelok's foster-brother,and that seems like beginning with myself after all. But all the storyhangs on this, and so there is no help for it.

  If it is asked when this beginning might be, I would say, for anEnglishman who knows not the names of Danish kings, that it was beforethe first days of the greatness of Ethelbert of Kent, the overlord ofall England, the Bretwalda, and therefore, as Father Wislac counts,about the year of grace 580. But King Ethelbert does not come into thestory, nor does the overlord of all Denmark; for the kings of whom Imust speak were under-kings, though none the less kingly for all that.One must ever be the mightiest of many; and, as in England, there wereat that time many kings in Denmark, some over wide lands and others overbut small realms, with that one who was strong enough to make the restpay tribute to him as overlord, and only keeping that place by the powerof the strong hand, not for any greater worth.

  Our king on the west coast of Denmark, where the story of Havelok theDane must needs begin, was Gunnar Kirkeban--so called because, being aheathen altogether, as were we all in Denmark at that time, he had beenthe bane of many churches in the western isles of Scotland, and in Walesand Ireland, and made a boast thereof. However, that cruelty of his washis own bane in the end, as will be seen. Otherwise he was a well-lovedking and a great warrior, tall, and stronger than any man in Denmark, aswas said. His wife, the queen, was a foreigner, but the fairest ofwomen. Her name was Eleyn, and from this it was thought that she camefrom the far south. Certainly Gunnar had brought her back fromGardariki,[2] whither he had gone on a trading journeyone year. Gunnar and she had two daughters and but one son, and that sonwas Havelok, at this time seven years old.

  Next to the king came our own lord, Jarl Sigurd, older than Gunnar, andhis best counsellor, though in the matter of sparing harmless andhelpless church folk his advice was never listened to. His hall was manymiles from the king's place, southward down the coast.

  Here, too, lived my father, Grim, with us in a good house which had beenhis father's before him. Well loved by Jarl Sigurd was Grim, who hadever been his faithful follower, and was the best seaman in all thetown. He was also the most skilful fisher on our coasts, being by birtha well-to-do freeman enough, and having boats of his own since he couldfirst sail one. At one time the jarl had made him steward of his house;but the sea drew him ever, and he waxed restless away from it.Therefore, after a time, he asked the jarl's leave to take to the seaagain, and so prospered in the fishery that at last he bought a largetrading buss from the Frisian coast, and took to the calling of themerchant.

  So for some years my father, stout warrior as he proved himself in manya fight at his lord's side, traded peacefully---that is, so long asmen would suffer him to do so; for it happened more than once that hisship was boarded by Vikings, who in the end went away, finding that theyhad made a mistake in thinking that they had found a prize in a harmlesstrader, for Grim was wont to man his ship with warriors, saying thatwhat was worth trading was worth keeping. I mind me how once he came toEngland with a second cargo, won on the high seas from a Viking'splunder, which the Viking brought alongside our ship, thinking to addour goods thereto. Things went the other way, and we left him only anempty ship, which maybe was more than he would have spared to us. Thatwas on my second voyage, when I was fifteen.

  Mostly my father traded to England, for there are few of the Saxon kinwho take ship for themselves, and the havens to which he went wereTetney and Saltfleet, on the Lindsey shore of Humber, where he soon hadfriends.

  So Grim prospered and waxed rich fast, and in the spring of the yearwherein the story begins was getting the ship ready for the first cruiseof the season, meaning to be afloat early; for then there was lesstrouble with the wild Norse Viking folk, for one cruise at least. Thenhappened that which set all things going otherwise than he had planned,and makes my story worth telling.

  We---that is my father Grim, Leva my mother, my two brothers andmyself, and our two little sisters, Gunhild and Solva---sat quietly inour great room, busy at one little thing or another, each in his way,before the bright fire that burned on the hearth in the middle of thefloor. There was no trouble at all for us to think of more than that thewind had held for several weeks in the southwest and northwest, and wewondered when it would shift to its wonted springtide easting, so thatwe could get the ship under way once more for the voyage she wasprepared for. Pleasant talk it was, and none could have thought that itwas to be the last of many such quiet evenings that had gone before.

  Yet it seemed that my father was uneasy, and we had been laughing at himfor his silence, until he said, looking into the fire, "I will tell youwhat is on my mind, and then maybe you will laugh at me the more forthinking aught of the matter. Were I in any but a peaceful land, Ishould say that a great battle had been fought not so far from us, andto the northward."

  Then my mother looked up at him, knowing that he had seen many fights,and was wise in the signs that men look for before them; but she askednothing, and so I said, "What makes you think this, father?"

  He answered me with another question.

  "How many kites will you see overhead at any time, sons?"

  I wondered at this, but it was easy to answer---to Raven, at least.

  "Always one, and sometimes another within sight of the first," Raven said.

  "And if there is food, what then?"

  "The first swoops down on it, and the next follows, and the one thatwatches the second follows that, and so on until there are many kitesgathered."

  "What if one comes late?"

  "He swings overhead and screams, and goes back to his place; then nomore come."

  "Ay," he said; "you will make a sailor yet, son Raven, for you watchthings. Now I will tell you what I saw today. There was the one kitesailing over my head as I was at the ship garth, and presently itscreamed so that I looked up. Then it left its wide circles over thetown, and flew northward, straight as an arrow. Then from the southwardcame another, following it, and after that another, and yet others, allgoing north. And far off I could see where others flew, and they toowent north. And presently flapped over me the ravens in the wake of thekites, and the great sea eagles came in screaming and went the same way,and so for all the time that I was at the ship, and until I came home."

  "There is a sacrifice to the Asir somewhere," I said, "for the birds ofOdin and Thor have always their share."

  My father shook his head.

  "The birds cry to one another, as I think, and say when the feast is butenough for those that have gathered. They have cried now that there isroom for all at some great feasting. Once have I seen the like before,and that was when I was with the ship guard when the jarl fought hisgreat battle in the Orkneys; we knew that he had fought by the same token."

  But my mother said that I was surely right. There was no fear of battlehere, and indeed
with Gunnar and Sigurd to guard the land we had hadpeace for many a long year on our own coasts, if other lands had had tofear them. My father laughed a little, saying that perhaps it was so,and then my mother took the two little ones and went with them into thesleeping room to put them to rest, while I and my two brothers went outto the cattle garth to see that all was well for the night.

  Then, when our eyes were used to the moonlight, which was not verybright, away to the northward we saw a red glow that was not that of thesunset or of the northern lights, dying down now and then, and thenagain flaring up as will a far-off fire; and even as we looked we heardthe croak of an unseen raven flying thitherward overhead.

  "Call father," I said to Withelm, who was the youngest of us three. Theboy ran in, and presently my father came out and looked long at the glowin the sky.

  "Even as I thought," he said. "The king's