Death of Kings

his crews melt away like frost in the sun. Nor did anyone think it strange that a Frisian would lead Saxons. The crews of the Viking ships are Danish, Norse, Frisian and Saxon. Any masterless man could go Viking, and a shipmaster did not care what language a man spoke if he could wield a sword, thrust a spear and pull an oar.

So my tale was not questioned and, the day after we reached Snotengaham, a full-bellied Dane called Frithof came to find me. He had no left arm beneath the elbow. ‘Some Saxon bastard cut it off,’ he said cheerfully, ‘but I sliced off his head so it was a fair exchange.’ Frithof was what a Saxon would call the Reeve of Snotengaham, the man responsible for keeping the peace and serving his lord’s interests in the town. ‘I look after Jarl Sigurd,’ Frithof told me, ‘and he looks after me.’

‘A good lord?’

‘The very best,’ Frithof said enthusiastically, ‘generous and loyal. Why don’t you swear to him?’

‘I want to go home,’ I said.

‘Frisia?’ he asked, ‘you sound Danish, not Frisian.’

‘I served Skirnir Thorson,’ I explained. Skirnir had been a pirate on the Frisian coast and I had served him by luring him to his death.

‘He was a bastard,’ Frithof said, ‘but had a pretty wife, I hear. What was his island called?’ The question had no suspicion in it. Frithof was an easy, hospitable man.

‘Zegge,’ I said.

‘That was it! Nothing but sand and fish shit. So you went from Skirnir to Haesten, eh?’ he laughed, his question implying that I had chosen my lords badly. ‘You could do a lot worse than serve the Jarl Sigurd,’ Frithof assured me. ‘He looks after his men and there’ll be land and silver soon.’

‘Soon?’

‘When Alfred dies,’ Frithof said, ‘Wessex will fall into pieces. All we have to do is wait and then pick them up.’

‘I have land in Frisia,’ I said, ‘and a wife.’

Frithof grinned. ‘There are plenty of women here,’ he said, ‘but if you really want to go home?’

‘I want to go home.’

‘Then you need a ship,’ he said, ‘unless you plan to swim. So let’s go for a walk.’

Forty-seven ships had been pulled from the river and were now propped by oak shafts on a meadow close to a small shelving cove that made launching and recovering easy. Six other ships were floating. Four of those were trading boats, and two were long, sleek war boats with high prows and sterns. ‘Bright- Flyer,’ Frithof pointed to one of the two fighting ships afloat in the river, ‘she’s Jarl Sigurd’s own craft.’

Bright-Flyer was a beauty with a flat sleek belly and a high prow and stern. A man was squatting on the wharf and painting a white line along her topmost strake, a line that would accentuate her sinuously threatening shape. Frithof led me down to the timber wharf and stepped over the boat’s low midships. I followed him, feeling the small shiver in Bright-Flyer as she responded to our weight. I noted her mast was not on board, there were no oars or tholes, and the presence of two small saws, an adze and a box of chisels showed that men were working on her. She was afloat, but she was not ready for any voyage. ‘I brought her here from Denmark,’ Frithof said wistfully.

‘You’re a shipmaster?’ I asked.

‘I was, maybe I will be again. I miss the sea.’ He ran his hand along the smooth wood of her top strake. ‘Isn’t she lovely?’

‘She’s beautiful,’ I said.

‘Jarl Sigurd had her built,’ he said, ‘and only the best for him!’ He rapped the hull. ‘Green oak from Frisia. Too big for you, though.’

‘She’s for sale?’

‘Never! Jarl Sigurd would rather sell his only son into slavery! Besides, how many oars do you want? Twenty?’

‘No more,’ I said.

‘She needs fifty rowers,’ Frithof said, rapping the Bright-Flyer’s planks again. He sighed, remembering her at sea.

I looked at the carpenter’s tools. ‘You’re readying her for sea?’ I asked.

‘The jarl hasn’t said, but I hate to see ships out of the water for too long. The timbers dry and shrink. I want to float that one next,’ he pointed to the head of the cove where another beauty was propped on thick oak shafts. ‘Sea-Slaughterer,’ Frithof said, ‘Jarl Cnut’s ship.’

‘He keeps his ships here?’

‘Just the two,’ he said, ‘Sea-Slaughterer and Cloud- Chaser.’ Men were caulking the Sea-Slaughterer, stuffing the plank joints with a mix of wool and pine-tar. Small boys helped, or else played on the river bank. The tar braziers smoked, drifting their pungent smell across the slow river. Frithof stepped back onto the wharf and patted the head of the man who was painting the white line onto the strake. Frithof was obviously popular. Men grinned and called out respectful greetings, and Frithof responded with generous pleasure. He had a pouch at his waist filled with scraps of smoked beef that he handed to the children, all of whose names he knew. ‘This is Kjartan,’ he introduced me to the men caulking the Sea-Slaughterer, ‘and he wants to take a boat off our hands. He’s going back to Frisia because his wife is there.’

‘Bring the woman here!’ a man called to me.

‘He’s got more sense than letting you scum ogle her,’ Frithof retorted, then led me further down the bank past a huge heap of ballast stones. Frithof had Sigurd’s authority to buy or sell ships, but only a half-dozen were for sale, and of those only two would suit me. One was a trading ship, broad in the beam and well made, but she was short, her length only about four times her beam, and that would make her slow. The other ship was older and much used, but she was at least seven times longer than her beam, and her sleek lines were sweet. ‘She belonged to a Norseman,’ Frithof told me, ‘who got himself killed in Wessex.’

‘Made of pine?’ I asked, rapping the hull.

‘She’s all spruce,’ Frithof said.

‘I’d prefer oak,’ I said grudgingly.

‘Give me gold and I’ll have a ship built for you out of the best Frisian oak,’ Frithof said, ‘but if you want to cross the sea this summer you’ll do it in pine. She was well made, and she has a mast, sail and rigging.’

‘Oars?’

‘We’ve plenty of good ash oars.’ He ran his one hand down the stem-post. ‘She needs a little work,’ he admitted, ‘but she was a sweetheart in her day. Tyr’s Daughter.’

‘That’s her name?’

Frithof smiled. ‘It is.’ He smiled because Tyr is the god of the warriors who fight in single combat and, like Frithof, Tyr is one-handed, having lost his right hand to the sharp fangs of Fenrir, the crazed wolf. ‘Her owner liked Tyr,’ Frithof said, still stroking the stem-post.

‘She has a beast-head?’

‘I can find you something.’

We haggled, though good-naturedly. I offered what little silver I had left, along with all our horses, saddles and bridles, and Frithof at first demanded a sum at least double the worth of those things, though in truth he was glad to be rid of Tyr’s Daughter. She might have been a fine ship once, but she was old and she was small. A ship needs fifty or sixty men to be safe, and Tyr’s Daughter would have been crowded by thirty men, but she was perfect for my purpose. If I had not bought her I suspect she would have been broken up for firewood and, in truth, I got her cheap. ‘She’ll get you to Frisia,’ Frithof assured me.

We spat on our palms, shook hands, and so I became the owner of Tyr’s Daughter. I had to buy pine-tar to caulk her, and we spent two days on the river bank forcing a thick mix of hot tar, horsehair, moss and fleece into the planking. Her mast, sails and hemp rigging were brought from storage to the meadow where the boats were grounded, and I insisted my men leave the filthy tavern and sleep with the ship. We rigged the sail as a tent over her and slept either in or beneath her hull.

Frithof seemed to like us, or else he just approved of the notion that one of his ships was going back into the water. He would bring ale to the meadow, which lay some four or five hundred paces from the nearest part of