‘Is it better, your Majesty? Has the pain ceased?’
‘It has,’ said the King, spitting again. ‘Your medicine was sour, but it appears to have been effective.’
Brother Willibald threw up his arms for joy.
‘Hosanna!’ he cried. ‘A miracle has occurred! St James of Spain has answered our prayer! Praise the Lord, O King, for better times are now beginning! The toothache shall no more cloud your spirit, nor shall anxiety dwell in the hearts of your servants!’
King Harald nodded his head and stroked the corners of his beard. He seized with both hands a large vessel, which a page brought to him, and raised it to his mouth. At first he swallowed carefully, evidently afraid lest the pain might return, but then drank confidently until the vessel was empty. He ordered it to be refilled and offered it to Orm.
‘Drink!’ he commanded. ‘And accept our thanks for the succour you have brought us.’
Orm took the vessel and drank. It was the finest ale he had ever tasted, strong and full-bodied, such as only kings could afford to brew, and he drank it with a will. Toke watched him, and sighed; then, he said:
‘In my throat there is a feeling
Of dry-rot most unblest.
Do physicians know the healing
For me, that ale is best?’
‘If you are a poet, you shall drink,’ said King Harald. ‘But afterwards you will have to compose a poem about your drink.’
So they filled the vessel again for Toke, and he put it to his mouth and drank, leaning his head further and further backwards; and all those present in the King’s bedchamber agreed that they had seen few vessels emptied more smartly. Then he reflected for a while, wiping the froth from his beard, and at length declaimed, in a voice stronger than that in which he had made his request:
‘Thirsting I rowed for many a year,
And thirsting I did good slaughter.
All praise to thee, Gorm’s gracious heir!
Thou knowest my favourite water!’
The men in the bedchamber praised Toke’s poem, and King Harald said: ‘There are few poets to be found nowadays, and few of those are able to turn out verses without sitting for hours in cogitation. Many men have come to me with odes and lyrics, and it has vexed me sorely to see them while the winter away in my halls with their noses snuffling up my ale, producing nothing whatever once they had declaimed the poem they had brought with them. I like men to whom verses come easily, and who can give me some new delight each day when I dine, in which respect, you, Toke of Lister, are more fluent than any poet I have heard since Einar Skalaglam and Vigfus Viga-Glumsson were my guests. You shall both spend Yule with me, and your men too; and my best ale shall be provided for you, for you have earned it by the gift you brought me.’
Then King Harald gave a great yawn, for he was weary after his troublesome night. He wrapped his fur more closely around him, snuggled himself into a more comfortable position in his bed, and lay ready for rest, with the two young women on either side of him. The skin rugs were spread over him, and Brother Matthias and Brother Willibald made the sign of the cross above his head and mumbled a prayer. Then they all left the room, and the groom of the bedchamber strode into the middle of the palace yard with his sword in his hand and cried three times in a loud voice: ‘The King of Denmark sleeps!’ so that no noise should be made which might disturb King Harald’s slumber.
How King Harald Bluetooth celebrated Yule
Great men from all over the North came to Jellinge to celebrate Yule with King Harald, so that there was less than room enough for them at the tables and in the bedchambers. But Orm and his men did not complain of this overcrowding, for they had received a good price for their slaves, and had sold them all before the festival commenced. When Orm had divided up the proceeds of the sale, his men felt rich and free indeed, and they began to yearn for Lister and to know whether Berse’s two ships had come home, or whether they themselves were the only survivors of Krok’s expedition. However, they offered no objection to staying in Jellinge until the festival was over, for it was regarded as a great honour, and one which added lustre to a man’s name for the rest of his days, to have celebrated Yule with the King of the Danes.
The principal guest was King Harald’s son, King Sven Forkbeard,1 who had arrived from Hedeby with a large following. Like all King Harald’s sons, he was the child of one of his father’s concubines; and there was little love lost between him and his father, so that in general they avoided each other as much as possible. Every Yule, though, King Sven made the journey to Jellinge, and everybody knew why. For it often happened at Yule, when the food was richer and the drink stronger than at any other time in the year, that old men suddenly died, either in bed or on the drinking-bench. This had been the case with old King Gorm, who had lain unconscious for two days after a surfeit of Yuletide pork, and had then died! and King Sven wanted to be near the royal coffers when his father passed over. For many Yules now he had made the journey in vain, and each year his impatience increased. His followers were a rough crew, overbearing and quarrelsome, and it was difficult to keep the peace between them and the men of King Harald’s household, all the more so now that King Harald had turned Christian and many of his men had followed suit. For King Sven still clung to the old religion, and made spiteful mock of his father’s conversion, saying that the Danes would have been spared all this folly if the old man had had the sense to know when he had lived long enough.
However, he did not trumpet his opinions too openly when he was at Jellinge, for King Harald was easily roused to anger, and when this happened he was liable to do anything to anybody. They wasted no words on one another once they had made formal salutation, nor, from their seats of honour in the great hall, did they toast each other more than the conventions of politeness absolutely required.
There was a snowstorm on Christmas Eve, but it passed, and the weather grew calm and cold; and on Christmas morning, while the priests were singing mass and the courtyard of the palace lay shrouded in good steam from the preparations afoot in the kitchens, a great long-ship rowed up from the south and made fast to the pier, its sail tattered and its oars glazed with ice. King Harald was at mass, but they sent a messenger to inform him. Wondering who these new guests could be, he went up the stairs to look at the ship. It was steeply built, with a red dragon’s head poised arrogantly upon a curved neck at the prow, its jaws caked with ice from the cruel seas it had passed through. They saw men climb ashore wearing garments barked with ice, among them a tall chieftain in a blue cloak and another, of equal stature, clothed in red. King Harald scanned them as closely as he could from where he stood, and said: ‘It looks like a Jomsviking, or perhaps a Swedish ship, and it is boldly manned, for its crew approach the King of Danes with no shield of peace upon their masthead. I know of but three men who would dare to come thus: Skoglar-Toste, Vagn Akesson, and Styrbjörn. Moreover, they have brought their ship alongside without removing their dragon-head, though they know well that the trolls of the mainland do not love dragon-heads; and I know of but two men who do not care what the trolls think, and they are Vagn and Styrbjörn. But I see from the ship’s condition that its captain disdained to seek shelter from last night’s storm, and there is but one man who would have refused to bow to such a tempest. It is my guess, therefore, that this must be my son-in-law Styrbjörn, whom I have not seen these four years; one of them wears a blue cloak, moreover, and Styrbjörn has sworn to wear blue until he has won back his inheritance from King Erik. Who this other with him may be, the man who is as tall as he, I cannot surely say; but Strut-Harald’s