He wagged his head mournfully and regarded Orm with weary eyes.
“All this was fourteen days ago,” he said, “and since then I have had little sleep. And my body is weak—nay, not weak, for it is as strong as the spirit that inhabits it; still, there are limits to its strength.”
“You can sleep later,” said Orm impatiently. “Do you know aught of what has happened to Ylva, King Harald’s daughter?”
“This much I know,” replied Brother Willibald promptly, “that unless she shortly mends her ways, she will burn in hell-fire for her brazenness of spirit and scandalous conduct. And what hope can one cherish that any daughter of King Harald will ever mend her ways?”
“Do you hate our women, too?” asked Orm. “What harm has she ever done to you?”
“It matters little what she has done to me,” said the little priest bitterly, “though she did, in fact, call me a bald old owl merely because I threatened her with the vengeance of the Lord.”
“You threatened her, priest?” said Orm, getting to his feet. “Why did you threaten her?”
“Because she swore that she would do as she pleased and marry a heathen, even though all the bishops in the world should strive to stop her.”
Orm clutched his beard and stared open-eyed at the little priest. Then he seated himself again.
“I am the heathen she wishes to marry,” he said quietly. “Where is she now?”
But he received no answer to his question that evening, for, as he spoke, Brother Willibald drooped slowly down on to the table and fell fast asleep with his head upon his arms. Orm did his best to wake him, but in vain; at length he picked him up, carried him to the settle, laid him there, and threw a skin over him. He noted with surprise that he was beginning to grow fond of this little priest. For a while he sat alone brooding over his ale. Then, as he found that he had no desire for sleep, his impatience began again to swell within him, and he got up, crossed to the settle, and gave Brother Willibald a vigorous shaking.
But Brother Willibald merely turned over in his sleep and muttered in a drowsy and peevish whisper: “Worse than fiends!”
When next morning the little priest at length awoke, he proved to be somewhat milder of temper and seemed fairly contented with his situation; so Orm lost no time in extracting from him details of everything that had happened to Ylva since he had last seen her. She had fled from Jellinge with the Bishop, preferring exile to remaining at home in her brother Sven’s care, and had spent the winter with him at Westminster, in great impatience to return home to Denmark as soon as good news should arrive of the situation there. Of late, however, the rumor had reached them that King Harald had died in exile. This had caused Ylva to consider journeying north to the home of her sister Gunhild, who was wedded to the Danish Jarl Palling of Northumberland. The Bishop was unwilling to allow her to undertake such a dangerous journey, preferring that she should remain in the south and marry some chieftain from those parts, whom he would help to find for her. But whenever he had brought this subject up, she had turned white with rage and had broken into fearful invective against anyone who happened to be near her, not excluding the Bishop himself.
This was what the little priest had to tell Orm concerning Ylva. Orm was happy to know that she had escaped King Sven’s clutches, but it vexed him not to be able to think of any means of seeing her. He worried, too, about the blow he had received on his neck, and the pain he still suffered as a result of it; but Brother Willibald smiled disparagingly and said that skulls as thick as his would survive worse cracks than that. However, he put blood-leeches behind Orm’s ears, with the result that he soon began to feel better. Nevertheless, he could not keep his thoughts from Ylva. It occurred to him to try to talk Thorkel and the other chieftains into undertaking a great plundering expedition against London and Westminster, in the hope that this might enable him to make contact with her; but the chieftains were occupied in tedious conferences with the envoys, settling details regarding the gifts they were to receive from King Ethelred, and the whole army sat idle-fingered, doing nothing but eat and drink and speculate on how much so great a King could fittingly be asked to pay.
Both the old Bishops spoke out manfully on their master’s behalf, advancing many arguments to show why the sums suggested by the chieftains should be regarded as excessive. They regretted that the Vikings did not appear to realize that there were more valuable things in the world than gold and silver, and that for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven was more difficult than for an ox to pass through the smoke-hole of a roof. The chieftains heard them out patiently and then replied that, should any disadvantages accrue to them from the bargain, they would accept them stoically, but they could not accept a sum less than that which they had originally named. If, they added, what the Bishops had said about the kingdom of heaven and the smoke-hole was true, they would surely be doing King Ethelred a good service by relieving him of some of the burden of his wealth.
Sighing, the Bishops increased their offer, and at last agreement was reached as to the sum that King Ethelred was to pay. Every man in the fleet was to receive six marks of silver, in addition to what he had already taken by plunder. Every helmsman was to have twelve marks, and every ship’s captain sixty; and Thorkel, Gudmund, and Jostein were each to receive three hundred marks. The Bishops said that this was a sad day for them, and that they hardly knew what their King would say when he heard the sum they had agreed on. It would, they explained, fall all the more heavily on him because at this very moment other envoys of his were negotiating with a Norwegian chieftain named Olaf Tryggvasson, who, with his fleet, was plundering the south coast. They could not be sure, they said, that even King Ethelred’s wealth would suffice to meet both demands.
When they heard this, the chieftains began to worry lest they might have asked for too small a sum, and also lest the Norwegians should get in before them. They held a brief conference among themselves and then announced that they had decided not to increase their demand, but that the Bishops had better lose no time in fetching the silver, for, they said, they would take it ill if the Norwegians were paid before them.
The Bishop of London, who was a friendly and smiling man, assented to this and promised that they would do their best.
“I am surprised, however,” he said, “to see such valiant chieftains as yourselves bothering your heads about this Norwegian captain, whose fleet is much smaller than yours. Would it not be a good thing for you to row down to the south coast, where this captain is lying, and destroy him and his men, and so win all his treasure? He has lately come from Brittany, in fine ships, and men say that he took much booty there. If you were to do this, it would still further increase the love that our lord the King bears you; and in that case he would have no difficulty in finding the sum you demand, for he would not then have to appease this Norwegian captain’s greed.”
Thorkel nodded and looked uncertain, and Gudmund laughed and said that the Bishop’s suggestion was certainly worth considering.
“I have never myself met any of these Norwegians,” he said, “but everyone knows that an encounter with them always provides fine fighting and good tales for the survivors to tell their children. At home, in Bravik, I have heard it said that few men outside East Guteland are their superiors, and it might be worth finding out whether this reputation of theirs is justified. I have in my ships berserks from Aland who are beginning to complain that this expedition is providing them with splendid booty and excellent ale, but little in the way of good fighting; and they say they are not used to a peaceful life.”
Thorkel commented that he had, on one occasion, encountered Norwegians, but that he had no objection to doing so again, once his arm was healed; for in a battle with them much honor and wealth might be won.