“You cannot lie with him by the campfires, among all the other men,” exclaimed the Bishop in alarm.
But Orm said:
“The voyager,
Heir to the sea,
The good plower
Of the auk-bird’s meadow,
Hath a bridal bed
For his royal spouse
Better than straw
Or cushioned couches.”
Brother Willibald accompanied them as far as the city gate, to make sure the guards allowed them to pass through the postern. There they parted from him, with many expressions of gratitude, and made their way down to the pier where the ships lay. Rapp had left two men on board, to guard against thieves. These men, left to their own devices, had drunk deeply, so that the sound of their sleeping was audible from a good distance. Orm shook them awake and bade them help him pull the ship into midstream, which, though they were still befuddled, they succeeded at last in doing. Then they dropped anchor, and the ship stood swaying upon the tide.
“I have no further need of you now,” he said to the two men.
“How shall we get ashore?” they asked.
“It is not far for a bold man to swim,” he replied.
They both complained that they were drunk and that the water was cold.
“I am not in a waiting mood,” said Orm; and, with those words, he picked one of them up by the neck and belt and tossed him headfirst into the river, whereupon the other promptly followed him, without further ado. From the darkness echoed back the sounds of their coughing and sneezing as they splashed their way toward the bank.
“I do not think anyone will disturb us now,” said Orm.
“This is a bridal bed that I shall not complain of,” said Ylva.
It was late that night before they closed their eyes, but when at last they did so, they slept well.
When, next day, the envoys appeared before King Ethelred with Gudmund and Orm, they found the King in an excellent humor. After bidding them a warm welcome, he praised the chieftains for their zeal to be baptized, and asked whether they were enjoying their sojourn at Westminster. Gudmund had occupied the night with a tremendous drinking-bout, the effects of which were still noticeable in his speech, so that he and Orm both felt honestly able to reply that they were.
The Bishops began by relating the outcome of their mission and giving details of the agreement they had reached with the Vikings, while everyone in the hall hung upon their words. The King was seated on a throne beneath a canopy, with his crown upon his head and his scepter in his hand. Orm thought that this was a new sort of monarch to see after Almansur and King Harald. He was a tall man, of dignified appearance, swathed in a velvet cloak, and pale-complexioned, with a sparse brown beard and large eyes.
When the Bishops named the amount of silver that they had promised the Vikings, King Ethelred smote the arm of his throne violently with his scepter, whereupon all the gathering in the hall rose to their feet.
“Look!” he exclaimed to the Archbishop, who was seated by his side on a lower chair. “Four flies at a single blow! And yet this is but poorly shaped for the work.”
The Archbishop said he thought there were not many kings in the world who could have performed such a feat, and that it testified both to his dexterity and to the excellence of his luck. The King nodded delightedly; then the envoys proceeded with their narration, and everybody began again to listen to them.
When at last they had concluded, the King thanked them and praised the wisdom and zeal they had displayed. He asked the Archbishop what he thought the general reaction to the settlement would be. The Archbishop replied that the sum that the Bishops had named would, indeed, be a heavy burden for the land to bear, but that it was, beyond doubt, the best solution of a difficult situation; to which the King nodded his agreement.
“It is, moreover, a good thing,” continued the Archbishop, “a joy to all Christian folk and highly pleasing to the Lord our God that our pious envoys have succeeded in winning these great warchieftains and many of their followers over to the army of Christ. Let us not forget to rejoice at this.”
“By no means,” said King Ethelred.
The Bishop of London murmured to Gudmund that it was now his turn to speak, and Gudmund willingly stepped forward. He thanked the King for the hospitality and generosity he had shown them, and informed him that his fame would hereafter stretch as far as the most distant villages of East Guteland, if not farther still. But, he went on, there was one thing that he was anxious to know: namely, how long it would be before the silver was actually placed in their hands.
The King regarded him closely while he was speaking and, when he had concluded, asked him what the scar on his face might signify.
Gudmund replied that it was a wound he had received from a bear he had once attacked rather thoughtlessly, allowing the bear to break the shaft of the spear that he had driven into its chest and then maul him with its claws before he at last managed to fell it with his ax.
King Ethelred’s face clouded with sympathy as he listened to the story of this unfortunate incident.
“We have no bears in this land,” he said, “much to our loss. But my brother, King Hugo of Frankland, has lately sent me two bears that know how to dance and thereby give us great pleasure. I should have liked to show them to you, but unfortunately my best trainer marched away with Byrhtnoth and was slain by you in the battle. I miss him greatly, for when other men try to make them dance, they move but sluggishly or not at all.”
Gudmund agreed that this was a great misfortune. “But all men have their worries,” he said, “and ours is: when are we going to get the silver?”
King Ethelred scratched his beard and glanced at the Archbishop.
“You have asked for a considerable sum,” said the Archbishop, and not even great King Ethelred has that amount in his coffers. We shall have to dispatch messengers throughout the land to collect the balance. This may take two months, or even three.”
Gudmund shook his head at this. “You must help me now, Skanian,” he said to Orm, “for we cannot wait as long as that; but I have talked myself dry in the mouth.”
Orm stepped forward and said that he was young and poorly qualified to speak before so great a monarch and so wise an assembly, but that he would explain the case as well as he was able.
“It is no small matter,” he said, “to make chieftains and soldiers wait so long for what has been promised to them. For they are men who quickly change their moods and are little inclined toward meekness, and it sometimes happens that they grow weary of the tedium of waiting when they are still hot with the flush of victory and know that good plunder lies ready for them to gather whithersoever they choose to turn. This Gudmund whom you see here is a mild and merry man as long as he is content with the way things are going, but when he is angry the boldest chieftains of the Eastern Sea quake at his approach, and neither man nor bear can withstand his fury. And he has berserks among his followers who are scarcely less fearful than he.”
All the assembly looked at Gudmund, who went red in the face and cleared his throat.
Orm continued: “Thorkel and Jostein are men of similar mettle, and their followers are fully as ferocious as Gudmund’s. Therefore I would suggest that half the sum due to us should be paid immediately. This will enable us to wait more patiently until the balance has been collected.”
The King nodded his head, glanced at the Archbishop, and nodded again.
“And since,” continued Orm, “both God and yourself, King Ethelred, find it a cause for rejoicing that so many of us have come up to Westminster to be baptized, it might perhaps be a wise thing to allow all such converts to receive their share here and now. If this should happen, many of our comrades might be driven to wonder whether it would not be beneficial to their souls, also, that they should become Christians.”