Thought and Memory: Chapter Nine

A novel by Simon Brooke

Chapter Nine

I had once before gone with my father to the Thing at the Sondefjord, and seen the merchants trading in the fair, and listened to the men sorting their quarrels over this bit of land and that horse; so I knew a bit of what would go on. But I was not ready for the size of it. The place of the Landesthing was a great open meadow, with tall old forest all around. Close by was a good sized river, and another clearing had been made along its banks; but there were trees between the place and the river, so that you could not see it from the place of the thing itself. All round the edges of both clearings were booths, like halls with no roof and open on the side facing in; each of the families which came to the thing owned one of these, and many of them were being roofed with gaily coloured cloths as we arrived. Lochlann lead us across the clearing to a great booth that stood at the highest point of the meadow, opposite where the trackway from the river came in. Quickly the men sorted a stack of poles which were inside the booth, and using the best of these, and those that we'd been dragging behind our horses, they raised the frame of a roof, and covered it with a red and blue sail, which was lashed down to the stones. Catriona broke up the rejected poles, and started to lay a fire. I helped unload the packs from the horses, with one of the men who was called Sverrir.

Whilst we were in the middle of all this, a group of men walked up, all dressed in fine war-gear. One of them strode into the booth and demanded in a loud voice who we were, and what we were doing in the king's booth. Lochlann laid down the rope he had been hauling, and turned slowly, pushing the sweat-straggled hair back off his face.

"I am in my own booth, that was my father's. You may tell my little brother that if he wishes a bed in his family's place, why then he is surely welcome. But I have not room for the great household he now has gathered around him."

It was a fine contrast to see, between those of us gathered behind Lochlann and the strangers. Our men stripped to their sarks, or bare chested -- for they had been working, and it was a hot day; dusty from the road, and weary with travel, but standing straight and quiet. The others with their gleaming weapons, and their mail chinking as they moved restlessly. You could see the warrior who had spoken trying to find courage to say more. Suddenly he swung away, marching swiftly back across the field; the others followed after him; and a great roar of laughter, from Trigvi and others, followed after them.

All through the next morning, men came into the booth, accepted a drink, and sat in quiet discussion with Lochlann, Trigvi and the others. Most of them were older; most of them wore expensive clothes. They talked about the matters which had to be talked about in the Thing, and who would be on which side of which matter. None of the names meant much to me. After a bit I got bored of this, so that Catriona and I went off to see what was happening in other parts of the place.

The booths down in the river meadow were held by merchants, and there was already much trading going on. I saw merchants there from many places, and some were so strange in their dress and manner that I could not guess where they had come from. The first booths we came to, men were selling furs from the north. Next, a weaponsmith's booth, with fine swords and spearpoints. Beyond that again, we spent a good deal of time gazing at jewellers work, and there were fine things there to see. But before long we came to the slavers booths. I would have turned back then, but Catriona urged me to go on, and see it all.

Most of the slaves on sale were women. The first stalls we came to, they were clean, and clad adequately considering the warm weather; they sat on benches along the front of the booths, each with one foot chained to a stake in the turf. Further down the river, where the booths were smaller, we saw women wearing what were probably the same clothes they'd been taken in -- filthy and tattered -- and some of them not even that. And where the clothes were not, the bruises were. Some stalls had no benches, so that the women had to stand, or sit on the grass. None of them lacked stakes.

When we got back to the place, we found that the choosing of judges was happening. A man named Haakon was called for, and approved, and he went to the judges bench. He was a huge old man, with a great beard that had been red, divided into two plaits which hung to his waist. A man named Peter was called next; he too was old -- most judges are -- but tall and thin and grey. And then Lief Trygvasson was called for, with great shouting and acclaim, and Lochlann went up to the bench. I was not used to him being called `Lief'.

Now, it is the custom, when the judges are chosen, to hold a blot, so that the gods may see the choice the folk have made. The Christman in the white robes stood up and said this shouldn't happen but that folk should cut down the holy trees of the blot-place. The three judges spoke together, quietly, and it is the tradition that folk should wait quietly when this is happening, but Olaf's men were calling out for the trees to be felled. Then the judge called Peter stood up on the judges' bench and called in a loud voice for quiet.

"Listen, folk. The law is that there should be a blod, and sacrifice to the Aesir, before the Thing can start, and that the judges should go to it, and make sacrifice. But I am a follower of the Christ, and I will not go to a blot. So I have said that I should not be a judge. But Lief has said that that law was made when we all trusted the Aesir, and that we must make new ways now that many of us trust the Christ. He has said that all three of us should go to the blod, and then the Christmen should raise a cross, and we should all three ask for the blessing of the Christ. But I have said again that I will not go to the blot, and so I should not be a judge. And Haakon has said he will not submit to the blessing of the Christ. So Lief has said that Haakon should go to the blot, and that I should go to be blessed, and he will do both. We have all agreed that this is what we think is the best way. If you don't think this is good, then we have agreed that we will none of us be judges."

Now the judge called Haakon stood up and spoke.

"All of us know that some of us here trust the christ, and some trust the Aesir. And this is true throughout all the land, so that men who trust christ live beside men who trust the old gods everywhere. So if there is fighting between the men of the christ and the men of the old gods it will be very bloody. Now you all know that there are some things that we who trust the Aesir do which particularly offends the christmen; and you all know that there are some things that the christmen do which particularly offends the folk who trust the Aesir. So please, you who trust the Aesir, do not bring folk for sacrifice at the blot, but only horses and cattle. You who follow the christ, please, do not damage those things which are sacred to the Aesir. Instead, take some space near to the place of the Thing and build whatever it is you need to worship your god. We have many things to decide at this Thing, and some of them will be hard to agree on. If we offend one another needlessly, we will be unable to agree."

Now Jarl Olaf stood up and spoke.

"You see that the time of the old ways are passed. You cannot choose judges who will agree to follow the law any more. If the judges don't follow the law themselves, how can you trust them when they speak the law? This is why I have come to be your king. I will decide the laws, and I will give you judges who will follow the laws I make, just like the kings do in other lands which follow the white Christ..."

The roar of angry voices built up to such an extent that I could not hear Olaf, although we were quite close to him. Lochlann stood up and banged the bench, three times, with the foot of his staff. A raven slipped out of the sky onto his shoulder. There was sudden silence.

"Whether we need a king, and who that king should be, is a thing we will discuss later. It is a big issue, and many folk will want to speak about it. But we cannot do that without judges. Now we must decide who those judges will be, and how we will show them to the gods we trust. Peter and Haakon have spoken to you about this. Do you agree to what they have said?"

There was a great roar of approval. It was very clear that most of the folk did approve, and the judges left their bench. Peter went over to the christman in white, and Haakon went to speak with some men who were dressed as priests. Lochlann came over to me, gently scratching the raven under the chin. Eyes followed him. Eyes exultant. Eyes wary. Eyes frightened. Eyes awestruck. Eyes.

After the judges had been shown to their gods -- and that was not simple, either, because there was a long and noisy disagreement among the priests as to which lot Lochlann would go with first, and then, when it was agreed that he would go first with the christmen, it was found that they had no place ready for them to worship in, so that had to be done -- but, as I say, after that, the rest of the day was spent listening to folk call out the complaints they were bringing to the Thing. That was different, too, to what I had expected. Because that this was the Landesthing, folk were not making complaints about horses stolen and boundary stones moved. Few folk were making complaints about simple manslaying.

The complaints folk were making were about farms burned and destroyed; about whole villages sacked; about folk being slaughtered; about goods being looted on a great scale. Most of the complaints came from lonely and poor places, where the folk were not strong. And while there were other folk named, we got used, that afternoon, to hearing the name of Jarl Olaf.

At last there were no more complaints. Folk started to drift away from the place, or gather round in knots, talking. Over at the bench, Lochlann stood, talking with Haakon and Peter and some other men. I waited, watching the squashy scarlet sun sink slowly towards the trees; other folk drifted away, but still they talked. After a while I went over to stand close by them. Lochlann saw me, and introduced me to the other men who were there. That broke the flow of their talk, so that there was a gap, and Haakon invited us all back to his booth for the nightmeal.

Haakon's booth was large, with an awning chequered black and rusty red. In front of it was a large board set up on trestles, with benches so that we could all sit round. Haakon's wife, who was called Astrid, served us with a meal of mutton stew and bannock, and ale to wash it down with. It was very good to sit there, in the quiet of the evening, watching the long shadows on the grass, and listening, now to singing from another booth, now to the birds in the trees behind, now to the quiet talk of the folk about me. They were older men, for the most, serious, slow spoken. It made me realise how trying I found Trigvi's loud jokes, and his harsh laugh. It's not that I didn't like Trigvi -- I knew he was a good friend to Lochlann, and I would by then have trusted him with my life -- but he is a noisy man to have around.

The men were talking about Olaf. They didn't say much about how he had come to have so much power -- they must have talked of this often in the past, but I found it confusing, because I knew so little. But I heard that he had been moving through the hill country that spring, with his war-band and his christmen. He would come to a village, and if they acknowledged him as king, he would say it was their duty to welcome him with a good feast -- although there is little left for a feast on the fell at winter's end, so that many villages were left to starve when he had gone. If they would not acknowledge him king, he would sack the village, siezing anything he thought valuable, and burning the houses behind him. Everywhere he went, he made everyone dip in the river for the christ.

Against this, the judge called Peter said that while it was very true that Olaf did all these things, he had also put down all the bands of theives who would otherwise have raided those same villages. He was hard, but it was better to have one hard dog to protect the flock than a dozen wolves harrying it. He was marked for the christ, too, so that all who followed the christ must accept him as king.

A man called Eirick said that if the folk could find a leader who would take the kingship, they could stand against Olaf -- for Olaf was not at all popular, and would not get many folk to stand by him, apart from his household. Haakon said that would be a good thing, but it would be hard to find a leader who could get everyone behind him, because if the leader trusted the old gods, the folk who followed the christ would not go with him; and the folk of the old gods would not follow a man of the christ. Also, the leader they put up might turn out to be as bad as Olaf, once he had that sort of power. What was needed was a man who was a lucky leader, but who did not want power for himself.

Peter said that, whatever, if they found a leader who would stand against Olaf there would be war, and that would be very bad for everyone. Olaf had been named king by the christ; they had better accept him. If everyone accepted Olaf for the king, and paid him a tax, then he would not need to harass the villagers. Another man said that he had never paid a tax in his life, and he wouldn't pay one to Olaf. Just let Olaf come to Odeby, and he would see how much tax he'd get!

Eirick said that was all very well for him, living in Odeby, where there were so many strong folk about. But folk who lived in more remote places were not so lucky. -- Anyway, so they went on. After a while I realised that the talk was going round and round, and what was really happening was that folk were trying to get Lochlann to say something on one side or another, so that they could see where he would stand. But Lochlann listened politely to each one, and said very little. I thought of old men playing chess, cautiously, keeping their good pieces back, making small moves that did not commit them. After a bit I got bored of it.

Back at our own booth, I found the others, too, gathered round the table outside our booth talking. I found my mantle, for the evening was getting cold, and a tallow lamp, too, for it was getting dark. I carried it out and lit it with a spill from the fire.

When I joined them, Sverrir had just said something which I didn't catch. Trigvi snorted in disgust -- "There's little point buying women in Dublin, for they can be taken thereabouts without much risk. And there's no point at all in selling them in Dublin, for they make a poor price. Nah, nah, there's some that raid Ireland and sell in Dublin, but the profit's poor. Men, now -- you can sell men in Dublin, there's always folk out of Andeluz and the middle sea wanting men for their ships and their mines. They man their ships with slaves, down in the middle sea -- a filthy, stinking habit."

I thought about the slave we had seen down in the merchants lines. I said "So where would you sell women?"

"Well, there's a price to be had for Irish women here, Thor knows. Folk wanting a wench for their bed at nights, and the Irish are thought well to bed... but no. The place to sell women from the West is in the South. Particularly those red-haired, white skinned women you get in the west. There's a fine price to be had for them on the Moorish coast -- that's in Afrik -- but it's an unchancy place to trade. No. The best thing is to take them East, down through the rivers of the Russ to Holmgaard. You can get a fine price for Western women there, from traders who go down to Miklagard and Baghdad; or you can take them on yourself, for more risk and a higher price."

"Is it worth taking slaves all that way? I thought you could get slaves easy enough in the Russ?"

"Not so easy now as they say it was in my Father's day. But no, you're right, there's slaves enough to be had in the Russ. The thing is, though, that the women there are darkish -- pale skinned, but dark hair and eyes. And it's the way with men that they'll pay more for what's strange to them. So the darker the buyer, and the paler the girl, the better the price you get, do you see? Just like you'll get a better price here for a really dark woman, like from Afrik or Andeluz."

"So you'd sell women from the North in Holmgaard, too?"

"Well..." -- Trigvi pulled his fingers down his long, curved nose; and again. Even in the flickering of the tallow-flame I could see his face darken. "Well... Of course there are folk who sell their own daughters, by the thongs of Mjolnir! But... but a man doesn't like to sell a woman of his own country. But yes, it's true, when you've northern women to sell -- particularly fair ones -- then Holmgaard is the place. Or further south."

He stopped abruptly, as though that was all he was going to tell us. He sat watching the fire, and I, too, stared into the red glow of the embers and saw the long ships sliding down the great rivers of Russ; and the women on them, bound perhaps, or cowed into submission, going away, away, away, from their own folk and the hills that bore them. Out of the silence that gathered, Catriona started to speak, slowly and low -- "everyone here has seen a raid, what happens to the men, what happens to the children, what happens to the women, am I right? So that there's no need for me to tell you about the raid when I was taken. But none of you has been a slave, been sold, so I'll tell you about that."

Her head was bent over her hands, which clasped the little cross she wore around her neck, so that I could not see her face.

"I was taken by a crew of Danes, a black and bloodthirsty bunch of brutes. You know that I was a bride of the Christ, so that I had not had a husband or laid with a man before I was taken. Fortunately they took me late in their voyage, when they had already taken several other women, so that they did not violate me as often or as brutally as they had the women they'd taken earlier. But they were so brutal that for many days I could not move without sharp pain in my groin."

"So then we came to Hedeby, where there is a market. Kirsten and I went down to the slave market, today, and I watched a young Irish girl being sold, and I remembered how it was for me. There was a man walking down the line of stalls, looking at the women who were chained there. I saw him take a long look at me, and then he moved on. After some moments he came back. He was a short, ugly looking man in his middle years, and not too clean. He pushed my head up, pulled my mouth open, looked at my teeth, smelt my breath. He squeezed my breasts and pinched my nipples. Then he said something to the slaver who was selling me, and the slaver signed me to take my clothes off."

I felt a hand on my shoulder, and saw that Lochlann had joined us. I pulled him down on the bench beside me, and gave him a squeeze. Catriona went on.

"I couldn't do it. He slapped me across the face and pulled them off, so that I was standing naked. That day in Hedeby -- it was not a day like today. It was cold, and there was thin rain driving in off the sea. And the market place in Hedeby is very crowded. So I was naked, and men all around were looking at me. The little man pawed me about some more, talking to slaver and pointing to my bruises and scars. I did not then know the speech of the north, but I didn't need to -- the tone of his voice was enough. The slaver would reply in a praising, ingratiating tone, lifting my breasts or stroking my hair or my thigh. Finally the little man pushed me down on the bench and pulled my legs apart so that he could look at my... at my... There in the marketplace! With everyone looking! And I was still all bruised there, and a bit torn, so that there was blood and scabs. And he said something contemptuous and walked away.

"I had not known that it was possible to be so humiliated. But what happened next was worse. The slaver pulled me off the bench, sat down where I had been, hauled out his cock, and made me suck it. There, in the market place! I could hear the slaver hooting and groaning as if he was in ecstasy. I wanted to bite his cock off, but I knew that I hadn't the courage. After what seemed like a long time of this, I heard the little man's voice again. The trader spoke to him. I thought I could stop... But the trader tangled his hands in my hair, and pumped my head up and down, while he continued, between gasps and moans, to bargain with the little man. Eventually I heard them strike a deal, he acted a great shuddering climax, threw me down into the mud and shit of the trackway, and went to get a hammer and chisel to cut the chain off my leg."

Trigvi's face held an extraordinary mixture of horror and shame. I knew at once, without him telling us, that that had been a trick of his too.

"So then I was the slave of the little man, and he kept me for two years. He was a merchant, trading through the Kattegat between Hedeby and Oslofjord. I was bigger and stronger than he was, and the first time he told me to do... with my mouth... he could not always make his cock stand, so that he liked it like that... anyway, the first time I would not do it. But he said if I did not please him, I could please his boat crew, and after I had looked at them I did as he told me. It took a long time to get used to that, because although he did not beat me, and was unable to... to fuck me... he made me do many things which it felt unclean to do. And, as well, he sometimes made me lie with customers of his, and they did violate me. But I got used to it and did not even try to escape, because I knew things would be just as bad for me if I did.

"Then there came a day that we went to a little place on the shore of Telmark, where my master was selling weapons to the Jarl. We lay that night in the Jarl's hall. In the middle of the night I was awoken by screams and shouts. The air was full of smoke, and there were flickerings of flame from in the thatch. Everyone was running for the doorways. As I ran out of the smoke I was grabbed by a man, who carried me and dumped me into a cattle pen, where there were already several other women and children. I looked back at the doorway of the hall, and saw that men who came out were being slaughtered. It was not very long before no-one else came out. Then we just sat in the pen, and watched the hall burn down. There were men guarding it, so that we could not get out.

"When the sun had came up, Lief came to the pen. He started to call us out, one at a time. He started with the older women. Each woman, he'd look at, and just say one word, and the woman would be dragged away. He would say `worthless'; or he would say `ransom'; or he would say `sell'. And when it was me, he said `sell'. I remembered the slave market in Hedeby, and I knew that there was nothing that could happen to me which would be as bad as that. I knew that death would not be so bad as that. So I ripped the brooch out of my cloak and struck at him.

"He was just young then, and slender, and his beard was not grown. But the ease with which he caught my wrist, and twisted it so that first I dropped the brooch, and then I fell to my knees, and then I fell to the ground -- the speed and the strength of him was terrifying. Then he violated me. There, in the yard of the burnt hall, in front of the pen where the other women were, and with his men all around, who had not illtreated any of us until then. And when he was done he got up and said, `sell'.

"Those of us that were kept -- those he called worthless he just freed, which was mostly the old and the children -- were tied together in two chains, one for `sell' and one for 'ransom', and we were marched off to Altborg, which took us three days, with Lief's men on horses round about us, and the things they had looted from the hall following on ox-carts behind. When we got there, we found that there was a slaver waiting. Lief bargained with him for what each of us was worth, as the slaver examined each of us in turn, and the men watched. Once when a price had been agreed, one of the men called out that he'd pay it. He threw some silver into the scales, and the woman was untied from the rope and given to him. They came to me, the slaver examined me quickly and expertly, and named a price. Lief at once doubled it. The slaver said that was much too much. Lief took off a heavy silver bracelet he was wearing, tossed it into the scales, and said he would have me.

"After that I was Lief's bed slave. He did not ask me to do any work but... but what he'd bought me for; and he was always gentle, and courteous, and respectful of me in everything else. But when he did it -- often he would... take me more than once in a day -- he was so powerful and forceful that it did not seem to me that I could resist. Then one day he told me to turn so that he could have me in the boys way. Without thinking, I said please no, that I didn't want that. To my amazement, he at once apologised, and took me in the normal way.

"It took me several days to form the courage to resist him, then. He is very beautiful after all! And I thought, too, that if I would not lie with him, he might decide to sell me. But then I thought, I am bride to the Christ, I may not submit to this man. So the next time that he took me, I fought against him. But he was too strong, and took me. This happened several times, but then, once, in the middle of it, he asked me if I was playing or if I meant to resist. When I said that I meant it, he at once got up, helped me up, and dressed me. That evening, he found for me a comfortable place in a slave-house with some old women; and he gave me this bracelet.

"There were several weeks after that that I slept in the slave house. Lief was always gentle and courteous when I saw him, but as the days passed he seemed more and more unhappy. Then other men about the great hall started to treat me as if they might have me. One day I met Lief and asked him if he had said to them that they might. He wept. We went into his chamber -- for in the great hall in those days there were many chambers, and Lief had one -- and he begged me to return to his bed. I said, would he give me to the men if I did not? And he said that he would not. I said, would he sell me if I did not? And he said that he would not. So I said that I was bride to the White Christ, and so I could not lie with a man as a woman does. Then he begged me, saying that he was mocked by the men of the hall, and swearing he would not touch me. That night I lay again in his arms and I was glad of them.

"And so we went for some months. Some nights he would say 'may I', and I would say no, and then he would weep, and I would hold him and wish that I had not. Once I woke to find him gently forcing me; and for pity I pretended I had not woken, and let him do it. Then he tried the same thing again, and I knew that if I let him this time all my vows were ruins and I had deserted the Christ. So I said no, and he wept. In the morning he freed me, so that I was no longer a slave.

"I have long ago forgiven Lief for the ill he did me, for I do not believe that there is any man in the north who would have done me so little ill, or made such generous amends. But he did me ill: great ill in forcing me at all; great ill in humiliating me in front of his men, and the women in the pen. Slavery is a great evil. It destroys those who are slaves, for it makes them submit to things which are sinful. It destroys those who take slaves, because it is itself sinful, and it tempts them to do things which are worse sins. It is an offence in the face of the White Christ, and when all follow the Christ we will end it."

I played with the dribble of mead that had trickled out of my horn when I had laid it down. There were things in all they had said which still didn't make much sense to me. I turned to Lochlann -- "when you were telling me... about when you went to Ch'in, on the way back from Ch'in... there was a woman you sold in Miklagard?"

Lochlann nodded.

"And Trigvi, you said that you would sell Irish women in Miklagard, just now?"

Trigvi nodded -- you could see he was still embarassed -- "you get a good price for white-skinned women there..."

"Didn't somebody say it was a big market there?"

The men agreed, yes, it was a very big market there, bigger than any other they'd seen except for Baghdad.

"And it is a city of the christ-folk, Miklagard?"

Again the men agreed, but Catriona said no, they weren't truly a city of christ-folk, because although they claimed to follow the christ, they didn't obey the father in Rome whom the christ had set up to rule over all the christfolk. And that was why they sold slaves and did many other bad things which the christ spoke against, for they were rebels against the christ and the father he had sent.

Lochlann snorted --

"Are you saying that they are sinful because they didn't follow Leo, whose lies and debauchery were so notorious that he was beaten in the streets of Rome in our grandfathers' time? Are you saying that they are sinful because they cast down the graven images, as your god instructed?"

"But Leo was innocent -- he swore it on the gospels..."

Lochlann groped in his bag for his little book. "I swear on these gospels that it is warmer in winter than..."

Catriona was white and shaking. She wrestled with Lochlann, screaming -- "you must not, Lief! Lief! Lief, be quiet, don't -- Lief, give it to me..."

"Why should I not swear, then? I will tell you one reason why I should not swear. Listen, this is what the white christ says"

-- he ruffled through the book for a moment --

"`Also, you know that you were taught not to break your word. But what I say is, don't swear at all. Don't swear by the sky, because that is god's home. Don't swear by the land, because that is what he rests his feet on. Don't swear by Jerusalem, where the king sits. Don't even swear by your own head, because you can't change the colour of one hair of it. Say just `Yes' or `No'. Everything more comes from the devil.' That is what the christ said. And your father in Rome, who you believe is the mouth and servant of the christ, swore on these words -- these, these words -- and you still believe he is the servant of the christ?"

Catriona seemed to collapse inside herself under the blaze of his eye, and sat, fingering a string of beads she carried at her girdle and muttering quietly under her breath. I went and put my arms around her, hugging her to me. A silence grew. The sound of music and bawdy laughter stole in from other booths. Out of the quiet, Lochlann spoke again, much more quietly, much more gently --

"Little Cat, I'm sorry. I don't trust your church. I don't believe that the white christ is a god; and I don't believe that any good god would want to see his worship spread through fear and blood, as the christmen are spreading it here. Look, if they are against the raiding, that's a good thing in itself, although I don't trust their reasons; but... Ach, no, that's it really. I don't trust them."

Soft grey rain was leaking out of a murky, formless sky in veils which dragged across the muddy place. In the centre of the place, the men stood in about the judges bench, hoods over heads and mantles huddled round shoulders, water beading a glittering sheen on the coarse grey wool, looking like nothing so much as one of those circles of old stones that you see. Olaf was not there, that I could see. I couldn't see any folk that I knew were his men. One after another, men got up and made complaint against him, giving the detail of their complaint. This went on for a long time. Several times I saw the judges call someone up to the bench, to send them trudging off through the wet towards Olaf's booth. Each time, after a while had passed, the messenger would come trudging back to the judges bench, and still Olaf didn't show himself. The complaints went on. At last Haakon stood up on the bench and spoke, calling loudly so that all might hear:

"Many folk have made complaint against Jarl Olaf, who is here on this ground. I have sent several folk to ask him to come here and answer the complaints. He has sent messages back to say that he is king, and does not need to answer complaints in the Thing. And I have sent folk to tell him that he is not king, for only the Thing can name a man king, and we have not named him; and even if he was the king, still by the old law the king must answer to the Thing as all men must. I say now that we will do no more business this day. And I say, I say this for all the judges who are here -- that it is our judgement that if Jarl Olaf does not come before the Thing when we gather for business tomorrow, that we name him nything, and forfeit of his lands and his goods and his life, so that his lands and his goods may be divided between those who complain against him, and his life may be taken by anyone here. And I say also, to all those who are men of Jarl Olaf's household, or have marched with his warband this year past, that if they do not come before the thing tomorrow, to answer to the complaints that are laid against them, that they shall be named nything, and forfeit of their goods and their lands and their life. That is our judgement. Is it the judgement of the Thing?"

There was a tremendous, deep throated chorus of Ay! Ay! Ay! from all the grey host. Haakon spoke again:

"The judgement of the Thing is given. We will break now, and meet again tomorrow. We three who have been named judges will go now to Jarl Olaf's booth and tell him of the judgement."


Copyright © Simon Brooke 1992-1996

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