The North Star/Chapter 45
XLV
THYRA THE TEARFUL
King Olaf sat in his council room alone, save for the guard who stood at the door. The voice of a woman was heard asking Unas for admission. Olaf lifted his head and listened. He had been writing on his tablets some dimensions of his new ships. The guard entered the room, “My King,” he said, “there wait without a lady nobly attired and her thrall maiden.”
“Bid them enter, Unas,” said the king, and pushed aside his writing materials, preparatory to the interview.
As his visitor came into the room, Olaf noted her stately deportment, her handsome countenance and her costly garments. The lady had passed her youth, and seemed to he of a commanding character. Her expression at this moment, however, was one of distress; and her whole behavior spoke of agitation. King Olaf rose to receive her. She came rapidly towards him and extended her hands in a gesture of supplication. Before the king could give her greeting, she burst forth in a tearful address:
“O bravest of Norsemen! Most valiant King Olaf! Thou dost see before thee a poor, unhappy, exiled queen. I have fled from my own land and from my enemies to seek shelter in thy kingdom.”
“And who art thou, unhappy lady?” asked Olaf, in a voice softened by pity at her distress. “Of a surety will I give thee every aid in my power.”
“I am Thyra, the sister of King Sweyn of Denmark. He hath wedded the Swedish widow, Queen Sigrid the Haughty, who doth hate thee so strongly. King Olaf, Sweyn and Sigrid hold constant thought of how they may harm thee, for Sigrid hath given her hate of thee to my brother. O King Olaf! he is a cruel, wicked brother. He would force me against my will to wed the wild heathen, King Burislav of Wendland, whose daughter Geira was thy wife, in thy youth. I was all unwillingly betrothed to Burislav. When I fled from my home and a lover I hated, my brother Sweyn did take from me all my estates in Wendland and in Denmark. So I come to thee, brave king, homeless, persecuted and penniless.”
“Nay! nay! Queen Thyra, no gentlewoman is homeless in my kingdom; and none would dare persecute thee while I can grasp a sword. The gold should perish in my coffers, if a queen were without their aid. When thou and thy thrall maiden have had some refreshment, I will send thee an escort to the home of my kinswoman, the Lady Aastrid, and upon the morrow I will hold council with thee as to thy unhappy plight.”
As Thyra and her maid were leaving the room, Thorgills came in, and when the visitors had left, Olaf answered the bard’s questioning look. “Yon lady is Queen Thyra of Denmark, who flies to me for help and protection.”
Thorgills looked troubled as he repeated: “Queen Thyra of Denmark comes to thee, my King? I like not the news. Thou hast angered Queen Sigrid, and thou wilt further anger Sweyn if thou dost aid his sister in her rebellious flight.”
Olaf laughed softly. “My faithful Thorgills, thou art ever afraid some woman will ensnare me into danger. See now! This is not the young witch Gudrun, nor yet the fiery old witch Sigrid. This is a poor persecuted and injured woman who only asks shelter in my kingdom.”
“My King,” said the scald, “the thing a woman asks for and the thing she will get for the asking are often as far apart as the little violet on the roadside and the highest hung star in the heavens.”
“Hath thy young Irish wife been asking thee for the stars?”
“My King, she asks for naught. She is gentle and silent and dutiful, but there is that within her heart is all unsatisfied. See now, my King. I thought to take this white blossom on my heart, but I have only touched the outer petals. The soul of the flower, the depths of its fragrant core are closed to me.”
“Nay! nay! Thorgills,”—Olaf’s voice was tender as a woman’s to the scald,—“thy wife is so young as yet that her child’s heart can hold no such love as thine. It is all a sore puzzle. No man can find what he seeks. My Gyda’s heart and mine beat together, and she left me. We love but once, and I have loved. As thou wert speaking of thy own disappointment and showed me that thou hadst not found all that thou didst seek, came to me this sudden resolve: I will wed Queen Thyra. She is a royal lady. I will give her a shelter and a place beside me over Norway. She is a Christian, and she will aid me to bring all my land to Christ.”
“My King,” said Thorgills, “I fear me thou wilt but gain the hatred of Sigrid and Sweyn.”
“I fear the hatred of neither man nor woman,” replied Olaf, and they parted.
The months of the year 998 that followed King Olaf’s marriage to Queen Thyra of Denmark were busy ones for the great viking. The fame of his prowess kept the enemies of Norway in a respectful attitude. Within his own dominion, however, a swarm of enemies had begun to arise. In the province of Viken, where Aastrid the mother and Lodin the stepfather of the king resided, a small rebellion had broken out. It was headed by Gudrod, one of the murderers of Olaf’s father and the last surviving son of Erik, Blood-Axe. Lodin and his kinsmen had defeated the forces of Gudrod after slaying their leader. This seemed to put an end to any open opposition to Olaf. The triumph of the king was overshadowed, however, by his grief for the death of his mother, which occurred at this time.
The work that lay so close to Olaf Tryggevesson’s heart was progressing rapidly. Province after province accepted the Christian religion, and even from far-off Iceland came the gratifying intelligence of the success of Father Reachta and his young companion, Father Breasal. King Olaf was busy and full of plans for his kingdom; and his home would have been happy, had not his wife, Queen Thyra, developed a complaining spirit that was fatal to all domestic peace. Olaf would have been too much occupied to have given great heed to the queen’s endless repinings for the estates which her brother had taken from her, but for her taunts and reproaches that her penniless condition was due to Olaf’s indifference and fear of Sweyn.
One day Olaf had asked Thorgills to sing to the queen. The scald looked dubiously at the gloomy lady; and very deliberately arranged his harp-strings, communing with himself. “How may I sing to please the queen, when naught that the king doth contrive can cheer her?”
When Thorgills had finished his saga of ancient battles, Thyra burst into tears.
“Dear lady,” pleaded the scald, “I would be forever dumb, sooner than grieve thee with my unlucky song.”
“Nay! nay!” protested the unhappy woman, “I weep not for thy song, but for memory of all the good warriors who are dead. In their day I would not be forced to sit in poverty while the revenues of my rich estates in Wendland and in Denmark are stolen from me. But now there is no one brave enough to help me.”
Olaf looked gloomily at the queen, and Thorgills strung his harp anew. At last the king said:
“My queen, thou hast a goodly portion of the revenues of my kingdom. Then why shouldst thou repine?”
Thyra burst into fresh weeping. “The revenues of thy kingdom?” she sobbed. “Thou dost only give me charity, because I am so poor and needy. O for a man brave enough to venture into Wendland!” and she wept again.
“Hold! my lady,” King Olaf said kindly. “That thou shalt not say again. Surely if thou dost desire one to go and restore thy estates in Wendland, it must be thy husband.”
“My King!” interposed Thorgills, to whom the mention of such an expedition conjured up the perils of Sweyn’s open hostility and Sigrid’s deep hatred and desire of revenge.
“I know, Thorgills,” the king interrupted, “thou wouldst counsel prudence, but I can claim no fellowship with fear—call it prudence if thou wilt.”
Thyra rose to leave the room. “Now thou must weep no more,” Olaf said very gently, “for I will presently prepare to journey towards Wendland.”
After the queen had left the room, both men were silent for a space. With a sigh, the king took up again his tablet of parchment, to continue the work which he had laid aside when Thyra entered. Holding the stylus in his hand, he looked at Thorgills. “My scald,” he said musingly, “it were a curious question to know what will please a woman. When my queen came to me, friendless, persecuted, and homeless, I made myself her lord and all my kingdom her home.”
“My King,” answered the scald, softly, as if debating within himself, “it doth seem to me that the things a woman most desires are the things she cannot get, or if perchance she get them, then presently she desires them no longer.”
Thorgills bent over his harp. “Thy queen grieves for her estates in a land where she hath no home. My young wife is well nigh starved with the hunger of her heart for the home where she hath no estates. But of this journey to Wendland, my King. There is Sweyn who is jealous of thy fame. There is Sigrid who will ever remember the blow of thy gauntlet upon her royal face.”
King Olaf smiled. “The journey to Wendland, Thorgills, is a little soothing tale, such as one tells the wailing child, to cease its cries for the moon.”
Thorgills rose to go. He too was smiling now, and he added softly: “Ofttimes, my King, when a woman wills to have a thing done, she also dreads the doing of it.”
While Olaf’s queen so bitterly complained at the loss of her estates, Sweyn of Denmark had also an unhappy queen, who would not be satisfied because her lord had never avenged King Olaf’s insult. Sweyn would gladly have made warlike overtures to Olaf, but the Danish king was in great dread of the mighty viking. In the meanwhile, he pacified Queen Sigrid as best he could by promising to avenge King Olaf’s blow whenever there was a favorable opportunity.
Earl Sigvalde had become very intimate at the Danish court, to which he often repaired, greatly to the distress of the Lady Aastrid; for she knew that it boded no good to King Olaf when her designing husband became so confidential with the enemies of the king.
Olaf was walking through the streets of Nidaros one March morning. It was Palm Sunday and the king noted with pleasure how fair and green seemed the foliage for so early in the year. A man was passing with some beautiful angelica plants, when the king stopped him. “I never saw them so soon and of such growth,” he said, handing the peddler a number of coins. “It is Palm Sunday,” thought Olaf, “and I will bring the queen these first fruits of the spring.”
Holding the pretty plants in his hand, the king entered the palace and went straight to Thyra’s bower, with his offering. The queen was surrounded with her bower women, telling them as usual of her grievance, and they were giving her considerable sympathy and mingling their tears with hers.
Olaf went up to Thyra, saying with winning courtesy, as he handed her the plants: “See! my queen, these are the earliest and the fairest plants I ever saw.”
As he held them out, Thyra rose up angrily. She dashed the plants to the ground and replied in a voice choked with sobs and through fast falling tears:
“Greater gifts did my father, Harold Gormssen, give me when, as a child, I got my first teeth. He came hither to Norway and conquered it; but thou, for fear of my brother Sweyn, darest not journey through Denmark in order to get me what belongs to me, and of which I have been so shamefully robbed.”
King Olaf’s anger was great. The bower women trembled, and even Thyra herself realized that she had pushed her complaining too far. For a moment Olaf did not reply. His face was deadly white and his eyes glittered like naked swords in the sun. The woman whom he had made his wife out of pity for her defenceless position, to taunt him with cowardice, before the prating gossips of her court! When he spoke, his voice had lost all of its kindness and the tone was haughty and severe. “Never shall I be afraid of thy brother Sweyn, and if we meet he shall succumb.”