The All Father Paradox Read online

  The well was a simple affair, dug by hand, the water table high enough to reflect her torchlight. Not enough of a fall to kill a man, but enough water to drown one. She sung softly to herself, not that any of the Saxons would hear her over their din.

  I know that I hung on a windy tree

  nine long nights,

  wounded with a spear, dedicated to Óðinn,

  myself to myself,

  on that tree of which no man knows from where its roots run

  No bread did they give me nor a drink from a horn,

  downwards I peered;

  I took up the runes,

  screaming I took them,

  then I fell back from there

  She cut the leather sack and the rope at the top of the well, making it all but impossible to draw water from it quickly. No sense poisoning everyone. The All Father, Óðinn, had gained his wisdom from drinking at Mímir’s well, although in exchange for that knowledge, he had been forced to sacrifice an eye. As she turned into the dawn, the völva wondered how she’d be rewarded for the sacrifice of a whole monk.

  EXEGESIS II

  GOSFORTH, ENGLAND

  2017

  MURDERED, MR. CHANDLER? YOU LOOK well enough to me!” The churchwarden laughed uneasily. If the old man was joking, he had a gift for deadpan, and if he wasn’t, well, it wasn’t polite to chuckle at senility.

  “Let’s just say I am in recovery, Churchwarden,” the old bear growled. “Feeling better by the moment.”

  Whoever he was, the visitor had a certain gravitas, an air of quiet authority, like he was treading the boards, playing The Dane as they say. He had a presence. Michaels wondered if he’d been in anything he’d seen. He surely couldn’t be just a bit player in one of the Jorvik touring groups.

  “So, why the interest in Willehad of Bremen?” Michaels asked. “Research for a part, is it? If you’d care to come down to the rectory, I am sure we have a copy of Alban Butler’s Lives of the Saints. Better yet, we can do a search of PASE.”

  Michaels fumbled for his phone, which nearly fell from his pocket. He caught it just in time, then thumbed in his passcode.

  “We had some people here from the University of Cambridge. All funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. They have an amazing database: the Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England. PASE. It has information on all the recorded inhabitants of England from the late sixth to the late eleventh century. Look, I’ll show you.”

  He enjoyed having immediate access to ancient history, and PASE had helped him win several quiz nights at the local pub. The screen hung momentarily, then flashed up an error page:

  This site can’t be reached

  http://www.pase.ac.uk/server DNS address could not be found.

  “Oh, it’s offline. Must be down for maintenance,” Michaels muttered, crestfallen.

  The old man was looking at him, seemingly amused by the churchwarden’s antics.

  “Like you say, Churchwarden. Ancient history. Water under the bridge. Tell me about your cross. Why only one?”

  Michaels checked his watch. He had to drive into town to collect some groceries, but he had a little time to devote to his elders and betters. It was only Christian, after all.

  “There used to be another. Maybe even a third. You can see one stump just there.” The churchwarden pointed to a small fragment just seven feet away. “But I’m afraid they were dismantled some time ago. This has been consecrated land since Anglo-Saxon times, but the church was extensively rebuilt in the eighteenth century. That’s when the damage was done. The remaining cross was identified by a Victorian gentleman, an amateur antiquarian called Charles Parker. His colleagues found remnants of the other crosses in the parsonage, used as a sundial, even as a step. The Fishing Stone in the church is thought to be a remnant too, showing the Viking god Thor fishing for the Midgard Serpent. It’s an old legend. I can show you if you’d like.” He gestured back to St. Mary’s. Even though the wind had died, he was keen to get back inside.

  “No need.” The old man strode purposefully to the second stump.

  Michaels wondered where he got his manners. A please or a thank you wouldn’t hurt.

  “How about the Hogback tombs? Part shrine, part grave, both found under a twelfth century wall, so their origin must have been long forgotten even then. The tombs have very distinct curved ridges, hence the name. Very intricately carved too…”

  The churchwarden realised he was staring at Mr. Chandler’s own intricate markings. The thought crossed his mind that the old man might have one foot in the grave himself, and that offering tours of the long-deceased might be ill-advised.

  His guest glared back, and even before he spoke, it seemed to Michaels that the old man had read his thoughts.

  “Never judge a book by its cover, Churchwarden. This leathery old binding, these spindly tattoos, they tell a saga. These marks are the birthright of my people; they bind me to the dead.”

  Michaels didn’t know whether the display was method or madness, but he decided not to antagonise the man further. He wasn’t comfortable with confrontation. Best just to plough ahead…

  “Well, we do have some idea about who made the cross, and the tombs. This land is formerly part of the kingdom of Northumbria, settled by Scandinavians some time in either the ninth or tenth century, after the Great Heathen Army seized the throne. This is before England and Scotland and referendums, of course, when the Northumbrian kingdom straddled the current divide. The cross itself dates to the first half of the tenth century, probably in the last years of Viking rule. Right in the middle of the Dark Ages, meaning the youth of today can conveniently ignore most of what happened and misrepresent everything else in comic books. The national curriculum is sorely wanting. Sorely.”

  The old man trailed back to the cross, his grey cloak sweeping the grass on the overgrown graves. If he sympathised with the churchwarden, he didn’t show any sign of it. He called back over his shoulder, “What makes you the expert?”

  Michaels was taken somewhat aback by the question.

  “The Church of St. Olaf, down the road in Wasdale,” he said collecting himself. “It was dedicated in 1977, the year I was born, and that kind of stuck with me. It’s part of the Benefice, if you want to visit it. It’s at least a thousand years old. The beams come from a Viking longship.”

  “Saint Olaf? Is that so?”

  The old man seemed calmer now. He stroked his long beard, as if soothing ruffled feathers. He looked even more full of himself, as if enlivened by the spirited debate. His eyes danced with delight.

  “Tell me about the cross that remains,” he barked.

  Michaels checked his watch again.

  “Well, all right. But then I must be going, I’m afraid. It’s Pies, Peas, and Puds night, and I have to get into town for supplies. The vicar will be happy to reschedule you, I’m sure.”

  “Time and tide wait for no man, Churchwarden,” the old man said, unrelenting.

  “Quite so, quite so. Well, Mr. Chandler, if you’ll look here. The shaft is full of these remarkable carvings, all of which illustrate a tenth century poem, called the Völuspá or the Prophecy of the Seeress. It tells the story of the creation of the world and its coming end, related to the audience by a seeress or völva addressing Odin, the All Father, the chief of the Viking Gods. It is one of the most important primary sources for the study of Norse mythology. You know it, of course?”

  “Of course,” the old man scowled. “Ragnarok. The twilight of the gods, the long-heralded last battle, where the monstrous Jötnar set about destroying the entire cosmos. Fenrir, the great wolf, consumed the world so swiftly that even the sun was dragged from its zenith and into the beast’s stomach.”

  Michaels was relieved. He was beginning to think the actor hadn’t bothered to learn any of his lines. You’d imagine that you’d do a modicum of reading before donning that ridiculous garb and gallivanting around the Lake District.

  “Exactly,” said Michaels. “And you can
see the story brought to life here: the great wolf swallowing the sun; two dragons attacking Heimdal, who wards heaven with his horn and staff; Loki, bound and tortured beneath a snake; Surt, attacking Odin from his ship of Hell. The lower part of the cross represents the ash tree Yggdrasil, which the Norse men believed supported the universe. And here on the east side, you can see Balder, the bright god, on the eve of his resurrection.”

  Michaels reached as high as he could to point out the key features in the sandstone. It was an odd guided tour, orbiting around one tall column, squinting into the weak winter sun, but the churchwarden could tell the old man was following intensely.

  “Fascinating, isn’t it? The similarity between Balder and Jesus, I mean. The notion of a dying-and-rising god is common enough I suppose, but I think the Viking Age was really about rebirth. The Old Ways were experiencing their own kind of Ragnarok. So when a Norse colony established itself in Northwest England, it had to find a way for its old traditions to interact with the traditions of the locals, locals that were Christian. It’s quite possible that the ambiguity in the images on the cross is intentional. That the pagans were in transition, from the Old Ways to our familiar faith.”

  The old man snorted so loudly that the churchwarden jumped out of his skin for the second time that afternoon. This time he dropped his phone, which cracked loudly on the base of the column. He bent to retrieve it and came close to swearing a second time. Channelling the vicar, he bit back the impulse.

  “Is that what you tell people? When they come to look at the carvings? What nonsense!” the visitor snarled, suddenly not just peremptory, but downright hostile.

  Michaels coloured up brighter than his long-lost parish pamphlets. His heartbeat was ringing in his ears. He thrust his phone into his pocket and jangled around for his car keys. That was quite enough of this cantankerous Yorkshireman and his goading comments. He snapped back, flustered.

  “What is there to disagree with? I’ll have you know even Eric Bloodaxe is rumoured to have converted. This cross, it dates from that time. 954AD. We have pamphlets—”

  “And that’s what passes for expertise, is it? Pink pamphlets! Rassragr! You people need a wake-up call,” scolded the visitor.

  The churchwarden was flabbergasted. This was the problem with modern Britain, he thought: they’d let old men like this have the vote. Stingy old buggers who couldn’t be trusted with a civil conversation, let alone a ballot box. Michaels felt that, Reverend Riley or no Reverend Riley, it was his God-given duty to try and talk some sense into him.

  “Go and look at the replica in the Victoria & Albert Museum,” he said. “All modern scholars agree. Every image has a Christian counterpart. Heimdal as the Archangel Michael, blowing his trumpet. Loki, the fiend of Northern legend, is a version of Satan. Balder himself is Christ standing with his arms spread wide, while below him are Mary Magdalene and Longinus with his spear.”

  The old man chuckled.

  “You are seeing what you want to see.”

  Michaels was incensed. If only he had one of his pamphlets handy, or one of the newsletters that blew away, they had some quotes from the Old Norse poems that he’d recited to such telling effect at the Scout Hall last week. He tried to scrabble together something articulate.

  “You are ignoring the evidence of your own eyes,” the churchwarden said. “The carving is self-evidently the Crucifixion. Not to mention the Norse poem. Go read the Völuspá, why don’t you? This was the world of Harald Hardrada, Olaf the Holy, Canute the Great,

  Haakon the Good. All Christian Viking Kings!”

  It came to him, then, the line he wanted, purloined from an old Victorian scholar.

  “Simply put, the cross is a translation of the Gospel story into Northern thought.”

  The old man grinned like a row of runestones.

  “Oh no, Churchwarden. Northern thoughts are never set in stone. And your memory is a fugitive from fact. Botulfr the Black is the only Viking prince worth his name. I am afraid you need a history lesson.”

  BLAKKR SAGA

  THE EYSTRA SALT, NEAR SVEALAND

  1041 AD

  KUNTA… FUKJA… DRIT!”

  From somewhere above him, a torrent of abuse was hurled at a grey sky, but if the gulls or the gods were startled, they made no reply.

  In the hold of a ship he did not know, Botulfr groaned. He instinctively rubbed at the pain in his neck and realised he was no longer bound. His abductors had bundled him in his bedding and carried him to their ship in the middle of the night. Botulfr had struggled, and even managed a muffled shout or two, so they had quickly knocked him unconscious. But now his hands and feet were free. His head, however, was still pounding, so he didn’t dwell on why.

  Botulfr listened from the shadows of the cargo hold to the men above him. They had stopped rowing and let the striped sail take the burden. Their argument had been swept beneath urgent oars for the past hour but now rolled back around the ship. At first, only the creaking mast groaned, filling the silence that followed the oaths. Then, he heard a second voice.

  “We had enough sworn swords when the ale was flowing.”

  Oars were being drawn up and stowed, each one clattering to the deck. The accented words of a third man came tumbling out impatiently.

  “Pine and oak will serve us well until we find more iron. Can you stay quiet so I can think?”

  The expletives returned, giving the man his answer. Even below deck, Botulfr could feel the speaker’s fury.

  “Ormstunga, can you speak without riddles? I have no idea what he just said. Did you understand what he just said? Did anyone understand what he just said?”

  “Perhaps you understand this, reðr!” An unseen gesture in the salt air.

  A fourth voice now, calmly ignoring the squabble.

  “We should dye his hair blond with lye soap so we are not recognised.”

  “Gest, he’s the only Norseman alive without a beard. I’ve known women with more hair on their chins. There is no point dyeing his hair.”

  Footsteps across the deck above.

  “The völva said—”

  “That bikkjuna can piss wine before I care what she says.”

  “It’s not what she says, it’s what the runes say. If—”

  “Runes, hundrfretr!”

  “Must every sentence be an insult?”

  “Your very breathing is an insult, rassragr.”

  There was a long silence. Botulfr shrank down into his furs, listening to the waves break and lap around the ship. The gulls filled the air with their cries, wheeling above him and the open cargo hole amidships.

  One of the men stepped into view and stared down into the hold, directly at Botulfr. Though older, with perhaps forty winters or more etched across his face, the man’s fair hair betrayed no grey and was pulled back in a single braid. There was some red in his beard. He had dark eyes, and around his arm, he wore a plaited silver ring. As soon as he spoke, it was apparent he was one with the heavy accent.

  “We’ll sail east. I have friends among the Rus. And then we can travel on to Grikkland. The prince looks Grikk. Plain sight will be his disguise, at least until we can get word to his father.”

  HIS FATHER.

  Alhróðigr Fylkir Veðrhallar, Ríkir Jǫfra, Allsráðandi—All-Glorious King of the Storm-Hall, Ruler of Princes and Lord of All. It was a pompous title, bestowed by a court who grew more grandiose and conceited with every victory. Most called his father simply Fylkir, the Leader.

  His empire, the Himinríki, stretched six weeks’ sail in every direction; to the west lay Írland, Skottland, and England; to the north, Nóregr, Danmǫrk, and Finnmǫrk; and far to the east, Garðariki. Across all these conquests, vassal kings ruled in his name. The Fylkir was a man who held counsel with gods; he set down laws and the fates of men at the Well of Urðr; he rode across Bifrost and further still, if you listened to the skalds, into the realms of spirits and gods.

  The Lord of All Heavens, and yet, he had let his wif
e be taken from him. Botulfr hated his father for that.

  He hated the way his father endlessly counted coins, sliding bezants, florins, dirhams, and marks into columns on ledgers. The prince wondered when his mother’s rivals would be held to similar account. He despised those ostentatious side-whiskers his father wore, a fiery red plumage, once, in his youth, but now grey shrouds of mourning. That this bear of a man, this great chamberlain of the gods, was so reduced, so enfeebled by inaction, caused the prince to burn with hot shame. The edifice of the empire—its storied heroes and unfailing ingenuity, its restless fleets and ceaseless hunger, an empire built around the Always Victorious King—was a nothing more than a drifting hulk, riddled with worms. His father was much more controlled than controlling.

  There was no body. There were no questions granted and no answers given. There was no discussion of the funeral feast; no runestone carved for a fresh barrow. Her bond-women and thralls vanished overnight, without so much as a murmur. The only proof that Kera, daughter of Burikhan the Tall, had ever graced the emperor’s bed was a fifteen-year-old boy and all his confusion and anger, the fury of the dispossessed.

  The whole glistening court at Uppsala melted away whenever Botulfr stalked the halls, infuriating him further. They said his brother Eirik had returned from the west, full of spite and menace. Jarls and godsmen gathered in whispering pools, coldly speculating on his princely fate.

  His father would offer no protection. He had already disappeared, back to roaming the passes, the bogs, fens, and forests, ever further from his palace, seeking solace in a fresh hunt or a new bed-slave. In hindsight, that was all he ever did. Escape.

  Then, the prince, too, was gone. And the whole inconvenience could be forgotten.