The coming of spring to Novgorod is announced by the river with sudden loud cracks, as the solid center breaks up into jagged floes, and softer clicks as the floes dissolve in a myriad tinkling pieces—bobbing and whirling away downstream between the ice-bound banks. When the last ice is gone, then the boatmen go down to their vessels, which have lain stuck fast in the river all winter, and haul them out to careen and re-rig them.
Now the rain comes in crashing thunderstorms that wash the snow down in torrents from the hillsides and make the river overflow its banks. It’s a rare spring that sees no houses swept away in low-lying parts of the town. Even the ground floor of the palace is often awash, although they have installed gigantic pipes made of hollowed tree trunks to drain it.
Rain and melting snow turn the ground into such a quagmire of sucking mud that a horse or man will sink in it up to his knees. Not until mid-May do the fields dry out sufficiently for the ‘black people’ to get on with their planting.
The spring is an unhealthy time of year as well as an uncomfortable one, with pestilence and fevers common. I was spared a second bout of my fever, but many others in the town fell sick. Magnus, just past his ninth birthday, fell ill and for a while looked like dying. Ingigerd, haggard and red-eyed, kept vigil at his bedside until the crisis was past. Yelisaveta said bitterly, not caring who heard her, that her mother would not have wept half so much over one of her own.
Easter, and the day of my baptism, were not far off. Einar had decided to be baptized with me and was looking forward to it, for the reason, he said, that he wanted a new suit of clothes. Why, he’d known a man once that was baptized four times just for the white clothes they gave away!
As the day approached, he and I, together with some warriors newly arrived from the heathen parts of Sweden, were ordered to take instruction in our new Faith under the tutelage of Father Dmitri. Hollow of cheek, long of nose, and thin of hair, he took his place before us in one of the palace rooms, leaning upon a lectern, while we sat before him on rows of benches.
We were but rude, simple men and had no idea what a great deal of explaining we were in for.
Right at the start he ambushed us with the three gods who were One, and the Son who was half god and half man. But soon, seeing some of us begin to stretch and others to yawn, he paused to assure us that as soon as we were proper Christmen, God would answer our prayers.
I was overjoyed to hear this for I had a number of prayers all ready—the chief of them being that Yaroslav should never catch me in bed with his wife. Some others in the audience, impatient of waiting for the glorious day, began to shout their prayers aloud, much to the priest’s dismay, seeing that most of them had to do with ‘sticking a sword into that bastard Svein’, or ‘getting their hand up Grushenka’s skirt’. We got merrier and merrier, with each of us trying to outdo the prayers of the others, until the priest could scarcely be heard above the din. Only after shouting and flapping his arms for some time, was he able to recapture our attention for his next topic, which was the Creation of the World.
He read us the verses about God creating the world and placing Adam and Eve in the Garden, and added that all this had taken place exactly six thousand five hundred and thirty-nine years ago in the month of September.
“Now really,” said I, raising my hand, “I’ll believe the six thousand and so forth if you like, but how can you know it happened in September?”
“Easily explained, my son,” he replied, looking down his long nose at me. “Didn’t Eve give Adam an apple? All right, and aren’t apples picked in September?”
Well, everyone laughed and I felt like a fool, so I kept quiet for a while.
From describing the Beginning of Things he skipped right to the End. In the Last Days, he said, mankind would be beset with continual wars and plagues. Antichrist would appear on earth. At the same time there would come four Kingdoms of Beasts and the giants Gog and Magog would fight against the true Christmen in a great battle at a place called Armageddon. After this, Christ would descend from Heaven, for the second and last time, to pass judgment on us all. Thereafter, the wicked would spend eternity in Hell, with molten pitch, sulfur, lead and wax being continually poured on their heads. But those who enlisted in Christ’s druzhina—here he lifted up his eyes—would have eternal life in Paradise.
“Doing what?” one fellow in the back wanted to know. “D’you mean fighting all day, as they do in Valhalla, and, when you’re killed, coming to life again next day to fight some more?”
“Good God, no!” He’d meant no such thing. “Paradise—,” he said, “Cherubim and Seraphim—throne of God—harps—”
“Pah!” the questioner spat. “You call that life?”
There was much laughter at this, but the priest, scowling and wagging his finger at us, warned that we were already living in the Last Days! For how else to account for the Infidel Arab enslaving half of Christ’s earthly empire, and what could that portend but the beginning of the End?
That put a stop to the merriment.
But we Norse, I thought to myself, have no need of Christmen to teach us about the end of things. Why, change a few details and it’s the same story my father used to scare me with when I was a boy and we took those long rambles together in the night: Ragnarok—the doom of the gods—when Loki, and the Giants, and Fenris Wolf storm the towers of Asgard and bring them crashing down. And since our religion is plainly much older than theirs—for Odin the All-Knowing walked the earth long before Jesus—it must be from us that they got the story and now pretend they thought of it themselves!
As I turned this over in my mind, a wave of memory surged through me with such intensity that for a moment I felt again the chill of those long-ago nights and my father’s rough hand on mine. Fear and longing filled me both at once and suddenly I shivered with the uncanny feeling that he was near me. Strange how this priest’s words stirred feelings in me just the opposite of what he’d intended.
Having given us a proper scare, Father Dmitri proceeded to instruct us how the White Christ would save us from our wickedness, and how even a fool could see that he was the True God, because didn’t it say so right here—and here—and here? And he began to read us some verses of old prophecies. But it was all such a jumble of foreign names and obscure arguments that we pretty quickly got confused; especially when he said that these prophets, by whom he put such store, were all Jews, but that the cursed Jews themselves refused to believe a word it!
I won’t tire you with all the rest of our first day’s lesson. He told us about how Jesus commanded us to love our enemies, so that if a man hit you on the one cheek you were to offer him the other also instead of splitting his skull for him as he damn well deserved. One grizzled warrior asked sarcastically, “What’s Yaroslav paying us for, then—to kiss his enemies?”
That plainly was a hard one for Father Dmitri. He started to say one thing, then started to say another, rolled his eyes in despair and raced on to the subject of miracles.
Making the blind to see and the lame to walk, and even raising folk from the dead—why, Christ and his druzhiniks had done all that just as easy as anything—not to mention those many saints who came along afterwards right up to our own day.
But here I couldn’t keep myself from asking, “Excuse me, but what about Father Vorobey? He was still as cold as yesterday’s mutton after three days trying to resurrect him.”
That seemed to be another hard one for the priest, and he could see that we were getting restless, being active men not accustomed to sitting for very long at a time, so he went straight on to the Crucifixion.
Now this story, too, the Christmen have stolen from us. Again, my thoughts flew back to Iceland and I heard the sound of my father’s voice shouting these words of Odin All-Father’s to the echoing hills:
Nine nights hung I on the wind-whipped tree,
Whose root sinks deeper than man’s knowing.
I, Odin, by a spear transfixed,
A sacrifice to Black-Brow’d Odin:
They gave me neither bread nor drink,
Yet down into the depths I looked,
Down, down I reached and grasped the runes,
Screaming, grasped them, flung them up
And then fell back.
Well, you can see the similarity at once, except that Odin, through his suffering, gave us the runes and, with them, poetry and divination, while the White Christ, so far as I could see, gave only a license for one half of mankind to persecute the other half.
But to come back to Father Dmitri’s lecture, he was describing the murder of Christ by the Jews with such liveliness and emotion that suddenly Einar Tree-Foot could stand it no longer.
“By the Raven,” he cried, jumping up and brandishing his sword, “none would’ve dared touch him if my Jomsvikings had been there!”
Instantly the room exploded into shouting and stamping, and many others drew their swords and swore that, by the gods, let ’em just see some Jews anywhere about and they’d send ’em away holding their heads!
Well, the scene got wilder and wilder until, at last, Father Dmitri just gave up and fled the room, hugging his book to his chest.
That night a mob of Swedes ransacked and burned some shops near the market, which were said to be owned by Jews. The flames spread quickly and came so near the palace that there was panic inside and everyone rushed about with buckets, wetting down the roof and walls. Even so, it was only a sudden change in the wind that saved the dvor from going up in flames.
Yaroslav was as frightened as anyone. He shouted for Eilif to take charge and do something, but, when they located the captain of the druzhina, he was lying drunk in bed with a slave woman. His rival then was sent for. Mind you, they might easily have found young Harald in the same condition as Eilif on any given night, but his luck saved him once again: he was reasonably sober and not otherwise occupied.
He called out the Norwegians, half of them armed for battle and the other half with buckets and blankets. The rioters were dispersed in short order but our best efforts could not prevent the fire from raging out of control. It leveled the Market Side all the way from Carpenters’ Brook to the Mound, destroying four churches and sixty houses before it was done—and that, despite the red roosters that all Novgorodtsi paint on their doors to protect them from the ever-dreaded flame.
Two days later, Yaroslav, backed by Harald’s strong arm, cashiered thirteen of the ringleaders without pay and banished them from the city. No matter how justified might be a Christman’s hatred of the Jews, he lectured them, arson could simply not be tolerated in a city built of wood.
At the same time he rewarded Harald with the gift of a fine silver-inlaid battle ax and extra rations for our men. And I commemorated the event with a poem in which I devised kennings for ‘fire’ more elegant and obscure than any ever heard before. As for Eilif, he didn’t show his face at court for a week.
After things had had time to settle down a bit, we were recalled to our catechism. This time Father Dmitri, carefully avoiding anything to do with the Jews, spoke about Saint Vladimir and the conversion of the Rus, concerning which I had heard something already from Stavko.
“Now Vladimir, my children,” the priest began, “was, in his early life entirely given up to lust, for he kept eleven hundred concubines—far surpassing the number that even Solomon had—and was married to five wives. One day, however, God put it in his heart to renounce his heathen ways and seek a new religion. Now, being ignorant of all other religions, he did not know how to choose one and so he sent his four most trusted boyars on a long journey for the purpose of investigating the various religions of men.
“They traveled first among the Volga Bulgars, who are followers of Mohammet, but returned, saying that they found no joy among them, in particular because strong drink was forbidden by their holy law. Vladimir was appalled. ‘The Rus’, he said, ‘cannot live without strong drink’.
“Next, the four envoys visited the Germans, who are Papists, but returned saying, ‘Their churches are cold and there is no beauty amongst them’. Last of all, they journeyed all the way to Miklagard, which is both New Rome and New Jerusalem, and whose Emperor is God’s viceroy on earth. And this time, when they returned to Kiev, they could scarcely tell of the wonders they had seen, for words failed them. ‘When we entered the Cathedral of the Holy Wisdom’, they told the Grand Prince, ‘we did not know if we were on earth or in heaven. Surely God dwells there’. Vladimir believed them and on the spot chose the holy Orthodox religion for himself and his people.
“Soon after making his decision known in Miklagard, he received in marriage Anna Porphyrogenita, daughter of the Emperor Romanus and the sister to the Emperor Basil. Never before in the whole of history was a foreign prince so honored as Vladimir was, and all because he embraced the True Faith. Immediately, he sent away his concubines and his other wives, cleaving only to Anna, and he and the whole population of Kiev were baptized together, rejoicing and praising the Lord, in the river Dnieper. This was in the year six thousand, four hundred and ninety-six from the Creation, or, as the Papists call it, Anno Domini 988.
“After that, Vladimir easily overthrew the demons, whom some of the people in their ignorance still worshiped—Svarog, Dashbog, Stribog, Khors, Yarilo, Lad, Volos, and Perun—especially Perun. Him he ordered to be tied to a horse’s tail and dragged to the river while men walked alongside flogging the idol with sticks.
“Then in Novgorod, too, the idols were overthrown, whipped, and flung into the river. And the people, seeing how feeble were these gods, who could not even defend themselves, went joyfully to be baptized in the Volkhov.”
“All, Father Dmitri?” I broke in. “All of them joyfully? None held back?” I hadn’t come to the lesson intending to quarrel, but anger suddenly flared up in me.
“Well, I mean to say, no, of course not; there were some so depraved by superstition that they hung back.”
“What was done about them, Father Dmitri?”
“They were dragged down by the scruff of the neck and thrown in! Why, d’you think they deserved better? Did God ask Lucifer politely if he would be so obliging as to leave Heaven? No, gospodin, he did not. He commanded St Michael, the general of his host, to take the Evil One by the heels and fling him into the pit, him and all his fallen angels! And should we do less wherever we find Satan? Does that answer your question, you, whoever you are?”
“He’s Harald the Norwegian’s skald,” someone in the audience called out.
“Well, he should know better, then, shouldn’t he?” said Dmitri. “Anything else you want to know, my inquisitive friend?”
Inwardly I thought, What have we done that we should be plagued by the Vladimirs and Olafs of this world? But to his question I answered, “No, Father, nothing else.” What was the use of talking? They would have it their own way in the end.
Smoothing his ruffled feathers, the priest continued: “And so we Rus hold Grand Prince Vladimir in pious memory and we treasure his relics—his foot, his skull, his jaw bone—all are preserved in the Cathedral at Kiev, or in other places, and their power is great.”
It always amused me to hear Vladimir’s name spoken with such reverence at court, seeing that Yaroslav had been in open revolt against him at the time of his death (out of resentment, so it was said, to the wrong done his mother when the Grand Prince took a Greek princess to be his single lawful wife). It was only the old man’s death that prevented a bloody civil war between father and son, Kiev and Novgorod.
“And now, my children,” Dmitri concluded his sermon, “before I release you, for I can see the hour is getting late, I deem it most important to remind you of how blest, how fortunate you are to be baptized into the Holy Orthodox Faith and not the accursed Church of Rome. For you must understand that the Latins are heretics, who believe that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son instead of from the Father alone; they are baptized in only one immersion of water instead of three; they do wrong also to take the Host in an unleavened wafer instead of in bread as Christ instructed us; they despise the flesh in that they require their priests to be beardless like eunuchs and deny to them the blessings of marriage—with the result that they all take concubines instead!
“Why, it is even said of them by no less an authority than that learned monk of Kiev, Feodosy of the Caves, that they eat lions, wild horses, asses, bears, and beavers’ tails, and are unclean in all their habits. This same Father Feodosy instructs us to avoid their communion, nor eat or drink from the same bowl with them; but if we must, out of Christian charity, give a Catholic food from our bowl, we must wash it out immediately afterwards and ask God’s pardon.
“And now, my children, go and pray earnestly to God, asking him to make you worthy of this sacrament—its day is fast approaching—from which you will arise new men in Christ.”
Father Dmitri sent us away to pray and meditate. And I did meditate.
I had been all through this in my mind before now. My mother had been Christian and so had Kalf Slender-Leg, the dearest friend of my boyhood. I could say nothing against them. But I had seen also how lustily these Christmen could hate—and hate not only the heathen or the Jew but each other! I’m a good hater too, but I don’t lie and call it Godliness. No, I will receive their baptism because it is a writ of entry into the great world, where I must make my way. When I am among them I will swear ‘by Mary’ and ‘by Christ’ as they all do. But I will not believe what they teach; and, in the secret place of my thoughts, I will still pray to Odin All-Father and the other gods of olden time—if only so that I may not affront my poor, mad father’s ghost.
Came the day.
Dressed in our gowns of snowy white, we stood barefoot in a line before the font, ready to ‘put off the old Adam and put on the new’, as Father Dmitri expressed it. Thanks to his efforts, we were all able to recite our Creed, if not much else. We had each been given a new name, too: mine was John, for the saint whose feast day this happened to be. (Fortunately, it was not generally the custom here to call someone by his baptismal name—Yaroslav’s, for instance, was George; Ingigerd’s was Irene—so that I could continue to be ‘Odd’ to my friends.)
Dag, with great good humor, stood godfather to Einar. Yaroslav, as a way of doing honor to Harald, insisted upon being my godfather, which, necessarily, made Inge my godmother—adding incest to adultery in the tally of her sins—and mine. Yesterday I had only been a damned fool; from today I was a damned fool and a sinner.
When it came my turn, I faced west, spat three times while renouncing Satan and all his ways, was thrice immersed in water, dabbed all over with oil, and became in the eyes of the world a Christman—and so sank into the chasm which opened at my feet.
I mean that chasm which lies between the old ways and the new, between heathen and Christman, barbarian and city-man; a chasm that I have wandered in for many years now, nor have I hope any longer of finding my way safely to one precipice or the other.