Maybe too much of a warning, Shef thought, remembering the wasted face of Wulfgar in the horse-trough, and that indefinable buzz of rage which he had felt in the fields and woods on their journey. When he asked why the Vikings were so determined to march on Northumbria, largest but not by any means richest of the English kingdoms, the laughter at that question took a long time to die down. Eventually, when he unraveled the tale of Ragnar Lothbrok and King Ella, of the old boar and the little pigs who would grunt, of Viga-Brand and his taunting of the Ragnarssons themselves in the Braethraborg, a chill fell on him. He remembered the strange words he had heard from the blue-swelling face in the snake-pit of the archbishop, the sense of foreboding he had known at the time.
Now he understood the need for revenge—but there were other things about which he remained curious.
“Why do you say ‘Hell’?” he asked Thorvin one night after they had put their gear away and were sitting mulling a tankard of ale on the cooling forge. “Do you believe there is a place where sins are punished after death? Christians believe in Hell—but you’re no Christian.”
“What makes you think Hell is a Christian word?” answered Thorvin. “What does heaven mean?” For once he used the English word, heofon.
“Well—it’s the sky,” answered Shef, startled.
“Also the Christian place of bliss after death. The word was there before the Christians came. They just borrowed it, gave it a new meaning. Same with Hell. What does hulda mean?” This time he used the Norse word.
“It means to cover, to hide something. Like helian in English.”
“So. Hell is what is covered. What’s underground. Simple word, just like heaven. You can put what meaning you like to it after that.
“But your other question: Yes, we do believe there is a place of punishment for your sins after death. Some of us have seen it.”
Thorvin sat silent for a while, as if brooding, unsure how far to speak further. When he broke the silence it was in a half chant, slow and sonorous, like the monks of Ely Minster Shef had heard once, long ago, singing on the vigil of Christmas Eve.
“A hall stands, no sunlight on it,
On Dead Man’s Strand: its doors face northward.
From its roof rain poison drops.
Its walls are made of woven serpents.
There men writhe in woe and anguish:
Murder-wolves and men forsworn,
Those who lie to lie with women.”
Thorvin shook his head. “Yes, we believe in punishment for sins. Maybe we have a different idea from the Christians about what is a sin and what is not.”
“Who are ‘we’?”
“It is time I told you. It has come to me several times that you were meant to know.” As they sipped their warm, herb-scented ale in the glow of the dying fire, the camp quietening around them, Thorvin, fingering his amulet, spoke. “This is how it was.”
All this began, he said, many generations before, maybe a hundred and fifty years ago. At that time a great jarl of the Frisians—the people on the North Sea coast opposite England—had been a pagan. But because of the tales that had been told him by missionaries from Frankland and from England, and because of the old kinship felt between his people and the now-Christian English, he had decided to take baptism.
As was the custom, baptism was to take place publicly, in the open air, in a great tank that the missionaries had constructed for all to see. After the jarl Radbod had been immersed and baptized, the nobles of his court were to follow and soon after that the whole earldom, all the Frisians. Earldom, not kingdom, for the Frisians were too proud and independent to allow anyone the title of king.
So the jarl had stepped to the side of the tank, clad in his robes of ermine and scarlet over the white baptismal garment, and put one foot down onto the first step of the tank. He actually had his foot in the water, Thorvin asserted. But then he turned and asked the head of the missionaries—a Frank, whom the Franks called Wulfhramn, or Wolfraven—whether it was true that as soon as he, Radbod, accepted baptism, his ancestors, who now lurked in Hell along with the other damned, would be released and allowed to wait for their descendants’ coming in the courts of heaven.