Book Seven Chapter Three
THREE
Not Lightly Does One Scold a Viking
7 September 1394 – 28 June 1396
Even with Drahomír safely in custody and the Moderský letopis complete, Kráľ Ostromír still was faced with the task of retaining the loyalty of his vassals from the other four Slavic nations (and the Kíllt Sámit) under his rule. (With the exception of Knieža Teodotii Koceľuk, naturally, whose political devotion was proven and whose friendship had been one of the bright points of Ostromír’s rule so far.) Civil wars and intimidation were a costly and bloody business; it was much more efficient and effective to do win the other vassals’ loyalty by hosting them in the feasting-hall of Kráľ Tomáš.Not Lightly Does One Scold a Viking
7 September 1394 – 28 June 1396
Or so he thought. He hadn’t quite been counting on a penchant for wild antics from his newest vassal.
The birth of a new daughter to the king’s niece Živana seemed as good a pretext as any for throwing a celebration. Messengers were despatched from Olomouc to Praha, to Opole, to Nitra, to Užhorod, to Siget and even to Tuoppajärvi to invite all the vassals of the realm to this feast, which promised to be a grander and more lavish one than any which had been hosted in Olomouc in two hundred years.
Not only the finest Bohemian crystal for drinkware, but even magnificent white glazed porcelains coming all the way from Taugats by way of Constantinople, were provided for the guests. The castle cooks and kitchen help were also put through their paces for this occasion. Whole roast pigs and goats were provided as the centrepieces of the feast, but there were also: quails; ducks; capons; sparrows, delicately stuffed and roasted; trenchers laden down with spiced game meats and sauerkraut; various head meats and sausages, sliced thinly and served chilled; great wheels of aged yellow cheese; halušky dumplings sprinkled with bacon and filled with cottage cheese; delicate fried pastries made from pâté à choux and filled with sweet apricot and sour plum compotes; and egg noodles covered in a sweet glaze of beet sugar and black poppy-seeds.
For refreshment of a liquid kind, there was of course the traditional Moravian damson wine in pin casks. There were also barrels of a full-bodied white wine from south Morava; sweet and more lightly-alcoholic burčiak; hard apple cider; elderflower cordial; and light-coloured Bohemian hops beers from Budějovice and Žatec and Praha. The entire spread could rightly be described as ‘kingly’.
The feast opened well enough, and the guests were shown in to their tables. The festivities were underway, and the king was giving the opening toasts, when all of a sudden there were the sounds of alarm and commotion in the courtyard, along with the clopping of the hooves of horses. The guests began to glance back to the doors of the hall as the sounds grew louder and nearer.
It was then that the king noticed, belatedly, that Wizlaw Rychnovský-Žíč was nowhere to be seen in the hall. Neither was Burgomistress Ľubica. And neither was Dušana. Where they had been, was to become clear in the moment to follow.
There was an almighty slam. In burst the black-avised Sorb, on the back of an equally-dark stallion which pawed the air in the space where the trammelled doors to the feasting-hall had swung wide. Wizlaw let out a wild whoop as the horse charged in, followed by Burgomistress Ľubica on a dapple-grey. Several other stable animals, some of them exhilarated at this sudden opportunity of freedom and others of them near a state of stampeding panic, followed into the hall. Most of them were riderless, but there was a poor goat among them that had to deal with the ponderous heft of Dušana on its spine!
The king stood aghast at the spectacle of confusion and mayhem that followed. All of his careful preparations were being splattered and shattered to pieces before his eyes. The crash and tinkle of broken glass and porcelain resounded and echoed off the walls, which were quickly adorned with bits of meat, egg and cheese and flecked with dark speckles of wine. Whinnies and brays and bleats mingled with human hails and curses, as some of the guests stood from their seats and fled for the corners of the hall; others lifted their vessels and cheered both animals and riders as they flooded in. Horseshoes trod the tablecloths, and the furniture groaned under the weight.
When he came to his senses, Ostromír signalled to his son.
‘Vojta, gather the ostlers,’ he raised his voice above the din. ‘Assist them as you can. See if they can’t sort out some of this mess!’
Vojtech answered with a firm nod, and he and his new bride both left to find the stable-hands and direct them to the hall. By that time, animal and human were both thoroughly enjoying themselves in the hall, the king was chuckling and sipping wine from a still-unbroken crystal goblet as the hullabaloo continued, and even Imma cracked a smile at the goings-on.
Vojtech and Adriana arrived with as much of the ostlery as they could, and the girl herself set to tidying the hall with an admirable diligence. To the Kráľ’s surprise, despite the delicacy of her looks, the lowborn Moravian girl his son had married turned out to have a remarkable way with beasts. Even the wildest of the unbroken horses she strode up to without a trace of fear, and calmed them with gentle words and a firm but steady hand. Ostromír noticed that Adriana’s stammer disappeared: she spoke more fluently and with greater ease to animals than she did to people.
‘Well, well,’ the king mused. ‘Perhaps Father hadn’t chosen as poorly for Vojta as I’d thought.’
In the end, despite the wreckage and mess that the rampage in the hall had caused, the total cost of the mucking and cleaning and repairs still turned out to be less than a war. And the guests had all left in high spirits indeed. Ostromír and Imma bade them all farewell, and the king promised to hold another feast soon… though next time he’d have someone keep a closer eye on the stables, and on Wizlaw.
~~~
It was roughly a fortnight after the feast, when a haughty Norse herald from the north appeared at the Moravian king’s court. He strode forward with an air of affront, and he gave the king only the briefest and most cursory of courtesies before declaiming, in a loud voice:
‘King! I bear from his Grace Sigbjörn Ásbjarnarson the Grand Prince of Garðaríki a complaint of a most grievous nature. I trust that you will hear it and let justice be done upon the wrongful party!’
The name of Ásbjörn of Garðaríki rang a bell to the king. That had been the prince who had sent the poems to Radomír 4. when he was alive. Ostromír was taken a bit aback by the severan’s brazen presumption and insistence, but he answered:
‘Make your lord’s complaint, sir. I will hear.’
‘While he was in attendance in Sigbjörn’s mead-hall, that man—’ the herald levelled a finger at Knieža Teodotii, ‘had the effrontery to scold and offer tunguníð to my liege in the open, within the hearing of all the guests and kin gathered there!’
The severan elements of Ostromír’s ancestry were rather distant. The half-English Queen Bohumila had been five generations back; the Anglo-Faroese Queen Alswit, nine; and the Norman-French Queen Dolz, thirteen. And Norse culture had been his father Radomír’s interest, not his own. As such, he had no idea what tunguníð was, but could fathom by the herald’s anger and insouciant attitude that some grave manner of insult had taken place.
‘Please speak plainly,’ the king said. ‘Precisely what speech did Knieža Teodotii utter that was so offensive to your lord?’
‘I shall not repeat the exact words here,’ the herald jutted out his chin. ‘Suffice it to say that this scoundrel held his Grace in utmost contempt, and cast gross aspersions on his maternal lineage.’
Ostromír had to raise his hand to his beard in order to hide the smirk that was close to forming there. Was the king of Garðaríki truly sending this man to make a formal complaint to Olomouc on account of Teodotii playing the dozens? He caught his friend’s eye across the hall, and between them was shared a mischievous twinkle of amusement.
‘I now understand the severity of your lord’s complaint, and you may rest assured that I shall consider it under advisement,’ said the king. ‘If there is no further business from Garðaríki, however, you may go with God’s peace.’
~~~
In answer to the King’s memorable New Year’s feast of 6904, Vojvoda Chrabroš of Silesia decided to host a feast of his own upon the following Pentecost, and invite the King to join. It wasn’t done out of a sense of competition, and that could easily be seen from the decidedly more modest spread of dishes that graced the Rychnovský-Nisa table. Rather, it was meant as a genuine show of gratitude. Chrabroš was neither of an envious nature nor of a gluttonous one—he had, however, weaknesses of another sort.
When Ostromír Rychnovský and his party arrived in Nisa to join the revelries, the feast had yet to get underway in earnest. One of those most displeased with the pace of the preparations was the lady of the hall herself, who contented herself with shouting herself hoarse at the servants to get everything prepared. She was in high dudgeon all evening, and Ostromír, Imma, Vojtech and Adriana learned quite quickly to steer clear of her path well in advance.
Her husband, however, was much more agreeable. ‘Welcome, milord! Welcome, friends! Come, please take your seats; have a glass of wine!’
The Kráľ found himself seated at the place of honour, and seated just at the corner nearest him was a woman with an earnest and open face, chatting animatedly with everyone seated near her. Ostromír felt slightly unsettled at first by the intense, nearly manic gleam in her eyes—and by the tendencies she showed toward repeating herself and making outrageous exclamations at inappropriate places. But he quickly found himself fascinated by the story she was telling, and listened to it eagerly.
‘The shifting sands of the desert, when I was in that camel train—oh, dear me!—the stuff got everywhere. It was quite unpleasant! And you could barely see the path in front of you! Our guide—he was a Hagarene, you know, very swarthy skinned, with a turban round his head—even he needed to seek help from the local fellahs who lived close by. I tell you, I was parched! Never thought I’d see a drop of water again, let alone wine! This is wonderful stuff, by the way! Wonderful! Anyway, whenever we got near a canyon, the whole line of us would ride in the shade, the way the sun beat down… it was a solid two weeks before we actually reached the caves. It was there that we learned the way to Saint Anthony’s from one of the hermits who lived there…’
Ostromír very quickly picked up on the thread of her conversation. He asked her many questions about her visit to Egypt which she was more than delighted to answer, though more than once Ostromír got the suspicion that what he was hearing was as much the result of her fancies or some garbled strand of memory that had gotten tangled up inside a mind that wasn’t too good at sorting them out. Whether or not what she was saying was true, though, she certainly expressed it with conviction. And Ostromír found himself seized with a desire to go and see the place for himself.
But then Živoslava (who was, Ostromír had learned, was the burgomistress of the town of Hrabóv), suddenly turned the topic of conversation around close to home.
‘Kráľ,’ Živoslava addressed him directly, ‘do you think this situation with the peasantry around Brassel, and in Bohemia as well, can be resolved peaceably? Prices are simply dreadful these days! Do you think the Crown and the nobles can bring them down?’
After engaging in a bit of back-and-forth with her on the subject, Ostromír quickly realised that although her understanding of matters of trade was a bit cursory, she cottoned on readily to the positions and interests of the various major players in the area, and her understanding of the political situation was much deeper than of the economic one. As a burgomistress, though, her sympathies were engaged wholly on the side of the poor and starving townsfolk. Despite her quirks of character and unsteadiness of mind, Ostromír couldn’t help but feel a kind of cautious fondness for Živoslava.
The festivities came to a screeching halt, however, when a young nobleman whose name was Vlastislav burst into the feast-hall in a rage, dragging behind him a tousled woman in a compromising state of undress, and flung her roughly in front of the king.
‘Take this—’ he gestured roughly at the woman in front of him, ‘into your custody, Kráľ. I will have nothing more to do with this adulterous lamprey.’
Over Vlastislav’s shoulder, Ostromír caught sight of their host, Vojvoda Chrabroš—clad only in a rumpled bedshirt and making his way a bit abashedly toward the rear of the hall, trying to escape notice. So that was the way of things, was it? Best to assuage the anger of the cuckolded husband now, and also spare their amorous host any further approbation. Ostromír had seen Jarmila: Chrabroš would be in for enough punishment at her hands as it was.
‘Very well,’ Ostromír told Vlastislav gently. ‘We shall take her back with us for now. Take some time for yourself to clear your head.’
Vlastislav’s veins were still throbbing in his head, but he managed to jerk a rough nod toward the king before storming out of the hall. Thus the feast here ended on a rather sour note.
~~~
Ostromír’s imagination had taken fire at Živoslava’s tale of her pilgrimage in Egypt. He at once began making plans to undertake his own pilgrimage to the holy places of the Thebaid and the Wâdî al-Naṭrûn – as much to satisfy his worldly curiosity as out of any genuine devotion to God.
The pilgrimage went largely without incident, save for some rather saucy companions on the road who gabbled and gossiped past their store of knowledge, and for a sudden and unexpected downpour during an outdoor homily given when Ostromír made port in Alexandria. And the rest of his journey was one of wonder and holy silence.
Živoslava’s mind might wander or get mixed up, but it was easy enough for the Moravian king to tell the kind of impact that it must have had on her. The ancient exposed stones of this place, the quietude, the nearness that it brought one to the eternal struggle of the human soul between the light of the Creator and the forces of the Wicked One… these all became clear to the Kráľ as he journeyed through the valley of the hermits. When he returned from this pilgrimage, he was no longer the same man. He was humbler, quieter, perhaps a tad more driven… as if he had heard a whisper out there in the desert, and longed to catch the sweetness of the unearthly strain once more.
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