The Ballad Of Sigurd Jorsalfare
Chapter 6
The coast of France; late autumn 1107
“All Sigurd ever wanted to do,” said my father — “was to walk through the alleys of Jerusalem. But in order to get there, he had to first make it down the coasts of France and Spain.”
“Did he?” I’d say.
“Did he? A Viking?” My father smirked and placed a new cigarette in his ivory holder.
“Square sails south-by-south west. Sigurd raised his hand and the Drekar slowed to a near stand still.
“How many?” Sigurd asked.
“About eight, maybe ten,” said Halvar Night Hawk, Sigurd’s navigator.
“Who’s?”
“Swedes,” said Halvar and spat.
“Swedes!? In these waters? The idiots can’t row a bathtub past Malmo without getting lost. Why are they here?”
Halvar shrugged.
“I don’t like Swedes,” grunted Sigurd.
“Nobody does,” said Halvar.
The two stood silently for a moment, bobbing up and down as the waves gently rocked the ships. The rest of Sigurd’s men used the lull to close their eyes for a few moments. They had been sailing south for the better part of the day.
The square sails grew larger. They also seemed to spread out in a line as they neared the Norsemen.
“My father warned me about the Swedes,” Sigurd hissed.
“Heathens,” spat Halvar.
And that was all it took. The old familiar word seemed to levitate Sigurd right off the deck. He drew his sword and pointed it towards the approaching Swedes.
“Kill ‘em!” He screamed.
Horns blew. The long ships lurched forward as the Norsemen started rowing ferociously. The sails, hoisted, blew open in the favorable wind and sixty Norse ships went flying at twelve knots, maybe thirteen, fourteen, even, at the doomed Swedes. The Norsemen sang derogatory ditties at the top of their lungs, cursing the blond heathens and their blond ways and their blond brains and their much inferior Aquavit.
Finally, a battle at sea! For this was Sigurd born and bred, for this he yearned and prayed to Jesus, nightly. His horny Norsemen fell upon the Swedes like hookers on a Lexus come to rest at a red traffic light on 10th Avenue and 28th Street on a hot Manhattan evening.
Faced with the ferocity of the Norsemen’s righteous indignation, the heathen Swedes had no retort. They tried — they did — flailing bravely with their swords and axes as though they were bargain hunters fending off competing shoppers with their Louis Vuitton bags. Their inferior godless ways were no match for the Soldiers of Christ. What used to be their heads were now liberated crimson doves flying off into the crisp air.
For an instant the sky was filled with the bearded heads, bobbing soap bubbles, blue eyes, startled, staring at each other, suspended over the waiting ocean. Then down they came in a torrent of angry bloody hailstones into the grey Atlantic.
“Ahoy!” cried the Norsemen and danced the happy dance.
“Swim back to Rusland, goat fuckers!”
“Send my regards to Kiev, you fornicating Slavs,” cried one of the more educated Norsemen with a keen sense of geopolitical rectitude.
“River navigators,” spat Halvar, for, at least, the thirty-sixth time since the battle had been drawn.
Headless bodies everywhere. Decks awash with blood and urine and spent arrows. The Norsemen surveyed their captured ships and the devastation left in the wake of the battle. They tossed the bodies overboard into the waiting jaws of the Great White Sharks, who had been following them ever since they first caught wind of the Crusades. Sharks are no dummies.
Here and there the Norsemen found a trembling slave, cowering behind a mound of rope or underneath a pile of rags. Magyars, Arabs, even Gypsies, all intriguingly dark and in desperate need for the love of Christ. “Convert them” said Sigurd and kicked the last headless Swede into the ocean.
“All dead and gone,” said Halvar, “Every one of them.”
“Good riddance,” said Sigurd, oddly calm, “Tie the ships and tow them to shore. Tonight we party.”
The good doctor materialized without a sound, carrying with him his ubiquitous airtight silver box, a beaded bag and three sticks of incense. He walked rhythmically across the largest Drekar, whose Dragon namesake was drooping in the wind, humiliated upon its shredded Sail, waving the incense and singing eerie incantations with a menacing smile.
He kneeled by the huddled slaves. “Tahki Arabi?” he asked sweetly (Do you speak Arabic?)
“Na’am,” (Yes) replied one of them, excited and relieved.
“Allah yerachmu,” (God will have mercy on you) sang the doctor to him and snapped his neck.”
*
News of the battle between Sigurd and the Swedes spread like wildfire up and down the Iberian west coast. No one was sure what to make of the ferocity with which one group of Norsemen annihilated another. Everyone, however, realized immediately that these were a people not to be trifled with. The Arabs had a special reason to fear the Norsemen, having heard the story of the good doctor breaking the Arab slave’s neck. The story was growing by the hour into a horror legend in which thousand of blond doctors were snapping little Arab heads and using them for ritual sports while dancing on effigies of the Prophet, peace be on him. News traveled fast in the 12th century — three miles per hour faster, to be exact, than in the 11th century, and at least nine miles per hour faster than in the 10th. The sharper minds in Western Europe quickly realized that this exponential rate of growth, while exciting in and of itself, could very soon leave Europeans behind the news permanently, with no hope of ever catching up. It had occurred to the church elders that, while it was always a good idea to keep the populace somewhat behind the times, if things were allowed to progress this way the clergy itself could be left in the dust, chasing the fleeing news, which would look embarrassing (The clergy being very poor runners due to their long robes and mysterious undergarments) and cause much fatigue. The dignity of Western Europe was at stake.
It was at this crucial moment in history that Father Boniface, a Cluniac monk of impeccable credentials, awoke to his discovery on a rainy Tuesday in Galicia, itching and excited. “Wheels!” he bellowed in Burgundian French, irritating his Spanish brethren. Having missed Matins by an hour (For the fifth day in a row), he ran down stairs to the chapel, just in time for Lauds, waving a sheet of paper with unbridled enthusiasm. Upon it, he had sketched in crude impressionist strokes, a monk, hurtling down a hill on all fours, his garments billowing in the wind, his feet and hands wrapped in twine, connecting them to little wheels. The monk looked alarmed. ”En recherche du temps perdu” read the caption. The monks saw this as an omen of things to come. Nevertheless, all soon recognized the meaning of father Boniface’s discovery — no longer would the clergy stumble behind the fast-accelerating news. After small modifications to the original design, church officials, from Monsignor up, were outfitted with the “Piedras Rolandos”, as the apparatuses came to be known. The hand wheels were removed after Hugh, the awesome Abbot of Cluny, was visited one night by St. Odilo, who tearfully informed Hugh that he found the mobile crouching monks to be an undignified visage. “All clergy must remain erect at all times”, said Odilo in a trembling voice, “even while moving on church business.”