Free Sworn Brother by Tim Severin Page B

spot, screened by tall reeds and grasses, and I would set Habrok down on a temporary perch, a branch curved over and the two ends pushed into the earth to make a hoop. And there, while the falcon sat quietly under her hood, Aelfgifu and I would make love. Under the vault of England’s summer sky we were in a blissful world of our own. And when Edgar judged that it was time to return to the burh, we would hear him approaching in the distance, softly jingling a hawk bell to give us warning so that we were dressed and ready when he arrived.
    On one such hawking excursion — it must have been the third or fourth time that Aelfgifu and I were walking the marshland together — we came across a small abandoned shelter at the tip of a tongue of land which projected into a mere. Who had made the secluded hut of interlaced reeds and heather it was impossible to know, probably a wild fowler come to take birds from the mere by stealth. At any rate Aelfgifu and I claimed it for our own as our love bower, and it became our habit to direct our steps towards it, and spent the afternoon there curled up in one another’s arms while Edgar stood guard at the neck of land.
    These were times of glorious pleasure and intimacy: and at last I could tell Aelfgifu how much I longed for her and how inadequate I felt, she being so much more experienced and high born.
    ‘Love needs no teaching,’ she replied softly and with that characteristic habit of hers she ran the tip of her finger along the profile of my face. We were lying naked, side by side, so her finger continued across my chest and belly. ‘And haven’t you ever heard the saying that love makes all men equal? That means women too.’
    I bent over to brush my lips across her cheek and she smiled with contentment.
    ‘And speaking of teaching, Edgar tells me that you trained Habrok in less than five weeks. That you have a natural way with hunting birds. Why do you think that is?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ I replied, ‘but maybe it has something to do with my veneration for Odinn. Since I was a child in Greenland I have been attracted to Odinn’s ways. He is the God whose accomplishments I most admire. He gave mankind so much of what we possess — whether poetry or self-knowledge or the master spells — and he is always seeking to learn more. So much so that he sacrificed the sight of one eye to gain extra wisdom. He comes in many forms, but to any person who wanders as far from home as I have done, Odinn can be an inspiration. He is ever the traveller himself and a seeker after truths. That is why I venerate him as Odinn the wanderer, the empowerer of journeys.’
    ‘So what, my little courtier, has your devotion to Odinn to do with birds and teaching them?’ she enquired. ‘I thought that Odinn is the God of War, bringing victory on the battlefield. That, at least, is how my husband and his war captains regard him. They invoke Odinn before their campaigns. While their priests do the same to the White Christ.’
    ‘Odinn is the God of victories, yes, and the God of the dead too,’ I answered. ‘But do you know how he learned the secret of poetry and gave it to men?’
‘Tell me,’ Aelfgifu said, nestling closer.
    ‘Poetry is the mead of the Gods, created from their spittle, which ran in the veins of the creature Kvasir. But Kvasir was killed by evil dwarves, who preserved his blood in three great cauldrons. When these cauldrons passed into the possession of the giant Suttung and his daughter Gunnlod, Odinn took it upon himself to steal the mead. He changed himself into a snake - Odinn is a shape-changer, as is often said - and crept through a hole in the mountain which guarded Suttung’s lair, and seduced Gunnlod into allowing him three sips, one at each cauldron. Such was Odinn’s power that he drained each cauldron dry. Then he changed himself into an eagle to fly back to Asgard, the home of the Gods, with the precious liquid in his throat. But the giant Suttung also