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Updated: August 28, 2024
And thereat I told of the healing of the ten lepers I had witnessed in Samaria on my way through Jericho. Pilate's wife sat entranced at what I told. Came to our ears distant shoutings and cries of some street crowd, and we knew the soldiers were keeping the streets cleared. "And you believe this wonder, Lodbrog?" Pilate demanded.
They didn't call you the matchless Hurler, because, by doing so, they would have paid you a compliment, but Hull over the Head Jack, as much as to say that after all you were a scrub: so, in ancient time, instead of calling Regner the great conqueror, the Nation Tamer, they surnamed him Lodbrog, which signifies Rough or Hairy Breeks lod or loddin signifying rough or hairy; and instead of complimenting Halgerdr, the wife of Gunnar of Hlitharend, the great champion of Iceland, upon her majestic presence, by calling her Halgerdr, the stately or tall, what must they do but term her Ha-brokr, or High-breeks, it being the fashion in old times for Northern ladies to wear breeks, or breeches, which English ladies of the present day never think of doing; and just, as of old, they called Halgerdr Longbreeks, so this very day a fellow of Horncastle called, in my hearing, our noble-looking Hungarian friend here, Long-stockings.
The other tale, given at length by Roger Wendover, tells that Ragnar Lodbrog, with only his hawk in his hand, was driven by a storm to the coast of East Anglia, that King Edmund made him his huntsman, but the former huntsman, Beorn, slew him through jealousy; that King Edmund put Beorn bound in the boat which had brought Lodbrog over, and sent him adrift to perish at sea.
Miriam misunderstood my silence, for her body moved softly within my arms as she added, as if in afterthought: "Take two spare horses, Lodbrog. I shall ride the other . . . with you . . . with you, away over the world, wherever you may ride." It was a bribe of kings; it was an act, paltry and contemptible, that was demanded of me in return. Still I did not speak.
Very few men born of women have been fortunate enough to suffer years of solitary and strait-jacketing. That was my good fortune. I was enabled to remember once again, and to remember, among other things, the time when I sat astride a horse and beheld the lepers healed. My name was Ragnar Lodbrog. I was in truth a large man. I stood half a head above the Romans of my legion.
And there, under that roaring roof of Brunanbuhr, the babbling drink-boy of the North Danes fought with mighty Lodbrog. And when, with one stroke, I was flung, dazed and breathless, half the length of that great board, my flying body mowing down pots and tankards, Lodbrog cried out command: "Out with him! Fling him to the hounds!"
Some tell how Ragnar Lodbrog, a great hero of these Northern tales, was seized by Aella, King of the Northumbrians, and was thrown into a dungeon full of serpents, and how, while he was dying of the bites of the serpents, he sang a wonderful death-song, telling of all his old fights, and calling on his sons to come and avenge him. The year 871 the Danes for the first time entered Wessex.
And there were live hawks so burned, and the two hawk-boys with their birds. But I, the drink-boy, Ragnar Lodbrog, did not burn. I was eleven, and unafraid, and had never worn woven cloth on my body.
She shook me till my harness rattled. "Speak, Lodbrog, speak!" she commanded. "You are strong and unafraid. You are all man. I know you despise the vermin who would destroy Him. You, you alone can save Him. You have but to say the word and the thing is done; and I will well love you and always love you for the thing you have done."
Lodbrog, I little thought it of you. Yet here you are, spouting and fuming as wildly as any madman from the desert about what shall happen to you when you are dead. One life at a time, Lodbrog. It saves trouble. It saves trouble." "Go on, Miriam, go on," his wife cried.
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