Ulvila, Suomi
March 1126
When Zygmunt returned to Ulvila to prepare for the wedding, Mieletty had accosted him and insisted that they go hunting together. Just the two of them, to celebrate “Ziggy’s last night of freedom.” Hunting, Zygmunt soon learned, was a bit of a euphemism. The supplies for this trip into the wilderness included a surfeit of beer but precious few weapons. If the two of them did come across an elk, they would be hard-pressed to do anything about it.
Zygmunt had found that it ill-suited a man with as many secrets as him to drink to excess. Tonight, however, he was alone in the woods with the person who knew him best in the world. What could be the harm? So it was that the young duke was well and truly drunk on the night before Midsummer.
Of course, once the beer started flowing, the talk turned to the pair’s youthful exploits. Mieletty was waving his hands around in the theatrical mannerisms of a street performer. “So Sohvi comes down, mad as can be, and screams,
WHO PUT THE CATTLE IN MY STUDY?! All the while, you’re standing there, covered in cowshit–”
“Not covered with cowshit,” Zygmunt retorted. “Daubed, here and there. Lightly perfumed.”
Mieletty waved the objection away. “Regardless,
you’ve got shit on you and you’re standing very still, like–” The prince slipped into an eerily accurate imitation of Zygmunt’s Slavic accent: “Maybe she won’t notice me.”
Zygmunt pointed a finger back at his friend. “It didn’t help that you kept looking at me and snickering.”
The prince placed a theatrical hand over his heart, trying his best to look serious. “In my defense, your majesty, it was
hilarious.”
“Where did you get the idea that cows couldn’t walk down stairs anyway?”
“Oh, well, Mikko told me–”
“Oh,
Mikko,” Zygmunt said with a laugh. “I should have guessed. That little asshole had you eating out of his hand.”
Mieletty laughed too. “Oh, gods, I thought he was so learned too. He was, what, sixteen? He wasn’t smarter than us, he was just taller.”
“Remember that shitty little mustache he had?”
Mieletty did his best impression of Kaur’s Latgalian accent. “
You need to clean your lip, lad.”
“Whatever happened to him anyway?” Zygmunt had not seen Mikko in years.
“A’kkel. He’s guarding the shrine up there now. Married to a Sami lass, I think, supposed to have a son on the way.” Mieletty gave a crooked smile. “He figured that we didn’t get enough snow down here.”
“Too much light in the winter too.”
Mieletty raised his cup to the night sky. “To Mikko! May he fill their heads with lies!”
Zygmunt crashed his cup into his friend’s. “Hear hear!”
The duke staggered off then to find a tree to piss on. Settling back in, he found that the prince had gone from gregarious to somber. Mieletty waved a finger in his face and said, “I want to tell you something.”
Zygmunt tried to laugh, but it came out forced. “You’re drunk.”
“I’m serious. I want to tell you something, I want to tell you…” Mieletty stared into the fire for a second, having lost his train of thought. “I want to tell you that I know all about your little secret, and I don’t care. You’re a good guy, Ziggy, and I love you no matter what.”
A chill ran down Zygmunt’s spine. “Secret? I don’t have any secrets.”
Mieletty barreled on, not listening. “You were always disappearing, always holding back something. Took me forever to figure it out. It just came to me one night.”
Zygmunt felt the bile rise within him. The night seemed so much darker than it had a moment ago. “Mieletty, I don’t–”
Mieletty gave an exasperated sigh. “Dammit, Ziggy, I don’t care that you’re a sodomite!”
A sodomite? The thought was so absurd, so wildly off the mark, that Zygmunt couldn’t help but laugh. “Mieletty, what on earth are you talking about?”
“Aapo told me all about it, Ziggy. He says every time they were going out whoring or wenching, you would slip off to go see some man in town. Starts with a T, I think.” Mieletty stopped for a moment, his brow furrowed. “Is he like your wife or something? Is that how it works, with sodomites?”
A sudden thought popped into Zygmunt’s head, and it made him laugh all over again. “Is that why you wanted to do this trip? To to talk me about being a sodomite? It’s okay if you’re fucking some man so long as you treat my sister right, that sort of thing?”
Enlightenment finally came to the prince. “Wait… you’re not…?”
“I’m not, I swear.” Zygmunt might have stopped there, but alcohol had loosened his tongue and he was so damn tired of hiding. “Tadeusz isn’t my lover, Mieletty. He’s my priest. My Christian priest.”
Mieletty just stared at him for a long moment, his eyes narrowed. Just as Zygmunt was thinking that he had made a big mistake, the prince blurted out, “So you’re a
virgin?!”
Zygmunt laughed again. The look on his friend’s face was really too funny for words. “If I say no, will you drop this?”
“Who was she?”
“Do you remember that summer that the trade delegation came from Perm? The chieftain’s daughter?”
The prince’s eyes were wide. “Her? Oh my god, you never said anything.”
Zygmunt smiled. “Of course I didn’t. Most girls are going to avoid you if they think you can’t keep it a secret after. You talk too much, that’s your problem.”
Mieletty chuckled. “Put that on the
karsikko tree for me: here lies Prince Mieletty Virtanen, he talked too damn much.”
There was a long amiable silence then, as the two men watched the campfire flicker in front of them. Eventually, Mieletty regarded his friend with a gentle expression. “It doesn’t matter to me what gods you worship, Ziggy. You’re a good man, I know that for a fact.”
To his surprise, Zygmunt found that there were tears in his eyes. “Thank you. I’ve been so… alone.”
Mieletty threw an arm around Zygmunt. “You’re never alone. We’re brothers. Nothing’s going to change that.” He then got a sudden shy smile on his face as he added, “Agne’s pregnant. Sohvi says it’ll be a boy. I’m… I’m going to have a son, Ziggy.”
“Mieletty, that’s wonderful!” Agne was Mieletty’s wife, the daughter of Duke Kaur; their marriage was the cornerstone of the Baltic-Suomi unity that the kingdom was based on. A son meant much for Mieletty as his friend and much more for the kingdom; Zygmunt could only imagine how overjoyed the king was. “When is she… I mean, how long?”
“It’s still early. Father wants to be sure before he announces anything, but the midwife is optimistic and Sohvi is too. If all goes well? This winter, sometime.” Mieletty gave his friend a meaningful look. “This won’t be all fun and games for you, Ziggy. I’ll want you to see to his education, when he’s old enough.”
Zygmunt stared at his friend, startled. Words of brotherhood were one thing, but this was something else entirely. “The king will surely…”
“Father will abide by my wishes on this. I’ll see to it.” Mieletty’s voice was calm but sure. In that moment, Zygmunt could almost believe it.
*****
It was hard to know what to make of Pihla. She had struggled to make eye contact during the wedding, leaving Zygmunt to wonder if he had offended her. Perhaps she was simply reluctant to be married at all, reluctant to have the life of an adult woman after being cosseted as the king’s youngest daughter. She had been a girl when he was still living in Ulvila, a queer girl obsessed with her books and long walks through the woods in the early morn. Mieletty was little help when it came to his youngest sister, but he did offer one insight that proved crucial: “She likes birds.”
There was a brief hiatus between ceremony and reception, where bride and groom might speak to each other, perhaps for the first time. Pihla spent much of her time studying her shoes, while wiggling her left hand back and forth in a rhythmic fashion. Zygmunt could not think of a word to say to her. It suddenly struck him that he would be married to this shy awkward girl for his whole life. Just then, that seemed a long time.
Eventually, for lack of anything better, he asked Pihla if she would like to receive his present just then. She gave him a furtive little nod before returning to her intense study of the floor. So Zygmunt ducked out and soon enough returned with a small bird cage containing a colorful red-faced songbird. At the sound of the bird’s trill, his new wife looked up and was immediately entranced.
“A goldfinch? How wonderful! This is a male, I suppose, from the darker red markings on the face. I don’t suppose you have a female too? A breeding pair would have many advantages for the attentive scholar, I believe. In any case we could always get one. I had one as a girl but of course I dissected it before writing a careful description of the bird’s song; it’s always good to return to one’s youthful mistakes.”
The sudden outburst left Zygmunt astounded. “
Dissect it?”
Pihla looked him in the eye for the first time, blinking in confusion. “Yes, of course. How else to properly sketch the skeleton? I still have the skull somewhere, it really is remarkable.”
“And… do you mean to dissect this one too?”
She considered this for a time and shook her head. “No, my old sketches are simplistic but they should suffice. This one shall teach me about the life cycle, mating practices, things of that nature. A corpse can’t tell you everything, you know.” She finally noticed him, seemingly for the first time. “It’s so fortunate that you support my study. Mother says that it’s
odd. You know, for a young lady.”
It was odd, Zygmunt felt, and yet perhaps odd was not the worst thing that one could be. Now that she was talking with such excitement, a knot inside him began to loosen. “I confess, I don’t know much about birds,” he said encouragingly, “Will you tell me?” This turned out to be the exact right thing to say.
The torrent of words that followed was overwhelming but oddly charming. She struggled with most of the duties of a conventional princess, but something about her father’s hunting falcon put her racing mind at ease. She spent much of her early life feeding and caring for the bird, until eventually Satajalka had invited her with him on a hunting trip. The falcon in flight was wondrous to her, but the grouse that it brought back was almost as interesting. She begged to see the fowl butchered, and marveled at its curious hollow bones.
The king and queen soon found that she was more cooperative with the traditional feminine pursuits if they permitted her time to follow her own personal obsession. Thus a pair of guards would tromp with her through the fens to see a spotted redshank in its breeding plumage. (One of the great joys of her girlhood, she told him with a shy smile.)
Of course soon there were books, some Latin volumes from churchmen or Christian nobles who made a practice of studying birds as she had. But the true wealth of scholarship, she learned as a teenager, was not in Latin but Arabic. It seemed that she had spent most of the last year endeavoring to convince her father to permit an Arabic tutor, and Zygmunt got the impression that her cooperation with the marriage was part of that deal.
“Eventually I had to explain that these tutors were not Christians at all, but followed some creed of their own that Christians seem quite opposed to. This seems to have done the trick.” She cocked her head and frowned. “There will be room for Hasan, I hope. At Chełmno, I mean. I’m not yet through
Kitāb al-Hayawān, and then it’s to be volumes by al-Jahiz and al-Tawhidi.”
“Of course we can make room for Hasan,” he said with a smile. “We shall have the most educated children in the kingdom, I suppose.”
When he mentioned children, she blinked and then said, “I will want to have coitus, you know.”
Zygmunt started to cough. “Excuse me?”
“Tonight. The bride is often nervous, Mother says. But I have considered it and it seems prudent.”
“That’s–that’s good to know.”
Pihla frowned. “Did I say that wrong? I only meant… It’s so damned hard to know how one is supposed to say things, when one is never told how to say them.”
Zygmunt did his best to manage his discomfort, because something about her frustration struck a chord of sympathy in him. “It was… unexpected. More bluntly said than I was used to. People expect young women to talk about sex with a lot of pretty euphemisms.”
“But why? Why not just say what you mean?”
He thought for a moment. “I suppose, because people wish to believe that young women are innocent and virginal.”
Pihla snorted. “I suppose that I have ruined that illusion for you.”
“Plain words don’t offend me, Pihla. We are married, thus you might as well say what you mean to me.” Zygmunt considered for a moment before continuing, “I should add: sex doesn’t have to just be prudent. It can be pleasurable as well.”
She flushed a little. “Truly? For the woman as well?”
Zygmunt smiled. “For the woman as well. Of course, we’ll need to see what you like.”
Pihla blinked. “Oh. Well. Mother didn’t say a word about that.”
*****
It was not yet dawn, and Satajalka was about to speak of war. He had a sudden memory of his sister Tyyne’s wedding, and a similar council that his father had called on the beach at Oulu. That was a moment of triumph, however, and this was anything but.
There was an anxious, claustrophobic mood among the assembled lords. Much of the nobility had come to see the princess get married and do business in the capital, and this morning they were all squeezed into a chamber meant for a few. Many of the lords gathered in the king’s solar had a bleary, bedraggled look, and plainly wondered at the early morning summons.
Duke Zygmunt was the last to arrive, which Satajalka supposed was a bridegroom’s prerogative. He stopped by the king for a private word before joining the rest of the nobility. “Pihla is outside the castle, majesty. Shall I send a guard to retrieve her?” He had plainly sized up the gathering as an announcement of war, and in that he was not wrong.
“Outside the castle?
Now?” The sun was not even up.
“She said something about the call of the great reed warbler, sire. Found in the fens at sunrise.” There was a fondness in the young man’s voice, which gave Satajalka reassurance that perhaps the marriage would work. Pihla was an unusual girl, and would require a certain kind of husband.
Satajalka replied, “I will send Erkki to look after her. The situation is not so dire as yet.” Erkki Sydӓnmaa was a head taller than the next tallest man in Ulvila, and his implacable strength inspired the commons to call him Surma’s Blade. He would keep the princess safe if any man could.
Relieved, Zygmunt gave his king a grave nod and moved to join the other nobles.
With the safety of his youngest assured, Satajalka called forward the rider who had arrived that night. Janis was a sharp-featured youth, obviously common, with mud-spattered leathers. He had spoken briefly to the king himself, and answered a number of sharp questions, but now he seemed overwhelmed by the sheer size of the crowd before him.
Janis began haltingly, “If it please m’lords, I…”
“Speak up, lad! We can scarcely hear you.” This was Duke Kaur, as gruff as ever.
The boy’s eyes widened, and he started to stammer, but no louder than before. “If it please m’lords, I– that is, begging your lordship’s pardon…”
This would never do. The lords were getting restive, and some of the more anxious were beginning to imagine the worst. Satajalka put a gentle hand on the boy’s shoulder and said, “Lad, nothing you say here will stand against you. Please, continue.”
Janis swallowed heavily, and then continued in a loud, clear tone. “There’s an army, m’lords. In Riga. Nine, maybe ten thousand.”
A hush fell over the nobility. That was more than Suomi can call up herself, even with Satajalka’s alliances among the Sami clans. “Were they flying the banner of the Cross?” one lord called out. “Was it the Swedes?” cried another.
Janis shook his head. “No, m’lords. They came cross the Daugava, m’lords. Flying the flag of Curonia, I think Pommeri besides.”
“Sviendorog rībeigais,” Duke Kaur said with a growl. Sviendorog the Hideous, a haughty Latgalian warchief who hated the presence of Suomi on Baltic lands. He had raided the Pruessi lands for years when Satajalka was a boy, until King Otso had sent a warband to extract tribute from him. “So he’s moved at last. That foul man has hungered after my lands for years. Begging your majesty’s pardon, but your father should have dealt with him when he had the chance.”
“Close your mouth, you filthy Baltic cur. King Otso fashioned a mighty kingdom where once there was nothing. A man like you is not worthy to polish his boots.” The outburst, to the surprise of all, came from Count Risto; the narrow-faced spymaster was flushed red with rage at the insult to the Virtanen name.
Before Kaur could strike Risto, Satajalka stepped forward. “My lords, squabbling will get us nowhere. Rather, say what would you have us do.”
“Cede him Selpils, and it may mollify him. That land is south of the Daugava, no? It is more naturally part of Curonia, it seems to me.” This notion came from Duke Susi; he ruled Karelia on the kingdom’s eastern border, and plainly did not care to fight over land so far from his own.
Duke Kaur scoffed. “Aye, and perhaps we should give Viipuri to the Russians while we’re at it. Or are you only generous with the land of other men?”
At that, Mieletty stepped forward. “My lords, we have all stood on a shieldwall, have we not? And on a shieldwall, my shield protects you and your shield protects me. We fight alongside each other, or we are each overwhelmed.” Men were nodding as he spoke, the prince’s words getting through. “I do not know the dog Sviendorog, but I know this. I know we shall bleed him for every inch of land he means to claim. I know he will rue the day that he crossed swords with us.”
Satajalka was flush with pride. Mieletty had looked like nobody so much as Satajalka’s own father in that moment, or perhaps like the king he would one day become. With the nobility now quiet, the king stepped forward himself. “Summon your banners, my lords. We shall march on Riga immediately, and roust him from it. My son shall command.”
The men filed out to go send riders to their lands, or in some cases to ride back themselves. Soon only Risto lingered behind. “Your majesty, if I may have a word…”
Satajalka suppressed a wave of irritation. “Duke Kaur is a fierce marshal, Risto. I will not replace him now of all times.”
Risto offered his king a pained smile. “As you say, your majesty. I just meant to observe… this Sviendorog is a man of some charisma, but his heir is not. We do not need to stop ten thousand angry Balts, only the one.”
The spymaster’s implication turned Satajalka’s stomach. “You are talking about
murder, Risto,” the king said as coldly as he could.
Risto nodded, not looking apologetic in the slightest. “As you say, your majesty.”
