Book 3: 'Arrow Odd'

23.0 THE CITY OF ROUEN

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

THE CITY OF ROUEN (Circa 870 AD)

"When Virgil wrote The Aeneid about Prince Aeneas,

He was presaging the retaking of Troy (Constantinople)."

Brian Howard Seibert                        

(869 AD) Arrow Odd overwintered with his Uncle Roller in Rouen and the duke introduced him to many fine and beautiful young women of the city and Oddi grew very close with several of them, but he waited patiently for spring and his next visit to Ireland to visit with his wife and daughter there. Princess Olvor had become friends with Princess Blaeja of York, Oddi's wife in Angleland and she'd agreed to come to Dub-Lin for a Guild healers conference in the spring and the two wives wanted to surprise Oddi with the visit when he came. King Frodi had returned to the east, to Kiev, for the winter, but his Great Heathen Army remained in Angleland under command of one of his Angle generals, Guthrum, so it was not safe for Oddi to go anywhere near York, so Princess Blaeja and her daughter by Oddi, Hraegunhild, would come to Ireland. But spring was a long way off, so Oddi borrowed a small river ship from Duke Rollo and a few young ladies and Norman officers joined him for a cruise up the Seine to Paris before the Yulefest. Oddi had left his ship, Fair Faxi, in Aquitaine, even though it had been fully repaired, because the ship was being watched all the time, but the river yacht was well equipped and had bright red awnings that could be quickly lowered if the weather turned, but the good weather held and the men rowed while the women sat beside them and drank wine and encouraged their fine strokes and when a breeze came up, so did the sail, and the men drank some wine as well.

In Paris Oddi met with the nun and they made plans to sail up to Brugge, in Flanders, to visit with her son, Oddi's cousin, Baldwin. Oddi would pick Sister Saint Charles up on the morrow and take her back to Rouen with him and from there sail by sea to the low country. Once Oddi and their party had gotten all their shopping done, the prince took them all to the finest inn in Paris where he had booked lodgings and the feasting began. The couples had paired up on the way to Paris and they shut down the dining hall before retiring to their rooms. They were all a little hung over when they picked the sister up at a quay on the Seine, and she had come early and they arrived a little late, so Oddi decided to impress everybody with a little Raven Banner Hrafnista magic. He stood upon his rowing bench and looked off in the direction of Rouen and said, "This is a little trick the Hrafnista men showed me," and he put out his arms and a gentle breeze came up from behind them and his officers yarded up the sail and they were off.

"That's very impressive," the nun told Oddi as he sat on the bench by the rudder and steered. His girlfriend sat on the bench with him and Sister sat backwards on the bench ahead and watched the young couple and it took her back. She could see Erik in the eyes of Oddi and it took her back to their trip down the Dnieper River past Kiev when she and Prince Erik spent their days together sailing and teaching each other languages and nights together keeping each other warm. "They say that Paris got its name from the local Parisii tribe of Gauls that live nearby," she started, "but that's not what your father, Prince Erik, told me." She could see that they were both a little tired and hung over from too much wine and a little too much keeping each other warm.

"What did he tell you?" Oddi asked as his girl just smiled and held onto his arm with both of hers.

"He told me that the people here picked the name Paris from Prince Paris of Troy of Trojan War fame because the Romans were giving all the cities Latin names after Julius Caesar's conquest of Gaul, but the Romans said it was too close to the Gaulish tribal name of Parisioi, so they named it Lutetia. When the Romans left Gaul, the Franks allowed Parisians to openly call their city Paris after the Trojan Prince and in spite of the Parisioi.  Erik also told me that Julius Caesar hadn't planned on conquering all of West Gaul, that he didn't have enough troops for it. He had only brought three legions north to punish one southern tribe for its transgressions against Rome. This was just before the time of Christ," and the nun made the sign of the cross, "and Caesar learned that Danes and Goths and Viking tribes had been conquering the Gauls of eastern Europe from the north, so he decided he had to conquer all of western Gaul from the south before the Vikings did. So he did it. He conquered all of western Gaul with just three legions against the equivalent of ten Gaulish legions or more and that's what made him famous. And, to other Romans, dangerous and that's what got him killed, murdered in his own Senate.