Can’t say I understood it, myself. Of all the emotions I’d learnt about during my time on the corporeal plane, this one seemed the most pointless, painful and complicated. It’s all about giving, apparently. Seems like taking isn’t enough. There’s also a lot of random stuff about poetry, flowers and lute music, plus kissing and cuddling (lots of this), wearing similar outfits, talking incessantly about the current object of devotion, and generally losing one’s faculties. As far as I could understand, love made you weak and boring. Balder, who by that token must have been in love all the time, told me, with his pitying look, that it was one of life’s greatest joys. I guessed he’d never experienced revenge, a threesome or Sigyn’s jam tarts.

Still, back to the story, and arrogant Frey, and how I used love to bring him down.

Now, Odin had the power to see anywhere in the Nine Worlds; it was a power for which he’d paid dearly, and he was unwilling to share it. That was why the high seat in Asgard was reserved for him alone; it was where he kept Mimir’s Head, bound by glamours, and where he came to be alone, and to think, and to plan his strategies.

Frey had no business sitting there, and probably wouldn’t have thought of it, if I hadn’t given him the idea. But marriage and love were in the air – Idun was back with Bragi, and their happiness together was almost enough to make a man gag. Plus Balder had just got married to Nanna, a doe-eyed milksop who thought he was a genius and deferred to him in every way –I guess his blind date with Skadi must have given him an extra push. Anyhow, Frey was bored (and restless, and randy) and feeling unloved. The pool of available goddesses in Asgard wasn’t what you’d call plentiful, and when you ruled out his sister and his various cousins among the Vanir, there wasn’t much left to work with.

Enter Yours Truly, with sympathy and the hint that Odin was getting his sexual kicks from spying on women throughout the Nine Worlds.

‘You can see everything from that throne,’ I told him, over a jar of mead. ‘Women undressing, bathing, the works. No wonder Odin spends so much time there. It’s like an old man’s wet dream.’

‘Really?’ said Frey. ‘Despicable. Women undressing – bathing, you say? Shocking. Honestly, I’m shocked.’

‘Me too,’ I said and grinned.

We finished the mead in silence.

I found Frey a few days later, sitting in one of the gardens, listening to Bragi playing his lute and looking glummer than ever.

‘What’s wrong?’ I said.

‘Oh, everything.’