Sidroc the Dane

by Octavia Randolph

  Anglia, Hrald thought. That huge island due West across the North Sea, beyond which was nothing. Angles had named it; they and the Saxons had settled and possessed it. His father had told him many good things came from there. Their salt was certainly clean.

  “No larger flakes to be found on Midgard,” the salt-seller went on. He took a pinch from the pile, gesturing that Hrald should open his palm. “And look.” Hrald brought the thing dropped there to his eye. It was a single crystal of salt, square at its bottom, rising to a sharp point. Hrald had never seen anything like it; it was broad enough at its base to span the nail of his little finger, he gauged.

  “Taste,” ordered the man.

  Hrald flicked it onto his tongue. It had enough structure that the sharp edges did not soften at once, and he gave it a crunch with his teeth. The flavour was free of mineral sourness, intensely salty, and pure. He had never seen, nor tasted, any close to it. At the farm they traded for two grades of salt, one coarse and oftentimes ill-flavoured, for brining and pickling, and another smaller quantity of whiter, purer salt for use in baking, at table, and in finished cooking. This so far outstripped the best his father had ever been able to obtain that he knew at once he wanted it.

  The salt-seller, a man of forty or more years, read the interest in the young man before him. The youth was tall and rangy, and perhaps younger than his height proclaimed. He was decently dressed, with a more than serviceable knife at his hip. His long and uncombed hair, brown in colour, suggested he had been on the road a day or two to reach the trading town. When he had called the youth over he had been walking with a rolled fleece on his shoulder, which he had set down at one end of the table, carefully, so as not to scatter any of the salt-seller’s small and costly wares.

  Hrald stood staring at the pile of salt, the pleasing sharpness of its tang still making his mouth water. He had never before bargained alone for anything of value, and wondered if he could procure the entire small cask sitting upon the table. He would take it from farm to farm, scooping out cups-full in return for fatted geese, smoked haunches of pig, and even silver-hack and coin. He had but one of his twelve fleeces with him; the others, ox, and cart were in the keeping of the watch-pen, where men armed with spears guarded the property given over to them. He unrolled the fleece now, showing it to the salt-seller.

  It was indeed a good fleece. The salt-seller knew exactly where to take such fleece, his next stop of Aros. But wool was bulky.

  “I deal only in silver,” he told Hrald.

  He watched the young man’s face change, subtly, but noticeable to a trained eye.

  “I have no silver,” Hrald admitted. He had but a few bits of hack-silver – broken bits of jewellery – in the purse at his belt, no more.

  The salt-seller shrugged his shoulders.

  “My wool is the best in Jutland,” Hrald now proclaimed, opening his hand to it. He had heard his own father say such things to traders.

  The older man considered. One could not always trade for silver, and he wanted this young man’s custom. He had a great deal of salt to sell.

  “That is a fine fleece,” he agreed. He would see if he could get its bearer to name a price. He did so through his silence.

  “I can offer six of them, for your small cask of salt,” Hrald finally said.

  “Six only. That is a pity. The price to carry away this full cask would be six-and-ten.”

  “Six-and-ten? I have only twelve,” Hrald found himself saying.

  The salt-seller nodded readily enough. “Let us go look at them,” he offered. He gestured to his son to come and take his place at the table’s edge.

  That is how Hrald came into possession of such good salt from Angle-land. He did not like trading every fleece for it, and the fact that he had made him determined to get the best possible price for every precious crystal. All the long walk home he considered its worth. By the time he arrived at the farm gate he knew what to do.

  “I will take it to Gotland,” he told his mother.

  Ashild had just finished tasting a giant grain of the stuff, Hrald placing a single crystal in her palm as the salt-seller had done to him. That mouth now opened in surprise.

  “Gotland!”

  It was a whole sea away. One must either take ship here and round the long horn of Jutland, or walk overland to the deep inlet on which Haithabu sat, which her boy had just retraced. Then awaited the voyage South and for many days East, out into the Baltic and its dangers.

  “There is no richer land,” her son was saying, “and the further I carry it from Angle-land the more precious it becomes.”

  This was true of course; any coveted goods grew in value with distance from its source.

  Ashild said little; they were sitting in the kitchen yard, Hrald’s packs still resting on a work table. He had unhitched the ox and led it to pasture, but after this needful task had wasted no time in sharing his discovery with his mother. She disappeared into the spring-house, half-buried in the ground to keep its contents cool, and came back with a crock of butter. She brought a loaf, baked this morning, and tore it in two. Together mother and son dipped wooden spreaders into the golden butter and smeared the bread. Then they each took pinches of the huge flakes of salt and dropped them on the glistening butter. The yeasted, crusty loaf, the sweet and grassy butter, the sharp and clear bite of the pure salt over both; all blended in every bite. Hrald was hungry, and Ashild had had little herself for hours. The savour of what they took into their mouths was unequalled; the quality of the salt beyond dispute.

  Hrald had been speaking about how he would go about this. He would return to Haithabu with its harbour filled with trading ships, find a captain to take him for a little silver. The wooden cask of salt had the advantage of being small; he and it would not take up much room on the broad deck of any knorr plying its trade along Baltic coasts. He was ever a steady lad, but now his voice rose in excitement as he detailed his plan to her. When they began to eat the salted bread and butter they both were quiet.

  She finished her bit, pushed the rest to her son. He had twenty Summers and had known no adventures. If Hroft still lived he would tell the boy to go. Something bright within her breast opened, thinking of Hroft; their son Hrald was much like him. The same fylgja, their guardian spirit, spoke to them. Hroft would send the boy off, she knew. She and Oddi, and the thralls, along with her two serving women, could well keep the farm for the month or so such a trip would take. But one thing she must ask.

  “And Ingirith?”

  This was the maid Hrald was promised to; they were to wed after harvest. Her father Oke had been friend to Hrald’s father, and the two had always planned to join their young this way. That Hroft had died before Hrald and Ingirith could join hands had not deranged the plan.

  “I will be back well before harvest, if I leave soon,” Hrald countered. Oke’s farmstead was North, almost at the smaller trading post of Ribe, and he did not want to take the time to walk there to tell his intended of his plan; better to surprise her with unexpected silver. Ingirith was a maid who liked silver.

  Gillaug and Jorild had boiled the hens up with a couple handfuls of barley, the shredded cabbage, and some spring onions. Hrald sat at the same scarred work table at which he and his mother had sampled the Anglian salt. It felt a lifetime ago, and in the most important way it was; his mother no longer lived. The Sun was lowering when Gillaug carried the pottery bowl to him. He was hungered, and felt almost ashamed of it. He recalled the times his mother had urged him to eat, laughing about his growing height, and lifted the horn spoon to his mouth.

  Gillaug and Jorild sat together at the smaller work-table. Hrald could not help notice how they fell to, holding the bowls close to their mouths. They must have been living on eggs and the slightest amount of grain; that and whatever they had found in the root-cellar, and what they could gather of pot-herbs for greens.

  When he was done Jorild came over to him. The dusk had deepened into a deep bl
uish haze. They had had only well water to drink, and she had a jug of it in her hands. She refilled his cup, and made a gesture to ask if he wished for more in his food bowl.

  He shook his head. He thought then to tell her it had been good; he always told his mother and the serving women so; it was bad manners not to comment on any food others had prepared for you. She ducked her head, her knees bending slightly in a rapid curtsy.

  She had said nothing to him save her name, upon his arrival. Her aunt was now moving about the wash-tub, busy. He felt the need to hear another’s voice.

  “I thank you for caring for my mother,” he found himself saying. He recalled Gillaug’s words, assuring him that Jorild had acted as a daughter would to the dying woman.

  She bobbed her head again, biting her lower lip. Her eyes were downcast, looking into the emptied bowl he had eaten from, now held in her hands.

  “She called for you,” she finally said. “As she grew worse, she called on your name.”

  Jorild raised her eyes to Hrald, saw the pain on his brow.

  “I am sorry she could not know you lived, and are well,” she ended.

  A lump had formed in Hrald’s throat. He could do no more than nod.

  He gave her no sign of dismissal, and in fact lifted his face to her as she stood before him.

  She would perhaps ask him what they all had wondered over the long months of his absence. The worst he might do was scowl and drive her away; he did not seem a man who would use the back of his hand on her.

  “Something…something delayed you,” she offered.

  “I was stranded, on the Pomeranie coast, over Winter,” he answered.

  Her face told that she had not heard of that place. She nodded, just the same. “Not Gotland,” she said. “Oddi told us you went as far as Gotland.”

  “I did, but on the way back the knorr I was on began taking on water, and badly. We made for the Baltic coast, but ran aground on a sand bar when we were close to landing. The hull stove in.” His voice sounded thin and tight as he told her this; he and the rest of the men aboard had in fact to swim for their lives to the deserted shore.

  “We made our way to an inland village, had to spend the Winter there.”

  She was taking this in, nodding in understanding. Such things happened to many sea-faring men. She remembered Ashild’s mourning for her son, her laboured rasping out of Hrald’s name near the end. She would hazard saying something about the woman, for his sake.

  “Your mother…she would be happy now, knowing you return.”

  His eyes shifted, moving around the empty and unnaturally still work-yard.

  “Já,” he agreed, in quiet answer.

  She seemed ready to move away, and lifted the bowl in her hands slightly.

  “Gillaug said she caught cold,” he said now, to keep her from leaving.

  “Já,” she returned. She paused a long moment before she went on. “It was hard for her to breathe; she feared she was drowning as she lay there.”

  His eyes closed in a grimace, hearing this.

  “We propped her up with many cushions, to try and give her some ease.”

  “How was she buried?” he asked now.

  Her eyes widened at this, and he thought she had taken fright at his question. She might fear he suspected the mistress of the house had been laid out with less than all that was hers, and that she, Jorild, or her aunt, might have held back something.

  “With all of her brooches and beads, her weaving shuttles and sword, and her linen smoothing board of whalebone,” she numbered. This last was her prized possession; any woman would covet it. “My Uncle Oddi was there; Oddi saw all, and will tell you.”

  Hrald lifted his hand in assurance that he believed her, waving away her fear.

  “Then Oddi had to sell the beasts,” he began, uncertain of events.

  “Já, já,” Jorild confirmed. “But first the King’s men took many away, and the thralls. After the Winter’s Nights festival, King Horik almost doubled the levy. Oddi worried; he wanted the taxes paid from the farm itself, fearful that if any of your kin stepped forward to pay, it might be lost to them; they might lay claim to the farm.”

  It was like Oddi to believe, and hope, that he still lived, and like him too to be a good steward in Hrald’s absence.

  “When there was not enough to feed the three of us, Oddi left for Signe’s. He had already taken your brother there. He told us he would come for us by Mid-Summer, if you did not return.”

  Hrald did not need to be told that the two women could not last the Winter alone, not with unplanted fields and a dearth of animals.

  He must get them all food, and now spoke aloud his thoughts.

  “I will go tomorrow, take the handcart to the next farm, buy grain and fowl, smoked pig, whatever I can.” He looked out above the shaggy roofs of the outbuildings surrounding them. “Then I must set out for my sister Signe’s, see my little brother, let them know I am alive.” He thought of both Signe and Yrling, and the doubled loss they thought they had sustained. “See Oddi,” he went on. “I will need Oddi back, to build up the farm.” His eyes lowered again to the empty work-yards, and the glowing coals of the cooking ring fire.

  He was looking at Jorild now. She had been standing before him the whole time, but he finally took her in. Like her aunt she was tall and thin. He thought he recalled her eyes were a greenish blue; he had looked at her when he had asked her name earlier. The face was plain, but her features regular, her skin unblemished, and she had lost no tooth. He could not guess her age; she might be of twenty years, or five and twenty. The light was dimmer now, making her brown hair seem darker than it was; it was not overly long, held off her face by the short kerchief tied at the nape of her neck. The oval fasteners at the straps of her over-gown were merely of animal bone, but she or someone else had taken time to incise a flowing pattern in their ashy whiteness.

  “Can you stay,” he asked her. “I have need of you.” He and Oddi would have their hands full, and he did not know how long it would take to find and buy a worthy thrall.

  She thought of the woman Ashild, calling for her son, and of how she must have loved this man.

  “Of my aunt I am not sure. But I can stay,” she said.

  Chapter the Second: Gotland

  THAT night Hrald once again lay in his alcove in his parent’s house. It is my house now, he reminded himself, feeling the bitter price of his gain. He thought of his eagerness to see his mother, knowing that once her tears of relief had dried he could tell her of his adventure. That story ran through his head now as he lay, exhausted yet unable to sleep. He would have told of the shipwreck, which had begun in mild alarm, grown to real fear, and ended in the cold swim, his silver twice-strapped about his body; the long months staying at the cattle farm of the Pomeranie family who took them in; the sail, in stages, and on three ships, back to Jutland, once trading season came round; but most of all, his time on Gotland.

  It was Gotland that had gotten him into trouble. He had stayed far longer there than he had planned, unable to tear himself away. He thought of his first glimpse of it after the long voyage, a dark and low smudge against a sky of startling clarity. It was an island, and he wondered if all such were blessed with some special attraction, simply due to their difficulty of access. Dane-mark itself was nothing but scores of islands, great and small, most of them so close to one another to be only a few oar strokes away. Gotland was set apart, a green gem in the vastness of the blue Baltic.

  The knorr he had taken passage on landed him at the largest trading post on Gotland, Paviken, on the western coast. It was well-sheltered, set in a lagoon of still water, but its size surprised him. It was so much smaller than Haithabu, and smaller even than the Summer trading-town of Ribe back home in Jutland. Yet its prosperity was everywhere evident. Coming in to land they passed a bustling boat-works, where ships were not only being repaired, but built from keel up. Hrald could see the stack of thick and s
easoned oak which would be shaped to serve as keelsons, as well as the thin pine planking waiting to be riveted together as new hulls. There were three long and solid wooden landing piers awaiting them, and the timber buildings fronting the trading road were substantial, not the mere Summer-huts of most trading towns in Dane-mark. Plenty of folk crowded that road, clustered about the rolled-up awnings of stalls, for it was mid-day, and the weather fair. Two men unloading their own ship had paused to catch the thrown line from the knorr that carried Hrald, and as they hauled her in they called laughingly out to the ship captain at the steering oar. Their Norse was so distinct as to leave Hrald wondering what they really said.

  He sold his salt that very day, cask and all, and for a sum that he wagered was worth the shorn and cleaned fleece of every ewe back at the farm, and a bushel of oats as well. The trader who bought it carried it directly aboard his stout ship, and left Hrald with a full ingot of silver, a handful of tiny coins stamped with the profiles of men’s faces, and an assemblage of broken silver jewellery. Hrald had taken the precaution of bringing a second, larger, purse with him, one his father used to carry when he sold cattle or a quantity of sheep, and the worn pouch was now packed, as was that smaller he wore at his belt each day.

  “That salt will go right round the island, across the Baltic, and to a trading post of the Prus,” guessed the captain of the knorr which had brought him. Hrald was sitting with him on a bench at a brew-house, ale cups in their hands, watching the salt buyer’s ship cast off.

  Hrald had come so far it was hard to countenance sailing further, and he narrowed his eyes at the oars now dipping into the water.

  “Did I do right to sell it so quickly,” he asked the man, uncertain now of the sale.

  The captain laughed, and tipped his head at Hrald’s waist. “Your belt will tell you that,” he answered, looking to the lumps of silver-filled purses resting there. “And the first offer is oftentimes the best. He was ready to buy, eager to set sail with one more prize on his deck. If you had turned him down, you could sit here for days, and end at last selling for less.”