Sidroc the Dane

by Octavia Randolph

  He did this, heading first North to stand beneath limestone cliffs looming above the rich blues and greens of the Baltic. These sharp cliffs looked mountains to his widened eyes, accustomed as they were to the flatness of sandy Jutland. He scaled one of them, to stand staring down and across the Baltic Sea from its vast height. They were different waters from that which he had ever looked upon at home, and the difference between his own North Sea surprised him; it was another hue, another and seemingly milder temperament. He went on, dropping down to water’s edge again. The stark and narrow beaches were of bleached limestone pebble, blinding in the clarity of the light, and he found himself squinting as his eyes scanned from shimmering sea waters to the brilliant white sharp-edged stones he trod. He came upon group after group of rauks, thrusting up from the shingle or arrayed on slopes. If they were truly once trolls, these must have been returning to their forest caves after night-bathing when the rising Sun caught and froze them. He spent a night in the shadow of one, finding it useful as a break against the ever-blowing winds. As his fire flickered and died he half wondered if at night the rauks once again became living beings, freed by the darkness from their stony prison. Awakening in the dark, he put out his hand to reassure himself it was still cold stone he slept under. He managed a laugh at himself and wrapped himself back in his blanket.

  Next day he turned South, then overland through dense pine and spruce forests dotted with lakes to the eastern coast. Oak, ash, and elm trees grew to mighty height in grassy glades, spreading leafy arms which had never known the trimming hook of any man. Wild horses, quick and hardy, moved through the trees; he spied them from the tracks he walked, nibbling at the edges of the glades, their furred ears moving as he neared. The red deer hinds he spotted were as large as the harts on Jutland; the hares too of unusual size. He saw more birds on land and water than he had ever before seen; it made sense, being an island landing place it would serve as refuge for many.

  Along the coasts his footsteps slowed as he came upon the huge burial mounds of great chieftains, long dead, their burnt bones deeply covered by hills of carefully placed round stones. He gave these mounds a respectful nod, skirting them carefully. In other places he stood staring at towering standing stones, looming over even his height. These worked slabs of limestone were covered over with paintings of warring men and bucking ships, with runes inscribed around the edges, telling the tale of the men and women who remembered those now lost.

  He dropped down further South, crossing over barren expanses of limestone alvar, with nothing taller growing from its sere whiteness than creeping lichens of gold, green, and grey. He made his way back to Paviken and Stenhild after six nights. She ran to him when he appeared at her gate, and he was happy to catch her up in his arms and laugh.

  The days spent with her passed. Twice a week she gathered a basket of ripe plums and walked to the trading road with them. The air was dry enough, the Sun hot enough to dry many of the rest for her Winter’s use. But that Sun was setting noticeably earlier, even in these northern climes. Every fair mid-day held true warmth, almost that of a Summer’s day; but the nights were cooler as well as longer. And he had walked to Paviken often enough to see that fewer ships were docking; trading season was coming to a close.

  He watched her as she moved around the small house one night. Her girl was already abed, and they themselves had finished their meal indoors; a light but chill rain had begun to fall. The dark, the rain, the coming cold – it all put him in mind of what he need tell her.

  “Stenhild, I must leave. My mother will be worried.”

  His voice was quiet, but firm, one of sudden decision which even he heard in it. He had tarried for weeks, and felt like a man who awakens long after he had intended to arise. He feared too, of leaving her with a babe to come, and had been relieved a few days ago to find out he was not.

  She stopped in her plate-clearing and came to him. She carried a kind of stillness with her.

  “Já,” she breathed, in quiet assent. “Your mother. And…your wife.”

  “I have no wife, not yet; I will wed after harvest. But I told my mother I would be no more than a month, if the Gods favoured me. And they have, in both my trading, and in you. Instead of heading back, I have spent that month here with you. The ship that takes me back could make many stops. It might be another two weeks or more before I reach Haithabu. Then I have a three-day walk to reach the farm. I must leave, and tomorrow.”

  He had been plotting this all out in his head in the moments before he opened his mouth, and was surprised at the flat reasonableness of it all.

  She stood there, nodding her head, breathing out a low sound of assent. He was looking at her, but she would not lift her eyes to his.

  “What will you do,” he asked her. She could not go on like this, her stores dwindling, her buildings needing work, with no man to do it. “You must wed again.”

  “Já,” she conceded. “I must wed. If he does not come back by next Summer, I will wed.”

  Hrald could say nothing to this faint hope. Her husband was dead; dead, or taken by slavers. There were plenty of his Danish brethren plying the waters, snatching what they could.

  She looked at him now, a young man tall and lanky, a man who one might notice because of his height, and for nothing more. His dark brown hair fell about his face to near his shoulders, and his darker beard was growing in; it had been closely trimmed to his face when he first crossed her gate. His hands were large and strong but far from clumsy; they had chopped the kindling she laid this fire with, milked the cow, rested gently on her naked waist. His eyes were that light brown shade that had flecks of blue in them, and they were fastened on her now.

  I would wed you, Hrald of Dane-mark, her heart was saying. I would wed you.

  Chapter the Third: Ingirith

  THE woman Gillaug had boiled eggs and filled a water skin for Hrald; there was little more he could carry away with him on his way to the neighbouring farm to buy more. Kol was an old farmer who lived there with a widowed daughter, and Hrald trusted that they would have something to spare. The trackways were dry; there had been no rain. Even pushing the hand-wain he should make good time. It was just after cock-crow, the Sun not yet showing its face above the dark edge of pines.

  As he was readying himself Jorild came to him.

  If she had been still a thrall she would not speak until spoken to, but her aunt had told him she had been a freedwoman since childhood. Even so she waited, watching him tighten the wooden wheel of the wain by pounding a splint into a crack near the hole of the axle.

  “I will be back before dusk,” he told her.

  She bobbed her head at this, then spoke.

  “I could carry something, in baskets, and on my back,” she offered. “I am strong.”

  He looked at her. The walk would not take more than half the morning. If she wore a withy basket on her back, filled with a half-measure of grain, and could carry something too, that would be so much the better.

  Jorild kept a good pace just behind him; he needed the width of the narrow track to guide the barrow so the single wheel missed the deeper ruts. It was all of wood, and heavy, and Hrald was glad when Kol’s farm came into view. Dogs rushed out, barking, and Kol came out of his barn, blinking in astonishment at Hrald, alive and before him.

  When they returned to his farm Hrald pushed sacks of barley, rye and oats, and smaller sacks of new carrots, greens, and fresh peas. He had a bag of dried beans, and a lidded basket into which three squawking hens had been deposited. They could spare as well a few loaves of bread, and as it was Spring, several small crocks of both butter and cheese. A crock of ale brewed by Kol’s daughter was set over the wheel, to balance its weight. As Kol pushed it across the wooden bed of the barrow Hrald wondered if Gillaug or Jorild brewed; his father had been good at it, but then his mother took over after his death.

  Jorild had indeed a half-measure of oats in the basket on her back, but the handbaskets she had
carried remained empty. They were now topping the hand-wain Hrald pushed, as she needed both hands free. Each held a slender line of hempen rope trailing from her fist, the other end looped into the nose-ring of a spotted piglet, for Hrald had also persuaded the old man to part with two of his big sow’s litter.

  Hrald took from the silver he still bore at his belt for all this, that which he had earned from the salt in far-off Gotland. Counting part of it out to meet Kol’s price was the last thing he had imagined doing with it. He had pictured setting both purses, still mostly filled, before his mother, and seeing her delight at such a sum. Now this silver was no different from that which had always sat in the dark ground under the grain-house floorboards. Reflecting on this as he made his way home, Hrald thought of the woman behind him, of how she and her aunt had suffered fear and want for lack of Oddi’s finding that silver.

  By the time they crossed the gate his arms and back were aching. But they had enough; it was a start. Tomorrow or the next day he would head for Signe’s. She and her husband owned an oxcart, and he would return with far more than this, and sheep too, and Oddi to help.

  His sister’s farm was a full day’s walk away, North up the coast. Hrald had not slept well, and was tired, his arms and legs still feeling the effects of wrestling with the heavy hand-wain. He ended up spending the night on the side of the trackway he followed. He went on at first light, walking faster now, until he reached Signe’s place.

  It was Yrling saw him first. Hrald had made his way past the sheep and cattle in the front pasture lands and had neared the woven fence surrounding house and outbuildings. The boy was walking from the fowl house, a wooden bowl in one hand and something small in another; yet another egg, Hrald thought, as he raised his arm in greeting to his little brother. The small mouth opened; the hand, too, and Hrald saw the egg drop to the packed ground. Another figure came in view, that of a man, and Hrald saw Ful, Signe’s husband, take the bowl from Yrling and cuff the boy across the head in return.

  Hrald called out then. Ful turned to see him, but did not move. Yrling was already running to his older brother.

  The boy still had his arms flung about his waist when Signe hurried out, her young daughters at her side, one holding her spindle in her hand. Then Oddi was there, hurrying across the far field, to stand and grin, nodding at him, from a distance.

  His sister cried over him, and Yrling would not let him out of his sight, even after Ful had told the boy to go back to his chores. The boy looked well-fed, but Hrald had not liked seeing Ful slap him due to a broken egg. But Signe’s elder girl led him away by the hand kindly enough; that was something.

  It did not take Hrald long to understand that Ful was not pleased by his return. He knew it would be a surprise, even a shock, to judge by the reactions he had already received, but he did not expect displeasure. Ful’s greeting words of welcome had been half-hearted. He had listened dismissively to Hrald’s tale, and had chided him at certain points. Hrald made no mention of what had detained him on Gotland, only that having sold the Anglian salt so quickly he determined to wander the island a while, having come so far. At least this was one point Ful could agree with.

  “You’ll not go so far again, once you are wed to Ingirith,” was his remark, sealed with a rueful grunt.

  “Ingirith,” repeated Signe with a small gasp. “She does not know you live.”

  “I will go now, tomorrow, to see her,” Hrald assured her. It was less than a day away, far less if Ful would let him ride his horse.

  First he need ask them for their help. Hrald’s father had always taught that it was unseemly to bargain with kin; one deserved their support as readily as that help was extended to them. Hroft had not liked Ful ten years ago when he wed Signe, and never did like him. Hrald knew this. As he detailed what he needed to begin to set his farm to rights he watched the grimace on his brother-in-law’s face deepen.

  “I have silver,” Hrald felt forced to say. He did not believe that he would have to buy stock and grain from his own kin, as he had from Kol. Even though Signe made a semblance of protest, it was only then that Ful nodded in agreement.

  It angered Hrald; what he asked for was in effect a loan, to be repaid in kind as soon as the farm was producing.

  “I will give you silver now,” he amended, feeling some little heat, but keeping his words as cool as he could. “And you will hold it, and return it to me when I repay what you have lent me, less one tenth.”

  “Já, that is just,” his sister was saying.

  Ful could never have held the farm without the silver and goods that Signe had brought with her when they wed, and she had more than once reminded him of this over the years. Ful was not successful in stifling his scowl, but was forced to nod. Signe clucked in approval and poured them all more ale; they were sitting outside under the deep eaves of the house, facing the paddock with its single horse.

  “Good,” Hrald summed. “With what you can lend me, Oddi and I will be able to make a start.” He watched Ful’s face darken the more, but went on. “And his female kin are there, his sister and niece; they will stay on with me.”

  They knew of course of Gillaug and Jorild’s coming, but it was of Oddi that Ful wished to speak.

  “It will be hard enough to spare what you ask of me, without losing Oddi,” he told Hrald.

  Hrald set his cup down so hard upon the table that a few drops of ale splashed out upon the darkened surface.

  “Oddi was my father’s thrall,” he said, with no attempt to hide the edge in his voice. By law Oddi owed his allegiance to him, Hrald, the son of the man who had freed him, and Ful knew this. Hrald could not believe that Ful would dispute his claim to the man, and felt certain that given a choice Oddi would readily return to him.

  His brother-in-law had two male thralls of his own, and two serving women, just as Hrald and his mother once had; workers enough, Hrald reckoned.

  “King Horik’s demand for double taxes makes for a lean year for us,” Ful said, as if in defence.

  How can you whine to me of this, Hrald thought. It was the same demand, and the penalty in the lateness of Hrald’s farm to meet it, that had ended in the confiscation of his thralls and beasts. Hrald had heard upon landing in Haithabu it had been imposed on all, rich and poor, but was to be a one-time burden.

  Ful did not press the matter further, and they turned their talk to other things. Hrald recalled what Jorild had told him of Oddi’s fears that kin of his would lay claim to the farm in the face of his apparent loss at sea. Oddi was a man of some forty years, and had wisdom. This turned in Hrald’s mind as he sat there opposite his brother-in-law.

  All in all it was not the reception Hrald had expected, but then nothing had been. After Ful left the table Signe reached her hand to Hrald and closed it over his own a moment. She had not been with their mother at her death; Ashild had been perilously ill by the time Oddi left to fetch her, reluctant to leave lest the King’s men return in his absence. Signe arrived to find the woman cold and Oddi digging her barrow.

  Hrald left for Ingirith’s family farm the next morning, and on Ful’s horse. Yrling begged to join him, and Hrald could not refuse. The boy’s unabashed affection for him gave Hrald some of the pleasure he missed from his lost mother’s joy. They skirted a bracken marsh and long stretches of birch woods, and reached there before noon.

  As Fate would have it, Ingirith was the first person he saw. She was on her knees in the bean patch, pulling up weeds with her two sisters, and had stood up to drape a handful of fallen tendrils back upon their spindly wooden support. She then placed the palms of her hands on the small of her back and stretched the roundness from her spine.

  “Ingirith,” he called. He knew her from the back; her yellow hair had always been longer than her sisters’.

  She whirled about, the other girls popping up as well from where they crouched amongst the vines.

  Yrling was on the saddle before him, and Hrald had one arm about him, th
e other holding the reins. He could not wave, but he did smile. Even staring at him as she was she was pretty, and he felt a sudden gladness in seeing her.

  Ingirith squinted at the figures on horseback; the Sun was behind them. Hrald kept coming towards her. After a few more paces she let out a cry.

  She did not run to him. He did not expect that. Living as far away as she did, they had seen the other only a few times, mostly at the Summer Thing, the gathering where disputes were heard and justice meted out. Folk came to trade sheep and cattle as well, and young people traded sidelong glances as their parents made inquiry as to their respective character, work habits, and likely fortune.

  Ingirith’s parents were now making their way from the work yard and house, her father Oke calling out in welcome. Ingirith had two little brothers, and they ran out as well. Hrald passed Yrling down to Oke, and swung down himself. All were gathered around him now. Yrling stuck close to his leg, surrounded as he was by strangers.

  Hrald had told his tale enough times that it had begun to take on a sense of distance to him, as if he were repeating a minor episode of a little-known Saga. The fact that he was the key character in the story only made it the odder to relate. It was also growing shorter, the quicker to tell of it. Oke had many questions about the fabled island of Gotland. Hrald looked at Ingirith, watching him closely, her pretty brow furrowed, the tip of her pink tongue showing as she listened. He recalled Stenhild, and his month with her. He remembered the scent of her skin and her hand resting on his bare chest. He closed his eyes a moment, then told Oke of the wild horses he had seen.