He cleared his tightened throat. “I, Hrald, son of Hroft, take you Ingirith as my wife. I will provide for you and do you no harm.”
He could not think of more to say. Walking here he had thought he should thank her parents for entrusting her to him, or invoke his own dead mother and father with gratitude for making the match for him. Say these things he could not. As the silence grew he looked down.
Ingirith was speaking now, but in a tone so low that even those nearest took a step forward to hear her. “I Ingirith, daughter of Oke, take Hrald as my husband.”
She paused long enough that her next words were hurried out. “And I will provide for him.”
Now they must exchange the tools of their livelihoods, in accord with the promises made. He passed the wooden handle of the sickle to her, and took the weaving sword in his hand. They held these tools a moment before returning them. Ingirith’s mother stepped forward, holding a length of gaily patterned tablet-woven ribband. Man and wife must join hands, and have those hands made fast by the binding of the ribband. Hrald held out his hand, and Ingirith took it. Her mother wrapped the ribband twice around their joined hands.
Hrald knew he should look in Ingirith’s eyes to seal their vows, and he looked at her as he gave her hand a squeeze. She glanced up at him.
It was enough. Her mother’s hands met in a single clap of joy, and all around gave a cheer. Ingirith’s mother unwrapped the ribband, and held it out to her daughter with a smile. It was always given into the woman’s keeping, this symbol of the bond between them.
Now Hrald must send the goat to Freyr. Hrald had not made public sacrifice before, and hoped he could do so swiftly and skillfully. The fowl he had occasion to Offer on his family’s farm during Blót, the month of sacrifice, had been done alongside his father’s greater offer of a piglet. Only since his father’s death had he dispatched that piglet himself, and then only twice. The goat was full grown, vigorous, and in the prime of life.
It had been pulling up the grass where it was tied the while, and only when they turned to surround it did the goat grow restive. The axe was sitting there, ready to be taken up in Hrald’s hands. He looked at Ingirith before he picked it up. Her eyes were fastened on the goat. As he neared, it began to shy, pulling on the rope that held it, and then to drop its head defensively. One of Ingirith’s uncles helpfully caught up the back legs of the beast, giving Hrald clear aim with the butt end of the axe head.
“To Freyr,” he cried. He was grateful to hit it squarely, the dull crack of the skull sounding over it. The goat toppled. Hrald dropped on his knees to open its throat with his knife, that the waiting soil receive its share of animal life-force.
He stood to further cheers. He went to Ingirith and lifted her hand in his, above their heads. She still held her weaving-sword in her other.
Women were moving amongst the laughing crowd, passing out cups and filling them with ale. Soon they would all walk back to the tables set up outside the house and begin the feast. Just now they seemed alone, the guests turning to each other or to the family of the bride. Hrald turned to her.
He had just made Offering that they might know abundance in their shared life, in goods and in children. He was grateful she was so pretty, and came with useful goods and some silver. He knew he was nearly a stranger to her, and she would be going far from her home to live with him. She was younger than he and likely frightened.
“You are very pretty,” he thought to tell her. It was true and no lie, she had full measure of beauty.
She gave a slight movement of her shoulders.
“I hope you will be happy with me,” he offered.
She nodded, then turned to a sister who had come up to kiss her.
The feast was notable for its richness. Ingirith was their eldest and first to wed, and Oke’s pride rested on making good show. He had raised up a large flock of fattened fowl, which knew the further luxury of being roasted and not boiled. The crackling skins had been stuffed with whole sage leaves and butter, and each guest had half a bird to himself. There were egg puddings, crusted and golden, dotted with pine-nuts, and loaves of newly-ground wheaten bread, instead of that of everyday rye and oats.
Hrald sat next to Ingirith and ate with her from a single plate. Mead had been dipped out, and his cup filled and refilled. He began to feel more ease. Ingirith too seemed to know ease. She smiled and chatted with those who stopped to speak to her, turning on the bench to do so. Even the back of her neck was lovely, Hrald thought, seeing the hollow there where her yellow hair was gathered under the knot of her head wrap.
They would spend their first night in her parents’ house; it was too long a journey back to his farm to do otherwise. By the time they were led to the alcove they would share Hrald felt warmed through by food and drink. The wedding-ale would continue outside without them, and they were sent off with hooting shouts to their rest.
It was her parents who led them thus. Oke clapped Hrald on the shoulder, and whispered something about the goat and the many kids it had sired; Hrald could not catch all but understood from Oke’s wink he should laugh. Her mother gave Ingirith a kiss on the forehead as they left her.
It was dim in the house but there was still light in the sky, so even with the curtains drawn it was not dark inside the alcove. Hrald stood on the platform, turned away from Ingirith to give her privacy as she undressed. The noise from the guests ebbed and flowed as folk neared the house and then retreated. He heard the front door open and the excited tittering of Ingirith’s sisters before hearing them being sharply called away.
He heard the rustle of bed linens. Without turning to her he sat down on the edge of the box bed and began to undress. Once naked he slipped in beside her as smoothly as he could. She still wore her long-sleeved shift. Her gown of rosy hue hung on one of the wall pegs, but she had not undressed.
He put his arm around her, tried to pull her close. Her own arms were running straight down her body, as if to keep her shift in place. He pressed his thigh against her and felt her hand was closed in a fist.
He let her go. Her eyes were not shut, but they were not looking at him. They were focussed up into the dusk of the timber roof.
“Ingirith,” he said.
She did not answer him.
“Ingirith.”
“What do you want,” she finally said.
The mead he had drunk should have made him laugh at that, but he did not. The warmth of that potent drink drained away from him at her words.
He found himself breathing out a deep breath, a sigh. One of the guests, a drunken man, began singing outside the door of the house to them.
“You are tired,” Hrald told her. “Let us sleep now.” He turned his back on her, as he thought she wanted.
It was not easy to emerge from the alcove next morning to greet the family, and those guests who had remained. Hrald dressed and left first. The grins and smiles he met with made his face warm, which all who looked upon him took for signs of a long and happy night. They were hardly more restrained when Ingirith appeared, in a gown of yellow. What surprised him was the good-natured coolness with which she returned the gibes.
Oke and Hrald loaded up the oxcart, and made their farewells to Ingirith’s family. If all went well they would see each other next Summer at the Thing. At the last moment Ingirith promised to journey up over the Winter’s Nights festivals. All Hrald could do was agree, weather allowing.
Then they were off. Their first stop would be to Signe and Ful’s farm. Their wedding gift was waiting for them there, and Hrald had not spent any time with Yrling, and wished to have a few moments alone with the boy.
The cart was not so full that Ingirith could not ride upon it. Hrald walked at the beast’s head, to save its strength, but also to feel the solidness of the ground under his feet.
They had not gone more than an hour when they met another oxcart, loaded with bushels of newly flailed grain, heading in the opposite direction. It was d
riven by a man and two boys, who yielded the track to them. After Hrald thanked them Ingirith called out.
“Do you head to Ribe?” she asked, in so pointed a manner that the man paused.
“Já, to Ribe,” he answered. “All good things are there,” he ended, with a grin.
Hrald watched his new wife duck her head in agreement; all good things are there.
Signe’s gift turned out to be a generous one. She had made the couple four pillows of tightly-woven linen, fully stuffed with washed fowl feathers. Any gift meant for the sleeping alcove of a newly-wed couple occasioned smiles, and this was no different. But Hrald did not expect what his brother-in-law Ful said to him, when he stood alone with Hrald as he checked the ox’s harness shaft. The man had turned and was looking at Ingirith as she stood with Signe.
“She is well worth flattening on those cushions,” he said, tapping Hrald on his chest with the back of his hand.
It was all Hrald could do not to step back from the man’s touch. As it was he turned his face so quickly away from Ful that he laughed.
The parting with Yrling was hardest. If things had gone well last night he would have brought up his plan of taking the boy home with them. But seeing how Ingirith had shooed Yrling away when he had gotten too close to her with muddied hands kept him silent. Perhaps when they passed this way again in Winter Yrling could return then. As it was he spent a few minutes with him, rolling an old iron cask hoop on the hard ground, chasing it with sticks to keep it rolling. Hrald had done the same as a boy and for the first time in a long time found himself laughing with his little brother. Then they were off.
The oxcart moved more slowly than a young and long-legged man like Hrald could walk, and they would spend that night on the road. As they made their camp he took heart that this would be the true start of their marriage. He let the ox browse in the tall grass at the side of the track, and unloaded much of what the cart carried. The space freed would make a more than adequate bed. The cushions Signe had just given seemed providential, though he had to force his thoughts from what Ful had said.
Ingirith heated water for washing, and after they had eaten they both used it, Hrald vanishing amongst the trees to allow her to do so in private. When he returned she was under the bedding she had brought. He washed himself and climbed in after her. She again wore her linen shift.
Married folk slept naked; only children and the ill wore clothing while in bed. Ingirith was neither child nor sick; she was his wife. But she lay there, as rigid and unyielding as last night.
He moved closer to her. There was still light in the sky, but they had spent hours on the road, he walking, she being jostled as she sat. He had wanted to stop and rest in good time. The place he had chosen was dry, with wild grasses on one side and pines on the other. That smell of pine resin he had ever liked was in the warm air. A few night birds were beginning to sing, calling out to their mates. It was otherwise quiet, and they were alone.
He bent over her, and kissed her brow. He thought she closed her eyes at this, but his own face was too close to be sure. He let his lips touch her forehead again, then drift to her cheek. He rested them on her lips. They did not respond, and he knew she held her breath.
“Ingirith,” he whispered. “You are my wife…”
Hrald had never lain with a maid, and never with a woman who was unwilling. Ingirith was both.
Now she turned her chin away. He felt shamed by her refusal, and unwilling to go further in the face of her coldness.
He could not ask her why she wed him. Few young had any say in the matter. Their folk chose for them, and they must trust their judgment had been good. Right now Hrald would have given a lot to speak to his dead father on the matter.
He had been propped on his elbow at her side. Now he let himself fall upon his back. A star was beginning to twinkle in the deepening heavens, one impossibly distant from his own unhappiness. He stared at it until his eyes burned.
On the morrow they would reach the farm. The thought of entering his alcove with her still a maid clenched the pit of his stomach. It was the bed in which Jorild, thin and plain, had been so generous in her giving to him.
Ingirith was his wife; he must end this nonsense. His embrace had been welcomed by other women; she would learn to welcome it as well. He would not force her body; he could not see himself doing that, but she must see reason, and now.
“Should I take you back to your family’s farm?’ he asked her, still looking up at the sky.
Oke would be a laughing-stock and she the object of ridicule. A repudiated bride was next to unmarriageable; at best she would end up some old man’s second or third wife.
He let his question sink in.
At last he felt her turn to him, one hand drawing her shift a little up her body.
He did not try to pull it off, just moved himself so he was over her, Ful’s words sounding in his ears.
Chapter the Fifth: The Babe
IT was not a scream Hrald heard, but a sharp cry. This was followed by a stream of female oaths, piercing and deliberate.
He came around the edge of the shed he had been hauling things from and into the kitchen yard. The fire frame and cauldron had been moved inside the house now Winter was here, but the work tables were still often in use. Near one stood Ingirith, less than an arms-length from Jorild. She was leaning towards her, almost on tip-toe, her arms rammed down the sides of her body, trembling in her anger. A wooden hauling bucket sat near her, its sides showing wet where the water had sloshed out when she set it down in haste. Jorild too was standing, shrinking back, face pale, her hands gathered in her curled-up apron.
“Slattern!” Ingirith repeated, hissing out the word. “We have barely enough to eat, and you get yourself with a brat!” She lurched at Jorild, and with an opened hand reached up and slapped the woman’s face.
On the packed ground to one side of Jorild, someone had been sick. Hrald saw it now, saw beyond it. A woman with child often retched up her food.
Ingirith was moving in again, and Jorild making no attempt to avoid the coming blow.
Hrald strode forward. “Do not touch her,” he ordered.
Ingirith jerked her head at him, her face distorted by the scowl upon it. She stared at her husband.
“It is your brat, is it?” she shrieked in demand. “Yours!”
Her eyes shifted, as if she were doing some reckoning in her head. She glared back at Hrald. “When all the time you were readying to wed me!”
Hrald looked at them both, Ingirith staring at him, Jorild barely able to raise her eyes. It was cold, and Jorild, shivering. The gown she wore was loose enough not to show any thickening of her body. But he realised now she must be four months along; it was the month of Blót.
He kept his voice as steady as he could, firm and steady. “Ingirith. Go to the house. Go.”
She waited a moment longer, looking from him to Jorild, but did turn and leave.
Gillaug had run to her niece’s side. She had known for some weeks that Jorild was with child, and knew too Hrald was the father; Jorild did not lie when asked. Gillaug had told her brother Oddi, who had taken in the news with a solemn nod; such things happened. Standing at Jorild’s elbow now, Gillaug saw that Master himself did not know; it showed on his face.
Hrald came up to them. He wanted to put his hand on Jorild’s arm. He did not. He could not even ask if it were true, and did not need to. Jorild lifted her eyes and looked at him. Hers were glittering with tears as she nodded her head once at him.
He heard himself breathe out a long breath. So be it, he thought, though his head was spinning.
“You will not be harmed,” was what he told her.
Inside the house Ingirith was not raging. She was sitting slumped at the table, sobbing, her head in her arms.
“Ingirith,” he said. “It is true. The child is mine.”
She did not lift her eyes, and she did not stop crying.
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�Send…her…away,” she implored, her words little more than halting gasps. “Please. If you value me, send her away.”
She did not sound like Ingirith. She was begging him, and Hrald bethought him that she had likely never done so to anyone before this moment. She turned her tear-streaked face to him, waiting for his answer.
He tried to think. Jorild had done nothing wrong. He had come to her alcove, and likely as not she felt she could not refuse him that first night, or any other. And her manner to him had been more than yielding, it had been willing, and even warm. To cast her away would be a grave injustice.
“I…I cannot,” was all he could tell her. “It is my child, my doing.”
His tumbling brain grasped at anything else he could tell her.
“I was with her for a few days only, after I came back.” He did not know what more to say, but went on. “I was gone nearly a year. My mother had died. My stock was gone…”
“And you knew you were coming to wed me,” she reminded, as she wept.
“Já,” he admitted. There was little more he could say to that; he always knew he was soon to wed.
It was common enough for a man to have children with his serving women or thralls; what was hard was his doing so just before his hand-fast. He understood that.
She stared at him, her disbelief clear upon her face. He had made his choice. He would not send the woman away. To Ingirith it was declaration that her husband placed a former thrall-woman over his rightful wife. The insult was deepened by how plain the woman was. He had demeaned her own beauty in lying with Jorild.
“It is a shock, I know this,” he offered.
His voice conveyed it had been mutual. He came to her now and placed his hand over hers. Their wedded life had not begun with any delight, but perhaps now they might go on together and begin anew.
“You did not know?” she asked. Her voice was calmer and held the surprise she felt.
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