He shook his head slowly. “I did not,” he told her.
He had not known. That was something, Ingirith felt. She had discovered it before he had.
What he also did not know was that she herself was carrying his child. She could tell him now, fling it out at him, but decided to wait. She felt a stinging anger arise, that this ugly freedwoman would bear his child before she, his lawful wife, would. And the babes would be but three or four months apart. It was a doubled affront, one that made her want to shriek.
She pulled her hand out from under his.
“Where?” she demanded, wishing now to shame him. “Where did you take her?” She pointed at their alcove, curtains drawn. “In the bed which is ours? Or out in the hay-loft, as would be fitting?”
“Stop it,” he ordered.
When he had heard her angry cries he had been gathering his kit to go down to the boat. He would oar her down the swollen stream and out into the North Sea channel. The fish he netted there once a week were a useful supplement to their food stores, and soon the seas would be too rough to go. It made him think of one thing Ingirith had said to Jorild.
“And we have plenty to eat.” He looked at the back she had turned to him. He did not know what more he could say. “I am going now, to fish,” he ended.
Out in the work yard Jorild had taken the abandoned bucket of water and spilled it over the mess she had made.
Once in the boat Hrald did not think of what he had just learned about Jorild, or even how Ingirith had reacted. He was thinking of the first day they spent as man and wife here on the farm. After he had moved her things in, he told Ingirith to bring the silver her parents had given her, and took her to the grain-house. There he showed her the spot where the family silver was secreted, showed her how to lift one short floorboard at the wall to make it easy to lift the other two.
“This is ours,” he said, feeling some pleasure in being able to say so. “The silver my parents left, and that which I earned in Gotland.”
He opened the several small jars for her, detailing what was in each, numbering the coins, showing her the hack-silver chunks of broken jewellery, and simple silver rod.
“Put your silver here,” he said, replacing the crockery jars and making room for the pouch she carried. “It is the safest place on the farm; even King Horick’s men did not find it.”
But instead of dropping it in, she held it more closely to herself.
“This is the safest place for it,” he repeated.
She dropped it in at last, and he replaced the boards, scuffing the grain dust over where he had been kneeling.
The next week he had need to lift the three floor boards again. Ingirith’s pouch was not there. He opened every jar, making sure nothing else had been removed. All was accounted for.
“Your silver,” he asked her. He did not need to say more than that.
“I have hid it myself,” she answered. Where, she would not tell him.
Things did not improve as Winter deepened. Shut up as they often were inside the house, the enmity Ingirith bore for Jorild seethed in her breast. At last Hrald determined that new sleeping quarters be made for Jorild, and he and Oddi turned a little-used cattle shed into a small house for her and her aunt. They re-thatched the gaps in the roof and made tight the door, as well as the shutter at the single window. They dug a fire-pit in the middle of the place, and planked the soil around it, giving dry footing even in Winter rains. And they built two simple beds for the women.
Ingirith resented every hour Hrald spent doing so, and every scrap of linen that went to bedding and towelling for the women. But she dare not complain aloud. At least she was out of the house. And there was a rueful fitness, too, in the fact that she who would bear her husband’s bastard should live in a cattle shed.
Ingirith’s anger at Hrald was such that it kept her from telling that she too was with child. Her body betrayed the news the same way Jorild’s had. Ingirith was standing at the soapstone cooking pot one dark morning, ladling a porridge of oats and dried peas into bowls. They were inside the house, the cooking frame having been moved there for cold weather. Of a sudden Ingirith began to heave, and dropping the ladle back into the pot, made for the door. Her belly was still empty and she retched up bile onto the damp ground. She wiped her mouth with her hand and straightened up. There was Jorild, walking from the well, carrying the bucket of water she had just drawn up. She paused when she saw Ingirith, then with her free hand pulled her mantle closer about her enlarged figure. Ingirith turned from her to see her husband in the door, come after her. He took in what had happened.
“You…” he began. There was almost wonder in his saying of it.
She drew herself up. The fact that Jorild knew as well made it all the more bitter.
“Já,” she snapped. “Me. Your wife.” She gave a short laugh.
“How long have you known,” he asked.
It gave her satisfaction to tell the truth. “Many weeks.”
“And you did not tell me.” His voice did not mask his hurt.
He wanted to feel joy in this. He knew that he should. But no part of Ingirith gave him joy. He knew that she did not care for him on the day they wed, but hoped that this was something she would learn. But now he knew she did not like him, either, and perhaps loathed him. Her coolness to him had rapidly become coldness. Finding that Jorild would bear his child had sealed her dislike of them both. Now she too would do the same, have his child. It was something he had done which had led to sorrow for both women. And it could not be undone, not unless the mother wished to rid herself of the coming babe. Then there were herbs that could be eaten, and brews drunk. Jorild had not done so, but she might think she did not have the right.
Ingirith just stared at him. She had been raised being told she would be Hrald’s wife, and had accepted it. Then when he had vanished, and been absent so long, she thought herself free of her father’s promise. Her eye had fallen on a handsome young smith, fallen, and then been filled by him and the dream she built around him.
This had been dashed by Hrald’s appearance, and she could not summon her former acquiescence. She was right to be sulky, she had thought, and right to make him earn her affection. But when he threatened her with returning her to her father she had begun to hate him.
She knew she was pretty and deserved more. She should not be here, on yet another farm, but back at Ribe, or wherever that handsome tool-smith lived. Then to learn Hrald had taken that ugly thrall to bed…
Her face softened, looking at him, and she took his hand and placed it on her belly. She then said that which she thought would give him most hurt.
“Take care I do not drown the thing at birth,” she told him.
Spring came. Jorild had grown large, and Ingirith too was showing that her own child would be born in Summer. Neither woman could work as they once did, and it was lambing time as well. Hrald and Oddi were busy too with planting.
When Jorild felt the first birthing pangs, Gillaug found Hrald out ploughing and told him. His neighbour Kol’s widowed daughter was sent for; Oddi went to fetch her. Capable as Gillaug was, it took more than one woman to welcome a child to Midgard. There were spells that must be chanted, invocations uttered, thank-offerings promised. These things were secret to child-bearing women, but men knew of them, and that they must be observed. And Hrald would want the neighbouring woman afterwards, to witness for him.
Ingirith would do nothing for the woman, not even heat water or gather linens, and Hrald felt this a lack of some kind of common decency. As it was he listened to Jorild’s groans coming from the shed, and finally went into the depths of the barn to muck out the cow stall. He could not continue his ploughing, and so put himself far from her cries; Oddi had taken the oxen he bought last year to bring aid for Jorild.
The babe took a long time coming, but all said first-born children often did. Being alone with Ingirith in the house was the worst part. She moved and acted to
him as if he were not there, and with Gillaug busy had to put the meal on the table herself, banging the bowls and cups down as if she were a child.
Hrald spent a restless night lying next to the sleeping Ingirith. He rose at first light and went out into the kitchen yard. As he stood there, squinting in the gloom at the cow shed, its door opened, showing a figure outlined by the glow of the fire within. He moved forward. It was Gillaug.
“You have a son, Master,” Gillaug said, a smile cracking her lined face. She gestured him in.
He had not been inside the shed since he and Oddi had finished outfitting it for the two women. Now he saw Kol’s daughter sitting on a stool by one of the beds he had built, a bed which held the long form of Jorild. She was sitting up, but her eyes were closed. The babe was lying against his mother’s breast, covered by a light blanket, so that only the dark little head could be seen.
He came closer, and Kol’s daughter moved to let him near.
“Let me see him,” Hrald asked. The lowness of his tone did not hide his wonder.
Jorild’s eyelids fluttered open when he spoke. Gillaug lifted the infant up, Jorild’s hand holding on to one tiny foot. She was smiling as she held it.
He sat down on the stool near the bed. “Give him to me,” he said now.
Gillaug wrapped a piece of towelling around the babe, and handed him to his father.
Jorild had closed her eyes, the hand that had held the little foot falling back empty to her breast.
“Jorild,” Hrald summoned. “Look at me.”
He set the babe on his knee. “This is my son, freeborn, who I acknowledge as my own.”
He raised his eyes to Kol’s daughter, and to Gillaug, and they nodded. Having spoken these words before them, Hrald accepted his son, with witnesses to attest to the fact. This boy would be his heir. He looked last at Jorild.
The babe began to mewl, the red face scrunching, mouth seeking. Jorild slowly lifted her hands to him, and Gillaug placed the child back upon her breast.
Later that day Hrald returned to the shed. The babe had been washed and swaddled, and was sleeping next his mother.
“What will you name him,” Jorild asked Hrald. For months she had hardly spoken to him, saying only what was strictly needed, and in the fewest possible words. Her voice now was that he remembered from their nights together, soft and warm in his ear.
It was a father’s right to name his son, and often the name chosen was of the new father’s own sire. But somehow Hroft did not fit this child, or his circumstances. He had no name ready.
“What would you name him,” he posed to Jorild.
She looked down at the babe tucked up under her arm. He would be tall, they both were; and he would be dark. He had been born in sorrow, but Jorild did not think of the getting of him in sorrow.
“There was a great Jarl who lived long ago, who I heard tell of,” she began. “His name was Sidroc.”
Sidroc, thought Hrald. A fine name, and a strong one.
“Sidroc,” he repeated.
Chapter the Sixth: Another
INGIRITH’S child was born at the time of the Thing, thus she and Hrald could not go. She had rashly told her parents they would visit over Winter, a promise she did not keep, and now she could not travel to the Summer gathering at which they, and all she knew, would be.
Kol’s daughter was again fetched, and Ingirith grudgingly let Gillaug help her, but Jorild was as ever banned from the house. What Ingirith did not know was it was Jorild at the cooking ring in the kitchen yard, making broth and hotting water, and even carrying it within the house to set it on the large table, to save her aunt the steps. Jorild’s own babe, Sidroc, was tied up on her back as she did this, and never out of sight or touch.
It was a girl Ingirith bore. When Jorild’s child had been born and lived, and been not only perfect but a boy, Ingirith began to pray to Frigg, that her child be the same. She even wrung the neck of a hen in Offering, asking that her child be worthy. When it was born and found to be a girl she wished to scream.
Hrald welcomed her nonetheless, setting the child upon his knee and proclaiming it his. Ingirith saw the dark head of her daughter and grimaced in disgust. She wanted a babe with hair as fair as her own, as fair as the tool-smith’s in Ribe.
She named the girl Ulfhildr. Wolf-battle, thought her father. Her mother gave her a bloody name, but the babe herself was mild and sweet-natured. Sidroc too was good-natured, quiet, watching all about him. When he began to crawl Ingirith tried to bar him from her threshold, extending the same ban from the house that lay upon his mother. Hrald put swift end to that.
“He is my son, and heir, and will come and go from my house as he will,” he decreed.
Ingirith bit her tongue; there was nothing she could say to that. But there was plenty she could say to Jorild.
“Wean him quick,” Ingirith told her one day when she came upon suckling child and mother. The leaves had all fallen from the trees, but by the kitchen fire it was still warm enough to sit outside. Jorild made bold to speak for her son.
“Mistress. He is too young to wean.”
The quietness of her statement gave Ingirith pause. She did not want to be known as a woman who had caused a babe’s death. She said nothing in return.
When a few weeks later she saw Jorild feeding the boy scraps of milk-soaked bread, she spoke again.
“Wean him, so you can go,” she told Jorild.
“We will go,” Jorild said. She had thought this day not too far in coming, but hoped it would not be in Winter.
“You will go,” Ingirith corrected. “The boy stays here, with his father.”
Ingirith spoke without thinking; now she grasped what she had just said. Her husband had time and again placed this ugly woman and her get before her – a boy that in her eyes was little more than a slave. Hrald would be forced to agree to the child staying, but the thrall-woman going. They had both injured her, and now she saw she could punish both.
“The boy stays,” she repeated. “That is the law.”
It was the law, and the boy’s mother knew it. A freeman had rights over that of the mother, if she were a freedwoman, or a thrall. Hrald could keep his son, and Jorild felt that surely he would want to.
If she took Sidroc with her he would be raised amongst those once thralls, as she herself was. She could give him nothing but a life in a dirt-floored hut. If he stayed with his father he would be seen by all as free. His father had a farm with livestock and her Uncle Oddi to help run it, and Hrald had silver too.
Jorild must leave, and her aunt would not stay without her. They need not go back to the holding she and Gillaug had been released from. Gillaug had a married daughter further North, with a croft large enough to take them in. Skilled hands such as theirs were always welcome.
They would wait until the boy was a year old. It pained Hrald, but they could not go on as they had. Ingirith was hard, with no tenderness in her, and Jorild’s presence was making her worse.
Hrald said his goodbyes to the two women at the door of the shed they had lived in. Everything was swept and tidy; Hrald did not know an earthen floor about a fire-pit could be so clean. Oddi had harnessed the oxen and would take them in the farm cart.
Hrald had a sum of silver in a tiny leathern pouch, which he pressed in Gillaug’s hand; he could not bring himself to give it into the hand of the mother of his son, as if she had been a whore. Sidroc was hanging from her skirts as Hrald spoke.
“Jorild. I am sorry to have brought this upon you. Thank you for giving me a son. Even though you go, he will always be yours, and ours.
“I will raise him as my father raised me. There is no taint upon him, nor will there ever be. He is my full son in every way.”
Her eyes were reddened and beyond tears; she had spent all night weeping. She picked up her boy and passed him into his father’s arms. Then she turned, and with Gillaug climbed into the oxcart with Oddi.
As th
ey rolled away Sidroc began to reach his arm after her, then to cry. Jorild did not turn in her seat to see him; to do so was beyond her strength. Her boy pressed one hand against his father’s chest, straining after her.
Ingirith had come out, and stood at the threshold of the house. Ulfhildr was in her arms, and seeing and hearing Sidroc cry, began herself to wail.
Chapter the Seventh: Always Be Reaching
WITH Jorild gone, things seemed at first to go better for Ingirith. She did not pet or spoil the boy, but when Spring came around again and a travelling trader commented that she had a fine son, Ingirith did not scowl, but rather looked upon Sidroc and nodded. If she must go to the trouble of raising the boy she might as well take credit for producing him.
Ingirith was a thrifty house-keeper and brooked no idleness in the two serving women and male thrall who now lived at the farm. She made no attempt to hide her dislike of Oddi, and Hrald was at pains to keep them apart, at last ordering Ingirith to leave the man entirely to Hrald’s direction. She was civil to Hrald before these dependants, but alone they spoke as little to each other as they did when they worked alongside the others.
As soon as her daughter Ulfhildr was weaned Ingirith wanted another child. If there had been amity between man and wife Hrald would have looked forward to his nights with her. But Ingirith had never lost her coldness to him. He knew she was pretty, a woman other men might envy sleeping next to, but lying with her brought release for his body and nothing more. He felt her stillness and lack of response was a rebuff not only of his attempted caresses, but of he himself. When she told him she was again with child it was hard to take pleasure in the news; she paid little mind to their daughter and almost ignored Sidroc.
Hrald did not know his wife’s ardent thoughts were focussed on another: the Goddess Frigg. Frigg was wife to All-Father Odin, and patroness of married women, and child-birth. Ingirith wanted a son. In secret she made Offering to the Goddess, wringing the necks of cocks, pouring milk at the roots of a chosen birch. But just as she had once turned her face away from her young husband, the Goddess Frigg turned her face from Ingirith, spurning her offerings, ignoring her pleas for a son.
Sidroc the Dane Page 8