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Sidroc the Dane

Page 10

by Octavia Randolph


  They sat on the shore, the Sun falling on their backs and shoulders, warming their bodies and the air around them. Whirring insects, large and small, dropped from that warm air to hover over the surface of the water. Hrald remembered his times sitting here with Hroft, and the filmy wings of insects just like these dipping and darting before their eyes. As they watched them Hrald began to speak.

  “There is something that we share, Sidroc, something in our blood-bond.”

  He was aware that his boy’s eyes, which had been trained on the tiny bodies flitting above the water, were now turned to him.

  “It is our fylgja. Our guardian-spirit. She comes from my father to me, and from me to you.”

  “She?”

  “Fylgyur are always female. Every family has one, passed along, shared within it.”

  “What does she do?”

  His father made a soft laugh. “Nothing. It is up to us to listen to her, listen for her.

  “If we do so she can guide us, help us make the right decision.”

  “What does she look like,” Sidroc wanted to know.

  His father considered.

  “Think of the most beautiful woman you can imagine. She looks like that.”

  He told his son this, even though he sometimes wondered if his fylgja was not almost a child-spirit; there was a kind of innocence about her. But Sidroc could discover that part later. Right now it might be more useful to imagine her womanly, and wiser than he.

  “Do the girls have one,” he asked now, thinking of his little sisters.

  “Já, já. All do. But some do not listen. Some never feel their presence.”

  “How…how do I feel her?”

  “You will sense her. Here.” Hrald tapped his own chest, which made Sidroc lift his hand to his own. “If there is a decision that must be made, make yourself still, here. Listen for an answer. Often it will come. You will know if it is right. Sometimes you will even feel your fylgja move within you, as if she is nodding her head, Já, or shaking it, telling you not to do that.”

  Sidroc was sitting at his side, blinking up at him, but also nodding his head, absorbing, not questioning. The stillness of the place, the beauty of it, the swim together after the fright of the morning, all lent quiet force to that which they shared now.

  Hrald thought of what more he could say. The times he had sensed his fylgja moving within him had led to the best outcomes in his life. But sometimes she had had no part in the path he must walk. Hrald had not asked his fylgja if he should wed Ingirith. That decision had been made for him. And there were many forces that intervened in men’s lives, for good or ill. Magic and sorcery could bend anything. And the Gods could cause great mischief if they chose.

  They walked back to the farm. The hound Hlaupari barked his welcome, and ran to Sidroc as he always did. Äse, Sidroc’s youngest sister, was tottering around the base of the fowl-house. Ulfhildr and Thyrvi, the middle girl, came out from the dim interior, a shallow basket clutched to each small chest.

  Sidroc grinned at his sisters. “I can swim,” he announced.

  As the older girls were clamouring over this achievement, Ingirith came out from the house. She had the forked beating-stick that she used to clout the grit from the bedding in her hand, a tool which the three older children had also felt. Both Sidroc and Ulfhildr fell silent for a moment, wondering if she would use it on them. The hound slunk away. Sidroc stepped closer to his father, almost without knowing it. But she looked at the group and pressed her lips tighter together, and went to where the feather cushions from her bed were sunning. From the way she beat the pillows that her sister-in-law Signe had presented her, one might think she meant to burst their linen tickings.

  Hrald watched her. He could not tell her that Sidroc, caught in a fishing net, had nearly drowned this morning. She cared nothing for Sidroc, and disdained, if not hated, him. The distress he had felt would move her not, and she would be happy to be rid of his son. Looking at her, slapping the dust from their wedding gift, he felt his loneliness as a man more sharply than he ever had.

  “Do not ever use that on the children again,” he found himself saying to her.

  It was so unexpected, and his voice so grave, that her hand froze in mid-stroke. She turned her head to look at her husband, and then whacked the beating-stick down into the pillow in a single stroke of fury.

  Grain harvest came, the fields bleaching from green to gold. Every morning Hrald squeezed a maturing kernel, feeling its progress from soft and milky to hard and ripe. Each small plot of oats, rye and barley was now ready to be scythed, gathered, threshed; and the rye and oats winnowed as well. Hrald and Oddi and the thrall worked almost from dawn to dusk of each hot and dry day. Sidroc worked at the threshing, beating the dried stalks of rye and oats with a grain-bat to free the seed heads, and he and Ulfhildr at winnowing, tossing the freed heads in the cross-breeze of the barn. This was dusty but light work for the youngsters, as the crisp chaff blew away, and the dense nugget of grain dropped to the tarpaulin spread on the floor.

  Ingirith and the two serving women worked at the digging and storing of the first root vegetables. Turnips, parsnips, onions, carrots, beets, and many-fingered cream-coloured skirrets yielded to their prising tools. These were laid in the deep root cellars, their thatched roofs just set above the surface of the soil, where they would stay cool yet free of damaging frost. The last bean stalks were stripped and the pods cracked open to dry the plump beans within. The cabbages, left alone along their rows in the plot, grew huge, immense furling spheres of swirling green and white.

  One day when the laying-in of the grain harvest was almost complete Hrald left Oddi to walk to the kitchen yard. The jug of water he had taken to the grain-house had been emptied into their thirsty throats, and he went himself to refill it at the well, glad to clear the dust from his eyes and nose. It was late in the afternoon and he would not be surprised to see Ingirith there, ready to begin the making of their evening meal. But as he rounded the corner he heard a stifled cry, followed by a stream of shrill invective.

  There was Ingirith, pinching Sidroc’s ear at the lobe with one hand, as she thrashed him with the forked beating-stick across his back and legs. The boy had pulled so in his attempt to flee that she had ripped his ear, and a trickle of blood flowed from it and down his neck. He was now pushing her away as best he could, his head bent at a painful angle as she gripped his earlobe. A large pottery bowl lay in pieces on the ground.

  Hrald yelled out as he lunged, dropping the jug in the dust. His hand was on his wife’s shoulder an instant later, whirling her about as he broke her grip on Sidroc. He snatched the birch beating fork from her right hand and snapped it in two, throwing it at her feet.

  “Your filthy get from that ugly bitch,” she shrieked. “As clumsy and as stupid as you!”

  Hrald could take no more. He reached out and slapped Ingirith across the face, and hard. She staggered back, almost falling, both hands going to her cheek.

  Sidroc was holding his own hand to his bleeding ear, and crying. Hrald now saw the two serving women, hustling away and out of sight. From the open door of the house Ulfhildr, in tears, peered out, her two younger sisters clinging to her.

  “We will part, Ingirith,” Hrald was saying. His own anger made his voice hoarse. “We will sunder this marriage.”

  Oddi had appeared, drawn by the noise, yet had stayed well back, as was fitting. Hrald saw him, and moved his head in his direction. “Oddi is witness to what I tell you.

  “I will do now what I wish I had done the second night of our union, send you back to your father. You will take your wedding-goods and go. Begin now to pack up your things. You will leave tomorrow, with the oxcart to carry you. I will give you half the silver we have earned. But you will go.”

  Her head was ringing from the blow, but his words were clear enough, though she could not believe them. The laws of Dane-mark made it simple for any union to be dissolved, and many unhappy
couples parted. Ingirith did not like Hrald and despised Sidroc, but she had never told her husband she wanted the marriage dissolved. It felt a shock, akin to the repudiation she feared on the road here, eight years ago. That a maid as pretty and desirable as she should be rejected by her new husband would have been a shame beyond recovery. It was even worse now; she had seven and twenty years and could not hope to attract a fitting man. The Goddess ignored her, and she hated herself for having brought forth only daughters. Who would want her, with three girls? She was proving she could not get a boy.

  She had nothing to hold him by, no son she could threaten to take from his father. “I will take the girls,” she spat back.

  Hrald cared for them, and the loss of them would pain him, but he told her the truth. “They are better off with their grandmother, who is a good woman.”

  She howled. “You – you have wrought some spell-work on me, so that I could not bear a boy. Some dark Gandr-work to keep that thrall’s son your heir!”

  The accusation caught Hrald up. Sorcery was practised by women, almost never by men. It was a woman’s craft and any man found casting spells was suspected of unmanliness. This made him liable to attack, even murder, by other men. To say this to him was akin to questioning his manhood.

  His shoulders had slumped, and he stood staring at her. She had dropped her hands from her face, and he saw the imprint of his hand on her inflamed cheek.

  “I have been too easy on you,” was all he could say. “Would I had sent you home that night, before you could wreak such mischief on us all. Já, you will take our daughters; it is your right. But do not pretend you care for them.

  “And I could name anyone my heir.” He reached his arm out now towards Sidroc, and pulled the boy to him. “But I am glad I have a true son from a good woman to serve thus.”

  All was over for him, she saw, but she did not like the ending. She thought it a feeble threat, but said the next with as much force as she could muster. “If you send me away you will never see the girls again. Never.”

  Hrald looked to where the three stood whimpering in the doorway. They were innocent of all of this, as innocent as his son. He must trust that their grandmother would give them what they could not find in their mother. Right now he must leave them with Ingirith.

  Hrald turned and left the kitchen yard, Sidroc at his side, and Oddi just behind them. He walked so swiftly that even with his own long stride the boy had almost to trot to keep up with him. When they reached the last outbuilding, Hrald stopped. He looked about him, as if dazed, then bent to his son. The ear had stopped bleeding, but the tear was a ragged one. He felt a new flush of rage that Ingirith would so misuse his boy.

  “Sidroc,” he said. “All will be better now. You and I will stay here, and have the life I always wanted for you.” He crossed his arms over his son’s back as Sidroc’s arms spanned his waist. Hrald did not know how to comfort the boy, and drew on a recent day that had brought them both fright, and then happiness.

  “We will return to the lake soon, and swim, continue your lessons,” he promised. This made Sidroc tighten his arms around him, and nod his head. It had been the best day the boy had known.

  Hrald let out a long breath, then held the boy at arm’s length.

  “I will bring my young brother Yrling to live with us, as I always wanted. He will be as an older brother to you, and I will learn to know him again. We will make our way.” He lifted his head, looking also at Oddi.

  “Go now, back to the house,” he told them. They had stopped before the hut in which the fishing gear was stowed. “I am going fishing. Stay with Oddi,” he told Sidroc. “She will not try to hurt you again.”

  “Let me go with you,” Sidroc asked.

  His father shook his head. “I must be alone. I need to think.” He looked at the sky; it was late in the day. He rarely took the boat save at dawn, when winds were light and the sea calmest. “I will not be long,” he promised. “But I must be alone now, and think.”

  Chapter the Eighth: Why Do You Look Up?

  HRALD did not return that night.

  Sidroc had gone back to the house as his father had asked him. He splashed his face and bathed his torn and aching ear. He and his sisters were ladled a silent meal by the serving women; Ingirith did not appear. When the washing up was complete and his sisters gone off to their box beds he lingered in the kitchen yard with Oddi and the serving women. As the light began to dim Oddi walked down with Sidroc to where the boat should be. It was gone, and there were clear signs of his father having launched it. Sidroc could even see the imprint where the net basket had rested in the tall grass; the green blades were still bent from the weight. Hlaupari had come with them, and the big dog’s tail beat a steady rhythm against Sidroc’s leg.

  The wind had risen, and now it carried a trace of salt brine to their noses. There was a shift in the fading light, and the clouds that seemed to sit behind the trees on the other side of the stream bank grew black.

  “He is a good boatman,” Oddi said, after a long silence. “If he met trouble, he would bring her to shore.”

  Oddi had at times gone out with Hrald when he was a youth. Hroft’s shoulder ailed him in old age, and he would send Oddi and his son, confident in their ability.

  Sidroc nodded, wanting to believe this. He knew he was a good swimmer, too.

  Oddi led him back to the house. Other than the thrall and serving women still in the kitchen yard, all was quiet. Hlaupari usually slept outdoors, but Sidroc let him come in; he wanted his company. The curtains on his parents’ alcove were drawn shut. When all were within, Oddi locked the front door, and slid the bar against that to the kitchen yard. Sidroc undressed and got into bed, but he did not lie down. He sat up, his back against the wooden dividing wall, listening. He sat a long time, waiting to hear the sound of his father’s key in the big iron box-lock. His father always had his key with him, and the door was left locked from the inside after dark. Sidroc would hear his father’s key rattling as it lifted the inner latch. His hound was on the floor boards just outside his alcove, and he knew he would bark his welcome when that happened.

  At last he slipped out of bed and dressed. Hlaupari thumped his tail against the floor and rose as well. The door key was on the hook by the frame, where Oddi had hung it, and he turned it in the lock and let himself and his dog out.

  Oddi found Sidroc on the bank of the stream in the morning. His hound was by his side, sitting up, and his barking when Oddi approached awoke Sidroc.

  The boy sat on the damp grass, looking up at Oddi as he told him what he already knew, his father had not come back. Oddi’s face turned down the stream. “He is a good boatman,” he repeated. He was unable to look at Sidroc as he said it.

  On the third day Oddi left, a pack on his back, to trace the stream to the sea. He might find word of Hrald, or of his boat. Sidroc wanted to go with him, but Ingirith would not permit this. She had awakened the day before to the news that her husband had taken the boat and not returned. “Would he had taken you too,” was all she said to Sidroc. She had done nothing to pack up her goods, he saw that.

  Her sulkiness was replaced by bouts of crying, a sudden sobbing that startled the serving women and left the girls hanging on to each other. Sidroc did his chores of carrying and stacking kindling, feeding the pigs, and penning and unpenning the geese, but otherwise spent the days at the stream bank, Hlaupari wandering though the grasses as he waited.

  Ulfhildr came with him once but sitting there made her cry, and she ran back to the house. Hlaupari was never sad, and if he got restless would chase a resting fulmar from the water’s surface back into the air, heading for the North Sea. Sidroc watched the birds soar, knowing they set out for open water, knowing that his father lived; but not believing he would leave him behind.

  He was there when Oddi returned, and heard the story twice, the second time back in the farm yard. Oddi had walked up and down the coast for a day in either direction, lookin
g for signs of the boat, asking any he met. None had seen man or vessel, but all told of the squall that whipped the waves to froth between the island channels and the North Sea.

  Ingirith listened, saying nothing. The sea that should have taken him nine years ago had finally done so.

  Oddi shifted from foot to foot as he went on. “Would you have me go to his sister, that she might know, Mistress?” He was not looking at her face, but almost at her shoes, as he addressed her.

  Hrald’s wife did not hear him. She had felt panic and anger and wept the most violent tears of her life in these past days. Now the surety that she was not to be driven away after all began to expand in her constricted breast. Hrald could not send her back, not now. She would not return to her parents in shame, three girls in tow.

  She turned on the four children.

  “You father is dead,” she told them.

  The children had been face to face with death before they could speak: the wrung neck of a non-laying hen, the cracked skull and slit throat of a pig, the limp plumed wood grouse and brawny deer their father hunted, the long-eared hares he snared. But to picture their father thus was beyond their ken; their faces showed it. Beasts needed to die that they might live and be fed. That he who provided for them was now also dead made no sense.

  Saying it aloud made it real for Ingirith: her husband was dead. Hrald had ruined her youth, but at least he had not taken everything from her. She was free. She wanted no ill gossip, and would wait a twelve-month, but then could wed again. She would lose no time now in claiming some scrap of happiness for herself.

  Sidroc was standing next to Ulfhildr, and closest to Oddi. Ulfhildr’s eyes had grown round, and now were squeezing shut as she lowered her head. Her long brown hair fell over her shoulders and was caught up in her small hands as she lifted them to her face. She began to cry, quietly, but her younger sisters saw it and began themselves to weep. Sidroc could not look at them, and found himself moving closer to Oddi.

 

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