Sidroc too was silent, and Gunhild kept her eyes upon her mistress’ back. The only one who spoke was in fact Ginnlaug, for when a man or woman cast an admiring eye upon her gown, she was quick to direct them to the plot where Balle, the famed silk merchant of Viborg, was now showing his wares.
On their return the silk-clad maid led the cousins down a side way they had not before noticed. A few cloth merchants were there, sellers of woollens and linen, and perhaps she wished to show herself to them. As they passed one building of timber a man stepped from the door. The group was already moving on, but a shrill clanging turned Sidroc and Toki around. The man they saw was curiously dressed, in a plain brown tunic so long it looked almost a woman’s gown. His brown hair was short, and cut in such a way that the top of his head was nearly bald, though the hair grew thickly enough, like a fringe, elsewhere upon it. The clanging came from his hand, for he shook a cup-shaped piece of metal, so that it rang out loudly.
“What is it?” Sidroc said aloud. The noise was shrill and clamourous.
Ginnlaug knew, and Gunhild too showed no surprise.
“A Christian. I have seen him before. His name is Anskar. That is his temple, and the bronze in his hand, a bell. He is calling others to come and pray with him.”
“A Christian,” Sidroc repeated. He remembered the thrall woman Berthe, and how she worshipped Christ.
“The King gives him leave to do so?” Toki asked.
“Já, já, for many of that belief come from Frankland, and they needs must pray to their Gods, just as we do.”
“So, a good business to let him be,” Toki said.
Here Sidroc and Toki found their eyes meeting, then going back to the simple and small hut where the man Anskar stood, shaking the noise out of the bronze cup he held. Yrling had told them the Christians of Angle-land had treasures in their temples; he had heard of other Danes finding great weight of silver lying in the open on tables there. But this hut was so humble as to make it hard to believe anything of value lay within.
They moved on, and by the time they returned to Balle’s waggon the silk seller and Ful were ending their talk.
“We will be here three days. Go home, speak to your wife about it,” Balle was saying. “Come back within that time, we will talk more.”
As they took their leave, Ginnlaug dropped her eyes before Toki, hoping that when she raised them he would be smiling at her. He gave a hasty nod and turned away.
“We have met your match,” Ful told his son as they reached their own waggon. He was in high spirits, rubbing his hands together, and grinning broadly.
“My match?”
“Já, this Ginnlaug. There is no better bride than a rich man’s daughter.”
“Bride? I cannot wed now; I want to go with Yrling, to Angle-land,” Toki answered.
“Já, you must have your adventure; that is understood. But wed first, get settled. When Yrling is ready then you can go with him on his raiding trip. You will see Angle-land, then you will return.”
Toki had opened his mouth, but his father cut him off.
“He is a buyer of silk,” Ful stressed.
“And he wants to buy me too,” Toki returned.
“There is no better match for you. Who indeed would you choose?”
There was in fact a dearth of suitable maids in the area, at least maids who could bring Toki real value in bridal-goods. Gunnborga was one; she was not only winsome, but would be richly dowered. Whenever they met she was polite to him, but even Toki understood she did not favour him. At any rate, Gunnborga was already promised to a cousin of her mother’s, a man undoubtedly far richer than he.
“Someone like Gunnbor – ” Toki began to answer.
“Gunnborga, Ginnlaug, there is little difference,” Ful retorted.
Toki snorted. “Ginnlaug is as homely as a turnip,” he complained.
If Bragi favoured him with a fine voice, it followed that the God should also allow him a wife of loveliness similar to his own: Idunn, she who kept the golden apples of youth for the Gods. This silk-seller’s daughter his father eyed for him had the face and form of a root vegetable.
Ful was forced to consider this. “Já,” he allowed. “But her silver will be beautiful. And,” he went on, “in the dimness of your alcove it will not matter. Keep your eyes closed if you must.”
This fatherly advice fell short of easing Toki’s concerns. “You ask too much,” he shot back.
It was all Sidroc could do to keep from laughing aloud. It would be a long time before he could afford a wife, but at least he was free from Ful’s plots and plans.
Ful was already envisioning the coming of Ginnlaug to the farm. “You will make your home at Åfrid’s old place; Ginnlaug will expect being mistress of her own farm.”
Toki remembered, with almost a sick feeling, Sidroc teasing him about this; his cousin had been right. He knew Sidroc was just at his left but could not look at him; it would confirm the snare he was being led into.
His father was going on. “Já, she will want to begin in her own house. And she is sure to come with a raft of serving folk.”
At this Toki jerked his head. “The pretty one, too?”
Ful thought a moment. “Be wary. Women dislike you sleeping with their own servants. But a second wife – that she can have no objection to.”
“I do not even want a first wife,” Toki protested.
This was no argument. All men and women wed, save those who were unsound in body. Toki knew he must wed, and make as good a marriage he could. His father countered this, and with no little impatience.
“Why are you blind to your good fortune? If you wed her, you will have silver enough to keep a second wife, one you can choose for her beauty.”
So it went on, nearly all the way home.
“When?” Toki finally asked, in way of assent. They had neared the farm. “When will it be?”
“As soon as we can. It is too good to pass up.”
Chapter the Sixteenth: Haithabu
TOKI’S hand-fast was set for the beginning of Blót, that month named for the blood that flowed from the sacrifices offered to the Gods. This last month before the onset of hard Winter was also marked by its feasting, as all beasts which could not be kept over on sparse fodder were also killed, and their meat salted, brined, and smoked to serve over the long and dark Winter months. Blót was thus ideal for celebrations, and deemed to be a propitious time for the joining of young couples.
This was three months away, but the farm was already preparing. Toki in particular was at work. The tenant family with their troublesome daughter had been sent on its way, much to Yrling’s relief, and Toki and two of the male thralls were readying Åfrid’s old farm to serve as bridal home for Ginnlaug, the silk seller’s daughter. The distance was great enough that Toki moved there as he readied the place to receive his bride. It marked a decided change in the lives of the cousins, as Toki moved closer to this threshold of manhood.
Sidroc and Yrling were busy at the farm, aiding Ful and the remaining thralls, but after the last grain harvest Yrling surprised his nephew. He invited Sidroc to join him on the three-day ride to the great trading port of Haithabu, on Jutland’s eastern coast. Yrling had travelled there once, and wanted to return. Ship-builders were there, and those artisans who crafted every needful thing for sailing vessels, from whale-skin and braided hempen line, to wool and linen sails. He wanted to take a serious look at all this, even though he was not yet ready to buy.
And there were further attractions to the place, which he went on to share with Sidroc.
“There are certain women in Haithabu,” Yrling told him. “We will go and visit them.”
Sidroc knew what this meant, and could not keep a slow smile from spreading across his face.
His scar went crooked as he did so. He had worn it now for five years, but it still had the red and angry look of one newly healed. Yrling’s own face had suffered by his broken nose, bu
t in its own way it made his visage the more hawk-like, a set of piercing eyes over a raptor’s beak. Some may have thought him more attractive for it. But few would have counted Sidroc handsome, even without his marred cheek; and though they had never spoken of it, Yrling was right in assuming his nephew had yet to know the embrace of a woman. This was one thing he could help him to.
Sidroc said nothing, just nodded his assent, and Yrling gave a laugh.
They would ride there, taking Ful’s horse as well, which Sidroc would ride. Their bed rolls and hide ground cloths were strapped to their saddles, but they would stop at farms for food; any would feed them for a bit of silver. Sidroc welcomed a break from the tedium of farm work, and before him was the long ride on horseback, and the prospect of sleeping out under the night skies in countryside new to him. Then there was their goal, and what it might hold.
Haithabu was due South, and then clear across the width of Jutland, right to the barricade of the Danevirke, which they would skirt when they came to it. Sidroc knew this is where his father Hrald had come and bought the good salt from Angle-land that took him across the Baltic to Gotland. As they walked their horses at the foot of the Danevirke he was aware he trod the same path his father had so many years earlier. But Sidroc was on a horse, and when they approached the sword-bearing guards at their posts along the base of the barricade, they looked up at him. True, he carried only a spear, and his shield slung over his back by its leathern tether, but he was at Yrling’s side. The two of them looked fully warriors, he thought. One day he would have fine clothes, a sword of beaten steel in a tooled sheath, and the horse tossing his head under him would be a stallion of great worth. As it was they warranted a glance, more than given those on foot.
Yrling owned a sword, and a good one, but he was not wearing it. Instead of strapping it on, Sidroc had watched him pack it in his leathern pack, and tie it to the iron rings of his saddle.
“You will not wear your sword?” he had asked then.
Yrling shook his head. “For show?” His grin faded. “I should not need it here on Jutland, and the wearing of it can bring more notice, and so trouble, than I care to court.”
It was this thoughtful cunning that Sidroc admired in his uncle. He carried the weapon with him, should they need it, but would not flaunt it.
It was late in the trading season and the crowds not as thick as found at Summer’s height, but there were still more folk than Sidroc had seen, even at the largest of the Things he had stood at. Once they passed through the gates in the tall palisade they could walk their horses on the larger planked roads. They edged their way past rows of stalls laden with baskets of cabbages and carrots, sacks of grain, small pots of honey, crocks of linseed and whale-oil, tables where shorn fleece and sheep skins lay heaped. Iron pots and pans clanged from overhead hooks, simple buckles and fittings for horse harnesses and bridles lined one man’s table, and an old woman had piles of animal teeth from sheep, goats, and cattle, drilled for use as fastening toggles.
Seeing a group of women clustered at the tables of one stall put Sidroc in mind of why they had come. He went over to what they looked at, made a decision, and slipped his purchase into his belt before catching up to Yrling, nearly lost to view in the throngs closing around him.
Folk of many lands traded here, both walking the pathways and standing at attention in stall and booth. Snatches of speech unknown to them floated to their ears, as did Norse in many accents. Rus traders from the shores of Lake Ladoga, garbed in peaked caps and the full and pleated leggings of their kind, held up pelts of brown mink and white fox, or cradled tiny coffers bearing healing resins and aromatic gums from foreign trees. Svear traders were there, with stacks of dried stockfish, and shining ingots of pure copper. Most numerous of all were buyers and sellers from every part of Dane-mark’s many islands. A large number of those at workshop bench or treading the roads were women, working at the sides of their husbands and grown children, offering woollens or linen, carving combs from red deer antler or ox horn, selling boiled eggs from baskets slung over their wrists. There was a brightness to their countenances that surprised Sidroc. Some of them, both young and old, rimmed their eyes with some sooty substance, making them stand out; and some young women had a rosy sheen on the lip. Some sort of beeswax, he thought; and as they made their way through the crowds it did make him look the longer at them for it.
Their goal was the frontage of the fjord on which Haithabu lay, where all the ships tied up. Some were docked at long wooden piers, others hauled up on the reed-lined shore. Boat builders and the repairers of boats were there, as were tar-merchants, rope-makers, coopers hammering up casks, and those smiths whose specialty were ship rivets and pulled nails.
Once at the frontage, they got off their horses, and led them. At the end of one pier was a space clear of work shed or warehouse, a space apart, and not yet empty. Two tall wooden carvings rose from the packed ground, and behind and before them were the smaller posts holding tined forks and open-work boxes marking a Place of Offering. The carvings were painted depictions of the heads of one-eyed Odin, All-Father; and of green-clad Freyr, guardian of ships. The great heads were the size of bushels, the painted eyes fixed and staring. All trading anchorages in the Norse world had such, a place where landing merchants might give thanks for safe passage, and offer what they could of loaves, bread, or a live cock fowl to ensure good trading. The richest merchants might even send for a piglet, and spill its blood in order that his goods might find ready buyers.
This noon there were none bowing their heads before the images of Odin and Freyr, but the speckled feathers of a newly-killed fowl spoke of one who had recently dedicated it. A dog, likely stray, sat beneath it, with lolling tongue and hopeful eyes.
They gave a nod at the carvings, and moved on with their looking. Most of the ships before them were broad-hulled merchant ships, knorrs; or smaller fishing boats whose bulging nets returned full of cod, herring, and sea trout to help feed the masses of hungry tradesfolk. A few, though, were drekars, war ships, and these were the vessels the two lingered before. All raiders were also traders; booty must be sold and bartered, and there was no greater trading post in all of the Norse lands than Haithabu.
Those built for war were fashioned for speed, longer and narrower than either fishing boat or trading knorr. Their tall pine masts could be swiftly lowered in bad weather, when rowing up narrow, tree-hung rivers, or while fighting ship to ship. All it took was the pull of the mast lock at its base to guide it down by the lines arising from prow and stern to the mast’s peak. Stout oars powered by strong backs propelled the ship in light winds or when every knot of speed was needed. In the back, near the stern, the greatest of these, the steering oar, shot over the starboard side and into the water. The tiller that slotted into the steering oar was held by the captain himself, or his trusted helmsman.
The curving prows and sterns of the ships they looked upon rose high and proud above the decks. A fearsome carving of an open-mouthed dragon or fanged creature might front the rising prow stem, and there too a wind-vane of chased copper would swing, ready to tell the helmsman how fast and from where blew the winds he sailed into.
On one they saw, standing up against the straked sides of the prow, an upright iron bar ending in a spiked curve. A stout and heavily tarred hempen line was knotted through an eye at the top of the bar. It stopped Yrling when he saw it.
“How rich is he,” he muttered to his nephew, “to have such an anchor, all of iron?”
Most boats and ships used anchors of stone, wedged between a yoked fork of wood, and tied in. But this war ship boasted one far easier to handle, of iron. It had Yrling shaking his head in wonder.
Even unladed, the ships were never left unguarded, and for the brief duration of their port stay a few heavily armed men would always be aboard. As Yrling and Sidroc walked along the line of ships, such men peered over at them, looking up from some task they bent over on the deck, or standing, arms crossed
over chests, at prow and stern. Some wore swords at their sides, and bracelets of twisted silver upon their wrists, and one man bore a necklet of gold. A few cast what Sidroc knew was an appraising eye upon them. None spoke.
“If we wanted to join them…?” Sidroc asked his uncle in a low voice, once they had moved away.
“I would choose the likeliest ship, one that showed its captain took care about it, and its lading,” he was told.
Yrling glanced back to the crowded roads of the trading town. “Then I would ask where their captain was drinking. Seeing him would tell me more, about him, and the men he chose to raid with him.”
Such a war-chief would be surrounded by his best men, as they took their leisure over ale or mead. It would mean approaching them, revealing their interest in being taken on. It could end in scorn, or blows. Men were killed at common brew-houses, and with some regularity. But those fighting at Haithabu, or any royal trading town, faced penalties so steep that few disputes broke out.
Sidroc looked his question to his uncle, wanting more.
“He would size us up,” Yrling went on. “Ask who else we had fought with. Where we had been.”
“What would you say about me?”
Yrling swept a glance over Sidroc, head to foot. A man’s outward form was his hamr, the shell to contain his hugr, his essence and mind. In some men the hugr could even be that of a wild beast. Yrling could not guess much of Sidroc’s hugr, but his outward shell, his hamr, was impressive enough.
“I need not say much,” he told his nephew. “He would look at you, your size. The scar would tell him the rest of what he wanted to know.”
The scar would tell him the rest, Sidroc thought. The scar my cousin gave me at twelve years of age.
For years he had been taken for being older than what he was; at seventeen he looked five years more. It was his height, and he knew, the scar. If men wished to believe he had earned it in some desperate struggle, let them.
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