She could not harm him now.
He stood looking down at her, a short, slightly plump woman with fading yellow hair. The fingers of his left hand rose unbidden, to the lobe of his ear, which she had torn.
“Sidroc,” she finally said.
Her eyes dwelt a moment on the ugly scar on his cheek. A small breath came from her, a puff of air. Her face was moving, an uncertain look which ended in a faint smile. She was biting her lower lip, studying him.
Her thoughts and memories were her own, but he wondered if she were not a better woman. Perhaps forming loaves and handing them out to those hungry for what she had made had struck up a spark of generous feeling in her breast. At any rate no scorn showed on her face.
He would not use her name; he could not, after the grief she had caused his father, and the pain to him. But he must speak, if only to recognise the connection between this woman and his lost father.
The names of his half-sisters rose to his lips, almost surprising him; he had not spoken them in so long.
“Ulfhildr, Thyrvi, and Äse – are they here? How do they fare,” he asked.
She wiped her floured hands on her apron. She had been taken by surprise at seeing him, and now by the honest concern in his voice.
“Äse is here, with me. Ulfhildr is wed, and farming, not far from my parents’ farm. Thyrvi is with her; Ulfhildr will have a child soon.”
He realised they had left home young, these two, but perhaps life with their mother made them eager to be on their own. He nodded at this news.
Ingirith kept looking at him. She could not quite bring herself to share that with the baker she had wed she had a fourth child, yet another daughter. Indeed, she found it hard to say anything at all.
She had, since her first marriage, taken obstinate pride in her capacity for hard work, giving short shrift to those who failed to measure up. But living in the great trading centre had blunted the sharper edges of her nature. Haithabu agreed with her. The folk she lived amongst were many and diverse, and even given the repetition of the baker’s trade, each day brought fresh faces to see and accents to hear. If she was as yet unable to take real pleasure in herself and others, she could at least take some satisfaction in deciding to come here.
“Why come you to Haithabu?” she asked at length.
Yrling was quick to answer. “Trading.”
They spoke a short while longer. When they selected two loaves she refused their silver, placing them in their hands, and biding them good journeying.
Toki’s envy was high, when he learnt of Sidroc’s trip to the fabled town of Haithabu.
“What did you do there,” he demanded.
“Looked at ships. Spoke to a sail maker.
“And – there are certain women in Haithabu. We went to visit them.”
Chapter the Seventeenth: The Ship
The Year 868
“WE will go, this Summer,” Yrling said.
Neither Sidroc nor Toki needed to be told of what he spoke. Yrling had just returned from a trip to Ribe, and must have determined that by Summer he would be ready to sail for Angle-land, master of his own drekar.
“My ship is being built, the sail woven. I have two months to gather my men, and lade the ship. Then we will go.”
It was after the evening meal, which had been taken within the farm house. A light drizzle was falling, and a few thralls worked about the kitchen yard. The three men were there as well, under the roof of an open shed, for what Yrling wanted to speak of, he wished to do away from the house, and in private.
We will go, Sidroc thought. The door leading to his new life was at last cracked open. He had feared it would not be this Summer, but the next; Yrling had not shared with them his plans. The one hint had been the recent stress Yrling had placed on weapons training. The three of them had not only spent long hours sparring with blunt-tipped spears, but taken turns with Yrling’s sword, hacking away at the iron rims of their shields and splintering the boards so that each needed to be replaced twice.
Even Toki was quiet, after his initial whoop of joy. He had looked for this day, almost as much as had Sidroc. The past three years had brought much change, and little had turned out as Toki had once expected. At twenty, he was the father of two children, and his own father was dead. Ful had not lived to see his son’s hand-fast with the rich Ginnlaug.
Ful was killed not two months before the feast day, but it was neither man nor beast who had brought him low. He had been felled by the bough of an elm tree. He had gone, with his son and Sidroc, into the forest to find a likely elm, one whose water-resistant wood would be cut into planks to help shore up some diking in a low and marshy pasture. They would not chop it down at once, only mark it for felling once the leaves had fallen.
They came upon such a tree, even greater in size than Ful had hoped, and he rubbed his hands as he spotted it, deciding the Fate of the mighty trunk. But the eldest of the Norns, those pronouncers of destiny, was watching. She was Skuld, ultimate collector of debt. This is the wise crone who snips the Thread of Life, and Skuld had other plans for him.
As Ful was marking the stately tree for its death, the elm did what elms are known for, the sudden dropping in full leaf of a healthy bough. That which struck him was the thickness of a man’s thigh. Sidroc and Toki were brushed back by the reaching branches, but only scratched. They jumped up to lift the bough off the groaning Ful. He was badly crushed, and though they carried him alive to the farm, died the next day.
It had been, in its way, a violent death, and was a shock to both cousins. One moment Ful was standing near them, gazing at the massive trunk, gauging how many planks could be sawn from it. A few heartbeats later they were struggling up from a green and leafy prison, the main body of the bough having just missed them. They had nothing to lay Ful upon, and must take him up by shoulders and feet and thread their way through the trees and back to the farm. Yrling was not around, having gone to a neighbouring farm with some cattle; and Signe, when she saw her senseless husband, fainted so heavily they feared her dead as well.
Toki let the elm stand, and did not tempt Fate by returning to it. The hand-fast went forward. Both fathers had given their word, and if the feast was not as gay as it might have been, Ginnlaug did indeed bring a fat purse of silver to her new husband, and carried as well as gift to her mother-in-law a panel of red silk to adorn her sleeping alcove. Though Toki had made some effort in preparing a home for Ginnlaug, they never lived there at the distant house, for now with his father’s death, Toki was made head of the farm. Signe could not run it alone, she was ill; and so the new couple moved into the house Toki had been born in.
Ginnlaug had proven a good care-giver to her mother-in-law Signe, and the serving folk she brought with her were hard workers. She had been too clever a maid to have brought the pretty serving woman Gunhild with her, which had at first aggrieved Toki. But as it was, knowing that within a year or two he would leave with Yrling on a raiding trip, he was in no hurry to invest the silver his bride had brought him in a second wife. He began to see the wisdom in growing what treasure he had, and this stayed his desires. Besides, he had his hands full. Ginnlaug was gotten with his child almost at once, and soon another followed, a boy, which is what mattered to the farm.
Now, as the rain pattered on the wood roof screening their heads, uncle and cousins spoke of what needed to be done before they left. Ginnlaug had been aware of Toki’s impending adventure, and almost as if she had been privy to their speech, began to call from the house. Toki lingered a few minutes more, and left, grinning with the knowledge that soon he would embark on a voyage of such daring.
Yrling and Sidroc watched him hurry away though the rain. Then Yrling turned to Sidroc and spoke.
“Your silver. I have put it all into the ship.”
Sidroc took this in, and without speaking. He saw his uncle had more to say.
“Those I take on, I will ask for silver, for provisions. But we may lan
d with almost nothing, save the ship itself.”
Sidroc found himself nodding at this admission. He had little of his own, so to begin on foreign shores with almost nothing seemed no special hardship. But he saw his uncle’s concern. They would have to win all they could in their first few raids, this was clear. And Yrling was untried as both leader and ship captain. He need seek more men to sail with him, and fight with him. Sidroc knew he might not be able to ask for as much as those captains who had with success sailed to Angle-land and won booty.
He thought for a moment of the silver. Yrling had showed it to him, several times. It was all he had gotten from his father’s farm. His share of those fields had been turned into silver, and buried by his uncle, and now his uncle had poured it into a ship. That was the magic of silver; it could take many forms.
“We will land with our arms,” Sidroc said in return. He lifted his hand, fist clenched as if it held a weapon. Everything they would win must be wrested with their strong right arms.
Yrling was pleased with this. “And you will get your silver back,” he promised.
Sidroc went the next morning to Oddi. They had begun to keep goats, and Oddi, with his steady and quiet way, was favoured by the beasts. The nannies pushed forward when he neared to be first to have their ears scratched, and he did the milking of them. Just now the new kids had dropped, so no milk was robbed from these young. Oddi was standing at the birthing pen looking over them when Sidroc approached.
As he neared the old man Sidroc felt again how aged he had grown; he knew he had the better portion of sixty years. He had been part of his grandsire’s life, of his father’s, and then of his. For all their long history, it felt awkward to now tell him what he must.
“I am leaving this land, Oddi; Jutland and Dane-mark, both. I will go to Angle-land, and not return.”
The old man was blinking at him.
“You are no longer bound to me,” Sidroc went on. “You are your own man, and free to go.”
Oddi was still staring at him. “Já, I will go,” he said, so slowly that Sidroc thought he discovered this thought only now. “My sister still lives, I heard tell of that, not long ago. She is up past Ribe.”
“Who does she live with?”
“Her daughter. And my niece,” he found himself saying, but could not add, She who is your mother.
“Then you will have a home,” Sidroc said.
“Já. I will have a home.”
Oddi made bold to ask a question.
“You will slave?”
Sidroc thought a moment. “I will not come back. I have heard enough of Angle-land to want to go, and stay. If slaves are taken, it will not be me bringing them here.”
Oddi gave a nod.
“Ribe,” Sidroc considered, thinking of what awaited his aged friend. “It is a long walk.”
Again Oddi nodded. “But there will be waggons, and carts passing, which will take an old man aboard.”
This was true, Sidroc knew. And Ginnlaug was a woman who felt no one should go hungry. He pictured Oddi staggering under the food pack she would fill for him. He would have food enough, to eat, and to share.
Sidroc had something ready for him, caught in a tiny pouch of leather, and held in his fist. He had counted over the silver he had at hand, and taken one-third portion of it to give to Oddi, as a parting gift.
“For your service to my father,” he said, lifting Oddi’s weathered hand and pressing the purse into it.
Oddi came close to speaking then, but his memory of Hrald stopped him. Hrald had never told this boy he shared a blood-tie, however faint, with his former thrall. He would honour that silence once more.
“May the Gods see you on your way,” was the blessing the old man gave.
Indeed, despite the misfortune in the young man’s life, Oddi thought the denizens of Asgard did take note of Sidroc.
“Oddi is leaving,” Sidroc told Toki later that day. “Going back to his kin.”
Toki’s mouth opened. “I need Oddi. He must stay here, help run the farm while I am gone.”
“He is free to go, and he will do so, soon,” Sidroc returned. “The thralls know enough. And Ginnlaug – no one is sharper with silver than she; she is her father’s daughter in that.”
Toki did not share Sidroc’s estimation of his wife’s ability, and he showed this by the way his lip twisted at his cousin’s words. How could a woman who had been cosseted all her life, whose prize possession was a head wrap of silk, be trusted to run a large and active farm?
“Many women run farms when their husbands trade, or raid,” Sidroc pointed out. “Balle, her father, was away months at a time.”
Ginnlaug may have lacked comeliness, but she was sensible, and more than capable about the place, and with the thralls and serving folk. She was also not without feeling. Toki, if he thought of such things, would have no fear for his mother’s happiness with Ginnlaug mistress.
“And Ebbe need brew much less ale, once you are gone,” Sidroc added as a gibe. Since Ful’s death and his own marriage, Toki had ended nearly every night drunk.
Toki did not seem to hear this; his thoughts reached back to an old resentment. “This is my father’s doing,” he sulked.
“Ha! If he had not forced you to wed, you could not go at all; you must remain and care for the farm. Instead you have a rich wife and so leave her, and your mother, in comfort.”
There was not much Toki could answer to this. As it was he hoped they would leave before Mid-Summer’s Day and its feast. Ginnlaug relished any chance to be seen with Toki, and they had hosted many a gathering at her behest since they wed. She need not know he planned to take his time returning.
The next month Yrling went ahead to Ribe, moving there to oversee the completion of his ship, and to find men. Signe shed tears over her younger brother’s leaving, and Sidroc and Toki found it hard to watch him mount his mare and ride off alone. All the grain was sown, but sheep-shearing remained to be done, and there was no need to join their uncle in Ribe until his ship was afloat. Indeed, it saved silver to wait, for food was costly there.
As in every late Spring, certain tasks of the season awaited. Roof thatching that had lifted over Winter must be set aright, beating it back in; wattle fences weakened by wind or beasts must be renewed by re-weaving; and chopping and stacking firewood, the endless task of their boyhoods, still beckoned. The busy days fell, one by one.
The day before they were to leave for Ribe, Sidroc left the house in the grey mist of dawn. He saddled Ful’s old horse, then went to the fowl pen. He snatched at a young cock and stuffed it into an oiled linen sack, so that only its head arose above the pucker of the drawstring. He tied this to the saddle ring, slung his shield on his back, tightened the tether, and took up his spear. Then he swung up, and put his heels to the barrel of the beast. They trotted out of the farm gate, heading due West, and to the sea.
Sidroc did not often look at the sea; the farm he had lived on for the last thirteen years was just far enough inland to make owning a boat a trouble. But he held close in his breast the memory of his times on the water with his father; and knowing where he was headed, and for what ends, felt called to go there now. He had a dedication to make.
Trotting along the westward road he passed a farm or two in the early going. The road turned North, but he went on his westerly path, by smaller tracks and then through grassland. He had his spear in his right hand and guided his horse with his left. He felt the weight of his shield, and the leather strap across his chest that held it. The young cock warbled and gave a stifled crow as they set off, but was otherwise still.
There had been little wind when he left, as happens often in the early hours of the day, but as the Sun began to climb he felt a freshening breeze, carrying to his nose the salty smack of the sea. The blue haze which was the sky resolved itself from the darker blue of the water. The grasses before him gave way to shrubby growth, and he picked his way through it to a beach of s
oft brown sand. The offshore islands were out there, sand bars, really, and he walked the horse along the beach a way, until only open water met his eyes. He got off his horse.
Across that water, far to the West, lay Angle-land. He could not see it, but he knew it was there. He would make Offering here, facing his goal, and dedicate himself to what lay ahead.
His father’s words came to his mind. Always be reaching, he had told him on that day he had taught him to swim, the day in which he had grasped his outstretched arm and saved his life in this North Sea.
He knew what to reach for, what he wanted: Angle-land and treasure. But no man could venture to such a goal unaided.
He set down his spear, pulled his shield off, and laid it at his feet. He loosened the cock from its sack, and holding it by its struggling feet, raised his arms. He was alone before the Heavens. Only the gentlest ruffling of the wind could be heard, and nothing moved save the nodding heads of the sea grass. No bird, neither gannet nor fulmar, oared overhead. The sea-path to Angle-land lay open, empty and beckoning. The Sun was glinting off the water before him, showing ripples golden and shimmering, making almost a bridge of light to the paling sky.
“Tyr!” he cried, to get the God's attention. “Look at me!”
His voice rang over the empty landscape. No one lived but he and his God.
His hand went to his knife, and he drew it as he lowered the fowl to the sand. A thrust at the throat sent the cock to Tyr. He stamped his left thumb in the warm blood and put it in his mouth, taking part in the Offering. Then he straightened up and again lifted his arms to the sky, bloodied knife in his right hand.
“I have no father but you,” he called. “Make me your son, Tyr. I give myself to you.”
The light breeze picked up of a sudden, blowing at his hair and tunic, as if Tyr had heard and was sending him an answer.
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