Sidroc the Dane

by Octavia Randolph

  The troop moved easily and well in a morning of growing warmth, one blue-skied and with a gentle breeze ruffling the fully opened leaves. Setting off at an easy canter they must ride through their own village, and the women and old men at work in their crofts looked up gape-mouthed at them. Once past the common pastures and into open land they slowed, having no need to push. They kept to the main road, passing those tracks which led to the small hamlets they had already frequented. The Sun had not yet reached its highest point in the sky as they neared Geornaham.

  They were met first by a mounted escort, four thegns, fully armed, awaiting them at the side of the road. These did little more than nod, and take up their position leading them. Trees hemming the road gave out to an open vista of meadowlands, and beyond this the pastures and then waving grain fields of the village fronting the keep.

  A number of the crofts of the village of Four Stones had been destroyed in the taking of the keep, and left in ruins. This village of Geornaham was smaller than what remained. But the low-roofed houses, many of them round, were solidly built of stiff wattle and daub, and well-thatched for dryness within. The numbers of goats, milking ewes, and lowing cows told butter and cheese must be found in abundance. The folk about, men, women, and children at work in rows of beans or around animal pens, stopped in what they were doing to look at them. Sidroc, in the first rank behind the leading thegns, noted their expressions. It was not the dull fear they had this morning seen the village women of Four Stones wear, but a curious interest. The fact that this large body of Danes was led by their own Lady’s thegns lent calmness to their watching eyes.

  The palisade enclosing the keep was well-made, not so tall as that of Four Stones, but encircled perhaps greater area. Its doubled gates were opened; they had seen that from afar, and now they rode in. Stablemen came forward, ready to take their horses, and they quitted them. Of the many structures before them the great hall stood out, not only for being larger than any other, but for the three who stood before it, awaiting their approach.

  They were greeted by Eldrida, the Lady of Geornaham, a wan and angular woman who held herself as straight as an iron rod. She wore few adornments, but even Sidroc could tell the linen of her light-hued gown was spun of thread of unusual fineness, and the coloured thread-work embellishing throat and hem had been stitched by a needle-woman of skill. Next her were two men. One, who the eyes of Sidroc and Yrling went to first, was a warrior, a man in full war-kit, ring-tunic as well, and with his steel helmet under his arm. He had a curled beard of light brown, and loose but thick yellow hair, paling now to grey, resting almost to his shoulders. The breadth of chest and brawn of the arm cocked to hold his helmet spoke much about the muscled thews beneath those linked rings of steel. The pale blue eyes looking back at Sidroc and Yrling wore the appraising gaze of an expert warrior gauging another fighter’s worth.

  As it turned out, it was the second man who would be far more vital to their dealings. He wore a long gown of almost black wool. About his neck was a thin knotted cord from which hung a cross of silver. A holy man of the Christians, they saw. He might have forty years or more, was thin-faced, and regarded the visitors with piercing eyes beneath arched and questioning eyebrows.

  They were led in, all of them, to a hall not much larger than that where Yrling supped and slept each day, but of markedly greater order. A line of serving folk were already coming forward, bearing basins and towels of linen. The Danes would have been left standing dumbly before them if the lady’s captain had not set down his helmet on a table, dipped his hands in the proffered basin, and dried them with the linen. Thus prompted, every man of Four Stones found himself doing the same, rinsing away the dust of the road and the grime from the reins they had so lately held.

  The high table was easy to pick out, with a ewer of silver upon it, and a few cups as well of silver. Yrling and Sidroc were led to it by the mistress of the hall, while his other men took their seats at the tables set about either side of the fire-pit, in this warm weather banked low. Once at the table, Eldrida took up the ewer in her bony hand, and poured out a brown strand of foaming ale into each cup, passing one first to Yrling, next to the man she called her priest, then to the captain of her thegns and Sidroc, and finally for herself. Four Stones boasted no cups of silver, and as Sidroc wrapped his fingers about the one she handed him he thought the very thinness of its walls might enhance the flavour of the ale swirling inside. Serving folk moved between the other tables, filling up bronze cups for all of Yrling’s men.

  After the first draught was taken, they began. It was all done in so few words; few enough that both Danes were surprised. The daughter of the hall was a maid, never wed. Her dowry was large, both in lands and silver. But as a maid she must wed and leave her home, which the lady wished to give as endowment to a church in her home shire further West. Thus the girl would come to Yrling with a chest of gold, equivalent to ten years’ rents.

  The bride-price requested was the protection of Four Stones over Geornaham and all its holdings. That was all.

  This speech was delivered by the Lady of Geornaham herself, in a tone low, almost rasping. Her priest, who she called Osberht, at times added a word or two; her warrior captain kept wary silence.

  Eldrida, having delivered her terms, let the men surrounding her absorb them. She had been Lady of Geornaham for three-and-thirty years, and widowed for the last seven. Her two sons had died in childhood, as had two other daughters, the one only being left to her. The girl tended to piety, but lacked, her mother gauged, the firmness of purpose to commit herself to a life of prayer. It was in fact Eldrida who wished to consecrate herself as a nun. She had run her course, served lord and hall, borne children and grieved them. She had tired of the trials of the world before the Danish invaders had begun ravaging her properties, trampling her fields, carrying off her grain and her folk.

  Merewala had been ally, and might have been more if he had lived. He had been widowed for years and with her own daughter of age a strengthening of that friendship might have been achieved through their wedding. Now, with her powerful neighbour dead, his keep taken by these Danes, she was hard pressed to see another, better solution to the quandary. No king or near-by lord was left in Lindisse to aid Geornaham. A union now might prevent complete capitulation later.

  She had broached all this with both priest and captain, knew they were against it. She was not without intelligence, and a forcefulness of her own in the face of such opposition. Her captain’s charge was defence, her priest’s, to pray. One was pledged to protect her body, the other, her soul. Both had served her long, and for years before her husband had died. They had carried forth their duties to him and his family and his keep in unbroken chain when she assumed her lonely role as widow and head of this holding. She was weary of being hedged about by these men, trapped in the narrow confines of the needs of her hall and folk. A life of contemplation, of oration, of gentle service to women who like her had fled the world, now called her with a voice insistent and supernal.

  She let her eyes, always discreet in their seeking, lift under lowered lids to the man sitting opposite her. This was the man who had overcome Merewala, who walked his grounds, ruled his people. Here was the new order of the land, before her, and the safest haven for her girl.

  She regarded Yrling, allowing herself a full assessment. His person was not displeasing; a well-knit, even powerful body, the hair of mid-brown combed and trimmed; eyes of animal-like sharpness beneath the strong brow line. The jaw was equally firm. Only the nose gave discord. It sat slightly askew on the face. She wondered with fleeting thought if it had been well-formed, and been at one point broken.

  Taking them both in, she was glad it was the elder she could present to her daughter. The younger one was almost ugly, the scar on his face drawing all eyes to it. And his height might frighten her girl. At least for such a tall man he was not ungainly; he moved with assurance. She had watched them both carefully as they neared, at first uncert
ain who was the suitor.

  A movement of her priest’s hand upon the table stopped her musing. With her eyes she bid Osberht speak.

  “You will of course receive the Holy Sacrament of Baptism,” he told Yrling. The priest had the palms of both hands flat upon the table, his upper body leaning slightly towards the man he addressed. “You will take one wife, your union blessed in the eyes of the Church, and cleave to her only, until one of you dies.”

  Yrling knew that the women of Angle-land expected to be the sole wife of their husbands. This did not trouble him. With a large holding such as Four Stones and much treasure, it made things simpler. His heirs would be limited to those children his wife bore him, and those natural children he chose to single out from any born him of serving woman.

  “One wife,” he agreed, not masking the slight irritation he felt at being so schooled. He spoke their tongue with a distinct and lilting cadence that marked the speech of the Danes.

  But there was one condition he would not agree to.

  “My Gods are my Gods,” he asserted. The way he lifted his chin at these words and looked back at the priest suggested the matter was closed.

  “There is one God, one Truth, one Light, one Way,” replied the priest. He had assumed the patient tone of one dealing with a child.

  “Odin,” answered Yrling.

  The priest suppressed his splutter, but Sidroc could catch the slight smile breaking at the corner of the captain’s thin lips. He too, did not like this priest.

  Sidroc glanced at his uncle, a look of inquiry, to which Yrling gave a nod of assent.

  “The coming Lady will make sacrifice as she wishes,” he began, unsure of the rituals of Christians.

  “The sacraments are sacrifices, you are correct,” answered the priest. “And I will travel with her to Four Stones to ensure they are observed.”

  Neither Dane relished this thought, but it was far from an onerous demand. This priest might hold great sway here at Geornaham, but would hold none at Four Stones.

  Yrling nodded. “Then you will come and help my wife in her offerings,” he agreed.

  Osberht turned to the Lady Eldrida. A small movement of her hands as they rested upon the table top conveyed her acquiescence. Osberht had to squelch what would have sounded an angry exhalation of breath in response. He had wished for no less than the opportunity to usher this heathen and his followers along the path to conversion, and to do it prior to the wedding. The union as this Dane’s reward for being sprinkled and blessed was true inducement. To allow him to wed her beforehand deprived all of them of the most compelling reason he should submit to baptism.

  But the Lady of Geornaham had never counted on this Dane’s conversion as a condition of wedlock. She had heard about the attack on Four Stones within a day of Merewala’s death; knew as well that his daughter had perished. Geornaham had been prepared for attack of its own. Instead they had been left largely in peace. She had considered the possibility, which had arisen as a reality two days ago, of the new Lord of Four Stones suing for the hand of her daughter. The priest Osberht could do as he liked once at Four Stones, as long as he protected the interests of her daughter, and the children born to her. The union would be blessed by the Church, the coming children raised in it. That was what mattered.

  Eldrida made this clear in her next words.

  “In addition to Osberht, my daughter will come with such serving folk as she wishes to bring with her,” she said.

  As simply as that, the issue of Gods was set aside by this woman. The two Danes watching her were aware she had overruled her holy man, and likely the wishes of her champion thegn, in doing so. They had more than a small amount of admiration for her.

  She waved her hand at a young serving maid, who had been standing all this time not far off, just visible in the shadows near an alcove.

  “Bring Eadburh to me,” she asked.

  The girl was brought, as richly dressed as any husband might hope for. She wore a gown of yellow linen, the light hue of which did not hide the necklace of small gold beads about her throat, for between each bead was a red carnelian the size of a pea. Her head was wrapped in a veil of white cloth of delicate thinness, so light as to flutter in her wake. The hair coming down beneath that head wrap was a pale and ashy brown, falling completely straight just past her shoulders.

  In person she was as thin as her mother, but far shorter. The face was that of a serious child, though they had been told she had seen fully eighteen years. Her unease, even fear, showed on her brow, though she tried to compress her lips into a smile. Eyes, nose, and mouth were not ill-shaped, yet nothing led to beauty. She had the comeliness of youth and little more.

  “Eadburh,” her mother was saying, “this is Yrling, Lord of Four Stones. Jarl,” she added, recalling that this is how he had named himself.

  A week later Yrling returned to Geornaham to fetch his bride. Sidroc was left this time in command of Four Stones, and Toki was there to witness the joining of hands between his uncle and his betrothed. It was more than a hand-fast. The priest uttered words, made signs in the air, dropped to his knees and rose, even placed a piece of bread in the bride’s mouth. Yrling took the maid’s hand and the priest made more signs over them.

  There was a bride-ale, a modest one by the standards of the Danes, and then, on the same day Yrling and Toki had set out, they rode back to Four Stones.

  Eadburh sat in a waggon pulled by two oxen, her priest beside her, a drover walking at the beasts’ heads. She brought as well three serving women, all not much older than she, and goods in the form of two looms, a chest of clothing, a barrel of bronze table ware, a round salver of silver, bed linens, towelling, and feather-stuffed cushions. The real dowry was in the leathern saddle bag strapped to the far-side of Yrling’s red stallion. A small wooden casket with a domed lid, filled with gold, was tied there.

  The Lady of Geornaham had brought this out to Yrling a week earlier, after her daughter had been dismissed. It was perhaps the fairest thing to do, for the beauty of so much glittering gold would throw the comeliest maid into shadow. Latching his eyes on the coins, necklaces, rings, and ornaments within the casket made a plain wife easy to accept.

  To carry back this treasure Yrling had brought sixty men with him, all fully armed. Baggage trains were readily ambushed, though he had taken care that none outside his own walls knew the day of his setting out. It meant leaving Sidroc with only thirty-odd to ensure the keep. But should anyone try their hand against Four Stones in his brief absence, he felt Sidroc best up to the challenge. As it was both foray out and back were uneventful, save that Yrling rode back a far richer man, and married.

  There was a real bride-ale at Four Stones. Enough was drunk so that Eadburh ran up the creaking stair near the entry to the small rooms above, her serving women in tow. Osberht the priest retreated to the passage between hall and kitchen yard after one Dane jestingly lifted his gown to see if he wore leggings beneath. Toki played his harp and sang; and when enough ale had been passed, many other men raised their voices in song as well. Jari took on all who neared in arm-wrestling; even three-fingered his right arm bore such force he rarely lost. Gaming pieces, never far from any Dane, were brought out, the men moving from table to table as their luck-spirits demanded. And there was dice, with heavy wagers placed and not a few punches thrown. When Yrling went to retrieve his bride he found her in tears. He led her to the treasure room. He had hoped she would show more spunk than the first woman he had wished to wed, Merewala’s daughter. Instead she cringed every time he touched her. He had lain with a number of women, both in Jutland and here in Angle-land, and never taken so little pleasure in a woman’s body.

  And her presence did not moderate the depletion of Four Stones’ stores. Eadburh’s mother had run a large keep, overseen a village, collected rents, and armed a fighting force. Eadburh seemed unable to muster even the cooking staff. She was cowed by the laundresses, fearful of walking in the village, evince
d alarm at horses, and had no skill at brewing. She was ever in the company of her frightened serving maids, looking as though she might erupt into tears, or clinging to Osberht the priest, as he chanted over her.

  Sitting next to Yrling at table, she seemed bewildered, if not lost. She could not glance at Sidroc without wincing, and Toki, to her horror, soon took to a sniggering and secret wooing of her. At first Yrling had allowed Osberht to sit at the high table with her, but seeing how much of her time was spent in prayer with him he banished the priest to take his meals in the kitchen yard. There he was better treated than in the hall, for the folk were believers; but his earthly pride was hurt.

  At night, in the treasure room with Yrling, Eadburh spent interminable time mumbling her prayers. At times he would let his eyes slide to the iron-bound chest that held the domed wooden casket filled with gold. This was the only good he could find in her.

  She was dead by Winter. There was no visible malady, only a wasting away. Her mother Eldrida had left Geornaham to go as a nun, and the place itself left in the keeping of a steward. The convent which housed her mother was a three days’ ride away. To Eadburh it might as well have been across the sea. The Winter was a wet one, with much frost and damp. The fever she took was just enough to carry her off.

  Chapter the Twenty-sixth: Heat, and Loss

  The Year 870

  YRLING and his men had the Gods’ favour to have ridden inland and learnt of Four Stones when they did. The keep of Merewala could not have long withstood the predation of their rapacious brethren. Between Guthrum and other war-chiefs of fame, Lindisse was now almost entirely controlled by the Danes. They, and other smaller war-lords, Yrling amongst them, had carved up this wet but fertile shire and made it their own.