Two Ravens

by Cecelia Holland

  “I don’t doubt it,” Bjarni said.

  He stripped off his coat and threw it across the foot of his bed. Ulf got him by the arm and swung him around.

  “My advice to you is to get out of here,” he said to Bjarni. “Take your slut. You have made bad enemies, and you have outworn my hospitality.”

  “Your hospitality!” Bjarni shoved him.

  “I am warning you,” Ulf said. Andres and Jon came around the fire, one to either side of the hearth, their eyes on Bjarni. With the fire at their backs and their faces in shadow they looked wolfish.

  “Well, you have warned me,” Bjarni said, “but against three of you I think I should have the first blow.” He cocked his fist back and drove it forward into Ulf’s stomach.

  They rushed on him. Under their weight he was borne back, and his spine hit the edge of the bed. He fell onto the bed, got his feet up, and shoved Ulf back away from him. Andres dove onto him as he lay there, and Bjarni rolled over and knocked him away.

  Ulf hit him from the side. Bjarni slipped down to one knee. He folded his arms over his head. They pounded at him, their fists bouncing off his arms. A boot came at his chest. He lunged forward to meet it. With the boot in his hands he pushed the body attached to it back toward the hearth.

  He managed to stand up. With a lucky hit he knocked Jon away from him, and for a moment he and Ulf milled at each other, taking and giving the hardest blows they could. Ulf stepped back first, blood running down his face from his nose.

  Bjarni gasped for breath. None of his brothers was down; they circled him, wary, their fists raised. Their faces gleamed. There was light in the room, more light than before.

  Ulf shouted and rushed at Bjarni again, and Jon and Andres came at his back. Bjarni slid his feet along the floor. He fended off Ulf’s first round arching blows. Getting his back to the wall, he set himself and began to strike at them all.

  They hit him, fists and feet thudding on his body and arms and legs. He took that, glad to take it if he could hit them back. He made them stagger. With a hot joy he realized that he could fight them all at once.

  “The bed is burning!”

  That was Gifu. Bjarni softened Andres with a hard stroke in the stomach and laid him out on the floor. The jumping light of the fire glistened on Ulf’s face. Jon had flinched back. Other people were around them, pulling at them. Bjarni lifted his fists and flung himself on Ulf.

  They went down hard. Ulf elbowed him in the throat. He tucked his chin down; he fought for breath. Gifu was screaming his name. The fire blazed down one side of the booth and on the ceiling. She pulled at his arm.

  “You will burn—you will burn—”

  He lurched to his knees. Ulf rolled onto his back, his face painted with blood that shone brilliant in the firelight. Bjarni got him by the wrist and dragged him toward the door. Ulf got his feet under him. He yanked his arm free and blundered the rest of the way. Bjarni’s knees wobbled. He stepped across the threshold into the mist of the night.

  The others were standing around at a distance from the fire, watching. Gifu held Bjarni’s arm against her side. He turned back toward the heat. The walls of the booth were of lava but the wooden beams, the straw beds, and now even the sod roof were burning.

  “What happened?” Ulf said.

  Jon was doubled over, his hands on his knees. “I guess—when I hit the fire, I knocked something in. A chair. Something.” He snuffled and shook his head, spraying blood around.

  Bjarni licked his knuckles. His arms and shoulders hurt.

  Hiyke walked in among the men. Her black shawl flapped. She said, “What were you doing, that you did not stop to put out the fire? God’s Love, none of you is fit to live here.”

  None of the men spoke. Over her head, Bjarni met Ulf’s eyes. They looked long at one another, until something rueful and friendly passed between them. Together they started toward the shed, for tools to keep the fire from spreading.

  BJARNI FISHED all the next day in the bay with a handline. In the owl-light, he and Gifu sat on the beach splitting the fish and hanging them to dry.

  “What do you think of Hiyke?” he asked her.

  “I love her,” Gifu said at once.

  That startled him; it seemed unlike her. He wiped his knife on the cloth. His sleeves glittered silver with scales.

  “She rides her horse with me,” Gifu said. “She gave me three dresses. She even likes the baby coming.”

  “What did she say about you and Kristjan?”

  “Oh,” Gifu said, without looking up, “I just wanted to see what he was like.” Then she said, “It is Hiyke whom you love, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anyone you love, I love,” she said.

  He slit open a white fish-belly. Hiyke was pitting him against his brothers—against Gudrun, in the end. Because of the fight, they had lost the sleeping booth. There was a lesson in that. He remembered the fight, and his heart quickened. He could have beaten them all, if the fire had not interfered.

  “What are you thinking about?” Gifu asked.

  He started out of his dreams and bent over the fish.

  THE NORTH WIND blew clouds over the sky, and they settled on the mountains and hid the pass from sight and shut out the sun. One day a man walked down out of the clouds to Hrafnfell. It was Ketil Longheels. He carried all his possessions on his back.

  Bjarni met him in the yard. Ketil shook his hand.

  “I have come to warn you,” Ketil said. “And to take you with me, if you will go.”

  “What is this?” Bjarni asked.

  Hiyke was in the cookhouse door, watching.

  Ketil said, “I have been summoned to my local Thing. I know what it is about. They are going to outlaw us. The nine of us who sacrificed at Thingvellir.”

  His voice was low, yet Bjarni knew Hiyke had overheard him. He did not look at her. Ketil’s face was white with strain. Bjarni took his arm.

  “Come into the hall.”

  They went down the steps and along the room to the table. Bjarni brought over the jug. They sat down with the jug between them on the table. They were alone in the hall, but the little door at the end stood ajar, the door to Ulf’s and Gudrun’s room.

  “I am leaving Iceland,” Ketil said. “I know what will happen. There is nothing to be done about it—and I would only humiliate my family if I stayed.”

  “Drink,” Bjarni said.

  They each drank of the mead. Ketil could not keep still; as he spoke, his hands twitched and turned in half-finished gestures.

  “There must be a place a man can go. You have been all over the world. Come with me.”

  “No one has summoned me yet,” Bjarni said.

  “They will. They know all our names—it was all about at the Thing; you must have noticed.” Ketil wiped his hand over his face. “There is no keeping secrets at the Althing.”

  “What of your wife?” Bjarni asked.

  Ketil put his head down on his hands. After a moment he straightened again. His face was an old man’s face. “She shut the door on me.”

  Through his shirt Bjarni touched the amulet around his neck. Here was another strange twist in his fate.

  “Will you come?” Ketil said.

  Bjarni shook his head. “I will not leave Hrafnfell.”

  “You will be outlawed.”

  “Yet I will not leave Hrafnfell. You can stay here until you are ready to go on—stay here and rest.”

  Ketil lifted the jug to his lips. Bjarni left him there, already half-drunk.

  He found Hiyke in the shed, milking the goats. She held one goat’s head and shoulders between her knees and bent over its back to reach its bag.

  “Ketil will stay with us a few days,” Bjarni said.

  “He is welcome,” she said. Her hands worked rhythmically. “You were one of them. At the famous sacrifice at Thingvellir.”

  “Yes.”

  “What a fool you are sometimes.”

  The goat bleated, protesti
ng. Hiyke straightened and moved the bucket, and the goat backed out of the grip of her legs. Bjarni leaned against the ladder. He put his hands behind him on the smooth wood of the rung.

  “Does it matter to you? You lived so long with Hoskuld—it cannot make such a difference to you as it does to the others.”

  She stroked her fingers over her face. Deep creases framed the corners of her mouth. She reached for the pail.

  “Leave it,” he said. “Answer me.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know what I think, since Hoskuld died.”

  “Did you love him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you never marry?”

  “He would not go into a church,” she said, “and I would not sit in the High Seat and take the hammer on my knees.”

  With a sharp sideways motion of her head she dismissed that. She said, “What about this news that Ketil brings? Does anyone else know that you were there also?”

  “Probably. I must be summoned to our Thing before they can judge me. I can guard against that.”

  She was staring at him, her wide-set eyes like crystals. “How long can you stand against the whole of Iceland?”

  “You are making more of it than there is.” He picked up the pails of milk and started toward the door. “It will fade. Next year no one will remember; there will be some other scandal.” He took the milk across the yard toward the cookhouse.

  KETIL STAYED only that one night at Hrafnfell, and he slept so restlessly that Bjarni, who was sleeping near him in the hall, wakened three or four times in the night. Just after dawn Ketil walked along the road around the bay.

  Bjarni went with him. They came to the place on the cliff where the path met the sea-road. A bitter wind was blowing from the north and heavy clouds hung low above them.

  “Be careful,” Ketil said. “Maybe I imagine it, but I see nothing but trouble for you with your family.”

  Bjarni gave him some money. “You may need this,” he said. “Go to Eirik Arnarson, he is always outfitting ships, and he will give you an oar to pull, to Norway or Greenland perhaps.”

  “Thank you. Once more I will ask you to go with me.”

  “I will not run,” Bjarni said.

  “You make me ashamed,” Ketil said, “and at this point, if this were an old tale, I would stay and help you, but I am going on.” He shook Bjarni’s hand a long time and went away down the road.

  Bjarni went the other way, down to the beach. The sea was crashing against the shore; the wind stung his cheek. He blinked into the wind, looking out to sea. The waves heaved and bashed their heads together under manes of foam. The spray flew over the rocks. Exhilarated, he opened his mouth and filled his lungs with the storm wind. He spread out his arms. When the storm reached Iceland, these waves would batter at the cliff behind him. Nothing could match them except the great whales, who played with storms. Bjarni shouted. He called out old chants in honor of the storm to come. His face pebbled with salt water, and his spirits high, he walked back up the cliff road toward Hrafnfell.

  THE STORM BROKE over them. Day after day sleet and rain swept in along the wind, hammering the grass down and roaring around the houses so loud that sometimes the people inside could not hear one another talk. The blackened pit of the burned-out sleeping booth filled with water and floating char. The rain running down the hill began to seep into the barn, and Bjarni took the pick and the shovel and ditched along the outside of the wall to lead the water off. Half-frozen, he went to the cookhouse, took off his wet clothes, and sat down in the warmth behind the oven with the jug of mead.

  Gudrun came into the cookhouse.

  “Oh,” she said. “I thought to find Hiyke here.”

  Bjarni was sitting half-naked on the stool, his feet propped against the wall; he pulled his shirt across his lap. Gudrun held her hands behind her. She smiled at him.

  “I don’t know where Hiyke is,” he said.

  “Oh, well,” Gudrun said. “It was unimportant.” She came a step closer to him. “My father hates you worse than the Bishop,” she said, “which is a thing to marvel at, you know.” Her skirt grazed his fingers.

  Gifu pushed in the door. She saw them together, and she grinned wide as a fox.

  Gudrun had turned and was taking down pots from the shelf. “Have you seen Hiyke?” she said.

  “She is in the loft,” Gifu said.

  Gudrun went out with an armload of pots.

  “All women are sisters,” Gifu said. She perched herself on the bench beside him, her arms around her ripening body.

  Bjarni took a long pull on the jug. “Forget you saw that.”

  “Never,” Gifu said.

  A booming gust of the wind thundered on the sod roof like a great fist, and all the ladles and spoons hanging from the beams danced on their hooks. Gifu shrank down.

  “When will it stop? It just goes on and on—”

  “Another three or four days, at the most,” he said.

  “Oh.”

  He touched her neck with his fingertips. “It will pass.”

  The storm was a blessing to him. By law he had to be summoned to the Thing by the man bringing suit against him. Fortunately, he had no legal home; he was just a guest at Hrafnfell. Therefore the summoner had to give him the summons to his face, and before witnesses. As long as he kept away from suspect people, he would be safe from the law. While the storm raged, no one would take to the road to come to Hrafnfell.

  “She looked at you like a rat at cheese,” Gifu said.

  Bjarni pinched her neck. “Keep it to yourself, or I’ll thrash you.”

  “Oh, Bear.”

  * * *

  THE STORM DIED AWAY. The sun rose brilliant in a cloudless sky. The windward sides of all the buildings at Hrafnfell were coated with a shell of ice, which melted in an hour. Gudrun Sigurdsdottir rode away around the bay, to hear Mass said at Eirik Arnarson’s church. The following day, Bjarni and his brothers set about cleaning up the mess of the burned sleeping booth.

  The rain had soaked the ashes and char to a black paste. Bjarni and Ulf waded in up to their knees and shoveled the sludge into the cart. In the back of the booth, where the room was cut deeply into the hillside, Bjarni found the heavy filigree clasp of the coat King William had given him.

  “You should have stayed there,” Ulf said, “where you were welcome.”

  Bjarni shined the face of the blackened clasp with his thumb. “It was not my home.”

  “I am asking you one final time to give up your claim to the farm,” Ulf said.

  Bjarni straightened; his brother’s voice warned him. The walls of the booth reached up above the level of his head. On his left, Andres suddenly appeared, standing on top of the wall, a rake on his shoulder. Bjarni glanced behind him and saw Jon there.

  “Yes,” he said to Ulf. “Go on.”

  Ulf bit his lip. He raised the shovel in both hands. Loudly he said, “Bjarni Hoskuldsson, I summon you to the Smoke River Thing, to let it be judged that you adored false gods, which is against the law in Iceland.” His voice cracked. He gathered breath again. “I do this in pursuit of a case I bring against you, as head of your family.”

  With an effort Bjarni kept his hands at his sides. “Are you sure that the words are right?” he asked.

  “Gudrun had them of Eirik Arnarson himself, only yesterday,” Ulf said.

  Bjarni stirred, lifting his arms. Ulf quickly clambered up to the top of the wall. He still carried the shovel. Bjarni looked up at his brothers, ranged around him on the walls, and each had some weapon.

  “You cannot unsay it now,” he said to Ulf. “But I warn you that you have made this a different fight, threatening me with weapons.” He walked out of the foul pit of the sleeping booth.

  ALL THE REST of the day he walked on the cliff over the sea, trying to sort out his thoughts. If he stood before the people at the Thing, he would not lie, he would not deny his faith, and they would outlaw him. He could leave Iceland, or he could stay
, but if he stayed anyone could kill him. He climbed down the cliff to the beach. The storm had strewn the sand with driftwood, the bones of the sea.

  He sat on the sand and watched the sea. Over his head ravens swooped and chased one another. It was cold and he began to shiver. At last when he was too cold to think he went back up the cliff and crossed the hillside toward his home.

  The bulging cliff glittered in the sun, still wet from the storm. A motion at its foot caught his eye. A horse galloped out of the shadow of the cliff and headed toward him. He stopped. It was Hiyke. She rode straight to him and drew rein.

  “What will you do now?” she asked. “Do you still think I am making too much of this?”

  “No, you are right,” he said; he was angry at her for railing at him. “Does that make you proud?”

  She lifted the black arches of her brows. The horse snorted and lowered its head. She said, “What will you do?”

  He scanned the farmyard, on the slope below him. There was no sign of Ulf. Kristjan loitered in the cookhouse door. The wind played in the grass. There were clouds moving in again from the north. Far down the sky, he saw a flight of geese going south.

  He remembered what he had done at Sigurd’s church. He said, “Perhaps I can keep them from going to the Thing. If none of us appears, there is no case.”

  Hiyke nudged the horse with her heel, and it sidestepped closer to him. She said, “That is too dangerous. They’ll fight—someone might die. Then there will be no reconciling any of you.”

  “What would you have me do?”

  “Go to the Thing—offer Ulf a fine of some sort.”

  “I would have to forswear the Aesir,” he said.

  “Do it, then!”

  “No.”

  “You must. It is the only way.”

  “No, there is my way.”

  “To fight.”

  “To meet them face to face.”

  Her breath hissed between her teeth. She swiveled her head, looking away from him. Her fists were clenched together over the reins. He put his hand over her two fists. Her hands were cold.

  “I am not Kristjan,” he said. “You cannot drive me here and there, like a sheep.”