Nebula Award Stories - 1983 #18

by Robert Silverberg (ed)

  Then she reached the door and motioned Sister Oddha, the doorkeeper, aside—the old Sister actually fell to her knees in entreaty—and all this, you must understand, was wonderfully pleasant to me. I had no more idea of danger than a puppy. There was some tumult by the door—I think the men with the logs were trying to get in her way—and Abbess Radegunde took out from the neck of her habit her silver crucifix, brought all the way from Rome, and shook it impatiently at those who would keep her in. So of course they let her through at once.

  I settled into my corner of the window, waiting for the Abbess’s crucifix to bring down God’s lightning on those tall, fair men who defied Our Savior and the law and were supposed to wear animal horns on their heads, though these did not (and I found out later that’s just a story; that is not what the Norse do). I did hope that the Abbess, or Our Lord, would wait just a little while before destroying them, for I wanted to get a good look at them before they all died, you understand. I was somewhat disappointed as they seemed to be wearing breeches with leggings under them and tunics on top, like ordinary folk, and cloaks also, though some did carry swords and axes and there were round shields piled on the beach at one place. But the long hair they had was fine, and the bright colors of their clothes, and the monsters growing out of the heads of the ships were splendid and very frightening, even though one could see that they were only painted, like the pictures in the Abbess’s books.

  I decided that God had provided me with enough edification and could now strike down the impious strangers.

  But He did not.

  Instead the Abbess walked alone towards these fierce men, over the stony river bank, as calmly as if she were on a picnic with her girls. She was singing a little song, a pretty tune that I repeated many years later, and a well-traveled man said it was a Norse cradle-song. I didn’t know that then, but only that the terrible, fair men, who had looked up in surprise at seeing one lone woman come out of the Abbey (which was barred behind her; I could see that), now began a sort of whispering astonishment among themselves. I saw the Abbess’s gaze go quickly from one to the other—we often said that she could tell what was hidden in the soul from one look at the face—and then she picked the skirt of her habit up with one hand and daintily went among the rocks to one of the men, one older than the others, as it proved later, though I could not see so well at the time—and said to him, in his own language:

  “Welcome, Thorvald Einarsson, and what do you, good farmer, so far from your own place, with the harvest ripe and the great autumn storms coming on over the sea?” (You may wonder how I knew what she said when I had no Norse; the truth is that Father Cairbre, who had not gone to the cellars after all, was looking out the top of the window while I was barely able to peep out the bottom, and he repeated everything that was said for the folk in the room, who all kept very quiet.)

  Now you could see that the pirates were dumfounded to hear her speak their own language and even more so that she called one by his name; some stepped backwards and made strange signs in the air and others unsheathed axes or swords and came running towards the Abbess. But this Thorvald Einarsson put up his hand for them to stop and laughed heartily.

  “Think!” he said. "There’s no magic here, only cleverness—what pair of ears could miss my name with the lot of you bawling out ‘Thorvald Einarsson, help me with this oar;’ ‘Thorvald Einarsson, my leggings are wet to the knees;’ ‘Thorvald Einarsson, this stream is as cold as a Fimbulwinter!”

  The Abbess Radegunde nodded and smiled. Then she sat down plump on the river bank. She scratched behind one ear, as I had often seen her do when she was deep in thought. Then she said (and I am sure that this talk was carried on in a loud voice so that we in the Abbey could hear it):

  “Good friend Thorvald, you are as clever as the tale I heard of you from your sisters son, Ranulf, from whom I learnt the Norse when I was in Rome, and to show you it was he, he always swore by his gray horse, Lamefoot, and he had a difficulty in his speech; he could not say the sounds as we do and so spoke of you always as ‘Torvald.’ Is not that so?”

  I did not realize it then, being only a child, but the Abbess was—-by this speech—claiming hospitality from the man and had also picked by chance or inspiration the cleverest among these thieves, for his next words were:

  “I am not the leader. There are no leaders here.”

  He was warning her that they were not his men to control, you see. So she scratched behind her ear again and got up. Then she began to wander, as if she did not know what to do, from one to the other of these uneasy folk—for some backed ofiF and made signs at her still, and some took out their knives—singing her little tune again and walking slowly, more bent over and older and infirm-looking than we had ever seen her, one helpless little woman in black before all those fierce men. One wild young pirate snatched the headdress from her as she passed, leaving her short gray hair bare to the wind; the others laughed and he that had done it cried out: “Grandmother, are you not ashamed?”

  “Why, good friend, of what?” said she mildly.

  “Thou art married to thy Christ,” he said, holding the head-covering behind his back, “but this bridgegroom of thine cannot even defend thee against the shame of having thy head uncovered! Now if thou wert married to me—”

  There was much laughter. The Abbess Radegunde waited until it was over. Then she scratched her bare head and made as if to turn away, but suddenly she turned back upon him with the age and infirmity dropping from her as if they had been a cloak, seeming taller and very grand, as if lit from within by some great fire. She looked directly into his face. This thing she did was something we had all seen, of course, but they had not, nor had they heard that great, grand voice with which she sometimes read the Scriptures to us or talked with us of the wrath of God. I think the young man was frightened, for all his daring. And'^JaipW now what I did not then: that the Norse admire courage above all things and that—to be blunt— everyone likes a good story, especially if it happens right in front of your eyes.

  “Grandson!”—and her voice tolled like the great bell of God; I think folk must have heard her all the way to the marsh!—“Little grandchild, thinkest thou that the Creator of the World who made the stars and the moon and the sun and our bodies, too and the change of the seasons and the very earth we stand on—yea, even unto the shit in thy belly!— thinkest thou that such a being has a big house in the sky where he keeps his wives and goes in to fuck them as thou wouldst thyself or like the King of Turkey? Do not dishonor the wit of the mother who bore thee! We are the servants of God, not his wives, and if we tell our silly girls they are married to the Christus, it is to make them understand that they must not run off and marry Otto Farmer or Ekkehard Blacksmith, but stick to their work, as they promised. If I told them they were married to an Idea, they would not understand me, and neither dost thou.”

  (Here Father Cairbre, above me in the window, muttered in a protesting way about something.)

  Then the Abbess snatched the silver cross from around her neck and put it into the boys hand, saying: “Give this to thy mother with my pity. She must pull out her hair over such a child.”

  But he let it fall to the ground. He was red in the face and breathing hard.

  “Take it up,” she said more kindly, “take it up, boy; it will not hurt thee and there’s no magic in it. It’s only pure silver and good workmanship; it will make thee rich.” When she saw that he would not—his hand went to his knife—she tched to herself in a motherly way (or I believe she did, for she waved one hand back and forth as she always did when she made that sound) and got down on her knees—with more difficulty than was truth, I think—saying loudly, “I will stoop, then; I will stoop,” and got up, holding it out to him, saying, “Take. Two sticks tied with a cord would serve me as well.”

  The boy cried, his voice breaking, “My mother is dead and thou art a witch!” and in an instant he had one arm around the Abbess’s neck and with the other his knife at her throat.
The man Thorvald Einarsson roared, “Thorfinn!” but the

  Abbess only said clearly, “Let him be. I have shamed this man but did not mean to. He is right to be angry.”

  The boy released her and turned his back. I remember wondering if these strangers could weep. Later I heard—and I swear that the Abbess must have somehow known this or felt it, for although she was no witch, she could probe a man until she found the sore places in him and that very quickly—that this boys mother had been known for an adulteress and that no man would own him as a son. It is one thing among those people for a man to have what the Abbess called a concubine and they do not hold the children of such in scorn as we do, but it is a different thing when a married woman has more than one man. Such was Thorfinn’s case; I suppose that was what had sent him viking. But all this came later; what I saw then— with my nose barely above the window slit—was that the Abbess slipped her crucifix over the hilt of the boy’s sword— she really wished him to have it, you see—and then walked to a place near the walls of the Abbey but far from the Norsemen. I think she meant them to come to her. I saw her pick up her skirts like a peasant woman, sit down with legs crossed, and say in a loud voice:

  “Come! Who will bargain with me?”

  A few strolled over, laughing, and sat down with her.

  “All!” she said, gesturing them closer.

  “And why should we all come?” said one who was farthest away.

  “Because you will miss a bargain,” said the Abbess.

  “Why should we bargain when we can take?” said another.

  “Because you will only get half,” said the Abbess. “The rest you will not find.”

  “We will ransack the Abbey,” said a third.

  “Half the treasure is not in the Abbey,” said she.

  “And where is it then?”

  She tapped her forehead. They were drifting over by twos and threes. I have heard since that the Norse love riddles and this was a sort of riddle; she was giving them good fun.

  “If it is in your head,” said the man Thorvald, who was standing behind the others, arms crossed, “we can get it out, can we not?” And he tapped the hilt of his knife.

  “If you frighten me, I shall become confused and remember nothing,” said the Abbess calmly. “Besides, do you wish to play that old game? You saw how well it worked the last time. I am surprised at you, Ranulf mother s-brother.”

  “I will bargain then,” said the man Thorvald, smiling.

  “And the rest of you?” said Radegunde. “It must be all or none; decide for yourselves whether you wish to save yourselves trouble and danger and be rich,” and she deliberately turned her back on them. The men moved down to the river’s edge and began to talk among themselves, dropping their voices so that we could not hear them any more. Father Cairbre, who was old and short-sighted, cried, “I cannot hear them. What are they doing?” and I cleverly said, “I have good eyes, Father Cairbre,” and he held me up to see. So it was just at the time that the Abbess Radegunde was facing the Abbey tower that I appeared in the window. She clapped one hand across her mouth. Then she walked to the gate and called (in a voice I had learned not to disregard; it had often got me a smacked bottom), “Boy News, down! Come down to me here at once! And bring Father Cairbre with you.”

  I was overjoyed. I had no idea that she might want to protect me if anything went wrong. My only thought was that I was going to see it all from wonderfully close by. So I wormed my way, half-suffocated, through the folk in the tower room, stepping on feet and skirts, and having to say every few seconds, “But I have to! The Abbess wants me,” and meanwhile she was calling outside like an Empress, “Let that boy through! Make a place for that boy! Let the Irish priest through!” until I crept and pushed and complained my way to the very wall itself—no one was going to open the gate for us, of course—and there was a great fuss and finally someone brought a ladder. I was over at once, but the old priest took a longer time, although it was a low wall, as I’ve said, the builders having been somewhat of two minds about making the Abbey into a true fortress.

  Once outside it was lovely, away from all that crowd, and I ran, gloriously pleased, to the Abbess, who said only, “Stay by me, whatever happens,” and immediately turned her attention away from me. It had taken so long to get Father Cairbre outside the walls that the tall, foreign men had finished their talking and were coming back—all twenty or thirty of them— towards the Abbey and the Abbess Radegunde, and most especially of all, me. I could see Father Cairbre tremble. They did look grim, close by, with their long, wild hair and the brightness of their strange clothes. I remember that they smelled different from us, but cannot remember how after all these years. Then the Abbess spoke to them in that outlandish language of theirs, so strangely light and lilting to hear from their bearded lips, and then she said something in Latin to Father Cairbre, and he said, with a shake in his voice: “This is the priest, Father Cairbre, who will say our bargains aloud in our own tongue so that my people may hear. I cannot deal behind their backs. And this is my foster baby, who is very dear to me and who is now having his curiosity rather too much satisfied, I think.” (I was trying to stand tall like a man but had one hand secretly holding onto her skirt; so that was what the foreign men had chuckled at!) The talk went on, but I will tell it as if I had understood the Norse, for to repeat everything twice would be tedious.

  The Abbess Radegunde said, “Will you bargain?”

  There was a general nodding of heads, with a look of: After all, why not?

  “And who will speak for you?” said she.

  A man stepped forward; I recognized Thorvald Einarsson. “Ah, yes,” said the Abbess dryly. “The company that has no leaders. Is this leaderless company agreed? Will it abide by its word? I want no treachery-planners, no Breakwords here!” There was a general mutter at this. The Thorvald man (he was big, close up!) said mildly, “I sail with none such. Let’s begin.”

  We all sat down.

  “Now,” said Thorvald Einarsson, raising his eyebrows, “according to my knowledge of this thing, you begin. And according to my knowledge, you will begin by saying that you are very poor.”

  “But, no,” said the Abbess, “we are rich.” Father Cairbre groaned. A groan answered him from behind the Abbey walls. Only the Abbess and Thorvald Einarsson seemed unmoved; it was as if these two were joking in some way that no one else understood. The Abbess went on, saying, “We are very rich. Within is much silver, much gold, many pearls, and much embroidered cloth, much fine-woven cloth, much carved and painted wood, and many books with gold upon their pages and jewels set into their covers. All this is yours. But we have more and better: herbs and medicines, ways to keep food from spoiling, the knowledge of how to cure the sick; all this is yours. And we have more and better even than this: we have the knowledge of Christ and the perfect understanding of the soul, which is yours too, any time you wish; you have only to accept it.”

  Thorvald Einarsson held up his hand. “We will stop with the first,” he said, “and perhaps a little of the second. That is more practical.”

  “And foolish,” said the Abbess politely, “in the usual way.” And again I had the odd feeling that these two were sharing a joke no one else even saw. She added, “There is one thing you may not have, and that is the most precious of all.”

  Thorvald Einarsson looked inquiring.

  “My people. Their safety is dearer to me than myself. They are not to be touched, not a hair on their heads, not for any reason. Think: you can fight your way into the Abbey easily enough, but the folk in there are very frightened of you, and some of the men are armed. Even a good fighter is cumbered in a crowd. You will slip and fall upon each other without meaning to or knowing that you do so. Heed my counsel. Why play butcher when you can have treasure poured into your laps like kings, without work? And after that there will be as much again, when I lead you to the hidden place. An earls mountain of treasure. Think of it! And to give all this up for slaves, half of who
m will get sick and die before you get them home—and will need to be fed if they are to be any good. Shame on you for bad advice-takers! Imagine what you will say to your wives and families: Here are a few miserable bolts of cloth with blood spots that won’t come out, here are some pearls and jewels smashed to powder in the fighting, here is a torn piece of embroidery which was whole until someone stepped on it in the battle, and I had slaves but they died of illness and I fucked a pretty young nun and meant to bring her back, but she leapt into the sea. And, oh, yes, there was twice as much again and all of it whole but we decided not to take that. Too much trouble, you see.”

  This was a lively story and the Norsemen enjoyed it. Radegunde held up her hand.

  “People!” she called in German, adding, “Sea-rovers, hear what I say: I will repeat it for you in your tongue. ” (And so she did.) “People, if the Norsemen fight us, do not defend yourselves but smash everything! Wives, take your cooking knives and shred the valuable cloth to pieces! Men, with your axes and hammers hew the altars and the carved wood to fragments! All, grind the pearls and smash the jewels against the stone floors! Break the bottles of wine! Pound the gold and silver to shapelessness! Tear to pieces the illuminated books! Tear down the hangings and burn them!

  “But” (she added, her voice suddenly mild) “if these wise men will accept our gifts, let us heap untouched and spotless at their feet all that we have and hold nothing back, so that their kinsfolk will marvel and wonder at the shining and glistering of the wealth they bring back, though it leave us nothing but our bare stone walls.”