by Born, Jason
I have never been in that cave. I probably never will go into that cave so I only imagine what it looked like. I picture the remains of many great men laid out, the dry rot of years taking their toll. Maybe the war and spirit trinkets are still set atop them. Maybe these great men rise each night to kindle a fire and talk of the challenges and joys of being a king of sorts. Maybe they go to Valhalla and celebrate with Odin singing the war songs. If they did that, however, I often thought, there would be trouble for they would have to get used to fermented drink. Or maybe they go to the One God and his heaven and celebrate there. Or maybe they go to the valley on the far away island and hunt with Glooskap.
I didn’t really know what happened after death. I did know that I had sent many a man there myself. I further knew that the only written proof I had was from the One God, all else was by word-of-mouth. So I was assured that it was his will that would prevail. It always did for me. His Providence would guide me and protect me.
. . .
Council was called the next morning, early. We had to decide what to do about what may become another war with the Pohomoosh and perhaps even the Fish, but since most of us were in council after Ahanu’s death, we knew our first priority would be to name a chief to avoid the disgrace rightfully heaped upon our heads by Nootau.
Hassun, bitter from once again missing out on a name-making battle, led the council. He was senior, perhaps thirty-five years of age and a close relative of the Ahanu line. It was also likely that he held out hope that his chance to be chief had finally come. It was not meant to be.
“The men who added the most wisdom to our last naming of leader have gone to Glooskap,” he said, referring to both Kesegowaase and Etleloo’s passing, but perhaps also to his own father’s addled mind. Nootau was having a bad day, yelling at his woman that Ahanu waited for him to hunt and so he was therefore not summoned for the council. “Let the spirit of Glooskap, who holds council with our ancestors, enter each of us so that when our mouths open, we find wisdom residing within.” Good start I thought as I crouched behind the main circle of men in the chief’s big mamateek. Several times over the years, especially during the last war, I was invited to sit among the elders and give the chief direct council. Each time, however, I declined saying that I served. I did not lead their people.
Time dripped like a slowly melting icicle tucked under the shaded branches of a tree, as the men of the council pondered or gamed politically or meditated while a single pipe packed with a dried mixture of herbs was shared. There had been no tobacco in the village for two or three years as trading always went through periods of bounty and want. After taking a puff, the men would release the smoke deliberately, allowing it to climb into the room and eventually the sky to take their prayers with it. Some waved the smoke back over their heads to bring the divine answer back to them.
While the last of the men finished his smoke, the young one called Pajack, that thunderous little thing with bones jutting from seemingly everywhere, spoke, “The line of the last chief is dead. He has no male heirs to take his place and so it is time to move to a new line. Hassun has been a leader of our people since the tall strangers first came.” The two men shared a look that told me they spoke of this beforehand. “He should be chief.” A small faction of men nodded their approval.
Too eagerly, Hassun answered, “It is my honor to accept.”
Men are funny creatures. The very faction who one moment earlier gave their approval of Hassun as chief were turned off by his impatience and set their faces to stone, waiting for a new, better name to come forward. So once again Hassun’s hopes were dashed, though he did not yet know it.
There were two men older than I who sat in the circle that day. The first, a happy man of simple thoughts who should never lead anyone except perhaps himself – even that would have been a challenge – was sitting near the door in front of me. I think no one gave him any consideration as chief. The second, Achak, was confident, retained some strength from his youth, and proved to be a good hunter over the years. Though he would never lead a war party again because his joints nearly hobbled him, I favored him because of his age and experience.
I did briefly toy with the idea of naming Rowtag the Younger, but he was too green. Perhaps he would lead these people in ten years when Achak passed on to Glooskap.
“Achak,” I said.
The old man waited for some nods and positive comments to come from the council members before he said, “If it is the will of the council I will serve, but I think we have others more suited to the task.”
Rowtag the Younger took up the case. “I will support Achak as chief if it is the will of our council. He would lead us with honor and wisdom, but I think Glooskap has seen fit to provide us another leader of vast experience, sound judgment, and with the strength of a pack of wolves. I take a different view from what Pajack said earlier. The line of chiefs is not broken, only bent in a new direction. In the morning we face the sea and find the sun. In the evening we face the land and find the sun. It is still the sun, but we face a new direction.” Men listened quietly. The simple, happy old man held the pipe puffing with his eyes closed.
“When the world works according to normal laws, a man succeeds his father to the house of chief. But these are times when the world is crooked. These are times when men can come from the sea in giant canoes. These are times when we are told of a One God who is more powerful than all other gods. These are times when the Mi’kmaq fall upon us to steal and kill. These are times when it took a stranger and a seasoned warrior to tell us that our silly girls have value. These are times when the world is crooked, bent to a new direction. These are times when the father should succeed the son to the mamateek of chief.”
His talk made me dizzy. I wished I understood it, but it was so fine that I also wished that I had remained silent or raised Rowtag the Younger’s name for chief.
Agitated, Pajack complained, “How can we make that so? He is foreign.” Hassun nodded approvingly to the young thunder, clearly hoping that someone other than Pajack would support him as chief.
It was Achak’s turn. “Rowtag has shown that the wisdom of his lost father is in his mind. To answer your question thundering Pajack, we may make it so for we are the council.” Men grunted their approval.
“But we must obey the traditions!” shouted Hassun, losing his grasp on patience. “And Pajack is right; he is foreign.”
Achak carried on, “The traditions shall be followed. He is no more foreign than I am. He is no more foreign than you. His mother was born of this earth and she died of this earth. Glooskap hunts for her now. He will do the same for your mother. The Mi’kmaq blood he has shed for our chief has been red like the setting sun and he does not stop with age. I am only sad that more of his kind did not come to us. He is not foreign.”
Exasperated now, Hassun screamed, “But the traditions! Even my father in his wrong mind will tell you we must adhere to the traditions.”
Rowtag the Younger showed his wise patience only went so far, “Hassun, don’t bring your father into this. I know that you and my father were of the same age and came to be men in the same year. He spoke only great things about you as I grew up. But you speak as one who cannot control his bowels; you shit from your mouth.” Two of the younger men burst into laughter, but the scene turned ugly as Pajack took a burning log from the central fire and thumped Rowtag. The young man saw it coming and so the blow hit his forearms, scattering embers and ash onto others who had to stand and beat the coals to avoid catching fire.
Pajack and Rowtag pounced onto one another, grappling to stuff their fingers into the other man’s eyes. I was glad that neither carried a weapon and that there was no tradition of drink among the Algonkin. If either was true, the fight may have ended with much worse than a few scratches and damaged pride.
I strode around the circle of men as they still patted out the embers. I picked both young men up by the greased tuft of hair that sat on top of their tattooed heads. Rowtag bli
ndly landed a fist onto my knee while Pajack jabbed an elbow into my windpipe. My plan was to hold them, but they angered me as they scraped like young rabbits held by their long ears, and so I rapped their heads together twice before they settled dizzily onto their feet.
Both Rowtag and Pajack looked up into my face, seeing that I meant them harm if they did not stop their nonsense. After looking back and forth at each other, a wincing nod from each told me I could drop them back to the hard-packed earth. Soon we settled back to our places, the only indication that something happened was Pajack holding his head and Rowtag inspecting his burnt forearm.
Achak rose then, asking the group to widen to make room for another man in the circle of council. Their asses slid around until there was a spot. “Halldorr, sit with us in council today.”
I laughed at him. “You must be desperate for wisdom to seek it in me.” Most of the men laughed along with me. Hassun shook his head, sticking his chin out. Pajack frowned. “I’ve told you in the past that I don’t pretend to lead you and therefore, why would I sit in council?”
Achak answered, “It is precisely why you do not seek to lead that we, as council among your new people, insist you join us.” And then, “Hassun has rightly pointed out that we must keep with tradition.”
They had asked me to sit in their circle at least three times over the previous ten years. Each time I declined. But on that day, the day after we buried Hurit’s only son, my step-son, I agreed. Maybe it was Providence who guided me. Or perhaps it was the old chiefs whose bodies lay buried in the hillside under that tree with the roots gnarled like the Yggdrasil tree.
And so I sat next to Achak. The men nodded their approval to which I answered stupidly, “Thank you.”
“And now it would show a unified people if Hassun nominated the man who should serve as the next chief of our lands. After all, by tradition the chief must come from the council and he now sits in council,” suggested Achak.
Hassun groused and grumbled, now knowing that he had no hope of claiming the small throne, such as it was. As quickly as he could, “Enkoodabooaoo should be chief.”
Then like a dry field of wheat catches fire in late summer, each man around the council circle sparked his assent and I was named chief. I became jarl of Vinland as Leif foretold so many years ago. I was chief of the skraelings, my new people. I inherited a chiefdom from my stepson, crooked or bent as Rowtag the Younger had said. I would not be killed for making a peace with the Pohomoosh because the one who knew about such things was dead.
I was chief and sitting there with the power newly granted in me, I recalled the old saying of my first people, “A thrall takes revenge at once, a fool never takes revenge.” And so we prepared to go to war against Luntook and his Pohomoosh Mi’kmaq for the killing of Etleloo. In my mind the Pohomoosh chief and I had no agreement, no bargain, no treaty, no peace, at least not anything enforceable. He granted us safe passage, but only one of us received it. He and his kind would pay.
PITUPOK & SURROUNDING LANDS
PART III – Jarl Halldorr!
1,036 – 1,066 A.D.
CHAPTER 13
The bones of my naked backside seemed bent on burrowing through the thin skin of my tired ass from the inside out as I sat on the log in the sweat lodge. I was thankful that the log had been stripped of all its bark, making it a smooth surface on which to sit, but sitting there completely naked made me more aware than ever of my age. Seventy years I had roamed this earth and now I sat alone with Hurit, each of us naked, seeking some peace at the outskirts of the village.
In the years I had been with the woman, we had visited the lodge many times. Most of the time I found the occasion ripe for spilling seed into her and she was usually most receptive. I think that it was on one of those occasions when the seed that became Alsoomse found itself planted Hurit’s womb. Times had changed, however. First, her monthly bleeding became erratic until it eventually ceased altogether. When she told me what was happening to her and that it was the path of life for all women I was initially enthusiastic as I thought the woman would have no reason to withdraw herself from me for the week of blood every month. The reality proved less thrilling than my imagination.
After her bleeding stopped about ten years ago, my woman seemed to have even less zeal for our time together when I entered the space between her legs. In fact, my ribs began to receive her elbow more frequently than ever when I tried, whether with kind words or devious actions, to suggest we revisit those old times of intercourse. But the woman yet loved me and, in truth, I loved her even more than when we plowed like spring farmers.
Hurit sat next to me on the log. I grumbled to myself about the aching bones in my ass and wondered if hers felt the same. That moment was another of only a handful in my life when I made the right choice with regard to the words I offered my woman. Or, rather, the words I didn’t offer. It was probably best I did not ask, for if she was not bothered by the pain, the woman would think I called her rotund like the fat, hard-working widow who lived in the mamateek next to ours. That woman’s true name escapes me because I would always call her Njoln in the skraeling tongue when I spoke of her with Hurit. Njoln means mistress and the memory of those talks and Hurit’s resulting anger still makes me wobble with fits of laughter. That rotund woman was a good mother – she raised three children to adulthood after her husband was gored by a moose. But that day, at least, I had the sense to say nothing to Hurit and so I just grumbled to myself.
Despite our infrequent times of coming together, I still found that my manhood rose when I saw Hurit there in the sweat lodge. Her skin was moist, glistening in the dim light that snuck into the house like sets of straight spears jutting through the occasional gap in the bark covering. In truth, she was yet beautiful. Hurit was, after all, still a pup compared to me, having only lived about fifty-five summers. Sometimes I would tell her that I saw one of the younger men watch her scrape a deer hide with some lust in his eyes. She scoffed, but it was true.
The village all shared the single sweat lodge which was a small, round mamateek situated near the river bank. A single family would claim it for the times between meals on any given day. The only two families given precedence were my own since I was chief and that of Hassun who had taken on more of our shaman role as Nootau declined and eventually died. Hassun reveled in the power of his default position, but harbored bitterness toward me for taking a title he thought belonged to him.
The lodge was considered a doorway between our world and the spirit world and so Hassun was likely its most frequent occupant, sometimes alone and other times with “helpers” who were usually younger women who found themselves with child some months later. There were many times that he emerged from the little house saying that he spoke to Hurit’s son for advice. I, too, had tried to meet Kesegowaase or his grandfather, Ahanu, in the spirit world, but failed each time.
I usually tried to speak to them about the son of Makkito, Etleloo’s daughter. Within several weeks following the girls’ rescue, Makkito showed that the Fish rape had found a seedbed. Her breasts and bellied swelled. I saw the girl accepted as wife by a competent though middling man of the tribe. He took reasonable care of Makkito and raised the little bastard as his own son. The man named Makkito’s boy Chansomps which means locust. The boy, well he was fourteen and a man now, was a fighter which I deemed as good. However, he showed no willingness for sense, fighting anyone and anything until he usually lost in a bitter, sputtering rage. I supposed it had to do with how his mother found herself furrowed all those years ago. The anger she felt at the time, carried to the son. Neither of the two dead chiefs saw fit meet me in the sweat lodge to advise me on the subject.
The door of the lodge faced the river. Nearby on a stretch of flat ground we had accumulated scores of large rocks, not the fragile rocks that chip or break when struck, but the types seemingly hard as steel. After a small mid-day meal, Hurit and I made a bed of twenty stones then made a roaring fire over top of them. I spent my aft
ernoon in council with my warriors while she tended the fire until it turned the rocks nearly orange. When my woman retrieved me, we scooped the coals and wood out of the way then I kicked the blistering, round rocks onto a hide and dragged them into the lodge. We sealed ourselves in and doused the rocks with water that was stored in a bladder hanging from a leather thong.
Hurit sang next to me that day. Her voice was good; though Gudrid, the widow of Thorstein I had so wanted to wed in Greenland, carried a tune as one of Christ’s angels and would have outshined my woman that day. I smiled and listened while the heat and steam cleansed my entire body. When she paused I sang a song in Norse to the old gods. I had sung it for her before and my woman had grown to like it, though she had only bothered to learn the meaning of several of the words.
The two of us were at relative peace then, satisfied in our lives, and I thought that perhaps that would be a day when my woman would invite my body to hers. But a rustle at the door banished those thoughts and shattered my hopes like pottery falling to the ground. “Who is it?” I asked, less than pleased, wishing Right Ear was still alive so I could sick him upon this intruder.
No one answered and the noise continued until the door I had carefully affixed from the inside, gave way and burst open, bits of bark littering the hard-swept earth. The late afternoon sun poured in, making both of us squint. Surly now, I shouted, “By the One God, I just came from council. What is so important that I cannot have a moment’s peace with my wife?”
Alsoomse, my little Skjoldmo, ducked into the lodge then and tightly closed the door behind her, even brushing the debris she had created while breaking in over to the side of the lodge. I shrugged. I would not be entering my woman that day. Of course, I had made love to my wife countless times when Alsoomse was at home in our mamateek so her presence would not have necessarily prevented the act. But I saw her mother’s eyes light up when the girl entered. Alsoomse met her look and I could see the two meant to talk about some such nonsense that drives women.