by Joyce Holt
"They're not as stupid as you may think," Lingormr said as he rose from the table. "They have their own slow cunning."
Spare skis, echoed the words in Jorunn's ears. Enough to go around. Enough they could part with a pair? Surely they'd take good silver in trade.
Jorunn finally found a moment alone, and looked for her sister through the key bow. She spied Oddleif once again at Svana's side, the two youngsters huddled behind a ramshackle building in the twilight, whispering to each other. Jorunn saw on their faces a weight of wariness heavier than any lad of twelve winters ought to bear, let alone a girl of nine.
Home ought to provide refuge, not peril. A father ought to guard, not threaten. After all, as the proverb says, who will carve your memorial stone if not your loving and well-loved kin?
Jorunn took care not to move the key while she turned her ear to the bow. Surprise and delight plucked at her cheeks. She could hear the faintest hiss of words – drowned out in the next moment by the barking of spisshunds. She growled herself, and looked up. No chance to listen nor even to spy. The stranded travelers were skiing up to the houseyard, and all turned to a noisy turmoil of welcome.
24 – Someone Must Know
Oddleif waited outside Svana's hut until his toes and fingers grew numb. Men's voices rumbled inside. Arguing. Guffawing. Raised in insult and jest. Knuckle-bone dice clattered on a board. Smoke slithered through chinks in the walls as well as through the roof hole.
At last Svana came out to empty a piss pot.
Oddleif hissed at her, beckoned her around the corner of the cot. "I've been to Moen," he whispered. "They say she never came there. I don't know what's happened to her."
Svana wrapped arms around herself and shuddered from the cold. "She will come back," she said. "She promised."
"She will if she can," Oddleif agreed, though the thought of that troll – that ravenous monster with fangs like pitchforks and claws like grappling hooks – kept trampling through his mind, gnawing him with fear right to his bones. "I'll go ask at Dondstad again. Someone must know something."
He swept snow from the woodpile so could Svana fetch firewood. "She will if she can, and until then, I'll help however I may."
25 – Plots and Schemes
In the wee hours of the night, smoke filled the hall at Kvien. A watchman rousted everyone, steading folk and travelers alike, before the pall grew so thick as to smother them in their sleep. A lad sent up on the roof found two thick spruce boughs cast there by the wind, one at each smoke-hole – and little else across the rest of the hall-keel.
In the morning the bottom cracked in one of the porridge pots and spilled gruel with a hiss into the coals. At noon, two spade handles broke in the labor of clearing the Keel Road. In the smithy hut behind the forge, a shield on the wall came loose of its peg and crashed down on the smith's wife, gashing her forehead.
"One disaster after another," Drifa muttered as she and Jorunn stomped at sparks that had burst from a resinous chunk of pinewood in the hall's main cookfire and scattered to the carpet of reeds and rushes on either side.
Jorunn chafed not so much at the calamities but at all the bustle that kept her from looking after her sister from afar. Throughout that whole day she managed only three short snatches of solitude. She glimpsed Svana grinding barley meal, Svana patching a crack between the wall logs, Svana shading her eyes to gaze past the sun's glare.
By evening, the exhausted folk at Kvien were muttering and glancing over their shoulders. "Curses and sorcery," ran one remark up and down the tables. Supper this night was nothing but flatbreads and dried meat. The cooks had had no time to boil any porridge except for the high table.
"What next?"
"Who is causing all the bad luck? Has someone offended the Æsir?"
One loud voice proclaimed, "Must be the trolls' doing!"
"Nonsense," Gunnarr said from the high carven seat overlooking the hall. "This troll pack hasn't once come within sight of Kvien." He turned back to their guests, whose sleighs still hadn't gained passage around the avalanche.
"Perhaps not the steading itself," someone said in a lower tone. "But haven't you noticed? They're circling the outlying fields."
"And if not the trolls, then what?"
"It all started," Sverri's voice snarled from the lowest table, "when that clodfoot first came to Kvien. I think it's her doing."
Jorunn looked up, startled. He was pointing a grubby finger at her. Even at this distance and through the hazy air she could see his scowl. She blinked, and shot a sidelong glance at her mistress.
Gyda nibbled the meat from a rib. She wasn't listening to drivel from the far reaches of the room – from the rabble.
But the rabble listened. Housegirls and youths leaned heads towards each other as they spoke about it, their gazes tracking to Jorunn where she stood behind Gyda's shoulder. She sucked in a breath.
She threw a beseeching glance at Drifa, but the older woman kept her eyes on Brynja's platter, and a thin set to her lips. Jorunn remembered holding up the three fingers, and Drifa's marvel at her accurate prediction. "Nei, I'm not a Finn," she muttered. "I don't cast curses. I work no magic." Vel, perhaps she did. She used that key to see afar. But I don't make things happen.
Murmurs roiled the air, then subsided at the thumping of the steward's staff.
Gunnarr stood. "Ja, there is mischief striking to right and left, but I'll have no blaming. We're all worn with the day's toils. Stoke the bonfires, then go to your night's rest. Those on watch, keep your gaze sharp. Bring word of anything amiss to me, or to Lingormr. Now off with you all." He waved in dismissal.
Jorunn stayed close to Gyda's side and avoided glances from folk of the lower tables. Let them muse and accuse, but on the morrow they'd find another scapegoat to blame.
A few laggards busied with the last of their meal. Most of the steading folk set about nightly tasks. Gyda slid her platter and bowl aside and flipped her fingers at Jorunn in dismissal. Drifa took Brynja's leftovers and strode off with a wary glance over her shoulder.
Jorunn gathered up Gyda's leftovers and stepped aside, looking for a quiet corner for her dinner. Youths were already taking down the trestle tables. They eyed her with suspicion as she edged past. One of the cooks glowered.
"Not me, not me," she grumbled, cheeks hot, then pressed lips tight together. Best not to be seen muttering.
The steward strode past and down the hall. He bore a large bowl of porridge meant, Jorunn knew, for the nisse who watched over their steading. The steward took this task every evening.
So the nisse was kept well-fed. Yet all this bad luck looked like the work of elvish discontent. What was amiss?
Making sure neither the smith nor the pig-keeper was anywhere nearby, Jorunn made her way to a spot past the door, in the darkest reach of the hall. She huddled in the shadows. "Show me the steward of Kvien," she whispered into the silver key.
Starlight gilded the man's shape as he trudged uphill on a well-tromped path. At last he stopped and bent. Setting down the bowl, Jorunn guessed. The hulk of a gnarled tree trunk filled the scene behind the steward.
As he turned and began retracing his route, Jorunn whispered, "Show me the bowl the steward just set out." It sat on a level surface, pale under the stars.
Would the key show her the nisse? The small folk never let humankind see them. Would the nisse be aware of a watcher not there in body?
She wasn't to find out. It wasn't clever little hands that took the bowl, but large pudgy ones. Jorunn sucked a breath. "Show me who holds the nisse's bowl," she breathed.
The view widened. She saw a man's back as he straightened and turned, a spoon already dipping into the butter-rich porridge. And the face, swinging into view – ja, she knew that face. Grimacing, she whispered the old saying, "Where gluttony rules, ruin soon follows. A man should master his belly."
"What you doing?" a voice hissed into her ear. "Why you mumble in dark?"
Jorunn jumped and whirled.
Valka lurked t
here, face hooded by her shawl. She had already snatched the bowl from where Jorunn had set it down. "What you want from me? You keep bringing porridge. You looking for more advice? What good it do you last time, huh?" She scooped up a glob of barley porridge with her fingers and slurped it down.
"Most people would say, Thanks shall you have," Jorunn said.
"Why you being nice to me? No one being nice to me."
Jorunn grimaced. "No one being nice to me, either." She heard her name called, and glanced up at the high table. Gyda was watching, and there was something about the set of her shoulders that spoke of a short temper. "You're welcome," Jorunn told Valka and headed back to her mistress, cleaning the platter as she scurried along and pondering what to do with the insight the key had given her. Sverri was stealing the nisse's porridge, that large portion just swimming with cream and butter. He must have been doing so for days, and the nisse's discontent had burst into rage. Who could she tell about the cause of all the bad luck?
How could she tell? She wanted no one to know about the key from the dwarves' realm. They'd take it from her, and then how would she keep watch over Svana?
She followed Gyda to the bed chamber, catching the tail end of a conversation with Brynja.
"Something shifty about it all," Gyda muttered.
"Can we be sure it was him?" her cousin asked.
"What do you think? Garbed all in brown, they said, and a raspy voice. Must have been Ragnvald. And must be something momentous, for him to show such ill manners."
"What is it?" Jorunn asked Drifa, who edged a step away. "For Frigg's sake, I'm no Finn! I cast no curses, nor cause any ill luck. It's the nisse's doing, I tell you. What are the mistresses talking about? Did Ragnvald return?"
Drifa glanced at the high-born young women then back at Jorunn, eyes narrowed. "The travelers mention someone by Ragnvald's description passing them, going eastward, shortly before they came to the avalanche. They saw the tracks of him and his men, skirting up around the blockage, and assumed he'd bring us word. But he must have passed by Kvien without so much as a moment's greeting."
"If it were early in the day," Jorunn said, "he'd wish to make good use of the daylight."
Gyda overheard. "Nei, it was afternoon," she said with a glare. "He should have brought us tidings so we could have gone to aid the stranded folk all the sooner. No excuse for slipping past like thieves."
"Bearing tidings to Harald that could not wait?" Jorunn guessed.
"If I want your opinion," Gyda snapped, "I'll ask for it."
Jorunn stepped back, biting her lip.
Gyda turned to Brynja. "Our guests heard of nothing so momentous that would spur such haste. I'm guessing he had good cause to avoid us here. I'm guessing in his sojourn on the coast he must have gone to Hordaland."
Brynja's eyes widened. "To Hordaland! Harald sent him to your father?"
"If so, we know what he'd be asking. And we know how my father must have answered—refusal of Harald's proposal. No good tidings to aid Harald's cause, for Ragnvald to be bearing through our lands. Vel, at least we know my father wasn't taken in by the airs of that young pretender. Girl, my hair."
As Jorunn set to work, she murmured, "Mistress, I think I know the cause of all the ill luck, the avalanche and all."
"The avalanche was not such ill luck after all. If it hadn't brought us our guests out there," she waved her arm toward the doorway, "we'd not have known about that slippery Ragnvald sailing past."
"The pig-keeper is stealing the nisse's porridge."
"And how would you know that?"
"I – I – I saw him going after the steward tonight."
"Leaving the hall?" Gyda sniffed. "Half the household went out on his heels, everyone hurrying to nightly chores, as Beste-Papa ordered."
"Left the hall, left the houseyard, followed him up the trail."
"You weren't gone long enough to see that. I saw you standing near the door a good long time."
"But he took—"
"First he casts false blame upon you, and you turn around and heap lies on him? Join him in grubbing through the muck, and you lose your grounds for complaint against him."
Jorunn stopped combing, her thoughts more tangled than bed-tossed tresses. "You heard what he said? You showed no sign, and lifted not a finger to my aid!"
"I'm not here to aid you, girl. You're here to aid me. On with it." Gyda tossed a stray tress over her shoulder.
"I begged you to speak to him, Mistress, to chide him for his—"
"Comb."
Jorunn set to work again. "The day we arrived, the very first day—"
"I'll hear no more about it. I can't watch over you like a stray lamb, and go barking after foxes. Stand your own ground. Do your own barking." The timbre of Gyda's voice changed as she spoke to Brynja. "Suppose Harald did indeed send Ragnvald to my father. Ragnvald made no mention of it to me on his way west. That would be at Harald's bidding, as well. And then to skirt around Kvien on his return—" She grumbled. "It's all plotted out. I'll wager Harald was expecting my father to say nei. What does he plan next?"
"His skald—" Brynja said, voice low. "All those sagas about kidnapping a bride? I think we should suggest Beste-Papa mount sentries on the Keel Road."
"All along the way," Gyda said. "Beginning close to the outlying steadings of Ringerike, right on Harald's own doorstep." Her fists clenched in her lap.
"He won't take us unawares." The iron-hard note in Brynja's voice surprised Jorunn. This was the maiden content to sit all day and embroider with mother and aunt. "How long do you think we have?"
"Four days down, four days back again, three each way at the swiftest," Gyda said. "Whether to face him or dodge, that is the question. We could mount a defense against one raiding party, but if he decided to come back in full force, the folk of Valdres would suffer. Just think of the warriors he could rally from his holdings!" She made a sound half sigh, half growl. "And so much better a use he could put them to, than stealing a bride. What a short-sighted lout!"
"You should go visit your father's court," Brynja said. "Leave before Harald gets word from Ragnvald, and mounts a raiding party."
"All of us should leave. I wouldn't be surprised if he took hostages."
"I can't leave! I have marriage negotiations underway."
"What if he's learned already about your kinship with Erik Weatherhat?"
Now it was Brynja's turn to growl.
"Let's talk with Beste-Papa in the morning," Gyda said. "We have three or four days before we must all be gone."
"Our mothers will not be pleased," Brynja said.
Jorunn finished with Gyda's braid. "I'll fetch warming stones for the bed," she murmured and slipped out of the bedchamber. In a shadowed corner of the hall with none but a spisshund in earshot, she used the key to search for Svana but found only darkness.
She blew out a sigh. Gyda didn't care to smooth her path here among a new set of challenges. Do your own barking, indeed. What does a mere housegirl matter, when kings and their messengers plot and scheme and scurry about?
Jorunn lifted the key once more, aimed it to the southeast, and whispered, "Show me Harald's man Ragnvald."
After two more requests, she found him. He squatted beside a hearth with firelight flickering on his sun-browned brow. His eyes glinted. He nodded, spoke, smacked one fist into his other palm.
She saw other figures moving about behind him, to the side. One leaned in to speak with Ragnvald, and the flames gilded his profile. A long nose, big teeth beneath a shaggy mustache. Harald's uncle Guttorm.
Jorunn frowned. He hadn't been in the company when Ragnvald came to Kvien.
She angled her head, tipped her ear to the key bow.
"Remember hiss orderss," Guttorm was saying in a squeaky voice like a mouse down a hole. "Don't harm her kin unlesss there'ss no other way to take her."
26 – Refusal and Rebuke
Jorunn's heart pounded so hard she couldn't hear Guttorm's next few words. She
steeled herself, pulled together a semblance of calm, and listened for many heartbeats longer.
"Kvien...at dawn...two days...I'll have the sleigh ready."
They weren't returning to Harald's court. They already had orders.
Jorunn leaped up from her crouch and clenched the key tight in her fist. She darted toward the cousins' chamber, caught herself, went back for warming stones for the bed, then scurried to Gyda's doorway.
She stood there a moment, quivering, the pail of stones swinging in her grip. As with Sverri the porridge thief, how could she speak of what she knew?
What did she know? Did the key always tell the truth? Did it tell what was happening in the very moment? Or things yet to come? Things past? She hadn't had time enough with it to learn such things.
Jorunn tucked the key back into her belt pouch, drew a deep breath, and entered.
Gyda and Brynja were arguing about the wedding, whether Brynja should take shelter at the steading of her suitor or sweep him along with the Kvien folk over the Keel to Hordaland.
Jorunn spread the hot stones upon the mattress ticking. She glanced at the glorious wall tapestries and the carvings on the posts. Would Harald's men burn down the hall to get at Gyda? Would they slay Gunnarr and Toli and Ormi Eight-Finger?
She moved the stones around a while, then wrapped them in cloth for the foot of the bed.
Drifa returned with the chamberpot, emptied and cleaned. The womenfolk readied for bed. Jorunn blew out the lamp and climbed in after Gyda. She waited for the argument to end, then spoke up. "If Harald gave Ragnvald orders what to do should your father say nei—"
"Be still, girl. I'm not interested in your opinions."
Jorunn gulped, then plunged ahead. "Wouldn't he have plans in place for a swift stroke?"
"I said, be quiet!"
"Why assume Ragnvald must trek all the way back to his side? Harald didn't get where he is now by taking slow steps!"
Gyda lay still against her cushions.
Jorunn could imagine her scowl, and braced herself for a slap that didn't come. "You may not have three days, let alone four," she whispered.