Fin Gall

by James L. Nelson

  Morrigan smiled. “Certainly not. He’ll beat me severely if he finds me out.”

  Thorgrim felt the spirit of the wolf begin to dissipate like morning fog. There was something about the thrall that affected him, and it gave him hope for her powers as a healer.

  “My name is Thorgrim Ulfsson. You’ll be rewarded for your risk,” Thorgrim assured her. “Now, come.”

  He led her over to the back wall where the wounded men were lying on their piles of cloaks. Olvir Yellowbeard was the first of them, with a deep gash that ran from his shoulder across his chest and stomach. The wound, undressed, gaped open like an ugly trench dug in white earth.

  Morrigan set down her large basket and peered close at the wound, sniffing and probing while Thorgrim held the lamp close. Olvir, asleep, shifted and groaned.

  “The rot is setting into this wound, but it may not be too late,” Morrigan said soft, and Thorgrim did not know if she was talking to him or herself. He made no reply.

  Morrigan pulled a handful of downy material from her basket. “Cobwebs,” she said, as if she thought Thorgrim did not trust her. Gently she packed the soft bundle of webs on Olvir’s wound. Olvir’s eyes opened wide in surprise and he made to sit up, but Thorgrim’s hand held him down.

  “Don’t move, Olvir Yellowbeard,” Thorgrim said. “This thrall is a healer.”

  Olvir groaned and lay still again. With sure hands Morrigan pulled a length of linen cloth from the basket, and a small jar filled with an unctuous paste. She rubbed the paste on the cloth and wrapped it around Olvir’s wound.

  “That is a yarrow poultice. That’s all I can do for now,” she said. “We must wait and see how it goes.”

  Thorgrim nodded. They moved on to the next man and she treated his wounds in a similar manner, and then the next. “You should have sent for me right off,” Morrigan scolded. “The medicine is not as powerful when the wounds are old.”

  Thorgrim nodded, said nothing.

  They came next to Giant-Bjorn. Morrigan looked at him close, probing the wounds, looking close in the lantern’s light. She pulled out another small jar, and with Thorgrim’s help tipped some of the contents into Giant-Bjorn’s mouth. “Skullcap will help him sleep. There is nothing I can do for this one,” she said and they moved on.

  As the minutes passed into the first hour Thorgrim’s anxiety rose like the tide. He wanted Morrigan to treat Harald before her presence was discovered. He wanted her to ignore all of them and concentrate her efforts on his son, but he dared not say it, or give any indication that Harald meant anything more to him than any of the others. He did not know what her relationship with Orm was, or what information she might be willing to barter with her master for some consideration.

  Ornolf the Restless was next, his face battered, his clothes torn, bruises and cuts visible through the rent cloth. Morrigan looked him over, looked up at Thorgrim. “These injuries are new,” she said.

  “Orm and Magnus had some questions they asked of him.”

  Morrigan nodded. “I thought I recognized Orm’s hand. Why him?”

  “He is the jarl. He is our leader.”

  Morrigan looked up at Thorgrim. “You are not the leader here?”

  “I am Ornolf’s hirdman. I am the second.”

  Morrigan nodded and pulled a small jar from the basket. “This is shepherd’s purse, for the bleeding.” As she talked she mixed the dried herb with water in a mug. “We must get him to drink it.”

  Thorgrim helped Morrigan lift Ornolf to a sitting position. They held the mug to his lips, and half conscious, Ornolf drank it down, drinking being a reflexive action for him.

  They laid Ornolf down again and Morrigan treated his wounds with cobwebs and yarrow. She gave him a drink from another jar she said was filled with yarrow mead, and Thorgrim had to physically pull it from Ornolf’s hands. “The only thing for him is rest, and that will help him sleep,” Morrigan said. “He will live, I think, unless Orm has more questions for him. Or burns him alive at the stake.”

  Thorgrim nodded. “Here, see to this one. I think he is in a bad way,” he said, nodding to Harald and trying to sound as disinterested as he could.

  Morrigan looked up at Thorgrim, looked him in the eyes, which he realized she had not done before. “Very well,” she said and shuffled over to where Harald lay, kneeling beside him.

  “He’s just a boy,” she said, brushing the sweat-drenched hair off his forehead.

  “Man enough to go a-viking,” Thorgrim said.

  Morrigan looked up, and there was a trace of disgust on her face. She picked up the silver hammer of Thor. “What’s this?”

  “Thor’s hammer. A way of asking for the god’s help.”

  “No wonder the fever has hold of him.” She pushed the hammer into Thorgrim’s hands, collected up the other charms, the little statue of Odin on his eight-legged horse Sleipnir, a tiny silver Valkyrie, and handed them all to Thorgrim. “Keep those away from the boy,” she said. She reached up to her neck and pulled a necklace off and put it around Harald’s neck. A tiny silver cross with the dying God Christ rested on Harald’s chest.

  Morrigan made the gesture Thorgrim had seen Christians make, touching her forehead, her stomach and both shoulders. She muttered something over Harald, some incantation, Thorgrim imagined. He was not comfortable with the Christian magic. At another time he might have told her to stop. But he was desperate now, and his own gods had done nothing to help.

  When she was done, she began to probe Harald’s wounds, muttering to herself, and Thorgrim could not help but notice she treated the young man with more attention and concern than she had the others. She carefully washed and dressed his wounds with cobwebs and yarrow poultice, then mixed up some herbs with water. “False indigo, it will help with the fever,” she said as she mixed it. Together, they made Harald drink.

  “I’ll leave some of this with you. See the guards don’t find it. Give it to him thrice a day, morning, afternoon and night.”

  Thorgrim nodded. In Morrigan’s presence he seemed unable to give any other response.

  Morrigan stood. “I’m done. I’ll try to return tomorrow.”

  Thorgrim walked with her to the door. He dug in the purse that hung from his belt, extracted one of the gold coins he had earlier removed from his shoe. “Here.” He handed her the coin. “You have my thanks.”

  Morrigan took the coin and looked at it, and her expression was one of faint amusement. “Payment for healing fin gall. Here’s something I never thought I would see.” She pocketed the coin, took the lamp and blew out the flame and was gone.

  Thorgrim stood alone in the dark. The smell of Morrigan persisted, even through the smell of the unwashed men and the burning seal oil.

  He felt for the first time since his and Harald’s capture some small hint of hope that his son might live. It was a good feeling, a buoyant feeling, and almost the instant he felt it, it was quashed by the reality of their situation.

  Harald might live...to what end?

  Magnus and Orm would not let them go. It would be more questioning, and then the stake. Harald would be better off dying delirious with the fever than living to see what punishment Orm and Magnus had in mind.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “It is the end of the world when peasants like these

  rise up against noble families.”

  Insult made by the king of Tara

  to his enemies

  M

  orrigan could feel the straw from the mattress jabbing her in the back like a dozen tiny knives. Orm was on top of her, and his weight made it hard for her to breathe. Her knee banged against the wattle and daub wall with each of Orm’s thrusts.

  Her eyes were open and she was staring at the ceiling. The rough beams and the texture of the thatch were just visible in the growing light of dawn. Once, in that circumstance, her mind would have been many miles away, off to some fine place where she was not being raped by the man who owned her. But not now.

  Now her mind w
as present, very much in the moment. She considered where Orm’s belt lay at the side of the bed, how far the reach to the pommel of his silver-hilt dagger. Her eyes saw the cob webs on the roof overhead but her mind saw her hand softly drawing the dagger from the belt and driving it between Orm’s ribs, saw him rear back in surprised agony as she rolled from under him, drawing the knife and plunging it in again.

  Then she saw the guards bursting in the door, swords drawn, finding her panting, knife in hand, and soaked in Orm’s blood. The vision of Orm, wide-eyed and wool-white in death, made her happy, but it was followed up always with the vision of herself hanged, drawn and quartered, burned at the stake. No crime would be more ruthlessly punished than the murder of a master by a slave. Such things were to be discouraged.

  So until the moment was right, until Morrigan could have her vengeance and live to celebrate it, she would suffer the slave’s ultimate humiliation.

  At last Orm finished with a grunt, lay still for a moment, nearly crushing the air from Morrigan’s thin body. Then he stood.

  “The mead has gone off. See that there is fresh,” he said as he stepped out of the room, fastening his trousers as he went.

  Morrigan did not move. She lay on the bed and let her anger settle. She reminded herself of why she was there. At first that thought had been enough to get her through this horror, but it was not enough any more. Like her Lord and Savior, at the moment when her trials were at their worst, she found herself questioning the reason for it all.

  At last she climbed off the low bed and straightened her clothes. She could feel Orm’s semen running down her thigh and she stepped over to the basin and washed herself. She had long ago decided that if she ever found herself carrying Orm’s child, she would kill the dubh gall and herself as well.

  The main room of the house was still dark and chill. Morrigan stirred up the coals in the hearth in the center of the room, adding twigs and peat until the fire was burning again. If she let it go out entirely, Orm would beat her. The dubh gall hated the dark.

  Outside she could hear the men of the fortress moving around, the guards coming off their night watch, the first work of the day commencing. She heard a knock on the door.

  Morrigan straightened and turned and regarded the door for a moment. It was an odd thing, to have someone knocking at such an hour, with Orm already gone. Sometimes, if something important was happening, word was brought to her by one of the many Irish slaves in town, and she wondered if this was such a circumstance. She crossed the room and opened the door.

  There was a sheep herd there, a young man and he looked nervous.

  “Yes?” Morrigan asked. She spoke her native Celt. The boy was no fin gall.

  “Are you Morrigan?” the sheep herd asked. “Slave of Orm?”

  “Yes.”

  The sheep herd shifted nervously. “My master bids me tell you he has fine sheep to sell, for the royal household, if you would look.”

  “Tell your master no. The fin gall eat pigs.”

  “My master bids me tell you...” the sheep herd thought for a moment for the words, “that these sheep come from the high hills of Tara and begs you will see them yourself.”

  Tara... The young man’s master was no sheep herd, of that Morrigan was certain. She looked around, suddenly afraid they were being watched, but the men in the stockade, the guards, soldiers and workmen, had not the least interest in what a thrall and a sheep herd might be discussing. Even the dozen men guarding the big room where the Norwegians were held seemed distracted and bored. And even if they were not, there was not a one of them who spoke the Celtic language.

  “What is your name, boy?” Morrigan asked.

  “Donnel.”

  “Very well, Donnel. Wait here and I will be right with you.”

  Morrigan hurried into the house, found her shawl and wrapped it around her shoulders, picked up her basket. The nightmare of the dawn, which generally would have haunted her for hours, was forgotten. She hurried out the door and followed after Donnel, who seemed quite eager to be out of the stockade and beyond the immediate grasp of the fin gall warriors.

  They walked down the plank road, Donnel a step ahead, and into the crowded market where other Irish women - some slaves, some wives - and a smattering of Norse women bargained for food and cloth and housewares. A dozen bleating sheep were held inside a wood-fence pen, and by the gate stood two men, two sheep herds. One younger then Donnel, one much older. One a real sheep herd, the other not.

  Morrigan stepped up to the pen and looked at the animals as if she had some interest in them. She spoke, soft and in Gaelic.

  “Brother, why have you come?”

  Flann mac Conaing looked casually around before he spoke. The rough wool hood of his cloak framed his face and his gray and white beard. “The abbot of Glendalough decreed that the Crown of the Three Kingdoms should be given to King Máel Sechnaill mac Ruanaid.”

  Morrigan gave a little gasp and looked up quick, met her brother’s eyes. “At last...” she said.

  Flann nodded. “It was put to Niall Caille to see it delivered to Tara, but it never arrived. My Lord Máel was certain Niall Caille meant to keep the Crown for himself. He was readying his army to go south when a messenger arrived. These young men,” Flann nodded toward the sheep herds, who were trying to look inconspicuous, “brought him.

  “Apparently, Niall thought it safer to send the Crown by ship. He outfitted a curragh, manned it with his most trusted noblemen and sent it north. The messenger was one of the noblemen, the only one left alive. The curragh was taken by Norsemen.”

  Morrigan shook her head. “Orm does not have it,” she said. “It is not in Dubh-Linn.”

  For a moment Flann said nothing. He prodded the sheep with his staff, trying to look like a sheep herd. “Máel Sechnaill was not pleased that this should happen, and us with no word from you.”

  Morrigan scowled. She could taste the fury like bitter fruit in her mouth. “I suffer here - suffer like Máel Sechnaill could never know - so that he might have word of what the fin gall are about. If he hasn’t heard from me about the Crown of the Three Kingdoms then that is because the Crown is not here.”

  Flann nodded his head. “It’s what I told My Lord Máel. Perhaps it was taken by Norsemen who were not from Dubh-Linn.”

  “Perhaps...” It was not possible that something so important as the taking of the Crown could have escaped her notice. Very little happened in Dubh-Linn that she did not know about.

  “There has been only one longship to leave in the past week, and that was Magnus Magnusson, who must have been sent to find the crown, but he failed. Other than that....” She stopped.

  “What?”

  “Of course...” Morrigan said, mostly to herself, as the odd events of the week suddenly became clear. “Thorgrim...”

  Morrigan did not know where the Crown was, but she was certain now that she knew who did.

  It was past midnight when they came for Thorgrim, and that was a bad time to do so. He was hunched in a corner of the big room, far from where Harald lay moaning. He was asleep, and in his dreams he was running with the pack. The taste of blood was in his mouth, the red tints of fury in his eyes.

  They grabbed him hard by the arms and yanked him to his feet. Still half lost in his dream world, he swung his elbow around and crashed it into the jaw of one of the men who had come for him. His left fist shot out at another as he groped for a sword that was not there.

  But Magnus’s men were ready for a fight, and despite such shocking ferocity from a man who was not even entirely awake, they managed to pin his arms behind him and get a braided leather cord around his neck, pulling it taut until his breathing became raspy and desperate. His head was swimming with rage and a lack of air. His wrists were held behind his back and powerful hands passed lashings around them.

  Magnus stood in front of him, a few feet beyond arm’s reach. He held a lamp. The yellow light of the flame fell on his rich red tunic and left most of his face i
n deep shadow. Behind him, another four men were tying the wrists of Kotkel the Fierce, who fought like a bear. Another dozen spearmen held the rest of Ornolf’s men at bay.

  “Bring them,” Magnus said when Thorgrim and Kotkel were at last bound and choked until the fight was out of them. He led the way out of the big room. The soldiers shoved Thorgrim and Kotkel after him and behind them the rest of the guards withdrew. And through his rage Thorgrim had presence of mind enough to thank the gods that they had not taken Harald.

  Magnus led them to a room somewhere in the fortress, a small room lit with a fire in the hearth that made the place look cheery. The men behind Thorgrim grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him toward the wall. He stumbled and fell hard, his hands tied tight behind his back.

  He rolled over and looked up. The guards made a rope fast to Kotkel’s wrists which were bound behind his back, then tossed the other end over the low rafters of the roof. Three men hauled away. Kotkel was lifted screaming and cursing off his feet.

  Magnus stood over Thorgrim. “Where is the Crown?” he asked.

  Thorgrim looked at him for a long time before he spoke. Kotkel’s cries of agony had turned into a stream of curses heaped on the Danes.

  “Ask Kotkel,” Thorgrim said, nodding toward the man hanging from the rope. “He seems more talkative than me.”

  “Perhaps. And perhaps you’ll be moved to talk. To end the suffering of one of your men.”

  “Perhaps not,” Thorgrim said.

  Magnus turned and struck Kotkel in the small of the back with the flat of his sword. Kotkel arched his back and shouted with the pain.

  Thorgrim clenched his teeth. He liked Kotkel well enough, but not enough to give in to Magnus for Kotkel’s sake. There were few in this world he cared for that much, and when the spirit of the wolf was on him, he would not be moved by pity, only rage.

  Nor did Thorgrim believe Magnus would leave them alive, no matter what he told him.

  “Unn, get the iron,” Magnus said and one of his men drew a glowing hot iron from the fire, held it wavering in front of Kotkel’s face.