Raven of the Waves

by Michael Cadnum

  Latin was the prince of all languages, but the next dawn Aethelwulf did something he had never done before. He began a poem—verses that the men and women of his parish would be able to understand. It was in their own earthy language, the speech of husbands and wives and horsemen. He marveled as he worked the poem in his mind what a fit word for God it was, and how God’s power broke through the sounds of the syllables like light through a cloud. “Micel,” he said to himself. “Great. The Great God.”

  He did not write down this poem with a quill and ink. Perhaps someday in the future he would have one of the brothers commit it to one of the vellum rolls that were not of the best quality. He kept the poem in his mind where he could knead it, where, with time, he believed it would grow golden and, if it were not too much to hope for, glorious.

  Frea, the wife of Alfred, sent for help. One of her children, afraid to look around at this room of books and beeswax candles, asked for the good father’s attention. “She can’t get out of bed,” said the short, round-headed peasant boy in the accent of field folk.

  Wiglaf and the abbot set off together.

  The clay cutter was a moderately wealthy peasant, the descendant of generations of men with skill in preparing the earth used in building walls. The problem with Frea, as far as Wiglaf knew, was that she was the most grumpy woman in the world. She was meaner than a gander, thought Wiglaf, walking, as was proper, a full stride behind the abbot. Frea would argue with a stump.

  “Frea has rheumatism,” said Aethelwulf, perhaps reading Wiglaf’s mind. His mother had said that some wise folk had such thought-stealing power, and it would not surprise Wiglaf if the abbot was one of them. “We must have sympathy for her.”

  “She’s the greatest scold,” Wiglaf offered, feeling immediately ashamed of himself.

  The abbot did not respond to this remark. “There is more nonsense about rheumatism than any other ailment. Some people think that if you drink the water a fox has been boiled in you can cure it. The truth is, Wiglaf, nothing can cure it.”

  Aethelwulf put on his most cheerful manner as he entered the cot. To Wiglaf’s surprise, it worked.

  “I’ve never been strong,” Frea said gently, without a trace of her usual humor. “Always given over to a fever every now and then.”

  “It’s not easy. Heaven understands this.”

  “But you’re so happy, Father. Happy Father I call you. Nothing ever troubles you.”

  Perhaps the abbot laughed too loudly. Frea’s head fell back to her rush-stuffed pillow-sack. “I shouldn’t have spoken so, good Father. Please forgive me.”

  “No, it pleases me to hear it,” said Aethelwulf. “As a younger man, and not so long ago as a not-young man, people thought me a very sour person. Always bitter, thinking how things could be and how they never were what they ought to be. With reason, I suppose—things never are quite what we hope. But something has happened to me since I came here to Dunwic. I’ve become happy. We don’t have to be happy to be a child of God, you know. There’s no reason to expect joy.”

  Aethelwulf advised Frea to drink warm water. “Not after a fox has been cooked in it, or drunk from it, or anything at all having to do with a fox.”

  On their way back to the abbey, Wiglaf said that Frea looked different.

  “She has something very wrong with her, Wiglaf,” said Aethelwulf. “You saw her eyes?”

  “The whites were yellow.”

  “What does that mean to you?”

  Wiglaf considered. He already knew that Aethelwulf now believed that Frea was a very sick woman. But what was the ailment called, and what prayer or what herb could cure it? Wiglaf admitted he did not know.

  “I don’t know either,” said Aethelwulf. “Perhaps she wants to have some peace in her last days. It takes so much courage, Wiglaf, just to be an ordinary man or woman.”

  9

  The sea crashed around Raven.

  Lidsmod shivered, soaked to the skin through his tunic.

  The heavy salt water drenched the wool clothing, and the rough salty fabric chafed the flesh. Lidsmod was bailing, flinging water over the side.

  Ulf took the bailer when Lidsmod had to pause, out of breath. The big bald-headed man flung brine into the wind, although most of it streamed back into his face, and dripped from his beard. The bailer was oak, half bucket and half shovel. When Ulf was red-faced and panting, Trygg, a man whose nose had been nearly cut off in a fight out of legend, took over, and when Trygg wearied, something happened that stirred the men of Raven with surprise.

  Torsten, the berserker, took the bailer, drew a deep breath, and when he was finished, there was no water in the ship. He handed the bailer to Opir, who wore it on his head for a while.

  “What it takes for the sea,” Njord said to Lidsmod, “is not courage, or bear spirit, or anything like that. You want to be a steady man—hofsmadr. Someone your mates can depend on, the way they can depend on this steering oar.” Some day, Njord had promised, Lidsmod could be a helmsman, someone the ship would trust. But this was not likely to be any time soon, Lidsmod believed. Njord handed Lidsmod a dried, tough stick of salted herring, and the two of them drank a few swallows of morning ale, just enough to take the bite out of the salt spray.

  Njord gripped the tiller in his right hand. He looked upward at the sky, as though he were not sailing the ocean at all, but the heavens. Lidsmod sat beside him on the raised platform beside the steering oar. This far at sea they had a good following wind, and no oars had to be manned.

  “Feel how Raven flexes with the swells,” said Njord. The red-striped sail blossomed. Raven seemed to leave the water. She rarely rocked from side to side, like a freight knorr, but always upward, flexing like a living creature, so that the ship seemed to climb the sky.

  Raven was a good name for a first voyage, but a truly fortunate ship would earn a better, longer, or more storied name. Crane, while a fine vessel, had never become Crane of the Wind, or Crane of the Victories, because something about the ship had seemed not quite saga fit. Landwaster, on the other hand, had once been called simply Fulmar, after the strong-winged seabird.

  A petrel scurried across the water, heading north-northwest. Raven coursed toward the southwest. Now that the oars were stowed, the sail billowed, and the walrus-hide stays fastened, the men occupied themselves by doing little: drowsing, talking quietly, enduring the water and the cold.

  Njord reached up and tested the tension of the back stay. Raven was so flexible that even this tug could be felt throughout the ship. “Climb forward to the bowline,” Njord told Lidsmod. “Make sure it’s taut.”

  Lidsmod scrambled over sea chests and lounging bodies. The bowline was fastened at the base of Raven’s prow. Lidsmod tugged at the rope, and a yellow grin appeared at his shoulder. “Don’t pull it like that—you’ll snap it in two.” Gorm shoved Lidsmod aside. “Many a good line’s been broken by a clumsy hand.”

  Lidsmod said, “Njord wants it tighter.”

  “He wants it tighter,” scoffed Gorm. “Njord knows everything about a ship, doesn’t he? So if Njord wants a tighter line, that is exactly what Njord will get.”

  Gorm’s words were fit enough, but his manner turned something in Lidsmod’s heart.

  “We tighten it like this.” Gorm stretched the line, untied and retied the knot in the space of three breaths. It was an expert knot, quickly executed. “Tighten the tack line on your way back,” Gorm said with a tight-lipped smile.

  The tack was fastened through an oar hole, and at first it looked easier than the bowline had. But the hide rope was stiff, and Lidsmod’s fingers were clumsy with the cold and wet. Lidsmod stepped on a hand, and Eirik’s eye opened.

  “There’s nothing wrong with that knot, friend Lidsmod,” said the saga teller sleepily. “Leave it alone.”

  It was too late. Three things happened at once.

  Njord called out, “What are you doing?”

  The tack line popped out of the oar hole and whipped into the wind.


  And Gorm laughed.

  The ship faltered, the sail flapping like a great white blood-splashed wing. The tack line slashed Lidsmod on the mouth, and his hands could not grab it as it blinked past him again.

  Ulf bulked close to Lidsmod and soothed the sail down. Eirik stood and reached out to the canvas, gathering in the snaking line.

  “That happens to everyone who ever sailed,” said Ulf reassuringly. “A man can stand all morning trying to snatch a loose line from the wind. Loop it through the oar hole and use a surf knot. Tug it tight. That’s all you have to do.”

  It hadn’t needed to be done at all, Lidsmod realized. Eirik had been right. Lidsmod was flushed with humiliation and stumbled over sea chests and huddled bodies, back toward the helm. He stared into the wind so that the hard breeze would seem to have caused his tears.

  “Grab the bailer,” Njord ordered, matter-of-fact. “Get that water over the side.”

  Lidsmod bailed. He had bailed since his infancy, as had any boy, in skips, small shore boats, with his friends. He could do it at least as well as most of the men, and even better, if he worked hard at it, than Torsten the berserker. He knew how to fling the water so it vanished into the wind, and he was quick.

  Gorm steamed inwardly, keeping his own counsel.

  Was there no other way to gain gold in the world than to endure these clumsy dimwits? he thought. Every one of them was stupid in some way. Torsten, with his bear shirt and his dull eye, who had to concentrate to swallow his spit so he didn’t drool. Floki, with his slick, smug expression, because he had won Gorm’s thirty sheep. Njord with his skull-cracked glee in the ocean, like a little boy in a fishing cog. And Gunnar with his pretense of not hearing what was said around him.

  Gorm said nothing. It was important to endure these men, because he needed gold more than ever. Gorm bit his lip and turned away. The sea rose up; the sea fell away. It did not interest Gorm.

  “This is a good wind,” Njord said, explaining why wet and chill were good things, blessings from Odin. Lidsmod was willing to believe it, and was thankful he wasn’t seasick. That would have been deep humiliation indeed. But already his old neighbors from the village looked different; the cold made the men look gaunt and unfamiliar. Even Gunnar looked cruel and watchful, and the poet Eirik drowsed sullenly, arms folded against the salt spumes.

  But the ship’s weather vane was, indeed, stretched straight as a black knife. “Three days and we’ll kiss land,” said Njord.

  Lidsmod allowed himself to feel a flicker of optimism. “We’ll surprise the Westland, like snow out of a summer sky,” he said, using the old saying hopefully. “Especially with a berserker like Torsten.”

  “Give me men like Trygg,” Njord confided quietly, “with his beak like two noses where a Dane sliced it. He’s left-handed as well as even-tempered. Sometimes a lefthanded man has an advantage in a battle. Men like Ulf are good shipmates too, and Eirik, whose mood is steady and whose poetry can ease even death. But a berserker …” Njord could not bring himself to say more.

  Gunnar stirred. The wind freshened, so he sent men to shorten the sail. But if Gunnar had said nothing, the work would have been done soon enough. These men needed no sea lord.

  “I knew this ship would fly!” cried Njord. He had augered the holes and driven the pegs. The steering oar, a broad wooden paddle fastened to the side of the ship, was held like a large sword into the water. It was always on the right side of the ship, the steer-board side. The oar sliced the water cleanly. Njord told Lidsmod that the feel of it in his hands was the best feeling in the world.

  The blue-black waves fell away. White foam skeined the face of the water. The timbers and the rigging groaned like great god-women under the thrusts of god-men. Njord spat salt water. The wool sail did not flap or billow. It stayed hard, pregnant-woman full. “Maybe two days,” said Njord, “at this speed.”

  Lidsmod glanced back. Crane was keeping up, he’d give it that. At this distance it was a twin to Raven, but Lidsmod knew that Crane could not beat against the wind, if it came to that, like this new Raven could.

  Landwaster was far behind, a black gnat on the water. But it did not have to be fast. Five hundred men had died because of that ship, and the five hundred Danish death agonies seemed to weigh it down. It was an ugly ship, and nearly crank, tending to lean sideways into the water.

  A wave ran under Raven, pattering underfoot like mice, rolling forward. The stern lifted with the overtaking wave, and the prow nodded. Now not only the wind was pushing Raven, but the sea too, blue cliffs rising behind them, urging them forward.

  That night, the invisible spray stinging lips and eyes, Eirik sang. His song was of the broad loom of slaughter, the human web. The Fates crossed it with a scarlet weft, and the warp was made of human entrails. Human heads were the loom weights.

  Lidsmod wished Eirik had sung another tale. Ulf, however, grunted with satisfaction when the saga was done. Like most of the men, he took solace from these cold stories, cold and true. Such stories helped a man endure real weather. There was solace for the fallen, but first they had to fall.

  The men ate salt herring. Eirik sang another song, and this one Lidsmod liked. It was the Saga of Landwaster. The ship fell from the north, and the Danes in their mead halls did not know it had gathered them until the oak halls burned. They ran, sword in hand, through the death gates, and the men of Landwaster, the sons of Spjothof, cut them one by one to the bone. Then came the counterattack, the attack of the wolf king, lord of the Danes, failing badly, and the surf splashing thick with the blood of the spearmen, the Danes all killed.

  Give me men to kill, thought Gorm, listening to the tale. He would have prayed to the One-eyed, but Gorm had no god. For him there was nothing beyond this world of black sea, black sky. But still he thought, Give me men to kill. He hungered for a circle of death around him.

  When every man was asleep or trying to sleep in the cold and wet, and Ulf was at the helm, the sky changed. The stars dimmed and vanished. The wind slackened.

  No one had to wake the men. They stirred, dim shapes in the dark. The sail was lowered, furled around the yard, and lashed to its supports. Men wrapped sea blankets around their shoulders, and Njord took the steering oar. He gripped it with both hands. It was not surprising this time of year, a storm out of the east. Now they would see how strong Raven was.

  Lidsmod knew not to ask. He scowled the same way Torsten scowled, and Trygg, because it was essential to have a manly look on his face. But soon he slipped to the helm and whispered to Njord, “What will happen?”

  The white-haired helmsman chuckled. “We’ll see what our fine Raven can do in a storm!”

  10

  Lidsmod had never been so afraid.

  Raven went under again, and then bounded into the air. Beards streamed water. Men hung on to sea chests. Lidsmod took his turn with the bailing scoop, and then clung to the side of the ship, half blind with flying spray.

  Trygg, his scarred nose streaming brine, bailed. It did no good. Eirik took another bailer and shoveled water too. No one spoke. It would have been useless. The wind raked the ship. Lidsmod tried to take heart in the knowledge that every man had experienced this before—some of them had been in ships that had capsized in storms, or in ships that had burst like rush baskets against rocks. The men held on, eyes tight against the sting of salt water.

  Opir hooted once when Raven stood nearly on end and then fell back. But now Opir was quiet too.

  Ulf checked the line around Lidsmod’s waist. He put his face against Lidsmod’s ear. “Don’t worry!” he called. “Raven will play with the wind!”

  To trust in the ship was to trust in the ship’s ancestors, in the pine for the mast and the oars, and the oaks that stood into the storms as they grew. It was to trust in earth and rain. The powers of the sky were in Raven as she shouldered upward from the sea.

  Raven plunged back, but the waves had fallen away, so that she fell farther, down so far that Lidsmod could see the cliffs of
water high around her. Water swallowed ship and crew. Through the dark they ascended, higher and yet higher, beyond what had been the surface of the waves. And still higher yet. The sky was made of water now. The earth was gone.

  Lidsmod had seen a god once. This was not something he would tell just anyone—when a god showed himself, it was not a secret you always shared with other men. Climbing into the highlands to carry a cheese to his uncle, who had scruffy sheep up where it was always winter, Lidsmod had seen a man standing at the crossing of two trails, a one-eyed man who did not speak but only watched. When the youth lifted a hand in greeting, this figure lifted his, in turn. Lidsmod stood in the path and waited as the unfamiliar man climbed the hill path and vanished.

  He mentioned this to his mother one night beside the fire; she did not answer for a long time. When she finally spoke, she said that Odin might take something from Lidsmod—a finger, or perhaps an entire limb. “This will be his way of keeping you safe, and accepting a fee in turn.” She said this without joy, and Lidsmod regretted telling her about the gnarled traveler by the stony path.

  Maybe now, thought Lidsmod, is when Odin will crush a thumb, or blind one of my eyes. He tried to stay close to Ulf, because the broad-shouldered man was known to be good luck—years ago Ulf’s grandfather had caught a dwarf.

  This was a famous incident, and everyone knew about it. Dwarves could make marvelous things of gold. They were cunning with their hands, and if a man waited near the earth cracks where they lived, and caught one in a net, he could make the dwarf carve or mold something for him before he was let go. Dwarves live in the ground like elves, and are notoriously cautious. Ulf’s grandfather had been a clear-headed freeman, widely known for his intelligence. He trapped the dwarf on Midsummer night, when there was no darkness at all, so that the dwarf was overconfident. Odin loves the sly.

  The dwarf, snagged and bound, agreed to make a cloak pin of gold; this was the brooch Ulf’s father wore on feasting days. It was a simple piece, and not as intricate as much dwarf work, but it was heavy with its richness, being pure gold, with a copper pin. Ulf’s brother would inherit it, and this was all the gold Ulf’s family had. He had a proud family, much admired, and they worked hard and feared no man.