The Sword Song of Bjarni Sigurdson

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  Bjarni shook his head, tossing a half-gnawed knuckle bone to Hugin. ‘Not the merchant kind, though Sea Cow was a merchant ship and the shipmaster was my friend. When the Chieftain bade me out of my settlement – an ill thing that I had done – he gave me a sword, not this one, which I carried for pay among the ship companions of Onund Treefoot, he that had his nest on Barra in the Outer Isles, and then with Red Thorstein of Mull. I was with him when he died in Caithness last autumn, and now my sword is my own again. I was hearing that King Anarand has Danes and Northmen among his war-bands on Anglesey.’

  The girl looked at him in silence a long moment through the peat-reek; then she said, ‘Maybe, one day. Meanwhile, let you bide here with me.’

  He returned her look, startled for the moment, and then demanded, ‘What as? You don’t need a cattleman.’

  ‘As my hired sword,’ said Angharad. ‘No, no cattleman . . .’

  Just for the moment he thought it was a jest, and then he saw that she was in slightly desperate earnest; and again he had the feeling that she was afraid of something.

  He held out his hand to her – palm up – above the fire. Hers came to meet it and they shook hands as men do on a bargain.

  So Bjarni Sigurdson, who had hired his sword to Onund Treefoot and Thorstein Olafson, was hired sword now to the lady of a derelict farm. And for the moment surprisingly content that it should be so. He went on working with her about the house and farm much as he had in the past three days, work that might have been done by a thrall, or the lord of the household come to that.

  He hunted and fished for her so that there was food for them both. It was a life nearer to the life he had grown up with than anything he had known in the past five years. Yet not quite like it – and he always wore his sword.

  At times, Angharad would disappear into the woods or up onto the high moors with a big wicker creel, and the growing things she came back with she hung up to dry above the fire, or pounded in with goose grease from a great jar in her store-shed, or infused in water from the stream, timing the process with incantations in a strange stately-sounding tongue that was neither British nor Norse. So it was not many days before Bjarni realised that young though she was – maybe no older than himself – she was herb-wise as an old village crone; but maybe something a little more, a little other . . .

  ‘Why do you do all this, and nobody comes for your salves?’ he asked one day, finding her tying dried herbs into bundles.

  ‘People do come – sometimes,’ she told him. ‘When they come, what they need is ready for them.’

  And sure enough, one day when it would have been past sheep-shearing time if there had been any sheep, a man came over the edge of the valley holding his right arm in his left, with an ugly gash on his wrist that had sickened with neglect and was oozing yellow pus.

  Angharad cleaned it for him and salved and bound it with clean rags. And she dosed him with something dark and pungent-smelling, and gave him more of everything in a bundle. ‘Come back in three days,’ she said.

  But watching him go away over the rim of the valley, she said, ‘He’ll not come back, not unless he gets so sick that all my leechcraft is undone.’

  ‘Why so?’ Bjarni said.

  ‘Because he’s afraid. Did you not smell how afraid he was?’

  ‘But he came, this time he came . . .’

  ‘Because he was more afraid for his arm.’

  ‘But what is he afraid of?’

  ‘What they are all afraid of – me,’ said Angharad.

  They were leaning side by side on the empty pigsty wall in the late sunshine, and he looked round at her quickly, not quite sure if he had heard her aright.

  She returned his look for a moment, then turned her gaze down the quiet valley. ‘When my father knew that he was dying he sent me to the nunnery over beyond . . . thinking, I suppose, to find safety for me there.’ Her hand moved up to the wine-coloured mark on her neck, as though it was linked somehow with what she was saying. ‘I was not made for the cloisters, but there was an aged sister there – Sister Annis – who was their infirmarer, very wise in leechcraft. I was set to help her because I had some knowledge of herb-lore myself, and from her I learned all that she had to teach of healing; some that the mother superior maybe did not know about, that came from part of an old book that was saved when the Emperor Theodosius burned the great library at Alexandria. Such knowledge is forbidden to us because it came from the ancient world, before the birth of Christ. But Sister Annis did not believe that any knowledge that might heal men’s suffering could be ill, and she passed on to me what she still remembered. So my father died, and when my brother was killed three winters ago at the boar hunting – I was close to taking my final vows, but I had not yet taken them – I left my nunnery and came home to handle the farm. At first the people of the valley were glad of my coming, for they had no wise-woman. But there have been bad harvests, and last year many of the cattle dropped their calves too soon. And when they brought their ills to me for healing, they were frightened of Sister Annis’s spells in the Latin tongue, though I told them that they were but Paternosters and words of healing power.’

  She had been talking in a level, hurried tone, as though having started to tell these things that maybe she had never told before, she could not stop. But now her quick rush of words fell away.

  ‘Could you not use the spells that they are used to?’ Bjarni said.

  She shook her head. ‘The spells and the salves and the draughts are part of each other. I could not change one without the other. This is the leechcraft that I have learned and I will not betray it. Beside, I cannot turn away the bad harvests. Nor can I charm this away.’ And again she touched the strange mark on her neck.

  The man did not come back; but a few days later, a girl of maybe ten summers came to the door, clutching a bunch of wilting wild flowers, tormentil, and bedstraw and crushed silken poppies, and holding out her left hand with a large wart on the forefinger and two more at the base of the thumb. Most of those who came to Angharad for healing brought payment of some sort: a pot of pig-fat, a few eggs, a handful of wool combed and ready for the spindle; though if they did not, it seemed to make no difference to Angharad. She took the flowers, and put them in a crock of water which she set beside Gwyn’s bed. Then, returning to the child in the doorway, took her hand. ‘Oh, you have knocked the big one, it is bleeding,’ she said, and took out from the breast of her sark something – Bjarni had never seen what it was – that she wore always on a silken cord round her neck and, kneeling, rubbed the wart with it. The child stood quiet to have it done, but Bjarni saw that she was shivering, and that the other hand behind her back was making the sign of the horns against the evil eye.

  Angharad rubbed each of the warts in turn. Then she dropped the thing back inside her sark. She cupped the girl’s face for an instant, looking deep into her eyes. ‘The Sea Beast will have taken them all away before the old moon dies,’ she said.

  The child remained still for a moment, then twisted away and turned and ran.

  ‘She was making the sign of the horns behind her back, all the while,’ Bjarni said.

  ‘I know. But none the less, the warts will go.’

  20

  Harvest Weather

  MOST OF THE summer had gone when one day Bjarni returned from fishing the tail of the upstream pool with two fine spotted char in his hand. There was a small mean wind blpwing and a fitful scudding of rain, and he looked somewhat anxiously to the weather, for the barley was near to harvest. There was a feeble wailing coming from the house-place, as of a sick lamb trying to bleat without enough breath to bleat with. And another sound, a low rhythmic murmuring that he knew well enough by now was the sound of Angharad at her leechcraft, and timing something with one of her strange Latin spells.

  He checked at the doorway, for often Angharad did not like a watcher at such times. But she did not seem to notice him, and nor did the woman who sat beside the fire, bent all together over the chil
d in her lap, almost as though she would gather it back into her own body. There was a thick pungent smell, and something was bubbling gently on the fire, while a pot of some kind of dark greasy stuff stood near by.

  ‘Paternoster . . .’ murmured Angharad, watching the pot and moving it a shade to one side when the bubbling grew too swift and again, ‘Paternoster . . .’

  The woman was rocking a little, as though already in grief.

  Angharad finished the Paternoster, and drew the pot aside. ‘Don’t do that,’ she said. ‘If you do as I tell you, the child need not die.’

  She fished a soggy mass of leaves from the pot as soon as it was cool enough to put her hand in. ‘Now put back your cloak from him and hold him steady.’ She spread the hot leaves on the baby’s small panting chest, and it broke its wailing to sneeze at the fumes. She bound all in place with clean rags, then drew the edges of the soft fawn-skin in which it had been wrapped close about it. She poured something into a little flask stoppered with wood, and gave it to the woman. They were on the threshold by this time: and Bjarni had drawn aside to let the woman pass.

  ‘Give him the draught as often as you can,’ Angharad said. ‘That is to bring the fever down. Keep him warm and still. And tomorrow I will come. Don’t bring him out again, not in this wind. I will come.’

  And the woman nodded wordlessly and, gathering her cloak close about the thing she carried, turned and walked away.

  ‘Would it not have been better to have kept her and the child here overnight?’ Bjarni asked, entering and dropping the fish that he had caught beside the fire.

  ‘Much, but nothing would make her keep it here after sundown. This way she will save its immortal soul, even if the body dies.’

  And the note of forlorn bitterness in her tone made him suddenly angry, so that he wanted to hit somebody.

  ‘Don’t go,’ he said the next morning when she gathered her things together and flung on her cloak.

  ‘I must,’ she told him. ‘If I don’t, the child may die.’

  ‘Then I’ll come with you.’

  ‘No! Bide close to the house lest Gwyn has need of you. He grows weaker these days.’

  He stood in the clearing to see her away, wondering why he should obey this chit of a girl in breeks as though she was the Lady Aud. And as she disappeared down the track, he heard behind him in the corner of the house-place the difficult grunting sound that meant that Gwyn wanted something. Hunching his shoulders, he turned and went to find out what it was.

  The old man had had his morning stirabout, so the most likely things were that he wanted a drink, that the rushes of his bedding had got into a lump somewhere, or of course that he had fouled himself again; but it seemed that it was none of these things. His feverish gaze fixed itself on Bjarni’s face, then went straining to the doorway and back again. He went on grunting; he seemed to be trying to speak. The need was so desperate that, though it was not speech, it was more like speech than Bjarni had ever heard from him before. ‘Go.’

  ‘Rest easy, old father,’ he said. ‘I’m going. I’ll leave Hugin with you.’ And to the great dog who stood beside him with gently waving tail, ‘Sit and stay.’

  He heard a protesting whimper behind him as he left, and turned in the doorway. The dog was half up again, tail and eyes beseeching. ‘On guard,’ he said, and the dog collapsed with a protesting sigh.

  He went on through the steading gate and down past the barley-plot, then towards the rim of the valley. He had never actually been into the village before, but his hunting had brought him above it more than once, and he knew the way well enough. In a short while, coming down a hill shoulder above alder woods, he saw Angharad only a short way away, and checked his long loping pace. He had no wish to catch up with her yet. So long as he could keep her clear in view . . .

  He overtook her on the edge of the village’s in-take land. Frowning, she looked round quickly at the sound of his footfall on the turf behind her. ‘I bade you not to come, but bide with Gwyn,’ she said.

  ‘Gwyn bade me to come with you,’ he told her flatly. ‘I left Hugin with him.’ Suddenly he grinned. ‘Where should your hired sword be but behind you when you walk abroad?’

  The small fierce moment passed, and they went together down the drift-way, Bjarni walking a couple of paces behind in the proper place for a hired blade.

  The village when they reached it was much the same close scatter of turf and furze thatched bothies and a few larger house-places that he had known elsewhere, save that it was not huddled below any chieftain’s hall, which gave it an incomplete look in Bjarni’s eyes, though he knew well enough that among the Welsh the lesser folk gathered in hamlets while the chiefs and greater kindred had their garths and steadings scattered solitary over the countryside – such steadings as Angharad’s must have been in its great days that were past.

  The drift-way became the village street wandering down through the turf-roofed houses and their byres and barns. The place had seemed busy enough when they came down towards it. Men were at work in the wood-wright’s yard and the smithy, someone was driving a pig up the stony street, women with their cloaks huddled about them against the thin rain were moving between house and byre and gathered bucket in hand around the spring head, children and dogs were busy about their own affairs. But at their coming the place grew quiet, children were called indoors, and men and women melted away, or drew well back from their passing. Only the dogs came with tails wagging friendliwise, and the smith – a man of power working with cold iron and bending it to his will had no need to fear witchcraft or any other unchancy thing – worked on unheeding of their passing by. Yet Bjarni had the feeling that eyes were watching them, even where no one seemed to be.

  At the next bothy, where an old cat lay dozing on the midden, Angharad turned and ducked in through the doorway, Bjarni following, blinking through the peat smoke. Yesterday’s woman sat beside the fire, the sick child in her lap. She looked up as Angharad entered, seeming for the moment to shrink back a little, then let her caught breath go, and moved to show the child. The two women spoke together, low-voiced, both looking at the babe. There was water in a crock set ready by the fire.

  ‘The fever is lower,’ Angharad said, her hand exploring the little creature’s head. She poured some water into the small bowl she had brought in her bundle, and while it was heating, undid the binding rags and lifted off the leaves, dry and crackling now, and wrapped the deer-skin close again.

  Then she brought out more of the same leaves and dropped them into the water. The hissing and pungent steam arose, and she began again the same low murmuring that Bjarni had heard before. ‘Paternoster . . .’

  To Bjarni, leaning his shoulder against the doorway, with his ears twitching for any sound from the street outside, it all seemed to last a very long time. But at last the fresh poultice was bandaged on, another vial of something changed hands, and all the other things that must be done, and Angharad gathered her bundle together and rose to go.

  The woman’s hand reached out desperately to cling to her. ‘Will he live?’

  ‘I think so,’ Angharad told her. ‘His fever is down and his breathing easier. If he grows worse again, send Anyl for me, and I will come.’

  Gently she drew back out of the woman’s hold, and came out past Bjarni into the street and turned uphill once more.

  On the way down it had seemed that Angharad had had no thought in her mind but the sick child, but now, with the thing that she had come to do safely accomplished, she seemed to have awareness for other things. Where the drift-way led through the first of the crop-land, she paused, her gaze running out over the barley paling, with its scatter of scarlet poppies. The rain had stopped, and a faint waft of sunshine ran before the wind.

  ‘By Our Lady’s Grace, the weather is kind; there will be a better harvest this year,’ she said, and turned to the steep track once more.

  A man was coming down the drift-way towards them, a dog at his heels and a bundled fleece on his
shoulder. He stopped as they drew near each other, then turned abruptly and disappeared behind a hawthorn windbreak. Angharad looked after him a moment, without checking her pace. ‘That was one of our farm hands until he drifted away last year.’

  ‘One of them? There were others?’

  ‘You can’t work a farm the size of Gwyn Coed – the size Gwyn Coed used to be – without hands. There were two more, and a bond-woman about the house.’

  ‘And they all – drifted away?’

  ‘I think maybe they were afraid to find the Horned One some stormy night sitting beside my hearth.’ She spoke lightly, but there was a faint bitter ache in her voice that made him look at her quickly. By now they were walking side by side. She did not return his look, but walked on with her head up and her gaze lifted to the high valleys that ran toward the foothills of the snows. ‘No, it is in my mind that far back behind all things is Rhywallan, my kinsman.’

  ‘A poor sort of kinsman, I would be thinking.’

  ‘There’s only one thing he loves,’ Angharad said simply, ‘and that is land, land . . . He wants mine. He has offered me gold for it.’

  ‘Has he not land of his own?’

  ‘Plenty,’ Angharad said, her eyes still on the valleys. ‘Up that way towards the broad in-take lands. Chieftain and Lord of three valleys he is, and corn-land on Anglesey that the King gives him for services as his falconer. Still he would have mine to add to his own, and he has the King’s ear.’

  They dropped over the rim of Gwyn Coed and descended through the thickets of oak and hawthorn and wild apple, and the hill flank rose behind them, shutting out the high valleys. And below them the burn came curling down through the in-take land.

  ‘Would you take gold for Gwyn Coed?’

  ‘I had sooner die.’

  ‘It’s in my mind,’ Bjarni said, suddenly stopping on the bank, ‘that you should let him have Gwyn Coed, you should wish him joy of it, and come away with me. I will take you back to my own settlement.’ He heard his own words, not quite believing that he was actually speaking them.