The Sword Song of Bjarni Sigurdson

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  ‘No,’ said Angharad.

  ‘There’s danger here. And you know it. Afraid you are. Come away.’

  ‘Of course I am afraid. Why else did I cling to you when you came out of the sea with your great man-killing sword at your side? I’ll not leave the land that was my father’s and my father’s father’s father’s before him.’

  Bjarni shook his head, baffled. ‘My kind can build their home and hearth and strike root wherever the keel comes to shore.’

  ‘But I am not of your kind. And there is one thing you are forgetting in all this – I cannot leave Gwyn.’

  And from that, he knew that there would be no shifting her.

  When they got back to the steading, all was as they had left it, the old man lying with his bright gaze turned towards the door, the great black hound sitting beside him, who leapt up and came with swinging tail to thrust his lowered head between Bjarni’s knees in greeting. And for a moment Bjarni wondered whether the whole thing was only a fancy in Angharad’s mind, brewed up by being too long alone, and in some way passed on to him. But then he remembered the emptying village street, men’s hands making the sign against ill luck as she passed . . . and he felt for the sword thongs at his belt.

  21

  Harvest Wrath

  THE WEATHER HELD, and in three days’ time the barley in the crop-plot was ready for harvesting. ‘Do you know how to handle a sickle?’ Angharad asked him a little nervously and Bjarni, unaccountably annoyed at the suggestion that he knew the handling of nothing but a sword, said harshly, ‘Why not? The raiding season ends with the start of the harvest.’

  But at the harvesting they made a team that worked together easily enough, Bjarni going ahead with the sickle, and Angharad following after to bind up the sheaves. In a way it was different from any harvesting that he had known before, for always the harvest had been a matter of wide fields, and the whole settlement gathering to each other’s aid. But this little harvesting, just himself and Angharad, and Hugin hunting field mice among the stooks, had an odd goodness about it that he knew suddenly he would not forget.

  They got the harvest in, sheaves piled high on the farm sled drawn by the horse, Swallow, and stored in the barn ready for threshing. The last sheaf, the maiden, they brought in and bound high on the crossbeam of the house-place for next year’s harvest. And that night Angharad made a feast; the best that she could contrive with soaked barley and meat, honey cakes and heather ale from her carefully hoarded store in a long-necked red pottery jar with a hunting scene embossed round its sides. But the thing that made it into a feast instead of the evening meal that on other nights, with the day’s work done, they had shared wearily together, was that Angharad, sitting on the women’s side of the fire, had changed her breeks and sark for a kirtle of saffron-coloured stuff, and washed her hair and brushed it out until it shone, and made herself a crown of flowers from the harvest field, moon-daisies and cornflowers and the like.

  ‘I have never seen you in woman’s garb before,’ Bjarni said, sitting on the men’s side and gazing at her through the peat smoke.

  ‘What good is a golden gown for mucking out the stables in?’ said Angharad simply. But she said it with a smile, rising to take more honey cake mushed in ale to the old man in the corner. Gwyn had been growing noticeably weaker over the past few days, spending more and more of his time in sleep, seeming less and less aware of what went on about him; but the harvest feast was for him also. Bjarni watched her kneeling beside the old man, spooning the pap into him, talking softly

  He watched her come back to the fire. He had the oddest feeling that it was not only the first time he had ever seen Angharad in a gown, but the first time he had ever seen her at all. It was not only the gown; it was that for that one evening Angharad seemed to have relaxed something in herself, and laid it aside like a weapon. The string of a harp that was always too tense was slackened off to its true pitch, so that the tune she made was good and sweet . . . A good harvest after two bad ones would maybe make the villagers not so sure now she was a witch, or that it was her coming that had made the bad harvests.

  Bjarni was not used to thinking that kind of thought. It took him by surprise, and the surprise of it made him choke into his ale-jar; and Angharad shifted round the fire and thumped him on the back, which turned the strange moment back to normal again.

  The neck of her saffron gown fell open a good deal lower than the sark she usually wore: and as she leaned towards him the thing that she wore on a silken cord around her neck swung out through the opening, and he saw that it was a ring; a heavy golden ring, much battered and set with some dark green stone. She made as though to catch it up and thrust it back inside her gown, then seemed to change her mind and left it hanging in full view, from which he judged that he might speak about it if he wished. ‘That’s what you rubbed the bairn’s warts with.’

  ‘A gold ring is the best thing for charming warts with, except a black cat’s tail, and I have not a black cat.’ On a sudden impulse she slipped the cord over her head and held it out to him.

  He hesitated a minute before taking it. ‘Is it magic?’

  ‘Only to the child whose wart it charms away. I use it because it is precious to me. It was my father’s and his father’s before him, right back to the ancient times – from the time of the Redcrest soldiers who built the great fort to guard the Anglesey strait.’

  Bjarni sat turning the ring between his fingers, catching and losing the firelight in the green stone. There was something engraved on it, a fish of some kind . . . he bent closer and saw that it was not a fish but a dolphin. ‘Seamen say that when dolphins follow a ship, the voyage will be lucky.’

  He handed the ring back to her, and she slipped the cord over her head and stored it once more in the breast of her gown. ‘It is too big for my hand,’ she said. ‘But now there is no man to wear it . . .’

  There was a lovely quietness of heart about her this evening, and sitting by the peat fire, beneath the corn maiden on the tie-beam, with Hugin chasing dream hares in his sleep close by, they talked together as they had never quite done before, telling things in exchange for other things, much as children may do when putting out tendrils of friendship to each other. So Bjarni found himself telling her about his boyhood in Norway before he came west-over-seas to join his brother in the Rafnglas settlement; things that he had scarce thought of in more than five years, and had not known that he remembered or cared about at all. And in return Angharad told him of the time when the half-derelict farm was alive and busy, when her father and brother still lived, and before the shadow came. And then Rhywallan’s name came into it. Bjarni sat forward with a jerk.

  ‘Oh yes, he was part of those days,’ Angharad said. ‘He was fostered here for a while, at my father’s hearth. He and my brother were close companions. He was greedy even then – land greedy, greedy for what he wanted; and because his father was the King’s Chief Falconer he had the right to the champion’s portion in all things.’

  ‘Is the King’s Falconer so great a thing to be?’ Bjarni asked. ‘To work the king’s hunting birds?’

  She laughed. ‘The King’s Falconer does not work the King’s falcons, he has underlings who do the work – the King’s Candle-bearer only walks before the great candle on feast days, the King’s Woodman does not himself carry in the wood and peats for the fire in the great hall. Only the King’s Harper, and the King’s Chaplain, and the King’s Champion must be always with him, to carry out their own duties. For the rest it is a title of power and honour, not a task to be performed. When Rhywallan became the King’s Falconer in his turn, he thought still more that all things he wished for were his by right. And he wished for me – I was twelve years old by then and of marriageable age, though ten years younger than him. He went to my father, but my father would not give me against my will. It made for bad blood between the households. And my father was already a sick man. I think it was for that reason that when he felt the hand of death upon him, he sent me to
the nunnery, to have me well out of the way of whatever might come after.’

  ‘Did you wish it so?’ Bjarni asked. He could not see Angharad shut away in a house of holy women.

  ‘It pleased me more than to be married to Rhywallan,’ Angharad said simply.

  Outside, the wind was rising, setting the smoke of the peat fire sideways, filling the far end of the house-place with blue haze. The old man coughed, and Angharad rose and went to give him a drink, then returned to sit by the fire again. The talk drifted to other things, and she began telling about her time in the nunnery, about Sister Annis who had taught her leechcraft, about Sister Garniflaith who was greedy and stole the honey cakes that the Holy Mother liked to keep for guests, and then tried to blame it on Mousis the nunnery cat . . .

  Presently Hugin raised his head and listened, muzzle lifted, grumbling softly in his throat. Bjarni glanced across at Angharad, and she was listening also, though as yet there was nothing to hear under the long slow gusts of wind. Bjarni put his hand on the dog’s neck, and felt the hair lift a little under his palm. A few moments more and they all heard it, in a trough of quiet between gust and gust; the flying beat of horses’ hooves coming up the valley.

  ‘Now who would be riding this way like the Wild Hunt at this hour of night?’ Bjarni said, and got up, his hand going to his sword hilt.

  ‘I can only think of one.’ Angharad was on her feet also and turning to the doorway. ‘And we were talking of him a while back . . .’

  Outside it was almost as light as day, with a great harvest moon casting sharp-edged shadows, and silver-fringed cloudlets scuttling across the sky. And almost as they reached the foreporch doorway, a man on a horse yelling like the fiends in Hell leapt the thomwork gate, two hounds as white as moonlight leaping ahead of him, and a moment later brought the horse to a rearing and plunging halt almost on the threshold.

  ‘Rhywallan!’ Angharad said, but Bjarni had known that before she spoke. ‘And what brings you here at this hour of night?’

  ‘It is a fine white night for the hunting,’ said the man on the horse. There was enough torchlight through the house-place doorway to show that the snorting and fidgeting animal was red – a bright bay – and the man’s mantle was red also: in sunlight horse and rider would burn like flame, but now in the moonlight they were as dark as something out of the Hollow Hills, until Angharad stepped forward with one of the torches which she had taken from the wall sconce. ‘And finding myself this way, I thought to ride up valley and ask after your harvest.’

  ‘The harvest has been good,’ Angharad said on a note of quiet triumph. ‘A good harvest after two lean ones. Maybe the shadow will pass.’ Bjarni caught and understood the note of challenge.

  ‘I see for myself the thing the countryside talks of – the fair stranger with a black dog at his heel, who came to you up from the sea on the night of the great storm.’ His gaze flicked over Bjarni with a curious mingling of looks: part curious, part jeering, part – and this was the dangerous part – on the edge of fear. Bjarni gave him back look for look, not answering, aware of Hugin pressed against his leg.

  Angharad answered easily enough, the goodness of the harvest still within her. ‘So, now you see for yourself: this is Bjarni Sigurdson, a seaman washed up from the wreck that night, he and his dog together. And a good storm it was for me too, left with no hands but my own to work the farm since Gwyn was struck down.’

  The man laughed. ‘That’s the kind of tale that you would tell – or that maybe he would tell you – of course.’

  ‘It is the truth,’ Angharad said.

  ‘So. It’s the truth.’ Rhywallan’s voice was mocking. ‘But to return to the harvest – it is for that that you have put on your best gown and tied up your hair with the flowers of the corn?’ Bjarni saw the man’s eyes moving over her with a kind of smirking delight, and knew that for Rhywallan too, the sight of her in woman’s gear was doing strange things. And yet all the time, the fingers of his bridle hand, half lost in the folds of his cloak, were making the sign of the horns.

  ‘Of course – down the valley the village will be doing much the same this night.’

  ‘And bidding any guest come in for a cup of harvest ale?’

  ‘I will bring you ale if you wish it, but I cannot bid you enter. Gwyn is at the end of life, and I will not have him disturbed.’

  ‘So.’ His face changed suddenly. ‘Forget the ale. Best not, I’m thinking, to eat or drink of this house. And as to the village harvest, forget that too. The deer broke into the crop-lands two nights since. There will be empty grain stores in the village this winter.’

  Angharad caught her breath, and Bjarni felt her tighten – all the strings of her harp tighten. ‘The corn was in good heart when we passed that way three days since.’

  ‘Aye, you were seen to stand and look at it, and him with you. It was the next night the deer broke in.’

  ‘It was none of my doing,’ Angharad said, speaking in a clear careful voice, like a woman standing trial before the moot, the village court.

  ‘No? But there are those in the village who fear otherwise, and fear is a dangerous animal when it breaks free. My advice to you is to get you back to your nunnery. I will give you gold for a second dowry if you have forfeited the first by this reckless return to the world.’

  Angharad said in the same clear level voice, ‘I would not sell the land to you for my dowry into Heaven, though Hell yawned at my feet!’

  Rhywallan showed no sign of being flicked on the raw by her tone, but his fidgeting horse flung up its head, snorting as though from a savage jerk on the bit, shivering and trampling.

  Hugin, who had been rumbling softly in his throat all the while, let out a deep warning growl. Rhywallan made a curious sound high up behind his nose, and in the same instant the two hounds, who had been standing stiff-legged and with lifted manes, launched themselves upon Hugin.

  Hugin was no fighter, but it was not in him to turn tail. He sprang joyfully to meet the double menace, and next instant a snarling and whirling dogfight was going on almost on the house-place threshold.

  Rhywallan reined his frightened horse a little aside, and sat looking on with interest, but the fight could not last long, two against one, and the one not a killer by instinct. Angharad cried, ‘Call your dogs off!’

  Bjarni plunged into the ugly tangle of struggling bodies rolling over each other and savage tearing jaws. Hugin was down, and one of the pale hounds had him by the throat. Bjarni’s hands were on the hairy neck, trying to strangle him off, but even as he struggled to force the clenched jaws apart, the other hound crashed into them, taking his legs from under him, and he felt the slash of teeth in his shoulder. Hugin was still struggling but the strength was going from him. With no time to think, Bjarni’s hand went to the dirk in his belt, almost as it seemed of its own accord ripping it from the sheath, driving it into the attacker’s throat. He felt the warm blood spurting over his hand as the hound collapsed with a grunt. His hand was on Hugin’s collar as the black dog staggered to his feet, choking and whistling for breath with the second dog already upon him. But in that same instant, fire came over his shoulder spitting and sparking – Angharad’s torch, and Angharad beside him driving it into the snarling face; and Rhywallan’s remaining hound giving back, swinging his head from side to side and whining like a kicked puppy.

  Everything seemed to go quiet with extraordinary suddenness, as the fight fell apart. Only one dog was trying still to growl, without as yet enough breath to growl with, and one whining and pawing at his scorched muzzle. And the third lying twitching while the blood fountained red from his throat. Then the twitching stopped.

  ‘You have killed my best hound,’ Rhywallan said in a grating voice.

  ‘Who was for killing mine, he and his brother – sicked on him by you,’ Bjarni said. For an instant it came into his mind that Rhywallan might demand Hugin in place of his dead hound, and he wondered how best to deal with it if he did.

  But R
hywallan seemed to read the thought, and his full lips curled in mockery. ‘Do you think I would take the like of that into my hunting pack?’

  Then Angharad’s voice, cool and sweet and edged like a sword, came between them. ‘Rhywallan, my kinsman, you have seen what you came to see, and said what you came to say; now let you be on your way while the harvest moon is still high to light you back to your dunghill.’

  The man turned a little in his saddle to look down at her as she stood with the torch held high. ‘Surely I have seen what I came to see – what all the valleys are talking of: you with your left-handed, devil-handed Sea-Demon and your black familiar. What spell did you cast to set the faery finger upon me all those years ago before ever you went to the Holy Sisters?’ He had been speaking quietly, almost musically, but suddenly, horribly, his voice rose almost to a shriek. ‘Aye, I have seen you with the harvest flowers in your hair while the down-valley harvest fields lie wrecked and trampled. Best you remember that, you with the witch mark on your long white neck!’

  22

  Witch Hunt

  RHYWALLAN WAS WRENCHING his horse’s head round as he shrieked his last words, jabbing in the spurs as the poor beast plunged away, the single hound streaking in its wake.

  A few moments more and they were out over the thomwork hedge, leaving a trampled and forsaken place behind them, and a wild thudding of hooves down the drift-way, like a rider of the Wild Hunt, then out over the open turf lifting out of the valley, growing faint, dying away. When there was no sound left but the wind under the moon, Bjarni fetched a long breath, and leant to pull aside Hugin, who had padded over, still grumbling deep in his torn throat, to nose at the body of the dead hound which lay before the threshold. ‘I’ll get rid of the dog,’ he said.

  Angharad shook her head. ‘The dog can wait until I have tended your hurts and Hugin’s. Back into the house, both of you.’