Odin’s Child

by Bruce Macbain

  “He won’t like it any better now, Mother.”

  “I want you to carve runes on it—the way he taught you. I want you to carve Thorvald, do not walk. We will lay it on his breast when we bury him.”

  This was the woman who only the day before had begged him to grovel before Snorri. Who could blame him now if his draug should haunt her?

  “Ask a priest to write it in priest-letters, why don’t you? It’s no job for me.”

  But she persisted. “Your father can’t read the priest-letters, what good would it do? Carve the runes for me, Odd.” She thrust the thing in my hands, turned, and took a few steps. Then she came back. She said, “Odd, carve on it too God help his soul. Then she went quickly back along the path to the house.

  Sitting down on a nearby rock in the shade of a barrow, I began to carve, and, as I carved, sadness and pity filled me. For the runes represented to me all that unfinished business between my father and me: questions never asked, understanding never gained, comfort never given. It would never be finished now.

  Gunnar, laying his spade by, came over to watch. “He tried that with me once, you know, before you were born—the runes—but I didn’t take to ’em. When he set me to carving, I threw the stick away, and he flew into a rage and beat me so hard I couldn’t move for a week. After that we went our own ways.” The bitterness in his voice surprised even me.

  “Gunnar, I never knew that.”

  “Lots you never knew, brother.”

  “Do you have no tears for him even now?”

  “For a coward?”

  “But he fought, Gunnar! At the end, he fought. You saw him.”

  “Oh, he fought—like a weak man goaded to it, not joyfully as a warrior fights.”

  “I call that hard words for a dead man.”

  “Odd … Brother!” Gunnar put out his hands to fend me off, for I had jumped to my feet and swung at him with the crucifix, like a club. An instant before, nothing could have been farther from my mind.

  “Odd, don’t!” he said. “I wouldn’t have us fight for anything—not now of all times. I take back what I said.”

  Putting his hand on my shoulder, he sat me down again. I poured my anger into my carving and made the slivers fly, just as if Father himself wielded the knife. Was his spirit raising its awful head among us so soon?

  But anger with me has a way of rushing in and out like a madman on an errand. Before long it went its muttering way, and I mumbled words of apology to Gunnar.

  I finished the inscription and drew the knife blade across my thumb. My blood flowed into the deep lines and notches of the runes. Rune spells are weak, so my father had taught me long ago, without the added strength of blood.

  “Gunnar, if you haven’t tears….”

  “Aye.”

  He took the knife from me and sliced between his thumb and finger, cutting deeper than he needed to, and let his blood run together with mine over the crucifix. “May he have good of it.”

  I knew Gunnar did it only for me. I loved him very much at that moment.

  †

  That morning the sun had been bright and hot in an empty sky, but by afternoon, rain clouds stood again over the mountains.

  We laid Thorvald in his tomb, placing next to him a joint of mutton on a platter, his silver-rimmed drinking horn, his blacksmith’s tools, a pair of spears, and his sword—first bending the blade to consecrate it. I whistled for Ulf and, when the old hound loped up, I scratched him behind the ears and cut his throat, laying his body at Thorvald’s feet. Then Jorunn placed the crucifix on his chest and folded his hands over it. I thought I heard Hekla grumble in its sleep as she did this, though it might have been only the echo of distant thunder. After that we shared ale and mutton at the graveside and, lastly, covered the crypt with planks, shaped the mound over it, and bade Black Thorvald farewell.

  Our mother did not weep. It isn’t our custom for women to wail and claw their cheeks at funerals in the appalling fashion of Greeks or Arabs. Nevertheless, she bore it hard.

  Little Gudrun’s death had stirred rage in her. Thorvald’s, once the first shock was past, affected her in a different way. All that evening she stood at her loom, her hands never still, weaving and talking, talking to herself more than to any of us, recalling the man that she alone remembered.

  “Lord,” she said, “the day I came here to live. His old mother was still alive then, the daughter of a king in Ireland, as she claimed, and maybe she was. Anyway, she thought I wasn’t good enough to wed her son, though I came of a proud hall. ‘We’ll see about that,’ thought I to myself, and I stood at this loom, just as I’m standing here now, to weave him as fine a shirt as ever man wore. But, as often as I would set the heddles for my pattern, that old mother of his would curse me for a stupid girl and pull them out again, until I grew so vexed that I cried and begged to go back to my own hall where they treated me kindly.

  “Your father just put back his head and laughed—you know his eyes would dance when he laughed—and said that a man in a house with two women was a thing to be pitied. ‘Mother go back in your corner,’ says he, ‘for I’ll wear no shirt at all but what fair-haired Jorunn weaves me, and as winter’s coming on, I’ll be glad if she hurries at it.’

  “He took off the shirt he was wearing then and laid it on the very bottom of his chest. After that, he went bare-backed for a week in the cold until I’d finished him his shirt.”

  “And where is that shirt now?” we asked.

  “Ah well, nothing lasts forever, does it?”

  “And the one he took off?”

  “Why, I guess he’s wearing it now,” she smiled sadly. “But it was such a long time ago.”

  And she remembered other things. How she would stand down by the riverbank each day as summer drew to an end, listening for the sound of his war horn and watching for his ship to come in view, its oars flashing up and down. And how our hall would ring at night with the shouts and laughter of the warriors boasting of their high deeds and hailing Black Thorvald of Hekla as their godi and their Ring-Giver.

  I heard all this with astonishment. I could just recall as a tiny child playing among the bleached ribs of that ship, its timbers soft with rot, as though they were the outward image of his own decaying soul. Finally, one winter we burned what was left of it for fuel. All the brave crewmen had long since gone off to luckier halls.

  With these bittersweet memories the day stole to its end.

  †

  The next night at dinner Gunnar did a surprising thing. He sat down in the high seat. Vigdis shot him an anxious look and said it was too soon, for decency’s sake, but Jorunn said, “No, he has the right, and the sooner done the better.”

  “I do have the right,” said Gunnar, his expression uncommonly serious, “but it isn’t long I plan to sit here. It’s up to me now to say what we will do and so I mean to. We are leaving Iceland—all of us, now.”

  “Ahh!” Jorunn’s face looked as if he had struck her.

  Seeing how she took it, he pressed his reasons. If he and I went into exile, he said, what would become of her, a woman alone? If we defied the ban and stayed—well, that was just what Hrut and Snorri were hoping for. They would have our lives and our land in short order.

  “Now then, hear me well,” he continued, addressing all of us. “I know a certain ship captain, a Greenlander. I’ve traded with him many a time. He’s an honest man and sails a fair little tub of a ship. I calculate he’ll leave within the week from Reykjanes, and he could take us with him. There’s land for the grabbing in Greenland, or, still better, in Vinland. Why, it’s so mild there, they say, that grapes grow on the bushes. We could drink wine every day in the year. I can taste it already! You’re with me, Odd, aren’t you? Odd’s with me.”

  I hadn’t said anything. What a change had come over my brother. The recklessness, the mockery were gone, and in their place an earnest, cautious head. How long he had waited to sit in Thorvald’s seat!

  But Jorunn, in a choked
voice said, “Leave here? Leave Thorvald alone in his tomb, and the Night-Sun, and all my little ones?”

  Suddenly and without warning the river that ran deep inside her, that none of us had ever seen, broke to the surface and burst from her eyes. Leave her babies! She was strong enough for anything but this. Great sobs shook her, throwing her forward and back.

  Gunnar waited. When the sobbing lessened a little, he put up his last argument against her. We could deed the land to Hoskuld, he said, and he would pass it on some day to Kalf or Katla when they married, and this way it would stay with kindred, and the dead would be content. But if we waited for it to be taken from us—here he made her look him in the eyes and spoke in his gravest tone—Hrut would come here to live, mow our hay, reap our barley, and no doubt piss on the graves of our ancestors.

  While he spoke, Vigdis put her arms around Jorunn and added words of her own.

  Our mother sat for a long time then, looking into the fire, but at last stood up, pushed back her hair, and smoothed her dress with her big hands. “Handsome Gunnar,” she said, “the man who sits in the high seat sleeps in the bed-closet.”

  “There’s no need….” he started to protest, but she hurried on.

  “You and Vigdis have made love on the bare straw long enough. It’s a good bed. Enjoy it while you may, it won’t be going to Vinland with us.”

  Gunnar jumped up from the high seat and kissed her. He was her darling, no one but he could have won her over.

  That night as I lay waiting for sleep to come, I thought again of my father’s gods. As I have said, he turned his back on the bluff and genial red-bearded Thor. As the darkness swallowed his heart, he turned instead, to one-eyed Odin, god of poetry, of war, and of madness. I decided that I, too, would put myself under his protection, for he is, besides all else, the patron of outlaws and outcasts—exactly what the Christmen had made of me. It pleased me to think that, as I was Black Thorvald’s child, I was in a way, Odin’s child too, for the two of them seemed to mingle in my mind.

  11

  Coward

  The following morning Gunnar was up early, rummaging around for food to put in his knapsack. Being a light sleeper, I awoke.

  “Well, brother, how was it in the bed?”

  “I shall ignore that, young Tangle-Hair.” With a flourish he twirled the tip of his pointed beard and grinned wickedly.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To Hoskuld’s, about the land—we’ve got no time to waste. Then on to Reykjanes to arrange our passage. Expect me back in three days, four at the most. Meantime, get everyone stirring here—Mother especially. Keep her busy. I want us packed and ready to go by the time I get back, you understand?” He bit off a hunk of bread.

  “Gunnar—?”

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing. If you say Vinland, Vinland it is. Only I was wondering last night … if shirking a fight was cowardice when our father did it, how has it now become prudence?”

  He stopped in mid-chew. Strange as it seems, he really had not thought of this. It showed on his face. “Well, damn it, Odd, I mean, if it was just you and me we’d go down fighting, wouldn’t we? But there’s the womenfolk to think of, and young’uns, and the land, and….”

  “And all those things that weighed on his mind, too.”

  “Well, that is, but I mean to say….”

  But he couldn’t quite think what he meant to say and so chewed his bread ferociously instead.

  For the second time in as many days the chattering madman, Anger, rushed upon me—that my brother should be so blind to this one thing, my father’s memory, that mattered so much to me. But I held my tongue and begged the madman to leave. How could I fight with Gunnar, who meant more to me than anyone? “We’ll be ready when you get back, brother, I promise. Ride fast.”

  †

  The next days passed quickly, for me at least. I drove unhappy thoughts away and concentrated my whole mind on this new adventure—and what an adventure it would be! To sail over the sea to a new land, with new faces, with riches for the taking, with dangers for a certainty. Red-skinned Skraeling warriors, painted and feathered, as we’d heard them described, lurked in my imagination, behind every rock. Sloe-eyed Skraeling girls peeped from every bush. What a swath I would cut through them both!

  From time to time, I thought of Kalf and felt sad. I would miss no one in Iceland but him. Couldn’t I rescue him somehow from his bondage to Hoskuld? By the Raven, I’d find a way.

  On the third day Gunnar returned. I was the first to see him, as I happened to be at the river end of the house at work with Skidi Dung-Beetle fitting new blocks of turf to the hole we had dug for father.

  Gunnar was in high spirits, for everything had gone according to plan. Our uncle had pressed on him far more money than the farm was worth. Gunnar emptied his knapsack onto the table and out spilled a heap coin and hack silver that you could scarcely pile on a plate without it spilling off. The ship’s master had promised to squeeze us in among the bolts of homespun and sacks of eiderdown, and guaranteed we would sail to Greenland as snug as a family of mice.

  “And so, my friends,” concluded Gunnar triumphantly, “we leave in the morning.”

  “Then,” said Jorunn, “each of you is to name his favorite dish, for I will never cook a meal in this house again.”

  The thralls were staying behind, the Greenlander not having space enough for them, and would pass with the land to Hoskuld. It seemed only right they should share this last meal with us, as for so many years we had shared the same labors under the same sky.

  Fewer of them had slipped away over the past few days than I would have predicted when you considered our contagious bad luck. I did note the absence of Padraig, a quarrelsome man whom I’d never cared for, and a couple of others, but there still remained six able-bodied men and four women and a gang of young’uns.

  That night Jorunn and Vigdis spread wild flowers on the tabletops and we slaughtered liberally—it was Hoskuld’s stock now—so that joints of mutton simmered over the longhearth. We were generous, too, with Hoskuld’s ale.

  I began to get drunk.

  And the drunker I got, the more I discovered that I was not happy. How Hrut and Snorri will laugh to see the sons of Thorvald run away! I thought bitterly. Just like their father, cowards to the bone.

  The prospect of a new life over the sea was no cure for this.

  I kept these thoughts to myself, for they did not seem to trouble Gunnar at all. There was no cowardice in Gunnar, and he knew it. And because he knew it, he could retreat when it suited him without a pang of self-hate. But he was only the son of Black Thorvald’s body, while I was the son of his spirit. I hadn’t the freedom to run away laughing.

  “May you have better luck hereafter, masters,” called out Skidi Dung-Beetle, offering a toast. “And us’ll think fond of you, for you have been good to us, as Northmen goes.” Skidi had been with us from childhood, and Gunnar this day had granted him his freedom. Looking round the table with his blunt, honest face, he got everyone’s assent, and the thralls lifted their stone mugs all together and brought them back down with a clatter on the table.

  But there was not much warmth in the eyes of Aelfric. He was a burly Saxon who had been scooped up six or seven years ago by a Danish raiding party that struck his village in some English fen on his very wedding day, or so he said. It was with him that Morag slept nowadays, although he suspected that he didn’t have her all to himself.

  I watched her sitting beside him. She was four months gone with child (his or mine she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say) and her breasts were beginning to swell and her face to grow rounded and soft. Did I say there was no one in this land that I would miss but Kalf?

  There was her.

  In the days since our return from the Althing, I’d been too distracted to seek her out. But on this last evening, a great longing for her took hold of me.

  She saw me staring at her and hesitantly smiled back. Stiff with desire,
I went over to her and gathering a bunch of her dark hair in my hand, pushed myself between her and Aelfric on the bench. Why should I wait and watch like a thief to steal a minute alone with her? Tomorrow I would own nothing on earth—not land, or country, or honor. Tonight, at least, I would take what I wanted.

  “I will miss you, darling Morag,” I said, “link arms and drink with me for old times’ sake.”

  She tried to laugh and turned her head away, saying I had drunk enough already. Did she fear Aelfric? Well, rot the bastard, I didn’t! “Give us a kiss, sweet Morag.” I pressed my mouth hard against hers and felt her yield—what else could she do? Along the bench the happy sounds of feasting died away, and the thralls glanced nervously at us. Even Skidi frowned at his plate.

  “What?” I cried. “I beg your pardon friends, I didn’t know. Must I have permission to fondle a slave’s bed-mate?”

  When a man talks like a fool, we say that a troll has twisted his tongue. Mine was twisted clear around my neck. But it wasn’t Morag, really, that I cared about. It was only that I must have a little power over someone.

  Aelfric sat still as a stone, his fingers digging into his knees.

  “Come now, sweetheart,” I wheedled, “sit on my knee. We’ll never have the pleasure again.”

  “Odd, don’t force me.”

  “Force you? By the Raven, when has anyone needed to force you?”

  “Odd!” Gunnar’s voice reached me across the room like a whiplash.

  “Later, brother,” I answered, not looking at him.

  “Come here to me.” It seemed, now, the voice of my new master, not a brother.

  With desperate bravado I got to my feet. “Well, darling Morag, it seems that anyone can have you but me.”

  “Friends,” called Gunnar, “go on with your drinking. Someone fill Aelfric’s mug for him. Christ, where would we be without his broad back! Excuse my brother and me if we talk a little in private.” Their eyes followed me to the foot of the high-seat, where I stood shaking with anger.