“It has been good having Niamh here. I am sorry about their lands, but she has been a help to us. I like her.”
“That is good,” observed Ragnhild absently, trimming the severed stalk further.
“It seems to me,” Ragna continued, “that a bride should esteem her husband’s mother as her own—and that is not always so easy, I think.”
The trimmer hesitated only an instant, and then…snip—another stalk fell. “All this talk of brides and husbands,” Ragnhild mused. “Am I to think a wedding is anticipated in this house?” She straightened and looked her daughter in the eye. “Or has the marriage already taken place?”
“For a truth, it has. We were hand-fasted before he left.”
Ragnhild nodded and turned back to her work. “Had it been anyone else, your father would have the man flogged through the streets of every town from here to Jorvik.” She paused. “He might do that still, who knows?”
“Father would never oppose the match,” Ragna maintained, a wariness edging into her voice. “He has never said anything against Murdo. He would never refuse us.”
“Nay,” Lady Ragnhild softened. “How could he? Lord Ranulf is a nobleman of rank, and a longtime friend. Your father respects him, and values his friendship. Anyway, the deed is done and we must all make the best of it.” The trimmer neatly lopped the stalk into her basket. “Bishop Adalbert should be your greatest worry. He can refuse to acknowledge the hand-fasting, you know, and your children would be born into perdition.”
“We have time yet.” Ragna bent her head. Her eyes filled with tears. “Until the Christ Mass, at least.”
Ragnhild paused and regarded her daughter thoughtfully. She put down the basket and opened her arms. Ragna stepped into her mother’s embrace and the two women stood for a time without speaking.
“Oh, Ragna, if you could have waited…” she sighed, leaving the thought unfinished.
“He will be a good husband, Mother,” Ragna said after a while; she sniffed and rubbed the tears from her cheeks. “He has never been anything but kind to me, and I love him for it—I think I always have. We will confirm our vows in our own chapel when he returns.”
“And if he does not return?”
“Mother! I will not hear you speak so.”
“I do speak so. Daughter, they are at war. You know as well as I, that men who go away to war do not always come home again. Of all those who leave home and family, only a few will return. Men die in battle and there is nothing we can do about it. That is hard, but that is the truth.”
“Murdo did not go to fight,” Ragna pointed out. “He went only to bring Lord Ranulf home, not to fight.”
“That is something, at least,” her mother allowed, tenderness and pity mingled in her gaze. “Oh, Ragna, I would that it were different for you.” After a moment she said, “We must tell Niamh, of course; she will want to know soon.”
“Tonight, I thought,” Ragna replied. “I will not be able to keep it from her much longer in any event.”
Lady Ragnhild raised a hand to her daughter’s head, and touched it gently.
“Crusade will end long before winter comes,” Ragna told her, forcing conviction to her voice. “The men will have returned, and we will be married before the baby is born.”
“Pray that is so,” Ragnhild said, stroking her daughter’s long golden hair. “Pray your Murdo returns soon. Pray they all return soon…hale and unharmed.”
After supper that night, Ragnhild suggested that Niamh join them for a walk in the long-lingering twilight. “These few fine days at the last of summer almost repay winter’s dark and cold,” she said as they strolled the path behind the house. The sky was flushed with pink and purple, and the few low clouds were red and orange against a sky of deepening blue. The sea breeze was warm out of the south, and the evening star gleamed just above the line of the hills beyond the ripening fields.
“It has always been my favorite time of year,” Niamh agreed placidly. “The cattle have calved and the young are growing. It is nicest before the tumult of harvest.”
“Ragna was saying that she hoped the men would be home for the harvest,” Ragnhild said.
“I hope so, too,” Niamh replied. “But I think we must not expect it. Whatever the next months bring, I fear we must prepare to face it without our menfolk.”
One of the servingmaids called lady Ragnhild away just then, leaving Ragna and Niamh together for a moment. They walked a while, enjoying the mild evening. “You have been quiet tonight,” Niamh observed. “It is not like you. Are you feeling well?”
“Very well, indeed,” Ragna answered. “If I am quiet, it is that I have been trying to find the right words to say what I must tell you.”
“Just say what is in your mind,” Niamh suggested amiably. “I am certain there is nothing you could say that I would not like to hear.”
Ragna nodded. “You are kind, Lady Niamh—”
“Let it be Niá between us,” she replied quickly. “We are friends enough for that, I think.”
“We are,” agreed Ragna, “and it is that very friendship I fear losing.”
“Whyever should you lose it?” Niamh stopped walking and turned to Ragna. “My heart, what is wrong?”
The young woman lifted her head. “Murdo and I are hand-fasted. I am carrying his child.”
“I see,” replied Niamh quietly.
When no further reaction seemed forthcoming, Ragna accepted her reproach. “I do not blame you for withholding your blessing,” she said, bending her head. “No doubt you hoped to make a better match for your son.”
In two steps, Niamh was beside Ragna, gathering the young woman to her breast. “Never say it,” she soothed. “Ah, Ragna…Ragna. I chose you for him the first day ever I saw you. I have made the match a thousand times in my heart. I have never breathed a word of this to Murdo, mind; but I prayed he would one day see for himself what I saw in you.” She held Ragna at arm’s length. “I am happy for you, and for him, too. If I hold any sadness at all, it is for the fact that I fear for your future together—”
“Because of the church? I thought of that. We can confirm—”
Niamh shook her head. “No, the church will be the least of your worries. Rather it is because we have lost our lands, child. Murdo will have nothing, and that is a sorry way to begin a life together.”
“But you will get your lands back,” Ragna said. “When Lord Ranulf and your sons return—you will reclaim Hrafnbú. I know it.”
“I wish I could be so certain. The truth is, there is much against us, and even if Lord Ranulf were here now, it might go ill with us.” Niamh paused. “We must not trust too highly in our hopes, for the whims of kings thwart all desires but their own.”
“Would you forbid our marriage for lack of land?” Ragna asked, not unkindly.
“My heart, I would forbid you nothing,” Niamh replied. “I wish you the world, and my dear son with it. And if he were standing here before you now, Ranulf would say the same. Your own father might take a different view. He might consider a landless match beneath his only daughter; he might feel he could do better for you elsewhere. And it would be his right.”
“I want nothing else,” Ragna declared, anger flaring instantly. “And I will have the father of my child to husband, or I will have no one. They will put me in my grave before I wed another.”
“Shh,” soothed Niamh gently. “To speak so is to arouse the Devil’s regard. Let us pray instead that the Good Lord will grant you your heart’s desire.”
Ragna smiled. “Despite those selfish kings.”
“Of course,” agreed Niamh, “despite all those selfish kings. They are but flesh and blood, and not angels after all.”
She took Ragna’s arm, and they strolled on. “Now then, we must begin to prepare for the infant’s arrival. We have clothes to make—”
“Warm clothes,” added Ragna, “for it will be midwinter.”
They walked arm-in-arm in the gathering dusk, and talked of
the preparations to be made in the next months. That night Ragna went to her empty bed with her soul more settled than it had been for a very long time. She fell asleep with a prayer on her lips. “Lord of Hosts,” she whispered, “send seventy angels to guard my Murdo, and bring him home to me with all speed. If you but do this for me, you shall never lack for a more faithful servant.”
TWENTY - FOUR
Skidbladnir passed between the Pillars of Hercules and entered the warm blue waters of what the monks called the Mare Mediterraneus. “The Sea of Middle Earth?” wondered Murdo, thinking he must have heard it wrong.
“Exactly,” Fionn told him. “We have come to the sea in the center of the Earth. Of all the seas in the world, this is the best. It is the most peaceful and tranquil, and the fishing here is better than anywhere else.”
This boast was put to the test at once, and as the days went by Fionn’s assertion did gather substance. Several places they coved for the night provided remarkable catches of fine-tasting fish of several kinds—some of which no one had ever seen before; one time they even caught crabs, which Murdo enjoyed, as they reminded him of Orkney.
A scant three weeks after entering this calm sea, however, the season changed; the good weather deserted them. The days grew colder and the winds increasingly harsh and fickle, and Jon Wing decided it was time to begin searching for winter harbourage. Accordingly, they searched the coastline for a suitable port, eventually settling on the small inland town of Arles, an ancient walled settlement on the southern coast of Gaul in the Kingdom of Burgundy. Jon Wing chose the town especially—rejecting larger port towns like Toulon and Narbonne, which were too big, he said: “Too many people, too many ships, also too many snares for unwary sailors.” He liked Arles, however, because it was small and quiet; moreover, it was a much cheaper place to stay. Little Arles lay upriver a short distance from the sea, yet possessed a bay and harbor large enough to serve many sea-going trading vessels—a fair number of which had also chosen the inland town for their wintering.
The monks were pleased with the choice; they were more than happy to spend the cold, rainy days in prayer and discussion with the local clerics at the Cathedral and Priory of Saint Trophime. Their mighty disputations were enhanced with the liberal application of the region’s good red wine, which they praised and consumed with equal ardor. The rest of the crew divided their time between the several drinking halls and brothels of the harbor precinct, indulging one desire while contemplating the other.
The enforced idleness hung heavily on Murdo, however; he found little in the town to interest him. Having no itch to enrich the whores of the town, nor thirst enough to keep the brewers busy—neither did the allure of learned debate with Gaulish monks tempt him—he instead occupied himself with climbing the hills beyond the town, or tramping along the quiet river. The hills were green with winter rain, and he liked the scent given off by the low-growing shrubs, but there was little else to recommend them, and he soon turned to exploring the ancient town.
The streets of Arles were narrow and the houses close and crabbed, and shut against the wind gusting chilly and damp out of the north and west. When the sun shone, Murdo strolled the twisting pathways. There were many peculiar-looking buildings: some had been built by the Romans, Brother Fionn told him; the rest were made by the Moors. The Moorish buildings were strange to the eye; with their white walls, and tall, slender columns, curious onion-shaped arches, bulbous towers, and high narrow windows covered with hundreds of squares of glass, Murdo always thought they looked like palaces out of a dream.
The most remarkable of these was an imposing white building which stood on one side of the market square. The market itself was a forlorn place on rainy winter market days; inasmuch as there was little produce to be had, few people bothered to come and, save for a few forlorn sellers of eggs and cheese, Murdo often had the place to himself.
On one of his rambles, he discovered that the quiet little town boasted an armorer. There were two other smiths, he knew, and both supplied the port and farming trade, making fittings for ships and ploughs, and such like. But the third smithy was on the other side of the town, away from the port and market. Murdo stumbled upon the place one day while trying to circumnavigate the town by way of the wall. Drawn by the gusty whoosh of the bellows and the ring of hammer on anvil, he had found a low, dark dwelling built into the old Roman wall. Once a gatehouse, the gate had long since been sealed with stone; the house—little more than a covered recess excavated in the wall—now served a man skilled in making weapons.
The smithy was a warm place to stop on a dark, windy day, and as the craftsmen did not seem to mind his presence, Murdo paused to watch.
“Here now!” called the smith upon noticing the tall young man loitering at the open door. “You like to work with iron, eh? Maybe you want to be a smith like me.”
Murdo explained that he was a pilgrim in the company of a warband bound for the Holy Land. “Our ship is wintering here,” he said. “We will sail again in the spring.”
“Ah, you are from the longship!” answered the smith, his Latin crude, but expressive. “Very fierce warriors, these Norsemen, I am told. Good weapons they have, too—but mine are better. Come, I will show you something.” He beckoned Murdo into the hut, which was almost completely filled by the enormous central hearth and forge. Taking a glowing stub of iron from the red coals, he said, “This will be a sword. It does not look like much now, perhaps—but soon! Soon it will fit the hand of a lord in Avignon.”
Murdo learned that the smith—a blunt, sweaty, black-fingered man named Bezu—had two apprentices and, owing to the increased demand for arms and armor brought about by the pope’s crusade, two was not enough. Bezu was looking for a third man to help him meet the rising flood of orders for his wares. “A strong boy like you would make a good smith. I could teach you. I could talk to your father maybe; I think we might come to an agreement.”
Murdo politely declined the offer, but the smithy became the place he visited most often. Indeed, Murdo became such a familiar onlooker that one day they invited him to share their midday meal of salt beef, cheese, and bread; in return for this kindness, he stayed to help with some of the smaller chores. When they had finished for the day, Bezu told him he was welcome to come and work and eat with them the next day.
Murdo happily agreed, and was soon spending much of his time with the armorer and his apprentices. The three worked together in a convivial haze of heat and smoke and earthy conversation, and Murdo enjoyed their camaraderie as much as he enjoyed watching them hammer the glowing red iron into sword-blades, spearheads, and shield-bosses. Bezu let Murdo try his hand at the bellows, and when he professed to enjoy this labor, the smith asked him whether he would like to learn how to make a spear.
“First, we must select the iron,” Bezu said, pawing through a stack of long, flat lengths of the black metal, some almost as long as Murdo was high. This amazed Murdo, who had imagined the head of a spear to be more properly fashioned from a short, thick square.
“Ah, this is where you are wrong, young Murdo. We are making this lance in the old Roman way,” the armorer told him. Laying a finger beside his nose, he added, “It is a secret my family has kept for ten generations.”
“And you will tell me?” wondered Murdo, flattered by this unexpected confidence. “Why?”
Bezu shrugged. “Perhaps I show you, and you change your mind and stay to learn my craft.” He smiled. “Also, what good is a secret if you cannot tell it once in a while?” Bending to the stack of iron, he pulled out a long, thin strap, as wobbly as a snake. “Here!” he cried, handing the iron to Murdo. “This for you!”
Murdo grasped the cold shank of rusty metal, regarding the wobbly length dubiously. “It does not seem much to you now maybe,” the armorer suggested. “But soon—a spear fit for the hand of a lord.”
Bezu then began showing his new pupil the long process of shaping the strap of iron: heating it in the forge, flattening it, folding it, sq
uaring it, and then gently rounding the upper half, a third portion of which was folded over upon itself, squared and flattened once more, leaving a ridge in the center and flaring the edges to form a stubby, leaf-shaped blade. Murdo liked working the iron, but regarded his handiwork as more of a curiosity than a weapon. Certainly, an iron spear was too heavy to throw, and the blade was too short and blunt to do much more than puncture.
“Just wait until you put the shank into the wooden shaft,” Bezu told him, showing how the long iron core would be inserted into a shaped haft of ash or oak. “Like so, eh? The blade cannot become separated from the shaft, and the core makes the shaft as strong as iron. When it is finished, you have a spear which cannot be broken! That is the Roman way.”
Thus, Murdo occupied the wet winter months, coming early to the smithy most days and working until dusk, often spending the night beside the hearth as well. When the closeness of the smithy stifled rather than warmed, Murdo would go out and perch himself on the old Roman harbor wall and spend the day wrapped in his cloak gazing out across the low-lying countryside towards the sea. Rain or sun—it made no difference to Murdo. The damp spates of wind and rain which the realm of Burgundy suffered were balmy as summer showers compared to the howling, spitting, bone-cracking winter storms of Orkneyjar.
On these occasions, and much of the rest of the time as well, he thought of Ragna, and what he would do when next he saw her; he thought about the two of them making love, making a home, making a life together. He thought of Hrafnbú, and how he and his father and brothers would win it back from the treacherous usurper Orin Broad-Foot. He thought of his mother, and he hoped she was well and not worrying about him. He took great solace from the fact that she was with Ragna; that the two of them should be together enjoying one another’s company warmed his thoughts on dismal days.
As the wheel of the year turned slowly around to spring once more, he grew restless to resume the voyage. Day after day, he watched the low clouds sailing southward, and wondered when Jon Wing would summon the crew and cast off. He went to the harbor often and almost always found the sea lord and two or three crewmen tending to small chores: braiding ropes, mending the sail, repairing oars, and such like. Murdo guessed the time was fast approaching when they would leave, yet whenever he asked, the ship’s master would squint up at the sky, taste the breeze, and announce, “Not today.” Jon would shake his head slowly. “Tomorrow maybe. You have one more day on dry land.”
The Iron Lance Page 26