by Ken Hagan
Helga’s mother has gone to ashes, she was so wasted by disease that a blazing funeral pyre — not often in use these days — was the only decent way to despatch her. Gerta’s smoke passed to the nether world in the bleak of winter, less than a week after Thor’s day. Later that same day, while Gerta’s ashes were yet warm, Idgar put Vrekla in charge of hearth and hall, a step closer, everyone says, to my sister becoming his wife.
With Helga living in the same hall, it’s tough to observe the expected rules of betrothal. When we pass the tallow at bedtime or when I collect a yoke of milk-pails from Idgar’s dairy in the morning, our bodies touch, too close for comfort. To make it harder for me, I couldn’t be more certain, each time our eyes meet across the hall, that her longing is no less than mine. It has begun to weigh on me. The source of our future happiness, Asgrim’s goodwill, has been purchased at a price. Sigi is betrayed and Mord left unrequited for murder. Worst of all, one last concession was exacted by Asgrim — something not envisaged by my father when he hatched the plan on his death-bed. I can’t mention it to Helga or anyone. It is driving an iron nail through my head.
‘We have waited this long,’ says Helga, with a brave face, while Vrekla serves out her day-meal to the family, boards of sizzling meat, dried cod in boiled milk. ‘What’s another month or two?’
‘Summer will be here before we know it,’ says Olver. ‘By then, kaupships will be in haven. We can invite easterlings to the wedding, merchants flush with silver, they will be good for a gift or two.’
‘We can auction seats for the feast,’ says Geir, ‘put a price on who sits at the high table, and set a ‘straw-rate’ for who sleeps in the barn. The more the merrier — we will invite every free man from Long-fiord.’
‘And deck the hall,’ says Olver, ‘eh Gridi, like we did for our wedding, best hangings, linen and fine stuff, make a proper job of it?’ Gridi smiles in agreement but her eyes are on her share of the cod.
Helga appeals to me. ‘Too much fuss, we don’t want things overdone, do we, Kregin?’
Vrekla serves me another helping of fish. She taps my board with her spoon. ‘Answer your wife-to-be,’ she says, shaking the spoon, ‘is it yea or nay?’
To my sister’s shaking spoon, there can only be one answer. ‘A wedding feast with all the trimmings is fine by me — if it’s what Helga wants.’
‘A send-off from Twaindale for the bride,’ says Geir, ‘what’s wrong with that?’
‘A waste of my bride-swag for a start,’ replies Helga. ‘Why should I feed the riff-raff from Long-fiord, and fill them full of beer? They don’t give a shepherd’s curse for me. What do they care if Kregin and I are to be married?’
‘You have to make them take notice, sister,’ says Olver. ‘That’s how it’s done these days.’
‘Neighbours have long memories,’ says Geir. ‘If a man is not invited to a wedding feast, he may hold it against us.’
‘That’s it,’ says Helga, ‘a big splash is for you men — it is for your sake, not mine.’
‘Don’t be such a spoilsport, Helga;’ says her father, ‘and besides, your brother is right. Who knows when we might need a neighbour’s vote in the hustings?’
‘You mustn’t forget, sister,’ says Geir, ‘your man is a big shot now, guothie of Osvik and Osvellir. Everyone should see how well you have done for a husband.’
*
I was to ride to Baerskard to see Sepp and talk things over with Ma, but an unexpected arrival at Idgar’s door has changed my plans. Asgrim’s skald-man has turned up, full of fuss, goodwill and false compliments.
Would there be a welcome at Idgar’s hall if Asgrim paid a priestly visit to Twaindale? Would grandpa Skar accept a blessing on his livestock and steading, and would Idgar accept a blessing on his new-born child? It was high time — so the priest-man’s message went — that Idgar’s baby girl was given a name-day in her honour. The skald-man added, in all modesty, that special verses of celebration for the child would be composed by him and recited on this auspicious occasion.
Idgar was cock-a-hoop at the news, and lost no time in sending a gift of whale-meat in reply to Asgrim. He and Vrekla have cause to shake the roof and share the ale. At last baby Ynvild will have her due. Asgrim will say the sacred words; the priest-man will grant the little girl the right to bear her name. As she grows up, she will be able to say, ‘I am Ynvild Idgars-daughter’. Eyjolf Asgrimson, Olver’s brother in law, has been chosen as the child’s name-bearer. It means that Eyjolf’s wife Ingrid will come to Idgar’s hall as a guest.
‘What’s eating you?’ asks Helga, as if she didn’t know.
‘I have never liked Ingrid, and I like her even less now. She is not to be trusted!’
‘But you won’t spoil it for your sister,’ says Helga. ‘Think of Vrekla and little Ynvild.’
*
Ynvild chases another spider under the hearth; catches the insect by finger and thumb; stuffs it in her mouth. Vrekla waits patiently till Ynvild swallows her tiny prey and wipes her child’s mucky face with the tail of the apron. ‘Ynvild,’ she scolds gently, ‘I told you to stop eating spiders — it is bad luck. Here, little one, if you are hungry, lick the curds off my ladle.’ The toddler takes the ladle from her mother, but instead of licking the spoon, she rattles it between the hearth-stones, making a woody sound in the crevice where she found the spider.
Vrekla turns on me, and speaks in the same half-scolding voice as she had for her daughter. ‘You will ride to Baerskard this afternoon?’
‘No, it will have to wait until tomorrow.’ My sister is not one to mince words. ‘You seem to imagine that this ‘move south’ will go as you wish, that Sepp and Ma will fall in with your plans. Do you think they will ‘up sticks|’ and go wherever you take them?’
‘I think nothing of the sort!’
‘Oh yes, you do! What if Sepp turns you down? He might choose to stay where he is!’
‘Why would he object? There is a better life for him and Ma in Osvik — better prospects for young Hvard — a fresh start for Bedwyr as a free man. Why shouldn’t Sepp want to see the back of Baerskard? It is a hellish place. I don’t know what possessed him to go there.’
‘You know how proud he is.’
‘Is there any pride in being a debtor? Asgrim has no hold on him now. He and Ma are free to leave Baerskard — they can go any time they want! I have settled their borrowings and paid off the old ship-debt left by Da.’
‘Why didn’t you ask Sepp before you went to Asgrim? He won’t like it if things are arranged without his say-so.’
Chapter 42
Inside Idgar’s hall the air is heavy with the dead odours from last night’s feast — the name-day feast for baby Ynvild — uneaten pork, over-cooked and stale; whale slops fetid in the darkness; ale-water and sick stinging to the eyes. Vrekla will be up soon to see to her daughter. My sister will barely have put her head on the pillow — she was last to bed after the feast ended in a happy, drunken shambles — but, if I know her, she will rise early to clean the hearth, sweep the floor, benches and tables, and clear the swill before the guests wake to their day-meal.
Snores rattle from bunk-boxes on both sides of the hearth, some comfortable and familiar like Idgar’s contented drawl or Geir’s sporty whistle; other noises unknown to me, like the strange humming of Asgrim and his wife Thordis. As for the skald-man, the lilt of his singing snore is loud enough to shake the rafters. From a double bunk at the end of the hall, from behind closed shutters, I can make out Ingrid’s love-cries in arousal. Her head rubs on wood in regular beat to the sound of her cries. And I hear Eyjolf’s too, his the heavier, banging briskly on the shutters — woman on man.
I close the gable-door behind me, leaving it unbarred, and escape into the steading yard. There is no sound from Idgar’s hounds or from Asgrim’s, not a shake of their chains. The dogs are sleeping it off after being fed on ale slops, put out for them last night by my sister. She is a sneaky one, is our Vrekla. She was determined to do
pe those noisy hounds and get some sleep.
A wind from the shore blows mildly off the sea, a fisherman’s wind, the morning silent but for calving cows in the stalls, and mother ewes in Idgar’s lambing barns. I breathe in the mildness, the dark air, the sweet dampness of mud-month before dawn. I hear the trickling of waters like a song in the air, melting streams everywhere, near and far, waters on the run. I creep past Idgar’s whale-pit — smiling at the thought of a dead runaway whale imagined by Helga’s sister — and make for the paddock. The horses, dark shapes huddled in the far corner, are standing asleep near the wall.
‘Srelni,’ I call to him — no more than a whisper, ‘here-boy-here!’
‘Take me with you,’ says Helga, slipping her hand in mine, ‘I heard you leaving by the gable-door. I had an idea this is where you would come.’
Srelni bears our weight, Helga’s and mine, on his bare back. My horse is unsaddled by leather or cloth, unbridled by rope or bit — Idgar’s house-carles wouldn’t take kindly to my waking them in the barn, to get at the horse leathers and saddles. The sorrel’s spirit is strong; he is wise and wilful, you can tell by the eyes. Helga in front, leans on his neck, pinching his haunches tight with her knee and thigh — her limbs bare on his bare hide, letting him feel the strength of her posture.
Helga holds the horse’s will by the top of his mane, riding him out of the dark paddock, guiding his steps across the steading yard, fording the beck stream, through Idgar’s coppice of birches, and up the watery dale. Seated behind, on the bevel of Srelni’s back, I need a light touch on Helga’s waist for balance, if the sorrel widens his stride over rough ground or lifts his hoof over a biggish stone in running water. When I am tempted to press tighter for no good reason, Helga laughs without a word and gives a shudder under my hands.
At the head of the beck, a thousand streamlets trickle out from the bog on the icy gravel. We dismount, the going unsafe, too soft for us to ride. Helga trusses skirts to the thighs; throws off her boots, like she did as a girl, to feel the turf under her feet. Untying the waistband from her skirts, she loops her boots to mine, and hangs them over Srelni’s neck.
We walk the fell-side barefoot. Sunless dawn breaks over snowy crags.
In daylight we see how far we have come. I recognise a peak in the distance on the far side of the fell. We are barely a rast away from the sheep-lands in Baerskard.
‘Miserable grazing,’ says Helga, nodding to the east, ‘a short summer too. You will be glad to get your family out.’
On the horse again, crossing a gravel plain between ridges, a flat wilderness of grit, no turf or heather, black sand, grist from years of melting ice, hardened to a kind of crumbling rock. This time Helga sits behind, arms to my waist, hands tucked under my belt. Snow on the ridges, pools and puddles under hoof, Srelni slows to a walk, a walk playful and sporting, splashing through melt water. Helga rests her chin on my neck, our two bodies bobbing to the even gait of the horse.
‘Kregs,’ she says softly, her breath warming my neck, ‘be honest with me. I know you feel bad about how things have turned out. You do, don’t you?’
I laugh to make light of it, wilfully mistaking her words. ‘Like you say, Helga, it won’t be long and we are married. We can wait till summer.’
‘I don’t mean that,’ she replies, ‘that’s nothing. I was thinking of the price you had to pay — to have me for your wife.’
It sets me laughing again. ‘I would pay twice over what your father asked, if that is what you want to hear. You are worth every bit.’
‘Make fun of me, if you like, but I promise, once we are married, that my share of the bride-price is yours to do with it, as you decide.’
‘We will share everything, as man and wife, what’s the fuss?’
She shakes her head, breathes deep in my ear. ‘It is not what was paid for me, but the blood-price you promised Asgrim. It bothers me. I saw the look on your face last night, when Grandpa said you should have his sword, and asked Asgrim to bless it.’
‘You saw what on my face?’
‘All this bowing to Asgrim goes against the grain. You hate him. And you hate yourself for what you have done. For you, it’s a betrayal of your murdered brother. If it weren’t for me and my father, you would have made Mord pay for what he did — for Sigi’s sake, and for your family in Osvellir, you wouldn’t have let it rest.’
*
Carried by Srelni through melt water over the gravel flats, we let the horse take us where he will, and at the gentle pace that he chooses. Helga turns to face me, her back to the stallion’s head, her gaze intent on mine, mine fixed on hers. We ride. Waters whisper. Srelni catches breath. Puddles splash under hoof. We ride. I feel the warm bristle of the horse under us, his nap creased in folds under our weight.
Helga has one hand, for balance, resting on the sorrel’s neck; fingers playing idly with the stiff hackles of his mane. Her hair hangs free, lank in the morning mist; a sudden bump of the horse’s gait and she fetches up to sit astride my knees.
*
We smell wood smoke before we see it thinly rising in the air. Srelni smells it too. He looks up from drinking in a pool of melt water, and rubs his front hoof anxiously in the grit.
‘Steady, boy.’ I kneel under him, stroking the horse’s ankle to keep him quiet.
‘Who can it be,’ whispers Helga, ‘to be out so early?’ Without waiting for answer, she wades through the pool and climbs the shale to where she can get a sight of what is over the ridge. I follow her.
There he sits below — the man who kindles a fire early after dawn in a treeless bog. At first I think it might be Ulph, but why would our shepherd have fled into Asgrim’s land, of all places, or wandered this far north into the fells? This is a younger man, beardless, hair cropped short, like you see the fishermen do, wrapped in an old fleece. He is hunkered by a fire so small that it wasn’t worth lighting — man and fire, on slab of stone, an island in the middle of a bog.
‘Bedwyr,’ I cry out to him, ‘it’s you, man.’
Startled he turns to us. He eyes Helga, eyes the horse, and jumps to his feet. ‘Tell me it is not true, young master,’ he shouts fearfully, ‘am I to be set free?’
Chapter 43
‘Call me a grey goose, lad,’ says Cuin with a grin, ‘but yesterday in the law-field the big men were taken aback by your way with words. They were not expecting a speech from you delivered with such authority.’
Praise like this from Uncle, and generous compliments yesterday from Klep and others, only add to the turmoil tearing at my insides. And yet it proves how well I hid my true feelings of disgust for what was done. I stood in the law-field and surrendered our family’s right to justice for Sigi, I made the final hateful concession demanded by Asgrim.
‘I doubt,’ Cuin rambles on, ‘I doubt if Leif could have turned his phrases better than you, bearing in mind your late father was a man of the law for a score-and-a-half of years.’ Uncle sips from a flask that used to be his grog-bag, filled these days with rosewater. Hethrun makes a mild cordial for him from the petals of dog-roses that grow on Skagi ness.
‘I have to agree, brother,’ says Sepp, ‘you spoke well. We are proud of you, Ma and I, and our Da would have been too.’
‘To hold their attention like that,’ says Geir admiringly, ‘and win them over: that took some doing.’
‘The big men may be won over,’ says Karghyll, slurping down his ale, ‘or they may not, but my advice is: keep your distance from priest-men and guothies. Begging your pardon, Kregin, I speak plainly. Don’t be deceived by fine words, theirs or yours.’
I have grown to like Karghyll for his plain-speaking ways. He seeks our company most mornings. He would rather sit in our booth than be entertained on the other side of camp, where, as he puts it, he would be ‘under the shadow of Klep’. Already he is in trouble with guothie Klep for falling in arrears of rent.
The dirty work of collecting Klepjarn’s debts is done these days by son in law Gunnar. Kar
ghyll has Gunnar’s henchmen to face, penalties to pay, insults to bear, things he never suffered as a tenant from my father. The man from Skogurdale sighs as if he carries the world-tree on his shoulders.
Sepp, seeing Karghyll’s discomfort, moves things on tactfully. ‘Fine words or foul: whatever Asgrim said in reply to Kregin, or intended to say, is not the point. He wants an end to killing. And that’s what he has.’
‘Your brother is right,’ says Uncle, ‘Asgrim and Klep are practical men, no different to your late father. They are in the business of building herds, trading wool.’ Sepp nods in agreement, while Cuin carries on. ‘If they make lands secure for their sons to inherit, and earn respect from common men on the way, that is what life is about. They don’t go looking for trouble.’
‘Yeah,’ says Geir, ‘but what if making their lands secure puts others at risk?’
‘Aye, true enough,’ says Karghyll, raising a finger of approval to Geir, ‘if we didn’t have a law-field as our court of redress, and the “grey goose law” to protect us, no one would be safe from these powerful men.’
Cuin, ignoring Karghyll’s stab at Klep in particular, and land-grabbers in general, switches his rosewater flask from one hand to the other. ‘Law or not, bargaining has to be better than battling. Look what striking a bargain has done to the price of wool.’
‘I will drink to that,’ says Geir, raising his pot, ‘and to the kaupships coming this summer. To the easterlings who buy our wool.’
‘Easterlings, Thor forbid!’ returns Cuin in mock annoyance. ‘Don’t ask me to drink to easterlings, merchants, a greedy bunch. Not worth a sip of rosewater!’
A sideways wink at Sepp and he quips, ‘I will make allowances, young Idgarson; it is forgivable in this instance. Seeing that Bera has twinkled her eyes at you.’
Geir’s cheeks turn red. ‘Then I will toast the “grey-goose law” instead,’ says he — to hide his blush, ‘not that I understand what it is.’
‘It’s simple,’ says Karghyll with a knowing look, ‘a grey goose isn’t white and it isn’t black!’