The Raven's Table

by Christine Morgan

  Olrunn, the jarl’s first wife, was divorced of him and gone away, back to her father’s hall. Hodvard’s friends and kinsmen said he was well rid of her, for she had been both shrewish, and over-coddling of their children.

  “He led them all to war, though I begged him not to,” she’d said, “and let them all be killed in battle. When I raged at him, furious, he scoffed and said that when he met them again in Odin’s feast-hall, they would thank him.”

  He placed the point against the hollow at the base of Hodvard’s skull, gripping the blunted end between two knuckles and bracing it with his thumb. In a short, fast jab, he pierced the skin, punching the ivory needle up and deep and at an angle.

  “If I must lose my six dear sons, never to see them again in this world or the next, then I would have the same for Hodvard! He will not, must not be reunited with them!” And, so saying, Olrunn had paid Thyf his purse of gold, sending him to do this.

  Hodvard grunted, a wet spit-bubble escaping his lips.

  The slightest sideways gesture sliced the sharp edges in an arc, shearing through the tough and gristly brain-stem, severing it.

  The jarl’s chest sank, subsiding, on a slow exhalation. A looseness overtook his body and settled him heavy upon the bed.

  Thyf pressed the sliver deeper until it had gone fully embedded. Of blood, there was barely a drop. The blunt ivory end, flush against Hodvard’s skull, would not be noticed even by the women who would wash and bathe and comb and dress him to be readied for his funeral pyre.

  Then he returned, stoat-silent and cat-quick, to lie down again and shut his eyes, and await what despairing outcry the morning’s grim discovery would bring.

  THE FATE-SPINNERS

  Slowly descending, the fine filament unraveling… lower and lower, lower yet, lower still…

  Surrounded by a vast openness. Dangling. Exposed.

  Leaving the dense thicket of thatch, moss-heavy, rain-damp… where untold numbers of creatures scurried and bustled… where the feeding was rich but competition was fierce…

  Into this space, the unknown, this dangerous exploration.

  Only the lifeline connecting, that strong silken tether.

  Spinnerets working, weaving, winding the thread.

  Air all around, the swaying of breeze, a rippling undulation. Sounds quivering against the lifeline. Movement. Vibrations. Temperature, smoke and heat.

  Lower and lower.

  Twisting, twining and turning.

  Legs flexing and bending, intricate perfection.

  The stirring of currents rising up from below.

  Closer now… lower… closer… thin forelegs extending…

  Swaddled and pink-faced, the sleeping babe-child… soft, plump lips parted… breath warm and milk-sweet…

  Then a shattering shriek.

  A sudden enfolding in fibrous coarseness.

  The lifeline snapping, cut loose.

  Trapped… caught!

  A terrible pressure, a clenching squeeze.

  Pain.

  The brittle breaking of long graceful legs.

  Abdomen rupturing with a wet, gushing flood.

  Then a shaking, a violent flinging, a casting-free and falling… and the heat now, the smoke…

  The heat! Bright-flaring and hot, hairs crisping, fluids sizzling!

  And no more.

  ***

  Thorbjorn rushed in with his sword in his hand, half-expecting to find his young wife being murdered.

  Instead, there stood Sighilde in the middle of their cottage, wide-eyed, pale and trembling, but untouched and unharmed and in no seeming danger.

  Little Thorulf howled in his cradle, startled by his mother’s scream.

  And no wonder, Thorbjorn thought as he lowered his blade. It had sounded loud enough to rival the horn-blast Heimdall would give when Ragnarok came, and the great warriors marched forth from Valhalla to bring final battle to the foes of the gods.

  “Odin’s eye, woman!” he said. “What’s got you in such a state?”

  “A spider, there was a spider, it dropped down from the thatch and was almost on the baby!” She burst into tears and scooped Thorulf into her arms.

  “Is that all?” Thorbjorn asked.

  “Is that all? It was a spider!”

  “We’ve had spiders before.”

  “Not like this! It was enormous, and went straight for his face!” Sighilde petted and patted the child until he ceased his indignant howling. He was a strong lad, and healthy, with his mother’s fair hair.

  Thorbjorn sighed. “Where is it now?”

  “I caught it in my apron, and crushed it, and threw it in the fire.”

  He looked at her as if she’d gone mad. “You killed it?”

  She pointed into the hearth-pit, near the sooty stone-ringed edge. A spider did lay there dead in the ashes, legs shriveled and curled tight against the blackened husk of its body. It was large, he supposed, as spiders went, but not worth this kind of fuss.

  “It’s bad luck, an ill omen, to kill spiders,” he said. “You know that.”

  Sighilde frowned, and in a sulky tone asked, “What else should I have done?”

  “Set it back in the thatch, or release it outside.”

  “It was after our baby!”

  “They’re harmless enough.”

  “They bite!”

  “They catch and eat other insects.”

  “I don’t care,” she said, bottom lip still protruding. “I hate them, that’s all.”

  He sighed again, set down his sword on the table where she’d been kneading bread dough, and put his arms around her. The babe gurgled happily and seized a handful of Thorbjorn’s red beard.

  “You think I’m silly,” Sighilde said. “You think you married a silly fool of a girl.”

  “A bit, perhaps.” He kissed her smooth brow. “But a pretty one, and I miss you already.”

  Laughing, she thumped him on the chest. “Oh, you’re as eager to go a’viking as the rest of them are. I’ve heard your mead-talk, you and Hrolf and Erik. A summer of slaughter, silver and slave-girls, isn’t that what they say?”

  “It’s the silver that interests me,” he said. “Svein says we’ll come home rich men. There’s plenty of plunder to be had along the Hjaltland coast. I’ll pour jewels in your lap, I’ll buy us cattle and sheep, and I’ll build you a fine big house with roof-timbers and shingles.”

  “What matters most is that you do come home,” she said. “Your son will want his father, and your wife her husband.”

  “I know, but I also know you’ll manage well enough while I’m away. Unless there are more spiders.”

  “Thorbjorn!”

  He chuckled and went back out, to where he’d been readying his weapons—sharpening the blades of sword, seax and axe; rolling his mail-coat in a barrel of sand to scour rust from its links; testing the strength of his limewood shield with its iron ring and boss.

  Svein had not sailed in three years, and his men were indeed eager to ride the whale-roads again. For Thorbjorn, his one concern was leaving Sighilde on her own with the babe, for he had not yet been married the last time he’d gone a’viking and raiding along the islands and shores. But there were neighbors aplenty nearby, other small farm-steads, a fishing village by the cove.

  She would be fine, he assured himself.

  Even if there were more spiders.

  ***

  A web spanned the upper door-corner by the time Sighilde returned to the cottage.

  She’d lingered longer than she’d intended in the village, talking with the others—wives, children, elders, kinsmen and friends—who’d come to wave their farewells as the longship’s oar-strokes carried it away.

  They all spoke with confidence, optimism and anticipation. Their men would make successful raids, have great battle-glories, and bring home enough slaves and silver to live wealthy as kings.

  Yet, as always, worry hid beneath such brash words. The laughter and good humor were meant to assuage conc
erns no one wished to voice aloud for fear of tempting the gods, or the Norns who wove the skeins of fate.

  Sighilde had taken eggs to trade for dried fish, and bought with coins a pot of honey and another of salt. She carried Thorulf slung in a wool wrap at her hip, gratified by the doting attention his bright blue eyes, chubby cheeks and blond curls had earned.

  Chores waited, of course. There were the goats to be milked and the hens to be fed, butter to churn and grain ground at the quern, water to be fetched and wood-kindling split, and the never-ending work of spindle, needle and loom.

  But first, that web.

  Its silken strands glimmered like gold in the sun. At the center sat its insolent creator, fat and smug as an Englisher lord. Several unfortunate flies and one wasp had already been caught there, trapped and wrapped, neatly bound.

  Sighilde did not pause to admire the delicate artistry, but snatched up a stout stick that leaned against the low garden fence. She poked its end into the web, twisting so that it made a tangled wad, flies and all.

  The spider dropped to the ground and attempted to scuttle for safety but Sighilde was too quick. She stepped on it, squashing it to mush beneath the leather sole of her shoe, and scraped off its remains on a tuft of grass.

  “Bad luck, an ill-omen,” she said, remembering what Thorbjorn had told her.

  Spiders.

  She shuddered.

  When she went inside, before her vision grew accustomed to the change from sunlight to dimness, she walked into a sticky, dangling strand. A sinister tickle brushed at her face. She leaped back with a cry, putting a protective hand over the baby’s head.

  It swung there, the spider, hairy and brown, twirling as it climbed back up its long string.

  How she hated them!

  She struck at it but missed and it escaped into a hole in the thatch.

  Four more of them crept across the roof’s underside.

  Shuddering worse than ever, skin crawling, Sighilde hurried over to the wooden cradle. She was about to place Thorulf in it when she saw yet another of the hideous things crouched on his blanket. It looked the size of an onion, with legs the span of her hand!

  A mix of revulsion and fury filled her. She went to the bed she and Thorbjorn shared, shook off the furs to be sure nothing had infested them, and set the baby down there instead. He kicked and cooed, smiling at her.

  For now, she ignored him.

  She seized the ends of the cradle-blanket and tied it into a sack around the huge spider, then beat it against a corner-post until the squirming stopped. She used her broom to swat the four down from the thatch—three fell to the hard-packed earth floor, where she stepped on them as well; the fourth clung to the broom-straws so she threw the whole broom outside.

  Finally she’d gotten those she could see, and jabbed the handle of her iron ladle up the thatch-hole where the last one had fled.

  Hateful, oh, they were hateful and loathsome, and it seemed she could feel them scurrying all over her… in her hair, tucked and pinned though it was beneath a linen kerchief… along her arms… up her ankles… down her neck and back.

  Sighilde calmed herself.

  The spiders were gone. Killed or scared off.

  And Thorbjorn had been right… she was being silly, a silly, foolish girl.

  They were only spiders, after all.

  Still, when the day’s labors were done and the evening-meal eaten, when she banked the fire to coals that would burn low through the night, she kept Thorulf beside her, and hung a cloak like a tent over the bed, so that nothing could fall from the thatch onto them while they slept.

  ***

  The weather turned the next day, warm but wet, the air muggy. A grey, steady rain pattered and dripped.

  It brought the spiders from the roof-thatch in droves.

  Some were small, white and shiny, round-bodied like ripe berries. Some were slender and narrow, dun-colored, moving on long hair-fine legs. Some were squat and stumpy, bristling with wolfish fur. There were speckled spiders and banded spiders, blotched spiders and spiders with markings almost like woven designs.

  They got everywhere.

  When she added a log to the fire, they’d swarm from each crack and cranny, but pop like roasted pine nuts from the heat of the flames.

  When she lifted the lid of the milk jug, two floated there, drowned in the goat’s milk, clotted with foam and with cream. More had got into the butter, and were all over the cheese.

  When she tried turning the quern to grind barley for bread, there were spiders between the stones so that they crushed and smeared in the coarse flour. When she took down the dried fish she’d bought yesterday, she had to knock spiders from it before she could set it to soak in a soapstone bowl.

  She could not leave Thorulf alone for more than a moment. It hampered her doing of chores, to be sure, but what other choice was there? Once, to her greatest of horrors, she’d glanced over to see his little hands reaching clumsily up toward a spider that hung suspended above him, and she reached it only just before the babe could.

  And still the rain fell.

  All that day and the next, and the next after that.

  By then, she was near desperate. Her hands shook from lack of sleep. Even the hung cloak hadn’t deterred the spiders for long. She’d wakened to the baby’s crying and found a spider on his face, then felt the tickling crawl of their many legs. They were on the bed, in her clothes, in her hair.

  She spent as much time as she could huddled close to the fire. The damp wood burned smoky, but that seemed not a bad thing because the spiders avoided it. She kept constant watch over Thorulf, barely daring to more than doze where she sat.

  The goats were indifferent to the rain, plodding in the mud, grazing.

  The hens in the henyard pecked at spiders, devoured them greedily, and the sight of this—disgusting though it was, the many legs twitching out the sides of their beaks—gave Sighilde an idea when she went out to feed them.

  A cat, she thought. A cat might do. Cats hunted mice, they could hunt spiders as well.

  Hadn’t Nida, Svein’s grandmother, mentioned that her queen-cat’s latest litter was weaned and rambunctious? And hadn’t Nida also, when Sighilde and Thorbjorn married, offered them a kitten as a house-gift whenever they should ask?

  If nothing else, Sighilde decided, a visit to Nida or to any of her neighbors would be welcome. She already missed Thorbjorn dreadfully… and the spiders… the spiders might soon drive her mad.

  ***

  “Spiders?” asked Nida, bouncing Thorulf on her bony knee as the babe chortled. “What of them?”

  The old wise-woman’s room at the back of Svein’s log-walled longhouse was cheery and comfortable, hung with colorful weavings and furnished with many carved wooden chests and benches. On the rush-covered floor was a ram’s hide, horned head still attached, woolly pelt the matted-down bed to a sprawling of cats.

  They were black-striped silver, with white chests and paws. Their whiskers and tails were luxuriant, their eyes a bright green. Two of the kittens, though weaned, persisted in trying to nurse as their mother pushed them away. The rest groomed themselves, wrestled each other, and tumbled about.

  Out in the main hall, other women—Nida’s daughters, daughters-in-law, granddaughters and unmarried nieces, as well as bond-servants and some slaves—went about their usual tasks. A few were pregnant, but none currently had babies as young as Thorulf, so he was once again the much-doted-on object of attention.

  “Is it bad luck to kill them, spiders, ill-omen?” Sighilde asked.

  She had been well-received despite arriving rain-soaked and disheveled. Now wearing a dress loaned by Svein’s sister while her own dried by the hearth-fire, having been offered and accepted some barleywine, she sat on one of the benches, glad to see not a spider in sight.

  Nida bounced Thorulf again and cackled a laugh, tipping her head with an ear toward the roof. “Well, I’ve heard it said that to kill a spider brings rain. By the sounds o
f it, someone must have been wreaking a slaughter.”

  Sighilde wrung her hands. “They’re all over my house… they creep out of the thatch, they crawl on the walls and come down on their threads.”

  “Most are harmless enough.”

  “That’s what Thorbjorn told me.”

  “But some do bite—”

  “So I told him!”

  “And many are poison. I’ve known men as big and strong as your Thorbjorn, warriors who’ve survived battles unscathed, only to sicken and die from the bite of a spider.”

  “What a horrible fate!”

  “Fate is fate,” Nida said with a shrug. “Are they so unlike us?”

  “Spiders?”

  “Spiders, Norns, and women… don’t we all spin and weave?”

  “I suppose,” said Sighilde. “I’m not as familiar with the stories and sagas as I’d like. My mother was Christian, converted by a traveling monk. My father followed the gods but she bade him be quiet about it, so I knew little enough about either.”

  Nida tutted. “Well, we’ll see to that.”

  It so happened that the custom of the women of Svein’s household was to spend rainy afternoons at their looms and spindles, which were set up to one side of the hall. There, they’d sing songs and tell tales to make the work pass by more quickly, and the children could play nearby without being too underfoot.

  The men, meanwhile, those freemen and farm-thralls not accompanying Svein on his voyage, would likewise gather in one of the out-buildings, where the smith hammered iron, where woodcarving was done and barrels made.

  Nida insisted that today, Sighilde join them. “Stay for the evening meal, and for the night as our guest,” she said. “In the morning, I’ll send Olaf and Ydris home with you to help with the chores.”

  Sighilde was reluctant, not wanting to impose. She’d brought a visiting-gift, a full basket of hazelnuts and bilberries, but hardly enough to warrant such a warm welcome.

  But, Nida insisted, and so she let herself be swayed. She was not, after all, eager to return to the cottage alone.