The Golden Wolf

by Linnea Hartsuyker

  Svanhild frowned. “You are right,” she said. “We have all the time left to us, to talk over things. To fight if we have to.” She looked at him sidelong. “You will not drive me away again.”

  “You will leave sooner or later,” he replied. “It is what you do.”

  “I?” Svanhild asked. “When we first met, you could not bear to stay in Tafjord longer than a few days at a time. I wonder that you have stayed so long in Iceland. How does the sea not draw you away?”

  He did not answer her. Perhaps it would take the rest of their lives to learn how the long years apart had changed them. Solvi had scorned farmers, and now he had become one. Svanhild missed the part of herself that had claimed this land, that wanted to make a home, tend a husband, raise a daughter—raise a grandchild. If Hallbjorn had made Freydis pregnant, then Svanhild, who still felt like a girl sometimes, would be a grandmother. Perhaps a gray-haired husband would suit her.

  25

  Freydis looked up from her weaving and saw the visitors coming across the field: her father, walking like a three-legged dog, dropping his left shoulder with each step, and a thin woman who walked like a man, too far away for Freydis to see her face, but not someone she could mistake. Her mother had come for her.

  Freydis had felt calm these past few weeks, obeying Unna’s instructions to eat more, even past fullness. The despair that had driven her to Unna’s mushrooms was still there if she reached for it, but every day that passed, filled with moments of beauty, gave her another layer of armor against it.

  She spent time with pregnant cats and ewes, because Unna said that their easy births would make hers easy as well. Alfrith would have said the same, though those old charms did not always work. Freydis had seen a woman die in childbirth with a cat next to her, and the infant died as well before reaching its bloody doorway to the world.

  She moved slowly to untie her small card-loom, first from her belt, and then from the stump she had used to provide tension. Unna had been called away to tend an old man who, she said, would probably be getting around to dying in the next few days, but her herbs might help him survive until the winter, if he wished it.

  Freydis wondered how Unna could look at life and death so simply, knowing life should be preserved when possible, but death and pain were inevitable, and must be faced. Easier said than done, and easier when it was someone else’s pain. Childbirth would dwarf any pain she had already experienced, and it might kill her. She could not help but rage against that.

  Freydis brushed off her overdress and fixed her hair. When Solvi and Svanhild—her parents, how strange to think of them that way—came close, Svanhild left Solvi behind, running over the broken ground toward Freydis. Svanhild opened her arms to embrace her, but Freydis sidestepped her, and crossed her arms over her chest.

  Svanhild cupped Freydis’s face instead, holding her until Freydis had to meet her eyes. Her mother was shorter than her now, she realized. “Daughter, you can’t know how glad I am to find you well,” said Svanhild. “You are well, aren’t you?”

  With her mother’s eyes and hands upon her, Freydis felt no choice but to nod, and at least that motion freed her from Svanhild’s grasp. Solvi arrived then, puffing from his exertion. “Your mother’s king has divorced her,” he said, with an odd mix of sarcasm and affection. “So now she comes here to us.”

  Freydis liked how he did that, put himself with her, against Svanhild. Growing up, she had heard nothing of him except how much he loved her mother—the first to fall under her spell, Harald’s fiercest enemy who quit his claim to Maer because of his oath to her.

  “I plan to stay,” said Svanhild. “Even if both of you reject me as he did.” She paused. “It is my land.”

  Solvi laughed. “To be sure it is. I will have some compensation for tending it for you, though, as will Unna.”

  “Where is she?” Svanhild asked. Freydis told her. “And you are staying here?” She reached toward Freydis again but dropped her hand before Freydis had to decide whether to avoid it.

  “Yes,” said Freydis. Unna’s quiet household had deepened her habit of answering no more than was asked, and barely that.

  “Unna would let me stay with her if I asked,” said Svanhild with a certainty that irritated Freydis. The irritation was a gift, far better than crying, showing the need that Svanhild had always seemed to despise.

  “Where do you wish your mother to stay?” Solvi asked her. He had done it again, asked her what she wanted. He sounded curious, not as though he wanted to push her toward one choice or another.

  If Svanhild stayed with Unna, she would crush Freydis’s brand-new sense of freedom, but if she stayed with Solvi, it would bind them back together. Solvi would not resist her. Even now, he darted a glance at her that softened his stern features.

  “Not with me,” said Freydis.

  “Unna is my friend,” Svanhild protested.

  “You do not wish to stay with your husband? Former husband, I should say?” Freydis asked. She did not like this cruel person she was discovering in herself, but she did enjoy the feeling of power her mother’s hurt gave her.

  Svanhild turned toward Solvi, and Freydis felt suddenly excluded. Her own fault. She had not gone to see her father since she had come to Unna’s farm. She had been too wrapped up in her own pain, and fear that Hallbjorn would return from wherever Solvi had sent him.

  “I want to stay long enough to greet my friend,” said Svanhild. “Will you forbid me that?”

  “No,” said Freydis, feeling as though she was losing something. “Do as you wish.”

  Svanhild smiled a little ruefully. Solvi looked weary, leaning on his cane. “I will get you a seat and something to drink,” Freydis said to him. She went into the house to get some stools and found that Snorri had arrived, so she returned for another seat and some cups of ale. Snorri accepted her welcome and drank from the side of his tattered mouth. Freydis found him easier to look upon when she concentrated on his eyes, which were a kind, even gray.

  “You are well now?” Solvi asked her.

  “Well enough,” she said. “The child is well rooted. I—nothing has changed that.” She found her hand going to her womb and stopped the motion. She had accepted this child, but she was not yet ready to love it.

  “I am not displeased to learn that,” said Solvi. “I had never thought to be a grandfather, or to know my grandchildren.”

  “I might die,” Freydis reminded him.

  “Don’t say that,” said Svanhild.

  “I am over-young for a child,” said Freydis. “Any healer would tell you that. Mothers my age often die—that is why the law says I am too young for marriage.”

  “You talk like a law-speaker,” said Svanhild. “I had not thought you spent that much time with Hilda.” Freydis remembered hearing Einar and Hilda talk over the law and former trials, arguing to pass the long winter nights, nights when Svanhild had been on other shores. Einar chose his words quickly and easily, but Hilda had a long memory of other cases, and won their friendly disputes as often as he did.

  Svanhild put her arm around Freydis’s waist too quickly for Freydis to avoid it, though she quickly pulled away. “Why do you hate me, Freydis?” she asked, her voice breaking a little.

  Freydis gestured at her abdomen. “Because I am here, like this,” she said, her voice rising.

  “And you blame me for that?” Svanhild asked. “When I have come to find you? Do you know another woman who would cross the sea, alone, for her daughter?”

  Anger felt better than despair, though it still came with tears. “I blame Hallbjorn and my foolish cousin Rolli,” she said. “And Hilda for sending me to Sogn, and you for letting it happen, and me for not preventing this somehow!” She ran into Unna’s house and began pulling her clothes out of the chest at the foot of her bed and shoving them into a bag. Wherever her mother went, she would go elsewhere.

  Svanhild followed her. She sat down next to Freydis on her pallet, and went to put her arm around her again
as Freydis edged away. Her mother’s touch seemed as abhorrent to her as Hallbjorn’s did, a touch of ownership that would smother Freydis’s spirit.

  “You do hate me,” said Svanhild.

  “Why do you care?” Freydis asked. “You don’t care what happens to me, except it gave you a reason to come to Solvi when your king divorced you. You did not even ask how I am.”

  “You look well enough, though you’re throwing a tantrum like a child,” said Svanhild.

  “I don’t need you,” said Freydis. “Solvi has offered to care for me, and Unna . . . though she said she was doing it for you. So I suppose you can tell her to send me away. Then I will have to stay with Solvi—do you truly mean to stay here in Iceland?”

  “Yes,” said Svanhild. “I have nowhere else to go.”

  Freydis did not want to see her mother’s vulnerability. “You have some other plan,” she said. “You always do.”

  “I don’t know what I’m doing to do,” said Svanhild. “Can you not help me discover it?”

  Freydis dried her face instead of answering.

  “Do you think your father is happy here?” Svanhild asked. “I have only just arrived, but it seems strange to me that he has stayed here.”

  “He stayed here to care for your farm,” said Freydis. She would not tell her mother of the fear she had seen in Solvi’s eyes.

  “He tells me he wishes to stay, and I know you will not want to spend your days wandering. So I suppose I must learn the desire to stay here. I had it once. Perhaps I can again.”

  “Perhaps,” said Freydis.

  They sat in silence for a time. Freydis felt oddly sorry for her mother. Freydis could not count herself happy, nor did she know what she wanted her life to bring, but she thought she could be well satisfied with a farm and a husband, as long as he was not cruel to her. Some animals and children to care for, a garden full of vegetables and herbs—a household. Her mother was cursed if she could not be satisfied with that.

  “Why did you claim your farm, if you did not want it?” Freydis asked.

  “It was for”—she took a deep breath—“my son. Your brother. Eystein.” Her voice sounded remote. She had never spoken of Eystein to Freydis before. Freydis had learned of him from women’s gossip in Tafjord. They said that Svanhild’s desire to act like a man had killed her son. “He would have been happy to inherit a farm,” Svanhild continued. “I wanted it for him. He needed me more than anyone has ever needed me, and I would have done anything for him. You do not need me. Solvi does not need me. Ragnvald does not need me. And Harald does not want me. Rolli is . . .”

  “What about Rolli?” Freydis asked.

  “He has been outlawed from Harald’s Norway, so I brought him with me. Perhaps he needs me. I promised I would help him. He seems cast adrift. Do you want to marry him?”

  Freydis shook her head vehemently. Rolli felt like her brother in a way that her older cousins—like Einar—did not. She could not imagine having him in her bed with anything other than disgust.

  “So nothing is settled or can be settled. I am sorry,” said Svanhild. “I would make what amends I can.”

  Freydis heard Unna arriving, greeting Solvi and Snorri. She rose, and pressed her hands to her eyes again to cool them.

  “You should go and see her,” said Freydis. “I have chores to do.”

  Freydis did some tidying by the light that came in the open door, then gathered her pails for the afternoon’s milking. Sheep and goats ambled toward her, desiring the relief that her hands would bring. She kept some sheep’s milk separate for feeding her little lamb, Torfa, who grew bigger every day.

  She could see Solvi and Snorri speaking with Donall, while Unna and Svanhild embraced, and then walked away together. Unna pointed out things in her garden and lands, likely what had changed since Svanhild had left. Pregnant with her, Freydis realized. Fifteen years ago, her mother had been as she was now. A little older, though not much. Solvi had forced her to leave Iceland then, and she had returned to an uncertain welcome now.

  When her pails were full she walked back toward the house. She followed the path around the south side of the house to avoid passing anyone. As she took the milk into the dairy shed, she heard Unna and Svanhild speaking.

  “She wants me to know that she could die in childbirth,” Svanhild said, with a little laugh that did not sound happy.

  “And so she could,” said Unna.

  “Oh, do not tell me that,” Svanhild replied. “I will not see another of my children die here. And Solvi would never forgive me.”

  “He would blame you?”

  “Of course. She does.”

  “She’s a child,” said Unna.

  “A child who will bear another child,” said Svanhild. “When I was not much older than she is, I had already run away from my family.”

  Freydis’s throat felt tight, and she grew angry with herself that she might cry in front of her mother yet again. No, she could not measure up to Svanhild Sea Queen. Svanhild would have fled from Hallbjorn, not given in to him.

  “Not all children are the same,” said Unna. “And you had astonishingly good fortune when you did that.”

  “Good fortune—I came here and my son died. Why must I have such weak children?” Svanhild asked.

  “I do not think she is weak,” said Unna. “I think . . .”

  “You know she is,” said Svanhild. “She is strange and superstitious, and she always has been. She relies on prayers when she should rely on herself.”

  “I think we do not yet know what she will be. But she found her way here to me—that is something.”

  “That boy brought her here,” said Svanhild dismissively.

  Freydis could bear no more and emerged from the dairy not far from where they stood talking. “If I am so weak, I will trouble neither of you further,” she said. “Mother, stay with Unna, and I will see if your weak daughter can find a place with her weak father.”

  “Freydis . . . ,” Svanhild called after her, but Freydis did not turn.

  As she walked away she heard Unna say, “She still needs mothering.”

  “She will not take it from me,” Svanhild replied.

  “Not when you think she is weak for wanting it,” said Unna, her tone sharp enough that Freydis would have flinched if that had been directed at her. Unna raised her voice and continued: “You were a good mother to Eystein, but you have spent too long among men. You cannot bully your way through every problem.”

  Freydis snorted as she went into the house to gather the bag she had packed. No matter how loudly Unna spoke, her mother would not hear it.

  Outside, Solvi and Snorri still sat with Donall. “Father, I would like to stay with you,” Freydis said. Solvi looked so glad at her words that she felt guilty. “But only if she is not. I cannot stay with her. She hates me.”

  “She came here for you,” Solvi reminded her.

  “She thinks me weak.” Freydis’s voice broke again.

  “And she knows no worse insult,” said Solvi, half to himself.

  “I cannot live with her, not and keep free of . . .” She could not speak it, her fear that her mother would make her desire death again, but Solvi nodded as though he understood.

  “I don’t know if I can either,” said Solvi. “It is her land, but—”

  “Would she expel you? Do you think she would be so cruel?” Freydis asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Solvi. “We will learn together.”

  26

  Solvi’s legs felt like sodden logs as he walked back to his farm with Freydis and Snorri. Unna had agreed to the trade, mother for daughter. She gave Solvi a significant look before they left, which Solvi understood as a command to keep his daughter safe, from herself, or anyone else. That might be easier at his farm, which did not have Unna’s dangerous stock of herbs.

  Svanhild had been angry at the trade, though she had not given full vent to it. “I will come visit you,” she promised Solvi and Freydis, making it sound almo
st like a threat. Solvi wanted to laugh—at her, at himself—but Freydis seemed too brittle to risk it. This all seemed comical. Svanhild would quickly find she did not want a fearful old man, lame and useless to her.

  As they walked back, Freydis kept a slow pace that Solvi could manage, though he still needed to rest a few times. When they reached Solvi’s garden, Svanhild’s captain, Falki, and Rolli Ragnvaldsson were laughing with Tova over the antics of one of the baby goats.

  Tova ran over to Solvi and helped him down onto a rough seat. Sitting down took away the pain in his feet so swiftly it felt like pleasure. Tova brought him a cup of light ale, and it combined with his hunger to make his head float. She massaged his legs with hard, painful strokes that he knew would make them feel better tomorrow, as he leaned his head back against his chair and let her drive out the aches.

  The talk quieted, and Solvi opened his eyes again. He waved Tova away. This was too intimate a service to be performed outside, with guests present. “Rolli Ragnvaldsson,” he said. “You seem to be a troublemaking sort. Tell me why you are here. I know Svanhild did not need an escort.”

  Rolli’s high-colored face split in a rueful grin. “I’m the one who needed help getting here,” he said. “I’ve been outlawed for seven years.”

  Freydis crossed her arms over her chest. “That seems just,” she said. She gestured at her still-flat stomach. “You could have prevented this. But you let him.” How could Svanhild think their daughter weak? She sounded just like her mother now, hard as flint.

  Rolli looked guilty. “Where is Hallbjorn?” he asked.

  “I sent him away,” said Solvi. “He is with the Scottish sea kings now.”

  “What should I do?” Rolli asked. “Aunt Svanhild said she would teach me of sailing, and that you could teach me how to be a sea king. But now she has left me here.”

  “That is what she does,” Freydis muttered.

  Solvi looked up at him. “Do you like farming?” he asked.

  “No, no farming for me.” Rolli puffed his chest out. “I will be a great raider.”