The Golden Wolf

by Linnea Hartsuyker

  38

  Freydis felt that the islands exhaled when Harald and his forces departed, a few days after Ragnvald’s ships. That day, she removed the stitches from Einar’s face. He winced when she pulled out the threads, which left little weeping holes behind. Einar then met with the men who remained in Thorstein’s hall—or Sigurd’s now, she supposed—and the surrounding farms, to learn what their troubles were while Freydis took an inventory of supplies to see if the food they had could be stretched over the winter.

  That night, Freydis’s blood came with the new moon, and she could not sleep. It was the first time since Thordis’s birth and she felt uncomfortably full, a pressure in her womb and between her legs that only time and the moon’s passing would ease. She left Einar’s side, drawn by the mild weather, rare even in summer. She put Thordis in the kitchen again, with the women who slept there, traced a charm on her forehead to keep her quiet, and then walked up the hill above the hall.

  When she crested the hill, the moon, fat and orange, was sitting on the darkest horizon, lighting the sea in ribbons. Torches shone in a circle some ways off, and Freydis walked toward them. Near a ring of standing stones, she saw the old women who had helped her prepare Einar’s body. And, with a feeling of inevitability, she saw the crone Runa among them.

  “I told you she would come,” said Runa. Freydis bowed. She had been drawn here by something, the same magic that had brought her to Alfrith’s side during the women’s ceremonies.

  “She is not one of us,” said another, Sigga.

  “She will be,” said Runa.

  “No, she is Norse, not Pictish. Golden-haired giants have no place among us.”

  Freydis waited. She did not mind this rejection; it seemed part of the ritual. She reached her hands toward the women. “I have guided life and death with these hands. I have studied healing with the guidance of two great sorceresses.” Unna did not call her work magic, but even she sometimes recited certain charms to help her medicines work. “I have borne a living daughter,” she added. Priestesses of Freya sometimes required women to pledge their daughters to gain access. Freydis could pledge that she would teach her daughter what she knew, and let her daughter decide how to use it.

  “You will leave here as soon as your people have finished their plunder,” said Sigga. “Indeed, we meet tonight because we do not know how we will survive the winter. We must pray for the best harvest the gods have ever given us, especially after your people’s battle trampled our island’s most fertile field.”

  Freydis bowed her head. “My husband will choose how long we stay,” she said. “But while I am here, I will honor your gods, and do what I can to make the fields fertile.”

  “No,” said Runa. “That is not enough. You must make him stay. Your husband will be jarl in this place.”

  “My uncle Sigurd is jarl here,” said Freydis.

  “He will die,” said Runa. “Will you doubt my prophecies again?”

  “If he dies his young son, Olaf, will be jarl,” Freydis replied uneasily. Runa had been the one who told Freydis that she would return to the Orkney Islands, before she sailed away with Hallbjorn.

  Runa shook her head. “No, your Einar will be jarl here, and his sons after him, if you make it so.”

  “I will have nothing to do with the death of my uncle and cousin.”

  “No, you will not,” said Runa. “But you can make your man ready. I wish he was of our people, but I see more and more of your Norse coming here, and it will go better for us if he is jarl than one of this Harald’s sons.”

  “If this is a place that Einar Ragnvaldsson can stand and rule, then I want that for him,” said Freydis. “But how will we survive the winter?”

  “Not now,” said Runa. “Now you must dance with us.”

  Freydis joined in the dance that whirled around and between the stones. The torches painted streaks through the darkness, complicated patterns like those found on the finest Dublin jewelry, like the warp and weft of her weaving. She forgot her cramps, forgot anything but the movement, following, then leading, then mourning when the moon set, and finally resting, unthinking, at the base of one of the stones, her hand still clasped with that of a woman she did not know.

  Eventually Sigga and Runa rose, and Freydis followed them, with the other women, back up over the hill.

  “Your man will be tested soon,” said Runa to Freydis as they parted. “Be ready.”

  * * *

  Freydis watched Einar’s boat from outside the hall as his rowers fought the wind and the current until the bay’s walls sheltered them enough to let the sail do the rest of the work. He greeted her quickly, then he and his men fell upon the meal she had prepared, devouring it with little speech. Afterward, he went directly to their bed, flopping down on the mattress with a carelessness that made Freydis smile. He did not hold himself as warily as he had as a boy, knowing that all eyes were upon him. Freydis had once envied that boy’s perfect self-possession, how untouchable he seemed, but she liked this man better.

  “The outer islands are doing better,” he said. “Closer in, Thorstein taxed them very hard, and Harald’s men took the rest. I hope that Sigurd can bring us something from Scotland, but even if he can, it will not be enough without everyone sharing their harvests. I wish he were here—he is jarl. I cannot be the one to call a ting meeting.”

  “You do not know when he will return,” said Freydis. “You should do whatever is needed.”

  “No one would come,” Einar protested. “They would barely even come for Sigurd.”

  “They will come,” said Freydis. “I will speak to the wise-women. Send your messengers.”

  Einar did so, and Freydis visited the crones. She brought a wheel of new cheese, fat and tender as a spring moon, as a gift, along with a basket of herbs she had picked. Sigga opened the door. She was shorter than Runa, and rounded, shaped like sea-washed stones stacked upon one another, wearing dark homespun.

  Wordlessly, Freydis presented her gifts. Sigga passed the cheese to Runa, and sorted through the herbs Freydis has brought. She held up one, yellow-flowered rue sprig.

  Freydis named it. “It will loose a child from a womb.”

  “Not without some danger,” said Sigga.

  Freydis held her gaze and nodded. “I have learned ways to lessen that danger, but yes.”

  “This is a worthy gift,” she said. “And Runa will like the cheese.”

  Freydis then told her why she had come.

  “This is not a thing that you can ask for and then walk away like a queen,” said Runa. “We are not your servants. Your man will have to ask the men, and you will ask the women, and all will come.” She gave Freydis a stone with a hole through it, and tied a braid of grasses around her wrist.

  “Even the out-islands?” Freydis asked, touching the objects. They had some meaning that she could not know, and was not meant to know.

  Sigga and Runa looked at one another for a moment, and then Runa said, “No, we will call them.”

  Freydis wanted to ask how they would do that, two limping old women, but if they wanted her to know, they would tell her.

  She told Einar some of what she had learned, and what they had promised her. “They think you will rule one day,” she said.

  Einar frowned and told her a strange story, of a tongueless witch in Hordaland who still gave him a prophecy. “I do not trust these women,” he said. “Their prophecies never mean what you think they should.”

  “Nonetheless, women can help convince the men to come to the ting,” she said. “You should not scorn their help.”

  Over the next week, she and Einar visited every household on the mainland. At each one Freydis talked with the woman of the house, showing the stone and the braided cord. She began to recognize the different features of the original Scottish—Runa called them Pictish—and the Norse newcomers. Some Irish features shone through as well, and the languages and dialects were a mix of those languages. Freydis had only Norse, and a smattering of w
ords that Donall had taught her, which she used haltingly. When she spoke them, she missed Donall’s handsome face, his way with animals, and Unna’s hard unchangeability, but she never thought that she had made the wrong decision by staying here with Einar.

  * * *

  Einar stood before the assembled men of Orkney—the ting meeting he had called. Some had come from the outer islands, sent to represent the communities that scraped out their living upon rock and scrub grass. Some from closer by brought their whole families, from small children who stuck fingers in their mouths and looked around at the gathering with wide eyes, to grandmothers with caved-in cheeks who leaned on sticks to walk.

  Freydis rested her hand lightly on his arm. Einar was proud to stand next to her; she held herself as much like a queen as Gyda would have. He opened his mouth to speak, but found he could not begin, and closed it again. He had commanded attention easily before his wounding. But how could he see how an audience reacted to him with only one eye?

  Freydis moved her hand to the middle of his back, which made him stand more upright, and then she pushed him slightly forward. He must speak.

  “Men, women, people of Orkney,” said Einar slowly, “winter will be here soon, and we must all face starvation, if we do not pull together for the harvest. My uncle Sigurd, who is jarl here, has gone to Scotland to raid and trade for grain, but if he does not return in time, or does not bring enough, we must all share our stores.”

  “Why should we?” called out one man whom Einar did not recognize. “We did not have these troubles when Thorstein ruled here. He left us alone, and took no more than we could replace.”

  Then he had not truly left them alone, Einar thought, but he had not done as much damage as Harald’s thousand men had. All of the islands together did not support more than twice that. He felt the pressure from Freydis’s hand on his back again, urging him to speak.

  “The past cannot be undone,” said Einar, “nor stores uneaten. But I am here now to make sure you can live through the winter, even after losing so much.”

  Another man stepped forward, this one from a farm near Thorstein’s hall. His stores would have been hit very hard by Harald’s depredations. “You mean you don’t want to starve,” he said. “You don’t care about us.”

  “True, I do not want to starve,” said Einar. “But I will promise to eat no more than the lowliest Orkneyman, and share all that I have, if all Orkneymen agree to do the same.”

  “Lies,” said the first man. “You come from the Norse lands, and you will go back to them as soon as things get difficult for you here. You live in a hall of wood while the rest of us live in turf. You will never be one of us.”

  His father had also said he was not one of them, not one of his sons. Einar had never wished for more than that, not truly. Being one of Ragnvald’s sons seemed the highest honor.

  He drew his dagger and held it high in the air. Freydis pulled away from him, and he sensed her fear, though she stood on his blind side. He waited for the crowd to quiet in anticipation, and then plunged the blade into the ground near his feet. He cut a long line through the thick root structure of the Orkney grass, and then another, parallel to that.

  Tears burned his eye—he had last cut turf for Ivar’s barrow. With blurred vision, he sliced a line at the bottom, then one at the top, and peeled back the layer of earth, as Orkneymen had done since the beginning of the world. He picked up the earthen mat and held it in the air. “I can cut turf as well as any of you, and live in turf too. I am an Orkneyman now. My brother’s bones lie here, and one day, if the gods will it, mine will too. We will live together, or die separately.”

  He had their attention now, his arms shaking from holding the heavy earth. “Thorstein’s hall—Jarl Sigurd’s now—can still give ten sacks of rye,” he continued, “and three of barley. We have twelve barrels of ale. We can afford to slaughter five young steers and one old heifer before the winter is over. There are yet uncounted cheeses. That is what we can give and still feed Sigurd’s warriors when they return.”

  It was a large amount, possibly more than he could spare without hunger, but a lord must be generous. “Now, you”—Einar shook the rectangle of turf at the man who had first questioned him—“what can you give to keep your neighbors from starving?”

  The man stepped forward again, and looked around. “I have a sack of grain that I can share,” he said grudgingly.

  “My stud ram is old,” said one middle-aged woman, who did not seem to have a man to speak for her. “He can be slaughtered, if my neighbor Markus can offer me the services of his ram next fall.”

  “Valka, you’ve always wanted his services,” said another man. “Is it for your ewes, or are you missing your husband that badly?”

  The woman, Valka, guffawed. “You’ve been trying to get your ewes pregnant yourself, so I think your ram is bored,” she shot back. Many of the assembled crowd laughed, and after that, they made more and more offers to share. Einar listened carefully, memorizing them as he once had the law, and when everyone had said what they could give, he repeated it all back to the crowd.

  Freydis gently detached herself from Einar’s side, and went to speak with the knot of out-island visitors, as Einar spoke with those on the mainland, arranging how their goods would be shared over the winter, when they would return: once after the harvest, and then again on the first fair day after Yule, when they would decide a final visit later in the winter. Poor weather could still force them all into bad choices, like slaughtering so many livestock that they would need to do more raiding to replenish their stocks, but Einar was hopeful.

  Most of the farms already had arrangements for sharing labor at harvesttime, and Einar added himself and his men to their number, sending a few off to the farthest islands, so they could make friendships and debts of gratitude, as well as report back to him. Until the crowds dispersed, he forgot his fear that his father was right, and that he did not belong here or anywhere.

  Freydis would host some of the out-island visitors in the hall tonight, but many had friends on the mainland to visit. They had survived on these harsh islands for centuries before Harald’s coming. If Sigurd remained here, his main task as jarl would be to prevent Harald from doing too much damage with taxes and other raiding missions. The Orkneymen could take care of themselves.

  * * *

  The harvest was easier than Einar was used to, which worried him. The fields were not as large as those around Tafjord, nor did they have the same yield. After the harvest was over, during the same dry days that favored mowing hay, the Orkneymen began to cut turf for the winter. Here turf served many of the purposes that wood did in Norway including housing and fuel. When burned it gave off a thick, choking smoke that made Einar cough and his eye water, but at least it made warmer walls than wood did, so they could burn less of it.

  Einar harvested turf side by side with the men of the mainland. He was clumsy at first with the long sharp spade usually used for the task, but soon he grew better at it, turning his warrior’s muscles to this homely task. At length the men began to call him Turf-Einar in grudging acceptance.

  Still Sigurd did not return, and Einar made plans for dispensing grain, cheese, and meat for the winter if they received no additional supplies. The men elected at the ting to help distribute the grain all detested one another, and argued constantly, but that meant that everyone in the islands had someone they could trust dividing up the grain.

  Einar gave up on seeing Sigurd until the spring. Perhaps he had decided to return to Norway with Harald. Or perhaps something worse had befallen him, and Einar was alone at the edge of the world with distrustful strangers, and Freydis, half girl, half goddess, loving, but so strange to him.

  A fierce fall storm came up after all the envoys had returned to their islands. The sound of the wind called to Einar, and he could not force himself to remain within the thick walls of Thorstein’s hall. He wrapped himself in his cloak and went out into the gale. Overhead, the sky was mottled gr
ay, clouds passing over and behind one another. The wind blustered around him, first sweeping his hair back, and then smacking it into his face. The rain plastered him with fat drops that quickly soaked him even through several layers of wool, and then turned to a harsh needle spray that stung his face.

  Every discomfort made him want to press farther on, to the edge of a cliff that overlooked the bay. The channel below surged, white and roiling. Waves slammed into the cliffs, reaching up with fingers of white foam before falling back into the sea. He thought of his father’s tales of Ran, the cold and hungry sea goddess, who always desired more prey, and for the first time since Ivar’s death, the thought of his father made him feel only a resigned sadness. They were equal, as all men were equal, before the might of the gods.

  He saw a ship in the distance, rocking in the swells, well outside the angry water of the bay. He watched it for a time, but it could come no closer in this weather, and then a change in the wind drew a curtain of rain between him and the small black silhouette. He began to feel the cold, and pulled his sodden cloak around him before tramping back to the hall.

  He was shivering mightily when he got there. Freydis met him and helped him strip off his clothes behind the curtain that hid their bed. She dried his hair when he bent down, and finding he was still shivering, stripped off her own clothes and pulled him next to her under the covers of their bed, until the warmth from her body reached the coldest parts of him. His body began to respond to hers. He kissed her neck, the swollen mounds of her breasts, hard with milk. His hair left wet trails across her skin, and she shivered.

  It seemed to him, as they joined, her warm skin burning on his cold, that she was part of the islands now, that joining with her was the same as taking the name Turf-Einar. He woke the next morning feeling fierce and whole as he had not since his wounding.

  When he went outside, he saw that the storm had blown away all the clouds, and a steady wind drew the ship closer to the bay. He recognized Sigurd’s colors and called the whole household down to greet him.