Thorkel would not be left out of the witnessing of this act of justice, and went for his mantle, the hair on one side of his head a hand’s length shorter than the other. Dagr stood about, looking at the line of faces, and saw Ladja. He wished to speak to her, and time was short. He was trying to think of a way to be alone with her when Thorkel returned, cloaked and ready to leave. First he pressed a small purse of silver in Dagr’s hand, insisting he take a share-man’s wage for the work he had done over the Winter, “For the smithing would have come out of my own purse, if you had not done it.”
This benison was unexpected, and Dagr placed his hand over his heart as he took the silver. He went then to the old man’s wife, and thanked her for her hospitality, and for the wool mantle she had had woven for him, and which he wore now. As he dipped his head to her he saw again the slender hoops of Rus gold, two large and two small, strung on a necklace of silver chain links and hanging from the brooches over her heavy breasts. One day Ladja will find a way to slip those rings from your chain, just as I am about to take back my boat, he thought.
Then Ladja was crossing to him. She had taken the food bag out of the hands of the cook and came to his side to deliver it; he was already walking, Thorkel in tow, towards his goal.
“Take this silver,” he hissed, trying to push the purse into her hand.
“Nai, you will need it yourself,” she answered. “I will have gold,” she reminded him, with the faintest of smiles.
“Share it with me, then. For the sake of what you have been to me.” He had poked his fingers into the bag and extracted what he hoped was half of the coins and hack-silver within. As he took the food bag he pressed the silver into her palm. Her lips pursed, but she nodded.
“I thank you, Ladja. I hope you are on the banks of the river Svir this Summer.”
After a final wave to the household he did not look back. Thorkel surprised him by breaking into a little jog, and the four men were quickly at the cove.
“There is danger sailing so early in the Spring,” Thorkel reminded him as Dagr lay the food bag and water-skin in the prow. Dagr did not bother to answer that danger had caught him in late Summer, when sailing is thought to be the safest.
Together Dagr and the two men pushed the boat down the beach. The tide had gone out a bit, but once the stern was in water their pushing was eased. Then Dagr took hold of the rail and pulled himself up and over. The men gave a final push, and the boat was free.
He wasted no time lifting the mast. As he busied himself he saw the men retreat into the trees, Thorkel last.
He sailed north up the Öland coast for a while. It was past mid-day and he could never reach Gotland before dark, not this early in the season, and not beating against the wind as he must do. He dropped anchor in a cove at the northern tip of Öland, ate some of the roast lamb and bread from his food-bag, and as the sky darkened, wrapped himself in his mantle to sleep. He felt the gentle heave and swell of the sea, and looked up at a sky swimming with stars. When he got home he would make Offering to Njord. He thought on this, lying safe and dry within his own boat, lulled by hearing its creak and the lapping of the water against her sturdy sides.
At dawn he was underway, sailing due east. He saw one small fishing boat, no more than that. The wind was fresh and his sail billowed in catching it. He skimmed over the silvery water, his hand firm on the steering oar, his face fixed on the place Gotland would appear. The Sun was not yet overhead and he sailed into its growing warmth.
When his island home emerged, dark, low, and long, on the edge of the water, he began to laugh. As soon as he could make out a landmark he steered north up the coast. He saw a few boats, specks on the horizon, and wondered if one of them was Tufi’s. He hoped he would be home when he drove the boat up into their cove.
As he neared the place, Dagr knew there was water in his eyes. He could see the snug house, the fish-hut, the long row of still-empty drying racks. Tufi’s boat was not there. He ran his boat up until she caught in the sand, and threw over his new anchor-stone to keep her there. He leapt out.
One of Tufi’s youngest ran across the grass and up to him, calling joyously, then darted towards the kitchen yard. Dagr strode there, coming almost face to face with Tufi’s wife as she stood at the work table, pounding a slab of salt fish with a mallet.
Her mouth opened.
“The featherbed you made me saved my life,” Dagr told her. Then she burst into tears.
Chapter the Third: Njord and Skaði
WHEN Tufi sailed in later he saw Dagr’s boat, and leapt from his own to embrace his younger brother. The household was up late that night, eating and drinking, and the little glazed crock of mead was opened to salute the return of he thought lost.
Halle was alive; he had returned just before the onset of Winter. The Rus had attacked a farm on the coast of Smáland, and Halle, who had been ordered to stay with the ship, had found opportunity to slip over the side and run into the trees. After a fitful night in the woods he met a goatherd driving his herd from their Summer pastures. In a few days he found a fur-trader to take him to Gotland, where he made his way home. But he had had to stop at the house of Tufi and tell them Dagr had been thrown overboard. Halle’s shock seeing Dagr alive was perhaps even the greater than his own brother’s, and he needed many cups of ale before the colour returned to his cheek.
“I will have my wife make me a second featherbed, one for my boat,” he resolved, “so I may become a sea-duck, as you did, and live, should I find my way into the sea.”
Dagr worked hard all Summer. He had lost the entire value of all the stock-fish his boat had been taken with, and still owed Tufi silver for the boat. The weather was fair and fishing was good that year, and soon the drying racks were strung with pale slabs of salted cod and herring.
But he was restless. The year had changed him in many ways, some which he could name and others he could not.
“Dagr, you should wed,” his sister-in-law would prompt him. He nodded, but with no real conviction. Then he would remember the comfort of a warm body pressed against his.
There were families with likely daughters nearby, a few of whom, Tufi’s wife privately suspected, were being sent rather too often for the families’ true wants to buy fish, for if the maidens arrived and saw Dagr’s boat was out they appeared crestfallen. But she could interest Dagr in none of them. Just to the north of them was Fiskehamn, one of the largest trading posts on Gotland, and well known for its fish, as its name belied. It was another place in which a man looking for a wife might profit by spending time at, for inland farmers came, families in tow, to trade grain or wool for stock-fish. No woman caught his eye.
Yet the harder he worked the more restless he became. Tufi no longer needed him, for even with his bigger boat he now had his sons to aid with hauling, which is why he had helped Dagr buy his own boat in the first place.
Toward the end of Summer Halle, who ranged broadly up and down the coast, stopped by with news: there was a trader on the East coast of Gotland, almost directly overland from where they now stood, paying good prices for stock-fish. Tufi’s fish were nearly all spoken for, but Dagr, due to his long days hauling full nets, had a surplus. He determined to hazard a trip down the coast and round the island’s sharp point to reach this eager trader. It took two days of easy sailing to reach there, dropping anchor at night in a barren cove just around the wind-driven southern tip.
Dagr sailed into the trading town just at mid-day. It lay in the crook of a sheltered bay, near a jutting spit of rock, and had a shallow shingle beach of white limestone pebbles and coarse sand. A wooden pier, newly built, proclaimed the town’s intent to grow as a trading centre; it had as yet a single line of stalls and small warehouses lining the short road that ran along the water’s edge. A few men upon the road watched Dagr’s approach, and after he had dropped the sail and steered the boat near the pier, stood ready to catch his thrown line. After exchanging greetings with the men he tied up his
steering oar, and they pointed him to the stall of the stock-fish trader he sought.
After prying open the casks and inspecting their contents the trader offered Dagr a half-mark more of silver per cask than he had expected. On top of this, they sealed their business over a deep cup of ale at the trader’s stall, where the man’s wife brought forth steaming bowls of dried fish stew, and hot loaves of bread.
“Lucky are my fish, if this be the Fate of those I have sold you,” Dagr praised, lifting the wooden spoon to his mouth, which made the woman dip her head to him. He oft times had a nice turn of phrase ready when needed, a continuing gift from paying heed to his old Uncle Ake. The trader grinned and nodded his head in agreement.
Back out on the trading road Dagr looked about him in satisfaction. His belly was full, the pouch at his belt heavy with silver, and his boat was empty. He had received courteous welcome and made a profitable sale; this place was a good one. He spent a long moment standing on the edge of the pounded road. He looked out over the Baltic, knowing that the first land-fall was far to the East. The light looked the same on this side of the island, but he felt different. He looked out towards shores more distant, the great trading routes that followed faraway rivers and traced into the lands of the Rus and its white-furred foxes, and deeper still to the South, to those lands of glimmering silk and fragrant spice. He did not care to think of the Rus pirates, but for a moment he let Ladja’s face and form rise in his mind.
The wind picked up and ruffled the water he gazed at. The Sun was warm on his back but he saw from the length of his falling shadow that it was heading down. If he left now he could sail until dusk, make landfall and spend the night on the boat, and be back at Tufi’s before night tomorrow. He would not be back this way, not until next Fall when he had more fish to sell; and even if he had racks full of them at Tufi’s the winds would soon make the sail perilous. He must leave now.
He turned and began walking towards his waiting boat. He had a full cask of water and had eaten little of the food he had aboard; nothing need stay him. Then a woman came out of the stall he was passing.
She was of mid-height, and wore a blue gown with a long-sleeved shift of yellow beneath it. A white linen head-wrap was knotted at her nape, and her red hair streamed out from underneath and fell over her shoulders to her waist. She had a basket over her wrist, which to judge from how lightly she bore it, must be empty. He knew her at once. It was the red-haired maiden he had met at the Thing.
He stood without moving, looking at her, knowing he was smiling. She looked at him and paused.
“Hej,” he said.
He was not sure she knew him; the look on her face was shifting.
“I am Dagr. We met at the Thing, several Summers past. You were carrying water and would not stop to try the fellows’ ale.”
Some light flickered in her face, her red brows lifted. His face was sun-browned, his hair sun-streaked and wind-blown, and at this moment his clothing was none too clean. He was taller than her, now.
“You wore a blue gown, lighter in colour than that which you wear today,” he prompted.
“Já,” she finally said. “The sunset on the peaks of Asgard. Your father’s ram.” The lips began to bow in a smile beneath the small nose. “But we did not meet. You are wrong there. You spoke to me; that is all.” There was no hint of smile now.
“That is true,” Dagr admitted.
He could not stop looking at her, and knew he should stop; she must be wed, and her husband might step out of the doorway and collar him for staring so. Still, he looked. She had changed but little, her cheeks perhaps less rounded beneath their pale freckles, her light blue eyes a bit sharper. The mouth too, a little more defined, as befit a woman who freely spoke her mind.
“You would never tell your name. Will you tell it now?” he asked.
She paused long enough to make him speak again, for fear of having offended her.
“That is my boat. I fish on the western coast. I landed this morning and sold my stock-fish to the trader there” – he lifted his hand to the stall with the red awning.
She nodded. “I saw you both roll the casks to his place.” Then she added, “I did not know it was – you.”
He nodded. “Já, Dagr. He who finds you lovely as Frigg.” He was smiling again, and chose to disregard the little wince she made. “Will you not tell me your name?”
“I will tell you now. It is Rannveig,” she answered. He took heart at once; she would have warned him not to speak thus if she were wed.
“Rannveig,” he repeated. “A fine name. And do you still brew no ale?”
Here she laughed a moment. “You have sharp ears to recall every word I uttered so many years ago.”
“Only five Summers,” he corrected, as if it had been five weeks. “And of your ale?” he asked again, almost teasing her. He hoped to see her smile again.
“If you must know, I now brew very good ale,” she returned.
“So the God has spat in it?” he asked.
She laughed aloud. “My father said that! When I made my first batch of good ale, he told me the tale of the queen who despaired of her brewing. She prayed to Odin and he flew by and spat in her big crock, and the ale foamed and was the best in the land.”
“Old Ake, my father’s brother, told me of that,” Dagr said. He did not find it hard to believe that her father had compared her to a queen, or her ale, at least.
“I should like to taste it,” he said, after a pause. Of a sudden she cast her eyes down, and he went on, “To raise a cup with your father.”
“He is dead,” she answered.
He nodded, then went ahead and asked what he must know.
“And you Rannveig, are you wed?”
Her lips pursed a moment. “Not wed,” she said. Her voice was quiet as she said it, but after it was out she lifted her eyes and stared him full in the face.
She began to walk, and he fell in next her. “Do you live here?” he wanted to know.
“Not here, but at our upland farm. We have a hall at the end of that road” – she pointed up a short but steep hill, to a wooden hall with a stone front – “but I let it as a store-house for grain and hay for the folk here on the trading road.”
“We?” he wanted to know.
“I mean, it was my mother’s. She has joined my father. I have a brother Rapp, much older. Years ago he wed a girl whose folk raised horses. They live at her farm. My parent's hall and farm are mine.”
Dagr had never heard of even the smallest farm being held by a lone woman; it was far too much work. “Who farms it with you?” he asked.
“I grow apples,” she explained. “An old couple and their son come to help with the haying and vegetables, and pick and dry apples with me every year. My grain I trade for. I keep only one cow, and a few hens; nothing I cannot care for myself.”
He had a hard time accepting this. “So you are alone? You farm it alone?”
She gave a slight shrug. “Apples need little care. Before Mid-Summer I pick off the smallest so that those which remain grow the larger. I have a skep full of bees, and the trees flower well. Before my mother died we planted many apple-seedlings, so I have young trees coming up too.”
He said nothing, taking this in, and saw her eyes flick to his boat, waiting there at the pier.
“It is a different life from yours, that is all,” she finished.
He too looked at his boat, and the life it represented. His eyes then moved along the broad swath of limestone shingle to the line of the gently lapping Baltic.
“It is a fine bay,” he told her. “Good shelter, and a pier too. You should live here.”
“Do not tell me where I should live. I love the farm, my apples, the land.” She was almost snapping at him.
“But here there are folk, and goods, and…the sea,” he tried.
She gave her head a little shake, but her mouth had softened.
“The sea-air –” he
began.
“Sea-damp,” she corrected.
He began to laugh a bit despite her. She looked at him, her head cocking on her white neck.
“We are like the tale of Njord and Skaði, one arguing for the sea, the other, the hills,” he said.
The God of the sea had wed a beautiful giantess who cared only for the hills and woods. Njord hated the hills and snow, and she hated the waves and damp, so they parted.
She looked quickly away, and he thought he should not have spoken of such things; to jest of any marriage, even an unhappy one, with a maid was to open a chest which might be difficult to close.
The silence that followed was broken by her. “It is late in the season for trading,” she noted. She had inclined her head to the trees that ringed the trading road. He looked with her, saw their leaves already beginning to rust, standing out more sharply against the green of the pine needles.
“Já,” he answered. “But I had heard it could be to my profit to come.”
“And was it?”
“Já, it was,” he said, but he was smiling at her as he said it. “And also I have a full half-mark of silver more for each of my four casks.”
She shook this off. “Well. If you have made your profit, you should be off.”
“The wind is picking up, and the water is roughening,” he said, raising his hand to the sea, though there were no more white tips on its surface than before.
She pressed her lips together in a tight smile. “Then leave your boat here, and walk home. Overland it cannot take you more than one or two days.”
“But early snow can overtake a man, this time of year,” he returned, willing to say something as improbable as this to buy more time with her.
For answer she gave a toss of her head.
They had reached the mouth of the pier. A bench made from a slab of wood sat off to one side of it. He slowed, hoping she might stop and sit. When she did he settled down next her. She placed her basket at her feet.
Tindr Page 5