She nodded, because it was hard to speak with a split lip.
Skarga kept her word. The Assembly met outside in the snow because the barns were small, smelly and full of animals. A dozen of Ogot’s stallers, jarls and bondi stood shivering, ankle deep in slush, muttering and nodding at the right moments. Skarga wasn’t there. Her presence was not required once she had made the initial statement. She had stood straight backed, licking the edge of her lower lip which was purple beneath a thick scab, stared ahead at no one in particular, and said, “I did it.”
Ogot had nodded for a slave to take her away quickly, before some idiot had the temerity to ask her what exactly she did and how. After all, she’d never promised to be generous with additional details, nor explicitly honest, and Ogot already believed his daughter to be an inveterate liar. Not that he blamed her for that.
Asved stood with his friend Ollaf, watching and grinning. Ollaf was the best archer in town but he didn’t sit with the Althing court. Skarga watched him salivate. Asved had made sure to stand within hearing. She hoped he wouldn’t be standing within sight while the sentence was carried out.
There was feasting that night but they kept it modest. A young pig and six hens had been caught inside the hall during the fire and roasted to ashes. That was a sore loss as winter dragged on and the old sow’s new brood were already sickly from the cold and unlikely to survive. The two fine black cockerels had been sacrificed to Odinn and the wolves had taken three good hens, while the salt beef was growing slimy in the damp. Even fishing was hard with ice chunks slapping up against the quay and tearing at the coastal nets, and the small faering boats constantly threatened by storm. So the feast had little food except smoked herring from the maggoty stores, lentils and turnips, mutton grease on barley bread and sour bacon rind. They made do with plenty of ale. The brindle bitch dragged in her suckling pups and took up half the hearth until someone stood on the runt of the litter, half squashed it and chucked the squirming remains onto the fire. Then the old bitch got under his tunic and bit his balls, which put everyone else in a good mood so they forgot the town’s recent bad fortune and the lack of food and toasted the bitch with good ale, picked almost clean of drowned fleas. Held in Red Bjorn’s longhouse since it now claimed pride of being the largest still standing, Ogot was pleased because the feast cost Bjorn for the bread and boiled turnips, and it was Bjorn’s fat wife who had the job of cleaning up afterwards, instead of his own wife, who would have complained for a week.
Skarga sat in the cow byre back home and put her head down on her knees and wondered. As the darkness gathered deeper through the corners of the world, so the hush of snow silenced the winds. She had been whipped before, but this time, if they were angry enough, it might be worse. They might even give the lash to Asved, and Asved would cut the flesh from her spine.
Everyone was used to pain of course, with winter hunger and the bitter cold. Indeed, Skarga had the best cloak of all the women, with a proud boarder of bird wings in silver and the shoulders fully caped in wolf pelt. Some years ago, she had sold Asved a curse for giving Banke toothache, and he had paid, as she demanded, with the cloak. It had been a terrible risk, but Asved had said nothing, nor hit her, nor even taken the cloak back again when the curse failed to work. It was the only deal she had ever dared make with Asved in all her life, and he had kept to it even while she had not. She had no idea how to curse anyone or summon up a toothache, yet the cloak continued to keep her warm. But there were other pains, and for a woman, whipping was one of the worst.
There had always been those with special knowledge, clever with herbs and potions, ointments and charms. Once there was an old man, bent and blind in one eye, who claimed to know the future and read portents in the stones and the water and the runes. He had lived alone in a small cave at the base of the crags, but he could not have known everything for one night a storm washed him out to sea and drowned him. When his body was flung back onto the rocks several days later, he was half eaten by crabs. He had lost the other eye and saw nothing at all anymore.
Such people were loved and respected. They were welcomed. As a child, Skarga had not understood why her own supposed powers were reviled and not admired. “Because you send only curses, and no blessings,” said her step mother. “You fetch water, and the water turns to worms. You clean fish, and the fish turn to maggots. You take my precious little Asved to play in the sun and the next day my baby’s sick.”
Skarga had been young but not stupid. She’d said, “The fish were maggoty because they were too long from the water and you’d stored them smelly. The water didn’t give worms, you all got worms from the dogs because you don’t wash properly every morning. And all little children get sick sometimes. I look after Asved every day, and he isn’t sick every day. Even when Asved did get sick, at least he didn’t die. Most children die anyway, before they ever grow up.”
“But you didn’t, little maggoty thing that you are yourself,” and her step mother had slapped her for answering back. Skarga had still never had a proper explanation.
Her three elder brothers were from two different mothers, the elder Hakon and the second Banke from her father’s first wife, and Gunulf was born of a slave who later ran away. Skarga’s mother, the second wife, had died giving her birth. Now there was the third wife Tove, with black eyebrows like a single crest and a temper nearly as bad as her son’s. Her son was Skarga’s younger brother and the one she disliked most, for Asved was spiteful. Skarga tried to keep peace with black Tove, for she had to work with her every day, but she never attempted friendship with Asved.
Although knowing herself to be neither witch nor sooth-sayer, there was a great deal of magic in Skarga’s life. She saw the magic of the stars like shreds of silver dust dropped in milk, the beauty of the low mist over the mountains and the sharp bite of the wind from the crags like a promise of hope to come. She could not control these things, but she saw their magic when others saw only the dull vagaries of an inclement climate.
Then as a lonely nine year old, she had discovered Egil on the hills, abandoned as some infants were by parents who could not contemplate another mouth to feed. Many such infants were ill formed, or girl children in a family already burdened by unnecessary females. But Egil was a fat boy child with round pink cheeks and a healthy yell. Skarga had brought him home to look after and her father had given permission for her to keep him as a slave. It had introduced her to love, which was something she had never understood before. That was magic after all.
Awaiting her punishment, Skarga slept with the cows that night. Things crawled from the prickles and tickled her ears. Cattle shins shuffled, noses down in the straw to search for softer grasses. Then she woke to learn it was not Asved she must face.
He was denied entry to the empty saetr where punishment was carried out, stalking back down the hillside in fury, throwing rocks at the ravens scavenging a dead hedgehog, and cursing loudly to any god that cared to listen. Watching his sister, glimpses of bare breast while she writhed, bled and screamed, was a pleasure he’d anticipated all night. Ollaf, who had never expected such delights, had gone off to wax his bow. Equally excluded, Banke was equally furious, and ran head first into the planked wooden wall of the larger cow shed. Then he sat down heavily as the blood dripped from his grazed forehead onto his knees.
Skarga was beaten by the Althing law-complier, only six lashes, the use of the plain strap instead of the thraell’s knotted scourge, and no one else watching but her father. But she cried anyway. She knew her back had started to bleed when she felt the sting of it down her spine and at the fourth lash she’d surrendered courage in great heaving sobs that made breathing difficult. Afterwards she was dragged off to a closet bed in Bjorn’s longhouse where Tovhilda limped over to nurse her, wiped henbane ointment on the shallow stripes and told her how lucky she had been.
Born with one leg short, Tovhilda had also been left on the barren hills to be taken by eagles or die of hunger and cold as Egil had. But still a
live and determinedly grizzling after two days, her mother, visiting the place to make sure, had relented and brought the child home again to a disgruntled father and a furious elder sister. The elder sister was Tove, then a jealous four year old. Now Tove was the king’s wife, and had taken in crippled Tovhilda as more servant than family. Tovhilda’s disability had never interrupted her work, nor her chatter. “Barely a bruise, little niece, and pink marks, not blue,” she said. “You should have seen the bruises after they’d done old Ragnsilda, the goat-herder’s wife. Her bruises were black as thunder clouds, and her with a crooked spine too.”
“Ragnsilda,” Skarga spluttered into the pillows, “poisoned her eldest son with a wolfsbane brew. Poor little bugger.”
“Well, they say she did,” Tovhilda pointed out. “But I say she thought the root to be a parsnip, and never meant no harm. You know how short sighted she is since her husband hit her over the head with the scuttle. Now, it was me helped when that little lad was birthed, and the size of his head, well Ragnsilda bellowed like a bull and frightened half the town. No doubt the whipping was neither here nor there after what she had to put up with, but the colours on her back - .”
Egil brought her water, and carefully washed her back, reapplying salve when Skarga asked him to. “You ought to curse them,” said Egil, tipping the beaker up for her to drink. “Kill them all. In agony.”
“I might, if I knew how,” said Skarga. The henbane ointment numbed and was healing and the pain had faded to stiffness. Lying on her stomach made it impossible to drink, so now she was curled on her side, which meant she’d had to get dressed. Egil had helped with that too. Her under-shift had stuck to the ointment and would pull away the scabs when she eventually unpeeled it.
“Old Oddulv one-eye used a pig’s jaw and kestrel’s pellets to make curses. I collected the mutings for him sometimes. I could get you some, if you want.”
“I don’t want any of your dirty little bird droppings,” said Skarga through clenched teeth. “I don’t read portents and I don’t set curses. I’m not even any good at healing. So stop annoying me. And getting some decent mead instead of scummy water might help.”
“I asked,” said Egil. “Fat Thora says her mead store is all finished after last night’s feasting and there’s only grits left. No ale either, she says. Do you want me to look for where’s she’s hidden the secret hoard? She’s bound to have one.”
Skarga sighed. “Everything hurts. Just let me go to sleep.”
CHAPTER THREE
Tove had sent Tovhilda off to the smithy to bring back more slaves. Two were always needed there to work the bellows, but several others were invariably found gossiping in the warmest place in town while pretending to hold the tongs and wield the hammers. “Need a spare fucking slave?” muttered Tove. “Then just go search the nearest fucking smithy.”
Skarga guessed Egil would be there too, curled by the forge. “I’d be there in the warm myself if I liked old Torgils a little more,” she said. “But I’d sooner spit icicles than talk to the bastard who beat his first wife to death.”
“Stupid bitch.” Tove slapped her absently. “The man’s the best smith we’ve ever had in town and his wife was a silly little measly thing with no brains and no guts. I’d disembowel any man that tried to beat me, and then feed him his own turds for dinner. Meanwhile here’s me been sweating like a pregnant sow since long before sun-up, with the brewery shed not mud plastered yet and a draught like Loki’s breath through every plank. There’s barely a drop of ale left in the barrels and half the louts of the village will be threatening rape and pillage if there’s nothing to get pissed on for a week.”
Skarga said,” I’ll go and find more slaves.”
“I’ve already sent Tovhilda. You get here and help me yourself.”
With spring now almost over, the low-ground oaks were thick with new leaf and finally the sun turned the ice to a drip of slush under a cloud scudded blue. The dull short days lengthened. The farmers brought the cows out from their byres. The cattle snorted and shook their shaggy winter coats and blinked at the bright air, remembering the pleasure of buttercups on the slopes. The sheep were trailed from the barns and their curly lambs bounced behind. The cockerels sat on the backs of the cows and waited for worms to be dislodged from the long green, and the piglets fattened up like shiny pink cushions and nuzzled their mother for her rich pendulous milk.
The men had almost finished rebuilding the hall around the existing hearth. Another few days and the thatch would keep the weather safely outside. Hakon and Gunulf were up on the roof beams shouting orders to the twelve Saxon slaves, who were grumbling and passing bundles of thatch and dropping debris and dust and beetles onto the jarls below. Ogot stood in the western doorway and scowled, and Banke, who was forbidden to help since he was bound to get everything upside down, sat out on the grass having a tantrum. Asved was resting in the big barn, now empty of cows, smiling to himself and pulling the legs off a spider.
With the claw of a falcon, the tooth of a wolf and the ear of a marten laid in each post hole before the wooden supports were erected, Ogot had ensured there could be no more curses. Ollaf the archer had suggested the old traditional sacrifice, his sweaty grasp on the arm of an infant still with its pissing cloths hanging from its middle. Skarga knew who the baby belonged to, for the mother had died of the bloody flux several days earlier. With neither father nor mother, the child was easy pickings.
“For the post holes,” Ollaf said.
Tove pursed her mouth and shook her head. “You’ve a taste for muck and murder, evil minded old goat,” she told him. “It’s years since we’ve done that sort of thing. The gods don’t demand it anymore, and I won’t have Ogot gutting orphans on this hearth. Take the smelly brat off and give it to your sister to raise.”
Already the birds were feeding their voracious young in the tree hollows, the flax fields were soft enough to plough and the chickens’ new warm white eggs were piled in the discarded mattress straw. Soon there would be poetry and sagas around the hearth in the long evenings. There would be a proper bed of quill over straw and pillows of goose feathers. Then the men who had wintered in foreign lands would return; the traders, the warriors, the raiders and their stolen riches. More slaves, more silver, more stories. There would also, she supposed, be Grimr the Skald.
Some of the women were searching for salad herbs along the scrubby cliff tops. Egil helped Skarga. Staring back up to the mountains beyond the farmlands, she said, “The passes are melting. Grimr the assassin will come. But surely he makes his name from the sagas, not from killing.”
“It’s the other way around,” said Egil. “I was talking to Snorri at the Helmsby smithy. He knew Grimr years back, and used to look after his horse. Says he was a mean toothed boy with a pleasure in violence. Travelled all around with a couple of female slaves he’d taken from the Pictish Isles. Treated them like pig dirt.”
Skarga sighed. “A poet must love words. He makes his own special magic. He can’t be all-over bad.”
“Come on lady. Don’t be daft.” Egil shook his head. “Depends what sort of stories he tells.”
Skarga turned abruptly. “Egil, if anything does happen, you know what I mean, if they take me away or push me over the cliffs, then just forget me. Don’t go making a fuss, or they’ll kill you too. I’ll give you your freedom when we get home, with witnesses, so you can get away and find a better home somewhere else.” The silence stretched, with only the boom of the tide hitting the rocks below. “Did you hear me?” demanded Skarga. “Do you understand?”
“Not worth answering,” said Egil. “You make me free like you said, and then I’ll answer. No point till then. A slave’s not supposed to tell his mistress she’s a blithering idiot.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Skarga said. She bent again, poking through the mud. The wild salad herbs were few this spring. Much of the ground was thin over rock and there was little enough they could grow here in the far north, though t
here was plenty to eat if you weren’t too fussy. Ogot managed a belly as pendulous as a cow’s udders though that was mainly from mead and ale.
“Boat’s in,” yelled one of the men from the seaward ditch. “Not one of ours.”
The men left their work and clustered along the cliff top, staring downwards. When a stranger’s knarr docked, damaged by storm or needing supplies, there was the chance to sell their own surplus, if they had any, and at a good price. Food and ale, and even good woollen clothes and a bundle of wadmal to trade or barter. If the ship was storm damaged, there would be work for the shipwrights and a good price to be got for timber. Then there was the gossip, the stories from far lands and the news from foreign courts. That meant one evening’s feasting at least, long talking around the hearth, singing and an excuse for roast meat and plenty of ale.
But there could be trouble too. If it was a longboat with some warrior chieftain itching after a wearisome journey, there could be fights and drunken brawls, bloodshed and women raped and killed. Even a peaceful crew could turn ugly after many days on a stormy sea with little to eat or drink.
Skarga heard the call and straightened up. Grimr the cruel, summoned to end her life, might also be coming by boat. She turned and ran back to the village.
It was a longship, a fighting vessel with sixteen pairs of oars and a serpent’s head raised at the prow. The serpent’s eyes were inlaid with gold and the scales of its coils down the stempost were iridescent with sea salt. A tumble of men disembarked with as much energy as good temper, as if they’d done well with whatever they’d been doing, but were looking forward to a change of scenery. The boat’s planks creaked as it pulled on its anchor, the great square sail already flat to the boards and the oars stowed. The clinkered sides still streamed water and the wind whined through the snap of the halyard.
Stars and a Wind- The Complete Trilogy Page 3