Womb-Fruit
It is written that Freydis, too, now found herself pregnant- not by her husband, as she well knew, for she permitted him to have no congress with her, but by Hel the Concealer, that is Blauserk, with whom she had lain in Greenland so long ago: - demon-spawn may take a long time to grow inside a woman;
being long-lived, they can easily swell inside her belly for a decade instead of a week before they come clawing their way out of her, leaving her shrieking and dying in her own blood. But Freydis Blue-Shirt did not fear death just yet; although she had become the womb-laid grave of a demon, she knew herself to be well-impregnated * Night by night she watched her belly swell. And everyone marveled, but said nothing. One night her serk burst, and she grunted in pain and clutched at her white belly with her black, black hands.. . Now the sagas write that in their ale-foamed state the men became quarrelsome that summer, and fought about women. Freydis knew this well. When her serk ripped she stepped forth for all to see, because she no longer cared what she did; it seemed she could not live without strife and raised voices. They looked upon her in the longhouse, and she stood tall with her hair loose like a maiden woman and her head held high, and her big breasts flapped against her big belly and they all drank in her womanhood, until when she was satisfied that she had inflamed them she laughed scornfully and went away. (Thorvard said nothing to her; he had learned at last that he could do nothing.) She was wearing a long blue gown with a white button-stripe falling its length, and a white collar. - When she retired, her men murmured among themselves, talking much about women, and presently they sauntered to Gudrid's longhouse and stood looking Gudrid over and remarking upon her body until Karlsefni drove them roughly away. And it was five nights to the waxing of the moon.
Gudrid Beqins Her Revenue
"Skofte!" cried Gudrid shrilly. "Come here at once, Skofte Carrion-Crow!" - All men looked and laughed and hoped for the sport of a woman-fight, for it was not the custom for one woman to call another's thrall.
The little man came running.
"Skofte, I give you back your witch-leaf that you beguiled me with, you and your wicked mistress! We know what you do; we know what she does! You sought to make me unclean; you sought to make me a demon-friend. I swear to you, I will live no more with filthy witches!" - So saying, Gudrid struck him with her bull-goad; she knocked him to the ground and beat him.
* It is peculiar that so little is known of Freydis's descendants, given her famous lineage. The Flateyjarbok contents itself with recording a prophecy of Leif's that her progeny would not prosper. "And after that," says the saga, "no one thought anything but ill of her and her family."
- He made no attempt to defend himself, but covered his face and called out to Freydis for protection, which of all the things he had ever done men reckoned most laughable, unmanly and shameful.
Freydis's men gathered round in a circle. They did not attack Gudrid, but stared into her face in silence so that she could read their enmity there. Presently Karlsefni came running from the pasture; when he saw what was happening, he struck his wife across the mouth and dragged her inside. But she only laughed. - In Greenland she had heard of a very cruel way the Skraelings had of catching seals. Leif had seen it. They trapped a cub-seal on the ice and pierced a hole in its flipper, through which they passed a long thong; then they threw it back down the blowhole and stood waiting with their spears. Seeing her baby alive but struggling and threshing at the extremity of its tether, the mother seal came swimming back to its aid, and then the Skraelings killed them both. So now the bond of obligation and honor that Freydis had towards her thrall must soon bring her wdthin striking distance of Gudrid's mercy, which was not quite so generous as her smile.
Everyone knew that Freydis had been inside her longhouse. But she did not open the door; she made not a move to avenge this insult.
Evening came. And it was four nights to the waxing of the moon.
The Hen and the Silver Game
The next night one of Gudrid's hens was found slain, with its blood smeared upon her door. - "Some witch must have done that, not I," said Freydis blandly. - Now, in front of all, Karlsefni brought the two women together and implored them to make peace, "for any day now the Skraelings will attack us," he said, "and we can ill afford to be disunited then." - "/ have done nothing," said Freydis icily. "But your wife must pay compensation for the blows she inflicted on my thrall." - "You took it with my hen, you witch," said Gudrid in a low calm voice, and no one liked the way she smiled. -"How much do you want?" said Karlsefni. - "Not less than a half-mark of silver!" screamed Freydis. "You're rich; you could easily pay me that!" - "So be it," said Karlsefni. "But be reminded once again that I am reaching the end of my patience towards you." - Freydis only grinned and held out her palm for the silver, and men said it was a strange sight to see those coins shining like stars in the black night of her hand. - "Give it to me!" cried Thorvard to his wife. "I'll keep it safe." - Looking round her, and seeing the naked hate in the eyes of all but her own men, Freydis saw fit to count
Thorvard as property of at least a little value. So she dropped the coins one by one into his hand (but one she gave to Skofte). Later, when they were in bed, she made Thorvard get them out again, and they played with them like children, ordering them in rows and arrays (and Freydis thought upon how her father Eirik used to sit beside her at the hearth-fire when she was young, saying, "Now, child, this penny is from the mint of Eric Bloody-Axe ..."
- but then she remembered that she was not supposed to think about Eirik anymore). - As for Thorvard, this night of coin-play with his wife was one of the happiest in his life.
But Gudrid sank down weeping; she was as Freydis had been after her dream from GloOSKAP; she was as a fir-tree stripped of its boughs. And Karlsefni set a guard, to make certain that Freydis could not bum him out.
It was three nights to the waxing of the moon.
The Catecfiism
The following evening, two of the decoy-men on the headland came to Karlsefni to report that they had seen many skin-boats coming from the south, and they expected that the attack would occur any time now. - "Very good," he said. "Our ships are loaded; Freydis and Gudrid have both drawn blood; we might as well fight." - Later he told Gudrid what the men had said. "But I for one do not intend to be in this country a year from now," he told her. "There is no happiness here." - "So you are ready to let all our labor here be wasted?" said Gudrid. Her eyes were as placid as sunny lakes.
- "Well, we've enriched ourselves here," said Karlsefrii. "It hasn't been for nothing. We'll be able to buy the best land in Iceland; we'll be sure that our son will be well-taught by priests." - "Let me think on those things," said Gudrid. "I like to think on things before I speak my mind." - "In that you are most unlike Freydis," said her husband easily. "Freydis is another matter for you to consider. If we settle in Iceland, you will never have to see her again."
"I cannot deny that that was cleverly spoken," said Gudrid, rocking the baby. It was two nights to the waxing of the moon.
BiackHands
The next evening, which was warm and starry and moonless, Freydis beat Skofte until the blood flowed. - "But what have I done, mistress?" men heard
him cry. Freydis did not answer. Later she said it was because he had not done proper homage to King Blue-Shirt. - "Who is that?" said Thorvard. - "Ask Gudrid," she said.
The night after that came the moon-horns.
Carrying the War-C(ub and Freydis
In the morning the skin-boats came up the river in great numbers. SkraeHngs and SkraeHngs leaped out, whirling their long rattle-sticks in counter-sunwise motions. Their black eyes rolled fearfully in their heads, as if they were bearsarks. All the SkraeHngs were howling: ''Kwe! Yal Kwe! Yal Kwe! Yar so that the Norsemen were afraid. So loud was this song that the men on the headland had no need to summon Karlsefni, for he had already brought his men and Freydis's men to the fight. Their red shields were aloft; they hoped to redden their spears. Karlsefni
bade them not to fear death, nor to groan, no matter how wide their wounds gaped - for such was the old law. Then he blew the war-horn. But to himself he thought that these SkraeHngs looked somewhat grim to deal with. - His friend Snorri Thorbrandsson was there with his son Thorbrand, who had never been blooded; both were brave and quiet. Bjami Grimolfsson was there with his men. Karlsefni knew that he could rely on them; long ago they had all exchanged ring-tokens. Thorvard of Gardar stood there white-faced and trembling; he had silver hidden about him, so that if the SkraeHngs captured him he could ransom his life. As for his thrall Skofte Carrion-Crow, he arched his back; proudly he wore the mail that Thorvard had given him. - "Come and fight, you SkraeHngs!" he shouted. "I'm as invulnerable as Baldur!" - And all men laughed to hear him utter such words. - They strode with swords ready; Karlsefni led them, and he held his shield cautiously ahead of him.
The People stood waiting and watching the white demons for a moment. Their spears, their pointed helmets, their red shields daunted the People somewhat, but they were few in number. The sound of the river was loud in everyone's ears. Then Carrying the War-Club jumped on a log, and cried: "See all their axes! We will take the Axe-Spirits now, for this morning dawns the day of Kluskap our Brother, of our Friends the Arrow-Trees, of our Grandfather the Sun! Now we will walk on ice; now we will creep upon bears. This day we will kill all the Jenuaq! Now fire your arrows; launch your flints!"
Now axes were everywhere aloft, and SkraeHngs fell; and spears rattled and
chattered in the air; and the Skraelings launched many volleys of arrows, screaming their hideous cries, and the arrows rattled on the shields of Karlsefiii's laughing men like rain. - The Skraelings dashed in close, and sought to pull their knives from their grasp, but Karlsefiii's men struck with a will and cut many of them down. They lifted up their glittering axes; they sliced their heads off clean. They laughed when they were spattered with Skraeling blood, like the gods laughing at the Fenris-Wolf when the fetter Glepnir tightened around him the more he struggled; - oh, yes, everyone laughed except the god TYR, for Fenrir had bitten off His hand.
But ever the Skraelings pressed closer and closer, and presently the Norsemen began to have the worst of it. The Skraelings struck at them with great fury. Still they fought among the high knobby trees: - every wound gladdened Hel. How the corpse-snakes* darted! The Skraelings launched many flints and other missiles, which rained down on the red shields, and when Karlsefiii looked round he could see that his men were far from steady. - Suddenly his fiiend Snorri shouted loudly, and Karlsefni thought that he must have been wounded, but then he saw that Snorri fought much more vigorously and fiercely than before, and his face was wet with tears. Then Karlsefiii saw that Snorri's son Thorbrand lay dead on the ground, with a flint point in his forehead. For the first time he began to be alarmed as to how the battle would go. - The Skraelings now launched great stones and boulders from their catapults, so that the ground shook when they landed; as yet the Skraelings had not gotten the proper range, but it was clear that Karlsefni and his men were doomed unless they acted quickly. - "Rush them!" shouted Karlsefni, but before the men could obey, the Skraelings hoisted a dark blue sphere or bladder on a pole and began swinging it round and round, shrieking so fearfully that the men stood paralysed. Karlsefni said later that this sphere was the size of a sheep's stomach. Suddenly the Skraelings let this missile fly; it whizzed over the men's heads like a meteor and fell to the ground with a great crash. Karlsefni's men covered their ears in terror. Then they fled. When the points of their spears tangled in the tree-branches they dropped them and ran on, leaping between roots, and rushing deeper and deeper into the forest. They ran past the palisaded clearing where Freydis and Gudrid waited with the cattle. - "Where are you going, you cowards?" shouted Freydis. - No one paid any attention to her, Thorvard least of all. - As for the Skraelings, they laughed a brazen yelping laugh when they saw her, and called her Kestijui'skw.- - "Oh, you'd like me to take my shirt off, would
* Kenning for swords, f Bondsmaid.
you?" shrieked Freydis. "I'll show you, you savage thralls, you Hell-meat!" -She began to clamber over the wall of the palisade. Gudrid, being Christian, sought to restrain Freydis from this, for she was pregnant and weaponless, but Freydis grinned down at her with a HEL-grin and Gudrid looked at her BLACK HANDS and her own hands fell limply to her sides.
For all her girth of belly, Freydis was very fit and strong. She ran to where Thorbrand Snorrasson lay dead and snatched up his sword. As the Skraelings ran towards her, she tore a great rip in her shirt with her hand and pulled one of her breasts out and began whacking it with the sword, yelling, "Is that what you want to see, thralls? Ha, ha - have none of you dogs seen a bitch? Look how I gash myself now vdth this sword! See the blood, you thralls? See my BLACK HANDS? See me touching myself wdth them? You'd better start running, thralls, or I'm going to touch you with them, too, and you'll all drop dead. Here I come! MUSKUNAMU'KSUTir
The Skraelings stopped short. - Freydis glanced over her shoulder to Gudrid. - "Set the bull on them, you Christian bitch! Hurry!"
Gudrid flung open the gate and prodded the bull. He charged out roaring and snorting. This was too much even for Carrying the War-Club, and he called to his warriors to run because the Powers were too strong. Laughing, Freydis came running after the Skraelings all the way to their skin-boats, her breast flapping and bleeding, her BLACK HANDS outstretched . . . The Skraelings rushed into their boats and fled, and Freydis danced among the dead and dying; such was her strife-lust. Two Norsemen had been killed, and many Skraelings. One savage lay mortally wounded by the water, run through with a sword. Freydis kicked him in the mouth. - "Ho, ho!" she jeered. "Look at him suck his tongue-gravel!"*
Carrying the War-C(ub and the Axe
But the strangest thing (and perhaps the most significant in this whole Dream) remains to be mentioned. It has been told that two of Karlsefni's men were killed. One was Snorri's son Thorbrand, and the other was a man in Bjami Grimolfsson's crew named Odd. Odd had had an axe. Seeing it lying there, sparkling in the sun, Carrying the War-Club rushed to possess it, for here at last he could achieve his purpose.
* Kenning for teeth.
Now there were many names for an axe. Some called it Shield-Fiend, and some called it Helmet-Witch. Some knew it as War-Witch; to others it was Wound-Wolf. But Odd's axe had simply been his axe. It was made of good iron. Its blade widened rapidly on both sides, and abruptly flared to make its single jaw, which could bite deep into men's bones. It was decorated with silver and gold. Carrying the War-Club had never handled an axe of its like, for the People had no knowledge of metal. He shouted as he raised it aloft; his warriors laughed for happiness; he cried out the name of Kluskap the Invincible, who had vanquished the Jenuaq Power .. . What happened next is told in the Flateyjarbok:
The fighting commenced, and many of the Skraelings were killed. One man stood tall and handsome among them, and Karlsefhi reckoned that he must be their Lord. A Skraeling had seized Odd's axe, and after studying it he swung it at his companion beside him, who fell dead in a twinkling. The tall man then took hold of the axe, scrutinized it, and at last hurled it a great distance out into the §ord. Then the Skraelings fled with all speed into the wood, and so was this happening concluded.
What could Carrying the War-Club have seen in the axe that made him do what he did? Did he see its metal spirit, its cold blue iron-spirit? - We will never know. And in any case, the entire story might never have happened. Eirik's Saga, which bears in many places the stamp of an accountant's steady soul, gives Freydis the sole credit for the victory over Carrying the War-Club and his people, saying of the axe only this:
The Skraelings discovered Odd, with his axe lying in the dirt beside him. One of them snatched it up and swung it so that it bit deeply into a tree; then each of them in turn essayed the sport. It was clear that they considered the axe a marvelous find, being in awe and wonder at its keenness. But now a Skraeling sought to cleave a rock
wdth it, and the blade broke. Thereupon, thinking it worthless because it failed to conquer stone, they cast it down.
So perhaps there was no spirit in the axe after all. Kespi-a'tuksit, as the People said: - Here ends this story. But I am convinced that Carrying the War-Club saw the FACT of the Axe peering out fi-om its gHttering smoothness, a fact that took hold of him and made him kill his enemy. Dreaming of Bad Days, who had always spoken against him; that must have been the case because he had no need to kill him. Preaming of Bad Days was gone by now; he
had passed beyond the wide lakes; he had crossed the rivers; he had rushed through the empty valleys; he dissolved in the Sky-World; he rotted in the Earth-World.) I fancy that when Carrying the War-Club pulled the axe out of Dreaming of Bad Days's breast and stood looking and looking at his own blue image, across which the red blood trickled, he saw himself grinning a grin of dead horse-teeth; just as Ingjald the Evil-Worker saw himself reflected in his daughter Aasa, so Carrying the War-Club saw himself growing deeper and deeper into death as he looked upon the shimmering surface of that axe like a lake of polished iron whose depths he could never see: - what was inside the axe-head? Inside was the thing that watched him; inside was the thing that guarded him and caught him with iron-claw hands and pulled the Ice-Shirt down over his head and shoulders so that he felt cool and superior and needed nothing but to swing his axe so that it whizzed through the air with the speed of a war-arrow and it shone blue and bluer and bluer than the sky and then thudded into some screaming softness ... - He had not wanted to kill Dreaming of Bad Days. He had sincerely not intended it. Praying to KlusKAP, he sent the axe spinning through blue sky and down into blue water where it whirled and dimmed and became gold and then green, and it vanished. - And now Carrying the War-Club, like so many others, is out of this saga.
The Ice-Shirt Page 35
