Midwinterblood
Page 13
Suddenly, in an evening, it was a place of firelight and joy and warmth; a small ship of life, making ready to sail through the dark and snow of winter, winter that was prowling outside, just on the other side of the smoky thatch.
Not one, but two pigs were slaughtered, and the smell of their roasting filled the highest corner of the longhouse.
Flower beer flowed like the streams from the hill, the bread was warm, and there were even apples from the western isle, stored in barrels against the winter.
Father sat at the middle of the long table, with Mother at his elbow.
We sat with the other children, to the side, but we did not mind.
Father was home! And we could see everyone and everything.
I looked at him again, closely. There was something in his eyes, I knew, something in his heart.
“Eirik,” I whispered. “What is wrong with Father?”
But Eirik! Oh, he knew nothing. Eirik was always for doing, not for thinking.
Faced with a runaway dog, Eirik would spend ages happily chasing it around the meadows, whereas I … I would have found a bone and let the dog come to me.
That was Eirik and me.
So he saw nothing.
“What?” he said. “Wrong? Nothing is wrong. Look!”
And maybe he was right. The hall was the happiest I had ever seen it, and it glowed with all the good colors; browns and reds and earths and yellows.
Father stood up, a skull of pig blood in his hand. He turned to the room.
“Our strength was great!” he cried. “And we are with you again! Yet we lost six men, and this feast we honor to those six. Hakon! Kar! Magnus! Sigurd! Björn! Gilli!”
With each name, there was a roar, and cups were clattered and skulls were scattered, and father drank the name of each of his fallen men, in blood.
Yet, there was still no mention of the newcomer, this Tor. And even I, as a child, knew this was wrong.
Father waved a hand for silence.
“Where,” he said, and I can see him doing it now, his voice dropping to a whisper, “is Leif Longfoot?”
Then, pointing across the room, he cried, “Leif! Our skald! We must have words! Give us words to remember our long voyage, and our great deeds, and to remember those who we lost.”
There was Leif, walking into the center of the longhouse, to stand by the firelight, to give us his words.
He was a beautiful man, tall and thin, not one for fighting, though he fought with the others when it was needed so. But his tools were words; those mysterious gifts from the gods, and while most men merely learned how to use them, Leif was one of the wizards who had learned the secret of how to make magic with them.
He stood by the fire, and waited for silence.
Then, he cried.
“Hwaet!”
And so, we all knew his words were about to begin, and wonderful they were to hear.
On a good day
is born that great-souled lord
who hath a heart like his;
aye will his times
be told of on earth,
and men will speak of his might.
Unfettered will fare
the Fenriswolf,
and fall on the fields of men,
ere that there cometh
a kingly lord
as good, to stand in his stead.
Cattle die
and kinsmen die,
land and lieges are whelmed;
when Wulf
to the wide waters went,
many a host was harried.
His poem told us all of the fears and fates that had beset Father and his men since we had last seen them, at the rushing start of the summer.
As we listened, I fingered the necklace at my throat, that one that Eirik had made for me from bone, a leaping hare.
I saw Tor rise from his place.
I also saw that Father had seen, and was carefully watching him as he stalked around the longhouse, behind the tables. He had been sitting opposite us, and somehow I knew where he was heading.
By the time he stood behind Eirik and me, rubbing his hands through our hair, the whole room was silent.
Leif’s last words died and floated away like just another spark from the fire, and then there was a terrible time of nothing.
Father did not rise, but spoke from where he sat. “Tor. What do you mean by this?”
We could feel his hands in our hair, and I felt for Eirik’s hand, and he felt for mine, as we did not understand what was happening.
Then Tor’s voice rang out, flew above our heads, back toward Father, toward the whole longhouse.
“These children,” he said, “are mine.”
Five
The feast foundered.
I saw many things.
Mother, looking away, looking away from Tor, looking away from us, from Father.
I saw how Father leaped across the table, scattering everything, the food, the drink, the knives, and then how he was in front of us, leaning across the table to Tor.
I hadn’t seen him pick up a knife, but there was a knife in his hand all the same, and its point was at Tor’s throat.
Despite which, it was Tor who spoke first.
“Do you deny it?” he whispered, his voice as thin as a reed by the water.
I was so close, I could see the point of the knife wavering, wavering, as Father breathed heavily.
Then, with a roar, he threw the knife into the dirt at his feet, and shoved Tor backward, away from us, sending him into the wall.
He staggered, feeling his throat, as if the knife were still there.
Father turned to the hall. “Our guest forgets himself. Yet we can forgive this.”
There was something wrong about the way he spoke the word guest.
“Yes. We forgive. But…” He turned to Tor. “For this night only. For this night, this night is a time of remembering and goodness, and we will not spoil it with stains of the tongue.”
He turned to Leif. “Thank you, Leif. How the gods use your voice I shall never understand. Give us music now. Give us songs!”
Others came forward then, and with the flute, the pipes and the drum, music was made.
I looked behind us.
“He’s gone, Melle,” Eirik whispered to me, just as I saw the truth of that. It was so, Tor had left the hall, in disgrace.
“But what did he mean?” I whispered to Eirik. “What did he mean?”
Eirik’s eyes were wide. I knew he knew no more than I.
Just then, the old woman whose name was Sigrid leaned over to us. “Do you not know? Has your father not told you?”
Her face was lined, having seen the weather for so long a time, and yet, her eyes told us of horror, or of shock.
“Has your mother not told you?”
We shook our heads, together, as we often did.
“No,” we said.
Sigrid’s eyes narrowed.
“But you must know. Tor is your father’s brother. He is your uncle.”
* * *
The songs continued late into the night, but I heard not a note, nor whispered a word more.
All I knew was the warmth of Eirik’s hand in mine, and we both shook from the not knowing.
Six
The tale was not one we could get from our father, nor from our mother, but as the days of the snow moon turned, we stole the story, like the hooded crow does in the midden, in scraps.
Tor, our father’s brother, had left the village, had left Bloed when Eirik and I were barely born.
Something had happened, and here even though we pestered Sigrid and others besides, we could not learn the whole of the happening.
Yet we knew enough.
Our father had become chief, and had taken our mother as his, though Tor had wanted her for himself.
Yet, being the older brother, and having the right to choose, he took our mother.
There had been no children. That was what we kept hearing.
There had been no children.
And every night, Wulf, our father, would drink more and more flower beer, brewed from the dragon plant on the western isle, and had grown into himself.
During this time, we heard, our mother was looked after by Tor, who offered her comfort where there was none, and love, where it had died.
And then, at last, a miracle occurred, and our mother became heavy.
Nine months later, and the miracle was made twofold, as not one of us, but two of us slipped out of Mother’s belly and onto the rug by the fireside.
They said we held hands as we emerged into the world.
They said that Father cried.
They said that Mother wept.
They said that the priest swore, because he had prepared only a single totem. Expecting just one child, he had not made magic for more.
As I was the first out into the world, he wrapped me in the skin of a hare, and pushed a hare’s skull into my hand, and a hare’s small leg bone into my mouth.
“What of the boy?” Mother had asked.
The priest had shaken his head. “The gods did not see another,” he said.
“But he will be king one day!” Father cried.
“That may be,” the priest said. “But he will be so without a totem.”
“That cannot be!” Father shouted. “I have my raven! My father had his fox! Everyone must have a totem. Most of all a king!”
And then, we are told, that the priest thought for a long time. He nodded to himself.
He looked at the pair of us, wriggling on the wet rug, and spoke.
“Then you must give him a strong name, instead. Give him a name from the old stories. From the sagas. A name of strength. A name of eternity. A name with powerful meaning. You should call him Eirik: Forever Strong, The One King, and that will be enough to protect him. Not only in this life, but in other lives yet to come.”
* * *
It was only later, a little later, that the bad time began.
Tor declared that Eirik and I were his children. He claimed that he, not Wulf, had fathered them on our mother.
He demanded satisfaction; he demanded that we be given to him, and he did not care who he abused or whose honor he insulted to get his way.
* * *
Eventually, he was banished from the island, for a time of no less than three years.
He was taken out with the viking, as it left one leaf moon, taken to be abandoned at the farthest reach of the voyage.
He was never seen again.
Seven years passed and he was never seen again.
And then, this viking, there he was, found in the sunny lands of the middle earth, his skin tanned, his beard shorn, and he demanded his return to Bloed.
They refused at first, but honor bound them to obey, and so they brought our uncle home. Our uncle? Our father?
Seven
The turning of the days became heavy and thick.
The short tide of daylight was gray and grim, as an unborn violence took root in the soil beneath the snows.
It was unseen, but it was felt by all, and it grew.
Very soon, it would burst up out of the ground.
* * *
Eirik and I clung to each other.
“What will be?” I whispered to him one night, as we lay in our bed, in the small room behind the longhouse. Our parents slept soundly, beyond the fire, but Eirik and I were full of fear and of wondering.
“Why do they not speak to each other?” Eirik whispered back.
It was true. Mother and Father were not speaking.
Tor strode around the village as if he were the chieftain, not Father. Some sneered at him as he passed, others took his hand in friendship, and so the village grew divided, and quiet, and brooded.
Eirik and I shivered and shook, and waited for something to happen, and we did not have long to wait.
* * *
One night, the violence that had been growing between Father and Tor erupted.
At mealtime, as we sat and silently chewed our food, the doors opened and there stood Tor.
I heard my father say, “Name him, and he’s always near.”
Heads hung, others lifted.
Words were muttered, as once more, Tor walked around the tables, and out into the center, by the fire.
He stood facing Father and then, without looking at us, his hand pointed in our direction.
“Those barn,” he said, “are mine. They are my seed, and mine to own. I will have them to me.”
Father stood.
Now all eyes were lifted, and all hands shook.
My father stood and walked around the high table, into the center of the great longhouse, and walked up to Tor, till their toes touched.
He said a single word to Tor, but no one knew what that word was, so quietly did he speak.
And then they were on each other.
I could not see who struck first, so fast it was, and it mattered not, because in a moment they were one beast, rolling in the dirt.
It would have been usual at such a fight for shouts to ring out, for voices to cry and for hands to hammer on the tabletops.
But not this time. This time there was silence, and the only sounds were the sobbing of our mother, and the grunts of the men grappling.
I felt for Eirik’s hand and he felt for mine, just as our father’s and our uncle’s hands felt for each other’s throats.
It didn’t take long.
As they rolled, I wondered why it was that our father, some years older than his brother, seemed the younger. His skin was younger, his back was straighter, his arms stronger.
And his hands.
He was astride Tor now. Like a horse. Even at the awful moment, I remember that I thought it looked as if he rode a horse.
But he didn’t, he rode a man, and as I fingered the hare at my throat, Father’s fingers closed around the throat of his brother, and squeezed.
They squeezed until the blood went from his fingers, so it looked like hands of bone, hands of a skeleton that tightened, and dug into Tor’s neck.
Tor’s eyes opened wide, his mouth opened wide.
His legs scrambled at the mud, but his arms were pinned to his sides by Father’s legs.
Tor’s heels ripped the earth of the floor like the furrows of the farmer’s field.
Then they stopped.
Nothing moved.
No one moved, or even breathed.
Then, slowly, finally, Father’s weight shifted, and his hands let go of his brother’s throat. He sat back, still astride the horse.
Tor’s eyes stared at the ceiling, seeing nothing.
They could not see now, so they did not see the tears that ran down his brother’s cheeks.
Eight
Then came the beginning of wonders on Bloed Isle!
We buried Tor in the long meadow, in a mound some way from the others, though with the proper rites, for his was royal blood after all.
There was a short silence then, a short silence of days, in which a fresh snow fell, quickly hiding the bare earth and stones of Tor’s grave, and it felt as if we had been blessed.
Blessed, because we could breathe again, put the blood behind us, and breathe again, blessed.
* * *
But we were not blessed, and the blood was yet to come.
I do not remember what happened first.
Whether it was a dog or a cow.
No. I do remember now. Strange how walking the journey once more brings back both shade and detail.
One day, someone came to the great longhouse, holding the carcass of a dog.
“It went mad,” they said. “It went mad and began to claw at the cattle. I had to break its back with a spade before it would stop.”
That was the first.
The day after, the cattle began to give a great lowing, a terrible moaning, an awful sound, as when they give birth, though the calf moon was still long away, across the other side of the darkness of winter.
My father spoke.
He raised a hand to a cowherd, a young boy.
“Manni,” he said, “take them. Put them in another fold. That one, yonder. Do it now.”
Manni did as he was bid, and was almost trampled by the cows as they stamped their way from the one fold to the other. Once in the far fold they grew quieter, though still a great cry would come from them, a sound that haunted us, throughout the black night.
* * *
In the morning came the first of the blood.
Another dog was dead, but not, this time, at his master’s hand.
It was one of the bitches. She was found by the midden, with her throat torn, and her blood taken.
Father ordered the carcass to be burned, not thrown in the midden.
Eirik and I looked at each other, our eyes gaping.
“Why is he doing that?” Eirik whispered to me.
I tilted my head to one side. “I do not know, brother. But I am afraid.”
Eirik took my hand, and we walked on through the short day, but by nightfall, there were to be more strange wonders.
The dried fish in the buttery were found rotting, the butter was rancid.
But these were just portents, mere omens, and the worst was yet to come.
For it was that night, that someone said they had seen a figure stalking the long meadows. A tall, strong figure, with a dark face.
They said it was Tor.
* * *
That morning, as Eirik and I brushed bad dreams from our heads, we woke to the sound of screaming.
First, we ran outside, and saw the carcass of a cow, a whole cow, gutted and bled, lying in the lane right outside the longhouse. A trail of blood led toward it.
Voices cried and wailed, and muttered.
“Who has done such a thing?”
“Who could do such a thing? The beast is heavy! Who could lift it here?”
Then, another scream.
“Look! Oh! Look!”
Everyone gathered then at the side of the longhouse, upon which were written words.
They were shaky, tall, and crazed, and they were written in the blood of the slaughtered cow.