Sidroc knew the best thing a new father could do to aid his wife was to himself split, rend, and open up wood or soil; to cleave wood, or till furrows. It was like the bronze keys women dropped upon the floor, unlocking the coming babe from its mother’s womb, or the ritual unbraiding and unbinding of hair and sash that his own wife had told him about when their two were born. And, he reflected with a wry smile, it kept the man out of the way of the women going about the work within, and kept the mind and body busy, unable to dwell on the ordeal his wife underwent, or the risk of her bleeding to death as she brought forth new life.
Both men watched Gudfrid go back and forth into the house, carrying food and drink. At times they stopped to rest in their wood-splitting, and sat on the bench by the small table Tindr had built not long ago, now that fine weather was come again. They drank more ale as the Sun climbed over their heads. Then Gudfrid came out, hands empty, but her mouth smiling.
Tindr saw Good Food’s lips move, and then Scar was slapping him across the shoulders and grinning. Good Food gestured, Come, and Tindr left Scar and went with her.
The house was dim after the brightness of noon in the glade. The air had a sharp smell, like that of blood and slaughtered beasts, and also the faint tang of sweet herbs or hay.
Deer lay before him, on their bed of feather cushions. Her hide tunic was off, and on her bare breast lay a tiny, glistening creature. Bright Hair and Nenna were on either side of her, beaming down at Deer, and now turning to face him. Bright Hair stood and made way for him.
He knelt at her side. Her eyes were lowered, looking at the pale head of their babe. The little one’s fists were tightly curled, but its mouth was open, and seeking. He watched Deer pull the babe further up on her breast, saw the tiny mouth reach for and close around the swollen nipple there.
Now her eyes lifted to his. She smiled at him. He saw the tears in her eyes, and knew his own were wet as well. He reached and touched her lips with his fingers. Then he moved his finger to the head of the babe. The hair there was like fine fur, and he stroked the tiny head as it suckled.
Nenna was at his side now, clasping him, and he felt her laughter even before he looked to her. They turned back to Deer. The little head had shifted, and the small mouth bowed open, like a yawn. He saw Deer laugh, and watched her take both hands and lift the babe up, showing it to him.
A boy. He had a son.
Later that day Deer slept. Scar and Bright Hair had gone home, as had Good Food, but Nenna had stayed, and was out by the cook-fire making their supper. Deer had never learnt to like ale, and the sweet taste of cow’s milk had surprised her; Tindr had seen that long ago in her face. But she liked milk thickened from long-standing, the way Nenna’s cook made, and liked as well the cheeses from it. Good Food had brought much with her, and now his mother had a fish stew simmering. Nenna brought them food and drink, and urged them both to rest. When Tindr carried their emptied bowls out, he saw his mother sitting at the little table by the cook fire, eyes closed, a smile on her own face. When he came back in, Deer was fast asleep.
The boy had been washed and swaddled and lay tucked up next to his mother. Tindr sat by the bed on a low stool, watching them both in wonder. When Deer opened her eyes he moved to her, and lay down next her, the little bundle between them. The babe’s eyes were closed fast. They spent some time looking down at his round face.
Tindr touched the child’s face again, at the brow, gently so as to not wake him. What, he asked, tapping now at his own temple.
Šeará smiled. She nodded at Tindr. Her own name for her husband was Wolf Eyes, for the blue-white eyes that marked both Tindr, and that most formidable of hunters. She looked past Tindr, pointed to his bow which hung on the wall. He stood and brought it to the bed.
Šeará touched the bow, then touched their son’s face. “Juoksa,” she said aloud. “Bow.” She smiled again at Wolf Eyes. “A name for the son of a great hunter.”
She watched Tindr make the sign he used when he wanted her to speak aloud, his fingers curled under his lower lip, then unfurling.
“Juoksa”, she said again, as he placed the tips of his fingers on her lips, feeling them round and then stretch open at the name.
She repeated the name, his fingers now laying on her throat, so he might feel it there. He looked at the tiny face, looked at his bow. He nodded, then lowered his head in joy.
Once at Ragnfast and Estrid’s farm the two groups from Tyrsborg joined up. Ceridwen and Sidroc and the children were there first, and had time to greet their hosts, admire the wealth of foodstuffs already upon the table, and walk from group to group, renewing acquaintance with rarely-seen family and friends of the farm. When the ox-cart wheeled into view, Eirian and Yrling ran to it. Little Juoksa was nearly a brother to them, and they took him off to where a group of children played under the pear trees. The heavy ale crocks remained in the cart bed, so that those thirsty might help themselves, but after Rannveig and Gudfrid and Gunnvor unpacked the smoked meat and pottery cups they had brought, the two lowing oxen were led off to a meadow. Gunnvor had baked four score of her small honey cakes, and these too were added to that bounty heaped upon the tables.
Sidroc and Tindr joined Ragnfast and the rest of the able-bodied men, heaving and sliding the last of the logs into place for the great fire which would be later kindled. Ceridwen stopped a while with Ragnfast’s ailing mother, who, unable to walk, had been carried out on a litter and sat propped up on cushions to partake of the festivities. Her own daughters, and her old friend and neighbour Thorvi, Estrid’s mother, sat with her.
The Sun, shining down from a sky of purest blue, crept overhead. All gathered about the base of the great fire. In a day as long and bright as this one would be, they recalled that after today the Sun would slowly die, leading them into Winter’s darkness. But this noon was a time to salute the good and life-bringing Sun, to thank its warmth that made crops grow, gave comfort to all beasts, and made full and happy the hearts of men. Even as the Sun began to diminish, it drew the grain in the fields and the vegetables in the ground to spread and flourish, and end in rich harvest.
“We cannot live without the Sun,” Rapp reminded them, “and as it dies, it gives us life.”
The fire was lit, the oil-soaked rushes thrust into its heart catching.
The dancing began. There was, as always, a man who plucked a harp, and a woman who beat time with a goat-skin drum and wooden mallet covered in the same. Two pair of brass hand cymbals added their bright and clashing chimes to this, played by two women, cousins to Ragnfast. And for many of the dances, Rapp, Ragnfast’s father, sang, and sang too when even the most lively of the young people had collapsed, laughing, in the meadow grasses, far from the fire’s heat, unable to take another step.
All who could walk danced, at least the first few dances. There was a freeing joy in joining hands, circling round the base of the blaze, turning to and then away from it, and then as the line broke into twos or fours or sixes, taking as partner loved one or stranger, old man or young child, and moving to and then away from the others. The throbbing of the harp strings, steady beating of the drum, and the clash of the brazen cymbals rose and fell in the dancers’ ears, just as their own panting laughter did. Even the laughter would end, and those young folk determined to be the last to drop would sway as they clasped moist hands.
Tyrsborg was not broad enough a hall for indoor dancing at the Winter’s Night feasts, and its mistress relished any chance to so move with the man she loved. When Sidroc took her hand and led her to the circle of fire the smile on her lips reached into her heart. To feel her hand in his, the strength of his wrist and arm guiding her, to see his head thrown back in laughter and his brow damp, as hers was, with their movement, and to have all this, surrounded as she was by those she knew and loved, seemed feast enough, before a single crumb had passed her lips. At one point he lifted her in the air, swinging her by her waist about him. All others dancing passed before her in a whirl.
Her gaze was fast upon the dark blue of his eyes, his brown hair flung wide above his shoulders.
When they stepped away to slake their thirst from Rannveig’s great crocks they looked on those still moving. Tindr and Šeará had danced but briefly, but Tindr liked to see the others do so. Now they stood with other young parents, watching the smaller revelers. Eirian and Yrling and many other children had circled all the youngest, and little Juoksa stood there, holding hands with another toddling child, pumping his feet up and down and laughing.
It was after the feast, when all were gathered once more about the fire, that something strange happened. The benches which had flanked the trestle tables had been dragged around the fire, now burning low but hot. Cups of ale and of mead too were filled and refilled, and folk sat talking to one another, at times rising to visit with some friend, not seen for the past year, at another bench. The sky was still bright but the quality of light had changed; the brilliant Sun shifting and throwing sharp and dark shadows from the backs of men and trees and buildings.
Ceridwen sat with Eirian at her side; Sidroc was off speaking with Rapp and Ragnfast. A woman, who she had noticed after the dancing had stopped, moved around the far side of the fire, and now walked to where she sat. Ceridwen saw she was not of Gotland; the woman’s gown and jewellery told her that, just as her own told the same about her. This woman coming to her looked like those of the large trading post of the Prus, that which she and Sidroc had stopped at years earlier. It was on the southern edge of the Baltic, and had been a place ruled by a powerful leader called a knez, and the place too where she had met a priest from Mercia, and an old silk-gowned spice merchant, who had told her she would one day have two daughters. This woman now stood before her sole daughter, Eirian.
The woman was of middle-age, no more, and had dark, red-tinged curling hair. She wore a long-sleeved gown of green, a green so deep to be nearly black. She had a wealth of slender, shining gold about her neck and wrists, in the form of narrow linked chains. Her head wrap was bright red, that shade of a cockscomb, a colour that swore against the dark ruddy hair it only partially confined. The eyes were dark and sharp, but moved slowly over Eirian. The girl sat up under this scrutiny, ready with a smile, but uncertain by the woman’s look if it would be welcome. Ceridwen found herself placing her hand in her daughter’s lap, to reassure her.
“You,” the woman said, addressing the girl. The voice had the same accent Ceridwen remembered in the land of the Prus, even in this one word of Norse. “You will travel far.”
“Someday I will go with father to the South, and see where the grind stones are made,” Eirian returned. She smiled uncertainly, as if hoping she had said the right thing.
The woman did not laugh at this, and went on as if the child had been silent. “You will travel far,” she said again, as if considering her own words. “Far from this island, and live among those strange to you, even as your mother does.”
“I am not amongst those strange to me,” her mother protested. She had lifted her extended hand from Eirian’s lap, as if to ward off this woman’s words. “This land may not be the place of my birth, but it is home to me, and its folk are my friends.”
The Prus woman’s eyes had dropped to Ceridwen’s wrist. Upon it sat the silver disc bracelet that her husband had fastened there on their first night on Gotland.
“The bracelet,” the Prus woman said, pointing now at it with her finger. She looked back into Eirian’s uplifted face. “You will wear it, take it from here. Take it to your grave.”
Ceridwen stood up. The Prus woman was just her height, and she found herself looking into her eyes. She did not know what to say, but she need not say anything, as the woman gave a nod of her head, and left them.
Eirian’s eyes were full of questions, which her mother tried to soothe. Estrid had witnessed part of the exchange and now came over to her.
“Who…who is that woman,” Ceridwen asked. “Is she of the Prus?” The woman had returned to a bench on the far side of the fire, and was almost out of sight, her red head-wrap only visible.
Estrid’s eyes followed Ceridwen’s. “She is mother to a woman of the Prus that one of Ragnfast’s distant cousins wed, and brought here. She is visiting them; we have never seen her before.” Estrid’s eyes returned to her friend’s face. “What did she say to you?”
“She spoke to Eirian, telling her she would leave,” Ceridwen repeated. She paused before she went on. “Leave Gotland.”
She did not say more; this alone was too terrible to countenance, that one she loved would leave this haven of peace and safety.
“Perhaps she is granted second sight,” wondered Estrid aloud. Her eyes had flitted back through the waving air over the fire, to where the Prus woman sat alone. She was fearful of such folk; sorrow could come from learning things out of turn.
“Já, perhaps she is,” Ceridwen answered, feeling chilled despite the fire’s warmth. Not, I hope, the evil eye, she said within herself.
Estrid must make response to her friend’s distress. She looked down at Eirian, put her hands on the girl’s shoulders. “That is not true, Eirian,” she soothed. “You would not leave us.”
Estrid was called away then, but not before giving Ceridwen a squeeze of her hand.
“Will you really give me your bracelet, Mother?” Eirian asked. Her face showed her bewilderment of it all.
Ceridwen’s hand had gone to her wrist, and she felt the silver disc beneath her holding palm. It was Sidroc’s pledge-sign to her, and she would die wearing it. He had taken it from the body of Saxon thegn he had killed, then given it to her at the keep of Four Stones in thanks for her searching his fetid wound. She had left it behind with Ælfwyn when she rode off with Gyric, and Sidroc had worn the bracelet himself for ten long years, before he could at last claim her as his own the night of their arrival here on Gotland.
She would be laid on her pyre wearing it, so that in Freyja’s hall she would come before her husband wearing that which had adorned her wrist in life.
Now she had been told that Eirian would wear the bracelet, and take it to her grave. A grave could mean a heathen or a Christian burial; that of ashes, or of the body itself.
Still holding her hand over the silver disc she answered her daughter. The bracelet had almost a life of its own. It had a life before it had come to Sidroc, and then to her, and perchance would have a life after her own had ended.
“I do not know, my bright one. If it should be worn by any, I would have it worn by you.”
Part Two: War
Chapter the Tenth: Fire in the Sky
The Year 892
ÆLFRED, King of Wessex, pushed back from his writing table. His shoulders ached, and his neck was stiff from bending over his manuscript. His eyes too were blurred, the result of fixing them upon his work through the unsteady light of the guttering tapers ringing his desk. They had burnt low in their copper bases; dawn would be no more than two hours away. He lifted his fingertips to his eyes, pressing against them so that the darkness showing under his closed lids turned to a shrouded red. He let out a breath, stood. He knew the skin around his eyes was lined, creased with a fine netting caused by war, worry, and the simple passage of years. If his work forging the Latin of the wise-man Boethius into the tongue of the Saxons added to the lines, it was a price worth paying.
He crossed to the door. He was not in his hall, but rather in the house he had given to Asser, his Welsh priest. It was Asser who had schooled him enough in the Holy Tongue of Rome that he might turn his free hours to these scholarly labours. The King slid back the iron bar and pushed out into the night air. The Welshman’s small house was surrounded by other timber buildings, and all were enclosed by the great palisade wall of oaken planks encircling the fortress of Witanceaster. Ælfred’s face lifted in the dark, up and far beyond the palings.
It was still there, the great and long-haired star, that was called in Latin cometa. It was so much brighter than the wa
ndering stars that its brilliance rivalled the Moon. He studied it again, his tired eyes filling with the splendour of its light. It was not golden in hue, such as a taper flame or a heaped wood-fire would show, but a pure and crystalline white, dazzling to behold. For a fortnight he had watched it grow. It would fade, he knew, perhaps even quicker than it had appeared and commanded the night heavens. Until then he would take his full of it.
When it had first showed itself, not long after the rapidly-shortening nights following Easter, it was greeted with wonder amongst his folk. The star was small, yet strikingly bright, with a tail of light streaming back, as long hair does from a wind-blown head. As it grew in size, fed by some unseen fire, fear had spread. Asser had preached calm; all was in the hand of God, and the world not due to end for one hundred years. Such stars had been seen before, heralds of good, such as that which had hung over the stable in which the Christ Child lay.
Ælfred himself had ordered those disturbed by the star not to gaze upon it. Some women, got with babes, stayed within doors all night, shuttering windows against any stray star-light, lest their wombs be turned before their time. The random mad-man or two, ready to rave at oddities, clawed at their faces and tore their hair. The priest was wrong, they cried, the world would go down in fire, and soon. Asser himself spent time seated in the gloom, bronze stylus in hand, sketching the thing in a wax tablet, so that he might one day commit it to ink.
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