by Joyce Holt
Jorunn couldn't help but recall Brynja's joyous voice at Dondstad, and how she ran to the dais to greet her Olde-Papa, Prince Dond. Here, Gyda kept to a stately pace, dropped her father a curtsy, spoke gracious words as if they hadn't been parted for more than a year.
Eirikr King rose from his carven chair and drew her to him for an embrace. His beard was nearly as white as her yoke-apron, but his eyes gleamed the same cornflower-blue as his daughter's, though set among many crinkles. His shoulder-length hair, the color of bleached linen, must once have shone the same golden hue as hers.
"What news, Father?" she asked as they pulled apart.
"I have tidings a-plenty," he said, with a twang to his voice. He arched a brow. "And it appears you have some tales of your own from travels in eastern parts."
"Ragnvald was here, I assume."
Jorunn noticed the same twang in the murmurs of folk all about – and a hint of it in Gyda's voice as well.
"Ja, he was. Make yourself at home and we will speak after the feast."
As they left the dais, Jorunn gazed around. One of the warriors here must be Gyda's elder brother, she guessed, but none of them looked so like her as young Toli did.
Toli at Kvien, Harald at Skiringssal, Prince Dond at Dondstad, the folk and mead-halls of her exile strung out in a ragged path behind her. Eirikr's steading at Bergvin made a knot on the end of that chain of lakes leading home to her sister in Morgedal. A new household to learn. Many new names and faces.
Ah vel, she'd learned many sagas and all the Sayings of the Wise, and the names of folk at Dondstad and Kvien. Surely there was room in the halls of her memory for this great clamoring horde at Hordaland.
The lady of this hall was the wife of Steinarr, Gyda's elder brother. A young woman with hair as tawny as Oddleif's, she settled Gyda and Brynja into a fine bedchamber with fresh rushes on the floor and a wide bed strewn with linen-covered cushions. Her little son followed her everywhere like a puppy, clinging to her skirt and sucking a thumb. Steinarr's wife looked to be no older than Gyda, and already was round-bellied with her second child.
Brynja chatted with the lady of the hall while youths brought in the traveling chests. Gyda gave her sister-in-law a proper greeting, pointed where she wanted her chests, ordered Jorunn to dig deep for the garb she wanted. When the young men left, Jorunn helped her mistress change to dry apparel and tended her hair. Gyda nodded at Brynja's chatter, but soon cut short and went to talk with the menfolk.
Jorunn followed after with an armful of damp woolens. She saw her mistress settled at the high table, then found a drying rack near the far end of the central hearth, just beyond a cluster of housegirls bent over their mending, and spread out Gyda's clothing to dry. She herself had no change of clothing except for her old ragged gown, now more rags than gown. Keeping an eye on Gyda, she turned by the fireside until she had steamed away most of the moisture.
She heard snatches of the conversation on the dais. Men laughed at Gyda's telling of the message she'd sent to Harald. One clapped her on the back, praising her boldness.
Drifa joined the gathering of housegirls at the hearth, Brynja's wet gown still in her arms, and murmured to some she seemed to know. When one of them looked her way, Jorunn smiled back. She tucked her braid around to cover the birthmark before venturing to strike up a friendship.
They nodded as she stepped closer. Their faces looked open and friendly, and her heart surged with gladness. A warmer welcome than at Dondstad and Kvien, she mused in relief, for here she was not arriving in tatters. And she came in service to their own glorious Gyda.
Then she noticed the housegirls nearest Drifa, glancing her way with eyes widening in awe. Jorunn sucked in her breath. Drifa and her talk of Finns and skald-maids.
Before she could speak to smooth away those silly wrinkles, cooks shooed the housegirls from hearthside and reached for the pots of stew. Youths bustled about, setting up the trestles, and Jorunn found herself spun about in the maelstrom of the household. She worked her way out of the whirl and took her lone way back to her mistress' side. Alone and friendless still, not spurned as a ragamuffin but still fended off at arm's length. Her heart chilled at the lack of friendship's fire.
When Gyda settled at Eirikr's board for the feast, she frowned at the first platter Jorunn presented. Huge brown patches marred each round of flatbread. Gyda picked through the breads offered and chose the palest one.
Eirikr apologized for the poor fare. "Just before barley harvest," he said, "I lost my best flatbread baker. She was with child, and having a trial of a time." He called for more mead.
Lost? Jorunn wondered what the woman's fate had been, and felt the dagger-stab of grief once more. Her own mother, so well-known for skill with skillet and roller, unlucky in marriage and childbirth. Gone, lost and gone. How many nights past? The days blurred together.
Gone, and no legacy left behind. After all her labor in teaching, her daughter's flatbreads turned out uglier than these splotchy rounds at Eirikr's board.
Jorunn stood at the table of a king, yearning for a humble corner. She held a hand towel ready for a king's daughter, wishing she held a roller and the knack her mother wielded.
A latecomer to the feast turned out to be Gyda's brother, Steinarr, come down from watch duty at the high mountain borg. A burly fellow with a high narrow forehead, close-set eyes, and a flaxen forelock like a fjord horse, he was as plain as his sister was lovely.
"Tell him," someone called to Gyda, "why your journey here on such short notice."
Men grinned up and down the high table and called for mead to toast the tale.
Gyda recounted her two days' travel in company with the young king of lands around the great Vik, the feasting and boasting at his meadhalls, the way he listened, enrapt, to the sound of her voice and heard not a single word. "The more I tried to douse his spirits, the harder he tried to win me. With needles and beads and silk." Scorn sizzled in her words.
Someone hooted. Eirikr's folk knew Gyda well, Jorunn saw.
"Then a month later his underling tries to creep up on Kvien with a band of warriors. For a hall-burning and a bride-stealing."
Steinarr scowled and thumped his fists on the table.
Gyda settled one hand on his, her voice low and solemn but a playful tilt to her head. "Harald Halfwit had sent him here first, as you know full well, then followed that failure by ordering me fetched to be—" She ground out the next word, "—his concubine. But Beste-Papa's men outnumbered his. They did not catch us sleeping."
"And Gunnarr had them hewed on the spot," Steinarr growled.
"Nei. I hewed them with my words. Gave them my response to take back to their master."
"Go on, go on!" folk chanted.
"I told them I will take no husband but the man who forges all the Nord Way into one mighty nation like Charlemagne's or Weatherhat's. I called Harald a stripling youth at the head of a ragtag host, nothing but a squealing piglet of a princeling." Gyda turned back to her plate and took a bite of pork.
Steinarr grunted. "Well done, little sister. Set an impossible task for an impudent upstart."
"Impossible?" She wiped at her chin. "Perhaps. Perhaps not, if a shrewd, long-armed warrior should rise to the challenge."
Lingormr spoke up. "Harald hasn't the reach for all the Nord Way, but neither is he a man to sniff at. He holds eight kingdoms along the Vik, and can rally a sizeable host. And so our sudden journey over the Keel. We'll let his anger simmer and cool before returning to Kvien."
Jorunn bit back a smirk. What could have been a wrathful hunger for revenge had blazed into an inferno of another kind, she knew. And Gyda still clung to her hope for a far-seeing warrior to transform the north.
Perhaps not, Gyda had said. Had no one else noticed the steel in her response?
* * *
Rain clouds hung like a shroud all that day of their coming, and continued to pour day after day, mixed with pelting sheets of sleet. Gyda did not set foot in the mucky houseyard
beyond the threshold. Her father had gifted her a new book that had come to port with a merchant the summer before. She sat poring over the parchment leaves by lamplight, from one meal to the next, her lips moving as she traced lines of ink stains. Her fascination with the written word she set aside only when guests arrived at Eirikr's court and there were tales to hear and word-battles to wage.
Gyda often held up Charlemagne as a banner of triumph on the stage of the world, and a long line of Greeks and Romans before him. She unrolled her map and pointed out empires to anyone who would listen. "Why remain a scattering of petty little kingdoms, when we can rise to such greatness?"
At first, her father and brother found her vision amusing. "Petty little kingdoms?" Eirikr snorted whenever she mentioned the short-comings of the old ways. "Making me a petty little king in your eyes?"
"Father! I speak of the difference between small realms and great nations."
"The Nord Way, a nation?" Steinarr would laugh. "Like great-cattle and small-cattle, horses and swine, all gathering in one pasture. What a trampling and jostling they'd make, and which beast would prevail as king?"
Visiting menfolk smiled at Gyda's speeches, nodding at everything she said, basking in the radiance of her beauty, but paid no heed to her words. Jorunn saw her mistress grow sullen, overheard her grumbling to Brynja. "Such are the doings in far lands, and they can be done in the North as well! Why do they treat me like a child clinging to fables?"
Brynja wasn't listening either. She paced their chamber. "If Harald marches to Kvien and finds us gone, will he rage further up the dale? What if Mundi must meet him in battle?"
"A foiled bride-stealing won't goad him to that length, I'm sure."
"You can't be sure! You've put in peril those I care most about!"
Gyda planted herself in Brynja's path. "Would you have me run to Harald's bed, for the sake of all others?"
Jorunn sidled out of the chamber. That argument kept circling round and round again, chilling the air. She went to the door of the meadhall and gazed out at the endless grey drizzling clouds. A bit of sun would help, she thought. A walk in the open air, the sight of far horizons, the crawl of the seasons and hope for the future.
As Gyda took less to the guest-table and more to her book, sitting alone with a lamp at her elbow, Jorunn stole away more often to spy back home. Her heart twisted into knots whenever Knut blundered into the scene. "Svana, oh Svana," she whispered from the shadows. "Do be careful and quiet. Remember what we taught you! Stay out of sight when he's drunk." What a fate, a youngling of only nine winters, trapped with no one for comfort but ragtag Oddleif, when he came prowling like a fox at night. Jorunn saw him hand her a bag of nuts one day; a hunk of dried meat on another; half a round of flatbread, the next. Her heart swelled in gratitude.
Then one day she saw another woman in the hut. Had her father found a new wife? She looked grim and bony, sharp and quick in all her movements, scowling – always scowling. She struck at Svana, sent the girl tumbling to the ground.
Jorunn's heart lurched, and she bit her knuckles in dismay. She must go back! But she could never travel all that way on her own. How long did Lingormr plan on staying here at Bergvin?
She must go back! But the whole great mountain hulk of the Keel stood to block her way.
32 – Ptarmigan and Grouse
Oddleif trekked down from the high mountain moor, puzzled at the utter failure of his snares. He had set two score of them, high above the tree line among birch scrub where ptarmigan feed throughout wintertime.
He'd found plenty of ptarmigan tracks. Half of the snares had sprung. But not one bird remained. He glanced over his shoulder, a narrow-eyed glare at the haunted heights.
There were other odd tracks in the snow as well. They looked like full-sized human footprints, but they barely dented the crust, lighter than the marks left by his own snowshoes. And they circled every sprung snare.
The tusse-folk had raided his line. Had they taken the ptarmigans for their own stewpots in glorious Alfheim? Or had they set the birds free out of mischief?
Oddleif had counted on a good catch. Svana looked so thin and pale. Always hungry. That new stepmother was as stingy and hot-tempered as a wolverine.
He'd already given Svana half his autumn stash of hazelnuts, and every other squirrel he caught. His brothers were grumbling at his over-generous nature. A good catch of ptarmigan would have provided feasting for them all, and then there would be no complaints.
Oddleif plunged into the forest again. He wound his way among the spruces, hunting for pine trees. If not ground-hugging ptarmigan, then wood grouse high in the pines. He drew his sling from his pouch, nestled into the leather cup a stone the size of a hazelnut, and set his jaw. He would bag enough to fill Svana's empty belly if it took him all day.
33 – Solve Klofe
On the rainy west coast, Jorunn spied for Harald, and found him in the east traveling northward by ski – him, and Ragnvald, and a whole host of warriors, followed by sledges loaded with supplies. She itched to tell Gyda. "You're free to go home," she yearned to say. "There's no threat any longer at Kvien. And none of this unending rain." But how could she explain her certainty?
"I have a hunch, Mistress," she dared the next day. "If I were Harald I'd heed the word you sent him, and push northward in my plot for conquest. I wouldn't bother with Kvien."
Gyda darted her a barbed glance. "The doings of kings are beyond your ken. Spare me your mindless blather."
"It was your blather. You wouldn't have said it if you didn't think it had a chance."
"You border on insult, girl."
From Gyda's tone, Jorunn knew to fall silent. Vel, she'd tried.
On the eighth day at Bergvin, a runner came to the mead-hall from a mountainside lookout. "Dragonship threading the channel. No figurehead mounted at the prow."
"Coming in peace, then," Eirikr said. "What color the sail?"
"Red, white and blue."
Steinarr spoke. "It's Cleft-Chin. Come to make plans for summer raiding." Gyda's brother rose from table, called for his greased coat, then strode out in the pouring rain to greet his comrade.
Gyda looked up from her book. "Cleft-Chin?"
"Solve, son of Hunthiof King," Eirikr said.
"Ah." Gyda turned back to her reading. "From North Møre. Still allies, then?"
"Ja. Petty little kings we might be, but together we forge a might to be reckoned with."
Gyda's lips went thin at the jesting in his voice.
Steinarr returned in company with a square-shouldered swordsman who stood half a head taller than anyone else in the mead-hall. A straggling line of sodden warriors trooped in after them and ranged about the hearth, laughing at the warmth and welcome and good roof overhead.
Steinarr led Solve Cleft-Chin to the dais. From where she stood in the shadows behind Gyda, Jorunn saw how the guest had gained his byname. A white scar slashed down his right cheek, cut across the corner of his mouth, and ended at the point of his chin. He'd chosen to play up that token of battle by forking his beard.
In the firelight, that beard and his wind-tossed mane gleamed with a coppery sheen. Ruddy-gold, as sagas called it. Halfway through Solve's greeting to the king of Hordaland, his sea-green gaze fell upon the king's daughter.
At the same moment Gyda looked up from her book. Jorunn saw the tilt of Gyda's head and the hitch of her shoulders, and heard her huff of annoyance.
Solve faltered in his speech, then rallied and went on, his gaze turned back to Eirikr by an apparent force of will.
Jorunn heard Gyda's sigh of exasperation. The young woman stood, allowed herself to be presented, then withdrew to her chamber so she could continue reading in peace.
* * *
Gunnarr arrived the following day. Jorunn's hopes leaped. He wouldn't have left Kvien if he thought Harald still posed a threat to his lands.
And so it was. At the high table he told Gyda's kin and their guest from Møre about word from his spies
who had lurked on the borders of Harald's Ringerike. "He's gone campaigning into the north. One of my men heard mention of the Trondelag area, so he must mean to cross the heights east of Dovre Fjell and brazen his way down to the northwest coast."
"He's gone north," Gyda echoed, shooting a keen glance Jorunn's way.
Jorunn dropped her gaze. She held her breath a long moment, let it hiss slowly out as talk and rumor abounded at the high table and no one paid her any heed.
"It seems someone challenged Harald," Steinarr told Solve Cleft-Chin, "to grab all the lands of the Nord Way and make them into one great holding to rival Weatherhat, and Charlemagne before him."
"A feat worthy of saga," Solve said and downed his horn of ale. "One little problem. While he's in Trondelag, he'll lose his kingdoms along the Vik. That Ringerike you speak of and all the others."
Gunnarr shook his head. "He posts his most trusted men to hold each region in his wake. Sets them up as jarls. His uncle Guttorm keeps the Vik under tight rein."
Eirikr sat back. "Are you telling us this scamp might actually bring it to pass?"
"With luck," Gunnarr drawled. "With a huge serving of luck. A huge serving of venison for me, be so kind. "
Gyda spoke up. "A little luck would help, but he has the wits for widespread conquest, if he doesn't lose his drive and swerve aside."
"Conquest does indeed seem to weigh topmost in his doings," Gunnarr said, stringing his words out long and slow. "He went so far as to make a solemn oath to fulfill your charge."
"Your charge?" Solve said, gazing wide-eyed at the king's daughter.
"He did?" Gyda asked, ignoring Cleft-Chin's inquiry. "A vow? He truly did?"
From behind her, Jorunn saw the sudden stiffness in her shoulders, heard the shallowness of her breath.
Gunnarr told of Harald's oath never to wash nor cut his hair until he'd won his grand and glorious quest.
Solve snorted. "Uff da! Either he'll break his vow and bring himself ill luck, or he'll soon become the ugliest man in all the Nord Way."
