The Sword Song of Bjarni Sigurdson

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  After a while he got up and turned back to the camp by the boat-strand, still thinking.

  He went on thinking a good deal through the days that followed; the day of fasting and mourning, the day of waiting, the day of rejoicing. He had no part in any of it, but he went hungry with the rest on God’s Friday, there being nothing to eat anyway, and with the gathering of Fionoula’s crew before the open door, watched what went on in the little stone and wattle church bloomed with the light of honey-wax candles on Easter morning. And, watching and listening, he learned more of the White Christ to add to what he had learned already during the months on Mull.

  And then in the midst of the night after Easter, the last night that they would spend on lona, he woke quickly and quietly as a man wakes to the old hunter’s trick of a thumb pressed below his left ear, but there was no one near him. He had rolled out from under the ship’s awning, and now lay staring up at the sky of dappled cloud, pearl-coloured, drifting across the moon, hearing the sounds of a calm sea and the breathing – snoring – of the other rowers under the awning. He had an odd feeling of having arrived somewhere that he had been searching for. As though in his sleep all his confused thinking of the past few days had sorted itself out, and now he could be still and see where it had got him.

  He knew quite clearly that despite the night when the priest had called in Thor’s name for the death of Hugin, he was not ready to leave his old gods yet. Maybe he never would be. Yet something in him reached out to this other god, who was Brother Gisli’s, and Erp’s and the Lady Aud’s. But the step was too great to be taken with loyalties divided. Brother Gisli had shown him that. He could not go all the way. But he could go part of it . . . He found that he was thinking of prime-signing no longer as just a sensible thing to do, but as a kind of threshold: and surely the White Christ, who knew the ways of men’s hearts because he had been a man himself, and died for other men, would understand if he could only come as far as the threshold.

  In the first green light of morning with the shore birds crying, he went in search of Brother Gisli and found him in the home pasture behind the grain store, squatting with a cade lamb between his knees, which he was feeding with milk from a leather bottle. He squatted down also, and waited until the little one was full fed and, with the alder teat plucked from its milky muzzle, had gone wobbling away. Then Brother Gisli looked up at him with his slow quiet smile. ‘A fine morning, and a fair wind for the Lady’s homeward faring.’

  Bjarni came straight to the point. ‘I would be prime-signed before we leave Iona.’

  ‘So-o!’ Brother Gisli shook the last drops from the bottle onto the grass beside him. ‘This is a thing left somewhat late in the day.’

  ‘I had much thinking to do,’ Bjarni told him. ‘I had to be sure.’

  ‘And now you are sure.’

  ‘Now I am sure. I would be prime-signed before I leave lona.’

  Brother Gisli looked at him with great kindness, a little sorrowfully maybe. ‘Ach well,’ he said, ‘it is a beginning.’

  Bjarni gave him back his look, straightly. ‘It’s as far as I can go.’

  ‘I dare say Christ won’t mind the waiting.’ He got up. ‘Come then –’

  ‘Shall I kneel here?’

  The monk shook his head. ‘This is a matter for Father Faremail, our Abbot, and there must be two to see it done and stand surety for you.’

  ‘Will you stand surety for me, foster-brother of my Chief?’

  ‘I – and another. Now come, for the tide will turn before Nones, and there is little time to spare.’

  And so in a short while Bjarni Sigurdson was kneeling before the Father Abbot in the doorway of the little church, with Brother Gisli and the Lady Aud herself kneeling on either side of him, with the brown-clad brotherhood, and the crew of Fionoula looking on. There had been no ready-making, no questions asked. Prime-signing had no need of such things.

  The Abbot was bending over him as he tipped his head back, saying something that had the sound of welcome in it, though he did not know very clearly what it was; making the sign of the cross on his forehead with water which felt very cold and trickled down between his eyes.

  He got up, and the Lady Aud’s arms were lightly round him for a moment, then Brother Gisli’s fiercer hold. And the thing was done; very quickly, for the tide was already on the turn.

  10

  Council on Orkney

  OFF THE SOUTHERN shore of Hoy, three longships lay at anchor, waiting for slack water and safe passage through the western end of the Pentland Firth and up into the great floe that sheltered the fleet of the Jarls of Orkney; Thorstein Olafson’s great Sea Serpent, Wild Horse and Star Wolf, their crews taking their ease before the last long pull that would take them up to Jarl Sigurd’s landing-beach.

  On the fifth starboard oar of Sea Serpent, Bjarni sat, elbows on knees, chewing his way thoughtfully through the lump of ship’s bannock that he had saved from the hurried morning meal.

  A year and the half of another year had gone by since he had been prime-signed, kneeling before the door of the little grey church on lona, with the tide just on the turn. Odd, now, it seemed, looking back, to remember all the tangled thinking of the days before he had made his mind up to that kind of halfway baptism. It didn’t seem to matter all that much, now. The Lady Aud had been pleased, and he felt more at one with the Christians among his fellows; and at feast time he went, for the most part, to the altar to the White Christ that Thorstein had set up among the altars to the older and darker and more familiar gods in the God-House. But that was about all. Maybe it would have gone on as meaning more if Brother Gisli had been still there under the skies of men; but when they had taken Fionoula back to Iona this spring, Brother Gisli had been gone from the island, only a small grey stone in the monks’ burial ground to tell that he had ever been there, and another of the brethren looking after the cade lambs.

  Sitting with his mouth full of dry bannock, Leif Ketison beside him playing knuckle bones right hand against left, he let his mind drift back, past Brother Gisli, over the four summers since Rafn had given him his sword and slung him out of the settlement. Four sea-faring summers that had made of him a seaman who knew the ways of ships in all weathers and in all their moods. Four summers that had grown his beard for him, short but thick, a young beard still, but the captain of the Dublin garrison would scarce have found it lacking now. Well, he would sooner have been Onund’s man and Thorstein’s and had the free-ranging years among the islands. They had been good, for the most part, those years. He realised suddenly that he was looking back on them as something that was over – almost over – and gave his shoulders a small angry shake as though to rid himself of the unlucky thought that had come upon him out of nowhere . . . no, not quite out of nowhere. There was a new wind blowing among the islands, as Brother Gisli had said, a restlessness. Many chieftains, even Aflaeg the Lord of Barra and father of Aesa, had already up-anchored and spread sail for Iceland; there was good farming land on Iceland, or so it was said, to be had for the taking. Word was carried on a colder wind, too, of stirrings in Norway; King Harald Finehair was on the move again. Too many men remembered all too well the last time that he had come west-over-seas to make his powers felt among the Islands. And Onund himself, so it was said, was away back to Norway with Thrond his sword-brother whose father had lately died – some trouble over the inheritance with Harald laying king’s claim to the land. The old Barra roost was breaking up and would not be the first of its kind.

  Maybe that, the breaking up and outward drift among the island chiefs, was the reason for this council called between the most powerful of them, Thorstein the Red, and Jarl Sigurd of Orkney.

  High in the bows of Sea Serpent, Thorstein raised one arm; the anchor came in and the great blue and red striped sail went lurching up the mast, followed by the sails of Star Wolf and Wild Horse lying astern. To Bjarni, hauling at the anchor cable, there did not seem to be much difference between sun-bright water now and as it had
been fifty breaths ago. But Thorstein was one – Onund was another – who could navigate in thick fog by the wave-patterns, the sound of the sea that tells of the sea-bed shapes, as familiar to him as the shapes of stack and headland above the sea. Both men knew the secrets of deep water through eyes and ears and the soles of their feet.

  The sails filled and billowed out, and the three longships slipped forward, the south-west wind behind them, into the perilous waters of the Pentland Firth. Presently they came about in a swath of flying spin-drift, and were heading north, tacking up into seaways between Hoy and South Ronaldsay. For a while Hoy took the wind from them, the water quietened and grew deeply green. The sails came rattling down once more and again they took to the oars, to bring the little fleet into the haven below the Jarlstead. For three days and another, Jarl Sigurd and his son Guthorm, Thorstein the Red, and the wisest and most powerful of their chiefs spent much time deep in council together where the land arose onto open moors beyond the in-take boundaries and no man might come close unseen to hear what passed between them. Not on the Moot Hill within the circle of willow wands, but in the main Standing Stones left by an older people, for this was not a moot council, but a stranger-gathering, and amongst them were strangers of another breed from the Viking kind, men from the mainland, not like the Old People of the West Coast and the Islands, but men of a harsher build, and with blue tribal patterns pricked on breast and forehead, and whose tongue, when they spoke alone together – though they could speak the Norse tongue well enough to the Jarl and his people – had a dark sound to it, a sound that made Bjarni, hearing them at a distance, think of the spatter of thunder-rain on the broad leaves of summer.

  And while the great ones held their council among the heather-washed stones of an older people, the lesser folk of the settlement and the ships’ crews carried on with the daily business of living in the harvest fields and cattle yards and along the boat-strand, and in between whiles amused themselves with any means that came to hand. There was little hunting to be had on the low bare windswept isles of Orkney, with no forest land to shelter deer or boar, only seal hunting, which was a thing done for meat and skins, dangerous, but without pleasure. There was also hawking after grouse and ptarmigan, but not much more. But something that was almost a fair had sprung up among the scattered bothies between the settlement and the haven, as always among the Northmen when there was any kind of gathering, a meeting of traders and craftsmen. In the open ground between, men raced and wrestled and strove which could throw their spear the furthest or split the toughest log with one throw of a war-axe, and feasted and drank from the ale-booths and wagered their silver on a string of cock fights behind the sail-shed, where the high turf walls gave some shelter from the never-ending wind.

  But rumours of what the chiefs were discussing drifted down on the wind in the way of such things to the rest of the settlement. Bjarni, returning from some errand that had taken him down to the ship-strand, and heading for the nearest ale-booth to spend the silver that he had won by a wager on the red cock earlier in the day, noticed more men than usual gathering at the armourer’s smithy, a tendency to gather in knots and fiddle with the weapons in their belts. ‘Is it a war-trail, then?’ he asked of the world at large, flinging himself down on a bench at the ale-house entrance. ‘I had thought maybe it was an Iceland faring.’

  A man whetting his dirk on the stone door sill looked up, testing the blade on his thumb. ‘Even for an Iceland faring, it’s as well for a man to have his weapons keen.’

  ‘It is Iceland then?’ Bjarni pressed, flinging up an arm to capture the attention of the snotty-nosed potboy. ‘Drink, here!’

  The other shrugged. ‘Who can tell for sure, save the wind that blows through the heather up yonder.’

  And a man sitting close by with a young goshawk on his fist put in, ‘None the less a man might hazard a guess – with those painted Pictish lords up there with the Jarl, I’d say more like Caithness and maybe the southern land beyond.’

  ‘So, a war-trail.’ Bjarni took the ale-jar from the potboy’s hand and took a good deep swallow.

  The man with the hawk, who was older and seemed to be more of the thinking kind than the rest, gentled its neck feathers thoughtfully. ‘Not at first, I’d be thinking, not with their embassy up there. There’s a great emptiness all over Caithness, hunting runs, wide moorland with good land under the heather, too much land for all the tribes of the Painted People. We could do with more land ourselves . . .’

  ‘You have been there?’ Bjarni asked, looking out over the green lands of Ronaldsay and the blue mountains of the mainland along the southern sky.

  ‘Every autumn. The Jarl hunts there each autumn, and counts the hunting runs as good as his own. The gods know there is no hunting, save seals, on Orkney.’

  ‘Aye,’ someone else put in, ‘there’s emptiness to spare on Caithness, and what people there are might well be glad of our swords, with Harald Finehair readying his ships on every strand in Norway, for a coming against the Scots coast.’

  The man whetting his blade on the door stone seemed satisfied with its edge at last, and looked up again, thrusting it into his belt. ‘And yon’s another reason, good as any and better than most, for a Caithness faring. Harald in Caithness and Sutherland would be a deal too close in our midst for comfort by way of the Great Glen or the Pentland Firth . . . Better to be there first.’

  It all seemed good sense, but . . .

  The goshawk suddenly spread its wings with a harsh cry and bated violently from its master’s fist. The man quieted it and got it righted, then got up and carried it outside, away from the peat-reek and the crowding faces.

  And Bjarni, looking after them, saw the mountains of Caithness suddenly grown shadow-thin, rising out of a faint sea mist that had already blotted out the coast.

  By dusk the sea haar had thickened and came rolling up from the south-west, a heavy clinging sea-smelling murk that blanketed sound and crept even into the Jarl’s great Hearth Hall to mingle with the reek of the peat fires and make ragged smears of light around the torches.

  And with the mist came one of the coast wardens, bringing with him a stranger in a rough seaman’s cloak. From his place among Sea Serpent’s crew at the guest end of the hall, Bjarni saw him as he passed within arm’s length and caught his breath in surprised recognition. Sven Gunnarson! He told himself not to be a fool; his mind had been running on the Barra days, and this cursed mist was enough to set a man imagining things. But it was Sven Gunnarson!

  The two men made their way up the hall together to stand before Jarl Sigurd in his High Seat with the dragon-carved fore posts. And the warden, leaning on his grounded staff, reported, ‘Messenger from three ships just come into the haven.’

  ‘In this murk?’ said Jarl Sigurd, fondling the ears of a great hound sitting propped against his knee.

  ‘Jarl Sigurd is not the only seaman west-over-seas,’ said Sven.

  ‘I can think of others, not many; which of them lies in my haven this night?’

  ‘Onund Treefoot, of Sea Witch.’

  ‘So. And what is the message he sends?’

  ‘He asks leave to water ship from your springs.’

  The Jarl’s thick brows shot up, and his flat-backed head on its long neck thrust forward, making it look even more than usual like the prow of a galley. ‘Since when has Onund Treefoot had need to fill his water casks from another man’s springs, unless it were done without the asking?’

  Sven gave his familiar one-shouldered shrug. ‘We are on the whale’s road north-west. An Iceland faring – a peaceful faring; we have women and bairns on board, and roped cattle. Therefore we have no wish for fighting.’ Bjarni knew how he must hate saying that. ‘To have carried enough water from the outset would be to carry fewer cattle and less grain and seed-corn.’

  ‘And so you thought to refill your bags from mine.’

  ‘Orkney is the furthest landfall on the Iceland run,’ said Sven.

  ‘Lewis is furt
her,’ said Jarl Sigurd.

  ‘Aye, but between Barra and Lewis there has been ill blood these many years.’

  That was a story well known to all in the hall, beginning with a raid made by the Lewis chief on Barra when the Barra fleet was away raiding elsewhere.

  The Jarl nodded. ‘And the sharing of water is a matter for friends and kindred.’ He grinned into the carefully wooden face of Sven Gunnarson. ‘There has never been friendship between Barra and Orkney.’

  Sven swallowed. ‘That is the message that you send back?’

  ‘That is the message that I send back. Yet I turn no man hungry from my hearth. Now that you are here, eat before you take it to him.’

  ‘Not under this roof,’ said Sven, and turned away, swinging his salt-stained cloak behind him.

  As he passed Bjarni their eyes met, and Sven’s widened for a moment. Then he went on, with no word spoken between them.

  Bjarni took a bannock from the bowl in front of him, but sat staring at it, with, for the moment, no wish to eat. So – of a surety there was a new wind blowing among the islands, and Onund Treefoot filling his sails with it, setting his keels with all those others on the Iceland run . . . Onund down there in the fog-bound harbour, almost within walking distance. And that was all, nothing more . . . Bjarni took a savage bite out of his bannock and dug his horn spoon into the nearest of the large communal bowls of eel stew. What had he to do with Onund Treefoot, that he should be waiting now like a hound for his master’s whistle?