The rowan tree with the double trunk still stood beside the foreporch of his brother’s house-place, and below its branches, Gram was working grease into a new ox hide. He looked up when Bjarni reined to a halt beside him and for a moment they looked at each other. ‘You don’t know me?’ Bjarni said.
And saw the other’s eyes light slowly as the knowledge came. ‘The beard makes a difference,’ he said.
Gram got up, rubbing his greasy hands on the seat of his breeks. Suddenly as Bjarni dropped from Swallow’s back, he let out a shout. ‘Bjarni! After all this while!’
They had their arms around each other, beating each other about the back and shoulders. ‘Five years! It’s been five years, and we thought you were drowned!’
‘I thought so too, one time,’ Bjarni said. ‘But here I am, back again. It’s good to see you, big brother.’
But he was taller now than Gram.
Angharad also had dropped to the ground, and stood holding Swallow’s bridle and looking on. Bjarni reached back for her and drew her forward. ‘I bring home with me Angharad, my woman.’ He felt her stiffen slightly and remembered that she was not his woman as yet, not in the eyes of other men and women; well, that could be set right in the next few days. His hands tightened over hers.
Then a thrall had taken charge of Swallow and they were crowding into the house-place, the familiar house-place grown strange after five years, and Ingibjorg grown strange after five years too, her face startled now as she looked up from her cooking pot, grown heavier with a downward droop to the mouth. Bairns too, one still in a cradle, one sitting almost in the fire playing with a little wooden horse, making it gallop on the warm hearthstone. Dogs too. He looked among them for Astrid, but she was not there. Well, it was five years and more; very old, she would have been.
Gram was saying, ‘Ingibjorg! See what the tide has washed up on shore.’
‘I see,’ Ingibjorg said through the steam of the crock she was still stirring. ‘The gods’ greeting to you, Bjarni, my husband’s brother. And this that the tide has washed ashore with you?’
Angharad spoke up for herself, carefully in the Norse tongue, ‘I am his woman, and Angharad is my name.’
‘Angharad, that is surely no name of our Norse tongue.’
‘No,’ said Angharad. ‘I am of an older race than the Northmen.’
‘She does not speak our tongue freely as yet,’ Bjarni said.
‘So, a woman of the British, then?’
‘Aye, from Wales. The Danes burned her house over her head.’ He was going to have to lie about Angharad’s story anyway, so he might as well make the lie a good one and well fleshed out.
The two women looked each other up and down, taking stock, much as Hugin and the two hounds who had risen from the hearth were doing, hackles a little raised.
‘Ingibjorg – go you and bring drink for our home-comers.’ And when she had risen and gone into an inner chamber, Gram drew stools to the fire, and they sat looking at each other with suddenly five years of silence between them.
‘We never thought to see you again,’ Gram said after a few moments. ‘Heriolf thought that you had drowned.’
Bjarni leaned forward eagerly. ‘Heriolf? He has been here?’
‘Aye, back in early summer. He told how Sea Cow had come near to shipwreck on Orme’s Head in the great storm. He told how you were on board heading back to Rafnglas even then, and a black hound with you – this one?’
‘Aye, this one.’
‘And how the dog went overboard, almost among the breakers, and you after him. And nothing that he or his crew could do about it, save try to keep Sea Cow off the rocks . . .’
‘But they got clear?’ Bjarni said, with a great gladness in him.
‘They continued to beat round the point, and at last found shelter to make good their storm damage in Conway Bay. But you they gave up as lost – yet they left your sword and sea-kist here for you if ever, against all odds, you should come back to claim them.’
Bjarni looked around him as though expecting to see it propped in a corner. ‘My sword? I might have known it would be safe with Heriolf. But I grieved for him dead as he did for me. You have it here?’
‘Na, na, he left blade and kist together with the Chieftain.’
Ingibjorg had returned with a leather jack of buttermilk that she gave first to Bjarni and then to Angharad, saying as custom demanded, ‘Drink and be welcome.’
She had brought dried meat and oatmeal back with her too, and made to add it to the bubbling contents of the pot, but checked a moment before doing so. ‘You will share the evening meal with us? It will be ready in a while and a while.’
‘They will share more than the evening meal with us,’ Gram said, and to Bjarni, ‘This was your hearth before you went on your wayfaring; it is yours again, and your woman’s. Our roof is yours, little brother, until we can build on a further bothy; and add to our land-take – and so, we shall do well enough.’
But Bjarni saw the anxious look in his eyes, saw Ingibjorg’s mouth tighten. And he was glad that he had made other plans. ‘Nay, big brother, the offer is a kind one; but I am minded to make my own land-take and build my own hearth for my woman and me, somewhere further up the dale.’ And he saw relief begin to take the place of anxiety in his brother’s eyes. Gram had never been any good at covering what he was feeling; and a faintly sour thought woke in Bjarni. ‘We will come back to share the evening meal with you, and gladly. For the rest – I shall find a sleeping place up at the Hearth Hall. If you will give Angharad shelter while she makes her bride-cake and a gown to be wedded in, there is no more that I ask.’
And ignoring their somewhat thin protests, he got up. ‘For now I must find Rafn. I have a sword to claim back, and a message for him that he will fain hear.’
He turned to Angharad. The older child had already climbed into her lap, and as she made to move it, he said, ‘Na na, leave the bairn be.’ He lifted a wing of her hair and leant to place a kiss under it on her neck, rather as though sealing her for his own in sight of family.
He laid his free hand kindly on Gram’s shoulder in passing. ‘Keep the good stew hot for me.’ He whistled quite needlessly to Hugin, who had already sprung up and come to his heel, and together they went out into the thickening last of daylight.
He ran Rafn the Chief to earth on the boat-strand, overseeing repairs to the figurehead of his ship which it seemed had suffered damage in one or other of the past summer storms.
In the shoreward part of the way, one or two among the faces that Bjarni remembered had remembered him; greetings there had been, and word of his coming had run on ahead of him; so that when he came down to the boat-strand, the big grey-gold man sitting on balks of timber in the mouth of the boat-shed turned from the work of the shipwrights without surprise.
‘Bjarni Sigurdson!’ he said, and then, ‘Aye, Bjarni Sigurdson and not his weed-dripping ghost. We had scarce thought to see you in these parts again.’
‘I was in my brother’s house-stead as I came by,’ Bjarni said. ‘He told me that Heriolf Merchantman was here in the summer, and thought me drowned, as I thought him and all Sea Cow’s crew.’
‘Aye, but before that, five years before, on the day you sailed with Sea Cow for Dublin, I think that you had little thought ever to return.’
‘Not until my fortune was made, at all events,’ Bjarni said. ‘But many things may change in five years, and I have a woman to build a hearth for, when she has baked her bride-cake.’
The Chief nodded, his eyes thoughtful and a hint of a smile at the young man’s face. ‘So, and what better reason to make for the home keel-strand? And the fortune?’
‘At least I have come back richer than I went.’ Bjarni grinned. ‘For I have this dog that followed me from the black alleyways of Dublin town, and a fine horse, and three gold pieces. And there is my sword and sea-kist that you hold for me.’
‘And a fine tale to tell in the Hearth Hall after supper, I am thinking.’<
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‘That too. I am pledged to eat with my brother and his woman – our two women – this night, but after, I will come back to tell it, and to claim my sea-kist and my sword that Heriolf left for me.’
‘You carry a better sword now than the one I gave you,’ Rafn said, his eyes on the beautiful weapon that Bjarni was nursing across his knees.
‘Aye,’ Bjarni agreed. ‘And I earned it. But the giver bade me set aside the other for my eldest son.’
Laughter sounded deep in Rafn’s throat. ‘Sa, sa – and a sorry thing it would be to rob the eldest son.’
So far they had spoken lightly enough, in the hearing of men at work on the galley and now packing up work for the night; and not one word had been spoken as to the reason for Bjarni’s leaving in the first place; and linked with that the message he had carried so long was with him still.
‘Rafn Cedricson,’ he said, very quietly with the half-laughter all gone, ‘I have a thing to tell, a message that I have carried three years for you.’
Rafn got up, and they strolled together around the side of the boat-shed among the blown dune-sand laced with marram grass.
‘What message?’ Rafn asked, checking in the shed’s lee. ‘Who from?’
‘Three years since on lona, I was prime-signed for the White Christ, and the holy man who stood sponsor for me, he gave me the message.’ Bjarni was looking out over the saltings and winding waterways into the pale brightness of the silver-gilt sunset, but he felt the man beside him grow suddenly tense. ‘I had told him of the ill thing I had done, to the east out of the settlement. I told him all; and when he was told, he said, “When your outcast years are accomplished, and you go back, tell Rafn your Chief that Gisli his foster-brother forgives him the oath-breaking . . .” That is all.’
‘It is enough,’ said Rafn the Chief.
And when Bjarni looked round at him he also was looking to sea, and there was something in his face that might have been only the sunset, but Bjarni thought was something more. ‘It is enough,’ he said again. He brought his gaze back out of the sea distance. ‘Aye, it is enough.’
They had begun to wander back towards where the high gables of the Hall upreared themselves above the close gathering of lesser roofs. Beside the mill they stopped again, the soft wet rush of the mill wheel in their ears. ‘It is good that you have returned,’ the Chief said, not a man to whom the softer ways of speech came easily. ‘Away with you now to the woman you left beside your brother’s hearth. Later come to claim your sea-kist and your sword for your someday son, and to tell us the tale of these five years – a fine tale, I make no doubt – the Sword Song of Bjarni Sigurdson.’ His great paw was on Bjarni’s shoulder, spinning him round. ‘The settlement has grown since you left it, but there is good land still for the in-taking, further up the dale.’
About the Author
Rosemary Sutcliff was born in 1920 in West Clanden, Surrey.
With over 40 books to her credit, Rosemary Sutcliff is now universally considered one of the finest writers of historical novels for children. Her first novel, The Queen Elizabeth Story was published in 1950. In 1972 her book Tristan and Iseult was runner-up for the Carnegie Medal. In 1974 she was highly commended for the Hans Christian Andersen Award and in 1978 her book, Song for a Dark Queen was commended for the Other Award.
Rosemary lived for a long time in Arundel, Sussex with her dogs and in 1975, she was awarded the OBE for services to Children’s Literature. Unfortunately Rosemary passed away in July 1992 and will be much missed by her many fans.
Also available in Red Fox Classics
Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken
Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kästner
The High Deeds of Finn MacCool by Rosemary Sutcliff
The Story of Dr. Dolittle by Hugh Lofting
The House of Arden by E. Nesbit
Uncle by J.P. Martin
SWORD SONG
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 9781448173815
Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK
A Random House Group Company
This ebook edition published 2013
Copyright © Rosemary Sutcliff 1997
First published in Great Britain
Red Fox 1997
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The Sword Song of Bjarni Sigurdson Page 24
