Viking Hostage

by Warr, Tracey;

  ‘I truly thought,’ says Aina, ‘that Mama and Papa had gone on a journey and brought back a boy because they needed one and I was merely a girl. I was most put out at first until I heard my mistake.’

  ‘Your father chucked you under the chin. “The Northchild is not a boy, silly,” he said. “We had to cut her hair short to get rid of the lice. She’s a girl like you. A girl you can play with.” “Not like me,” you asserted, screwing up your nose at me.’

  Aina leans forward and kisses my cheek to make up for her initial resentment of me.

  ‘Steward Renaud crouched to slice through the rope at my ankle. “You run,” he said, “and”, he mimed a hanging, his tongue lolling, and I heard the tinkle of your laughter. I lent around Renaud to glower at you.’ I reenact the glower that I greeted Aina with at our first meeting and she stretches her small pink mouth wide in glee, her shoulders shaking.

  ‘“Girl!”’ I mimic Renaud’s voice and tone of command. ‘He shook his head at me and his expression was fierce. I looked miserably to where Lady Melisende had already forgotten me and was entering the hall with you, her chattering daughter excited at her side.’

  Aina sighs. ‘Poor Sigrid, the poor friendless slave at first.’

  ‘Not friendless now,’ I say smiling warmly to her. We fall silent and I turn back to my sewing whilst Aina picks up a scroll telling the story of an explorer in a distant land. Aina’s words, ‘poor slave,’ echo in my head along with the conjured images of my arrival here last year. I felt what seemed to me like the sudden withdrawal of Melisende and Ademar’s affection as they were wrapped up in their reunion with their daughter Aina, and the daily business of Ségur. I became just another part of a large household of servants, the lowest part. I felt the weight of my slavery fresh on me then.

  The steward Renaud had a pendulous and quaggy belly that swayed when he walked and he never liked me. He beckoned to me in the courtyard on that first day. I followed him to the hot kitchen where a delicious smelling meal was in preparation. Ten sets of eyes turned towards me. Renaud pointed to a table where I sat alone and ate the bread and cheese put before me. I looked surreptiously at the strangers, under my eyelashes, for my experience of slaves was that I might be put to sacrifice, or at least when I was a few years older I expected to be sent unwilling to the beds of men who might treat me badly.

  ‘This girl here,’ Renaud told the assembled servants, ‘is a pagan slave.’ They murmured and frowned and crossed themselves. ‘We’ve never had a slave or a pagan here before,’ he went on, ‘and the work of a slave is to lug firewood, feed pigs, cut peat, clean shoes, sift cinders, all the dirty work.’

  The cook tutted at him. ‘Renaud! The girl may be a pagan, but she’s a child nonetheless and I’ll have no cruelty to no one in my kitchen.’

  ‘You’ll do as you please, Becky, I’ve no doubt as you always do, but I’m telling you this girl is related to them who have devastated our monasteries and coastal towns, and carried our own folk away into slavery and our daughters into prostitution. We all know monks who’ll tell us they are glad of a gale that keeps the Vikings off the sea.’

  ‘From the Fury of the Norsemen O Lord deliver us!’ recited one of the men sitting near the fire.

  ‘I know all about your subversive tricks, you slaves,’ Renaud said addressing me again, ‘sabotaging tools, thieving, burning the harvest, mutilating yourself, trying to kill yourself or your unborn babies.’

  I stared at him with my mouth open.

  ‘Don’t try any of it here,’ he said fiercely waving his fist close to my nose, and I shook my head, my eyes wide.

  The next morning there was a general agreement in the household that I needed to bathe. The cook accompanied Aina and me through the postern gate and down to the bank of a broad green river that ran around three sides of the castle.

  ‘What’s it called?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ll tell you if you tell me your name,’ Aina said.

  I hesitated. My initial muteness and the continued withholding of my name were small acts of power in my powerlessness, but there was something about the girl I liked and I wanted her to like me. ‘Sigrid Thorolfsdottir,’ I said.

  ‘Sigrid,’ she said with satisfaction, and did not attempt to pronounce the second more difficult part of my name. ‘Well, Sigrid, the river is called the Auvézère and flows down towards Périgueux through this plateau which is named the Bocage. Can you swim?’

  I nodded, suppressing my contempt at this ridiculous question.

  ‘Don’t try to escape,’ Aina said. ‘I’ll catch you and you’ll get a whipping so bad you won’t sit down for a fortnight.’

  ‘Alright,’ I told her.

  The place we had come to was a placid sheet of water created by a small waterfall the breadth of the river, just before the bridge. Water roared down in glassy sheer sheets over black boulders. Behind the waterfall, the green placid pool was easy to enter from flat rocks extending towards the river. White fluffy flowers gathered in clumps on the water’s surface and in rocky crevices on the bank. A frog leapt in ahead of me. A few leaves twisted and turned on the surface. Aina and I stripped to our shifts and waded in.

  I swam out to the deep centre of the river, revelling in the sun on my face and the silky liquid sliding over my grimed skin, soaking at my tangled muscles and heart. I breathed in smelling the scent of soil suspended in the water. The sunlight striped the pale skin of my arm under the light green water. Thorgils will find me I told myself. He will come and take me back to my freedom.

  The castle stood above us on a rise in the bend of the Auvézère, banners flying on the towers and at intervals along the steep path leading up to it. A double-arched stone bridge crossed the water a little way upstream and the small village clustered at the foot of the hill near the bridge with irregular height houses and gaily coloured roofs. Two small boats bobbed, tied to the opposite bank, one painted curious patterns in black and white and the other painted brown. Next time if I took a knife from the kitchen to slice their moorings, if I could be sure the oars were in the boat, I could escape.

  Green leaves hung in thick swathes from trees leaning from the bank. Reflected light danced. The church bells chimed the hour – seven strokes and then a joyful pealing calling us to breakfast. The water was surprisingly warm for one who had grown up swimming in icy fjords. I swam round and round in large circles. Aina hauled herself out onto one of the flat stones and sat drying, watching me suspiciously, ready to leap in and give chase if I showed signs of escape. Wait. Watch and wait. Be patient. My father’s voice was in my head, from the times he taught me to hunt. Better to run when I am sure than to risk a beating or worse, a maiming that might ruin my chances of freedom forever. I swam back, shook myself like a dog on the bank and put on my clothes. They were a good fit but old and threadbare in places – Aina’s cast-offs.

  A few days after my arrival Ademar took me to see the castle chaplain, Father Dominic, and explained that I would be instructed as a Christian and then I could be freed and would no longer be a slave.

  ‘No,’ I said firmly.

  ‘Sigrid …’ Ademar began and the chaplain tutted and reached for a wide leather strap hanging on the wall. Ademar stayed the chaplain’s arm and looked enquiring at me. ‘It’s for the best Sigrid. You are in a Christian land now.’

  I eyed the strap but clutched my Thor hammer. I had to remember my brothers, my father, and my homeland at all costs. I must keep something of myself that could not be bought or commanded and I had resolved with myself that I would not lie or compromise concerning my gods.

  ‘No,’ I said loudly, looking with steel into Ademar’s eyes, ‘I am a Northchild.’

  ‘Hmmpf, let me see to this my Lord,’ said the priest, ‘We are told in the Psalms: Thou shalt bruise the heathen with a rod of iron and break them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.’

  ‘No,’ said Ademar, holding up a hand to Father Dominic. ‘I’ll not have her compelled or ill-treated. Very well Sig
rid, then you will continue as a slave if that is your wish. We will ask you again when you have been here a while longer.’

  The other servants were all free, so I was the lowliest person, which meant that I had the worst, most unpleasant jobs that nobody else wanted to do. If the privy needed cleaning that was my job, or if the field needed dunging then I must go and do the work.

  On the rare occasions when I saw Ademar he winked at me and asked me how I did. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘thank you sir.’ He remembered me shackled and dishevelled at the slave market and I felt shame for that.

  ‘Bonne!’ he said.

  When I went to the spigot, Aina sometimes came to stare at me. She sat on the steps, watching me go back and forth between the well and the kitchen. ‘What does it feel like to be a slave?’ Aina asked eventually.

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ I said smugly watching Aina’s eyebrows crease together in confusion.

  The humiliation of my enslavement was hard to bear. In my dreams the silver coils of my brooch transformed into a splendid ship with a serpent masthead and I rode across the sea to Thorgils and Olafr shouting: ‘Leap from the fetters! Escape from the foes!,’ but then my dream turned to nightmare, for I found them harshly used as slaves, working in a mine or sometimes a treadmill. Their backs were streaked purple from the lash and the rest of their flesh had a hideous pallor. The pupils of their eyes were eaten away by smoke so that they could hardly see and groped at me, asking, ‘Is that you Sigrid?’ I woke from such dreams sweating, my eyelashes clumped wet with grief.

  ‘Tell me about your homeland,’ Aina tried when she saw me the next day.

  I considered shaking my head in refusal but I wanted to speak of it. ‘I am from Viken in Norway. My countrymen have travelled all around the world and seen many strange things.’

  ‘What things?’ said Aina in an avid voice.

  ‘On Iceland there are twenty volcanos. They erupt with lava and ash and black sand.’ I searched my memory for what I had heard as a small child and my recollections had no connections, one to another. ‘We had a neighbour who was called Halfdan the Generous with Money but Stingy with Food.’

  Aina laughed, bending over and pressing her hand to her side. ‘You’re making my face ache Sigrid, stop!’ she cried.

  ‘Well it’s not all funny,’ I said. ‘In Norway winters are sometimes so cruel we had to carry the livestock out to the fields in the spring because they were so enfeebled by lack of feed, and if the harvest failed we had to make bread from the bark of trees.’

  ‘That sounds foul,’ she said, pulling a face. ‘What about your gods? You have lots of them?’

  ‘Odinn has a horse called Sleipner with eight legs – very fast. The Gods live in Asgard and they travel across Bifrost the Rainbow Bridge to our world, to Midgard. The underworld is called Niflheim.’

  ‘A rainbow bridge!’ exclaimed Aina and I could see the imagining of it dancing in her eyes. ‘You have goddesses too don’t you?’

  ‘Frigg is the wife of Odinn and the mother of Baldr.’ Aina was staring at me agog. ‘Freyja has a chariot drawn by two cats and she is the goddess of love.’

  ‘Cats?’ queried Aina.

  I nodded yes, my blue eyes wide to express my awe and reverence of my Aesir. ‘Gerdr is the wife of Freyr and she was once a giantess. Sif has golden hair and is the wife of Thor. Skadi used to be married to Njordr the god of the sea but she separated from him and she lives in the mountains and hunts on skis with a bow.’

  Aina’s eyebrows were raised high as she took in this information. Her small mouth was open in a perfect O and she shook her head slowly from side to side. ‘We have Mary,’ she said, ‘she is the mother of Jesus, the son of God, but she was a Virgin and wasn’t married to God. She was married to Joseph a carpenter.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I asked, bemused.

  ‘Yes,’ said Aina and shrugged her shoulders. ‘Tell me more about Skadi who hunts on skis.’

  In return for my tales of gods, Aina told me how one of the Ségur gardeners talked to the plants. ‘And listens to them talking to him too!’ she exclaimed, and she told me that Renaud is known as the Ségur Chronicle because he hears and retails all the gossip. ‘And,’ she said, ‘I overheard my mother’s maid telling the kitchen maid that she would do Phillippe if she got the chance.’ We exchanged baffled looks. Phillippe had just returned from his trading trip.

  ‘I hope she doesn’t mean that she would hurt him,’ I said. ‘I like him.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Aina.

  When I was set to clean the Lord and Lady’s chamber one day, I was astonished by the array of toys Aina possessed: miniature spoons, jugs and goblets for her dolls, glove puppets, a rocking bird that stuck its tongue out from its beak, brightly coloured spinning tops and a hobby-horse with little bells on its harness. Aina showed them to me and let me hold the bird and make its tongue stick out at her.

  On another day Renaud took me and the priest with him out to the sheep who were suffering from murrain disease. Father Dominic opened his Bible and solemnly began to recite from its pages to the stricken flock. I remembered my father telling me that Christians were fools, and I kept the laughter from my face. Sometimes I was sent with the dogs to guard the flock from wolves, to lead sheep and goats back to the sheds and milk them, to do the arm-aching work of making butter and cheese.

  ‘It’s a life of sweat and dirt, maid, but it will soon be over,’ the cook told me, which gave me no comfort. I had to find my brothers and avenge my father before my days were over, and I was just wasting my time here. When I thought of making an escape my heart sank for it had been a journey of many months to come here, through lands that I knew nothing of. There was no sight of the sea. If there had been sea I think I would have just made away in a boat as soon as possible and trusted myself to Odinn. Here I could only think to escape on the river, but I needed to wait and find out more about where it would take me.

  My work was to tend sheep and pigs, help with the harvest, cook, brew beer, wait at table, nurse those in the household who were sick, spin, weave, dye, sew, work in the garden and vineyard and look after the animals in the courtyard. Most of the time I was covered in soot and smuts from cleaning fires or some of my other work and it was near impossible to keep my face, hands and apron clean. I went short on the milk and scraps given to me, leaving them instead for the house spirits hoping they would help me with my chores. I was sorry but also smug when another maid had a misfortune – bruising her hip on the corner of the table in her hurry, scalding her fingers on a hot dish, or dropping and breaking a precious glass – for it was obvious, since they were Christians, that they were not leaving the necessary gifts for the helpful house spirits, whereas I often saw the spirits disappearing around distant corners, little old men with wrinkled faces and pointy hoods, carrying brooms and doing some of my work for me.

  Preparing food in the kitchen that would be carried into the hall, I poured the broth carefully from the pan into three bowls for Ademar, Melisende and Aina, breathing in deeply, savouring the scent of the rich brown soup flecked with orange and white chunks of vegetable. My stomach rumbled, anticipating my own meagre portion of the leftovers later. I slept in the kitchen at nights with the household dogs. I dreamt of my father standing on the far side of the fjord calling to me in the cold, clear air, of the sledge that he made for us one year that we could hitch to a pony and drive through the snow, of Thorgils and I running through dark, slender trees, encumbered by our thick fur cloaks. I dreamt of racing downhill on skis with Olafr to try to get back in time for something urgent – what was it? I woke trying to clutch at the mystery of what we were racing towards, unable to grasp it.

  It was my job to keep an eye on the fire, to riddle it and stoke it up in the mornings before anyone else was up and about. Sometimes I woke late with the cook’s boot poking in my ribs. She was cross that there would be a delay in baking the morning bread. At night, when I finally lay down after my hard labours of the day, I tried to stay
awake to spend a little time in the longed for privacy of my own head, and I would trace my serpent’s curves through its flimsy cotton pocket. I liked to think this caress woke the serpent and it spoke to me telling stories of my homeland and my kin. As the months at Ségur wore on, my recall of my father’s face and voice became vague and he seemed to slip away from me, more and more just a dim reflection in a murky pond, but Thorgils was always vivid, his aquamarine eyes – now green, now blue, depending on whether or not we were on the water – his freckles clustered densely together all over his face.

  Ségur was a mostly harmonious place presided over by Ademar and Melisende. There were subtle gradations of everybody there which I learnt in time. The dairy maid was considered superior to the girl who tended the pigs and she in her turn was considered to have more standing than the maid who looked after the poultry, taking them out for daily walks behind her like a gaggle of school children. The steward Renaud was the most important of Ademar’s servants, and after him came Phillippe, who assisted with the trading, and then the miller, the smith, the foresters, and the herdmen. There were so many servants each with their own duties and rights that it took me a long time to get to know them all and to understand the strange customs. There was a ploughman, a bee-keeper, an oxherd, a cowherd, shepherds, a cheesemaker, a barnman, a woodward, a hayward and sowers.

  Aina told me: ‘Each sower gets to keep one basket of wheat for themselves, for their own strips of field. The cowherd can pasture his cow with ours. If a tree blows down in the forest it belongs to the woodman and the corn that falls by the barndoor belongs to the barnman.’