The island is teeming with life. Raucous seabirds wheel around us, sit on nests on the narrow ledges of the guano-streaked cliffs like a great shrieking city, skid across the surface of the ocean carrying flapping fish in their beaks, plunge-dive at dark clouds of mackerel. Aina and I lay on our bellies on the edge of the cliff, watching the birds. There are fat black and white birds with striped beaks and long talons like the fingers of a lute player. Aina laughs pointing at some birds that have no nests and balance their eggs on their toes instead.
The hazy blue-green view of sea, sky, islands, distant mountains, yellow beaches and just discernible settlements on the mainland stretches all around us. Aina stands and turns round and round with her arms flung out until she falls over dizzy, watching the swoop of screeching gulls from her back on the grass. ‘If this is captivity, Sigrid, it’s not too bad at all.’
‘No,’ I agree, ‘although I would not be one of the slaves on this island for anything. Commanded to any man’s bed, with no control of the fate of any child I bore, worked hard through all the hours of daylight.’
‘Yes,’ Aina says, sobering.
A ship passing from Norway docks for two nights to take on fresh water and Olafr and Thorgils entertain the pilot and crew with two days of feasting, drinking bouts and entertainments. A huge cauldron of ale sits in the middle of the hall and Morag and the other slaves hurry back and forth dipping drinking horns into the liquid and handing them back to the thirsty men. Late in the evening, Thorgils has to diplomatically intervene to prevent one of the visiting crewmen forcing Morag to his bed.
In the morning when the headaches have cleared a little, the visitors engage in contests with Thorgils’ men – wrestling and horse racing. The crews practise ‘swine-array,’ marching in a tight wedge formation, clashing together harmlessly, or more or less harmlessly. Olafr shows off his ability to cast two spears at the same time. Thorgils shows his skill in casting a twisting spear with a cord looped about the shaft so that it spins in flight. They are both stripped to their breeches, gold rings gleaming on their upper arms: Thorgils, large like a bear, his muscled arms and chest clad in light red hair, dense freckles dusted across his shoulders; Olafr is as tall and well-muscled as my brother, but slighter, his sinews sleek beneath his golden skin, like a lynx. Practising together they show how they can fight with either hand to bewilder their opponent or in case one arm is wounded. Aina sits on the grass, at the front of the spectators, elbows on her knees, chin in her hands, her eyes wide and avid.
‘Let’s see the spear, trick, Thorgils,’ calls Olafr. Thorgils stands at one end of the field and Olafr at the other holding an unblunted spear. He hurls it accurately at Thorgils who dodges to one side, catches the spear back-handed in mid-air, swings his arm back up, and flings the spear at Olafr who ducks to the side, rolling on the ground. Other men try this trick unsuccessfully and Morag has to bind several wounds as a result.
On the second evening there are board games and then as the drinking gets underway again, humorous exchanges of insults.
‘You are a hot rabbit!’ a crewman shouts at Olafr, imitating the mating movements of a male rabbit.
‘But your trouser-snake is too cold to emerge from its hole,’ Olafr yells back.
‘You mince around like a woman,’ Toki shouts to Gunnulf Flatnose who does not take this particular insult in good humour, instead lunging across the table to grip Toki’s throat in his huge hand, so that Thorgils has to hammer on the table with his fist to get them to break apart.
The second morning after the visiting ships docked I enter the hall from fetching water to be greeted by an extraordinary sight. A person covered in different coloured shaggy furs, wearing a great many strands of threaded beads and stones and holding a long wooden staff is seated high and precariously on five feather cushions. Several women of the house, including Aina, stand around this raised up person chanting. A small bowl on the ground has a few smouldering leaves in it that are giving off a dizzying pungency. It is impossible to see the person’s face because it is enveloped in a furry hood but I can see the mouth below the edge of the hood chewing or mumbling. That mouth seems to be rolling its tongue around and around. It begins to babble – incomprehensible mutterings in a low, inhuman voice.
Morag stands at the back not joining in the chanting.
‘What is it?’ I whisper.
‘She is named a völva,’ Morag says. ‘She came with the ship and can tell us the future they say.’ Morag crosses herself and I wonder how Lady Melisende would feel to see Aina chanting there of Odinn and Freyja.
The hooded woman stamps her staff once and the chanting stops. Aina sneeks an amused look over her shoulder to me and I frown at her. She should not participate and scoff if that is what she is doing. The völva pronounces that the harvest will be good, the milk will flow in the goats’ udders, next winter will be mild and then the women begin to ask her questions.
‘Will I carry this child to term?’
‘Yes, it is a boy.’
‘Will my master marry me?’
‘No. He has a wife in Norway and will sell you to the next slaver passing this way if you pester him.’
‘Will I marry the man I love or the man I should?’ I hear Aina ask in her clear voice and halting Norse.
The hooded head turns in her direction. It is impossible to see anything of the völva, so shrouded is she in her strange clothes and decorations, that she seems more a thing than a person. ‘You will marry the man you love,’ she pronounces, ‘if you tie my runes to your wrist for three days and nights and pray to Freyja naked under the moon. Aallatti!’ One of the assistants with the völva passes a rune stick to Aina who looks at it curiously.
I frown. The seer’s answers are sowing much mischief it seems to me. I watch Aina tie the rune stick to her wrist and when the ceremony is over and the völva lifted down from her cushions, I follow Aina outside. ‘Aina, what are you doing, chanting with pagans? What man do you love? You’re not really going to pray to Freyja naked under the moon are you? Show me those runes now. You don’t even know what they say.’
‘No thank you Sigrid. It’s my business not yours,’ she tells me tartly and skips away.
She could not think that Olafr will marry her, surely? I know her head is stuffed with romantic longings but that would be ridiculous. Thorgils told me that Olafr is preparing to reclaim his birthright to the throne of Norway. Aina’s ransom would help him in that but his wife will not be the heiress of a minor Frankish Viscount. She will be a Queen or a Princess and bring him military allegiance. I run after Aina and catch up with her. ‘There’s a big difference between being a prized concubine and being a legal wife,’ I tell her, ‘It’s not worth it, and what happens if you are ransomed and returned to Guy without your honour? He will not take you then.’
She frowns at me. ‘I don’t know what you are talking about Sigrid.’
The following morning I look for Aina in the hall and cannot find her, as often happens now. I know that she will be down at the beach, watching the men working on the ships, pestering my brother and Olafr with a million questions about Norway and seafaring. I walk down swiftly to ensure that she is safe and am relieved to see that she has at least had the good sense to take Morag with her. Olafr and Thorgils are looking over the ships. Thorgils has worked on the less battered ship, The Crane, and it shines now as if readying for its maiden voyage; its planks repaired, lashed with new ropes and nails, freshly tarred, newly carved stems at either end resembling the beak of a crane. The ship that we travelled in, however, The Orm, is still a sorry sight. Thorgils has used axes to prop it up on the beach and the gaps between the warped planks and the damage at the front of the hull, where it has repeatedly beached and scraped across gravel and rocks, is clear to see. The broken yard and the torn sail have been removed and will have to be replaced. The dragon’s head has been taken down and carefully wrapped.
‘Is it done for, Thorgils?’ asks Olafr, ‘just a ridicule-ship after
all our adventures in it? It was my first ship,’ he says to me, turning at the crunch of my feet on the sand. Aina takes advantage of my presence to move up close to listen to the men’s conversation and grabs my hand, and both men take advantage of her approach to stare openly at her. I frown at Thorgils sternly and he resumes his work. The fraying thong that binds the völva’s rune bracelet to Aina’s narrow wrist tickles the side of my hand.
‘No, not done for,’ Thorgils says, walking around the ship, considering it from every angle. ‘I can repair The Orm, but it will be months of labour, making a new yard, replacing the planking, but she could be seaworthy, fit for you again in three or four months time. It will take a fair time for the women to weave enough cloth to stitch together for a new sail too.’
Olafr nods. ‘Well, make the repairs then, Thorgils, and I must sail without you this time.’
Olafr has decided to sail to Dublin where the King’s sister, Gyda, has become a rich widow and invited suitors to woo her at the Thing – the Norse Assembly. Since Olafr needs both a wife and money he intends to try his luck. Looking at him – lean, lithe, blond, fearless, the great-grandson of King Harald Finehair and his wife Swanhild, the only survivor of the royal race of Norway – I think it likely that when we next see him he will be a husband alright.
‘If Lady Gyda will have me, I’ll sail to England with her, for I have business there. When you hear news of the ransom, send word,’ he tells Thorgils. ‘Will you come with me, Sigrid?’ he says, surprising me. ‘Leif Hairy Breeks has a liking to take you to wife.’ Aina gasps and clutches at my arm, shaking her head. ‘His chest is filled to the brim with gold and silver, and I can vouch that he would make you a fine husband, foster-sister,’ Olafr goes on, frowning at Aina.
‘I thank you, Olafr,’ I say formally, ‘and I thank Leif, but I am not inclined to marry at present. I wish to stay with my brother for a while, since I have newly found him.’
Olafr looks regretful at my reply but nods his acknowledgement of my decision. ‘Take this then, little Sigrid,’ he says, removing a thick gold ring from his finger and placing it in my palm, ‘we three are rich indeed in our reunion and I will be richer still when your friend’s ransom arrives!’
At dinner that evening I surreptitiously look at Leif’s gleaming yellow hair and long moustache which he keeps well washed and combed, and I look at his bulging arm muscles, clinched with gold rings, and hope I have made the right decision. Despite my desire to stay with Aina and with Thorgils for now, I do not wish to be an old maid. I am not a young girl and I cannot turn down too many husbands.
Before bed I look at myself in a burnished plate and wind my loosened hair around my fingers. I have never thought of myself in this way before: as a woman that a man might ask for.
In the morning we stand on the beach and watch as the cover is thrown off The Crane and it slides on its rollers, thundering into the water, looking splendid there after Thorgils’ hard work. Aina is standing some way off from me laughing with Ragnhild and I suspect, that despite my attempts at disapproving surveillance she waited for me to be fast asleep last night to creep out and danced naked as the völva told her to. Leif is one of the men standing on the beach, waiting to board. I step to his side and touch his sleeve to gain his attention.
‘Lady?’
‘May Thor protect your journey, Leif,’ I say shyly. ‘I thank you for the honour you did me … asking for me.’ I look down, faltering. Perhaps I should have said nothing. ‘But I need to spend time now being a sister, before I can think of being a wife.’ I look up at him now and there is a silence between us before he speaks.
‘Then in time I may ask for you again,’ he says.
I give him a small smile and move towards Aina. Olafr reaches her before me and with irony in his voice, he wishes Aina happiness in her future marriage, tells her that she is a maiden for kissing and suddenly takes her in his arms, pressing a long kiss to her mouth. Aina struggles in his embrace, pushing at his shoulders and I move towards them, planning to intercede but Olafr releases her just before I reach them. She is breathless and flustered, her mouth puffy and reddened. She raises a hand to slap him and I catch her elbow and tuck her hand firmly under my arm. ‘Fare well, Olafr,’ I say to him, and he laughs loudly at both of us as he balances up the oar, boarding the ship. We watch The Crane’s hull slice smoothly through the sea and Olafr, and Leif with him, sail from view.
I am relieved to see over the next few days that Aina does not seem to pine at Olafr’s absence. At dinner, Thorgils mentions her betrothal.
‘I do not wish to marry Guy,’ Aina says sulkily. ‘I hope he doesn’t pay the stupid ransom.’
‘No you don’t,’ Thorgils tells her bluntly. ‘If your Lord Guy does not pay then Olafr will get his price for you another way and you’ll like it even less.’ I see fear creep over her face then, and no doubt she is remembering my tale of how Olafr’s own mother had been sold as a bed-slave, even though she was a queen. Thorgils studies her face for some time. ‘In Norway we do not marry off our women against their wishes and if a marriage does not work we divorce.’
‘Well, that is very sensible,’ she says, raising her eyebrows defiantly to me, as if it were my fault that she is betrothed to Guy. All I have done is try to get her to see reason, to accept the inevitable with dignity instead of petulance.
In the morning I wake to a glorious sunrise over the sea and mist coming off the surface of the water. I offered to Thorgils and Ragnhild that I would assist with the weaving of the new sail but Aina screwed her nose up hearing my suggestion. She has no patience for hours of weaving and will aim to avoid it. I walk down to the landing beach and she is there at the water’s edge skipping stones. She points at dense underwater kelp wafting in the shallow waters and the bobbing heads of seals, out in the swell. Some days on the island we see porpoises and dolphins leaping the waves in graceful arcs or white dangling jellyfish and pink lobsters in the water, crabs climbing rocks on the beach. Yellow-headed gannets swoop and black choughs stroke the thermals with broad fingered wings. ‘I love my prison!’ Aina shouts to me above the wind, her arms flung wide.
‘I need to worship my God,’ Aina says to Thorgils this morning. ‘May I have your permission to pray at the altar in the small chapel in the woods?’
He considers and then nods. ‘You’re not Christian, are you Sigrid?’ he asks.
‘No, brother,’ I say. ‘I refused to abandon Thor and Odinn, but I will accompany Aina for her devotions.’
‘To stand by Thor and Odinn in these late days is to be a dog howling in the wilderness, it seems,’ says Thorgils.
The small chapel amongst the trees is still mostly intact. We sit near the altar in the dark wood pews looking at the colourful stained glass windows and Aina bows her head in prayer for some time. ‘I prayed that God will comfort my mother,’ she tells me. Outside in the graveyard, generations of monks’ graves are starkly marked with rows of brown wooden crosses. Aina walks around looking at the names and dates scratched there. ‘Hundreds of Christian men worshipped and lived here before the coming of your countrymen,’ she says. There are inscribed stones set along the paths to the chapel but I cannot divine the meaning and see that these are not runes put here by the current occupants but come from the earlier Christian inhabitants. ‘I think some is Latin,’ Aina tells me and reads out: ‘All you who walk past, pray for the soul of Cadwagn. But I can’t decipher most of it.’
We walk back past the beach and stop to watch Thorgils at work, standing astride an oak log, swinging an adze skilfully to shape a new stem for The Orm. Beside him, his tool chest is open, and curious, we admire the array of saws, rasps, axes, gouges, chisels and hammers, neatly arranged within it. ‘I can make you anything in wood, sister,’ Thorgils tells me, pausing to wipe the sweat from his eyes, ‘from a spoon to a house.’
‘Let’s start with a spoon, then,’ Aina laughs. ‘Sigrid loves porridge.’
That evening when Thorgils and I are alone togeth
er, staring into the fire, he tells me he was married a few years back to a young woman in Viken named Hildr. ‘I am haunted by one mistake, Sigrid. I knew Hildr was with child at the beginning of the summer but I chose to follow Olafr viking to increase our wealth. My homestead was remote and we had no thralls or slaves then to keep her company. She was alone when she tried to birth our child and alone when she died. I dug her grave near the cliff’s edge and buried her with her wool combs and loom weights. I put her beads and a filigree gold pin I gave her on our wedding day beside her on the cold earth on a square of blue cloth. She was only twenty, Sigrid, and our daughter never saw the sky or the sea. The child was so tiny I could hold her cold body with her head nestled in one hand and her perfect toes in the bend of my arm.’ He holds out his big hand, cupped, to show me where the baby’s head had fitted and draws a finger to mark at his elbow where the child’s feet had rested. ‘I was sorrow-clenched Sigrid. I laid the baby gently in the grave, in the crook of Hildr’s arm.’
‘I’m so sorry Thorgils.’ I sniff and wipe my eyes, reaching up a hand to wipe a tear from his cheek too as it trickles towards his sandy beard.
‘Hildr made this tunic for me while I was away and she nurtured our child in her womb. I found it folded neatly at the foot of the bed where she and the child lay pale and dead.’ He tugs at the garment, seeming to notice for the first time that it is threadbare and has a hole at one elbow.
‘Did you name the child?’ I ask. He shakes his head. ‘Perhaps you should and carve both their names on a rune stick?’
He looks at me with interest. ‘You give her a name, Sigrid. You are her aunt.’
I think carefully. ‘We should call her Ingemar Thorgilsdottir.’ It had been the name of our mother who I never knew.
‘Hildr and Ingemar. I will carve the runes. You’re right, always right, little Sigrid. You used to irritate me in our childhood with your precocious wisdom and unwelcome advice to your much bigger brother! Like an old scold in the body of a five year old.’ I laugh with him but see the pain still trying to pretend it is past in his eyes. ‘Sigrid the Deep-Minded,’ he says affectionately and the name sticks to me even more so because Aina finds it amusing to call me that, especially at times when I am trying to give her good advice that she intends to ignore.
Viking Hostage Page 21
