“I will go and fetch some hides, so you may see them,” Ketil said. “My brother will stay to make sure no others offer twenty-one in our stead.”
He clambered over the side, and took off at a trot to their workshop on the trading road. He passed through the fronting stall and out to the side yard. His wife Tola stood there, at work with some hempen rope, braiding and twining six lengths of it into an open basket-weave. She had each end tethered round a rounded post as she worked her knots, and looked up and smiled as Ketil hurried by.
“A Svear trader. A walrus hide,” Ketil explained, as he vanished into the doorway of their small house. He snatched at a few thick-fleeced sheep-skins, two from their bed, one from the floorboards, and gave each skin a shake. He hustled back to the pier with his arms full of them.
Once aboard he showed the sheep-skins to the Svear, one by one. One had been lightly sheared to be curly, the other two left in the sheep’s longest wool.
“We can give twenty, of this quality, shorn, or long,” he told the man.
“As large as these, or larger,” added Botair, who had only grown more attached to the walrus hide during the little time he had stood over it awaiting his brother.
“And the wool?” asked the Svear. He had handled the fleeces in turn, and stroked them in a way that the brothers knew he valued their softness.
“By the evening you will have all, twenty fleeces of this fineness, a cask of wool-wax, and a sack of wool, shorn and washed. They are ready and waiting. We have only to go to our farm to fetch them.”
The man nodded. “That is good. But there must be two sacks, and they must be of white wool.”
Ketil opened his mouth. The three fleeces he had carried from his house were all grey, one light grey, the other charcoal, and handsome too they were. White sheep were but a third of their flocks, and hard to increase, for even a white ewe could, and often did, bring forth grey lambs.
“White…” repeated Ketil.
Both bothers looked down, and the Svear was forced to speak again.
“I have a hall full of women, and they will give me no peace if I return with no white wool,” he admitted.
They looked at him and reflected. He was a wealthy man, would have at least two wives, and at his age, plenty of daughters too. Grey wool could not be dyed, save to make the lightest of it dark blue or black. The white could take on any colour, yellow, green, red, blues of all ranges, all shades a rich trader’s wives and daughters would covet.
The Svear’s red-haired sons were nodding their heads solemnly behind their father.
Ketil wracked his brains. They could trade with neighbours for enough white. It would be costly, but the single walrus hide would bring them more profit than they had seen in any two years. He nodded to his brother.
“Two sacks of white,” they agreed, and the Svear nodded and smiled. “The woman Rannveig, there,” ended Botair, pointing to the newly-built brew-house not far away, “is a fine brewster. Let us seal our business over a cup of her ale.”
At the pier end the boys watched the men move off and make the turn to Tindr’s. They had been jumping from plank to plank, and now went back to their game. One had a soft piece of limestone with him, and with it had drawn rough squares on the knotty surface. These they must jump in order, and then try jumping to only every other square. Tindr was long of leg and did well. Good-natured Ring was sturdy and strong, and would stagger, laughing, as he fell short. The other two boys were Assur and his younger brother. This last was too small to make any of the longer jumps well, and soon dropped out, but Assur played with intent, hurling his bulky body forward from square to square. He took the chalky limestone from Ring and drew two squares even further away, then gestured to Tindr that he go first. Tindr bit his lower lip as he gauged the distance, then made the jump, landing in the centre of the square with a loud uh.
“Uh,” repeated Assur. “Uh, uh.”
Tindr had turned and was grinning back at them, not knowing what Assur had said.
“You grunt like a pig,” Assur said, looking full at Tindr.
“Go and make your jump,” Ring said.
“You go first,” Assur challenged.
“It is your square, you drew it. Go and jump it.” It was clear from Ring’s crossed arms that he did not think Assur could do so.
Assur crouched and swung his arms, then made the leap. He fell short, both feet striking the drawn line.
Ring hooted, and Tindr laughed his short braying laugh. Assur turned on them. He scanned their faces; even his brother had laughed. His cheeks flamed red, so that the purple mark on his neck stood out less sharply.
“You grunt!” he repeated, fixing on Tindr. “You grunt like a pig.” Tindr was looking, unknowing, at him, and now Assur lowered his head and swung it from side to side, as a sow does ploughing up the soil for grubs and roots.
Tindr’s eyebrows lifted, and his blue-white eyes narrowed under them. He charged at Assur, arms swinging.
The heavier boy overpowered him, and with a wild swing knocked Tindr in the head, sending him face-down, sprawling onto the planking. He would have rolled off and into the water if Ring had not grabbed at him and reached his arm.
“He began it,” Assur was saying. His little brother was hanging around his leg, stopping him from moving towards Tindr, who lay on his back at the edge of the planking.
Ring heard a man yell, and looked towards Tindr’s house. His father Botair, along with Tindr’s father, Dagr, were already at the pier mouth, and striding to them.
Tindr was sitting up now. Blood was running from his nose, and his eyes were dazed, as if he could not focus them.
Assur’s small brother looked as if he wanted to run, but there was nowhere to go. He began shuffling his feet from side to side, and began to sniffle. Assur put his hands on his hips and faced the coming men, but as they grew closer he dropped them at his sides.
Dagr took it in as he approached. There was so much Tindr did not know. Things which other boys learnt by hearing were lost to him. What he knew of folk and their ways must be read through his eyes. He missed so much through not hearing.
And he knew that he did not punish Tindr enough; that good as he was, he was, in his way, spoilt. “I will not let one birch twig fall on him,” Rannveig had warned Dagr the year earlier, when Tindr had set a hay rick alight at the farm by shooting with flaming arrows. “We must make him understand, but he will never be whipped.”
“Who did this,” Dagr asked, looking to his son’s bloody face. He saw the small bone whistle Tindr wore about his neck was broken in half.
There was silence for a moment, and then Ring answered. “Assur hit Tindr with his fist; he was making fun of him.”
“He began it,” Assur retorted. “He came at me first.”
Dagr had before seen this boy whose neck bore the ugly birth-mark which marred him, and seen his people, the mother a faded and worn shell, and the father loud-mouthed and untrusting. That the boy was marked had made Dagr wonder if he would become friends with Tindr, as if the two shared some kinship. But each time they were together there was trouble.
“Let this be the end of it,” Dagr ordered.
Chapter the Eleventh: Estrid
IT had been a snowy Winter, and Tindr had not seen Estrid during all of it. He had only seen Ragnfast once, when his cousin had fastened on his wooden skis and kicked and poled his way across the ridged drifts of his family's farm land. Ragnfast had made his way to Tindr's, stroking through the forest which then lay open to the eye under its blanket of snow, and spent two mirthful days with them. They skied long distances together across fields and meadows, tracking rabbits and watching kites and goshawks soar over their heads. But Estrid he had not seen since before Blót.
She came to the trading road with her parents and her older sister, walking alongside the ox cart they had driven. It was packed with bundles of wadmal, and would return with pottery cups, an iron basin, new lengths
of hempen rope, a small tub of beeswax, and sacks of grain to last them until their own oats and barley could be harvested. Estrid was already a good spinner, as was her sister, and both her sister and mother had worked hard at their upright looms over the Winter, beating up the woof of the thick fabric. As Estrid helped carry the bolts out and lay them in the waggon bed she had felt a thrill of pride in knowing that some of what she held in her hands had been teased and spun by her. Their flock was not a large one, but her father was jealous of their care, guarding them from straying and from theft, insisting they be covered by the best rams he could find, and shearing each himself; he would allow no hired man to help.
Once at the trading road Estrid was free to roam and see what friends might be about. Her parents and sister would be busy at the stalls and warehouses. It was mid-way in Spring and not all of the trades-folk had opened, but the rope-making brothers Ketil and Botair were always there, and Botair's boys, Runulv and Ring might be about. The brothers, tho', were now of an age where they no longer played, and Estrid, when she saw them again after the absence of so many months, was aware that they were become almost men. She came across them on the beach. Botair had bought a boat, with hopes of both trading and fishing from it, and the boys were working within as it lay hauled up on the pebbles not far from Botair's stall. They barely glanced at her, gave her a wave and a smile, and turned back to their task of enlarging the opening for a bigger steering oar. So she kept walking, towards Tindr's and the brew-house that his mother kept.
The day was cool and the skies filled with scudding clouds, and the wind blowing made it feel as if Winter was come again. She was glad to walk past the empty brew-house and into the kitchen yard, where Rannveig was standing near the warm little malting-oven where she toasted the grain for her ale. Gudfrid was there, too, turning from the smokehouse door. There was already something in a cauldron over the fire. Both women waved her over.
“And how pretty you have grown!” was the first thing the cook said to her, which made Estrid's cheek colour.
Rannveig nodded her head in agreement. Her mouth was smiling at Estrid, but it was not without a twinge that she looked upon her; her youngest girl would now have been about Estrid's age.
“A cup of broth,” she offered instead, and dipped into a thick pottery cup a ladle of the fragrant broth in which a capon was simmering.
“Tindr is about, he will be glad to see you,” she added, when Estrid had finished the broth. Rannveig stood up from the work-table where they were sitting and scanned her small garden. She thought he was out checking on his woodland bees; best keep the girl here until he returned.
He did so not long after, a sack tied to his waist which held a few tools he had taken with him, lest the forest hives needed to be better secured to the stands he had built. Later in the season the bees’ wax itself would fix the skep to the platforms, but now with the bees still sleepy they might be upset in a strong Spring gust.
He greeted Estrid with a grin, touching his ear, touching his eye, pointing to her: I am happy to see you. Tindr did not see how much Estrid had changed. He saw she was taller but little else; he knew he was taller too, his legs longer than last’s years leggings. He was glad she was back, glad that soon with longer days they might wander the beaches and choose the best of the shell-shaped rocks to take home with them.
First he took her to one of the garden hives. Estrid had no fear of Tindr's bees. He moved slowly and calmly about them, and if he was ever stung she never knew it. Certainly they had never stung her. They walked together now to one at the edge of the herb garden. The domed skep perched on an old tree stump there. The straw plaits Tindr had woven and twined together were bleached and worn; he would shape another to replace it this year. The skep seemed still. Tindr placed his hands at the base, and tried to lift. It stuck in one place, and he drew his knife's point along a part of the yellow-stained rim, breaking a waxy seal. He took the skep in both hands and slowly lifted it. Estrid had seen inside before, but each time she did her grey eyes opened wide. Pale yellow, golden brown, dark brown, smoothness and lumpiness, a mass of slow moving tiny bodies. A smell like the sweet tapers Rannveig made, and the smell of a spoon of honey being brought to the lips, and a smell of warm soil. As Tindr peered inside, a few bees crawled out upon his hands, resting there, wings motionless. Estrid watched him smile as he looked, and then his hands slowly rotated the skep down to its base. He placed his hands on the outside until the bees that had rested there flew off.
One of them landed on Estrid's face. She flinched, and her eyes crossed as they turned towards the tiny creature on her cheek. Tindr smiled, stretched out his hand, and laid it upon her cheek. He kept smiling at her until the bee crawled onto his thumb. He slowly lifted it away, brought it to his mouth, and breathed upon it. The slow wings began to beat, and off it flew. Estrid raised her hand to her cheek where the tiny legs had tickled her, and smiled back at Tindr. He treated her as gently as he did his honey bees.
After this they walked to the side of the garden that fronted the beach. Dagr had built a low plank fence here, just tall enough to keep the salt spray from Rannveig's brewing herbs. In its sheltered lee a cluster of wild flowers had begun to bloom. Estrid bent and picked one of the yellow ones; they were not out yet at her parents’ farm. She plucked off the petals, one by one, and began to sing a song that all children knew. Tindr had watched her and other girls sing this, many times, and smiled as Estrid's mouth opened. As she sang she nodded her head once to the left, then to the right, then looked up into the sky, pulling each petal in turn. It was a game, and after she had finished with one flower, she picked another to begin again. Tindr lifted his hand and laid it on her white throat, just where the small knob was moving as the shape of her mouth changed. She smiled at him, and Tindr began to sing too. He watched her mouth, and felt with his fingers. She let off pulling the petals, and helped him by beating time with the hand that held the flower. He tried to move his lips as she did, make the same shapes hers did. His song was a honking bray, but he was happy with it. She lifted her other hand and placed it on Tindr's throat, wanting to feel what he felt as he touched her there. The knob on his throat was larger and moved more. She could feel it ripple up and down as his bray grew louder or less shrill. They were both laughing as they sang.
They were standing face-to-face, Estrid with her back to the garden, Tindr with his to the sea. Of a sudden Estrid stopped. She was looking past Tindr’s shoulder, and he turned to see what she looked at. The boy Purple Neck was there. He had been walking on the beach and saw them there.
Both Tindr and Estrid dropped their hands, but Assur had seen them at their play. He moved to the low plank fence and stepped over, unbidden, into Tindr’s garden.
Tindr did not want him there. He watched Assur say something to Estrid, saw the slight nod of the boy’s yellow head in his direction. Assur was smiling at Estrid. She was still holding a flower in her hand, one that bore but two petals, but that hand was now down at her side. She smiled briefly at Assur, then looked at Tindr. But Assur was speaking again. He lifted his hand, put it on Estrid’s throat. The flinch she gave was greater than that with which she had greeted the bee. Assur was talking at her, moving his other hand, but she remained still. He reached down and took her hand, began lifting it to his own throat. The purple birth-mark almost touched the knob there which moved as he spoke to her.
The year she had first met Assur she had wanted to touch that purple mark. Today she did not.
Tindr saw her brow scrunch. She bit her lower lip, then gave her head the smallest of shakes, which only grew when Assur pressed her hand on his neck.
“Nai,” she said.
Tindr remembered the word Nai, knew what it meant; remembered it just as he had Nenna and Da and his own name, Tindr. He often knew when it was spoken; saw the upper lip lifting and rounding. Sometimes the head would shake from side to side just as Estrid’s was now. It meant the same as his sign, Do not do, fists clenche
d, wrists crossed.
“Nai,” she said again, but Assur did not release her. She pulled her hand from Assur’s neck and pushed him away, her narrow shoulders turning, her face twisting as she did. Assur caught her hand and tried to pull it back to him.
Tindr bared his teeth at Assur, and lunged at him.
Assur jumped back. The deaf boy was howling at him, a horrible shrill cry that he thought only ogres could make.
Tindr did not come at him again, just stood his ground. Assur was scared of him, scared of being like him, but it was the deaf boy Estrid liked.
Assur saw Estrid’s face was pink with anger, and he thought, disgust. It was aimed at him. The deaf boy could touch her, and she welcomed his touch. But not his. She was looking at the ground now. The flower she still held had lost its final petals. He did not mean to do this, and he did not know how to tell her. Everything he did around her angered her, or made her run away. Everything he did when she was near him was wrong. He did not know how to tell her this, and made a little movement towards her, lifting his hand.
Estrid stared back at him. She read in Assur’s face that he was sorry, could see it in his slumped shoulders too, but he had frightened her. And he had worried Tindr so that he had become something else, like a wild animal. When Tindr screamed like that, it frightened her as well. She knew she should be kind to everyone, but she did not like Assur, and it was all his own fault.
She looked to Tindr, who met her eyes. They knew Assur’s father beat him; they had seen him strike Assur hard on the trading road. Sometimes Assur had black eyes or red welts on his wrists. But neither wanted him here now.
Tindr jerked his head in the direction of the fence. A low whine, almost a growl, came from under his gritted teeth.
Assur took a step back, shifted his eyes, saw that the deaf boy’s kin had moved from the kitchen yard to the foot of the garden. It was not the sight of Rannveig and Gudfrid that drove Assur away. It was the faces of Tindr and Estrid.
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