Tindr

by Octavia Randolph

  She would not, he knew, become the Lady of the Forest to him now. She gazed upon him just the same, a reminder of the bond between them. He felt the coolness of her woman’s flesh under his hands again, and the warmth beneath that coolness. He felt her palm upon his chest, lying over his beating heart. He saw the beautiful mouth come to his hands and anoint them with her kiss. Here, in her garb as a white hind, she came to remind him of all this, of what she had given him, and how he was given to Her.

  The water was come into his eyes, gazing on her. When she bounded away he dropped his head and cried out long and bitter tears.

  Chapter the Twenty-first: The Golden Cross

  The Year 884

  WORR, the horse-thegn of Kilton, had sailed for Angle-land the day before. He had taken the serving girl Sparrow with him, whom he would deliver to the convent at Oundle in Lindisse. From thence, before he returned to Kilton, he would journey on to Four Stones, to tell the Lady Ælfwyn of the death of Godwin, the Lord of Kilton; and give to her Ceridwen’s letter.

  The mistress of Tyrsborg had awakened thinking of these things, that Worr and Sparrow and the merchant ship that bore them were likely past the southern tip of Svear-land now. Turning in her bed, she slipped her hand up on the bare chest of her husband. With his wounded thigh he must lie almost immobile the night long, the leg propped up on cushions to help the swelling. He had slept but lightly; the pain assured that, but he drowsed now. She pulled herself up so her lips could just brush the scar upon his cheek, and left their bed.

  Out in the kitchen yard Helga had marshaled the children. Little Eirian and Yrling were already sitting at the table there, spooning skyr and honey into their mouths; as soon as they had wakened Helga had shooed all the young ones out of the hall to leave quiet for the healing of the Dane. The boys Ceric and Hrald stood at the basin of warm water Gunnvor the cook had poured out for them on one end of her work table. Ceridwen could not keep the smile from her face as she saw them; the wonder of having them here was still fresh upon her. As she neared Helga dipped her head to her, and the boys looked up too from where they splashed their faces and hands. They had their tunics off, and as Ceridwen came to them her eye was stopped by a glimmer of gold suspended from her son’s neck, hanging above the washing basin.

  Her breath caught, and she felt her heart contract. Ceric bore about his neck the golden cross that Gyric had cherished, that given him by Ælfred, King, as token of his love following Gyric’s return to Kilton. The cross was from Rome, blessed by the Holy Father himself, and Ælfred had valued it above all his possessions, yet had freely given it to his friend for the succor it might give him. Gyric’s eyes had been burnt out by renegade Danes, but he recalled the golden cross well, and the moment the messenger had placed it in his hands he knew what it was. He wore it each day thenceforth. Ceridwen had never seen him without it. Now her son wore it.

  She came up to the boys, kissing each in turn. It was a moment before she could speak, though Hrald looked to her expectantly, hoping for news of his father’s continued healing. They toweled themselves and pulled on their tunics. Ceric’s silver-hilted seax, once also his father’s, lay on the table, and he buckled its belt about his waist. His mother found voice.

  “The cross you wear,” she began to Ceric.

  He nodded. “It is father’s. The Lady Modwynn gave it me, last year.”

  She knew it was not likely that Ceric could recall his father wearing it himself; he had been so young at Gyric’s death. Now both cross and seax had come into his keeping; his uncle had given him the latter when she and Ceric had left Kilton more than three years earlier to visit Four Stones. She was struck, too, that Ceric no longer called his grandmother that; he was growing up, and at twelve years used the more formal address for Gyric’s mother. In three more years he would be given a sword.

  “It was a gift from King Ælfred. He is my godfather,” Ceric went on, as if his mother were likely to forget that.

  Ceridwen could only smile and nod. She turned to Hrald.

  “Your father grows stronger by the day,” she told him. “I think it will not be long before he can ride again. Then he will take you to Tindr’s cousin, Ragnfast, and you will return with horses for each of you.”

  Tindr came and joined them as they sat. Enough had changed in the last three days that sitting down in the morning sunshine and sharing food took on added meaning. Tindr spent a moment looking about the table before he began. Scar was not there; with his bad wound it would be a while before he could easily walk. Bright Hair sat across from him, tearing bread for the little ones at her side. He followed her eyes down to them. Tindr felt a deep affection for these children; they loved and trusted him, begged that he lift them upon the horses to be led about, helped him gather eggs and feed the beasts, laughed with him and made up new signs only the three of them could understand. He was a part of this place. He looked over at the boys. He had watched Bright Hair hold and kiss them, knew she cherished their coming. They were to be a new part of this place, and he would be part of their lives here. He would matter to them, and them to him.

  His thoughts moved on, and his lids dropped a moment over his eyes. He saw again the warrior who had brought these boys. He forced his eyes back to the smiling faces of the little ones.

  All partook of what Gunnvor had made, and she too quitted her post at her cook-fire and broke bread with them. She had baked the loaves just this morning, and they were warm enough that the soft butter they spread beneath a crackling crust melted into slick golden droplets, so rich that the boys were licking their hands. There was honey too, as much as the boys liked, which there never was enough of at home, and they knew they had Tindr to thank for this. The boys looked shyly at him, sometimes with side-wise eyes, as he sat amongst them. He had already shown the boys how good he was around horses, which mattered to both of them, and they had the promise from Hrald’s father that Tindr could teach them the ways of the forest. Now they watched Tindr put down his bread and gesture to Ceric’s mother. He pointed to the boys, made a motion as if he were pulling an arrow from a quiver and setting it to the bow, then pointed to his work bench in the stable. She watched with care, nodding the while, then spoke to them.

  “Tindr asks if he should make bows for you.”

  “Yes! Yes,” they both said.

  She smiled. “Já, já,” she corrected, which Hrald, who knew Norse, at once repeated.

  Later that day Ceric came to her, alone. Yrling trailed the boys everywhere, but was just now stacking a pile of blocks on the table by Tyrsborg’s stone end. He was out from underfoot from Gunnvor’s cooking work there, but where she and Helga could keep an eye on him. Hrald had joined him in his building, and Eirian had wriggled in as well, claiming a few for her own.

  Ceridwen was standing at her linen loom near the open side door. One look at Ceric’s face made her set her shuttle down, tucking it between the taut warp threads. After what Ceric, and all of them, had been through she was alert to his changing moods; it was difficult herself to focus long on any task. In the past she could lose herself in spinning or weaving, but with the little ones scampering about, and now the demands of caring for her husband and making the boys comfortable she was never long at anything. And she was fighting her own memories of Godwin’s arrival, and death.

  It was of this last that her son wished to speak. He could not do so at first, and after she greeted him with her smile she stood looking at him. Ceric looked down. She knew then to pick out her shuttle from her warp, and began to drive it through the opened strings, her eyes on her work, not him.

  “My uncle’s…grave,” he said at last. The inside of his lip had been split when his uncle had knocked his seax out of his hand, and he felt the raised line of the small wound now as he spoke.

  She paused, her fingers resting just above the waiting linen.

  “I would like to put a cross there,” he told her.

  She turned to face him. “Of course,” she an
swered. Tindr had made a small wooden cross for Sparrow; he could make one larger.

  “Uncle said this was a God-less heathen place,” Ceric reported. “There are no priests here, no church.”

  His hand had gone to his chest. She knew the golden cross lay beneath, under his tunic.

  She dropped her voice even lower. “There are no priests, nor any church,” she said, all her gentleness in her tone. “Gotland is a heathen place. But not God-less. There are many Gods. The same our people in Angle-land worshipped not long ago. The same my own father and kin worshipped,” she ended.

  It took him a long time to answer, and she returned to her weaving, waiting.

  “Uncle said that you…are damned. That you are turned heathen, and will burn in Hell. Like – your new husband.”

  She let out her breath as softly as she could. “When did he say all these things?”

  “On our journeying here. Every day, both when we were riding to Hrald’s, and then when we were aboard ship.”

  So both boys had heard him say such things. Her throat felt like it was closing. “And…do you believe what he said?” She waited a moment before she went on.

  “This is only your third day here. But you have seen kindness already, from the folk here; and seen the type of hall-moot that the folk hold to make sure of justice when there is trouble.” She paused again, turned to look at him, but he again was looking down.

  “All the folk here are heathen, all of them,” she went on, stressing this last. “Do you think all here will burn in Hell?”

  She watched him swallow, saw the green eyes look bravely into hers.

  “All of them?” His voice was but a whisper.

  She gave a single nod of her head. “I am heathen,” she told him. “I was baptised as a child, just as Sidroc was as a man. But I choose, as he does, to worship the old Gods of our folk.”

  “He is not our folk,” Ceric said quickly.

  “He is a Dane, yes. But the Gods of the Danes and the Gods of the Saxons and Angles are the very same.” She paused again. “We are cousins. The priest Dunnere at Kilton teaches you our history; how we came many years ago and claimed the island from the people of Caesar, who were dying out. My father’s folk – and your grandfathers, both of them – came from the same marshy wilds that many of the Danes come from now. That is why our Gods are the same. We are cousins.”

  “He killed my uncle.”

  Ceric was staring at her now.

  “He did,” was all she could say. “But your uncle was trying to steal me from my home, and wanted to kill Sidroc.” She felt helpless and almost ill, attempting to beat back a memory that was too fresh to have clouded in her mind. The fear and horror were still alive in her belly.

  “And you are heathen,” he ended softly.

  “Já,” she told him, using the Norse. It was her new tongue, that of her new people, those who held the faith she held. He must try to accept that.

  Her boy had once again turned his head away from her. She went on, looking at her hands resting upon the warp strings. “Tindr can make a cross; he has skill with wood, which is why he offered to make you a bow. Shall we go and ask him to make a cross for the grave?”

  “You ask him. He is your serving man.”

  She was stung at this, both his words and the sharp tone with which he had of a sudden flung them at her.

  “Tindr is far more than a serving man,” she corrected, her voice still low. “But I will ask him to make one.”

  That night Tindr stood outside looking up at the sky. He often did so, stopping to lift his face to the stars glittering overhead, or to the mellow light of the Moon swimming in the cold dark. Tonight he stared, thinking not of the pinpoints of distant sparks above him, but of what he had seen earlier.

  During the day he had gone to a spot on the beach, not far from his mother’s house, where he had built a fire three days before. He had carted the dead man’s clothing there, along with a quantity of bloodied straw, and set it alight. The warrior’s dark clothing was punctured with knife marks and sliced through where his mother and he had cut it from his body. It was saturated with his blood, so much so that when he had gathered it in his arms his tunic had gotten stained. He had helped his mother wash and wrap the man, and now he swallowed back the bile rising in his mouth, recalling the sight of the warrior’s broken body. He had wanted no trace of it to remain at the hall. Burning the clothing and straw in one of the cook-fires was unthinkable, and he had chosen a stretch of beach away from the view of any on the trading road.

  He had gone back today to clear away the signs of burning. The mound of spent wood was a small one. He kicked it with his foot, shattering it into ashes. His toe dislodged something. It was part of the dead man’s black boot, charred, but still recognizable. He looked at it, saw it for what it was, and swiftly buried it further up the tide line, where the pebbles became soil.

  He thought of what had happened since the warrior who had worn that boot arrived. Sparrow had left, gone with the second warrior, and the boys were here. His mother had told him these were the sons of Scar and Bright Hair, and had come from afar. The boy with the coppery hair looked like Bright Hair, and looked too like the warrior Scar had killed.

  He had watched that warrior twist Bright Hair’s arm so that she fell. If Scar had died, he would have shot the warrior to keep her safe, shot him to kill, and would have done the same to the second if he must. As he had watched Scar and the warrior fight he had discovered this, and learning this about himself had changed him. He could kill a man if he had to.

  Sparrow sat in the prow of the merchant ship. She liked to sit thus, upon a lashed chest with her pack at her feet, and watch the distant green coasts slide away. The winds were dry and strong and the sail was always filled, billowing out so it was hard to see back to the stern. Worr had made her understand that it would take two or three different ships for them to reach the place Mistress had told her about. She sometimes would lift the hem of her mantle and feel the hard disk sewn there, the gold she would carry to the holy woman Sigewif in return for taking her in. Each time she touched it she felt a tremor of happiness, happiness and a little fear.

  Worr treated her as Mistress promised he would. Most nights they landed and slept on shore, and he had a tent for her to sleep in. If they stayed at sea he laced up a little shelter off the gunwale for her to sleep under, and he slept just outside it, so she always felt safe. But on the third day they made land and stopped to pick up a Svear woman and her children. It was the merchant’s wife, and she had been almost as glad to see Sparrow as Sparrow was to see her. She spent some time with her husband back near the steering oar, but mostly sat with Sparrow and her three young in the prow, out of the way of the sail and the men behind it. When the ship did not move too much they both could stand and spin; Mistress had given her a thick coil of wool roving to work from to give her something to do. If they could not spin they spoke together, played with the children, and just drowsed in the warmth of the day.

  Sparrow and Worr said prayers together each dawn and dusk, asking Jhesu Christus to protect the ship. The merchant’s wife cocked her head with interest, and Sparrow tried to tell her about Jhesu, but knew she did not do a good job. Abbess Sigewif would teach her how to better tell others, she knew.

  Worr spent time talking to Sparrow each day, and if he spoke slowly she could begin to understand more of what he meant. And she could help Worr, because all on board spoke Norse, and she could ask questions for him and help him understand, and she wanted to help. It was no harder than with Tindr.

  She thought of Tindr, of how he had walked into the woods near where she was hiding and left the shoes he had made for her. Inside he had put rabbit skins, as her feet were bare. She had put them on and her feet were no longer cold, nor did they hurt from the roots and rocks of the forest floor. Then he came back and left bread, and a jar of broth. Living amongst the trees she had been so hungry she had eaten green leaves,
and they made her sick. She knew then to come back to that place every day. Some days he would set down the food and drink and stay a little way off, waiting for her. But she would not show herself. After this he would leave the food and blow a note or two from his whistle, so she might know it was there.

  She had wanted to trust Tindr, but she was afraid he would hurt her. But the Master frightened her most, with his scar and gleaming weapon. He was so like the men who had hurt her over and over onboard the ship, and on land too.

  One day Tindr blew his whistle, and she crept through the trees. She waited until she was certain he was gone and then went to the food. She dropped the blanket she had taken from the bed from her shoulders. There was butter and honey too on the bread, and she was pushing it into her mouth when Tindr showed himself. He stepped from behind a tree, with his hands out in front of him. She wanted to turn and run, but the look on his face made her stop. He put his hands together, like a bowl, and just reached them towards her, as if he wanted to give her something, and not take.

  He gestured that she should follow him.

  Somehow she did. She thought Mistress would beat her, but she did not. And Master never looked at her or touched her. All were kind. Mistress knew about Jhesu Christus and told her many of His stories. And now she had given her gold, so that she might go to a place and pray and live with others who loved Him.

  When she was with Abbess Sigewif perhaps she could tell her about Tindr and the rest. Perhaps priests could go there someday and teach them about Jhesu Christus. Until then she would pray for them, and ask Worr to pray for them as well.

  Mother and son walked together to the place of burial. Tindr went with them; the cross was large enough that with hammer and block to drive it in all was heavy. Ceric claimed the cross, holding it in his arms across his chest. When Tindr had finished smoothing the wood Ceridwen had drawn the words GODWIN OF KILTON in charcoal on the cross-piece, and then with heated poker burnt in these letters so they would stay.