“You need not come,” Ceridwen was telling Ceric and Hrald as she wrapped Eirian and Yrling in mantles of fur. “You may stay here; we will not be long.”
Both boys knew this day was coming, and now had not expected they would be excused from the witnessing of it. Gunnvor had been cooking a special meal for their return; one of the spotted pigs had been killed, its fresh meat enriching both pies and browis.
“I will come,” Hrald answered. He had seen the goat his father and Tindr had brought from the goshawk farm, been there when they returned with it yesterday, and had helped Tindr feed and water it in the stable. He knew his father would make the sacrifice and wanted to be with him.
Ceric had determined to stay at the hall until he heard Hrald. He had told him last night he would not go, but had neglected to ask Hrald if he would. Now he did not wish to be left behind, despite the fact that he might be putting himself in danger with God for what he might see. Yet he could not speak to his mother and say Já, he would come. He just went to his alcove and got his mantle and hood.
The Sun was aiming for the highest point in its shallow arc when they set out. Gunnvor and Helga went with them, and Rannveig came up from her brew-house as well. The walk through the trees to the place was not long, the Sun crossing slowly overhead in a dull sky of silver gray. It had rained in the morning, and the bark of some trees was black with wet. A few drops fell from boughs overhead, and the forest had the rich and oaky smell of verdant growth falling into loam. Mosses and ferns were still green, but nearly every tree had lost its leaves, crunching softly underfoot amongst the fir needles on the narrow track.
Tindr had gone ahead with the goat. He had fed it grain mixed with mead, as he ever did with the chosen beast. The creature’s head had begun to hang, and it looked unsteady on its feet when Hrald’s father lifted his arms and began to cry aloud to the sky.
Hrald had seen his father make Offering at Four Stones, had seen him choose a piglet from the pens and then followed him, unasked, to the Place of Offering. His father was alone, and Hrald could not hear the words he had spoken; he had hidden behind the great tree there to watch. It was when Ceric and his mother had arrived, he remembered that.
Now, watching his father’s back as he raised his arms and spoke, he wished to be nearer him. Wilgot forbade him to go to the sacrifice pit, but though his mother knew he sometimes did, she did not chide him. But he knew Abbess Sigewif and the priests at Oundle would count praying there a sin.
Listening to his father praise the Gods and recount the blessings of the year he could not keep himself from going nearer him. One of the things he gave thanks for was his and Ceric’s coming, safe and whole, to see them. As his voice rose and grew louder, Hrald found himself lifting his own arms in echo of his father’s gesture.
His father ended his words, and turned to see him, arms uplifted. He looked at him in a way that made him glad he had done so.
He turned then, to where Tindr waited with the goat, and saw Ceric’s face. He looked angry and scared both, looking at him like something vile.
But Tindr was holding the goat’s head now, and Hrald’s father had pulled his bright seax.
It was not the squeal of the goat that made Ceric wince; he had for years seen such beasts be butchered in Kilton’s kitchen yard. It was the killing of it in the woods, and for whom it was killed.
On the way back they were all quiet, but Hrald’s father had his arm around the waist of Ceric’s mother. The boys fell in behind them.
Ceric was angry now he had come. He glared at Hrald when they turned to leave, and would not look at him now as they walked back. They were nearly out of the forest when his mother turned to look back at them. She was smiling when she did, but when she saw Ceric’s face her smile faded. She stopped and let the boys catch up to her.
“Dunnere…Dunnere would say this is ignorance and sin,” Ceric told her. His voice was almost breathless, and he was looking only at her, not at Sidroc. “Do you truly believe your Gods come and eat of this?”
She looked over at Gunnvor and Helga and Tindr, asking them with a tilt of her head to go ahead without them. When they had gone she turned back to her son.
“I do not know, but I know it is left with good intent,” she told him. “I know that what is Offered feeds the foxes of the woods, and the birds of the air. And I have seen too, with my own eyes, that the ground on which this blood has fallen is nourished. We are nourishing the Earth with it. What grows there next year will be rich and doubled in bloom; I have seen it. So the Earth is fed by what we Offer, even if the Gods do little but look down and smile upon us.”
Her son was shaking his head impatiently at her. She began to feel some little impatience herself.
“Are you so certain about all Dunnere or Wilgot says and does?” she tried him, but gently. “Do you not sometimes wonder if the bread he holds is the body of the Christ?”
Hrald was nodding his head as if to agree with her. Ceric saw this and almost spluttered.
“Dunnere –”
“I know what Dunnere would say,” his mother said quietly. “I wish to know what you think.”
“There is one true God. Jesus Christ is his Son.” He spoke with real defiance. “Believing this makes us different from those who are lost in error.”
“Jesus,” repeated the Dane. He had been looking on with mild eyes. “Já, I know his Saga. He was a powerful chieftain, and made strong magic. The feeding of many from a few loaves and fishes. The turning of water into wine for all his men, and his host’s men, at the hand-fast feast. He knew seiðr, the most powerful of magic, that known to Freyja and Odin. He made a dead man rise and walk again. His Saga-stories are good ones; Wilgot told them.”
“It is more than just stories,” Ceric countered. He had tempered his tone, but Ceridwen felt it was brave of him to speak so to Sidroc.
The boy watched the Dane consider him, then nod.
“The stories are how we know the Gods,” Sidroc told him. “That, and how they answer us when we call on them.”
Sidroc posed a question to the boy now. “What kind of God do you seek?”
“Kind of God…?”
“There are many. Gods for war, and for peace, for love and lust, for our beasts and for the hunt, for men, and for women.”
Ceric, confused, gave a shake of his head.
“Your God, the Jesus one, is good for peace,” the Dane offered.
Ceric nodded; he had heard Him called the Prince of Peace.
They were nearly at Tyrsborg. The wind shifted, bringing to their noses the smell of the pig-meat and barley browis steaming in Gunnvor’s large cauldron in the kitchen yard. Pounded fish-paste, sprinkled with Gotland’s best salt was there, too, ready to be spread upon hot loaves; and she had made honey cakes as well.
“Peace is good,” Sidroc ended, and they headed to the meal that awaited.
“You must write a letter, shield-maiden.”
Ceridwen was seated on a bench next Sidroc, snug before the fire blazing in the fire-pit, when he said this. Gunnvor had gone to bed, as had the boys, but Helga stood near her, spinning, and Tindr sat cross-legged on a deer skin at the fire’s edge. She was working some nålbinding into stockings, and lowered her work as he went on.
“Like unto the safe-conduct I rode to Kilton with. Put my name on it, written big, and also the name of Ælfred. Runulv will take it with him when he sails for Four Stones with the boys.”
She had not wished to think of this yet; Winter was just coming on. But the safest time for Ceric and Hrald to sail would be Runulv’s first trip out, as soon as the weather broke in late Spring.
“Já,” she said. He was still looking into the fire, thinking of this. She freed one of her thumbs from the looping work and touched his knee. She would not speak to him of her fears for the boys’ safety on their voyage home. Less would she now complain of how her heart would ache when they left.
“I am grateful you t
hink of these things,” is what she said.
She took a little breath and picked up her work again. “I will go to Sone and have him make parchment for me.”
She thought more. “In Spring I will have time enough to gather what I need to mix ink; oak galls are readily found, and apple bark aplenty from the farm.”
She looked to Tindr, sitting across from them, carving a deer. “And thanks to Tindr we have many geese. I will have my choice of quills, regardless of how many I spoil.”
She glanced at Sidroc, saw he was deep in his own thoughts and had likely not heard. His concern was doubled, she knew; he would fear for the boys, from marauders and from shipwreck, and fear too for the added danger he sent Runulv and his ship and their trading goods into.
Her thoughts moved on. If she had parchment she could write a letter to Ælfwyn, and not depend solely on the boys to tell her how they fared on Gotland; indeed, she wished to say to her friend things the boys never could. She could, if she wished, write again to Modwynn and Edgyth, a letter Ceric would carry…
She shook her head at this; it was much to think of. She took too much on her head at once; Sidroc had often told her so.
She lifted her eyes to the tall and spare form of Helga, eyes half closed, dropping her whirling spindle, drawing up the slender thread, pulling out the fluffy roving from over her shoulder to do it again. There was comfort in hand-work, always, in the rhythms of needful goods growing beneath one’s fingers. She turned back to her own work.
In the morning she walked down the hill to the shoe-maker. A raw wind blew in from the sea, frosting her breath. Her face felt almost stiff when she opened the door of his workshop, well-wrapped as she was in her fur-lined mantle. She wore her hood trimmed with red fox, and clutched it tight about her head. She threw the hood back as the old man greeted her, rising from his workbench. Even in the cold the place reeked of the sharp and dark aroma of lye-cleansed animal skins.
“Sone,” she told him, as she warmed herself at the brazier on the floor, “I need a hide from you, that I must have before Spring.”
“Hides I have many,” he said, waving his hand at a stack of them, ready tanned, on a worktable. His fingers looked forever curled from his heavy stitching work, and were stained a smudged browny-black from years of handling dyed skins.
“I need a special one, of great fineness. Use a white lamb, not a year old, and scrape the skin so thin that bright daylight may be seen through it.”
“Such a hide will cost good silver, and have little strength,” he warned her, dealing as he did in tougher stuffs for shoes and boots.
“It needs but little strength,” she assured. “It will not be worn, but cut by me into small squares, and used to write upon. As if I drew the runes on stone. But the lamb must be white, or my letters will not show.”
He looked at her and nodded, though she was not sure he understood. No matter. By Spring she should have the costly thing in her keeping, on which she would pen words she hoped would guard that which was beyond price.
The celebration of Winter’s Nights brought feast after feast to Tyrsborg. The weather was cold but with little snow, which made the summoning of friends easy. Gunnvor and Helga hustled about the cooking fires, both in the kitchen yard and within the hall. Outside, the coals were kept hot and raked heavy over the covered iron baking pans hiding Gunnvor’s crusted loaves. Nestled next them were sealed iron pans holding carrots and parsnips slow-roasting in honey and butter. Eggs, carefully saved in cold ashes, were now roasted in these same coals, and once shelled were being popped into hungry mouths. From the cooking frames hung pots of meat broth, steaming away next to those of barley browis, fragrant with dittany and dill and made rich with pig-meat. Fat geese were baked, stuffed with hickory-nut meal, dried grapes, and bread crusts. Pies filled with minced lamb and turnips wore wreaths of whole dried leaves of mint. Haunches of smoked deer meat were shaved thin and savoured with cups of Rannveig’s good brown ale. Still-juicy pears and apples were drawn from their cold cellar holes and wrapped in pastry, baked, and drizzled with honey, the fruit bursting with sweet-smelling steam as the crust was broken with a knife. There was golden mead, and also precious wine, swirling dark in the cup, which the mistress of Tyrsborg allowed even the boys a draught, well-watered.
It would be Ceric’s and Hrald’s only Winter’s Nights festival on Gotland, and Ceridwen wished it to be as memorable as they could make it, for all their sakes. Rannveig of course, near and dear as she was to Ceridwen, came to every feast, and at each her ale and mead was celebrated.
It was Rannveig who had taught Ceridwen the rituals of Winter’s Nights. These were feasts ruled by female spirits, honoured in the dark of Winter, for Winter is the womb of Spring and birth and increase. It was the mistress of the house who called the gathered guests together, and who then went alone from door to door, sprinkling purifying salt at each threshold, bidding none to open these doors until she declared the feast over. And it was the mistress who called the dísir, the female spirits who made themselves free of the household, to join them in their feasting. These were not the spirits of Frigg or Freyja or Sif or any other Goddess, but the female element in all Goddesses, all women, all life.
To other feasts, friends came as they could: neighbour Alrik and his wife and daughter; Ragnfast and Estrid and their brood; the rope-makers Ketil and Tola; Botair, his sons Runulv and Ring, with their wives Gyda and Astrid and little ones.
At one feast at which Runulv and his brother Ring were guests, dice were brought out after the remnants of the food had been cleared away. Deep cups of ale had been drunk during the eating of it, and now sweet mead filled the silver-lipped cow-horn drinking vessels, brought out specially for feasts. The blaze in the fire-pit gave such warmth against the winds howling outside that those who sat closest to it must soon relinquish their seats or fall faint from heat. Every cresset was lit and burning. The cheer and brightness of the hall made all forget the biting cold outside, and length of dark night. Winter’s Nights marked the rebirth of the Sun, and each day would now grow longer.
Rannveig sat on the fleece-lined lip of a sleeping alcove, talking with Ragnfast’s mother-in-law, Thorvi. Eirian, tiring now, had pulled herself into Rannveig’s lap and had nodded off to sleep, despite the noise. Rannveig had pulled her own mantle over the child, whose long legs betrayed her father’s height. Her brother Yrling was with the rest of the young ones, led by Ceric and Hrald, at the end of the hall near the front door. They played a game of sticks and beach pebbles, bouncing the pebbles against the stone wall of Tyrsborg’s front to see which came closest to the sticks lying on the floorboards.
Ceridwen, her ritual duties complete until the evening’s end, sat now with the other young mothers. They took turns passing the youngest babes amongst them, praising their beauty and the strength of the tiny fingers curling around their own. The newest of these was Astrid and Ring’s second child, born just last month. Astrid had unpinned the shoulder clasp of her gown and opened her shift, and her new daughter was sucking lustily.
At the table end on the other side of the fire stood the evening’s host, Sidroc, throwing dice with Runulv, Ring, and Ragnfast. Fortune seemed to favour all equally this night, and each player’s respective piles of silver waxed and waned so that little difference could be seen after long play. They paused in their efforts and took more mead. It was then Sidroc, watching Hrald and Ceric at their own play at the far end of Tyrsborg, spoke to his ship captain.
“Runulv,” he began. “In Spring when you sail, you will carry extra cargo.”
Runulv was now used to the Dane surprising him with some special treasure to offer in Frankland or Dane-mark. He cocked his eyebrows, waiting.
“It is the boys, Hrald and Ceric.” Sidroc watched Runulv turn his head to where the boys crouched, throwing their pebbles. Ring and Ragnfast looked too, before returning their eyes to their host.
“You must take them to Angle-land.”
; Runulv had seen the white coast of Angle-land, seen it from afar aboard his merchant ship when he sailed to Frankland. Part of that huge island was now controlled by Danes, famed for pirating at sea.
Sidroc read some of the questions clouding the young man’s brow. “After the boys are delivered, you will then sail for Frankland, and trade as you will. But your first and most important cargo will be Hrald and Ceric. They must be delivered to Four Stones in Lindisse.
“You will sail up the coast and land at a place called Saltfleet. I built a pier there, and there will be men day and night to watch it, and collect fees for landing. I will tell Hrald what to say, he speaks both tongues, and you will have a letter too, a safe-conduct, which you should not need. When the men see Hrald that will be enough.”
Runulv did not know the word ‘letter’, and indeed Sidroc had used the Saxon name for it, for there was no word in Norse.
“A letter – it is words, written on hide, like runes painted or carved on wood or stone. It will be in the speech of the Saxons. It will say you have leave of the King of the Saxons to travel to the coast of Angle-land. Also,” he added, lowering his voice, “the leave of Sidroc of Lindisse to land. Even those who cannot read this speech will know the look of my name.”
The three younger men had been listening with intent. Since the day the Dane had arrived on Gotland he had been the object of conjecture. He wore the knife of the men of Angle-land; those on the trading road had seen Danish warriors who had won them in raids in that far off land. His wife was not a Danish woman, and spoke no Norse, though she had quickly learnt it. After the death of the stranger at Tyrsborg part of the story came out; Sidroc had in fact fought and won land in Angle-land. No one knew the extent of what he had left behind.
Runulv, who had risked his ship and his life over the past four sailing seasons to earn silver for them both, felt he had also earned the right to speak.
Tindr Page 27
