“Are you then a Jarl,” was what he asked. Ring and Ragnfast were staring at him as he asked this. Their eyes shifted, as his did, to the Dane’s face as he replied.
“Jarl of South Lindisse,” he said. He had not spoken this title in almost four years. “Hrald will rule in only a few more years.”
Runulv’s head dropped in surprise. He lifted it as Sidroc went on with his orders.
“From Saltfleet it is a full day’s ride to Four Stones. My men will horse you. Your ship will be safe at Saltfleet; you need leave but half your men aboard.
“You will have an escort, but must take the boys yourself to Four Stones. There you will see the Lady Ælfwyn, Hrald’s mother. You will take her the gifts we have sent; to her, and to my chief men Asberg and Jari, but are to do no trading.
“You will have an escort back to Saltfleet, and any provision you need. Then you will set sail for Frankland.”
Runulv, decisive by nature, took this all in. The boys had come from Angle-land, and to there must be returned. He would face the same dangers he did every outing, shipwreck from storm and predation from pirates. He had been told to do no trading when he landed; nothing must delay his delivery of the boys to the Dane’s former keep, and his setting sail for Frankland and the profit that awaited there. He knew without it being said that Sidroc would pay a premium for this task.
“I will want more men,” was how he answered. His ship had but eight oars, but a tall and heavy mast that carried a large sail. The young men who signed on with him each trip were not only strong rowers but had been trained to fight; several had been with him from his first voyage for Sidroc. Eight strong backs to row, and him at the steering oar. He was gauging the number of additional men he could wisely carry.
“A crew of twelve,” was what he decided. “All oars can be manned and four ready with bow and spear, should we be pursued. With four extra men I can spell those at the oar who tire, as well.”
Twelve men would mean nothing if they fell into the sights of a drekar, a dragon-ship of the Danes with its crew of thirty or forty warriors. The four of them standing there knew this. Yet it was all Runulv’s stout ship could manage. The Gods had smiled on his every voyage, and he would have to rely on their favour continuing.
Ring, the captain’s younger brother, had gone twice for Sidroc, set sail for Dane-mark to trade salt and amber the first and second season Runulv had gone to Frankland. Both voyages had filled his purse with silver. He had been able to hire men to help him clear more land, bought a pair of young oxen, and built up his flocks of sheep to more than two score. The farm he and Astrid worked was owned by the Dane and his wife, and supplied the family of Tyrsborg with grain, vegetables, mutton and fleece, and the apples the place was known for. It was all carried down to them in the large waggon Ring had been able to buy with his trading silver. Astrid had silver brooches at her shoulders and he a big pin on his woollen mantle.
The first time he had been out he had been caught by a storm. He wrestled with the steering oar in the raging sea as his men bailed, frantic against the waves slapping over the sides. It was a near thing that his first trading venture was not his last. He had vowed not to sail again, but following the death of his young wife in childbed had asked to be sent the next season. That time he had smooth sailing, and carried querns shaped of Gotlandic limestone, jars of Tindr’s honey, and baskets of amber to Dane-mark. The profit from both trips was such he could not hope to see in five good years of farming.
Then he had wed Astrid. She sat across the fire from him, their toddling boy at her feet, their new daughter at her breast.
“I will go,” he said of a sudden. The thought of the gain to be had was enough to overcome his fears, at least that night standing there with Runulv.
The other three turned to him. Ragnfast bred and trained horses and was good at it. Here at this feast he wore a cuff of silver around each wrist, and his wife Estrid had a new pair of shoulder brooches chased with gold. He was of the land, and wanted nothing more. Other than going out with his cousin Tindr as a boy in his Uncle Dagr’s fishing boat for the day, he had never sailed, and had no wish to.
Runulv looked at his brother, judging his claim. As boys they had been companions in all, and Runulv would have liked his company on past trips, and for Ring to share the same memory of the greatness of the stone city of Paris. And Ring was stalwart and strong.
It was Sidroc who spoke. “Nai,” he told Ring.
They had been drinking mead. It was late, and the fire’s warmth, the fellowship and feasting made all such ventures to come look easy. He glanced over to Astrid and the new babe now sleeping on her shoulder. Ring’s boy had crawled in his shield-maiden’s lap, and she was bouncing him on his chubby legs and singing a little song.
“Nai. Never brothers on the same ship.” That was all he said. He must send Hrald and Ceric together; there was no remedy for that. He would not tempt disaster and heartbreak for so many more should Runulv’s ship not make the shores of Angle-land.
Chapter the Twenty-seventh: Leave-taking
WINTER had been long, as it ever was this far north. The sea raged in wind-swept tempest, then lay deadly calm, locked with thick plates of ice that shoved and creaked upon the water’s surface. There had been no cheeses nor eggs gracing Tyrsborg’s table for weeks, and even the butter Gunnvor had frozen, well-salted, under the floor boards of one of the outbuildings was nearly gone. It would be more long weeks before the first green shoots of grass could be seen. There were apples, still, with wrinkled skins but some firmness to the flesh, lying hidden in straw; and cabbages, growing limp, and rooty carrots. Only their meat was fresh, for Tindr’s bow still brought them deer, at least for another waxing and waning of the Moon; then all the stags would have fled to the deeper reaches of the forest. With the boys he shot also the big blue-grey hares, if they popped up upon a fallen tree trunk or paused on a forest track. Snares could not be laid, for in snow rabbits forsook their pathways and runs and hopped anywhere upon the crusted surface. All such meat was lean, making the little butter left and its welcome fatness a treat. Even Tindr’s bees slept, but the jars of honey he had gathered from them sweetened the short days.
Then the snow that had blanketed all began to recede. Rain fell in sheets, softening it to a slushy mess, and the wind that blew did so less bitterly. Each day the Sun rose higher, and stayed longer. Trees showed the swelling buds that promised new leaves, and green sprouts could be seen when dead leaves and snow-crusts were moved with prodding toe. Ceridwen went out and plucked the tiny leaves of birches, boiling up a tangy pale-coloured broth which she drank eagerly and urged upon the rest of Tyrsborg. And Sone the shoe-maker delivered to her the scraped and prepared hide of a white lamb.
She laid it on the great table within the hall and looked at it carefully. She would square it first, saving every odd shaped bit for practice with the ink she would mix. She gauged she could cut six fair-sized pieces of parchment from it, more than enough for letters to Ælfwyn and Modwynn.
More important than the letters was that which Sidroc had asked her to make. She had seen such a document but once, years ago when he had ridden to Kilton with Ælfwyn, bearing in a pouch at his side a parchment of safe-conduct from Ælfred. She had seen it in the treasure room and read it then, and earlier seen Godwin break the waxen seal and unroll it. He had glanced at it with Wulfstan, his chief man, before dropping it there on the table. It was the second day of Sidroc and Ælfwyn’s stay. Just the act of Sidroc showing the parchment and naming it a safe-conduct had been enough to delay the actual reading of it.
She lined the lambskin with charcoal run against a narrow piece of planed wood, then took up the sharp bird-shaped shears from her work-basket and snipped through the costly thing. It was not as smooth as the parchment prepared from practised monks, and she tried buffing it with a sheared fleece wrapped about a block of wood; but it would serve. Holding the six sheets gave her a feeling of wealth, almost as if s
he handled gold, and indeed what she wrote could prove more valuable than even that.
She rode off with Tindr to their upland farm, returning with curved pieces of apple bark lifted from a tree Ring had cut down. She had seen the small round galls she needed on an oak not far into the woods from the hall, the size of walnuts in the shell. Tindr had iron shavings aplenty from his filing and shaping of his arrowheads. When she mixed all these together with water in a small pot and set it to boil Gunnvor watched with interest as the liquid darkened. She strained it through worn linen and let it sit. A drop of the ink looked nearly purple, like the darkest of berries, but it would dry, she hoped, to a near-black.
The parchment needed lines to help keep her lettering level. Without the proper scribe’s tools she bethought her of how best to make them, and settled on drawing the sharp point of one of her steel needles across the surface, making the lightest of scratches her inked words would float above. All the time she worked at this she thought of the three letters she would write, and the differing messages they must bear. Her work went on, and the work of the hall went on around her, but each afternoon when the light was at its best she turned her hands and thoughts to this new task.
The first she wished to write was that most needful, the safe-conduct, a letter she hoped would never need to be read. She had a store of long goose-quills she had gathered from the stable, and with Gunnvor’s sharpest knife made her five cuts to admit and hold the ink, ready in a tiny pot. She lit three cressets and set them all about her on the table; it was yet too cold to leave open the hall doors, and she wanted as much light as she could make to guide her.
She beat her memory to recall the wording. She had heard many documents of the King and high churchmen read aloud, and did her best to mirror their language.
I Runulv of Gotland travel as protector to Ceric of Kilton, godson of ÆLFRED KING OF WESSEX and Hrald son of SIDROC OF LINDISSE, to deliver these same into the care of Lady Ælfwyn of Four Stones. None are to hinder nor harm this party, in their coming or going, under penalty from ÆLFRED and GUTHRUM KING OF ANGLIA.
She read it aloud to Sidroc. He listened with eyes lifted to the dimness of their peaked roof.
“That is fine,” he praised. He looked upon her work, his finger going first to his own name, and then to Ælfred’s. “This will serve well,” he told her.
It would only serve if it had a chance of being read, he knew. If a war-ship filled with his brothers bore down on Runulv, waving a piece of white lambskin at them would provoke nothing but hooting laughter. If however, he was stopped by a patrol of either Ælfred’s or Guthrum’s forces, it might keep them from being seized, even if those aboard could not read it themselves.
“You will teach Runulv how to say every part of it, as if he could read it himself,” he thought aloud now. She saw the wisdom in this and nodded her head.
“Show me which part is my name,” Runulv asked next day. He had listened to Ceridwen read it aloud twice, and was still wondering over the small circles and curved lines that said so much.
His eyes narrowed at the cluster of letters she pointed to. “Do you see how the first letter looks like the rune Rad?” she answered. It was one of the few likenesses she could make to her rounded script and the mostly straight symbols of the runes.
He began to repeat the letter after her, following her finger as it moved across the cream-coloured parchment.
“These are the most important words, the names of Ælfred, King of Wessex, and Guthrum, King of the Danes of Anglia. All men in Angle-land will know their names.”
“And those at sea?” Runulv asked, and then answered himself. “If we are challenged at sea we will act as we must.”
As Spring came on, the wild-flowers which were one of the glories of the island burst into bloom. The splashes of reds, blues and yellows amongst the vivid greens of meadow growth always brought to Ceridwen’s mind her precious weaving, the carpet Sidroc had taken from the Idrisid ship for her. The mild air was full of flying insects hovering above these flowers, Tindr’s thirsty bees amongst them. The lakes and streams, unlocked from ice, brimmed with fish. The hens warmed themselves in the sunshine and began to lay again, and there was grass enough for the cow that her milk grew richer, rich enough for good butter to be drawn from it. Soon peas and early greens could be savoured, and fresh herbs enliven Tyrsborg’s meals once again. The young pear and plum trees Ceridwen and Tindr had planted before the front door their first year had blossoms, and the hard grape vine buds were swelling.
Yet Spring meant the boys must leave with Runulv, as soon as he deemed the weather safe. There could be no fixed date for this, and Ceridwen would look at the calendar she had drawn of the wheel of the year on the wall of the treasure room, and point out to herself where they were today, with no knowledge of which day she must say fare-well to Ceric. And her grief was nearly doubled, for Hrald had stolen her heart with his sweet and winsome ways. She had always loved the boy as Ælfwyn’s son, but living with him these many months had endeared him to her in a way she did not know could happen with a child not her own. Indeed, Hrald felt partly her own, through the love she bore for his mother, and that she bore for his father. She was bound to Hrald for his own sake, and for theirs.
The boys, freed from the confinement of the long Winter, ranged about on their horses, wandered the woods with each other or with Tindr, even tried swimming in the still-frigid sea. They kept on in their work in the wax-tablet, as Ceridwen was mindful they not seem to have slipped too far in their skills. Tindr stood with them many hours before the shooting target on the stable, guiding their wrists and steadying their stance as they aimed at the charcoal deer drawn there. And Sidroc worked almost every day with them, flinging spears at the second target, that of a man.
Each boy had grown some, he could see that. He thought Hrald would surely be as tall as he; his mother was tall, and he need look at the boy’s face to remind himself how young he really was. He had thought over Winter’s Nights it might be best to go to Berse and have short swords made up for the boys after all; they had progressed so much in their skill. But the giving of a sword marked a threshold over which no boy could retreat. He had asked much of them, shown them much, told them more. He would not lay that which they could not handle on their young heads. He hoped, awakening in the dark, that with Hrald he had not already done so.
“In the treasure room at home,” he told him one evening when they were alone, “there is the black chest.” Hrald had nodded, recalling it. His father had many times shown him the prizes within, a trove of worked steel, all carefully wrapped in fleece to save the blades from rust. “Our finest swords are there; you will have your pick of them. Asberg will help you choose.”
They were the swords of dead men, Hrald knew this; those swords of the Saxons his father had killed, and those killed by his men who had given them to his father in tribute. Some he knew were swords of Danes who had died as well, picked up from the field of battle. If they had no kin the sword was always forfeit to the war-chief who led them.
Yrling’s sword was not amongst them. Sidroc had watched Godwin of Kilton kill his uncle, then stoop over his dying body and tear the silver hammer of Thor from his neck. Lifting his head he had seen Sidroc, and sprang with face contorted in fury after him. Neither could stay to collect the sword still in Yrling’s bloodied grasp. It was a great regret of his he had not got it. When his shield-maiden had recounted to him Kilton’s return and the showing of booty, he knew Kilton had not got it either, and took some comfort in that.
Sidroc thought carefully of what trading goods would be sent to Frankland. Barring the rarities of silk or spices, goshawks could always be counted upon to bring the greatest return.
This year he would send but one hunting bird to Frankland, whereas in the last two he had sent two. The mews at Ring’s had produced several chicks, but only three birds were trained up enough to sell to the noblemen Runulv would seek out. And of these, Sidroc had de
termined to send two to Four Stones.
“The silver female, and the grey male, both as gifts,” he told Runulv, when they met to discuss what treasure he would carry. “Ring is readying them now. The big female to Asberg, the male to Jari. They will be able to raise up their own, if luck is with them.”
Runulv took a breath. This was rich treasure to send as gifts, but the birds were Sidroc’s to give.
“The brown female you will sell in Frankland,” he was saying now. Runulv had seen her; she was a fine bird, lightning fast in the air, and he was glad to know he would have something fit to offer to Charles, the King of the Franks, or to his chief men.
For other treasure-worthy items, Sidroc turned to the trading road. Berse the weapon-smith came to his aid, being able to hammer out two swords and three knives, all pattern-welded, he could take. The hilts and pommels were plain, and Sidroc took them to the silver-worker Tume, who beat in strands of silver wire. He had amber, as always, both beaded necklaces and small ornaments of it, and knew it would once again fetch a good price.
When the snow had fully melted, Sidroc rode along muddy tracks to Thorfast, the fashioner of stone far in the East of Gotland. He took Tindr and Hrald and Ceric with him, so the boys saw the furthest and rockiest reaches of the island, where it narrowed to a thin neck of land before opening again to its wild wind-swept end. He ordered five stone querns from the man, destined to grind some woman’s grain in another land. He had the boys with him when he bargained for the white salt crystals grown by Asfrid, the woman on the trading road, and the several times he dealt with Berse over the making of the treasure which was his blades. All these things would make the voyage to Frankland. He had vowed to teach them the ways of trading, and did so by having them watch and listen. And he gamed with the boys, teaching them every trick he knew when playing dice, especially that of knowing when to stop, “Which may take you some loss of silver to truly know,” he told them one night, when they played together with Runulv and Ring.
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