Tindr

by Octavia Randolph

  Rannveig stood before her friends. She knew that all that was said this morning might matter, and chose her words with care.

  “This is Toste, Sigvor’s husband,” she said, opening her hand to the man seated before them. “Sigvor is dead. She was found with Eirik, the father of her first born.”

  Ceridwen spoke first, though in her shock she could hardly form the words. “Her old sweetheart?” she asked.

  “Já.”

  Sidroc looked to the man, then back to Tindr. His hand rose to his head and he ran his fingers through his dark hair. “What part did Tindr play in this?” he asked.

  “I do not know yet,” his mother told him. “He saw it happen. I have sent for her parents, and Eirik’s as well. And Botair, Ketil, and Berse. I do not think either of them should tell until the others are here.”

  Sidroc nodded. “The first telling is the truest,” he agreed.

  The four of them waited as the others arrived, striding from their various homes or workshops, bringing others with them. Toste looked as if he could not hold his head up, sprawling on the top of the table for support. Tindr sat down again at his table, and as the chief men and women of the place filed in, watched them give hushed greeting to the others before staring at Toste’s lowered head.

  Sigvor’s parents came in, with her older sister Sigrid, the two women already weeping from the little Gudfrid had been able to tell them. With eyes glaring at Toste, her father demanded the story as soon as he strode in. Rannveig was quick with her answer; nothing would be said until all closely connected were gathered. The parents of the dead man were last to come, living at a place far removed. His mother was wringing her hands, but his father’s face was set.

  Twenty or more people were now ranged before the two men, Tindr and Toste. Berse, the weapon-smith, had been speaking with Botair and Sidroc, with Rannveig listening in. Now Berse stood up and addressed all.

  “This is a dark day for us. Blood has been shed, and lives ended. Toste will tell his story, and then Tindr. The telling will be hard, the listening more so. But we are a peaceful people. No weapons are to be drawn.”

  Berse paused a moment, looking to Sidroc and Botair, who had placed themselves nearest the two who were to speak. Berse himself, working all day hammering steel, was a formidable man, and would be in the centre of the room should any need to be restrained. All the men sitting there, and most of the women, had knives at their waists. All knew the sanctity of any place in which the truth was to be told, that it must not be sullied with violence.

  Toste arose and told his story, his fingers steepled on the planks of the table top. He began with the day he had gone to visit his mother, told of hearing of his cousin’s return, and how he had begun to suspect Sigvor was seeing Eirik and planning her escape. He told of the lie he had learnt about, when his neighbour Krok had seen Sigvor in town heading up the hill to Tyrsborg. It was here that heads turned first to Sidroc, then to Tindr. Tindr’s eyes widened, but as Toste went on the others stopped looking at him.

  He came to the difficult part, watching his wife slip out of the house with her belongings, trailing her to the beach. Seeing her there in Eirik’s arms. Toste’s voice had risen in pitch as he told this, and the noises coming from those sitting before him grew, an undercurrent of gasps, barely spoken oaths, and grunts and snorts of startle.

  “Já, I meant to kill Eirik, I did,” Toste was saying, his voice shuddering. “But Sigvor – Sigvor turned him out of the way! I did not mean Sigvor to die…”

  There was a tumult of shouts and cries. Sigvor’s father was standing, straining forward towards Toste. “Where is she?” he barked. “Where is my daughter?”

  Toste was sobbing now, and Sigvor’s mother and sister wailed, watching him. Eirik’s parents too were standing, calling out their question, and Berse gestured to them they must still themselves.

  “When I saw what I had done, I killed Eirik with my knife. He was the reason Sigvor died!”

  Eirik’s parents sat down, his mother with her hands covering her face, his father white-knuckled as he listened.

  Berse looked to Rannveig. “What did Tindr see?” he asked her.

  She rose and came to stand at her son’s side. With a few gestures of hands and head she asked him to act out what had happened. He began in a way that surprised all. Touching his cheeks to represent Sigvor, he then repeated how she had asked him for a coin. His hand went to his belt, and he held between his fingers the bright gold piece for all to see. Toste straightened up at this, they all did. It seemed to prove his tale, that Sigvor had plotted to leave him, and was not above asking a man for gold so she could do so.

  Eirik’s father lowered his face then. It was all too like his troublesome youngest, to have demanded gold from a woman he was stealing away. The tears were running from his wife’s eyes as he sat there, but what he felt was the shame Eirik, even in death, had laid on his family.

  Ceridwen, watching Tindr, found herself rising to her feet. She could not add much to the telling, but wished Tindr to see her stand in his support. Her husband’s eyebrows lifted as she stood, but she looked to Berse, who nodded to her.

  “I saw Sigvor on her way back from Tyrsborg, the morning she came to Tindr,” she told them. She hardly knew what to say next. “I was surprised to see her there; she did not part happily from our hall. I know she saw me, but she did not lift her head so I could greet her.”

  Heads nodded; folk shifted on their benches. All knew Sigvor had left Tyrsborg hastily, years ago, after falsely accusing Tindr of having gotten her with Eirik’s child. Rannveig’s anger over the girl’s behaviour back then had been just.

  “Have him tell of the murder,” Sigvor’s father called out, staring at Tindr.

  Toste answered him, his voice catching. “It was not murder. She turned him away…”

  Berse ordered all to silence, and Rannveig had Tindr go on. He still held the coin in his hand, that which he had never had a chance to give Sigvor, and now set it down. He moved with his mother before the table he had sat at, and touched his eye. He wrapped his arms about Rannveig, so that she was looking out at the crowd. Rannveig had heard enough to know Sigvor had spotted her husband and had pushed Eirik out of the path of the thrown spear, and she turned Tindr away. They parted, and Tindr grunted, nodding his head, touching his mother’s side to show where the spear had entered.

  Fresh cries came from the folk before Tindr; he saw their gaping mouths and the tears on the cheeks of the women. It was terrible for him, worse than when Purple Neck fell from the rock. Red Cheeks had been killed before his eyes, and by the man pledged to protect her. Then the same man had, with savage violence, driven a knife through the other man’s heart. He knew women were precious and men would kill for them. Tindr had watched Scar kill a man with equal ferocity. But the man Scar had severed the throat of was a warrior who had wanted to hurt Bright Hair, and was then trying to kill Scar. Tindr himself had nocked an arrow at the strange warrior’s back, ready to let it fly if he must. He remembered how he had felt, standing behind the warrior, not feeling his own breath, nor even the beating of his heart.

  He scanned the faces before him, all looking back at his own face. He could not tell what blame he bore in all this. When Purple Neck had died, it took his cousin and Da and Nenna a long time to make him understand he was not the reason Purple Neck had tried to climb, and died doing so.

  His mother signed to him he should sit now, and he returned to the table. She had given his hand a little squeeze when she left him, and as he sat he saw Scar look at him, and open his hands flat before him: Good.

  “And she lies there, on the beach?” Sigvor’s father was shouting. Her mother now joined him. “Where are my grandsons?” she called to Toste.

  Toste had not even time to give thought to his farm. His children would have risen and found neither parent there. His daughters would have fed and clothed the boys, but all would be wondering where they were. The spectre o
f them looking for him, of Sigvor’s two crying for her, rose in his eyes.

  His mother-in-law was standing, shaking her fist at him. “Sigvor’s boys will not spend another night under your roof, the man who killed their mother.”

  Toste found himself dumbly nodding back to her, já. She would take Sigvor’s sons, it was only right.

  He was light-headed; there had been no mention of outlawing, no oaths of vengeance sworn by Sigvor’s father. He would be made to pay the dowry she had brought with her; he would do that without complaint. He would go back to the farm, and be no worse off than he had been after the mother of his own children had died. He grasped onto this thought, then felt the hollow falseness of it. He would never be the same. He had killed two people. No woman would wed him now. His plain older daughter would never wed, and his sons would bear the shame of their father’s act. He and his daughter would grow old, living together but alone in his farmhouse. He lowered his head into his hands again, and sobbed.

  Berse called out for quiet. He looked to Sidroc and Botair. “We must now, those of us who choose to, go with Toste and Tindr to the cove.”

  No one spoke. Some of the men had begun to rise, and some women too. Sigrid, Sigvor’s sister, had her arms about her mother to keep her there, but the older woman broke free. Sigrid rose herself, biting her lip ruefully. Sigvor’s father held his hand up to stop his wife. “Nai,” she answered, before he could speak. She was not crying now, and her voice was as hard as the steel which had pierced her daughter. “No one will stop me from looking on my dead girl’s face.”

  Sidroc looked to his own wife. He had learnt early that giving her orders rarely worked, but he would do so now if she rose to follow him. She had seen slaughter, much of it, but never here on Gotland. The night-mare which had often carried her away in their early days here had left her. He did not want the sight of the slain lovers to call the dark mare back again.

  He need not fear. Her eyes were trained on Rannveig. Ceridwen saw in Rannveig’s face her unwillingness to let Tindr go alone, then saw her look to Sidroc. Tindr would not be alone.

  Sidroc motioned Tindr to his side. He watched his wife rise and go to Rannveig, sit down next her with her arm about the older woman’s shoulder. Ceridwen lifted her face, and he nodded to her as he went out the door. They set off, Toste between Berse and Sidroc, and Tindr beside Sidroc.

  The party of ten or twelve made their way down the trading road. Their numbers quickly swelled as others joined them, those who had heard little or nothing of what had happened that dawn. They looked up from their work with questioning eyes at the cluster of grim faces passing before them, and many found themselves rising to follow in their wake. They joined at the rear, speaking in hushed voices to those who had been at the brew-house. Berse stopped at the grain-sellers, told him to ready his ox cart and follow them to the cove.

  In the brew-house only women were left. Ceridwen yearned to take Rannveig out into the herb garden, and wished to be there herself, under the sky and amidst the scented flowers. But the way her friend sat there made her know that Rannveig could not or would not leave; she would await the return of the others here, in her brew-house, the room around which her life and the lives of so many of the local folk revolved.

  One of the women sitting there was the salt seller Asfrid, seated near Eirik’s mother, who was softly crying into a corner of her head-wrap. Asfrid would have liked to go sit with Rannveig and the wife of the Dane, both of whom she liked. But Eirik’s family were nearly all fisher-folk, and her best customers, so she stayed near to the weeping woman. And she felt pity for the woman, who had lost her son twice, so to speak, once when his boat had not returned, and now at the hands of another man. Eirik was no good, but a mother’s love endured.

  Gudfrid moved amongst them with a tray of ale. The day was warming, and with all the words that had been spoken and tears shed ale was welcome. As they sipped the women scarcely spoke. Rannveig was silently berating herself once more for ever bringing Sigvor to Tyrsborg. The woman had attempted to take advantage of her son’s sweet nature, and had hurt him badly. She had hastily left the hall with no apology when all had given her a chance at a good home and stable life. Now she had dragged Toste down, caused the man to lose his senses and cover himself in her blood. And she had left her two boys behind her, all for the love of a good-looking scoundrel.

  Rannveig felt, as well, the cruelty of Fate. When Tindr had taken the golden piece from his belt to show what Sigvor had asked him for her heart had turned in her breast. It was true she had told her son from the start that the gold earned from the sale of Dagr’s rare narwhale horn was his. But she had told him then, and he had understood, that it was for his wife and him, and their coming babes. She did not have the resolve to go through those gestures again, stressing that he wait until his hand-fast before spending any of it. Tindr had been single so long that such a day was not to be looked to.

  Yet Rannveig knew within herself a glimmer of gratitude to the dead woman. She had rejected Tindr. She shuddered to think what would have happened if Sigvor and Tindr had made hand-fast, and then Eirik returned as he did. It was unthinkable that Tindr would kill as Toste had, but the wound to her boy would have been great if she had run off as she had planned to do.

  Those who had gone to the cove neared the place. They saw the boat first, listing slightly in the receding tide. Eirik’s father, shaking his head to himself, knew it at once to be the second vessel of his oldest son, stolen by Eirik. They stepped upon the white limestone of the beach. As soon as the yellow of Sigvor’s skirt could be seen, Tindr hung back. Toste too was unwilling to go closer, but pinioned as he was between Berse and Sidroc he was forced to approach. Even so he stopped several feet short of the slain pair. They let him be.

  Toste’s spear lay at a low angle from Sigvor’s body, firmly lodged in her ribcage. The wind was fresh and the hem of her gown was fluttering slightly over the tops of her dark shoes. The tips of her yellow hair were likewise stirring in the breeze, in a ghostly mockery of life. One of her cheeks rested on the stones of the beach, where she had fallen. Eirik’s arms were flung out on either side of him, his back still arched from the action of his head lifting as Toste had neared him with his knife. It was buried, almost to the hilt, in his chest.

  Sidroc went up to the bodies, passing a small pile of leathern packs. He had never seen the man before, but the woman he had known slightly a few years past. Sigvor had lived under his roof for a month, had brought him food, gathered eggs, swept the floor. He recalled her voice. She had walked the Earth some twenty years, and was now a bloodied corpse. His warrior-mind skipped through these facts, selecting those things needful to the task before him.

  He scanned the length of the bodies, then squatted down. With deep wounds to the vital organs they had quickly bled dry, and the blood had soaked the clothing of their upper bodies and stained the white rock on which they lay. Little pools of it lay cupped in shallow stones around them, and begun to thicken in the warmth. The meaty smell of it was intense, lightened only by the slight salt tang of the steady sea breeze.

  Despite the blood he could see the first wound Eirik had received, under the right breast, when the spear had run Sigvor through and pierced his chest. Toste had been very close when he had hurled his spear.

  Berse came up to his side. Sidroc knew the weapon-smith could fight, and had in his youth gone raiding. The look on Berse’s face told him long years had passed since he had looked on bodies such as these. Sidroc pointed out the place where the spear had caught them both, pinning them briefly together. Berse nodded and swallowed.

  Botair and the others had slowed as they neared, but now that Sidroc and Berse stepped away, they came in twos and threes and looked down on the dead. Sigvor’s mother was sobbing in her husband’s arms, Sigrid on the other side of her, tears running from her face, but look they did. Some did not come close at all, but lingered back where Tindr stood, staring out at the sea. None stood
by Toste. There were large clouds swimming in the blue sky, and the Sun vanished for long moments behind them, casting them in a shade that was almost cool.

  When all who had wished to neared the bodies, Berse asked the key question of the day. “Do any of you, looking on this, and having heard what you have heard, call for the outlawing of Toste?”

  The man named had kept his head resolutely down. He raised it now, looking not at those who had formed a loose circle about him, but solely at Berse.

  None answered. Even Sigvor’s kin kept silent, save for the weeping of her mother and sister. The girl had shamed herself, but without Tindr’s showing that the spear was truly meant for Eirik, they would have pressed for outlawing.

  Berse glanced about them, scanned their faces. The last he looked at were Botair and Sidroc. The two joined him a moment, their voices so low that none could discern what they said. Then Berse faced them all and gave the decree.

  “This woman’s death was accidental. The killing of this man was just retribution for the stealing of Toste’s wife.”

  Berse looked at Sigvor’s father as he said this last. The weapon-smith thought the grieving father would have been justified in killing Eirik himself, for the shame he had brought Sigvor to.

  Eyes turned to Toste. He was swaying where he stood, and looked as if he would swoon. He bowed his head before all.

  There was little left to say. Toste was free. Botair would go now, with Sigvor’s father and Toste, to his farm, to fetch Sigvor’s young boys; her mother had been speaking the truth when she had said they would not spend a single night under the same roof with Toste.

  Before they left Sidroc walked to Sigvor’s parents. They had looked stricken when they had first heard the news, and now had seen that which had changed them, and forever. He had killed enough men and watched their faces as he did so to be able to say something to them, and he did.