‘Good!’ There was only the faintest hesitation, but Helga caught it, and discovered there was something satisfying about feeling Sigmar squirm. ‘We will start when the sun dips down.’
Aslak nodded. ‘As we should. It’s bad business, and the sooner we get the confirmation we need the better.’ A soft wave of agreement swept the mounted riders. Helga tried to imagine them all being roused out of their beds. My father has reaped his harvest, she thought, and he could reap it again, five times over. In this valley any man would die happy knowing that his children could say he’d taken a blade for Unnthor Reginsson of Riverside.
‘Come! We have things to discuss,’ Unnthor said, motioning for the newcomers to follow him, and the men dismounted and walked past Sigmar’s group without so much as a hint of menace. Behind them Einar and Jaki had appeared and grabbed the reins, leading the horses away. The Swede’s face remained studiously cheerful, not changing at all, and looking, to Helga, incredibly false.
Once they’d gone she turned to Hildigunnur. ‘There’s going to be a sumbel?’
Her mother smiled. ‘Of course.’ She reached out and held Helga’s shoulder firmly. Her bony hand was pleasantly warm through the shift. ‘I’ll teach you something here, girl. Men rule the world. They are chieftains, they are captains, they are kings. And they will make big decisions. And when they do, the woman who has poured ale down their throat and words in their ear gets to decide what those decisions are. Do you understand?’
Somewhere underneath, something stirred in Helga: a seed of suspicion that almost instantly blossomed into full-blown caution. She had to force herself to reply, squeezing in all the doubt and confusion she could muster. ‘. . . I . . . I guess.’
Hildigunnur smiled. ‘I suspect you’ll master all of this soon enough. Just do what I tell you, keep your eyes open and follow.’ And with that, she turned away towards the longhouse to prepare a ceremonial drinking feast for the unexpected guests.
Or were they guests? What are Father and Mother planning? And why have I suddenly decided that it’s important to play the part of the child? Unbidden, Helga remembered something Unnthor had taught her, skulking around in the forest with her bow when she was much younger.
It’s easier to hunt if the prey doesn’t know you’re there.
Her mind racing again, Helga followed her mother into the longhouse.
*
The men came back sometime later. Whatever they’d needed to settle between them had obviously been settled – there was a different look about them, like dogs that had decided which way the pack worked. Hard to be completely sure, Helga thought, but her gut told her Unnthor had just about clawed back the high seat from Sigmar.
If the chieftain was thinking twice about the look of his great hall, it didn’t show. Hildigunnur had pressed Einar into service and two new tables had been hastily assembled. Helga had watched from afar – her friend was practically bristling at her whenever she came close, so after a while she’d stopped trying. Had she said the wrong thing in the tool-shed? Had she pushed too hard? She’d never seen him quite like this before. He was even more miserable now than he had been – he was polite to everyone who spoke to him, but he wasn’t talking; he said nothing without being asked. The tables had been assembled quick enough, though – he’d driven in each nail with a single precise and heavy smack of the hammer. Now they were all standing ready and laid, with almost every drinking mug and horn in the house set out.
Hildigunnur had asked Thyri to go and fetch a special small cask that had been squirrelled away in the back, hidden behind the regular barrels of honey-mead.
‘Right,’ Hildigunnur said now, waving a finely wrought pouring jug that Helga was absolutely sure she had never seen before; it had appeared as if by magic from some hidden storage space. ‘Bring this to your father,’ she said, producing another unknown item: a beautifully carved black drinking horn set with deep silver inlays. ‘He’ll be served first.’
Helga did as she was told. She recognised some of the men around the table from when they’d visited her father in the past, but their names eluded her, and the moment she saw two or three of them together, she forgot again. They all looked so alike, with solid bodies, thick necks, blocky hands and hard, callused skin. They might have gone into farming looking different, but as much as they’d tried to shape the land, the land had also shaped them.
Unnthor and Sigmar were seated at the top end of the table, but there was no order that she could divine to the rest; Norsemen and Swedes had been mixed up together with little regard to who was and wasn’t important. Einar and Jaki had been summoned to sit down and join them, as had Aslak.
Einar wouldn’t meet her eye, and Aslak appeared not to care about anything but his family.
Bjorn would have loved a seat at this table. I’d bet he’d be telling dirty jokes at his own send-off. Helga found she was missing the giant, and she spared a thought for Thyri. He’d been loud and annoying, for sure, but he’d certainly been entertaining company.
She set the drinking horn down by Unnthor’s right hand, next to Sigmar. Her father shot her a brief glance and almost imperceptibly bowed his head – thank you – but immediately returned to the role he played so comfortably, sitting in his great chair, listening carefully to the men and dispensing quiet advice. There was no such thing as a king in these parts, but if a stranger had wandered in tonight he’d not have known that.
Next to him, Sigmar had a smile affixed to his face. At a casual glance he would have looked the happy right-hand man, but Helga knew better: the smile didn’t reach his eyes.
So the game is still being played – and I suspect the rules are being written, broken and re-written as we go.
She could sense Hildigunnur moving behind her, and the men fell quiet as she advanced towards her husband.
‘In this house you will raise your cups towards the seat of the Allfather,’ she intoned.
‘In this house we will raise our cups,’ the men replied as one. The timbre of their voice sent a shiver down Helga’s spine as she sat unmarked in her spot in the shadows; it wasn’t an altogether unpleasant sensation.
Now at the head of the table, Hildigunnur poured a careful measure into Unnthor’s horn. He waited for half a breath, then gestured towards the guests, and moving together, Agla, Jorunn and Runa stepped forward with jugs of their own and started filling each cup, their movements neat and precise. As soon as the men’s mugs were filled, the women stepped back.
Unnthor raised his horn, and a beat later, the men did the same.
‘Drink wisely, drink slowly,’ Unnthor intoned, ‘for tonight, we talk to the gods.’
The men followed his actions, carefully sipping the sweet-smelling ale. By the odd twitch of an eye or flinch of a shoulder, Helga guessed that her mother’s brew was warming their insides. ‘Now: Sigmar. Tell us a tale of Freyr, for we wish our crops to grow.’
‘When the moon rises over the eastern seas . . .’
He fell easily into the rhythm of the skalds, reeling off an old story about the fertility god, a farmer with a lame leg and his buxom daughter. The men sat and listened politely, occasionally looking towards the chieftain at the head of the table. Not one of them spared the women a second glance.
But Helga noticed as the first one – it was Runa – quietly slipped out through the back door. Agla followed, then Thyri and Hildigunnur. When Gytha left as well, Helga hurried on after her.
*
Outside, the last rays of the sun were stretching across the sky. There was a particular quality to the light just before it left, Helga thought. It was the last chance you’d get for a while to see things clearly. The chill in the shadow of the longhouse made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, but she shrugged it off and followed the women, who were heading in a tight-knit group out to the big stone.
They hadn’t waited for her to arrive and
she walked into the conversation already started.
‘—but the matter needs to be resolved,’ Hildigunnur finished. The other women had shifted position and now everyone was standing next to Hildigunnur and facing Thyri, who stood before them like Helga imagined a beggar might at a queen’s court.
Silence followed.
Hildigunnur said, ‘You understand that, don’t you?’
Trying her best not to feel like an intruder, Helga inched in towards the circle and stopped when she was just about a part of it, but not quite next to her mother and Agla.
Thyri looked back at Hildigunnur. ‘Of course I do.’
‘And?’
Thyri locked eyes with the old woman. Moments passed. ‘Your son was murdered under your roof.’
This time it was Hildigunnur’s turn to swallow the silence.
Thyri’s features looked like they had been carved from the mountainside. ‘And now . . .’ The moment hung in the air between them. ‘Now you expect me to . . .’ It was warmer here, out in the falling sunshine, but Helga’s hairs still stood on end. No one dared breathe.
‘Four,’ Thyri said at last, firmly.
Hildigunnur exhaled sharply. It could even have been a choked-down laugh.
‘Each.’
Out of the corner of her eye Helga saw her mother’s eyebrows rise. ‘Four? You have to be—’
‘We both know the boy couldn’t have done it,’ Thyri said. ‘You know it because you’re smart, and I know it because I am his mother. But if you want me to give up my only child after I lose my only love, you’ll be only too happy to pay me four men’s worth for each of them.’
‘Two.’ Hildigunnur’s voice had all the warmth of stones smashing together.
Thyri smiled. ‘That’s amusing,’ she said. ‘I thought the honour of the Riverside family would cost more than that. What do you think will happen to your trade when the story comes out?’
‘What story?’ Hildigunnur snapped.
‘I haven’t decided yet,’ Thyri said, sweetly. ‘If you say the gods want to take my boy’s life, then so be it. But I will make up something delightful, something that the pig-wives will be all too happy to carry wherever they go. And when they do—?’ Thyri looked Hildigunnur in the eye, and suddenly Helga saw all too well how this woman had managed to stand up to her huge husband. ‘They’ll charge double for what you buy and give you half for what you want to sell. They’ll whisper behind your back, and they will certainly not come to you for advice, and your living husband’s name will be mud. And that, to you, is worth a bag of gold?’
Two cats, squared off. Any moment now the claws will come out.
Hildigunnur’s eyes narrowed. She took a deep breath, then another. ‘Four for Bjorn. Two for Volund.’
Thyri swallowed hard. ‘Done.’
The two women clasped hands and quick as a flash, Hildigunnur drew Thyri in and gave her a fierce hug as she whispered something in her ear.
Bjorn’s wife shuddered, then with a visible show of force she stilled, and they separated.
‘If she gets that, then so should I.’ Agla’s voice was thin, high-pitched, close to breaking.
‘Mother!’ Gytha hissed, but Agla would not stop.
‘With Karl gone, we will be without any means of providing for ourselves within the year. She will have no dowry, and the name of your husb—’
Hildigunnur didn’t even look at her. ‘You will get thrice the blood-price for your husband.’ Agla’s mouth hung open for a blink, then closed. Beside her, Gytha stood red-faced.
Thyri just sold her son. The realisation hit Helga like a boulder in the stomach. She just sold her . . . her unknowing son.
‘And this is how it’s going to go.’
Helga managed to fight her impulse to run away, but listening to her mother’s voice meticulously laying out a simple plan strengthened her resolve. If no one will fight for Volund’s life . . . Her jaw tensed. I’m going to have to do it myself.
Behind her, the last fingerbreadth of the sun dipped below the horizon.
Chapter 16
Sunset
Unnthor placed his empty drinking horn gently down on the table. ‘It is time,’ he said.
Sigmar looked round for Thormund. ‘Take the men out. We will be with you shortly.’ The gangly man rose and gestured at the other Swedes, who stood up in ones and twos and moved towards the big doors.
After a gesture from Unnthor the Norse farmers did the same and within moments the big house was empty save for the two men.
‘So,’ Sigmar said.
‘Here we are.’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you kill them?’
Sigmar froze and stared at the big man. ‘No,’ he said eventually.
‘I know what you are. No need to hide it. Did you?’
The Swede relaxed, and the right corner of his mouth twitched briefly. ‘No. I didn’t.’
Unnthor nodded, slowly.
‘Did you?’
The big man’s eyebrows arched. ‘No,’ he said.
‘Good! Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s go and ask the gods whether the boy did it.’ They stepped back from the table, neither turning his back on the other, until Sigmar smiled and pointed at his bed. ‘I’ll be over here. You do what you need to do.’
The old man stood his ground, watching the Swede walk across the floor of the longhouse. Only when the younger man was standing by his own bed and reaching for a bundle of black cloth did he move towards the corner where he slept.
*
Helga watched the men leaving the longhouse. The procession was not particularly orderly, but there was an odd solemnity about it. They looked important and thoughtful. And none of them knows that their little line of ducks means nothing. Everything has been decided.
She looked over at Thyri, who was standing as tall as she could, her jaw jutting out in defiance, her lips pursed, looking ready to argue her son’s life on the point of a knife. Just like she has to. The men had to rule; that was the way of the world. But women like Hildigunnur, and Jorunn . . . Helga looked at the assembled women. Like every one of them, come to think of it. None of them looked particularly like they wanted to be ruled by men. She thought back on all the big, important decisions she’d seen Unnthor make. Or think he’d been making.
Every time he’d done anything, he’d done it after long talks with Hildigunnur.
So who was the true chieftain of Riverside, then?
The doors of the longhouse opened. Well, there’s the one who looks like it.
Unnthor, son of Reginn, stepped out in a dark blue shirt and black trousers. A massive black cape hung over his shoulders, pinned by a silver brooch the size of a man’s palm. A triple line of silver crossed his right arm. Helga caught more than one man working hard not to stare. A chieftain measured himself by the rings on his arms, and while Unnthor had never been one for showing off, that had to be the biggest armband anyone in present company had ever seen. Standing straight-backed, he looked less the bent, tired old farmer and more a mythical warrior from the old tales.
Sigmar walked beside him, dressed all in black, his clothes simple but well fitting and made of expensive fabric. Hildigunnur had told her that unlike the spring or winter festivals, they’d be dressing to fit the occasion. Well – there wasn’t much cheer to it, that was for certain.
She spied out Einar and inched close to him. ‘The old man looks good,’ she muttered, but Einar’s only answer was a grunt. ‘You’re quite the sore bear today! What’s the matter?’ she asked, but Einar didn’t respond. She gently placed a hand on his forearm, only to feel the contact between them disappear as he stepped away from her.
Not you too.
It suddenly felt like Einar would be the last person she could ever speak to, and now he too was moving away from her.
Einar swallowed, but remained silent.
She was about to scream at him, at everyone, at the world, but the procession of men had reached the big stone and it was time to be silent.
*
When the two men in black reached the stone, Unnthor unclasped the armband and handed it to Sigmar. It was a massive thing, thrice-woven. Clutching it, the Swede locked eyes with the massive Norseman and they dipped their heads to each other, then Unnthor stepped back to stand in line with the men.
Sigmar turned to the stone, and it felt to Helga like the world drew breath. Only the far western side of the sky was still bright with the last rays of sunshine, but Jaki had lit mounted torches that gave heat, warmth and shadow. The darkness crept over them from the east and was now reaching over the longhouse like a bear paw.
Unnthor’s armband caught the light of the flames as the Swede raised it to the sky.
‘I swear an oath upon the honour of Riverside!’ he cried.
He brought the circlet down slowly, the silver sparkling in the torchlight, a dancing snake in his hand travelling inexorably towards its destination. The black surface of the bowl shimmered: a pool of darkness deeper and more forbidding than the night sky.
A gateway to the depths. Images collided in Helga’s mind – claws breaking the clean line of blackness, sinewy limbs rising to break into their world, jaws distended in silent screaming as something rose—
The pictures shattered as the armband sank into the blackness. The light reflected from the slowly immersing silver showed flashes of red, circles spreading from the wound formed by the intrusion. Sigmar did not hesitate. The band continued sinking – half under now, then two-thirds – and his knuckles drew closer and closer to the blood in the bowl.
Helga couldn’t stop herself wincing when Sigmar’s hand clutching the end of the triple circle sank into the blood; she only breathed out when the descent stopped.
Kin (Helga Finnsdottir) Page 21
