Two Ravens (12 page)

Gifu sat on the bed. Her skirt was bunched around her hips, and her long legs were bare. One hand rested on her rounding belly. She smiled at Bjarni.

“You slut,” Bjarni said.

She held out her hand. Three pieces of silver lay on her palm. “Someone must keep us.”

“The king keeps us.”

“I like a pretty now and then.” She fingered her money.

He took three ribbons from his sleeve and draped them over her shoulder. He had bought them for her in the market. She caught them up, crowing. “Bear. My favorite colors, too.” She rushed around the room hunting for her looking glass. “Silly old Bear.” She tied her red hair up in the blue ribbon.

Bjarni sat down on the bed. “I am going to Iceland. The king has found a ship for me.”

She wheeled toward him, her face taut. Her eyes moved, taking in his new clothes. “Oh,” she said. “What of me?”

“If you wish, you can go with me.”

“I wish it.”

“I am a farmer in Iceland, you know—it’s a hard living. We work all day.”

She leaned against his side and slid her arm around him. “I will work.”

He thought of Hiyke and of his father. What would happen between them would follow in its own time. He was ready: more than ready.

“What will your family think of me?” Gifu asked.

“We will learn that when we get home,” Bjarni said.

PART TWO

HIYKE AND HOSKULD slept together in the big carved bed he had built for his first wife. One night, when
Swan
had been gone more than a month, a sound woke Hiyke.

Hoskuld snored in the dark beside her. She climbed down from the bed and stood below the gutskin window in the ceiling.

“Who is there?”

“Mother,” a voice whispered, through the window.

It was Kristjan’s voice. She put her feet into her boots and pulled her shawl around her. Hoskuld slept on. She went out down the darkened hall to the door into the yard.

Soft snow was falling. Kristjan came to her and pulled her by the hand across the frozen yard toward the barn.

“Mother,” he said, when they were inside the barn, and embraced her. One hand on his chest, she forced them apart.

“So you came back,” she said. “Where are the rest?”

“In the ship,” he said.

“And you want me to smooth things over for you with Hoskuld.”
 

“Mother, he will heed you. Besides, it was all Bjarni’s doing.”

She was shivering. Her feet were cold. In the back of the barn a horse snuffled. She said, “Tell Bjarni himself to talk to Hoskuld,” and turned back to the door.

“Bjarni is dead,” Kristjan said.

That silenced her a moment. Presently, facing him again, she said, “What happened?”

“I am cold, Mother. That’s a story for the hearth. Talk to Hoskuld for us.”

“You good-for-nothing,” she said. “You think so little of me.” She spat off to his left. “I regret that I am your mother.”

“Who is this?” Hoskuld said, behind her.

Barefoot, in his nightshirt, he came in through the door. He carried the axe in one hand.

“Oh,” he said, and strode toward Kristjan. “It’s your cub. Where are mine?”

She pulled Kristjan behind her. “They are nearby. I don’t care what you do with them, but leave him alone.”

“It was all Bjarni’s idea,” Kristjan said, over her shoulder. “We came back as soon as he was dead.”

“Dead.” Hoskuld lowered his hands. “You are sure? You saw him dead?”

“Not exactly—Sigurd took him. We stole Sigurd’s daughter. Bjarni fell to them.” Kristjan was leaning over Hiyke’s shoulder to speak to his stepfather. His breath grazed her ear. “We came straight back, I swear it, as she is honest.”

Hoskuld laughed. He took Hiyke by the hand and nodded to Kristjan. “They can come back.” He led her out through the snowy yard to the bedroom door. More than once he laughed.

THE GIRL WITH ULF was tall and fair. Her face was lovely. Hiyke sat beside Hoskuld in the High Seat; she saw how her husband looked at the girl.

“You are Sigurd’s daughter,” Hoskuld said. “You favor him. He was always a handsome man.” He ignored his three sons, standing behind her. “Are you here of your own will?”

“Yes, my lord,” the girl whispered.

“I am going to marry her,” Ulf said.

“What is your name?” Hoskuld said.

“Gudrun, my lord.”

Whenever she called him that, Hoskuld swelled. Hiyke sat unmoving in the seat beside him and kept silence.

“Well,” he said, “I will give you the shelter of my hall, and for your sake, pretty Gudrun, I will take them back. Come here and sit by me. And now tell me your story.”

Ulf stood between Jon on the left and Andres on the right. He said, “We found Sigurd’s island and stayed there above ten days, but he and Bjarni could not agree. And he would not give me Gudrun. We left—we came back later and stole Gudrun while they were all in the church, but they caught Bjarni. We barely escaped ourselves. Sigurd had hundreds of men there.”

Hoskuld smiled. He had forgotten Gudrun at his side; he looked only at Ulf. He said, “I meant Sigurd to do away with him. I thought he had outrun me when he left me behind. But you did my work for me. Fate’s work, it was; that is clear.”

Andres said, “We did not wish his death—we did not cause his death.”

Beside him, Ulf looked down at his feet.

“You did,” Hoskuld said. “Don’t tell me otherwise. Haul
Swan
up onto the beach. We have hay to mow.”

Gudrun would not marry Ulf until he took Christ. She slept on a pallet in the little room in the back of the hall where Hiyke and Hoskuld slept. Ulf never saw her alone; Hoskuld managed that. She spent the day washing her face and hands and putting clothes on. Ulf tried to talk her into marrying him as he was, but she refused. She fawned on Hoskuld. She had a pretty, shy, mild way about her that seemed false to Hiyke.

The days grew short. They brought in the yearling sheep to be slaughtered. Hoskuld kept them all hard at the work, except Kristjan, who did as little as he could. One night when they were in their bedchamber Hoskuld said, “That is a lazy, weakling brat you have.”

Gudrun was sitting on her pallet in the corner, listening. Hiyke motioned at her with her head, to remind Hoskuld. She did not want to argue with him in front of her.

The man pushed her. “Did you hear me? I said that I will hasten him out of here unless he works.”

She burned at that. “If he goes, I will go,” she said.

“Go, then!” He leaned over her, shouting into her ear, as he always did. “Go beg on the road. That’s all he is worth. That, and drowning.”

Gudrun was watching all this intently, a smile on her lips. Hiyke bit her lips to keep from swearing at him. He roared at her; he was half-drunk. He tramped out of the room and across the hall to the High Seat, and Hiyke heard him bellow for his jug.

Her hands shook. She wished that she had struck him, to take the edge off her anger. Between her and Gudrun there passed an instant’s glance. Gudrun lowered her head over the looking glass in her lap. Hiyke went out to the hall.

Hoskuld sat there in the High Seat. The pelt of a black bear hid the pagan carvings on the back. His shaggy fair hair stood out against the glossy fur. She went down the hall to the door.

Kristjan was sitting in the grass behind the shed, playing on a little flute of bone. She took the flute from him and broke it in her hands.

“You are a disgrace to me,” she said. “For my sake he tolerates it, but I will not. Either you work or you go.”

Kristjan raised his dark frowning face toward her. “Why should I work for him? I hate him. I hate them all.”

“Then do it for me,” she said.

He caught her hand and kissed the palm. “I will,” he said. Getting to his feet, he put his arms around her; he was only slightly taller than she was. She put her head down a moment on his shoulder.

SHE RODE along the beach, looking for shells. As she rode she thought that she might leave Hoskuld. Even while she considered it, her mind resisted it.

Her first two years at Hrafnfell had been hard ones. The fish had disappeared out of the sea and half the lambs had died. She had worked beside Hoskuld and his sons until she could not walk. She had climbed up the cliff after eggs and gathered seaweed and boiled it for soup. Now the life here was better. She had earned her life here, and she would not give it up.

The grey mare picked her way over the rocky beach. Hiyke kept watch for the small shells that she used to dye her wool. Her hands were cold. She reined the mare down toward the sea. Now she did not look for shells; she stared out to sea.

Married at fifteen, she lost her husband to the sea barely a year later, with Kristjan still unnoticed in her womb. For twelve years she had lived with her husband’s family, carding the wool, spinning and weaving, as a good Christian woman did. Her husband’s family was wellborn, their house stocked with servants. Hiyke did no harsh work. Yet she longed for work, for the test. Then one day she had seen a blond-haired man at the gate who stood a head taller than anyone else on the farm.

It was a sin, to love Hoskuld. Yet she paid her penance, every day, hauling water and scrubbing the floor, and bearing Hoskuld himself. She crossed herself, sure that God understood her. The grey sea churned the surf around her horse’s feet. She urged the mare on, looking for shells.

WHEN HOSKULD HAD SLAUGHTERED the yearling lambs he culled the weanlings and took the finest of them and washed it. He made his yearly joke about giving a gelded sheep to the god of his manhood. This he did before everyone, not caring that it was against the law.

“Who will go with me?” he said. “Kristjan?”

Kristjan said nothing.

“Jon? Andres?”

“No, Papa.”
 

“Ulf?”

Ulf turned away. Hoskuld pulled back his lip in a smile. “Cross-kisser,” he said. He took the lamb over his shoulders and the axe in his hand and went up the hillside, toward the great bulging rock of the Raven Cliff.

Hiyke and Gudrun were watching from the side of the yard. Gudrun turned to her. “Where is he going?”

“To sacrifice,” Hiyke said. “He gives the lamb to his demon, Thor.”

Ulf was coming toward them. Gudrun held out her hands to him. “You did not go,” she said, and went into his arms.

* * *

ULF AND GUDRUN were married by Eirik Arnarson’s priest, in the church at the chieftain’s farm. They knelt down together to take the Body of Christ. Afterward the wedding party sailed across the bay to Hrafnfell to feast the couple. Hoskuld gave his son a fur cloak. He gave Gudrun a necklace of gold links. She laughed, thanking him, and kissed him.

“Be careful,” Hiyke said, when the bride had left them. “She might confuse herself over the bridegroom.”

“She might be the fatter for it,” he said. He lifted the jug.

“Not from you, Hoskuld.”

They were sitting together in the High Seat. Up and down the hall, the guests and the people of Hrafnfell were dancing. Even Eirik Arnarson had joined them.

“It is not my misdoing you do not bear,” he said to her. He pushed the jug at her. “Drink.”

She stuck her chin up. He leaned toward her and said into her ear, “What, do you not trust yourself with it?”

Taking the jug, she lifted it and drank of the mead. He laughed at her.

“Here comes Eirik Arnarson,” she said. “If I were you, I would turn sober before you make a fool of yourself.”

Hoskuld put the jug down. The chieftain came to the opposite side of the table, and they shook hands. The table was between them; Hiyke had heard that was a bad omen.

“There is no more word of Bjarni?” Eirik asked, when they had done with the amenities.

“Nothing,” said Hoskuld.

“That is much to our loss, here,” Eirik said. “Much to our loss.” Standing straight and fat and soft before Hoskuld, he said, “Even worse are these rumors about it. I would take it ill if you brought about what happened to your son, Hoskuld.”

Hoskuld gave a careless laugh. “What, little man, would you fight with me over it?” He gestured to Hiyke. “She will tell you I am innocent. Tell him, woman.” Heaving himself out of the double chair, he went away down the room.

Eirik looked at her, blinking. His small mouth was tucked down at the corners.

“He did nothing,” she said, which was true.

“Damn him,” Eirik said.

“This is our hall,” she said, sharply. “And you would not curse him to his face, would you.” She went away from him. A few steps away, she glanced over her shoulder. Eirik stood there facing the empty High Seat. His mouth worked in and out. Swallowing the insults. There was no justice in him, not for Hoskuld or for anyone else. She crossed the hall, her throat dry, to find some drink.