Two Ravens (13 page)

Near the wall she came abruptly face to face with Eirik’s priest. When she would have gone by him the priest stepped into her path.

“Hiyke Ragnarsdottir, I would be pleased to see you at Mass.”

“I have better things to do,” she said, “than spend half a day listening to you misinterpret the Scriptures.”

She had gone once to his church, and he had chosen as his text for the sermon the words of Saint Paul that it was better to marry than to burn. Since then she had prayed by herself.

The priest picked at his nose. His eyes burned with zeal. He said, “Remember the parable of the strayed sheep, my daughter.”

“I will find my own way to God,” she said. “Let me by.”

“Your way. That is your sin, Hiyke Ragnarsdottir, to prefer your own way over God’s way.”

As he warmed to his lecture he waggled his finger and his voice swelled, and the people around them turned to look and listen. Hiyke brushed by the priest. She felt the eyes on her like venom in the air. She got a cupful of mead and drank deep to steady herself.

She drank much that day. Night fell, and she was as drunken as the rest. The wedding couple were put to bed in the sleeping booth. In the yard the guests danced and drank by the light of torches. Hiyke’s head was pounding, and her stomach churned. The light dazzled her eyes. The murky shapes of the dancers whirled before her.

A great goat danced before her. The horns curved back from its round brow. Hoskuld danced with the goat. He lumbered in a circle and the goat stood on its hind legs and drove its horned head at him.

The guests screamed, laughing; all the sound mixed together in her ears. Her tongue flicked over her lips. Her gaze was fixed on Hoskuld. He led the goat around again in their clumsy dance. The goat reared and put its hoofs on his chest. Reaching down, crouching, he caressed the beast’s balls with his hands. The goat bleated, and Hiyke stirred, her thighs warm. The wild shadows of the goat and the man lapped against the sleeping booth, where Ulf and Gudrun shared the wedding bed.

Hoskuld drove the goat away. He came toward Hiyke, bringing the scent of the beast. He spread out his hands for her to see. On his palms he had drawn the runes of her name. She trembled from head to foot. She coiled her arms around his neck, and their mouths met, and their bodies pressed together. He took her away down the hall to their bed.

HOSKULD AND ULF played chess, and Hoskuld won. After that he would not play with Ulf again.

“You are no challenge. I am used to opponents who know the game.”

Ulf flushed. “Let me try. Once more.”

“Bjarni would never have been trapped that easily,” Hoskuld said. “He never made mistakes.”

“He made one,” Ulf said. “Or he would not be dead now.”

“He is dead because you are a coward and a weakling,” Hoskuld said.

Hiyke was watching this from behind her loom. Gudrun sat on the hearth; she watched also. Ulf stood to face his father. His face was dark with temper. His fists knotted.

“Do not fight in the hall,” Hiyke said. She threaded her shuttle with the grey wool.

“He will not fight,” Hoskuld said. “Because it is the truth.”

“Come outside,” Ulf said.

Hoskuld was placing the chesspieces back at the edges of the board. “Sit down,” he said.

“Come outside!”

Hoskuld got up from the High Seat. The bear fur was matted where he had been. Ulf went ahead of him toward the door. Before he reached the step, Hoskuld sprang on him from behind and struck him down.

Gudrun screamed. Hiyke stood, dropping the shuttle. The weights on her loom clinked together.

Hoskuld spoke to Ulf, lying at his feet. “Your brother was worth ten of you. He would never have trusted me behind him.” He came back to the High Seat.

Ulf rose. He swayed, half-dazed by the blow. Hoskuld beckoned to Hiyke.

“Come. I will teach you the game.”

Hiyke put away her yarns. Ulf was staring at his father, but his arms hung at his sides, and he did not challenge Hoskuld again. He went to the door. On the steps he stumbled and nearly fell. Gudrun followed him out of the hall.

Andres, Jon, and Kristjan were still sitting at the table. Hiyke took her place in the High Seat. Hoskuld turned the chessboard so that it was between them. His sons and his stepson watched him without looking away.

“You are all as shameful as Ulf,” Hoskuld said. “You all killed Bjarni.”

Jon lowered his eyes. Beside him, Kristjan put his feet outside the bench and walked out of the hall, and no one called him back. Hoskuld was bent over the chessboard, but all his attention lay on his sons.

“Tell me again how you left him behind to die.”

“Hoskuld,” Hiyke said. “That is between them and God.”

“Keep quiet,” he said.

Andres stood, his hands on the table bracing him. “If Bjarni is dead, then by his way of thinking he died well, and if he is not dead, then we are guilty of nothing. I am going to sleep.” He too left the hall.

Hoskuld said, “That is a mouse-minded thought.” His shadow lay broad across the table. Only Jon faced him now, his cheeks sucked thin, and his mouth tight.

“Tell me how you left him,” Hoskuld said.

Jon swallowed. Slowly he began to tell that story, already old. Hiyke studied the chessboard before her. She knew the actions of the pieces. She shut her ears to Jon’s voice.

IN THE RAIN of an autumn storm Hiyke rode around the end of the bay to a nearby farm, to help a woman there bear a baby. Several other women of the farms around the bay had also come. They brought forth the baby in its time and Hiyke washed it and swaddled it; the other women went about neatening the room and making the mother comfortable. It was a small, mean hut with only one room, and the man too lazy even to make lamps. He sat in the corner by the hearth drinking birch tea as the women tended his wife and child.

Hiyke took the baby to its mother. The woman lay like an emptied sack on the bed; she looked on the baby without love. Hiyke slid it into the curve of its mother’s arm.

“Ah, well,” the woman said. “One more won’t make such a difference.”

Her older children were all outdoors, even in the rain. Hiyke got a broom and swept the hearth.

Later the woman called her over to the bedside again. She took Hiyke’s fingers in her moist hand.

“Hiyke,” she said. “You are well off, there at Hrafnfell. We are so poor, and my children are sick. Please, can you give us something to keep us through the winter?”

Hiyke glanced up at the other women, all watching her. Her neck and cheeks began to heat unpleasantly. She said, “I shall ask Hoskuld to give your man a place on
Swan.”

The woman in the bed let go of her hand. “Our stomachs won’t wait until the fishing begins.” She lifted the newborn in her arms for Hiyke to look at. “We’ll all starve.”

One of the other women said, “For Christian mercy, Hiyke Ragnarsdottir—everyone knows how your storerooms bulge at Hrafnfell.”

“Because we work,” Hiyke said. “Because we care for ourselves.”

Their faces were shut against her. One said, “Mysterious it is, why God exalts some people, in spite of their sins.”

“For Christ’s sweet sake,” another said, “Hiyke Ragnarsdottir, have you no reason to crave Christ’s mercy ? Think, now.”

They stood there talking about sin to her, talking about mercy, while in the corner by the hearth the man drank tea she had brewed.

“I shall ask Hoskuld to make a place for him on Swan, when he goes fishing again.” She nodded to the other women. “And now I will go.”

She went out slowly, so that they would not think she was running away. The grey mare was tethered in the lee of the hut. The oldest child had brought it some grass in his hand and stood feeding it. Seeing her, he stepped back hastily to let her by. His face was pale. He watched her with awe. She knew that the women called her witch-names behind her back; the children heard it, made it into songs, which they sang in her hearing. She swung her leg and her skirt up across the saddle and turned the mare’s head toward Hrafnfell.

The rain had stopped. Round clouds still covered the sky. She rode at a gallop along the green slope. On her left the dark mountain stood; on her right was the head of the bay, the waves softened to little curls of foam. She rode to the stream that came down the mountainside from the glacier.

Someone sat on a stone on the far side. She reined in. It was Kristjan; he stood up and crossed the broad, shallow stream toward her. The water was smoky from the glacier. It piled up against his legs as he waded through it.

“What are you doing out here in the rain?” she asked. Her temper was still mean.

“The rain has stopped,” Kristjan said.

She put the mare at the stream but it refused. Kristjan took the bridle and together they urged the horse to cross the water. Hiyke looked up into the sky. The clouds were parting. She saw blue through the grey.

She said, “These people have no idea of justice.”

Kristjan raised his head, turning his dark eyes on her. “What happened?”

“Ah, they begged.”

He led the mare onto the dry land, and she took him up behind her. The mare started off at a trot. Ahead the trail wound up the slope toward the pass through the mountains. The ditch was full of hawkweed. The sheep had clipped the grass on the far side almost to the ground.

“There is no value in justice if God will forgive all sins anyway,” she burst out. “We eat because we work—if we feed all the lazy people through the good years, when the bad years come, we shall all starve and die.”

Kristjan said, “Do what you will, Mama.”

It rankled like a thorn under the skin that the other women should have spoken so to her. She urged the mare into a flying gallop toward the walls of Hrafnfell.

* * *

THE NIGHTS LENGTHENED into winter. Rain and snow fell. The earth shook several times a day for a few days. When the rain paused, Hiyke saddled the grey mare again and rode over the hill, to make certain that the springs where the sheep watered were still sweet to drink. On the way, Hoskuld and another man came into sight ahead of her, moving fast along the path toward her.

The other man was Jon. He walked hunched over like a crone; she did not recognize him until he was close. Hoskuld’s lips were moving. He talked steadily to his son, who hurried on ahead as if he could outrun what Hoskuld said. Hiyke reined in the horse.

Jon passed her without a word. She pulled the mare around to block Hoskuld’s way.

“Did you taste the water at Grim’s Meadow?”

“Yes, yes,” he said.

Jon was disappearing over the top of the hill. She said, “Why are you doing this? Why are you ripping at them over Bjarni?”

“He was my son,” Hoskuld said. “Who else but I should avenge him?” He struck the mare on the flank, and she shied away. He walked past her, after Jon.

IN THE LONG NIGHT Hiyke kneaded her bread by the deep yellow light of a soapstone lamp. The wind slowed her way to the barn and helped her along on the way back. The men sat in the hall drinking and playing chess. Andres read to them. Hiyke worked at her loom. No one made poems.

Hoskuld suddenly stood up from the High Seat and staggered a step and fell headlong.

Hiyke threw down her work and knelt by him. He was breathing. He stank of drink. At first she thought he was only drunk, and she made Ulf and Jon carry him to his bed.

She sat there in the flickering light of the lamp and said her prayers. The storm boomed and flapped against the gutskin window over her head.

“Stop muttering your female curses,” Hoskuld whispered, “and bring me the jug.”

“You don’t need any more of the jug.”

He heaved himself out of the bed and tramped through the door to the hall. Hiyke followed after him. Standing on the threshold he staggered a little and caught himself again.

His three sons and her son had put their heads together across the table. They watched Hoskuld enter; their eyes glittered. He crossed through the yellow light of the hearth and picked the jug off the table. When he turned to go, the four younger men set on him.

Hoskuld went down. Hiyke seized the heavy fire-iron. Swinging it full around her she beat them away from him. She stood over him, protecting him; Ulf and Jon and Andres crouched before her, their fingers hooked and their faces twisted into snarls. Kristjan backed away from them. By the table, Gudrun watched with shining eyes.

Hoskuld tried to stand. Hiyke caught his arm; she braced him up, his great weight pressing on her shoulder.

“Come to bed,” she said.

He resisted her. Unsteadily he moved forward down the hall. With the fire-iron in her hand she guarded him, and he rounded the table and sat in the High Seat.

His eyes closed. Frightened, she wheeled around, shielding him from the others. “Get out!” She brandished the fire-iron at them, and they fled her, all but Gudrun, who stayed where she was.

“Go with them,” Hiyke said to her.