Two Ravens (15 page)

“There was nothing we could do,” Kristjan said. “There were too many of them to fight. We thought they would kill you straightaway.”

“Spoken like an Irishman,” Bjarni said.

Andres pulled the end of the bench out and sat on it, facing him. “That’s true. It was our fault. As for me, I want your forgiveness.”

“That’s a Christian word,” Bjarni said. He got up and walked around the hall, looking at the familiar things.

“Is that girl your wife?” Andres said.

“No. She is an English girl. Her family saved my life when I was running away from Sigurd.”

“God bless her for that, then,” Andres said.

Kristjan snorted; he went out of the hall. Bjarni said, “Stop, Andres.”

His half brother began to speak, indignant. Bjarni followed Kristjan out to the yard.

Hiyke met him halfway to the cookhouse.

“Gifu is asleep,” she said. “In the loft.”

“The loft?”

“That is where I sleep now, since Gudrun wanted the marriage bed.”

They went down into the cookhouse. On the stone table there were crocks of milk set out to separate. Bjarni sat down. Hiyke put fish and bread and a piece of cheese on the table at his elbow.

“Gudrun went on to the church,” Hiyke said.

He nodded. The cookhouse was too dark to see her face distinctly. The bread was fresh and he ate it all. She went around the cookhouse, wrapping the rest of the cheese and putting it on the shelf.

“You must wonder at your welcome,” she said.

“They thought I was dead.”

“They thought that they had killed you.”

He had expected a worse welcome, and yet a better one, with everything solved in one blow. He said, “I am alive, you see.”

“Yes—she told me how.” Hiyke faced him again, closer. The light lay on her cheek. Her eyes were clear blue. “Such things are heard of in tales, mostly.”

“She lies. Don’t put weight on anything she says.” He took his English dagger to cut the piece of cheese. “I am not here to satisfy myself with Ulf and the others. Is that what they are afraid of?”
 

“Yes, I think so.”

“I am not.”

“That is an excellent knife.”

“The King of England gave it to me,” he said.

“Oh. Then she does not lie all the time?”

He put out his hand and took hold of her skirt. She stepped back. He let her go. With a sweep of her hand she pulled her skirt back out of his reach.

He said, “You know why I left. For that reason I came back.”

The shadow veiled her face again. She said, “I am in no mood for amorous talk.”

The door flew open, and Jon came down into the cookhouse. He had not seen Bjarni. He passed Hiyke, pulling off his coat in the warmth of the oven, and then saw Bjarni sitting there against the wall.

Jon’s eyes popped. He stammered out, “Papa.”

Bjarni got to his feet. He tipped his head forward to keep from striking the roofbeams.

“Why did you come back?” Jon shouted. “Why didn’t you stay where you belong? Why did you come back?” He burst up the steps and out the door. Hiyke watched him go.

Bjarni sat down again. He passed his hand over his face.

The door hung halfway open. Hiyke went to the second step and pushed it shut. She turned toward Bjarni again. Her eyes were wide and bright.

“He tormented them, Hoskuld. He shamed them for deserting you. So there is that in their greeting of you.”

“I have no interest in that,” he said. “I am here for your sake.”

“Bah,” she said, and looked angry. “You are here for your own sake, to have me. It is not so easy as that—just to want.”

“Ah, Hiyke,” he said.

Her face was grimly set. She stared at him a moment, went up the step, and opened the door, letting in the dusty sunlight as she left.

BJARNI SLEPT in the sleeping booth, in the bed against the hillside. In the night he went out behind the booth to piss. On his way back to the door, he saw Jon creep into the booth ahead of him, hunched over like an old man. Bjarni watched him from the door. The banked fire in the hearth gave enough light to see by.

Jon stole across the room, going from one bed to the next. At each he looked to see who lay there. In the first he found Kristjan, and in the second he found Andres. On the foot of the third bed he found the fine velvet coat that King William had given Bjarni. With the coat was the English dagger.

Jon drew the dagger out of its sheath. He lifted it in both hands and plunged it down into the bearskin under which Bjarni had been lying. His arms pumped up and down half a dozen times with the dagger.

Behind him, Bjarni said, “Am I dead yet?”

Jon screamed. He dropped the dagger. He spun around. Only a few feet separated him from Bjarni. He screamed again and dashed across the booth to the door.

Andres called out, “What is it?” Kristjan was standing in the dark at the foot of his bed, the blanket around him, and his knife in his hand.

Bjarni said, “Maybe he thought I was having trouble sleeping.” He took the dagger out of the rent bearskin. He did not go to bed again.

When he went to the hall for his breakfast, Ulf and Gudrun were still away at the Christian church. He sat down over a dish of lamb and duck’s eggs. Kristjan came to him.

“Jon sent me here,” Hiyke’s son said, without preliminary.

Bjarni nodded, chewing his meat.

“He did not intend it,” Kristjan said. “He was overwrought. It was old Hoskuld he struck at, not you.”

Bjarni lifted his head. Sitting down, he was at eye level with Kristjan. The boy was fifteen; he would always be puny, dark as a dwarf. Bjarni said, “You are still the go-between.”

“Yes,” Kristjan said.

“I will not ruin your luck. Go tell Jon that I have forgotten what he did.”

The dark youth went away. Bjarni crossed the yard to the loft, to see how Gifu was.

Hiyke was gone. Gifu sat cross-legged on the straw bed, taking clothes from her pack.

“This is such a strange place—the night seems only an hour long.” Gifu stood to put on her dress. The bulge of her growing baby thrust out her shift.

Later in the day Bjarni went to the hall again and found Ulf there, sitting in the High Seat with Gudrun beside him. Ulf rose to his feet to greet him. They shook hands and Bjarni sat down on the bench beside his brother.

“I am glad to see you,” Ulf said. “Hiyke said that you made your fortune in England. I am surprised you came back. I am glad, too,” he added hastily.

Bjarni looked past him at Gudrun, sitting in the High Seat, her hands in her lap. He shortened his gaze to Ulf again. “Of course I came back. What happened to Hoskuld?”

“Don’t believe what Hiyke tells you. He drank himself to death.”

Bjarni laid his forearms on the table. “That she told me.” He laced his fingers together. “What happened back at Sigurd’s holm?”

His brother fingered his jaw. Beside him, Gudrun leaned forward and spoke in her cool voice. “Be plain with him, husband.”

“Hoskuld intended Sigurd to kill you,” Ulf said. “We thought you were dead, there, on the beach.”

“My father surely did not set you free,” Gudrun said.

“No. I escaped from him.” He nodded to Ulf. “I will be as plain as that with you, brother. Hoskuld is dead, and I his eldest son, but you have his place in the High Seat.”

“He disinherited you,” Ulf said. “He left you nothing.”

Bjarni sat back. Gudrun was smiling. She said, “You are welcome here, Bjarni Hoskuldsson, as long as you wish to stay.”

He left them there, sitting together in the High Seat. He went out of the hall and across the hillside. The wind chilled his burning face. He strode along the slope, not caring where he went, until his eye caught on the graveyard, higher on the hill. He walked up to it. Within the fence of chunks of lava were two rows of graves. None of the humps was marked, but by the fresh soft grass he knew which was Hoskuld’s. He spat on that grave.

He stood there deep in black thoughts. The sound of a horse coming brought him back to himself. Hiyke, on the bay gelding, was galloping down from the height below the cliff.

He stepped back from the graveyard. She drew rein above him and crossed her hands over the saddlebow.

“What are you doing there? You can’t reach him now; you are wasting your curses.”

Bjarni walked through knee-high grass to her side. “Why can I not reach him—he reached me from beyond the grave—he fed me ashes this day.”

They went along the slope toward the hall. On the cliff above them the ravens clamored. Their shadows swept over the grass. Below, near the shore of the bay,
Swan
rode on her reflection in the quiet water. He returned his gaze to Hiyke, riding beside him. He let his eyes feed on her. She gripped the rein in her two hands. Today she seemed no older than a girl. Her face was sunbrowned, her mouth ripely curved. Suddenly she reined in.

“It is your farm,” she said. “You should have it. Ulf has let all the work go. You see how the place is kept. They neither fish nor mow nor shear the sheep, without someone to tell them.”

“We will go to the Althing soon,” he said. “I will talk to Eirik Arnarson and the other chiefs and see if Hoskuld’s will cannot be set aside.”

“Talk? I cannot understand you. How can you come back and find what you find and simply talk?”

He took the rein and made the bay horse turn, so that he and Hiyke were face to face. “I told you why I came back here,” he said.

She lifted the rein in her hands. “Take Hrafnfell,” she said. Her eyes glittered. “Take the High Seat, and I will give you what you desire of me. Now free me.”

He opened his fingers. She galloped the horse away down the hill. He stood in the grass. The shadows of the ravens swooped around him. His fists were clenched. The wind blew into his face. Yet he stood there like a stone until he had calmed himself, before he went back to the hall.

THEY WENT TO THE ALTHING. Bjarni saw Eirik Arnarson there.

“I heard you had come back, with a new pair of boots, too,” Eirik said. He put out his soft ringed hand. “Someone said King William knighted you.”

Bjarni laughed. “Why should I kneel to the Red King when I can clasp hands with Eirik Arnarson?”

“I am not sure if that is a compliment. You know that Sigurd Gormsson is here.”

“Is he?”

Bjarni looked around him. They were standing near the height of the sloping plain above the lake of Thingvellir, where the Council of Iceland met. A shelf of lava cast its shadow over the green grass behind him. Half the people in Iceland talked and walked among the booths set up along the side of the plain. Eirik pointed to a booth in the row on their left.

“There—in the Vestman Booth. That is where Sigurd is.”

Bjarni turned back to the chieftain. “You know that Hoskuld and my brother Ulf robbed me of my inheritance.”

Eirik looked troubled. He patted the air with his hands. “That is harshly spoken. Harshly spoken.”

Bjarni frowned at him. “It was not kindly done, either.”

“I am afraid that nothing can be changed. Hoskuld knew the law. He spoke to the right people—it was all done before witnesses.”

“He had no right!”

“Ah, you know, a man may choose not to have his bastards inherit of him.”

“Do not call me a bastard, Eirik. He married my mother.”

“The old way. By handfast. The Church says that issue of such marriages are bastard.” Eirik shrugged his shoulders. “There is no help for it.”

Bjarni’s blood beat in his ears. He tore his gaze away from Eirik and scanned the plain of Thingvellir again. Another man came toward him and Eirik.

This was Ketil Grettirson, Ketil Longheels he was called. Like Bjarni he prayed to the gods of the Aesir. He said, “We are having a horse fight later. Will you come?”

“Whose horses?” Eirik said.

Ketil talked of the horse fight. Ulf came up to them. Bjarni had mastered himself; he could smile at his brother.

“You know that your new father-in-law is here.”

“Sigurd?” Ulf looked all around him. “Do you think he is here to make trouble with us?”

“Maybe we can get her dowry from him,” Bjarni said.

Ulf grunted. He set his hands on his hips. “Let him come to me, if he wants to make peace,” he said, in a loud voice. “Eirik! I want a word with you.”

He and Eirik wandered away a few steps to talk. Ketil took Bjarni’s arm and turned his back to them. He murmured, “I have eight for the sacrifice, will you make nine?”

“Now?” Bjarni glanced around to see they were unheard. “There are hundreds of Christians here. They will squeal like piglets if they find out.”

Ketil said, “There are also enough of the old faith here to make up the nine, which is not true elsewhere.”

A burst of laughter resounded from Ulf and Eirik, off behind them. Bjarni lowered his voice. “Are there so few of us left in Iceland that we have to risk outlawry?” He nodded to Ketil. “I will come.”