Two Ravens (19 page)

He remembered what he had done at Sigurd’s church. He said, “Perhaps I can keep them from going to the Thing. If none of us appears, there is no case.”

Hiyke nudged the horse with her heel, and it sidestepped closer to him. She said, “That is too dangerous. They’ll fight—someone might die. Then there will be no reconciling any of you.”

“What would you have me do?”

“Go to the Thing—offer Ulf a fine of some sort.”

“I would have to forswear the Aesir,” he said.

“Do it, then!”
 

“No.”

“You must. It is the only way.”

“No, there is my way.”

“To fight.”

“To meet them face to face.”

Her breath hissed between her teeth. She swiveled her head, looking away from him. Her fists were clenched together over the reins. He put his hand over her two fists. Her hands were cold.

“I am not Kristjan,” he said. “You cannot drive me here and there, like a sheep.”

She turned her blue eyes toward him again. “Bah. You are as ham-headed as your father.”

His temper rose again. He gripped her hands tight. “We made a bargain, which I will honor. All you need do is keep your part of it.”

“Damn you,” she said, “I will do as I please! As for you, since you came back from England you have lorded it over everybody. You, who have nothing!”

Her eyes were shining. She was half in tears.

He freed her hands. “I did not mean to make you cry,” he said.

“I am not crying. It is the wind.”

They stood there for a few moments, unspeaking, while she arranged herself again. Finally, she said, “I am a shrew. You have made a bad bargain.”

He kissed her mouth. She laid her arms over his shoulders and her lips parted and her breath warmed his tongue. He was first to draw back. Her eyes were still brimming with tears. She touched his cheek with her fingers.

“I will help you,” she said. “Whatever you say, I will do.”

“Come home with me.”

They went down the steep slope toward Hrafnfell.

WITH THE SLEEPING BOOTH BURNED, everyone except Hiyke and Gifu slept in the hall. There were eight days remaining before the family should go to the Thing. Bjarni kept to himself; he spoke mildly to his brothers when he had to deal with them. Twice he went down to the beach and brought back long beams of driftwood. At night when the others slept, he shaped them into bars. He said charms over them and cut runes on them. The night before the family was to go, while everyone slept, he fitted the bars over the door to the hall and the window in the roof over Ulf’s and Gudrun’s bed, and there he kept his brothers, for three days, letting only Gudrun go in and out to feed them.

ON THE FOURTH DAY he took down the bars, and one at a time his brothers came out of the hall.

None of them spoke to him. Jon and Andres went away, each in his own direction. The weather was fine; Bjarni took the scythe out to the lower hayfield and began to mow down the hay. After a time, Kristjan joined him with a rake, and they went up and down through the hay.

In the evening they walked down the slope and along the foot of the Raven Cliff. The sun was down, and streaks of purple rimmed the horizon.

Kristjan said, “Why did you pen me in? I have nothing to do with your quarrels.”

Bjarni said nothing. The slope fell off steeply toward the hall, so that he stepped down more than he moved forward. Hiyke had bade him lock Kristjan in; she worried that Ulf and the others might attack him if he seemed to side with Bjarni.

“Does Gifu ever talk about me?” the boy said.

“Leave her alone.”

“I did nothing to her she did not want.”

“Not,
and
nothing
—” Bjarni stopped; he gripped his stepbrother’s arm and made him stand. “That’s all you care about, is it? What you do not do? Listen to me, I have some good advice for you. Leave your mother.”

“Leave her! But I love her. And where should I go?”

Bjarni started off again down the slope. The scythe lay on his shoulder. “Anywhere but here, or you will be a greyheaded child.” He stretched his legs out, walking away from Kristjan.

When he came into the yard, through the opening between the shed and the burned-out sleeping booth, Gifu was standing in the dirt, shouting through the hall door.

“Bring it yourself!”

Gudrun rushed out of the hall. Her skirts billowed and swung around her heels.

“That is my thanks for trying to teach you womanliness!”

Gifu scurried away from her. “Hag,” she cried.

Bjarni went into the shed and hung the scythe on the rafter. Through the door he heard the women trading insults at each other.

He could see Gudrun standing on the threshold of the hall. “You slut,” she called.

“Slut, am I? Were you so pious spying on Bear when he was naked, that day in the cookhouse?”

Bjarni went into the yard. Gifu saw him coming and lumbered toward the barn, her hand bracing her back. He pushed her ahead of him into the barn.

The barn was warm and smelled of goats and milk; the goats were gathered in the dark at the far end. Bjarni turned Gifu around to face him.

“I told you not to speak of that.”

“It’s true,” she cried. “She looked on you with such a lust—she wanted you.”

The goats bleated, stirring, and Ulf came through them, from the back of the barn. He passed Bjarni without pausing. All Bjarni saw of his face were the points of light glowing in his eyes. The door screed on its hinges. Ulf went out.

“Aaaah—” Angry, Bjarni lifted his hand to strike Gifu.

“It is true,” she said. “Better he knows it now.”

He lowered his hand without touching her.

* * *

BEFORE SUNRISE he went back to the hayfield to cut down the rest of the hay. It all had to be brought in before the next rain; he prized the day’s sunshine and worked hard. Gifu brought him his dinner at noon. She sat down on a stone at the edge of the field and began to eat his meal for him.

“Hiyke says that Ulf and Gudrun argued all night long.”

Bjarni sat down with the scythe to hone it. It was Hoskuld’s hone, and his name was marked on it; Bjarni covered that part with his hand. Gifu had eaten his dinner, even the mead. Her chin was covered with crumbs. She leaned back on her braced arms. Her vast belly kept her from sitting upright.

“I will name him after you,” she said.

“I have the feeling it is a girl.”

“No—it will be a boy, and I will name him Bear.”

“Half Iceland already thinks it is my child. Besides, it’s unlucky to name a baby for a living person.”

“I’ll pretend it’s for someone else,” she said.

She shook the crumbs from her skirt. Bjarni went out again to cut the last of the hay.

Late in the day, all the people of Hrafnfell gathered in the hall for supper. Gifu huddled by the fire. Her face was pinched. Bjarni picked up her hand and found it hot and dry with fever.

“You should go to bed,” he said.

She shook her head. Her wild hair drooped on either side of her face; she rubbed her eyes.

At supper she took no food at all. She sat beside him on the bench and he tried to give her pieces of his meat but she refused. Suddenly she doubled over. Bjarni lifted her in his arms, her legs trailing down. Her hands pushed and tugged on her belly.

The others stood in their places to see. Ulf called, “What is wrong?” Hiyke hurried around the table and laid her thin hand against Gifu’s cheek.

“Is she having the baby?” Bjarni said.

“It’s too soon. She is fevered. Bring her to bed.”

Gifu whimpered. Her eyes closed. Bjarni wrapped her in his coat and took her to the barn. He climbed the ladder with her tucked in one arm. Hiyke went ahead of him to smooth the bed cover and he laid Gifu with her head on the down pillow.

Hiyke brought her a cup of milk steeped with herbs. Gifu’s breath was harsh.

She said, “I am poisoned.”

Bjarni lifted her up again into his arms. Hiyke sat before him, her silver cross in her fingers.

“Gudrun has poisoned me,” Gifu said.

Bjarni and Hiyke looked at one another; they each saw that they agreed.

The girl said no more. Bjarni rocked her, and Hiyke knelt by the bed and prayed. Night came. The barn creaked; the earth had quaked a little. Bjarni felt only a momentary tremble. Just before midnight, Gifu died.

Hiyke pulled her shawl over her head and covered her face with it. Bjarni went down the ladder to the barn.

When he went out the door, Kristjan was standing there. He said softly, “Is she any better?”

Bjarni said, “She is dead.”

Kristjan turned away from him. Bjarni put his head back, looking into the starry arch of the sky.

He could not bury Gifu in the mud, in a hole scraped out of the ground. On the hill above the woodyard, he laid out stones in the shape of a longship, pointing the bow north. The wind blew up a rain storm and in the rain he laid Gifu down on her back in the ship and put around her the things she had liked, her favorite clothes, her ribbons. He took the silver amulet from around his neck and laid it beside her. He piled the rocks over her until the whole of the ship was heaped with rock, streaming in the rain.

When he turned away from the grave Hiyke was there behind him on the grey mare. Rain dripped from the horse’s mane. Bjarni stood without moving, spiritless, his back to the grave. He stirred himself; putting one foot before the other he started down the hillside, following a sheep-path. Hiyke turned to ride beside him.

Halfway down to Hrafnfell they passed Kristjan, walking up the path. He went by them without saying a word, without even glancing at them. Bjarni looked back and saw the boy kneel down by the ship-mound.

Hiyke said, “Well, what shall we do? We cannot summon Gudrun to the Thing, not now.”

The rain was beating into Bjarni’s face. He walked with his head down. Above them the sheep were huddled beneath the overhanging Raven Cliff. He glanced back again and saw Kristjan still praying over Gifu.

“We have to kill her,” he said.

“You say it so easily.”

“Saying it is not doing it.”

“It is awful, even to think of it.”

“Can we do anything else?”

They were almost in among the farm buildings, and Hiyke pressed her lips together and did not speak. She slid down from the saddle. The yard was deep in mud. They led the horse between them into the barn and Bjarni stripped the harness off. Neither of them spoke. He looked several times at Hiyke as he unsaddled the horse and rubbed it down, but Hiyke’s eyes were always downcast.

Later when the rain slackened, Ulf and Gudrun went over the hill to the hot spring. Bjarni went into their room and searched the two chests that stood against the walls, where his brother’s wife kept her clothes and goods. In a bottom drawer he found a blue vial, half full of a dust. This he took away with him.

He fed a bit of the dust to a goose, and the goose died.

Hiyke was in the cookhouse. She had lit two hanging lamps against the gloom and was kneading the bread. He passed through the smell of yeast to the bench by the oven.

“I have found the poison,” he said.

Hiyke’s strong arms pumped in the dough. She had rolled her sleeves up out of the flour and her skin was powdery with it. She did not cease working.

“She is guilty. We both know it, Gifu knew it,” she said.

“Then we will kill her,” Bjarni said.

Hiyke cast a swift oblique look at him. She rested her hands on the floury board before her. “How?”

“It is a very serious crime,” he said. “To kill in secret. You know that.”

“It is justice,” she said, and gave him another, longer look.

He put the vial of poison on the table. “Give her the poison she gave Gifu.”

Her face was like stone. She picked up the vial, looked at it, turned it over in her fingers, and put it away inside her clothes. She went back to kneading the bread.

“I wonder how long she has had it,” she said.

“Sigurd gave it to her, at the Althing.”

“She had it before then. She came here with it. From the moment she came here, Hoskuld waned.”

He did not reply to that, although he knew it was untrue. It rubbed him that she should still think so much on Hoskuld.

THAT EVENING Gudrun did not come to supper. Ulf said, “Maybe she has something already in the oven,” and clapped his palm over his belly. His smile was stiff and false. Jon sat by the fire, carving pins out of wood to fasten the rafters of the new sleeping booth. Andres lay down in the dark at the back of the hall and pretended to sleep.

In the morning Bjarni went to the woodyard to cut wood. There was rain coming down. Ulf and Jon came after him to gather logs for the fire. When Bjarni turned his back, they attacked him with knives.