The Sea Queen Page 11

  * * *

  Ragnvald passed the next day doing harvest tasks, making sure Sogn was ready for the coming winter. He had just finished counting and inspecting his cattle, newly returned from the shieling, the high pasture where they grazed during early summer, when Oddi fell into step with him, Einar bounding after them.

  “Tell your father what you told me,” Oddi said to Einar. He lifted Einar up into his arms, Ragnvald’s little son who did not like to be touched by anyone. He sat in the crook of Oddi’s shoulder as though it were a hall’s high seat.

  “What?” Ragnvald asked.

  “He overheard some of Atli’s men—”

  “Eavesdropping?” Ragnvald asked.

  Oddi gave Ragnvald an irritated look. “Paying attention. Listen to him.”

  Ragnvald looked at Einar. His son resembled Vigdis too much for Ragnvald’s comfort, and reminded him of his conversation with Hilda the night before. Ragnvald had gone out to sleep among his warriors, leaving Hilda to her empty bed.

  “One of Atli’s men said that your grandfather killed his grandfather by treachery,” said Einar. He scowled. “He told a long story. I don’t remember all of it.”

  “That’s what Atli said to me,” said Ragnvald. “It doesn’t make it true.”

  Oddi set Einar on the ground, and he ran off to where Ivar played near the open kitchen door. “Yes, but he’s trying to convince your men of it. And your son.”

  “Of course.” Ragnvald sighed. “This is why he wanted to stay for the harvest. I should have known.”

  “Yes, you should have,” said Oddi. Ragnvald looked at him sharply. Oddi rarely criticized him so directly. “And you should be kinder to your son. He is a very clever boy. He could be a great credit to you, or he could stab you in the back.”

  “It’s the latter I fear,” said Ragnvald. A child so cool and watchful unsettled him.

  “He fears you and worships you,” said Oddi. “You may not see it, but if you treat him as your stepfather did you—”

  “You compare me with Olaf?”

  “Yes,” said Oddi. “I don’t think you mean him harm, but you will make him cruel and fearful if you are not kinder to him. It is not too late. If your Ivar is to be king of Sogn after you, Einar will be his right-hand man, as valuable to him as you are to Harald.”

  “I am not so valuable to Harald,” said Ragnvald. “He sent this Atli to me.”

  Oddi gave him a sardonic smile. “Maybe he wanted to get rid of him and trusted you to do it.”

  * * *

  When Ragnvald inquired about the behavior of Atli and his men, Fergulf, the steward of the farm at Sogn, told Ragnvald that Atli’s men were always the first to wake and go out to the fields, and the last to come in and eat at night, but lacked skill. Hilda told him they had blistered hands from scything the grass for hay, and came to her for salves of precious beeswax.

  During harvesttime even men who had their own cottages came to the hall to eat. Atli stayed out of Ragnvald’s way. He ate with his own men, and slept with them in tents that ringed the hall and made it look as though a ting had sprung up there. Ragnvald joined them that evening, bringing with him a servant who carried a bowl of rich, sour skyr fermented from the farm’s best milk to add to the men’s meals of stewed meat that had been stretched thin with porridge and onions to feed all of the hungry mouths at the hall.

  Ragnvald brought his plate to Atli’s end of the rough, outdoor table where they all ate. “Your men work hard,” he said.

  “Thank you,” said Atli with a quick and insincere smile.

  “Have any of them ever helped with a harvest before?” Ragnvald asked.

  “No, but there is nothing they won’t do if I ask them,” said Atli.

  “It shows,” said Ragnvald. “They work hard, but they are not much help without knowing their craft. From now on, they will be paired with my men, who can better show them how to put their remarkable strength and loyalty to better use.” He stood, taking his untouched trencher with him, and turned back after he had left their circle. “Unless you would rather go. I would gladly meet you in Nidaros in a few weeks.”

  “Of course we will stay and help,” said Atli, without a smile this time.

  Behind the table where Atli and his men sat, a party of men approached across the field, leading a number of ponies laden with baggage. As they drew closer Ragnvald saw among them his father-in-law, Hrolf Nefia, his son, Egil, and, by Egil’s side, Sigurd. The ponies would carry furs, then, for Ragnvald to trade in Nidaros. Ragnvald waved a greeting and walked across the field to meet them. The situation with Atli and his men was volatile enough without bringing Sigurd back into it, at least not before hearing what he had to say.

  “Well met, Father,” said Ragnvald when he reached Hrolf’s group. “You are welcome here. My hospitality is open to you as always, though my hall is rather crowded right now.”

  “Greetings, King Ragnvald,” said Hrolf. He wore fine clothes in many bright colors, and a giant silver belt buckle that Ragnvald had gifted him. Ragnvald’s generosity had improved his fortunes over the past five years. When Ragnvald went to Hrolf’s home to take Hilda back as his bride, he had arrived with Harald, Oddi, and Sigurd by his side, all in their finest imported silks. Harald bought a number of the fine ermine furs that Hrolf traded from the Keel’s trappers, and promised to send his agents to purchase all of the rest so they could be sold in his new capital. Dazzled, Hrolf had happily given Hilda in marriage the next day, celebrated by Harald’s men and all of Hilda’s sisters. And Ragnvald had always made sure that Hrolf did not regret the match. He had paid for the new outbuildings that housed the mountain ponies that Hrolf used to bring furs down to Sogn.

  Ragnvald felt Atli’s presence by his side, and introduced him before Atli could say anything. “This is Atli Kolbrandsson from Dublin. Do not trust a word he says.”

  Hrolf laughed. “Very well, I won’t.”

  “Atli, this is my father-in-law, Hrolf Nefia, his son, Egil, and you know my brother Sigurd.”

  “Your brother?” Atli asked. “I thought he was only your stepbrother.”

  “He has been a brother to me, so he deserves the honor of that title,” said Ragnvald. “If he is so much as scratched while you are both at Sogn, you will suffer for it.”

  10

  In the weeks that followed Svanhild’s attack on Geirny, Solvi and his men spent most of their time in negotiations with Gudbrand and his allies. The argument over whether to attack Vestfold or somewhere on the west coast of Norway seemed interminable to Svanhild. She hoped they would argue long enough so that winter would prevent any ships from departing. Solvi brought Svanhild to Geirny’s tent, outside a half-built turf hall, and required her to make a humiliating apology, along with a gift of jewels to pay for the offense. Svanhild felt the sting of embarrassment keenly and avoided the company of all Icelanders save Unna and her family.

  “You must claim your land before Solvi leaves,” said Unna as she and Svanhild walked out to the edge of Unna’s land, searching for one of Unna’s ewes. “If you claim land, Solvi will be forced to hire men to farm it, and to defend it. If he leaves before you do it, you will have nothing, only his gift to me to feed you and your son through the winter.”

  The sulfur in the air was strong today—rotten egg with a tang of metal in it—a choking scent that rolled down from the smoking mountains and cooled, so the air seemed thick and viscous when it reached the lowlands. Some days Svanhild could not smell it, and she wondered if it had become part of her skin and her breath, the way a fisherman always smelled like his catch. Or how Solvi smelled of sail wool and seawater, even when he was far from his ships.

  Unna gave Svanhild a knowing look when she hesitated in replying. “You must secure Eystein’s inheritance. What else do you have to give him?” If Solvi did not return from the coming war, then Eystein’s inheritance would be a handful of treasure cached all over the Norse and Irish coasts. Solvi had a magpie’s love of bright objects, and as l
ittle idea as a magpie what he should do with them.

  Svanhild took Unna’s elbow so they could steady each other over the uneven ground. “Solvi is a good father,” she said. “He will do right by Eystein.”

  “Where is he now?” Unna asked.

  For a moment, Svanhild did not know if she meant Eystein or his father. She had left Eystein behind with Donall, who Eystein liked, even if they had trouble understanding each other’s words. Donall had a knowledge of livestock that surpassed most of Iceland’s other farmers, and many of them called on him to heal their sick animals. Svanhild thought Eystein would like to learn these skills from him.

  “Solvi is speaking with . . .” Svanhild waved her hand toward the dwellings near the bay. Everyone in the settlement knew of the battles brewing and each had a differing opinion. Some feared that attacking Harald from Iceland might bring his forces down upon them. Some, mostly nobles who had left Norway rather than swear to him, hoped for the allies’ success, even if they would not go themselves. Many did want to go, and every day more promised to sail with them. Svanhild found it restful that Unna had not yet shared her own opinions about the planned attack.

  Unna made a skeptical noise and tightened her arm in Svanhild’s. “Every man will fail you eventually,” she said. “Look to your own future.”

  “Solvi is not every man,” said Svanhild, though without conviction. If only Eystein could stand sailing better, Svanhild would take him and join Solvi. She need not fear violence; she and Eystein were both ransom prizes too precious to harm, equally valuable to Solvi or Ragnvald.

  A droplet of rain fell on Svanhild’s arm. She looked up the slope, into the wind. She did not yet know Iceland well enough to tell which clouds brought weather and which came from the volcanoes that expelled their smoke and ash into the sky. Eystein loved this land already, the flowing green grasses that rippled over the hills like another ocean, and the black rock on the sides of mountains that met glaciers of searing white. He loved the plants and growing things, and often brought her butterflies and ladybugs that she let crawl over her hands. A few days earlier, he had brought her a small vole, its fur as soft as the hair on his head had been when he was a baby. He had sat all afternoon, he said, with a crumb of bread in his hands, waiting for it to lose its fear of him. In Svanhild’s grasp, the vole shuddered and trembled, as though it might shake to death, until she released it among the grasses to find its own kind.

  A crying noise stopped Unna, and Svanhild with her. Unna crouched down and listened. The bleat came again from a hollow in the grasses, and Svanhild saw a tuft of wool caught in a thistle nearby.

  “Help me,” Unna commanded. A small ewe, younger than most of Unna’s flock, was kneeling on its forelegs hidden by a tuft of grass. “Hold her,” said Unna. Mud pulled at Svanhild’s feet. She looked down at her shoes: fine worked, embroidered in crimson and gold floss. Solvi would drape her in gold for the seagulls to admire if she let him.

  “Well?” said Unna. Svanhild took her shoes off and walked down into the water barefoot. She expected cold, but it warmed her chilled feet. A hot spring must run off here. No wonder Unna grew such lush crops.

  The ewe rolled its head, wild and frightened, and showed the whites of its eyes. It tried to find purchase with its forelimb and then cried when the broken bone collapsed beneath it. Svanhild crouched next to it, and petted its head, oily with lanolin and matted with mud.

  “No, hold its hindquarters,” said Unna. Svanhild moved farther back and did so, while Unna looped the ewe’s head under her shoulder and, with a hard stroke of her dagger, cut its throat. The blood warmed the water further, and dyed Svanhild’s toes pink.

  “I’ll send Donall out here to fetch it for supper, or it will draw wolves,” she said, wiping her dagger in the grass. “Too bad—I liked this one’s wool, though she never had enough sense to stay out of the nettles.” Unna touched the stem of the plant with the tip of her dagger, and stepped carefully around it. “Sweet, but only if you can grasp them.”

  “I used to be good at this,” said Svanhild. She pulled her own dagger and used it to cut low on the stems of the nettles while she wrapped her hand around the leaves so they protected her from the barbs. These would make a flavorful stew.

  “What will you do if you do not claim land?” Unna asked. “Solvi could be gone for years.”

  “Stay with you, if you will have me,” said Svanhild.

  “I would,” said Unna, “but we are strong-willed women to share a household for long. Better you claim some land—you can stay with me for the winter, and in the summer hire men to build you a house of your own. Perhaps your Solvi will win and can send you timbers from his district, and you will have the finest house in Iceland.”

  “I don’t think Ingolfur would like that much,” said Svanhild.

  “He will always have his chair posts,” Unna replied, with a quirk of her lips.

  Still, Svanhild hesitated. Solvi did not want her to take this step. They had visited many places where Solvi might have been granted the land of the conquered. Islands in the Hebrides were as fertile and green as this. With the Irish subdued, they might even have taken land outside Dublin, if Solvi had been willing. They had little to bind them to Iceland—no one here did, except exile.

  “What if he wins and I have to go back to Norway?” Svanhild asked. She looked up at Unna.

  Unna shrugged. “I will run it for you while you are gone—for a portion of the output. Do not worry about that.”

  “Solvi won’t like it,” said Svanhild. The peace between them these past few weeks was fragile and hard-won. If she did nothing, and waited until he was gone to make her claim, she would avoid another argument—but Unna was right, she needed him to buy slaves, and pay laborers to work it for her. Her jewelry, fine as it was, would not buy the years of hard work that turned scrub forest and heather into farmland.

  “It is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission,” said Unna.

  “That is a boy’s reasoning,” said Svanhild.

  “And I heard that sometimes you wore trousers and rubbed dirt on your face pretending to be a boy in Solvi’s service,” said Unna. Svanhild smiled—she had done that at the battle of Vestfold to secure Solvi’s freedom. “You must do this to secure an inheritance for your son. He will not want his father’s ships.”

  Svanhild told Unna she would do it the next day. That morning, Solvi seemed pleased with himself, saying that he had not formed an agreement but was bending Gudbrand and Nokkve to his way of thinking. Only Rane, backed by the Swedish king, preferred to start his conquest in Vestfold.

  “I told Rane I would go to the court of Eirik myself and make him see that he will get more for his investment this way,” Solvi said to Svanhild in their tent, that morning. “Then we’ll attack in the spring. Eirik will listen to me. Rane is only a minor jarl.”

  “What of Ulfarr? You sent him to Tafjord,” Svanhild asked. She cared little for Ulfarr himself, but he had protected Solvi well since boyhood. If he must be anywhere, Svanhild wanted him by Solvi’s side.

  “Yes,” said Solvi. “I had meant it for a raid only, but if Ulfarr draws Harald’s forces to Tafjord . . .” He trailed off, then kissed Svanhild on the lips excitedly. “Yes, you are right. They will certainly follow me to Tafjord if I tell them Harald will come. Thank you, my sea queen.” Svanhild watched him go, bemused. She had not wanted to make this war any easier for him.

  Svanhild brought Eystein and Katla to meet Unna at the edge of her land just before sunrise the next day. The ritual required her whole household, all who planned to work the land and profit from it. She would begin her homestead with herself, Katla, and Eystein, and add to it later: servants and thralls, bought now with plunder and later with lengths of wool cloth woven from her own sheep. In exchange for Katla’s participation in the ritual, Svanhild had promised her a dowry so she could make a good marriage, and if she had sons, Svanhild would give them portions of land on which to live. Katla’s usually truculent
expression became more open at Svanhild’s offer.

  “If you live up to the trust I have placed in you,” Svanhild said to her, “you may even be housekeeper and oversee all of this land, to be trusted to make all of the decisions I would make when I am gone.”

  A man could make a claim by lighting bonfires in sight of each other, and all the land within their perimeter at the end of the day would be his. A woman’s portion was smaller: she could claim the land around which she could lead a heifer in a day. This close to fall, the day was not much longer than the night, and Svanhild must walk quickly, pulling a plodding cow. Unna had gifted her a sprightly young heifer, barely older than a calf, who often galloped in Unna’s fields for its own pleasure.

  Unna knew the prayers well enough to act as priestess. She spoke the blessings to Freya while Donall, in his strange accent, gave the responses of Frey, the god of fertility. Unna placed a flower crown on Svanhild’s hair and draped a garland around her wrists. She put the cow’s lead rope in Svanhild’s palms, and draped another garland around the cow’s neck. Hops, barley, rye, and wheat, braided with the grass that fed the sheep. As soon as Unna spoke the blessings and bid her go, Svanhild took her first step.

  Her pockets bulged with carrots and packets of grain sweetened with honey, as many inducements as she could carry to keep the cow moving. Katla carried a bronze dish that contained hot coals, bright with little licks of fire. With every step Svanhild declared herself the land’s mistress, showing her household’s mastery over livestock and fire. That was what Unna said: with the right blessings, this magic would bind the land to her and her line for all time. Donall followed, keeping watch over Eystein, and marking the edges of Svanhild’s land with sticks thrust into the ground.

  A few days earlier, she had paced out this land, to see how far she could walk between sunrise and sunset. The blessings worked best if she completed her circuit ending where she began, enclosing the land as the garland encircled her head. The cow half led her at first, thinking the walk a game, but as the day wore on it became weary. Svanhild saw the land differently today, when every footfall claimed it for her. At the first turn of the path, she stumbled and almost dropped the cow’s rope. Stones would follow in each of her footsteps, and grow into a fence that marked off her land with cairns, blessed by fire and prayers to the fertility gods at each turning. Now the path took her upward, up the slope of the smoking mountain. Svanhild had to pull on the heifer to make her climb.