V
Sævil rode off with his lady and twoscore men. The urchins Ham and Hrani plucked at his arm and asked leave to come along. He barked a laugh and told them, “Of course not.”
Little snow had fallen thus far. The air lay cold beneath a sky low and heavy as a slab of slate. Fields reached brown, trees stood leafless, farmsteads crouched inward. Here and there a flock of crows jeered “Ha-kra-kra!” Hoofs and wheels rang on the road. Against this, the jarl’s troop splashed brightness. All his warriors owned helmets, more than half had byrnies, which gleamed; the blues and greens, yellows and reds of cloaks fluttered back from their shoulders; they were mostly young men, whose merriment stood forth in steam-puffs. Their shaggy ponies trotted briskly ahead.
Signy rode in a wagon carved and painted, trimmed with gold and silver, drawn by four horses of the big Southland stock. With her were a driver, two serving wenches, and supplies of food and gifts. She was a tall woman, the Skjoldung handsomeness in her face and amber-hued braids. Inside a fur coat she wore gaily dyed clothes and lovely ornaments. But no mirth was in her eyes.
Jouncing slowly over the ruts, her car went at the end of the train. Hence she heard the rack at her back before her husband or his men did. Turning about, she saw two ragged, dirty shapes in hooded cloaks, overhauling.
Because those beasts fit to ride were gone from the hall, Ham and Hrani had caught a pair of unbroken foals in a paddock. With bridles of rope and sticks broken off thornbushes, they somewhat made these mounts carry them. The bucking, plunging, and shying were wild to behold. Ham sat backwards, yelled, flapped his arms, and behaved in every way like a fool. Hrani rode more soberly. Even so, it was his horse which made such a leap as he drew nigh that his cowl fell off.
Signy saw fair locks fly around a face whereon, through grime and gauntness and untrimmed fuzz of beard, she knew her father’s looks. She remembered—and had she maybe, during these past three years, begun to suspect? “Hroar!” she gasped as if he had stabbed her. “Then … then your mate must be Helgi—”
Hroar fought his steed till he mastered it. He covered himself anew and sought back to his lolloping brother. Signy buried her head in her hands and wept.
Word passed along the line that she was troubled. Sævil trotted rearward. He was a dark man, fork-bearded, given to keeping his own counsel. There in the wagon, beneath the frightened gaze of her servants, sat his wife crying. He drew alongside and asked what her trouble was. How she answered need not be from a later tale-teller. The wellborn were expected to be able to make a verse at any time, and a gift of skaldcraft ran in her blood.
“The end has come
of Skjoldung athelings.
The oak has fallen,
leaving only twigs.
My darling brothers
are riding bareback
while Sævil’s folk
go off to feast.”
The jarl sat quiet in the saddle for a bit until he said, most sternly, as he stared at the driver and girls: “Great tidings, but let them not come out.”
He spurred toward the lads. They dismounted, to show him respect and listen more readily. “Go home, you shameless whelps!” he bellowed. “I ought to hang you! It’s not fitting for you to be in a troop of good men!” He whirled his horse around and cantered back.
Helgi bristled. “If he thinks—” he began.
Hroar cut him off: “If
you
think, brother mine, you’ll recall how his hand moved, hidden from his followers. It signed us a warning, not a threat. And see, our sister weeps. She must have known me and told him. He doesn’t want anybody else to learn it from his words.”
“Well,” said Helgi, “what should we do now?” They had had no fast-set plan. They merely hoped to spy things out while seeming a pair of nitwits, and afterward do whatever looked best. Could they get near enough to King Frodhi to sink their knives in him, then before the guardsmen slew them call out who they were—but Hroar called that a daydream.
“We’d better not keep these nags,” the older youth decided. “Too open a defiance of Sævil. If he didn’t punish us, the rest would ask why. They’re more trouble than they’re worth, anyway. Let’s leave them off at yonder garth and tag along afoot.”
Thus they did. When the early dusk fell, Sævil and Signy took hospitality from a yeoman. Their folk spread warm sleeping bags outside. Hroar and Helgi shivered hungry in a thicket.
They had not far to fare, however. Frodhi was not keeping this Yuletide at Leidhra, but in a lesser hall he owned north of Haven. Most kings traveled about for part of each year, in order to gather news, hear complaints, give judgments, and on the whole strengthen their grips. Besides, truth to tell, their main dwellings must from time to time be cleaned, aired out, and let sweeten.
That tip of Zealand is wind-whipped, a land of moor and sandy hills, thinly peopled. The hall and its outbuildings stood alone, to north a rolling reach of ling
gone gray with winter, to south a darkling skeleton woods, one farmstead barely in sight across empty miles. Most months none dwelt here save a few caretakers, who tended, slaughtered, smoked and salted those cattle and swine which guests would eat. The chief building had a single floor, and in front a single door; at the rear it abutted on a wellhouse.
Frodhi the Peace-Good had raised it for two reasons. First, this spot was handily near the middle of what fishermen lived on the north coast and the bay to westward, what farmers plowed the heaths, what hunters or charcoal burners ranged the wilds. Second, here was a clump of oaks taller than elsewhere in these parts, where offerings had always been made. A hall hard by it would gain in holiness, and when its owner was on hand he would be the head butcher and spokesman to the gods.
That was why Frodhi his grandson now chose to keep Yuletide here. Among the heathen, the midwinter rites honor chiefly Thor, who stands between our earth and the giants of endless ice and night. Belief is that on the eve of it, all kinds of trolls and spooks run loose across the world; but next day the sun turns again homeward and hope is reborn.
Moreover, the king meant to talk with different leading men, sound them out, win their friendship by an open-handedness which inwardly griped him. Hence for days, wagons creaked hither, bearing food, beer, mead, and gifts—golden arm-rings and other jewelry, weapons, furs, clothes, silver-mounted harness and drinking horns, glass goblets and stamped coins from the far Southlands. Kine, sheep, and horses, to be slain for the gods and eaten by the folk, milled around in pens. Thralls filled what lowly shelters they could find. Then arrived the king, the queen, and the royal guards.
Since he was asking great men here, each of whom would bring followers, the troop of Frodhi was smaller than was common for him. Besides servants, he brought just his berserkers and a chosen few of those younger sons of yeomen who most often take royal service—chosen for looks, manners, and garb. The rest he gave
leave to spend the holy season with their kindred. As I have said, Frodhi had begun to feel at ease in his over-lordship.
Soon guests came, until the stead was a roaring whirlpool. Most shire-dwellers stayed home. There would be no room indoors for them, and they did not like the thought of camping out on Yule Eve. A number of landloupers risked it, for the sake of meat and beer during those few days of their starveling lives. Among them was a witchwife known as Heidh. When Frodhi heard about her, he said she should enter the hall.
VI
Hroar and Helgi reached the place in mid-afternoon, an hour or two behind Jarl Sævil’s band. They mingled easily with the throng in the courtyard. Kegs had been broached, bread and cheese and cold meats stood out for whoever would partake, the smell of roasting oxen welled from the cookhouse to warm the bitter air. Men laughed and bragged, ladies gossiped while eyeing each other’s gowns and gauds, children tumbled in play, dogs yammered.
Between their own rawness, and the blow that a stoup or three of beer can give to a hollow belly, the brothers more than carried out their aim of behaving like loons. They sprang around, somersaulted, cracked foolish jokes, stood on their heads, waved legs in air, and all in all made themselves out as silly and loud-mouthed. So folk merely looked down on them, or away from them.
Day drew to a close. At this season, it was hardly more than a glimmer between two gaping darknesses. Guests streamed indoors. Frodhi required that weapons be left in the foreroom. His excuse was that on Yule Eve men always drank heavily; quarrels might well flare, and if edged metal was to hand, a blood feud could much too easily start. The truth was, he did not really trust them. To be sure, he must lay the same command on his own warriors; anything else would have been a deadly insult. But those who were armed only with eating knives
would hardly attack household troops who, outnumbered or not, were highly skilled fighters.
The foreroom thus grew crowded and agleam. Despite the longfires and many lesser flames, the chamber beyond seemed murky. Smokeholes were not drawing well and a blue haze thickened, stinging eyes and lungs.
When they had pushed deep into the crowd, the boys suddenly stiffened. They could make out a man who sat near the seat of guest-honor that Sævil and Signy would share. Stout, gray, coarsely clad, he must have stayed within this whole while. “Regin!” Helgi cried in joy. “Old Fosterfather!”
He started toward the sheriff. Hroar grabbed his cloak. “Hold back, you staggerpate,” the elder hissed. “Do you want to get us slain?”
Helgi yielded. Still, he could not keep from leaping and dancing down the length of the hall. Hroar must needs pace his sibling. He cast a glance through reek and dimness and elbowing, chattering folk, toward the high seat. There sat his uncle and his mother. The king was leaned forward, in earnest talk with a beggarly-looking crone who bore a crooked staff. He would not mark what anybody else did. Across from him was Signy. Her husband had not yet joined her. The longfires roared high, red, blue, yellow, casting sparks and a surf of heat Among huge hunchbacked shadows glittered the gold on Signy’s arms, at her throat, in the coiled braids beneath her headdress. She was signing to her brothers.
Hroar urged Helgi thither. They stood before her, their faces beclouded by the cowls. Hers was drawn taut. She beckoned them close and whispered wildly, just to be heard by them amidst the din: “Don’t stay here in the hall. Don’t! Your strength is so little.”
Helgi started to answer. Hroar thrust him onward. It would not do for others to see the strand-jarl’s lady beseech two witlings. They sought the far end of the chamber and squatted down among the wanderers and dogs that waited for whatever the king would order given to them or the great men deign to throw their way.
The feast came forth. Good and plentiful were both food and drink: trenchers heaped to overflowing with juicy meat, flatbread and loaves stacked beside tubs of butter and cheese, servants scurrying ceaselessly to keep horns full of beer or mead. Yet there was no mirth. Talk buzzed dull and low. Few youths invited maidens to come sit and drink at their sides. A skald chanted forth old lays, and new ones in praise of King Frodhi, but his tones seemed lost in the smoke. Only the row of fires was loud, brawling and spitting above white-hot coals.
That downheartedness stemmed from the mood of the host. He sat withdrawn and curt-spoken, giving off chill like an iceberg. Sigridh his queen was wholly woeful; her fingers twisted and twisted together.
At last the tables were cleared away. The king rose and made the sign of the Hammer above a great silver cup which he then drained. Next should have come the turn of the earth-god Frey. In his honor, a boar made of gold should have been carried in, for those who wished to lay hands upon and make vows.
Instead Frodhi said, flat-voiced and tight-lipped while glooms went hunting around his head: “I want to make known that ill faith is among us tonight, yes, and a will to do murder. If we end it not at once, surely the gods will feel themselves aggrieved, and we may look in the coming year for famine or worse.” He was silent for a bit; the eyes upon him glistened white; some guests could not help coughing, an ugly noise. “A witchwife has told me,” Frodhi went on, “that she smells danger nigh, stemming from my own blood.
“Well, you know how I’ve sought after the sons of my brother and my lady. I would heal the breach, I would bring back the peace which ought to dwell among kinsmen. Ever have they hidden from me, though. Why else save in hopes of uprising and murder? And who else might be hereabouts, wishing me harm, save those two?
“I will give rich rewards, and forgive whatever he may formerly have done or plotted against me, to whoever will tell me where Hroar and Helgi Halfdansson are.”
Queen Sigridh fought not to weep. King Frodhi peered
about. He could not see well in the gloom. Besides, the faces of men like Sævil Jarl and Regin the sheriff were cold and shut.
“Stand forth, then, Heidh,” ordered the king, “and tell me what you need to learn what you must.”
The woman hobbled from her seat. Shadows blent with her rags while firelight reddened her unkempt gray locks. She leaned on her staff and spoke in low tones.
Among the stinking paupers, Helgi and Hroar squatted on the floor and gripped their knives. A hound smelled their sweat and growled.
Frodhi spoke to his frightened thralls. They fetched a witching seat. He often had to do with spellcasters and therefore kept such things on all his garths. It was a high beechwood stool whose three legs were of ash, elm, and thorn. Heidh put it before the king and herself like a raven upon it. She closed her eyes, moved her withered hands, and muttered.
No firepit lay between the royal seat and the place of honor opposite. Frodhi squinted across at Signy and Sævil. The jarl sat quiet—-the carven pillars seemed to have more movement in this uneasy light—but his wife breathed hard and her gaze roved. Heidh fell silent. “Well, what have you seen?” Frodhi shrilled. “I know much has been opened to you. I see you have luck with you. Answer me, witchwife!”
She parted her jaws and gasped. A cracked croaking came from her mouth: