Odin’s Child (41 page)

Meantime we, the living, came more and more to resemble the dead. Glum, who was still sunk in his special despair, toiled through the day like a dumb beast of burden. Stig grew morose and irritable. Though he never said so aloud, into his eyes oftentimes came a look that told me his mind was on Nidaros and Bergthora and how he might have been there now, sitting by a warm fire with food in his belly. Even Einar turned moody, baffled by the silent resentment of the others. They needed someone to blame for their sorrows and he was the outsider, the hated Jomsviking.

For us all, the days dragged by in ceaseless toil and growing despair. Added to our other miseries, we soon began to notice the black bruises on our arms and legs, the bleeding gums, and faintness which herald the dreaded scurvy. So at night, when we sank down on our cold floor that
hadn't even the comfort of a bit of straw on it, we slept the restless sleep of sick and exhausted men.

Nevertheless, I continued to work at learning the speech of our captors. I couldn't have said why. I had no plan really. Stig and one or two others who had caught my enthusiasm for it in the first days had long since given it up, but sheer perverseness kept me at it. I must do
something
. And so I willed myself to believe that somehow my effort would bear fruit in the end.

I should say something more here about my teacher, Hrapp the Fool. As to his age, I had guessed him to be near fifty. It was a shock to learn he was only thirty-two. He had lived nearly half his life in this wretched hole. For all I knew, he was a cheerful and generous youth when he and his mates set out on that unlucky voyage that ended here, but fear had taken him over like a leprous wound, deforming him beyond recognition. He trembled as easily as he breathed; cringed as naturally as he shat himself; was fawning, greedy, sly, and suspicious. When I asked him once if he suffered much from nightmares (as I did myself), he only laughed. I suppose he meant that this life was all one nightmare.

He was certainly not stupid. To have survived here at all bespoke quick wits. But he grudged each little bit of knowledge that I dragged from him, whether about the speech, customs or history of Pohjola, as if it diminished by so much the precious hoard of knowledge that was literally his life's blood.

Why, feeling as he did, had he agreed to teach me at all? Though I had taken him by surprise with a bluff at our first meeting, I had no real hold over him. Nevertheless, he quickly fell into the habit of following me to my work every day, and even of spending the nights with us in our foul little cell, although my crew mistrusted him.

I doubted he was a spy. Where was the need? I decided finally that while he might fear me as a rival for his Mistress' favor, he also dreaded the thought that we might go off without him. And so he balanced on a knife blade of doubt whether he should risk the little that he had for the much he might gain.

I pitied Hrapp easily, liked him with difficulty, and never for a moment trusted him.

In any case, though, I put him to good use; always making him speak to me in Finnish, asking him the name of each thing, and saying it over
until I had it right. And soon, what had sounded like nothing more than the twittering of birds, began to separate itself into words I could roll around on my tongue.

I have more wit for this than most men. From my earliest childhood I possessed a great memory for words, which is the reason my young head was as well stocked with tales and poems as many a man twice my age.

Soon I could hold simple conversations with the peasants who toiled alongside us in the fields, though they had little to say.

What their rank in the society of Pohjola was, I never understood. They were angry when I called them orjat, and yet they seemed no better off than slaves, being as dirty, dumb, and starved as the rest of us. It was only the children who were sometimes merry, and vastly entertained by my efforts to speak their language. Whenever I made a mistake they would put their hands in front of their faces, shriek with laughter, and guess wildly at my meaning until the approach of some sour-faced elder put an end to the game.

Sometimes I would try to overhear these peasants talking among themselves. Mostly they spoke too quickly for me, and I didn't get much, but there was one word that I would catch now and again that intrigued me—sampo, as nearly as I could make it out. When they said it, they would lift their eyes quickly to the hill, then look away and bend their heads again to their tasks. And this they did more frequently as the first month of our captivity drew to an end.

That hill began to haunt my dreams. Nothing grew on it, nothing near it. Our work never took us there, and I could make no one talk to me about it. And yet its shadow, in every sense, hung over us. In some lights, as when the setting sun threw a bloody haze over the landscape, its dun-colored earth seemed to glow like molten copper. At those times it reminded me of my own Hekla—and stirred troubling memories in me.

†

The warriors of Pohjola, who lived with their women in the great hall, were a class apart. They did no work of any kind, but passed their days sweating in the sauna, carousing, and swaggering about the place dressed in their finery and armed to the teeth.

One day, though, Joukahainen assembled three score of them together,
more than half his total force, and led them out, shrieking their war cries, through the sea-gate to their boats.

Following that, we spent one joyous week without beatings, until, on a gray morning, the sentries blew long blasts on their birch bark trumpets and presently the gate swung open and the warriors pranced through again—fierce scowls on their faces, crowing and leaping and whirling their swords around their heads as the whole farm ran down to greet them.

I happened to be standing at the woodpile by the hall, where I had been sent to split firewood. From there I had a clear view down to the seagate, and through it, for the first time since our captivity began, glimpsed a sliver of sea. I could see the prow of a boat, crammed to the gunwales with hides, sacks of meal, and other stuff as might be looted from a rich settlement. Unnoticed, I joined the crowd and drew closer.

While his warriors carried this cargo in and heaped it up in the yard, Joukahainen displayed before us his special prizes—the inevitable heads, eleven of them, which he unwrapped one at a time. He held each one up by its hair and encouraged the Pohjolans to scream abuse at it before handing it over to one of his men to set on a stake. Several were the heads of women, five were children, one an infant.

His best prize he saved for last—a girl, pushed through the gate by two warriors. She was slim as a willow and dressed in a red shift that was sewn all over with little bells and golden disks. Two yellow braids hung down to her waist. With a sudden pang I thought of my dead sister. Joukahainen shouted up to the hall for his Mistress to show herself and accept the gift he had brought her.

By and by, Louhi answered his call. Pulling her head down into her shoulders tortoise-wise, she advanced with a quick shuffling gait over the dusty ground between us. The crowd drew aside for her, warriors and peasants alike, touching their foreheads and dropping their gaze as she passed by—this stumpy, halting old woman, swaddled to her ears, as though she feared the touch of what little sunlight there was. In a month, I still had not had a good look at her face.

Standing in front of the girl, she thrust a finger at her and spoke some words, but too low and quick for me to catch. Then, in an instant, the girl spat in the old woman's face. Louhi, recoiling, dove into the folds of her clothing and came up with a knife. She would have ripped the girl
from belly to breastbone if Joukahainen had not made a lightning grab for her wrist. It astonished me that he dared this, such fear did she inspire in everyone. But he had his way. She retreated a step and the knife went back inside her rags.

In return, he made her a very low bow, while touching his fingertips to his forehead, and said something to the effect that she must be patient just a little while longer. To this she made some piping reply, and turning from him, scuttled back to the seclusion of her dark hall.

The Headsman followed her there, dragging the girl behind him. With fair Louhi and gentle Joukahainen gone, the crowd dissolved and drifted back to its labors.

†

My curiosity about that morning's business was soon to be satisfied. Hrapp found me some hours later in the stables and informed me coolly that a feast was ordered that night to celebrate Joukahainen's victorious return. I was to present myself to Louhi, who was aware of my progress in the language, and entertain her with whatever poor effort I was capable of. I swallowed hard and thanked him.

The rest of that day I spent in a sweat of preparation, cudgeling my brains for some simple story that I could manage in their tongue and feeling my little store of words leaking away by the minute.

The feast was already under way when Hrapp and I crept into the high-raftered hall and took seats at the farthest table from where Louhi, black and shriveled as an old spider, sat amidst her warriors and wizards.

The smoky fire-lit interior hardly differed from that of any chieftain's hall at home. Six broad tables lay end to end on trestles and the warriors and their women sat together on benches, leaning their elbows on the sand-scoured tops and carving their meat with their knives. Above them, rush lights in brackets cast a fitful light across the rows of painted shields and arms that hung on the walls. And down the middle of the hall, women and barefoot girls carried mugs of ale and bowls of stew, ladled from two great cauldrons that swung above the hearth, while dogs and children ran in and out of their legs. The din was enormous.

By no means did the best of the fare find its way to where we humbler guests sat. Still, it was enough to make my head swim and I
ate greedily, knowing that tomorrow it would be fish heads and turnip tops again.

I noticed at once—for it was my habit always to keep a wary eye out for him—that the object of our celebration had not yet made his appearance. And it was some little while before the door, near which I sat, flew open with a bang and revealed Joukahainen, drunken-eyed, framed in the doorway.

In one hand he held a flaring pine branch, while the other arm was thrown round the shoulders of the girl that I'd seen that morning. When he was sure that every eye was on him, he pushed her roughly before him and stepped inside. In the light of the torch his white skin glowed red and glistened with sweat, and his hair stuck damply to his neck. The girl was wet-haired too, her cheeks were burning, and her shift clung to her small breasts.

“Joukahainen comes late from the sauna!” a warrior called out, laughing.

The Headsman acknowledged this with an icy smile. He was a handsome man, no doubt, in a chilling sort of way. His tunic and breeches were of gray wool trimmed in blue and fastened at the wrists and ankles, in Finnish fashion, with buttons of bone. From his shoulder swung a cloak of spotted lynx skins that he always wore, and his silver bracelets and the hilt of his sword glinted in the firelight.

Other warriors took up the refrain from the first one, calling out—a shade too heartily, I thought, as though even they were not really easy with him—“Is the girl well trained, Joukahainen? Has she learned sauna-skill from her mother? Does she know how to strike with the birch twigs to rouse a man's passion? Does she make it hot enough for you, eh?”

Ignoring their leers and gestures, he stalked past them with his quiet cat's step, like a beast that knows it is master in its lair, until he reached the seat of honor. With a shove he sent the girl to the cauldron to fetch him his food, and took his place at Louhi's side.

I applied myself to my own food and paid them no more attention for a while. Only when I had satisfied the cravings of my belly, did I question Hrapp about Joukahainen's victory.

“A slave's got no business to be so curious,” he answered in his customary sullen tone.

“I know,” I said, smiling, “it's my one fault. Tell me or I'll let slip to the
guards that you're planning another escape.”

That brought on the quakes and tremors. “Ease off! What a bloody scarer you are! I only know a little anyway. They say he's come back from Kalevala—a place that lies on the coast, to the south somewhere. During all the time I've lived here the two folk have been enemies. Don't ask why, for I don't know. Pohjola is the stronger, but the Kalevalans are rebellious dogs, and they strike back whenever they dare. One of their warriors, especially, a sly fox named Lemminkainen, gives us trouble. He haunts the forest and the islands offshore, never staying long in one place, but aiming quick blows at our farmsteads and ambushing our hunting parties.” It amused me how Hrapp always spoke of “our” this and “our” that, when he meant his enslavers. “‘Twas in one of those skirmishes that Louhi's husband lost his life, or so goes the talk.”

“Come to the girl, Hrapp, who is she?”

“Now, how am I to know that? Joukahainen sometimes neglects to tell me all his business, you know—rude of him, but there it is.”

“Come on, Hrapp, do better than that.”

“All I know, dammit, is that the house servants called her—”

“Ainikki!”

It was Joukahainen who shouted it, jumping up from his place and dragging the girl into the middle space between the benches. Having eaten and drunk, he was now ready to trumpet his deeds in Kalevala.

Holding the girl by her chin, turning her face this way and that so they could see her, he began his speech. I give the sense of it here as best I can, for many words I didn't understand:

How they sailed down along the coast and fell like a thunderbolt on Lemminkainen's farm, catching them all asleep except for the man himself, who was nowhere to be found. But that was all right, for it was all a part of Joukahainen's plan. They had burned the place to the ground, he crowed, slaughtered the animals and set fire to the fields, and every soul they found they tortured and killed, save two—the old mother, who was half dead anyway, and this pretty one, the outlaw's little sister. Now the mother would give her son no peace until he tried to save the girl—“and then we pluck him!” Joukahainen grabbed a handful of air as if it were Lemminkainen's throat and shook his fist. “And by Death's ugly daughter, we'll tickle him. Hai! Flay him and spit him! And pretty Ainikki and I will watch, won't we, little sister? Hai! And then make him watch when
I lay you on the ground and open your legs, as I have done to you seven times already in three days and mean to do every day. Yes, I promise myself that pleasure. Finally your brother will beg me to kill him. I will do him that favor. Hai! There is a stake already sharpened, higher than all the rest, that waits for Lemminainen's handsome head.” He drew his sword and slashed the air to show how he would sever the neck of his enemy. “Hai! Hai!”