The Saga of Colm the Slave (14 page)

“These people mean to kill them.”

“I know,” said Colm.

Gerda was pregnant and it took several
people to help her down from her wagon. She looked about with
shining eyes and stroked her great belly. She shouted commands at
the other women and it was obvious she thought herself in charge of
them.

People had arrived from other godords
now. Many of them said that they, too, had suffered difficulties
and seen strange things in the last while. They all said Ogmund and
Agdis were responsible.

A group of slaves stood off to one side.
It was not for them either to interfere or to take part, unless
told otherwise. For a moment, Colm envied them: they had no cares
or responsibilities. He felt a harsh judgement forming in his mind
but then he saw the way the slaves were standing, tense and uneasy,
eyes darting about. Once blood began to flow who could say where
the killing would stop? After all, these slaves were no more part
of the community than this old couple now being cast out.

Once Colm himself had been a slave and
the boundaries of his world were the clothes on his back. Now he
was a freedman of some stature, a farm-owner and man of property
expected to do his part in the community, asked to aid a friend who
was struggling, looked to for advice and assistance. Colm looked at
his neighbors rushing about, eyes wide with excitement. There were
times he felt very much apart from these others.

The crowd swarmed about the doorway but
no one had the courage to go in. People yelled for the couple to
come out but there was no sound from inside the house. It was
getting dark and people began lighting torches and stone vessels of
fat for light. Soon enough someone got the idea of tossing a torch
onto the roof where it jutted from the hillside. It burned for a
moment, then went out. People pointed at it, shouting that this was
more sorcery! Someone poked a torch under the eaves and the thin
rafters and brush that supported the turf began to catch. Soon the
roof was smoking. People shouted and ran about, gathering fuel that
they piled against the walls or throwing pitch and fat onto the
roof. Smoke billowed from the smouldering house. Finally it began
to blaze. The crowd cheered. Ogmund stumbled out of the doorway.
Agdis was close behind. They were coughing. The crowd fell back,
afraid of them, and watched them silently. The old couple’s eyes
were full of smoke and they rubbed their faces. They bent over and
spat on the ground.

The crowd surged forward and grabbed
them both. Men pulled sealskin sacks over their heads so that the
couple could not cast spells. Agdis was hauled away to one side
while some men wound a rope around Ogmund’s neck and strung it over
the doorframe of his burning house. They pulled the rope tight and
Ogmund hung in the doorway, hands clawing at his throat, feet
kicking at the ground only a few inches below. Soon enough the old
man strangled.

Now everyone’s attention turned to
Agdis. They dragged her into the open and snatched the sack from
her head. The old woman knelt on the ground, eyes darting about,
mumbling. “She is cursing us!” Gerda yelled. “Stone her!” The women
shouted and gathered up rocks. Agdis grimaced with her toothless
mouth. The first stone hit her and she raised her arms before her
face. The women pelted her and she collapsed in a heap, blood
running from her forehead. The women closed in and crushed her
skull with stones.

For a while people milled about,
examining the corpses and discussing each other’s role in the
deaths of the old people.

“Now things will go better for us,” said
Ketil.

“Oh yes,” said Thorolf, “Your herds will
increase and the hay grow tall and rich. Fish will run so thick
that you can cross the streams on their backs. All the girls will
be pretty and the weather will be fine.”

“You mock me.”

“Not at all. I am agreeing with
you.”

Bjorn was worried now, his excitement
turned into anxiety. “Suppose she cursed us there while she died?
Or he cast a spell while he hanged?”

“They died wordless,” said Thorolf,
“Only screams.”

Bjorn said, “What of their farm?”

Thorolf said, “It is mine now. I will
send my farmhand Adals to run it. He is newly married to the widow
Braga and is very capable of making this farm produce well. We will
help him build a new house. In time, he will buy this farm from
me.” Thorolf looked around at them. “We shall all enjoy our
prosperity. All of us together, here in our community.”

7.Geirrid and Gudbrand

Colm paid out his fee to Bjorn and was
only a few years away from paying out Thorolf as well. He was a
free man, more than a freed slave, since Thorolf had led him into
the Law at Althing. This was so that everyone knew his status in
the land. People respected him, too, because of his killing
Gunnlaug and especially because of his role in the berserk feud,
when outsiders had tried to disturb the peace. Most men were
confused about this, though, and thought it was Colm, not Gwyneth,
who had killed Snaekulf. Colm and Gwyneth were happy not to tell
them otherwise. It was hard for a woman to carry a reputation as a
killer. Besides the killings, Colm was respected as a hard-working
farmer on his way to great prosperity. Even so, if Colm died, the
Trollfarm and all its wealth might all go to Bjorn. Such was the
way with a freedman’s property; Colm still owed his former master
and would until Bjorn’s death.

After Colm and Gwyneth married, he
thought they were as happy as anyone could be. He looked into her
face and saw the light quicken in her eye and his heart filled in
his breast. Colm’s farm did well and his flock grew large. With
Bjorn’s consent, old Edgar spent most of his time at the Trollfarm
when he wasn’t at the shieling. He made himself useful in many
ways. Gwyneth worked as hard as any woman ever, pulling a little
extra wool from the sheep when she could manage, and combing the
goats for hair. But she never tried to stretch the wool by spinning
in the goat-hair; she did not want her work to be thought of as the
second-rate product of an ex-slave. Instead, Colm twisted the hair
into long cords. He traded a dead lamb and some hay for a few long
pieces of driftwood and fashioned cord and wood into a loom for
Gwyneth. He made it a little wider than usual so that her weaving
would be that much more valuable than that of other women.

Colm worked to make the Trollfarm
longhall more liveable, though he was unable to do much about the
leaks where the collapsed roof had been repaired. He cut a door
through the turf wall at the other end of the hall and added a
stove-room, smaller and lower-roofed than the rest of the house. He
dug a small pit in the floor and lined it with slabs of soapstone
that jutted well above the floor and radiated heat from the fire
inside. The room was warm and cosy in the winter, a good place for
people to sit and chat. Gwyneth’s thallur, her woman’s platform,
took up one end of the room. Gwyneth’s new loom stood there and was
always full of her weaving.

One day when Edgar was up with the sheep
in pasture, Colm came back to the farm and saw Gwyneth fulling
wool. She had her skirts hoisted well above her knees and was
treading the fleece in a bucket of urine so strong it made Colm’s
eyes water to look at it, but there was something… Gwyneth raised
her head as he approached and her eyes half-closed as she read his
expression. He lifted her from the bucket and had her there on the
ground, her reeking legs wrapped around him.

And that was the one that took hold.
Gwyneth soon was pregnant. They had their private jokes then, about
the way she conceived, and private names for the one to be born
that made them laugh, though they never hinted of them to anyone
else for fear their child would have to bear a mocking by-name.

The baby was a boy and they named it for
Gwyneth’s father, Gareth, knowing that the Norse would make that
Geirrid. He was a fine big boy and Gwyneth doted on him, proud and
laughing as she raised him from her lap, happy beyond measure at
having him. And then Colm, too, felt a happiness that he had never
hoped to know, not since he was a child and seized by raiders and
taken into slavery. His joy was absolute. Colm and Gwyneth now were
happy and there were no serious events in the district, so the
community was happy as well. In happy times, nothing happens. This
happiness lasted about three years.

One summer, a year after he finished
paying off Thorolf, Colm hung about the Trollfarm. He delayed going
out to the hay field and pretended to find chores to do so that he
could watch Geirrid. The boy was outside, chasing sunbeams and
drifting seed-wool and other things only he could see. He toddled
about the farmyard, falling on the muddy ground and making his
parents laugh, but not too loud, not enough to hurt his
feelings.

Bjorn rode up with his son, Gudbrand.
Gudbrand was about two years older than Geirrid. They made their
greetings and Gwyneth offered food and drink but Bjorn waved it
off. “After,” he said. “Now I need to speak with Colm.” He was
bursting with news and Colm prepared to hear some stupendous gossip
or other but Bjorn surprised him completely, “I want you to foster
Gudbrand.”

This was a tremendous offer. If Colm
took Gudbrand as his foster son, then he would become part of
Bjorn’s kin. If anyone were to harm Colm or his family, Bjorn would
seek vengeance for him. Colm pulled his mouth shut and began to
speak but caught a glimpse of Gudbrand shoving Gerrid. Geirrid fell
on his bottom, looking up in amazement at the older boy. “Ha!”
laughed Bjorn, “What a rascal! Look at him, thick as a tree! What a
man you will make of him, Colm!”

And Colm turned from Gwyneth’s stricken
face to Bjorn, “I will do my best. He seems a worthy lad.” There
was nothing else he could do but agree to Bjorn’s proposal. Nor did
either parent run to help Geirrid.

So Gudbrand moved to Colm’s farm where
he spent most of the year. Colm took the boys fishing and it was
Gudbrand who always claimed the largest salmon, whether he had
caught it or not. They snared ducks but Gudbrand could not catch a
one, so he proclaimed this a stupid game, and no more snares were
set. They went out on chores together, but Colm and Geirrid raked,
while Gudbrand napped in the hay. When there was an extra piece of
meat, it went into Gudbrand’s mouth, no matter that Geirrid looked
hungry. Still, Colm thought his son lean and beautiful and Gudbrand
squat and ugly, though he never voiced this thought, not even to
Gwyneth. He hoped, with time, that Gudbrand might take Geirrid
under his wing and be a brother to him, but Gudbrand made it clear
that he thought himself better than the son of a slave and expected
everyone else to recognize it, too. Geirrid disliked Gudbrand but
had to accept him. He was part of the family.

The boys often played by a pool below
the falls. Geirrid skipped a rock across the pool. "Four!" he
shouted.

"That's not so many," said Gudbrand. He
threw a stone, but it only skipped twice. "That was a poor stone,"
he said, "We have better stones on my father's farm."

Geirrid said nothing, but chose another
stone to throw.

"My father is very rich, you know," said
Gudbrand,

"Yes," agreed Geirrid, "He has many
sheep."

"Sheep! Huh! Who cares about sheep.
Father has many slaves."

Geirrid threw a stone but it only
skipped once. He said nothing.

"Yes," said Gudbrand, "Slaves and land,
that's wealth. Some have only one farm. My father owns three."
Actually, Bjorn owned two farms and rented another small holding
from a widow. He did this as a kindness since she could not work
the land herself and had not the wealth to hire farmhands.
Eventually, people thought, she would probably re-marry.

Geirrid carefully chose a stone and
whipped it sidearm across the pond."Twelve!" said Geirrid, "It
skipped twelve times!"

"Huh," said Gudbrand, "I don't think
so."

"It was twelve! I counted."

Gudbrand shrugged. "You always
exaggerate. Tell me again, how many men has your father
killed?"

Geirrid looked down, glowering. He hated
for Gudbrand to talk like this. Colm seldom spoke of his killings
and Geirrid understood that they were not actions his father was
especially proud of, though he himself was thrilled to think of
them. Who called himself a man who had not killed another man? Now
he shrugged, "I don't know."

"Oh?" said Gudbrand. "It was five,
wasn't it? Or maybe twelve?"

"It was four, as you know very well."
Geirrid didn't count the man his father had killed while raiding,
that would only set off Gudbrand the more, since Bjorn had killed
no one on that voyage.

"So I am told. Yes."

"Your father has killed his share," said
Geirrid. "One of those murderous twins and he was there when they
killed those two witches."

"But that's only three! And your father
has four!" Gudbrand sat back and Geirrid bent forward, waiting for
the words that he knew would follow. "At least," said Gudbrand, "At
least my father isn't a slave." And Geirrid had nothing to say to
that.He lashed another stone at the water, but it didn't skip at
all.

One day, when Geirrid was nine and
Gudbrand almost eleven, the two went off up the mountain to where
old Edgar watched the flock. Colm held back at the farm for a
little while, doing this and that. He was surprised to look up and
see Geirrid returning alone. Then he noticed the spots of blood on
Geirrid’s sleeve. “Where’s Gudbrand?” he asked.

Geirrid looked away and down for a
moment and Colm knew, as a parent knows, that his child was about
to lie to him. “I went to the falls. He walked on up the path to
the meadow.”

“I see,” said Colm quietly. His heart
froze in his breast. “Well, I better go on up that way. Oh, and
Geirrid?” He spoke off-handedly. “Better change that shirt.”