She decided to take a tour of the place, especially since she’d seen through the arrow slit window that most of the men were outside engaged in some primitive war games, using swords, broadaxes, maces, spears, and bows and arrows. Maybe a walk would ease her headache.
Upstairs were three bedrooms, Brandr’s, Liv’s and an elderly relative she had yet to meet, plus three smaller chambers that could only be described as bed closets, with fold-out pallets. There was also a larger room that would have been a solar in another time. Five women worked there.
“Hi! Can I come in?” Since no one objected, she walked in, but they weren’t welcoming her either. They probably didn’t know how to treat her, whether she was a thrall or not.
Of those free women, judging by their hair and attire, the oldest, wearing an outfit similar to hers but with a white apron over a red gown and gray hair tucked under a trim cap, was weaving cloth on a tall loom; it appeared to be a blanket with varying shades of blue.
“Forget the animal furs. That should keep some Viking stud warm on a cold winter night,” she joked.
The woman just stared at her.
Okay. No sense of humor.
Another used a handle spindle to card rough wool.
“You could get a job at Williamsburg doing that. Probably better pay.”
Still no response.
Another was embroidering metallic gold and silver patterns on strips of red silk, which would no doubt edge some male or female clothing of the upper classes.
“That’s really pretty. What do you call that kind of embroidery?”
Reluctantly, the young woman who had a bad case of acne, replied, “Osenstich.”
And that was that. Conversationalists they were not. At least not with her.
Of the two thralls, one was cutting rough fabric on a long table to make the hated thrall gowns. The cloth was cut into a T-shape, then a circle made in the center for the neck. After that, it was folded over, and seams were sewn by another thrall from under the wrist, underarm, and down to the hem. Very basic.
The thralls kept their heads down, meekly, but the three free women kept glancing her way.
“Nice meeting you.” She exited and closed the door behind her.
Next, she went down the stairs to the massive hall. Here people worked diligently, as well. Some were doing a haphazard job of cleaning off the greasy trestle tables with dirty, wet cloths. At one end, a woodworker was carving a bowl out of a block of wood, using a pole lathe. As he pressed his foot down on a treadle, the wood spun on the lathe at the same time he pressed a chisel in the appropriate space.
“Hi! My name is Joy Nelson.”
The man stared at her for a long second, “Are you a thrall?”
Joy hesitated. She could say no and get the cold treatment again, in reverse, but that was no way to case enemy territory. “Brandr says I am. I say I’m not.”
He nodded, “My name is Osmund. I was taken on a Viking raid in Wessex.”
“What are you doing with all of those?” There were blocks of wood all around him.
“Bowls, cups, plates. When the carpentry shed is rebuilt, I will make furniture, as well. Not enough room to do it in here, I daresay. The only one of the outbuildings restored so far is the smithy’s. His work cannot be done indoors, and there is more of a necessity for swords and knives and tools.”
Whoa! Finally someone who can put more than two words together.
“Do you have family?”
“I have a wife.”
“And she was left behind? I am so sorry!”
“She was taken, too.” Osmund motioned toward Tork’s bimbo who was shoveling ashes out of one of the fireplaces at a pace so slow it would take her a full day to fill a wooden bucket. But then, Ebba probably wouldn’t be reprimanded if her primary duty were on her back in some vile Viking’s bed.
“You must be so angry.” She patted his hand.
“ ’Tis the way of the world. She spreads her thighs willingly ta save us both.”
“What do you mean?”
“The heathens woulda lopped off me head if Ebba had not tol’ them of me carpentry skills.”
“Don’t you resent them using her like this? Or your bondage, for that matter?”
“What good would that do? And our lot is not so bad. In five years, if I do good work, I have been promised freedom. Then I can earn enough coin ta buy back Ebba’s.”
“That’s horrible!”
“Nay, it is not. I was a bondservant to an English thane afore. My treatment there was no better than this, and I had ten years ta go.”
Joy barely paid attention to the nearby man carving combs and knife handles out of deer antlers, as she walked away, so upset was she by the Viking class system, if that’s what it was.
She wandered through a corridor and into a huge kitchen. The dozen or so people in there, free servants as well as thralls, stopped talking when she entered. She weighed her options, then lied, “I’m a thrall, sort of. A free thrall.”
Her words were met with a bunch of frowns, and then they resumed their work, ignoring her. Some of them also resumed talking amongst themselves. Everyday things: menus for the day, chores to be done, gossip, and men.
But Joy was more interested in her amazing surroundings, for the moment. The cooking fireplace was big enough for five full-grown men to stand in it, side by side, two deep. Some animal, possibly a cow . . . no, a deer . . . was being roasted on a spit, being turned by a little boy, no more than eight, who picked his nose with boredom at the tedious job. An enormous cauldron bubbled with some kind of stew.
Nearby, a barrel of water was filled almost to overflowing with live eels, one of which had already met its fate and was being skinned by yet another servant. For the evening meal, no doubt. Yeech! Several baskets held fresh and salted fishes.
Another small boy, possibly twin to the one at the spit, schlepped two buckets of milk into the kitchen. One he handed to an old man working a butter churn, and the other he took down some steps, which she presumed led to a cold cellar.
A girl of about twelve was grinding grain into flour with a stone quern, a primitive device that involved two round stones, one on top of the other, with a hole on top through which the grain was poured. When a handle was turned, the grain was squashed into flour.
With dull efficiency, a free woman in drab clothing—a servant, she guessed—was kneading bread dough, which she rolled out into large circles with holes in the middle. When baked in the hearthside stone ovens, the flat wheels were slipped onto a tall pole for storage. It was unleavened bread, except that Joy knew from a cooking class she once took that there was a small amount of yeast in fresh-ground grains. The girl was a one-woman mass production machine. Even as Joy stood there, twelve breads were taken out of the oven and stacked on the pole and twelve more put in the oven.
“That must take forever,” she remarked.
The girl shrugged and pointed to a huge bowl where she was dumping the flour, what amounted to about what would fill the ten-pound bags Joy had seen in supermarkets. “That took me ’bout an hour.”
“How can you tell time?”
The girl waved a floury hand toward a tall, thick candle sitting on a wall shelf. It had black lines marked at even intervals on the sides. “That be a timekeeping candle.”
Amazing what humans could accomplish without all their electric gadgets, she thought.
“I could do better, but me arms get sore,” the girl added.
“Maybe I could help you later.”
The girl looked appalled, as if Joy was trying to take her job away from her.
An old lady with dried apple skin and gnarled hands was defeathering several headless chickens, which still dripped blood onto the hard-packed dirt floor. And bony old chickens they were, too. No force-fed, fatty poultry here, but the meat would probably be tough as old leather. The old lady dipped the birds into scalding water to aid the removal of the feathers, all of which were being dropped into a burlap type sack for some future use. Pillow, maybe? Awaiting the defeathering process were also a bunch of plump pigeons and a dead duck.
In another corner a litter of puppies lay in a pile of straw, which hadn’t been changed in days, by the smell of it.
Peering through an open door, Joy could see a large pantry or storage room with numerous shelves where two men continued to unpack the boxes of supplies that had been brought on the two longships from Hedeby. Barrels and sacks of flour and grains. Dozens of eggs. No sugar, but honey still in the combs. And vegetables, like turnips, peas, leeks, onions, beans, carrots, cabbages, and mushrooms. Fruits and berries, some still fresh but most dried. Various kinds of nuts. And vats and vats of ale and mead, and smaller amounts of wine.
Considering how many people had to be fed two or three times a day here, she supposed all these people and all these food supplies were a necessity.
Going back to the huge butcher block-style table in the center of the kitchen, she approached the woman cutting up the eel and placing it in a clear amber liquid that smelled like vinegar with slices of onion floating on top. To Joy’s disgust, she noticed that there was a rim of old grime under the woman’s broken fingernails, and the table was so dirty it must not have been cleaned in weeks, if ever. Even the worst restaurants knew that kitchens needed to be “broken down” each evening and all work surfaces scrubbed and disinfected. This was bacteria heaven. “Are you the head cook?”
“Huh?” said eel lady. “Nay. Kelda be the cook here since the master were a bratling.”
Since the bratling she referred to was probably Brandr, and he must be in his early thirties, she figured the cook’s work history spanned more than three decades. “Where is she?”
“Kelda? Ah, she has a bad case of the roiling bowels t’day. Ta the privy she went.”
“Fer the fifth time since morn,” the bread maker added. The two women grinned at each other. Obviously, Kelda was not a favorite of theirs.
“She be breaking wind like a cow in clover,” the boy at the rotisserie added with a giggle.
TMI,
she told herself.
“Beans will do it ever’ time,” opined the old lady plucking feathers. “I tol’ her ta take the strings off the beans. That removes the farts. Hee, hee, hee.” She cackled at her own words.
Everyone laughed, and the bread lady said, “Oh, Gran Olssen, you be sayin’ that ferever. Ya know ’tis not true.”
“What is not true?” a short, heavyset woman asked, bustling into the kitchen from outdoors. Before anyone could answer, assuming they would answer, the woman looked at Joy and demanded, “Who are ye, and what are ye doin’ in my kitchen?”
If there was any doubt that the woman stomping into the room was Kelda, it was dispensed when she let loose a loud fart and didn’t even break stride. Although there was stifled humor throughout the room, no one dared laugh outright. Except Joy, who couldn’t help herself.
“Sorry,” she said to the unamused woman, whose hands were placed firmly on her wide hips. “I’m Joy Nelson.”
Eying her up and down, taking in her attire, the cook asked rudely, “Be ya thrall or lady?”
“Both.”
“Whaaat?”
“I don’t believe in slavery.”
All the jaws in the room dropped.
“Well, ain’t that jist wonderful? Ye come here ta free all the thralls?” the cook ridiculed her. “Blessed Frigg! Wait ’til Master Igorsson hears ’bout this.”
“I never said . . .” Joy stopped, watching with incredulity as the cook took one of the plucked chickens over to the butcher block table and slit it from neck to bottom on the underside, then began pulling out the guts, some of which she dropped into a bucket sitting next to the table and the rest going onto a separate pile, which included the liver, gizzard, and heart. One of the puppies scampered over and grabbed a string of guts from the bucket before the cook could manage to kick it away. The puppy ran off with the slimy gore to share with his yipping brothers and sisters.
She noticed a number of things in succession. The cook had not washed her hands after coming back from the privy and was now handling food . . . chicken of all things, which everyone knew was a breeding house for germs. Plus, she was working on a table that needed a scouring with a wire brush and bleach.
“Stop! You can’t do that,” Joy said, approaching the table. “You need to go wash your hands with soap and water. Everyone should . . . before handling food, but definitely after leaving the bathroom . . . I mean, privy. And look,” she said, taking another knife in hand and scraping it across the top of the table. At least an inch of caked-on grime came away, revealing a whitened board beneath. “This is disgusting. Bacteria heaven.”
The cook’s mouth worked like a puffer fish. “Back-tear-ya? I will give ya back-tear-ya, like me tearin’ up yer back with me cleaver.” She raised the huge knife up high and came after Joy with a menacing snarl.
Everyone in the kitchen stopped what they were doing and stepped back to leave room for the combatants.