Mother of Kings Read online

  “Greeting, Eirik Haraldsson,” she said aloofly. Word had sped beforehand on the feet of a boy. “I hight Kraka, wife to Özur, and make you welcome of our house.” She beckoned. “These be our sons.” Yellow-haired Aalf and redhaired, freckled Eyvind trod gawkily forth, said what they could, and withdrew to stare.

  Kraka barely glanced at Gunnhild. Wrath rushed hot and cold through the girl. Yes, she had been unladylike, but was she to be nameless before the king’s shining son?

  She swallowed it. One way or another, she would make herself known to him.

  “I have heard of you, lady,” Eirik was saying. “You are a daughter of Rögnvald Eysteinsson, who was the jarl of North Moerr and headman over Raumsdalr, are you not?”

  “I am.” Her answer sounded stiff. Her mother had been a leman her father had for a while—of good yeoman stock, but when Özur Dapplebeard came and asked for the maiden’s hand, the jarl must have reckoned that this was as well as he could do. Not that it was a bad thought, making ties with a hersir in the North.

  She coughed. Gunnhild heard how she gulped rather than spat.

  Eirik gave her his steely smile. “Ever was your father a staunch friend of mine,” he said, “and for this he had honor and gain.”

  Kraka nodded grudgingly. “Yes, that is true.”

  Eirik went straight ahead. “It’s also true that my father outlawed Rögnvald’s son Walking Hrolf for a strand-hewing in Norway. But everybody has heard how well Hrolf did for himself in the West.

  “And it’s true that two of my half-brothers burned your father. But one is since dead, and my father King Harald sent the other away. He made your brother Thorir jarl of Moerr and gave him his own daughter Aalof to wife.”

  Then Kraka smiled too. She knew this well, but for Eirik to set it forth before her household was to offer goodwill and respect. It meant still more coming from one with a name for being grim and toplofty. Of course, he’d have it in mind that a jarl ranked second only to a king. “Let me bring you your first horn of mead, before I try to make your first meal among us worthy of you,” she said.

  Gunnhild did not slip free of helping with that. But throughout the work she looked, listened, and thought. The thinking went on that night and the next day and afterward.

  Eirik’s crews were a lusty, noisy lot. She heard many boasts from them, not only about themselves but him. He was twelve winters old when his father let him go in viking. He, the king’s most beloved son, had ranged over the Baltic, the North, the Irish, and the White Seas, to Wendland, Denmark, Friesland, Saxland, Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland, France, Finnmörk, Bjarmaland—sometimes trading, oftener fighting, looting, burning, bringing home rich booty of goods, with captives for sale. Gunnhild recalled tales her own father had told of his own raidings. They paled beside these. Her heart beat high.

  Meanwhile thralls shambled past on their lowly tasks, broken men, unkempt women soon used up. Özur was no more harsh with them than needful, but they got somewhat less kindness from him than his horses did. A few times at the midwinter offerings, when the year had been bad, he had given Odin one that was no longer strong, hanged on a tree at the halidom. Free workers, taken in from poor homes that could not keep them, were a little better off. And Özur did rather well by his foremen, and in a gruff way by those he called his tame Finns, whose skills furthered his hunting, whaling, and sealing. But their lives were so meager, as were the lives of all crofters, smallholders, and fishers—huddled in sod huts, breaking their hands in toil on gaunt fields or on the oars of boats that often never came back. Always they went in dread of hunger, storm, sickness; and Father himself had wondered today if vikings were upon him.

  How handsome Eirik was, how splendid his garb and gear, how lordly his ways! He had nothing to fear; let the world fear him. What wealth must fill his houses—besides gold and other fine things, warriors, skalds, traders, outlanders, newness from everywhere! What was Ulfgard but a forgotten beggarly outpost?

  Come the feast, host and guest would vie in giving gifts. She knew Father’s could not match Eirik’s.

  Maybe Eirik had a skald with him, who would make a poem in Father’s honor. How empty it would sound.

  Gunnhild straightened. She nearly spilled the laden tray she was carrying. No, she thought, she would not become anyone’s underling, nor would she forever be a nobody.

  III

  Seija bore Özur no children. Whether this was by happenstance or her wish and lore went unasked. Folk looked on her as a spooky sort, best left alone. Kraka had soon said she would no longer have this witch in the hall. Özur yielded and ordered a dwelling made for her, well away from the garth. He set her to watch over the swine when these roamed fending for themselves in the warm half of the year. She was eerily good at that, seeming to know when and where anything went amiss. Meanwhile she grew leeks and herbs for herself and gathered roots, sedges, berries, and suchlike wild food. Bread, milk, and stockfish she got at the steading, where she did not otherwise come. Özur might bring a crock of ale along when he sought her, though after a while this was rather seldom. Gunnhild was there often.

  Mother did not like that. Father allowed it when his daughter had no work on hand. At first he had asked what they two did. Gunnhild answered truthfully that Seija told tales from her homeland and taught her things about the use of herbs in cooking and healing. She did not speak of what else went on. It was nothing of weight, but he might have forbidden it as beneath her rank.

  And now even a girl of thirteen should have been asleep. But this was high summer, when the sun slipped barely and briefly under the waters. Soon, for a short span, it would not set at all—midsummer, when everybody from everywhere came here. Then Özur’s land was a sprawling, brawling camp; the freemen met to settle things among each other, to swap yarns and wares, to handsel deals; at the halidom the balefire burned and blood flowed, whereafter the offerings were roasted and feasting began. Few slept much in the season of the light nights. Time enough for that when winter laid blackness upon them.

  This evening Gunnhild could not, however hard she tried. At last she rose from her heap of sheepskins. The room was gloomy; she must fumble with clothes. The girls and unwed women who shared it—those who were not already outdoors—stirred in their dreams; straw ticks rustled dryly. In the long room, men snored on the benches. Father and Mother had a shut-bed past which she stole very softly. The doors were not latched, for anybody might have to go to the stoolhouse and a boy kept lookout above the fjord. As she left the garth for the woods, Gunnhild heard thumping, grunting, and panting in the bushes offside. She had done so before, and sometimes happened on the sight itself. This time the noise quickened her heart and heated her cheeks. She hastened onward.

  A trail wound amidst birch and pine. Few of the trees were close together, though underbrush grew thickly. Sky reached well-nigh cloudless behind darkling needles and leaves that long, low-slanting sunbeams turned green-gold. Deeper in, the light was lost among shadows, through which the birches showed ghostly white. Moss on fallen trunks glistened wet and rich. The air lay cool but still full of noontide smells, flowers, earth, pine gum. Birds called. Squirrels darted fiery up the trees and chittered. Once, far off, something bellowed thunder-deeply—a bull aurochs?

  The trail gave on a small clearing. A spring bubbled near a turf hut, hardly more than a den. Smoke sifted through the thatch roof, off a hearthstone whereon a fire smoldered banked. The door stood open on Seija’s belongings. They were poor and scant. She stood at an upright warp-weighted loom, for she wove wool given her and traded the cloth for a tool or a haunch of meat.

  As swiftly aware as a cat, she sprang forth. The two halted, gazing, in search of words. Seija was short, full-formed, with a wide face, nose curving to a point, brown eyes, brown hair in braids. She could have covered her head like a wedded woman, but seldom did. Today her feet were bare, her garb a shift of faded blue wadmal.

  “Greeting, child,” she said. Her Norse had become fairly good. “I’
m always glad to see you.” She looked closely. “But you are troubled.”

  Gunnhild gulped and nodded. “Mother—” She could not go on.

  Seija waited.

  “She’s worsening fast,” Gunnhild said in a rush. “Thin, hardly any strength, and she coughs up slime with blood in it. Father’s cast runes.” It being no holy thing, she had watched while he cut them on sticks, which he tossed so he could read how they fell. She had tried it herself when nobody was watching. “He says it bodes ill.”

  Seija nodded. “I have heard. Once in a while I have seen. I’m sorry.” She did not say, “She has no love for me.” Kraka’s feeling was not hatred but scorn, with maybe the least unspoken and disowned touch of fear.

  “Nothing has helped that we and two different wisewomen did. Can’t you?”

  “She would not let me.”

  “Oh, but if you could—”

  The Finn-woman sighed. “I have no strong spellcraft. Only a few tricks. As often as not, they fail me.”

  “You told me your brother was teaching you more.”

  “Yes, we have women—” Seija searched for a word. “—somewhat like your spaewives that I’ve heard tell of. But I was taken too early from my Saami.”

  “I have been thinking.” Gunnhild strove not to shiver. “That brother of yours off in Finnmörk, is he a great wizard?”

  “If anyone is, Vuokko—”

  Gunnhild broke in. “Why has Father never spoken of him?”

  “Have you forgotten? Vuokko was not there. Your father sailed north—”

  “Yes.” Gunnhild said it aloud, working to straighten out the jumble in her head. “I remember. The walrus and narwhal were few that year. He went after more. I, I’ve wondered if what he really wanted was the faring, after so long a while since he was last abroad.” She had come to know him.

  And Özur had found some Finns, down from the woods to make a catch on behalf of their tribe. A maiden among them caught his eye.

  A fresh chill went through Gunnhild. “Would your brother have stricken Father dead?”

  “I think not. The vengeance afterward would have been frightful.”

  Gunnhild twisted her mouth into a smile. “Anyhow, my father paid for you. Didn’t he?”

  “Whether or not this was my father’s wish,” Seija said flatly.

  “Was it yours?” Gunnhild had not asked such a question before. New tides and bewilderments had begun to rise in her.

  “I have made the best of it.”

  Seija looked off into the sun-flecks and shadows. Gunnhild could barely hear her. “But I dream of wandering free through the wide lakelands, with kin and friends and our own, olden ways. Sometimes I find mushrooms that help me dream. Of late, it has even seemed to me that—” Her words dwindled away.

  “If we sent for your brother—” Gunnhild faltered.

  Seija shook her head. “I don’t think they could find him and bring him here in time. And your mother might be unwilling to see him.” After a span, in which Gunnhild heard only the honeyed call of a cuckoo—what right had it to be so happy?—the Finn-woman said: “And she may well be beyond all help.”

  The will of the norns stood not to be altered, Gunnhild thought. But that Mother, strong, beautiful Mother, should be hollowed out like this— It was horrible being helpless. “Tell me about him,” she well-nigh begged. “Tell me about your home.” Anything to make her forget.

  Belike, in the mood that was upon her, that would be hurtful for Seija. Well, only Gunnhild ever sought her out for more than a swiving. Let her repay.

  Seija smiled sadly. “As you wish. As you have need of.” She waved at a log. “Be seated. Would you like some bread or a bowl of curds?”

  In a while they were side by side. Seija soon fell into her own tongue. Gunnhild did likewise. Over the years she had picked up knowledge of it. Father said it might come in handy. He did not have much of it himself, mainly from his dealings, though his mother’s mother had been a Finn-woman. Neither Aalf nor Eyvind could be bothered to learn.

  What Father had not heard about was the bits of witchcraft his daughter also gained.

  IV

  Summer waned; days shortened; the first sallowness stole over birch leaves; often at sunrise hoarfrost glimmered on the ground. Fields lay harvested, and on every threshing floor a young woman had held the Old Woman, the last sheaf, in her arms while the workers danced and shouted in a ring around her. Slaughter-time was not yet, but nuts and berries were thickly ripe in the woods, where stags bawled and clashed. When the moon rose full it lingered late, beckoning hunters.

  This year, for some days, a hunt more earnest went out from Ulfgard. A crofter of Özur’s had been found slain with his wife and two children, the house robbed of such of its scanty goods as could easily be carried away, together with foodstock, fowl, and flesh off the one cow. When Özur heard, from another tenant who happened by soon afterward, he went straight to the lonely little steading, looked it narrowly over with a tracker’s eye, and cast runes. He himself was among the men who sought forth with hounds, scouring after the ill-doers.

  “I have a good guess who they are,” he said. “It began three years ago and well inland from here, but word passed widely around. The brothers Kol and Mörd dwelt by themselves, because they were surly and threatful and nobody could get along with them. When they slew a neighbor for no rightful cause and would not pay for him, they were outlawed. Every man’s hand being against them, they must needs flee into the wilderness. Since then they’ve skulked about, stealing or worse at outlying garths, too woods-crafty to chase down. I didn’t think they’d ever come this far. Belike the folk yonder have, at last, been closing in on them, and they’re trying elsewhere.” He laughed. “Let’s hope that was unwise of them.”

  To Gunnhild it was at first thrilling. But when again and again the search bands trudged home with naught to say, she cared less and less. As a girl, she knew hardly more than what she overheard, or what Aalf and Eyvind flauntingly told her. This soon ran to “Yes, we must have frightened them off.” Then her father ended the hunt. There was, after all, much else to do. She barely marked it when he swore that poor Gisli would nonetheless not lie unavenged, and gave no heed when he spoke aside, quietly, with men of his whom he trusted. Cloverbee, the cat she thought of as hers, had had kittens. Two were let live, and they were weanling. That was something near to her, unlike the dull round of her duties.

  So on a brisk morning she left the hall with one in her arms and started across the yard. It nestled close, a fuzzy brindled ball that sometimes ticklingly licked her wrist. As she passed the fence gate, her father’s man Yngvar strode to her side. “Where are you bound, young lady?” he asked.

  “To see my friend Seija,” Gunnhild answered. “It’s been a long while.”

  “We’d not have allowed you to, with those cutthroats in the neighborhood.”

  She had not thought about that. The knowledge shocked into her. She gasped. “Then why was she left there all alone?”

  Yngvar shrugged. “It wasn’t likely they’d come so near us while we were after them. And having her in sight would do your sick mother no good.” His look went stern. “Our hunt did find signs that they haven’t yet gone far. Keep away from the woods.”

  Seething, Gunnhild stiffened. “Can you forbid me?” Özur was fishing on the fjord and Kraka slept heavily after a bad night.

  “I’ll take that on myself, yes.”

  “Send a man along with me, if you’re afraid.”

  Yngvar stood for a bit unspeaking before he shook his head. “No. We—we can’t spare any.”

  “That’s silly, this time of year. And don’t think I haven’t seen how somebody, man or boy, is always elsewhere.” Coming home closemouthed too. She’d not asked about it, for such things were not women’s business unless they were told. Now she wished she had made it hers.

  “Keeping his eyes open. If you go, you’ll be turned back.” Yngvar smiled. “Wouldn’t you liefer I did that,
between the two of us, than a lowly lout?”

  Gunnhild sniffed and stalked from him.

  Sheer foolishness, she thought in wrath. And cowardly. How had this been for Seija, with news of what was going on and only the herd of swine on hand? Gunnhild would not yield to it. But she must be cunning. A woman always must, if she wanted to keep any will of her own.

  She walked three times around the garth as though working off her anger and then to Ulf’s barrow as though to sit at its foot and sulk. Nobody seemed to be watching. On the far side of the mound, the two pine trees hid her. The ground beyond was only grass-grown, and beyond it was a stubblefield. But everything stretched empty. She reached a neck of the woods and slipped into its shelter. Thence she made her way through undergrowth, at which she had won skill, until she found the path she wanted.

  The hut lay peaceful amidst wind and restless light, door open. “Hallo,” Gunnhild called. She jumped down over the threshold into its half-underground room. The fire glowed dull red, banked, beneath sudden duskiness. Seija stood at her loom. She started, with a thrall’s wariness, before she saw who was here and said, “You! Welcome!”

  “How have you been?” blurted Gunnhild.

  “I’ve missed you, dear. Come, sit. Will you eat, will you drink?”

  “I should have— Well, they wouldn’t have let me. Haven’t you been afraid?”

  “Not greatly. I can’t fear much anymore.” Seija brightened. “And now I have a guard.”

  “What? Where?”

  “When they gave up the hunt for the outlaws, your father had a blind made in a thicket nearby. A lad stays in it, turn by turn. If he sees them, he’ll run and bring help. You haven’t heard?”

  “No, nothing was said about it.” Gunnhild’s wonderment at that gave way to another question. “But he’d have seen me come too, and, and Yngvar said I’d be sent back.”