Demon of Scattery Read online

  “I can do better for you than that, Brigit.”

  She glared at him. “Can you indeed? You savages swoop down, make ruin, and are gone, till we’ve built up again what it pleases you to plunder.”

  “I’m no viking of my own wish,” he told her. “I’ve traded in the Westlands for many years. How else would I have learned your tongue?”

  Her lips grew thin. “Why then are you playing pirate?”

  “Ill luck.” Strange, he thought, that he gave her the tale so readily. “My father was a well-off yeoman in Thrandheim. That’s a kingdom in the land called Norway.” Sharply before him rose the great bright bay, where islands dreamed and boats went dancing; the sturdy wooden houses of Nidaros town, the life that brawled in its lanes; the hills beyond, wildwoods, farms, home.

  “I being his third son, no land would fall to me,” Halldor said. “Besides, I was restless. I became a hunter and trapper, who early went on ships bound north to Finnmark and Bjarmiland. There we’d gather things like hides, walrus tusks, fine pelts. Soon I was in a crew bearing them overseas to these western countries. In time I won enough wealth to buy my own acres, raise my own garth, wed—and, yes, have two ships in trade, not these lean dragons but good big-bellied knarrs—”

  He mustered calm. “Well, my father took sick and was a long while a-dying. My oldest brother Thorstein is a hothead, often in viking, unwise as a farmer. My second brother… set off for Russia, and the ship was never seen again. That was a heavy loss, for he bore a rich cargo to barter, mostly bought with borrowed money. Thorstein quarreled with a neighbor, it came to blows, men were slain or badly hurt. The Thing—the folkmoot—deemed Thorstein at fault. He must pay more than he had in weregilds, or be outlaw. Of course, I helped him pay. But I’d overreached myself, too. Big dowries for both my daughters to get them well wedded, and money in ships or out in loans I could not recall at once… The upshot was, if I would save my homestead, I must win wealth fast. So I swapped one freighter for the warcraft you’ve seen and joined a viking fleet readying for Ireland.

  “That was year before last. I’ve enough now, or ought to after I’m through here, that I can go back. Thereafter I’ll be what I erstwhile was.

  This faring cost me my elder son, and maybe it will cost me Ranulf too. If he dies, what have I saved my home for?”

  He had said too much, and broke off. They reached the southern tip of land. Between them and the bank flowed two miles of river. It went murmurous, aglow as sunset climbed and strengthened. The air was growing damp.

  Brigit crossed herself and muttered a prayer. Then she challenged him:

  “If robbery pays better, why would you rather be a chapman?”

  Astonished, he answered, “Why? Well, raiding pays better for the few, not the many. Also, well, I take no pleasure in harming folk who never harmed me. I’d rather fare about, from the reindeer herders in Finnmark to the lofty halls in York and London—and, yes, even your abbeys—I like talking with strangers, learning about them. A foeman can’t.”

  “How can you, a pagan, deal with men of faith?” Her tone was sharp-edged.

  “Oh, I got me prime-signed long ago.”

  She gave him a puzzled look. “Prime-signed, yet not baptized?”

  “No. I’ll not forsake Thor of the Weather. We get along well, Redbeard and I.”

  She flared. “Proud must that demon be of you!” Her voice dropped.

  “Still, I’ll be praying that your son be healed.”

  Halldor shrugged. “Yes, so you can go free. That’s between you and your own god.” His mouth crinkled. “Don’t forget to eat, though.”

  Suddenly: “But are you maybe a witch, Brigit? I asked you about yourself, and instead spun you my yarn. Now do tell me who you are, that I may think what’s the best bargain I can offer you.”

  Calming, she nodded—sundown turned her curls to molten bronze—and gazed across the water to a woodland drenched with amber light. After a silence she spoke, softly and slowly:

  “My life has been less varied than yours. My father is Conaill MacNiall, lord over the land where my convent stood. Before you burned it. My mother was his slave, but he was good to us both. She died later, birthing my brother, when I was six years old. Next year I was of an age to be fostered, so Father sent me to his aunt the abbess.”

  “Why?” Halldor wondered. “In Norway, well-born children often go as fosterlings into households more lowly, but that’s to teach them skills, and to bind both families closer. What gain here?”

  “Oh, I was slave-born. He gave me to the Church as payment for his sins.”

  Brigit stood quiet. A salmon leaped in the river. All at once she blurted:

  “Besides, Father’s wife could never abide my mother. Not that she minded him bedding her, but you see, Mother was of the Old Way—She was christened, of course, but she’d make offerings to the Sídhe, and it was Samhain and Bealtaine, not All Souls’ and Lady Day, that she kept—” A pause, a gulp. “Father let her. I fear he’s not the Christian he might be, and I pray for his soul, and for poor Mother’s. She was a simple girl from the bogs. There the Old Way still goes luring among the mists—” A finger flickered through the sign of the cross, twice, thrice. “Holy Mother Mary, blessed Saint Brigit my namesake, I thank you that I was saved.”

  “Then you’ve liked being a… a nun?” Halldor asked low.

  ” Yes!” Brigit nearly hissed it, while she stared into distance like a blind woman. “After I watched Mother serve Father and his wife at table—then sit at the far end of the hall, away from fire and honor—she who loved him—I watched her die screaming in childbed. Oh, tended she was by that other woman, but coldly, coldly. Father himself could not come to her; that wouldn’t beseem a man. Then why should any woman ever wish to serve a man?”

  “But man and woman can be shipmates through life—” Halldor quit his clumsy search for words. What he had wanted to speak of was such an uncommon thing anyhow. Could he honestly say that he and Unn had ever quite known it? In a way, but—And Brigit, thus far, was merely prey.

  He needed to hearten her, for Ranulf’s sake. At the back of his head, there passed through him that that could be for his own sake too. “You’re a spirited lass,” he said. “Did you really find joy in poverty, obedience, and singing songs to your god?”

  She swung to face him. Her gaze was no longer blank, but matched her words. “Do you suppose, you benighted heathen, that we did naught but pray? Why, prayer was our rest, our joy. We were never idle—work—gardening, cooking, cleaning, brewing, tending the animals, housing wayfarers, caring for the poor, the sick, the hurt—How do you think I learned leechcraft? Chopping helpless people up, like you? No, I went about the whole parish, fearless, my person sacred, the honored guest of lord and crofter alike. For that lord or his merchant friend, I’d write a letter, or read one that came to him. Home again, I’d study Scripture, the lives of the saints, the wisdom of the ancients—we had Virgil—but what would Virgil mean to you, you illiterate pagan? And as the abbess grew old and weak, I her niece helped her more and more to govern our sisterhood—”

  He thought fleetingly that the convent, humbler than this monastery had been, was about as much as his wife had to steer, or less. On the other hand, at home there were no dealings with priests, bishops, far-off Romaborg, the weight of hundreds upon hundreds of years…

  “Then you came, you murderers, bandits, wolves!” Brigit screamed.

  “You scattered us—all but me, and would God I’d gotten away to die in the wildwood!—you looted, you burned, you ruined it all—Oh, Hell will have you!” She lifted crooked fingers to the sky. “Holy Senan, you drove the sea beast from this island.” Her teeth gleamed in a mouth stretched wide.

  “Call it back against these beasts!”

  She had drawn the reins too tight upon herself, Halldor saw. They had snapped. He could hardly blame her. A Norsewoman with her kind of heart would have taken a gruesome revenge and died, like Brynhild and Gudrun—or, if na
ught else could be, turned a knife on herself—but Brigit was Christian and debarred from that freeing. Still, he couldn’t let her run mad. Ranulf needed her.

  He slapped her cheeks, right, left, right, left. The blows cracked aloud.

  Her head rocked back and forth. Her screeches came to a halt and she stared at him out of eyes gone huge.

  “That will do,” he said. “We can talk more, later. But first let’s go back.”

  Dumbly, she stumbled after him. Sunset began to fade.

  —At camp, she soon came out of her shock, as he had awaited. She even found some orders to pass, through him, to three of Ranulf’s friends, who were to care for the wounded youth overnight. “Should anything untoward happen,” Halldor told them, “you can call her from my tent.”

  One fellow leered. “As for what else she may need,” he asked, “can I help out… again?”

  Halldor flushed. “No. She’s earned that much respect.” None of them dared further mirth, at least until he was gone.

  —Stretched across two pairs of poles whose ends were carved into ravens’ heads, and a shaft between them, the tent was high enough at the peak for a man to stand upright. It held a warm, strong smell of grease, leather, fire. A lamp cast flickery light and restless shadows. Pegged together, a bedframe was covered with bearskins; they were bulkier than straw tick and wool blanket, but stayed fresher when a man fared overseas.

  Halldor looked long upon Brigit. She gave it back to him.

  “If you heal Ranulf,” he said at last, “shall I take you home to your father, and help him make such alliances among the Norse that he need not fear them?”

  “That would be well,” she mumbled.

  How strong and fair she stood, he thought; and he offered in a suddenness that surprised him: “Any child you bear, I’ll provide for if no one else does.”

  She did not smile at his words, but flinched. “You would not leave me alone… until I am free?”

  “No,” he said, for he could say nothing else. “You are too fair. But I’ll try to be kind, Brigit.”

  She turned her face away, which hurt. Nevertheless he went to her.

  VI

  TWILIGHT GREYED THE SHANNON. The crews would soon return. Brigit sat in Ranulf’s doorway, savoring her last moments of solitude. Across the fields, smoke rose from the ruins of another home. Days, now, they’d harried the land, and few folk were left. Those who tried to resist were slaughtered. Damn the raiders to the blackest pits. Far up the river she saw longships. She went inside.

  Despite her best efforts, the hut was damp and chill, and the sickroom stench fought the sweetness of straw and herbs. Ranulf lay quiet, on clean bedding. His eyes were blank.

  “They are coming now,” Brigit said, in the few Norse words she’d learned. On the shore hulls scraped over pebbles, hearty voices laughed and jested. Ranulf turned his head away. “War and plunder are not everything,” said Brigit. He did not answer.

  As soon as Sea Bear landed, Halldor hastened to the hut and stood looking down at his son. The firelight gilded the youth’s hair and his few wisps of beard. In that light, with his eyes closed, he seemed a child.

  Halldor’s garments reeked of smoke, and his boots were foul. He stood silent a moment. “He mends?”

  Brigit nodded. His body, anyhow. “Today he moved the fingers of his right hand. Strength returns.”

  Halldor’s shoulders slumped. She saw how tense and weary he was.

  “You have done well, woman.” He reached into his pouch and drew forth an object. It gleamed. “Then have a leech-gift of me.”

  She stretched out her hand before she saw what it was. A gold collar!

  She dropped it as if burnt. “You have robbed a faerie-mound!” She scribbed her hand on her skirt. “That is gold of the Old Ones, the Sídhe, it bears a curse!”

  “It was only a stone-heaped grave,” said Halldor, “and no ghost rose against us. We have the same in our country, though I’d not trouble my kinsmen’s grave-goods. You have worked well.”

  Brigit backed away. “No! This is cursed by the ancient gods—I dare not touch it—death and madness!”

  He shrugged. “Strange, you Christians. If your god is all-powerful, why fear the ancients?” He picked up the collar and returned it to his pouch.

  “I’d not willingly distress you. My wife Unn will wear it with pride.”

  Brigit fought horror long enough to think, He wished to please me. She raised her head. “If you’d truly reward me, Halldor—”

  He smiled. “Set you free? I’ve agreed to that, when my son no longer needs your care. And if you’d plead again that I not touch you, remember I am a man.”

  “No, it is a smaller boon I ask.” Brigit paused. “The monks here kept books, many more than did my convent.” Before you and your bandits sacked it. She bit back the words. “Ranulf is less ill now, and can be left for longer periods. Might I have leave to study the volumes in my free time?

  One of your men said they survive by your order.”

  Halldor nodded. “You have leave, if Ranulf is tended.”

  Brigit bowed her head and murmured thanks. The illiterate pagan! But at least he’d spared the books.

  Her hand that had touched the collar felt filthy. She slipped from the hut.

  Chill wind swept the island, bearing scents of river and early spring. A few stars gleamed through the cloud-streaked sky, but most of Heaven’s lamps were left unlit. Unseen in the gloom, the river chuckled.

  Brigit sought Saint Senan’s holy well. The vikings did not know of it, and it was the one place on the island left undefiled. Shallow, it trickled from the moss to pool in a tiny rock-lined basin. Brigit felt as if she had clasped something dead, though many the corpse she had washed and laid out with never a qualm.

  She knelt and sank both hands into the water. Whispers went on the night wind, and she shivered. Saint Senan, save me from those who ride in the dark! And Brigit, my namesake, deliver me from bondage. But the night would not be still.

  The way back to camp was long, and gloom rustled about her. Halldor’s tent-lamp made a warm yellow beacon. She crept inside. He did not ask where she had been.

  After he used her she did not lie staring into blindness, but fell instead into troubled dreams. In another, brighter world, a tall woman called her

  “my child, my namesake.” But this woman was garbed in a silken gown and green mantle, and her eyes were milk-white. She wore no cross, and her golden hair blew unbound. “I am Brigit, and I have heard your plea.”

  She reached out a hand and mortal Brigit woke, chilled with sweat. She lay listening to Halldor’s steady breath and the tap of rain on the tight-stretched tent skins. Her right hand was chill. That was no saint, she knew. When she called, who had answered?

  Dawn came grey and wet. Wind tossed waves against the stony beach.

  The season might have been midwinter.

  “We’ll not fare out today,” Halldor said, surveying the sky. “I do not like yon clouds.” He pointed to where murk roiled in the west. “Work enough have we done of late; a man must also rest.” He let the tent-flap drop, and smiled.

  Brigit dressed quickly and went to check on Ranulf. She must find refuge—

  He looked pale in the dim light. The hut was colder than usual. Brigit built up the fire, fed and bathed him, and changed the bedding. The morning exercises were hurried. She was eager to reach the scriptorium.

  Grudging the time, she gnawed a dry crust of bread. She refused to eat with the vikings, and though Halldor made food available, she took as little as she could and yet live. As she washed it down with ale, Halldor appeared in the doorway.

  “Your son should be all right for a while,” she said. “Perhaps he’d like to spend some time with you. His exercises are finished. If you’ve no need of me,” Please God he has none! “I’ll be with the books.”

  Halldor nodded. His eyes were on his son. Ranulf struggled to rise, but fell back. Brigit saw Halldor frown, as if thinking,
before she escaped outdoors.

  The rain fell heavier now. She hoped the storage-hut was tight. Books were so easily spoiled. She approached the small wattle-and-daub building and pushed open the wicker door to darkness.

  Two bronze lamps hung on chains, and she found the flask of oil, but she must go back for fire. So anxious had she been to get away—no, she would not return to Ranulf’s hut. Halldor was there. She went instead to the main cooking-fire in the center of camp. Several crew members sat idle under a nearby lean-to. No one addressed her as she took a brand, but one of Ranulf’s friends muttered something, and was answered by low laughter.

  Her cheeks flamed. She held her head high as she walked away.

  After she adjusted the smoky wicks, light showed that the earthen floor was dry and the leather satchels on their pegs hung oiled and mildew-free.

  All was as it should be, left by careful hands. Then she realized: the monks had of course taken the volumes to the tower for safekeeping; how came they then back here? She shivered, seeing ghostly hands scrabble from shallow graves, dead feet creep up bloodstained ladders to gather their beloved books. Almost she fled the place. In the night, in the mist, after the slaughter, while I saved a pagan life—But then she recalled that Halldor had given orders. She reached toward the satchels. They swung heavy with the weight of manuscripts.

  Halldor must have pillaged many scriptoria, she raged, else he’d not know how they were kept. She lifted a bag from its peg.

  The leather was embossed. She stroked the interlaced design. Finer by far than those her convent owned— had owned. Six books this monastery had! She opened the one she held. A Gospel book, two volumes, Luke and John. She put it back. And next to it, yes, Matthew and Mark. A copy of the Psalms, as well; a life of Saint Brendan the Navigator, who’d sailed down this very River Shannon to fare across the sea; and the Life and Rule of Saint Senan. She looked at this last in dismay. Senan had scant use for women, she knew. What did he think of one in his very monastery? Her fingers strayed toward the final satchel. This leather clasp was stiffer than the others, less-used. She drew forth a thin volume, sparsely-illuminated.