Erling sailed to Scotland to raid that summer. He told me he'd pass by Ireland thereafter, out of respect for me.
"I care not if you raid in Ireland," I said, "as long as you let Connaught alone. As a matter of fact, I can give you a list of places I'd be pleased for you to harry."
"The word is, it's a good year for Scotland."
"As you wish. Will you take thralls?"
"I've little stomach for slave-taking anymore. I'll snatch some hostages to ransom, no more than that. I can buy thralls in the markets."
It always made me nervous to see Erling call up a levy and sail off with his ships full of fighting men. I remembered too well how enemies had taken advantage of his absence before. And with Eyvind Kellda alive and about somewhere, I found reason to spend much time on my knees.
But no harm came that summer. It was no small thing to challenge Erling Skjalgsson, even with his back turned, and his name alone was worth a hundred armed men.
Things were dull with so many gone. The bored skeleton force that stayed behind under Eystein mostly talked, of an evening, about the fun and plunder they were missing. I took to going for walks after supper, and the walks started ever earlier as time went on.
One evening I was just coming out into the watery midsummer glow when I heard a voice in song. I followed it and it led me to the god-tree's place. There I found Freydis Sotisdatter. She sang:
"Your weakness makes me stronger.
Your hunger is my food.
I stand because you've fallen;
My life is in your blood.
You love because I hate you.
You give that I may take.
Your birth-day came to serve me;
Your death is for my sake."
In the twilight I could clearly see what she was about. She had her dolls thereArnor, Thorir and Sigurd, Thorliv, Sigrid and herself. She'd taken three of them into her hands, and was binding them togethertwo male dolls bracing a female one.
"What are you doing, child?" I asked.
"I'm binding Arnor and Thorir to myself," she said.
"What are you binding them with?"
"The guts of a cat."
"You killed a cat?"
"One of the thralls drowned some kittens."
"Why do you do this?"
"So that Arnor and Thorir will fall in love with me."
"Do you mean to marry them both?"
"I mean to spurn them both."
I sat down on Big Melhaug beside her. "Daughter, daughter. Setting to one side the sin of sorcery, why would you wish to hurt people? As much as this spell-binding troubles me, it troubles me more that you'd rather cause pain to others than joy to yourself."
"There is no joy for me."
"Not so! Or rather it's only true if you choose it."
"I've no choice. I've never had a choice. I had a purpose once. I was the gods' gift. But you took my purpose away."
"I saved you from abuse and perdition. Your life after that is what you let God make it."
"To have a choice I would have to have power. The only powers left to me are the power of the old magic in my bloodmy birthright from my motherand the power of the thing between my legs."
I took her by the shoulders. "Is that all you think you are? Is that all your uncle's love means to you? Is that all you've learned in church? You were made by God! You're not an ill wind, and you're not a breeding cow! Why must you act as if you are?"
Her pale eyes staring back at me seemed empty as a cat's. "My mother and Soti taught me what I was long before you and Lemming took them from me. I let you christen me, and I let you tell me your tales. But I don't believe them. Perhaps someday I'll find a new purpose. Until then I will amuse myself."
'Twas like arguing with a stone wall, or an Englishman. I let her go and walked away from her backwards, crossing myself with my right hand and crossing my fingers against the Evil Eye with the other.
I turned about when I was out of sight of her, and felt dizzy. The whole sky seemed to shrink to the size of a calfskin above me, and once again it seemed to curl and crack like a piece of parchment grown old. I sank to my knees in the heather. The whole creation, I thought, was wearing away before my eyes.
'Twas then I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up to see the dark Wanderer from Eastland. Had I not been so soul-sick I'd have wondered where he'd come from.
"Did you ever hear the tale of the thirteenth apostle?" he asked me, sitting on a mound.
"Who? Matthias?"
"No, Matthias was the one who took Judas' seat after the Resurrection. This was Thaddeus."
"But Thaddeus was the same as Jude the Less. I think."
"No, that's a mistake. They weren't the same man. The fact is, the reason the lists of apostles in the gospels differ a bit is that the group wasn't iron-bound. Some came, some went; some grew and stayed on while others lost their nerve and ran away. Thaddeus was a stayerhe did not give up easily, but he kept to the edge. He had trouble opening his heart to the others. He saved some part of himself . . . apart.
"When his Lord was crucified, Thaddeus did no better and no worse than the others. He ran. He found a place to hide. He stayed there, not sure whether the Romans or the temple police might not be after him next.
"By late on the second day, most of the men had gathered in a friend's house. Thaddeus was not one of them. No one knew where to find him. So the next morning, when the women came with the news of the Resurrection, he wasn't there. He didn't hear the tale of how Peter and John ran to the tomb and found it empty. He didn't hear the story of the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, who met the Beloved on the road.
"It wasn't until a couple days later that Bartholemew found him and told him, `We've seen the Lord! He's risen from the dead, just as He said!'
"What do you think Thaddeus said?"
"I don't know."
"He said, `That's very nice for you, Bart. I'm sure you sincerely think that what you say is true. But let's look at it realistically. We've all had a big disappointment. We wanted badly to believe that the Lord would come back. So you've worked yourselves into a state where you actually believe that He has. I'm happy for you, but it doesn't work for me.'
"Bartholemew said, `No, it's true! We saw Him! We touched Him! He ate a piece of fish in our sight.'
"Thaddeus shook his head. `It won't do, you know,' he said. `People are too shrewd to believe a story like this. Even if it were true, it wouldn't really matter. It would be just a thing about this worldthis low and miserable world.
" `I've thought much about our Lord's teachings, and I have seen the true meaning at last. This world is nothing. Anything that happens here, even a resurrection, means nothing. Our Lord was too good for this world, so He died. He's in a better place now, and He wants us to understand that the true meaning of His promise of resurrection is that His moral teaching lives on. We must do good in this world, and not look for any other world.'
"Bartholemew went away in sorrow. Thaddeus closed the door and turned back inside. To his amazement, he saw the Lord standing there before him.
" `Do you think I am only a seeming?' the Lord asked.
" `Yes,' said Thaddeus.
" `What if I were to touch you?'
" ` 'Twould prove nothing.'
" `There's naught I can do that would make you believe?'
" `There is naught,' said Thaddeus, `that would persuade me to set myself in a place to be betrayed again as You betrayed me. I will believe the truths You spoke, and forget about Your false promises.'
"So the Lord left him alone, and Thaddeus went on to begin his own church, where he taught a very spiritual doctrine. He told everyone that his church was bound to outlive the other apostles' church, because his was founded on hard-headed facts, not wild stories. But in truth it never went anywhere. When the persecutions came, all his followers renounced the Name, and Thaddeus ended up selling fish in Joppa."
Another matter I've spoken little about is bathing. The Norse are cousins to the English, but are like the Irish in at least one respectthey prize a clean body.
They get clean, however, in a peculiar, barbaric fashion. There is on each farm a house, small or large after the size of the household, with a stone oven in it. Unlike their other houses, this one has no gable-peak holes for ventilation. On Saturday nights (their word for Saturday is "washing day") they fire up that stove with birch wood until the stones shimmer like water and the house fills with smoke, and they go inside and throw water on the stones, making the place a steaming, choking, blinding, flesh-searing purgatory. Then they sit naked on two or three levels of benches around the walls and tell each other dirty stories.
In time someone with enough reputation not to fear being called a coward suggests that they all go out and cool off. Such houses are built near rivers or ponds, so everyone goes out of the hot house and jumps straightway into the cold water (in winter they just roll in the snow).
Then they all go back inside and repeat the liturgy again and again, until either the next group demands its turn or the Chief Rooster decides they've had enough. Even so, men of honor take pains to be the last to leave.
Then they chase each other around naked for a while, flogging one another with scrub branches.
I'm not making this up.
Such rituals are a sort of test of manhood. The time you take before suggesting a cool dip (if you're Chief Rooster), and the level of bench you sit on, are matters of status. So is your willingness to throw water on the stones and send up yet another smothering cloud of steam.
The first time I took such a bath (in Visby, if you recall), I went through the standard newcomer's initiation. The men in the house with me (Eystein was one of them, as a matter of fact) told me seriously that there were two ways to control the heat of the steam. "Hot water on the stones makes the house hotter," they said, "and cold water makes it cooler."
Think about it for a while. They had a good laugh at me over that.
Of all the bullyboys, no man had higher bathhouse honors than Eystein. He sat on the upper bench always, and called for more steam whenever anyone was in danger of getting his sight back. I did not ordinarily bathe with Eystein.
But I'd been meaning to talk to him, and I wanted to do it alone. I realized with dismay that, busy as he was with many things, the only time I was likely to catch him by himself was at the end of a bath.
I've run into Irish priests, now and again, who've told me that my years in Norway, under English bishops, has made me lax in my penances and fasts.
Such men have never sat in a Norse bathhouse with Eystein.
There were some surprised looks when I joined Eystein's bath party that particular Saturday evening.
"Trying to impress your heathen woman with your manhood?" someone asked me, laughing.
I made no reply. I couldn't have if I'd tried. I was climbing, on sheer will power, up to Eystein's bench. I suppose I must have breathed, because I did not die, but I don't remember doing it. I sat, leaning my back against the sooty wall, and tried to be very still.
The party went on. The air burned my nostrils with every breath. The men laughed and made new steam.
We went outside and cooled down. It's hard to imagine a state where a leap into a frigid pond is pleasant, but I swear it feels like silk sheets after the steam.
We went back in. We boiled ourselves.
We went back out.
It was the longest evening in the history of the world. The hours Joshua took when he made the sun stand still were repaid then, with usury.
At last Eystein said, rather quietly, "I think this is probably enough for tonight, lads."
We could have recited the 119th Psalm, I think, in the time it took before somebody on the lowest bench said, "I suppose so. I've got a woman waiting for me," and headed for the door. One by one, with all the breakneck speed of cold pitch, the rest followed him out.
At lengthat long, long lengthonly Eystein and I remained. It would have been sooner, but some other fellows coveted the honor of staying as long as Eystein, and I had to wait them out. Why I wasn't carried out I'll never know.
But I realized at last that it was only he and I in the house. I opened my mouth to speak, but could only cough for some time.
"What's on your mind, Father?" Eystein asked.
I pretended not to know what he meant.
"You wouldn't be here still if there wasn't something on your mind. You've done very well, you know. The house was specially warm tonight. I think you'll find the men respect you more tomorrow."
" 'Tis Deirdre," I said.
"And what of her?"
"She's been through a hard patch. She tried to make away with herself once. I can't tell you to stay clear of her, but for God's sake, don't break her heart. She's like a bird's egg since she lost Patrick."
"And you think I mean to break her heart?"
"Sometimes you men forget that thralls are full as human as you, and your even Christians to boot."
"You don't know me well, do you, Father?"
"We've never been boon companions, I suppose."
"Do you know my mother had thrall blood?"
"Do you say so?"
"Aye. Her mother was a Cornishwoman, taken by Erling's grandfather. I knew her when I was young. I get my dark hair from her. She sang like a bird."
"Then I take it you've no plan to wed Deirdre. You'd not want more thrall blood in the family."
"That's what I would have said a few weeks since. But there's a thing that can alter such reasonings."
"And what's that?"
"Falling in love with the woman."
Just when you think you've seen everything under the sun, I thought to myself.
Title: | The Year of the Warrior |
Author: | Lars Walker |
ISBN: | 0-671-57861-8 |
Copyright: | © 2000 by Lars Walker |
Publisher: | Baen Books |