Avalon (38 page)

Twenty-five ships had started on the venture, fourteen eventually arrived at Brattalid, and of the eleven missing ones, some had turned back but others were never heard of again. They had sunk then? Nobody knew. Or perhaps, said Merewyn, consulting Sigurd, some of those ships had been blown Hke Ari Marson's to that faraway land across the sea where Rumon and Jorund had been.

"Perhaps —" said Sigurd, who had no time for any thoughts but the immediate settling of his family.

He and Ketil sailed the Bylgja around south into Ketilsfjord. They found a site on a little vik or creek near the entrance to the fjord. There was a big black crag which would keep the arctic winds off.

There were acres of grass, and some of what Ketil's determined eyes decided was arable land, as well. "An ideal place," he kept saying, "much can be grown here, the cattle will flourish, I'm sure — and as for the fish in my fjord — which will be yours some day, Sigurd — why, they are as plentiful as midges, and nobody to dispute our right to them!"

"There is no wood," said Sigurd, in a quiet voice.

"Tcha!" cried Ketil. "Plenty of stones and there's turf to burn, until we start regular voyages to fetch timber, or maybe we'll go west to that forest Jorund told us of. With a good ship, one can do anything."

Sigurd said no more, and indeed Ketil's optimism infected his crew members. They had come along partly for the adventure, and also because they all had had trouble in Iceland, one way or another, but now three of them decided to stay on Ketilsfjord

for this winter. The other men drifted back to Brattalid to see what was going on, and what land grants they might get. Two of them expected to bring wives from Iceland later. From Ketilsf jord to Erik's headquarters was only a day's ride around between the tips of the fjords and the edge of the icecap, and it might be even quicker by water.

Merewyn, Brigid, and Orm slept on the ship until their homestead was built; nor was it long a-building for there were eight men working, Ketil, Sigurd, their three serfs, and the three members of the crew who had elected to stay with them.

By mid-July they were well ensconced at Ketilvik, the name they gave their new home. It was, to be sure, not nearly so fine as Langarfoss, but it had a long hall, with the High Seat they had brought, and the carved Norwegian doorposts which Ketil cherished almost as much as "Bloodletter." There was an alcove, for Merewyn and Sigurd, temporarily screened off by canvas until they could get more wood for a wall, and there were raised benches made of turf and stone for the others to sleep on in the Hall. There was a storeroom and- a bam.

Ketil was jubilant on the day that Merewyn moved from the ship. "Well, dottir," he said. "Not so bad, eh? And all our own. No rent to pay to anyone! We must invite the neighbours to a feast. Invite Erik himself! This is as good, though not as big, as that house he built at Brattalid."

Merewyn, four months pregnant, and struggling to find places for the household goods they had brought, heaved a sigh. "I promised Orm that there would be forests — and roses," she said, "and with what could we give a feast?" They had been living on fresh-caught fish, and seal, the latter so tame that it took a man but a moment to spear one. She was sick of both foods, and longed for bread. The white bread she had dreamed of — so foolishly. She had not needed Sigurd to tell her that no wheat would grow here.

"Oh, we'll slaughter a sheep or two," said Ketil, "and they're fattening nicely."

That was true. The sheep and the cow and the horses were growing sleek as they browsed the long grass. They also chewed up the few tiny shoots which might have developed into birches.

"But in winter, Father .. ." she began, and stopped because he was ticking off on his fingers the settlers who would be invited to Ketilsfjord. " — Hjerolf, Einar, Thorbjom, Snorri, Hrafn — and Erik the Red, of course. All the families in the Eastern Settlement."

Father, she wanted to say, don't you see that this is worse than Iceland, that though we have shelter, already in July it's cold, that there is nothing here but the rough grass and that towering mountain of gray ice behind us, and I hate the noise of seals barking where I imagined I might have a garden. Don't you see that Sigurd is not content, or guess that even alone with me he has grown silent, and does not seek my arms?

"A-ha," said Ketil with satisfaction, having finished his list of guests. "We'll have a fine gathering — like the old days in Iceland — nay — better than that, like the feastings we had when I was a boy in Norway. My father was most hospitable."

Inside Merewyn something snapped. She flung down the load of eiderdowns she had been carrying. "You stupid old man!" she cried. "Why did you ever leave Norway, -if you liked it so? And why have you made us leave Iceland? Because of pride, because of killings? Ah yes, killings — plenty of those — you murdered Uther, who I always thought was my father, and Blessed Jesu — I wish he had been!"

Ketil stared at her in astonishment. He saw only an angry young woman who reminded him of his mother when she was in a temper, and the temper became them both. Merewyn looked quite beautiful: her tall body stiff as a spear.

"Dottir, dottir —" said Ketil. He turned to Brigid who was staring dumbly around the Hall. Ketil clapped her roughly on the shoulder. "Here, you take care of your mistress. Fetch her some ale!"

Brigid never understood Ketil's speech, and she was afraid of

him. She gripped her knuckly chapped hands, and looked helplessly at Merewyn.

"Bring ale," said Merewyn in Celtic, "and we will drink together to this beautiful home, and this charming country to which Ketil Ketilson, my father, has brought us — for what else can we do?"

"As you say, mistress," said Brigid, pleased by the thought of a drink, and she scuttled away.

It was then that Merewyn felt the baby in her womb, like a little message, like a fluttering of butterflies. Butterflies. Shall I ever see them again! Violet, and gold, and scarlet, or even pale blue were butterflies, flitting over a scented English garden until dusk came, and then you saw the great white moths, and presently at Romsey one often heard the nightingales.

She thought of the pink rose she had held and snifl^ed so rapturously on the day the Vikings raided Southampton. She thought of what happened later and of Merwinna's heroism, praying — praying — before the altar in Romsey Abbey. She shivered. Despite a feeble peat fire on the long central hearth, the Hall was cold. A new wind was blowing down off the ice cap. It did not actually enter the house except around the doors, for no windows had been cut. There were as yet no cow-birth membranes with which to cover windows and let in light. But the damp cold seeped through — and it was still only July.

"I HATE this place," she cried to Ketil. "I won't stay here. I won't have my baby here!" One could jump into those freezing waters out there amongst the seals, and very soon there'd be no more struggle.

Ketil — as perturbed as he ever had been by a woman — drew his reddish brows together, and opened the front door. He shouted for Sigurd, who was supervising the last stores to be taken off" the Bylgja.

Sigurd arrived frowning, and at Ketil's helpless gesture went to Merewyn. "What is it, wife?" he said. She gave him a despairing look. He put his arms around her, and kissed her. He

kissed her on the mouth, and she wilted against him. "I can't stand this —" she moaned.

Sigurd grabbed her arms and shook her. "You can —" he said. "You have endured much, and will endure Greenland, because / say so. This is no time for a man to think of love-making nor have I thought of it for a while. Too much else to do. But there is love between us, and you must do your part. Half of you is Norse, and I think the other half is not lacking in strength. So drink that ale Brigid keeps trying to offer you, and keep quiet, Merewyn."

She bowed her head against his sweaty leather jerkin. "Yes, Sigurd," she whispered.

Ketil's housewarming feast duly took place in August. Though it had been postponed, for there was a week of fog, but then it cleared at last into sunlight. It grew almost warm. And the ships sailed up the big fjord into the vik which was quite large enough to harbor them near the homestead.

Just before the feast, Sigurd had a piece of luck and speared a walrus which had been floating down the fjord on an ice floe. Riches, indeed! Not only the beast's flesh and blubber, and the oil it gave for the lamps, but its tusks! The ivory was worth its weight in silver, and could be sold in any European market. Even kings bought ivory from walrus tusks. They had it carved and set it gold. They used it for their baubles, their chessmen, their caskets and reliquaries. The other source of good ivory — elephant tusks — was scarcely known, or obtainable out of Africa.

Merewyn, whose spirits had been low, could not help feeling gayer as all their guests arrived, and were most pohte in praising the new homestead, and in extolling Sigurd's luck with the walrus. And it was pleasant to feel important, and to chat with the other wives of whom four had accompanied their husbands to Ketilvik. There were children too for Orm to play with. Einar had brought his little boy; Snorri Thorbrandson had a girl

of six, and then, of course, there were Erik the Red's lads, Thor-stein, Thorvvald, and Leif. Erik's wife, Thiodild, had not come. She had a pain in her chest, said Erik, also there was so much to do at their BrattaUd homestead. But he brought with him his bastard daughter — Freydis, for whom Merewyn felt an instant and uncanny dislike. Why do I? Merewyn thought, trying to be fair, and knowing that Freydis's situation was much like her own. Freydis had been born of a foreign woman in the Orkneys, and later recognized and taken into the family by Erik because he had no other daughters. Also Freydis was very young, fourteen maybe — Erik could not remember — but she looked older. She was big, full-breasted, and strident. She talked a lot in a grating, deep voice. She had some pimples on her heavy face, and her wiry, red hair was chopped off short below the ears . . . an eccentricity which puzzled Merewyn. But these were not the peculiarities which made for antipathy. It was the look in the girl's yellowish eyes, a look both bold and sly, and something else which Merewyn felt as not human. A cat look, was it? Or like a dog at the convent who had gone' mad and bitten a stable boy who thereafter died in agony.

Yet Erik acted fond of his daughter, and nobody else seemed to think her odd. Freydis was well-mannered and praised the homestead and the feast louder than anybody.

After serving the men, the women sat on the Cross Bench to one side of the Hall and now Merewyn discovered a friend. Not only a friend, but nearest neighbor, which delighted them both. This young woman was Astrid, the second wife of a plump and kindly man called Herjolf, who had settled himself on the next fjord below Ketil's and was building his homestead on a sheltered cape, naturally called "Herjolf's Ness." There was not a man in the company who did not feel pride in owning and naming such large tracts of land for himself. The women, more imaginative, wondered about the coming winter, but they too were merry as they downed their wooden beakers full of Ketil's imported mead.

Astrid was pretty and high-born — from one of the best families in Iceland. She had curly blond hair, and a sweet smile, and she also was pregnant. "We'll help each other when the time comes, won't we —" she asked Merewyn, an imploring smile in the mild blue eyes. "You've had one, and will know what to do, and at home I have watched two births with my mother. Also you'll have this one before I do. You can teach me, please."

"To be sure," said Merewyn valiantly, ignoring her own doubts. "And on horseback I think we're only a few miles apart. We'll visit often."

They talked together until some of the men began snoring on the benches.

Merewyn learned that Astrid was quite fond of her stout middle-aged bridegroom, who was always good to her. And that by his first wife he had a son, whom Astrid had never seen, since Bjarne had left last year on a trading ship to Norway. But, said Astrid, Bjame would probably turn up here before the winter set in, because he always tried to winter with his father.

"But won't he look for Herjolf in Iceland?" asked Merewyn, thinking how far away that place already seemed.

"No doubt," said Astrid, "but they'll tell him where we've gone, and Bjarne's a great sailor, his father says." '

Merewyn sighed and yawned, dismissing Bjarne, and very glad that Sigurd had neither previous children nor bastards for her to raise.

She looked up at Sigurd, as he sat beside Ketil on the High Seat, and saw that he was patiently enduring Ketil's spate of anecdotes about the days they went a-viking — the raids, the plunder. But when Ketil, who was drunk, said something about Padstow and the rich booty in Cornwall, Sigurd said "nay!" in an angry shout, which even awoke one of the snorers.

Ketil was startled. His bloodshot eyes turned to Sigurd. "What's the matter with you?''''

"From Cornwall, Ketil Ketilson, you got your daughter, and I my wife," said Sigurd. "And that's enough about it!"

Merewyn's throat choked up as Ketil looked bewildered. "Tcha!" he said, but feebly, and began to drum on the table. "Where's the mead? Somebody fill my horn, and I'll show you how well I can still down it at one quaff."

Astrid put her hand on Merewyn's. "Your husband loves you," she said. "For this you are lucky, but you must have suffered much."

Merewyn returned the hand's pressure, and after a moment she said, "I am lucky to have found a friend — there's been nobody since Elfled at Romsey Abbey — oh, so long ago. And perhaps Rumon —" she added in a whisper.

Astrid did not understand, but she leaned her shoulder against Merewyn's and the sympathy comforted them both, until Merewyn suddenly stiffened and said, "That Freydis! Why does she stare so at us? Those yellow eyes — what do they mean?"

When Astrid looked down the Cross Bench, Freydis was noisily sucking on whale blubber and staring only at the fire. "Merevyn—" said Astrid gently, stumbling over the name, "you are tired, I think, and should lie down. Come, I'll help you into bed."