Bracelet of Bones (6 page)

6

S
olveig sat up half the night, carving by the light of the fire. First she cut the teeth in the maple comb to honor her part of the bargain with the three traders, and then she turned to the walrus-tusk flute.

Carving and looking forward . . .

I don’t know what Red Ottar will decide, she thought. That big woman with the fish hands, she’s against me. Vigot is really handsome, but he knows that he is, and I don’t quite trust him. But what if they decide not to take me? What will I do then?

Looking forward and looking back . . . I don’t feel bad about leaving Asta. She won’t mind that I’ve gone. But I feel sad when I think of her sitting at home without a man. Some people do things, but others, like Asta, have things done to them. That’s when despair darkens the doorstep.

At dawn, Solveig gave the walrus-tusk flute to Turpin.

“To play a dawn song to lighten your day,” she told him.

Turpin frowned. “Who says I’m sad?”

“I do.”

Then Turpin gave Solveig a grave look and, after that, a bear hug. “May the gods guide you to your father,” he said.

While it was still very early, Solveig and the fur traders walked back along the lakeshore past the granary and malt house to Red Ottar’s storehouse, and Solveig was carrying her small bundle of clothes, her reindeer skin, and her sack of bones.

“All right,” announced Red Ottar. “We’ve decided to take you.”

Solveig’s heart lurched.

“Not,” he added, “that we all wanted to. Not by any means.”

That big woman, thought Solveig. Who else?

“But a crew’s a crew,” the skipper went on. “We all pull together.”

“I’ll pull with you,” Solveig said.

“You will,” Red Ottar replied. And then he turned to the big woman. “Bergdis,” he said with an upthrust of his head. “And you, Odindisa.”

Slothi’s wife and Bergdis stepped forward and stood on either side of Solveig.

“Behold!” exclaimed Red Ottar. “Your two shoulder companions. Not to mention your fellow bailers and oarswomen. They’re old hands—they’ve sailed with me a dozen times—and they will counsel you and caution you. They’re accountable to me.”

Solveig was aware of Bergdis’s warm shoulder leaning into hers and of the cool space between her and Odindisa.

“And if you come to harm,” Red Ottar said very deliberately, “so will they.” He paused. “Hear that, Turpin?”

“I do.”

“I swear it, my friend,” said the skipper, wagging his right forefinger. “Now! Five men, four women, two children. We’re a team of eleven, and we all have our own duties and bring our own skills. Your skill, Solveig, is to carve and to give me all your carvings to pay for your passage.”

Solveig nodded. He’s strong, she thought. I like that.

“Your duties,” Red Ottar continued, “are to help Bergdis cook and to assist Bruni Blacktooth with smithing and carving. Do you understand?”

“I do,” said Solveig.

“You may think we’ll have plenty of time once we’re under sail,” Red Ottar told her, “but it’s never like that. There’s always something to be done.”

Red Ottar turned to Torsten.

“So,” he asked, “when can we set sail? What do you say, Torsten?”

Torsten said the weather was set fair. “Not only that. The wind’s behind us.”

“The wind’s behind us, and my rival Ulrik’s already ahead of us,” said Red Ottar. “He left last night.”

“Tomorrow at dawn, then,” Torsten declared.

“Once we’ve sailed out of this lake and through the waterway to the sea,” the skipper told Solveig, “our first landfall will be Åland. One big island. Hundreds of little ones. Like the moon surrounded by the stars. It’s two days and two nights from here.”

“We’ll head straight for it,” Torsten said, “unless the wind worsens.”

“Åland,” said Odindisa in a singsong voice. “It’s alive with magicians.”

“Pff!” spit Red Ottar. He gave Slothi’s wife a sharp look.

“You know I sometimes see what others cannot,” Odindisa went on.

The skipper clapped his hands. “Nonsense!”

Odindisa turned to Solveig and gave her a look, half wild, half lost, as if she were caught between worlds.

“Åland, then,” Torsten repeated. “And after that, east, east all the way to Ladoga. At least five days and five nights from Åland.”

“I saw two dancers turned into stone,” Odindisa said dreamily.

“Odindisa,” snapped Red Ottar, “I’ll flatten you into a pancake.”

“Shall I show the girl around?” Torsten asked.

Solveig’s heart leaped. She couldn’t wait to ask the helmsman about her father.

But Red Ottar said, “I’ll come too. I’ve got to check the cargo.”

“We’ve already checked it,” Bruni Blacktooth told him. “Slothi and Vigot are both aboard, watching over it.”

“Even so.”

Solveig could see how proud of his boat Red Ottar was. He led the way across the landing stage and slapped her planks.

“Oak,” he said. “Green oak planks. I saw them being split in the forest. She’s only a yearling, you know.”

“She’s beautiful!” exclaimed Solveig.

“Look at that curve and sweep.”

“Like waves,” said Torsten. “Like my wife.”

“She’s my sea wife!” said Red Ottar. “The keel’s all one timber, forty feet long. Know about ships, do you?”

Solveig shook her head. “Not really. Little ones. Cobles, skiffs. But I’ve never been aboard a boat half as fine as this.”

“Come on, then,” said the skipper. His eyes were fox-red and shining.

Oh! As Red Ottar marched Solveig up to the bows and back to the stern and from side to side, she felt so lighthearted that her feet scarcely touched the deck. In her ears she heard words her father used to say:

“Pace her out,” Red Ottar told Solveig. “Get to know her.”

And with that, the three of them marched side by side from bows to stern again while Solveig counted out loud.

“Fourteen,” said Solveig. “Four from side to side.”

Red Ottar grunted and then nodded, and Torsten slipped Solveig a wink. “Still growing, is she, skipper?” he asked.

“A ship for the gods,” said Red Ottar. “Wasted on you lot.”

“You can never be sure,” Torsten replied. “Some boats do better to sit on the beach than swim in the water.”

“The sail’s twenty feet high, twenty wide,” Red Ottar told her. “Look at that pennant . . . look at these seal-hide ropes . . .”

He’s so rough, Solveig thought, and yet he sounds as eager as a child.

“Right!” Red Ottar told Solveig. “We sail when we can and row when we can’t. Here are the oarsmen’s benches. I row opposite Vigot and . . .”

“You row?” exclaimed Solveig.

“Of course,” the skipper replied. “Do you think I sit on my hands? Torsten’s our helmsman, and I row opposite Vigot, Bruni rows opposite Slothi. And then you women, the four of you, will each row a half shift and do some bailing with the children.”

“Who will I row with?”

The skipper pursed his lips. “We’ll see about that,” he said.

Solveig pointed to the open hold around the mast. “What’s your cargo?” she asked.

“The usual mix,” said Red Ottar. He stamped on the deck. “Stowed under here as well.”

“Skins and furs?”

“Hundreds of them,” Red Ottar said. “I will say this: old Baldy and his brother—what’s his name? Orm?—they bring us better furs than anyone else.”

“Turpin, you mean?”

“Baldy, yes.”

“Why do you call him that?”

“Because he’s so hairy! Mind you, they stink the place out. This time we’re carrying wax as well—I’ve never seen so much. Enough to brighten every building in Ladoga . . . and Kiev.”

“Furs and wax,” said Solveig.

“And weapons,” said Red Ottar, “some with decorated blades and pommels and sheaths. The Icelander, Bruni, he made them this last winter.”

Torsten interrupted Red Ottar by spitting on the deck, then spreading the saliva under the sole of his left foot.

“What’s wrong with you, Torsten?” barked Red Ottar.

But Torsten didn’t reply. He just growled.

“Can I see them?” asked Solveig. “The weapons.”

“You’ll have to wait. They’re all wrapped in oilcloth and stowed away under here.” Red Ottar stamped the deck again and he laughed. “Look at you. Bright eyes!”

“It’s all so new,” Solveig said.

“And then,” said Red Ottar, “we’re carrying honey, barrels of honey. And board games. And, er . . .” he lowered his voice, “precious metals.”

“Gold, you mean?”

Dawn.

Gulls mewed. Terns trilled. But as Torsten untied the boat and she began to glide, then gently to rock, all the companions were silent, caught between earth and water—and between what they were leaving and what lay ahead.

It took them all morning and early afternoon to sail from the harbor on the lake of Malar through the waterway to the open sea, and only then did the west wind really pick up.

The waves clapped their hands, and Red Ottar’s boat skipped and whistled.

Solveig sat in the stern, aft of the huge square sail. This is just as fresh as when I was swept past Trondheim, she thought.

“Swinging around,” Torsten called out to her.

Solveig squinted up at him.

“The wind!” he bellowed.

“My father,” began Solveig, “did he . . . ?”

Torsten motioned her to come closer. “Can’t hear you,” he said. “Not with all this wind slap.”

“My father . . .” Solveig began again.

The helmsman clamped his jaw and nodded firmly. “Good man,” he said. “Man of words. Man of stories.”

“You talked to him?” Solveig asked.

“We were pinned down in Ladoga for two days,” Torsten told her. “North wind. Yes, he told me about Harald Sigurdsson and sailing to join him.”

“Oh!” said Solveig, feeling disappointed.

“But he was thinking more about what he’d left behind than what lay ahead. I could see that. The farm . . . Asta . . . One evening he told me about Siri . . . Sirith.”

“My mother!” said Solveig eagerly.

“But,” said Torsten, first considering Solveig, then laying a warm hand on her left shoulder, “it was you. You, Solveig.”

Solveig held her breath.

“Yes,” said the helmsman. “He told me how much . . . how most of all, he was missing you.”

Solveig felt so hungry. For all that Torsten had told her, she ached for more. As if however much he told her, it could never be enough.

On the other side of Torsten, Vigot hauled in his fishing line and grasped a glittering, jerking sea trout; he took the hook out of its mouth and smacked its head against the gunwales.

Vigot gave Solveig a calculating look. “They can’t resist me,” he said, and he smiled.

I can, though, Solveig thought. The one who really can’t resist you is you!

Red Ottar and Edith were sitting in the shadow of the groaning sail. He was winding a piece of Edith’s long dark hair around her left ear . . .

Bergdis was preparing the fish Vigot had already caught, tossing their entrails overboard, where they were snapped up by screaming gulls before they even touched the water . . . Bard and Brita were crouching over some board game, and their father, Slothi, was half watching them. Bruni Blacktooth was searching for something where the cargo was stacked, quietly swearing to himself. And away on her own in the bows, Slothi’s wife, Odindisa, was reaching out with both arms, far out over the water, singing and saying.

She’s silver-eyed, thought Solveig. Sharp as a scythe. Was she for me or against me?

All around Solveig, the traders were at their business or leisure, and slowly the chariot of the sun journeyed downward, chased by the wolf Skoll, always yapping and snapping just behind her.

“The ravens!” screeched a voice right behind Solveig.

“Oh!” gasped Solveig.

“The ravens!” screeched Bergdis. “Thought and Memory—I can see them sitting on your shoulders.”

Solveig scrambled to her feet. “I didn’t see you,” she said.

Bergdis waved her filleting knife, and it flashed in the sunlight. “I need your help, and I need it now. Come sundown, there’ll be eleven hungry mouths and empty stomachs aboard this boat.”

“What shall I do?” she asked.

“The same as me. Heads off! Tails off! And then gut them.” Bergdis gave Solveig a shrewd look. “To be a Viking woman,” she said, “you have to be a man as well.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll find out.” She tapped her chin with the point of her filleting knife. “Follow me,” she said, and she waddled down the deck.

Bergdis’s little hearth, just an iron plate surrounded by four iron fenders, was down in the hold, well protected from the sea breezes. There she and Solveig grilled their first meal aboard—the sea trout and mackerel caught by Vigot—and added cold mash of turnip and carrot. And after they’d eaten this, washed down with cloudy ale, Solveig felt too tired to begin carving. Anyhow, the light was failing fast.

“Nothing goes to waste.”
That’s what my father says, thought Solveig. He’d tell me that even if my carving hasn’t become part of my journey yet, my journey will become part of my carving.