The Saga of Colm the Slave
Read The Saga of Colm the Slave Online
Authors: Mike Culpepper
Tags: #iceland, #x, #viking age, #history medieval, #iceland history
SAGA OF
COLM
THE SLAVE
by
Mike Culpepper
Some of this material was first
published, in somewhat different form, in
Alfred Hitchcock's
Mystery Magazine
: "The Icicle Judgement", Jan.-Feb., 2009; "The
Necklace of Glass", Nov., 2009; "The Trollfarm Killing", Dec.,
2009; "The Silver Pennies", July-Aug., 2010; "The Berserk Feud",
Jan.-Feb., 2011; "The Witch Couple", April, 2011.
Cover illustration is from the Hunterian
Psalter (c.1170), held at the Glasgow University Library.
Mike Culpepper has a blog:
http://shrineodreams.wordpress.com/
Copyright 2014 by Mike Culpepper
ISBN: 978-0-9879017-1-2
The Saga of Colm the Slave
10.Egil Bloodhead and His Wife Gunnora
29. Ljot And Styr Discover A New Problem
30. The Missionary And The Sacred Stone
34. The Althing Considers Religion
37. Frosti Tries To Save A Horse
Gwyneth was in the pasture already,
testing the fleece on the pregnant ewes for pull. Birthing would
begin in a month or less and some of the sheep had already begun to
loosen their wool. Colm scraped the thin snow from a patch of
ground and the sheep ambled toward the exposed grass. He climbed up
on the round stone-walled hayguard and began forking hay onto the
cleared patch. From time to time he glanced up at Gwyneth as she
moved through the sheep, one hand gently stroking at their wool,
the other clutching at the ragged cloth she wore for a shawl. Her
breath rose in clouds about her face, her cheeks red with the
cold.
“Fine thing,” muttered Colm, “A man like
me doing this kind of labor, descended from kings as I am.”
Gwyneth looked up at him. “Oh, yes, as
are we all! Not a thrall on the place but isn’t royalty gone
astray.”
“Oh, but it’s so! A king I would be in
my own land!”
“King of the liars!” She looked directly
at him and Colm caught his breath. Gwyneth had blue eyes brighter
than any sky and hair blacker than any night.
“Well, I’m not saying my kingdom is the
grandest in the world but my father set a raven flying across it
when I was born and I was old enough to talk when it reached the
far border.”
“Speaking from the cradle, were you?”
She turned away but Colm could tell she was smiling.
“I don’t want to brag, but I had three
languages by then and those not half what was required to give
direction to all the tribes in the realm. Indeed, they were so many
we could never finish a census. By the time you counted the last of
my father’s subjects, the ones you began with had birthed whole new
families with children of their own and you had to begin counting
all over again!”
“Oh, indeed, more subjects than lice on
your head, no doubt.”
“Well, I don’t want to brag…”
“No, please don’t.”
Colm grinned. “It so happens that…”
“Colm! Where is that lazy
good-for-nothing?” Bjorn was yelling. “Colm!”
“Coming!”
“I want the cowshed shovelled out before
dark so you better hop to it!”
“Excuse me,” Colm said, “But I must
attend to matters of state.”
“Certainly, your majesty,” said Gwyneth,
“And don’t forget your dung-fork.”
Colm was in a fair state of mind when he
reached the cowshed but Bjorn soon darkened his mood. Yelling and
ordering him about as though a man needed directions to shovel
shit! Bjorn wasn’t a bad master but he was trying to impress his
visitor, Hastein, so he fussed and blustered. Hastein was slightly
higher in rank than Bjorn – both were free land-owners who followed
the chieftain Thorolf, their godi, to the Althing, but Thorolf
trusted Hastein and sometimes sent him about to do his bidding. No
doubt he reported back what he saw of the other farmers, too. Bjorn
had only come to Iceland a few years before with his family and
slaves including Colm and Gwyneth. He was well received at first –
Hebrideans were all supposed to be rich from piracy and plunder –
but it was soon discovered that Bjorn had little more than what was
needed to buy his land and set up farming. Still, he worked hard
and his wife, Aud, was an efficient manager, so in time Bjorn might
become wealthy. Colm could be proud of his master.
Like all slaves, Colm dreamed of being
free. He could not yet see a way this might happen but he was only
seventeen, so he thought everything was possible. When he was very
small he saw one of his brother’s heads lifted on a raider’s spear.
Later, he heard his other brother screaming in agony from inside a
burning church. Not set ablaze by foreign pagans, either, but by a
war party up from Munster -- just another skirmish in the
everlasting conflict over the high kingship. Colm was ten when he
was seized by raiders and taken, first to the Hebrides where he was
dealt to Bjorn’s family, then to Iceland. This was not the worst
place in the world, Colm knew. There were neither foreigners
raiding from without nor wars within. Only the occasional feud
spoiled the peace. That, and the slave’s chance of being sacrificed
to a pagan god, or murdered for some offhand reason or for no
reason at all.
On the other hand, peaceable though it
might be, Iceland lacked bread. Colm sat on a longhall bench and
spooned up skyr – the thickened sour milk that was his supper – and
wished he had even a stale crust of the coarsest loaf ever baked to
chew on. But what little grain this country produced was all brewed
into beer – not that Colm would have minded a mug or two of that as
well. Might as well wish for meat, he thought, and cake, too, while
I’m at it.
Gwyneth swept through the longhall,
carrying a great pitcher of beer like a vision of plenty right out
of Colm’s imaginings. She passed into the end room where Bjorn
entertained Hastein. Colm moved toward the doorway so he could look
in and watch her as she moved about, serving the men. A small pair
of scissors dangled from her apron, forgotten and left from her
work of trimming the woven cloth. It flashed like a jewel in the
lamplight of the inner room.
Bjorn and Hastein drained their cups,
matching each other drink for drink, as men must do. Gwyneth
refilled them and Hastein looked up and studied her face for a long
moment. Colm crept up to the doorway and pressed himself against
the turf wall, listening.
“…But stay the night!” said Bjorn.
“No, I want to be going back,” answered
Hastein, his voice slurred with drink.
“It’s dark and dangerous.”
“The moon is shining bright as day.
Anyway, send a slave with me to light the way. Oh… That one
perhaps.”
“If you insist on going, I’ll get one of
the men…”
“No. She’s the one I want.” Colm
stiffened. He knew that Hastein meant Gwyneth.
“And just how long do you plan on
keeping her?” Aud’s voice. “There’s work she needs to be doing, you
know.”
“I’m not used to being questioned by a
woman.”
“You take a female slave, you interfere
with women’s work.” Bjorn setting Hastein straight. He and Aud
worked well together. But now he was setting into a dispute with
his chieftain’s agent.
Hastein backed away from a quarrel.
“She’ll be back by morning. I just want her for the night.”
“Early morning, mind. We can’t be
short-handed this time of year.” Aud wanted to avoid a
confrontation that might wind up in bloodshed. Many a feud had been
started by hasty words. And a slave’s virtue was of no account.
A few minutes later, Hastein and Bjorn
came into the longhall, heading toward the door. Gwyneth came
after, carrying a torch, dragging her feet. Aud walked behind,
urging her on. The four walked outside, then Bjorn and Aud
returned. Aud went back into the end room to make certain the slave
girls had cleaned up properly. Bjorn surveyed the longhall.
Most of the slaves were already asleep
on the benches. Colm lay still under his cloak, eyes shut. He felt
Bjorn’s gaze track over him, then heard the door to Bjorn’s
sleeping compartment open. Aud came into the longhall, muttering to
herself, and a moment later Colm heard the bed-chamber door shut.
He waited a few minutes, listening to Aud and Bjorn talking softly
to one another, sifting through the events of the day, then Colm
reached into a hiding place he had made beneath the bench and took
out the knife he had hidden there, a single-edged scramasax he had
lifted from the belongings of a dead English slave. He crept from
the bench to the door and glanced back. In the low firelight his
bunched cloak looked as though someone were asleep beneath it.
Outside, the bright moon reflected from
the frosted earth. Everything glowed with pale light. There were no
shadows anywhere. The cold cut through Colm’s thin shirt but he
ignored it and began trotting out of the farmyard toward the path
that ran to Hastein’s farm, about four miles away. He kept one hand
on the handle of his knife. Colm had no idea what he was going to
do. He was slow and cautious in his plans and liked to think
carefully before acting, but now he was swept up by dark feelings
about Hastein and Gwyneth.
About a mile along, Colm saw Gwyneth on
the path ahead, coming toward him. They came abreast of one another
and looked directly into each other’s face. Neither said a word.
Then Gwyneth began walking back toward the farm and Colm continued
on the way.
Ahead were cliffs rising above the path.
South-facing, they caught an hour or two of sun each day. Great
icicles formed there and hung in glittering rows from a frozen
shelf that jutted into space. Below the ice, lying beside the path,
Colm could see the crumpled shape of a man’s body. He walked up
slowly and crouched down, examining the body in the moonlight.
Hastein was dead. Blood had poured from
a steaming wound in his neck and was already freezing into the
earth. Colm rocked on his heels, thinking. Something caught his eye
in the crusted snow nearby. He scratched it up: a small pair of
scissors like those women used to trim cloth. Colm closed his fist
about it and sat thinking a long while.
In the morning, Colm walked out of the
longhall into sun so bright it hurt his eyes. He crossed the
farmyard to the cattle-byre to begin his day of work and, all the
time, he was listening for the shouts and cries that meant
Hastein’s body was discovered.
He caught sight of Gwyneth ahead and
caught up to her. She jumped at his touch when Colm pressed the
scissors into her hand. “You dropped this,” he said. Her face was
deathly pale and her eyes wide with fear. “Don’t worry,” he said.
“It will all come right. Keep to your story.” He walked away before
anyone saw them talking together.
Gwyneth had told the other women that
Hastein had become sick from the beer and lost all appetite for
anything but going home and passing out. So she had returned. Maybe
there was a pool of frozen vomit somewhere along the path, thought
Colm, but it didn’t matter. It wasn’t unusual for drunken men to
spew their supper but generally they just started drinking again.
People would ask if the lust-filled Hastein would really be
deterred from his satisfaction by such a small thing.