Authors: Flora Speer
“Except that he is the older. By Odal law,
when Thorkell dies Snorri will inherit everything.”
“What will you do then?”
“I do not know.” Erik’s green eyes rested on
Thorkell a moment. “My father is an honest man who has been fair
toward me. I hope he will live for many more years.”
“What finally happened to Ragnhilde?”
“She died of a wasting disease while I was
away in Miklagard.”
“Where is Miklagard?”
Erik scowled at her. “You ask too many
questions, Lenora. I have told you enough for one night. Be
quiet.”
She obediently fell silent, and Erik began a
conversation with Halfdan. Lenora did not mind Erik’s brusque
order. So much new information filled her mind that she needed time
to think about it.
After what Halfdan had just told her she
understood better the bad relations between Erik and Snorri. She
suspected Ragnhilde’s evil deed had cast a blight over Freydis and
Halfdan, too, for how could Erik’s blood brother care for
Ragnhilde’s daughter, how hope for a future with her? Lenora
remembered part of a verse Father Egbert had once read to her from
the Holy Book: “The sins of the fathers... visited upon the
children.” The sins of the mothers, too, it would seem. Poor
Freydis. Poor Halfdan.
Angrily, she dismissed the thought. Why
should she care about the problems of these Norse? They were all
heathen monsters. Let them settle their own feuds. The thing that
mattered, the most important thing she had learned from her
conversation with Erik and Halfdan, was that in this country slaves
could be set free legally. Thorkell had freed Erik and would have
freed his mother.
She would ask some of the other women about
it. Surely someone would know how it could be done. She might even
stir up her courage enough to ask Freydis, who, although not very
friendly, was fair and honest with all of the slaves. Perhaps one
day soon she and Edwina could both be free. Lenora hugged the
thought close and smiled to herself, and thought of revenge against
Snorri.
The next morning Lenora saw Edwina again.
Freydis brought her into the weaving room where Lenora was
struggling with the loom, and then quietly walked away, leaving
them alone.
After a tearful embrace, Lenora looked at her
friend more closely. Edwina was more thin and pale than ever. Her
loose, unbelted Norse clothing, similar to Lenora’s own, hung on
her tiny frame like a shroud. Her honey-blond hair was pulled back
and knotted, the ends hanging free down her back. The hairstyle
emphasized her hollow cheeks and sunken eyes.
“Oh, my poor Edwina. Have you been ill?”
Lenora tenderly stroked the girl’s cheek.
“Not ill. Only unhappy.”
“Is Thorkell cruel to you? Has he hurt
you?”
“No, but I must share his bed each night. You
know about that. Thorkell told me he gave you to his son. You know
how it is for a slave.”
Lenora had her mouth open to tell Edwina that
she was more fortunate when she remembered Erik’s threat to kill
her if she told anyone he had not lain with her. She shut her mouth
firmly.
Edwina wiped her eyes. “Thorkell is not
unkind,” she went on. “It’s just that he is so old. He’s almost
fifty.”
Lenora nodded sympathetically. In an age in
which boys were considered adults at twelve and most men were dead
before their thirtieth birthday, Thorkell was old indeed.
“Perhaps that is a good thing,” Lenora said,
hoping to provide some comfort.
“Yes. The first night was bad, but now he
seems to want me just to lie beside him. He puts his hands on me. I
do not like it, but it is all he does.” She sighed deeply. “It
really doesn’t matter, with my beloved Wilfred gone. I don’t care
what happens to me now.”
Appalled at the change in her friend, Lenora
forgot discretion in a rush of anger.
“Edwina, I can’t bear to see you like this.
You were always so cheerful, always calming me when I was upset. I
wish I could help you now. How I long to take revenge on them for
what they have done to us. Especially Snorri.”
“Hush, Lenora, don’t say that. If anyone
heard you, they would kill us both.” Edwina looked frightened.
“Think about your eternal soul. Vengeance is the Lord’s. Father
Egbert always said that. We must accept what has happened to us and
trust in the Lord to give us strength to bear our misfortune.”
“Trust in the Lord?” Lenora asked in
exasperation. “These people are heathens. They don’t know or care
anything about the Lord. All they know is the law of the sword.
Plunder and rape and burn and kill.”
“They are not all violent and cruel. Thorkell
is a learned man. So is Erik. I have seen them working together,
how they love and trust each other. They both know how to read and
write, and count, too.” Edwina’s eyes widened at the thought of
these accomplishments.
“Are you defending them? How can you?”
“Because they are not as bad as you
think.”
“Snorri—”
“Snorri is a beast. Snorri is the worst of
the Vikings. But they are not all like Snorri. Did you know Erik
came to me and told me you were well and safe? Did you know he told
Thorkell my betrothed had been killed, and to treat me kindly?”
“I did not know. He could have told me that
you were well, but he never did. And what Erik told him did not
keep Thorkell from taking you to his bed, did it?”
“No, that is true. He is an old man and
settled in his ways. Owners bed with their female slaves. Thorkell
would not change such things, but he is kind to me.”
“I don’t know how you can accept this misery
so easily. I have tried so hard, but I will never be able to accept
it. I hate them all. I wish I could find a way to make Snorri pay
for killing our family.” Lenora’s eyes blazed with her desire for
vengeance, her cheeks flamed.
“You will drive yourself mad thinking such
thoughts.” Edwina shook her head sadly. “There is nothing you or I
can do to change what is. Accept it and make the best of it. And
now let me help you at the loom. You never could weave properly,
Lenora.”
With this firm change in subject, Edwina went
to work, quickly untangling the warp threads and setting their
stone weights aright. She passed the skein of wool back and forth a
few times, straightening the weft with the whalebone batten,
producing a stretch of smooth, even fabric.
“You see? It’s not so different from our loom
at home. Now watch as I do this. You use the weaving-comb this
way.”
Lenora tried many times in the following days
to change Edwina’s passive attitude toward their slavery. She had
never realized how stubborn her friend could be. Edwina would not
budge. She would hear no word of any scheme for attaining revenge,
and at last Lenora gave up, realizing there was nothing a lone
woman could accomplish against the Norse. She would have to swallow
her pride and be content with survival, as Maud had once advised
her.
Freydis was pleased with Edwina’s skill and
speed at weaving and soon allowed her to take over Lenora’s work at
the loom while Lenora did the spinning. Lenora was relieved to be
free of the weaving room, and guiltily relieved to be free of
Edwina’s mournful presence.
One sunny afternoon Lenora was returning to
Erik’s house with a pile of freshly done laundry. She had shortened
an old linen shift that Freydis had given her and then washed it,
along with two of Erik’s short-sleeved linen undershirts. He wore
them when at weapons practice, discarding his woolen jerkin in the
summer heat, and one or two were always sweaty and dirty. After
washing the garments and partially drying them in the sun, Lenora
had had the unpleasantly warm job of pressing them on a whalebone
board, using heavy, heated glass globules to smooth away the
wrinkles. She had burned a finger and she was tired and
irritable.
She stopped on her way home from the laundry
house to watch the men of Thorkell’s hird at weapons practice. It
was important to keep their skills finely honed so they could
fulfill their duty of protecting Thorkell, his home, and his
family. The practice yard was busy all day long, no matter what the
weather.
Today, Asmund, a tall, red-haired man, was
working with a twisting spear, which was thrown with a cord looped
about the shaft so it spun as it flew through the air and hit the
target with fearful power and accuracy. Two other men practiced
with swords, attacking each other with heavy, sweeping strokes,
parrying each other’s blows with their painted wooden shields. The
Norse were proud of their ability to use their swords with either
hand, and as Lenora watched, one of the pair switched shield and
sword from hand to hand without missing a blow. Halfdan had once
let her heft his sword, so Lenora knew how heavy such a weapon was.
She watched the swordsmen appreciatively until her attention was
drawn to a fourth man in the far corner of the yard, who repeatedly
threw his battle-ax at a target, moving farther away from it each
time.
When she had first come to Thorkellshavn
Lenora had turned her head aside each time she passed this part of
Thorkell’s domain. The sight of those weapons had stirred unhappy
memories of their deadly use on her dear ones. One day she had seen
Erik and Halfdan at practice with their broadswords and had stayed
to watch them as they dodged and ducked one another’s blows,
leaping sideways or backwards easily, laughing and joking as they
worked. Erik’s lameness seemed a minor inconvenience, so skillful
was he at the acrobatic style of fighting that the Norse loved.
Only later did she begin to realize how much effort it took to
overcome his handicap each time he took up his weapons. It was by
dogged determination and constant practice that Erik had recovered
and now maintained the agility, balance, and speed necessary to
survive in battle.
Seeing Erik and Halfdan were not in the
practice yard, Lenora walked on. As she approached the door of
Erik’s house, Snorri’s closest companions, Hrolf and Bjarni,
appeared before her.
“Lenora,” Hrolf said, blocking her way. He
had a high-pitched, nasal voice that contrasted unpleasantly with
his heavy, bulky body. It was he who, on that day she could never
forget, had assaulted Father Egbert and knocked Lenora unconscious.
Lenora hated him only slightly less than she hated Snorri
himself.
“Let me pass,” she said coldly.
“What a busy little slave you are,” Hrolf
sneered, paying no attention to her demand. “You wash his shirts
during the day and warm his bed at night. How fortunate Erik is
that Thorkell gave you to him. Not many younger sons are so
favored.”
Lenora tried to move around the two men, who
she now realized were drunk, but one of them was always in her
way.
“Would you like to warm our beds instead?”
Bjarni asked, leering at her. “Two full-bodied men instead of a
cripple. That should please you.”
“If either of you touches me,” Lenora warned
them, “Erik will kill you both.”
“That weak twig.” Hrolf laughed. “I could
kill him by blowing on him.”
“Your breath would destroy the strongest man.
You have had too much ale,” she replied.
“Erik the Far-traveler is too weak to protect
you from us,” Bjarni told her. “He was once a fine warrior like
Snorri, but those soft Greeks ruined him so he no longer drinks or
wenches with us. He will not fight us over a slave woman.”
“Come, pretty Lenora,” Hrolf coaxed. “Let us
go into the summer fields and pleasure ourselves. We will make
joyous sacrifice to Frey.”
“Get away from me.”
As the two men advanced on her, Lenora felt
panic snuff out her indignation. She could not let them touch her;
she would die if either of them laid a hand on her. She was
terrified that she would faint and they would drag her away and do
what they wanted to her.
She backed away, knowing they could catch her
easily. She moved one step back, another, a third, and then she
felt an obstruction behind her as a sturdy arm was wrapped about
her waist.
“Oh,” she screamed, and looked up into
Halfdan’s broad face. She nearly dropped her bundle of laundry, but
Halfdan caught it in his free hand and gave it back to her. His
left arm supported her as she sank limply against him, shaking with
relief. She felt his strength and his firmness at her back.
“Well met, Hrolf, Bjarni,” Halfdan said
pleasantly.
“What do you want?” Hrolf growled.
“Snorri is working on his ship, down by the
river,” Halfdan told them in the same friendly tone.
“We know that. What of it?”
“Did you know he is talking of making another
voyage soon?”
“He is?” Hrolf and Bjarni looked at each
other in astonishment.
“You didn’t know? I’m surprised he didn’t
tell you first, since you two made his last trip so successful. I
would think you would want to volunteer to go a-viking again before
winter comes.”
“How do you know this?” Bjarni regarded
Halfdan suspiciously.
“I heard him talking to Thorkell earlier.
Don’t you think you should ask him about it before anyone else
takes your places? He will be choosing his crew very soon now.”
“Yes. There is always plunder on Snorri’s
voyages. His luck is so good that many will want to go with him.”
Hrolf was thoughtful. His small eyes glanced from Halfdan to Lenora
and back again. “You can have the woman if you want her. We won’t
tell Erik.”
With sneering laughter, Hrolf and Bjarni went
off to find Snorri. Halfdan released Lenora and stepped back.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“I would like to kill those two,” Halfdan
said in a conversational tone. “But that would only make things
worse between Snorri and Erik.”
“Is Snorri really going away?”
“I think so.”
“Good. I hope none of them ever comes
back.”