East (23 page)

"I understand you journey north."

"I carry only cargo, not passengers."

"Please, sir. I will work. I must get to..."

"No!" he thundered, this time glaring at me with those fierce eyes.

"Forgive Thor's ill manners, miss," said a voice behind me, also in Njorden. "He is short on ale."

I turned to see two men. They were rough-looking in garb and hygiene, but there was a twinkle in the eye of the smaller of the two, the one who had spoken. He was slight in build, though he looked agile and his thin arms were roped with muscle. His skin was deeply browned by the sun. He moved quickly as he boarded the
knorr
and went to a sea chest, on which he settled himself comfortably, leaning up against the side of the boat, his hands behind his head.

The other man was fair haired, tall and slow moving, with a broad, ugly face. He said nothing, though he looked calm and not unkind. He nodded at me as he, too, climbed on board.

"Ask if she cooks, Thor," said the small man. "I don't think I can abide another sea journey eating your cooking."

"I can cook," I said quickly. "And I'll pay for my passage besides."

"Listen to that, she cooks and has a dowry." The small man grinned. "Tell me, are you betrothed, maid, for if not, I would make a fine husband for any..."

"I'll snatch out that flapping tongue of yours, Gest, if you don't get to work!" Thor bellowed.

The small man rose quickly and began to do something with the rigging.

"Please," I said to the man called Thor. Though he was intimidating, I managed to look him straight in the eye. "I haven't any money..." I began.

He snorted. "Be off with you. You've wasted enough of my time."

"But I do have this..." I continued, undeterred. I took out my leather wallet. I hated to give up another of my beautiful dresses, and so soon after the first. But I had to travel north.

As I shook out the gold dress, all three men stared. But then Thor growled, "What do I want with a lady's gown?" He pointedly turned his back on me and returned to his work.

The one called Gest said, "Don't be a fool, Thor. Why, you could buy a brand-new
knorr
with what you'd get in Paris for a dress like that. And you could fill its hold with enough ale to last a year, to boot."

Thor slowly turned back, his face showing a flicker of interest. "Give it here," he said, stepping back onto the dock. He ran the glittering fabric through his dirty calloused fingers. "Very well. I'll take you north," he stated gruffly.

"Oh, thank you," I said.

"I'll have this now," he said, taking the gown from me. "We leave at sundown." Roughly he folded up the golden fabric, and tucking it under his arm, he set off for town.

"You won't get nearly as much as it's worth, here in La Rochelle," Gest called after him. But Thor ignored him.

Gest shrugged. "The man's got a mighty thirst on him." He turned his attention to me. "Well, welcome aboard the good ship
Sif
" he said. "What's your name, lass?"

"Rose," I replied.

"Rose, is it? I am Gest, at your service, and this is my mate, Goran." The fair-haired man nodded at me. "I don't suppose, Miss Rose, you know how to make raspberry cake out of salt pork and hard bread?"

"Perhaps not, but I can manage
rommegrot,
if you have a measure of wheat flour," I said.

A wide smile creased his face. "Ah, bless you, child," he said.

"May I ask," I said, "where exactly this ship is headed?"

"You may well ask. The destination is upward of Suroy, but with old Thor at the steering oar, you never can tell. If he's full of ale, which is what that golden dress is headed for, he's likely to steer us into a storm cloud thinking he's found Valhalla."

I felt giddy with excitement. Suroy was near the top of Njord and this was just what I'd hoped for, though I was also a little uneasy at Gest's words. I could only pray that he was exaggerating.

I decided to use the time until sundown to write a letter to my family. When I was done I went back to the caravel and, keeping out of sight of Captain Contarini, managed to find a friendly sailor who was willing to take my letter—along with the last of my coins—across to Tonsberg, and then make sure it got from there to Andalsnes. Of course, I had no guarantee he would do as he said, but I sensed an honesty in him, as well as a dislike for the way his captain had treated me.

It was approaching twilight when I found my way back to the
knorr.
But before I even saw the ship, I could hear Thor singing at the top of his voice.

"
Reach for your mead horn and raise it high.
Odin the great! Thunder god Thor!
Balder the mild, and Freya sweet.
We toast until Valhalla is reeling!
"

As I came up to the
knorr,
I smelled a strong stink of ale.

Thor was sprawled at the rear of the ship, his hand gripping the steering oar. Gest greeted me cheerfully, helped me aboard, and gestured to me to take a seat. "Could be a rocky departure," he warned.

"Ready to cast off?" he called to Thor.

Thor kept singing.

Gest nimbly unfastened all the ropes binding the boat to the dock, and he and Goran pushed off. The sail filled and the ship lurched forward. "That old souse won't give up the steering oar for the life of him," Gest muttered as he passed me, grabbing at a rope that was whipping around the deck.

Anxiously I gazed ahead at the seawalls protecting the entrance to the harbor. We looked to be heading straight toward the starboard one, but eventually Thor heaved the steering oar and we just cleared it. He laughed loudly and then resumed his song. We were out on the open sea.

"We are lucky," Gest said. "We have a southeast wind." It served us well for the first two days of the journey.

I had never been on anything larger than a rowboat, much less a ship such as this. It was clinker-built, Gest told me, which was a style of boat building that involved overlapping the planks in a fashion that made it shimmy through the waves like a sea-dwelling snake.

Surprisingly, I took to life aboard the
knorr
without difficulty. Gest had predicted I would get seasick, being such a landlubber, but I did not. I loved the sea wind on my face and the feeling of skimming the waves.

On the second day of the journey, we spied the brooding white cliffs of the land called Anglia to the northwest. If I had not known better, I would have thought the cliffs were snow-covered, but Gest told me they were white because of limestone, a chalky rock.

Soon we came out on Njordsjoen, the sea I had traveled through in a sealskin, borne by the white bear.

The journey was uneventful for the next five days. I learned how to cook on a
knorr
when the water wasn't too choppy, using a small cauldron hung on a tripod. My cooking was only just adequate, given what I had to work with, but Gest praised me lavishly—mostly, I think, to annoy Thor. Gest was an extremely amiable, entertaining traveling companion, while Goran remained silent, and Thor spoke only to the two men, ignoring me almost completely.

Eventually Thor sobered up, at least for a time, and it became clear that he knew his boat and the seas—and that he would have been a very good captain, were it not for his weakness for ale. Gest had been right; most of what Thor got for the golden dress had gone to buying casks of ale. They were stowed in the sturdiest part of the storage area belowdecks, and Thor visited there frequently, refilling a smaller cask that he would keep at his side.

There was one time when Thor lay passed out at the rudder as we hit a patch of choppy seas. Goran took over the steering oar and held us fairly steady, although when Thor had finished sleeping it off, he groused that Goran had put us off course. Goran and Gest seemed to be used to Thor's unreliable behavior, however, and took it all in stride.

For navigating, Thor used a
leidarstein,
an ugly brown stone he always carried with him in a small leather pouch. My mother had a
leidarstein
that had been handed down to her from her mother, so I had seen how one worked. But it never failed to amaze me, watching the needle slowly swing toward the polestar in the north.

On the sixth day we came into sight of the Shetland Islands, and Gest told me that the southern region of Njord lay directly east, though we were too far away to see it. If we continued at our current rate of travel, he said, we should reach Suroy in eight or nine days.

But the next day the wind deserted us. After several hours becalmed, Thor suddenly shouted at me to take over the steering oar. Until then my jobs had been confined to cooking and bailing out water (which, because of the low sides of the
knorr,
was an ongoing and crucial job). Gest and Goran lowered the sail, while Thor gruffly instructed me on how to hold the tiller steady. Then, because he was the largest of the three men, Thor took an oar on one side of the ship while Gest and Goran manned two oars on the other side.

It did not take me too long to get the feel for holding the ship steady, especially with Thor barking out instructions. The rowing was hot, backbreaking work, and I felt sympathy for the three men, their muscles straining and sweat rolling down their faces. At midday Thor came back to the steering oar while I prepared a meal of smoked fish and hard bread. He took many breaks from steering to refill his mug of ale, and I could see that Gest was watching him closely.

The sky began to cloud over, and naively I thought this a good thing because the rowing wouldn't be so hot for the men. But the air felt strange, making my skin prickle. When the wind began to blow again, whitecaps appeared on the waves. It was coming too quickly. And the sky kept getting blacker.

Thor jumped up, draining his mug. "Raise the sail!" he shouted.

Gest frowned. "Looks a big one, Thor. Best we not risk the sail."

"Let it blow!" Thor threw back. "We'll ride her out. And make good time, too."

"But the wind has shifted all around the compass these past few minutes," Gest responded, "from south to east to west. You know that portends..."

"We'll raise the sail!" Thor thundered. '"Rather founder than furl,'" he said, sounding as if he was quoting something.

Reluctantly Gest and Goran went to unfurl the sail. The wind tore at them, and the fabric snapped as they struggled to raise it. But finally the sail was aloft, and as the wind filled it, we shot forward through the roiling sea.

Thor had grabbed the steering oar from me. I could smell the ale on him and felt suddenly afraid. Gest and Goran were moving around the boat, checking on ropes and making sure everything was tightly lashed down. I picked up a bailing bucket without being told.

Rain sheeted down from the sky, mingling with the surging spray from the sea. In short order I was soaked through but was too busy bailing to care. Gest and Goran soon joined me.

The waves were getting higher, and it seemed for every bucket of water I tossed overboard, three bucketfuls came sloshing over the sides of the
knorr.

But it was a wonder to me how that ship rode the waves. Every time I saw a huge wave looming toward us, I was sure it would be the end—that the ship would be swamped and we would capsize. But every time, the
knorr
slid up and over the wave.

The wind was shrieking and the sail was stiff and distended, as though a giant fist were thrust in it at the bottom, hurling the
knorr
along with a violence unlike anything I had ever seen. The ropes holding the sails were taut, stretched to their limit, and I imagined that at any moment they would snap.

At the steering oar, Thor concentrated his whole body on wrestling the wind and enormous waves for control of the
knorr.
His eyes burned and his face was lit with some primitive emotion; it almost looked like joy.

Then Gest shouted to Goran. They threw aside their bailing buckets and made their way to the sail, untying ropes as they went. They were lowering the sail. I looked over at Thor and saw that his face was suffused with rage.

"Cowards!" he shouted. I was afraid he was going to lunge at them, but he kept still, just barely.

The wind was lashing the sail, which snapped and bucked like a living thing at the two men as they wrestled it down. They secured the sail as best they could, then returned to bailing. The
knorr
steadied with the sail down. I could hear Thor still shouting curses at his crew.

As we crested one very large wave, I saw a mountain of water bearing down on us. I let out a cry of fear and Gest muttered a prayer. Then I turned to see Thor charging toward me, the tiller swaying crazily behind him. No more was there rage in his face, just a fanatical sort of determination. The wind blew back his mane of hair, and he looked like some crazed sea-god. Grabbing hold of me with his thick arms, as if I were no heavier than a child's cloth doll, he carried me across to the prow of the ship and then thrust me under the deck boards, wedging me in tightly. My cheek scraped against a barrel and my shoulder struck my own pack from home, which had been stored down there with other cargo. I inched forward, clutching my pack to my chest. I dimly heard shouts and the wind screaming, and then there was a great violent crashing sound as a giant wave slammed down on the
knorr.

When I came to, I could still hear the wind, but it was no longer screaming. Miraculously the ship was still afloat. I lay in a chilly pool of water and wine, which had spilled from the cask on which I had scraped my cheek. I could hear no other sounds but the creaking of the ship, the sloshing of water around me, and the diminishing fury of the wind.

Gingerly, my head pounding, I wriggled my body backward, then slowly pulled myself out from under the deck boards. I sat up, waist-deep in water, and the ship seemed to spin dizzily for a few moments. I closed my eyes, then opened them.

I could see no one.

H
E CANNOT GET USED
to being without fur. I see him nab at his skin, and he remains quiet most of the time.