Fin Gall (22 page)

Chapter Twenty-Three

Men with black, keen spears

will
blight the fruits of noble rule.

                                               
Irish Poem of Prophecies

              I

t was not Brigit’s duty to care for the hostages. It annoyed her father that she did so, her, the daughter of the rí ruirech of Tara. But it was her nature to want to help those who were weak, who could not help themselves.

              It is no more than the Christian thing to do, she thought to herself, seated on the stool by Harald’s bed. Máel Sechnaill would have preferred the fin gall in the stone-built prison, eating the scraps that the hogs left behind, and not in the royal house, eating the king’s food, but that was not how hostages were to be treated. Not as long as Brigit was part of the royal household.

             
The king did not like it, but they were cut from the same cloth, Brigit and Máel Sechnaill, and the rí ruirech would rather remain silent than argue with his daughter.

             
Harald was asleep now, the remnants of the first real meal he had eaten since he arrived at Tara sitting on a trencher on the table and scattered across the floor.

             
She had tried feeding him broth, after the fever broke. She spooned it into his mouth, thinking that in his weakened state his stomach would not tolerate solid food. Harald, the Norseman, felt differently.

             
He used gestures, it was all they had to communicate. He gently pushed the broth away and with his other hand made eating gestures. Brigit shook her head, pointed to the broth, thinking that he did not understand that this was food. Harald shook his head, made more emphatic eating gestures, along with exaggerated chewing. Brigit smiled and nodded. Real food. Harald was a strong young man and he was ready to eat.

             
The minor kings, the rí túaithe who had gathered at Tara for Máel Sechnaill’s attack on Leinster had not left. They still hoped for some action, or to attract the king’s favor, or even better, Brigit’s favor. They enjoyed feasting, slaughtering calves at a prodigious rate, and as a result there was an unusually ample supply of hearty fare to be had, at any hour. Brigit sent word for one of the slave girls and gave her instructions. Ten minutes later the girl returned, the trencher piled with beef and kale cooked in drippings, coarse bread and butter as well as a bowl of porridge and a horn full of mead.

             
Harald’s eyes went wide when he saw the food, and his face had that look of desire that Brigit generally found directed at herself. He sat up, swung his feet over the edge of the bed. He swayed a bit, then steadied himself. He paused to regain his balance then reached for the trencher and attacked it like a Viking.

             
Brigit tried to gesture for him to go slow, tried to communicate that it might be dangerous for him to wolf down the heavy food, but his hunger eclipsed his reason. He tore in, and all Brigit could think of was the way her father’s hunting dogs went after a chunk of meat tossed into the middle of their pack.

             
Brigit sat back and watched with a mixture of delight and not a little revulsion as Harald went at the food with his knife and fingers. The rí túaithe were not the most decorous of men, but they seemed absolutely delicate in comparison to the way the young Norseman ate.

             
It took Harald about ten minutes of chewing, ripping, swallowing and wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his none too clean tunic before he set the trencher down and laid back with a contented sigh. He looked over at Brigit for the first time since the food had arrived and smiled at her, a smile so warm and full of genuine affection that the memory of his eating habits fled from her mind. He said something, she had no idea what, but the tone sounded very much like “Thank you.” He paused, and then added, “Brigit.”

             
“You’re welcome, Harald,” she said and he smiled and nodded.

             
They sat like that for some time, and then Harald fell asleep again, his mouth slightly open, his breathing soft and steady, with none of the labored rasping of his fevered sleep. Harald, she decided, must have an extraordinary constitution. She would have expected him to be far more wasted by the fever than he was. He seemed as if he had just woken up from a nap.

             
Youth...
she thought. She reminded herself that he was only a few years younger than herself.

             
Brigit remained where she was, watching him as he slept, the strong jaw, the yellow hair swept back behind his broad shoulders.

             
Is this the face of a heathen murderer?
she wondered. She thought of the great atrocities that had been done to her people by the Vikings, the sacking of the monastery at Iona where dozens were butchered, the destruction of Rathlin and Skye, the rape of Inishmurray off Sligo and Roscam in Galway Bay.

             
Were those Harald’s people?

             
Then she recalled watching from her window at the royal house of Gailenga as her father ripped the living guts from her husband, Donnchad Ua Ruairc. The fact that he deserved every second of the agony he suffered, and she knew it, did little to lessen the horror of the memory.

             
Brigit gave a sigh that encompassed all the weakness of men, then stood and stepped quietly from the room.

             
With Harald asleep, she walked down the hall to the room where the one called Giant-Bjorn was held. While Brigit considered it her Christian duty to care for all the hostages, in truth she gave only perfunctory attention to the other two, and devoted nearly all of her time to Harald, but she did not dwell on why that was. 

             
It was two days since Brigit had looked in on Giant-Bjorn. At the last he had been mending well, and now, but for a slight limp, was as good as if he had never been wounded. Flann had ordered two guards to stand outside his room, since, unlike Harald, he was once again strong enough to pose a genuine threat.

             
But there was no one in the hall outside his room now, and Brigit could not understand why that might be.

             
She paused by the door. It was made of two-inch thick oak and iron-bound, intended to slow down anyone trying to get in quick. She listened, but could hear nothing from within. She knocked, tentatively. It was an odd thing - she did not often knock on doors. She heard no answer, no sound.

             
Slowly she lifted the latch and swung the door open, just enough to peek inside. The room was a wreck, the bed tossed on its side, the table smashed to pieces, the cross that had hung on the wall broken in two and thrown in a corner. It looked as if they had locked a wild bear in the place. But it was empty.

             
Brigit closed the door and stared off into the twilight of the hall. She wondered if Giant-Bjorn had been moved, if her father had finally become sick of having the fin gall under his roof and had moved them to the prison. He might have spared Harald, might have sensed his daughter’s special affection for the young man.

             
If he sensed that, he would slit Harald’s throat,
Brigit thought. She walked down the hall to where it opened into the great hall, where a dozen servants and slaves made ready for the evening feast. At the table a handful of the rí túaithe were already into the mead, and they greeted her with looks and words that expressed their appreciation of her royal bearing, but she ignored them. Brigit crossed the hall to the south wing of the house. The other one, Olvir Yellowbeard, was kept there.

             
There were guards at his door, two men, well armed, so she knew he was within. She stopped at the door, waited for the guards to open it, but they hesitated. She saw glances exchanged between them.

             
“Open the door,” Brigit said, but still they did not move.

             
Footsteps in the hall, and the guards looked over gratefully to Brian Finnliath, master of the guards at Tara, as he approached with his usual active step.

             
“Master Finnliath,” Brigit said, stepping over to meet him. Brian Finnliath had been master of the guards for most of Brigit’s life, and while it was his sworn duty to protect all of the royal household, he had always cared more for Brigit than any of them. He used to carve her little wooden swords, when she was a girl, and teach her to fight. When one of the rí túaithe had once, in his cups, made a lewd comment, Brian had beat him half to death, and then saved his life by not reporting the comment to Máel Sechnaill.

             
“Brigit, my dear, what is it?”

             
“I wish to check on the well being of the fin gall, but these men will not let me pass.”

             
Brian Finnliath looked nervously around, just as the other guards had. “Mistress, I don’t think...”

             
He got no further. Brigit turned and before any of the three men could act, lifted the latch and swung the door in.

             
Olvir Yellowbeard was there, as she had surmised. Not on the bed, but on the floor, leaning against the bed. His arm lay by his side at an odd angle. His hair and beard were stiff with dried blood. His tunic was wet where he had urinated on himself. He looked up at her with his one eye that would open, the other swollen shut under humps of bruised and bloody flesh.

             
Brigit gasped. She put her hands to her mouth and backed away. She felt one of Brian Finnliath’s hands on her shoulder but she shook him off. She swallowed hard, then turned and ran.

Chapter Twenty-Four

We fought; I paid no heed

that my violent deeds might be repaid.

My lightning sword I daubed with blood.

                                             Egil’s Saga

              H

arald was in a deep sleep, a profound sleep. His body felt heavy and he was completely comfortable, as if there was a mattress on top of him as well as below, and it was pressing him down, encompassing him with warmth and softness.

              He dreamed of the sea. In his dreams he was on board the
Red Dragon
, except it was much longer than the real ship, and the mast, as big around as a tree and with no sail or rigging at all, rose up and up to the sky. All his fellows were there, and his father and grandfather. Brigit was there, too.

             
The ship was pitching with short and jerky movements, as if she was cutting though the in-shore chop, her bow headed for some rocky beach.

             
And then he was awake. Or so he thought. He could see the room, dimly. It was dark but there was light, yellow, dull and wavering, and it gave Harald a sense of relief because he hated the dark. There was a hand on his shoulder.

             
He turned his head. Brigit was beside him, shaking him.

             
Brigit...
he thought. He had thought of little else, since his fever broke.
Lovely Brigit, come for me...

             
It was like paradise. He was warm and rested and here was the beautiful Irish girl come to share his bed with him. But there was a dream-like quality to it all, and suddenly he was not so sure that any of it was real.

             
He looked around, trying to remember where he was. He recalled Brigit, but what else? Where was he?

             
He tried to think because if he could remember where he was then he would know if this was a dream or not, if the lovely Brigit was a real woman or just a soft vision in his sleep world.

             
But here she was, pulling on his arm. She wanted him to get out of bed, apparently, which he did not want to do. Rather, he wanted her to get into bed with him. Despite his grandfather’s urging, Harald had never been with a woman before - the idea made him a bit nervous - but somehow he felt it would be different with Brigit. He and Brigit would just melt together, they would commingle like warm porridge and honey and it would be fine and lovely.

             
But she was definitely pulling on his arm so he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat up, as much as it grieved him to leave that warm, soft place.

             
Once he was sitting up, Brigit turned away, hunting for something. Harald looked around the room, lit by a small oil lamp which Brigit must have brought with her, and he began to recall his situation. They were holding him in this fine room, though he was not sure who they were. They were treating him well, but still they would not let him leave the room, and he was not sure why. He recalled the jarl who had spoken to him - Harald assumed he was a jarl - the one named Flann. It was only after he left that Harald realized Flann had answered none of his questions, save to say that his father was coming for him.

             
Father...
Harald had not really thought of his father, or Ornolf, or the others. There had been so much to consider, and he was so weak, and Brigit was so much on his mind. But now, sitting on the edge of the bed, he was taken by a profound sense of loneliness, such as he had never felt before. Not the loneliness he felt working the high meadows in the springtime back in East Agder, but something much deeper than that. Like treading water in the open sea. Everything he knew was gone.

             
Then Brigit was in front of him again, with her lovely heart-shaped face and her dark hair tumbling around. She held out his shoes and he looked at them, unsure what she wanted, and nodded his head.

             
Brigit thrust them at him with an exasperated expression and Harald took them and put them on, and that seemed to be what she wanted. He kept his eyes on her as he wrapped the laces around his ankles and tied them. There was something different about her. She was wearing a heavy wool cloak, like one would wear out of doors. He had never seen her wear such a thing before.

             
There was a sewing basket at her feet, from which she pulled a large piece of dark cloth. She beckoned for Harald to stand and he did as he was directed.

             
The cloth turned out to be a cloak or a coat of some sort, woven from course wool, a rough garment. Brigit held it up bottom first for Harald to slip over his head. The night was warm and he felt no need for more clothing, but he was getting the sense that Brigit did not stand for argument so he pulled it over his head and found the sleeves with his arms.

             
He looked down at the loose fitting robe as Brigit tied a rope belt around the waist. It looked very like the robes Harald had seen the Christ priests wearing in the monasteries he and his fellows had sacked. He wondered if they were going somewhere, he and Brigit.

             
Brigit reached up and flipped the cowl of the garment over Harald’s face. It was big and obscured his view, but again he made no argument. Brigit stepped back and examined him, then nodded, apparently pleased, and that made Harald happy.

             
Brigit picked up the oil lamp and the basket and moved soundlessly to the window on the far wall of the room. It was covered by a thick wooden shutter that was barred from the outside at night - Harald had tried it several times. But tonight apparently it was not, as Brigit blew out the lamp’s flame and slowly pushed the shutter open to peer outside.

             
The night air spilled into the room, cool and moist and fresh, and with it, muted and distant sounds. Harald crossed over to Brigit, eager to look out the window and smell the fresh air and perhaps touch the girl, but he was still not certain what she was about.

             
His legs felt unsteady as he crossed the room, and his head seemed to swim. He had not been on his feet for more than a few minutes at a time for as long as he could recall. He thought back. Since the fight on the longship.

             
He stepped close to Brigit and she put her hand to his chest to stop him and he stopped. She looked out the window again, looked left and right, and then with a quick motion that surprised Harald, she dropped the basket through the window, then hoisted herself up on the sill and eased herself down to the ground outside. She looked around again, then turned and beckoned.

             
A few things were coming clear. Brigit wanted him to leave with her. He was not sure why. Was he in danger in that house? He had thought he was among friends.

             
Brigit beckoned him again with an emphatic wave of the hand and he too climbed up onto the windowsill and dropped to the ground. He felt awkward, his arms and legs not moving the way they once had.

             
There was movement in the dark, the sound of running feet, and suddenly three big dogs were on them, panting and growling. Harald stiffened and felt a surge of panic - he did not like dogs - but Brigit held out her hand, down low, and the dogs sniffed and rubbed against her, eager for her sharp nails to scratch their necks.

             
The past few days had been sunny and warm, but now a light mist was falling, cool and wet on Harald’s face and hands. It felt good. Brigit picked up the basket and walked off and Harald and the dogs followed.

             
He looked around as they walked, curious about this place he had been for...he did not know how long. The moon behind the thick clouds illuminated the area with a dull light. There were a dozen or so buildings, from small, round, thatched places to a big wooden structure that towered over the others and that Harald guessed was a mead hall or a temple of some sort. Well-beaten roads edged with rail fences crisscrossed the huge compound. There were orchards and gardens as well. He could smell horses and the remains of fires, dying away.

             
The entire area was surrounded by a circular wall, perhaps twenty feet high and easily a mile in diameter. In the dark he could not tell what it was made of, but if it was like the other walls he had encountered in his raiding in Ireland it was built up of earth and wood.

             
It was a lovely night, despite the light rain, and Harald was enjoying the stroll after his long confinement. As he moved he felt the strength and coordination come back to his legs and arms, and that was good.

             
Then Brigit stopped short and he all but ran into her. She turned and looked at him. They were nearly the same height. Her face was creased with concern, which surprised him since he himself was having such a nice time.

             
She reached up and adjusted his hood so it covered more of his face, making it even harder for him to see, but he did not object. He wondered why she was doing this, what was going on.

             
And then with a lightning flash he understood. She had decided they must run off together! She was in love with him, but her father would not have them marry for some reason, perhaps because Harald was a Norseman, or too young, so she had decided they would just run away. It was the only thing that made sense.

             
Harald felt a warmth spread over him, like slipping into a bath. He smiled at Brigit and she smiled back, a tentative smile. It was only natural that she would not be as light-hearted as he was, Harald understood that. It could not be an easy decision for her to give her life to a man with whom she had never actually spoken.

             
There was a new vigor to Harald’s step as he continued to follow behind his soon-to-be lover. He could see now they were headed for a gate in the wall, though from the size of it he judged it was not the main gate. He wondered at the hour. It seemed well into the dark, dead time of the night.

             
They were twenty feet from the gate when Harald saw a man move out of the shadows, and he started a bit. He was not expecting to see anyone. And then another, on the other side of the gate. Guards. Brigit did not break her stride and Harald followed behind.

             
One of the guards spoke. The words were meaningless to Harald but the tone seemed part deferential, part challenge. Brigit said something in reply, pointed to Harald. Harald tried to retreat deeper into his cowl.

             
Now the other guard was there, and he was studying Harald while Harald studied him. He wore a helmet, no mail. There was a big knife on his belt and he carried a spear but no sword. The other guard, the one who was still talking with Brigit, was armed the same.

             
They’re all but naked, by our custom,
Harald thought. A Viking wouldn’t go to the mead hall so lightly armed, to say nothing of standing guard duty.

             
Harald turned back to Brigit, who was still in conversation with the first guard. Their voices were louder, their tones more strident - it sounded very much like an argument. Suddenly the second guard stepped up to Harald and with a quick movement pulled the cowl back. The conversation stopped. The guards wore a self-satisfied look. Brigit looked near panic.