Hrolf Kraki's Saga (10 page)

Huge it was, of the finest timbers, cunningly carved and painted. The beam-ends atop the gables branched out in the shape of mighty antlers, gilded to blaze beneath sunlight: wherefore the hall was called Hart.

Upon this house came grief.

It may have been ill luck. It may have been the wrath of a god. Open-handed toward men, the brothers were rather heedless about offering to Æsir and Vanir. They did what kings were supposed to do at the high holy
times. Otherwise, Helgi might slay a cock or the like, once in a while for luck; but mainly he trusted in his own strength. When Hroar’s thoughts turned from kingship or kindred, they went more to outland learning than what he might owe any gods or buried forebears.

Be that as it may, the tale goes that Hart became haunted. Long ago a king named Hermodh was driven from home for his greed and cruelty: he was among the worst of the dark Skjoldungs. Skulking in the fens, he got children on a trollwife. Of his blood was that being hight Grendel, who entered the new hall at night and grabbed men for his food.

In England they say this went on for twelve years. The Danes call that unlikely. Would not a warrior like Helgi have rid his brother of woe? Suppose, instead, Hroar built Hart soon after he had done well by Ægthjof and Helgi had done ill by Olof. He lived there nine years, while the brothers worked together until at last Danes felt happier in their homes than ever since the Peace-Good. Then Helgi, restless, busked for a long-faring to lands unknown. He may have sailed west to England, or east and north to Norway and Finland and Bjarmiland, or east and south down the rivers of Russia, now raiding, now trading, ever tasting fresh winds beneath new heavens; and three years blew by ere his ships came home again.

Hardly was he gone when Grendel shambled forth. Through those three years the hall Hart lay waste, and sorrow dwelt on the brow of Hroar.

He waited for Helgi’s return, since he knew of none else who might cope with the monster. Yet he could not tell if Helgi’s bones bleached upon strange earth. Thus he welcomed an offer of help from the son of Jarl Ægthjof whom formerly he had saved: his kinsman Bjovulf of Götaland, the man that in England they call Beowulf.

The tale is well-known, how Bjovulf gripped Grendel and tore the arm from him, how Grendel’s mother came in vengeance, how Bjovulf followed her beneath the water and slew her likewise, to win a name which will be
undying as long as the world shall stand. Enough, here, that he had but lately gone home, when Helgi came—and found all Denmark ringing with what that outland hero had done, hardly an ear left open for his own deeds.

He was not so unmanly that he begrudged Bjovulf a well-earned fame. Nonetheless he harked back wistfully to years when he too was young. He was no gaffer—little more than thirty winters had whitened the world since first he yelled his way into it—but a freshness was gone from his eyes. If naught else, folk took for granted that Helgi Halfdansson would do things like sailing further than men had done before. Ah, otherwise it was when he, a boy, overthrew a king and avenged himself upon a queen!

Maybe that was the reason why, next summer, he planned a cruise which would take him by Als. He said he wanted to scout out Saxon realms. He could do little in northern Jutland before he knew how stood the south. No doubt this was true. However … did he remember crowing over honor regained … or, even, brown eyes and bravely clenched fists?

He knew nothing about Yrsa. None did, save Olof her mother, the midwife, and two grannies who had since died. The crofter pair who were rearing her had well-nigh forgotten that the girl was not born to them.

They dwelt on the north shore of the island, which gives on Aabenraa Fjord. Southward reached heath, speckled with stands of low, gnarled oak and evergreen, till this turned into willow marsh and afterward a greenwood impassable save for a few trails. Northward were broad yellow dunes, then water, a glimpse of mainland on the left and otherwise waves, clouds, gulls. Often rain, mist, snow, or endless winter nights closed in. Here was a lean and windy land, where a few families dwelt well apart because each needed many acres to wrest a living from and none had much to lure robbers.

Here grew up Yrsa, daughter of Helgi the king and Olof the queen.

She knew she was a fosterling. Besides being told so,
she looked altogether unlike the parents or their children. However, this was common. A man might drown or a woman cough out her lungs, leaving a brood behind. A child was a pair of hands, therefore always wanted. Yrsa gave scant thought to a mother whom she believed had died in thralldom, a father unknown. Nor did she think whether her lot was happy or unhappy. Later she remembered these years as better than they maybe were.

True, she knew toil, hoe and hatchet, quern and kettle, loom and broom, the untold and untellable tasks of a girl who was meant for a croftwife. But life was not wholly aching back or bleeding fingers. It could be caring for a baby, or gathering nuts and berries amidst a giggling gang, or singing and daydreaming while she grazed the geese.

Garb was harsh gray wadmal, patched and tattered. Children went barefoot in summer, at best had birchbark shoes in winter. But they grew hardy and seldom minded the weather. Food was rough and sometimes scant. But gruel, black bread, a bit of goat cheese, hoarded leeks kept one going until the seasons came for fresh-caught fish, oysters, cormorants’ eggs, the harvest of woods and moors. The dwelling was a single murky room, if Yrsa did not count the part wherein goat, geese, and pig were penned. Yet those beasts breathed forth warmth as well as smells, and she knew closeness to her dozen foster-siblings, and when in the dark she heard Father and Mother thresh about, she could hope to welcome a small newcomer next year.

She knew terror. Gales whirled from the north while Father was out in the fishing boat he shared with his neighbors. Did he never come home—or did he come home a strandwasher, a staring bloated eel-eaten thing such as drifted ashore now and again—it could mean not only sorrow but hungering to death, or going into thralldom for lack of any other help. Ran grinned on the sea bottom; nicors lurked in the fen-pools; the Elmwife brewed fog; drows rode the ridgepole at night, thatch acrackle beneath their drumming heels; the least thing
done wrong might bring deadly-bad luck. Or, when a ship drew close as if to make landing, or strangers came afoot, it was into the underbrush and hide, for the poorest of girls still owns what a robber will want!

Yet she also knew friendship and merrymaking, both at home and among the neighbors. Neighbors could backbite, dreadful squabbles could hatch, but in the end everybody stood together against the world. There were the four great holy times: Blessing, Midsummer, Harvest, Yule, times to be awed and afterward rejoice. Someday she would be grown, and for a year or two steal off in the light nights with youth and youth, until one of them married her and she as housewife would offer milk to the elves and beer to her guests in the sight of all. Meanwhile the children watched ships pass by, miles off, ships that clearly would never land here (oh, but if they only would!)—striding oars or boldly striped sail, a far, far spark of sunlight off metal; who knew, maybe a king was aboard, maybe a god?

Winter brought cold and darkness and tightened belts … likewise lessened work, ice to crunch underfoot and ice to slide across, snowballs and snowmen, time for the beloved old stories. Spring brought toil and spilling rains, likewise white hawthorns and a sky full of birds returning from none knew where. Summer was green, everywhere green, dizziness of smells, honeybees abuzz, sunlight in blinding hot torrents—save when a thunderstorm came, but that was wonderful:
flash!
flew Thor’s hammer, and
crack!
it smote trolls, until the wheels of his goat-car rumbled away, down and down the reaches of heaven. Fall blazed, gave fruits with both hands, bellies got filled to bursting, heather bloomed purple, long-lived full moons drenched night in brightness which glistened on hoarfrost and on the dew over spiderwebs, and made a rocking roadway across the waters from here to world-edge; and high overhead sounded the wild goose wandersong….

Yrsa did not understand why her foster-siblings paid no heed to such things. Well, they were dear, but they were different.

V

“I’d like to see for myself how this land has fared,” said Helgi, “but somehow don’t think I’d be very welcome under my own name.” None could talk him out of his wish to tramp alone about Als. His ship let him off in a cove he remembered and would call there daily, beginning a week hence.

He looked for no trouble. Who would attack as big a fellow as him, especially when he went in rags? Besides, his staff was the shaft of a spear whose head and pins he carried next his skin, along with a dagger. He waved a cheery farewell and strode off under the trees.

The news dashed him a bit, that Olof was not at her lodge. Her overseer gave him a sour stare, but a hireling filled a bowl and let him sleep in a haymow, in swap for his songs and tales. He gave out that he was a homeless Himmerlander in search of work. “Here we’ve no need for you,” his host told him. “If you go further, though, to the north coast, you’ll find a clutch of poor folk who do some fishing. I daresay they’d be glad of stout arms on a pair of oars.”

Helgi shrugged and followed the rede, mainly to spy out those beaches. Now that he had Fyn, he needed close knowledge about this side of the Little Belt.

And thus he topped a high dune, and from afar saw a girl who walked along the strand. Last night had been stormy. She was out after driftwood, amber, or whatever else might have come ashore.

He knew that if she saw him coming she would dash toward a hut, unseen behind dwarf pines, whose smoke smudged the sky. It would be pleasant to chat alone if she was not too ugly. Anyhow, when he had shown by laying no hand on her that he meant well, her kinsmen should open up to him. Else they might fear he was an outlaw, or a thrall-catcher looking them over.

Helgi crouched back down behind the dune while his eyes scouted a path. He could zigzag from thicket to bush
to boulder, he could use his hunter’s tricks to sneak through the ling, until he was almost upon her.

And so he did. But when he peered from behind a scrub oak, the heart soared in him.

This was a windy day. Sunlight speared through hurrying clouds, sheened on the waters, then was gone again as shadow swept across the world. Waves boomed inward, burst white over skerries, tumbled back and rushed in afresh, gray, green, and steel-blue. To one side, misty as a dream, lifted mainland hills. The wind whistled up white-caps, roared in boughs and soughed in heather. Gulls rode upon it, mewing. It was cold and tasted of salt, it thrust and slid. It tossed the hair of the maiden who picked her barefoot way over the sand between the sprawled brown strands of kelp.

She was not tall; standing straight, which she did, she would reach halfway up his breast. A drab gown strained across small breasts, slim waist and limbs, suppleness overlaid by an endearing coltishness. Beneath soot and suntan, her skin was fair; freckles dusted a tilted nose. That face was broad and high in the cheekbones, tapering to a strong little chin, mouth wide and soft, lips parted a bit to show good teeth, eyes huge, wide-set, long-lashed under arching brows, the gray-blue of her seas. She had woven herself a garland of yellow dandelion flowers. The locks beneath flowed to her hips. When the fleeting sunshine touched them, they shone as if burnished.

Helgi trod forth. “Why, you’re lovely!” he cried.

She sprang back with a stifled shriek, dropped the wood she had gathered, and ran. He loped alongside her. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I’d never harm you. I want to be your friend.”

Grimly, she ran. He put on speed, got ahead of her, barred the way. She snatched a stick, spat like a wildcat and jabbed at him. He liked that grit. Spreading his arms, he gusted forth laughter. “You win,” he said. “I yield me. Do whatever you will.”

She lowered the stick. Her breathing slowed. He could overwhelm her—but he merely stood and smiled. What a big and handsome man he was, too! That frame did not
belong in those foul, flapping tatters. His face went with the body, craggy-nosed, eyes heaven-blue, flaxen mane to the shoulders and beard closely cropped. Scars lay white among the golden hairs on his arms.

“What’s your name, lady,” he asked with an outlander lilt, “and of what folk do you hail?”

She pointed to the smoke. “I’m yonder crofter’s daughter,” she whispered through wind and surf. “Well, no, really, I … my mother was a thrall. I hight Yrsa.”

He stepped to her. She stood as if under a spell, hearing her heart knock. He took both her hands in his, which were hard and warm. Gazing for a long time, he said thoughtfully: “You do not have the eyes of a thrall.”

They sat down, backs to the blast, and talked. She had never imagined a stranger would care about the day-to-day life which was hers. “Who are you?” she kept asking. He would put her off: “Tell me more of yourself, Yrsa.”

“There’s something hidden about you,” he said. “How old are you?”

“Why, I … I never counted,” she answered, astonished.

“Think.” He took her fingers. “This year; last year—” After a good deal of finger-play, she was flushed and half dizzy, and guessed maybe she had thirteen or fourteen winters.

“I was that age when—Well, no matter,” he said. “We both come of fast-growing stock.”

They shared cheese and hardtack from his wallet. Later, when he laid an arm about her waist, she did not shrink, but sighed and leaned her head on his breast.

A gull wheeled low, milk-white in a shaft of sunlight.

“I’m head over heels with you,” said Helgi. “I am.”

“Oh, now,” breathed Yrsa.

He must grin. “You being a crofter’s daughter,” he said, “it’s fitting that a poor beggar should get you.”

She jumped from him in horror.’ What? No, no, no!”

He rose to loom above her. “Yes, oh, yes.” Taking a careful, unbreakable hold: “Come away with me, Yrsa. You must. A Norn stood here today.”

She started to weep and plead. He stood a while, in noise and chill and hasty shadows, before he said: “I could bear you off against your will. But your tears would hurt me too much. That’s a word few women have ever had from me. I ask you, then, if you’ll freely be mine.”