Winter Serpent (15 page)

With the confinement of winter weather the Northmen fell into an easy sloth. Their time was spent in lounging about, with little pretense at the work of the camp, telling and retelling the tales of the raid, and drinking heavily. The Northmen slept much during the day, and this gave them a restlessness and wakefulness for the nights which Doireann hated. It was often dawn before the drinking bouts and the surly fights which sprang from them died down.

As they became more housebound they were subject to fits of brooding. They were fond of referring to themselves as a “melancholy race,” a phrase Doireann had heard more than once in their songs and narratives, and she found this to be true. They were as pettish and sullen as women for days at a time, and, when drunk, would weep copiously over little or nothing. The Jarl was no exception. Doireann avoided him as did the others when he sat hunched over the fire, forgetting to eat, deep in the abyss of his mood.

He had been sunk in his brooding for days when, one evening, she happened to pass by the table, noticing him at one end, apart from the dice players, his arms stretched out before him on the board, his head lying sideways between them. The hall was full of men but it was fairly quiet, Raki and a group of the most restless ones having taken themselves outside to go fishing. She thought the Jarl drunk or asleep and went to step around him, but he raised his head and spoke to her. She paused.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I thought I would go to bed,” she answered, surprised.

He motioned for her to sit down and she did so, facing him. He studied her for a while without speaking.

“Is it all right with you?” he asked at length. Still baffled by his interest, she nodded. “And with the child?”

She frowned.

“Yes, I think so. As much as I am able to tell. He… it, is very active. Especially when I would sleep.”

He seemed satisfied. His eyes were bloodshot with drink, sullen with the mood which had lain upon him the past days. He thrust his cup of ale at her and she took it uncertainly and swallowed.

“I will tell you a story,” he said suddenly. “What?” she said.

“I will tell you a story about the Tree of Life.” She could only stare at him.

“This Tree of Life,” he went on gloomily, “is called Yggdrasil. It is the ash tree of the world. The crown of it is in the sky and its three roots are so: one among men, one among the frost giants whom Thor defeated, and one in Hel. From the crown of the tree drips the dew that supports the world of nature, the trees, the grasses, and all the living creatures. Yet at Yggdrasil is also the Council of the Gods and at its base flows the spring of Urd, whence emerge the maids of fate whom men call the Norns. Young and beautiful are they, like yourself, but they are all-knowing beyond the comprehension of men, and destiny is on their beauty. Nidhugg the dragon gnaws at the roots of the tree. Like all that is evil, he seeks to destroy the worlds of gods and men. But this is not the only sadness. The hart eats the leaves from the crown of the tree, and on one side it is attacked by decay.”

He paused to see if she was listening.

“Yes,” he continued, “the Tree of Life struggles, but the Norns at the base water it from the spring which flows nearby, restoring it, and it stands in all its splendor, ever green.”

Doireann stared back at him.

“There is not much sense in this, is there?” she said.

“Of course there is sense in it. The story tells the tale of life. The Tree is life and it is timeless and all-enduring.”

“I understand this,” she said wearily. “But, considering the attackers, the struggles of the tree are pointless.”

“Pointless? This sounds like some of the talk of the Irish who are always looking for a meaning to things. Who said that life should have a meaning, or a point?”

She was silent, but he intended to pursue the thought to its ending.

“Life has no point, it is true. There is no meaning to it beyond man’s duty to himself.”

“A man has no duty, then, save to himself?”

“I did not say this. A man has duties in his life. But first he has this duty to himself that he should be resolute, honorable, and strong; this is the wisdom of life as it is taught us. Why should he search for further meaning? In the end the Winter Serpent will devour the earth, the gods of Midgard will fall, as is foretold, and all shall be destroyed.”

“What is that?” she said quickly. “This serpent who will destroy your gods?” He looked at her with a touch of irritation.

“Yes, this is a thing now such as none of the Gaels or the men of Britain could understand. The Norse are the children of the Winter Serpent; he sends them forth to challenge the tribes in the west who are Christian. But he exists on his throne in the ice caves to remind us that all that is now shall yet return to the night of eternal silence. They are only fools who long for their dream of Valhalla, this other life after they are killed. This is nonsense. In the most ancient of tales, which are the true ones, it is told that man is only the bird flying from the cold night into the warm-lighted hall and out again into the never-ending darkness.”

“Then why should man bother himself with his duties to be honorable and resolute?” she countered.

He considered this.

“Some things are known to be good, and some to be evil,” he muttered. “Evil lies in evil, dies in evil. Among these may be classed also the mad and the damned.”

She started to speak but he overrode her.

“The damned may also be those who are cursed through no fault of their own, but by plan of their destiny. The mad and the accursed, fine brothers are they, who wish for death and have it not. To them is given only one hope: that when they die they will be reborn in the spirit of some other. One child among their children may have their father’s soul and be free of his curse.”

He picked up her hand from the table and held it in his.

“Pray to your gods that this child you bear me may have my spirit yet be free.”

She tried to pull her hand away.

“I cannot pray to my God!” she cried out, and the dice players looked up. She lowered her voice. “My God has abandoned me to yours.”

He drew up his lips in a mirthless laugh.

“And mine has abandoned me also. My name, you know, means ‘he who is protected by Thor.’ But it has been a long day since I have sacrificed to him, now that I have given my vows to those others.”

He held her fingers up to the dim light of the fire and studied them.

“This should be the hand of a Norse woman, tall, fair, and accustomed to the ways of Norsemen. It should be the hand of a Jarl’s daughter, her blood proper to mingle with that of the Inglinga, not an alien girl who should still be in her mother’s house.”

She succeeded in pulling her hand away from him.

“I do not know what Sweyn has told you of my life, Thorsten Jarl, but I
have never known a mother nor yet her love and protection. All I have known
is the spite and evil of my foster brother the toiseach of my clan, and the helplessness and shame of being first in his power and then cast among foreign men and taken as your wife unwillingly. I have known hatred and it has made me strong. Someday I will kill Calum macDumhnull and strew his entrails for the sheep to trample, and see justice done my enemies.”

“This is foolish talk for a woman, especially one who turns pale at the sight of blood and is sick when Sweyn tells his drunken tales.”

She looked levelly at him.

“It is no idle vow,” she assured him.

They were both glum in the silence that followed. A barrier lay between them as wide as the table and as thick, and far more impenetrable. The irony of it was that she carried his son and it was her child also, and this fact was as real and recognizable as any enmity, any lack of understanding between them.

7

Donn macdumhnull was not clever. He left this to his brother Calum, yet it seemed that it was always he who was forced to think himself out of Calum’s mistakes. Donn considered himself a fighter, not a thinker, and because of this he made a good captain

of the warriors of Cumhainn, a good leader of the garrison at the dun fort over the mountains.

“Give me a good spear, a good fight, or a proper hunt,” he was fond of saying. “I leave the talking and the conniving to the others.”

So he began to sweat and to curse from his seat by the window of the fort when he saw the new arrivals coming out of the forest on the track from Dunadd. He had enough guests already that day; the open stone broch was crowded with hunters and travelers seeking a night’s lodging, and the circular tower would hold no more. In the small room behind him there were some hunters from Loch Eti in search of wild boar and an itinerant monk from Ireland on some holy journey or other which always occupied holy men, and Donn’s small store of conversation had been fairly well strained. Pleasant talk was hard enough for the slow moving, slow talking Donn, and now this new band of visitors meant more of the same, and something else besides.

These newcomers were the Ard-Ri’s men, warriors from the house of the High King at Dunadd, and to deal with them Donn would need cunning and a good memory for what Calum macDumhnull had told him to say. He had hoped against all that this thing would not come to pass, that the Ard-Ri, clever Alpin, would not send his warriors into Cumhainn to find out what had occurred with this gossip of Norse camped in the lands of the macDumhnulls. But now they were here, and it could not be said that their coming was unforeseen. This was like Alpin, to keep his eye on his districts and be ready to meddle when it could bring him gain. All Dalriada knew the Ard-Ri’s ambitions and how he fancied himself a ruler in the all-powerful style of Charlemagne of the Franks.

Donn snorted to himself. The Scots of Dalriada were not the Franks nor the Neustrians, and Alpin was only chief over many chiefs. Alpin was clever and wished to see himself king over a great kingdom of both Scots and Picts from sea to sea, with all his chieftains and tuaths obedient to him, and send his captains here and there like a mighty lord over all. Here was his band of warriors coming now out of the forest to find what might be wrong in the land of the macDumhnulls, to find the loose end of the stick so that the Ard-Ri might put his hand on it and wield it.

But not this day, Donn thought to himself. Not if he could be crafty and thwart them. The Red Foxes still ruled in Cumhainn, and did not need the Ard-Ri’s hand in their affairs.

The warriors from Dunadd were mounted on fine, spirited horses. The leader of the King’s men was having some difficulty keeping his mount in hand long enough to blow his bronze horn before the wooden stockade.

Donn stuck his head out of the top of the stone tower and glowered down at them.

“Blow, blow,” he muttered to himself. “Blow your head off, you fancy cock, you wild-looking devil. I see you here, Comac Neish, and it’s trouble you mean, and well I know it.”

He pulled back into the room where his guests were squatted by the hearth, warming their hands. The stone walls of the broch were crowded with spears and the big bows of warfare. There was not much room left now. The latecomers would overflow onto the beds of rushes pushed into the corners. Donn shrugged. The fort was no great hall, and he made no pretense at hospitality. The Ard-Ri’s men would have to cook their own meat at the hearth and share the beer out of the common bowl. He could not bother himself with such things, for he must think on what he would say to Comac Neish, the Ard-Ri’s liege man, who was an Irishman with a quick tongue and a quicker sword hand. What would he say if Comac talked about in circles concerning Northmen and Muireach’s daughter? How could he keep from betraying Calum macDumhnull and his plots, his infernal plots which were always trapping him, forcing him to talk, talk, when he had nothing to say?

Donn lumbered to greet the warriors coming up the steps. He gave them courteous greeting; this much he could do, although he was nettled by Comac Neish’s look of amusement as he stumbled over the words. Donn saw them safely squatted on the floor before the fire with the others and went himself to get them some drink. When he came back the men from Dunadd were already involved in some argument with the Culdee monk.

Donn sighed in relief. He repeated to himself what Calum had told him. If intruders should come into Cumhainn, delay them, and send word over the forest track of their coming and their business. Well, Calum would know at once when he sent their names. Comac Neish, that would be enough.

The Ard-Ri’s liege man was tall; he sat on the floor with his legs stretched out before him, perhaps to show the fancy leather trousers he wore, embroidered in silk thread. This wandering princeling from Eire was a madman; you could see it in his broad, roughened face and flashing mouth. It was the kind of face women could not resist, to judge from the gossip out of Dunadd, and of course they would be drawn to him knowing his story. It was told he was of the royal house of Ulaidh, in north Eire, and that he still had many kinsmen there who counted their chariots by the hundreds and their cattle by the thousands. However, Comac had nothing for himself. Some old trouble with the bards and the last rebellion of the druids many years ago had put a ban on the family. They could not hold land in Ireland nor marry into their rank in that country. Well, they looked the type that was always getting into some trouble, to judge by Comac Neish. Bards and druids. This sounded like the Irish.