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CHAPTER VI

In the course of the feasting the free men held a Thing, or assembly, and acclaimed Erling hersir in his father's place by banging their weapons on their shields and making an ungodly racket.

The men half carried Jarl Haakon to his ship when the feasting was done, and he said he couldn't remember having such a good time in years. Only two men had been killed during the drinking, one of them by accident in a wrestling bout, so the peace had held.

"Thank God he's gone," said Halla as we watched his ships sail off. "Erling kept me and his sisters hidden away all the time he was here." We could hear the sisters' voices, shouting and laughing, as they skipped about like calves turned out of the byres in the spring.

"That was wise. Haakon kept himself to thralls this visit, but I'm told there are a lot of angry husbands up in the Trondelag."

"Why can't all men be like Erling?"

"Who'd sit in the lower seats?"

When the guests were gone, Erling set about making repairs at Sola. He had arranged to buy timber from a cousin, to rebuild the hall.

We were having supper at Somme one of the first evenings thereafter when Erling had Lemming brought in. Lemming had been locked up since the night of the fires, and they brought him in chains. He stood before the high seat and eyed us like a penned boar.

"Thorvald Thorirsson, known as Lemming," said Erling. "You have been accused of lighting the jarl's balefire in breach of the law of the land. What say you to this charge?"

"Hang me," croaked Lemming.

"Not until I understand better. You did not love your old master, Soti the smith, did you?"

"Bugger him."

"And you do not love your new master, Father Aillil, either?"

Lemming spat.

"And you do not love me, the lord of Sola?"

Lemming only growled.

"Then explain to me, Lemming—why did you take such risks to save the lives and wealth of so many whom you do not love?"

Lemming hung his head like a scolded child and said nothing.

"No answer?" said Erling. "Are you going to leave us with a mystery?"

Lemming still said nothing.

"Then there's nothing for it but to pass sentence. As you may have heard, I promised Jarl Haakon I'd put a rope around your neck."

Lemming raised his head and looked Erling straight in the face. His eyes were cold as caves in a glacier.

"Bring the rope I chose," said Erling. One of the men went out to the entry room and came quickly back in.

Lemming tensed his entire body, never taking his eyes off Erling, as the man laid around his neck a braided torque of pure silver, then loosed his bonds.

When Lemming reached a hand up and felt what was there, he gasped, and we all did the same.

"No man who saves my home and title, and the lives of my people, will be hanged for it, jarl or no jarl. This is the rope I give to you, Lemming, and with it your freedom. You may go or stay, as you like."

Like an oak felled after a hundred years, Lemming toppled to the floor and lay as a dead man.

Later that night, when most of the men had rolled up in their cloaks on the benches and Erling and I still sat and talked, his mother came in with a sheathed sword. She held it out in both hands and said, "This should be yours now, Erling."

"My father's sword?"

"Smith's-Bane was his, and his father's before him. It comes to you."

"I thought you laid it with Father in his grave. Surely he would have wished it."

"It is right that the heir should carry the sword."

"Mother, I am grateful, and I will keep it as a treasure." He took his father's sword.

"And you will bear it in battle?"

"No, that I will not. I have a better sword." He drew Smith's-Bane from its sheath. "Do you see how the steel is patterned along the inside, like wheat sheaves and writhing snakes, and bright on the edges? That's how they made swords in old times—with steel and iron pattern-welded together, and pure steel at the edge, because steel was dear. But my new Frankish sword is steel all through. It's lighter and stronger, and it won't be bent as easily."

His mother snatched the sword. "I'll take it back then, and bury it with your father! I thought you'd be glad to carry the weapon your ancestors bore with honor since the day it was found in its maker's dead hand. But I see that you care only for what is new. The old you throw off like worn clothing, whether your father's sword or your father's faith! You think this Christ too is greater because he's new!"

"No," I broke in. "Not because He's new. Because He's true. No other reason, ever."

I don't know why I said that. I didn't believe Christ was true at all. I suppose I was getting accustomed to my role.

She turned on me, her face white. "I didn't ask your counsel, god-man! Never speak to me unbidden." She spat on the floor and went out.

"Far be it from me to tell you your business, Father Aillil," said Erling, "but I gave up long ago trying to convert my mother."

I slumped on the bench. "A man must work at his trade," I said.

Erling was silent for a time, watching the flames on the hearth. "How did you feel when your father was killed?" he asked at last.

I pulled my cloak tighter around me. "It was as if—as if someone had taken a cleaver to the world, and chopped it off sheer before my feet, leaving me teetering on the edge."

"That's it," said Erling. "I felt it, but I couldn't find the words. You must stay with me always, to say these things for me."

I baptized Halla, along with a bonder and his wife and some of the thralls' children, the following Sunday. Erling gave her a brooch as a memento, and she looked happy as a bride in her white gown.

The smiles of pretty women are gall and poison oak to priests. Worst of all is to be an unbelieving priest, who cannot profit by prayer and fasting for the mortification of the flesh. And in fact a true priest can get away with some backsliding, and often does, especially in the outposts of Christendom. As a false priest I dared not.

Besides, she was Erling's woman. I would not touch Erling's woman though she implored me with tears (which was unlikely), and not only out of fear.

But that did not exorcise the memory of her eyes, and the echo of her laughter. I went out that evening and walked about the farmstead in the long dusk (I'd moved back into my own house at Sola now), hoping to lose my itch in weariness of the body. The sky was clear for a change, and the breeze carried a rumor of winter.

"You can't fight it, you know."

"Who's that?" The voice startled me. It was a soft voice, but clear.

"When have you ever curbed your lust? You'll watch her, and watch her, and someday it will be too much for you, and you'll try to take her, and Erling will kill you, or sell you. Do you think you're really a free man?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said. It was an uncanny voice. It seemed to come from no direction, almost like my own thoughts, as if someone had wormed into my head and spoke from behind my eyes. I looked around in the red and silver light and saw no one. The only shapes nearby were two hillocks of earth, overgrown with heather.

"You may fool Erling, and you may fool the yokels in the church, but there are those who cannot be fooled."

"Are you God?"

"You may call me `god' if you like. That would please me. You would do well to please me. The time is coming when you will be much in need of friends."

Yes indeed, there are devils. I ran back to my house as swiftly as I could, stumbling and ignoring it. In my haste I blundered into a large, hard body. I landed on my rump and looked up at Soti the smith, who had come up the path from the other direction.

"Out so late, god-man?" he asked. "Calling to your spirits? You come from the direction of the Melhaugs. I'd stay away from Big Melhaug were I you, especially at night. There's a dragon under that mound. It's said it was a human once, long ago, and the haug is its grave, but it's a dragon now, and it eats men's souls."

I said nothing, but bolted for my house. Behind me I could hear the smith laughing.

* * *

I took my meals with the household at Somme, and one evening after the drinking was done, Erling called me to him and said he wanted my help.

"I've vowed to give my thralls the means to their freedom," he said. "I owe them for the night of the fires, and it seems to me a fitting task for a Christian lord. Do you agree?"

"With all my heart."

"Good. Now my problem is that I can't just turn them loose and bid them godspeed. For one thing, they're not prepared. Have you seen Lemming in the last few days?"

"From time to time. He seems to do a lot of dicing with the bodyguard. By the way, you paid me too much for him. I got him for nothing, after all."

"Say no more of it. I like to do things properly. I thought Lemming might have somewhere he wanted to go, and the silver I gave him would pay for it. But he says one place is like another. He bought a fishing boat, but lost it at dice. Now he just drinks from a cask of ale he bought, and hacks pieces off the torque and gambles them away, and when the silver's gone God knows what he'll do."

"And you're afraid the others would do the same."

"I can't afford it. By our law a master answers for the living of any thrall he frees. I need to see that my freedmen have livelihoods."

"Have you something in mind?"

"I have a plan. I want to give each thrall a set amount of work to do each day. When that is done, each should have a piece of land or a task or craft they can ply, to earn silver. When they earn the price of their freedom I'll sell it to them, and set them up with some land and a cow. That way I can get people on land that's fallow now, and they'll pay rents and my lordship will prosper. And there's something else . . ."

"Yes?"

"You've been to Visby. There's a class of people there, and in other market towns, who are neither farmers nor priests nor bodyguards nor landholders. They're more like Soti. They live by working at crafts, and selling what they make for their own profit. The lords of the towns tax them. I think it would be profitable to have such people of my own."

"But you have no town."

"I've thought of founding a market, perhaps just in the winter. Risa Bay, north of Kolness, might be a good place."

"You want to train your thralls as craftsmen?"

"Do you think they're too stupid?"

"My lord, I was a thrall too not long since."

"Indeed. I apologize."

"There's something else you could do, my lord."

"What's that?"

"The silver they pay you. You could use it to buy more thralls."

"I'll have to. I can't run my farms without thralls."

"And you could offer them the same bargain. You'd have the hardest-working thralls in Norway!"

Erling frowned. "I don't know. It might make me a laughingstock among the landholders."

"It would make you great in the eyes of the Lord. And it would pay you well! How much would the landholders laugh when they saw your fields wide and rich, and your storehouses full of grain and silver?"

Erling smiled. "You could be right. If my vow works as we hope, it might be worth considering. It might well be. And it would be fitting for a Christian lord. We've never had Christian lords in Norway. Someone will have to show the way."

"Very true."

"I need a man to be in charge. Someone with brains and a heart. You said that you read a little. Can you write?"

"A bit. Not much."

"More than anyone else here. I'd like you to keep records so that there'll be no question about accounts."

"I can work out some kind of system of marks and ciphers, I suppose. I'd need parchment and pens and ink."

"You'll get them."

"I'll see what I can do then, my lord."

"Then God bless us both!" said Erling Skjalgsson.

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Framed