"Saga" - Chapter six
Content - Brokeback AuAu fic taking place in the Viking era (Scandinavia, ca AD 850).This chapter rated R. No warnings for this chapter.
Disclaimer - The original Ennis and Jack who inspired this fic do not belong to me, but to Annie Proulx, Diana Ossana, Larry McMurtry and Focus Features. I intend no disrespect and make no profit.
A/Ns - Explanations of names and terms follow after each chapter. Thank you to Soulan who beta’d this chapter.
Links to previous chapters:
Chapter 1: http://gilli-ann.livejournal.com/22271.html
Chapter 2: http://gilli-ann.livejournal.com/32308.html
Chapter 3: http://gilli-ann.livejournal.com/33130.html
Chapter 4: http://gilli-ann.livejournal.com/33946.html
Chapter 5: http://gilli-ann.livejournal.com/34153.html
Saga - Chapter 6
Sigrid Elmarsdottir was indeed astounded at seeing her older brother returned to life, but neither she nor Ketil had much time to spend on reacquainting themselves with each other or to sit over the ale bowls idly talking about times gone by. The first weeks after the brothers returned home instead went by in a blur of activity. It was the busiest time of year, the height of harvest, when the coming winter’s food for people and animals was gathered, processed, and stored safely away in outhouses and barns.
The whole household was hard at work haying, harvesting the grain and leeks, and even cutting leaves. Every hand was needed, right down to the thrall children, who helped herd the sheep and milk the goats now that the adults were too busy, as well as went out into the nearby woods to gather berries and nuts to be preserved. And every last worker returned home voraciously hungry, so Sigrid’s women had a hectic time preparing unusually large quantities of food each day for the whole household. The low monotone whirr of the heavy stone grain-grinders could be heard all through the day, and pots were constantly kept boiling on the open hearths.
The harvest went well. The weather proved favorable, by the good will of the gods, and the yield was decent enough though not at all exceptional.
Without pause the farm activities transitioned into the annual slaughter of sheep and cattle, a necessary culling of the flocks. Every last part of each animal was utilized and preserved: The meat was salted, smoked or dried, and the skins and guts and tendons readied for use in many ways. No hand was idle from sunup to sundown.
In addition to this hustle and bustle, people from the farms in the valley took time out from their own harvest and slaughter to ride over to meet Ketil, and to wish him welcome home of an evening. They had to be entertained with good food and better drink the way hospitality required. Einnis noticed that Ketil would linger over the ale bowls long into the night on such occasions, but his brother was a strong and healthy man, so nothing was said about it.
On a few occasions Ketil rode out to pay visits of his own, politely seeking out the most significant men in the valley so that they did not need to bestir themselves on his behalf, and reacquainting himself with old friends and neighbors. He clearly enjoyed the attention his many exciting stories of far-away lands and daring adventures earned him. During such visits either Einnis or Sigrid would ride with him as custom dictated. Though they were most times more than tired, they never found it in their hearts to deny Ketil his requests to join him.
--
Eoin had been settled in the thrall’s house as soon as he arrived at the farm. He had his own place on the sleeping bench along the wall, and a small chest for his belongings. In truth, the thrall’s house here was not much better than the one at Mjod’s farm, but having a place of his own helped. He grew accustomed to the stifling air, appreciating the warmth from the hearth in the chilly northern nights.
The other thralls were friendly enough, though paid him little heed since he couldn’t talk with them. He was grateful for every kindness, and wondered whether they’d been specifically ordered to welcome him properly and to treat him well.
During each day, whether at rest or at work, he’d be all ears and eager to pick up the meaning of new words and phrases. When darkness fell he would listen intently to the talk over the evening meal or the nightly games of tafl, ranging from idle comments about the day’s passing to long convoluted tales of the gods. Eoin looked forward to the day when he could join in the talk himself and speak up when he wanted to. He thought that the day wouldn’t be too far off, as he discovered in himself an unexpected knack for Norse pronunciation. His understanding of everyday talk increased by leaps and bounds so much so that he had to wonder about it.
He was thrown out into the maelstrom of farm activities from the very first day, and fell back to old work habits from his childhood years. He took his place herding cattle and carting hay, chopping wood and bringing in seemingly endless buckets of water.
There was a strange comfort and relief in having reached a destination where he could regain his bearings after the travels and troubles he’d endured ever since the Norse warriors descended on the monastery and so changed his life.
As the days of harvest progressed, Eoin admitted to himself that Einnis Elmarson, for all his silences and distant ways, knew much more than the use of his sword and to sit a horse well. The Norseman proved a skilled farmer, directing his people with fairness and efficiency. Both hired hands and thralls paid Einnis the kind of attention obviously born of honest admiration, not of fear or mere duty. The men had nothing but respect for Einnis, but it was equally evident they were still a little cautious around Ketil.
Eoin discovered in himself a grudging pride on Einnis’s behalf, as if he somehow had a legitimate stake in the other man’s - his owner’s! - honor and renown. He tried to dissuade himself of that notion, to continue to think as a free man would, but as day followed day the feeling lingered and even grew stronger.
He saw Einnis often enough in passing. Their eyes would meet for a moment whenever their paths crossed in the courtyard or returning home from the fields. Each man’s gaze was drawn to the other’s, much as the hands of a greedy warrior will always reach out to grasp such tempting gold as fate places in front of him.
But Eoin kept himself back, carefully remaining among the other thralls, and Einnis remained aloof. They spoke no word together until eventually, on one fall evening, Ketil and Sigrid rode off visiting far down the valley. Many an uneasy night had by then turned into weeks since Einnis came home to the farm.
He decided to send for Eoin at last.
--
When the thrall arrived, Einnis was sitting alone, brooding on the bench beside the high seat, clad in a blue tunic, a drinking horn placed on the table in front of him. People were at work in the hall clearing tables and tidying the benches after the evening meal, but otherwise he was alone. Without looking up he motioned for the thrall to come sit down on the bench next to him.
He leaned his head back against the wooden wall tiredly, looking straight ahead and pondering for a moment before speaking as if to the whole room in general.
“How are you faring here at my farm, Eoin?”
“I do well here,” Eoin carefully assayed, wrapping his tongue around the proper sounds and appreciating the use of his given name. It warmed his heart that the Norseman held to his word.
Einnis’s brows shot up, and he glanced at the thrall. A small smile appeared on Einnis’s lips and lent warmth to his shadowed eyes.
“You have learned our speech! You can speak, and you look well, that’s good. I’m glad,” he said plainly and carefully after a moment. “The work is not too hard?”
Eoin shook his head. “Used to work… hard,” he responded, trying his best not to trip over the words.
“The men treat you well?”
“Yes, Einnis Elmarson. The men treat…I…well.”
Einnis turned to look at him directly, his gaze suddenly so eager and intent that Eoin felt singed by the impact of it.
“You are a long way from Ireland, and live among strangers here. I thought perhaps you would pine away with the need and wish to go back home. Some do.”
Eoin nodded his understanding, then shook his head pensively. “It is not so…bad? I do not …pine..…much.” He considered that for a moment, and looked up into Einnis’s eyes, amending his reply. “I do not pine…. for home”.
A faint blush of heat washed over Einnis’s cheeks, and he reached for the drinking horn, taking a deep and deliberate drink. He did not reply. For a while they sat in silence. Einnis absent-mindedly studied the silver scrollwork on the drinking horn in his hand, tracing the intricate patterns round and round, back and forth with a calloused finger. Eventually he looked up, expression determined and serious.
“Well, there’s no use in pining and longing and wishing for the sun and the moon and the dwarf treasures hidden in the deepest mountains, or so I’ve always found,” Einnis said, and to Eoin’s surprise he offered the thrall his drinking horn.
“Be content with what the fates decide to give you. Here, drink deep and long of this, and let it bring you some little joy tonight.”
Eoin accepted the horn gladly and lifted it to his lips. His eyes never left Einnis’s, but widened in amazement when the distinct aroma of the drink met his nostrils. This wasn’t ale, nor even ordinary mead. It was the finest, most expensive mead to be had, exquisitely honeyed and sweet as the songs of the Lord’s own angels, the kind of mead that princes would drink at festivals and high days and surely feel themselves lucky in tasting. It met his tongue like a loving kiss, its delicious warmth and sweetness spreading through his whole body like caresses and fire from within.
He closed his eyes and sighed with pleasure as he drank, unable to stop, tipping his head back, draining the rest of the mead slowly in a long, sensuous draught. His eyes were hazy with bliss when they opened at last, the tip of his tongue sneaking out to lick mead foam off his upper lip.
Einnis was watching him silently, unable to look away. For a moment they both held their breaths.
Then as before, Einnis’s jaws clenched and he determinedly broke eye contact. Removing the horn from Eoin’s unresisting hand he put it back on the table, his own hand moving on to seek the silver Tor’s hammer in the chain around his neck. His eyes roamed from one end of the hall to the other cautiously as he slumped back on his seat and made a weary and dismissive gesture.
Eoin lowered his head and nodded. He glanced around the hall too. The relatively few people present were occupied with getting their duties done for the day, and not a one of them was looking their way.
He summoned up courage to dare touch Einnis’s shoulder fleetingly as he rose to leave, casting about for something to say that might cheer the other man. Who knew when next he would have the chance to speak this freely, the two of them so completely on their own?
“The thrall room has … stranger people. No space. Here with you, this place you have… where you are….feels good… like… like Breidablik!” he said, ending on an enthusiastic high and grinning a little with relief at having managed that last difficult word.
Caught off guard, Einnis looked up and met Eoin’s grin. He couldn’t help smiling himself, then broke out in a hearty laugh at the unexpectedly complex and exaggerated compliment. Eoin joined in, delighted that he’d managed to lighten Einnis’s somber mood.
Einnis shook his head as he chuckled. “It seems to me you have somehow learnt that flattery will get you far, and in Norse at that, Eoin, if you claim that our plain and simple hall equals Baldur’s great and glimmering one in any way.” He smiled at the notion for a moment, then grew serious.
“But if you know that much, you may also have heard say of Breidablik that nothing unclean and nothing unholy is allowed there, ever.” He bit his lip. “Therefore you are more right in the comparison than you can possibly know, for the same may surely be said of my clan’s halls, and nothing will change that, not ever.”
Eoin turned serious in his turn and looked at him uncertainly. Einnis’s words were too difficult for him, and spoken too quickly. He didn’t understand them. Even so, he did recognize the sentiment behind them, visible as it was in the speaker’s posture: A return to unease and sadness. He stood there at a loss for a moment, not knowing what to do, and having no right to remain unless ordered to. There was no other choice for him than to step back down to the hall floor and to leave, suddenly back in a strange and incomprehensible world.
The wide bench spaces along the walls, half hidden behind wooden pillars, were much larger than the thralls’. As he passed them to leave, Eoin wondered for a split second which one of the boxed-in sleeping bench spaces would be Einnis’s.
Worries or no, the glow of the mead stayed with Eoin all through the night. He called up Einnis’s handsome looks, strong body and smiling face before his mind’s eye, and was glad that the other thralls were sleeping deeply and noisily. He couldn’t avoid making some noises of his own as he most sinfully took himself in hand, strong rhythmic pulls stoking the fire in his body. It flared bright like the sun for a moment before leaving him limp, content and drowsy.
The very last thought to flitter through his mind had him wondering whether Einnis shared his sheltered bench with some woman or other, or if he too spent the night alone. Then sleep took him, and he knew no more.
--
The entire household looked eagerly forward to the Disablot as the busy season calmed down at last. The offering ceremony marked the end of fall by honoring the powers of fate, death and renewal, giving them thanks for the harvest and asking their protection though the cold winter months ahead.
Unlike all other offering ceremonies, this one took place on the farm itself and so involved the whole household as participants. No outsiders were allowed to be present, though, for fear of offending the goddesses and arousing their anger.
The offering started at noon with the ritual slaughter of a horse. This responsibility had now passed from Einnis to Ketil as the new master of the household, and he made very sure to perform it with particular care. The rites’ words rang out over the courtyard loudly and clearly, and the long knife found its mark without hesitation. Once the horse’s blood had been given in sacrifice, it was up to Sigrid, the mistress of the farm, to lead the rest of the ceremonials when they resumed later in the day.
Eoin kept himself away from the blot ceremonials. As soon as he realized what was happening, when the sturdy and decorated horse was brought forth through the excited throng of people in the courtyard, he quietly sought his bench in the empty thrall’s house and settled down for rest and silent reflection.
When everyone gathered in the hall for the rituals inside, an irritated Ketil told one of the men to go get the Irish thrall, and to be quick about it. “The goddesses will be angry if we do not all of us gather here to honor and thank them.”
Einnis, sitting next to him, put a restraining hand on his arm and shook his head at his brother. “Leave the thrall be. I think the powers would like it less if we brought someone into the hall who would not be honest about joining in the rites. You can try to make him participate willingly, but I believe he would refuse.”
Ketil arched an eyebrow as he looked down at Ennis’s hand on his arm. “He is just a thrall. We can make him honor the goddesses - by force, if it comes to that.”
Einnis cast a glance towards the door and tensed in his seat. “Perhaps so,” he conceded in a low voice. “But I know the man. You may have to beat him senseless to make him obey you. I can’t afford to lose a strong worker that way, not with the plans for my farm. I need all hands, healthy and whole.”
Ketil wanted to object, but this time Einnis didn’t give him the chance to speak.
“It would find no favor with the powers, Ketil, if we disrupted the blot with violence to force a man to honor them. Let Jaran be. What powers a man let rule his life is for him alone to decide.” Einnis looked towards the doors again with a sudden frown. “If the goddesses are angered by this, I would think it is Jaran they will take it out on. They will punish him - unless his own god can protect him.”
Ketil could not fault his brother’s reasoning. On his travels he had met many followers of Christ who obviously hadn’t been stricken by the gods. And he’d visited the Christian god’s mighty church in Miklagard, much bigger and more impressive than any other building he’d ever seen. A power strong enough to raise such an immense structure should not be easily dismissed. Better to let the powers fend for themselves if they felt slighted. Skadi, Freya and Hel all knew a thing or two about punishing those who crossed them.
“Very well,” he said curtly and shrugged, taking a deep draught from his horn, and waving their man off impatiently. “You are right. If the goddesses are affronted by the thrall’s behavior, he will be the one to feel their wrath. So leave him be, and close the doors. No uninvited spirits or powers must be given access tonight!”
The doors were ceremonially barred, and the buzz in the hall intensified to excited fever pitch. The blot followed its proper course, according to every rite and custom. Sigrid spoke the sacred incantations, and personally served each and every household member a helping of horsemeat, prepared for long hours in the cooking pits behind the hall. The ritual meat was deliciously rich, with a distinct flavor that complemented the other food and drink, available in abundance.
Everyone fell to with delight and healthy appetites. But Einnis’s glance strayed to the doors more than once, and a worried little groove remained etched between his eyebrows all through the night’s festivities.
--
Time passed quickly, and the first frost night had come and gone by the time Ketil and Einnis finally had time to ride to the out-farm to review it and to plan all the work to be done there over the winter and early spring.
Einnis as was his wont wore the blue cloak, a heavy silver brooch pinning it firmly in place on his right shoulder. It was a cold, bright morning, and the horses had been frisky at first, but now the brothers rode at ease, several of their dogs following excitedly in their wake. Every single breath they took showed up as puffs of cold mist. Nature was turning towards winter, the fields already brown and bare and offering a playing ground for the cawing crows.
Pale sunlight from the east picked out the contours of each rock and tree along their way, and illuminated the far hill pastures. The brothers could see a flock of sheep moving in the distance, each animal small as a bug on a yellowing cloth. The sheep were foraging among the last limp grasses on the hillside, two herders following as the flock trekked onwards in search of better grazing. One of the herders had a long brown cloak on. Einnis followed that cloak with his eyes as long as possible, until a curve in the two riders’ path hid the pastures and the far-away herder from view.
Tbc……….
Comments and explanations;
Breidablik - Breidablik means “the one that glimmers far and wide” and is the bright god Balder’s home. Balder may be considered the Norse pantheon’s Christ figure. This is what the source material, the prose Edda, among other things has to say about Balder: “He dwells in the place called Breidablik, which is in heaven; in that place may nothing unclean (unholy) be.”
Horse meat/Horse offerings - the Norse religion’s ceremonies were closely connected with the offering of horses to the gods and subsequent meals of horse meat, so much so that once Christianity was (forcibly) introduced as the Scandinavian countries’ only religion (ca AD 1,000), it actually became illegal on pain of heavy fines to eat horse meat. It was considered a deliberately heathen and therefore blasphemous activity. (Whether horse offerings were associated specifically with the Disablot I do not know - that’s my own conjecture!)
Diser - “Diser” were an assorted group of fertility/fate/death goddesses, among them the Valkyries, the Norns, and Freja, Skadi and Hel.
Freya was the main Norse goddess, fertility and sexual love her domain.
Skadi was a giantess turned goddess whose name means “injury” or “harm”. She was the one to bind a venom-dripping snake over the bound Loki’s head. She was also named the “ski-dis”. (This being Scandinavia one did of course need a ski-goddess !).
Hel was the sinister keeper of the realm of death that lay “northwards and downwards”, and Loki’s daughter.
Disablot - This offering ceremony was held at the beginning of winter. It was very public in Sweden, but strictly private in Norway and Iceland. King Olaf Haraldsson’s court bard Sigvat tells in one of his surviving poems how he was turned away from a farm where he asked to be allowed to stay the night in dreadful weather, the custom of hospitality being broken because a private blot was going on inside so that no strangers were allowed. (Sigvat, a Christian, was *not* happy about being thus chased off in the night.)
The mighty Church in Miklagard (Istanbul) - it is the Hagia Sophia that Ketil has seen. It is known for a fact that Vikings visited the church more than thousand years ago because of ancient runic inscriptions that have been found. A viking called Halvdan carved his name there in the 9th century, and other similar inscriptions have also been found. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runic_inscriptions_in_Hagia_Sophia