"Saga" - Chapter 19
Content - Saga is a Brokeback AuAu fic taking place in the Viking era (Scandinavia, ca AD 850). No warnings for this chapter. This chapter rated PG-13.
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 - It is time for both Yule and Christmas celebrations in Saga, but joy is tempered with longing….
Relevant explanations of names and terms follow after each chapter. Thank you very much to Soulan for thorough betaing! Previous chapters are linked from here: http://gilli-ann.livejournal.com/43336.html
Saga - Chapter 19
Einnis returned home from seeing to the snares late in the day, spent and weary, to find the courtyard filled with loaded work-sleighs. Thralls were taking the sleigh horses to the stables, and many men were standing about. The remaining part of Arna’s dowry had arrived.
Mjod sent his daughter and her husband greetings and well-wishes, and also sent word about king Eystein’s defeat. Both Einnis and Arna saw these tidings as cause for celebration. Without having talked much about it, they had been keenly aware that the farm’s location far from the valley represented a risk of enemy attacks. That danger was less now, though they still needed to keep guards about the property. Outlaws and men cut loose and adrift from King Eystein’s service might try to raid any lonely farm that didn’t demonstrate its ability to fight them off.
Nevertheless the news was very welcome, and that evening good food and the best ale filled the Einstad tables for all to enjoy.
---
Shortly before Yule Arna proudly told Einnis that she was with child, if the signs were anything to go by. She glowed as she gave her husband the good news, and they huddled together in delight under the duvets and covers, feeding off each other’s warmth in a winter that had otherwise turned exceptionally cold. Come midsummer they would be parents, the gods willing, and would be presenting the clan with a new generation to carry its honor into the future and follow where the forefathers had led the way.
The two of them had already decided against traveling the long way down the valley to the midwinter blot - it was hardly right for the master and mistress to leave the household behind the very first time Yule would be drunk on Einstad. They were much surprised, though, when they welcomed Ketil a few days before the celebrations. He came on ski, only accompanied by a few of his men, and voiced his intention to drink Yule with his brother and sister-in-law and to spend the whole week at Einstad.
After their wedding Einnis and Arna had seen but little of Ketil. Most times when Einnis had visited Ketil’s farm in the course of that fall his brother had been gone, out hunting for food or for pelts. Mistress Ragnhild had stated her opinion about Ketil’s seeming neglect of his farm in no uncertain terms, but Einnis had let it go, understanding well enough that there might be a reason for Ketil to want to lie low and stay out of sight for a while.
Now Ketil joined them at Einstad instead. Though he congratulated Einnis and Arna with a genuinely pleased smile once he heard that his sister-in-law was carrying an heir for the clan, he otherwise brought very little cheer. He seemed moody and morose and spoke very little. His many strenuous hunting treks had caused him to shed weight, and he looked fit and strong again, but now he took every opportunity to nurse a bowl of Yule ale, downing the strong drink in surprising quantities. Where ale previously had made him loud and rash and frequently full of mirth, he now instead sank into sour grumbling, scowling at anyone who happened to be nearby.
At table during their first shared evening meal Einnis asked for news from the valley. Ketil laughed mirthlessly, casting a glance in his brother’s direction before glowering down into his ale bowl.
“I just heard the news that Helga Hauksdottir is getting married,” he said, more than a hint of scorn and disdain in his voice. Einnis looked to his brother sharply.
“It had to happen. Who is she marrying?”
Ketil laughed again, a loud unpleasant noise. Helga had accepted the proposal of Ulv Sigurdarson, the middle son of one of the most influential chieftains in the valley. She would be the daughter-in-law of a wealthy, mighty and well respected man.
“The boy is barely 18 years old!” Ketil blurted, suddenly fuming. “A mere stripling, not yet dry behind the ears! That is what she deems to be better than me - what a joke! What an insult! I sure hope for her sake that at least he has a big cock and enough stamina in bed to satisfy a slut for a wife!”
Einnis sighed and shook his head at his brother.
“The hasty tongue sings its own mishap, if it be not bridled in! Ketil, my men are listening. You shouldn’t speak so carelessly and disrespectfully. Helga is in her right to marry whom she chooses, and as for her intended, he is four years older than I was when I took over many responsibilities as master of our farm. As far as I have heard, Ulv shows great promise. He is old enough.”
Ketil grinned wildly. “Old enough to fuck her at all hours of the day, yes - but that’s all. I guess there’s no doubt about who’ll be wearing the trousers in that marriage. When they’re not in bed I suppose her husband will do well enough down on the floor as a playmate for Helga’s daughter!”
Arna drew a sharp breath, and Einnis rose from the table.
“Ketil, you are drunk and you do not know what you’re saying,” he stated loudly and clearly. “Go to your bed now and rest. Sober up - we’ll talk more when you can govern your mind and your words!”
Ketil looked belligerent and ready to protest, but he wasn’t too drunk to belatedly realize that every head in the room had turned towards the high table. A hush had fallen over the hall.
He rose and stepped down to the floor, a lopsided grimace on his face, managing to keep upright though he moved unsteadily. “You bore me, little brother, with your righteous life and your pompous sayings.”
He laughed, harshly and gratingly. ”A merry Yule to all!” With that he was gone from the hall, and Einnis sat back down, reached for the mead horn and gulped down a goodly draught. His eyes met Arna’s worried glance, and he shook his head in exasperation.
“I wish he would put this matter of Helga behind him and look ahead to new possibilities. There are other fish in the sea,” he muttered, a note of worry and doubt creeping into his voice.
Arna didn’t reply, but lowered her eyes and drew an unsteady breath. They sat for a beat in silence while the hall around them returned to normal, men and women turning to their food and drink, talk and laughter rising over the benches and tables.
The remaining days of Yule Ketil held his peace, drank little and spoke less. He apologized to his brother and sister-in-law for his crude behavior, but there seemed to be no honest will to change his ways behind his formal, distant words. His presence put a damper on the festivities for Arna and Einnis, but by and large the people of Einstad were well pleased with the celebrations, the food and drink and the general good cheer.
They all toasted Frey and happily drank to árs ok friðar, a good year and peace, with high hopes for the coming year.
---
When the year turned towards midwinter and Yule-time approached, Kaupang became another town, a mere silent ghost of its boisterous summer self.
The traders had left, most of the markets were closed, and lords, warriors and farmers alike had returned with servants, thralls and kin to their homes in hills and dales and along the coast. Some few craftsmen, one of them Gunnar Gavlpryd, stayed in town on permanent basis, and a few lords stayed too with their families and households. Otherwise the houses were locked down and barred, the market stalls were empty shells, the trade tents folded and stored, and the storage houses and the wharfs were nearly deserted.
Gunnar had to protect his eyesight and didn’t work as much now that there were only a few hours of daylight to be had. He hadn’t started drinking again, but kept to his bed for long hours, burrowing down into the blankets and sleeping like a bear in its den.
The weather had turned cold, and snow blanketed the town and its environs. Muirenn and Eoin had more time on their hands. As in their first weeks together they would sit talking, or merely enjoying each other’s company while the fire blazed on the hearth and the snow fell outside. Little Sverri was big enough now to push himself up on chubby arms to look around when Muirenn placed him on a blanket on the floor, and he had started crawling a little. Muirenn looked at her son with pride, and was careful about getting enough to eat so that her milk would not dry up. She wanted to nurse the boy through winter if she could.
Gunnar had been invited to drink Yule at a manor near Kaupang, a place where he would be carving new high seat poles come spring. Admonishing Eoin to come get him if he hadn’t returned in five days, Gunnar set off, his eyes blazing with irrepressible thirst and his hands shaking with want. He had stayed sober for months - now the desire to drink his fill burned inside him like an all-consuming fire. Eoin had no choice but to let him go. Gunnar was a free man and his own master, and could not be dissuaded.
Thus completely left to their own devices, Eoin and Muirenn prepared for their Christ mass celebrations.
During their months in Kaupang they had occasionally happened to meet Irish thralls who belonged either to the local manors or to traders. Most of them had since left town with their masters for the winter, but a very few remained. Eoin would gladly have asked them to join him and Muirenn in celebrating the birth of the Lord and in giving thanks on the holy night. But he did not dare make such a bold move. Gunnar had warned his Irish companions in no uncertain terms that they needed to be very careful about making any sort of contact with their countrymen. It might anger the powerful lords and thrall-owners. Though thralls were allowed to speak among themselves, and were given some freedom to move about as long as they performed all their heavy and time-consuming chores, the fact that Jaran and Myrunn had been freed could all too easily be considered a threat to the very order of society.
On Christ mass eve therefore, Muirenn and Eoin had the house to themselves. They spent the early evening enjoying festive food that Muirenn had taken great care in preparing, and the very best ale that Eoin had been able to buy. After the meal they sat side by side on the bench, content, drowsy and pensive.
“My mother used to sing hymns while we waited for the holy night and got ready to go to church to celebrate the mass,” Muirenn said, a melancholic note creeping into her voice as she looked back on the family life she’d been torn away from. “She had the sweetest voice…. The sound of it used to ring like a bell in my head while we walked to church. My family carried torches on the way, and so did everyone else. It looked like a river of light in the darkness, moving up to the church.”
“There were lights everywhere in the monastery too,” Eoin mused, his mind’s eye turning to years gone by. He could call forth the details, memories of sights and sounds and the solemn and joyful mass in its splendor. Candlelight, incense, voices rising to fill the church with praise, happy faces. He could see it all so clearly, and was able to describe it in vivid detail to Muirenn, who listened raptly.
“How I wish that we could have been there tonight, at home to greet loved ones and see those lights,” she murmured, looking over to Sverri’s basket where the boy was sleeping soundly. Eoin nodded, finding no words but knowing that none were needed.
They sat quietly next to each other, staring into the flames on the hearth and contemplating the strange and surprising twists of fate that had led them far away from home and from the remembered masses of their youth, had taken them through fear and thralldom and onwards to freedom and new beginnings in this far foreign land.
Eoin let his mind wander, step by step through the last year, all the way back to his lonely Christ mass in the stable one year and a lifetime ago. He remembered the tranquility and deep peace of mind he’d felt back then, the certainty that the Lord had guided him in mysterious ways to where he needed to be, to Einnis - that their joining was His will.
This last year truly had brought him the heights of ecstasy and the depths of despair. He knew in his heart that Einnis would always remain a constant in his life, a guiding star over the turbulent seas that he’d been struggling to navigate ever since Einnis set him adrift. But though that light was always calm and bright, the star was distant now, and small, a mere pinprick in the sky. Clouds of doubt and worry were drifting in, threatening to obscure that far-off brilliant point.
Eoin’s days, and even more so his nights, had grown long and weary, and his heart sometimes felt heavy as a stone with longing and uncertainty. He had heard the Norse talk of fate, which seemed to be their heathen way of describing God’s unfathomable will. He knew that Einnis was his fate, but fate could prove hard and seem unfair and even cruel. The Lord provided no assurance of happiness here on earth, gave no promise of certain joy except to pure souls welcomed into Heaven.
Every day without Einnis was a test of Eoin’s resolve, his trust and unshakable faith, and God had time enough. Eoin could only pray and humbly hope that the Lord did not have the ultimate test in store, the loss of Einnis for ever.
He wanted to make the sign of the cross over his heart, but his hand felt strangely heavy. It remained immobile in his lap.
Next to him Muirenn sighed, coming out of her own reverie. She moved closer to Eoin and leaned her head on his shoulder.
“I believe that we may well be the lucky ones, we two, when all is said and done,” she whispered wonderingly. ”To think what might have been…. “
Eoin nodded slowly, acknowledging the simple truth in her words. He placed his arm around her shoulders companionably, holding her close, wordlessly communicating his understanding.
She drew a breath, and suddenly pressed herself against him, turning towards him and closing her eyes. Eoin looked into Muirenn’s prettily flushed face, watched the light of the fire playing over her features as her chest rose and fell with rapid breaths. Without any conscious decision on either’s part, the two of them drifted together, leaning in gently till their lips met in a tentative, bashful kiss. One kiss, and then another. And another.
Muirenn reached for one of Eoin’s hands, pulled it in between their bodies and placed it firmly on her left breast, pushing up against his palm, moving even closer with a gasp.
“Oh dear Lord, it’s been so long….” she whispered breathlessly.
For a few brief moments Eoin went with the flow, reveling in the warm and willing body straining against his, signaling its availability and offering oblivion, comfort and relief. But he couldn’t do it. Not tonight of all nights, not when he’d just relived last year’s Christ mass and the silent vows he’d made, the beauty and joy that Einnis brought him, the surety of the Lord’s purpose. He wrenched himself free from her, drew a hand across his mouth, pulled away and gestured apologetically.
”Muirenn, I’m sorry. I can’t…. I’ve sworn vows…. I can’t. I can’t do this, not on this night.”
Muirenn sat up, blushing scarlet and trying in vain to regain composure, struggling to arrange her hair and clothes.
“Oh Eoin, I know, I know, forgive me. But it is so difficult.....”
They sat for a moment, at a loss, staring at each other. The ground had suddenly shifted under them, and the road ahead seemed to lose itself in rocky and treacherous terrain. Then Muirenn rose to her feet with a brittle little laugh. “Sleep cures all ills, so they say. I guess it’s worth trying. Good night, Eoin.”
He nodded, tacitly acknowledging her retreat, but himself remained seated on the bench late into the night. He put another log on the dying fire. So many twists and turns in his life’s strange path!
He had heard the tale of Loki, bound on sharp rocks, a snake over his head dripping slow drops of venom, and of Loki’s patient wife Sigyn, standing by his side until the end of the world as she held a bowl to collect the poisonous drops and protect her husband. Waiting for Einnis and staying true to what they shared seemed to be asking for Sigyn’s kind of selfless patience from Eoin. But he was only a man, no saint, and no magic-wielding hero with otherworldly powers.
He supposed Einnis surely would be married by now, maybe even on his way to becoming a father already. He’d be more elusive and inaccessible than ever. And yet……..
Carefully ensuring that Muirenn was asleep, listening to her even breaths, Eoin quietly rose and tiptoed over to his chest of modest belongings. Digging to the very bottom he pulled out a canvas-wrapped parcel, opened the ties, shook out the contents, and spread it over his lap as he sat back down. He let his hand slide over the cloth, feeling the familiar texture the way he would have caressed a lover’s skin. Einnis’s blue wool cloak, Eoin’s secret and tangible connection to their time together, to the snowy woods of Einstad and the smithy in the field, where this blue cloak sometimes covered them and helped keep them warm through icy winter nights when they slept together, breathing the same air, skin touching skin and hearts beating in perfect time.
He lifted the cloak reverently and bent down to hide his face in it, searching for the smell of that distant time in the woods. But the scent of its one-time owner was not there anymore. The cloak smelled of stale dust and mold now, having lain so long rolled up and hidden away at the bottom of the chest. Snow and fresh sweat, semen and musk, wood-smoke and pine needles - all gone. Only the memories lingered on.
Eoin nevertheless pressed the cloak to his face once more, rubbing his cheek on it and closing his eyes as images and emotions flooded back, overwhelming him with their intensity.
“Merry Yule, Einnis,” he whispered softly into the night.
Tbc………..
Notes and explanations;
“The hasty tongue... etc” - The quote is a saying from stanza 29 of Havamal.