XXXI
The home of Gudorm Thorleifsson lay in northwestern Zealand, a day’s ride from Haven. Broad and rich were his grainfields, grasslands, woods, ponds; herds and flocks, fish, and game abounded. Well over a score of free folk lived and worked there, carles, women, children. Even the dozen thralls were well fed and well treated.
The house was long, stoutly timbered, turf-roofed. It and its outbuildings made three sides of a flagged yard. On the fourth side two barns flanked an opening with a gate for defense. Nearby clustered the lesser dwellings of hirelings, and farther off the huts of the thralls.
Northward rose the wood closest by, a thick shaw of mingled oak, beech, elm, and hazel. At its edge, which axes had long since sharply marked off, stood the high barrow of Keldor, founder of steading and family. The household made him an offering at the time of each full moon, a sheaf, a fowl, a piglet, on the holy days a lamb or calf. Otherwise it was looked on as an eerie place and mostly shunned.
Always the garth throbbed and shouted with life. From the milking at dawn to the stabling at dusk, they were busy cleaning, cooking, brewing, chopping, shearing, slaughtering, spinning, dyeing, weaving, nailing, forging, on and on, the tasks of every year and the tasks nobody had foreseen. Footfalls clattered, hoofs thudded, wheels creaked, hammers crashed, voices of human and beast went through smells of smoke, sweat, meat, hides, hay, dung, earth.
The dwellers had their pleasures too. In between the bouts of heavy toil, and in snatches throughout those whiles, free time was not scant. Seldom did it go in dumb idleness. Tales, riddles, verses, songs, ring dances, races, wrestling and other matches, ball games, draught games, or getting drunk filled it well. A man might carve twining vines on a clothes chest, or he might go fishing. Lads and lasses wandered off by twos, to come back flushed and bright-eyed. When Gudorm’s fellows called on him, or he on them, trenchers were heaped, ale flowed, and the merriment could last for days. When merchants pitched their booths at the fjord some miles off, men were wont to bring their women along to the fair. And then there were all the small, quiet joys that one took for given. Denmark under Hadding was happy.
Ulfhild was not.
She had borne herself well at the wedding. As mistress of Keldorgard she was stern with underlings but did not shout or strike at them. However, they learned to beg forgiveness and jump to her bidding when her voice turned cold. Among the neighbors she was ladylike, often winsome. They told Gudorm she was as fair to behold as she was highborn. She quickly found how to gladden him in bed. At first he reckoned himself a lucky man.
Thus it hurt him sorely when, month by month, she withdrew. Less and less did she talk to him about anything but the business of the household. More and more seldom did she give him back his kisses. When they had their first child, a healthy boy, she stood by at the namegiving, but never did she smile.
He let his pain come forth at last, in the close darkness of the shutbed, as she lay unstirring at his side. “Has the blood frozen in you? Are you sick?”
“Sick in my heart,” she answered.
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“That a king’s daughter is bound to a farmer.”
“What? You knew what I was, you know what I am—a great landholder, formerly a guardsman of the king and now his reeve in this shire.”
“Bathe as often as you will, I always smell what you are.”
She gave him a few more bitter words and ended, “So shall our son be, and every child I bear you.”
He shuddered. “I could hit you for that,” he said raggedly.
“Do, and I leave you. You know the law. Nor will my father any longer be your friend. I’ll see to that.”
Gudorm’s anger broke. “We, we were blithe together in his hall,” he stammered. “We sat in the same seat, we drank from the same beaker, you were with me more than with any other young man. How have you come to hate me?”
She let his heart beat a while before she said, “Oh, I do not hate you. I only hate this lowliness. I want you to rise above it, to make yourself worthy of yourself.”
“The king says he’ll raise me to jarl.”
“When? He has as many now as he needs. They’d not take kindly to another, nor would you be of any use. In these dreary times of peace, none is likely to die soon and get out of the way. The king, though, he is old. And Frodi, who is to come after him, has slight liking for you and none for me.”
“What, then?” rasped Gudorm. “Shall I go in viking? I might maybe find enough gold to glut your greed.”
“No.” She rolled over to lie close against him. Her arms went across his breast. ‘I said I don’t want to lose you. I want the best for you, for us both and for our children. Think about it.”
Soon, though, she had him setting thought aside for that night.
She did not stop there. It was not that she nagged him. Rather, she worked slowly, a little at a time, month by month, year by year. She planted one seed in his mind, gave it sunshine and warmth by kindnesses toward him, watered it with thunderstorms of wrath, fended off the worms and crows of his doubts, let him harvest the fruit himself, and sowed two new seeds where it had been.
“Even as Eyjolf ‘s fosterling, I wore silk on the high days,” she recalled. “Here it’s linen at best.” She made light of her furs and fine-spun wool.
“We will
