Outward Borne (14 page)

At that time, almost every girl of
my age was sent from her home for two, maybe three years. We
usually went to live with a relative in another village, or out
with the forest herds where we were to experience a different way
of living and perhaps find a husband. My friend Mildryth had gone
to her cousin’s ranch north of Nehdun the summer before. She was
already married and to an Alimani at that.

Grandfather often told the story
of the Alimani. His father was a boy when the Alimani came to our
lands and Grandfather remembered seeing some of those same men
himself. A great lord and six armored warriors road into Feldland,
all astride large war horses, their armor rusty and their mounts
hard ridden. Even their servants carried shields and long pikes and
had used them often. As hard-pressed as they were, the Alimani
still carried a great deal baggage and owned a string of unusually
large, fine horses. The Alimani were tall, thin men with blond hair
and blue eyes, very different from the rest of us, with our dark
brown hair and short stature.

We still had some warriors of our
own at that time, rough men they were, though most the lords and
fighters had left to conquer lands in Mercia. Our men, even if we
could have gotten them to leave their homes and farms unprotected,
would not have been able to defeat those big men with their iron
mail and battle axes and our leader, old Aelflhere, was wise enough
to know it. We had little choice but to treat these strangers well
and hope that they moved on to other parts. But they did not move
on, they stayed in the forest in their own camp, and the people
began to fear that they would make themselves masters of our lands.
Then one day a rider, a young Alimani man, came to them on a horse
almost dead from fatigue. We never knew what message he bore for
the lord and his armed men road off the next day; many of their
servants were left behind.

The Alimani men who came to our
village had escaped a warlike tribe that had driven them from their
homelands, a place far to the south and near the high mountains of
that region. Most believed that their lord had been summoned to
join his king, who may have escaped the wars as they had, and who
would be gathering his men to him. We never knew. They never
returned. The warriors had gone off, leaving several of their
retainers and as many horses. The Alimani horses were bigger and
stronger than those we possessed and were much desired. As time
passed, and the warriors did not return, those Alimani could no
longer pay for the upkeep and began to trade their horses for
brides and farmlands, and so became part of our village. There are
still many who are recognizable as Alimani, as those men, like
their mounts, bred true.

I was older than most to be living
at home, just over fourteen when I was sent away, not to some
intriguing Alimani settlement, but to Lindisport and Alaric,
mother’s cousin. Father kept me at home for an extra summer after
he became sick, some kind of wasting disease he had. I did the best
I could for him, I even moved his sleeping mat nearer the fire pit,
but he grew suddenly weaker then died as the winter’s cold came on.
I was finally sent away when spring arrived that year, but it was
an odd choice. Alaric had long been a seaman and the captain of his
own trading ship, the Gray Gosling, but he was a little old man by
that time and his son Alric sailed the Gosling.

Mother could not go with me as was
normally done. She was too burdened and worried about the farm with
Father gone. She was afraid to leave the place unprotected, and my
little brother Gunthar was too young to help much. My great dog
Loboc was to be my companion and protection. He could do the job as
he was a big as Gunthar’s pony and most loyal. Loboc was big even
for a great dog, broad and heavy, very strong. He could pull his
two-wheel cart all day no matter what the load. Loboc’s dark eyes
were sad even when his long shaggy tail was swinging wide. His
thick brown hair was almost always matted with dirt unless I could
get him to swim across our creek, which was not often. He did not
like the water as much as others of his kind, and neither I nor
anyone, could get Loboc to move when he did not want to.

When it was time to leave our
farm, I took what little clothes I had, and my indoor shoes, and
put it all into packs for Loboc to carry. I kept some dried beef,
last year’s nuts, and some hard bread that I hoped would be enough
for the two of us. We walked to the crossroads where we were to
meet a group of horse traders that mother heard were coming. They
came from beyond Nehdun bringing three wagonloads of hides for
trade. It was two hours before they arrived with all their dust and
dirt, all strangers from the deep forests. They didn’t want any
girl along, but I followed anyway. They were afraid I would hold
them up, but I didn’t.

Those rough smelly horsemen left
us alone in the middle of the village, or rather they kept moving
along after Loboc and I stopped. I had been to Lindisport before;
it was not such a large village. We easily found our way to
Alaric’s house where some grubby slave looked down at me as if I
was a wet river rat and ignorant besides. I was Gwynyth of
Feldland, I told her, come to stay with Alaric. He was not there,
she told me, and sent me away, down the hill toward Black Creek and
the docks. It happened that Alaric had moved into the trading shed
next to the wharf, into some side rooms that teetered on stilts
over the mud flats. He did not expect me, or even recognize me, and
did not appear to know what to do with me once he caught on that I
was to be staying with him.

I stood before him as he sat on
his one stool and considered me as some new type of problem. After
a while, old Alaric figured out that there was a room, not much
used, that he could put me in. This room seemed very large to me. I
had never had a room to myself, even if there was no furniture and
stacks of empty barrels and some dirty old wool bales stood along
the west wall, which was slanted as if it was sinking into the
marsh. I could get a useful table and a bed somewhere, but it would
not be very much like a home as there was no fireplace, no place to
cook. Light came in through cracks near the roof where the building
was pulling apart. It would be fearsome cold in the winter. I was
alone there with Loboc, Alaric never talked very much, at least not
to me, there were no other girls living near the docks, and it
smelled. Whatever had died during the winter rose up to rot as the
muck thawed. The villagers emptied their night pots into it as
well, too lazy to walk ten more steps to the water. Only Loboc
liked the stinking mud and brought as much as he could into our
room.

It was still early spring when the
ice on Black Creek began to melt in earnest. More and more people
from Feldland, Nehdun, and the farms in the region set out on the
muddy roads. All of them brought their winter products to our
trading dock. Others came as well, wild people who lived beyond the
villages and up the river. Some looked more like beasts of the
forest than real people; they spoke strange languages, if they
could speak at all. There was no market town anymore, though some
trading still happened in Lindisport around the well. Most goods
would be taken downstream to our trading post on the Sliefe Fjord
or carried up and down the rivers that emptied into the northern
sea. Our towns were known for their iron small-ware, metal tools,
wood bowls and woven wool cloth, all things that were much needed
on the isolated farms and brought good value. There is much else as
well, common goods like hides, grain, sheep’s wool, whatever might
be used in trade.

Alaric kept a record of all the
goods left at the storehouse and who had left it there, and in
return for their wares; each person would receive a just share of
the season’s trading profit, should it be a good year. I suppose
that was why I had been sent to Alaric. I knew sums that my late
father had taught me, but no letters. At least Alaric seemed
pleased that I could help count and sort the stock that was coming
in. I think he became a lonely man after he left his house to his
son, and moved away to live by himself. I am not surprised for
Alaric was too surly to have any friends. He had little pleasant to
say to his son, or me, or anyone else.

Alric was much nicer. He was a
small man, like his father, but very strong. He had reddish blond
hair, cut short in a severe way, a thin face with large blue-gray
eyes and he was not wed. He always had a smile and even stopped to
talk to me from time to time. His best friend Bertram, who had not
married either, came over in the evening and from time to time they
would tell interesting stories of their voyages on the Gray Gosling
and of the unusual people they met. I would sit on an empty bin in
the dark outside the house and listen to them talk until the bugs
became too thick. We never had such swarms on the farm.

I had been in Lindisport for only
a short time, maybe three weeks, when Alaric made me keep all the
records for all the materials we were storing. I was frightened at
first. There would be trouble to pay if I made a mistake and some
grubby one-horse farmer didn’t get his proper share of year-end
goods. Alaric never told anyone he had done this, and he continued
to act as domineering as he ever did. I told him to provide me some
consideration, or at least give me some food, if he was going to
have me do his work for him. He got angry with me, just stomped
away, and never mentioned it again. I think it was poor eyesight
that gave him trouble and left him confused at times. For me, it
meant working until it was too dark to see, then begging left over
food from Ursilet, if her pig of a husband did not eat it all. Most
nights I could not help but cry.

It rained for three days, very
heavy, as happens in the spring. All that rain raised the level of
Black Creek so that its deep dark water turned brown and rose to
cover the mud beneath our rooms and washed away the stink and the
rotten ice as if it had never been there. It was an exciting time
in Lindisport, people met after months of being isolated, the air
was warm, the days lengthening, the winter’s handiwork was there to
be admired, and the trading knorr would be sailing soon.

I was surprised when the loading
started and Alric put me to counting and totting the wares being
packed onto the Gray Gosling. He and Bertram were making ready for
the spring voyage to stock the trading post and they wanted to sail
before the Red Brigitae. Cyphus had been built about ten years
before on the bay of the northern sea near the entrance of the long
fjord. My father had gone there one summer to help with the
building. He complained ever after about being cold and wet the
whole time. Winds blew rain or mist off the sea almost every day he
said. Father had many grim stories of how dangerous Cyphus was
during its early years. The post had even been abandoned one summer
after raiders, Vikings they were, came in from the open sea, and
stole what they wanted and set fires that burned part of the post.
Stories of sea raiders were ever told, but that summer they grew to
be more frequent and more violent. Many thought that if Cyphus was
left abandoned, the Vikings would continue up river to our village.
So, the post had been rebuilt and strengthened with a stockade all
around, and life had settled these past years, with only some petty
thieving to worry about. Even so, it must be a horrid place, with
cold sea winds blowing, fog and overcast day in and day out, and no
society at all save some crusty fishermen, smelly sailors, and
filthy men who crossed the peninsula along the fjord.

Much to my delight at the time,
when the Gosling was fully loaded and about to set sail down river,
Bertram stuck me on top a hoard of cowhides and let Loboc climb
aboard to sleep in the sun and said that we could sail with them.
Lindisport bordered Black Creek, just below the rapids, where it
ran deep and slow to the river. The short, broad-beamed Gosling
floated past the Red Brigitae, Eudovig waving from the stern, the
eight oars held high until the creek widened. We headed into that
narrow stream through a tunnel of tree branches, the overhead sun
glinting through the leaves. I felt on top of the world, sitting
high on the bow as we entered the Risser River. The fat old Gosling
moved faster in the current. I had never been so far from home as
this.

Our lands had few people by that
time and we passed many fields that had turned to scrub. Trees grew
tall in pasture lands and some huts had fallen in, of course, this
was expected as some of those people lived like animals in rotting
hovels that had been a long time returning to the fetid soil they
stood on. For generations, our tribes had been sailing away to live
as lords in Mercia, for they received rich spoils for helping our
Kings conquer that rich island to the west. The priests, warriors,
and land barons with their men-at-arms had sailed away, but my
grandfathers stayed and, along with some others, had gathered on
the fertile lands around the three villages to carry on.

We saw no more abandoned land
after the river slowed, widened, and entered Sliefe Fjord. The Gray
Gosling turned with the wind; the crew set their single square
rigged sail, and put aside their oars. Cyphus was a long way up the
narrow fjord, but a strong breeze stayed with us that day and we
sped past the ancient forests lining both shores of the blue-green
water that led to the sea. Even so, it was night when we arrived at
the trading post. I could not see much of the low, dark building,
but it had a weak sort of stockade around it, which did not make it
seem to be a very safe place.