Odinn's Child Read Online Free Page B

sending on my child to live with his father, so the infant will not disturb your household for very long.'
    Thorgunna's clothes chest was snapped shut and fastened. A second, even bulkier coffer was hoisted out of stowage and manhandled into the rowboat, and the two women — and me — were carefully rowed to the beach, where Thurid's servants and horses were waiting to carry us back to the farm. I should add here that the horses of Iceland are a special breed, tough little animals, rather shaggy and often cantankerous but capable of carrying substantial loads at an impressive pace and finding their way over the moorlands and through the treacherous bogs which separate the farms. And some of the farms on Iceland can be very large. Their grazing lands extend a day's journey inland, and a successful farmer like Thurid's cuckolded husband Thorodd might employ as many as thirty or forty men and women, both thralls and freemen.
    Thus my mother came to Frodriver under her own terms - as a working house guest, which was nothing unusual as everyone on an Icelandic farm is expected to help with the chores. Even Thurid would put off her fine clothes and pick up a hay rake with the rest of the labourers or go to the byres to milk the cattle, though this was more normally the work of thrallwomen and the wives of the poorer farmers, who hired out their labour. However, my mother was not expected to sleep in the main hall, where the majority of the farm workers settle down for the night among the bales of straw which serve as seats by day. My mother requested, and was given, a corner of the inner room, adjacent to the bedchamber where Thurid and her husband slept. When Thorgunna unpacked her large chest next day, Thurid, who had thought my mother wanted her own quiet corner so she could be alone with her baby, understood the real reason. My mother brought out from their wrappings a splendid pair of English-made sheets of linen, delicately embroidered with blue flowers, and matching pillow covers, also a magnificent quilt and a fine coverlet. She then asked Thurid if the farm carpenter could fashion a special bed with a high frame around it. When this was done Thorgunna produced a set of embroidered hangings to surround the bed, and even — wonders of wonders — a canopy to erect over the bed itself. A four-poster bed arrayed like this was something that Thurid had never seen before, and she was overwhelmed. She could not stop herself from asking my mother if perhaps, possibly, she would consider selling these magnificent furnishings. Once again my mother refused, this time even more bluntly, telling her hostess that she did not intend to sleep on straw. It was the last time Thurid ever asked Thorgunna to sell her anything, and Thurid had to be content, when Thorgunna was out working in the fields, with taking her visitors to give them surreptitious glances at these wonderful furnishings.
    My mother, as I have indicated, had a predatory attitude towards the opposite sex. It was the story of Birsay all over again, or almost. At Frodriver she rapidly took a fancy to a much younger man, scarcely more than a boy. He was Kjartan, the son of one of the lesser farmers working for Thurid. Fourteen years old, he was physically well developed, particularly between the legs, and the lad was so embarrassed by Thorgunna's frequent advances that he would flee whenever she came close to him. In fact the neighbours spent a great deal of time speculating whether my mother had managed to seduce him, and they had a lot of fun chuckling over their comparisons of Thurid with her lover Bjorn, and Thorgunna in chase of young Kjartan. Perhaps because of their shared enthusiasm for sexual adventures, Thurid and Thorgunna eventually got along quite well. Certainly Thurid had no reason to complain of my mother's contribution to the farm's work. In the nearly two years that Thorgunna stayed at the Skattkaupandi farm, she regularly took her turn at the great loom at