RAINEACH.
So Thorstein was healed of his sickness; but not until the summer was far
spent, and not until he had begun, little by little, to learn words of
the fell-folk’s language. For whatever the child did for him or showed
him she was not silent about it, but chattered the while, and often said
its name loud and plain; and when he said it after her, she laughed and
nodded. When she brought him milk she would say “Bainne:” and sometimes
when he was thirsty the little roguish creature would wait awhile, as
he clacked his tongue and licked his lips, until he would say “Bainne:”
and then she laughed and brought the milk-pot. And Thorstein soon learnt
with such teaching, and never thought of being shy as children are when
they are taught a strange tongue. Nor was it quite strange to him: for
his mother had told him a few words of her mother’s language, which was
Erse, and not unlike the words of these people, only spoken a little
otherwise. So when he one day saw a ring in the child’s treasure-ark, and
came out with “Fainne,” and saying “Meur” put it upon her finger, she was
astonished, and the rest of them laughed.
Now that he offered no longer to run away, they treated him well after
their fashion. He got the cream of the milk, as if he had been a chief’s
son at fostering: although the cream was always sour from keeping in foul
crocks of rough clay; and indeed they liked it so, as though new cream
were tasteless. There was always plenty of flesh meat, of roe-deer and
hares and other savoury sorts, good enough, said he to himself, if one
doesn’t watch the cooking. As the saw says “What the eye never sees, the
heart never grieves after,” so their clarty ways vexed him less and less,
as the days wore, and as Greenodd began to be like a dream on the other
side of awakening.
Lying in the hut, or sitting out in the sun wrapped in a deer-skin,
Thorstein watched the people, and when they were not so new to him they
seemed less strange and uncouth. Even when the men came in, whereas at
first he crept as far out of the way as he could, at last he was drawn to
look on at the game they brought, red-deer and roe-deer, wild boar and
hares, all manner of moor-fowl and mere-fowl, and wonderful fish, spotted
trout, and silver and golden char, whose pink flesh is the delicatest
of all eating. Thorstein had seen some little sport at Greenodd, but
it was plain that here the great lake was a teeming fish-pond and the
great fells one deer-park, and that these red men were the cunningest of
hunters and fishers, if their farming was nought.
Nor were they rough with him now. Once, when a huge youngster began to
tease him with some more horse-play, the giant carle who was father and
chief of them all, laid open the lout’s head for him. And if once he had
thought that they had no manners, and their customs were beastly, now
he began to find that they were cunning in their own craft, eloquent in
their own tongue, kind to their own kin, and proud of their own havings.
It was not always growls and blows: many a time the little wench would
play with her ugly father, and cuddle him prettily, and he would pet her
as if, said Thorstein to himself, they were no Christian savages, but
decent Thor-fearing folk. And if he had looked down upon them as the dirt
beneath his feet, he now gathered that they reckoned less of him than he
thought for, and kept him at arm’s length while they treated him well,
just as a boy treats a squirrel he has caught, stroking it while he holds
it hard, for fear it should bite.
So the summer wore and the autumn came, and Thorstein was kept within
walls or close at hand. He spent his time with the women for the most
part, helping them in their work, but much as he liked. They let him
stack wood for fires: sew and fashion such garments as they made from
skins, or from cloth that they got by barter for pelts among the Welsh.
Sometimes he was let milk the cows and goats, and take them to pasture;
but then there was always somebody to watch that he should not run away.
Other whiles he tried his hand at woodwork: but it was long before they
let him handle a knife, and when they did, sharp eyes were upon him
all the time. But they seemed mighty pleased when he turned out little
stools and boxes, pegged together with wooden nails, or bits of hooper’s
work that would hold water. And as he began to be useful, so he got on
famously with them and felt homelike.
The child who had nursed him gave him to understand that her name was
Raineach, that is Fern: and indeed she was not unlike the bracken when
it is red in autumn, and she was slender and strong and wild as its tall
fronds that smother up the hollows among the boulders on the moors.
She was maybe a year or so younger than Thorstein, but as tall as he.
Gartnaidh mac Tairneach, which is the Son of Thunder, was the name of her
father, the giant as we may call him, for he was a head and shoulders
taller than even a tall fellow among the Northmen, and far away bigger
than the Welsh. Raineach was pleased when she found out Thorstein’s
name and what it meant in her talk; for it is as much as to say the
Thunder-stone, because Thor is nothing else than the Thunder-god. “And
so,” said she, “We are brother and sister, for the Thunder-stone is the
Thunder’s child.” And Thorstein by this time was little loath to have it
so: and whenever his mind went to Greenodd it took Raineach there too,
and he could see her in his dreams in their hall, sharing his trencher
and cup, and friendly with Hundi, and tormented by Orm. So he put off the
escape that sometimes he planned, until he might persuade her to run with
him.
But when at last he had words enough to open out his mind, and to tell
her of his longing for home, she was astonished and grieved, and gave him
to know that she thought him a very lucky lad to be living in such good
company and so well off as he was. For many days she was cool with him
and said little: which angered him, so that he would say nothing to her.
Once when they were out with the goats together, and she was groping in
a blackberry bush, a wild cat sprang straight out at her, like a shot
from a sling: and fixed teeth and claws all together in her shoulder.
Thorstein had the creature throttled in an instant, but great work it was
to get it off, and to kill it, bang as he might with his thick stick. And
then he got her home, and the women put herbs on the bite to take the
poison out, and to stop the blood. So it was Thorstein’s turn to be nurse
for a while, and his sulkiness melted away: all the more that she gave a
fine story of his bravery.
Which when the giant heard, he said the little fellow was good enough
now to go out with the men. And after that, for many a weary day and
through many a terrible night, trotted he behind long-shanks and his
lads by moor and mire, chasing the red deer and the roe, and snaring the
fowl of wild-wood and water. And one while he got good words for his
work; and other whiles, for all he could do, it was nought but ill luck,
and an empty belly, and hard blows to his back. But to such doings one
hardens when limbs are young, and each time the weariness and the danger
are forgotten. Hunger and cold, and rough companionship, and the squalor
of the huts became too common to be feared any more. And as the months
passed, the boy waxed and throve in the keen air of the fells. He grew
cunning to track the slot, keen of eye and deft of hand, like any savage
of them all: and Raineach was proud of her foster-brother.