The Knight

Chapter 64. A Blind Man With A White Beard

By the time I reached Gylf, he was his everyday self again, having decided that one large ordinary dog was more than enough to pin and hold an old woman. He backed away from her when I told him to, leaving her weeping and gasping, curled up like a prawn on the dry leaves under the hedge.

“Now, now.” Dismounting, I knelt beside her and laid a hand on her shoulder. “Cheer up, mother. Gylf won’t hurt you, and neither will I.”

The old woman only wept. Something dark connected the hands that covered her face, and examining it more by touch than by sight, I discovered that it was a chain of rough iron a bit longer than my forearm. “I wish I had a lamp,” I said.

“Oh, no, sir! Don’t wish for that!” The old woman peeped between her fingers. “Master’d see us sure, sir, if you was to light a lamp. You won’t, will you?”

“No. For one thing, I don’t have one. Did your master put that chain on you? Who is he?”

“Yes, sir. He done, sir. You’re one a’ them knights, sir, ain’t you? Like down south?”

“That’s right.”

“When I was a girl, sir, I seen some that come to the village. Big men like you they was, on big horses. An’ iron clothes. Has you got iron clothes, sir?” One hand left her face to stroke my arm. “Well, I never.”

“Are you a slave?” An eerie wail filled my mind as I spoke; I shivered, but it soon dwindled to nothing. “I asked your master’s name. Whose slave are you?”

“Oh, him, sir. He’s not a good one, sir, not like his pa, but I’ve seen worse, sir. Hard though, sir. Hard.” The old woman tittered. “He’d like me better if I was younger, sir. You know how that is. His father did, sir, Hymir that was, sir. I didn’t like him, sir, for he was bigger’n your horse twice, sir, only he was kindish to me because a’ it, only I didn’t know it was kindish then, sir, only he wisht I was bigger, sir, you know, an’ I found out after, for I’m too old now, sir, so Hyndle leaves me be. It’s the warm work for women, sir, is what they say, or else cold an’ starve. Only I don’t know which is worse.”

“Hyndle is your master?”

The old woman sat up, nodding. “Yes, sir.”

“Hyndle is Angrborn, from what you’ve said about him.”

“Is that the giants, sir? Yes, sir. They do claim her for their ma, sir.”

“If you’re running away from him—”

“Oh, no, sir!” The old woman sounded shocked. “Why, I wouldn’t do that. Why, I’d starve, sir, an’ never get back to where the regular people live. An’ if I did, I’d starve there, sir. Who’d feed a old woman like me?”

“I would if I could,” I told her. “But you’re right, I couldn’t. Not now, at least. Why are you out here at night, instead of home in bed?”

She tittered.

“Are you an Aelf? Have you taken this shape to have fun with me?”

“Oh, no, sir!”

“Then why are you out?”

“You wouldn’t believe, sir.”

Gylf whined and I stroked his head, telling him we would leave in a minute or two.

“It’s a man, sir. It is, and I shouldn’t have laughed. Only it’s a sore long way, sir, an’ I’m a-weary with working all day. If—if you could ride me on for but a little a’ it, sir, I’ll bless you ’til the day I die, sir.”

I nodded, thinking. “I was about to say that if you were running away I wished you all speed but I couldn’t give you much help. I have to go to Utgard as quick as I can. I hate to put any more weight on this horse, because he’s lame already. You can’t weigh half what I do though, and my armor weighs half as much as I do.” I stood and helped her rise, noticing just how thin and worn she looked in the moonlight. “So we’ll just sit you up here.”

She gave a little squeal as I lifted her onto the white stallion’s war saddle.

“That’s it. You don’t have sit astride, and I doubt that you could in those skirts. Leave your feet where they are and hold on to the cantle and pommel. I’ll lead him, and he won’t be going any faster than I can walk. Where are we going?”

She pointed down the hedgerow. “It’s a long, long way, sir.”

“It can’t be.” I was watching where I stepped, and did not bother to look over my shoulder at her. “Not if you were planning to walk it tonight. You would have gone home after, too? And gone to bed?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then it can’t be far.” I started jogging, something I hadn’t done for a while. “Ain’t you a-feared you’ll lose your dog, sir?”

I strained to see him, but Gylf’s seal-brown rump and long tail had disappeared in the moon-shadow of the hedge. “I’m not, mother. He’s run ahead to scout out trouble, which is what I would’ve told him to do if I’d thought of it.”

“Rabbits, too, sir. An’ got a deep mouth from the look a’ him.”

“He does, but he won’t be running rabbits this night.” I jogged a hundred strides or so in silence, then slowed to a walk. “Did you ever tell me what your errand is, mother? A man, you said.”

“Yes, sir.” She sounded terribly sad. “You’ll think I’m cracked, running after a man at my age.”

“There’s only one girl for me,” I told her, “and people think me cracked because of it. So you’re a crazy woman on the charger of a crazy knight. We freaks have got to stick together and help each other, or we’ll be left to howl in the swamp.”

“Will you tell me about her, sir?”

“For a year. But she isn’t around, and your man is. Or he will be soon, we hope. Is he a good man, and does he know you’re coming?”

“Yes, sir.” She sighed. “He is. An’ he do, sir. Can I tell you how it is with him an’ me, sir? ’Twould ease my mind, an’ you can laugh if you want to.”

“May,” I muttered, jogging again. “Yes, I may. But I don’t think I will.”

“Years an’ years ago it were, sir. Him and me lived in a little bit a’ a place down south. Every girl there had a eye for him, sir, but him, he had a eye for me. An’ nobody else’d do. That’s what he said, sir, an’ the way it was, too.”

“I know how that is, mother.”

“May every Overcyn there be bless you for it, an’ her too.” The old woman was quiet awhile, lost in reminiscence.

“I got took, sir. The giants come looking for us, the way they does, sir, when the leaves turn an’ they don’t mind moving around. An’ they found me. Hymir did, sir, my master what was. So I had to—had to do what I could for him, an’ get it all over me often as not, an’—an’ Heimir got born, sir. My son that was. Only Master Hyndle’s run him off now, or he’d help me, I know.” She paused.

“He’s not what you’d call a good-looking boy, sir, an’ it’s me, his mother, what says it. Nor foxy neither, and didn’t talk ’til after he was bigger’n me. But his heart ... You’re a good-hearted man, sir. As good as ever I seen. But your heart’s no bigger’n my Heimir’s, sir. No woman’s never had no better son.”

“That’s good to know.”

“For me it is, sir. Ain’t you getting tired, sir? I could walk a ways, an’ you ride.”

“I’m fine.” The truth was that it felt good to stretch my legs, and I knew I owed the stallion a little rest.

“You’ve run quite a ways, an’ it’s a good ways more.”

“I close my mind.” I wanted to tell her, but it was not easy. “And I think about the sea, about the waves coming to a beach, wave after wave after wave, never stopping. Those waves turn into my steps.”

“I think I see, sir.” The old woman sounded like she did not.

“I float on them. It’s something somebody taught me, or maybe just told me about and let the sea teach me, not magic. The sea is in everybody. Most people never feel it.” Saying those things made me think of Garsecg, and I wondered all over again why Garsecg did not come to see me in Mythgarthr.

“It opened me up, it did, having my Heimir. So then we could if you take my meaning. Like a real wife should, sir, the regular way.”

“You and the Angrborn who had taken you, mother? This Hymir?”

“Yes, sir. Not that I wanted it, sir. Hurt dreadful every time. But he wanted it an’ what he said went in them days. So then I had my Hela, only she’s run off. Master shouldn’t touch her, her being his half-sister, only she’s ... Well, sir. You wouldn’t say it, sir. She’s got that big jaw they all have, sir. An’ the big eyes, you know. An’ cheeks like the horns on a calf, sir, if you take my meaning. Only good skin, sir, an’ yellow hair like I used to, too. That yellow hair’s why my master that was, that was her father, took me, sir. He told me that one time, so it was bad luck to me. Only if it’d been black or brown like most, probably he’d a’ kilt me.”

The hedgerow had ended, though the path had not, weaving its way among trees and underbrush bordering the river.

“There was times,” the old woman muttered, “when I wisht he had.”

“Is it your son Heimir we’re going to meet?”

“Oh, no, sir. I don’t know where he’s at, sir. It’s the man I told you about, him I was going to marry all that time ago. He’s got took now, sir, if you can believe it. Got took for fighting them like he did, with a white beard, if you can believe it. An’—an’ I hope your horse don’t fright him, sir. The noise a’ it, I mean.”

I smiled. “He clops along no louder than other horses, I hope, and somebody with guts enough to fight the Angrborn isn’t likely to be afraid of any horse. Besides, he’ll see you on his back, unless the moon—”

“Oh, no! He won’t, sir. He can’t, sir. It’s—it’s what makes him think, sir, deep down, you know ...”

The old woman sounded as if she were choking, and I glanced back at her. “Makes him think what?”

“That I’m like I was back then, sir. You—you’re young yet, sir.”

“I know, mother. Younger than you can guess.”

“An’just to have him think like he does, deep down ... Oh, I’ve told him, sir. I couldn’t lie about nothing like that. Only when he sees me inside a’ himself—an’ that’s the only way he can, sir ....”

“You’re young again. For him.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sometimes I’d like to be young again myself, mother. Young outside as well as inside. I take it he’s blind?”

“Yes, sir. They blinds ’em, sir, mostly. The men I mean. Big as they are, they’re a-feared a’ our men.” The old woman’s pride kindled new warmth in her voice. “So they blinds ’em, an’ they blinded him, old as he was. He sees me, sir—”

Whining, Gylf had trotted out of the night.

I dropped the reins and laid a hand on Gylf’s warm, damp head. “You found someone.”

Although I could scarcely see Gylf’s nod, I felt it.

“Dangerous?”

A shake of the head.

“A blind man with a white beard?”

Gylf nodded again.

From the white stallion’s back, the old woman said, “Up there’s where we meet, sir. See that big tree up against the sky? It’s on top a’ a little hill, only we got to go through the ford, first.”

“We will,” I told her.