Chapter Twenty-Four
“It looks very rough,” Hulda said, narrowing her eyes against the strong morning sunlight. “I did not expect it to be quite so…battered.”
Indeed, the longboat listed a bit to one side, giving the dragon at the prow a lopsided look. Compared to Faeir’s ships—well, there was no comparison.
She no longer concerned herself with aught her faeir owned. She had moved out of his home four days ago, taking temporary housing where some of the warriors lived, but she did not like it there. They were noisy and crude and not overly clean. But it represented independence.
Following that move, she had gone to Garik and told him ja, she was interested in his offer to go in on a boat of their own. He and his brother, Helje, had brought her to this inlet some distance up shore from Avoldsborg, where the old man, Frode, kept the vessel he wished to sell.
Her first glimpse of it, though, dashed her hopes and made her question herself. A fool, Faeir had called her. Ivor, too. Were they right?
She glanced at Garik. In the morning light, he looked terribly young, too young to sail, though she knew very well he was a fine mariner. His brother, a couple years his elder, did not say much, though he was in on the proposed venture.
Garik met Hulda’s gaze with steady enthusiasm. “She needs an overhaul, ja. It is nothing Frode cannot manage.”
Hulda remembered Frode as a strange old man, elder to even her faeir. He talked to himself and he spat a lot. She had hoped, if she took Garik up on his offer, he would mostly deal with the old man on her behalf. Mayhap he still would.
“I somehow thought work on the vessel would be farther along,” she said, doubtful. “How long will it take to finish?”
“Frode has been working on it. Not much longer. If we want it, we will have to put money in so he can finish.”
“Ah.”
Helje spoke for the first time, his voice deep. “One must start somewhere, Mistress Hulda.”
“I understand that.” She had not expected to start at so low a place as this. If she invested all she had in the longboat—well, it did not appear a hopeful venture.
If she failed—again—she would have nothing. Nothing. And she refused to go crawling back to Faeir.
There had been a terrible argument the day she left, Faeir threatening and Móeir weeping, taking Hulda aside and begging her not to go.
“I have already lost my son. Do not make me lose my dottir also.”
“You are not losing me,” Hulda had assured her. But ja, she could see that she was.
Hulda had held a big vision then of succeeding in this venture, launching a few bold voyages. Making Faeir eat his words about her. Looking at the slightly sad longboat in the narrow inlet, stranded there as if it had come home to die, that vision evaporated.
Was this truly the best she could do?
Frode’s dwelling stood alone above the rocks that fronted the inlet. He had a son whom everyone considered slow, and no wife. The shed out of which he worked had been built just behind there, and he emerged from it now.
Grizzled he was, with a rat’s nest of gray hair spilling down his back and salt-rimed clothing. Hulda had asked Garik how he knew the old man.
“Everyone knows him,” he’d replied. “And a boy must learn the craft of boatbuilding somewhere.”
Garik being a clever lad, she had taken his word for it. There was, so she reminded herself, a price for everything. Associating with the old man might be the price, in part, of her independence.
It might well be the price of seeing Quarrie MacMurtray again.
Still, she eyed Frode with misgiving as he loped over the rocks to them, a big, rangy, loose-limbed body now bent with age and likely the results of hard work. Boatbuilding, with all its attendant labors, was not an easy vocation.
He spat as he joined them. Hulda did her best to ignore it.
“Lads.”
She was indeed dressed like a lad, some of Jute’s stolen clothing cut down to fit and with her hair tightly braided, so she took no offense. Looking into the old man’s face, which was deeply lined and frankly not too clean, she saw he had two different-colored eyes. Strange from birth, then.
“So you want to buy the Freya?”
Hulda sighed. Was not every second boat called Freya?
Garik gave her a look before treating Frode to a wide grin. “Ja, we do. And you promised you would make us a fair price.”
“Did I?”
“Ja, sure, the bunch of us young men just starting out, like I told you.”
“She needs a considerable amount of work.” Frode squinted at the vessel. And spat into the water.
No lie, Hulda thought.
“Needs a new rudder. New mast, as you can see. Repairs to the deck. There was a fire—”
“A fire!” Hulda exclaimed.
Frode glared at her. “Just a small one.”
Hulda began to say that she did not think it a good prospect for them. A picture of Quarrie MacMurtray flashed into her mind, face battered, eyes steady. Just the way he’d looked before she kissed him.
Days and days had passed, yet she swore she could still taste him on her lips.
“How long? To get it ready,” she asked.
Frode hemmed and hawed. He mumbled to himself. He spat some more. “The big repairs—not long. The minor ones—”
“We could help with those,” Garik said quickly. “Helje and I. And”—he gestured at Hulda—“you know I want to learn.”
“She was a swift boat, once,” Frode said. “Agile. Almost no draft. She would serve you well.”
“Can you have her ready in a fortnight?”
Frode turned and stared at Hulda. Behind his bi-colored eyes, she glimpsed a certain lack of focus. In his thoughts, only? Or was that madness?
She said, “The season moves swiftly. We have only so much time.”
“Ja,” he agreed. “Summer is fleeting.”
She stood there waiting while he pondered it, with the smell of the sea in her nostrils and urgency prodding her inside.
If he says he can ready the boat in a fortnight, she decided, I am in. If he says it will take longer, I will withdraw. Though the gods alone knew what she would do with herself then.
“Ja,” he said. “A fortnight.”
It felt as if Hulda’s world shifted. As if, indeed, she found herself balanced upon some great wheel—that of Freya’s chariot, perhaps—and she had to dance in order to keep her feet.
“If you help,” the old man added.
The door of the shed banged on its leather hinges. Frode’s son came out and headed for them.
As tall as his father he was, and twice as broad. A veritable ox of a man. He had light-brown hair and, as Hulda saw when he came close enough, two light-brown eyes.
“Bjarni,” Frode said, “these fellows are going to buy Freya. They will help us get her ready quickly, ja?”
“Ja, Faeir,” Bjarni said. He turned incredulous eyes on them one by one, lingering on Hulda’s face the longest.
“I am not saying it will be easy, mind,” Frode went on, and spat. “But Bjarni here is good for lifting.”
Hulda just bet her was. The name suited him, his being big as a bear.
“And I have the skill we need in my head, my hands. The three of you will do the grunt work, eh?” Frode continued.
“There may be others,” Garik said, “to have a share in the venture.”
“We still have to agree upon a price,” Hulda interjected. “If we are to supply labor, it should be less.”
“But there is the matter of time.” Frode eyed her. “I shall need to work day and night to finish in a fortnight.”
“Faeir—” Bjarni began.
“Hush, lad. We are doing business.” The old man squinted at the boat again and seemed to come to a conclusion. “She is doing no good moored there and would be better off about her adventures.” He named a price that made Hulda suck in her breath. One even she could afford.
“Agreed,” she, Garik, and Helje said all at once. At such a price, they could keep the venture among the three of them and no doubt share the spoils.
“Faeir,” Bjarni said again, more forcefully, his gaze fixed on Hulda, “she is very pretty, is she not?”
Old Frode stared at Hulda and seemed suddenly to tumble to the truth of her gender. The ensuing look on his face made Garik begin to laugh. Helje joined in and then they were all laughing.
A good beginning, Hulda acknowledged. Mayhap it would be a successful venture after all.