Odinn's Child Read Online Free PDF Page B

seems to be an explanation for what happened in the events leading up to my mother's sudden death, including the red rain: she had caught a bad chill when she stayed out in the thunderstorm, then failed to change into dry clothes, and the chill developed into a mortal fever. Her insistence that her bedding was burned may have been because she feared that she had caught some sort of a plague and — if she had the medical knowledge that I was later to find among the priests and brithemain in Ireland — it was normal practice to burn the bedclothes of the deceased to prevent the illness spreading. As for the red rain, I observed when I was in the lands of the Byzantine emperor how on certain days the raindrops had a pinkish tinge and contained so many grains of fine sand that if you turned your face to the sky and opened your mouth the rain drops tasted gritty and did not slake your thirst. Or again, when I was employed at Knut's court in London, a south wind once brought a red rain which left red splotches on the ground like dried blood, as if the sky had spat from bleeding gums. Also I have heard how, in countries where the earth belches fire and smoke, there can be a red rain from the sky — and, Adam of Bremen should note, there are places in Iceland where holes and cracks in the ground vomit fire and smoke and steam, and even exude a bright crimson sludge. Yet the people of Frodriver will swear on any oath, whether Christian or pagan, that genuine blood, not tinted water, fell on them from the sky that day. They also affirm that in some mysterious way Thorgunna and the red rain were linked. My mother came from the Orcades, they point out, and as far as the Icelanders are concerned any woman who comes from there — in particular one as mysterious and taciturn as my mother — is likely to be a volva. And what is a volva? It is a witch.
    Perhaps witch is not quite the right word. Neither Saxon English nor Latin nor the Norman's French, the three languages most used here in the scriptorium, convey the precise meaning of the word volva as the pagan Norse use it. Latin comes closest, with the notion of the Sibyl who can look into the future, or a seeress in English. Yet neither of these terms entirely encompasses what a volva is. A volva is a woman who practises seidr, the rite of magic. She knows incantation, divination, mysticism, trance — all of these things and more, and builds up a relationship with the supernatural. There are men who practise seidr, the seidrmanna, but there are not nearly so many men as there are women who have the knowledge and the art, and for the men the word magician would apply. When a volva or seidrman is about to die, there are signs and portents, and the red rain at Frodriver is a surer sign that my mother had seidr powers than any silly stories about love potions she used on my father.
And this is confirmed by what happened next.
    Early the following morning my mother's coffin was lashed to the pack saddle on the back of the biggest horse in Thorodd's stables, and a little procession set out for Skalhot, where my mother had asked to be buried. Thorodd stayed behind on the farm as he had to oversee the rest of the haymaking, but he sent four of the farm labourers to manage the pack train. They took the usual route southward over the moorland. The going was quite easy as the moor was dried out at the end of summer and the usually boggy patches could carry the weight of the horses, so they made good progress. The only delays were caused when my mother's coffin kept slipping sideways and threatening to tumble to the ground. A coffin is an awkward load to attach to a pack saddle. If slung on one side like an enormous wooden pannier, you need a counterweight on the opposite side of the horse to keep the load in balance. The men did not have a sufficiently heavy counterweight to balance my mother's coffin, and in the first half-hour the saddle itself kept slipping sideways, forcing the escort to