| Once upon a time in the North Country lived a peaceful neatherd, Humfrith, and his beautiful wife, Summerwithe. He tended his cattle, milked them each day, slaughtered and restored them as required. Summerwithe would mind the bee-skeps, make cheese and butter and strong honey-mead. Humfrith traded their produce with his neighbours for what they needed and paid his scots in kind. They were very happy together but as the years wore on there was just one cloud in their sky – her womb never quickened. This was a great sorrow to Summerwithe in particular. |
| After many years of waiting she decided to go to the Great Ones’ Hall with gifts and seek remedy from them. She took with her their best cheeses and finest mead as gifts for their favour. She was received graciously by the Lady and received her blessing. However, she fell under the eye of their Lord, Gromscatha, who found her pleasing. |
| Shortly after her return from the Great Hall Gromscatha came to visit. They were greatly honoured and awed by his visit, for he had never come to them before and made him welcome. However, when he crudely told them that he had come to grant her wish for a child, and the means by which it would be achieved they were both horrified. Humfrith would have fought to the death to protect his beloved wife, for all that he was outmatched in size, weapons and skill, but Gromscatha, as his Lord, had his bondsman’s oath and knew his True-name. Thus he was rendered powerless to act against him and compelled to slink off to the barn for the night where he lay weeping with rage, frustration and shame. |
| In the morning Gromscatha left without a word, not even troubling to leave a guesting gift and was seen no more in Humfrith’s valley for many years after. Meanwhile Summerwithe’s womb did indeed quicken. At first she hoped that it was the result of the Lady’s blessing and the child would be Humfrith’s but as she grew ever greater she realised that the father must be Gromscatha.
The birth was difficult as it ever is when the Great Ones father their children upon women of the lesser folk. Humfrith paced outside the house, as men do at these time, while the wise-women of the valley attended Summerwithe. Eventually one of them came to the door to tell him that there was nothing for it but they must cut her to bring forth the child. He begged them to forget the child and save her life but they told him that if they did not get the child out of her she would die anyway. So they cut her and brought forth the huge child, but try as they might they could not save Summerwithe. As she lay bleeding out her life she took Humfrith’s hand and bade him promise her that he would look after her child, love him and bring him up as he would his own. |
| It was no easy thing that she asked of him, for his first thought was to dash out the brains of this bawling infant, this wife-killer, on the floor of the dwelling where happiness dwelt no more. However, he held in his heart his beloved’s last wish of him, and so listened while the wise-women showed him how to feed the child by dipping a cloth in a panikin of milk and giving it to him to suck, and other advice on the care of a babe. Eventually he began to see that not only was this child the spawn of the hated Lord Gromscatha but it was also all he had left of his love, Summerwithe and in time came to love him as if indeed he had been his own. In return he was rewarded as the child grew with features that favoured his mother more than his natural father. However, it soon became apparent that he would grow tall – unusually tall for one of the Common Folk. When he was old enough to be curious Humfrith told him the tale of his birth but in truth he seemed little interested. |
| He grew into a fine young man, tall and straight. He helped his adopted father with his herds and helped him with all those chores which Summerwithe had done and that he now needs must do himself. Together they became fine cheese-makers and made good butter. They made mead to, although it was never as good as Summerwithe’s. He took mostly after his mother in looks, only his stature and somewhat beetling brows betrayed his inheritance from his father. There was one strange thing about the boy: he never uttered a word. This seemed not a lack of capacity on his part – he could understand well enough,was quick to learn and could communicate simple things by signs – he simply never spoke. |
| So things went for many years until one day in Thrimilchmonath Lord Gromscatha came striding up the valley. Whether he one day thought to discover what had come of his night with Summerwithe or whether word had come to him by chance through some loose tongued neighbour, Humfrith never knew. However, he strode up to their dwelling in the early evening and demanded they come out to greet him. At first Humfrith came out alone but Gromscatha seemed to know that there was someone else and eventually the boy too came forth. Gromscatha looked him up and down and nodded. He pronounced him as his son and said he would return with him to his hall. The boy shook his head and began to turn and run but Gromscatha was on him in an instant and struck him a mighty blow with his fist that knocked him to the ground senseless. Bending down, he grabbed the boy by his shirt front and made to sling him over his shoulder and carry him off. |
| Once more Humfrith was forced to stand by as Gromscatha abused a loved one, but he was older and wiser now and suppressing his anguish he summoned instead some cunning. “My Lord,” he said, “surely the hour is late for you to set out on your return. I would not be doing my duty as your oathman were I not to offer you the hospitality of my own humble hall this night. Meanwhile, I will talk some sense into the lad and ensure he understands what is right. My head upon it.” Gromscatha grumbled a little but saw that Humfrith spoke sense and, though muttering that his head was indeed upon it, ducked his own head and entered Humfrith’s dwelling. Humfrith sat him in his own seat – a little small for his bulk but the best accommodation available, while Humfrith went down to his cellar to find food and drink. He returned with some bread, butter and cheese, along with a small barrel of mead that he set upon the table and tapped for his guest. This special mead was the last brew that Summerwithe had ever made. Humfrith had kept it against some special occasion and had never broached the cask so it had had years to ferment and grow stronger and richer in flavour. |
| Gromscatha ignored the food but reached eagerly for the barrel and drew forth the drinking horn from his belt. Now Gromscatha’s drinking horn was famous throughout the North Country for it could double the volume of any liquid put into it. So Gromscatha poured a draught that seemed too little to overflow the horn but did so and took a cautious gulp, as if he feared the quality of anything he might drink in such a low dwelling. Immediately, his visage was split by an enormous grin as he drained his horn and poured another – this time with more care over spillage. This too he drained with great gusto, reaching for the tap once more. So it went on through the dark hours of the short spring night night. Gromscatha made a poor guest, for he ate no food and had little conversation – and what little he had was for the most part disagreeable or simply outrageous flyting – but he attacked the cask with great relish, doubling its contents each time with his wondrous drinking horn. |
| Dawn found the barrel empty, propped on wedges, fetched by Humfrith, to obtain its last bounty, and Gromscatha, face down upon the table, snoring cavernously. Humfrith felt he had broken no oath – it was no part of a bondsman’s duty to save a Lord from his own appetites. Humfrith closed all the shutters so no light would penetrate the house and beckoned to the boy who had sat all this while quietly in the corner. |
| “Lad,” said Humfrith, “Do you want to be this Lord’s son?” The young man shook his head vigorously. “Well, if I were you I would leave right now and get as far away from here before he wakes up.” The boy hesitated a moment looking at the man who had been his father in word and deed all these years. “Of course, if my Lord’s acknowledged son were to ask me to come with him, then I’d have no choice but to do so.” The boy beckoned to him and Humfrith grinned, picked up the bread and cheese his Lord had spurned and followed. When he got to the door, however, the boy stopped and went back to where the sleeping giant lay. His weapon belt hung on the back of the chair and the boy grabbed it. He drew the langasaex and for a moment Humfrith thought he might slay Gromscatha as he slept. Perhaps he thought of it but he was a well-brought-up lad who knew that kin-slaying was wrong and never had a good outcome. He simply thrust it through his own belt, and handed the longsword to his father, then he picked up the horn from where it lay on the table. Humfrith shrugged – who was he to interfere in the inheritance matters of his lord’s family. |
| The two headed up to the pasture and calling for his dogs Humfrith and his son rounded up the aurochs and headed up the valley, following secret trails that only he knew, while using his skill and arts to obscure their trail. |