BOOK REPORT: "THE TOADS OF GRIMMERDALE" BY ANDRE NORTON

“The Toads of Grimmerdale”, (1973) by Andre Norton from The Book of Andre Norton (DAW Books) 1974

I RECALL READING THIS STORY 'BACK IN THE DAY', and ran across it recently. I’ve read a fair number of Norton’s  novels and short stories and find them enjoyable and engaging, both for her settings and in the way she moves her characters through the landscape, that I’ve discussed earlier in a Feb 4/19 post.

"Toads” is a fantasy story where magic is a force in the world, if faded by time and hidden by superstition and social taboo. The setting is medieval; there are “Holds” and “Lords”, and mercenaries with long swords and chain mail shirts. The story is set in a time following a long and bitter war where eastern invaders have recently been driven from the shores of High Hallack, on the Western Continent, leaving the countryside raw and torn, its people impoverished and suffering.  The world of “Toads” is the setting for a series novels Norton wrote under the Witch World title and is, a distant planet inhabited for centuries or millennia by humans (and others) who arrive there through ‘star gates’—artifacts created by an ancient, now extinct, civilization. The story has references to ruins and old roads, antique powers and “Old Ones”, as well as strange alien entities “which had no common meeting with her kind”, as the story’s central character, Hertha, grimly discovers.    

     The story opens with Hertha journeying across a bleak, midwinter landscape. She is alone and on foot. We learn she is pregnant and is making the difficult trek to the shrine of the goddess Gunnora to ask for her assistance.  She wants the goddess’s to help her carry her child to term. Her pregnancy was the result of a rape three months earlier, and even though she is a Lady with privilege and prestige, her pregnancy has brought shame to her brother, the dale's lord. He demanded  Hertha abort the child so he could save face. Instead she steals away in the night from her home, where she has lived all her life, never to return.

But Hertha has another reason in seeking favour with the goddess: she wants revenge upon the man who raped her and made her an exile from kin and hearth. She moves through the winter landscape, through deep snow and then along a windswept path that was free of ice and drifts. “It was very old, that road, one of the reminders to be found all across the dale land that her own people were late comers. Who had cut these ways for their own treading?” Thoughts of the recent war, of looted land and uprooted people, and how she came to leave Horla’s Hold are juxtaposed with images of stone carvings and structures from an ancient past whose meaning Hertha cannot begin to guess.

The element of magic is quickly introduced upon her arrival at Gunnora’s shrine when door opens, though no one is present to admit her. Once inside, the scents of flowers and herbs are redolent; it was “[a]s if she had, in that single step, passed from the sure death of mid-winter into the life of spring.”

We learn that Gunnora is an entity sympathetic to the “new comers” (humans), and seems to express her power through the natural world of growth and regeneration. As we learn later, the power of the Toads is alien in nature, cold and impenetrable and ancient, and is associated with the stone ruins and rocky landscape around the village of Grimmerdale. Both these ancient powers have an intelligence. In the story each communicates to Hertha, and while Gunnora seems motivated to help and heal, the motives of the Toads is less clear, though they seem to want to control or possess, or in some way ‘absorb’ the humans.

Arriving at Gunnora’s shrine, Hertha sees no one, but she hears a voice welcoming her and bidding her to enter and eat, and then to sleep. As she sleeps she dreams of her foster-mother, Elfreda, who guides her before the goddess who appears as light without any form. Her first wish for a safe birth for her child will be granted, but she is told she must find her own way in seeking revenge upon the man who raped her. As Elfreda says, “Vengeance is not of the Lady.” And so Hertha leaves Gunnora’s shrine and journeys to Grimmerdale where the Toads are rumored to have powers that will assist her in her dark mission of revenge. 

At this point, Norton introduces the character of Trystan, a soldier for hire who is seeking to make his fortune by taking control of a lord-less dale in the tumultuous period following the war’s end. He is recently returned from the siege at High Halleck’s port capital where Alizon invaders from the Eastern Continent were finally expelled. (East/West; well Norton likes to keep it simple. It was written during the cold war, after all!) He is in the company of Urre and Onsway, two drunkards, and like so many men at this time, they are falling into lives of dissipation and ruin. Interestingly, Urre was once heir to a hold, now destroyed in the fighting.

 
"There were many dales swept clean of people. The men were dead in battle, the women either fled inland if they were lucky, or else slaving for the invaders overseas—or dead also. …Yes, there had been a great shaking and leveling, sorting and spilling."

Urre and Onsway are examples of those who will not recover from war, or perhaps it is more that the conflict has revealed their true nature. By contrast, Trystan keeps his own counsel, listens and observes, and makes plans for the future. He says: “In such a time, a man with boldness, and a plan, could begin a new life.” The story centres around Hertha and Trystan, their meeting, and how they come to understand each other. Minor characters: a couple of innkeepers, a “pot boy", some “moon-eyed” villagers, and of course the toad-like creatures that trap the unwary with their dark magic—complete the story’s roster. Compelling central characters like Hertha and Trystan, with their youthful determination to achieve their goals: revenge for one; a dale lordship for the other, makes the reader interested in them. Will they succeed? Should they succeed? Are their goals worthy ones? In the tradition of a fantasy tale with a feudal setting, martial values and the aspirations of Trystan do not seem out of place. He contemplates gathering “…men like himself…rootless men who wanted roots in better circumstances than they had known. … One did not need a large war band to overawe masterless peasants.” He will take what he wants by force.  Today, we find such plans problematic, and Norton’s willingness to have The Strong Man take control of things is questionable (deciding who will lead exclusively by the strength of their sword arm), but in “Toads” one of Norton’s themes is being in control. For example, an individual needs to have control over their life, just as society needs to have order and stability to function.

The story is set in a time where war has destroyed much of the social order, and violence is an all-too-common fact of life. Men travel armed and women are protected by a thin veil of social norms that in Hertha’s case failed her; her rapist was not an enemy invader, but a soldier of her own country.
Trystan’s plan is to restore order to one small part of High Hallack, and by story’s end whether he will succeed and what type of lord he will become are open questions. However, we come to see him as disciplined and principled. He is not rash; he deliberates then acts. He is someone who is in control of his emotions. When a frightened Hertha attacks him, mistaking his attempts to aid her as a threat, he acts with proportionate force to subdue her and protect himself. And when he learns of her plot to give him over to the alien Toads, he is quick to forgive her: “‘Have done!’ He brought his fist down on the settle beside which he knelt. ‘Let us make an end to what is past. It is gone. To cling to this wrong or that, keep it festering in mind and heart, is to cripple one…’”. Trystan will not hold a grudge; he acts practically and fairly, and he acts with a sense of justice in mind. For example, he will not take over Nordendale as would an outlaw, brutally and with only pillage in mind, but more like a caretaker, operating within what social order remains. After their encounter with the Toads, Trystan elaborates on his plans to Hertha:

"Now there are masterless men in plenty, too restless after years of killing to settle back behind any plough. Some will turn outlaw readily, but with a half dozen of such at my back, I can take a dale which lies vacant of rule, such as this Nordendale. The people there need a leader. I am depriving none of lawful inheritance, but will keep the peace and defend it against outlaws—for there will be many such now."

Trystan’s use of force is his method of control—to protect himself as an individual and to counter the lawlessness rampant in the land. It is measured, tempered. He is a professional soldier. He has been a Master of Archers for his lord and fought in the war. He has killed. But it is clear that his actions are bound within a code of conduct; he sees the value of leading a disciplined life. Around him, societal control has broken down; men and women give into their passions and darker desires. The alien Toads control those who seek them in their stone temple. Hertha comes within their evil sphere of influence because her need for revenge overrides any other thought or consideration. She is not in control of herself.

After visiting the Toads, she leaves the stone circle, ‘marked’, for the aliens have altered her appearance, and changed her into an ugly, old woman. The Toads will grant her strongest wish—revenge on Trystan, who she thinks is her rapist. These entities manipulate and control others by forcing their will upon them—through hypnosis or some sort of mind control—and affecting changes in the environment, for example conjuring up snake-like creatures to attack Trystan, and altering Hertha's appearance.

On the other hand, the power of Gunnora is expressed only when a person is willing. The Goddess will not control the minds of those who come to her for help. For example, Hertha has a sachet of herbs she gathered at Gunnora’s shrine. She holds it to her breast as Trystan tells her of his hopes for their future. Like a Catholic holding a rosary, she offers a wordless prayer to Gunnora, in the hopes that what he is saying to her is true and will come to pass. The goddess’s powers are subtle and indirect, in contrast to the brute force of the Toads.
The theme of boundaries is one that Norton explores in many of her stories: what is acceptable and what is beyond the pale; what is common to all and what is alien, and to what degree one may cross over the boundary between them. Hertha’s character is interesting because we see her crossing a number of ‘boundaries’. She refuses to accept the edicts of her brother and will not be bound by a life of drudgery and shame within their hold. We see her test the boundary between what is human and what is alien. Hertha knows to visit Gunnora’s shrine from speaking with other women. While the Goddess’s powers are beyond human understanding, Gunnora is nevertheless part of the human world, and is seen as an  acceptable and beneficent entity. On the other hand, it is only through furtive conversations and warnings that Bertha learns of the existence of the Toads. They are alien and at a remove from the human world. Just how far removed, Hertha will discover.

An important theme in Norton’s stories is male/female roles in society, and in “Toads” she examines them within a feudal setting. Even though Hertha was born into wealth and privilege, her life is circumscribed because she is a woman. On the road to Nordendale, she muses she has few practical skills useful in the wider world, having learned instead “those not of the common sort, rather the distilling of herbs, the making of ointments, the fine sewing of a lady’s teaching. She could read, write, sing a stave—none of these arts conducive to the earning of one’s bread.”  By contrast, men have many roles, and they hold the political, economic and military levers of power in society. Women have household duties and are subject to their husbands’ edicts such as the one Trystan broaches with her: “‘There is an old custom. If a man draws a maid from dire danger, he has certain rights—‘”. ⁺ Though Trystan will not use this "right" (to have sex with her) and take advantage of Hertha.

But there are also areas specifically for women, such as the worship of Gunnora and the “Wise Women” tradition. Wise Women appear to be healers and mendicants; knowledgeable in plant and herbal lore, and it is perhaps the fact that women have so few roles in society, so few venues for expression or redress that some are tempted to seek power through the dark arts like Hertha does, invoking the inhuman powers of the Toads.

     By the story’s end we are left with Hertha and Trystan arriving at an understanding. He will escort her to the safety of the Wise Women’s enclave at Lethendale while he journeys to Nordendale to establish his hold. He will return in a few weeks to ask Hertha for her hand in marriage. As a woman of High Hallack, Hertha will never be a marshall or dale lord, or control lands and riches. In the context of her society and times, she will be wife to Trystan and mother to her soon to be born child. Nevertheless, despite the imbalance in gender roles, she will achieve equity with Trystan. He says: “‘I think we are greatly alike, lady. So much so that we could walk the same road, to the profit of both.’” And for the second time as they spoke, she studies his face “…determined to make sure if he meant that. What she read there—she caught her breath, her hands rising to her breast, pressing hard upon the talisman.”

The theme of openness and transparency is another one that Norton examines. Hertha’s face is made ugly by the Toads to ensure she will lead Trystan to them (they will not change her back if she fails to do their bidding.) It masks not only her identity and her motivations, but it also makes her alien to Trystan. It is only when her true face is revealed that Trystan can see and understand her motivations and actions, just as she sees in his face “…that this indeed was the great moving wish of his life…” (to become a fair and benevolent dale lord). The Toads' own mask-like faces disguise the alienness of their thoughts and desires. And interestingly, the soldier who raped Hertha months earlier, whose face she never saw, and who she imagines as the embodiment of evil, is in effect ‘given a face’ by Trystan, who shows her how the now-dead youth was like so many after the war who were damaged in mind and spirit. The image of a monster she had held in her mind for such a long time dissipates as she realizes her rapist was simply a foolish, youth, self-destructive and lost.

This ‘unmasking’ of her attacker removes any remaining hatred of him, and she forgives him, just as Trystan forgives her for leading him into the trap set by the Toads. (Hertha had a change of heart, ultimately rescuing Trystan from the Toads by calling upon the power of Gunnora to aid them.)  In Norton’s stories, forgiveness and redemption are strong themes upon which many of her outcomes turn. And that’s not a bad way to end things.*

 *Oh yeah, they get married and live happily ever after. Hey, it's a romance, after all!