by Kim Wilkins
And the cry went up: ‘Aye.’ Every one of them. Some appeared more reluctant than others, some still gave Rowan dark looks, while others saved their dark looks for Heath and had warm eyes for her, but they all said aye.
Heath had just slipped his arm around Rowan’s waist when the door to the roundhouse burst open, letting in a blast of damp air. Standing there wearing a crown of blackberry twigs was Rathcruick of the Woodlanders. He was accompanied by a young man Rowan recognised as his son Carnax, and both of them were drenched through. At the sight of him, a jolt of heat went to Rowan’s heart.
‘What nonsense is this?’ he cried. ‘I have been standing beyond this door listening as you swore allegiance to this … Thyrslander –’ he indicated Heath with a contemptuous flick of his hand and a withering tone, ‘– when the young woman is not his heir at all. She is mine.’
Confusion. Hostility. Heath drew his sword.
Rowan had to speak. ‘Be quiet!’ she shouted, though whether it was to Rathcruick or the rest of the assembly, she didn’t know. ‘I have no Woodlander blood in me. I draw my lineage from Connacht.’
Rathcruick strode close and grasped her wrist hard enough to bruise it, pulling her close and peering at the tattoo on her cheek. ‘What is this?’ he demanded. ‘Dardru, what is this?’
‘I am not Dardru. I have never been Dardru. She is dead and if she is blessed by the gods, then her spirit has long since flown my body to make peace in the afterlife.’ Rowan didn’t know if this was true, or if some echo of Dardru’s spirit still fluttered inside her.
‘Can you not still open the crossings?’ Rathcruick demanded. ‘That is Dardru’s ability, not yours.’
She shook him off violently. ‘It is mine now. And I owe you nothing for it. You took my childhood from me.’
Rathcruick turned to the assembly. ‘You would trust Heath over me? One of your own? They say they will throw out the trimartyr raiders, yet they are both of Netelchester, a trimartyr kingdom! They say they will not subject you to Bluebell’s rule, yet Rowan’s mother is her sister! You have all been duped.’ He glanced at Rowan. ‘Even my daughter has been duped.’
‘I am not your daughter!’ Rowan roared. ‘Is this all you have brought to the assembly? Confusion and doubt? Have you no concern for Bradsey, where most of the Ærfolc live? It is not your village that is under attack from brutal and pious raiders. It is not your people being burned in their houses while their murderers pray to Maava. No, you hide between shadows and crossings, and have left us exposed. If you have nothing useful to offer us, then you should leave my father’s house, my father’s village, immediately.’
Rathcruick and Carnax stood staring at her. Rowan tried to imagine what Bluebell would say to them, and decided she would swear and wave her sword. So instead, Rowan said, ‘Nobody here is listening to you any more.’
Niamma echoed her. ‘Yes, go away. Our decision has been made and you were not part of it.’
Others began to jeer, and Rathcruick, standing in a puddle of dripping rainwater, turned his eyes to Rowan and lifted a crooked index finger. ‘You will regret this,’ he said. ‘I will make sure of it.’
Rowan felt the chill of his curse, but deliberately kept her appearance calm. ‘If all you have is trouble and threats, then you are not welcome among us. Leave.’
Rathcruick nodded, grasped Carnax’s shoulder, and stalked from the roundhouse, leaving the door open. The rain hammered down, turning the ground to mud. A slight woman near the back of the room hurried to close the door. Murmurs followed in his wake.
‘Well,’ said Heath, forcing brightness. ‘Let us celebrate our new unity.’
Rathcruick was forgotten, as arrangements were made for firelight, feast and good mountain ale.
Five
For Bluebell, coming home meant returning to her greatest love: Blicstowe, city of her birth, stronghold of the kingdom of Ælmesse. Its name meant ‘the bright place’, because the vast ruins behind the city were made of gleaming white stone. The ruins dated to a time before time. The size and formation of the heavy stone – the arches and wide concourse – could only have been built by the hands of giants. In front of it, on the flat hilltop, stood the hall of her forefathers. Her hall. The mightiest in Thyrsland, long and dark, with its low thatched roof and carved beams and gable ends. These she could see from the plain, but the rest of her family’s compound was hidden behind a high wattle-and-daub fence, which separated it from the muddy alleys and teeming streets of the city.
She rode Torr hard, and Hyld could not keep up, so had returned to lope alongside Ash and Sighere, a few miles behind. The rest of Bluebell’s hearthband waited overnight in a village an hour from Blicstowe. She wouldn’t have the families of the dead see them ride through the gates, their numbers so diminished. Rather, she intended to visit every widow and widower first, and pass on the terrible news: that their loved ones had died in service to the mighty kingdom of Ælmesse.
Bluebell rather suspected the mightiness of the kingdom may be cold comfort, but she did not have subtlety in language as her sisters did. What she would bring to each sombre meeting, though, was her own honest sorrow.
But before that grim task, she intended to prise herself out of her clothes and bathe, so she could appear before the bereaved as a king, not a filthy traveller.
Less than an hour later, in her bower, in a deep bronze tub of rapidly cooling water, Bluebell sank her head under and let her long golden hair float about her. She became aware of a scrabbling noise and sat up, water streaming off her. Two paws on the bath’s edge. Her old dog Thrymm.
‘Hello. Hello, my lovely girl,’ she said, rubbing the dog’s silvery head. Thrymm thumped her tail wildly. Where the dog was, her husband was surely close behind. ‘Snowy?’ she called.
Then he was there, tall and fair and smiling down at her. ‘I can see your tits, my king.’
‘The most powerful tits in all of Thyrsland,’ she said, puffing out her chest.
Skalmir knelt next to the bath and she put her wet arms around his neck and buried her face in his shoulder while Thrymm tried to lick them both. She thought of the homecomings denied her dead thanes, and released him. A servant came in to pour more hot water into the bath, then left quietly.
‘You have the water too hot,’ Skalmir said. ‘Your skin has gone red.’
This was Snowy’s way: to fuss over little ailments. Put on a cloak, you’ll be cold. Careful you don’t trip over that doorstep. Don’t sit so close to the fire. Bluebell led an army. Shedding blood was her business.
‘I like it hot,’ she said, indulging his protective instincts. ‘It scours off the smell.’
He sat back on his haunches. ‘Why did you come home through the rear gate?’ he asked. ‘No word you were coming. No time to prepare a parade.’
‘Half my hearthband is dead,’ she said simply, and he knew enough of her to know what a devastating blow this was. He reached into her bath and found her hand, withdrawing it from the water to kiss her scarred knuckles.
‘You have the heavy task of telling their families, then?’
‘As soon as I am dressed. And then, my husband, I am going to bed naked with you and you will make me forget everything.’
‘I shall do my best.’
Bluebell shook off his hand. ‘What have I missed?’
‘My dogs killed the kitchen cat. They’ve been sent to your Uncle Robert’s.’
‘Uncle Robert. All the half-wanted members of my family end up there. Did Gytha have her spawn?’ Gytha, her best spear woman, had been too heavily pregnant to travel. If she hadn’t been, Bluebell would have sent her to Marvik. She had dodged death as had her unborn child. Bluebell had left her in charge of the standing guard of Blicstowe instead.
‘Yes, a girl named Bless.’
‘Bless? That isn’t a name! It’s what you say to a sneeze.’
‘She is determined to keep the name as she says she feels so blessed by her safe delivery.’
‘Bless,’ B
luebell muttered. ‘What a stupid name.’
‘The standing guard will be glad you are back. Gytha has been … distracted.’
Bluebell sank up to her neck in the water again. ‘Babies make women into idiots. Clumsy idiots.’ All the talk of children sparked her memory. ‘Rowan sent you a gift,’ she said. ‘It’s in the bottom of my pack over there.’
Skalmir stood and went to fetch the pack, bringing it back beside the tub to unbuckle it. Bluebell bent over the edge of the bath, dripping, reached out and began to rummage for the flights Rowan had made for Snowy, with the colourful feathers of a wild and rare Bradsey pheasant she had shot especially. But her hand did not find the gifts, tied together with twine. Instead, her fingers struck something hard and cold.
Horrified, she withdrew the bogle axe.
‘This can’t be,’ she breathed.
‘What is it?’ Snowy asked.
She climbed to her feet. ‘One of the Wildwalkers must have returned it to my pack,’ she said, although she knew this could not be true. She had seen the axe embedded in a beam as she rode away.
‘Bluebell?’
‘It’s a curse. Or a charm. Something made by the Ærfolc to vex me. To make something unpredictable happen.’ Maybe one of them had followed her, slipped it among her things while she slept rough on the side of the road one night. She hadn’t time to return all the way to Bradsey to get rid of the thing again. ‘I’ll have it packaged up and run back with a courier,’ she said, shoving it back in her pack. ‘While the Wildwalkers are still at the assembly.’
‘Should I be worried?’ Snowy asked.
She smiled. ‘You’re married to me. You should always be worried.’
It took only an hour to find all the widows and widowers and tell them. An hour of her life packed with grinding sorrow that seemed to crush her bones to powder. She was surely two inches smaller when she opened the door of the state room at the back of her hall, and found Gytha there, half asleep in a chair, a baby suckling at her breast.
‘Gytha?’ Bluebell said.
Gytha roused. ‘Word got around you were back,’ she said. ‘I knew you’d turn up here eventually.’
Bluebell advanced, peering down at the child. ‘Is that your baby?’
‘Her name is Bless.’ An expression of idiotic devotion came over Gytha’s face.
Bluebell shook her head. ‘She’s very …’ Bluebell couldn’t think of an adjective so she moved on. ‘How was the birth?’
‘The most horrific thing I have ever had to do and I will never ever do it again. I would rather go to war. I want to go back to war. Soon.’
‘You know how to prevent a pregnancy.’
‘None of our methods are failsafe except abstinence,’ Gytha said, prising the babe off her bosom to reveal a nipple the size and colour of a chestnut. She pulled her tunic back down. ‘Bluebell, I am still ripped and bleeding down there. I haven’t slept more than three hours together in nearly four weeks. How do women do it more than once?’
‘They come over all gooey as you have and think it’s worth it.’
‘I’m not gooey. I am ready to ride at your side again … when my downstairs heals.’
‘You are not riding again for a year. You need to be near your … Bless.’
‘But with the hearthband so diminished? Who is left?’
‘I lost five. Without you I’ll be down to six, but I’ll train some new thanes. Those strapping brothers who came up from the south, maybe. And Frida, the one who wears her hair very short. She has a strong arm and quick feet. Sal can take Kara’s place …’ Bluebell trailed off, remembering Kara’s husband’s reaction to news of her death. I should have protected her. Bowed legs and eyes that didn’t work right; he couldn’t protect anyone. The loss of a spouse in war was harder for men. She thought about Snowy worrying her bathwater was too hot.
‘Do not think less of me because I have a child,’ Gytha said. ‘I am ready and willing to fight.’ Then the infant made a noise – it sounded like a cat being stepped on – and Gytha cradled it over her shoulder with a protective hand on the back of its tiny head. ‘Shush, little one. Shush,’ she said, all talk of riding and fighting forgotten.
‘Take it home,’ Bluebell said. ‘Put it to bed. And get some sleep yourself.’
‘Don’t think less of me, my lord,’ Gytha said again, with less conviction, climbing to her feet. ‘It was a baby came out of my body, not my brain or my courage.’ She left, closing the door behind her.
Bluebell returned to sit at the long oak table. It hadn’t been dusted in some time, and collections of maps were jumbled all over it. Her father had always kept it neat, but then he had a love of order and civic responsibility that Bluebell hadn’t inherited. She did what she had to, of course, but analysing property borders and listening to neighbouring hunters complain about each other was not interesting to her. She had delegated much of that responsibility to Snowy, and sometimes Ash, who could at least read fluently. Bluebell was suspicious of reading: the trimartyrs loved their complicated manuscripts, and especially loved using them to enforce laws that had never existed before they were written down and suddenly became incontrovertible. Wengest’s preacher, Nyll, had once told her that his pen had more authority than her blade: she had responded, ‘Not if I cut off your fucking hands.’
The door opened and at first Bluebell assumed Gytha had forgotten something and was returning, but instead of the burly rectangle of her best spearman in the doorway it was the slight frame of her sister Ash.
‘You got here quickly.’
Hyld came tearing in then, and Bluebell rubbed her ears.
‘I thought you might need me. You carried a heavy burden today,’ Ash said, approaching.
Bluebell shrugged. ‘A king’s duty.’
Ash smiled, as she always did when Bluebell referred to herself as a king. Bluebell answered to ‘my queen’ as well, and was happy for people to call her anything, including a bully, a bitch and a brute, as long as they knew she was stronger than them.
‘I don’t want embraces. I don’t want pity,’ Bluebell said. ‘I am too raw with it. Once I have tidied this …’ She swept her arm over the table. ‘I am so tired, Ash.’
‘I will tidy this for you. I know where everything goes. Only listen to me for five minutes because I have something important I must tell you.’ This last came out all on one breath, so Bluebell knew that Ash was nervous about something.
She frowned. ‘Go on.’
‘Bluebell, I am in love.’
Bluebell hid a smirk. ‘In love? With whom? Do I know him?’
‘You do. He is much beloved of you.’
‘Surely you don’t intend to steal my husband? You will have to join quite a long queue.’
Ash’s brow creased almost imperceptibly, as she wondered whether Bluebell was joking or not. ‘No, I – it’s Sighere.’
Bluebell waited. Silent.
‘He is terrified that you will be angry with him. I’m … I must admit I am terrified for myself, but the heart knows its path and I … Are you angry?’
Bluebell smiled. ‘I’ve known for ages, you idiot.’
Ash looked shocked rather than amused. ‘Then why did you say nothing?’
‘I wanted to see how long it would take Sighere to tell me and I am perfectly ashamed of him, sending you in to do the work alone.’
‘He doesn’t know I’m here. The reason I came to see you was to ask you if he could have two weeks away with me. Away from his duties. I want to return to the sea, Bluebell. I want to find my magic. I do not want to be without him, or without protection.’
Bluebell’s first instinct was to shout no. Five thanes dead, another suckling a baby with a name so stupid Bluebell couldn’t even say it in her head, three new thanes to recruit and train. She needed Sighere now more than at any time. But yet, here was her sister. Dear, obedient, loving Ash, who never asked for anything. After the emotional turmoil of the day, the thought of her sister’s happiness appealed t
o her vastly.
‘Take your two weeks,’ Bluebell said, and felt a stir of regret.
Ash’s eyes widened. She could barely contain her smile. ‘Really?’
‘Come back to me with all your magic restored, so you can go on serving your kingdom. And bring Sighere back with you. You will both have work to do. Lots of work. Very, very hard and dirty work. Most unpleasant.’
Ash impulsively squeezed Bluebell in a hug, then stood back. ‘We look forward to serving you, my king,’ she said, then turned on her heel and dashed off, clearly having forgotten her promise to tidy the maps for Bluebell.
Bluebell half-heartedly began picking through them, then shoved them away. Today was not a day for such tasks. Today she had been a king until it hurt. She was going to go home and be a lover, then sleep with her husband and her dogs until long past cock crow.
Ash stood at the edge of the stableyard, eyes fixed on a point beyond the hedges and the old yew tree. Reaching with her mind …
‘Ash,’ Sighere said, appearing at her shoulder. ‘The stablehands have our horses ready.’
She turned, sighing. ‘I had hoped Wraith might come,’ she said. ‘This is the first time he hasn’t. If only Bluebell had let me take him to Harrow’s Fell. Perhaps he has left me forever.’
‘Warriors do not like phantom horses, Ash,’ Sighere said, gently lifting her chin. ‘When Bluebell brought you back from your wanderings, you looked like a ghost. Now you have colour in your cheeks, flesh on your bones, hair on your head …’ Here he moved his hand to stroke her thick, dark hair. ‘You are a woman now, and that … horse of yours knows that you and he are no longer formed of the same substance.’
Ash smiled up at him, and hoped he couldn’t see the dull panic she repressed. Her magic was waning … had waned. Was Sighere right? Had happiness and company driven it out? Instead, she said, ‘Can you believe Bluebell said yes?’