by Kim Wilkins
Thorkel had tilted his head, pointed to his ears. Skalmir understood the non-verbal question: Are you deaf? One simple nod and the question was resolved, and nobody expected him to listen or answer any more.
Now the wound on his head had scabbed over fully, his bruises had turned yellow and his ribs only hurt if he moved suddenly or stretched too far. All around him, though, were far less fortunate men. Infections ran wild, and the close, smoky air of the infirmary was filled with the groans of men feverish and in pain. Even though these were the men who had invaded his wife’s city – a thought that made him sick with sorrow – he could not help but feel pity.
Thorkel came to him that morning to check on him, and seemed pleased with his head wound. He chattered the whole time, under his breath, not expecting to be heard. With a hand under Skalmir’s elbow, he encouraged him to stand.
Gingerly, Skalmir stood. Thorkel stood back, spread his arms and nodded at Skalmir to do the same.
Skalmir did, sucking in his breath at the pull of pain across his ribs.
Thorkel bent over. Skalmir tried, but released a shout. Thorkel quickly reached for him and drew him upright, then lifted Skalmir’s arms up until he read the pain in his face.
He released Skalmir’s arms, said something and pointed at the floor. Wait here. Skalmir waited. Thorkel wove between mattresses to the corner of the barracks, where he had taken over chests and dressers with his medical instruments and supplies: bandages and potions and salves and the fearsome bone saw. He returned a few moments later with a bucket of putrid, dirty bandages, and a second empty bucket. Handing them to Skalmir, he mimed washing them. Thorkel was too busy with sick men to wash bandages himself.
Skalmir nodded.
Thorkel pointed to the door, and Skalmir took the buckets and slipped outside.
The fresh air, after the stench and smoke of the infirmary, was welcome. He took great lungfuls of it. The day was clear and cool, the distant sun too weak to dry the mud of yesterday’s rain. Skalmir set the bandages down by the bench that ran alongside the outer wall of the barracks, and took the empty bucket to the well.
This was his first opportunity to see the new Blicstowe. Hakon and Willow had raised flags all over the city. The raven and the triangle, stark black against undyed cotton, flying in the stiff autumn breeze. His instinct was to run, but armed soldiers stood in groups on every corner, and the gates would be manned. Could he walk past and out of the city without notice, injured as he was? In the city, he was only one traitorous whisper away from being revealed as Bluebell’s husband. Skalmir kept his head down and slunk past the soldiers as quickly as he could. The village square was eerily quiet. Citizens of Blicstowe were too afraid to leave their houses. A group of four ice-men joked and laughed in one corner. Skalmir went to the well and hung his bucket on the hook. Letting it down was easy; hauling it up again agonising. Nobody noticed him or called out to him. He returned to the barracks, sat on the bench, and pulled the first bandage out of the bucket.
A whimper.
Skalmir glanced up. Standing twenty yards off, looking mournful and hungry, was Thrymm.
Skalmir opened his mouth to call her, but then remembered he was supposed to be deaf and dumb. Instead, he patted his leg, and Thrymm ran gratefully towards him, shoving her big head against Skalmir’s belly and wagging her tail furiously. Skalmir scratched her head vigorously, almost in tears at finding love amid these frightening circumstances. He leaned over and whispered in her ear that she was a good girl, that he had missed her. At length, she stopped licking him and sat at his feet protectively, head on her paws. Skalmir pulled out the first bandage and dunked it in the water. Blood smoked out of it. He scrubbed it against itself, then wrung it out and plopped it next to him. He continued like this for the rest of the bandages, then tipped out the filthy water and returned to the well for fresh water to rinse in. Thrymm trotted behind him.
When he returned to the bench, Thorkel was waiting for him. Skalmir slowed his feet, wondering if Thrymm’s presence would draw suspicion. But Thorkel was simply eating a bowl of oats in the weak sunshine. Thorkel nodded at him, and Skalmir sat down and continued his work.
Thrymm whimpered at Thorkel’s knee and Thorkel talked to her in his soft, musical voice. He took another spoonful of his meal then put the half-full bowl on the ground for Thrymm to finish.
Of course. She must have been so hungry. Skalmir couldn’t help himself smiling at Thorkel, who grinned in return and said something. Skalmir neither knew nor cared what it was: any man who knew how to treat a hungry dog was a good man, regardless of which side of the mountains he came from.
They sat together for a while, the three of them. Skalmir rinsing bandages, Thorkel tying them over the high beams of the eaves to dry, Thrymm happily following him up and down the building. A gusty wind picked up and the bandages fluttered like streamers. They reminded Skalmir of his wedding day, and thoughts of where Bluebell was, how she must be feeling, crowded his head like shadows.
Then there was a crash and a clatter, and Skalmir jumped and looked around.
Thorkel had knocked one of the buckets over by accident. That was all.
Except it wasn’t all, because now Thorkel was looking at him curiously, clearly wondering how a deaf man had heard the noise.
Skalmir quickly glanced away, his heart thudding. Thorkel said nothing, continued hanging out the bandages until they were all done. Then, with a few kind words to Thrymm, he ushered Skalmir inside.
The infirmary was too warm, claustrophobic. Skalmir realised his whole body was tense, waiting for what would come next. His broken ribs hurt from being contracted in anticipation.
But nothing happened. Thorkel indicated Skalmir should return to his bed, and then he went about his rounds. Skalmir could hear Thrymm whining at the door, but forced himself to ignore it.
At length, Thorkel went to the door himself and let Thrymm in. A few shouts of pleasure went up around the room, injured raiders reaching their hands out to pat her. Thrymm warily sniffed at all of them, eventually settling between Skalmir’s bed and the bed next to his, where a meaty man who had lost his arm used his remaining hand to rub at her ears desperately, as if clinging to any small joy he could find.
Thorkel moved past, giving Skalmir and smile and a nod.
Could it be Thorkel hadn’t realised Skalmir had heard the bucket fall? He tried to relax, but the itch of unease would not go away.
The old healer knew he wasn’t deaf. He was absolutely sure.
Maava’s silence was acute.
Willow had not heard His sweet voice or that of His angels since she had sat on Bluebell’s throne. Days flew by. Hakon disappeared from dawn to dark, positioning and repositioning his soldiers, commandeering food and other supplies, setting up the ominous pyres on every street corner, threatening citizens to get information about the home guard, then rounding up those soldiers and putting them to the blade. Willow put herself in charge of converting the citizens of Blicstowe, bringing women in with their children and spitting stories of Maava to them until the little ones cried and the mothers promised to forsake their heathen gods, if Willow would leave their children be.
She saw herself reflected in the eyes of one little girl on one occasion. Her pale plain face, her hard gaze. It made her flinch. She never looked at herself in a mirror, and cared little for her appearance. A plait, a scarf, a grey dress. She hadn’t realised her cheeks had hollowed, that she looked monstrous, like something left outside too long in moonlight. No wonder the children were frightened.
Well, they all ought to be frightened. Not only the children.
Yet the angels who had sung her way to this victory had now grown quiet. Maava’s presence, which had seemed so close that it might almost break through the shining veil between them, had cooled. A silence had inhabited her. The surprising horror of it was how mundane her existence felt without the constant voices ringing in her mind. Up until she sat on the throne, she had felt part of some grand story.
Now she felt diminished, somehow.
Willow tried not to worry, and she certainly did not stop praying. She and Hakon had moved directly into the largest bowerhouse, the one that had once been her father’s. It had lain untouched, dust gathering, blankets still bearing the impression of the last time he had slept there. She had Ragnar bring six large flagstones from the city square and made a place to kneel in discomfort and worship her lord. This is what she was doing when Hakon returned unexpectedly in the middle of the day.
His big shadow fell at the periphery of her vision. The smell of him, so familiar now. Like seaweed and blood.
‘Wife,’ he said.
She ignored him, praying to the silence inside her mind. Come to me, Maava. Let me know if you are pleased with me.
Hakon knelt next to her, waiting quietly. When she finally looked up, he had her in his one-eyed gaze. Smiling. Hakon was at his ugliest when he smiled. The leather patch she had sewn over the hole in his face pouched up, the stitches stretching his top lip grotesquely.
‘You need a chapel.’
‘This city needs ten chapels. Are you saying we can start building them?’
‘We don’t need to build anything. I have a good idea. What if we bring Maava into the heathen heart of this compound? What if we convert Bluebell’s bowerhouse into a chapel?’ Then he laughed, and Willow found herself smiling in response.
Yes, this was a way to erase the heathen evil and replace it with trimartyr good. Maava could not fail to be impressed with this gesture.
Hakon stood, and held out his hand for Willow. ‘Show me,’ he said.
Willow took his hand and led him outside. The air was so mild and humid compared with wretched Marvik, but she tried not to sigh with pleasure at the weak sunshine. There ought to be no pleasure until every citizen was either converted or dead. The family compound lay behind a high wall with a gate that Willow had kept closed since her arrival. The hall, with its high roof and heathen carvings on the gables, was surrounded by smaller workhouses, bowerhouses and stables. She took Hakon down past the kitchen and some of the smaller servants’ houses – the bodies had been dragged down the hillside to be burned yesterday – towards Bluebell’s place. As they walked, they passed one of the small guesthouses; the one that Willow and Ivy always stayed in if they came home to their father as children.
She stopped by its arched door, and touched the carving. Sunflowers. Her father had had them carved specially as Ivy was so fond of sunflowers. Willow had made no such demands. She was intimidated by Father, but he seemed to know it and was always gentle with her.
Willow shook her head, clearing away unwelcome thoughts.
‘What is this place?’ Hakon asked.
‘The bowerhouse I stayed in as a child,’ she said, opening the door. Light fell into the room. It had been ransacked like all the others, but because it had been unoccupied for some time there wasn’t much to throw on the floor. Some broken pottery, the wooden pieces of an old board game, spare linen, a stored loom cracked by the violence with which it had been cast against the wall. But then …
‘Look!’ she said, and she barely recognised the delight in her voice. She cleared aside a crumpled blanket and her hand closed over a clay pig, fired and painted with big black eyes and stupidly long eyelashes.
‘What is this?’ he asked.
‘It’s Pansy the piglet.’
Hakon considered her curiously.
Willow turned the pig over in her fingers. Her hands had been so small last time she held it. ‘There was an orphaned piglet in the compound one time when I came. Bluebell had found it trapped under a log in the woods. It must have found its way through a crack in a hedge. She brought it home to hand raise it but she was always so busy and forgot it, and so I fed it milk and it followed me everywhere. When it got too big they had to send it back to the farm. I cried for days. Ash made me this to cheer me up.’ Willow looked up, and saw that Hakon wasn’t smiling at her memory.
‘Which sister is that? The witch, the adulterer or the one who burns trimartyr chapels to the ground?’
The shame that washed over her then was hot and suffocating.
Hakon knocked the pig out of her hand and lifted his enormous foot as if to crush it. ‘Will you stop me, wife?’ he asked. ‘Will you stop me as I destroy all the happy times you remember among your repulsive family?’
She looked from Hakon to Pansy and back again, and shook her head, wordless in her disgrace. His heel came down. Pansy was obliterated.
The rage she felt then. Not with Hakon, for he had acted properly. With herself. Here she was, only a few days back in her family home, and she had lost the angel voices, become a thing of the world again. A pottery pig that meant nothing – nothing – to Maava, had her uttering Ash’s name fondly. Ash, who was an undermagician! She pushed him aside, and ground her own heel in the shards. One of Pansy’s eyes looked up at her. It filled her with fury. She began to pick through the other things on the floor, collecting broken pieces and casting them against walls.
Hakon stilled her.
‘Save it for Bluebell’s bower,’ he said, and this time he was smiling.
Willow stood, casting aside the woollen cat she had torn in half. She grasped Hakon’s hand and hurried out, dragging him down between bowerhouses and kicking open Bluebell’s door. While the rage was still hot in her breast, she began to kick over furniture, tear up blankets and clothes. She picked a chest up off the floor and threw it with such force at the wall that the lid cracked off and flew into the corner. Hakon bellowed with laughter but Willow was not having fun. She was letting a pure stream of frustration and anger and shame and hatred flow through her unbound, and it felt sick and dark and hopeless.
Within two days, she’d had the room with the sunflower carvings entirely emptied and fresh rushes laid down. A prayer stone. With her own hands she scrubbed the box bed and had a fresh straw mattress brought in. A chair and a table.
On the table, she placed the corner of Pansy pig’s head – just the curve of a skull and one folded ear – as a lesson in how easy it could be to slip out of Maava’s favour. She would not forget again. Nor would Avaarni ever be allowed to forget, for this room was for him.
A light knock at the door.
She turned to glare at the woman who stood there, a freshly made widow from town who had a reputation for fine sewing. The woman dropped to her knees, the bundle of clothes in her arms pressed against her.
‘Praise Maava,’ she said.
‘Stand,’ Willow said. ‘What have you brought me?’
The woman was nervous and damp-eyed as she approached and laid her bundle on the bed. ‘As you asked, my lady …’ She tripped over the salutation, clearly unsure what to call Willow.
‘My queen,’ Willow corrected her in a firm but gentle voice.
One by one, the seamstress laid out the items. ‘Tunics and trousers for a boy of about eight,’ she said. ‘My own boy is ten, but small. I measured these against him. But you’ll see …’ Here she flipped up the hem of one of the tunics. ‘… all have been made to be easily altered.’ Her eyes darted around the room. ‘This is the boy’s room?’
Willow looked around. ‘Yes, he will be joining us soon.’
‘Is he … tall? Like you and King Hakon?’
‘He is sure to be. For he will be Maava’s great warrior. A straight back. Golden hair.’ Willow smiled over the frustration and fear. ‘You have done well to make these so quickly.’
‘Can I do anything else for you, my queen? I could embroider a bedspread for your boy? Does he like stars and moons? My son loved frogs at his age. I could embroider a –’
‘He does not love stars or moons or frogs. He loves Maava, and all his mind is bent upon his salvation.’ Willow warmed to this imagining. ‘He is not concerned with toys and the ordinary nonsense of children, for he knows he must bring the souls of Thyrsland to Maava and nothing else matters to him.’ Her voice had grown loud.
The woman nodded. ‘We
ll, then. He sounds like a fine lad. I shall look forward to meeting him.’
She backed out, then closed the door quickly behind her.
Willow caught her breath. The truth was Modolf had returned from another meeting with the team he had scouring the country, looking for Avaarni. Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. She had forgotten how the boy looked; she had almost forgotten he was not a boy when she had lost him. A dim memory of a silly young girl who smiled too much. She knew she was being tested and although she wanted very badly to pass the test and please Maava, she also felt as though she was all the way at the end of her patience. She had taken Blicstowe. What more was there for her to do to prove her love for her god?
She sat on the bed. Straw poked through the mattress cover and scratched her through her clothes. Embroidered frogs. No wonder the children of Blicstowe were weaklings. No wonder they had been so easy to conquer.
Taking her husband’s language, Willow began to tell herself a story, but this wasn’t a story about her past. It was a story about her future. About the homecoming of her son.
Deep in the night, Willow was still awake. Owls hooted. Feet marched past her bowerhouse.
I am still awake.
Eyes on the dark ceiling. Hakon silent and still on the other side of the bed. A fist of pain behind each eye.
Dawn would surely soon be here. Willow rose and pulled on a cloak over her nightgown. She may as well pray.
She took herself out of the bowerhouse and into the night rain. Mud splashed her hem as she made her way down to the chapel, formerly Bluebell’s bowerhouse. She smiled to herself as she opened the door. Everything had been cleared to one side, a chaotic heap of furniture and objects, most of them broken by Hakon’s and Willow’s tempers. The rushes had been removed and the floor was hard-packed dirt. Cold. Perfect.
Willow lit a torch for light but left the hearth cold, and knelt in front of the wooden triangle that Hakon had knocked together with long nails. One of the nails had protruded through the other side, glinting dully in the low firelight.