And then Gefjun’s feet crawled to a halt and she couldn’t move.
“I ….” She couldn’t say any more.
“You’re a stranger,” Sóma said gently. “And you don’t know what’s happened here.”
Gefjun straightened. “You mean about how he killed the queen’s daughter?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“He poisoned Thora.”
Sóma stared, her mouth open, then shook her head. “Poisoned her? Poisoned her? How can you say such a terrible thing?”
“It’s not an accusation if it’s true.” Gefjun said.
“No. Wait. The queen told you her daughter was poisoned?”
Gefjun opened her hands. “Well, yeah.”
Tears came to Sóma’s eyes. “After all we did to try and save Thora? After our physicians and herbalists worked hand in hand trying to find out what was wrong with her? We sat with her, we held her little hands, we cleaned up her vomit, we cooled her brow, we did everything, everything in our power to ease her pain through the sickness.” Her voice shook. “And this is how the queen repays us.”
Gefjun was taken aback. “You did?”
“We all loved that child. Thora was a perfect helpmate to the king. It was sweet to watch them together, talking and laughing. When she first arrived, she was afraid. And so was he.”
“Really?”
“But it was so funny to watch the king, the sovereign of this land, sneaking into the dining room to leave a hothouse flower on her plate, and then he jumped like a startled deer when she surprised him at it. She said, ‘What’s this?’ and he said, ‘I just … found it!’ and ran out of the room like his pants were on fire. He was so shy. We couldn’t believe it!”
“A big guy like him?”
Sóma laughed. “He wanted so much to make Thora feel at ease, so he clowned a little. But he was also very nervous, too. Can you imagine a man like him being nervous? Well, he was. He wanted everything to go well between them. He truly did.”
Gefjun tried to fit the pieces together in her mind. “So he liked her.”
Sóma chuckled softly. “More than just liked.” Then she became serious. “He carries Thora’s book with him everywhere he goes. He told me that reading the words that she used to read gives him comfort. But at the same time, reading those words also increases his sadness that she is gone, never to come back to him.”
“But ....” Gefjun began.
“But the queen says he poisoned her,” Sóma said sternly.
“Yes.” But Gefjun was not sure of it now.
“And that’s her justification for killing Varinn’s precious son and starting this whole war?”
“Why, didn’t they tell you?”
“We understood that the queen was upset when her daughter died. We were, too. But then when she … when she killed his little boy.” Sóma shook her head. “It was heartbreak upon heartbreak.”
Gefjun’s brow furrowed. Then she proceeded with caution. “We were told he was twenty-five years old.”
Sóma turned her head at looked at Gefjun, mouth open. Then she shut it. In a shocked, hurt voice, she asked, “Is that what she told you?”
“It is.”
“Young lady, how old do you think King Varinn is?”
Gefjun’s heart dropped. She looked at the ground. Somehow this had never occurred to her. “He’s… not quite 30.”
“King Varinn is 25 years old. So how old do you think his son really was? How old, Gefjun?”
“Um…”
Sóma held up her hands and closed her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I forgot myself. I should not be speaking this way to a guest.” She opened her eyes. “You need to understand how this murder broke all of us. His son was the joy of all our lives. He was just five years old, Gefjun. The queen murdered a precious little boy who was only five years old.”
6
Healer
He was Aesa’s age, Gefjun thought. And the queen killed him?
Her head started whirling.
“I have to go … I need a moment.” She walked away quite suddenly, leaving Sóma behind.
When she reached the orchard, she sank down on a bench, her head in her trembling hands.
Queen Saehildr had killed … had murdered a little boy.
The story had to be wrong. It had to be. It was too awful.
But then she remembered what Nauma had shouted at them across the water, when her fleet was preparing to attack Dyrfinna’s ship, ten to one.
“We are the child-killers,” Nauma had shouted. “And because you and your queen are also child-killers, we are evenly matched.”
When Nauma had said that, Gefjun and her friends had been puzzled.
Now she understood.
Queen Saehildr had lied to them about how she’d taken revenge for her dead daughter.
But she’d lied about the way her daughter had died, too.
“She was supposed to tell the truth,” she said aloud. “She lied to us about her daughter. And she lied to us about …!”
Gefjun was on her feet, pacing through the orchard, hardly noticing the pinks and whites of the blossoms, hardly noticing their honey scent, hardly noticing the soft petals falling like rain.
We were the villains. We were the villains all along!
She felt so sick at herself, she couldn’t breathe.
She ran.
And then, there was Varinn, walking through the falling petals, his face down. His head snapped up when he heard her.
She stopped in her tracks and went red all over and couldn’t speak.
Varinn had always been the faceless enemy. That’s where the trouble was. They didn’t know.
“Sir,” she broke out, distressed. “I’m sorry. I was Thora’s friend for many years. I didn’t realize that you were her friend, too. I’d ... I’d been told ... I never would have fought for the queen if I’d known,” Gefjun burst out.
Varinn’s face went cold and hard. But after a moment, his face sagged. He looked down at the little book he held in his hand. Then he leaned against a rough-barked apple tree and covered his face with one broad hand.
“You knew her, too.” His voice wobbled.
“Thora and I were sword-friends,” Gefjun said. “We rescued her, one time, when Iron Skull’s Danes invaded our home. We fought mock-battles everywhere. She tried to teach me to read those books,” she said, gesturing at Thora’s small volume. “I wish I’d let her.”
Varinn tried to speak, couldn’t. He gently wrapped the small book in a clean, white handkerchief, and he carefully slid it in a pocket over his heart.
“Not a moment goes by,” he said in a broken voice. “That I wouldn’t give everything I have. All my possessions. My heart. My soul. I’d give all of them. Just to have them both back. In my arms.” And then he sobbed.
Gefjun turned slightly aside and looked at her hands as the storm of tears broke over him. She wept as well, both for him and Thora and for Ostryg, who she’d lost.
Gefjun was a healer. She never forgot this; it was part of her nature—ran in her blood. People had died in her arms many times over the last few weeks, those she’d tried hard to save on the battlefield, but had failed. Even back at home, she’d stood at the bedside of patients with her mama at the moment their bodies let their spirits go. Grief was an endless part of a healer’s world, as much as joy was.
When Varinn’s sobs died down, she turned back to him.
“You were her friend,” he said. Blindly, he reached out to her, and she gathered his hands in hers. They were strong hands, calloused, the skin slightly chapped, and he had some dirt under his nails and along the edge of his index fingers. Just like hers. It seems that his royal highness really does love to garden, she thought. Even pulls his own weeds, from the look of it.
“I have a song that might help you.” She pulled magic from the air and wove it into the words she sang:
Peace comes down
Like soft spring rain
And
soothes your aching heart.
She let his hands go so he could wipe his tears.
“Sing that song to me again,” he said. “Please.”
She did, gladly, for it gave her comfort, too.
“I know the clouds are not cleared away,” he said. “But your song has done me much good. Thank you.”
“I had no idea about the truth. We were misled—lied to. I went into battle for love of Thora, to avenge her. I’m so sorry.”
Tears came into his eyes again. “It is very hard to be leading armies at this time. I only want to be left alone to grieve for all I’ve lost. I have no taste for revenge. But my people have demanded it. They fully understand everything I’ve lost, and have pledged themselves to bring down your queen and those who support her. They consider your people to be, if I may be blunt, bloodthirsty—to have heard that Queen Saehildr has done this thing, and then rally to her defense.” Varinn covered his face again. After a long moment, he recovered enough to say, in a choked voice. “I loved her … I loved Thora dearly.”
After a long moment, Gefjun said, “Let’s not talk for a while. Let’s just walk through the orchard. If that’s okay with you.”
“Sing that song again.”
“I have the feeling I’m going to have to sing it for the rest of the day.”
He half-laughed at that. “I would … it would be a relief if you could.”
Said with such shy hope that now Gefjun laughed. “It’s the least that I could do. Um, begging your pardon, your majesty. I hope you don’t mind my being so forward.”
His dark eyes, though still filled with tears, were kind. “Protocol states that I should be more distant. But,” —he patted his hand on his heart– “but at this moment, your song is relieving some of my burdens, and I don’t care a whit for protocol in the face of that.”
They walked together, side by side, and pink petals floated down over them.
It was very strange, Gefjun thought. Just moments before she was thinking of ways to kill him. Once Sóma had told her the truth about the twin tragedies that had been inflicted on him, everything had changed.
Then Gefjun told him about how her best friend, or former best friend, had split the skull of her betrothed, just because he’d pissed her off over some stupid thing he’d said that she didn’t like … and she’d wept, and the king held her hands and talked to her.
But it was mostly that she was speaking to someone who was going through the same pain and grief that she was. They were both walking that same road.
“What better way than to walk it together, and help each other out?” she said.
They’d wandered to the sea shore looking out over the harbor. There at the docks floated Skeggi’s ship and Dyrfinna’s ship.
“My friends!” she cried, and she turned to King Varinn. “Sir, my friends are down there. Can you help them? Are they still here? Can I find out if Ragnarok is still alive?” Her heart pounded for him and all her other patients she’d worked so hard to heal on that ship.
But Rjupa!
Her heart crashed down through her chest. “But Rjupa is dead! Skeggi is dead! My closest friends were killed when your troops threw them overboard.” She fell to her knees and covered her eyes.
“When did this happen?”
“Nearly three days ago. My friend Rjupa was a dragonrider. Was burned over half of her body. And they threw her overboard—” she choked, then continued. “They threw her overboard because she was too burned to row. And then Skeggi, the captain of that ship yonder, he ran and flung himself over the side to be with her. To try and save the one he loves.”
A long moment passed. King Varinn ran his hand over his face.
“I owe you a greater debt than before,” King Varinn said softly. “Let us check on your remaining friends. I swear to you that they will not be sold as thralls.”
“Rjupa and Skeggi are dead,” she said miserably, letting her hands fall and staring out at the cruel sea. “I could hear my patients drowning as we rowed away.”
“I wish with everything I have that we could bring your friends back, and that we could bring back all who have died in this war. But the gods’ edicts can never be changed, try as we might. Come. We will see if your Ragnarok friend can be saved. It is the least that I can do.”
They walked down the hill to the bottom of the great keep that was carved into the side of the mountain overlooking the sea.
One of the puffins standing on the rocks peeped and waddled quickly to her, eyeing her this way and that, its big orange and white beak flashing from side to side.
“Why, hello. Are you my puffin friend from the ship?” she asked quietly, with a little laugh.
The puffin came to her, a curious little bird with black, oiled feathers and bright orange feet. He looking like the puffin that had befriended her in her misery on the ship.
When she walked on, the puffin trotted along behind, occasionally stopping to take a closer look at whatever random thing took its fancy. Then it would toddle on behind her again.
“Would you look at that?” Varinn said. “You have made a puffin friend.”
The three entered the keep, the guards standing aside and nodding to Varinn, who stopped for a moment and talked to them to see how they were doing. Then they went inside, where Gefjun was met by a huge, echoing rumble of voices from inside a vast stone room.
Long ago the ocean had hallowed out this cave. Over the years, the cave had been enlarged. People built supports and erected a rough breakwater to block the worst of the ocean’s waves and keep the structure from collapsing. The floor sat well above the level of the sea, and this was where they held the prisoners. They were at least out of the weather, but the inside of the cave was cold and damp, and the roar of voices inside was as loud as the sea.
“You shouldn’t be in here,” one of the guards said to King Varinn. “Begging your pardon, sir. “
Varinn grumbled into his beard, then said, with a sigh, ”You are right. You really can’t travel anywhere you please when you’re king,” he added to Gefjun. “If anything, travel is curtailed.”
The female guard watched the interaction, her head cocked to the side.
“Go with the young lady and help her find a fellow she calls Ragnarok,” he told the guard. “He is still a prisoner, but needs to be cared for.”
“This way, blessed one,” said the guard, and Gefjun followed her into the crush of prisoners. Gefjun told the guard the name of everybody she could remember from Dyrfinna’s and Skeggi’s ships, until the guard said, “I remember that one. Come this way.”
They wove their way through clusters of unmoving people who sat holding their heads in their hands, groups of men and women talking in low voices, a tight group gathered around a very small campfire. One man lay on the floor, deathly ill.
Gefjun stopped immediately. “Wait a moment,” she said, kneeling beside him. “I’m a medic,” she told the man, though he was unresponsive. She felt the carotid artery for his pulse, found it weak and stuttering. She checked the whites of his eyes, smelled his breath, listened to his heart. Fever, yes, but to judge from the sweat and his clammy face, but it wasn’t just a cold alone. There was something else wrong with him.
She had a small flask of ale that she used as medicine to revive her patients. She uncorked the bottle and let a few drops fall into his mouth, watched his throat until she saw the Adam’s apple bob up and down, then gave him a few more drops. After a few swallows, his eyes twitched. He groaned.
“Sir, I’m a medic,” she said. “Can you talk to me?”
She waited for a long moment.
“I’m trying to heal you,” she said. “What is wrong with you? What are your symptoms?”
His mouth stirred. “More ale, please ….”
She gave him a few more drops.
Then slowly he said, “They … threw me down … on a stab wound. On my back.” His lips stirred. “Turn me over, Miss. Please.”
“Help me,” she told the
guard, and they carefully rolled the man onto his belly, ignoring his cry of pain. Just as he’d said, a great spreading red stain had soaked through half of the clothes on his back.
Gefjun, beside herself with disgust, curled her lip. Idiots, throwing him down like that on an open wound. “Do you have a knife? They took my work knife.“
The guard handed Gefjun her knife, and she quickly cut the clothes away until she found the wound. “Bring me water,” and the guard sent somebody for water, then bandages. She washed the stab wound and checked it for any foreign objects, and there was the end of the blade broken off in the wound, already surrounded by a little pocket of pus.
“Thank goodness you let me check this man,” she said, holding up the bit of blade on her knife. “This would have led to a serious infection.” She washed out the wound until the water ran clear. She bound the wound and was done. Now at least he had a fighting chance. “Rest on your side, or on your belly,” she told him.
“There’s a lot more people like this, ma’am,” the guard said.
“Take me to them,” she said. “If they all need my help, then I need to see them.” She got to work.
After several patients, the guard said, “You might spare a thought for the good king, who has been waiting for you with marvelous patience back by the entrance.” She pointed way across the room where King Varinn was sitting on a chair that somebody had evidently brought down—too fancy a chair for these drab surroundings. He was smoking pipes with several members of the guards, all of them talking in comfortable and serious tones.
“He might have to wait for me, up at the castle,” Gefjun said. “Ask his permission to allow me to keep saving lives. I haven’t even found my people from my ship.”
The guard said, “Allow me to deliver your message to him. Then I’ll come back and help you.”
The guard rushed over and delivered the message. In response, the king rose and bowed in her direction. She returned the bow, and the king left.
The guard came back, a little out of breath. “I’m ready to help.”
A Fire of Roses Page 5