by Joanna Bell
"And where is this place, then?" He asks, and although his tone is exactly the same as mine, we both know this is precisely where this conversation has broken down every other time we've had it. "South of here, by the village where we found you? Is it outside the Kingdom of the East Angles? Maybe it's south, across the sea?"
"Yes," I say, very quietly. "It is across the sea. But not south. Southeast. Past the land, past the Kingdom of the East Angles, and Mercia."
"Eire?" Eirik asks. "The Green Isle? My people are there, too, you know. We raid all up and down the coast of that land as well as this one. Is that where you come from, girl? And if it is, how did you get here?"
I shake my head. "No, I don't come from Eire. You don't know the place where I come from. No one here does. You don't even know it exists."
"Ah, that's interesting," the Jarl whispers in my ear and I can tell from his voice that he thinks we've passed out of our real talk and into our joking-talk. "And how is it a maid of ten and ten years came from this land that nobody knows exists to the Kingdom of the East Angles? Did you build a ship yourself?"
"I don't know how to build a ship."
"I know it."
"I didn't come on a ship. I didn't walk. I came here in a different way to all of those ways. It would be very hard to explain, because the truth is I don't understand it myself. I know I came here because here I am, sitting here with you, but I couldn't tell you how, Jarl."
We sit silently in the warmth for a few minutes until Eirik pats my thigh, indicating for me to stand up. "I'll call Hildy to take your friend here back to her children. She –"
"Did they –"
"Yes, they ate. They're being cared for. Give her a blanket to take with her when she leaves."
***
Willa makes no attempt to escape that night, or that week. Eirik is smart, though, and he's made sure to have Gudry, Anja and Hildy be extra watchful with me. He's posted more guards close to the roundhouse – his own, and the one where Willa and her children sleep. He makes no attempt to stop me from bringing them food, though, or new clothes to replace the oldest boy's garments, which are so full of holes they can barely be described as clothing. By the end of the first week the kids are noticeably more energetic than they were when they arrived, and it makes me smile to see them running around their mother's legs, playing games with each other as she works.
And Willa does work, because Eirik has drawn the line there, telling me he wouldn't be able to explain it to his men or his people if he suddenly let a captive live as one of them. Willa and I talk when we can, snatching little two minute or five minute conversations before one of my attendants drags me away. She still plans to escape, and she says it'll be when the Vikings relax their current levels of security a little, which she knows they will.
"Eadgar knows," she whispers to me one day when I've managed to slip away from Gudry. "So does Aldred . We discussed the Northmen many times, because we knew they would come for us, sooner or later. They know I'll be trying to get back to them, they'll be waiting. When I get back we'll try to ask the ealdormen to move us further inland, away from these raids – they're moving people already, on the King's orders. It'll be soon, Paige. I'll have to take the children and leave here soon."
"Don't leave without me," I implore, although even as I'm begging her not to go without me I don't know if it's about me not wanting to miss my opportunity to escape or me not wanting to lose Willa again, and possibly forever this time. Neither of us needs to say it out loud, we both know if the Vikings catch her there will be little I can do to convince them to spare her life. "Please."
That night, as I lie in Eirik's arms, I wonder if it will be one of the last times I do so. He's right when he tells me I love him, and he's right that I'm too afraid to say it, but after all this time I still don't have a choice. It's not just my father now, or my friends at home – it's not just their suffering pulling me away, making it impossible for me to stay in the past. I'm going to have a baby soon, and my main concern is for whoever the little fluttering in my belly will turn out to be. Even if there was no one waiting for me back in 2017, which it must now be at home, I still couldn't find it within myself to risk my own life – and therefore my child's life – to stay in a past where death is so common and expected that people treat it the way they treat having breakfast, or stubbing their toes. Could I?
And as it turns out, the decision is confirmed for me four days later when Eirik returns from another raid with an already foul-smelling wound across his right shoulder and a fever even I can feel. I find him in the healer's roundhouse, taken there by his men, after Hildy comes to tell me, in grave tones, where he is.
He smiles when he sees me, trying to play it down. He's sitting up, strong as ever, his eyes are clear – but there's no mistaking the smell.
"That needs to be cleaned," I bark at the healer as soon as it hits me. "You need to boil water from the stream and clean the wound, you need to –"
"Girl," Eirik takes my wrist. "Let the healers do their work. They're preparing a poultice right now, to speed the closing of the injury."
I look up and sure enough, the healer and her two female assistants are busy preparing herbs of some sort, mashing them into a bowl of pig's fat and approaching the Jarl with a big gob of it a minute later. When one of them reaches out to apply it I slap her hand away.
"No!" I yell. "Don't put that on a dirty wound! Damnit, you have to clean it first, didn't you hear me? Someone needs to go get a bucket of water right now and –"
I stop talking when I see that no one is listening. They're just staring at me like I'm crazy. I shouldn't be surprised, the concept of hygiene – at least in terms of injuries and keeping them clean – doesn't exist with either the Vikings or the Angles.
"Fine," I tell them, grabbing a wooden bucket. "I'll go fetch the water myself. Don't put that on the wound – not yet."
I rush to the stream, fill the bucket, and return as fast as I can. It's to no avail, the pig-fat-and-herb substance has been applied and the healer's assistants are wrapping a definitely-not-sterile linen bandage around the Jarl's shoulder and upper arm area.
"You shouldn't have done that," I say to the healer. She looks up at me and then quickly at Eirik, probably waiting to see if he's going to shut me up. Eirik says nothing, but he doesn't look especially happy.
"If we don't treat the wound, lady," one of the assistants says to me, "the rot will spread, it will get into his blood. If that happens, it could be very bad. We don't want –"
"You're right!" I respond, just barely keeping my voice below shouting volume. "We don't want it to spread to his blood! Yes! Correct! That's why we have to clean it first – that's why we shouldn't be applying whatever the hell that concoction is to it, or wrapping it in dirty –"
"Girl."
It's Eirik. His grabs my upper arm, his grip firm. I stop talking and he politely asks the healers to leave, which they immediately do. Then he turns to me.
"I'll be glad when this child is born, Paige. I fear pregnancy is softening your mind."
I press my lips together, hard, to keep words I'll regret from coming out, but I can't withhold an eye-roll. The Jarl pulls my body towards him – not so hard as to hurt, or to cause me to stumble, but hard enough to let me know he's not joking around.
"Let the healers do their work," he continues, clearly exasperated. "Why do you insist on acting like you know how to do everyone's work better than they do? It's not right, Paige. It makes people think ill of you, and I don't want my people thinking ill of you. Why can't you just keep your mouth shut when it's called for? Don't you want my wound to heal quickly?"
"Of course I do!" I reply, my voice rising with helplessness. "That's why I told them to boil the water, and clean the wound before they dressed it! if they don't do that –"
"Enough!" Eirik yells, getting to his feet. "I'll send for Hildy and some tincture for you. You don't listen to me, girl, even when I really need you to. What am I to make
of that?"
"But Eirik," I say, reaching out for his hand as he goes to leave. He dodges my touch and sets his jaw. "No, girl. Go back to the roundhouse. Have a nap. Have some tincture. Have something! Stay here until Hildy arrives – if I hear anything about you wandering off, I'm going to be very angry."
He leaves and I sit heavily down on the bare earthen floor of the healer's dwelling, my eyes prickling with tears of frustration. He's angry with me, because he thinks I'm thinking about myself, that I'm being a know-it-all, making his wound about me and not him. Even though the truth is the exact opposite.
I submit when Hildy arrives, hanging my head and silently allowing her to drag me back to Jarl's roundhouse. When he returns that night he doesn't say much, and I can see he's favoring the shoulder already, wincing when he uses the arm.
"Eirik," I say, very softly, "you should let me wash –"
"QUIET!" He bellows, turning to me with such speed I think he might strike me. He doesn't, though. He doesn't make love to me, either, before we go to sleep. I lie awake, worried about his shoulder as he tosses and turns all night.
Chapter 22
9th Century
Less than a day later and the Jarl's shoulder is visibly worse. The foul smell has grown and Eirik is sweaty with fever now, still speaking but not always making sense. The sense of panic around us is palpable. Veigar and Hildy, usually enemies, speak in low voices outside the roundhouse as I tend to him inside. When they come in, both of them look to be expecting a fight from me, but I give them none. I have other plans.
Before they leave, I grab Hildy by the arm – Veigar is an idiot, I know he won't listen. Hildy, for all her bluster and cruelty, is not an idiot.
"Wash the wound with boiled water," I hiss in her ear as she tries to pull away. "Dress it with nothing, wash it and expose it to the fresh air. He's going to die if you don't!"
"No one's going to die, girl," Hildy replies, freeing herself from my grip. But I can hear the fear in her voice – she's trying to convince herself more than she's trying to convince me.
As soon as they're gone, I take advantage of the fact that the whole camp is bound up in the Jarl's worsening injury – no one has been left behind to guard the roundhouse – or me. It's a warm night but I pull a woolen tunic over my head anyway, and slip my feet into the crude leather sandals Eirik had made for me. I grab a cloth sack, into which I shove the loaf of bread and the apples that have sat uneaten on the table for the entire day. Then I slip out into the night, to find Willa.
Thankfully there is no one at her roundhouse, either, and it's easy for me to whistle in the distinctive tone we developed as children, so she knows it's me. She emerges a couple of minutes later.
"What is it, Paige? Are we to leave now?"
"Yes," I reply, glancing from side to side, ready to duck into the roundhouse myself if any of the Vikings come near. "Get the children. The Jarl is unwell, everyone tends to him, this is our only chance."
There is no hesitation from Willa. She steps back into the roundhouse and comes back with two small children in her arms and another just behind her. I take the largest of the two little ones – all three are as silent as mice – and we make our way swiftly, carefully to the place where the palisade stops on the eastern edge of the camp, facing the sea. No one is there. We slip out, still not saying a thing, and follow the path to the beach, where we head south.
It's twenty or thirty minutes later before we feel safe enough to talk.
"I brought some bread," I tell Willa. "And apples. The children can eat."
"You must eat, too," Willa tells me, nodding down at my belly.
"This isn't how I planned it," I say as our pace naturally slows the further away we get. "I did not plan to escape with a big belly holding me back, or with three little ones to carry. Do you think we have even a chance?"
Willa turns back, eying me. "If you didn't think you had a chance, Paige, why did you leave? Even if the Jarl dies, they'll find you another husband. You're beautiful and strong, they know your babies will be as beautiful and strong as you."
"The Jarl isn't going to die!" I cry and Willa, never one to hold back, looks baffled.
"Then why are you leaving?"
"Because I need to get him something to save his life. Some med–" I cut myself off, because Willa doesn't know what medicine is. "Some, uh, plant. A plant. It grows in the woods outside Caistley. Yes, a healing plant. I need to find it and bring it back, to heal the Jarl."
"Wait," Willa says, stopping. "Let's take a short break, alright? Just until we catch our breath. And you will tell me what craziness this is you speak of. You plan to return? Is that it?"
We sit down in the tall grass that runs along the top of the coastline, each of us with a sleeping child in our aching arms. I don't like the fact that my arms are aching already – it's been less than an hour, how do we propose to keep going for many more hours without becoming too tired to continue? I push the question out of my mind. Willa is staring at me waiting for a response.
"Yes," I nod, looking out over the sea at the moonlight dancing over the waves. "He's going to die if I don't."
Willa watches me for a few seconds and then joins me in gazing out over the water before responding. "You love him. I thought as much. Is it a wise thing, Paige? To love one of the Northmen? Do you think, if your healing plant works, that he will live a long life? I suppose it doesn't matter, none of us are wise when it comes to love."
My mind is trying to get ahead of itself, I'm already picturing the pharmacy in River Forks, wondering how difficult it will be to break the glass with a rock in the dead of night, thinking maybe I should bring one of my father's tools to help. I'll need to get online, too, so I can find out what particular variety of antibiotic I need to steal. What if my bike has a flat tire? Can I walk to the pharmacy? What if there's an alarm? I won't have the energy to run from –
"Paige?"
"Huh?"
"We should keep going – it'll be too hot in the middle of the day, the children can sleep then. We should take advantage of the dark."
So that's what we do, and the walk isn't too arduous at this stage. It gets easier when the gray dawn begins to swallow the darkness and we can see where we're putting our feet. Willa is right, though – by the time the sun is high in the sky it's too hot to keep going, and our bellies are grumbling with hunger. We retreat into the woods and sit in the shade. Willa and I tear pieces off the loaf of bread for the children, and hand them apples. We drink from a stream, as we have been doing since we left the Viking camp, and then we all fall into a deep sleep.
Willa shakes me awake sometime later and I immediately see from the light that it's late afternoon. Beside us, the children sleep restlessly and I notice the oldest, a boy named Rowyn, has a bright pink sunburn across the tops of his shoulders. Willa wakes them as I take the rest of the bread and apples, and the various tunics we've shed in the heat, and stuff them into the linen sack I took from the Jarl's roundhouse. Thinking of the Jarl urges me on, even as I fear I am too late, that he was too sick when I left, that there isn't enough time for me to travel all the way back to Caistley and then all the way back to the camp – not to mention the trip to 2017 in between.
"He's strong," Willa says, scooping her youngest baby into her arms and seeing the expression on my face as we set out again. "He's the strongest man I ever saw in my life, Paige. I wouldn't have believed such men existed until I saw your Jarl. If anyone can fight off a fever, it's him."
Please be right. Please be right.
Soon, we come to a place where the land is marshy all the way out into the sea. I take a few steps into it, sinking up to my knees, and realize there's no way it's passable, even if we were without the little ones.
"The marshes go inland a far ways." Willa says. "Miles. Perhaps someone has built a bridge over it, out of wood? There is such a thing in the marshes north of Caistley – or so the people say."
I look to the west, inland, and then east,
out to sea, shielding my eyes against the setting sun with one hand. "Is this the marsh north of Caistley?" I ask. It's a marsh north of Caistley, I know that, but I don't know if it's the same one Willa speaks of.
"I don't know," Willa replies. "I've never been so far north – until your Jarl and his men took me."
"We're going to have to swim," I announce. And even as I announce it I am fully aware of Willa's feelings about swimming. Not only does she not swim, she actively fears the water – be it the sea or the deep stream that ran through the woods near Caistley. Both she and her brother seemed to associate the water with disease, bad fortune, death. I could never persuade them to do so much as stand in it up to their knees, and neither of them ever made an attempt to hide the fact that they considered me completely insane for swimming in it – even in the harmless, slow-moving sections of it that passed through the woods.
Willa shakes her head immediately, chuckling with humorless disbelief. "No. No, Paige. I'll not have the children anywhere near the water."
"Where will you have them, then?" I ask. "Back at the Viking camp, without their father? Without their uncle? Because that's where they'll be if we don't get around this marsh. The Vikings won't just let me go, you know. I'm carrying their Jarl's baby – and you're an escaped captive. They'll be coming after us, and some of them are likely to be on horseback.
"We're not going into the sea!" Willa shouts, distraught at what I've just said, because she knows it's true. "We'll go inland, we'll walk along the borders of the marsh. We'll find a wooden walkway or we'll just go all the way around."
"But so will the Vikings, if they choose to come after us!" I exclaim, grabbing her by the shoulders and giving her a little shake. "They'll be expecting us to do that – they know the Angles fear the water, and they don't know I don't. You don't even have to swim – we can use pieces of wood, we can use these dry logs from the woods to float, we can find some big enough for you to hold yourself and the children with, to keep your heads above the water!"