by Julia Knight
A woman’s voice stopped the heathen from another shove. Not gentle, this voice was a scold, high, shrill and demanding. An older woman with shorn hair stepped down the shore toward them, snugly wrapped in fur against the wind. She stood square before the man, looked up at him and berated him with a wagging finger. The other men laughed and cat-called. The one taking her tongue-lashing dropped his head and blushed, though he hid a shame-faced grin in his beard. With a final sharp flourish, the woman turned to them and eyed them critically but not unkindly.
“Seasickness is a bitch, ain’t it?” she said in Saxon.
“I—er, yes.” Wilda was too taken aback to say anything else.
“Well, you’re off the boat now. You’re to come with me, my lady. Agnar and his wife Idunn have got the job of keeping you for now.” The woman pointed up the shore to a grim-looking man with a ruddy, weathered face and a gut just starting to turn to fat. The woman next to him, the first Norsewoman Wilda had seen, was handsome but stern, her fair hair gathered in a bun at the nape of her neck and covered with a scarf, making her face seem even sterner.
“What about me?” Myldrith asked. “I should stay with my lady. Please, I have to stay with my lady.”
The woman snorted and her eyes slid over Wilda with a cold, contemptuous look before she looked more kindly on Myldrith. “You belong to Sigdir, you’ll be in his house and I don’t envy you.” She crossed herself and muttered under her breath.
Myldrith clutched at Wilda’s arm, but seemed to be rendered speechless with fear. Wilda held on to her, an arm around frail, hunched shoulders.
Wilda managed to squeeze her hand before she was taken. “God is with you.” A poor comfort, perhaps, but all Wilda had to spare for her. Time for no other words of comfort before a heathen dragged Myldrith away sobbing. Wilda couldn’t bear to watch, to think what might happen to Myldrith. To her.
Finally the cries stopped, cut off by the slam of a door that was a slam to Wilda’s heart too. In a godless land, her and Myldrith, and each alone. Survive, only survive. Do what you must.
“I’m Bebba by the way,” the thrall said. “Come on, my lady, let’s get you to the smithy for your collar. At least it’ll be warm in there.”
“Collar?” Wilda asked, but she knew well enough. Saxons and Northmen both kept their slaves in collars, but it was the reality of it that brought it home, even more than Sigdir and the others’ treatment of their new slaves.
“Aye, collar. Like this, see?” Bebba pulled the tatty fur away to show an iron collar welded shut around her neck. “Mark of the thrall. Well, the hair too. Of course, your ladyship gets something different. Sigdir said you’re to keep your hair, for a start. Won’t make you no more free though.”
“Why…why did they bring me?” Wilda stumbled after Bebba, who led the way off the windswept shore, watched by the avid eyes of half a score of heathens and their women. “Why didn’t they just raid the town, kill us?”
“Because slaves is wealth. And they brought you for a special reason. Don’t know what it is but you’re to be kept up at Agnar’s house, all quiet like.” Bebba shot her a sharp glance. “It won’t be good, I reckon I can tell you that. They ain’t all bad, I’ve had worse Saxon masters than old Agnar and his wife. He ain’t too bad for a heathen, the old goat. Idunn is a fine mistress too, firm but fair. But there’s some of them… There’s a curse on this village. I knows, I sees it. They don’t, not all the while they’ve got gold coming in, while Bausi and Sigdir make them strong. But they will.”
Bebba led them up the shore past Agnar and Idunn’s watchful eyes, onto a path that wound up the steep slope where the village looked out over the fjord. A river tumbled down the centre, loud and chattering, crossed by a small wooden bridge. A biting wind laced with snow whipped through Wilda’s dress and shawl. My Lord, it was so cold, so early in the year. She hardly dared think how cold it would be come Christmas.
They passed by neat-looking houses with wooden walls and turf roofs. A man stood on one, scything the hay before the snow ruined it, but stopped to watch them pass. Bebba noticed Wilda watching him. “A winter long as it is here, you got to find as much hay as you can. The amount of livestock a man can feed over winter is a sign of his wealth, so they don’t spare nothing in that regard. You think it was cold where you’re from? Here it’s colder than Satan’s heart for more than half the year. Get used to it.”
Walking into the warmth of the smithy was bliss. The smith was hard at work at the anvil, the sound of metal on metal reverberating round the small room in a rhythmic song, like the peal of church bells. He finished what he was doing and stood up, head and shoulders above Wilda, so tall he all but brushed the ceiling. He snorted, said something short and brutal-sounding to Bebba and turned away.
“Off you go,” Bebba said. “Over to the anvil so he can put your collar on.”
There was no escape from this, not now. For now she had to survive, and that meant doing what she was told. For now, the thought of Sigdir’s men left behind in Bayen’s house would keep her from acting too impulsively.
The smith appraised Wilda’s neck critically, then pulled a collar from a chest at the rear of the smithy. When he held it up, ready to put it round her neck, she saw what was different, as Bebba had said. Not iron but bronze, with an intricate pattern engraved upon it, of ravens and horses and a huge tree threaded through everything.
“Special one for you, see, my lady.” Bebba’s sneer almost didn’t register as the smith clamped it round her neck, the metal cold, the fit just that little too tight so it pinched her skin. She bore it because she had to, as she had borne so many things when all she wanted was to run, far, fast, sprint along the beach with no cares, sand spurting from her footfalls and salty wind in her hair.
She hadn’t run that way since the day her mother died. Since then she’d walked as a lady, talked, wove, spun, everything as a lady. Everything her mother had wanted while she was alive and Wilda hadn’t cared to listen to. Too busy running to listen, to understand. But since that day, she’d stifled it all. First because her father had been so wrapped in his grief and she hadn’t the heart to test his patience so, and then because she’d been married off to Bayen, become a lady to his thane. Thanes’ wives did not run on the beaches, chasing seagulls, or climb trees. Thanes’ wives were elegant and demure and knew their role. People had depended on her. Practicality, survival was everything.
The collar felt as though it was choking her, too tight around her throat, but she said nothing. Practicality and survival were paramount here too. Wordlessly she followed Bebba out of the smithy, to where Agnar waited for them with a glowering look.
He led them a short way up the hill toward a large building, long and low. Other buildings clustered round it as though for warmth, and not far away another huddle of buildings stood.
“This big hall is Bausi’s home and feasting hall. That over there—” Bebba pointed to the other cluster of buildings. “That’s Sigdir’s. That’s where you’ll be living soon enough, I don’t doubt, once he’s done whatever his plan is for you. I got one piece of advice for you. You keep your head down and don’t answer back, whatever you do. Sigdir is Bausi’s man, through and through, though he ain’t so mean, yet. If you’re quiet and respectful, it’ll go easier. If you aren’t—well, then, if you aren’t, it’ll be all the worse.”
Bebba turned and said something to Agnar, but the heathen growled and turned away. “Come on. Don’t you be giving Agnar no trouble either. He ain’t so bad, but you’ll catch it if you don’t mind what he wants. You’re a thrall now, not a lady.”
Agnar grasped Wilda’s shoulder and shoved her in the direction he wanted her to go. He pointed up the valley toward another group of buildings vague in the thickly falling snow. Wilda wrapped her shawl more firmly around herself and trudged on.
Agnar’s house was like the others, long and low, again roofed with turf. A welcome fire burned in the centre of the room, and benches built into the walls were
lined with furs and woven blankets. Some sort of membrane covered the small windows to keep out the icy draught, and the only light came from the hearth and the little lamps set about. Not so very different from a Saxon farmer’s hut, and well kept with fresh rushes on the floor. Yet not what Wilda was used to. A lord’s hall had always been her home, with a great feasting hall and bedrooms, thick hangings to keep the draught away.
Bebba bustled over to the fire and dipped her finger in a pot sitting on a stone slab next to it. With a satisfied nod she found two wooden bowls and ladled a thin gruel into each. “This’ll warm your bones a bit. Come on, sit down.”
Wilda sat next to Bebba on a bench set into the wall and tried to ignore the pinch of the collar around her neck. She, with her husband, had owned slaves. She’d never thought to be one, and to a heathen too. Lord save me. Now that she was still, now that she was warm, her imagination went wild, thinking what this would mean. These heathens had done nothing to her—yet. The stories she’d heard…she could only hope that was all they were—stories. Even if not, what could she do? Nothing, yet. Best not think of it now. Not yet. Tomorrow was soon enough.
The gruel was bland but hot and Wilda cupped her hands around the bowl, slowly letting the warmth reach her, inside and out.
Bebba made herself busy stirring a kettle, full of stew by the smell. Another smell, familiar. Barley and hops permeated the air, warm and malty. It smelled of home and helped her shoulders loosen. Something of her old life among the strangeness. She cautiously took in her surroundings.
Agnar was older than she’d first thought. Strands of silver threaded his fair hair and beard, and his hands were gnarled and reddened. His wife, Idunn, was younger but not by much. Silver touched her hair, too, what Wilda could see under the scarf. Her face was unlined except about the eyes, and her manner was stern but with a hint of pity about it. They spoke together for a time and Agnar seemed to attend her words carefully, as though her opinion was important. Finally he nodded and spoke to Bebba. Again, Wilda could almost make out a few words, but not the sense of the sentence.
Bebba snorted with laughter and then translated. “Old Agnar here says you had better behave or you’ll catch it. He thinks I’m a fool. Like I said, he ain’t too bad for a heathen. He don’t beat me, and as long as I keep him in beer, he’s too drunk to want anything I don’t want to give. Treats his wife right good too. They’re funny over here. Women are… See, it’s their gods and goddesses. The goddesses are as important as the gods, in their own way. Same with the women, the free ones anyway. Bausi’s the jarl, their thane, and he rules this place and he’s poisoning it. But it’s the women that run it, especially when the men are off raiding, and they know it.”
Bebba cast a glance Agnar’s way. Idunn was off somewhere, bustling about in the dimness of the end of the house, but Agnar was watching Wilda keenly. Maybe seeing how she was taking all this, whether she’d give any trouble. Bebba’s mouth twitched when she looked at him, but he didn’t say anything, so she carried on. Wilda got the feeling she was enjoying herself, and that maybe this was a speech she gave often to new slaves.
“In many ways they’re just like us, and in lots of ways they’re very different. You know they don’t see the raiding as stealing? Theft is an awful bad crime here, but the raiding is different to them. A challenge to a fair fight. It’s the same with the women when they raid. A vanquished foe needs to know they’re vanquished, and what’s the best way to prove their manliness? Aye, that’s it, proves to the Saxon men who’s stronger. But you ain’t a foe no more, you’re Sigdir’s property. This ain’t war, this is home and they do love their women, or rather women in bed. Lord, do they! Now some of them, they’ll take you to bed. Same as any man, Saxon or Norseman, some won’t care how you feel about it neither. You want to take care with those’un, but you’re Sigdir’s so they’ll have him to answer to if they hurt you. But there’s some who won’t care that you’re his, see, some who don’t need to care. Bausi’s the worst, and Sigdir’s his foster son and becoming just as bad, learning by example. Those two think they can take what they want, and they can, and ain’t no man in the fjord will stop them.”
Wilda frowned at that. “He said that to take me as his bed-slave would dishonour me, and he wouldn’t. Myldrith, though—it would have been better if he’d taken me.” At least she knew what to expect, how it had been with Bayen.
“Ah, yes, I seen you got a wedding ring. You’d know more about the bed than that young slip of a lass. It’s a man’s world, all right, wherever you are. But Agnar here says the men left you alone on the boat, which ain’t happening often, especially since Bausi. Maybe Sigdir’s going to ransom you?”
“Not to my husband. Sigdir murdered him.” Even now, Wilda couldn’t summon up much to feel. Bayen had been a good man, had maybe deserved more from her, but Wilda had long ago realised that feelings were a hindrance.
“Lord have mercy, you’re a cold one.”
That stung. But what good would tears do for Bayen? She’d prayed for his soul, as she should, had been a good and faithful wife to him. What more was expected?
Wilda stared into the fire, her eyes hot and dry. Tears were no good, no help for anyone. They weren’t practical, they hadn’t brought her mother back to life after the raid eight years ago, hadn’t helped her father with his grief or hatred. Tears didn’t matter, and she’d shed none since then. Sometimes it frightened her, the sense that the well inside her had run dry, that the echoing emptiness of her heart made her life a cold, bland thing. Sometimes she prayed to God to show her where she’d gone wrong, how to feel again, but He didn’t answer and that was her answer. Tears didn’t matter. Dealing with things did.
“Aye, well, those two, Sigdir and Bausi, are the Devil himself.” Bebba crossed herself hurriedly. “Cursing this place, they are. All the young men look to them, see, because Bausi’s the jarl, and they’ve all sworn to their gods that they’re his men. They wear his rings on finger and arm to prove it. These heathens—that’s in their blood, see, in their head. Different from good Christian folk. An oath is their word, and they won’t break it.”
She patted Wilda’s hand absently. “Aye, it’s a different thing. Now there’s many a lady takes a man to bed she don’t love. That’s just the way things are, there’s no help for it, and I see you knows that already. It helps if she likes him though. See, and I may be a thrall like you but I been here a time, nigh on three years now, and Agnar sees me right. I like him, and he’s promised Sigdir he’ll keep you here, and safe. He’ll look out for you. You do as he says, work hard, and you’ll be fine. Maybe even buy yourself free, in time. I almost got enough, four ounces of the six I need. Agnar here lets me sell the extra ale I make.”
Wilda looked at Bebba properly for the first time. She too was older than she first appeared, more Agnar’s age. She had the wrinkles of someone who laughs often and smiles more, and the kind, patient eyes of someone who had seen a lot and come to terms with what life had given her.
Many a lady takes a man to bed she don’t love. True enough. Farmers’ daughters married men for a roof and a bed, to help out with the smallholding. Merchants married their children to each other to strengthen trade alliances. Love was something the bards sang of, but practicality made it a nonsense. Survival was more important. It was the way of things and always had been. Yet she had loved Bayen, after time. Not as the bards sang, but he was a good God-fearing man who’d treated her with sombre kindness, and she’d felt a quiet kind of love grow from that.
Now Bayen was gone, murdered by these savages, and she was no longer the lady of the house, of the estate, no longer Lady Wilda but a slave. That was what she had to deal with, and she would. You got what God saw fit to give you and made the best of it. God had His reasons, must have even for this. She looked up at Agnar, at the way his eyes were worried, how he chewed his lip. Bebba was maybe right about him. Even if she wasn’t, Wilda just had to get on with it until she could escape or buy her freedom. T
here was nothing else to be done.
“Where do we start?” she said.
Bebba laughed and stood up. “Oh, you’ll do, my lady. You’ll do.”
Chapter Four
Never a whit should one blame another, whom love hath brought into bonds.
Havamal: 93
By the time Toki had steered the horse down the twisting paths to the village, grateful once again for Einar’s sureness on the slush and ice where his halt leg was not, the snow had thickened. Clouds drew down around the mountain, obscuring their tops. Toki could only barely make out Odin’s Helm, the rocky outcrop that watched over the village, made it a lucky place. So they’d said once, but Raven’s Home didn’t seem so lucky to Toki and hadn’t for years. The wyrd of the village was blackened to his eyes, had become a poisoned thing. As his wyrd was, his fate twisted by one night, one moment.
He found a place for Einar and left him in the fuggy warmth rising from the cows. He hesitated in the doorway and peered across to the feasting house at the centre of Bausi’s group of buildings. It was far larger then the rest, more than forty fathoms long. Smoke puttered out of three holes in the turf roof, and the smell of roasting beef and pork made Toki’s stomach cramp. The entrance was a bustle of activity as the women and thralls and karls got ready for the feast. A celebration for the safe return of the raiders, who would already be warming themselves by the great fire, drinking ale and vying to tell the best tales of their exploits.
They might not even notice him, if he were lucky. If he was unlucky, then he would brave it out for the chance to see Gudrun. They taunted his outside, the limp, the silence. They could not reach his inside, where still he dreamed of one day being able to stand tall and strong and say, “I am Einar, and not a coward.”