by Julia Knight
“What was it she called me?” Wilda could guess the gist, just from the fact Myldrith had said Toki’s name after, but she needed to know.
Rowena blushed. “A whore, or their word for it. She said you whored yourself to Toki.”
Wilda shut her eyes and said another Hail Mary. “What will Sigdir do?”
“It depends. If you went willing, you’ve dishonoured Sigdir. Oh, if Toki took you by force, then that’s no dishonour for you, or even if he seduced you, that’s one thing of a difference here. But if you went willing…”
She had, oh Lord, she’d been more than willing. “What will Sigdir do?”
“Kill him, most like. A blood price.”
Dawn was a long time coming, and Wilda couldn’t sleep. Finally, as the sky grew pale, she set to work, anything to take her mind from what Sigdir was doing, what she had done. Killed a man with herself, and not just any man.
She went out into the frigid cold of a Norse winter dawn. The sky was pearl-white, the just-broaching sun seeming rimed with frost. Snow crackled under her boots, and her breath puffed out into little clouds that turned to prickly ice-drops in a moment. The well was frozen over, again. She dropped the bucket in to break the skin and when she’d managed it, concentrated on getting it full and pulling it up. The cold bit through the rough wrappings on her hands, and her fingers were long since numb so she fumbled the rope.
A commotion across the yard disturbed the blessed silence. Four horsemen rode in, Sigdir at the head. Something was tied to his saddle, a long line of rope half-dragging in the snow behind him, and what was at the end was dripping blood.
Einar raised his head briefly, his beard tangled with blood from his nose, his cheek misshapen and purple. A yank on the rope that bound his hands and tied him to Sigdir’s horse brought him back to his knees. He looked up again and saw her watching. She began to run, her mouth already open to shout her reproof, to demand that he be let go as though she still had any authority. His fingers, blue-purple with cold, raised to his lips, a brief touch. Silence. Then he turned his head away, as though shamed that she should see him so.
Sigdir slid from his horse and strode toward her, his face hard and eyes glittering. He called for Rowena so that Wilda could understand him, and waited impatiently for the house to rouse. “A gift for my betrothed. The one who’s dishonoured you will not go unpunished.”
“I don’t understand.” Wilda couldn’t take her eyes from Einar, from where the warriors manhandled him into the building where the overwintering sows were kept.
“Toki’s confessed that he took you against your will, that he’s dishonoured his brother. Yet it’s no dishonour to you. It’s their way, my lady. You’re a freed woman now. Not a thrall, though you still got to do what Sigdir tells you. But free born and freed women…if a man rapes or seduces them, then it ain’t the woman’s fault. It’s the man who’s dishonoured her, and her house. Especially if she’s unwed, that’s a bad crime, to them. You ain’t got no house but Sigdir’s, you’re part of his house now, and he’ll defend your honour to the death if he needs to.”
The warriors came out of the pig barn, laughing crudely at something. Wilda looked up at Sigdir, at the flame-red hair, the harsh face that was softened now by something she couldn’t name.
“What’s he going to do to Ei—Toki?”
Sigdir frowned when Rowena translated the question, as though he wasn’t sure why she should ask it. “My own brother’s dishonoured me for the last time. More, he’s dishonoured you, my betrothed. I must claim for that dishonour, the dishonour to my whole house. A blood price. A killing.”
Einar struggled to get up, but balance was hard to find when one leg didn’t bend properly and your hands were tied in front of you. Finally he managed to get to a sitting position. That would have to do. It wasn’t as though he could go anywhere if he made it to his feet.
The pig barn stank, and it was all over him, their muck stinging where the skin had been taken off his cheek, and his wrists where the rope bit in cruelly, the knots pulled as tight as could be. It would take a knife to get the rope off, a knife he didn’t have. The other end of the tether was up far beyond his reach, tied to a rafter. He got his leg into a more comfortable position and waited. There was nothing else to do.
How Sigdir had known he couldn’t fathom. Surely Wilda wouldn’t have told him. So now all Einar’s choices had fled, leaving him this. Waiting for Sigdir to extract his price. Einar had nothing to give, no money, no real property to buy his pardon. And Sigdir hadn’t looked like a man willing to accept that in any case. No, this would be a blood price.
One of the pigs snuffled at the blood on his face and he shoved it away. The door opened and Sigdir came in, his face screwed up in disgust and anger. He stood over Einar and looked him up and down, making no attempt to hide his sneer.
“So, what did you do? Slip some of the spae-wife’s herbs to her? I can’t think a simpleton cripple such as you could overpower her. She need only run at a trot and you couldn’t catch her. And why, brother, why did you? You knew it would shame me, dishonour me. Is that why you did it? Your cowardly way of angering me?”
Einar turned his head away and kept silent. Silence was always best, he should have remembered that at the beginning, when he’d known Wilda for who she was. Silence was safety, silence was life.
Sigdir grabbed him by the hair and pulled him to standing. There was no turning away, not from the eyes that burned like ice and the hurt behind them.
“Tell me.”
Einar looked into his face, one so like Arni’s and their father’s except it was warped with hate and anger till all Einar could see was Bausi there. Bausi twisting Sigdir’s heart and mind, and Einar had done nothing to stop it, because he didn’t have any way to thwart his jarl or the curse he’d laid on.
Sigdir threw him down in disgust, and Einar landed with a jolt and a grunt of pain on his bad knee.
“Why was it that Arni died, and not you, eh? If he’d have lived—” Sigdir broke off with a pained look, and Einar remembered how much Sigdir had idolised Arni when they were boys, almost as much as Einar had. He’d seemed like a god to them, like Thor made into flesh, and in their eyes he could do no wrong. Yet a god that could die a meaningless, empty death on the end of his brother’s spear.
Sigdir paced, his hand stroking the hilt of his sword as though he debated using it, but the hatred seemed to have disappeared, fading away into a childlike bewilderment. Finally he stopped and looked down at Einar. “How was it that you could let him die? Not even summon the courage to try to help him, but run like a woman, and a milk-blooded woman at that?”
Einar couldn’t answer. Every day he wished Arni had lived. Every day he wondered why Arni had died, and he had not. What fate the Norns had woven for him. Instead of answering, he did what he always did and turned his face away.
“It wasn’t just one brother I lost that day,” Sigdir said to his back. “I lost Einar, not because he died or was a coward or even became simple, because I don’t think I ever believed that. I lost him because he abandoned me, even when he never left, and I hate him for it.”
Einar shut his eyes and wished he could shut his ears too.
“And worse, now that brother dishonours me, my house, our house, in the worst way possible. I—I only have Bausi to look to, and I know, I know what he’s like, that what he says isn’t always the right thing. But a haze comes over me, a black mist on my mind, and I can’t think but to do as he’s taught me. Arni shrinks of shame in Valholl, I don’t doubt, at some of the things Bausi teaches me. But I know no else, no other way. Because you abandoned me to him. So, Einar, tell me, why did you take her—and dishonour me?”
Einar forced himself to look at Sigdir, to see the youth and bafflement under the mask of hate, but he couldn’t bring himself to speak. What could he say, what reason could he give? None, because he had no excuse. No reason except for a kind word, a soft touch, a single brief warmth in the frozen waste of his li
fe.
“She was going to be my way out, away from Bausi.” Sigdir’s face crumpled in a frown. “The raids go well enough, we’re strong and become stronger. Other jarls become richer because they don’t raid, they settle. Yet Bausi likes to raid, to pillage and plunder for the pleasure it gives him. So I took her, killed her thane husband and took her. They had no children, no obvious heirs. His estate was willed to her, but under their law she couldn’t marry yet, not for a year after his death. So I brought her here. When we marry, those lands come under me. I planned to settle there, with some of my men. They’re farmers, herdsmen, woodsmen, and they too weary of raiding. I thought to get out from Bausi, to appease him by making tribute.
“Only now, now I must take a blood price from you. That saddens part of me, that I should have to do that to my brother, who I once loved. But the other, stronger part of me is glad that I can lay my hate of you to rest, because the brother I loved never came back from his first raid, though he lived. The brother I loved would never have abandoned me to such a man as Bausi, knowing I had no way to escape him, as my jarl and protector. So I will take my price, then I can marry this Wilda, and be gone with a clear heart.”
Einar watched Sigdir’s back as he made for the door. Pull the right thread, but which was it? Sigdir—it must be Sigdir, but Einar had little hope now, no hope of lifting this curse, except that it would die with him, and maybe that would be enough. There was still one thing left to do though, one faint chance for Wilda.
“Sigdir.” Einar’s whisper stopped his brother with his hand on the door. “Sigdir, I didn’t abandon you. I did what I had to, bore every word and taunt, to protect you and Gudrun. Because we’re cursed, all of us, and that’s all I can say. Silence was my only defence, our only defence.”
Sigdir looked back over his shoulder, a suspicious frown darkening his forehead. “Cursed? Why?”
“Because I didn’t die.”
Sigdir’s frown deepened and he opened his mouth to speak, but Einar cut him off.
“Keep her away from Bausi. Please, Sigdir. This coward, for I am that, this coward begs. Keep her from Bausi.”
“You think I’d let him near her? Why do you think I keep her hidden? Because he’d take her and her lands, in a heartbeat, and I’m not the heartless man you think I am.” He stepped through the door before Einar could say any more, and the door banged shut, leaving Einar in pig-strewn darkness.
It wasn’t enough. Bausi would see her at the wedding, and worse, she would see him, she would know him, Bausi would kill her, and there was nothing he could do now to prevent it.
Chapter Fourteen
And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.
Mark 11:25
Wilda couldn’t breathe for fear as they waited. Yet there was no sound of fighting, of a sword drawn, no screams or cries, only a dread silence that was worse. When Sigdir came out of the pig barn his face was turned in, a hint of sadness behind the hate, but his hands were free of blood, and Wilda could breathe again.
Sigdir stamped into the longhouse and all scurried out of his way, warriors, karls and thralls alike. Only Wilda couldn’t move, had to stay there and stand to him, brazen and afraid. Afraid too of what would happen if she didn’t. It was all she could do for Einar, and it was nothing.
Sigdir eyed her, his brow darkening as she stood and faced him when all others hunched out of his way. He waved a hand, barked an order at her, but she didn’t move. At Sigdir’s impatient signal, Rowena crept out from where she hid by the byre door.
“He asks what it is that you want, why you stand there defiant before him like a lady of the house already. A freed woman must still listen to her former master. Wilda, now’s not the time, not when he’s like this.”
Wilda set her shoulders and tried not to think of running, out through the snow, up the mountain, as far and as fast as she could with the knife-wind in her hair and lungs. She couldn’t run, not now, not with Einar there with the pigs, waiting to pay the price for her folly. “Now is the time, it must be now. Tell him, he’s not had to pay a bride price for me, for what this marriage will give him. He stands to gain much, and I lose much. I ask a price, a bride price, a small one. That’s the custom here as well, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then he should honour it, if he has any honour.”
Rowena cringed as she relayed Wilda’s words, and it seemed she was right to. Sigdir’s face twisted into a hook-mouthed sneer and he stepped forward to loom over Wilda. It took all her nerve not to flinch, not to make a break for the door and run, anywhere, anyhow, just away, run until her heart burst on the mountain. Sigdir’s eyes held hers, their restlessness gone, still now, bright, hard. The Devil’s child.
When his words came, they were little more than a whisper, but all the more menacing for that, and for the breath of them over her cheek from his nearness.
“He—he asks if you question his devotion to Odin.”
Wilda managed to shake her head without the tremor travelling through the rest of her.
“Then what is your price?”
His eyes were too blue, too cold—like the glacier ice at the head of the fjord, glimpsed only briefly when the clouds deigned to lift.
“Free Myldrith, let her have the child in Christian lands, baptised. And don’t kill him. Not for me, not for my honour, for I have none. Tell him that Christ forbids it, that my faith bids me to speak for him, for his life. I must forgive.” Though she had nothing to forgive poor Einar for, and everything to thank him for. Yet Sigdir mustn’t know that, and this was all she had.
Sigdir took a step back at that, clearly puzzled. Yet the anger, the hate still bubbled through, apparent in the set of his shoulders, the timbre of his voice. “Your Christ is weak, with milk for blood, thinking everything worth doing is a sin. That’s why they call him the White Christ, the coward god, no match for red-blooded Red Thor. It seems you have a hard, cruel master as well as cowardly one. My brother forced himself upon you, and you wouldn’t take vengeance for that?”
Not even if he had. “No. Christ bids me to forgive, seventy-seven times if I must. Fine him in the Saxon way, the Christian way, if you have to. I’ll not have his blood on your hands and my soul. Not if you wish to marry me and take my lands.”
Sigdir’s brows drew down and his eyelids hooded, guarding his feelings. Finally he jerked his head in agreement. “Myldrith may go if that will please you, if that is your price. I brought her only as company for you, as a comfort. Come spring, I will take her back myself, and in the meantime she may live up at Agnar’s. I will not trouble her again. As for Toki—if he’ll be the hostage to your good behaviour, then I’ll take thought on it, and counsel. Bausi must be told, at the least. Yet if truth is told, it’s not just this that brings his neck into my hands. Not just this. I’ll think on it.”
And Wilda had to be content with that.
Einar had lost all feeling in his hands from the rope that twisted round his wrists. His bad leg had begun to seize from the cold packed-earth of the floor seeping into the mangled knee joint. He tried to move, to loosen it, but the numbness of his hands and having them tied made balance difficult. Worse was wondering what Sigdir was doing, who he was telling, what he was planning.
When the door banged open again and Sigdir strode in, his face dark as black ice, it was almost a relief. Sigdir yanked him up by the hair but steadied him when his leg failed and he would fall. Sigdir’s sword stayed in its carved wooden sheath, peace ties still intact. The blood price would not come yet. Not yet.
Sigdir looked him up and down, eyeing him critically. “She’s a strange woman, all these Christ followers are strange. All is sin, everything a man wants to do, everything a true man knows is right, is a sin. Forgive those who wrong you, where’s the glory in that? She asked that I not kill you, as her bride price.”
Einar shut his eyes. Strange her beliefs mig
ht be, but she’d come to see what was important to them, to the Norse, and use it well.
“Will you pay it?” was all he could ask when he opened his eyes again.
Sigdir got him standing upright before he cut the rope where it was tied to a beam and pushed him to the door. “It’s her right to ask it, to name her price. But for this—for this I must talk to my jarl. And so must you.”
A yank on his hair made sure Einar followed, though it was hardly necessary. Sigdir pushed him ahead, made him walk at the point of his now-drawn sword, like a condemned man going to the death that should have been his anyway.
They passed karls and bondsmen who looked at him with sneers and derision, past thralls who saw him as little better than themselves. His face throbbed and not just with the swelling. He stumbled across the snow, out of the shelter of Sigdir’s holding and onto the path that led to Bausi, to his jarl and chief tormentor.
By the time they came to the point of the path below the feasting hall that also served as Bausi’s home, most everyone in the village had turned out to watch. Women whispered behind hands, men openly debated what had brought the simpleton Toki to this. Word soon got round, it seemed, because Wilda was mentioned, words said about her that burned him to hear, that would have made him lay about with fists and feet if he hadn’t been tied, even if he had no sword to bite the words from their mouths.