Ragnvald stood forward and spoke of the trap that Vemund had led them into and how, in the confusion, Arnfast had wounded Herlaug. He tried to put equal weight on Arnfast’s report of the campsite, his own decision, and the precautions he took. “This wound was done by misadventure,” Ragnvald finished. “As for Arnfast, he is a Sogn man. He served Hakon as a boy, and now he serves me, his king.”
“King Hakon,” said Harald, “here is my decision: you may choose a fine that I will decide, a fair wound-price for a king’s son, or three years’ outlawry for Arnfast.”
“I will not choose,” said Hakon. “I will agree to a lifetime’s outlawry for Arnfast, and . . . double the usual fine.” He glanced at Geirbjorn, and Ragnvald suspected their intention. If Arnfast was outlawed, his life would be forfeit if he remained within the bounds of Norway, and Hakon would make sure he was found and killed before he could leave.
“Neither the injured party nor his injurer are present to agree to a punishment or fine,” said Ragnvald. “What if both would prefer to duel?”
“I have outlawed dueling,” said Harald.
“Unsanctioned duels,” Ragnvald reminded him. “If all parties agree and you sanction it . . .”
“My son will agree to anything I accept,” said Hakon.
“And I will do my best to convince Arnfast of the rightness of what is decided here,” said Ragnvald. “He is his own man, though.”
“And my sons are not?” Hakon asked.
Ragnvald shrugged.
“This is purposeless,” said Harald. He banged his cup on his chair. “Here is my verdict: I agree to the double injury fee, for my ally’s son has been disfigured.” This caused a murmur among the crowd. No one but a king was usually compensated so greatly for an injury, even a disfiguring one. Harald continued: “Arnfast is outlawed for three years from all districts controlled by King Hakon and his sons, as well as my own.”
“So he is confined to Sogn?” Ragnvald asked. Arnfast could not afford the price, and so Ragnvald would have to pay it, or put Arnfast and his family into indenture for the next three generations. Better Ragnvald should be in debt to Hakon than force his retainer’s family into slavery.
“Yes,” said Harald.
“You promised kingdoms for all my sons,” said Hakon. “So far Heming only has North Maer. I will agree to this . . . justice if you make a place for my son Geirbjorn, and Herlaug as well if he recovers.”
“My ally has been given all he asks for, and still he wants more,” said Harald to the crowd. “Your son Heming has not defended Maer as he promised, and so I spent the summer fighting there. I should see if his brother can succeed instead. Geirbjorn may try his luck in North Maer.”
“That is not what I meant,” said Hakon. “I will not be satisfied with this.”
“When are you ever satisfied?” Harald asked. “You try my patience. Here is my last offer, and then you may do what you will, with no fine, no outlawry, and no kingdoms either. Geirbjorn may go to Vestfold and lead my defenses there. I had planned to send my uncle Guthorm, for I fear the king of Sweden has designs upon our southern shores, but let your son prove himself there. If he does well, he shall have his district.”
Harald stared down Hakon until he nodded and said, “I agree to this.”
“Good,” said Harald. “Make sure your sons do as well.” He touched his forehead briefly then stood. “I am done giving justice today. Any with other matters may wait until tomorrow.”
Harald walked over to Ragnvald as the hall began to clear. “From what I know of the skills of Hakon’s sons, I might believe that Herlaug cut himself on his own blade, not Arnfast’s.” He laughed.
“That is not fair,” Ragnvald answered, trying to hide a smile. “They are all good swordsmen, only—”
“How useful is Hakon as an ally, truly?” Harald asked. “My uncle insists that we cannot hold the west coast of Norway without him, but I cannot see how it will end between us except in war. I would rather bring it now than wait for his betrayal.”
Ragnvald looked around. Hakon and Geirbjorn had already retreated. Anyone might report this conversation to Hakon, but that was probably what Harald wanted—to make clear that his patience grew thin.
“Your uncle is right,” said Ragnvald. “Cheer up, though—Hakon is old and will be dead someday soon.”
“Not soon enough,” said Harald, but he grinned at that, and clapped Ragnvald on the shoulder. “Come spar with my men and make them better. You will forget all about this.”
Ragnvald could not easily forget the gold he now owed Hakon for Herlaug’s wounding, but he could remind Harald of his skill in battle before he had to argue with Atli tomorrow.
14
Eystein had cried as Svanhild brought him on board Solvi’s ship, and then fretted himself into exhaustion. Now he slept in a fur bag on a bench out of the way of the crew. He had dozed for long stretches at a time, leaving Svanhild with no other company than Katla, who did not trouble to hide her resentment that she had been taken from Iceland so soon after putting her feet on solid ground. She had no sympathy for Svanhild, and seemed to regard her as much the cause of her distress as Solvi.
The ship moved swiftly, and Solvi kept its bearing with the aid of the stars. “We must stop and rest when we can,” said Svanhild to Solvi warily, three days after leaving Iceland. She felt as though every time she talked to him, he rejected her words. His anger had grown, as she put all of hers into keeping her energy up to care for Eystein. The route took them to the Faroe Islands, then the Shetlands, offering a night or two of respite from the rocking of the ship, and the constant wakefulness that overnight sailing demanded.
“Hakon’s forces chased us out last time,” said Solvi.
He had not dismissed her suggestion immediately so she pressed. “There are many deserted beaches here. Eystein needs a night or two of good sleep, and the warmth of a fire.”
“All he’s done is sleep,” said Solvi. He glanced back to where Eystein lay swaddled in his sleeping bag like a newborn.
“Because he is sick,” said Svanhild. She could not stop herself from adding, “You are killing him with this voyage.”
Solvi said nothing but turned the ship toward the green islands rising in the distance. The islands were tilted, tipped down toward the west as though pressed down by a giant hand, and rising to cliffs in the east. As Solvi’s ship drew closer to the archipelago, he veered around to the south. Svanhild went to Eystein, who had opened his eyes and was struggling to sit up.
“See, we are nearing the Faroe Islands,” she said to him. “The islands all wear clouds like woolly hats to keep them warm.” Eystein smiled at the image. They had sat together this way many times so they could watch the approach of a new shore together, and speak about what they saw.
A small boat sailed east from the southern island, and Solvi steered the ship behind a point of land that would hide them. They made landfall on a narrow beach, ringed on all sides by high cliffs. Solvi’s men dragged it up onto the sand, and then moved the stern so the whole of the ship nearly filled the beach, while Svanhild set up a tent in the dim alley between the ship and the cliff.
She sent Thorstein to climb for eggs hidden in the cliff above while she harvested wild lovage that grew in the narrow band of soil that had accumulated at its base. The plant’s roots added starch and flavor to the eggs of seabirds, which otherwise tasted like the fish they ate. Eystein could not stay here long.
The wind blew unceasing against the beach, filling Svanhild’s ears with a rushing sound that made it difficult to hear anything else. She slept that night in a tent with Katla, nestling Eystein between them for warmth. Overnight the wind shifted, and Svanhild woke in the dim predawn, her body sodden and frigid from rain that had been forced in through a gap in the tent’s roof. She was shivering, teeth chattering in a way she thought she should be able to stop, but every time she did it turned into a deep shaking in her chest that felt as much like fear as cold. Eystein—she reached down to touch him,
dreading that she would find him as cold as she. Instead, his rain-slick skin was hot with fever.
“Katla, help,” Svanhild cried. “My son, his fever.” She had let herself believe his illness had passed, even though Solvi put him at risk again. He had seemed better. She sat back on her heels crying, shivering, swatting at the raindrops that still came in through the gap in the tent. No one stirred; she had not spoken loudly enough to be heard over the storm.
“Katla,” she cried again. “He is dying, my son is dying. Help me please, Frigga and Freya, goddesses, help me. I cannot bear it, I cannot bear it, I cannot bear it.” She rocked and cried until finally Katla woke, and sat up, squinting and stretching. “Help him,” said Svanhild. She shook Katla’s shoulders. “Do something.”
“What should I do?” Katla asked.
“He is burning up from this fever, and there is rain in the tent. Don’t be a fool, Katla. This is dangerous.”
“The rain will probably help keep his fever down,” said Katla.
“Do as I say,” said Svanhild. “Or at least fix the hole in the tent and find him some dry clothes.”
Katla pawed through the wool bag at the foot of the tent. “They’re all wet,” she said.
“Then go wake the men. One of them must have some dry clothes—or you can fetch some from the ship.”
Katla moved slowly, so slowly leaving the tent that Svanhild screamed at her. “Go. If he dies I will blame you.”
“I thought you blamed your husband,” Katla said sullenly. Svanhild rose up on her knees and slapped Katla across the face, hard enough it made Svanhild’s hand hurt. Katla choked off a cry. She brought her hand to her face, stared at Svanhild for a long moment, and left the tent.
Svanhild lay back down next to Eystein. She cradled him against her chest, and he flopped against her, murmuring in his fever. His breath smelled oddly sweet, a sweetness that made Svanhild think of decay, but no dying thing could give off so much heat. Unna had said that fever burned out the evil that caused illness, like a furnace that smelted iron to remove its impurities. The body did its work, as long as it had the strength to keep up the heat, though a fever could burn out his wits. She would accept that if she had to, even if Eystein should live a fool. Perhaps then Solvi would stop trying to make him into a king.
She stopped those thoughts as swiftly as she could. She might tempt the gods to take that bargain. No, she wanted his wits, his sweetness, everything that made him her beloved son. “We are on a new island,” she said to him, hoping he could hear her. “When the sun rises, you will see it better. It has black sand and high cliffs with birds living on them, and green grass above.”
When Katla returned with blankets, Svanhild commanded her to fetch Solvi. He arrived after an agonizing wait as Svanhild fussed with Eystein’s blankets.
“Well, wife,” he said. He stooped to enter the tent. “What is it now?” He looked down at her.
“Your son is very ill,” said Svanhild. “I know the men of these isles are not our friends, but we must remain here until he improves.”
“He only became sicker when we made landfall,” said Solvi. “We must press on.”
“That is foolishness! Fevers ebb and flow—you know this. If you make us leave, you will kill him,” said Svanhild.
Solvi left the tent without another word. In the morning, when his men packed the ships again, he came back to find her. “The tide is with us,” he said. He picked up Eystein and slung him over his shoulder. “Shall I leave you on this beach, Svanhild?”
How tempting, to watch all her cares sail away. She could walk to the north end of the island, to the settlement at Sandvik, indenture herself as a servant, lose herself in a new life, and never think of Solvi or Eystein again.
“No,” she said, the words choking in her throat. “No, I will not leave my son.”
* * *
The Faroe Islands faded from view at midday. The weather was blustery, with cloud cover that parted occasionally. After so little sleep, the brightness of those stabs of sunlight hurt Svanhild’s eyes. Eystein did not wake, even when Svanhild pulled him against her. His fever was breaking; he grew cooler as the day wore on. His breaths came slowly, until Svanhild could hardly detect them at all. She held him closer, breathing with him, as though the constant filling and emptying of her own lungs should prompt his.
When she paused for a moment, feeling faint from breathing too hard, he seemed colder still. She pulled up his tunic to listen to his breath as Unna had done, and thought she saw a bruise spreading over his chest as though his heart had begun bleeding. His pulse gave a flutter in his neck, like the beating of a bird’s wings, and then stopped. Svanhild held him, then shook him, willing him to wake again, but his body grew chilled as the spirit left it.
She recoiled and thrust him from her so he fell off the bench. When she saw what she had done, she cried out and reached for him again, but she could not make herself take the empty doll of his body back into her arms. Instead she composed his limbs so he lay peacefully against the curved floor of the ship. The beads of water that forced themselves in between the seams of the boards could not trouble him now.
“He is dead,” she said. She knelt on the bench above him. She spoke at a normal volume, which was too quiet to be heard by anyone around her. Solvi, at his post by the steering oar, had stayed as far away as possible from where she held her dying son. She leaned down over Eystein and pulled his blanket up to his chin. She should cover his face, she knew, though she could not bear to do that yet. He was so thin, the ridges of his skull pressing through the skin of his forehead, making him look as much like an old man as a boy.
She stood, and stepped deliberately over coiled rope, around barrels of ale and fresh water. She watched herself take these steps as though from the outside. I am walking across the deck, she told herself. I am stepping around this barrel. I am going to my husband to tell him that our son is dead. I am a body doing these things and nothing more. What animates me no longer animates him.
“Our son is dead,” said Svanhild, when she stood an arm’s length away from Solvi. He seemed not to hear her at first, and then he went white and stumbled back. A swell pitched him forward and he crumpled to his knees, grabbing Svanhild’s skirt. Svanhild sank as well, her chest so tight and pained she felt she would break in half.
She pulled Solvi to her breast and held him while he shook silently. She wished for someone she could cling to as he did, someone who could comfort her. Her mother, perhaps, as she was when Svanhild was a child, before tragedy stole her spirit. There had been a time when Svanhild knew that no matter how long or hard she cried, her mother would stroke her hair and console her.
She could not bring herself to stroke Solvi’s hair the same way, and soon grew weary of holding him. Eystein needed her—to wash his body, prepare it for burial in a mound on the land she had claimed for him. Solvi must agree to that now; it was where Eystein had been the happiest.
* * *
With Katla’s help, Svanhild wrapped Eystein in another shroud that covered his face, and laid him flat on the floor of the ship. Otherwise, said Katla, he would stiffen sitting half upright, and be harder to bury. Solvi’s men averted their eyes and found excuses to look away from the place on the ship now marked with death.
Solvi would not hear of taking Eystein back to Iceland to bury him. “No, we must continue to Tafjord. We are bringing war there, remember,” he said. He would not look at her either, only at the horizon beyond the sail, scanning for signs of land.
He seemed to have aged in the half day since Eystein’s death. The laugh lines at the corners of his eyes that Svanhild loved had been erased; only the stern furrows between his brows remained. He looked like a carving of an old king, with a pointed beard and empty eyes. He looked like his father.
“Where will our son lie then?” she asked dully.
“He will burn on a pyre as my father did. It matters not where, only that the ashes carry his soul to heaven,” said Solvi.
“What heaven is for him?” Svanhild asked. “I want to be buried next to him so we can be together for all time.”
“He is no warrior, but he can find a children’s heaven, a broad field where he can run,” said Solvi.
“We have a field back in Iceland,” said Svanhild.
A spasm crossed Solvi’s face, some very strong emotion that Svanhild could not read. “He was my son,” said Solvi. “My line does not spend the afterlife buried under the ground. Put him in the sea if you prefer.”
“No,” said Svanhild. “I could not bear that.” Her ancestors lay in mounds, guarding their land in death as they had in life. To burn Eystein was to destroy him. To put him in the sea was to abandon him. “Our son died of fever and now you want him to burn. Fire maimed you.” Solvi set his jaw. “Do you want your body burned as well?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Solvi shortly. “One day the fire shall finish its work.”
“If you burn him, you should burn me too,” said Svanhild. “You have stolen him from me twice. You will not take him a third time.”
* * *
Svanhild had spoken truth when she said she meant to burn herself with her son. She struggled against Solvi’s men, who held her back as they lit the torch for his pyre, yet when shrouds began to burn away from Eystein’s face and expose the blackened flesh underneath, she turned away. The wind blew the ashes into her face, and still hot, they made little stinging welts on her skin.
Then she sobbed, sinking to the ground, crying at the slight injury to her skin, crying that she had not forced herself to endure more. Eystein had been too weak to survive as her and Solvi’s son, and she had been too weak to follow him into death. He had weakened on their sea journeys and grown stronger on land. He was never meant to be the son of a sea king who would burn his dead. The fates had sent him to the wrong family. They should have sent him to a priestess, to bring him up in the service of Frey. Svanhild should have given him over to them, to learn the magic of plants and the fields. The figure that seemed to writhe in the flames would never do any of those things.
The Sea Queen Page 17