“I cannot support this feud,” said Ragnvald. “Hakon’s sons will be outlawed, and your family will be paid.” He wondered if he should simply let Arnfast carry his feud to Herlaug and Geirbjorn. Arnfast would certainly die, as would his brothers, if they tried to avenge him, and that would be an end of it. But if Ragnvald allowed that, it would endanger his kingship, and possibly Harald’s as well. A king’s protection and his justice must be as strong as steel, or none would follow him.
“Gold,” Arnfast spat. “What good is gold?”
“No good,” said Ragnvald. “But neither is the torture of women. This is the work of a coward, a nithing. Would you make yourself another Herlaug, and face the cold hell of oath breakers and criminals after your death? No. You will have justice, but if you hurt any of Herlaug’s women over this, I will kill you myself.”
“It’s what she wants,” said Arnfast, indicating the back of the room with a nod. Ragnvald heard wails and whimpers from that corner, nothing as coherent as a call for revenge.
“If so, it is because she is crazed with pain,” said Ragnvald.
“He must die,” said Arnfast. In this state, it seemed that he hardly heard Ragnvald.
“I do not make threats lightly,” said Ragnvald. “You will be killed or outlawed if you pursue a private feud. Think on it.” He spoke quickly: “And if you will not think of your life, think of your brothers’ lives, your sisters’. Your mother is not the only one who can be hurt. Think.”
“I don’t care—” Arnfast began.
Ragnvald quelled him with a glare. “Think,” he commanded.
“Look at my mother’s face, then come back and tell me if you would still do nothing,” Arnfast spat. He was too blinded by anger to see how this would end: war with Hakon. But he was Ragnvald’s sworn man, and if he did not do what Ragnvald ordered, he would be an oath breaker. He would see that.
Ragnvald had to witness what was done to Jorunn, though, or his imagination would show him a hundred pictures far worse than the reality to haunt his dreams. He walked over to the circle of women, servants in dark homespun. Two held down Jorunn’s shoulders. Alfrith bent over her, wearing fine dark wool, her sleeves rolled up, her hands red with blood. She blocked Ragnvald’s view of Jorunn until she turned to ask a servant for a pair of scissors, and then he saw a mess of flesh that hardly looked like a face anymore. Most of one cheek had been torn away entirely, exposing her teeth back to the molars. The other side of her face was a seamed and puckered mass where Alfrith had sewn it together and begun the work of cauterizing the wounds to keep them from growing infected. Could such devastation heal? Ragnvald’s stomach heaved. He cast his eyes down, so he would not be seen to be turning away. He barely escaped vomiting on the floor, swallowing down the remnants of his last meal, which rose, bathed in acid, to his mouth.
“It is very bad,” he said to Arnfast when he rejoined him. “To do this to any woman is a crime even the gods would have trouble punishing harshly enough.”
“I did not cut him in malice,” said Arnfast. “I would have offered my life to spare her this. Now I can offer my death in the service of revenge.”
“You have heard my decision,” said Ragnvald. “Promise me at least you will not do anything until Alfrith tells us what healing she can bring.”
Arnfast stared up at him, and then, finally nodded.
“Come,” Ragnvald continued. “I am sure that chores have been left undone since this happened. See, there is hardly any wood in the fireplace. Let us fetch some, and bring in some snow to melt for water.”
They found wood, and many other chores to fill their time. Out on the woodpile, the corpse of Arnfast’s father lay frozen among the pieces of timber, awaiting spring for his burial. Wind had torn his shroud from him, and Ragnvald met the dead, staring eyes, before quickly covering him again, hoping Arnfast had not seen.
* * *
By dawn, Jorunn had retreated into fever and delirium. Alfrith dosed her with jealously hoarded opium brought with her from Smola, purchased at great expense from southern merchants. She mixed up a tincture and dripped it into the woman’s mouth, rubbing her throat to make sure she swallowed it. It kept Jorunn quiescent except one horrible moment at dinnertime when she stood up and lurched around the hall, and Ragnvald barked at the servants to put her back to bed and tie her there if need be.
Neither he nor anyone else in the house could eat after that. Ragnvald lay next to Alfrith that night with his stomach roiling still, and the thin, keening noise from Jorunn’s pallet keeping him from sleep.
“Will she live?” Ragnvald asked.
“She is fevered now,” said Alfrith. She had worn the same grim look all day that Odin’s Valkyries must wear when they walked among the dead on a batttlefield. It made him both fear her and love her all the more, for facing what he dreaded. “If it passes, she may live, though horribly scarred. She will always be prone to fevers in the wound, and more of the flesh may die.”
Alfrith spoke, Ragnvald noticed, as impersonally as possible about the injury. He nodded, and resigned himself to a long, sleepless night. Jorunn’s face haunted him whether he closed his eyes or left them open.
“When will you know?” he asked.
“I will know when the fever passes or she dies,” Alfrith snapped. She sighed. “Forgive me.”
“No, you have more right than I. You may be as ill-tempered as you wish.” He needed whatever goodwill she could spare for the question he meant to ask her tomorrow.
In the morning, Alfrith packed cloths full of snow around Jorunn’s face to draw down the fever and the pain. When Jorunn slept, she walked with Ragnvald outside, her rigid calm melting into exhaustion.
“I do not have much opium left,” she said. “Her pain and fever will make her mad if they have not already.”
The wind that greeted their arrival had calmed and the sun shone bright. If Herlaug had not made this farm a charnel house, he and Alfrith might be sledging this day, riding down the hills fast enough to blow Alfrith’s hair back.
“I will make sure we trade for more in the spring,” said Ragnvald. “That is a problem, though. How many days longer can you dose her?”
“Every day she needs more,” said Alfrith. “At this rate, three or four more days, perhaps.”
“Are there other potions you can use?”
“I have some mushrooms that induce a stupor, but I have only used those . . .”
“What?”
“I have used those to help those who cannot live to die peacefully,” she said. “I do not like to do it. But I begged my mother to use those mushrooms on my brother. You would not have had to kill him then.”
“It was his wyrd,” said Ragnvald. He had been frightened that night, but so much had come from that moment of fear, including Alfrith by his side now. “And yours and mine as well.”
“They are superstitious on Smola and would have killed me for an evil sorceress if they knew I exercised this power,” she said, still half to herself. “But I saw many on the edge of death who asked for my help so they might not see another pain-filled morning. Can you love Hel’s handmaiden?”
“I can love you,” he said. “Could you not help Jorunn to die? What kind of life will she have as she is?”
Alfrith shuddered and touched her own cheek, the first instinctive reaction he had seen from her in all this time. Herlaug’s knife had cut through all of them, and all who would see Jorunn in the future. “She asked me,” said Alfrith. “When I first came. I could hardly understand her words.”
“Why did you not do it then?” Ragnvald asked.
“She is not old, and she is fevered. I do not deal in death to all who are in pain. Only if they cannot live.”
“I fear it would be better if she died,” said Ragnvald. “If Arnfast takes his vengeance successfully, there will be war between Hakon and me. Harald will lose honor if he does not outlaw Herlaug and Geirbjorn, but he will lose Hakon as an ally if he does.”
“And you thi
nk if Jorunn dies . . . ?”
“Then at least Arnfast will not think he can ease her pain by killing Herlaug,” said Ragnvald. He could feel how thin the argument was as he spoke it.
“He will still desire revenge,” said Alfrith, her voice rising in anger. “I will not kill for your convenience. Or because you cannot look on such a wound without blanching. Have you not been in battle?”
“Men die of wounds like that in battle,” said Ragnvald. “They die screaming and delirious with fever. Their wounds stink and fester and they breed plague.” And they died in tents, under the care of Ronhild and other healers, hidden from view. “If you do not do this, I may have to kill her sons, or watch feud tear apart Harald’s Norway.” He saw Alfrith start to waver and pressed his case. “You are the only one who can do this thing. If I cause this woman’s death, her sons will hate me too. If you do it, you will give her mercy. Do not answer me now. Tend her and think upon it. Think upon her suffering. Think upon her living like that.”
Alfrith gave him a look of such fury Ragnvald worried he had lost her forever. “You are as cold as one already dead, Ragnvald Half-Drowned,” she said. “I cannot tell if you ask this for your own comfort, or if it truly will save more lives. I will not decide today. Now leave me be.”
* * *
Ragnvald wanted to hate Alfrith for what she had said, but he had never learned the trick of hating those who told him an unpleasant truth. Half-Drowned, Alfrith called him. More people called him Ragnvald the Wise, or Ragnvald the Mighty now, but Half-Drowned felt truer. Half cold, a creature of shadows and chilly water, only half a feeling man.
He kept out of doors as much as he could and was not the only one. Both Arnfast and his brother found excuses to be outside, chopping kindling for fires that did not need to be made. If Ragnvald went inside he might have to look at Jorunn. Alfrith made it as chilly inside as out in the cold wind, though Ragnvald did not think that Arnfast or Tofi noticed. They were too lost in their own misery.
The next day, when Ragnvald went to tend the ponies, he found Arnfast there already, opening the feed shed. “What are we waiting for?” he asked Ragnvald.
“I am waiting for Alfrith to be willing to leave her patient. Your mother is still fevered.”
“She will not heal,” said Arnfast. “I tell you, she begged me to let her die, and then to avenge her.”
“Alfrith can ease her passage,” said Ragnvald. “You must speak with her if you think that is what your mother wants.” She had lain next to him like a block of wood the night before.
It was a bad day for Jorunn. Her fever made her see things, and she tore at the bandages on her face so that her sons had to restrain her arms, though not before she bared her wound again, and the gleam of her white teeth through her missing cheek made the scar on Ragnvald’s own cheek ache in horrible sympathy. He had been lucky with Solvi’s cut. Lucky that Solvi meant to kill, not mutilate. He carried his scar to the Sogn ting trials, calling it an insult wound. He had not known what such a thing was.
Jorunn was quiet during dinner, dragged down into an unnatural sleep by the last of Alfrith’s opium. Alfrith looked worn out, the lines of her face severe in the firelight. Her beauty was the type that would grow greater with age, and be called handsome even until her death. She was only a woman, though, not a healing goddess, and Jorunn’s wound tested her sorely.
“We must speak privately, my lord,” she said to Ragnvald after their silent meal. Ragnvald walked with her out into the night. No moon shone, and the stars made a cloudy ribbon across the arc of the sky. The aurora hung in sheets above, pure white curtains, like the fairest of maiden’s hair, or like the silver streak in Alfrith’s.
“When you came before, my brother lost his life and became a draugr. Now this woman has become like a draugr as well. What fate do you bring me, Ragnvald Half-Drowned?” she asked.
Ragnvald shuddered to hear the name spoken again in the darkness. He had brought men and a few women terrible fates with his own hands, and the hands of his men, starting fires that burned families to death, bringing armies that killed and plundered. His foster-brother, Einar, had died on Ragnvald’s sword, his blood poured out on the ground of Ardal.
“She has asked me to die,” said Alfrith. “Her son has asked me to let her die. You have asked me to let her die. She is crazed by pain, though, and she may want to live once she heals. I have seen it.”
“Would you want to live like that?” Ragnvald asked. “Your beauty gone?”
“Time takes beauty from all of us,” said Alfrith, quoting the proverb. “I would live. If I still had my wits, and could collect herbs and bring healing. Jorunn can live to hold her grandchildren in her arms, to know her mutilation is avenged at least with the outlawry of Hakon’s sons.”
“Her grandchildren will fear her,” said Ragnvald.
“Children are kinder than you,” said Alfrith.
Ragnvald thought of his sons Einar and Ivar, the bond between them stronger than the ties that bound some grown men. “I will do as you bid,” he said.
She took a deep breath. “I may yet do this, but only if Jorunn and her children—Tofi, Arnfast, and her daughters too—all agree. I will not do this in secret or let any turn their face from the decision. I do not care about what this feud means for Norway or for your precious king.”
“If you want to prevent bloodshed—”
“Do not lay that burden on me,” she snapped. “I came for Jorunn. I cared for her when her servants could hardly look upon her. I will not carry the lives and decisions of every foolish man who can pick up a sword.”
* * *
Alfrith kept vigil by Jorunn’s side that night, lit by one candle. Near morning, Jorunn stirred and opened her eyes. Alfrith gripped her hands. “The opium will wear off soon, and you will be in pain again,” she told Jorunn. “You have told your sons that you want to die. You have told me that you want to die. Is it because of the pain?”
Jorunn’s eyes, still beautiful, a rich, warm blue, like a summer midnight sky, washed with tears and she shook her head no.
“Is it because of your face? Because you will be troubling to look upon? Because eating will be difficult for the rest of your life?”
Jorunn nodded.
“If you die, you will never see the women that your sons choose as wives. You will never hold their grandchildren in your arms. You will never be able to advise them. If you choose to live, you choose pain and difficulty. But if you choose death, you choose this as your last moment, and you will never move beyond it. I will deliver your choice to you, but you must choose it freely. I want you to decide now, before the pain returns. Because it will, and the help I have left for it will not work as well.”
“I don’t know,” said Jorunn.
These words Ragnvald could make out. He sighed.
“What . . . you think?” Jorunn asked.
“I think you should live,” said Alfrith.
Arnfast choked out a sob and turned away.
“I promise you vengeance on Hakon’s sons,” said Ragnvald. He had the glimmerings of an idea now, indistinct as lightning on the horizon that augured a storm. “You must leave it to me, though. It will take some time, and it will fall on Hakon and his sons as though decreed by the gods.”
“Yes,” said Jorunn. “I will live to see that.”
“I will give you willow bark to ease the pain,” said Alfrith. “Remember though, when you feel the pain, it is because you are alive and your body is trying to heal itself.”
Alfrith patiently dripped the medicine down Jorunn’s throat. She took Tofi by the hand and taught him how to tend to his mother, and make sure she drank enough water, so she would not be parched by her fever.
“She will live to see my revenge,” said Arnfast. “I suppose that is good.”
“No,” said Ragnvald. “I command you to remain here to tend her. I command you to leave revenge to me, as your sworn lord.”
“It is my duty—mine and my brothers’,
” said Arnfast.
“Your mother made a hard choice,” said Ragnvald. “It would have been easier for her to choose death and to end her pain, but she was brave. Far braver than you are being now. It is easy to pursue Herlaug, perhaps even kill his mother or his brothers. Leaving to do vengeance is the easy choice. Staying here to protect her, showing her that her sons still love her even with her beauty gone—that is the hard choice. Your mother made the hard choice—honor her by doing the same.”
“But—”
“You may come back to Naustdal in the spring and tell me how she fares. At that time I will be able to tell you more of my own plans. Be sure, Hakon’s sons will be punished for this. But they will be punished by the laws that they have broken. That is the vengeance that I owe them.”
“Law,” said Arnfast scornfully. “Law was meant to protect my family—you paid wergild, and I am outlawed from half of Norway for three years.”
“When the god Loki killed Alfather Odin’s son Baldur, do you recall the vengeance Odin visited upon him?” Ragnvald asked. Arnfast nodded, but Ragnvald continued anyway, for Arnfast must understand and trust him. “He turned one of Loki’s sons into a wolf, who tore out the guts of the other. Your enemies are too powerful for you alone. They must be made to turn on each other. Do you understand me?”
“No,” said Arnfast. “But you are called the Wise, and I will trust you. Still, if I can hold the blade that kills Herlaug, I will never ask for anything again.”
Over the next few days, Alfrith taught Jorunn’s children all that they must do to care for their mother and her wounds. Jorunn stood and went outside for the first time to bid farewell to her husband’s corpse. Ragnvald spoke the words of blessing for him, those that could be said without laying him in a proper barrow.
“The wound is knitting as well as it can,” said Alfrith after she laid Jorunn back in her bed. “Now that she has decided to live. What changed your mind, my lord?”
“You did,” said Ragnvald. “You gave me the words that I think will keep her sons here over the winter. And then I will see what is to be done.”
The Sea Queen Page 31