Hidden

by Donna Jo Napoli

  We now number fourteen. We are skilled and strong. But, good Lord, what a mess our routine has become. I have to change this. I know that. But I have no idea how.

  The Birka market is nearly empty because it’s mealtime. This way there will be fewer people to stop us from carrying out our rescue plan for Mel, fewer witnesses, if in fact we ever do get the chance to go through with it, which looks more doubtful every day. Sometimes I think half my women are still with me out of loyalty. The other half, because any alternative open to them is hateful. No one really thinks we’ll find a trace of Mel.

  Something has to change. And something will, of course. Winter is almost upon us.

  Frustration speeds my steps through the market, when I suddenly halt. A slave dealer has set up a tent with a rug on the ground in front. It’s set back from the rest of the market, as though the dealer thinks his goods are special. Three women sit there, hair combed, faces washed. They are tied by the waist to a single rope. They are on display, like jewelry. The slave dealer stands off to the side, his back to us, talking with a customer, but it’s the women that interest me. They’re young and pretty, and they’re murmuring.

  In the language of Eire.

  I’m sure of it. I have to strain to hear over the loud rush of blood in my ears, but I am totally sure of it. One of them tells the other that she’s so grateful for the fish and goat after a week of nothing but boiled parsnips. She runs a finger through the now empty bowl beside her and licks it. That’s what she said, those exact words: boiled parsnips.

  Boiled parsnips are what they fed us on the slave ship seven years ago.

  I wander away from my companions and closer to the girls—because that’s what they are, really—girls my age. Fifteen years old, maybe sixteen. The girls stop talking. Like wary birds. How quickly people learn the way of animals when they become the hunted, the captured.

  “What do you want?” comes from behind me. That voice, that accent.

  I turn to look at the slave dealer. It’s him. Older and heavier, but him. I sway on my feet. My stomach threatens to pitch. He smells of goat like he did years before. Yes, yes, the girls were just talking about goat, so that might have influenced me, but still I could swear it’s him. I force myself to step closer and take a whiff. Clay. He reeks of it. The slave dealer seven years ago reeked of clay. I catch one hand in the other behind my back to stop the trembles. I look at him with as blank a face as I can manage.

  “You’re not a customer. So get away from my beauties.”

  “How much do they cost?”

  He raises a thick eyebrow. “One mark of silver. Each.”

  “That’s a lot for girls from Írland.”

  He scratches his throat, and I can tell he wants to know how I found out where they came from. But all he says is, “So?”

  “Is that what you got for the witch?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know. Years ago. Seven years. The mute. She came from Írland too.”

  His face goes slack. “Aist?”

  Aist? Is that what he called Mel? I don’t remember him giving her a name.

  The man leans toward me. “The one with the large gold ring on a leather strap?”

  Oh, good Lord, I’m right. It really is him. He’s talking about that gold teething ring Mother gave Melkorka from when she was little, to carry it with us so that we could prove we were royal children if we needed to. The ring that was supposed to be part of keeping us safe. But nothing could have kept us safe from this animal. I fall back a step.

  His eyes narrow. “She had hair the color of yours. But loose and curling.”

  “Where is she now?” It’s Sibbe speaking. She presses against me from one side and Thyra presses from the other and Matilda stands with her arms crossed at the chest in a belligerent pose.

  “Who wants to know?”

  “Alfhild,” says Sibbe. “And what is your name?”

  “Gilli.”

  “We’ll pay,” I say.

  The monster looks across us, then settles his eyes on me. “Are you Alfhild?”

  “Yes.”

  “You remind me of a little girl. A wild one. She jumped into the water and disappeared. Along with a boy. I thought they both died.”

  “The boy might have.”

  He runs his tongue across his teeth, then picks a bit of meat from the top ones. “She was bought by the Norseman Hoskuld. He took her to Iceland.”

  He says the name funny, but I recognize it: Ísland. The very name turns my skin to gooseflesh. “Why?”

  “She’s his concubine. In that desolate place, they need all the comforts they can get. Besides, she was too beautiful for anything else.”

  My fingernails dig into my palms. “Have you heard news of her since?”

  “Nothing.” He holds out a hand. “Pay me.”

  I look at Sibbe. We have rehearsed this, but it can’t go the way we rehearsed. These girls are Irish. They won’t trust Norsewomen. We have to change roles. And Sibbe, though she’s been with us only a month, has a natural tendency to lead. Will she take the risk? “Pay him, please.”

  “Of course,” says Sibbe. “But Thyra must come with me into the tent. I don’t want to be alone in there.”

  Thyra nods.

  Gilli frowns. “Pay me out here.”

  “I carry my money in a private place,” says Sibbe. “On my person.”

  A touch of color goes up Gilli’s cheeks. Men are so easy. “Well, you’re not going into my tent alone.” He walks to the tent and lifts the flap. “After you.”

  Sibbe and Thyra disappear into the tent, with Gilli.

  “I’ll take you back to Eire if that’s what you want,” I say to the girls in Gaelic.

  “What? Who are you?”

  “There’s no time to explain. You’ll be safe with us. Are you coming?”

  Matilda has already cut the rope.

  The girls look at one another—good, they’re united.

  We run straight into the forest, the five of us.

  A scream comes from the tent. Screams and screams.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Back in Birka the town is having horse races on the beach. Then there will be horse fighting, which is as dangerous for the spectators as it is for the competitors, and demonstrations of fighting with weapons. It’s the summer games—and all of it is ending soon. Swimming races are already long over, as are boating races. We can’t hear any of the commotion, because we are now far from town, out in the sea, going south with the wind. But I know what’s happening. The same thing happens in Heiðabý when summer ends.

  Jofrid is at the helm, which means there is not much for me to do as first in command; I can give up control. I press my forehead against the mast and close my eyes. My sister is with a Viking named Hoskuld—she’s his concubine—in a country so inhospitable it is called Ísland. But Eire must be our first stop. The three Irish girls have been promised delivery home, and I keep promises.

  Mel. Sometimes I have felt as though I made up my whole history—a tall tale that a skald like Beorn might tell. The only one who knew it was true was me, and that alone made it suspect. But now Gilli confirmed it. He confirmed that I jumped into the water and a boy jumped too. He confirmed that Mel exists.

  She lives in Ísland.

  She is a concubine.

  Someone throws an arm around me. In surprised gratitude, I turn to find Sibbe there. We lean into the wind.

  Sibbe and Thyra played their parts perfectly. They waited until they felt sure we were far, and then they set to screaming as though Gilli were murdering them. A trader nearby came to see what was up, and the girls accused Gilli of molesting them. The trader, a Norseman, was disgusted; in his eyes Gilli was a dirty Russian and Sibbe and Thyra were fine Norse girls. Such an attack couldn’t be allowed. An argument commenced; other traders were drawn into it. Sibbe and Thyra escaped in the confusion.

  We are gone. Free. And I have the information I’ve been search
ing for all these months . . . no, all these years. What now?

  I pull away from Sibbe. “What now?”

  “Let’s put the question to everyone,” she says.

  And so, when we harbor the ship for the night, we have a talk. It is so much like my idea of a þing assembly that I cannot help but think how very Norse I have become. I’ve grown up in Norse country.

  The discussion is brief.

  Everyone is ready to go to Eire. No one is ready to go to Ísland.

  The first voyage—to Eire—requires travel that can be largely close to land, with perhaps at most a single day at any given time totally at sea. And though my crew cannot talk with the Irish girls we rescued from Gilli’s clutches, the physical presence of them is compelling; they want to see these girls get home safely. Besides, Jofrid would scold anyone who suggested we go back on a promise—and no one wants to be scolded by Jofrid.

  The second voyage—to Ísland—requires days if not weeks of sea travel after leaving Eire. And all that long time without land in sight. With storms that can flip a boat. In a season where the sky could dump snow at any moment. All for a woman, Mel, who is nothing but an idea to them.

  So we make a pact. And I pay everyone from hoard coins—all but the Irish girls.

  We will go to Eire now. Before winter sets in. We will return the girls to their homes. And we will winter with their families. We are all able; we can contribute in useful ways to the life of their ringforts.

  Then, early next spring, the ship—this ship that has become so much a part of me—will return to the Baltic. The crew will gradually disperse, choosing where to live. Perhaps Heiðabý, Ribe, Birka. These are the names that come up. Big cities seem safest for maintaining control over their own lives. No one wants to work in a small settlement for the rich farmer who makes them do all the heavy labor. In a city some of them can pool their resources and maybe set up a shop. Maybe even become traders. Ha! They know so much about trading by now. And I will sell this boat and take a job on one of the giant seafaring ships to Ísland. If I disguise myself as a man, someone’s sure to take me on.

  It is a fair plan.

  Then we eat fish and plums, the first plums of the season, yellowish inside, with deep pink staining the flesh around the pit. I suck on the pits till it hurts the roof of my mouth, all sweet and hard together. The hunt for news of Mel is finally over, and I have these women to thank for that. What a marvel they have become. They navigate by sun and stars. They know the tides and currents and the migratory patterns of birds. They wield swords and axes, and so many of them are superb archers now—all of them as good as Skaði, the hunter giant. They have done everything I could have hoped for. And all of them are proud of themselves for it, not just Grima—all of them revel in their new skills. I will miss them terribly.

  I wrap a silk scarf around my neck, red with gold embroidery. It could be from China. Or Byzantium. Everything can be bought at Birka. Everyone can be bought at Birka.

  Just as in Heiðabý.

  This is the way of the world. I think of the man who taught me that phrase.

  Ragnhild is on duty tonight. She stares at the moon.

  I watch the black lapping of the waves. It is insistent, so regular, so normal—it is the way of the world. Everything is the way of the world. I feel without power. I move beside Ragnhild. “Will you go back to him?” I whisper.

  She doesn’t ask who. “I never had any other plan.”

  She is so free in her passion—so clean and wonderful. I stuff my mouth with the back of my hand. Alf. Good Lord, my thighs tremble. I feel like a draug—a ghost—as though I’ve seen my own death and it’s too late. Inside my chest, something shatters.

  But something else is whole and right. I realize I love this boat. The very ship itself. It is slender and flexible. The keel is made from a single timber, so it moves with the water. The overlapping planks are riveted together perfectly. The sail is huge and strong. The rudder is just the right size to steer us properly. The mast, seated in a huge block of timber, couldn’t be knocked over by anything. This is a perfect boat for travel to Eire. And next spring, after the others have left, I will board another wonderful boat for travel to Ísland. I have become a woman of the sea.

  I may have given up Alf, but I will find my sister.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  We sail for days without seeing other boats. Local traders have stopped for the season. Long-distance traders are crossing the Baltic Sea southward, migrating like birds.

  At night the women talk of setting up home on an island. It began with an offhand comment by Jofrid. But others joined in. Why not pick an island that no one else wants—a rocky crag? That way, no one will suspect women live there. No one will bother them.

  They can take sand from the beach and kelp from the sea, and form layers—sand, kelp, sand, kelp—filling the largest indentations in the rocky top, until weather does its magic on the layers and turns it into fertile earth. They can grow what they need. The deepest indentations can be sealed somehow to hold rainwater. They’ll make ponds that way. There are hundreds of islands off Jutland, where the weather is so much milder than in Skáney. They’ll find the right one, and then they can live independently of the rest of the world. Women alone. Free. They fall into one another’s arms in joy. They can be as independent of the world as that child Bolli’s settlement is. And if they want, they can trade, but have someplace to retire all winter. They have choices now.

  Their dreams jab me, for I cannot share them. I cannot even envy them.

  One night, as we eat a wild boar that Unn killed for us, I listen to the animal’s skin. It is so thick, you hear it as it tears. It says something secret, about the hollow under one’s neck, the private folds behind one’s knees, the fact that we all die, sooner rather than later. It drives me crazy. I am fifteen, nearly sixteen. The skin of my life is tearing.

  Rain comes. We’ve been at sea in rain before, of course. But this one goes quickly from a gentle patter to sleet. So we stop at the first settlement we see. It is on a hill, across a fjord, just around the west tip of Skáney.

  We eat with the people, who welcome us heartily as the traders we present ourselves to be—traders who have already sold everything. That makes sense to them, for it’s the end of a work season for them, too. They’ve been fishers all summer. The bay is rich in cod, plaice, flounder, herring. But they’ve spent the past day packing their belongings into wagons. They are moving inland for winter, where the firewood and the game are plentiful. They are cheerful and hospitable.

  Then the stories begin. They tell tales of the ghosts who haunt this place. I thought I knew all about them. But their ghosts are from the sea, and they can turn themselves into trolls, with a dreadful stench, or into seals that lead you astray at sea; you only realize what they are when you throw a spear and it bounces off them.

  After stories we’re all more comfortable, more intimate. And now they warn us about the notorious women pirates, red-haired devils who kill without a second’s pause. They tell us that the kings of the Dan people, including all of Jutland, have banded together to send out ships of warriors to track them down and kill them. They think this is a good thing. They don’t talk about the women and children slaves that these pirate women have returned to their homes—they know nothing of this. And I suddenly realize no one knows the truth about us except the families of those women and children.

  They talk about pirates in general—how the whole system they count on for survival will collapse if pirates are allowed to prevail. They tell of pirates who get enraged at ships that are empty, having already sold their goods, and torture the crew out of spite, even kill them. They hate pirates. And they hate these women pirates most fiercely of all—as though the fact that they are women makes it unnatural and therefore far worse.

  We sit there in our male disguises and listen impassively. I am glad no one of our crew speaks up, no one gives in to the urge to set them straight about what the women pirates have d
one. After all, then they’d wonder how we knew.

  We tell them we are sailing to Írland. They laugh, thinking it is a joke, thinking we are saying we are going to raid monasteries and burn farms, which would make us even greater terrors than the women pirates. But I explain that we are giving passage home to the three Irish women (an explanation their faces tell me I quickly have to revise), in exchange, of course, for considerable silver, since they are all three princesses (at which their faces tell me I have gone too far) or, rather, one is a princess; the others are servants.

  Once I stop blathering and they realize we are serious, they are full of advice. They tell us to go up the west coast of Skáney till we reach the point where the forests are so thick, no light penetrates the trees. Then we are to cross the sea westward to Jutland and cut through a giant fjord at the north that will spill us out on the other side into the North Sea. They say this will shorten our journey by two days, maybe even three, depending on the winds.

  I know about that fjord, of course. That’s where Gilli cut through seven years ago—the Limfjord, where I jumped overboard and lived for that spring and summer and part of autumn till Beorn whisked me away with Ástríd and my little egg Búri.

  “But won’t the passage from Skáney to Jutland be long at that point? Won’t we be out of sight of land?”

  “For a couple of days,” says a man. “But to long-distance traders like you, what does it matter?” The way he says it, the thrust of his chin, puts me on alert. He finds us suspect, though he can’t be onto us or they’d all be attacking.

  “This ship is new to us,” I lie. “For safety’s sake, we want to keep within sight of land whenever possible.”