Cranky Ladies of History

by Tehani Wessely

  The trial was a farce. News and rumours, lawsuits and justifications, measures and countermeasures, rumours of who slew whom and why…all a torrent of empty words.

  Words can’t nullify a debt. Words can’t make a person forget when she’s been wronged.

  Hallgerðr snorts.

  Fools, all of them. Proud, vulnerable fools. Þorgeirr Otkelsson had ambushed the greatest warrior in Iceland—no matter how he’d died, Hallgerðr thinks, Gunnarr was still the best of them—and the hero was punished for striking back.

  Exile. Three years, no more, no less, to be spent abroad. Banished from his district. Banished from Iceland. Banished from the home he’d loved so well.

  A light sentence! Three years overseas, no more, no less. Three years, else he could be slain on sight by the kinsmen of the blubber-faced man he had killed. Three years to save his life.

  “Go,” Njáll had said. “A journey abroad will bring you greater honour than any you’ve earned before.”

  “Go,” Rannveig had said, a crease of concern darkening her brow. “Give your enemies someone else to quarrel with for a while.”

  Hallgerðr had said nothing.

  Was it really that hard for him to leave? No, Hallgerðr had thought then. She’d been uprooted herself, three times already. She’d travelled far from the Dales she’d known and loved, far from Höskuldr, far from Hrút. She’d been fostered and married—to a pig, a sheep, and last to this—hero—this warrior, this handsome Viking, who could not bring himself to take to the sea.

  Pride.

  Honour.

  Winding and winding, Hallgerðr readies the bow, stringing it with strands of equal length and tension. They thrum when plucked, resonant as Gunnarr’s halberd before a battle, singing for blood.

  Storytellers claim it was the beauty of the countryside that kept him from leaving. A ship was waiting to take him a-viking with Kolskegg and four other men. He had added his wares to the hold, bid his overseer and servants farewell, paid a last visit to his dear friends at Bergþórsváll and left behind his halberd, his deepest thanks, and a household of heavy hearts.

  That afternoon, he rode away while Hallgerðr was in the homefield surveying the flocks. He’d saved no kisses, no goodbyes, for her.

  Almost, Hallgerðr thinks, not for the first time, like he knew he’d be back.

  Around the hearth on winter evenings, the saga-tellers have already started making a tale of Gunnarr’s devotion to Iceland. His horse stumbled, they say. The beast threw our hero just beyond the Markar River. That’s why he stayed; it was the horse’s fault.

  But Gunnarr was an accomplished rider.

  Others claim it was the landscape that held him captive. Standing, dusting himself off, he was spellbound by fields of rustling grass. By ripples on the river he’d swum as a boy. By the mountain crowned with clouds, thick and rich as Norwegian ermine. From a distance, his gaze had fallen upon the longhouse at Hlíðarendi, so they say, which he’d built with his own hands. Next to the fields of barley, the deep green turf roof had sat like fresh seaweed in a bed of golden sand.

  Fair is the hillside. Fairer it seems than I have ever seen before…

  That, so they say, was the clincher. A farm, no more beautiful than any other in the region, and no less. As productive as the next ones, but no more. A cluster of buildings, rectangles of peat and straw and driftwood clapboards. Nothing impressive. That is what convinced the exiled man to stay. To open himself to attack. To wax poetic in the face of fate.

  But Hallgerðr knew her third husband better than that. It wasn’t a few clumps of dirt or mangy livestock or weed-speckled hills that forced Gunnarr off his horse that day, that convinced her Viking not to spend three years plundering his way to Norway and back.

  It was honour, that fickle motivator.

  It was stupidity.

  It was pride.

  In all his life, Gunnarr had never fled from a fight.

  ◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊

  The shine on Gunnarr’s reputation dimmed, the day he returned. On that afternoon, Hallgerðr had seen him more clearly than ever before.

  In the slump of his shoulders, she saw weakness. In the jut of his jaw, selfishness. In the clench of fingers on bow, revenge.

  Yes, Hallgerðr had been glad to see him tethering his favourite roan in the yard. She’d relished the musk of him as he entered the hearth-room. It was wrong that he’d returned, but Hallgerðr had known—far better than sullen Rannveig ever could—that Gunnarr was where fate had deemed he should be.

  Here, at Hlíðarendi, with her.

  Here, where she could repay him what he was owed.

  “The horses are ready, Hallgerðr,” Rannveig calls now, a note of triumph in her tone. “Grani is waiting with them; hope you’ve packed him some rags. Högni will stay with me—won’t you, child? Let those two go together, the traitor and the greed-driven boy.” Hallgerðr hadn’t noticed her first son’s return, but she hears his faint assent. Typical. Högni hasn’t the guts to challenge his elders.

  Unlike his father. For months, Gunnarr had flaunted his outlawry, his bold presence at Assemblies both impressing and incensing the gathered chieftains. He’d had a Viking’s nerve, her husband—and for a while folk were too afraid to attack him. But as the weeks passed, half-hearted grumblings had flared into full-blown affront. Spurred by long-simmering grudges, over a dozen men had advanced on Hlíðarendi, spears pointed at the high-day sun. The horses’ hoofs tore across partly-mown fields, hastening when their riders realised Gunnarr was at home alone.

  Well, he hadn’t truly been alone.

  Hallgerðr closes her eyes, prays for a half-breath of silence. Not until he is enclosed in his cairn will Gunnarr ever know what it means to be on his own.

  Hallgerðr was here, at her husband’s side, when Þórgrímr climbed onto Hlíðarendi’s roof. She’d been here when Gunnarr had eviscerated the Norwegian, shoving the point of his spear-tipped halberd up through the soft turf above their sleeping-loft, between the rafters, then between the struts of Þórgrímr’s ribs. She’d been here when Gunnarr had leapt down to the main hall, where Rannveig had hurriedly opened the windows, and he’d shot arrows through the blank squares with such skill his attackers had been forced to withdraw. Once, twice, thrice the troop had advanced, and each time they’d been beaten back. Yes, Hallgerðr had beheld it all.

  Through a gap in the shutters, she’d seen frustration in the men’s flushed faces, their fury, their impotence, and she’d sympathised. She’d understood.

  All of them, at one time or another, loved Gunnarr as much as she did. They’d witnessed his feats in battle, his prowess, his boundless luck in horse-fighting and sailing and husbandry. They’d seen him deal incredible blows, seen him kill, heard him talk his way out of trouble. It took twelve, or twenty, or thirty of them to match Gunnarr Hámundarson. Dozens to bring him low, dozens more to serve him his due.

  Dozens of men, Hallgerðr thinks, or one woman.

  “Give me two strands of your hair,” Gunnarr had said. Hallgerðr hears his strong voice, even now. Fearless, firm, echoing out of his grave. “Give me two strands of your hair,” he said, when the attackers had finally prised the roof off the house, when they’d begun to rain dirt and arrows down on them, when Gunnarr’s matchless bowstring had snapped. “Give me two strands of your hair,” he’d said then, as if Hallgerðr owed him, “and twist them together to make a new string for me.”

  What more can I give you, she had wanted to shout. What more than years? Two strong sons? Countless opportunities to increase your prestige and honour? A welcome bed? A full larder, even when others starved? This last still rankled most, and though Rannveig had sneered at Hallgerðr from the corner in which she’d hid, though Gunnarr had already been bloodied from two shallow wounds, though his bow was damaged and his halberd useless against enemy missiles, Hallgerðr had raised a hand to her flushed cheek, remembering.

  “My life depends on it,” he’d said, panic sl
icing his warrior-calm. “They will never get at me as long as I can use my bow.”

  “In that case,” Hallgerðr had replied, the words rampaging like trolls from her lips, unstoppable. “In that case, I’ll remind you of the slap you gave me, which I’d promised never to forget. Consider us even.”

  Hallgerðr can’t describe the expression on her third husband’s face, though its image has kept her awake for two nights. While his mother yammered about stinginess and shame, Gunnarr’s eyes had glinted—let no one say he wept!—and the mouth Hallgerðr had kissed countless times disappeared beneath the beard she’d never grown tired of touching.

  “Every man has his limits,” he’d had said at last. “And his pride. I won’t ask again.”

  If only you had, Hallgerðr thinks, twisting the last tight cords of long hair into Gunnarr’s bow. There would have been an apology in that asking. There would have been an acknowledgement—of what? Hallgerðr has thought on it for days, but still isn’t certain. All she knows is she wishes, fervently, that he had asked again. Just once more.

  “Get out of my house,” Rannveig screams now, standing in a dried pool of her son’s blood. Every ounce of her energy is now devoted to standing, marking her son’s death, holding his weapon, screeching at his killer.

  Hallgerðr gathers the bow, checks the balance. Perfect, she thinks, then tests the hair-string. It’s flexible but tense. Powerful. Strong as her need to give it to Gunnarr. To place it whole in his callused hands. To see him use it, one more time. Yes, Hallgerðr wants that more than anything.

  And it is not wrong to want.

  “For So Great a Misdeed” by Lisa L. Hannett

  THE PASHA, THE GIRL AND THE DAGGER

  Havva Murat

  The hulking man pulled the swaddling away from the tiny baby. “A girl…” The words were a whisper. He held the infant up to the slanting light coming through the window to make sure, but it was undeniable; the baby was perfectly female.

  He shoved the bundle at his sister, who had attended the birthing of the infant. His wife lay unconscious in the bed behind them. The furs were soaked with blood. He couldn’t bring himself to go to the woman who had been his wife for fifteen years. She had promised him this time she would give him a son. She had seen it in a dream: Saint Clement had handed her the child and proclaimed it would help them turn back the Turks. And now this. The tiny female wriggled and let out a mighty wail as her aunt Besjana wrapped her up again and cradled her against her chest.

  “She’s healthy and strong this one.” Besjana patted the baby’s back.

  “I have five daughters already. I need a son. Why won’t the Lord give me a son?” Grigor Kelmendi dropped his stubbled face into his hands.

  “She could give you grandsons. Perhaps that was the meaning of the dream?”

  “Or granddaughters.” Grigor shuddered. “How am I to repel the Ottomans with an army of women? Will they talk them to death?” He threw his eagle-crested helmet against the wall. The iron rebounded with a clatter on to the stone-flagged floor.

  “It is not for us to argue with the Lord, Grigor. Take your daughter and stop your roaring.” She held the offending bundle towards him.

  “I will not! Leave her out on the mountaintop. If the Lord loves females so much let him care for her.”

  “You would leave your own daughter out in the snow? What if our father had done such a thing with me?”

  “He only had you, Besjana. He didn’t have to bear the shame of fathering six daughters and no sons. Do you want all of Albania to laugh at me? The mountain lion who could only father lionesses.”

  “They will not be laughing when you draw your sword against them. You are the greatest warrior these mountains have ever produced, Grigor. Not a man of the Kelmend has ever come close to you.”

  “And yet the Lord shames me by sending me daughter after daughter. Do you know the Ottomans recite poems about me in the great hall at Rozafa castle?”

  “Then turn your anger on them; ride to Shokdra and rip its walls down to the earth, but do not harm this child!” Besjana held the infant close.

  “No one can know I have fathered another female.”

  “Your mother is a woman. If it wasn’t for her you wouldn’t be here!” Besjana clutched the child more tightly.

  “I have never disrespected my mother.” His eyes were burning wounds.

  “The Virgin too was a woman, if it wasn’t for her, our saviour would never have come.”

  “I am still without a son to help me repel the Ottomans! I have no use for daughters, Besjana! I cannot train them for war.” He ripped one of the shutters from the window and threw it at the floor where it smashed. A freezing gust blew into the room.

  “You must stop this, Grigor, please.” Besjana shook as the baby’s screams grew louder. “The baby needs to be suckled or she will die. Your wife is not long for this world. We must think of the child.” Besjana looked down at the piteous sight on the bed and pulled another fur on top of the bloodied mess.

  But Grigor was lost in his own wretched thoughts. “No one must know. Tell them mother and child died together.”

  “You will not leave this child out on the mountain to die—she is perfect and beautiful.” Besjana kissed the child’s head, her tears mixing with the fresh blood.

  “I will do with her what I will!” he roared. “Give her to me, Besjana.” He snatched the baby from her arms.

  “Grigor, promise me you won’t kill her. Swear it on your honour as a Kelmend knight.”

  He looked at Besjana and the haze of his anger dissipated. She was a good sister to him: loyal, fierce, protective. And he was not a murderer, though he’d killed many a man. She was right. He couldn’t leave the child to die. It would be as shameful as keeping her. He must find another way.

  “I will not kill her.” His voice was gruff as he looked at the wailing bundle.

  “Let me take her, Grigor.”

  “I will not have this child associated with me. If you want to help, Besjana, have my wife buried.” He glanced at the pale visage of his wife. There was no time for tears. Ottoman reinforcements marched on them from Shkodra at that very moment. “I will take care of the child.” He shook off his sister’s pleading hands, wrapped the child in his fur cape so that no man or woman would know what lay within, and disappeared into the storm outside.

  ◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊

  Besjana was met at the doors of the Shirgj monastery by a Benedictine monk dressed in the coarse robes of his order. She swooped past the spindly old monk into the interior. It was even colder inside than it had been without. Besjana pulled her fur cape tightly about her body.

  “You are the lady Besjana?” The monk looked at her suspiciously. Everyone was a potential threat with the Ottomans breathing down their necks.

  “As you see.” She pulled the glove off her left hand and showed him the eagle-crest of the Kelmendi on her ring. He nodded and she walked through the vaulted entrance of the monastery. “The child?”

  “The coin?” the monk responded.

  Besjana untied a leather pouch from her waist and handed it to the monk, whose face split into a greedy smile.

  “A true man of God,” Besjana scoffed.

  “Even a man of God has accounts to settle.”

  “Take me to the child.”

  “She is upstairs.”

  “Are you certain she is the child I seek?” Besjana asked as she was led up the stone staircase, past Byzantine murals of the Madonna and child.

  “Ten months ago a baby was abandoned here in the middle of the night wrapped in the finest fur I have ever seen. A rider was seen on a great, grey warhorse emblazoned with the very crest on your ring.”

  “I see.” Besjana felt euphoria ripple through her core. She had found her. “And you kept this information to yourself?”

  “I am fond of having my head attached to my body, so yes, I kept the activities of your noble brother to myself, until now.” As he spoke, they left
the stairwell and stopped before a timber door.

  “I too am quite skilled with a sword, so I suggest you continue to keep your silence.” Besjana pushed the door inwards and entered. Lying in the middle of the room was a row of tiny cribs filled with infant girls. Seven little bodies slept beneath crudely knitted blankets of goat hair hardly warm enough to keep out the mountain air.

  Besjana recognised, without having to ask, the visage of her niece. It had taken ten months for her to track down the baby, but the girl was the very image of her dead mother. She grabbed the child from the crib and cradled her, wrapping her fur cape around the both of them. She was so cold. It was a wonder she was alive at all.

  “Where is her fur?” Besjana barked at the monk.

  “We sold it to pay for provisions. Your brother left no money. We do the best we can for abandoned children.”

  “This is the best you can do?” Besjana grabbed the monk by the hood of his robe.

  “Lady, I am the one who has cared for your niece these long months.”

  “She is dirty and her crib is soaked with piss. I ought to drown you in it.”

  “My Lady, please. You will wake the others.”

  Besjana looked at the other forlorn little bodies asleep in the room. She felt despair clutch at her heart; it was a curse to be born a girl in these lands, perhaps in all lands. “Where are their parents?”

  “Some are dead; some are like your brother. They do not want their shame to be known to the world.”

  “There should be no shame in giving birth to a girl.” She stared into the priest’s face. “I am a woman and I could take your head off with one strike of my axe.”