by Lena North
"Not much to say, Sissa," he murmured but when I kept watching him he sighed and continued. "Uncle slit her throat quickly, and she gave up a strange gurgling sound. Freyja started swaying and gagging, and then she rushed off. Uncle Ingolf ordered Hjalvor and Sigurd to turn her around. Not a lot of her blood was spread out, though, so only the ones standing closest would have touched it. Then they put her on the stone they'd brought to act as the altar and we continued the ceremony. I didn't look at her, not really... I thought it was you and -"
He stopped talking, and I could hear how he swallowed.
"Josteinn, I'm sorry, you don't have to talk about it. It must have been awful," I said, regretting that I made him tell me. I'd seen Heidrun in the grove earlier. I could guess what it would have looked like the night before, even if she had the hood on then.
"Yes, it was," he said quietly.
"I guess Freyja really can't stand the sight of blood, huh? I always thought that it was just her way of getting out of doing the hard work during slaughters," I said, nudging him with my shoulder to indicate that it was a joke.
"She looked stunned at first. I thought she'd throw up right there, but then she stumbled away, and I guess we're lucky she did. It would not have pleased the gods to get a vomit-covered offer from us," he chuckled and suddenly I heard myself giggling in the silliest way.
I didn't want him to think I was an idiot so I swallowed the rest of my laughter and then we were quiet. The wind had picked up a little, and I could hear soothing, rhythmic sounds of the waves coming in. I still couldn't understand how our Jarl hadn't recognized Heidrun and when the silence stretched out I couldn't stop myself from asking him about it.
"But Josteinn, I don't get it. Surely Jarl Ingolf should have recognized his own daughter?"
"It's not so strange, Sissa. It was dark, and you actually look a lot like Heidrun. It isn't surprising, of course, though with how everything has turned out it's harder to notice I suppose," he said calmly.
"We had the same hair, that's all. Why would we look alike? We moved here when I was little, and I have heard Father say that it was a long journey to get here. We have no relatives here, or anywhere," I mumbled.
I was confused and also embarrassed. As thralls, we had some freedom and the Jarl mostly ignored us which meant we could go about our lives in relative peace and quiet, but we were still not freemen. We had no right to marry, no right to own land and our lives were perhaps peaceful, but they were also hard. I'd worked in the fields and helped to grind both barley and salt since I was a small child, and my brothers had always worked hard too.
"They haven't told you?" Josteinn looked incredulous.
Then he moved as if getting to his feet so I grabbed his arm to hold him in place.
"Don't go. Told me what?"
"Damn. Sissa..."
"Joss," I said, and it was both a plea and a command.
Our eyes held for a long time. We were really close, so I could see through the darkness how his softened, and I suddenly remembered hearing him shouting my name when he'd thought they sacrificed me. His breath was warm on my cheeks and for a short moment, I thought he would lean in even closer. Then he pulled back a little, and I must have imagined the look in his eyes because they were determined, and he straightened his back.
"Your parents didn't want you to know for some reason, but I'll tell you anyway because I think they should have explained. Please don't let them know that I was the one who told you, though. Promise me that."
"What? Tell me what?" I asked, completely bewildered.
"Promise," he said.
"Yes, Joss, of course. I promise."
"You and Heidrun looked so alike because you are related."
He had bent closer to me and spoke quietly into my ear. His breath tickled a little, and it sent shivers down my spine, but I ignored that, turning my face slowly toward him. He raised his hand to push my chin so I was facing the ocean again, and continued to speak quietly into my ear.
"Heidrun's mother, Torunn... she and Gudrun were cousins. Your mother grew up in Torunn's family as a foster child, and they were close. Sissa... you and Heidrun were second cousins. That's why father doesn't think it was the gods’ interference that changed your places in the sacrifice. They would not have been dissatisfied with you because you are a thrall now but you weren't when you were born, and they are far away, but you have a family with considerable influence on your mother’s side."
Chapter Four
Friends
"Sissa, I asked you to cut the carrots into pieces, not stab them to death," a laughing voice with a thick accent murmured behind me.
I turned and laughed into Morag's beautiful dark brown eyes. She was one of the three women the warriors had brought back from their raids on the Northern Isles last summer, and we'd become good friends in the months they'd been in the village. I liked the other two girls as well, and since I made an effort to learn a little bit of their language at the same time as they learned ours, we'd spent a lot of time together.
When they walked off the ship, they seemed helpless and useless, like the small fluffy balls of down from the ducks we used to fill the Jarl's pillows. I'd since then learned that looks could indeed be deceiving. They used to be free and had lived with their families on the Isles some days away across the ocean. There was a big monastery a few days ride from the village where they lived, and there had been frequent raids to that, so when our ship sailed in they'd known exactly what to expect. There just hadn't been very much to raid from their village, because it was around the same size as ours and it wasn't poor but held no riches the likes of what could be found in the churches and bigger towns. They told me, with a fair bit of snickering, that they thought our warriors had made a mistake and gotten on shore in the wrong place. The bays looked very much the same on their islands so it was an easy enough mistake to make, they'd said. Then they'd snickered again.
Morag was the smallest of the three, and she looked dainty and fragile, with long, bright red, curly hair, and a face full of freckles. It only took one look into her dark brown eyes to understand that she had an unusual inner strength and a will made of iron. She had a sense of humor that matched my own, and laughter seemed to be her way of dealing with the situation the three girls found themselves in.
Catriona was tall, slim and resembled a kitten with huge innocent eyes and soft, straight, light brown hair. She didn't say a lot, and sometimes I thought that this was because she rarely knew what to say. Catriona seemed content just to go with the flow, whether it be Morag and her angry commands or one of the older women's softer requests. It didn't seem to be in her nature to disagree with anyone. I knew that she'd never hurt even a fly, and had in fact seen her walk around a spider out in the yard when everyone else would just have stomped on it. I'd snickered, but she just smiled sweetly at me and said, "Spiders have feelings too, Sissa. Besides, they eat earwigs, and I do dislike those."
The last girl was Agnes, and she was angry all the time. It could be because she was justifiably unhappy with the situation they were in, though she might just have been born a very angry person. I would certainly put my bets on the latter. She was a big and sturdy girl, not pretty at all but not ugly either, just very, very, plain. Sometimes she'd stand by one of the walls in the Jarl's longhouse, where no one would notice her for hours. Not until she scowled or snorted out some angry expletive. There were words women simply weren't supposed to use, but she used them often enough even though it got her into trouble with the older women. She'd told me that she'd trained with her brothers to be a warrior, so maybe that's where she got into the habit of cursing.
"Sorry, Mags," I said, using the nickname Morag had told me they used in her home.
They'd been given other names when they came to our village, and we were supposed to address Morag as Ragna, but I just couldn't do it. She was absolutely not a Ragna, and she was most definitely a Mags. Catriona was to go by Kari, which worked better although I rarely used it, and Agnes refused to r
espond to anything except Nessa so in the end they never bothered to find a new name for her.
Mags had given me the task of cutting carrots into chunks that would go into the stew that Freyja had ordered us to prepare for the evening meal. We'd started to bring the sacrificed animals in from the grove. Usually, we would have taken them down one or two each night of the festivities and grilled them over huge fires outside as a part of the celebrations. The custom was to eat the smaller animals first, and on the final night, we'd have the biggest one with the tastiest meat. Because of this year's final offering to the gods, and since the Jarl had put a stop to any further celebrations, Freyja ordered the thralls to make a stew. Once the Jarl and his extended family had eaten, what remained would be shared with the rest of the village. Some of the visitors were already gone, and several others were packing up and getting ready to leave. There were few reasons for them to stay, and I also suspected that they wanted to go back home to gossip about what had happened.
I wondered what they would have done if I'd been the one they sacrificed. They wouldn't have grilled me, that's for sure, but I was sure they'd have celebrated like we always did. After all, I was a mere thrall girl, and expendable. Except, I wasn't. I'd thought a lot about what Josteinn told me, but I'd not yet discussed it with my parents. I needed to clear my head first, and I thought that maybe I could talk to Josteinn again about it. He'd not told me any more details, and I'd been too stunned to ask him questions. He'd seen how confused I was so he'd gotten to his feet and told me to talk to my parents.
Before leaving he'd watched me a while with a strange look on his face and then whispered quietly, "Sleep well, Sissa, you'll need it. We have hard times ahead, both you and I. They'll accuse either your family or me and mine because we're the only ones who gained anything from Heidrun's death. My father will protect me as long as he can, and Gudrun will be able to hold my uncle back for a little while, but if the truth doesn't come out, they will blame either your brothers or me. You know they will."
Then he'd left, and I'd sat there on the beach in the long winter night until I'd been frozen to my core.
Once I finished cutting up all carrots, I moved on to chopping the tiny mountain of turnips into pieces, and it all felt surreal. Two days earlier it had been my last day, and yet, there I was, slicing up the most mundane of all boring vegetables. Maybe I should have been able to enjoy the simple pleasures after an ordeal like mine, but I mostly felt like screaming. Suddenly, I missed Fin. He'd been my best friend, and we'd always talked about things. Fin had a way of making big problems seem ridiculous, and when life seemed too hard we'd snuck away to do something to let out our anger or frustration. It had always been something forbidden, often something dangerous, but it had been exhilarating and it helped. We'd climbed the mountainsides without ropes or taken one of the faerings to go fishing far out on the ocean. Once we'd gone to where the wolves had their den and crawled inside. It had admittedly been empty, but we hadn't known. If the wolf pair had been there with their pups, we would have been in trouble. Or, most likely, dead.
I swallowed and adjusted my collar that suddenly felt too tight.
"Does it bother you?" Mags asked.
"What? The collar? No, not really. I've always worn it, and besides, it's leather so it doesn't chafe my neck. Yours are worse, the metal must be heavy."
All the thralls wore collars that showed their status, but there were different kinds of collars. Mine was a wide leather belt with Jarl Ingolf's insignia burned into it sewn together around my neck. I could have cut it off easily with a knife but what would be the use? Women from our village were married into all the nearest villages, and they would recognize me and my white hair. If I wanted to go further away then I'd have to steal a horse, and that would only get me killed once they caught me, so there was nowhere I could go. Mags and her friends wore collars made of iron. They were put around their necks by one of our blacksmiths, and there was no way to remove them unless you really knew what you were doing, and used the right tools. Any other way could easily cause fatal injuries.
"It's awful. Not the wounds it causes, or the weight. What it represents. I hate being here, and I hate not being free. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night because it bothers me, and I don't mind missing sleep. I do mind that it's the symbol of my slavery that wakes me up."
Mags spoke in their language so none of the other women understood what she said, but Catriona still shushed her nervously. Nessa barked out laughter, and I jolted because I'd never even seen her smile before.
"You are not wrong, Mags," she said, and even though she still had some sort of a smile on her lips, her words came out angrily.
"Sissa..." Mags looked at me, so I stilled because she was uncommonly hesitant. "Don't you ever want to leave?"
I stared at her, my mouth falling open. Suddenly one of the older women dropped a spoon on the floor, and we all jumped. Then we continued with our chores, and Catriona started to talk animatedly in a loud voice about how they used to make the stew in the village they'd grown up in. I chopped turnips and thought about my life. Did I want to leave?
"Think about it, Sissa. Surely you know that we will try to get away? We'll try to go home, of course. If you want to leave, then you can easily come with us. You would have a life on the Northern Isles with us, a good life where no one could tell you what to do, as a free woman," Mags mumbled.
"Honesty, Mags. You promised me," Nessa interrupted, sharply.
"Nessa -"
"No, Morag. Not this way. Not with temptation or deceit. You promised me that it would be done with honesty, and I will hold you to that promise." Nessa interrupted.
The two girls glared at each other until Mags suddenly smiled ruefully.
"Sometimes I wish they'd left you behind, Agnes." Then she turned to me. "She's right, Sissa. I have much to explain -"
"What are you talking about? You know that you are not allowed to speak that language," Freyja interrupted.
Actually, we didn't know that because no one ever told us we couldn't. In fact, both the Jarl and Einarr had heard us many times, and they'd never objected. Einarr had even smiled a little and told his brother that it could be good to have someone else in the village knowing how to speak with new thralls that the warriors brought back.
"I'm sorry, Freyja. We were discussing the different ways to slice a turnip, and how to ensure that its taste spreads into the stew in the best possible way," I answered blandly, smiling as politely as I could.
"Oh," she replied looking a bit bewildered. "That's good," she continued with a small smile. "I like turnip," she concluded vaguely.
I followed her with my eyes as she walked away, thinking that it must be difficult for Freyja without Heidrun because even though Freyja was the Jarl's wife it had been Heidrun running the longhouse. The Jarl's first wife had been sick for a whole year before dying and during that time, Heidrun took over the household from her mother. She had also kept the keys to the storages even when the Jarl married Freyja just a month after Torunn's death.
I wondered if Freyja was happy having the keys and finally being in charge of the household, or if she'd never wanted the responsibility in the first place. I guessed it had been a comfortable life with Heidrun in charge, but also humiliating, in particular since there was still no offspring in sight even after two years of marriage.
"I need to think, Mags," I murmured. "Too much has happened, too many questions are unanswered, and it is just too much right now. Can you give me a few days and then we can talk again?"
"Of course, I understand. Just promise me you'll think about it," she murmured back to me, and I nodded.
After the freemen had all eaten, the thralls gathered to scrape up what was left in the big pots. Since many visitors had already left the village, there was still plenty of food, and we gobbled this unexpected luxury up. Most of the thralls passed by me during the meal, giving me a soft pat on the back or just a silent nod. No words were spoken, but I kn
ew that many were happy that I was alive. It didn't mean that they were pleased that Heidrun was dead, just that they were glad for me, or for my parents who were very well liked. My mother was one of two healers in the village, and most of the thralls had been taken care of by her. She was there for them through births and deaths, for minor scrapes and major cuts, and they all relied on her calm authority.
I let my eyes move over the crowd of people and listened to how they all chatted happily as we sat around a huge fire in a clearing just outside the village, energized by the meal. Most of us had lived our whole lives in the village, and I wondered if I wanted to leave. My life wasn't so bad, I thought. When my eyes passed Torbiorn, I jerked and kept my gaze on him. My brother was calm and confident, although not a particularly cheerful man. I knew that he had good friends among the other men, and the warriors held him in high esteem. He didn't talk a lot in bigger crowds, though, and usually kept his emotions hidden, so those who didn't know him well often thought that he was distant and cold. Right then, in the warm light from the fire, he looked... happy. As I watched, he winked slowly and the corners of his eyes crinkled slightly. I forced myself to turn slowly to see who he had his eyes on, and then I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from gasping.
Nessa sat across the fire, right in front of my brother, and it looked like she was blushing.
Chapter Five
Accusations
When a few days had passed things were getting strained in our village. Einarr was asking questions to everyone and in the beginning, everyone was calm and positive. Einarr would figure it out, they said. The Jarl and Einarr, they would know what to do. I listened carefully to as much gossip I could, remembering what Josteinn had said. I worried that he'd be right, and that blame would be cast on him, or my brothers. As time passed by it became more and more apparent that he'd not been wrong. As in, not wrong at all.
Einarr and his men shared nothing of their findings so rumors were soon flying around the village. Some said that proof was found, that it pointed toward Josteinn, and that this was the reason they didn't share any details. Others declared that the only ones who had anything to gain were my family. Few dared to say something about my parents, but this respect did apparently not extend to my brothers so fingers were pointed at them both.