by Lena North
"A strong man, you could do worse, Sissa," Catriona continued, and I looked around quickly, but Einarr had disappeared.
"She would be dead within a week," Mags stated. "There's nothing that wife of his wouldn't do to keep him to herself. She would gladly kill for him, and I wouldn't be surprised if she has already," she said but continued quickly when she saw how my eyes sharpened.
"There's no need to worry because we will be old together, Sissa. The seer told me that I'll become a very old woman. I would also have a good friend by my side all through my life. A friend with hair like the lightning from the hammer of Thor so that has to be you."
I laughed then.
"You have met the seer? When? How did you find the coins to pay her?"
"It was just a few weeks after we came to the village. She passed here on her way down from the north to the bigger villages, remember?" Mags asked. "As for money, well, we didn't have to bring anything. Your Jarl’s wife didn't know what to use to reward her, so she ordered us to carry piles of things, and the seer just laughed. Then she took all of it and did a reading with us right there in her tent. We didn't understand a word of your language back then, but it must have been good because that Freyja, she looked mighty pleased."
I laughed again because both girls looked quite sour at the thought of Freyja being satisfied.
"She tossed the bones and the runes around several times, and she kept talking, but then she suddenly froze. I thought she looked stunned, which was strange and that's probably why I remember it so clearly. Then she turned to us, speaking in your language," Catriona said. "We didn't understand, of course, and Freyja tried to push us out of the tent. Then the seer barked something out loudly, and a woman came in to translate. I don't know how it all came about, though. Maybe something in her reading spilled over to us since we were there."
"She said we'd all be old, we'd all be happy, and that I would have a good friend by my side," Mags said smugly.
"Mags, really? She said that if we let honesty rule our lives, have faith in the dark man and avoid the shards of glass, then you would have your friend," Catriona scoffed. "And I don't understand half of that, but I do know that you lie better than anyone I've ever met, and more often too."
"True. But I have never lied to Sissa, and I won't. Not ever," Mags said solemnly.
It sounded like she was making a vow. Chills were suddenly running up my spine, and I didn't know why but I was suddenly afraid. I had a distinct feeling that bad things were coming our way, and that things would get a lot worse before they got better again.
Chapter Ten
Death
I'd not seen Josteinn in a few days and in a weird way that felt really good. Being with him made me happy, but I had more time to think when I was working, or alone, and I needed that. Just a few weeks ago my life had been mundane, comfortable and safe. I'd plodded along, and if I hadn't exactly been happy, then I'd at least not been unhappy either. I'd mostly just been. Now life was confusing and I had a hard time figuring everything out. There were the sacrifice and Heidrun's death to think about, my friends were leaving, and we needed to plan. At the same time, Josteinn was being... I did actually not quite know what he was being. I also wasn't sure that I'd interpreted his father's comments about giving him money correctly. Had he meant money to pay for me? Did I want that? I'd been a thrall for as long as I could remember, but the thought of being sold, being bought, still didn't sit well with me.
I also needed the time to think about my promise to help Einarr. I wasn't sure what I could do to help him, but I'd said I'd try, so I spent a lot of time going through the details. It was wasted time, so far. I wasn't getting any closer to finding answers, and it felt like there was something I should see or someone that I overlooked. I thought a lot about Joss, and he still seemed the most likely suspect. I wondered what I'd do if I suddenly found out that he'd done it. Would I thank him for saving me by telling Einarr or Jarl Ingolf? Or would I pretend I still didn't know, to save him right back? Heidrun would still be dead, so maybe I wouldn't say anything, I thought, although I knew that I would. I hoped I wouldn't have to make that choice.
Astrid usually tended to the freemen when they were ill but these days she spent much time trying to manage the Jarl's household, and I wondered how she ever had become a healer in the first place. Josteinn had been right, his mother did have hard hands. She had hard eyes and a sharp tongue too, and we heard her and Freyja snapping at each other often. I didn't particularly like Freyja, but I pitied her because of the situation she was in. Many days started with Astrid standing in the Jarl’s longhouse, ordering both thralls and free women around as if she was the mistress. I heard her ask Freyja more than once to hand over the keys to the storages, but so far Freyja had resisted.
I pitied Freyja, but I pitied Jarl Ingolf even more because he had to live with her constant whining, and she wasn't very skilled so mistakes were constantly made. This meant that our Jarl couldn't scold Astrid in the way his wife wanted him to because she was the one who made all Freyja's mistakes go away.
It seemed like my mother tried her best to keep me close to her, or perhaps away from the constant bickering in the longhouse, because she asked me to help her more than she'd done before, but I didn't mind. Sitting with the sick gave me time to think, and it was infinitely preferable to cutting vegetables or hauling firewood into the houses.
"I'll go over to sit with Disa, her condition worries me," Mother said.
"Do you want me to come too?" I asked.
I liked the old woman, and she'd been a part of the Jarl’s household a long time. She came to the village at the same time as the Jarl and Torunn had taken Freyja in as a foster child, and the old thrall had mostly been helping Torunn to raise Freyja. It surprised us all that Disa was moved to another family when Freyja married the Jarl, but Disa had never complained so gossip died down quickly and we thought nothing of it. Now she was ill, and Freyja was rarely there to help even though what had started as a simple cold seemed to worsen with every hour.
"Yes, Sissa. Please come as soon as you have checked with the women in the longhouse so they can spare you. Her breath is becoming shallow, and I fear we will lose her before the day is over."
Our eyes met, and I nodded silently. If my mother thought that the old woman would die, then she wouldn't live through the next days, and we both knew it.
"Sissa, where are you going?" Astrid called out as I closed the door to the Jarl's house behind me.
"I will go and help Mother with Disa, she is getting worse and Mother worries," I replied.
"Surely one healer is enough for the old woman, you are needed inside," she snapped.
"No, actually I'm not needed. I just asked, and they said that -"
"Are you contradicting me?" she interrupted.
"No, but I asked and -"
"You do not have the right to go against my order, Sigtrudr," she snapped.
I started to get annoyed with her because even though she did have a point, a thrall had no say compared to a free woman, Freyja had just told me to go and tend Disa with my mother.
"What's going on?"
Josteinn had seen us, and he must have seen that she was angry with me. I almost sighed with relief, knowing that I would have help getting out of the situation.
Astrid wasted no time in telling him how I refused to follow orders and how I talked back to her. When he turned to me, I thought he wanted to hear my side of the story.
"Joss, no. It's -"
"Why don't you go inside, Sissa," he interrupted calmly. It wasn't a question. In fact, it sounded a little bit like an order, but he had his back to his mother, and there was a pleading look on his face. He knew very well that his mother wasn't telling the whole truth.
"Joss..." I whispered, and swallowed, but a lump in my throat suddenly made it difficult.
"What's happening?" Jarl Ingolf asked harshly, surprising me. I'd not heard him, and Einarr walk up to us so I jerked, but my eyes did
n't leave Josteinn's face.
Astrid told her tale again, but the Jarl interrupted her halfway through her explanations.
"Sissa, did you ask my wife if you were needed?"
"Yes, Jarl Ingolf," I replied quietly. "I asked Freyja. She said that they would manage well and that she appreciated my services to Disa. Mother believes that she'll not last through the day."
"Then go," he barked.
Astrid made a small sound, and the Jarl moved toward her, but Einarr stepped between them.
"Woman, go home and wait for me there," he said to his wife.
Judging by the tone of his voice, I didn't think good things were in store for Astrid, so I quickly lowered my eyes. I absolutely didn't want her to see the smugness I felt.
Then I walked away, but as I turned the corner, I looked back. Einarr was pushing his son backward with short hard jabs in his chest, and I could see that he was talking angrily to him. I couldn't hear what was said, but it wasn't acceptable for a man to get involved in the squabbles between women so of course he would be angry with his son.
To reach Disa's home I only had to follow the main path through the outer edge of the village, but that also meant passing the sheds where both Heidrun and I'd been kept the night of the sacrifice, and I didn't like it. Just looking at them made me feel slightly nauseated and if I could avoid walking past them, I did. There was another way, and it was a little bit longer, but I didn't think Mother would mind so I turned around the brewery and walked down to the house where mead and ale were stored. It was a small house, but if I rounded it, I could avoid passing the sheds. We only cleared the snow away up to the door of the storage house so my feet would get both wet and cold, but I decided it would be worth it.
I trudged through the snowdrifts and started to think that it had been a stupid idea when I suddenly noticed how the snow had been pressed down so I didn't sink into it. I was standing straight under a small window on the side of the house. It was blocked to keep the snow out but beneath it, the snow had been packed together. I wondered if they'd used this way to get some of the mead out. It would be closer to the area where food and drinks had been served after the sacrifice so it would make sense, and I knew that they often did it this way, even though it wasn't allowed. Then I felt how my feet started to hurt from the cold snow that had slipped into my leather shoes. I'd inherited them from Ulf so they were too big and snow could easily fall all the way from the top and onto my feet. I scowled and wished I owned shoes that fit me better, but it was useless to wish for something that never would happen so I clenched my jaws and hurried the rest of the way.
As I got out of my shoes and rubbed my feet dry, I told my mother about the dispute I'd had with Astrid, to warn her that the woman likely would be more difficult than ever, and she sighed.
"Einarr has always been a good man," she said cryptically. I waited for her to say something else that would explain, but she just got up to fetch water from the kettle over the fire.
I wasn't as experienced as a healer as my mother was but even I could see that Disa wouldn't last much longer. She seemed to slip in and out of consciousness and most of the time she just lay there with her eyes closed.
We didn't speak for a long time, and the old woman's rattled breathing was the only sound in the little house.
"Where did Fin go?" I asked suddenly. We'd never talked about it, but suddenly I needed to know what she thought had happened.
"I don't know, Sissa," she sighed. "Maybe they sold him."
"Do you think he's dead?" I asked.
"I don't know. Maybe. If he tried to escape, then either they killed him, or he would likely have died in the forest. He had no family, no connections. He'd have nowhere to go so he would die, just like any outcast would."
She sounded bitter when she added the last part, and I remembered that Torbi had told me that there had been a risk that Father, and all of us, would become outlaws. To live outside our law was close to impossible. No one would help you, and anyone could kill you without any kind of punishment. The only chance of survival was to move far, far away, and start a new life somehow, but without money even that was unlikely to prove easy.
"But maybe he made his way back to the Finns?" I asked, and this was the only hope I had for my friend. I'd been by the gorge, hoping to find proof that he somehow left without me and that he did it using our plan. The thought that he would had stung, but he would, at least, have been alive. I had found nothing so my only hope was that he'd somehow managed to get back to where his mother came from, wherever that was. We knew very little about Finnr's mother, but with his black hair and eyes, and her whispering the name Finnr on her last breath, we had always assumed that he'd be from the east. That he had a family with the Finns.
"Maybe. But we don't know if the woman even came from the east. They brought her here from a raid, but they had been raiding all over that summer. We had two longboats back then, and they moved the loot and prisoners around between them. I don't remember them going east, but as I said... they were all over that summer."
"Do you think I can ask Einarr?" I whispered. He'd been the one to bring Fin's mother to our village, and to his house. Astrid had been furious at first because the woman had been with child, but also sick, and Einarr had decreed that she was not to do any heavy work. In the end, she'd died giving birth to Fin, and he'd been raised partly together with Joss. As we grew older, they'd drifted apart, and Fin and I had grown close instead.
"No. Sissa, absolutely not. What if he was involved in Finnr's disappearance somehow? Einarr is a good man, but he's dangerous. He has ambitions for his family, so if you start asking questions then things could happen," she replied immediately. When she saw the look on my face, she put her hand on my cheek sand said gently, "It is what it is, Sissa. The gods have plans for us, and we get what we get. You will have to learn how to be content with the life you have here, with us and as a thrall."
"I am content, Mother," I replied, and it was true. I was content. If I sometimes dreamed of more, then that wasn't so bad as long as I knew that it was just dreams, I told myself.
"Humpf," Mother said, and turned her attention to Disa, who had started to fidget and moan a little. I washed the old woman's face and chest, thinking that it would help bring down the fever but as I did, I realized that she wasn't so very warm.
"I can't feel any fever, Mother, do you think she's getting better?" I asked.
"She has none, and hasn’t had any for several days," Mother replied grimly. "I can't understand what illness she has, it looks like nothing I have ever seen before, and I worry that our visitors brought something here that can spread in the village."
I pushed the old woman's gray hair to the side. She had short hair like all the thralls, but it still covered part of the chin and neck. When I did, I noticed some oddly looking marks on her jaw.
"Mother, what are these? Is it part of her illness?"
The light was dim in the little house, and the smoke from the fire thick, so we opened the door and together we twisted Disa around until we could see the marks clearer. It looked like bruises.
I turned to my mother but then suddenly the light from the door was shadowed by Freyja, and she rushed into the house.
"Oh, how good, she is better!" she exclaimed cheerfully.
"Freyja, no. I'm afraid she isn't," my mother replied calmly.
"But she was getting out of bed? And look, she is smiling," Freyja said, pointing at Disa, who indeed seemed to be smiling.
"You succeeded, after all, my girl," she whispered, but her words were slurry, and she looked confused.
"Don't talk Disa, save your strength," Freyja replied softly, walking the few steps across the floor to sit on the side of the bed as Mother and I put the woman on her back again.
"It started with the cat," Disa mumbled. "I knew then, and I know now."
"What do you mean, Disa?" Mother asked gently.
"Heidrun is dead?" Disa asked, but it suddenly seemed as if
she had trouble breathing.
"Yes, our lovely Heidrun is dead," Freyja whispered, and tears started to run down her cheeks.
Disa pulled in a deep breath, opened her eyes wide and the confusion from before seemed gone. She turned to my mother and raised a hand to grasp for her sleeve.
"Sissa got a last meal," she whispered hoarsely.
"I'm right here," I said, but the old woman didn't turn to me. She continued to stare intently at Mother. "She wasn't gone," she whispered, and then her eyes glazed over as if someone had put drops of milk in them. A puff of air rattled through her and then her head slowly fell to the side.
Disa was dead, and at first, Freyja didn't quite understand what had happened, but when she did, she promptly started bawling.
"She's gone! My darling Disa is gone. She gave me my first kitten, and we played with it together, and she moved with me to this village. So kind. Always so kind..." she trailed off and then she leaned on my mother, shaking and whimpering. They got up, and my mother told me quietly to prepare Disa for burial. Freyja had worked herself into a frenzy, so when Mother led her out of the house, I was relieved.
The marks on Disa's jaw bothered me. When I'd washed her and straightened her clothing, I took a burning piece of wood from the fire and held it up so that I could look at them again. There were three bruises on the left side of her head, one on her jaw just by the ear, and two more on her neck just below. I wondered where they came from and looked around to see if she could have hit something, but I couldn't find anything in the house that would have caused marks like that. I shrugged and decided to ask Mother. Maybe the bruises were a part of her disease, or else there would be another simple explanation.
When I put the branch back in the fireplace, I nudged the kettle, and it started to swing so I took a piece of cloth and grabbed hold of it. Then I froze. I had my thumb up on the rim of the kettle, but I looked at my fingers. The kettle was small and curved so my little finger didn't touch it. But the other fingers formed three perfect dents in the cloth, one above the other, just like the bruises on the old woman.