We were standing at the edge of the forest, in the same place where the slaughtering had taken place. I could feel myself supported on either side, but I did not look to see who held me. There was much sobbing and wailing. Before me, a great funeral pyre had been made of peat and branches. On top of it lay Guthorm, his once-used sword across his chest. Someone stepped forward with a torch and lit the pyre. Screams went up with the flames. I recognized Mother’s among them, from somewhere behind me. I wanted to turn, but I had no power to do so. My gaze was fastened to the fire. It burned blue and gold and white and red. And when the wind changed, it seemed to reach out to those of us who had gathered to watch it. There was a collective gasp, and I was dragged back a pace. I was aware of a burning sensation deep with me, and I believed the fire had found me after all. I wished to sit, but the men who held me, my brothers surely, made no move to release me.
One funeral seemed to follow on the heels of the other, but as the second took place on Frankish lands, this could not have been the case. I remember nothing of the journey, but I suppose I sat in the oxcart with Sigurd’s corpse at my side. There was no wind on the day of the second funeral, and the flames rose straight to the sky. There were men holding me up again, and there were more men holding back what I took, at first, to be some wild beast who sought to break into the clearing. But when the beast broke free of its wardens, I saw that it was only Brunhild. Screaming wildly, she ran to the pyre, her golden hair itself a flame. Then one of the men holding me released me so suddenly that I half fell. He rushed to the pyre behind Brunhild with his arms outstretched, but he was too late. Brunhild’s screams rose up with the smoke. Then they ceased. The man who stood before the pyre—Gunner, surely, though I did not recognize him at the time—dropped his head so low that it seemed it would fall from his shoulders.
Now a very long time passed during which I was not aware of my surroundings at all. I had, I suppose, fallen deeper into my abyss, into a place where even true dream images evaded me. If the sun shone, I failed to see it. If there were people around me eating and sleeping, I took no note of them. I had no fears. I had no memories. I was outside time and dead to circumstance.
And then, all at once, I was aware of a stinging sensation on my face, and I opened my eyes and saw an old man staring at me, his face not more than a hand’s length from my own. His expression was soft, unguarded, a contradiction, I thought, to the fact that he had just slapped me hard. His hair was white and clumps of it stuck out in stiff points on either side of his head. As I blinked at him, he began to chuckle.
“Chero! Sunhild!” he called.
Two women appeared. They froze when they saw me, their expressions rapturous.
“Good work,” cried the younger of the two as she clapped her hands together. She was very stout, and her high-pitched voice made her obesity all the more apparent. Her small gray eyes were nearly lost in her heavy face. Her thick, dull, straw-colored hair fell untidily all about her shoulders. She was dressed in a coarse colorless robe, dirty at the hem. She came closer, and I noted that she smelled. The old man fell back to make room for her. She sank to her knees before me and touched my face. Her rough fingers slid down my cheek, across my lips, under my chin, down the length of my nose. “Do you know me?” she asked, a finger lingering on my bottom lip. I made no attempt to answer. “You must try to speak now,” she said, blinking her eyes as if to hold back some emotion.
Now the other woman came forward. “Let me, Sunhild,” she said. Sunhild made a space for her, but unlike the girl and the old man, Chero did not kneel. She bent over me and lifted my chin so that I was forced to look up at her. Her eyes were a darker version of Sunhild’s, gray with yellowish streaks running through them. And she, too, was large, though not as large as Sunhild. Her face was squarish, and her cheekbones were high and prominent. Her fingers were not as rough as Sunhild’s, but her touch was not as gentle either. She smiled at me. “We must not rush her,” she said to the others. “She will come around when she is ready. It is enough that she is awake. How did you do it, Gripner?”
Ah, Gripner, I thought. The older of the two women would be Gripner’s wife then, and the younger, their daughter. I had met his wife and daughter once many years ago, at Worms. But I knew these things as one knows things in a dream. And I expected at any moment that these people would vanish, as all the others had, and that then I would find myself alone again in the eerie safety of my abyss.
“I slapped her,” Gripner said. He chuckled. “Good and hard. I should have done it long ago.”
Sunhild gasped. “You cannot mean it, Father!” She reached past her mother to caress me again, her big cow face full of alarm and sympathy. But Chero seized her wrist.
“You did well,” Chero told Gripner. “But now I will take charge. I think that best. I have a plan. No one is to see her unless I say so. Do you understand that, Sunhild?”
Sunhild lowered her massive head and added one more chin to the two I had already taken account of. Her mass of dry hair fell forward from her shoulders. Gripner began to laugh again. “You are a hard woman, Chero,” he declared. Chero smiled as if she had been flattered. Gripner got up slowly, holding his back in a manner which indicated that it pained him. He went away chuckling softly.
Now Chero turned her gaze on Sunhild, and she too got up, though reluctantly, and went away. I followed her huge figure with my eyes. Then I took stock of my surroundings. I was in a bower smaller than my own. It was cluttered with distaffs and piles of cloth and wooden vessels and rolled mattresses. It was a rolled mattress against which I was leaning. “You must rest now,” Chero said. “Tonight we will begin our work.”
I closed my eyes obediently and immediately returned to my abyss. But when Chero returned later, I was propelled from it just as quickly. My dream, I sensed even then, was coming to an end. Chero had a bowl of milk in her hand, and when she saw my eyes open, she bade me to drink from it. As I neglected to lift my hands for it, she placed one of her hands behind my head and with the other, she held the bowl to my mouth. I drank. Then I became aware of a wailing coming from the hall. I moved my head from side to side to see beyond Chero. She looked over her shoulder. “It is the little one,” she said turning back to me. “Sunhild,” she cried, “bring in the child.”
Sunhild entered smiling, the child all but lost in her heavy embrace. Chero moved aside and Sunhild sat the child down before me. She regarded me curiously for a moment, and then she began to smile, though her face was still wet with tears. She was a lovely, fat baby with large, round eyes, the bluish-gray color of dusk. Her cheeks were so full that when she turned her head to smile at Chero, her little nose all but disappeared. Her mouth was curled in a way that seemed familiar to me. I felt an immediate connection to her, an intimacy. Sunhild said, “She looks like Sigurd, does she not?”
I stared at Sunhild. She was still smiling, but there were tears in her eyes. Though I did not understand her sadness, I felt it, and I made an attempt to place a comforting hand on hers. But my hand was stiff and feeble, and it fell short of its goal and plopped back onto my lap. Sunhild, who had been watching its progress, threw her arms around my neck and began to cry more loudly.
“Hush,” warned Chero. “You will frighten her.”
Sunhild withdrew. The baby began to laugh. Sunhild wiped her tears away and laughed, too. Then she put her arms out to the child. I was afraid she would take her away, but when she got hold of her, she lifted the child up and placed her on my lap. My hands found their power immediately. I caressed the child. She clung to me, cooing. I held her tighter, thinking I must find a way to take her back with me, into my abyss, when I went.
“You will hurt her,” Chero cried, pulling the child out of my grip. And sure enough, the child looked at me accusingly and began to cry again. She put her arms out to Sunhild, and Sunhild, whose expression was openly apologetic, took her from Chero. “Take her away now, Sunhild,” Chero said.
Sunhild hesitated, but Chero narrowed her eyes. Sunhild’s eyes widened in response. Then she turned and left the bower.
Chero regarded me for a long time, with her arms folded under her bosom. Her gaze was steady, thoughtful, purposeful. Her squarish face now resembling a man’s more than a woman’s. “The child has no name,” she began. “We have been waiting all this time for you to give her one. You have been with us now for twice the span of her age. She has gone nameless long enough. What will you call her?”
When I did not respond, Chero began to move about the room distractedly. She stopped near a pile of cloths and bent to examine it. “I should have made Gripner give her a name,” she mumbled as she extracted a cloth from the center of the pile. “I should have insisted. A child should be named as soon as it is decided that it should live. It is bad luck to leave a child nameless for long. The evil spirits love nameless things. But Gripner never listens. He sprinkled her with the water and smeared the honey on her lips, but would not name her. What does he know about such matters? I should have insisted.”
She turned and tossed the cloth to me. It fell onto my lap. “You have responsibilities,” she said. “You must find your tongue. It has not been easy for Sunhild and me, what with caring for you and the child as well. We had to hold the child to your breast so that she could be suckled. Your milk was barely enough. We had to start her on goat’s milk early on. She might have died. And you—like a baby yourself! We had to feed you, dress you, clean you, keep you warm. And throughout it all, you slept. You slept like a baby, without a notion of what was going on around you. Even when you bore the child, you slept. Think of it. You screamed as other women scream, but you never as much as opened your eyes. You never looked on your child. She’s more Sunhild’s than yours in that sense. Sunhild’s the one who bathes her, who feeds her. Poor Sunhild, who will likely never have a child of her own. She loves you and the child better than she loves herself. She never tired of watching you sleep. So many evenings holding your dead, white hand in hers, singing to you, talking to you, praying for you… Think of it, Gudrun. Do you even know where you are? Do you remember anything?”
Chero threw her hands up. She turned on one foot and went to the wall against which the wooden vessels were lined up. She reached into one and extracted a needle and several colored threads. She held them out to me. “We have no idle hands here,” she said. “Take up the needle and thread it. Surely you remember how to embroider.”
Kneeling, she sighed and turned one of my hands palm up. “Child, I do not mean to be so…” she began. Then she pressed her lips together so that her face became stern again. She threaded the needle quickly and placed it in my hand. Then she took the cloth from my lap and placed one corner in my other hand. She sighed again and got to her feet. “You are to begin tonight,” she said loudly. “Do you understand? When Sunhild and I come in to make you ready for sleep, I will inspect your work. If it does not satisfy, out with you. I will send you away first thing in the morning, out into the wind and the snow without so much as a loaf of bread.” She narrowed her eyes the way she had narrowed them at Sunhild earlier.
As soon as she was gone, I closed my eyes. But I sat for a long time, the needle in one hand and the cloth in the other, before blackness finally came. And again, it was short-lived. I heard voices, then footsteps, and then I was aware of people nearby. I kept my eyes closed and pretended to be asleep. I felt my fingers being uncurled and their contents removed. Sunhild said, “She has done nothing.”
“I did not think she would,” Chero responded.
“You spoke to her harshly.”
“We have tried other approaches. Look how well it worked for your father.”
“When he slapped her?”
“Aye, indeed, when he slapped her.”
“It does not seem right to me.”
“Life is harsh, Sunhild. She must see that and choose to enter back into it anyway. Otherwise her return, if it comes, will only be temporary.”
They worked in silence after that, unrolling the mattresses and spreading them out. Then they put their hands on me, on my shoulders and ankles, and lifted me onto one of the mattresses as easily as if I were a child. They covered me over with rugs.
When Chero had gone, Sunhild took hold of my mattress and yanked it until she had moved it where she wanted it. Now we were very close together, for when her voice came, I could feel her breath brush my cheek. “Sweet dreams, sister,” she said in her little girl voice. She fumbled with her rugs. When she had settled herself, she whispered, “Father says that you will be well soon and that then you will want to go away to live with your own people. He has already sent a messenger to say that you awoke today and held your daughter in your arms. I waited a long time for this day to come, sweet sister, to look into your eyes, but now I wish it had not come so soon. Oh, I do not mean that… It is just that…I cannot bear it. I simply cannot bear it. You are ours now. You must not return. I was so lonely before you came. And the child… Oh, I cannot bear it. The gods forgive me, but this I cannot bear.” She began to cry softly into her mattress.
I smiled and felt myself drifting into a dream of her face. But then the face became that of another, a bright, flawless face as different from Sunhild’s as two faces can be. The beautiful woman in my dream backed away from me. I saw that there was a pool behind her. She dove into it. I kept my eyes fastened to the surface, waiting for her to emerge, but it was Gunner who emerged, triumphant with the war sword in his hand. Then he was gone and I heard Sunhild crying again. Suddenly I was afraid. I freed my hand from the rugs that covered me and felt along the edge of her mattress. I found her shoulder. She stopped crying immediately. She snatched my hand and pulled it to her lips. She kissed it wildly, a hundred times, a thousand times. I squeezed her hand to let her know I loved her, too.
I awoke the next morning to find my hand still in Sunhild’s. She was facing me, breathing heavily through her mouth with the flesh of her cheek bunched up against her nose so that only one nostril was exposed. I found myself greedy for her company, her voice and her smile, and I slipped my hand out of hers and touched the tip of her nose. She did not stir. I wiggled her nose gently with my finger. Her mouth closed and her jaw began to rotate as if she were chewing something. Then her eyes popped open, and with that came the smile I had been longing for. She sat up at once, and throwing her rugs aside, she bent over and embraced me. Her weight was too much for me. I laughed and pushed her away. “Are you well?” she cried.
I nodded. I felt well enough. She called out to her mother, and Chero came rushing in. She had the child on her hip. “Gudrun is better!” Sunhild exclaimed. “She woke me up. She held my hand last night.”
Chero scrutinized my face. “Let me hear it from your own mouth,” she said.
I opened my mouth to speak, but the sound that came out was no more than a grunt.
“You are not trying hard enough,” Chero said.
Sunhild grabbed hold of the hem of her mother’s robe. “But she is. Can you not see it? Oh, I beg you, do not be so harsh with her. Look how she struggles. She is helpless. Her voice is locked away. She has gone too long without using it. It will come back in good time.”
“Perhaps,” Chero said, looking at me from an angle. “But she must come into the hall and eat at the table properly today. That, at least, will be something.”
Anxious to please, I tried immediately to raise myself, but I found that my legs were as useless as my voice. Sunhild got up and took hold of my arms. She was a strong girl, and in a moment I was up on my feet. But for all her tugging, I could not seem to get my feet to move. Then one of my ankles bucked and I fell against her. Gently, she lowered me back down to the mattress. Chero grabbed one of the rolled mattresses with her free had and stuck it between the wall and my back so that I could sit.
“It is too soon,” Sunhild cried, her eyes brimming with tears. “Y
ou said yourself only yesterday that she should not be rushed. She can eat in here a little longer. I will bring her food. I will work with her. I will massage her feet. I will make her move her legs. You will see how quickly she will learn from me.”
Chero sighed. Then she closed her eyes and nodded reluctantly. She was about to depart when Sunhild whispered, “Leave us the child.” Chero wrapped her arm around the child protectively. “She will not hurt her. I will watch. Look at her. Her eyes never leave the child. She longs for her. Please, Mother.”
Chero looked from Sunhild to me. Then she sat the child down before me and pointed a finger at Sunhild. “If any harm should come to Sigurd’s child…” she warned. Then she sighed again and went out.
With Sunhild’s help, I lifted the child onto my lap. Happily, she showed no sign of fear. I stroked her corn-silk hair and breathed deeply of her scent. Her eye fell on one of the colored threads which Sunhild and Chero had overlooked the night before. When she began to squirm, I released her, and she crawled away in pursuit of it. “Go ahead, little one,” Sunhild said gently. “Pick it up if you like.”
The child picked up the thread and held it before her face. Then she crawled to Sunhild and held it out for her to inspect. “Pretty,” Sunhild said. “Now go and show it to your mother.” Sunhild pointed to me. The child followed her finger. She crawled over and held the thread so close to my face that I could not focus on it. I lifted her and held her against me. I kissed her head, her nose, her eyes, her mouth. Sigurd’s child. I kissed her ears and her neck. And in the smile that rose to her face, I saw him, Sigurd, smiling. And all at once I knew that Sigurd was gone, and Guthorm too. Both gone, both dead—just as it had happened in my dream. I handed the child back to Sunhild and began to weep. My child had come into the world without my noticing. The tears would not stop. They rolled down my face and moistened my robe.
The Last Wife of Attila the Hun Page 31