The Last Wife of Attila the Hun

by Joan Schweighardt

  Chero came in. When she saw me, she put aside the food bowl she had been carrying and rushed to my side and wrapped her arms around me. “Cry all you want,” she whispered. Over her shoulder I saw Gripner appear in the doorway, squinting his eyes. He nodded encouragingly. Through my burning tears, I sought out Sunhild’s face. She was crying too. When Chero released me, Sunhild took her place. And all the time Gripner remained in the doorway, nodding and smiling sympathetically. And so it went. My healing had begun.

  Whenever I cried after that—and I cried often—there was always someone there to console me. Chero, no longer harsh—or at least no harsher than was her way—spoke gently to me then, encouraging me to visualize my grief, to see it as a flock of birds which would soon take wing and leave me in peace. Even the child, who spent more and more time playing at my side in the bower, learned to hold me when the tears began. In imitation of Sunhild and Chero, she rubbed her small hand on my back, rocked with me, her little face buried in my bosom. Gripner alone never took a turn holding me, but he came often to stand by my side, sometimes with his stiff, aged hand on my head.

  When I was not crying for Sigurd and Guthorm, I worked with Sunhild. She made me move my limbs in various ways for long periods of time. No matter how discouraged I became, she remained cheerful and confident that I would soon learn to walk again. And if my slow progress, a constant contradiction to her confidence, ever disheartened her, she never let on. She was nothing but patient. She seemed to have no thought beyond my well-being and that of the child. And how I marveled at her selflessness, so vast, so genuine. And many times I promised myself that when I was well again, I would find a way to emulate her.

  In the evenings, I embroidered on the long, colorless cloth. It was Chero’s request that I should embroider my own history, right up to my marriage and Sigurd’s and Guthorm’s deaths. In the beginning, I had no bent for such a project. My embroidery skills had never been good, and I found it tedious to stitch the little figures the way that Chero showed me. Nor could I imagine how, one day, I would bring myself to stitch the bodies of my loved ones, high upon their funeral pyres, engulfed by flames. But I was so slow about my task, that day seemed very far off indeed. And furthermore, I would not have dared to disappoint Chero after all that she had done for me. And thus did my unskilled fingers set about their task.

  To frame the events that I desired to portray, I made for each a square, the width of my hand, with my threads. I determined in advance that this would afford me one hundred squares in which to work—four rows of twenty-five each running along the length of the fabric. Then into each square I stitched events as I imagined them. I stitched first my ancestors coming down from the north and crossing the great river in search of fertile lands on which to begin a new and better life. I stitched them plowing, building, praying, and gathering about their hearths to raise their drinking horns to the gods and share their dreams for a prosperous and peaceful future. Then I stitched the Romans coming to take the many by force to be their slaves or to fight in their armies. I stitched the Burgundians who remained behind, making their new home at Worms and looking to Gundahar, their king, the brother of my father, for consolation and protection.

  All this and more I stitched. And by the time I had used up some twenty squares and twice as many nights, a strange thing happened to me. The stories my fingers told were the stories I had heard all my life, from the mouths of my father and my brothers and our freemen. And always I had heard them with interest and sympathy. But now, as I lingered over each event in my work, these stories began to become real for me in a new way. It was as if, when I took up my cloth, colorless no longer, I was not one person but two. And while one stitched, tirelessly now, in quick time, and with a skill I had never thought to acquire, the other lived in each little square, took part in each battle, held her hand over the quiet heart of each still-warm Burgundian whose life-blood had been spilt for his people. I heard the war cries now, the horses charging, the clash of blades, the screams of the women and children. I felt their pain—our pain—our anguish, our anger, our fears. By the time I got to the square that was to depict my father, I felt less his daughter than his peer. Likewise, as I stitched my mother, so young and vibrant and indifferent back then to the black veil that hung over the future, I felt her desire to put my father’s mind at ease as if it were my own. And when they married, this solemn, saddened, thoughtful man and this carefree girl half his age, I was there. I was there to see my brothers come into the world, first Gunner, then Hagen. Even at my own birth did I seem to stand watching, feeling the blend of pleasure and pain as my mother experienced it, hearing the voice of the old woman who brought me forth saying, “A girl this time,” seeing my father’s initial disappointment vanish when he saw my mother’s slow smile come to her face.

  I was there at Gundahar’s side, not as the child I had actually been but as I am now, as I stitched his attempt to take Belgica and Aetius’ coming forth with his armies to check him, to punish him for wanting what all men want—a stronghold of his own, lands of his own, a life for his people. I was there to see the Huns marching to Worms at Aetius’ beckon to put an end to my people for good. I was there for the battles that ensued, the burning halls, the executions, the blood, the grief, the shattered dreams. I was there for Gundahar’s death, and there with my father, among his men, as I stitched him negotiating with Aetius to spare the lives of the few Burgundian survivors. His great effort to conceal his hatred for his enemies from the general to whom he made his appeal was my effort too. His feigned humility was mine. His shrouded rage was mine. Mine was his grief at his brother’s passing. I felt it here, deep in my heart—and my heart grew heavy and full again. And little by little there came into my body a new spirit to replace the one that had died. And this new spirit was so unlike the other that it made me giddy sometimes to think that such a thing had taken up within me, for this was a collective thing, the spirit of all the Burgundian hopes and fears together. It came trickling in with the rhythm of my fingers, filling the void that had been the result of my loved ones’ deaths. It sated me. It made me feel very old—yet ageless and outside time. It made me feel wizened. I imagined I was beginning to understand something of sweet Sunhild’s selflessness. She, too, was filled with a collective spirit, the spirit of her folk and her past. But for her this occupation was unconscious, while for me it was a learned thing which more than likely would have evaded me altogether had not my suffering, my death in life, prepared me for it.

  And thus, by the time I got to my own more personal history, my own sorrows diminished somewhat. It was with pride now that I showed my work to Chero each night—though it was evident that she failed to see what was happening to me, that the events I stitched now represented the ancestral memory which I had acquired in stitching them. She complimented me on my little figures, prettier and more animated than ever, but she remained obsessed with finding a way to free my tongue. For her, only such an outward manifestation of my healing would suffice. Looking over my shoulder, she would ask me, “Who is this child? What is this man doing? Whose blood flows here?” And when I only stared back at her dumbly, amazed to realize that she had failed to see that I was the child and the man, that it was my blood which flowed forth, she would sigh and go away full of concern for my well-being.

  Sunhild and Gripner, on the other hand, did not seem bothered at all by my silence. And I cannot say that it bothered me much either, for I learned to watch and listen more carefully as a result. Now, when I sat at the table in the hall (for I had, by then, regained full use of my limbs), I needed only to hear one word from Gripner or Chero to know what they were truly thinking. And sometimes no words were needed at all. My silence mirrored a peaceful place within me. And in that place the thoughts and needs of others seemed to flow in effortlessly. I knew, for instance, even before Sunhild did, the times when Chero was beginning to be annoyed with Sunhild’s childish chatter, and then I would take Sunhild’s hand and
lead her from the hall. I knew, too, when Gripner was feeling aged and useless, and then I would go to him and sit at his side. Sometimes he would ask to see my tapestry, and in spite of his poor eyesight, he would find the squares depicting Sigurd’s ride into the high mountains and stare at them for a long time. And I sensed then that he was waiting for an opportunity to speak to me alone about these events in Sigurd’s life. But it was some time before he did so, for with Gripner nearly blind and his back always a source of pain to him, he seldom left the hall. And Chero, having Sunhild and a handful of servants to do the work that had to be done outdoors, was content to stay indoors caring for him.

  Other than my anxiety about Gripner and the words that he would one day say to me, this was the most peaceful time in my life. I did not have Sigurd and Guthorm anymore, but I had my memories of them. I had Sunhild and my daughter to console me when memories were not enough. At about the time I learned to walk again, my daughter learned to walk too. And as Gripner’s lands were full of meadows and quiet streams, Sunhild and my child and I spent much of our time walking and marveling at the beauty of the world. Sunhild was like a child herself, then. Sometimes she reminded me of Guthorm. There was not a flower or a cloud that escaped her attention. And she would do most anything to get my child and me to laugh, for she loved the sound of laughter better than anything else in the world. On all fours she would imitate the cows or the sheep that my child never tired of pointing out to us. And then my child was never content until she could climb onto Sunhild’s back. As Sunhild’s back was broad, I would have to hold my child in place as Sunhild began to move like the animal she sought to portray. And when Sunhild began to move too quickly for me, we would all three go tumbling into the high meadow grasses, laughing and happy enough to be in one another’s company.

  Sometimes we would walk down to the place where Sigurd’s ashes were buried. Sunhild was solemn then. With my child between us and our hands locked behind her back, Sunhild would tell me of the adventures that she and Sigurd had shared as children. There was something familiar about some of her stories, and I came to realize that Sigurd had told them to me long, long ago, in the days before the siege. In this way Sunhild reawakened my earliest memories of Sigurd. And my love for her doubled when I realized that Sigurd had loved her as much as I did. I felt I could stay on Gripner’s lands forever, listening to Sunhild and the words that my child was learning to utter. When I recalled that my mother and brothers were waiting for me to come home, I grew sad and hoped, like Sunhild, that it would still be some time until I was that much recovered.

  But one evening in the late spring, all this came to an end. We had finished eating early, and Sunhild and I, seeing that there was still plenty of light, decided to take our embroidery outdoors. By this time my tapestry was nearly complete, and as I did not know whether my Frankish family knew all the details surrounding Sigurd’s death, it had been a while since I had volunteered to show my work to any of them. Still, I imagined that someone, Chero most likely, had peeked at it anyway when I was not about, for after I had embroidered Sigurd and Brunhild lying together in the cave, no one asked to see it anymore.

  I had stitched myself eavesdropping on my brothers in the forest, my reaction to their words, and my going to Brunhild to make the bargain with her (though the picture of this last event was insufficient to represent the words that passed between us). I had stitched the weddings, and Sigurd’s rejection of Brunhild up in the clearing north of the bathing pit. I had stitched, too, the night that Sigurd confessed to me his involvement with Brunhild. Here, to make the scene sensible, above my portrait of Sigurd and me speaking together in the bower, in a little circle, I duplicated the events in the square that showed Sigurd and Brunhild in the cave. In the square that followed, I had stitched Sigurd crying, for though I know that men are loathe to be thought capable of tears, I felt that Sigurd’s remorse was an important part of my story and should not be left to speculation. In the next square, I had stitched Gunner and Brunhild in their bower, and again, by adding a little circle above Brunhild’s head in which I depicted the cave, though not its occupants, I was able to suggest that Brunhild had hinted of the event which Sigurd, and Brunhild, earlier, had told to me. In the next square, Gunner and Hagen were riding out into the forest with Guthorm. And then, in the next, there was poor Guthorm, vomiting evil things, and, finally, him hurling the sword and Sigurd hurling it back again. Then I had only five squares left. In the first of these five, I stitched myself, oblivious to the people and events around me. To depict my state, I rendered my eyes pupil-less. In the next two, I stitched the two funerals, with Brunhild heaving herself onto the pyre in the second one. In the background of both, I stood among the others with my eyes blank. In the next, I stitched the birth of my child as I imagined it. Now there was only one square left. And as Sunhild and I sat on the rocks outside Gripner’s hall, I began to stitch myself and Sunhild stitching. Though my eyes were lowered in the little scene, and thus my pupils not visible, the expression on my face confirmed that I had found tranquility on Gripner’s lands. Beyond us, I stitched Gripner’s hall, but not its walls, and thus was I able to depict Gripner and Chero within, and my child asleep in her cradle near the hearth. My tapestry was complete. I sighed and whispered, “It is done.”

  “Done already?” Sunhild asked. Then she jumped down from her rock, careless of her own embroidery, crying, “You spoke! You spoke!”

  Aye, I had, though until Sunhild exclaimed, I had not realized it myself. And as I considered the words I had said, I saw that they were as much a comment on my life as I had known it as they were a comment on the status of my tapestry. I rolled up my work and got down from the rock to retrieve Sunhild’s. When I handed it to her, I saw that she had not yet decided whether to rejoice or despair. She was dancing from side to side, her eyes wide and her mouth opened. But I took her hand, and she said nothing. As we began to walk up to the hall, Sunhild finally decided on an attitude and began to cry. I squeezed her hand and pulled her along.

  The door being up, we entered unannounced. Chero and Gripner, who were sitting at the table in positions uncannily similar to the ones in which I had only just depicted them, ceased their conversation abruptly so that I knew they had been talking about me. Sunhild, who was calm now, said flatly, “Gudrun is cured.”

  Chero straightened and dropped her hands into her lap. Gripner smiled.

  “It is true,” I said. “You cured me, the three of you, with your kindness and your love.”

  Chero got up slowly and approached me, her trembling fingers extended as if I were an apparition which she felt compelled to touch before it vanished from her sight. I took her hand and kissed it. Then I went past her, to the table, and unrolled my tapestry before Gripner. Sunhild and Chero moved to stand behind him. Gripner’s aged finger began to move slowly over the last row of squares, the ones I had not yet shown to anyone. It came to rest on the square that depicted Sigurd and Brunhild lying in each other’s arms in the dark cave. Gripner bent his head low so as to compensate for his poor eyesight. When he had made out the picture, he sat up again and turned to look at Chero. Her face had reddened and her eyes glistened with tears. Still, she had no response other than to nod at Gripner.

  Now Gripner’s finger came to rest on the square that showed my brothers conspiring in the forest while I hid among the trees. It lingered there a moment and then moved to the next square, the one that showed me prostrate and tearing at my hair, overcome with grief at what I had just overheard. Gripner considered this square long and hard, but decorous as he was, he refrained from questioning me about it. His finger moved again, now to the square that showed Brunhild and me conversing by the stream, and again he considered it carefully.

  “Aye,” I said, “Brunhild told me about their night together here, when we bathed together in the river,” and I showed them where to look. “Her reason for coming to our lands was not to marry Gunner but in the hope that this incid
ent might repeat itself. And as I thought it likely that it would, and as I needed her help, I went to her to say that I would suffer Sigurd’s infidelities on the condition that she make certain that Gunner never learned that the blood-bond between himself and Sigurd had already been broken. My decision was a poor one, for as you will note farther down, Sigurd had already decided that he no longer desired Brunhild’s love. If I had not gone to her, if I had not made her to think that it would all be so easy, perhaps Sigurd would still be alive today. It is important to me that you know all this.”

  “Gripner suspected it,” Chero mumbled.

  “Do not hold yourself to blame,” Gripner said, raising one brow. “Your offering her what she could not have does not change the fact that she could not have it. Sigurd loved you. You could not have changed that.”

  Ah, but I could have, I thought, though I did not say so to Gripner.

  His finger moved quickly over the next few squares. When he got to the one depicting Sigurd’s death, he withdrew his hand entirely and sat for a moment with his eyes closed. Then he rolled up the tapestry. He was about to lay it aside, but Sunhild snatched it from his hand. She carried it over to the hearth and opened it up anew. In a moment, Chero joined her. Though their backs were to me, I could hear them whispering, speculating.

  “And now?” Gripner asked softly.

  I turned to face him. “And now I must leave. I must make peace with my brothers.”

  “They have been concerned about you. Many times during your illness they sent messengers to ask whether they might come, but always Chero and I thought it best—”

  “You thought wisely.”

  Gripner stretched his neck to see past me. I turned too. Sunhild and Chero were wrapped in each other’s arms now, sobbing softly, the tapestry still laid out before them. “Sit,” Gripner whispered. I sat. He glanced once more at Chero and Sunhild. Then, satisfied that they would remain preoccupied for some time, he whispered, “I do not like to speak of your future in front of them. They love you dearly, and their greatest wish is that your life will now be one of peace and tranquility. But I have had glimpses, and I feel I must tell you the things I have seen.”