The Last Wife of Attila the Hun

by Joan Schweighardt

  Even from my hut I could hear the madness surging as word of Attila’s death spread through the village. Roar after roar of grief went up like so many funeral pyres bursting into flame. I could hear the women screaming, and I imagined that they were tearing at their hair and their faces, not because they loved Attila but because they feared what would become of them if it were thought that they did not.

  It was late when I heard Edeco’s voice, but it seemed to me that no time had passed at all. “Ride off to your hut now,” he said to the guard outside my door. “As soon as I am done here, I will meet you there, for there is something else I would have you do before we join the others.” I uncurled myself, but Edeco did not enter. I heard him ride off, and then there was a banging in the distance, but I did not have the strength to get up to see what he was about. There was silence, and then more banging.

  I forced myself to sit up when Edeco finally returned and entered. His face was swollen almost beyond recognition and caked with dried blood. In one hand he held a battle-ax. “Where did you get it?” he asked, his eyes gleaming against his grotesque flesh. Having been rendered nearly senseless by the chaos I had set into motion, I could only stare at him. “Where did you get the poison?” he repeated.

  “Are you not pleased that he is dead?”

  Edeco’s lips stretched and quivered. He lifted his face to the roof and moaned. When he had lowered it again, he cried, “You must go now. I have made it all ready for you. Look.” He grabbed my arm roughly and pulled me to my feet and then to the door. My eye fell on the sun descending beyond the Western palisade. It was a wonder to me that I was still alive to look at it. He steered me around to the back of the hut, and I saw immediately that one plank of wood had been hacked away from the palisade. “Go through there,” Edeco said, his gaze set rigidly on the narrow opening. “And then through the one beyond it. The village is empty. They have all gone to watch the funeral just outside the city gates. No one will see you. There is a horse waiting. But you must ride fast. And you must ride east first for many days, for they will be searching for you in the other direction. Attila’s sons are already fighting amongst themselves. When I saw them last they were arguing over the war sword. Ellac says it should go to him now as he is he eldest. Ernac insists it be buried with his father, that its power was meant for him alone. The only thing they all agree on is that a new leader should not be chosen until after the funeral—and that only because each knows that he is less than capable, and yet none is prepared to step aside to make way for his brother. Most likely the empire will be divided among them. And divided it will fall. You have succeeded, Gudrun. You have killed the greatest man who ever lived.”

  Too weary to be stirred by his emotion, I mumbled, “I shall never find my way home.”

  “You should have thought of that when you left the evidence behind,” Edeco shouted. “You should have thought of that when you set out to—”

  “But what evidence did I leave?” I asked.

  He stared at me incredulously. “I went to his bower only moments ago, to stare at the place where he breathed his last and to consider my part in it,” he said. “There were two guards there, and as I was looking on, one noticed the two wine cups at the side of the bed behind Attila’s shoes. ‘What is this?’ he said, seeing that one was full and the other empty. Then he lifted the full one to his lips and tasted it. He fell down dead within moments. I would have killed the other guard then, but I heard someone coming in behind me. It was Onegesius. I said to him, as I had to, ‘It seems the Thuet killed our leader after all. He was poisoned.’ And he said to me and the guard who was witness, ‘Say nothing of this until after the funeral. I would not have Attila’s funeral befouled by such a scandal. Killed by a woman, a Thuet! When the funeral is over, we will kill her, and no one need ever know the truth.’”

  I stared at him in amazement. “But it is not possible. Only one cup was poisoned, and that he…” But even as I said these words, I saw Attila again, sucking vulgarly on the date pit, sucking, laughing, playing with the pit between his teeth—and then gasping when I told him the lie that I had invented so that he should not die in peace. “You must come with me,” I cried. “You dismissed the guard here. Onegesius will learn of it and—”

  “The guard I dismissed will not live long enough to tell Onegesius anything. This axe is his. It will seem as if you got it away from him, and fearing the wrath of Attila’s sons, that he killed himself.”

  “Spare his life and leave with me, I beg you. We can live in peace on my brothers’ lands. I have a daughter. I will teach you to be a Thuet again. I will help you to forget your part in this, for I can see that it troubles you now that it is done.”

  “Would you have me plant crops and herd sheep, Gudrun? Men who have long gotten their luxuries freely do not bend so easily. I must stay here. Here I can prepare my sons for the vision you once foresaw.”

  With my only thought being that Edeco must flee with me, I opened my mouth to declare that the vision had been a lie. But then Edeco added, “That is the only thing left to me now. If not for that, then all the rest has been in vain.”

  I closed my mouth abruptly, but Edeco continued to stare at me as if he were defying me to disagree. His knuckles were white around the handle of the ax. “Your Odoacer will prosper,” I whispered at last, and some of the tension went out of Edeco’s face. But when I stood on my toes and kissed his bloodied cheek, his agonized expression returned again, and he lifted his chin high and looked away from me.

  I hurried past him, out of the hut. When I reached the opening in the first palisade, I stopped and turned to look back at him. It seemed to me that I had never seen such a terrible sight as that of the Thuet with the Hunnish scars and the bloodied face and the rigid eyes that refused to look back at me. I began to run. And I prayed that the gods, who perhaps had ears for my voice after all, would comfort Edeco and bring his sons their just reward.

  Epilogue

  IT TOOK GUDRUN a full year, but eventually she found her way back to her people. And by that time there was not a Thuet alive who had not heard that the Hunnish empire, having been divided equally among Attila’s sons, had lost its force and begun to crumble.

  Although she missed Edeco sorely and speculated often on what might have been between them, the next several years of Gudrun’s life were a great pleasure. Along with Sunhild and her mother, she raised her daughter on Burgundian lands. Prior to their deaths, Hagen and Gunner had both married and produced five offspring between them, and Gudrun’s belief that the Burgundians would prosper yet was renewed. In her absence the knowledge of writing had come to some of her people, and Gudrun made fast work of acquainting herself with it. She died peacefully not long after completing her account of Sigurd’s death, her recovery from it at the hands of the Franks and her imprisonment in the City of Attila.

  Unfortunately, her death occurred some years before Edeco’s Odoacer marched into the Empire and made himself the first barbarian king of Italy—an event which marked the end of the already declining Roman Empire.

  Author’s Note

  The Last Wife of Attila the Hun is based on the “Sigurth” and “Guthrun” lays, as they appear in the Poetic Edda, and on the history of the Roman, Germanic and Hun tribes during the reign of Attila the Hun. While there were many instances where the legend and the history were close enough to be combined, where they were not, I took the liberty of creating the links that I imagined.

  Acknowledgments

  THANKS TO EVERYONE at Booktrope for giving this story, which I so loved writing and still enjoy reading, a second life. Special thanks to my team members, the incredibly talented Michelle Fairbanks, Cory Williams, and Cass Metcalfe. You have all been so patient with me, and so tremendously helpful in making The Last Wife of Attila the Hun the best book it could possible be. More special thanks to Jacqueline Church Simonds, who oversaw the publication of the first incarnation of this st
ory, with more grace and care than any author could ever ask for.

  The legends that inspired The Last Wife of Attila the Hun have lived in my heart and my imagination ever since I first read them, years ago, in an undergraduate class taught by Professor Robert Waugh at the State University of New York at New Paltz. Thanks to Bob Waugh, and to all the wonderful educators everywhere who regularly change the lives of their students by lifting them up into the splendor of myth and poetry. I don’t know who I would be if such treasures hadn’t come my way.

  Last but never least, and speaking of treasures, thanks to my sons, Adam and Alex, for the indescribable joy your existence brings into my life daily, and to Michael Dooley, my husband, partner and best friend.

  About the Author

  JOAN SCHWEIGHARDT is the author of five novels, a memoir written under a pseudonym, and various magazine articles, including several stories in travel magazines. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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