Sisters of the Fire

by Kim Wilkins

  He dragged himself to his feet. ‘Go on then. Get your bow.’

  With an excited yelp she hared off inside again, while Skalmir waited with the afternoon sun on his bare shoulders. The sapling grove had once been land cleared for farming. Mildrith had had the Great Mother’s touch with plants, and her small vegetable and herb patches weren’t enough to keep her busy. She had wanted to grow food to sell to the markets. She had wanted to be busy and productive, and raise her child to be the same. After her death, Skalmir replanted the space with saplings, so he wasn’t reminded every day of the dreams that had died with her. Now it was Rowan’s favourite place to go: safe and close enough to home, but still wild, with its rabbits and its chatter of birds and gleam of insect wings.

  The door slammed behind her again, and a moment later her hand was in his and they were walking the muddy path into the sapling grove, the dogs at their heels. Sparrows pipped in the low branches.

  ‘So what did you learn today?’

  ‘How to be a good trimartyr,’ she said grimly. ‘Which is a great deal the same as how to be a commonsense good person but far more boring and with lots of talk of death by fire.’

  ‘Well, always remember, nobody sees inside your heart. You may believe what you want to believe.’ Though Skalmir hoped she believed in the old ways.

  ‘I know, Snowy. I can keep all of the gods in my head at once. Don’t worry.’

  He didn’t worry, not really. Rowan was almost preternaturally able to present the perfect face to every person she encountered. With King Wengest she was the demure princess; with Bluebell she was the raging warrior-child; with Sister Julian she was the patient trimartyr pupil. Skalmir liked to think she was herself with him. Somehow his grief and Rowan’s had found in each other a sweet harmony. They both knew Rowan wasn’t his, that one day she’d be taken from him, but as far as Skalmir and Rowan understood life, that was the nature of loving someone.

  He stood by her in the dying afternoon light as she shot arrow after arrow into a painted target he had built for her out of a larch log. Every afternoon she would do this, for hours. He sometimes believed she wouldn’t stop if he didn’t tell her to. She didn’t tire of it, nor grow bored, as she did with everything else. She was all focus and energy, running back and forth to fetch her arrows and unleashing the whole quiver again and again. Then, in the evenings, she would sit happily by the fire after supper to replace arrow heads and mend fletchings and wax her bow string.

  ‘Give me a challenge, Snowy,’ she said after a while. ‘I’m sick of shooting at that target.’

  ‘All right,’ Skalmir said, grasping her hand and walking her up a hillock. ‘See that ash over there?’

  ‘That one?’ she asked, pointing with an arrow. ‘With the ivy growing up it?’

  ‘Yes. The lowest branch is very narrow but you have a clear shot. Can you hit it from here?’

  She nocked the arrow without a word. Became still. He never saw her so still as she was when shooting.

  With a soft swoosh the arrow sailed away and thudded into the branch.

  ‘Well done.’

  She pulled out another arrow. A soft rustle in the undergrowth behind them caught her attention. Skalmir had time to register the fact that a rabbit had emerged from its hole a hundred feet from them – moving, half-hidden by widlflowers – before the arrow had left Rowan’s fingers and found its mark.

  She gasped. ‘Did I hit it?’

  The dogs, trained for precisely this task, streaked off after it. Skalmir and Rowan began to run back through the undergrowth, the long tickling grass. Skalmir found the little body, warm but limp, Rowan’s arrow protruding from its back.

  ‘I hit it!’ she shouted. ‘Snowy, I hit it. I caught us dinner. And from so far.’

  ‘Not only that, it was moving,’ he added, trying to sound more encouraging than astonished. He reached out to stroke her hair, but she ducked away, too full of excitement for affection, and snatched her rabbit off him.

  ‘Now you can show me how to skin it and gut it, and then we’ll roast it with some turnips.’ Already she was heading back to the house, her proud little spine straight and square, quiver bouncing over her shoulder, the dead rabbit dangling from her hand.

  Skalmir followed, brimming with pride, even though she wasn’t his to be proud of.

  Late, late in the night, a boom of thunder woke Skalmir from a confusing dream about a deer that could speak, once it had taken an arrow to its brain. He blinked in the dark and saw the flash of lightning through the cracks around the shutter. Another crack. Rain hammered down.

  He turned over, told himself to go back to sleep, but then remembered that Rowan liked to sleep with her shutter open on warm evenings, and it had been cloyingly warm at bedtime. So he kicked the dogs off his feet and rose to open the door between their chambers. Yes, the shutter was open, and the rain was gusting through it in swells. Another bolt of lightning momentarily blinded him, leaving a flash on his vision. He closed the shutter. Tomorrow he and Rowan would have to take out these wet rushes and put new ones down. He turned to where she lay, sleeping on her side. In the dark, he could make out her white nightgown, her shoulder rising and falling with her breath.

  Skalmir went to her bed and crouched down. It seemed she had slept through the thunder. Gently, careful not to wake her, he reached out to stroke her shoulder.

  She was icy cold.

  Puzzled, his heart speeding a little, he let his hand rest there a few moments. She was definitely breathing. Why was she so cold? The shutter had been open but the night was muggy. He reached under her blanket to feel her back. Again, icy.

  Now he began to doubt himself, doubt his eyes. She was as cold as the dead, so he shook her lightly and said her name. ‘Rowan?’

  She moved. Of course she moved. She was breathing, she was alive. She made a small mumbling sound, then said, clear as a bell, ‘Mother?’

  Skalmir didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t answer. If she was dreaming happily about her mother, he would not be so cruel as to remind her that she was stuck here in a dark, ancient wood with him, and would perhaps never see her mother again. Wengest had put Rose aside – Skalmir didn’t know why for certain but the rumours were of infidelity – and ordered her never to see her daughter again if peace was to hold between Ælmesse and Netelchester.

  Rowan’s question hung there in the dark, unanswered. But she was breathing regularly and deeply again and still as cold as November frost under his hand. He pulled her blanket up higher and tucked it around her tightly, trying to warm her up. He was surprised she remembered her mother; perhaps she only remembered her in her sleep.

  Skalmir stood. Leaving her small, sleeping body behind him, he closed the door and let her dream.

  Three

  The music and laughter and free-flowing mead made her father’s hall seem so alive that Bluebell could hardly believe this feast was to mark a death: the king’s counsellor, Byrta, who had served their family for sixty years. But for Bluebell and her hearthband it was a party, a chance to catch their breath and eat heartily after the privations of life on the road.

  ‘And then I sat on him,’ Gytha was screeching, ‘until he said yes!’

  A loud roar of laughter went up, and Bluebell gulped her mead and laughed with them. Gytha, the only other woman in her retinue, was telling the story of how she had convinced her new husband to marry her.

  ‘I suppose you’ll be off having babies, now,’ Sighere, Bluebell’s second-in-command, said. ‘Just when your spear arm was becoming legend.’

  ‘Depends on who has the greater claim on my womb: the Great Mother or the Horse God.’ She shrugged, took a gulp of her drink. ‘What will come will come.’ But Gytha had already been to see Bluebell to ask how to avoid a pregnancy, something Bluebell herself had avoided since – when had she started fucking? Sixteen? Seventeen? A long time, in any case. Gytha didn’t want to leave the road any more than Bluebell did. Life after the road was dull and circumscribed, waiting
around to die.

  Bluebell glanced around the room. Firelight and smoke and movement. Her eyes were drunk and exaggerated everything, and she smiled at nobody and everybody. The wise women of the village crowded around a table near the hearth – their bones so cold from age that even summer couldn’t warm them – telling happy stories of Byrta’s life and laughing in defiance of death. The rest of the crowd was made of old warriors, young stablehands, musicians and tale-tellers, Byrta’s friends from town, and others who had known and loved her, many of whom were unused to being in Æthlric’s hall and were full of marvel and excitement rather than mourning. It was a happy occasion.

  ‘Where’s that little serving wench?’ Ricbert slurred.

  ‘Over there,’ Lofric said, pointing across the crowd to the other side of the hall.

  Her men had become infatuated with one of the new hall girls. She was tiny, perhaps a foot shorter than Bluebell, with curling ringlets and a poppet’s face, but enormous breasts.

  Ricbert stood, holding up his empty cup. ‘Hey there! Hey!’ And when she didn’t hear over the din, he put down his cup and lurched off after her.

  Sighere was straight-backed, alert.

  ‘Relax,’ she said. ‘Enjoy yourself. No harm will come to us today.’

  ‘Your father,’ he said. ‘The king. He’s nowhere to be seen.’

  ‘He probably went outside to piss.’

  Then there was a shriek and Bluebell saw Ricbert had picked up the little serving girl and was carrying her back to where the hearthband was sitting. Indignant, the girl dumped her jug of mead all down his back. The other men were laughing and whooping, calling to Ricbert to toss the girl to them. They began to pass her around, lifting her over their heads and crowing about how strong they were.

  Bluebell finished her drink, stood up and boomed, ‘If you are so keen to lift a woman over your head, try it with me.’

  Lofric placed the woman on the ground and she scurried to the fire.

  ‘Come on, then. Lofric? Ricbert? No?’ She spread her arms. Bluebell never drew attention to her sex. She was sure, for the most part, her men thought of her as they might think of a man. She was a more powerful soldier than any of them, taller than all but Sighere, and made them call her ‘my lord’ rather than ‘my lady’. But it was the sign of a craven spirit in a man to exercise his power over somebody weaker outside of battle and she disdained it furiously. Would they be so cruel to children, or to dogs?

  ‘Ricbert,’ she said, with cold threat in her voice. ‘I want you to try to pick me up.’

  Ricbert knew better than to defy a direct command. Sheepishly, drunkenly, he took a step forwards and reached for her. Thrymm, Bluebell’s dog, leapt to her feet and growled low.

  ‘Down, girl,’ Bluebell said.

  Ricbert’s arms went around Bluebell’s waist, and as hard as he pulled her up, she planted herself ever more firmly on the ground. It was no contest. She was bigger than him, he was drunker than her.

  ‘Anyone else?’ she asked.

  Gytha laughed and piled on with Ricbert, then it became a joke and they were all crowding around her, falling over each other as they tried to pull her off her feet. Thrymm barked nervously and Blubell laughed and laughed as they failed to move her. She was made of stone. She brought down her arms with one swift movement and swept them all off. Some landed on the floor among the rushes and the dogs. A crowd that had gathered laughed and hooted and Sighere put a cup of mead in her hands and she called them all fuckers under her breath and sat down again.

  ‘He’s not back,’ Sighere said.

  For a moment she didn’t understand what he meant, but then she glanced up at the high table and realised he meant her father hadn’t returned.

  ‘I’ll see if I can find him,’ she said, and patted Thrymm’s flank so the dog would follow her.

  Bluebell slipped out of the hot, noisy hall into the long summer twilight. If her father had sought peace, he wouldn’t have headed towards town, but rather around towards the stables. She followed the path and saw him soon enough, standing under an oak tree at the top of the hill, looking out over fields beyond the giants’ ruins. The oak was thick with foliage except for the top-most branches, and a dozen rooks had perched up there: black fruit. The sky was washed yellow-grey as the day finally gave way, late as it always was this time of year.

  ‘Father!’ she called, and he turned and waited for her to join him, patient and still. Thrymm ran down to him and licked his outstretched hand.

  ‘Are you unwell?’ she asked as she approached over the dewy grass.

  ‘I suffer from what every old man suffers when a good friend dies,’ he said.

  ‘And what ailment is that?’

  ‘An unshakeable feeling that my death is near.’

  The cold touched Bluebell’s heart, but she pretended to laugh his comment off. ‘Byrta was fourteen years older than you. A crone. You are still –’

  ‘I am not still anything, Bluebell. I have seen sixty-two winters. I have old injuries that ache more with each passing year. Byrta lived to an old age because she had a life indoors, in quiet rooms and soft spaces. I have worn my body out in service of my people. I cannot be too far behind her.’

  Bluebell realised that her father’s morbid ramblings were his way of grieving, that the king of Ælmesse did not weep, he raged.

  ‘You are still hale,’ she said gently. ‘You are still our king. My king.’

  ‘But if there was a war, Bluebell? Could I lead the army? Or would you do it? I’m good for visiting shearings and settling land disputes and placating people who think they’ve paid too much tax, but not much else.’ His eyes went back to the fields laid out all around the town of Blicstowe, crops of different shades of green ripening in profusion. ‘It’s already over,’ he muttered.

  ‘Nothing is over,’ she said.

  ‘I had hoped to die by steel, not by winter.’

  He turned back to her and she saw the deep lines on his face, the sag of his eyelids and the silver of his beard, and felt a pang.

  ‘Death will come to you too, one day,’ he said.

  Bluebell’s spine stiffened. As it did, she could feel the strength and suppleness in her muscles and joints, and she dismissed her father’s words without letting them settle inside her. ‘If death comes for me, Father, I’ll cut its fucking head off.’

  Æthlric laughed, light returning to his eyes. ‘That you would, my girl. I can imagine it all too well. Well, at least I can say I raised a good child.’

  ‘Five good children.’

  His smile retreated. ‘Well.’

  ‘Three, then. Ivy and Willow were a waste of your seed, I’ll admit that.’

  He nodded. ‘Ash,’ he said. ‘I want her back. I always thought she would take Byrta’s place. She trained for it.’

  ‘She never finished her training. And now she’s taken herself into exile, and we aren’t to reason against that. She believed it the right thing to do.’

  Her father’s expression told her he disagreed, but he didn’t pursue the point. ‘You know I have eyes all over Thyrsland looking for her.’

  ‘You should leave her be.’

  ‘I only want to know where she is. I won’t bring her back against her will. I liked it better when I knew where you all were. What you were all doing. I long for us all to be reunited. Rose … how long will she stay with her aunt? I expected her to return ages ago.’

  Bluebell bit her tongue so she didn’t interrogate his choice of words. ‘Her aunt’. Why not ‘My sister’? He had refused to explain their estrangement and there was no point in pressing him now. Bluebell wouldn’t mention his bastard grandson. Instead, she said, ‘Rose fears your disapproval.’

  ‘As she should. She behaved foolishly, but not all is lost. She gave up Rowan; the peace still holds. For now.’

  For now. Netelchester, long their old foe, was in the protracted process of converting to the trimartyr religion, as Tweoning already had. If Lyteldyke also went down
that road, nearly half of Thyrsland would have adopted the cruel faith. A faith that said women couldn’t rule.

  ‘Had you given thought to Rowan’s future?’ Bluebell asked suddenly. ‘One of King Blackstan’s sons might make her a good husband, and secure Lyteldyke.’

  ‘Ask him next time you go north. How old is the girl now?’

  ‘Too young to wed. Seven, I think. But a promise might be made. If Wengest is amenable.’ Wengest, who was too stupid to see Rowan wasn’t from his seed.

  Æthlric nodded, opened his mouth as though about to say something, then thought better of it.

  ‘Go on,’ she prompted. ‘You can tell me anything that’s on your mind.’

  ‘It would be much easier if you wed.’

  Bluebell was already shaking her head.

  ‘And if you had your own heirs.’

  ‘They wouldn’t grow inside me. Everyone says my womb is made of steel,’ she joked.

  ‘Bluebell …’

  ‘The Horse God made me this way.’

  ‘Take a year out, while I’m still alive –’

  ‘No babies.’ Bluebell’s pulse was thudding in her throat. He had never said it directly to her before, though of course it had been implied a million times. His wistful mood must have made him say it. He was grieving. He felt old and longed for his family to be biddable little girls again.

  Not that Bluebell had ever been biddable.

  ‘Rowan will be a good queen. She’s in good care and far enough from the trimartyr fervour of her father’s court,’ Bluebell said. ‘I go north as soon as the mourning is over. I will send ahead to Blackstan for a meeting with him.’ She glanced up to the hall. ‘Will you come back inside?’

  ‘I am enjoying watching the day dwindle,’ he said. ‘I’ll be along in my own time.’

  ‘Very well.’ She turned and began up the path.

  ‘Don’t forget,’ he called after her urgently, ‘you will die one day.’

  ‘Don’t forget,’ she replied, without turning around, ‘you are still alive.’

  Bluebell never brought her entire retinue to Nether Weald. She always left them under Sighere’s command at Withing, a town much better equipped for dealing with eleven men, their warhorses and their packhorses. Nether Weald had one inn, small enough to burst at the end of an ordinary day – her hearthband simply wouldn’t fit. Besides, Nether Weald was chosen precisely because it was so far from anywhere, so quiet and so forgettable. A perfect place for a young princess to hide until she came to womanhood. Not even Sighere knew that Rowan was in the Howling Wood. He was easily deflected with a claim of ‘the king’s private business’.