Peaceweaver

by Rebecca Barnhouse

  Hild tried to relax her jaw, but Unwen’s words had brought the previous day’s events back to her with such immediacy that she felt like she’d been slapped. After a few moments, the soft sounds of the fire and the creak of the floorboards under the slave’s feet as she went about her work calmed Hild, allowing her to think about what Unwen had said. The gods sent their spirits into a person? That wasn’t what Bragi had said when he’d warned about malign forces. The chief skald was no fool. He had the knowledge and the experience to recognize the signs of a possession by something evil.

  Then Ari Frothi’s lined face rose before Hild. What had he said? That the gods may possess a person.

  Hild stared into the fire. “Unwen?” Like the slave, she kept her voice low enough that the guards outside the door wouldn’t hear her.

  Unwen crossed the room and crouched before her again. This time Hild recognized that the slave’s intention wasn’t familiarity; it was secrecy. The closer their heads were to each other, the more privately they could talk.

  “What is it like when someone is possessed by a god?”

  Unwen shook her head, keeping her gaze on the fire. “I only knew one person who was possessed. They say it’s different for everybody, that it depends on the god.”

  “And the person you knew? How did he act? What happened to him?”

  “Her,” Unwen said. “She— It was like what happened with you. She did something but she didn’t know why. Didn’t even know she’d done it till it were done.” She swallowed as if her throat were sore, and closed her eyes tightly.

  “Unwen?” Hild said gently.

  The slave gave her head a little shake, but she kept her eyes screwed shut.

  “Who was she, the one you knew?”

  Unwen kept her face turned away from Hild’s. She swallowed again, and then, as if the words were scraping against her throat, she wrenched them out. “My daughter.”

  She rose and went back to the bed, refolding the blanket, tucking the sheets more securely under the pillow, picking up the feathers that had made their escape. Hild watched her stop and lean on the mattress for a moment. Then Unwen closed the bed’s doors, brushed her apron, and said briskly, “You’ll be wanting your loom over by the fire, where you can see it, my lady. I’ll move it for you.”

  “No, Unwen,” Hild said, looking at her as if she were seeing her for the first time. “I’ll do it.”

  The sound of footsteps made them both turn toward the door as it opened, sending sun flashing into the room. Hild’s mother stepped in and the door closed behind her, taking the light with it.

  As Hild got to her feet, her mother took her by her elbows and peered into her face, her brow furrowed with worry.

  “I’m all right,” Hild said. Before the words were even out, she realized how pale and worn her mother looked. Had she slept at all last night? Had people treated her poorly on Hild’s account? “Who poured the mead for the goddess? Tell me it wasn’t Skadi. Was it?” she asked in a feeble attempt to lighten her mother’s mood.

  The expression on her mother’s face told her she’d hit closer to the mark than she had intended. “I know you were counting on it, Hild, and I’m sorry. I talked to your uncle, but Bragi—” She gave her head a little shake of anger.

  “It’s all right. Here, let me help you.” Hild unpinned the brooch that held her mother’s cloak together at her shoulder—the blue cloisonné jewel with runes carved in gold running around the edges and spelling out the words Valgard had me made for Saxa. Hild’s father had given it to her mother when they’d first been pledged to each other, and her mother wore it only on special occasions—like when she led the ceremonies in Freyja’s temple. Hild handed the cloak to Unwen, then scooted the stool over and guided her mother down onto it, watching her.

  Her mother sighed and turned her face from Hild’s. Hild waited, giving her time to smooth out the bad news.

  “They found the dagger.” She reached for the poker and stirred the glowing embers. Finally, she spoke again, her voice pained. “There was no poison on it.”

  A noise in the corner of the room made both Hild and her mother look toward Unwen. The slave was shaking her head in disgust.

  “Unwen?” Hild said.

  “They’re not fools, those Brondings. They would have wiped that dagger clean the first chance they had.”

  The recognition that she was right kept them from commenting on the slave’s presumption. Unwen busied herself again, eyes averted, as Hild turned back to her mother.

  “Your uncle may have realized that—especially when the Brondings accepted the wergild in payment,” her mother said.

  “They took the wergild? That’s good, isn’t it?”

  Her mother nodded, but the way she hesitated made Hild realize there was something else. She hoped the fire’s warmth would give her mother the strength to tell the whole truth instead of trying to shield her from it.

  Her mother set the poker back on the hearth, giving it far more attention than it needed. “They left this morning. The Brondings.”

  “Before the harvest festival?” Hild said. It was an insult to the king, but not an unforgivable one.

  Her mother nodded, her fingers still resting on the poker.

  The oddness of her mother’s posture told Hild she still wasn’t through. Her insides tightened.

  Finally, her mother looked her in the eye. “As part of the payment, your uncle gave them Fleetfoot.”

  Hild felt the breath go out of her. “Fleetfoot?” she whispered. “He gave them my horse?”

  “I’m so sorry, youngling,” her mother said, and Hild saw in her eyes how helpless she felt.

  Hild strode to the door, her hand stopping when it reached the latch, the touch reminding her why it was closed. She stared unseeing at the doorframe, at the cuts in the wood where she and Arinbjörn had measured their height every winter, a rune scratched beside each cut to identify it. She reached out her fingers and ran them over the wood, digging her fingernail into the last mark they’d made for her, in the year the king had given her her horse.

  Leaning into the wall, she touched her head to the wood the way she and Fleetfoot always greeted each other, one warm forehead against the other.

  Did Beyla know? Was that why she had been trying to talk her way past the guards? She loved the horse almost as much as Hild did. Hild had to talk to her—now. But the way was barred. She could go nowhere.

  She tightened her grip on the doorframe. When a splinter bit into her palm, she welcomed the pain.

  NINE

  HILD HEARD THE CLICK OF THE LATCH AS HER MOTHER let herself out of the house. She lay back on her pillow. Somewhere a dog barked, but she couldn’t hear voices. It must be very early morning.

  Hild knew how frustrated and powerless her mother felt about Fleetfoot. About everything that had happened. All day yesterday, when she wasn’t busy with festival duties, she had hovered, trying to do things for Hild, but there was nothing to be done. No matter how many times Hild forgot and walked to the door, she could never go through it, or even open it, unless Bragi and the king changed their minds.

  She closed her eyes and pictured her horse, trying to let thoughts of him keep her from remembering what she’d done. It didn’t work.

  How could she, who had wanted Bragi and her uncle to stop sending so many men off to war, who had argued against killings and deaths, how could she, of all people, have killed a man? Try as she might to keep it away, the scene in the field replayed itself on her eyelids. In her fingers, she could feel the weight of the Bronding’s body pulling on her sword as he fell. She rubbed at her palm, but the sensation haunted her.

  Unwen thought there was honor in being possessed, but she was wrong. And even though Hild’s grandmother had been far-minded, Hild wanted nothing to do with it. If it ever happened again, she wouldn’t give in to it.

  Mice rustled in the leaves on the other side of the wall. She rolled over. Today would be as endless as yesterday. Her mother woul
d try to cheer her, but what cheer could there be? She pulled the blanket over her head.

  Again the mice scrabbled beside the wall. “Hild,” a voice whispered.

  “Beyla?” She sat up so fast she hit her head on the bed’s ceiling. “Beyla, is that you?”

  “Hild,” Beyla whispered again.

  Hild knocked on the wall, two shorts, one long, the signal she always used for her sister.

  Beyla knocked back, repeating the pattern.

  Her heart thumping, Hild moved as close to the wall as she could. She had so much to say to her friend, so much to ask her, but now no words came. It was enough to envision Beyla crouching beside the back wall of the house.

  “Guards coming!” Beyla said, and Hild heard her scrambling to her feet. Then she was gone.

  She lay listening, hoping Beyla would return, but instead of footsteps, she heard raindrops plunking tentatively on the roof before they built to a steady drumming.

  When she finally crawled out of bed, Unwen scurried to help her dress. She was eating when her mother returned. “This rain is a good sign,” her mother said, shaking water from her cloak. “It shows that the gods still favor the kingdom.”

  Despite what happened. Despite what I did, Hild added silently.

  Her mother crossed to the fireside and placed a cool hand on her cheek. It smelled of the outdoors, of the rain. “You’re cold. Unwen.” She gestured and the slave brought a shawl to drape over Hild’s shoulders.

  Hild let them fuss over her; it was easier for everyone if she allowed her mother to expend her nervous energy. When Hild pulled the shawl more tightly around herself, she felt another one being settled over her, but it couldn’t take away the chill of the house, or the gloom. Nor could her mother’s funny stories about Siri’s boys. Hild did her best to smile about Faxi’s learning to dance at the harvest festival, but the tale, and the pleading look in her mother’s eyes, only reminded her that she hadn’t been allowed to witness it herself. Would her uncle ever relent? If only she could be in the hall to judge his mood or talk to him face to face …

  Behind her, her mother whispered orders to Unwen, even though there was no reason for her to keep her voice down. And what could she tell the slave to do that she wasn’t doing already? When she finally left the house, taking her jittery anxiety with her, Hild was relieved.

  • • •

  Beyla came again the next morning, knocking on the wall and speaking Hild’s name. Hild was ready for her. She’d woken early and waited in the dark, words she wanted to say tumbling through her head. If she had a chance to tell Beyla only one thing, what would it be? She couldn’t decide. As it turned out, she didn’t need to. Whispering through the wall made real conversations too difficult. “This rain won’t stop,” Beyla said twice before Hild understood her, wasting words on something she already knew. She imagined her friend holding her cloak over her head, water dripping onto her face and her hair, which was probably falling out of its knot. Then Beyla said, “Guard,” and Hild heard her footsteps diminishing before the heavier tread of a warrior’s feet splashed through a puddle.

  When she got out of bed, her mother helped her to dress, chattering brightly while she straightened Hild’s shift and worked at the straps that held up her gown. Then, as if she had just remembered it, she said, “The queen needs me,” and gave Hild’s shoulder a squeeze before she slipped out of the house and into the rain. Hild knew that her mother was trying to stay cheerful for her sake, and that it wasn’t easy for her. Nor was it necessary.

  She found she was becoming more and more satisfied to be left alone with her thoughts and Unwen’s dark gossip. As the slave endlessly swept the spotless corners of the house, she told Hild what she’d heard people saying: some men feared that Hild would curse them or that she had the power to blunt their weapons and make their arrows go awry by merely looking at them. “Fools,” Unwen said, and it comforted Hild to hear the scorn in her voice.

  She watched the slave for a moment, trying to work up the courage to ask the question that bothered her the most, the one she had no one else to ask. Finally, she said, “What’s the difference between being far-minded, like my grandmother was, and being possessed …?” Her voice faltered before she got to the words like me.

  Unwen snorted and looked toward the door. She had taken to wearing her cooking knife at her belt, as if she were protecting Hild from the guards who always stood outside the house.

  “You want to know the difference?”

  Hild nodded.

  “If a woman tells a man the gods favor him, everybody says she’s far-minded.” The broom halted mid-sweep and the slave turned to Hild. “But let a woman do what the gods tell her, without asking a man’s permission first? Then she’s possessed.” Unwen punctuated her words with her broom, jabbing it into a corner.

  Hild wished she could believe her. The slave didn’t think any malign forces were at work, and Hild had been grateful when she had said aloud, more than once, that if evil spirits were what had made Hild save the life of the king’s son, then she, Unwen, was a three-headed chicken. But Unwen had also told her that in the king’s kitchens, some people were saying it was Hild’s fault the queen had never had another child and never left her bed.

  A finger of fear twisted around her spine. There were plenty of problems in the kingdom she could be blamed for. And if people didn’t think of problems on their own, she suspected Bragi would help them.

  If only she could talk to Beyla about it, ask her what the women in the hall were saying. She could just hear her friend arguing with anyone who tried to make accusations against Hild.

  The next morning, she was awake long before she could expect Beyla to show up. In every small noise, every creak of the house, she heard footsteps. Not until she’d finally dozed off again did real footsteps startle her awake.

  “Beyla,” she whispered, rising to her elbows.

  The footsteps stopped.

  “Beyla?” she said again, louder this time.

  There was a noise outside the wall, and then the footsteps receded. What had happened? She strained her ears, but silence met them.

  Then a goat bleated and another answered. A boy called them by name and led them past the house, probably taking them out the Lake Gate to graze. Beyla must have been avoiding him.

  The sound of the goats faded, but nothing took its place. Hild kept listening. Finally, when she’d almost given up, she heard the patter of footsteps, followed by the three-part knock. Hild felt weak with relief. She hadn’t realized how much she counted on Beyla’s visits.

  “Hild,” Beyla said.

  Hild knocked in response. Now that Beyla was here, the questions she had wanted to ask faded in importance. It seemed enough to simply know that her friend was on the other side of the wall.

  “You there!” a man called.

  “Goat’s breath!” Hild heard Beyla say, and then there was noise Hild couldn’t discern, followed by Beyla saying, “Ow! Let me go!”

  A second man said, “Stop struggling and you won’t get hurt.”

  Hild covered her eyes with her hand, but it didn’t keep her from picturing Beyla scuffling with the guards.

  A third voice said, “Bring her along. Bragi’s waiting.”

  “Hild!” Beyla cried, and Hild could hear the noise of her struggling as the guards dragged her away. To Bragi. She listened until the sounds died out, then lay heavily on her mattress, darkness weighing her down.

  She didn’t have to be told to know that Beyla wouldn’t be coming again.

  TEN

  HILD PICKED LISTLESSLY AT A THREAD IN THE PATTERN her fingers were unweaving. She couldn’t remember how long it had been since Unwen had hauled the loom over by the fire. She’d meant to do it herself, but that was before torpor had overtaken her limbs.

  As the days had gone by and nobody had told her what was to become of her, Hild had lost her appetite for food, for news, for company. All she wanted to know was what would happen to her. Was she
to be exiled? Or had her exile already begun? Were the four walls of this dark room her future?

  She tugged at another thread on her loom. The head that had been coming into view—the woman putting her baby into the boat—had disappeared, a victim of her nervous hands.

  Her eyes lost their focus and the tapestry became a surface for images of her past life, before her imprisonment. She saw sun and bright sky above brown earth; grain standing in tall shocks; the faces of Beyla, her sisters, her nephews, a laughing Arinbjörn.

  The face of Garwulf.

  Fleetfoot.

  Were the Brondings taking good care of him? Surely they recognized his value, his spirit. She hoped they were currying him regularly, because he loved to be curried. She pictured the silly faces he always made when she and Beyla brushed him. She closed her eyes, feeling her horse’s nose against her cheek, the warmth of his flank. Then, with a great effort, she blinked away the emptiness that tugged at her heart.

  It was dark, as it always was now, the room lit only by the fire on the hearth. Wasn’t it time to sleep? Unwen wouldn’t let her into the bed if it wasn’t evening, but Hild no longer knew whether it was day or night. Laboriously, like an old woman, she rose from the stool and dragged her body to her cabinet bed.

  “Not yet, my lady,” Unwen said, taking her arm and leading her back to the fire. “You haven’t eaten anything today.” She lowered Hild to the stool again. “I’ll get you something from the king’s kitchens. What would you like?”

  Hild forced herself to look at the slave, but speaking took more energy than she could muster, despite the desperation she read in Unwen’s eyes.

  “I’ll be right back. Just you wait and see what I’ll bring with me.” Without bothering to throw her cloak over her shoulders, Unwen hurried away.

  As the door opened, Hild shut her eyes against the stabbing light. It wasn’t even bright out, but compared to firelight, daylight seemed harsh and threatening.

  Her mother still brought her tales of her nephews, and Unwen still whispered the latest gossip, but Hild had stopped even pretending to pay attention. None of it seemed real anymore. None of it mattered.