by Joanna Bell
And when one of my own guards stopped me at the gates to Thetford, I could see for a few seconds that he did not quite believe it was me.
"Jarl?" He asked, taking a step back as if he suspected an Angle trick. "Jarl Ivar? Is it –"
"Aye, it's me," I replied wearily. "Let me in so I can eat, and then sleep until the winter has come and gone."
But the guard was not about to let me in with no fanfare. He flung open the gates and ran through the town bellowing that it was Jarl Ivar, that the Jarl had returned and that everyone should come out to welcome me back.
I noted, as word spread and my people came to greet me, that the place had not descended into chaos. And when I was alone with Jarl Ragnar and Jarl Styrr, it was one of a few things we spoke of before I could no longer keep my eyes open.
"You're tired," Ragnar said as I sat down and fell upon the bowl of steaming pork porridge a thrall had set down before me. "Eat, Ivar – and then rest. We have things in hand here, you can take what time you need."
"You do have things in hand," I told him. "For that I'm grateful."
A look passed between Ragnar and Styrr and I felt a lick of anger in my belly, knowing what the look pertained to.
"Speak up, man!" I shouted, managing to spill the porridge on myself as I did so and slamming my fist onto the table. "Voss! Voss, look what I've done! Stop eying each other like old women and ask me what I already know it is you want to ask!"
Another look passed between them, to see me so quick to anger.
"You did not find her?" Ragnar asked a moment later. "The woman – you did not –"
"What do you think I found?" I yelled, before a wave of sudden tiredness rolled over me and my shoulders slumped forward. "What does it matter anyway? Is she with me? Do you see her? No. That is all that anyone need know."
That night, I took to bed. And there I remained for 3 more days and nights, until Jarl Eirik came to me in my roundhouse and offered to bring the healers.
"There's nothing they can do," I told him gruffly, not bothering to turn over in bed so I could look him in the eye. "All there is to do now is wait and see if the function fully returns. The flesh is closed, it –"
"I do not speak of your arm, Jarl," Eirik said. "I speak of your need for darkness and rest. If you've picked up a fever from the journey, the healers can brew a tea to drive it off, or –"
"I've not got a fever," I replied flatly.
"Aye, I thought it as much. What happened, Jarl? Did she die?"
Eirik knew what troubled me. He was the wisest among us, I sometimes thought.
"She did not die," I replied, wanting to think of anything but her, although I no longer seemed capable of it. "She's from the same place as your wife, Jarl. And she has a child there – a child she refused to leave. Her people fixed my arm, and when it was healed enough to travel, I came right back. I did not linger. I did not –"
"I know it, Ivar. Everyone in Thetford knows you would not be kept from us by anything but death. You say her people healed your arm? You went there? To that place?"
Something caught my notice in Eirik's tone – a surprise, almost a disbelief. How much had his wife told him? And even if she had told him everything about the place, how much could he really know without having seen it himself?
"I did," I told him. "Didn't even mean to, but I did. I should never have traveled south, I should never have –"
"You are a man," Eirik told me. "Not a god, Ivar, no matter how much you wish it. You must have known that one day a woman would come along who could capture you – do you think any of us would have done any different?"
It didn't matter what any of them would have done. There was only one Jarl of Jarls, and I was only given into the role because I wasn't the type of man to do what anyone else would do.
Eirik was trying to let me know that he understood. He was trying to help me. I knew it, but it just, as everything seemed to during that time, made me angry.
"Out with you!" I snarled a moment later, "I'll not be checked up on, Eirik! I'll join you in the morning at breakfast, there's no need to fret like an –"
"I do not wish to check up on you, Ivar. I only wished to –"
"OUT!"
And as soon as he was gone, I felt terrible for having treated him – one of my Jarls – in such a manner. Soon, however, I dozed off again into an angry sleep marked by dreams in which I pursued Sophie through a forest and, at every moment when I thought I'd caught up with her, saw her disappearing again around another tree.
The next day I met with the other Jarls and our advisors and told them, in no uncertain terms, that I was back, that I did not wish to discuss Sophie, and that what we needed to do was get on with preparations for the winter.
The highers of Thetford that had survived the battle and the first period of occupation had mostly fled either of their own accord or after we made it clear to them that they endangered themselves by staying. Peasants are one thing – as long as their bellies are full and they find themselves overseen by a people who do not treat them with overt cruelty, they're docile. Highers cannot be trusted. Full bellies and warm beds or no, they plot to take back the positions that have been taken from them – and I wasn't about to let the remaining few of Thetford threaten the stability my people had managed to impose in quite short order on the town.
When a single family, the nephew to the Lord of Thetford – who himself was known to be close to King Edmund – and his wife and their children refused to leave under orders from the Jarl of Jarls, I demanded that Jarl Styrr bring them before me.
"Is it wise to bring his children, Jarl?" Ragnar asked, taking care to see that everyone saw his question as advice and not challenge. "Surely they will bawl and cry and interfere with –"
"Bring them," I replied, eying the men by the door who would be set with the task itself. "Bring all of them."
As it was, the nephew of the Lord of Thetford had the bad luck to be a proud man with no power. Only the powerful can afford pride.
"You understand that if you refuse you will be killed?" I asked him as he stood before me in Thetford's great hall. "This is not a request. You are not safe. Your wife is not safe. Your children are not safe. Do your best for them and take them away from here, spare them the –"
"I cannot, Jarl."
I laughed, sure the man was playing a game because he had not yet realized I was serious. His expression did not look as if he played a game, though. His countenance was as stern as my own.
"What do you mean you 'cannot?' You can! Go now, to the gates with your family, and be gone from here for –"
"I cannot, Jarl."
"Why is that?"
"Must you even ask? You, the Jarl of Jarls, must I tell you why I cannot leave? I am the nephew of the Lord of Thetford – Lord Wicken – slain by your men not 2 moons ago. I swore to defend Thetford from invasions, from enemies, and at all cost to myself. I swore to do my duty –"
"FUCK YOUR DUTY!" I roared suddenly, springing up from the heavy wooden chair from which I oversaw the room.
All eyes were instantly on me, and looks aplenty being passed between my men. I didn't care. The man standing in front of me hadn't done anything to cause the offense I felt in my heart, but I was too heated to know it. In the moment, I hated him.
"If he won't leave," I said, looking to Jarl Styrr at my side. "Bring him to the square and I'll relieve him of his head myself."
The man's wife began to weep quietly, and Jarl Eirik stepped forward to whisper urgently in my ear:
"Are you sure of it, Jarl Ivar? It would be just as easy for me to take him by force – and his family – and put them outside of the gates. There's no need to –"
I held up a hand and he fell silent. I looked towards the man in front of me, who appeared frightened – but still resolute.
"Is that how you'll have it then?" I asked, eager to be seen to have given him a clear chance to avoid his rapidly approaching fate. "You're ready to die, to leave your wife a
nd children to the whims of life, for your pride?"
"It is not for my pride, Jarl," the man replied, and everyone heard that his voice was shaking. "It's for my du –"
I could not hear the word spoken again. "Take him," I growled to Eirik and Styrr. "Now! Take him to the square at once – and bring me my sword!"
Styrr tried, on our way to the square, just like Eirik had, to talk me out of what I was about to do. And it was not until later that night that I saw that what I had interpreted as uncharacteristic timidity on the part of my men was not timidity at all – it was justified caution. Why risk enflaming the locals, including those outside Thetford, who could cause us trouble in the winter if they wanted to – by killing their Lord's nephew for what seemed to be no reason at all?
I did not allow any doubts into my head that afternoon. When the man's wife insisted on being allowed to watch, and stared at me the whole time with hate burning in her eyes, I allowed it. I was convinced of my own rightness, of the justice I was about to deliver. And as such, I wanted to be seen to swing my sword boldly, and with purpose.
Which is exactly what I did. The Lord's nephew, although not a physically imposing man, died bravely. He did not weep or beg, he simply bid his wife goodbye, and to bring herself and the children south to the King, for protection. And then he knelt and bent his head upon the chopping block, saying a short prayer before he did so.
When it was done, and the leathers on my feet were soaked with blood, I left immediately for my roundhouse, and ordered the men to leave me alone until the next day.
I did not chop off any more heads that season. Before the next moon after the execution of the Lord's nephew, I was back to myself. Mostly back to myself. Irritations still crept in more easily than they had, and anger was still quicker to rise up in my chest, but it was not enough to make trouble.
The preparations for winter continued – the harvest was bountiful that year, and the grain overflowed from the grain houses even with the losses from the fire. The livestock grew fat and the blood moon of late fall, when the animals that could not be kept overwinter were slaughtered, was to be soon upon us. There was a lot of food – but there were a lot of people, too. The peasants of Thetford needed to eat as well as my own people, if they were to be put to work for us and kept from trying to murder us in our beds.
"It's not enough," I commented one day, walking down one of the side roads in Thetford with Jarl Eirik and spotting one of our butchers with a wheelbarrow half-filled with salt. "Do you see how many pigs there are in this place, man? It's not half enough salt to cure them you've got there – bring more. More!"
The butcher nodded respectfully and I continued on my way with Eirik.
"Will there be enough?" I asked him. "Or will we be dying of hunger by spring?"
Eirik glanced at me, and there was something wary in his eyes that I had noticed in a few of the men lately, as if he feared kindling my temper. "I reckon there's enough," he replied. "But the peasants will have their meat rations cut. If we give them pork for Christmas, a goose or two to the most loyal among them, it will hopefully be enough – they do not seem particularly restive."
"Not right now they don't, when their bellies are full."
And all the while, as my days were marked more by domestic tasks than martial – a state of affairs that would not last past the spring, I knew – I did not think of her.
At least I did not think that I thought of her. I thought very much about not thinking of her, in fact. It got to where I could feel a memory approaching, where I could anticipate the twinge in my loins at the vision, in my mind, of her naked breasts, and stop it before it came. There was no control at night, of course, and my dreams were full of her – but I forgave myself that weakness, knowing that no one saw it but me. Sometimes in the mornings I would wake to a memory so fresh it seemed impossible that it wasn't real, that she wasn't beside me at that very moment, waiting for me to roll her onto her back and open her sweet thighs.
"Jarl Ivar?"
I looked up from where I sat at the table in my roundhouse with Sig, poring over a map, depicted on a stiff leather, of how close we stood to the border with Mercia. A thrall stood in front of me, cowering like a beaten animal. And before I could ask the boy why he cowered, he told me I had a visitor – Paige, Jarl Eirik's wife.
I looked at Sig to see if he knew why she would be visiting at such an odd hour but he just shrugged and rolled up the leather to take back to Uldric.
'Bring her in, then" I snapped at the thrall, and he fair fled the roundhouse, only to reappear briefly a few moments later with Paige, hugely pregnant, in tow.
"Welcome," I said, standing up and taking her arm to help her into a seat. "You must surely be a mother again soon?"
She smiled ruefully. "It feels as if I will be carrying this child in my belly for the rest of my life, Jarl. Thank you for welcoming me without warning of my visit – I didn't think to send word, I'm sorry."
"It's no trouble," I told her, smiling, although I wondered what the reason was for her presence. "What is it that's brought you out into the cold evening?"
We chattered on politely for a short while, but I got the feeling she was interested in trivial things about as much as I was – which was not at all – and then she mentioned, as if in passing, that she had a friend she thought I might be interested to meet.
And in my pre-occupation with what she was doing at the roundhouse, and the conversation with Sig still taking space in my mind, it did not dawn on me right away that this person would be female. And when it did, I knew the reason for Paige's visit.
Had it come to that, that my Jarls were having to arrange women for me? I almost laughed, thinking of what my mother and father – what everyone in my home village would say – if they could see me now, practically a gothi in my self-denial. It had not been that way when I was a younger man, not yet ten and ten, and working my way through the village girls.
Things were different that fall and early winter, after leaving Sophie behind. It was not that my desire had been killed – no, it was a strong as it ever was, rising endlessly like sap in a tree. It was that it had been changed from a diffuse power, aimed in a kind of general sense at all femininity, into a very, very specific one. I didn't want to be with random women, or with Paige's friend. I wanted to be with Sophie. And Sophie was gone out of my life, so I didn't want to be with anyone.
I glanced at Paige, smiling a little ruefully. "It was smart of Jarl Eirik to send his wife," I told her. "He knows that even with my temper quicker these days, I will not become irritable with his pregnant wife."
The Jarl's wife shook her head. "I come of my own accord, Jarl Ivar, no one has sent me. I come out of concern for the Jarl of Jarls, for this 'quicker temper' you mention – would it not be helpful to take a woman into your roundhouse this winter? I know just the one – smart, beautiful, and she won't pester you for marriage if you don't wish it."
"It's kind of you to think of me," I told her, "but I'm afraid it's for naught. I seem to have developed a condition whereby I only want one woman – and she is as lost to me as if death itself had taken her."
"Sophie."
"Yes," I sighed. "Sophie. I never speak of her. I don't know why I do it now."
"Because you miss her," Paige said gently, getting up from the table and pouring me a cup of day ale out of the cask. "And because it's easier for men to talk to women about these things, than it is for men to talk to other men. And you spend all your time with men, Jarl."
She was right about that. Not that it mattered. "Aye, I do. In case you've not noticed, winter is almost upon us – there is much to do before the winds –"
"Oh I know," Paige replied, cutting me off in a way that not many people would have been brave enough to do so – although she seemed not to notice. "Everyone sees how hard you work, Jarl. Too hard, don't you think? You were gone for longer than a month – a moon, I mean. Longer than a moon and your Jarls kept us safe and fed and warm. You do no
t have to do it all, you do not have to oversee every aspect of the winter occupation of Thetford. Maybe some time spent doing something different would be good for you – and then, as is the way of these things, good for your people, too."
I drank some of the ale, chuckling. "We should send you to negotiate with the Mercian king! Such tact, such discretion, all to avoid telling me that I've been a raging beast, and that my people fear me now, as much or maybe more than they love me."
My laughter died quickly, though, because what I said was true – and not particularly funny.
"No," Paige replied. "They don't fear you more than they love you. The love is still the greater part of their feelings for the Jarl of Jarls. They worry for you, Ivar. They see that you are unhappy, and they wish it were otherwise. So do your men. So do I. You say that you cannot be with any woman but Sophie – have you thought of going back to her, when the preparations for winter are complete?"
I jerked my head up, searching Paige's expression for some sign that she was joking. "Go back to her?" I asked, baffled. "But – I am the Jarl of Jarls, woman! I cannot just abandon my –"
"You wouldn't be abandoning us. We would know where you went, and that it was perhaps not forever. Do you not trust Eirik and your other Jarls to be able to keep a tight watch on this place – to hold it? That's 4 Jarls, Ivar, and probably more than ten times as many men between them as the Angles."
"Of course I trust them," I replied at once, almost offended at the idea that I did not. "I would trust any one of them to do the job on their own, truth be told."
Paige reached out and put her hand on mine, squeezing it a little. Eirik's wife was bold, as I seemed to recall him mentioning a few times. "Why don't you go to her, then? What keeps you but pride? Your men wish you to be happy, and so do your people. Your happiness is their happiness, their strength."
The urge to anger was there, burning in my chest, but I could not let it out with one of my Jarl's wives. I coughed, frowned, sat back in my seat. She noticed, of course, because she had that womanly characteristic of noticing every damned thing.