Kin (Helga Finnsdottir)

by Kristjansson, Snorri

  Jorunn and Sigmar’s sleeping bunk was largely untroubled on one side, but well compressed on the other. Despite their tough exteriors, they appeared to enjoy each other’s company very much. Helga thought of Einar and felt a twinge in her heart. It must be awful to desire someone and know that someone else is close to them at all times, and closest in the night.

  And then, before she could decide on something else to do, her nose told her that she was standing by Karl’s bed.

  She’d slept in a bed exactly like it for as long as she could remember. It was nothing but a long box, really, with raised edges, well sanded, filled with straw and topped with a thick woven blanket. Karl looked oddly out of place in it, all stiff and pale, as if he’d sunk into himself. The rage that had filled him was gone like hot air. In his own house he’d probably had a bigger bed, big enough for Agla to share. Helga felt her stomach turn as her thoughts went unbidden to what that might be like, so she pushed them away and instead busied herself by looking more closely at his head and neck.

  Plenty of scars and marks, but nothing fresh. Karl had clearly put his face in harm’s way more than once in his life, but his dead body held no fresh bruises that had been stopped in mid-bloom.

  ‘No one clouted you around the head, and no one held you by the throat,’ she muttered. ‘So why did you let them cut you?’

  She bent down and studied his mouth. A part of her expected Karl’s eyes to flutter open at any moment and, with a grin, start dragging her down into his bed-grave with him. She pushed those thoughts away too, telling herself, ‘Shush, girl. He’s dead as a fence post, and only half as charming. And there’s nothing’ – she pulled apart the dead man’s lips and looked for residue – ‘in here but stink. Mead, oh, quite a lot of it, too. So that takes care of the “why”. But what about the “who”? Who would have approached the sleeping wolf?’ she said out loud.

  She heard the main door open and close behind her. ‘Is he still dead?’ Einar’s voice carried across the longhouse.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ Helga said. ‘A lot of blood.’

  ‘And that’s not supposed to be on the outside,’ Einar said thoughtfully. Helga’s spirits lifted ever so slightly. Everything was always a little better with Einar around.

  ’Your wisdom runs deep, as usual. He is as dead as they come.’

  Einar stood beside her, looking down. ‘How was he killed?’

  ‘As far as I can gather,’ Helga said, ‘whoever did it must have waited until he was passed out from drink—’

  ‘They did put away a lot last night,’ Einar said, ‘and him more than most.’

  Helga reached over the dead body. ‘Then they snuck in, pulled the blanket aside and cut open his leg veins. Even if he had woken up, he’d’ve been dead in a matter of heartbeats.’ She pulled the blanket away completely, wincing at the sound of the dried blood ripping away. The stench of voided bowels rose up to mix with the stale air. ‘There,’ she said, pointing at the black stains on the trousers.

  ‘Bled like a pig,’ Einar said. Although the smell clearly stung him, he didn’t move away. ‘Not a lot of honour in that. Do you have a knife?’

  ‘No – why?’

  ‘I’d like to have a look at the wounds.’ Einar produced his own short, stubby blade from his belt and proceeded to cut away a section of the cloth. The skin underneath was pale and coarse with long, black hairs. ‘Look,’ Einar said.

  Helga leaned closer. ‘They’re so . . .’

  ‘Thin. Very thin cuts.’

  ‘He won’t have felt a thing.’

  ‘Especially not after the third barrel.’

  Helga’s head spun. There was something here. Something— ‘I know which blade made these cuts,’ she said.

  Einar frowned at her, looked at her face, searching for something that suggested her mood.

  Blood thundered in Helga’s ears and the words felt alien in her mouth. ‘My mother’s carving knife.’

  *

  Jorunn swung the hand-axe, split the log neatly in two and swept the pieces aside with a practised hand towards Sigmar, who stacked them into the rapidly filling woodshed. A swing, and the edge of the axe bit into the top of another log. They worked in rhythm, each confident in the other’s movements.

  ‘Did you do it?’ Her voice was calm.

  Sigmar chuckled. Then a moment later, he paused. ‘What—? You’re— What—?’

  The axe swung down and the log split. The two halves tumbled towards Sigmar. ‘Did you?’

  Calmly placing the splintered logs on the pile, Sigmar paused before walking across to the splitting stump, narrowly dodging more flying wood. ‘No,’ he said. The axe was already airborne, and the log smacked into the stump by his knee. Sigmar didn’t flinch.

  ‘He was an arse,’ Jorunn said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But he was still—’ Before she could bury her axe in another log, Sigmar stepped in and held her tight. She struggled against the hold, but he didn’t let her go.

  ‘He was your brother,’ Sigmar said, and the axe clattered to the ground. ‘He was family.’ Her eyes closed and her mouth twisted, but no tears followed. ‘We will get to the bottom of this. Someone will crack. They always do.’

  ‘I just thought – because I know what you used to—’

  ‘That was another life, my love,’ Sigmar said, his voice soothing. ‘Another life, and another man. That being said, I held no great affection for your brother, but when have I ever done anything without your permission?’

  Jorunn’s mouth twisted again, this time into a small, reluctant smile. ‘You’re right, and only too right to remember it.’ Her arms snaked out and met behind his back, returning the embrace. ‘You know me well.’

  ‘I do,’ Sigmar said.

  ‘So when I find out who did this, you’ll be there to assist me and do what needs to be done.’ Sigmar took a step back, released her and looked her straight in the eye. What she saw there made Jorunn smile. ‘I married well,’ she said, reaching for the axe.

  *

  ‘You are not saying that,’ Einar said. He glanced again at Karl’s body.

  Helga swallowed. ‘Of course not, you idiot. She told me yesterday that she couldn’t find it. Sent me up to the new barn to look for it and everything.’

  ‘So anyone could have walked past, picked it up and waited for the right moment.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And all they needed was to be light on their feet and know where the veins lay.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Which eliminates—’

  ‘No one. Everyone. I don’t know,’ Helga said. ‘I just don’t know. They didn’t use brute force. They moved unseen. Must have been one of the family because we would have heard the dogs.’

  Einar shrugged. ‘There’s nothing here,’ he said. ‘I’ll just—’ He bent over, trying to shift Karl’s body, and cursed. ‘Heavy bastard,’ he muttered.

  ‘Get someone to help?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Einar said. ‘They all got shipped out to do chores, quick as you like. Hildigunnur took Agla and Gytha down to the river, Bjorn walked his family up to the copse with axes and Aslak led Runa and the kids off to pick berries. Father went with Unnthor to mark the mound. I don’t quite know how they are going to figure this all out.’

  ‘That makes two of us,’ Helga said.

  *

  The only sound in the little clearing was of steel biting into wood. Bjorn swung again, his reward a spray of splinters. On the other side, Thyri knelt by a fallen tree and busied herself stripping the branches. Volund, at her side, was doing his best to help.

  ‘No,’ she said under her breath, grabbing the boy’s arms. ‘Like this.’

  Volund adjusted slowly, frowning. ‘Here?’ he said, scratching at the joint where the branch met the tree with his knife.

 
; ‘Yes,’ his mother said. ‘Now pull the branch and saw at it.’

  ‘But then it will break and come off.’

  ‘That’s what we want.’

  Volund frowned. ‘Oh,’ he said, reluctantly slicing into the wood.

  Bjorn roared.

  The sound bounced around the clearing and rose up, up above the branches, settling in the tree crowns as he spun, shifted the grip on the axe so that his big hand was just below the blade and stormed towards the fallen tree.

  The colour drained out of Thyri’s face as she saw her husband’s fury. She raised her hands protectively above her head and cried, ‘Bjorn – no! Please—!’

  Three steps and the giant was towering over them. Volund stared up at him, lower lip quivering, mouth half open. ‘Take the branch off. Now,’ his father snarled, but the boy just stood there, staring, not understanding. In one swift motion Bjorn knelt down and swung, and the blade whistled towards Volund’s head.

  In an instant the branch was airborne, with only a straight line to mark where it had been connected to the tree.

  ‘Next one,’ Bjorn ordered.

  Volund bent the next branch he could reach and started clumsily hacking at the join.

  When she rose, Thyri was taller than her kneeling husband. She reached around and pulled his head in towards her breast, stroking his hair. ‘I’m sorry he’s gone,’ she said softly. ‘It is a sad thing.’ Bjorn’s muscular shoulders shifted, but she tightened her grip and shushed him. ‘Just – let him go. We didn’t kill him, and we’ll find who did. Your mother’s wisdom is deeper than the sea. She’ll learn who took your brother, if she doesn’t know already.’

  Like a gentled bull, Bjorn snorted, a loud, wet sound. By his feet Volund had slowed down some, but he was still whittling away at the branch. ‘We could leave him here and come pick him up in eighteen summers and he still wouldn’t get it done,’ he muttered. ‘It took me months to teach him how to bleed a pig.’

  Above his head, Thyri smiled. ‘That just means he got my beauty and your brains,’ she said.

  ‘Hey!’

  She bent down and kissed his brow. ‘I jest, of course. He’s not your son at all. I sat on a rock at the wrong time.’

  Bjorn looked up at her. ‘I married well,’ he muttered.

  Thyri smiled. ‘And if you want to stay married, you’d better go and make some use of yourself.’ She looked at the wounded tree. ‘Your strong, hard-working son and I will be done with this one soon enough.’

  As he rose, Thyri disappeared once again into his shadow. ‘If the woman says so, then it is so,’ he rumbled and set off, axe slung over the shoulder.

  *

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Helga said. ‘I’ll help you.’

  Einar glanced at her. ‘Sure?’

  ‘Why not?’ In fact, she didn’t care. All she knew was that she needed to get out and she needed Karl’s body to no longer be in her house.

  ‘I’ll get the shoulders,’ he said, bending over Karl’s body again, ‘and you get the legs.’

  She stretched over the dead man’s feet, looked at the corpse and felt the stone at her chest heat up. There was something wrong . . . something missing . . .

  ‘Are you going to help or not?’

  Like a startled bird, the thought fluttered out of sight. Helga sighed and grabbed bony ankles, just past where the gushing blood had drawn a line on Karl’s shin. The weight had to be all on Einar’s side, but with the two of them lifting, the body started rising slowly out of the bunk.

  ‘Got him?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said, but in truth, she was anything but fine. It wasn’t the weight, that wasn’t too bad, but the lack of heat in the body really bothered her. She’d carried an animal carcase or two in her time, but human legs were supposed to be warm, and these weren’t.

  ‘He feels like winter,’ she murmured. ‘I wonder how quickly we turn cold?’

  ‘If you’re just going to stand there and wonder you’ll find out soon enough,’ Einar said, huffing. ‘He’s a heavy bastard.’

  They were halfway to the door when it opened and Hildigunnur entered. ‘What are you doing?’ Her voice was level, but taut.

  Einar stopped in mid-step, awkwardly balancing the weight of Karl’s upper body in his arms, and turned his head to Hildigunnur over his shoulder. ‘We— I just— We—’

  ‘We thought we should bring him out,’ Helga supplied.

  ‘Put him down,’ Hildigunnur ordered.

  Einar looked at Helga. ‘You first,’ he said, glancing at the ground, and once she’d lowered Karl’s heels to the floor, Einar did the rest. Out of his bunk, the first son of Unnthor Reginsson looked smaller somehow – diminished, bereft of the tooth-gnashing fury that had fuelled him last night and all of his life.

  Hildigunnur closed her eyes for a moment. ‘A great wrong has been committed in my house,’ she said. ‘A great, great wrong.’

  ‘Yes, Mother,’ Helga said. ‘And it’s been done with your knife.’

  Hildigunnur’s eyes shot open. ‘What did you say?’ she snapped.

  Recoiling from the venom in her eyes, Helga stuttered. ‘It’s – it’s been done with your knife – the carving knife that Father keeps sharp for you.’ She glanced down at the body. ‘The cuts to the vein are so thin, you’d need a really sharp blade for it. He won’t have felt a thing.’

  The old woman took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. Without speaking, she repeated the action. ‘With my knife,’ she said at last.

  Helga nodded, and Einar did the same.

  Hildigunnur looked like she wanted to say several things. ‘Whoever did this,’ she finally said, ‘must have picked it off a table in here at least a day ago, because I haven’t seen it since the first night.’

  ‘Oh,’ Helga said.

  ‘Why “oh”?’ Einar said.

  ‘Because that means whoever did it planned to do it,’ Helga said. ‘And that’s worse.’

  Hildigunnur nodded.

  ‘Oh,’ Einar said.

  ‘Carry him out into the yard,’ Hildigunnur said. ‘We’ll cover him and take him out to the fields, dig him a cairn. It’s the least we can do.’

  ‘And then?’ Helga said.

  ‘Then we find whoever killed him,’ Hildigunnur said. ‘So we have to ask ourselves: many people had a reason – but who had the best one?’

  *

  Runa yanked on the branch of the bramble-bush until the berry came off, snorting in disgust as it squished in her hand.

  ‘Maybe if you went a little bit more gently you could—’ Aslak began, but Runa turned and glared at him: a look that could have cracked ice.

  ‘Shut your hole,’ she snapped.

  ‘I was just—’

  ‘I know what you were just. You have no idea—’

  Aslak looked at her, smiling. ‘I’ll just be over here with my full basket of berries,’ he said, sauntering away.

  ‘Oh go hang!’ Runa shouted after him. ‘Is that what you count as an achievement? Picking fucking berries?’

  Aslak stopped, calmly put down his basket and turned back to face her. Then he walked towards her, saying softly, ‘No, but raising happy children who have a pissy mare for a mother? That is an achievement.’

  Runa’s jaw fell.

  ‘Behaving towards you in the manner I choose, rather than in the manner you deserve? That is an achievement.’

  She opened her mouth to speak, but Aslak’s rising voice swallowed hers. ‘Knowing that I could walk away any time and choosing not to? That is an achievement.’

  He took half a step closer and firmly grabbed Runa’s shift near the throat. Twisting it, pulling her face towards his, he said, ‘Keeping this family together – with you in it – that is an achievement.’

  She clawed at his hand but Aslak held firm, taking her by th
e wrist and pushing her hand away. ‘You’ve always looked down on me,’ he hissed, ‘you’ve always thought you deserved something – someone – better. Well, I’ve grown tired of it.’

  Wild-eyed, Aslak stared into Runa’s narrowing eyes.

  He never saw the fist.

  Instead, his head jerked to the side and he let go of his wife’s wrist, clutching his ear.

  Runa rubbed at the reddening flesh on her arm. ‘You pick a strange time to act like some kind of man, Aslak Unnthorsson,’ she said, her mouth a thin line. ‘And if you should ever think to dust off your manhood again, don’t do it like that. Ever. Unless you want to wake up with your manhood in your mouth.’ With that she turned and walked off towards the sounds of the children playing.

  ‘When we wed I promised you that nothing would break our union,’ Aslak said to her back. ‘And now I’ve made sure of it.’

  Runa slowed down by half a step as the words reached her, but then she hurried away.

  ‘It’ll all be better now,’ Aslak said to the blackberry brambles. ‘It’ll all be better.’

  When he looked up, Runa was gone.

  *

  The wood was rough under Helga’s hands and her arms ached. She hadn’t managed to find any comfortable way to get at the back of Karl’s bed for a sustained assault on the blood-soaked boards and the stains were stubbornly resisting her best efforts. Still, the work was allowing her mind to wander.

  When she imagined Karl, the first thing she saw was the anger: the fury of a rabid dog needing to bite something. Had he snapped at the wrong person? He’d bloodied Jorunn’s nose – was that enough to murder someone for? He’d insulted Bjorn and threatened Sigmar. Then there was the way he’d looked at her. Even at the height of summer, even knowing he was gone, Helga felt a chill creep up her back and had to twist her shoulders to get her spine back into place. Had he looked like that at someone else? Someone’s wife?

  ‘They’re coming back.’ Einar’s head disappeared as quickly as he’d popped it through the door to the longhouse.

  ‘That’s what got us into this mess in the first place,’ she muttered. She leaned back and wrung her rag into the bucket. The drops were a fair few shades lighter now – they’d been dark red when she started, so that was progress, of a sort. Knees creaking, she rose and turned away.