“It’s nothing to do with me, stupid,” said Skarga after Tovhilda had gone. “Did you see me throwing dirty little bones or squatting in a corner muttering spells?”
“I know,” said Egil. “But I sort of had a feeling something might happen.”
“Then you must know more about magic that I do,” sniffed Skarga. The soup was hot and smelled well stewed. She drank and passed the bowl back to Egil. “And if you’re implying that I have powers I don’t even recognise, well, I don’t like the idea. I wouldn’t be stuck here locked up and bored stiff if I had any witchery at my fingers.”
“No,” said Egil, finishing the soup. “But if there was no power lurking anywhere at all, by now we’d both surely be dead.”
That night’s dream was snow bound. The ice rose like cliffs to both sides of a chasm, and Skarga clung terrified to the edges of a fur piled sled. Its speed cut the wind. The sled’s tracks were straight between the blue ice walls, the sky above narrow sliced, too distant for colour. It was a bear that drew the sled, a white bear as massive as the sea beast that had steered the boat in the storm. Its feet were black soled and utterly silent on the snow. Its fur rippled sheen, as if it carried the wind on its back.
Skarga was crying again when she woke. Egil was curled behind her, his arm around her waist, and above them his cloak enveloped warmth against the night chill. Outside the familiar sound of Banke’s temper echoed in the early frost. Asved was saying, “That’s why she has to go. Look how she causes trouble, even between us.” And Banke was wheezing with the effort of holding his breath. He would release it in one explosion as he aimed the first punch, at the same moment as the graze to his own knuckles would send him into tears. Asved continued, “Of course I never told her to curse you. As if I would. You’re my big brother after all. My big clever brother. That toothache was her own nasty idea. It had nothing whatsoever to do with me. I’m your faithful friend, aren’t I?”
“You gave her your best cloak,” wheezed Banke, mounting anticipation for explosion. “Had to be a reason. Big cloak. Big payment. I’d always wanted that cloak.”
“Simply a gift, from a loving bother. The bitch was cold.”
“Never.” Hurtling towards each other with the full violence of frustrated resentment, saved Asved from thinking of an even faintly believable reply.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Ogot said, “Take the curse off Tove and I’ll make sure you die quick. No rape. No pain.”
“What a tempting concession,” said Skarga as cheerfully as she could. “But I admit I’d hoped for something a little more alluring.”
“What, like letting you go?” Ogot was standing in the open doorway. Behind him the early morning was still dull. Summer’s dawns were already wavering into autumn’s darker frost. Back against a balance post of the main hall, Banke was sitting slumped and snivelling. Asved had gone. Ogot shifted uneasily from one foot to another. “Look, you might as well know, I won’t do that. You’d better accept it, since I won’t be changing my mind. You’re a danger to all of us. How could I let you go?”
Skarga stood and came over towards him. “I’d swear not to curse any of you ever again. Just let me go. I promise I’ll travel as far south as I can and I’ll never, ever come back. I’ll take Egil with me, and you’ll never see either of us again. Doesn’t that make sense?”
He didn’t even answer her. He slammed the door in her face and she heard the lock snap tight. Egil came over and took her hand. “He’ll think about it. He’ll decide it’s the best thing to do. Tove will screech at him and insist you be sent off at once. Hakon will say fair’s fair and Gunulf will say that’s the easiest way out for everyone. Asved will say you should be whipped first before letting you go and kindly offer to do it, and no one will care what Banke says anyway.”
“And Grimr?”
“He’s hiding from the pox. And your father will add up just how much silver he’ll be saving.”
The reeds were softer and smelled cleaner than the benches so Skarga sat on the floor. She was aware of a desperate weariness. “It feels like years since I slept well. Even when I do get my eyes shut, I have horrid dreams. I’m always drowning. If it’s not in water, it’s in snow. I even drown in air. Maybe I should just take father’s offer to get killed off quick.”
Egil sighed and stretched out on the reeds beside her. “You never used to talk this much rubbish. Excuse me while I ignore you.”
Skarga smiled. “But I’m so terribly tired, and terribly tired of being hated and hurt. I suppose being frightened makes me sleep badly too. There. I’ve admitted to being frightened.”
“As if I didn’t know,” said Egil. “And I know about the dreams as well. You keep moaning in your sleep. It’s very disturbing. Besides, you can’t drown in air.”
“In my dreams I can,” said Skarga.
“I have dreams too,” said Egil, more gently. “Usually I fly, but the air never threatens. It’s the falling that makes me sick. You know, first stretching towards some far horizon, so beautiful, so tempting. And then I remember I’m a slave brat, and the wind catches me at once. I twist and get crumpled up and fall, and fall, and fall.”
Skarga leaned forward and grasped his hand. “Perhaps that’s sort of drowning too,” she said. “Just remember that you’re not a slave anymore. And remember I can’t make magic either.”
“So you don’t know proper spells,” Egil said after a small pause, “but you could just mutter words, like when they sacrifice some poor chicken in a foundation hole.”
Skarga shook her head. “The only thing I have available to sacrifice is you. And think what a mess that would make.”
“There’s really no point talking to you these days,” muttered Egil, and went away to curl up in the far corner. He appeared to be asleep by the time Ogot came back.
Ogot stomped inside and slammed the door very heavily behind him. “Take the curse off, then,” he said. “Do that first. Prove good intentions.”
Skarga was startled and stood up quickly, brushing grass from her skirts. “You mean make Tove better? But once I did that, how would I be sure you’d let me go?”
“Never said I would,” scowled her father. “Show good intentions first. Then I’ll take the matter up with your brothers. We’ll decide, according to how quickly your mother recovers.”
“She’s not my mother,” said Skarga.
“Make her better quick,” continued Ogot. “And no scars. Especially not in those special places. You know what I mean. No pocked tits or anything. Then I’ll talk it over with Hakon and the others. I’ll give you my word to consider it fairly. Hakon likes justice, you know that.”
“Something he never learned from you,” said Skarga, moving a step backwards from the likely reach of her father’s arm. “And I couldn’t trust you to let me go once Tove’s recovered. Let me go first.”
Ogot shook his head vehemently. “Think I’m a pissing idiot? Let you run off and leave me in shit? You don’t trust my word, eh? Well, I don’t give a shit off the cliffs for yours either. No. You prove yourself first.”
Skarga glared, found no eye contact, and sighed. “I don’t know if I can make her better that quickly. At least make a promise, once she’s better, I can go.”
Ogot shook his head again. “I make no promises. You take that fucking poxy sickness off my wife or I’ll collect every scrap of silver I own for Grimr to nail you up to the nearest oak, and we’ll all watch you fucking die. I’ll give you ‘til tonight, or you’ll swing like Odinn for the next week.” He had gone long before Skarga thought of an answer. By then Egil had crawled back into her arms.
The rash of the lesser pink pox began inside the mouth and quickly spread across the upper body, the raised itch turning to tiny sacks of liquid which then travelled, like ants, to other parts, and eventually to other people. The blemishes sometimes ran together, embracing before dying. But as one pustule decayed and flattened into its scab, so another sprouted. Tove did not suffer in silence. N
aked beneath the soft wool of the quilted duckling down bedding, each touch aggravated the intense sensitivity of the rash. With scratching the pustules broke and became open sores. The pain of those sores and the itch of the rash seemed unbearable and yet had to be bourn, and could not be sloughed off. So Tove screamed. Because of the risk of infection through the proximity of such virulence, and also because of the noise, she was bundled down in the largest chicken coop to sleep, at a good distance from the main house. Plank built, neither solid clinker nor the grandeur of lashed logs, with thick straw to collect eggs and warmly snug against wolf siege, the hut swayed in the winds which whistled through the draughts. But these were not the problems that irritated Tove most.
“I have to,” Ogot told her, diplomatically apologetic. “I don’t want to send you away. Well, of course I don’t, you’re my own dearest little sunbeam. But the women’s quarters are crowded out and there’s guests. How can I have you in the main hall with Grimr expecting to be feasted every night? He’s twitchy about catching the spots as it is.”
“Twitchy?” screeched Tove. “Have you any idea what agony I’m in? Fuck Grimr.”
“Yes, well, plenty are as it happens,” scowled Ogot. “But the wretched man won’t take my girl away until I’ve got enough to pay him, and we have to get Skarga well gone, as far as possible, or the whole village will be down with the pox.”
“You get that bitch out of here and tell the bastard to kill her slow,” Tove squealed. “Fuck her bloody first, then slit her stern to prow. I want the bitch to suffer worse than I am.”
Ogot smiled nobly. “Yes, dear. That I promise. But I’ve got to be clever. And you know how clever I can be when I want. She’s going to take the curse off first, so you get better. Then I said I’ll think about letting her go.”
“You’d better not,” Tove warned him.
“Well, as if I would. She could go miles away and still set spells to bring ruin on us all from a distance, like she did when she burned the hall. I reckon she could go to Rus-land and still send curses back. She’s got to be as dead as the silver it’ll cost me, and Grimr has promised a guarantee. He’ll carry the full weight of the curse when he kills her of course, but I don’t care about that.”
Tove nodded, but the effort made her whimper. “She believed you? She’ll make me better quick?”
“She’s not agreed yet,” Ogot admitted, “but I’ll put the pressure on. You’ll be fine in the morning, just be patient my precious. At least it’s the pink pox, not the yellow.” He left the barn quickly before she threw something at him for there were several rotten eggs at hand. Besides, it was important to keep her sweet or he’d never get her back into his own bed once she was clear of the pustules and the insane wriggling and scratching. In the meantime there were times when he itched himself, just to slap her into submission. The attraction he’d once felt for her had already faded with age. Each night he had to sweat and work his own elbow to raise himself, and the scars of the pox wouldn’t add to her beauty either.
Then others in the vicinity began to squirm and scratch and the first signs of the raised red rash spread into throats and from there to shoulders and half the slaves got feverish, which meant no work, and then some of the farmers and their wives and their field workers. A small boy, jumping into ice cold water to stop the irritation, died with the shivers. By the next morning, when Ogot had promised his wife she would be recovered and the curse lifted, the village was pitiful in chaos. There was wailing from every house and the animals wandered aimless with few to watch them. It was harvest time and the crops, left to lie as the weather deepened into early autumn, might soon be lost. Wolves took three of the best laying hens and Ogot’s favourite dog broke a leg chasing them into the high forest. Ogot cried as he slit its gullet to stop the whimpering. Harvests demanded a good feasting to appease Fricco or there would be little fertility from man, beast or land in the months to come. Feasting needed the women to brew, cook, mix buttermilk and bake bread but there were few women out of their cots.
The sun was already well up when Ogot went back to roar at Skarga. “I’ll do it,” said Skarga quickly. “Let me go and I’ll say the words before I leave. Tove will be over it before I’m even out of sight.”
“It’s not just Tove,” said Ogot, striding into the little hall. “It’s the whole shitting village. Why? Fuck it, even Tovhilda’s as sick as a toad, and you like her.”
Skarga was half into saying something when Ogot hit her and she tumbled to the reeds. She curled, instinctively covering her face with her arms. Egil ran between Ogot and his daughter. “Lord, forgive me. She’ll make them all better. She meant to anyway. I beg you, let her go.”
Ogot kicked him away and sent him sprawling. He leaned over Skarga. “Get up, bitch, and I’ll tell you what I’ve decided.” Obediently she sat, peering up, shading her eyes in case he lashed out again. “I’m going to let you go,” he shouted into her face. “You’ve got to swear to make everything better, lift the curse and set no more on this village or any of your family for the rest of your life. And if you break that promise, the curse rebounds back on you. Agreed? Then swear it.”
She nodded. “Yes alright. I’ll swear on Odinn’s eye. If you let us go first.”
“Oh no,” said Ogot. “Not both of you. You go. We keep the brat as a hostage. Once the pox disappears and everyone’s back on their feet, then we let him follow you.”
Skarga shook her head, struggling back to her feet. “Please. I won’t.”
Then Egil was in front of her again. “Yes, she’ll do it,” he said, words in a tumble. “We both agree. Just let her go now, with some food, and some new shoes because she’s got none. I’ll stay until everyone’s better.”
“Get on with lifting the curse then,” Ogot said, backing from the room. “I’ll be back with food. And boots too I suppose. Now give your word.”
“I give my word,” said Skarga. “But I want Egil.” Ogot slammed the door behind him. The walls were still vibrating as Skarga grabbed Egil and pulled him close. “You mustn’t. You know I can’t make the pox go away. I won’t leave you behind. They’ll kill you if Tove gets worse.”
Egil wriggled from Skarga’s embrace. “Once you’re well away, I can slip out more easily. I’m used to sneaking around. Slaves have special practise at not being noticed.”
“I’m not risking it,” said Skarga. “I won’t go unless they let you come with me. Banke would have you head down in the water barrel as soon as I’ve gone, and this Grimr won’t be wanting to save you, that I guarantee. There’d be nothing you could do.”
“We don’t have time to argue,” said Egil. “Think. In a day or two, Tove will recover and your bargaining power will disappear. The pink pox doesn’t usually last that long. They’ll all get better anyway. Then they’ll let me go, but if you’re still here they’ll just think your curse wasn’t up to much, and they’ll pass you over to Grimr. We have to take advantage now.”
Skarga still had a tight grip on him. “You don’t understand, but you ought to, because you know the family as well as I do. Listen, it was your plan and it worked, but Father doesn’t mean to let either of us go. He’ll let me go a little way and then send Grimr after me once he thinks the pox is lifted. He’ll keep you and kill you himself. But if we get away together, we’ve a fair chance of escaping.” She sniffed loudly, wiped her nose on her sleeve, and smiled. “Besides,” she said, “I don’t want to run away alone.”
Egil finally extricated himself and wandered over to the locked door. “Alright. There’s no sound outside,” he said. “I think it’s time we both sat down and practised lifting curses. We’ve got until the morning to discover how to make magic.”
They were good solid boots, though too large for her so she stuffed them with reeds. The stockings were old ones of Tovhilda’s who had never owned anything new, but these had originally been warm. Skarga smoothed the soft knitted wool up her calves, avoiding the unravelling holes, and then rolled them neatly under
her knees with a quick twist to keep them up. She had not expected a new tunic or shift and was surprised to receive both. From Tovhilda again.
“Tove’s more my size,” said Skarga dubiously eyeing the boots.
“Tove wouldn’t give you the shit from her arse,” Ogot pointed out. “Tovhilda likes you, though I can’t make out why.”
Skarga said, “Because she knows what it feels like to be kicked and hated, simply for being alive.”
“Rubbish,” glared Ogot, sensing criticism. “Of course she’s kicked and hated. Stupid sow is a cripple, isn’t she?”
He left Skarga to dress, warning her to start lifting the curse at once. Skarga huddled in a corner and began to strip. Egil politely turned his back. Skarga said, “You have to take the knife.”
“I haven’t got anywhere to hide it anymore,” said Egil. Slave’s garb was rudimentary, and his clothes were even more tattered than usual.
“You can turn round now,” Skarga said. “And you’ll need the knife more than me.”
“We both need it,” said Egil, “but there’s only one, so we can’t. The sword got lost in the sea, and your other knife was left sticking in the other Grimr’s chest.”
“It wasn’t. He pulled it out and threw it away,” said Skarga.
“You’re very irritating sometimes,” said Egil. “Stop worrying about the knife. Just hide it in your belt again and hurry up before your father comes back. And don’t make silly faces at me. I’m not being noble. It’s just common sense.”
Skarga was dressed and the knife again hidden behind her belt when Ogot slammed back in. He had brought Asved and Hakon with him. Skarga, warm in her new thick tunic and heavy leather boots, shivered.
“Have you done it?” demanded Ogot. “Have you taken off the curse?”
Skarga stared back, resting her hand reassuringly against the embossing of her belt links. “It’s set in motion but it’ll take a little time to work. They’ll all be fine tomorrow. Well, Tove will but some of the others may take a little longer of course. Now Egil and I are ready to leave.”
Stars and a Wind- The Complete Trilogy Page 13