Against a Darkening Sky

by Lauren B. Davis

  Wilona doesn’t push the matter. She goes in alone and finds wine and ale, somehow missed by the looters, under a pile of ruined furs at one end of Caelin’s private chambers.

  Over the next week, three sheep wander back into the village and now graze near the cave. Bana is almost back to what he was, except for his partial vision. Egan still has strange fits during which he repeats the tale of the slaughter until he falls into a sort of stupor.

  But over the next weeks, he tells the tale less. Wilona is as firm with him as Touilt had been with her, and she forbids his self-punishing regimes, his desire to stand in the icy river and pray all night, and his refusal of food, which he says purifies his body. She bullies him, pushes and prods him into the cave, under the furs; she forces a spoon into his hand and makes him eat. Under her ungentle ministrations, he begins to put on a little weight.

  Wilona, on the other hand, finds her appetite less and less hardy. In fact, she fears she might have eaten or drunk something that is upsetting her stomach and draining her strength, for she is increasingly exhausted. Waves of nausea beset her and she vomits frequently. Nothing helps, not wild ginger or mint infusions. She is irritable and short with Egan, even more than usual.

  One afternoon, the rain outside is mixing with sleet, and the hens have retreated to their coop. Bana lies near the fire, across Egan’s feet, and Egan hones their axes and knives against a whetstone. The soft hiss of the iron against the stone is the only noise except for the whistle of the wind and the patter of the rain. Wilona bends low toward the light, mending a pair of leather boots.

  “They are more mend than boot,” she says.

  Egan chuckles. “You’re a miracle worker. Your needle must be blessed.”

  She tries to think of something sharp to say, for Egan’s constant talk of blessings and miracles grates on her nerves. She opens her mouth to tell him so, but before she can, the smell of the plovers roasting over the low fire reaches her nostrils and she gags. She hurls herself out of the cave.

  She barely makes it to the river’s edge before her stomach convulses. She doubles over, her back rounding, her neck straining. Very little comes up. She’s been sick, it seems, for weeks. She rinses her mouth out, trying not to give in to the waves of nausea.

  Egan stands behind her. “Can I do something?”

  “Leave me.”

  “There are some things a man can hardly understand, let alone make better.”

  For an instant she’s not sure what he means, and cannot care less, given the state of her insides. And then it hits her. She reels, grasping at the rocks to keep from tumbling into the water. Let it not be! She counts. Two moons. It cannot be. She counts again.

  What an idiot she is. Why had this possibility not occurred to her? But she took the herbs. They should have worked. She touches her breasts and realizes how tender they are, and swollen. Clearly, herbs or no herbs, the gods have decided. How they must be laughing. What are they playing at now? Her hands are fists. She gave up everything for them—Margawn, Margawn’s sons and daughters! What might have been if she had been less concerned about the gods and more concerned with her own heart? And now they play this perverse joke on her. They took away everything. And now this?

  And now this.

  The gods have given me this. A sacred gift.

  “Come back inside, Sister. It’s cold and you must take care of yourself, as you so often say to me.”

  In a sort of trance—all she can see is her own stupidity and the cruelty of the gods—she allows him to lead her inside and to wrap a fur around her shoulders.

  “There now. Feeling better?”

  She counts again, forward this time. The child will be here when? First Travelling Month? Second Travelling Month, perhaps. “What month do you think it is, Egan?”

  “We’re near to Yule, Sister.” He looks stricken. “Perhaps we’re past Mother’s Night. God forgive me! Can it be I missed the birth of our Lord?” He closes his eyes and moves his lips in prayer.

  She places her hands on her belly. She knows certain herbs and roots that even now would be effective. It would be more dangerous now than taking them sooner. And does she even have any in her stores? How could she not have considered this possibility? She has been as addled as Egan. She gives her head a shake. Focus!

  “What do you think has happened in the wide world, Wilona? Why do you think we’ve seen no one?”

  “I think everyone’s dead.”

  “I wish someone would come.” Egan stops sharpening the axe head and picks at a scab on his knuckle. “I would like to live by the sea once more. Perhaps we should go to Ioua Insula. I don’t think God wants me here any longer.”

  Wilona wishes he would stop talking. His mind is still fractured, and in truth she wonders if he will ever be what he once was. Perhaps he was always a little mad; she remembers the barbed belt he wore about his middle. Still, mad or not, how can he be so cavalier about this? Can he not imagine the horror she endured? By Thunor. He’s never asked. Not once.

  She realizes she’s making slow circles on her stomach with her palm. She imagines a baby nestled deep inside the dark, warm cave of her body. She wonders if it can read her thoughts, if it knows she contemplates killing it. What difference would it make, though? Babies die all the time. She has no gods to answer to now, no code to live by save that of her own survival. What difference would it make?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Some moons later, when the length of day and night are once again in balance, when a hint of warmth has returned, and when the otters’ footprints once more mark the riverbank, late one night, when Egan has fallen asleep, Wilona rises from her pallet. Bana raises his great head and makes a low inquiring growl.

  She creeps from the cave. The dog stands and stretches, pressing back on his forelegs and yawning hugely. He wags his tail and pads over to her, butting her thigh with his head. She scratches behind his ears. “Oh, fine, come on then. I don’t imagine I could stop you.”

  She climbs the hill behind the cave, up onto clear land, the dog beside her. She stands facing the moon, a full moon, shining as brightly as a polished shield. The ground all around is silver with frost, cold and pure. Her breath is a cloud around her face.

  Wilona rests her hands on her stomach. She feels the child inside flutter now from time to time. She has not, in the end, been able to put an end to the pregnancy. The child is hers and, having so very little, she found it impossible to reject it. “What a strange family we will make, Bana. A mad monk, a faithless orphaned woman, a child conceived in violence, born into a dead village, and you.” The dog licks her hand and leans against her leg.

  Before her the limitless land swells and rolls, lit by the moon, so full of life, yet so bare. She and Egan might be the only humans left alive for miles and miles and miles, in all of Northumbria. It feels that way. He talks more and more of returning to Ioua Insula, his holy, shining island, and she’s beginning to wonder if it might not be the best thing. If she can stand one Christian, it’s not impossible she could stand an island full of them, for the sake of this child.

  Suddenly she is a little girl again, standing on the moors, with nothing but the dead behind her, and only the icy, mysterious, vacant future before her. Such a star-bright night. Then as now.

  All things turn and spiral back like this, it seems. From this horror-time a peace-time will follow, if only briefly. Crops will be sowed and harvested. Another king, another court, and what is broken will be built, as the seasons turn, as day turns into night and night into day again. She closes her eyes and sees before her the loom weight Touilt once wore, on which was carved a spiral. Death and birth. The gods who die and are born again. And what, when all is said and done, is the point? There is life in her. Sacred and mysterious.

  It’s odd how the gods, even the Christian god, seem benevolent and majestic when they’re left alone in the earth and sky, without the interference of people. What was it Egan said about his god? My Lord Christ stood besid
e me, Sister, weeping, as he stands with me now. What might it mean to have the gods stand weeping with you? Not to be alone?

  But she’s not alone. Wilona’s hands spread across her swollen belly, and her heart cramps and writhes. The child will be an almost-orphan with no clan … only Wilona to stand between him or her and all the wanton violence of the world. She would not wish such loneliness on anyone.

  Bana’s ears prick and his head whips round. He trots a few paces in front of Wilona, in the direction of the village, and whines. The hackles on his back rise and he stretches out his neck. He growls, low, and his hind legs tremble. Wilona puts her hand on his back to quiet him, but his gaze is pinned to some point out of her sight. He is rigid. She looks where the dog looks, straining to see.

  Figures. Just visible in the thick moonlight. Two? Three? Near what used to be the animal pens at the eastern side of the village. Wilona’s skin shrinks and her fingertips prickle. The child inside her kicks out. Ghosts? Risen on the full moon? Or Cadwallon’s scouts? The figures look stationary, but after a moment she realizes this is just a trick of the light. They’re moving, and moving this way. She thinks there are two, not three. One much larger than the other. The large one carries something, a staff or a spear.

  “Bana! Come!” She calls the dog, grabbing a handful of his fur. He wriggles and squirms and it’s all she can do to hold him. He wants to protect her this time, she’s sure, the way he tried and failed to do before. She forces him back to the cave, her feet slip-sliding on the still-frozen paths. She must slow down. If she falls and breaks a leg, she and the child are both doomed. She must wake Egan; they must arm themselves and go into hiding until they know who’s coming. The noise must have woken Egan, for he’s already on his feet, swatting sleep from his eyes.

  “Someone’s coming!”

  “Who?”

  “How should I know? It might be a friend, but it might not. Douse the fire. Grab that axe. Until we know for sure, we must hide.”

  “Cadwallon?” He steps back into the cave’s recesses as though to hide there.

  “Egan! Don’t be an idiot. If it’s Cadwallon’s men and they find you here, they’ll kill you.”

  He sits down. “Then I think I’ll stay.”

  Bana barks and she shushes him, then grabs the front of Egan’s tunic and puts her face close to his. “I will kill you myself if you don’t get up, you idiot. I need all the help I can get right now, and if you die I’m likely to die as well. Do you understand?”

  Egan smiles, and Wilona sees he would be happy to die, at last, and be free of the terrible guilt of living. It is all she can do not to strangle him. There is little time and she sees the addled monk won’t come unless she drags him. It surprises her, the stab in her heart she feels at the idea of losing him. “Suit yourself, Christian. Hide yourself as best you can.” She ties a piece of rope around Bana’s neck, picks up the axe, and tucks her dagger in her belt. “May your god have mercy on your soul,” she says.

  As she glances back she sees Egan sitting calmly, throwing wood on the fire. Idiot! Idiot! Her heart is a wild thing flapping in her chest and she puts the stinging in her eyes down to fear.

  She runs with the dog upriver to the lightning-struck, hollow oak. The river might be forded safely there if she needs to run. Whoever is coming will have to pass her before they reach the cave, if they’re on the river path. She will be able to see them without them seeing her. If they’re foe, she’ll wait until they pass, cross the river, and hide in the wood. She hunkers down in the tree’s deep, dark, mushroom-scented cleft, her back against the soft wood, and pulls Bana in with her. The ground beneath her yields, crackling with ancient acorn shells. She puts her arms round the dog’s neck and buries her head in his rough, wiry fur. It’s hard to say how long she sits there, for time has its own rules and the folk of the wild wood will play tricks when it amuses them. Then Bana begins barking and she can’t silence him. He twists and bucks and convulses so violently she fears her wrist will break. Then, in a mighty leap, he breaks free and bounds down the path, baying like a mad thing. Damn him! He’ll lead them to her! She must run. But how can she let him fight for her alone again? She rises, stands in the path, frozen … and then the dog goes silent. Her heart seizes. The barking starts again, wildly, hysterically.

  “Bana! Stop. All right! Stop. Stop, I said, by Thunor!”

  It cannot be.

  “Wilona? Wilona!”

  The gods are tricking her. But hasn’t some part of her always known? She always said she’d know if his heart no longer beat.

  “Wilona! Wilona, are you there? It’s Margawn. It’s Margawn!”

  She cannot seem to make her body work, her voice … Her hands fly to her mouth.

  “Wilona? Can you hear me? It’s Margawn!”

  It is.

  Whatever spell had held her breaks and she runs, tripping once over a tree root, then catching her balance. She cannot speak; there is no breath left for words, only for running. A shape in the path before her. Large. Like a bear. Margawn, her golden bear. But not. Something wrong, not the same. But him, yes him, yes him, yes him, him …

  She’s in his arms before she can think, and then she knows it’s him, by smell and touch and taste, by him calling out her name and she calling out his. It’s no ghost, but him, alive, impossibly alive, against all odds, ripped from the very web of wyrd, alive and hers and whole … wait—no, not whole.

  She pulls back and looks at him and cries out. His face is freshly scarred, a puckered line twisting his cheek from mouth to ear. And his body, his poor body, is not the size he once was. Of the arms she clings to, one is not an arm at all, just a stump, a hen’s wing.

  “Oh, my love,” she says. He tilts his head away from her, but she turns it back. “No, no, it was just a shock. You can’t think I care!” She kisses him. Bana runs in ecstatic circles around them, whining and wriggling like a pup.

  “I would have returned to you sooner, if I could.” He buries his face in her hair, and in a hot rush she realizes he is crying. “It was a long time before I came to myself. I said I’d come back to you.”

  “You did. You said you would. You have.” And yet she knows, even as she holds him, clings to his heaving, shuddering shoulders, that he is not the man he was, that whoever he is, whatever he is, he is no longer a warrior. It is more than his body; he carries weariness like a weight now deep in his flesh, his bones, his soul. “You’re here. Here with me. You’ll rest,” she finds herself saying, her voice drowning in tears. “You’ll rest now.”

  “A mute woodcutter, only that, imagine.”

  She doesn’t understand, and doesn’t care. “It’s all right, my bear. We’ll get you food and sleep.”

  But he keeps talking. “When the battle was done, a woodcutter found me still alive. There might be others. I don’t know. If there are, they’ve fled south.”

  He sits on a nearby fallen log, as though his legs have finally failed him. Bana tries to lick his face. Wilona makes the dog sit, which he does, heavily, on Margawn’s feet, and he won’t be budged.

  Margawn puts his good right arm around Wilona. “I don’t know why Cuthberht didn’t leave me there. Others would have, or finished me off. But he didn’t. He dragged me to his hut and kept me alive somehow.” He turns his face to her and it is more beautiful than any sun-filled morning. “I’m no soldier now. No threat to any king.” He squeezes her. “I feared I wouldn’t find you … and when I saw the village …” His face crumples and it’s some moments before he’s quiet. When he regains himself he says, “I was so sure I’d lost you.”

  Her eyes are pinned to his face, and her heart beats like the wings of a trapped falcon. “I survived, but … the gods didn’t protect me. Bana tried his best and paid for it, as you see.” She wants to wait, to give him time to rest, but only the shock of the moment has stopped him noticing. In another minute they will stand, and he will see her properly. “I fought them, but in the end …” She brings Margawn’s hand to
rest on the swell of her belly.

  He stiffens and utters a choked cry.

  What a homecoming welcome is this. She refused his children, and now, in her belly, the enemy’s spawn. “I avenged my honour while they slept.”

  His face contorts again. He pulls his hand from hers and covers his eyes. “By the gods, I’m sick of honour.”

  “You and I survived. That’s all that matters.”

  He takes his hand from his eyes. “A child?”

  She searches his face. “I thought I’d prevented … this. I was wrong, and then, well, I couldn’t. Margawn, I want the child.”

  “Even though?”

  “Even though.”

  Something struggles within him—she sees it as his features tighten—and he closes his eyes. She holds her breath, and all that might be seems to teeter on the tip of that moment. When he opens his eyes what she sees is not disgust, as she feared it might be, but hope, or at least the hope of hope.

  “Yes,” he says. Such a tiny word, and yet in it such enormity.

  The world steadies itself. She breathes again.

  He says, “I only thought of getting back to you. No further.” He pulls her to him. “It’s all that mattered then, or now.”

  And now it is she who weeps, stopping only when Bana insists on licking her face, and then Margawn’s, and as they push him away they discover, to their surprise, that they’re laughing, just a little, but laughing, still.

  It occurs to her then. “And the man I saw you with, the woodcutter? Where’s the man to whom I owe so much?”

  Margawn whistles. A moment later an old man comes along the path. His face is wrinkled as a dried apple, and as sweet. Wilona kisses him on both cheeks, making him blush so brightly his skin shines pink even in the moonlight.

  “I call him Cuthberht,” says Margawn. “Since he couldn’t tell me his name. He seems to like it well enough.”

  The old man nods and smiles, revealing the blackened remains of several teeth.