The Unbroken Line of the Moon

by Hildebrandt, Johanne

  They started walking back to Kungsgården along the sun-warmed path.

  “Repayment or not, it seems like you’re going to have to part with Emma anyway,” Ulf said.

  He nodded toward the courtyard, where an oxcart was being tended by a tall man with the symbol of the temple on his goat-hide apron.

  “They’ve come for her.”

  Sigrid looked at her brother in astonishment. Why would they care about Emma?

  “They don’t have anything to do with domestic servants.”

  Ulf gave her a concerned look.

  “The temple priests have more say than even the king. Tread cautiously, sister. Your enemies are using Emma to hurt you.”

  Sigrid tried to swallow, but her mouth was parched from fear. She wasn’t afraid of worldly power, but the priests and priestesses were another matter.

  “They’re just people,” Ulf said.

  “No,” Sigrid said, slowly shaking her head. “There’s nothing human about the gods.”

  The hall was full of people when Sigrid stepped in with her brother by her side. Those who had assembled fell silent and turned to look at her, their eyes unfriendly. It didn’t bode well.

  Erik sat on his throne, talking to the three priests who had blessed them during the night. They were still wearing their light tunics and the black paint around their eyes, but they were no longer wearing masks. Ergil, the royal family’s ealdorman, was also there. Erik had said that the old man, with his thinning beard and the age spots on his face, was only summoned for serious matters.

  Erik got up from his throne and waved to Sigrid.

  The mark on her wrist grew warm, and it burned as she walked through the hall. Solveig watched her uneasily, which frightened her. When she got closer to the throne, she saw Emma kneeling nearby. Her head hung disconsolately, and she didn’t even look up when Sigrid arrived. What was the meaning of this? Had Father transferred the debt onto Emma, or was Ulf right that someone else wanted to use her to make trouble for Sigrid?

  “How may I serve you, my king and husband?” Sigrid asked, nodding her head in deference.

  Erik watched her, his eyes rimmed in red from exhaustion, but there was no sign of reconciliation in them.

  “Accusations have been made,” he said in a loud voice.

  Sigrid shivered as the three priests eyed her as if she were a sacrificial animal. They could talk to the gods and see the Hidden. If they accused her or Emma, she had every reason to fear them.

  “I don’t understand. Did I do something to vex my husband or the gods whom I so faithfully venerate?”

  She almost succeeded in sounding indifferent and innocent. Wide-eyed, she looked at the priests and her husband. Arngrim, the eldest of the priests, began to speak. His face was painted with thick white paint that had cracked in places. Still, he was just as awe inspiring as Thor, who had animated him during the nighttime blessing.

  “You have a false seeress as a maidservant. A liar who poisons people with unholy sorcery and puts curses on good men.”

  Sigrid and her brother exchanged glances. So he’d been right that they were going to use Emma to hurt her. But who was behind this? Toste had entered the room. He stood in the background and contentedly watched what was happening. Jorun and Alfhild stood with the women, seeming pleased, as if this was the best thing that could possibly happen. Other people were also relishing watching the priest, and neither Erik’s mistresses nor Haldis seemed to think that this was a bad outcome.

  Emma raised her face, disfigured from the swollen bruises. Her eyes were bloodshot. The wave of tender rage Sigrid felt made it hard to breathe. My sister, Vanadís’s gift. Not even the priests should be allowed to touch her.

  “That is a serious accusation,” Sigrid said loudly, looking around the room. “It’s extremely fortunate that there’s no truth in it. Emma is carrying the dís Kára within her. Freya herself has blessed me with this gift. He who defies Freya defies Valhalla. Certainly that is not the priests’ will.”

  She stood up taller as a murmur ran through the hall. Sigrid realized too late that she’d gone too far. She had challenged the priests even though that hadn’t been her intention. Their eyes were as cold as fish eyes and Erik looked profoundly displeased. Sigrid wiped her sweaty palms on her dress.

  “The gods speak through us, Scylfing woman. Their will is ours,” said Frey’s priest, but he stopped talking when Arngrim held up a hand.

  “We venerate Our Lady Freya and our queen,” Arngrim said. “Let us leave it to the gods to decide if this girl Emma is acting on their behalf. If she carries Kára within her, we will honor her.”

  Damn it. Sigrid had walked right into a trap.

  She looked at Emma, sitting there with her eyes closed, sad in her wretchedness. Why couldn’t the dís come to her now? Kára had just been there at dawn to announce the presence of the baby. Why did Emma just sit there, huddled and vulnerable, leaving Sigrid to bear this shame alone?

  “Well said,” responded Erik. “Let us test this maidservant’s truthfulness right away. If she’s lying, I want her gone before the day is done.”

  The three priests bowed to Erik and got up. Sigrid saw the triumph in their faces. Then she understood. The test they were going to put Emma through would kill her.

  “I want to see my maidservant tested and triumph,” Sigrid said quickly. “If she lied, I will send her to the afterworld myself. But if she told the truth, I want her respected as a great seeress.”

  Arngrim smiled faintly and then bowed his head.

  “So it will be. If she survives, she will be respected.”

  They couldn’t just take Emma and kill her. Sigrid had to have hope, maintain confidence. She followed the procession through the crowd outside the temple. Visitors crowded around booths where merchants with scales and weights were selling everything conceivable: jewelry, mead, bread, and chunks of roasted meat wrapped in leaves. Chickens, pigs, and goats were crowded into cramped pens. A man carrying a sheep with its legs tied together stopped and watched Emma with disgust as she walked at the front of the procession with the priests by her side.

  Sigrid gulped. This had to go well.

  In a stall a man was selling small clay statues of the gods and goddesses. Freya wore a long dress and raised her hand as if she were casting a spell, a sword at her side. Thor held the hammer in his hand. There was also Erce, who sat in her chariot decorated with flowers, symbolizing her power to grant peace and a good harvest.

  “A half daler,” said the woman selling the figurines. “You could certainly use Erce’s blessing.”

  Sigrid walked on, filled with disgust at having had to see the goddesses desecrated. With a shudder she followed the procession through the tall gates that were guarded by two young men with hammers like Thor’s.

  It looked different from how it had looked at night. The building looked smaller, and priests with shaved heads and priestesses with staffs were visible through the open doors. That’s not where the three priests were leading them, though, but rather to the grove of trees behind the temple.

  “They’re taking her to the holy oaks,” Sigrid whispered to her brother, looking toward the ancient grove, where people had been making sacrifices since the dawn of time.

  A priestess waited by a bonfire. Hope sank in Sigrid’s chest when she recognized Hyndla, the seeress whom Solveig had warned her about.

  They were going to burn Emma. If Kára didn’t help her this time, she would surely die.

  Jorun giggled behind her back. When Sigrid turned around angrily, Jorun looked down, but Sigrid had already caught the gleam of ill will in her eye.

  “Are you taking pleasure in Emma’s pain?” Sigrid asked, offended.

  Jorun quickly shook her head while Alfhild pressed her lips together to keep from laughing. Had her kinswomen, her own flesh and blood, really come to the temple to watch Emma get cleared out of the way?

  “Is this your doing?” Sigrid asked.

  “No, Sigrid,”
Jorun said. “We would never hurt Emma, no sooner than we would hurt your dogs or Buttercup.”

  She was lying. Sigrid recognized the look in her eyes all too well.

  “If I find out that you went behind my back, I’m going to skin you and salt your screaming, bleeding bodies.”

  Sigrid was so angry with her traitorous kinswomen that she wanted to eviscerate them. She turned her back and clenched her fists so tight that her fingernails dug into her palms.

  Kára would help Emma survive. Freya would not let her maidservant down.

  “Soon they will all kneel down in submission before the Wild Stormy One,” she told her brother.

  “May you be right, sister,” Ulf said with grave wonder. “May you be right.”

  Emma eyed the bonfire with resignation. It towered in front of her. She had avoided one death by burning, only to encounter another. No one could escape his or her destiny, and she was already dead, after all. This would allow her to go to the afterworld, to the big void where the goddess ruled and there was no pain.

  Hyndla didn’t even glance at Emma, just turned to the three priests and asked, “Who is she?”

  “She says she’s a dís. She has put a curse on free men,” said Thor’s priest.

  Hyndla’s lips curled in scorn.

  “Tie her by the fire. Let the flames determine whether she’s blessed by the gods or a liar.”

  Hard hands dragged Emma up to the bonfire and tied her to the pole in the middle. She moaned with pain as the rope cut deeply into her wrists and waist. Kára was silent, as if she’d never been there. Emma must have completed her destiny. The dís had no more use for her and was going to let her die the same way she had been saved. In sadness, Emma watched the people who came running to see her suffer. They longed for her death. Every direction she looked there was just eager curiosity. Then she caught Sigrid’s eyes, filled with pleading. My sister.

  Emma pursed her lips and almost started crying. She so wanted to take care of Sigrid and her son. How could she do that in the afterworld? She looked up at the now-overcast sky. Who would look after them now?

  Hyndla loudly chanted spells as she raised a lit torch. Without hesitating, she set fire to the twigs that flamed up with a roar.

  Emma felt the heat approaching. The billowing smoke tore at her lungs. She started coughing and soon the pain came as the fire licked at her feet.

  “Where is your dís now?” Hyndla screamed at her, her eyes wide.

  The three priests beside her watched Emma with anticipation. They were enjoying her pain. Sigrid’s face was white as snow, and her lips moved in prayer. Emma moaned in pain as the fire cut at her feet like knives. Her dress caught fire. Now she would die, seared by scorching flames. The fear ripped her wide open, and she tumbled down into an abyss. She was back at the monastery, locked in and screaming with those demons, who were so willing to die in the flames.

  My destiny is not yet completed! Roaring, she ordered the dark smoke to part for her. She overpowered the gods, bent their will to obey her. Kára, Wild Stormy One, obey my will. Dísir, I summon you!

  Emma screamed so loudly that her voice echoed over the earth, down to the afterworld, and all the way up to the heavens. The sky rumbled as it rushed to aid its sister, and a burst of wind suddenly blew through the grove of trees.

  A heavy raindrop fell on Emma’s face. She looked up at the sky, where shrieking beings, terrible in their veil-draped strength, swept through the clouds.

  Sisters, I greet you.

  The rain started gushing toward the ground as if the gates of the sky had opened and Hvergelmir itself gushed down from the black clouds. Sizzling and sputtering, the flames were extinguished at once. Emma raised her face to the sky and laughed at her sisters, the dísir in the sky, as the rain washed away her sin, doubt, and pain.

  The eternal spiral kept spinning through time, and she was still in this life. The humans, so pathetic in all their weakness, took cover beneath the oak trees as the rain came down in torrents. A moment later it was over.

  Drenched, Sigrid stood before her, rain dripping from her face and clothes. As if she hadn’t noticed how wet she was, she smiled in relief. Hyndla, who had so willingly tried to send Emma to the afterworld, stared at her. The priests looked just as bewildered.

  “Release the girl!” a sharp voice ordered.

  The three old seeresses whom Emma had met on the beach came walking laboriously toward them, supporting themselves on their staffs. Hyndla and the priests sank, crouching down in the wet grass.

  “The sacrifice has been refused,” one of the elderly seeresses said.

  “They let themselves be governed by vindictiveness and a desire to dominate,” the second said with a disgusted look at Hyndla and the priests, who paled in the face of her stern gaze.

  They knelt on the wet ground before the three aged women, and there was fear in their eyes.

  “The punishment is severe for those who tear the tapestry and disturb the fate of everything,” said the eldest of the seeresses.

  Housecarls climbed onto the bonfire and cut the ropes that bound Emma. She was alive. The pain from her feet radiated through her legs, and she couldn’t stand upright. Emma sank down before Sigrid’s feet, shivering from the cold.

  Sigrid knelt beside her, wrapped her own cloak around Emma’s shoulders, and then ran her hand over Emma’s hair.

  The three old women stared vacantly at them.

  “Thank you, Venerable Ones,” Emma whispered.

  “You live to complete your destiny,” one said.

  Emma lowered her head and put her hand on her heart. She understood. The time would come soon for her final sacrifice. Her destiny approached relentlessly. She moaned in fear and leaned into Sigrid’s comforting warmth.

  “I bow to your will,” Emma replied.

  The three seeresses nodded in satisfaction at her response.

  Sigrid looked in astonishment at the three ancient women. They were more shabbily dressed than anyone else in the temple, and their wispy gray hair was like cobwebs around their heads. Their sunken faces were filled with warts and scars, and their eyes were nestled inside deep wrinkles. But one of them carried a falcon on her staff—Freya’s animal form. These seeresses who looked like they had lived since the dawn of time must be powerful.

  “Venerable Ones, I do apologize, but who are you?” Sigrid asked, moving her hand to her heart.

  The eldest of them turned to Sigrid and said, “The mother of the king is blind.”

  Another chuckled throatily and added, “She does not recognize those who mete out the terms, change people’s lots in life, and measure out the fate for the children of mankind.”

  The hair on Sigrid’s arms stood up, and she dropped to her knees before Verdandi, Urd, and Skuld, the three Norns who controlled the fates of everything. Now she understood the priests’ fear. In the face of the three great ones, they were all nothing.

  “All-knowing spinners of destiny, I serve you,” Sigrid said, panting.

  The three Norns, guardians of the font of knowledge, who dwelled at the foot of Yggdrasil, nodded.

  Without saying anything more, they left Sigrid and Emma crouching on the ground and walked, supported by their staffs, into the grove of trees. The next moment they were gone, as if they’d never been there. All that was left were the rain-wetted leaves dripping on the lush soil.

  Sigrid put her arm around Emma’s shoulders and held her tight.

  I thank you so tenderly for your protection.

  The onlookers and the temple servants who only a brief moment before had so eagerly hungered for Emma’s painful death now backed away from them, filled with fear and respect. Even Ulf’s mouth hung half open, as if he couldn’t believe what had just happened. Sigrid rested her cheek against Emma’s wet hair and inhaled the smell of smoke and sour hemp. This was victory, magnificent and mighty. They had made the journey together from desperation to respect.

  “No one will dare come after us again
,” Sigrid said and cautiously stroked Emma’s sooty cheek. “We’re safe now.”

  It was crowded around the mead barrel where men played backgammon, drank, and listened to music so upbeat that few could sit still on the benches. Young women danced with drunken warriors, and they roped everyone into the song’s refrain.

  His grave was the ship,

  that ferried him home,

  home to the All-Father’s dwelling

  where the valkyries poured

  the mead he adored. Sing hey!

  Sing ho, for Kvasir’s reward!

  Sweyn drank the sweet mead and leaned against the wall while the smiling Gunn tried to sit on his lap.

  “I’ve missed you, my handsome.”

  They had been attracted to each other before, and she was one of the most beautiful women in the hall, with an ample bosom, but she was acting drunk and he found her unappetizing.

  “Not tonight, beautiful,” he said politely.

  After Sigrid, other women did not much appeal to him. He hadn’t even enjoyed the house slave even though she’d offered to warm his bed. If you’d had the most beautiful of young women, it was hard to feel any desire for anyone else.

  Gunn sat down next to Åke instead, who willingly pulled her onto his lap.

  “Don’t refuse the gifts that are offered in this life,” Åke chastised. “Soon enough we, too, will be drinking in Valhalla.”

  Gunn laughed coquettishly when Åke put his hand on her breast.

  “Is Sweyn not interested in women anymore?” she asked, and nibbled on his ear.

  “Get out of here!” Åke said, standing up so quickly that she practically fell on the floor. “No one speaks that way about my brother.”

  Gunn’s laugh was shrill and mocking as she sauntered away from the table.

  “Sweyn, you’ve got to stop turning the ladies down. People are starting to question your manhood and say you’d rather sew with your mother than screw.”