by Lena North
He seemed to be a good man, he was very handsome, and his father was a wealthy, powerful man in a Hundred a week's journey from our village. It was an advantageous alliance for both sides because it was an unspoken agreement that Stein would be our new Jarl when Jarl Ingolf was too old. I wondered what would happen now, realizing that the one who had lost the most when Heidrun died was Stein. It would be difficult for him to still claim that he'd be the next Jarl without Heidrun at his side, and I wondered if he regretted that he pushed the wedding forward. If they'd been married, he could have claimed that he was family, but now it would be hard for him to even stay in the village.
"We have to take her down. Ingolf, we can't leave her hanging there! We have to -"
"Stein, calm down. We can't do that, and you know it," the Jarl hissed, interrupting Stein's angry rant. "You know we can't risk displeasing our gods by taking back the sacrifice. She has to remain for the full week."
Stein protested loudly, getting in the face of our Jarl. Finally, Einarr put an end to the discussion by taking a strong grip on Stein's upper arm, pulling him away. When they disappeared, the Jarl turned to the crowd.
"Go home everyone. We will have no more feasts in this gathering. That much we can do for Heidrun."
It was a good order, and only a few looked disappointed. Heidrun hadn't been an open and friendly woman, and even though she'd knew everyone by their first name she hadn't seemed to have any close friends in the village. She'd nevertheless been respected by everyone, and she had been our future leader. I wondered who'd be the next Jarl now that Stein was out of the picture, but it hit me immediately that there was a natural choice. The Jarls nephew, and Einarr's only son. Josteinn.
Chapter Three
Dreams
"I don't know what to say."
With those words my father summarized what we all felt as we sat around the table in the little house at the back of the Jarl's longhouse where we lived. Most of the thralls stayed with their owners, sleeping with their animals or by the fire in their great hall, but for some reason, we had always lived apart. Our house wasn't really a house, though, it was more like a shed propped up against the back wall of the longhouse. We only had one small room where we all lived, but it was ours, and it gave us some privacy, as well as considerable envy from the other thralls.
Remembering how my mother spoke to Jarl Ingolf, I wondered how she'd dared. She was a strong and confident woman, greatly respected among the thralls and most freemen. Around our Jarl, she always seemed to shrink, as if she cringed under his gaze. Jarl Ingolf was always curt with her, angry almost, which was surprising because I knew Mother had been close to the Jarl's first wife, Torunn.
"I can't believe Heidrun is dead," Ulf murmured suddenly.
My oldest brother was a copy of our calm, strong and solemn father. He usually bent his head down and worked from morning to sunset without saying much about anything, so we all turned to him in surprise when he spoke.
"Well you should believe because I was there in the grove to make sure and it was not a pretty sight," Torbiorn said harshly, making a face as he bent his head over the bowls of soup mother had put on the table.
We'd spent the day being questioned by Einarr, but we'd had nothing to say that could explain what had happened. I'd had the least to add because I'd been in the shed, and Einarr had not asked me much anyway. My parents and two brothers had all been in the crowd throughout the sacrifice, of course, but we were thralls so they'd been at the back, not seeing much. Not wanting to see much. Two of the warriors had dragged what they'd thought was me up to the Jarl, and my family kept their heads down during the sacrifice. Other thralls standing around them, and a few free men, had confirmed this. My sister wasn't in the village anymore, she was moved to another village a few years ago. We'd not seen her since, though according to gossip, she was thrall to one of the big landowners there and had two of his children already.
After the questioning, we'd been asked to go back to our home, and to do our usual chores the next day. Since there was little else for us to do, we'd walked back in silence, and a few smiled at me as we passed through the village but no one spoke to us.
"Did you have to make Nettle-soup of all things, when you know how much I hate it?" I asked, trying to lighten the mood.
I understood that it had been hard for Torbi, and I knew they were all confused, but the atmosphere around the table was strange. I thought that me returning from the dead should have been a happier occasion. Eating soup made from dried, stale Nettles was not what I would have expected.
"Sissa, don't make any jokes. Not tonight, and not for a long time," mother said bitterly, in a hushed voice.
"What?"
"They will blame us, you know they will, and it has already started. You heard the Jarl's wife, and so did everyone standing around. If they can't say for sure that the gods had a hand in this, then they will have to put the blame somewhere, and they will put it on us. Who else gained something from Heidrun's death?"
"Your mother is right, Sissa. We are glad that you are here, never doubt that, but who else could they blame?" Father looked resigned.
I swallowed, thinking that he was right, there would be blame, and it was likely to fall on my family, but he was also wrong.
"There are others who will gain from this, I can think of several," I protested.
Mother immediately leaned over and put her hand firmly on my shoulder.
"Hush, girl, lower your voice," she whispered, "Those are dangerous words."
"You can figure it out," Torbi interrupted. "You have always known how to figure things out, Sissa. Remember when Torunn's necklace disappeared, and they said it was stolen? You asked just a few questions and then you found it behind the bed."
I stared at him thinking that this was hardly the same thing as a woman forgetting that she'd hidden her valuable necklace when we thought there was an attack on our village.
"He's right, Sissa. When Leif and Sif's youngest son disappeared, you were the one to find him." Ulf added slowly.
I wondered if my brothers were losing their minds, comparing Heidrun's death with a necklace and a child that had gone into one of the longboats thinking that he could hide there and go with the warriors on their upcoming raid.
"Okay..." I said but then I trailed off. I wanted so badly to tell them that, of course, I'd figure it out, I'd solve this in no time at all. I had no clue how I would be able to do it, however, or even where to start.
"We leave it for now, boys. Maybe they'll find that the gods had their hands in this, or maybe it was just an unfortunate mistake somehow. We work as we always do, stay silent as we always do. That should keep us safe for a while," father said. It was clear that this was his final words on the matter so we didn't protest.
Instead, we bent over the bowls of green disgusting goo with half a soggy boiled egg floating in the middle. Nettle-soup, I thought sourly. If they'd sacrificed me and the gods had accepted our offer, then I would have eaten meat and drank mead for dinner instead.
We spoke very little after that, and since we didn't know what else to do we went to our beds, but I couldn't sleep. All that had happened whirled in my head, nothing made sense, and I worried that Mother was right. Maybe they would blame my family. After a long while, I gave in, accepted that I wouldn't get a grip on it all that night and drifted off into a fretful sleep.
My dreams woke me up, and my heart was beating hard in my chest. I lay still for a while, wondering what I dreamed, and I tried to find sleep again because it felt crucial to continue dreaming but it kept slipping away. Then I suddenly remembered. There had been a man, I'd been chasing a man through the forest, and he'd held something.
The hood.
They'd asked my mother to make the hood, and at the time I'd thought that it was an uncommonly cruel request. In all that had been going on I'd forgotten. There wouldn't be another hood in the village, we had never used something like that for anything. When punishments were met
ed out, they were done so openly and the one receiving the punishment did so without covers over his or her head. I wondered where the hood that Heidrun must have had had on her head came from. If I could look at it, then there might be some answers to be found. My mother was an excellent seamstress, and I suddenly remembered how I counted the many small, even stitches as I waited. There were others who could have done something similar, but most would not have been able to. Some were utterly useless with a needle as well. I was one of them, though I knew of a few others.
Before I could change my mind, I got out of bed, grabbed my leather shoes, Ulf's long cloak, and tiptoed out into the night. It was dark so, at first, I started to think that I would never find my way to the grove. Then the clouds parted, and the moon gave me enough light to see where I was going.
When I approached the area where we performed all our ceremonies, I slowed my steps and started to re-think my idea. It had felt urgent as I lay in bed, with the dream fresh in my mind, and I'd thought that I had to go immediately. As I moved into the grove, it started to feel like an uncommonly stupid idea. The clouds parted even further revealing a moon that was almost full, so suddenly I had a good view of what was in front of me.
They had sacrificed the smaller animals first because the gods wanted the best offering to be saved for the end. Hanging from the trees on both sides I could see the contours of a goat and what I thought was a couple of pigs. I concentrated on breathing slowly through my mouth, to avoid the stench of blood and dead flesh. Then I forced my feet to move toward the shape at the end of the line. The shape of Heidrun.
The animals were hanging from their back feet to let the blood pour freely, and as I walked past them, I saw dark pools in the snow beneath them. Heidrun was hanging with her head up, and the thick rope tied around her neck. I didn't want to look at her so at first I kept me eyes on her feet. She had no shoes on, and the back of her heels were muddy and scraped. The bare feet swayed slowly in the wind, looking small and vulnerable, and not at all like the feet of the strong, determined girl that I'd seen striding forcefully through the village my whole life.
Then I took a deep breath, pressed my lips together, and raised my eyes to look at the hood. What I saw made me stumble backward, gasping. Nothing covered Heidrun's face, and she seemed to stare back at me. Her mouth was twisted into a grimace, and I could see her teeth. Her eyes were wide open, which made her look surprised, almost as if she wondered what was happening. The cut across her throat was long, deep and gaping horribly. I took a few more steps backward because suddenly all I wanted was to get away. My stomach turned, and a scream bubbled up the back of my throat, so I clenched my jaws together and tried to breathe through my teeth. I couldn't make my eyes leave Heidrun's face as I continued walking backward, quicker and quicker. Then I stumbled on something and sat down on my behind with a thud. I gasped, scrambled back to my feet, kicking furiously at the branch I'd fallen over so it flew to the side where it landed in some bushes. The fall had unlocked my eyes from the dead girl above me, and I looked down to make sure I didn't fall again, but then I stopped moving. There were many footprints in the snow, though only a few had blood in them. If there was blood in the footsteps, then someone had walked around in the grove after all the offers had been hung there, I thought, wondering why anyone would do that.
I studiously avoided to look at Heidrun and squinted in an attempt to see the footprints clearly in the dim light. There seemed to be at least two sets of big and one set of small feet that had spread blood on the ground below Heidrun. I frowned and looked around, but I could not see any pattern, or where the persons would have walked to or from. Then the wind picked up through the trees, and all the bodies around me suddenly twisted and turned. The creaking sound of rope grinding against the branches they were hanging from was eerie, making me shiver. A series of cracks came from somewhere in the forest not far away from me, sounding like someone stepped slowly on some small twigs. I felt panic shoot through my body and in a knee jerk reaction, I turned and ran. I didn't stop until I was far away from the grove, almost all the way down to the beach.
I stood there for a while, hugging myself to stop my body from shivering. Darn, I thought. That had been a stupid thing to do, and I learned absolutely nothing except that I spooked more easily than I'd thought, and that death looked awful.
There was no way I'd be able to go back to sleep for a long while so I continued down to the sand dunes and sat down with my back resting against one of the smaller boats that was laying there, upside down, waiting for summer to come.
It took a long while but eventually my breath slowed down, and as I sat there, wrapped up in my brother's thick cloak, the shivers subsided. At first, all I could think about was the awful look on Heidrun's face, and I wondered if she had suffered. The cut across her throat had been deep. I hoped that life had left her without too much pain, but I also remembered how I'd felt as I waited in the shed the night before so thinking about her final moments made me shudder. She must have tried to scream because her mouth had been open, but she would have been gagged just as I had been. I frowned and tried to think more calmly about what I'd seen in that grove, tried to deal with it as if it had been just an everyday household problem and not a horrible corpse dangling in front of me.
Her lips had been pulled back a bit, and I'd seen her teeth. The piece of cloth they'd used to gag her had slipped down a little, so I'd seen the roof of her mouth. They must have hung her up with the hood and gag, or else they would have known that it hadn't been me they sacrificed. Maybe Einarr had been there to collect the hood already, I thought. He was trying to figure out what happened, and he could have gone to pick it up to look for clues.
It struck me that it anyway had to have been one of the men, and one of the tall ones because she'd been hanging quite a bit above the ground. Her feet had been at the same level as the top of my thighs so I would never have been able to get the hood down to look at it. I might have reached up to touch the bottom part of it if I got up on my toes, but I wouldn't have been able to pull it up and off her head. It must have been Einarr then, I thought, because he was tall, just like the Jarl. Josteinn was tall too so he might have helped his father. Apart from them, there weren't too many men that would have reached it. My father was below average, almost the same height as me, but Torbiorn was big, even a bit taller than the Jarl. Stein might have reached it, although I doubted it, and a couple of the warriors would have been able to stretch that far up too, but that was it. Surely it must have been Einarr, I thought again.
"Sissa."
I jumped and gave up a small strangled scream when a quiet voice murmured my name. Then a huge shadow emerged from the darkness. It was Josteinn, and he sat down beside me with a sigh.
"Having trouble sleeping?" he asked gently.
"Guh," I answered because I'd been too deep in my thoughts to hear him coming, so he'd scared me.
Then I felt my face heat up, and I grabbed hold of the cloak to keep my hands from fidgeting. I'd been watching Josteinn all my life, wishing for him to notice me, even though I'd always known well that nothing would ever come out of it when he was the Jarl’s nephew and I the youngest daughter of one of the thralls. He'd never paid any more attention to me than the other thrall girls, but that had never mattered. I'd always told myself that there were no laws against dreaming.
I'd thought that I would settle with Finnr, and I'd been content with that, happy even. Fin had been so alive, so vibrant, and we'd made such grand plans for our future. We'd said that we would leave, go on adventures and see more than our small village. Be more than our village. It had all been foolish and impossible when we were thralls both of us, but we had planned anyway and vowed that we'd somehow find a way. When Josteinn's blue eyes and sweet smile sometimes came to me in my dreams instead of Fin's dark hair and black eyes, then I'd seen no harm in that because I knew that there would never be anything between us.
Then Fin had disappeared, and I'd not wanted anyth
ing to do with the other boys or men among the thrall, even though I knew that it was time for me to decide upon someone. I knew even better that I should be grateful that the Jarl had not sold me, as he'd done with my sister.
"Yes," I whispered when Josteinn kept looking at me, expecting an answer, and he smiled a little.
"I can see how all of this would make it difficult for you," he said. "I have a hard time to find sleep myself, and my parents are also moving around."
"Was it the gods, Joss?" I asked, using our childhood way of shortening his name.
I didn't think it had been the gods interfering, but maybe it had been, and I wanted to know what he thought. Even more, I needed to know what his father thought because that was what would impact my family and me the most.
"I don't think so, and I know father doesn't either," he replied as if he understood why I asked. "My uncle is the one in touch with the gods, so he would know better, but his judgment is clouded. Father says that he's never heard of the gods interfering with a sacrifice like this. It is up to us to offer, and for them to accept or reject."
"But if the gods hadn't cloaked her identity, how could it be that Jarl Ingolf didn't recognize her. She was his daughter, and he must have raised the hood, or held her?"
"He didn't lift the hood, he cut right through the bottom of it. And he didn't touch her, Hjalvor and Sigurd held her. They pulled her over to Uncle Ingolf, and before they had time to let go he took a step forward and did the cut. It wasn't easy for him, Sissa. Whatever you think of him, you must know this. We've never sacrificed one of our own, and I've never heard of it being done by anyone in our time," he replied.
"How was it?" I whispered.
I'd been to many sacrifices in my life so I knew what usually happened, but I couldn't quite imagine that they'd done it the same way with an actual person.
