Magnus

by Joanna Bell

  When Taber and his son had been ushered out of the hall, Lord Eldred adopted a sterner look and turned to Magnus, who suddenly wobbled on his feet and almost stumbled backwards.

  "Bring him a chair!" The lord commanded. "His head is not yet healed from the blow, he needs to sit –"

  "No," Magnus replied, closing his eyes tightly and then opening them again, shaking his head a little. "No, I can –"

  He stumbled again, almost dropping to one knee that time, and Eldred signaled for the chair to be brought. When I took an involuntary step towards him, distressed by seeing his distress, I was stopped again before I could go anywhere.

  "Sit," Eldred said, when the chair was in place. "I understand that your people are not allowed to show weakness – indeed, that at the first sign of sickness or injury you are taken into the woods and driven through the heart with a spear – but such barbarity is not our way. We –"

  "We do no such thing," Magnus responded, and I could hear a tiredness in his voice that immediately set a low-level of anxiety running through my veins. "When one of us is sick or injured, Lord Eldred, the others –"

  Eldred held up a hand to silence him and I felt certain that, were he not injured, Magnus would have continued to make his point – possibly in a way that was less than polite. Perhaps it was not such a bad thing that the blow to his head had laid him low at that point, when the Angles were clearly so jumpy?

  "As it is, you have saved the life of one of our children. For this your life will be spared and you – and your woman – will be allowed to stay here within the walls of my estate while you regain your strength – as long as you can give us your word that, should your people arrive to take you back, you –"

  "If my people come here," Magnus said, making me wince to see him interrupting Lord Eldred so carelessly, "they will kill me before they kill any of you, I can promise you that. I want to live, Lord Eldred. And because I want to live, I give you my word that I will offer all the help I can in defending your estate against my fellow men of the North. With luck, they are already on their way back across the sea."

  "Yes," Eldred nodded. "With luck. And we will need to keep your sword whilst you remain with us – you understand."

  Magnus nodded.

  "Right, there it is then. The Haesting estate is yours, until your strength has returned. Consider it our thanks for saving the life of Taber's boy."

  Magnus nodded again, and then we were led out of the stone hall, into the chilly evening and away to one of the huts that stood very close to one wall of the estate. The man who led us passed me a cloth sack and the larger tunic that had been fetched for Magnus.

  "Here," he said, just before leaving. "This can be your shelter, and here is some bread for you to eat. Good-night."

  "Good-night," I replied, and then turned to watch him scamper off into the darkness.

  Inside the hut, a fire had been lit for us in the small fire-pit. It was a very small space, and looked to have been unused for a long time. Even in the dim light from the fire I could see cobwebs hanging from the straw roof.

  "How do you feel?" I asked Magnus, sitting down with him on the floor because there were no chairs to sit on – there was no furniture of any kind except a single table that sat against the curved outer wall.

  "Hungry," he replied quietly. "And tired."

  I reached into the sack I'd been given and pulled out a piece of rather stale bread, which I handed over.

  "You should eat, too," he told me, taking a bite. "It's important that we eat, girl, even if the bread is stale."

  "Stale bread?" I grumbled, leaning back against the flimsy hut's outer wall. "You save one of their kids and all they can do is give you stale bread? And say they'll let you sleep on the dirt without killing you? Where I come from, we would do more for –"

  "They do a lot," Magnus interrupted me. "They do a lot more than they have to, Heather. Do you not have enemies in United States of America?"

  "The," I smiled. "The United States of America. And yes, we do have enemies. We just don't – we don't actually run into them very often."

  "And if you did, would you give them food and shelter?" He continued, taking another bite of bread. "Even if you were afraid they might turn on you?"

  I thought of the Soviet Union and their stockpile of nuclear weapons, the ones I was constantly hearing about on the news. "No," I replied. "I don't think we would. But I don't think they'd be helping us save any of our children, either. I just think it's rude to give you a shitty little hut like this, and stale bread and –"

  "Heather!"

  "What?"

  "Do you not see that they don't have much? You have come from somewhere where food is plentiful – I see it not just in your strong limbs but in the way you looked at those rabbits I killed for you – and the oysters. If you think the Angles – or the people of the North – ever have reason to turn down food, you're wrong. Even stale bread is probably more than they can spare. Did you see the lord give the man Taber a bag of grain, to take with him?"

  I nodded. "Yeah."

  "It's because he knows they are poor peasants, and that they do not have enough to feed themselves properly. Even these stale crusts you look upon right now with such disdain would be enough to cause most people here to fight over them. I understand if you are not used to such a state of things, girl, but I must ask that you keep that look in your eyes hidden when you deal with the Angles. They're poor but they're proud – and they won't take well to you looking down your nose at their generosity."

  "Oh," I said, chastened because I had genuinely not realized that stale bread and a bare floor were a lot for the Angles to give. "Oh. I didn't know that."

  "I see that you did not," Magnus replied, smiling sleepily. "I wonder what place it is you are from where you have never had to eat stale bread? In the morning, perhaps you can tell me more about it?"

  We slept like spoons, Magnus' body curled tightly around mine on the floor to preserve as much heat as possible – we had nothing to warm us but the thin tunics – and in the morning when we woke my body was stiff from the chill. My stomach was also so empty it ached, almost to the paradoxical point of nausea.

  "When my strength is back," Magnus said as we sat on the dirt floor looking dejectedly at each other, "I will kill a deer. I'm good with a bow and arrow, even if it is not my usual weapon, and I saw that some of the Angles carried them. If I kill two deer, and give one to them, surely they will not begrudge me borrowing one of their bows?"

  I took him out of the dark hut, because the air inside it was too still, and in the morning sun I made the sleepy-headed Northman sit on an old tree stump so I could look at the wound on his head. To my great relief I saw, when I parted his hair, that it already seemed to have scabbed over.

  "And how do you feel?" I asked when he stood up, and seemed steady on his feet.

  "In truth, girl, I feel fine. The healers in Apvik always say to rest for half a moon after a wound to the head, even if a man doesn't feel he needs it. And right now, I don't feel I need it. What I need now is simply breakfast."

  He didn't look like he needed it, either – not standing there in front of me giving every appearance of strength and fitness. Still, I was naturally cautious.

  "Perhaps you should take their advice, anyway," I suggested. "The healers, I mean. You –"

  "Oh I will," Magnus replied, looking down at the tunic billowing around him in the light breeze and smiling. "It's never done me good to ignore what the wise women say. Look at me in this dressing – I look like a child."

  I laughed, because one thing Magnus did not look like was a child. No. Even in silhouette and from a mile away, I knew that it would not be possible to mistake a person of his size and stature for anything other than a man. Even the thought of it stirred something in my belly that I immediately resisted, not wanting to weaken him further with sex when both our stomachs were empty and we'd both fairly comprehensively had the crap beaten out of us the day before.

&n
bsp; I looked around. People were everywhere, and all of them looked...busy. No one dawdled, no one chatted amiably, everyone – even most of the children – had the look of determination on their faces that people get when there are things that need doing.

  "It's coming up on harvest time," Magnus commented, perhaps seeing that I was curious. "It's the most important time of the year, and the harvest moon is the moon that will determine whether the people eat through the winter or whether they starve. They look pre-occupied because they are, hoping for good weather – sun, no rain – and a bountiful harvest."

  "Won't Lord Eldred feed them?" I asked, not thinking the question through.

  "And what would he feed them with if not the grain they've grown and the fruits they've gathered?"

  I looked up at Magnus, with the rising sun behind his head illuminating his golden hair into a blood-stained halo. "Oh. Yeah. I just thought - I thought maybe they could get some grain from, uh – from somewhere else?"

  "Yes," he said, perplexed. "But where?"

  "I don't know," I conceded, thinking to myself that if someone were to suddenly remove all the grocery stores from Los Angeles, the people of 1983 wouldn't know where to get their food, either. They would probably know even less than the Angle peasants, who at least had the experience of knowing how to grow crops for themselves, and raise livestock.

  It was into this exchange that a woman, who looked to be about thirty years old, inserted herself.

  "Not busy?" She asked me pointedly, grinning a lopsided, gap-toothed grin. "Come and pick peas with me, girl. I'll give you half of what you pick and you can make your Northman a pottage for supper."

  I looked up at Magnus, my eyebrows raised at the stranger's presumptuousness, but all he did was shrug. "You might as well – we need to eat. I'll go and see if any of the men will allow me to accompany them outside the walls for rabbits."

  "You can't take rabbits!" The woman exclaimed, looking scandalized. "You haven't been taking rabbits, have you?! The beasts of the woods are Lord Eldred's property, and meant only for his table – do ye not know that?"

  "Alright," Magnus replied easily. "I'll see if any of them want to gather oysters at the –"

  "But gathering oysters is women's work!"

  Magnus smiled, amused. "Perhaps I'll spend the day sleeping in the sun, then? And wait for the women to bring me my supper?"

  "Go to the lord's hall," the woman replied, not at all intimidated by the Northman towering over her. "You look strong, Lord Eldred will surely find some work for you."

  "No!" I cut in, when Magnus looked like he was going to do just as the strange woman had suggested. "Magnus, you're supposed to be resting, remember? The healers in Apvik said –"

  "Don't worry, girl," he said, pulling me into his arms and kissing the top of my head. "I'll not do anything too much. But I can't sit here all day, can I?"

  It seemed that sitting there all day was exactly what he should have done, but I could see from the look on both of their faces that I was going to be argued down if I disagreed.

  And so I went with the woman, who told me her name was Brona and then insisted, as the healer had done before her, on calling me 'Eltha' after I told her my name was Heather. She handed me a straw basket that sat amongst many others of all different sizes against the estate walls by the wooden gate, and then led me out into a cleared area in the woods where a patch of what I assumed were pea plants grew.

  And then we began to pick peas. Well, Brona began to pick peas. I knelt down and started to shove the little green pods into my mouth, so hungry was I by then.

  "Eltha!"

  I kept gobbling, unable to stop myself.

  "Eltha!"

  That time, a hard slap on the shoulder accompanied my name and I almost toppled over into the pea-plants.

  "Hey!" I barked, wrenching my arm out of Brona's grip. "I'm hungry! I haven't eaten a goddamn thing since, like, one mouthful of stale bread last night!"

  When I moved to put another peapod into my mouth, Brona – whose grip was much stronger than I would have expected from someone so thin – grabbed my wrist and pried it out of my fingers, staring at me like I'd just keyed her new Camaro.

  "Don't do it again, Eltha," she warned, and I saw that she was not joking around. "You smile at me and I don't see what you think is funny. Who do you think planted these peas? You? Who saved the seeds all winter to sow, and then plowed the soil by hand? Was it you? You are a guest here. You would do best to act like it."

  I hung my head, chastened and embarrassed and not quite understanding what had come over me. I never would have gone straight to the fridge in a stranger's house and started eating – so why was I doing it with the peas?

  Because I was hungry. Not 'I ate a bowl of cereal for breakfast and then skipped lunch' hungry but properly, truly hungry, like I didn't recall ever having been before.

  "I'm sorry," I whispered. "I – I don't even know why –"

  "You were hungry," Brona shrugged, relaxing now that she saw I was no longer a danger to her peas. "I understand how it is – I am hungry, too. But we can't just gobble up all the peas, because then there won't be any for winter, will there? There won't be any to plant when the ground thaws – and what will the old people and the babies and the sick people eat if we –"

  "I know," I repeated, very quietly. "I'm sorry. I won't eat anymore."

  "I'll slap the smile off your face if you do," came the good-natured reply.

  So I picked peas with Brona. I picked peas for a very long time, until the sun on my bare shoulders and the back of my neck began to burn, and my back ached with all the bending down. And when I hobbled into the woods at the edge of the pea-patch to take a short rest in the shade, Brona walked over to me with that look of offense on her face again, and kicked me in the shin.

  "Don't!" I pleaded, almost ready to cry from hunger and heat and exhaustion. "Please, Brona – don't kick me –"

  She kicked me again. And that time, I did cry. Not from pain – the kick was not very hard – but from self-pity. Brona, hearing my sniffling, sat back on her haunches and started to laugh.

  She started to laugh.

  I looked up – tired, hungry and miserable – and saw that she didn't even have the decency to try to hide the fact that she was laughing at me, that something about the fact that I was suffering amused her to no end. And that suddenly made me very, very angry.

  I leapt up and flew at her, intending to deliver a slap like the one she'd given me. "Fuck you!" I yelled. "Fuck! You! I come out here to help you pick peas – I do you a favor! – and you laugh at me because I'm hungry?!"

  And then, as if it were the easiest thing in the world for her – and maybe it was – Brona blocked my attack and flipped me over onto the ground, pinning me down with one arm across my throat. It knocked the wind right out of me, and I started spluttering and coughing trying to turn my head away as she got right into my face.

  "A favor?" She hissed, just as angry as I was by then. "A favor? You think you have done me a favor? What will you eat tonight, you spoiled bint, if not the peas I ALLOWED you to pick alongside me this morn?!"

  "Half the peas," I wheezed pedantically, because Brona's arm was still heavy on my throat. "You said I could only keep half!"

  "Yes," she replied, her eyes flashing. "Half the peas. How is it you do me a favor again, girl? You do yourself a favor, not me!"

  I reached up and tried to free myself from her grip, clawing at her arm uselessly and kicking out with my legs. It didn't work. If anything it just seemed to amuse her further.

  "You're surprisingly weak," she commented as I struggled, raising one eyebrow at me as if I were a decidedly curious specimen for her personal study. "You should have seen yourself limping off into the shade after not even a quarter-day of picking peas. I should think you a king's daughter with that skin and that aversion to hard work, but no king's daughter would be accompanying a savage Northman on a journey to –"

  And then, suddenl
y, the entire weight of Brona's body on top of mine eased and I watched, dumbfounded, as she seemed to float away.

  But she wasn't floating – she was being lifted. Someone was lifting her. Magnus.

  "Get off her," he ordered, taking Brona by the tunic at the back of her neck. "Is this how the Angles treat the wife of the man who saved –"

  "She's not your wife!" Brona squeaked, paddling her legs in the air so it was now my turn to smile smugly at her struggles. "Everyone knows it, Northman! Everyone –"

  Magnus jerked her back roughly and she smartly decided it was best to stop talking. And then, without letting go of my tormenter, he turned to me.

  "What's going on here, then?" He asked, in a tone I did not much care for. "Why do I find you two rolling around in the peas like a couple of children?"

  "She kicked me," I replied stiffly. "Not that I have to explain myself to you."

  Brona's eyes widened and she looked up at Magnus, as if to see what punishment he was about to deliver to me for – for what? And when no punishment came she tried to use my tone to score a point with the Northman.

  "See?" She said to him. "Do you see how she is? I kicked her because she went into the shade to rest while I continued to work picking the peas. And then she had the nerve to tell me that she was doing me a favor! As if I forced her to come with me and pick peas for her own supper!"

  And to my chagrin, Magnus nodded. "Aye," he said. "She's difficult, to be sure. And lazy."

  "Lazy?" I repeated, blinking, unsure I'd heard him correctly. "LAZY?! HOW DO YOU EVEN –"

  "Keep your voice down," Magnus admonished. "Or the Angles will come to see what's going on. Is it true you went to the shade to rest while your companion picked peas?"

  "Yes!" I spat angrily. "It's hot as hell out here, Magnus! If you'd been out here all morning –"

  "I was out all morning," he replied simply. "The lord's men needed some help carrying rocks to repair a section of the wall. You speak as if it was only you working in the sun when in fact it is everyone around you. And only you seem to feel entitled to take rests like some kind of –"