Magnus

by Joanna Bell

  Roasted meat – venison – was served, along with a stew of sneeps, smoked pork and greens, and cup after cup of ale. The musicians played and the Angles sang songs which they kept stopping in the middle of to teach us the lyrics to, and it was just what we – what he – needed.

  When we had eaten so much our stomachs ached with it, Lord Eldred stood and held his hands in the air, quieting the hall and casting his eyes over his guests.

  "It's not many an estate in the Kingdom that can say they defended against a raiding party of Northmen," he said, after a hush had fallen. "Two winters ago the King's own party was attacked and the King barely escaped with his life. I fear we would be burying more of our own today if it were not for the Northman here, Magnus. He woke me in the night to warn of what was coming, and told us of their tactics. Without him, this would be a funeral feast."

  Under the table, I sought Magnus' hand and took it in my own. Beside me, he sat in silence, his eyes focused on the empty wooden bowl on the table in front of him.

  Lord Eldred continued. "Do not hang your head, Northman. I witnessed with my own eyes the events of last night. I saw him swing at you three times, I saw him slice open your arm. We all saw these things – and we saw your restraint, too. But what man would think it wrong to kill those who vow to kill our loved ones? What man would see fit to let him go, he who threatened the life of our woman, or our child? No man at all, Magnus. No man at all."

  The Angles began to beat their wooden cups against the tables then, just lightly, as Eldred spoke. And when the lord of Haesting told Magnus that he had done them such an act of benevolence that he would be welcome to stay on with them for the winter – and longer – as one of them, the banging of the cups became deafening.

  "And the woman, too," Eldred nodded at me. "Wife or not, you may keep her at your side. We make this offer in acknowledgement of the great favor you did us this last night, Northman. Without you, Haesting might have been lost. I might have been lost. Stay the winter within my walls."

  When Magnus finally lifted his head the banging of cups became frenzied, and some of the Angles who sat close to us reached over to slap him on the back and shout his name. And when it had died down enough, many minutes later, for a speaker to be heard, my Northman turned to Lord Eldred.

  "I am grateful for your kind offer, Lord. It has been our privilege to stay in Haesting with you and your people, and to help with the harvest. But I was not made to live under another, although I do not say this with any wish to cause you offense. I –"

  "I grant you leave to stay as a freeman," Lord Eldred replied, before Magnus could finish. "You will be given your freedom and not tasked with working to sustain my household or the estate itself. This is my humble gift to you, in return for your acts of loyalty and courage last night. We know what it must have been to face down your own people, and we honor it."

  I turned to Magnus, along with everyone else in the hall. And then their mouths all fell slightly open when he responded by turning to me and asking me what I thought of their lord's offer. It was not too often, I suspected, that women were asked their opinions on important matters on the Haesting estate.

  "What do you think?" He said, squeezing my hand in his. "In truth, girl, I have been in fear of the winter to come and how we will survive it without –"

  "I think we should stay," I smiled. "Lord Eldred has made us – made you – this offer. Your arm needs to heal. In truth I just want to stay with you. You know I don't know very much about living here, or how to do many things – although I'm learning. If you think it's best that we stay here at Haesting, then I think we should, too."

  "As it is," Magnus looked back up at Lord Eldred. "We will stay for the winter in Haesting."

  A cheer arose, and the cups were banged again as the musicians started once more to play. Little honey-soaked cakes were brought in on trays and set in front of each guest and even Magnus' eyes widened at the sight of them.

  "What are they?" I asked, picking mine up and examining it – it was small, and rather hard for a cake. Almost like a half cake, half biscuit hybrid.

  "I do not know their name, girl. I only know that honey is almost more precious than gold – Lord Eldred does everyone at these tables a great honor."

  The honey-cake was sticky and sweet and delicious when I took a bite, only realizing as I chewed it that I had not tasted a single sweet thing since I came to the Kingdom of the East Angles. And after they were eaten, when I thought things might be about to wind down, more ale was poured, and the music continued to play and soon people were stepping away from the table to dance.

  Magnus and I stayed where we were, watching. It was not an occasion for dancing, not for us. And when we went back to our hut, swaying slightly from the ale, I remained awake long after he had dozed off, lying beside him on our straw bed and gently running my fingers down his cheek as he slept.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Magnus

  The next day, before Heather woke, Lord Eldred came to the little hut on the edge of his estate to speak to me. I emerged into the early autumn sunshine with my body and my heart aching, and stood blinking in front of him.

  "I do not wish to bring you more trouble in the midst of your grief," the lord started, "but duty compels me to speak to every capable man on the estate. About half of our grain stores burned last night, and the rest of the harvest is now of the utmost –"

  "Of course," I replied, understanding immediately. The harvest had been a bountiful one so far, but with half of the stores burned, it was now more important than ever to take the rest of the crops from the fields. Even if it could be managed, the estate still risked starvation. "I will join the men in the field, Lord. If I am to accept your hospitality for the winter, I must also do all I can to ensure that hospitality is well met."

  Lord Eldred did not reply right away, and on his face he wore a look of surprise.

  "What is it?" I asked.

  "I'm sorry," he replied, shaking his head. "Northman – Magnus – I'm sorry. It is just I have spent my whole life being told – and telling others – that the Northmen are savages, barely better than wolves, and completely uncivilized."

  I smiled. "It is the same for us. In the North we speak of the Angles living in the mud like pigs, and murdering each other over the merest of slights. You are not a young man, Lord Eldred – and I am not a sheltered man. I have seen enough of the world to know that these stories are just that – stories. In truth we are all the same, all we want is stew for our pots, warm blankets for our children and safety for our people."

  The lord of Haesting smiled knowingly, and then seemed to be about to leave before stopping and turning back.

  "Oh, and I brought you this. It is the dagger with which your brother cut your arm – he must have dropped it, and his men did not see it in the mud. I thought it should be yours."

  At once, Lord Eldred handed me the dagger – the same dagger my grandfather had given me all those many winters ago, after a trip to the busiest trading center in the North. I held it lightly in my hand, running my fingers over the jewels, so carefully inlaid that they sat flush with the gold that held them.

  "It's fine work," Eldred commented. "Very fine. One would have to travel a great distance to finds smiths capable of creating such a piece."

  "Aye," I nodded. "My grandfather brought it from a trading center as a gift for me. It was my dagger, before Asger stole it from me."

  "Then I am glad to return it to the rightful owner."

  I strapped the dagger to my outer thigh, under my leathers, because it was too precious to leave in the hut, and I did not want its presence to tempt thieves – especially with Heather often there on her own. And then I spent the day in the fields, where the harvest was winding down and the skies had thankfully seen fit to bless us with more sunshine.

  To spend the winter within the bosom of the Haesting estate was a better prospect by far than spending it on the move across the frozen landscape with Heather, but it was
not enough to put my worries to rest. Half of the grain stores were lost. Come spring, the Angles would be lucky not to have lost any of their own to hunger. How could I justify taking more from the mouths of their children?

  I was going to have to find food for us myself. I was going to have to claim my independence as a freeman – that is, a man who is not beholden to a lord on an estate, and one who does not have to give a portion of his crops and meat to that lord. And to do so would mean spending the winter outside the walls of the Haesting estate.

  I looked up at the sky as I took a short rest from drawing my scythe back and forth across the stalks of wheat. The weather was still favorable but it was going to be hard work. Hard work that could not be borne by myself alone – I was going to need Heather's help. But it seemed the only thing to do, if I did not want us to spend the cold moons to come beholden to Lord Eldred and his dwindling stocks.

  As it was, Heather seemed to be even more enthusiastic about the idea than I was, and after securing the lord's permission to build a small dwelling in the woods close to – but outside – the estate, we set to work.

  She knew nothing about building, or weaving the slender trunks of saplings between thicker posts in order to make a fence, or turning the earth over in preparation for planting. But once I explained a task to her, Heather was better than some of the men I had known at working hard. She was strong, for one thing, and her stamina was much improved in just the short time we had been with the Angles.

  And the Angles themselves were generous with their help. Even as they had their own tasks to attend to they helped us thatch our roof with straw, and gave us one of their spring pigs just as it was almost fattened for slaughter.

  I was almost glad of the work to be done. It left me very little time to spend pondering the sadnesses that had befallen me. Instead, I spent my days with the foreigner, working on our little home. When the winds cooled, it was the two of us together who mixed straw and mud and animal dung together and then spent days working it into the woven branches that made up the walls of our dwelling. It was to me she looked, laughing, when the mud-mix was so cold her fingers lost their nimbleness and I had to sit with her beside the fire until the feeling and dexterity came back to them. And it was to our bed I took her each night, until it felt that I knew each of her cries, each of her squirms and moans and twitches, as well as the back of my own hand.

  Without her, a hard winter would have been harder. When the snows blew in after the Yule period and the food dwindled, we had each other. Without her to come home to, I may not have ventured so frequently out into the cold forest to hunt the rabbits Lord Eldred granted me the freedom to take. Without me to watch her back, she may not have spent so long gathering the little hard, red berries that the healer promised would keep our teeth from falling out of our heads until the spring vegetables grew.

  It was that time when the hope of the thaw is almost stronger than the reality of it, the last moment of winter's hold on the landscape, when I found myself awoken one night by the sound of whimpering.

  "What is it?" I asked, sitting up wide awake when I realized it was Heather. "What is it, girl? Did you dream of –"

  "Magnus –"

  But she did not dream. She reached down between her legs in the dim light from the fire and brought her hand up between our faces. Her fingers were dark with – what was it? It took me a moment to understand what I was seeing, and when I did, it was as if someone had torn my stomach right out of me. It was blood. Thick and wet and terrifying.

  "What –" I stuttered, my mind suddenly unable to process anything beyond panic. "What – Heather, what –"

  "I must have been pregnant," she said, in a tone as flat and bleak as I had ever heard her speak with. "Magnus, I must have been pregnant."

  I carried her to the healer in the middle of the night, wrapped in our stained bedding, and sat helplessly to the side as the woman confirmed that the bleeding was a lost pregnancy.

  "I didn't even know," Heather whispered.

  "It's not a rare thing," the healer told her gently. "I'll give you some herbs to boil in water for a tea, to help stop the bleeding. You must go back to bed, and you must stay there until the new moon. This is a time of great weakness for a woman, great vulnerability. You can get sicker if you try to do too much, if you do not take the time to heal."

  "But –"

  The healer turned to me. "You will stay at her side, Northman? You will make sure she does not leave her bed until the new moon?"

  I nodded, but I was in no fit state to take in information. Neither was Heather. When we got back to our dwelling we sat at the table in silence for a period of time, before I remembered that she was supposed to be lying down.

  "Who cares?" She asked, her voice suddenly bitter. "Who cares if I lie down or not? I lost the baby, didn't I? What else could happen?"

  "The healer said you were to take to bed until the new moon," I told her, reaching for her hand even as I felt I could offer no real help. "She said if you don't rest, you could get weaker. She said –"

  Heather looked up at me before I could finish, and the look in her eyes nearly broke my heart.

  "I was pregnant?" She whispered plaintively. "Magnus, I was pregnant. With your baby. We were going to have a baby. And now we're not?"

  I took her in my arms and brought her to lie beside me in bed when the tears started to spill down her cheeks. "It's as it is," I told her, brushing her hair off her face. "There will be another child, girl."

  Heather seemed lost after the loss of the child we hadn't even known about. She mourned the baby she had not had time to imagine. And I tended to her, and allowed her the room to do as she needed.

  Perhaps she was not the only one who was lost. That spring I felt our impermanence on the earth more deeply than I had ever felt it before. I felt the loss of my family, of my brother and my mother and father and my homeland. I watched the Angles going about their lives, and I watched Heather mourn and it crystallized, like a tree on the horizon as a fog lifts, that she needed something I was not providing.

  I needed it, too. We needed to put our roots down. We needed something solid. That night, I left Heather with Brona and went to see Lord Eldred to ask if we might stay on the Haesting estate. Not for another season, or another moon, but for good. I asked if we might become part of their settlement.

  "I had thought it already done," Lord Eldred told me as we sat across from each other at the high table. "I think everyone in Haesting thought it already done. Many say the estate would not even be here any longer were it not for you and your help on the night of the raid. It will be good for you – and good for the girl, Heather. How is she?"

  I reached down to scratch the ears of a dog who had appeared beside my knee, and sighed. "I don't know. There is so much to do, and she speaks of the child infrequently now. I still see her sometimes, when she does not know I do, staring off at something I cannot see. I know she thinks of the baby then."

  "You must give her another baby."

  "Aye. But before that I must give her a home. A real home, not somewhere temporary, before we leave for another land. And I must give her the title of wife, so she knows that I will only leave her when death takes me."

  A servant brought a flagon of ale and placed it on the table. Lord Eldred poured each of us a cup and we sat quietly for a short while, drinking.

  "Yes," he said eventually. "Marry her. Give her a child. If you care for her happiness, you will do these things."

  "All I care for is her happiness," I replied. "More than anything else – more than my own."

  "You shall take your marriage oaths here, in my hall. Neither of you have any family nearby, and so we will be your family, Magnus. I get ahead of myself, don't I? Before any other plans are made, you must first ask the girl if she wishes to be your wife."

  I spent the next few days, as we worked to tend our garden and keep our house, observing Heather. I thought I was being subtle about it, too, until she turned t
o me one afternoon while she plucked slugs from the mud, before they could get to our peas and greens, and asked if I had a new hobby.

  "A what?" I asked, because by that time we were used to each other coming out with words the other had never heard. "A hobby?"

  "Yes," she smiled – Gods, what a relief to see her smiling – "a hobby. It's like a pastime, something to do that isn't work. You have seen how Bradwin carves those little animal figurines from wood after dinner? That's a hobby."

  "Ah," I replied, still not sure what she was talking about.

  "Well do you?" She pressed me. "Have a new hobby? Is watching me your new hobby?"

  I closed my eyes and laughed. "I thought you hadn't noticed."

  "I notice everything, Magnus."

  "That you do."

  She came to me across the garden plot, which I had started to enclose with a dry-stone wall, and pulled the brim of her straw hat down over her eyes to block the sun. And then she kissed me on the cheek and grinned.

  "So what's going on? Why are you hovering?"

  "I have just been thinking," I told her, "of something you said to me before the winter."

  "And what was it I said? Come inside with me, I need to get something to drink."

  I followed her into our dwelling. "You said you were lonely. You said you had always been lonely."

  Heather looked up at me as she held the ladle that we used to scoop ale out of the cask, and I could not read the look in her eyes. "I did say that," she replied, pouring the ale into a cup. "Do you want one?"

  I shook my head. "And do you feel it still?" I asked, sitting down at our table and watching her drink the ale with the gusto of a thirsty child.