Magnus

by Joanna Bell

  "Why are you asking me about this?" She responded, looking into her cup and not at me.

  I took her hand, then, and clasped it in mine. "Why do you think? Because I don't wish you to be lonely, still. Are you? Do you miss your family? Is it enough to have me, and this little dwelling?"

  I could tell from the way she turned her body in the chair that Heather had not expected to have a serious conversation that afternoon. Still, I had to know.

  "I don't ask you these things to make you unhappy," I continued, when she did not answer right away. "I only ask them because it has become clear to me over the past season that nothing matters to me as much as you. If you are still lonely, then nothing I've done has been good enough. If you are still lonely, then –"

  "I'm not lonely."

  I narrowed my eyes, trying to figure out if she was being truthful or just trying to make me stop asking. She must have seen that I was skeptical, because she repeated herself.

  "I'm not lonely, Magnus. I'm a little sad, because I lost our baby. I am not as sad as I was, but I am still sad. But I'm not lonely. It's funny, isn't it?"

  "What's funny?"

  "It's funny that I used to live with so many other people. Not just my parents, but everyone. So many people everywhere, you couldn't get away from them if you tried. All those people and I was lonely. And now, I have one person. I have the Angles, too, but you know what I mean. I have you. And I am not lonely with you, if that's what you're worried about."

  The healer had warned that Heather might go through a period of weakness after the baby was lost. She warned that some women never recover from it. But it didn't happen. I looked across the table at her in the warmth of the afternoon, at her hair the color of the chestnuts that fell from the tree behind our dwelling and her eyes the color of the sea on a cloudy day and I saw that she still glowed with health. Even in the winter when the food ran low and we went to bed with our bellies rumbling, she had never lost that sparkle in her eyes.

  "Why are you looking at me like that?" She asked. "What's gotten into you?"

  "I was just thinking of the place you come from," I told her. "A place where you were never hungry. You have the look about you of a King's daughter, you know – many in Haesting say it. The look of someone who was not deprived of food or warmth as a child. And yet you speak of it as if you don't miss it."

  "I don't. Not really. Perhaps I would, if it weren't for you?"

  "I spoke to Lord Eldred a few days ago. I told him we would stay. Not for another moon, or two moons, or three, but for good. If you disagree you can tell me why but I was just thinking that there is no longer any reason for me to go anywhere. There's no reason to go across the sea to the Kingdom of the Franks, or back to the North."

  Heather hadn't taken her eyes off me. And when I said that there was no longer any reason for me to leave, I saw that they began to glimmer.

  "The North isn't my home anymore," I continued. "You are my home. Wherever you are is home. So if you don't want to stay here, then –"

  "I do!" She replied, her voice breaking as she got up from the table and came to me, curling herself into my lap and resting her head in the spot under my chin, which seemed to have been made solely for that purpose. "I do want to stay here, Magnus! I want – I want to stay with you. It's like you said – home isn't about a place anymore. Not for me, either. Home is just you now. Home is a person."

  I wrapped my arms around her, holding her against me. "And if you'll have me," I said, leaning down to kiss the top of her head. "We'll be married in Lord Eldred's hall."

  There was a silence after I said that, one that lasted too long for my comfort. And then she turned her face up to me, as if trying to work out if she'd heard me correctly.

  "Did you just propose?" She asked, smiling and wiping a tear off one creamy cheek. "Magnus, did you just casually propose to me as if you were asking me to go picking oysters? Did you just ask me to – to marry you?!"

  "Yes..." I replied, perplexed. "Is it – is that not how it's done where you come from? In the North my father would have gone to meet your father, and there would have been a negotiation period while our families worked out the terms of the marriage. But as neither of us have any family here, I did not know how to ask. And I notice, Heather, that even as you dance around me like a madwoman, that you have still not given me an –"

  "YES!"

  "Yes? Is it what you –"

  "Yes!" She cried again, her laughter filling my ears. "Yes, Magnus. Yes, yes, yes, yessss!"

  I stood up and put my hands on our table, exhaling and more relieved than I thought I would be. Heather noticed at once and came back to me, putting her hand on my back and looking suddenly concerned – although the smile still played at the corners of her mouth.

  "What?" She asked. "Did you think I would say no? I only hesitated because I couldn't believe you were really asking. We, uh – that's not how people propose where I come from."

  "Isn't it?" I replied. "Have I done it all wrong, girl? How would it be done in the United States of America?"

  She smiled. She always smiled when I named her homeland. And then she knelt on one knee at my feet and looked up at me. "Well," she began, "first you would get down on one knee."

  "On one knee? Not two?"

  "No, it has to be one."

  "Why?"

  "I have no idea," she giggled. "Stop asking questions. OK. So. You get down on one knee. And then you, uh, you offer me a diamond ring. But wait! First you have to give a speech about how much you love me and how wonderful I am."

  "Is it so?" I teased. "Only the man must give a speech on the beauty and exceptional character of the woman? What if I want to hear the same said of me? What if I want a jeweled ring, girl?"

  Heather reached up and caressed my cheek. "It's not how it's done – but I suppose if you want to hear that you're wonderful and strong and sexy and smart and literally everything I could ever have dreamed of in a man I could say that."

  She smiled, but I could see that she spoke the truth, even as her manner was playful. I pulled her up onto my lap and kissed her.

  "Do you feel disappointed, girl, that I did not give you a ring? There is sometimes an exchange of rings at the marriage ceremony itself, and there are certain customs that only a married woman can take part in. There is a certain way of braiding the hair, for example, that means a Northwoman is married, and a style of golden arm band that is, again, the mark of a married woman. I suppose we will both find out what the Angles' customs are."

  "I'm not disappointed," she whispered. "You are the least disappointing person I have ever met in my life, Magnus. The only thing I'm afraid of is – is –"

  It took me a few seconds, in my happiness over Heather's agreeing to marry me, to see that she was crying. I immediately wiped the tears from her cheeks and took her shoulders in my hands, demanding to know what it was she was afraid of.

  "I'm afraid of disappointing you," she answered, very quietly. "I'm afraid I won't be able to have any children. The healer said sometimes it happens after a woman loses her baby – she said sometimes she can't have any more. And it's been how long? We – Magnus, we do it all the time! Why am I not pregnant again? Why –"

  "Heather!" I spoke loudly and tightened my grip on her, because she had begun to speak with great haste and her words were running into one another. "Heather, girl, look at me!"

  She looked at me, and at once I saw in her eyes that what she spoke of was something she had been carrying with her since the baby had been lost. Why had I not thought of it?

  "Voss," I swore, balling my hand into a fist and slamming it down on the table. "Voss, girl, I did not see that you carried this burden! I see it now, in your eyes. How could I have missed that? How could I not have know that a woman who loses her child will worry about losing more children? I'm a dull-wit – and I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. It's my task to keep you from your worries – I will work harder at it. Please don't worry – look at yourself, you are healthier
than any of the girls on the estate, and you are still young. There will be another child. There will be many children for you – for us."

  "Will there?" She asked, her voice shaking slightly.

  "Yes," I answered at once.

  If only I had known, in my youthful naiveté – for I was still youthful, and naive, when it came to the things I spoke of that day – that one must never make certain pronouncements about matters that are best left to the Gods.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Heather

  Until Magnus proposed, in his sweetly unadorned Northern way, I truly had not even considered that a man – especially a man like him – would one day want to marry me. To marry me. Heather Renner, the screw-up. The bad girl. The dummy who wore too much eye make-up and would rather go to concerts than study. Heather Renner, who was so awful even her own mother didn't like her.

  Those ways of thinking about myself were fading. Their power, once so great they had almost paralyzed me, began to wane the day I met Magnus the Northman, who didn't seem to think of me as a dummy or a screw-up at all. I respected him. I admired him – more than I had ever respected or admired anyone in my life. And so his obvious love for me finally helped to do away with all of the baggage my mother had spent my life trying to saddle me with. My love for him was as bright and intense as mid-afternoon sunshine. It made me smile to see him walk into a room, and to witness the respect with which the Angles – including Lord Eldred – treated him.

  We married in the lord's hall in what I thought might have been early July – neither the Angles nor Magnus called the months by the names I knew. A priest was sent for, although he was like no priest I had ever seen, and the Gods and Goddesses he invoked when he called them to attend our ceremony were not any that I was familiar with.

  "You two are almost bound," he intoned in the hall, as we stood in front of him after vowing to always stay true to and support each other, no matter the circumstances of life. "For it to be done, there must be the giving of the swords."

  I did not quite know what the 'giving of the swords' was. Brona had explained, and Lord Eldred had sent for a sword to be made especially for me, by the King's own smiths. During the ceremony it was held by a young Angle boy, who waited for the moment to bring it forward. It was Magnus' turn first, though.

  He turned to face me and held his blade balanced across his two open hands. "My ancestral sword is yours, Heather. I give it to you to keep, until such time that our sons may keep and use it."

  The priest nodded to me, then, and I saw that the Angles were looking at me expectantly. I reached out and took the hilt in my hand, and then both hands as Magnus whispered to me that it was heavy. It was heavy. So heavy my almost-husband had to reach out quickly and stop the point from hitting the floor.

  And then it was my turn. The Angle child stepped forward, dragging the weapon, which was thankfully held safely in a sheath, to me. And when I could not pick it up, I simply held it by the hilt and faced Magnus to say my words.

  A wave of shyness came over me before I began to speak – the hall was crowded with people – and when I started my voice was hoarse. I coughed and looked up into my Northman's eyes, which always served to calm me, and then I started again:

  "You have given me your ancestral sword. Now you must have a new blade. With this sword, keep safe our home and family."

  When he took the new sword from my hands, lifting it with such ease that I could almost hear the impressed murmur pass among the watching Angles, it was one of the proudest moments of my life. I watched him pull the shining blade from its sheath, and his eyes run over the jewels – red garnets, deep honey-toned amber and, in the very center, a single pearl, which Lord Eldred had told me was an extremely rare and special thing.

  "You honor me," Magnus said, his eyes wide at the beauty of the sword and the import of the moment. "There will be nothing greater in my life than to call you wife, Heather."

  After the swords, we exchanged rings – simple gold bands – and then an ornately carved wooden key was presented to me by Magnus, as a symbol of my new authority over our household and all the goods within it. We had joked, before the ceremony, that we did not yet have a dwelling grand enough to require keys – and that giving me authority over the food stores was likely to see it all eaten by rats within the next moon. But in Lord Eldred's hall, the moment was not light. It was not somber, either, but there was a seriousness to it, an acknowledgment of the weight of what was happening – two people joining their lives forever.

  When the key was safely tied to the thin leather belt that I wore around my waist, over my bride's tunic, the priest bid Magnus and I to kiss each other, to make it official. And when my new husband stepped forward, took my face in his hands and bent to kiss my mouth, a cheer rose up from the Angles – many of whom we now called friends – and two paths, that had been running in parallel for some time, finally merged into one.

  Before the marriage ceremony, the Angles had split themselves into two halves, roughly based on Brona's blood family on one side and Bradwin's on the other. Each stood in for the families that Magnus and I did not have present, and each made the day an occasion for the entirety of the Haesting estate, rather than just for Magnus and I.

  When the ceremony was over, the biggest feast that had been held on the estate since I'd arrived there with a Northman I barely knew took place in Lord Eldred's hall. Huge clay casks of mead were brought up from his personal stores, and the Angle children fought each other over honeycakes while the adults' found their cheeks growing redder with mead and laughter and the warmth of family.

  Because the Angles were family by then. Not in a forced or ostentatious way – in fact it was not their custom to speak of such things – but simply in the way of it being true in their hearts – and mine. Magnus knew what it was to have family, and community. He knew what it was to be – well, to be known. To belong to a group who truly knows and loves you. I, having never known such a thing, reveled in even the smallest pleasures of being close to others. To walk to the estate from our dwelling was to greet – and be greeted by – as many people as you passed on the path. Each smiled warmly at the sight of me, and called me Eltha, and asked after little matters – how was the pea crop doing? did we need help to clear the thickly tangled roots from the field where we intended to plant oats? would we be at the estate that night to drink ale and sing songs?

  And so the wedding was not just the making official of my bond to Magnus, it was the making official of our bond to the Haesting estate, and to the Angles themselves. Late on the night, when new levels of boisterousness had been reached, I suddenly sensed a growing tension in the room.

  Magnus, who was almost as unfamiliar with the marriage rituals of the Angles as I was, shrugged when I asked him what was going on. And then his friend Eadwin came over to bend down and let us know that the bride-race was about to commence.

  "The – the bride what?" Magnus asked, grinning drunkenly because he had had quite a lot of ale.

  "I told you of it!" Eadwin laughed, before Bradwin joined him, and I looked around to see that almost everyone had stood up, and was obviously waiting for some kind of signal. "We race to your cottage now, the two parties and the new husband and wife – you must get there before anyone else, Magnus, or you will lose the right to carry your own bride over the –"

  It was at that moment that my new husband appeared to remember what it was his friends spoke of, because he suddenly put his cup back down on the table, turned on his heel and ran out of Lord Eldred's hall at great speed. And after him went the Angles – shouting and whooping and racing out into the night as I looked up at Eadwin.

  "Well?" He said to me. "Are you coming? It won't do for Magnus to have no bride to carry over the threshold."

  And so I ran, too. The path outside of the estate had been set with lit torches, all the way to our home, where I found the Angles crowded around the door trying to wrestle Magnus – who stood fast in the frame – away from it.


  "Ah!" A voice arose when I appeared, breathless with running and happiness. "The bride arrives! Magnus has won!"

  Our friends burst into song again as I walked carefully up the stone path, that Magnus and I had laid together, to the front door. And when I got there he scooped me into his arms and, to the sound of loud, singing, drunken Angles, carried me over the threshold and inside.

  When the door closed behind us, he set me gently on my feet and we looked into each other's eyes, smiling, glowing with joy.

  "I wonder, did I do it right?" Magnus asked, chuckling. "Eadwin and the Angles told me how to do it, to wait until you arrived and then take you in my arms through the door – but I do not remember if I was supposed to say some words or not."

  I snaked my arms around his waist and put my chin on his chest – one of my favorite things to do – and looked up into his eyes. "Perhaps we will find out tomorrow that we're not married, and we'll have to do it all again?"

  "As it is," my new husband bent to kiss my mouth. "I can think of far worse fates than marrying you again, my love. Perhaps we will not get it right the second time, either? Perhaps we will spend the rest of our lives getting married every day?"

  Already, I could feel under his leathers what he needed. We had not made love for a half moon before the ceremony – a full moon had been tried for, but neither of us were able to keep away from each other for so long. Still, a half moon was far more than we had gone since meeting, and even with the mead slackening my tongue and fuelling the Angles who still sang and danced outside our cottage, it was not enough to dull the flame that leapt up in my belly at feeling Magnus' arousal.

  "Haven't you had too much to drink?" I teased. "I thought I might get some sleep – I'm so tired."

  "Oh," he grinned, running his hands down my back and caressing my ass. "You thought you might get some sleep, did you?"

  How is it that two weeks can feel so long? When I pushed my fingers around the back of his neck – that smooth, strong neck, the close scent of which was better than any drug for me – and buried them in his hair, it was already enough to have me on fire, my skin tingling with anticipation.