by Joanna Bell
"I'll do it," I promised, not yet sure what 'it' was but too entranced by the promise of more gold to imagine there was anything I wouldn't do. "Just tell me what you need me to do, Jarl."
What Asger's father needed me to do was kidnap a baby. What he instructed me to do before that was keep watch on his other son – Magnus – and the woman he was with. He did not think it likely they would stay in Haesting, but if they did, I was to observe the son, and any woman he seemed to be with, and wait for signs of pregnancy. In the event of a baby being born I was to see to it that I was there at the birth, and then to take the child away – to pretend illness or perhaps even death to the parents.
The Jarl said he would send a small ship twice a year, with a small crew of two or three men to meet me in the early spring and the late autumn on the beach where I had met Asger, and that I was to report all I had learned to the men who would be on the ship. He also said, because he knew what his son and I had been doing together, that if I had a baby in my own belly he would bring me and my entire family back to the North with him if I wished, to live as highers.
I didn't quite believe him about the last part, because as avaricious and stupid as I was at that age, even I could see that the Jarl's interest was in any grandchildren he might get his hands on, to carry on his legacy. It was not in Angle peasant girls. If I had Asger's baby, the Jarl had no reason to look after me or my family once he had his hands on the child.
Not that I had a baby in my own belly, which became clear soon after the Jarl left and my blood returned.
What I did have was a gold wolf's head for a trinket, and the promise of much more gold where that came from. I began to travel to the Haesting estate with my aunt Wenda when she would visit to tend to the sick or deliver a baby. It was not suspicious, because it was known that I was probably to be the healer after her.
The Northman Magnus married the foreigner, and they lost a pregnancy. I reported that to the Northmen who came in a small ship to the bay, as the Jarl had said they would, always in the early spring, often before the thaw had even started, and then again late in the autumn. I also reported that the couple had taken on another woman's baby as their own, but the Jarl was interested only in his own blood.
As the winters passed, the ship started to come once a year, rather than twice. And then there was one year when it did not come at all, in any season. But the year that Eltha's belly began to grow, and I came to realize that it was indeed, after all those years, another pregnancy, they turned up on time and I gave them the news. Within two moons they were back, with a gold ring for me to keep hidden and renewed promises of more.
So I did as the Jarl had asked, so many winters before. I took the baby, who was born alive – but barely – and whisked him away to the beach, where a small contingent of Northmen waited near the camp they had made in the woods. And when I handed the little bundle over, I was given a heavy sack in return, filled with gold as promised.
The child will not live, I told myself as I walked back to the estate to prepare an empty grave for its parents to visit. It does matter that you gave him to the Northmen, the only difference is in which grave will contain him. His parent's hearts would be broken if you had done what you did, or not.
After the deed was done and a moon or two had passed, I truly did not think too much of it anymore. And when I did it was only to remind myself that it wasn't often that a mother labored that long and lived – and it was almost unheard of that both the mother and the child lived. Besides, Magnus the Northman had killed his own brother. It was right that he should lose his son for such a crime. That is what I told myself.
I used some of the gold to pay masons to build a cottage with stone foundations, and a stone courtyard like that of the Northman and his wife. When that was done, I paid a man to travel south, to Colchester, and purchase a gown of blue colored silk for me. And then my husband and I took on two men, trained with swords and bows, to be in our service and to provide us with protections now that we had become people who owned things that were worth protecting.
I did not think I would have reason again to think of the Northern Jarl, or the baby that came so many years later and the gold he was willing to trade for it.
But as it happened, there was something inside me, some instinct or goodness, that I had not anticipated. And when news came that Magnus was gravely wounded, and soon to die, I found myself seized by a sudden urge to find him and confess my crime.
Chapter Twenty-One
Heather
The final disaster, in the trilogy of disasters that marked my life, came when the Northmen extended their raids further north than they had for years. I woke in the night to find myself alone in bed and the sound of horses hooves in the distance.
"Mag–"
"Shhhh!"
He did not need to shush me again. We knew each other as well as ourselves by then, and I had heard something in his tone that told me he was serious.
"The Northmen," he whispered a second later. "They come in the night, Heather."
At once, I remembered that we had plans to move within the walls of Haesting the next day – only hours away – and then found myself distracted by the sound of a woman's scream, and then men shouting, and the metallic sound of swords clashing.
"They attack Ceoldor and his family!" Magnus whispered, turning to me. "Heather! You must go – out the back, through the pig gate. Go to western gate. I will join you in –"
Another scream ran out, closer then, and I was almost sure it was Ceoldor.
"No!" I whispered back, as my heart pounded in my chest. "Magnus – come with me – why would you –"
"Go now! Girl, I will meet you there. There are many of them, and I need to help –"
"Please come with me," I begged, because something about that night felt foreboding. "Magnus, please –"
And then I found myself hauled out of bed and shoved towards back door to the cottage. "GO! NOW!"
I went. As the sounds of hooves approached the courtyard, and my husband drew his sword, I went. I ran out past the pigsty and, as he had told me to do, around the back of the estate to the smaller western gate, rather than the main northern one.
Within the walls, the men were already preparing to defend Haesting. I found myself ushered into the same small underground room as I had been all those years ago, when Magnus' father and brother attacked. All around me the women and children and old men of the estate crowded anxiously together, asking each other if they had seen the attackers, and how many in number they had been.
The battle lasted many hours, and when we were allowed out the day was almost past. I emerged into daylight, and a scene of bloody chaos. Bodies lay everywhere, Northmen and Angles, and the air stank of death. It was Lord Eldred himself, his fine leathers soaked with blood, who approached me first.
"Eltha. You must –"
"Lord Eldred!" I exclaimed, horrified to see the lord of Haesting himself in such a terrible condition. "Lord – have you seen Magnus? Where is –"
"He is in the hall, tended by the healers. You must go to him, Eltha. You –"
I did not hear what else it was that Lord Eldred said, because I was running towards the hall, trying to reassure myself in a panic that at least he was alive. 'He is in the hall, tended by the healers.' Healers do not tend to dead men. So my husband was alive. But wounded, perhaps? It couldn't be badly. He was the best swordsman in Haesting, so it was not possible that he could be badly wounded. It was not possible.
When I saw him, I also saw at once that I was wrong. It was possible for Magnus to be badly wounded, and that he was. A gash ran almost the full way from his shoulder to his elbow, so deep I could see the white flash of bone in its depths. I fell to my knees at his side, screaming at one of the young healer's apprentices to being the clean bandages from my cottage before touching my husband.
"Heather?"
"Yes," I replied, unable to control the emotion rising in my throat. "Yes, my love. Do you – do you n
ot see me? I am right here. Right here beside you!"
Magnus turned his head, his eyes open, towards me. But he did not see. It was bad. It did not take a healer to see how bad it was. His gums, when I lifted his lips, were pale with blood loss, and the straw underneath him was soaked red.
"I love you," I cried, because I thought he was going to die right that moment, in front of me. "I love you! Magnus – why didn't you come with me when –"
"Because they were upon us," he whispered, his breathing labored. "And because it is my job to keep you alive. I held them back long enough for you to get within the walls, did I not? Are you hurt?"
"No," I replied, as warm tears streamed down my cheeks. "No I'm not hurt. But what worth is my life if I am without you, Magnus? What –" I broke down again.
"What worth," he repeated weakly. "What worth? Girl, your life is worth a thousand of my own. And a thousand times I would give mine for yours."
When it became clear that Magnus was not going to die right that minute, I asked Ora, who was in attendance with all the younger healers, because the hall was filled with wounded men, if I might have time to return to my cottage and fetch the bottle of strong alcohol I had brewed from sneeps, to use as a disinfectant.
The cottage was destroyed – all the cottages outside the walls were destroyed. The parts that could be burned were burned, and the stone walls had been smashed to pieces. The pigs lay dead in their sties. But the sneep alcohol was intact, still snug at the bottom of a wooden chest that sat in the corner of what had once been my home. I grabbed it, along with a pile of clean bandages, and ran back to the estate, even as part of my mind was accepting, by then, that no amount of alcohol or bandages were going to be enough to keep a wound so deep from festering.
And as it was, there was no time for it to fester. I found Ora bent over my husband, whispering something in his ear, and then I watched as his eyes rolled back in his head.
"Come," Ora said, laying a hand on my shoulder. "There are men we can still save, Eltha. Your husband is lost. Come and help –"
"Get away from me!" I screeched, slapping her hand away and desperately pressing my fingers to Magnus' neck, feeling for a pulse. And there it was, so weak it was almost imperceptible. I crouched over him, resting my head on his chest, weeping.
"Please don't leave me," I whispered. "Please, Magnus. I don't know how to live without you. I don't - I don't know what to do without you. Please, please."
It went on like that for hours, a woman whose hair was streaked with gray and whose hands had lost the suppleness of youth bent over her dying husband, imploring him not to leave her alone in the world, her heart as panicked and lost as that of a rabbit before the hunter deals the final blow.
And then he woke, just before sunset, and I felt his hand tighten around mine.
"Magnus!" I whispered, looking up, smiling even as I knew it was goodbye.
"You smile," he whispered, his voice so low I could barely hear it. "Such a beautiful smile, my love. That smile has been the light of my life, do you know it?"
"Yes," I nodded, choking with emotion. "Yes, yes."
"It is right that you smile. It is not many who have a love like ours. Even when you put me in the ground, you will still have our love. Until the day I see you again, you will have it."
A cold electricity seized my limbs, a certain knowledge that the moment was upon us, the moment I suppose I had always known would come, but had hoped it would not be so soon.
"Magnus," I wept. "Magnus, please don't –"
"Listen. Listen, my love. Our son – our son –"
He broke off, and a horrible choking sound came from his throat.
"Our son will be there, too," I told him. "And Eidyth. We will all be –"
"Our son –"
He was trying to say something, but the words would not come. All of my attention was on him, and being with him, and making sure he knew, as he went to the next world, that he was loved.
"The healer – Ora –"
"Shhh," I said, stroking his hair off his still-handsome face, so I could kiss his cheeks. "Shhh, my love. I'm here. I'm –"
"He lives. Our son lives. The healer took him. That night, that night –"
I drew back, far enough to look into Magnus' eyes. "What?" I asked, unsure if I'd heard him correctly. "What did you say? Our son lives? No, my love. He does not live, not in this world. He –"
"Heather!"
The last word my husband spoke was my name. His eyes widened as he spoke it, and his grip tightened, and then, suddenly, he was gone. He was gone and the world changed in an instant from a place of love and familiarity, of places and events I cared about, to one of distance, as if death had placed me on an island, and all who I could see and hear were on a far shore.
I did not think of much, including his last words, for three moons or more. Haesting was in disarray, and the broken down estate, with its stores looted and burned, resembled nothing so much as my own heart. I dreamed of Magnus almost every night, horrible dreams where I suddenly walked in on him as a young man, sitting around a table with a wife and a family I didn't recognize, or found him at an estate just a little further up the coast, with a look on his face when he saw me like I was a stranger to him. I always woke from those dreams with the thought that perhaps he wasn't dead, perhaps he was just somewhere else, another estate or village. And then, after having that thought for a few minutes, it would dissipate and once again I would come to know that he gone.
Sometimes I tried to comfort myself with the knowledge that nothing mattered anymore. It didn't matter that our cottage was torn down and its straw roof burned, or our pigs killed and our cows set loose. It didn't matter that I had nothing except my husband's dagger, because the Northmen stole his sword and I buried him with the one he had given me at our wedding. I wore the gold dagger strapped to my thigh and wrapped in rags so no one would know what it was and think to steal it. Nothing mattered without Magnus. All I was doing after he left me was waiting to die. So if the Northmen returned and took me, or the Mercians thought to do the same, and make me a slave, it was of no consequence.
I did ask Ora, the healer, what she thought of Magnus' pronouncement that our son had somehow lived. I still remembered that cry on the night of his birth, the one everyone was adamant my mind had conjured from nothing. She would not meet my eyes when she answered that my husband had been near death, that his thoughts were a mess, that he did not know what he said.
"The other things he said made sense, though," I replied, as the healer fussed with a small tub of herbed tallow, opening and closing it over and over.
"What would you have me say?" She asked finally. "How many years ago did the child come into the world? He did not live, Eltha – it should be obvious to you by now. And even if it's not, what does it matter?"
She was right about the last part. Even if my husband's last words were true – and how could they be? – what did it matter? Even if somehow our son lived, it seemed certain that he lived somewhere else, with other people he thought were his parents.
No, it was not possible. He was gone, as Magnus was gone, as Eidyth was gone. And it was in my heart I carried their memories, until the day would come when I, too, would pass into the next life.
I did not weep so much after Magnus' death as I had after Eidyth's, or our son's. It was not because I loved him any less. Indeed, I loved him so much that when he went, a part of my heart went with him, so I knew – or I thought I knew – that I would never again love anyone as I had my husband or my lost children. Or perhaps it was the part that produced tears? Perhaps my lack of lachrymosity was that I had been given a finite amount of tears in life, and by then they had all been spent on my heartbreaks? All I knew is that when my husband left the world, I no longer had anything to hold onto. I was adrift.
When the Northmen returned, not a year after the first new raid on Haesting, they succeeded in taking the estate. Lord Eldred fled with his daughters and their families, and a
few swordsmen, and I never saw him again. Many were killed. I was almost killed, until one of the Angles saved me by telling the Northmen of my healing skills.
For a time, I traveled with them. At first it was with their raiding party, which was all men. Later, perhaps a year, perhaps two, more of them arrived from the North, and with them came women and children and men who were not warriors. I then became attached to the latter group, an older Angle woman with no husband or children, but enough skills with tending to wounds to make me worth more than the effort to swing a sword and take off my head.
Instead of lords, the Northmen had Jarls – what Magnus' brother would have been had Magnus not killed him. The first Jarl I traveled with was cruel, and took great joy in killing and destruction. The second, who brought with him the women and children from his homeland, was not as bad. I say 'not as bad' – but I was little more than a slave. They did not give me, or those like me, enough to eat, or thick enough blankets to keep warm at night. And without adequate food, I found myself weak and sick, always coughing, always shivering in the night. Often I would find myself sleeping with the hounds, because the animals at least offered some warmth.
It was with the second Jarl – Tor – that I expected to die. I became so enmeshed with his people that he brought me back to the North with him when they returned, and I lived in a little village next to the sea and acted as the healer for the people. It was a strange thing, at first, to be among Magnus' people, and in his homeland, but after asking a few of the villagers if they knew of him, or his father, and receiving only blank stares in return, I gave up. Wherever Magnus had come from, it was not the same part of the North that I went with Jarl Tor.
It seemed a year, perhaps two or three, when we returned to the Kingdom of the East Angles. I had lost track of time by then, so the summers all blurred into one summer, and the winters all into one winter. I would not even describe myself as unhappy, because unhappy seems to indicate the presence of emotion. After Magnus died, and after it had sunk in that he was not coming back no matter how fervently I wished for it, I seemed to just stop feeling. Even if my stomach ached with hunger, I could take bread if it was offered, or go without, and feel the same about either outcome. If some of the other low people tried to befriend me, or ask me about my life, I would answer them with brief, flat answers that let them know I was not interested in a connection.
