Magnus

by Joanna Bell

  "When Thetford falls, the Kingdom of the East Angles will be ours in full," one man said, "as their King has already pledged his fealty."

  I asked them if they had, in their conquering of the coastal villages, come across a man by the name of Magnus, who was of the North but living with the Angles and his wife. They had not.

  When I rode inland, following the Great Road, I did not ride to find my mother and father, because I still had no idea of their whereabouts. I went inland to find the Jarls who took Thetford, because such was my restlessness that I found I could not stay in one place. There was as much chance of finding my parents in one place in the Kingdom as in any other. The way my grandmother told it, it sounded as if perhaps they had lived close to the sea, but in truth she did not mention how far the peasant girl had traveled with her little bundle – me – before handing it over to the Jarl's men. Perhaps it was a journey no longer than my own to the beach in Apvik – perhaps it was a day or more?

  I found Thetford in the hands of a band of Northern Jarls and their men. It was almost winter, and the place was busy with that half-panicked energy that always takes over during the autumn season, when the people worry about whether or not they have enough to see them through the cold to come.

  Just inside the gates, a great Jarl on a horse rode through behind me, with a deer carcass slung over the horse behind him and large retinue of men.

  "A visitor," he said when he saw me standing there beside my own horse, clearly without any idea of where to go or who to speak to. "A Northern visitor, if I interpret that style of leathers correctly. Who are you?"

  "I am Magnus," I replied, even though after four years the name still felt strange in my mouth, because I had chosen to stick with Asger whilst I still lived in Apvik, so as not to confuse people. "I – I am from Apvik, in the North. I will be Jarl come the next winter, but as it is I am too young."

  "A Jarl-to-be," the Jarl replied, smiling. "Have you come with a message? Is there word of further movement on the coasts? Do more men come behind us down the Great Road?"

  "I, uh," I started. "Yes, I think so. Not that I have been sent to tell you – it is just what I heard in the camp. They said you had come to take Thetford, and that after the winter, more would follow in your path."

  "But you were not sent to bring this news?"

  I shook my head. "No."

  "Then why are you here?"

  The Jarl was not being unfriendly. If anything he was being far kinder than he needed to be to a stranger who had just showed up at the gates of a freshly-conquered town. I could have been anyone. I could have been an Angle in disguise.

  "I – I am here – I am here because I look for someone," I replied, flustered. "And because I was bored on the coast. It is not my greatest amusement to burn the huts of peasants, Jarl."

  Something about that made the Jarl smile. "Aye," he said. "Nor is it mine. I am Eirik. You will surely understand that I cannot just leave you to wander the streets of Thetford on your own, not being sure of who you are yet – but I invite you to join us for supper. We will eat the stag I've killed, you can meet the other Jarls, and perhaps you can give a clearer description of your purpose in Thetford when you have a full belly?"

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Heather

  How can I describe what it is to come home after thirty-five years? What words can there be to tell what it is to find the place with two faces – one so familiar it makes you pinch yourself and wonder if you were ever truly away, and another so alien it makes you shake with how badly you want to flee back to the place where you spent those thirty-five years?

  Everything seemed big and loud and brightly colored in River Falls. From the first moment I emerged from the tree with Sophie, I could not keep my attention on one thing for more than a few seconds before another thing stole it away. The woods were the woods, as they had been. River Falls was River Falls, as it had been. On the very surface, things seemed not so different. The roads were full of cars – more cars, and strangely shaped, but cars, with wheels, and drivers who would honk and gesture impatiently at anyone they deemed to be taking a fraction of a second too long in making a turn. At the cabin in the woods where Sophie brought me, I found a refrigerator and an oven, and a bed to sleep on – all familiar things, things I remembered.

  But below the surface, River Falls was in truth so different I would not have been able to function were it not for Sophie – and her little daughter Ashley – who showed me the ways of the future. Yes, the cars still had four wheels and they still ran on the roads. But they spoke to you now, just like KITT in Knight Rider. And no one seemed to think it was worth commenting on! There were a lot of buttons in the future, a lot of beeps and chirps and trills, and a lot of flat, glossy surfaces. There was a button for everything. You didn't put a key into the lock to open a car door, you pressed a button. You didn't turn a knob to heat up the oven, you pressed a button. You didn't pay with cash or fill out a check when you paid for groceries, you pressed a series of soft plastic buttons and the money transferred itself, as if by magic, from a customer's bank account to the grocery store's. And as these buttons needed constant pressing, they also provided a strange, beeping soundtrack to life. I was surrounded by beeps, constantly whirling around at the sound of one, and then turning back at the sound of another.

  "You'll get used to it," Ashley reassured me. And she was right, in a way. I did start to get used to it. But only after months of tagging along behind Sophie like an invalid, having to learn how to live and function in the world almost as a small child has to.

  The Jarl Sophie had been with during her brief time in the past came through the tree after her, and I wasn't surprised. They were in love, and I knew – better than she did at the time – what love could make a man do. She was pre-occupied with her love, and her child, and I was just grateful to be included in her life, and introduced to the people in it.

  When Magnus' gold dagger sold at auction for an amount of money I found myself almost wholly unable to process, I understood that the final chapter of my life was written. It hadn't yet been lived, but I knew what it was to be. I thought I knew it, anyway. A house in River Falls, where I could be near Sophie's children – who became to me as important as the grandchildren I didn't have – and her mother, and her friends, and Sophie herself. Another house, in the woods, set on many private acres where I could retreat when all the flashing lights and chirps and distractions became too much – which was about once a week.

  Life is strange. If I had been asked, at twenty, who my closest friend would be at almost sixty, I would not have said a Viking Jarl. But Sophie's husband and I could not help but become close, as we were perhaps the only two people in existence who understood how truly bewildering the future was. Ivar would visit my acreage often, mostly when he, too, found himself overwhelmed, and we would forage for mushrooms together, or chop wood for the fire, or spend hours trying to recreate the pottages and stews we remembered from our past lives.

  A great Jarl and a second son's widow – an unlikely friendship. We would joke about it sometimes when we ate – often only by the light of candles, as we were in agreement, even after some time spent in its midst, that the future was far too brightly lit.

  "Served supper by a Jarl," I would chuckle when he placed a bowl of steaming chicken stew in front of me. "It's a wonder your hand knows the movements."

  "Shut up, woman," he would rib me affectionately. "It is not I who wrote the rules of this place."

  "And what do you think of them?" I asked one evening, as we sat out on the covered porch of my house, listening to the sounds of night falling over the woods. "I was no one after my husband died and your people took Haesting – I was little more than a slave. But you – you were a great man, Ivar. Everyone had to listen to you – the Jarl of Jarls. Do you not miss it?"

  The Northman thought for a few moments. "Do I miss it? I don't know if 'miss' is the right word. Are there times when I wish I could order people to do t
hings and see them done? Yes. But the way things are here seems to work for them does it not? Do these Americans lack food, or safety? It seems to me I have never seen a more comfortable populace – they fear neither invaders nor hunger. They do not need strong men with swords because they have moved beyond that life. Back in our time, strong men with swords were still the rulers of the world. But if my daughters having full bellies, and hospitals to care for them if they sicken means me losing my place, as one of those strong men with swords? I'll take it. I'm a father now, a husband. There is nothing so important to me as my family."

  I liked Ivar. Even had he not been the only person I could talk to of the past, I would have liked him. He was wise, and he didn't live for his own ego.

  "And what of you?" He asked. "If the Gods would return your husband to you, would you go back?"

  "I would," I replied, without hesitation. "And don't think that means I do not care for my life here or the people in it. I have come to love your daughters as if they were my own grandchildren, Jarl. I would miss them. I would miss you and Sophie and everyone else. But you know what it is to love, and so you know my answer could only be that I would go to wherever my husband was, if the Gods saw fit to return him to me."

  "Aye, I know it."

  I was not lonely in River Falls. Not in the way most people think of loneliness, not in the way I was when I was young and living in Los Angeles. Most think loneliness is about people, and that if you have people around you, you cannot be lonely. In River Falls, I had people. People I loved, and who loved me. But I had no one who knew me when I wasn't yet an old woman, and that is another kind of loneliness. Sometimes, in the midst of one of the feasts I would throw at my home in the country, I would find myself standing in the kitchen, waiting for this or that dish to finish cooking and a paradoxical feeling of aloneness would steal over my heart at the sounds of laughter and conversation coming from the dining room. Sophie – and her family and friends – took me in. They didn't take me in as a favor or to make me some kind of mascot, they took me into their family and their hearts. And still those quiet moments would catch me unguarded sometimes and I would almost fall to my knees, crying for the husband who I had lost so many years before, wanting nothing more than to speak to him one last time, to tell him of my new life.

  "You will see him again."

  It was Ivar, who always moved surprisingly quietly for such a large man. And he'd found me lost in one of my 'moments' in the kitchen, aching for Magnus.

  "Do you not believe it? Do you not believe you will see him again? I know many here in this place do not believe such things."

  "I don't know," I replied, closing my eyes briefly. "I don't know."

  "You will. It will not be in this life, or any life like it, but you will be with him again. I can tell from the way you speak of him, that your love was strong. Death does not break a bond like that. It only changes its nature."

  I blinked away a tear and turned back to the stove, where a cheese sauce – Sophie and Ivar's daughters liked nothing so much as macaroni and cheese – thickened. "I hope you're right," I replied. "I don't even truly know what you mean, but I hope you're right."

  "I am. There are many things I've questioned since coming here, but this is not one of them. How can it be? The one thing that remains the same, between our old world and this world, is love. They drive cars and fly in airplanes and pay for their food with pieces of plastic, but love is unchanged, is it not? Do you see any difference?"

  I lowered a whisk into the thick cheese sauce. "No. Not in love."

  "As it is, Heather. You will see him again. And until that day comes, you have all of us to drive you out of your mind and show up at your house every week demanding to be fed!"

  So that was my life. Not unhappy at all, not lonely or without meaning. But shot through with a melancholy that could sometimes feel quite acute.

  I took to gardening with some fervor. All the money in the world – which indeed, seemed to be in my possession – was not necessary. As long as I had a trowel, some seeds and a watering can, my days passed in contentment. I soon bought some chickens, and two cows, who I cleared and fenced a portion of my land for, and settled into my life as a 'rich lady farmer' as Sophie teasingly called me.

  It was a fall afternoon when I got the phone call. One of those perfect autumnal afternoons where the sky is a deep blue and the sun still brings enough warmth to make a jacket unnecessary – even as the trees have begun to don their bright red and yellow attire.

  "Heather?"

  It was Sophie. And she sounded strange.

  "Yes, it's me. What is it? Is something wrong?"

  She paused. "No. Nothing's wrong. I was just – I was wondering if you were home this evening."

  "Of course. Where else would I be? Are you sure nothing's wrong, girl? You sound as if –"

  "Heather! Nothing is wrong, I promise you!"

  "Alright. Were you thinking of bringing the girls to visit? I can show Ashley the pumpkins if she wants, they're –"

  "No," Sophie interrupted again. It wasn't like her to interrupt. It wasn't like her to sound so stilted and odd. "No, I mean – perhaps this weekend? I'm sure Ash would love to check on the progress of the pumpkins."

  I furrowed my brow. "If you're not stopping by, then why are you calling to see if I'm home this evening?"

  There was another pause. "Heather?"

  "Yes?" I replied, thoroughly confused.

  "Just make sure you're home this evening, OK?"

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Magnus*

  Not all the Angles had fled Thetford. Many chose to remain, and pledge fealty to the Northern Jarls who were now in charge. It was some of those Angles that I approached over the next few days, asking after a man named Magnus and his wife. Magnus was not a common name for the people of the Kingdom, which made my task somewhat easier.

  None in Thetford, however, had heard of him – or even anyone who sounded like it could be him, with a different name. And I did not know my own mother's name, so I couldn't ask if anyone knew of her.

  Jarl Eirik saw something in me, it seemed, because he took me into his household for the duration of my short stay, and invited me on most days to eat with him and his men. On a night shortly before I left to return to the coast, I found myself brought to a different longhouse than the usual one, where Eirik's men would drink dark ale with me deep into the evening.

  Inside, instead of warriors, I found Eirik's wife and children, and a few others. I bowed my head respectfully as I entered, aware that it was a privilege to be invited to eat with a Jarl's family and close friends.

  "I'm Paige," a woman who wore the golden armband of a Jarl's wife told me. "And this is Emma, wife of Jarl Ragnar. The rascal who hides under the table is Eirik, our first son."

  I greeted everyone as they were introduced, and saw that Paige held another child to her breast.

  "What brings you to Thetford alone?" Emma asked, when the venison stew had been served and Paige reassured me that Jarl Eirik would not mind if we began our feasting before he arrived.

  "I seek a man," I told her. "And a woman. But it is only the man's name I know."

  "You seek a man?" She replied, eying me. "What man? A Northerner? Has someone done you wrong?"

  "Magnus seeks his father," a booming voice came from behind, as Jarl Eirik entered the longhouse. "His father also carries the name Magnus. He seeks his mother, too, although for her he does not have even a name."

  "And how is it you came to be in the Kingdom of the East Angles," Paige joined in, "looking for your mother and father? You are from the North, are you not? Why do you seek your parents here, in the Kingdom?"

  And so I was obliged once again to tell the tale of how I had come to the land of the Angles to look for my parents. Paige and Emma followed closely, asking clarifying questions I did not have the answers to, and expressing their sympathy at my plight. It was after we had taken enough stew to fair burst our bellies that Emma sat
up and looked at me.

  "Magnus, right? You said your father's name is Magnus, like your own?"

  I nodded, watching as she turned to Paige and addressed the next question to her. "Didn't that old woman – Heather – say her husband was called Magnus? In fact didn't she even say he was a Northerner? Am I remembering it right?"

  At once, the attention of everyone in the room fell on Paige as we waited to hear if her memory matched Emma's. She narrowed her eyes, thinking.

  "Yes – I – yes, she did mention a husband named Magnus, didn't she? Yes – she did! I remember her speaking of him when we bathed in the river. I – oh my God – I think she even mentioned that she lost a child. Were you there when she spoke of it? She said she had lost one in the womb and one at birth – did she not?"

  I forced myself to remain seated, and to keep the calm expression on my face even as the weak little flame of hope that has been burning in my chest since my grandmother told me of my origins burst into a fire at the conversation taking place in front of me.

  "Is it so?" I asked, as the women looked at each other, trying to figure out if their memories were well-recalled or not. "Is it – you said – her husband's name was Magnus?"

  "Her husband was long dead," came the reply, and with it the feeling of having been struck with something large and heavy. "Oh – Magnus, I'm sorry. I didn't think to – I'm sorry! What is the likelihood of it being your father, anyway? What are the odds of –"

  "I'd say the odds aren't bad," Jarl Eirik broke in. "You say the old woman spoke of a Northern husband, whose name was Magnus? And she was herself not a Northerner? How many marriages between Angles and Northmen can there have been so many winters ago? And how many that produced only a single child, dead at birth? Dead – or stolen? You said your grandmother told you that you were taken at birth, did she not, Magnus?"