Magnus

by Joanna Bell

  "Yes," I breathed in response, as a feeling of dizziness came over me. "Yes, I – yes, she said I was taken at birth, by the peasant girl who my father paid in gold."

  "So they will have told your mother and father you died," Eirik continued. "There was no other excuse they could have offered, was there?"

  A hush fell over the room. Paige and Emma looked at each other, wide-eyed with the possibility that the woman they spoke of could be my mother, and Eirik kept an almost fatherly eye on me, waiting to see how I would react to the possible news.

  "So," I started, a short time later, and when I found myself able to speak once more. "This woman, this – Heather, is that her name? Where is – is she here in Thetford?"

  Paige and Emma once again threw meaningful looks, which I did not understand, at each other. It was Paige who responded.

  "No," she said gently. "She isn't in Thetford. She isn't – Magnus, she isn't anywhere, uh, anywhere near –"

  "Is she dead?!" I cut in, sitting up straighter in my chair, my stomach seized with a sudden fear. How cruelly perfect would it be to learn that my mother was dead just as I learned that there were people in Thetford who knew her?

  "No," Paige replied slowly. "She's not dead. Not that I know of, anyway. But she – Magnus, she isn't here."

  "Yes, you already said that," I replied hurriedly, only to sit back and apologize a moment later when I noticed Eirik's stern glare. He was a kind man, and reasonable, but he was not about to let me snap at his wife – or his fellow Jarl's wife.

  "I'm sorry," I continued in a softer tone. "My impatience gets the better of me – I was five and ten when my grandmother first told me of my parents, you understand. It has been such a long time since then. But if you could tell me where she is – I have come all this way inland on my own, I can surely find my way to another village or estate in the Kingdom."

  Once again, the two women eyed each other. What secret was it they knew of that I did not?

  It was Paige who bid me to meet them the next morning at the stocks in the center of Thetford, if I wanted to know more about where my mother was. I didn't understand why they couldn't just tell me that night, but as they were high people, I agreed to the meeting.

  That night, I barely slept. I kept repeating the name they had given to the woman they spoke of – Heather – over and over in my mind. Was this 'Heather' my mother? How many days ride would it take me to get to where she lived? What would I say at the moment of meeting, how would I tell her who I was? And would she even believe me? Would she see something of herself in me, even if she thought I was crazy?

  All night I asked myself those questions, over and over, until the dawn light came over Thetford and I made my way, bleary-eyed and badly slept, to the stocks.

  And then, when the sun was almost at its highest point, both women appeared, and once again exchanged their secretive, almost worried looks, when they saw me.

  "What did you think?" I asked, smiling. "That I would not be here? Finding my parents – or just my mother, if my father is already gone to the next world – is all there is for me. It is my only task."

  "It's a beautiful day," Paige said, gesturing for me to stand. "Do you feel like walking? Let's walk to the gardens and pick some kale and sneeps for the stewpot."

  And so we walked the narrow streets of Thetford, where the people, still in their autumn rush, went to and fro all around us.

  "Why do you seem so reluctant to speak of my m– of Heather?" I asked, when we had been walking for a short time and neither woman had seen fit to mention the matter at hand. "You said you did not believe her dead?"

  "No," Emma replied, again with that careful slowness that was starting to make me feel short-tempered. "No, we don't think she's dead."

  "Has she done something terrible?" I followed up, wracking my brain for some reason the two Jarl's wives could have for behaving so strangely. "Is she – is she sick?"

  "No," Paige told me, and there was kindness in her voice. "No she hasn't done anything terrible and I don't think she's sick – she wasn't sick when we last saw her, anyway."

  Again a lull fell over the conversation. We had almost made it to the Thetford garden fields when I couldn't contain myself any longer.

  "Why do you torture me?" I asked impatiently, causing both women to turn and look at me. "Do you think I don't see the way you look at each other?! What is it? You say she is not dead, she has not committed a terrible crime, she is not sick – that you know of. So what is it? Why won't you tell me where she is when it seems such a simple thing?"

  "Ah," Emma replied at once. "But it is not actually such a simple thing as you think."

  "I am trained with a sword," I told them. "And a good rider – I do not overwork my horse. Wherever Heather is, I promise you I can ride there. Even if she has left the Kingdoms of this land – if she's traveled south across the water to the Frankish Kingdom, I can find my way to –"

  "But you can't," Paige said. "You can't ride to where Heather is."

  I stood on the spot, shaking my head slightly. What did she mean? Was she teasing me? The expression on her face said she was not. "If you mean she has sailed across –"

  "I don't mean she sailed anywhere. She didn't."

  "Then what?!" I burst out, almost at my wit's end. "Then why do you say I cannot ride to find her? Why don't you –"

  "We talked about this," Emma said, cutting off my plaintive questions. "Here, shall we sit here in the gardens? There is much to talk about – perhaps we should sit?"

  So we sat on the edge of the gardens, and Emma continued.

  "As I said, we spoke of this – Paige and I – before coming here to meet you. Is it true what you say, that this is your only task? Do you not have people to return to? If you find your mother, what do you intend to do?"

  The Jarl's wives could not have been more than five winters older than me, and yet the way they spoke to me, in motherly tones, seemed to both annoy and please me. "I am ten and nine," I reminded them with a respectful smile. "Not ten. Are there those who expect me to become their Jarl, when my training is complete? Yes, there are. My grandfather's people, back in the North – in Apvik. But my grandfather is dead, and so is my grandmother. My whole childhood, I thought my mother and father were dead, too. Do you know what it is, to be a small child without a mother or a father?

  To my surprise, Jarl Eirik's wife nodded. "I do. My mother died when I was five, and my father – who is now happy here with the Northern people – took to his bed until I was grown. I understand what it is to be alone in that way – to some extent, as it is."

  "And so you understand what it is in my heart, then?" I continued. "You understand that I do not seek to find my mother so I can introduce myself and kiss her cheek and then go back to my life in the North? If my mother lives, I will take her with me, so I can care for her for the rest of her days. If she lives, we must be together. It is as it is, a mother must be with her child."

  "And what if she doesn't want to come back to the North with you?" Paige asked. "What if, when you find her, she is content where she is?"

  I sat back a little on the soft earth of the garden, pausing because I had not thought what I would do if my mother refused to come back to the North with me.

  "Heather isn't a Northwoman," Emma told me. "She's not even, in truth, an Angle."

  "What is she, then?"

  Emma smiled. "She's from the same place that Paige and I are from."

  It made sense, when Emma said that she and Eirik's wife were neither of the North nor were they Angles. Although no one had told me, I had sensed, even in our brief time together, something foreign about the two of them, even if I could not quite name what it was. They had a boldness about them that, even in Jarl's wives, I found slightly surprising. "And where is it you and Paige –"

  "That is why we ask you these questions," Paige cut me off. "Because the place we are from – the place Heather is from, and the place she is right now, if all went well with her plan
s – is not like other places. It is not like 'the North' or 'Mercia' or 'the Frankish Kingdom.'"

  I met her gaze, and then that of Emma, waiting for the explanation to continue. When it did not, I threw my hands up and chuckled.

  "Is it a riddle?" I asked. "I'm sorry, but I have no thought as to what it is you tell me. I do not know what you mean when you say that it is 'not like other places.'"

  Emma leaned in then, as if she were about to share a secret, and told me in a whisper that it was not a riddle.

  "And not a trick, either. Where we are from is not another place, Magnus. Well, it is, but not a place you can ride your horse to, or sail to, or walk to. It is another world. I don't say 'another world' to confuse you further, but because that is the simple truth. It is another world."

  Another world. I closed my eyes. Another world. I had only one understanding of other worlds. "So... she is dead?" I asked hesitantly. "My mother is –"

  "Are we dead?" Paige responded with a smile.

  "You, uh – no," I replied. "No, clearly neither of you are dead. But, I – what is another world but death? How does one travel to another world – one that cannot be reached by horse or boat or foot – if not death?"

  I was confused. I was more confused than I had ever been in my life. I kept looking up, from Paige to Emma and back again, waiting for the moment when they would burst into laughter and admit they played a trick on me. But the conversation had gone on too long then to be a trick – and if it was still somehow a game to them, it was an exceptionally cruel one.

  "I'm sorry," I said quietly, a moment later. "I – I have no understanding of what it is you tell me. I don't see it – all I want is to find my mother. If she is in another world, as you say, and you know how to get there, then please tell me the way. Is it even necessary that I understand the circumstances if you can tell me how to get there?"

  "I understand your impatience," Paige replied. "I understand it because I would feel it in your place. And you're right, in a sense – it is not truly necessary that you understand the whereabouts of Heather, as long as you can get there – which you can. We don't speak with you like this to torment you or for our own amusement. We do it because we know the place you will be going, and we know that when you get there, however ready you think you are for it, you will not be. Did you know that where Heather is, you will not be allowed to carry a sword? We only speak to you as we do because we see how ready you are to go. But if we send you off with no idea of your destination, you are liable to get yourself into quite a lot of trouble before you find your mother."

  "You think me too young and impetuous," I addressed the two women, seeing in their eyes that they did. "And I do not deny being either of those things. But I will say it again – the most important thing to me is to find my mother. If there are things you can tell me that will make finding her easier, then I am willing to listen. I am not a Jarl yet, but do you think I have not already learned the lesson that charging into any new situation with my sword drawn is not always the right way to go through life? If you say I must leave my sword then I will leave my sword, even if it will be a reluctant parting."

  "Yes," Emma said. "You must leave your sword. And you must prepare yourself to see and hear and experience things you have never dreamed of. You must prepare yourself to be very careful, and very watchful, and not to take fright at –"

  "I do not take fright easily," I boasted, because it happened to be true. "I do not –"

  "You might," Paige commented, "if you knew what you were talking about."

  We fell quiet for a time, then, in the garden. If I was reading the Jarl's wives right, they had agreed to tell me how to get to where Heather – the woman who might be my mother – was. They had at least not said they would not tell me. I could feel the tension between them, the nervousness at what they, too, sensed they were going to do.

  "We cannot keep a son from his mother," Paige said eventually. "We will show you how to find Heather. But you must swear, Magnus – you must swear – not to speak of this to anyone."

  "I swear it," I replied. "I'll not speak a –"

  "And we cannot show you until the thaw."

  The thaw? The winter winds had not yet blown into Thetford as we sat in the garden. "But I travel alone!" I replied. "Even in winter, I can travel well enough with just my horse and a bow to hunt rabbits. You don't have to wait until the thaw to –"

  "But we do," Emma told me. "We do, because you won't be traveling alone. You're not going to somewhere obvious, Magnus. You're not going to a certain town or a certain estate. You're going to a – well, you're going to a tree. And we cannot give you accurate enough directions to find this tree, as nondescript as it is, without coming with –"

  "A tree?"

  Paige smiled. "Yes, a tree. Did you hear what we said about other worlds, and strange things, and not being about to ride to where Heather is – or didn't you?"

  "But –"

  "You cannot go south alone. We will ride with you when the thaw comes. And you'd be careful to mind that we don't owe you anything, Northman. It is a kindness we do you, because we like you and we see that you are sincere in your wish to find your mother. You are welcome to spend the winter here in Thetford, if you wish. Eirik and Ragnar have already agreed to allow it."

  I sent word to Kiarr on the coast, that I would overwinter in Thetford, and Jarl Eirik found me quarters with his retinue. I ran into Paige and Emma often that winter, sometimes at supper, sometimes just in the streets of Thetford, and would try to extract information from them on where it was I was going, come the thaw. But they were quiet, and stingy with details.

  They were right that a kindness had been done, though. They did not have to tell me anything about Heather, or where she was, or even that she might be my mother. And in respect of this kindness I did my best to contribute to the smooth running of Thetford when the cold came. I patrolled the city walls with Eirik's men, and accompanied the hunters when they rode out for deer. I did my duty at the various gates to the town, watching for attackers, questioning any arrivals. In turn, the Northern warriors took me as a friend, and brought me with them on their revels at the end of each winter moon.

  When the days began to lengthen once more, after the Yule time, it was Jarl Ragnar who commented that he would be sad to see me go, and that I had proven myself a loyal and hard worker, even as I knew I would one day be a Jarl like him.

  "It is not many men, who know they will one day be Jarl, who are content with guard duty at the city gates," he said one afternoon, as I carried a barrel of ale to his quarters. "Or carrying ale!"

  "If what your wife says is true, and the place I go to find my mother has no Jarls – and no use for Jarls – perhaps it's just as well," I replied.

  I had not intended my reply to be anything other than a show of humility, but Jarl Ragnar had clearly been talking to his wife about my upcoming journey.

  "Is it so?" He asked, looking me straight in the eye. "Do you think you could let go of the role you had always hoped –"

  "I hoped for nothing so much as I hoped for a mother and a father!" I replied, somewhat heatedly, before immediately apologizing. "I'm sorry, Jarl, I – this subject is one that –"

  "It's nothing, boy. I can only imagine what it must have been for you to grow up without a mother and father. All I meant was that it's possible for men to get attached to an idea of themselves, a picture of themselves that they carry only in their minds. Do you understand? See that you do not spend your life trying to live up to an image only you have seen, Magnus."

  I set the barrel of ale down on a heavy wooden table carved with likenesses and scenes from Northern myths and stories. "In truth, Jarl, the image was never my own. It was my grandfather's. He lost his sons, and it was I who was to compensate for that loss. But if you think I myself ever took any great interest in being a Jarl, in truth I did not. A child knows only what those around him know, and so when I was young I can say perhaps I looked forward to wearing fine
furs and having the people defer to me, or bow their heads respectfully. But ever since learning the truth of my birth, I have found that if anything being Jarl is a future burden I half-wish I did not bear. If Kiarr and the people of Apvik wanted to hand the honor to someone else –"

  "Find this woman you think might be your mother first," Ragnar broke in before I could finish. "You are young, yet. Find Heather and then ask yourself if being Jarl is your life's task."

  When the time came to ride southeast, I was surprised to see both how small the traveling party was, and how full of high people. Both Paige and Emma rode with me – and so did their Jarls.

  "Is it so?" I asked, when we met at the gates just before dawn broke on a cloudy day not long into the thaw. "The Jarls travel with us? Both of them?"

  "Thetford is peaceful," Emma replied. "And Jarl Styrr will remain. It will not be a long journey, but it cannot be one that is known amongst the men. We must keep our reasons to travel southeast within this tight group, Magnus – did you not understand when I told you as much, before the winter came?"

  "Aye, I understood," I told her. "I just did not realize you intended to share those reasons with quite so few."

  And so we rode southeast, first down the Great Road and then off it, towards the coast. Our progress was swift, as neither Jarl Eirik nor Jarl Ragnar wished to spend more time than necessary exposed to the dangers of the road, and away from Thetford. On the day after our fifth night spent sleeping in the woods, we came to the sea, and then began to make our way back into the woods, down a path Paige and Emma seemed to agree was the one. My stomach began to churn with nerves, as I sensed we were close.

  But no village appeared – as the women had said it would not. No castle, no estate came out of the woods. When we came to a stop, and I looked around, in truth I could see nothing of note. We were simply in the middle of the forest, on a narrow path, with no landmarks of note in any direction.