by Joanna Bell
"Yes," Ragnar responded, his voice a mix of both annoyed and slightly sheepish. "Of course. Kiarr, take the captive to the prisoner's dwelling. No, take her to the women at the cooking pits. She can help to prepare the food."
"Jarl!" I exclaimed, before Kiarr dragged me off. "Would it be alright if Kiarr took me to the beach first? Just for a little while – seeing the sea would help me to feel less frightened."
Something in me knew that Ragnar would react protectively if I told him I was scared. It wasn't a lie – I was scared. I was also intent on getting my bearings in the camp, figuring out what direction was north, south, east and west, and trying to pick which path led back to the tree.
Ragnar looked at me, as if about to allow the trip to the beach, but then at the last second he glanced across the table towards Fiske.
"No," he replied a moment later. "You're a prisoner, Emma. You don't get to go for walks on the beach while the others toil. Take her to the cooking pits, Kiarr."
Damnit.
Petulantly, I tried to yank my arm away from Kiarr as he marched me away, but all that did was cause him to sink his fat fingers even deeper into my flesh.
"Ow!" I screeched. "Stop it! You're hurting me!"
But Kiarr didn't even seem to hear me. When we arrived at the cooking area – open to the winds but covered with a roof of branches and straw held up by wooden poles and thick enough to keep the weather out at the same time as it was thin enough to let the smoke dissipate – Kiarr shoved me towards a red-faced woman who seemed to be in charge. She wore a rough linen apron over her tunic, and it was smeared with filth.
"Jarl says she's to stay here," Kiarr told her and she sighed heavily, as if Kiarr had just told her she had fifteen minutes to train me in the art of diamond cutting.
"Doesn't the Jarl know that I'm busy?" The woman asked plaintively, looking to me as well as to Kiarr, as if I had something to do with the situation. "I've barely time to make sure these foolish girls don't burn everything to a cinder – now I have prisoners to tend to? Does the Jarl know how –"
Kiarr didn't respond with words. No, Kiarr simply raised one meaty fist above his head and the red-cheeked woman ducked away, understanding she would get no sympathy from him.
"Fine," she shrugged, still wearing a look of being immensely put-upon on her face. "You can prepare the sneeps. Here."
I found myself shoved towards a table piled high with a mound of short, pale root vegetables that looked a little like misshapen parsnips. And as I stood there staring, wondering what to do with them, lady red-face shoved a knife into my hand and opened her eyes wide at me, the way you do when someone is failing to understand something incredibly simple.
"Well, girl?!" She yelled, causing me to cringe away from the smell of her breath as she got closer to my face. "Are you dull? You understand how to prepare a sneep, do you not?"
"Yes," I replied stiffly, because I did not feel I'd done anything to deserve getting yelled at by some dirt-smeared Viking with terrible dental hygiene, even if I didn't actually have any idea how to prepare sneeps. "I do."
"Well get on with it then!" She barked, slapping me hard on the back.
I put my hands softly on the table in front of me, breathing as I had done earlier when I needed to keep my emotions under control – slowly in through the nose, and then out through the mouth - like I'd been taught in the meditation class one of my friends at Grand Northeastern had insisted I take with her.
The knife in my hand was blunt. So blunt I doubted it could have drawn blood with it even if I tried – so murdering my new boss was out of the question. As, it seemed, was peeling the odd, pallid things she'd referred to as sneeps. Nonetheless, I tried. I bent over the table, clutching a root in one hand, and trying to use the edge of the knife to peel the skin off it, like one would with a carrot. The blade slid uselessly down the vegetable and I tried again, pressing harder that time. And again and again, each time using more force, until a thin shaving came off. It was going to take hours.
I looked around as I peeled, observing other young women in the cooking area, all hard at work chopping enormous chunks of flesh into smaller pieces or stirring pots of admittedly delicious-smelling liquids set over open fires or kneading dark lumps of dough on wooden tables the surfaces of which were worn smooth with their labor.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING!"
I jumped about three feet into the air as the head cook screeched directly into my ear. Not that I even had time to think about responding before she snatched the knife out of my hand and waved it in my face.
"Are you deaf, girl? Is that it? Is the Jarl sending deaf girls to me now?! Why must I –"
Angry, I snatched then knife back out of her hand, which caused all the other girls to stop whatever it was they were doing and stare at me, waiting to see what my punishment would be.
Not that I intended to let their boss lady deal out any kind of punishment. When she reached to take the knife back from me once more I held it above her head – she was quite a bit shorter than me – and she reacted by punching me in the stomach. I doubled over, groaning, stupidly not having expected it.
"Fuh –" I wheezed, trying to get my breath back. "Fuh –, fuhhh –"
"Fuh, fuh, fuh," the cook giggled, mocking me and sending my rage level spiking.
"FUCK YOU!" I finally shouted, when the air returned to my lungs. "Fuck you! You fucking –"
She went for me before I could finish, but I saw her coming and threw the useless knife aside so I had both hands free to shove the cook to the ground and jump on her, raining sloppy but somewhat effective blows down on her head. When she wrapped her hands around my neck and began to squeeze the breath out of me, though, I stopped hitting her and clawed at her fingers, digging my nails into her flesh until she screamed. She didn't let go, though, and I could feel myself starting to lose consciousness.
Before the darkness at the periphery of my vision could take over, I suddenly found myself lifted clean off the cook by the scruff of my wool tunic. And then the cook herself was snatched up from the ground and a loud voice boomed through the cooking pit.
"WHAT IS GOING ON HERE? INGA! WHAT IS HAPPENING?!"
Jarl Ragnar. He had both of us by the backs of our tunics, practically dangling in the air. Inga, the crazy cooking-pit Viking, was still eyeballing me. I swung out wildly and missed, and the Jarl gave me a single hard shake – hard enough to temporarily dampen my anger at Inga.
I couldn't see his face but I could hear his heavy breathing and I could sense his – not quite his anger, not just yet, but his disbelief.
"One of you best start explaining at once," he snapped. "Inga we've spoken of this! I've already had to ask you to go easier on your girls. And I the Jarl! I who should be dealing with the fitness of my warriors and the plans of my raids – you've forced me to come to the cooking-pits too many times for it to be amusing any longer!"
Inga hung her head. I did not, because I didn't feel I'd done anything wrong.
"You send me such useless girls," Inga burbled, managing to sound both obsequious and presumptuous at the same time. "And Jarl, I –"
"Enough!" He barked, suddenly letting go of Inga so she crumpled to the floor. "I swear it by Thor's fist, woman, if you speak so much as another word I'll whip you myself!"
The Jarl wasn't kidding, that much was clear. Even more so when he set me down roughly and caught me smiling.
'And YOU!" He growled. "I am starting to suspect you're as crazy as the old man in my home village, who spends his days laughing at the sky. What's got you chuckling like an old man then, Emma? And why are you giving my cook trouble?"
What could I say? That I was grinning helplessly because of his use of the phrase 'by Thor's fist'? No, I could not do that. Crazy or not, I was aware that it would be a bad idea to tell the Jarl I found his swearing hilarious. Besides, I was still incensed at Inga.
"I was doing exactly what she told me to do, Jarl," I replied, not quite managing to keep the indignant
anger out of my tone. "She told me to prepare the, uh – the sneeps. So I was preparing sneeps. I was –"
"Preparing sneeps!" Inga cut in, yelling again. "Preparing sneeps! Girl you were doing something to those sneeps but it wasn't preparing them for the stew! She didn't chop a single one, Jarl, the whole time she –"
"I WAS PEELING THEM!" I shouted back, immediately regretting the volume of my response and quieting down. "I'm sorry to yell, Jarl, but what she says isn't true. I mean, I was peeling them, that part is true, but I don't see how –"
"You were?" The Jarl asked, cocking his head at me curiously like I'd just told him I was casting spells on the sneeps. "Peeling them, girl? Why? What is it to peel a sneep, anyway?"
"She was, Jarl!" Inga piped up. "Fair rubbing the knife down them like she was cleaning a deerskin. Dull she is, as dull as my husband."
I bit back a comment on the necessity of a man's stupidity if he was going to take on a horror like Inga for a wife and replied once again, that yes, I had been peeling the vegetables.
Inga knocked her fist against her skull, a gesture I actually recognized as the further accusation of 'dullness' that it was. "We cut sneeps, girl," she told me, speaking slowly the way one does to a child, and miming chopping with the side of her hand. "Chop chop, into pieces. You understand, now?"
"And you didn't notice that whole time?" I asked sarcastically. "Really, Inga? Are you sure you didn't just let me peel all those sneeps just so you'd have an excuse to yell at me? Because you seem to really enjoy yelling at –"
My tone was designed to piss her off, and it had. She snatched out for me, trying to grab my arm, and the Jarl shoved her away so hard she landed on her ass. Then he rolled his eyes, sighed, and grabbed me up by the tunic again, dragging me outside.
"Finish the vegetables," he called back to Inga. "Or I'll see to it you don't sit comfortably for a moon."
I considered struggling, I really did. But the truth was I was tired. The Jarl was the Jarl – even I with my idiotic modern ways, was beginning to understand that. If he wanted an explanation, he would ask. If not, he wouldn't. In the meantime, there was little to do but dangle from his grip, like a kitten in its mother's teeth.
The Jarl kept going, past his own roundhouse, past the feasting hall, out beyond the boundary of the camp, currently marked on that side with a deep, wide ditch that he leapt over with ease, even with me hanging off one arm.
"Where are we –" I started, when we got to the top of the beach and he kept going, down to water's edge. Before I could finish he'd freed me from his grip and I turned, eying him, waiting to see what he was going to do to me.
And what Jarl Ragnar did was fix me with a stern look that lasted all of five seconds before he suddenly burst into a fit of helpless laughter. He looked even more handsome than usual when he laughed.
I waited for him to finish. And when he did, and I thought I might ask what was so funny, he started up again.
"The look –" he giggled, stopping to crack up again. "The look on her – on her – ha ha ha – did you see the look on Inga's face!? Did you see it? She wasn't –"
He broke off again, exploding into another gale of laughter, his whole body shaking with it.
Ragnar gasped and took a deep breath, in the midst of his laughing fit. "Gods, Emma, was she angry! None of the cooking-pit girls will so much as squeak at Inga, she's got them as scared as mice. And you – you –" he chuckled helplessly, only managing to get it under control about 30 seconds later – "she wasn't expecting you, was she?"
And as so often happens when you're witness to another person lost in mirth, I began to crack a small smile, too. Inga had looked pretty shocked. Still, it was difficult for me to find the situation quite as funny as Ragnar seemed to.
"You let her do that?" I asked, when his giggles seemed to die down. "You let her treat the other girls like that?"
Ragnar was bent over, hands on his knees, trying to get himself together. But he directed a suddenly skeptical eye in my direction when I questioned him about Inga's treatment of her workers.
"My concern is whether or not my people have good food on the feasting table, Emma. And they do. So there is no reason for me to interfere with how things are done in the cooking pits. A Jarl who is seen to be concerning himself too often with the domestic tasks will lose the respect of his clan."
I could have kept questioning him – indeed, the part of me that is never satisfied with pat answers dearly wanted to. But I needed to stay as far away from the Viking Jarl's bad side as possible.
"You don't like my answer," he commented, having seen the look on my face. "Do the warriors prepare the food where you come from, Emma? Do the women fight in battle? Is that how it is down south and east, across the sea?"
"The warriors don't prepare the food, you're right," I replied. "But we don't have so many warriors down south and east, and there are a lot of men who cook meals for their families. And yes, some of the women do fight in battle. It's –"
Ragnar scoffed loudly. "Some advice for you, girl. If you're going to lie, make your lies believable. No land that makes its women into its warriors will survive."
He wasn't wrong, not from his perspective. Combat in Ragnar's world was still of the hand-to-hand variety. Size and strength were the deciding factors in who won a battle. And I knew there was no point in trying to explain advanced weapons to him, or how women were just as capable of pressing buttons and pulling triggers as men. So I just nodded, not in total agreement but as a signal that I was conceding the point.
"You want to carry a sword, girl, is that it? Here, try mine."
And with that, Jarl Ragnar removed the sword that he wore strapped around his waist at all times. It looked large in his hands – longer and broader than I would have expected – but it looked absurd next to me. He balanced the tip in the sand and leaned the hilt towards me and as soon as I had wrapped my hands around it I knew it was going to be too big for me to wield with any grace.
"No," I said, pushing it back. "It's OK. I don't need to –"
"Pick it up," Ragnar insisted. "Go on."
Challenged directly, my pride got the better of me. I gripped the hilt with one hand and tried to lift the sword. It was incredibly heavy – much heavier than I would have guessed – and it barely moved. I used a second hand and managed to get it off the ground by a foot or two.
"There," I said, looking Ragnar in the eye. "I can –"
"Swing it," he cut in, grinning. "You can't, can you?"
He was right. I couldn't. "We don't use swords where I come from," I told him as he took it back and refastened it at his waist.
"Well we do," he replied amiably. "And you can barely lift one, let alone swing it at an enemy. Don't look so offended, Emma – did you expect anything else? I'm bigger than you, and stronger by far. Did you really think you would be able to wield a Jarl's sword?"
I looked out to sea, at the dark gray waves and the whitecaps in the distance, unable to think of what to say.
"The beach," Ragnar said, joining me in looking out across the water. "You said you wanted to come to the beach and here you are. Perhaps I am not as terrible a monster as you would have it?"
He took the fur that he carried draped over one arm, then, and I saw that it was the one he had given me earlier. It must have fallen off in the tussle with Inga. Ragnar wrapped it around my shoulders, pulling the leather ties tight at the front with surprising tenderness.
"You miss your home," he said quietly, after making sure the fur was secured. "Look, I can see it there on your face. You think of home."
The Jarl was eerily accurate in his mind-reading. I was thinking of home. Specifically, I was thinking of England, where, confusingly, I was standing at that exact moment. But it was not 9th century England I thought of. It was my England, the country where I knew my parents were worrying about me, wondering where I was.
"You're right," I said, as the high wind from the sea blew my hair off my face. "I am."
/> "Why did you leave it?"
As I began to reply, the Jarl led me a few paces back to where the driftwood piled up at the top of the beach, and sat me down on a log bleached pale by the elements.
"I'm not sure," I replied. "Well, maybe that's not true. I was having a difficult time. I didn't really mean to leave."
And just like that, as the words 'I didn't really mean to leave' left my mouth, my eyes welled up with unexpected tears. I tried to blink them away but they were too voluminous and instead of disappearing they just spilled down my cheeks, freezing before they could reach the corners of my mouth.
Instead of offering me comforting words, or pretending he understood what I was talking about, Ragnar turned my face towards him and looked right at me for a few seconds. I searched his eyes, looking for a meaning behind what he was doing – was it another question? Another challenge? It didn't seem to be either of those things. What it seemed to be was a kind of seeing – an acknowledgement. And when the seconds had passed he used the softer linen of his shirt, pulled out from under one heavy shearling sleeve, to wipe my cheeks.
It was one of the most careful gestures I have ever experienced from another human being, so perfectly attentive that I was unable, in my strange modern embarrassment at honest emotion, to deal with it. I turned away as Ragnar dried my face, and then I changed the subject.
"Is it true that you're going to see Eirik?" I asked. "He's north of here, with Paige?"
The Jarl gave me a harder look, then, and narrowed his eyes. I hoped he didn't blame me for looking away a moment before. "Fiske thinks I shouldn't talk to you about any of this," he said. "I wonder – is he right?"
"Do you think I'm a spy?" I asked, laughing at the idea. "Me, a weak little woman – as you so thoroughly pointed out with the sword? How could I –"
"Ah!" Ragnar stopped me. "Lifting a sword is one thing. Your arms are not as strong as mine, Emma, but your mind may be stronger by half. It's a stupid man who assumes a woman his lesser because she can't best him in combat. And Fiske is right, you seem reluctant to give details of where it is you come from."
