Ragnar

by Joanna Bell

  "So you've done this before?"

  "No, actually. As I said, this is the first Yule that Eirik has felt the people were ready to observe in full. He says now we have a gothi and more than enough provisions and the people are more settled here, it's time. He says the rituals keep the people together, keep everything coherent."

  "No sex?!" I asked again, incredulous.

  Paige shook her head. "Nope. Not until the first feast night of Yule."

  "Ragnar won't be able to do it," I told her confidently. "He won't. I know he –"

  "He has to," Paige replied. "It's not an option. He's a Jarl, he has to. So you better just get used to taking care of yourself, if you know what I mean."

  "Are you being serious?" I asked, not entirely convinced Paige wasn't joking – about the no-sex part, anyway. "And if you are – why? Why no sex?"

  She grinned. "That's exactly what I asked Eirik when he told me. It's not everyone – well, Eirik says it's supposed to be – but the only people who are really held to it are the Jarls, the gothis and people of very high rank. It seems to be one of those 'set an example' things."

  "Yeah, OK," I said. "But that still doesn't explain why. Why ban sex in the first place – especially when it's this cold and there nothing else to do?"

  I picked up a piece of dense, butter-less Viking bread and took a bite as Paige explained. "I asked Eirik about that, too. He said it's a 'quiet' time of the year. The days are dark and short, the food stores are often low – although that's not the case this year, with all the successful raids – he says it's a kind of enforced break from the usual routine, a time for people to go inwards, to look to themselves and what they wish for in the coming year, rather than eating and drinking and fucking themselves into oblivion before Yule."

  "Mm-hm," I responded, thinking. I still didn't believe Ragnar and I were going to be able to keep our hands off each other, but I could see a kind of sense in what Paige was saying. It was like the old tradition of letting a field lie fallow for a season, to give the soil a 'rest.' Something about the idea of treating souls the same way – even if I didn't think I believed in souls – just felt appropriate and right.

  "I thought it was silly at first," Paige continued. "But after thinking about it a little more, it kind of makes sense, don't you think?"

  I nodded. "Actually, yes. A period of rest – what better time of year than this one? Even in our time everything slows down around Christmas, doesn't it?"

  "Imagine how much better the feast nights – and the nights with our Jarls, after the feasts – will be after a period of deprivation beforehand? The Vikings are good at this kind of thing, they don't all fall apart and start whining the minute they don't get exactly what they want, exactly when they want it. I won't say it hasn't taken me time to adjust – and I'm still adjusting – but I feel like it's been good for me. Like it's made me more resilient in a way that all those years of therapy never did."

  And so the first period of Yule began, and I found myself swept along on the tide of a tradition that felt at once alien and strangely soothing, even in its difficult early days. As it turned out, Ragnar and I weren't given the chance to try to keep our hands off each other because the two Jarls and their highest warriors were separated from their women during the nights. Paige and I, and the other women, slept in the roundhouses. Ragnar, Eirik and the warriors spent their nights outside the camp walls, sometimes with the gothi, sometimes alone, shivering in the snowy woods. When I asked Ragnar what it was about, he seemed more tight-lipped than usual, before explaining to me one evening, as we ate a supper of thin gruel and plain bread in the feasting hall, that it wasn't something he was meant to talk about. And then, when he saw that my curiosity was piqued rather than sated, he smiled and leaned in to whisper in my ear.

  "Gods, Emma, the last thing I want is to go back to the forest tonight, where the gothi makes us drink foul teas and leads us on journeys between worlds. What I want is to come back to the roundhouse with you and pull all the dressings off –"

  "Foul teas?" I asked, intrigued. "Journeys between worlds? What does –"

  But Ragnar shook his head, and I watched as his eyes crawled slowly over my face and lingered on my lips. I wanted to know what was happening in the woods at night between the Jarls and their gothi. I wanted to know what ancient rituals were playing out under the moonlight. But in that moment, when I saw the look in Ragnar's eyes, a pull much more powerful than curiosity yanked me out of my imaginings and sent my arms around his muscled neck.

  "Emma!" A female voice rang out immediately from the entranceway to the feasting hall. "Are you finished with your supper?"

  We had chaperones during the first part of Yule – well, the men had chaperones. Young men and women in Hildy's service, and almost as annoyingly on top of things as she was. And this particular chaperone's task was to watch Jarl Ragnar that night, to make sure he didn't break the Yule tradition and take me right there on one of the feasting tables.

  Ragnar looked at me for a moment before the girl came to lead him away, back to the gothi and the winter night and the spaces between worlds. His eyes were the same color as ever, even in the weak light of the feasting hall, but a darkness had passed over them, then, and for a brief moment I understood why sex was not permitted during that time. If your mind is focused on earthly pleasures, it can make it difficult – maybe impossible – to focus on other thoughts, other ways of being. Of course the gothi didn't want the Jarls and the warriors losing themselves in women and mead and roasted meat during that sacred time of the year, when the eyes of their souls were called to gaze elsewhere.

  Not that my understanding lasted long, when Ragnar was led away and I found myself alone at the feasting table, aching for his body, his mouth on mine.

  It wasn't just the men who spent their time in the midst of ritual and spirituality during Yule. The women, too, had work to do. The healers – as Paige referred to the small group of older women who tended the sick and delivered babies and womanly wisdom to the people – came to us periodically, to lead Paige and myself and the other Viking wives in the performance of some rite or another.

  Part of me was aggrieved when I was led alone one morning to a hot-spring by one of the healers. She stripped me naked in the freezing air and, just as I was about to climb into the relief of the hot water, she produced a thin, flexible tree branch, still adorned with dried leaves, and ran it over my body, gently at first, and then increasingly not-gently as she began to hit me with it until almost every inch of me was pink and stinging. When she finally allowed me into the water, she left the branch and instructed me to get out every little while and hit myself with it, until my skin tingled with the cold and I couldn't stand it any longer.

  It wasn't even the physical ordeal – the feeling of the hot water on my cold, sensitive skin was about as close to orgasmic as I've ever experienced without it being the real thing. No, it was not that that annoyed me. It was something the healer said about the purpose of the bath – that it would make me beautiful – for Jarl Ragnar.

  Great, I wanted to say, when I sank for the first of many times into the hot ecstasy of the spring. So the men are off journeying between worlds, thinking higher thoughts, and I'm just here making myself pretty for one of them. Wonderful.

  Not that I was annoyed enough to leave the spring, of course. But I did bring it up later that evening with Paige, as we sat in her roundhouse wrapped in clean, soft linens and utterly blissed-out after the hot-spring –naked in the snow/whipped with branches –hot-spring routine. She'd spent her day the same way, in one of the other pools in the spring, unseen by me.

  "Doesn't that bother you?" I asked, as we sipped the light day-ale which was as much as we were allowed to have during the time of Yule austerity. "Ragnar and Eirik are out there having adventures and it's our job to just stay here and make ourselves pretty?"

  Paige chuckled a little. "Yeah. I mean, I can't say I've never had those thoughts – men and women are definitely tr
eated differently here – but, I don't know. Do you really want to be sleeping out in the woods tonight?"

  "No," I shook my head. "But that's not the point. The point is the men are seen as these all-important people, their thoughts are important – ours don't matter. All that matters is we look good when they get back from their spiritual journeys with full balls."

  "That's not it," Paige said, sitting up straighter so she could toss another log onto the fire and check on baby Eirik, who was asleep on the bed beside her. "It's not that their thoughts matter more than ours. I've thought about this, you know. I asked Eirik about it a few times and he just seemed to think I was crazy to even frame it that way. The way he explained it was that it's about necessity."

  "Necessity?" I asked, confused. "How is it necessary that the men spend a few nights running around in the woods on drugs?"

  "I don't mean that!" Paige replied. "I mean, OK. Where you and I come from, there's enough food, right? We don't have to worry about starving. We also don't have to worry about getting killed, right? Not as a matter of course in our daily lives, anyway. We don't have to worry about people coming to our house and throwing us out and just taking it, deciding it's their house. But here, they do have to worry about all of that. Everyone does – even the kings and queens. Eirik explained it in survival terms. He said it's not about men being more worthy than women, or vice-versa, it's simply about everyone having a necessary role to play. The women aren't out in the woods tonight because the children and the old people need to be cared for. The grain needs to be ground and the bread needs to be baked."

  "OK," I said, still skeptical. "But what's so necessary about the men being out in the forest with the gothi? How does that contribute to survival? Wouldn't it be more useful if they were hunting?"

  Eirik began to fuss, then, and Paige lifted him to her breast. "Oh there will be a hunt," she told me. "At the end of this first part of Yule, the men will go on a hunt. The venison will be used for the Yule feasting."

  "But what about –" I started, because Paige hadn't explained why the nights with the gothi and the 'foul teas' were necessary. But she saw that I was getting a little heated and held up her free hand.

  "Emma, slow down! I'm trying to explain it to you, aren't I? And don't look at me like that, like I've turned into some kind of fifties housewife – this life, here, with the Vikings? It couldn't be farther from that."

  I sat back on the furs – Jarl Eirik and Paige's roundhouse was full of what might best be described as day beds. Simple wooden platforms about four feet by two feet, set less than a foot off the ground and cushioned by linen sacks stuffed with straw and then, on top of those, a thick wool blanket and a fur. They were always receiving visitors and they needed somewhere comfortable to put them. "OK," I said, consciously lowering my voice. "I'm just curious. I'm sorry if I got a little loud."

  Paige stroked her finger down one of her son's fat cheeks and looked up at me. "The rituals in the woods are just that – rituals, sacred processes. You've only seen a successful Jarl in Ragnar. Hell, I've only seen a successful Jarl in Eirik. I've known only good times. Easy victories. You said the same – that the estate near Caistley fell with ease. But it is not always easy, and no leader is ever confident that he and his people will always be on the winning side. The Jarls are privileged – you've seen it. But it's an exchange. The people agree to allow the Jarl a luxurious roundhouse, confidence in their deference, the power to make decisions and lead men. In turn, they get safety – and the Jarl's get responsibility. If someone dies, it's on Eirik's shoulders – just as it is on Ragnar's if something should befall any one of his people."

  My friend was right about that. Ragnar was scarcely older than me, but I'd seen the way he worried if one of his people was sick, or one of his men injured. It wasn't something I understood, because I am from a modern, middle-class family. The only thing I had ever been responsible for was – well, it was very little, if I'm honest. Getting to class on time, I suppose, and even that proved too difficult on an embarrassingly frequent number of days.

  "OK," I said to Paige. "I get that. It's so weird, isn't it? How different their lives are – can you imagine anyone we know leading a group the way Eirik and Ragnar do? Deciding when to sail, where to settle, who to promote to positions of responsibility? I don't think I know a single man our age who could do it. Back home, I mean – in 2017."

  "Me neither," she agreed. "That's what I was going to say about the rituals the men go through, the preparations for a hunt, the visits to the between-worlds – which is what Eirik calls them. Even that is about survival, isn't it? Because being a warrior is scary. There's a good chance you'll die young, and painfully. A good chance you won't see your children grow up – if you even manage to have any before some grubby stranger shoves his spear into your belly. So the Vikings – all of them, the whole society – they agree to venerate the warriors, to give them their due. The gothi helps them get used to the idea of death, to think of the rewards of an honorable death and a place in the Great Hall in the next world."

  "Damn," I commented, thinking deeply about what Paige was saying. "When you put it that way, it's almost kind of awful, isn't it? Preparing them for death? The warriors are our age - some of them even younger!"

  "But it has to be that way, that's what Eirik was saying. Everyone has their role, and nothing works if the people don't fulfill those roles. The children die if their mothers don't care for them. The society dies if the warriors don't defend it. Eirik doesn't think I'm dumber than him – actually he constantly says the opposite – but I've never seen even an ounce of this questioning that you're doing – and that I've done my share of – in him before."

  "I guess they can't afford to question it, can they?" I asked. "It's like you said – there's work to be done. If no one does it, people die. That's crazy, Paige. Isn't that crazy? I've never thought about any of this before – about how easy we have it in the future."

  Paige smiled and held up my empty ale cup, raising her eyebrows at me to see if I wanted more. I nodded and she passed me her sleeping baby so she could pour it. "You're right," she commented, looking back over her shoulder. "You do have it easier. But you also have it harder. The tangible parts – the food, the central heating, the cars – those are easier. But some of the others things, I don't know..."

  We talked on into the night, until our heads were nodding with sleep, and then one of Hildy's girls led me back through the cold winds to the westerly roundhouse so I could sleep. And before I did, I thought of Ragnar out in the freezing woods, his eyes focused on seeing the next life, on welcoming it. All my churlish envy was gone after talking and thinking with Paige. If I felt anything for Ragnar that night it was a kind of admiration laced with sadness. He was so young, so vital and strong. And the chances of him dying before he got his first gray hair now seemed so high and so real. Suddenly the bathing in the hot-springs made sense – I even found myself wanting to go again the next day, and again until I was allowed to spend my nights with Ragnar once more. He wasn't out with his warriors and the gothi having fun. He was out learning about what it meant to be a Jarl, about what it meant to suffer, to sacrifice, maybe even to die before his time. And when he came back to me, I was going to show him I understood that.

  17

  Ragnar

  My toes and feet began to develop the white bloodlessness I remembered seeing in my father's feet as a child, during particularly cold winters. Even in my fur and leather boots, with more furs on top of us and huddled together with Eirik and our men in the shelter made by a fallen tree, my feet would simply not warm up.

  It was miserable, as those early days of Yule often are for the warriors. Our bellies growled with hunger. In the evenings, when the shadow-eyed gothi would clasp the drinking bowl in both his hands and offer it up to me, sometimes I would retch at the mere smell of the dark liquid within. And then I would drink it – all of us would drink it – and so begin the journey into the place where the stars float
ed under my feet and the earth over my head.

  We didn't speak of it amongst ourselves, as it's not considered a thing to speak to other men about, but I wondered if they saw the same places that I saw – if their nostrils, too, took in the sulfurous scent of the candles and hearths in the Great Hall. I floated above the figures of the warriors who had gone before me, up to a ceiling of such height the men became as small to me as mice, and watched as they took their eternal feast, listening as the songs sung by the living, of their greatness, traveled between the worlds.

  I found Eirik at dawn one morning, wild-eyed and jabbering that he'd seen one of his young warriors, lost in a raid not two winters ago.

  "He's here!" Eirik said, clutching at me and looking around as if the man was just hidden behind one of the trees. I could see that the gothi's tea still worked its magic on my old friend. "He's not dead! He's here! Help me find him again, Ragnar!"

  But the young man was not there, and when the tea's effects wore off Eirik became quiet. We all became quiet. At first I missed Emma, my sweet little foreigner, for the usual reasons men miss women. I missed the sound and warmth of her sigh in my mouth when I brought her to completion. I missed the way it made me feel more a man than anything else to bring her to that state.

  But by the end of the time with the gothi, barely having spent any of it in the feasting hall or the roundhouse, and none in Emma's soft embrace, what I most missed was no longer so specific, so focused. The women greeted us at the threshold of the settlement after the last day of early Yule. At least I think the other women were there. All that I saw, as I ran across the frozen ground with what felt like the very last of my strength, was her.

  She stood beside the end of the palisade, her arms stiffly at her sides, as if they did not know what to do with themselves without me to give them purpose. And when I took her soft little face in my hands, and she looked up at me with those eyes brimming with everything that was passing between us, I almost cried.