“Perhaps,” he says, “you would like to return to your hall. And we can billet your crew.”
I nod, and he smiles and takes a step back before turning.
“Eindr?”
“Jarl Hladgertha?”
“Ragnar is with me. Make preparations for your king.”
The girls wake me early. Eindr is waiting outside my house. It is scarcely past dawn and the knots from the voyage have yet to leave my shoulders. But I’m dressed, combed, braided, appointed. Kohl is under my eyes and berries stain my lips, the stain transferring to the thin wooden cup as I sip birch tea.
I go to greet Eindr, who paces to warm himself in the early sun.
“Eindr?” We walk a little for privacy’s sake.
“They return, Ladda. Jarl Rorik and his men.”
“Thank you, Eindr. Are they here yet?”
“No, but soon. From the east.”
I have to think about this for a second. No, I don’t, but I should. In the end, I say what I wanted to say since I got here.
“Have my chair brought to the field behind the hall. Set up a pavilion there and bring some wine.”
“And chairs for Jarl Rorik and King Ragnar?” he asks.
“My chair and mine alone.”
At this, I think he’ll just leave. It’s difficult to see him, because I don’t know where to rest my eyes. Not in the curls of his hair, or the lines of his cheek, the bronze of his hands…
“Ladda? If I may…”
“Of course, Eindr,” I answer, grateful for the distraction. Grateful for the break in the uncomfortable silence.
“I have… the timing is odd, but I have something for you. A gift. A welcome-home.” And he hands me a fist of green silk, placing it into my waiting palms. “Please be careful, it’s sharp.”
A spearhead in iron, though the lightest and most silver iron I have ever seen. While made of one piece it seems like a tangle of wires woven together, the work so intricate. As we knot beasts and birds and serpents into our work—yet there are no heads here, no faces. Just a delicate writhing of line and beauty, fragile-seeming yet unbreakable, like something forged by Kara’s elves.
“It is Arabic?” I wonder.
“It is. Scripture. A saying. The words make up the spearhead itself.”
“Let me guess, you discovered it in inventory and thought it was mine anyway.” I’m teasing him. He doesn’t know I know about the ring.
Eindr looks left and right, leaning towards me. “Something like that,” he says, smiling.
“Thank you, Eindr, it’s beautiful.” Without thinking I dart forward and kiss him on the cheek. His smile cracks my heart open and I’m amazed to have found it closed so tight.
“I would ask one further gift from you, if you would.”
“Anything.”
“The truth, then. Did Rorik accept payment from Harald to hold back from retaking Aalborg?”
Eindr says nothing, but in his eyes I can see that he is wounded to have disappointed me. His complete lack of reaction and surprise is all the truth I need from him. I can all but see an iron collar around his throat. I place my hand on his arm.
“Thank you, my friend.” I say.
Before the hour’s over, I sit attended under a canopy of linen, on the great wooden chair piled high with furs. I can feel the hoofbeats through the grass before I hear them. Ragnar is at the west end of the field, leaning against the back of the hall. I’ll say this about my friend: he is beautiful when he leans.
The first riders clear the forest and seem confused. They’re not expecting this, me, practically alone in the field at the head of their road. They fan out, allowing Rorik to trot up the center. He looks nervous; his eyes sweep the field. Because I don’t rise to greet him, he canters over to me and dismounts.
His feet under him, he dons his most charming smile, and I am reminded how good he is at this. Politics. Business.
“My love,” he says, his arms spread wide. “When did you get back?”
“When you saw my ships enter the fjord,” I say without emotion. “When you fled.”
“We had some business inland,” he says. “But what is this?” He gestures to the shade, and the small table set with meats and fruit. And no chair for him. I do not answer. He tries again.
“It is my joy to see you, Ladda. You have no idea how much I’ve missed you.”
“I have some idea,” I say, rising.
I do this:
I look at the field where I left a small piece of my ear, the place where I fell in battle from a spear that nearly took my life.
I smell the sweat of horses.
I turn my cheek for a kiss.
I note the green velvet of my husband’s Frankish tunic.
I drive the spearpoint in my hand up under his jaw to the small pad of flesh there, pushing again as it crunches against the palette, feel the hot gush of blood staining my hands as he drops gagging and bubbling to his knees at my feet. Dying.
I draw my sword, a thing made for drawing in the sun, so that it whispers itself into my slick hand, and I strike down to his neck, the flecks of blood suddenly raising up my dress to my collarbone, my throat, my face.
I level my sword at four hundred men, still mounted, who are shocked at the murder of their lord by a girl. And there at the centre of all of them is Caldr’s scowl.
“Listen to me, all of you,” I say. “I have slain the traitor Rorik, in accordance with the law. I and I alone am Jarl of Aalborg. Follow me, and swear me your feal, and I will make you rich. But betray me, or conspire against me again, and you will meet the same fate as this corpse here.”
The men look amongst themselves but I try not to notice. One of them could spear me, spear Ragnar, and that would be the end of the war. So simple, really.
None move.
“And you, Caldr,” I yell out. “You are free to do one thing and that is ride to Harald, if he will have you. I will not. From this moment you are a wolf’s-head in the Jutland, and anyone can kill you if they wish without penalty of law.”
A hundred heads turn to Ragnar, unarmed, who continues to lean against the back of the building. He shrugs, but in a comical way, his palms upturned to the heavens. The men laugh, many dismounting to kneel before their Jarl.
Caldr glares at me, but he knows he’s done. A single pace towards me and he’ll not live another breath. He sneers, as only a man with so much practice at sneering can do, and turns his horse back to the forest. Two men follow, silently, whether to accept him as master or quarry I don’t know and don’t care.
“Jarl Ladda!” cries one of the kneeling warriors. He calls me by my family name, simpler, and it speaks to kinship.
“Jarl Ladda!” cries another. And this they chant. The serving girls laugh, not knowing if they would share my fate had things gone differently, and now all that nervousness lost to laughter and the pouring of wine. Casks of ale are rolled uphill and bashed open, the men plunging drinking-horns and already singing. The horses, overwhelmed by all the sudden noise, defecate steadily on the grass, and at this the men laugh louder, like children.
Two men come to move Rorik’s body.
“No, leave him there,” I command. “He will not enter Valhalla.”
It’s a quiet curse, but a lasting one—there’s no way to take back such a thing. The men are horrified. I regret it at once, but can’t show it.
“Eindr!” I shout, though it seems he is right behind me. Of course he is.
“Ladda?” He’d dig out that spearhead from Rorik’s throat and throw himself on it if I asked him to.
“It’s in my power to free you, now,” I say. I’m guessing, but I’m pretty sure I’m right.
“Free me?” He doesn’t understand, at first.
“From thrall. You’re not a slave, anymore, Eindr. You’re whatever you want to be.”
He swallows. “There’s only one thing I want to be,” he says.
“Then be that.”
And so I kiss him, th
e blood from my hand in his hair, but we don’t care and all the world is watching and his mouth is on mine and he’s strong, so much stronger in his arms than I thought it would be, and there’s only him and the scent of him and the pounding of my heart. There is cheering because a heartbeat ago there was uncertainty and now there is not. Now there is only their Ladda and her consort Eindr and that is a simple enough thing for anyone to understand. Something even my heart can understand.
I take my lover’s hand and practically march to my house, by the hall.
“And where are you going, Jarl Ladda?” asks Ragnar as we pass. He hasn’t moved from his spot, but his happiness for me, the smile on his face, is priceless.
“Mind your own business, Goat Pants,” I say, not stopping.
I allow myself two days.
Two days.
All business can fall to Ragnar. Eindr and I don’t leave our bed. We have food, water, wine brought to us. All there is of us is love. Skin. Hunger. Sleep. The days are for love, and for drifting in and out of dreams. Nights are for sharing, for whispering to one another. Childhood stories. Secrets. Incidents written into our flesh by fine scars. He kisses my ragged ear. I kiss his neck where there are marks from an iron collar in his boyhood.
He thinks I’m the goddess Thorgertha. He worships me like one, in an instant, then teases me in the next. We’re drunk on one another and the places we inhabit in each other’s hearts.
No one interrupts us. I just know, on waking on the third dawn, that it is time.
He’s still asleep when I steal from our bed, and I leave the curtained dormer and rouse the two dressing-girls. They tend to the fire and the kettle, and my hair is unbraided, combed, and oiled, rebraided.
Eindr stands naked by the curtain, watching me dress. He wants to ask me to come back. I want him to ask me. But I can’t, so he’ll say nothing. He knows, too. He gets dressed.
We hold hands as we walk down to the docks together, the morning wind in the rigging of a hundred and twenty ships. A fleet like the sea has never known.
Ragnar has been busy. Many have been sleeping aboard, and the docks are piled high with barrels, bundles, weapons, casks, great jars sealed with wax. It’s a market-smell of dried fish and copper, though it’s not a market we sail to.
“It’s all right,” Eindr says, “I know we’ll have to sail soon. Today, if you like.”
My throat is a bottle found in a barn, empty and hollow and dusty.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” he asks. “Everything will be perfect so long as we’re together.”
“Eindr,” I say, holding both his hands in mine. “You can’t come with me.”
“Of course I can.”
“You can’t. I need you not to.”
He still doesn’t believe me.
“It will be fine, Ladda,” he says.
“It will. But not like this. I need you to go.” This is impossible for me. I am breaking my own heart.
“Go? Go where? I’m not leaving your side,” he insists.
“Stop. Just stop, please? Listen?” I kiss his fingers, because if he wipes the tears from my cheeks I won’t be able to do this. “I’m sending you to the Nordvegr. To be the jarl of the Gaular.”
He tries to interrupt, but a simple “please” silences him. I continue.
“You’re the only one I trust. I’m giving you the Gaular. It’s mine, and I’m giving it to you because I believe in you, in your strength and your learning. You can make something of the place, something important. And you’ll have Kara and Brandr…”
“I don’t need Kara and Brandr,” he says. “I need you.”
“You have me. Oh my gods, you have me. And we’ll be together, I swear it. But I need to know that the Gaular is safe, that my sister is safe and that my people won’t just fade away if…”
“Don’t speak like that. Nothing’s going to happen.”
“Still. I need you there. They need you. You need to speak with Kara, have her teach you the runes she taught me. You need to figure out how we can teach them to others. Skalds, I mean. Our runes, they’re… special. Different. Your learning… just… figure it out.” I’m babbling. “Please, Eindr. For me. Go and build something.”
He knows it’s decided and that all of him wants to fight me. I want him to fight me. I want him to win, to ignore me and stay by my side every second.
But we both know it can’t be like that.
“I’m sending you north with seven ships,” I tell him. “With blacksmiths and quarrymen, and enough iron to build a fortress. You’ll find a garrison, not just warriors but families, who will settle and fight for the Gaulardale.”
“That’s three hundred people, Ladda,” he says. “Dozens of families. Think of what that will do to Aalborg. That’s your responsibility, too.”
“Take some from Aalborg, some from Hjorring. Villages in between, or just offer,” I tell him. “Take livestock, cattle, sheep, horses, anything you might need. Tools and weapons. Make it strong. Make it beautiful. Build stone halls. And then I’ll come and stay with you. Forever. I promise.”
A dockside gift from Ragnar—I don’t know how or when he conceived of this or managed to make it all happen.
“There are privileges to being king,” he says when I ask. “You’d like it.”
And on every mast a banner in red with a swan emblazoned in white. The Swanfleet of my dream, real, and here bobbing in the harbour. I don’t know how many hours, how much thread, how many beats of the loom this must have taken. The banners glint with fine silver wire woven into the design to catch the light, over and over, flashing with the breeze.
The priests here wanted a blot, a sacrifice of some dozen swans. I forbade it. Let them kill something we can eat, I tell them. So, what would be blasphemy is credited to practicality.
The wind comes off the land as the tide goes out, and we cruise through the Limfjord to the west with spacing our largest issue: wind and water want us all to collide in a clump, and the rocks here too unforgiving for such closeness. Half the ships are loosely cabled together on long lines, so that those closest to shore can be given a few extra backs for maneuvering as needed.
Once clear of the shore, we’re greeted by almost a dozen ships belonging to those loyal to Ragnar. Set out from Heithabyr and following the coastline, there’s been no sign of Harald between the isle of Fyn and the Jutland. He is somewhere out in the Kattegat. There is some debate whether to return to the fjord, past Aalborg, and so take the eastern passage to the sea.
Hearing this nearly kills me. There’s no way I can turn around and sail past Aalborg, past Eindr. There’s no way I can say goodbye again, no way not to stop and either throw my arms around him or throw myself into the waves. I can have war. But I can’t bear the thought of this.
But Ragnar decides, and mercifully we are to take the long way around. So for us it’s north, around the northernmost spits, and then south to the straits between Fyn and Sjeland. From there we can resupply at Roskilde, and cross to Lund if necessary. All these names, shapes of islands drawn in the dust. We have to know these waters, understand them, or die.
If Harald is running, we give him an advantage with our numbers, being so easy to spot from shore. But if he stands and fights, it’s a navy we kill him with.
The journey north is hard, as the wind is fickle and we are oars against the tide. But our backs are fresh, and there’s no rain, and this is the part of war that has every boy looking as joyous as serious. No enemy in sight, but the world of spear and shield, and new songs, and bawdy jokes, camaraderie and abundant fresh water for thirst. The new boys haven’t heard the stories a hundred times, have never seen their brothers bleed out whimpering on their laps.
Not yet.
Ashore, for a Thing with the captains. There are so many of us it takes nearly an hour for the ships to move out of the way to allow the rowboats to beach. Here, there are great cooking fires, debts settled, gear hauled out and repaired, traded.
I don’t
see Rota so much as know. I just… know. And I turn and Rota is there, under a stiff leather cap and broad in shoulder, a rower’s shoulders.
“Rota!” I cry, and my arms are around the scent of the sea, the scent of war. Sweat, leather, copper rivets. Smoke and salt and dried fish.
“Ladda,” Rota says, voice muffled by the kissing of cheeks and my barrage of affection, and I’m half-lifted off the ground.
“Kara told me you were dead,” I say, still trying to catch my breath.
“Almost,” Rota says. “Probably close enough for the gods to say so. And you?”
“Almost.” There’s a respectful beat of silence between us, even though we’re still tangled in each other’s arms. “Let me look at you.”
There is the conspirator of my childhood there still, somewhere under the sun-baked skin and ragged hair. The eyes are older, decades older, but there is the familiar solidity, the strength. Conviction. A confidence in fate which I lack.
“Did you take a wife, as Gudrun said?” I ask.
“A wife! We’re not all as old as you, Ladda. Of course, I know you’re a legend now.”
“I’ve gotten pretty good at shutting people up,” I tease.
“Apparently not. They say you’re either Alfhild the Pirate Queen, thrown out of Hel and the sea, or the goddess Thorgertha herself. You can turn yourself into a swan.”
“How much ale went into reaching that conclusion?” I ask.
Rota grins. “Word from the Gaular?”
“Fine. Better than fine. There is a new jarl, Eindr, you might remember him. He is…” I break off.
“You’re in love with him,” Rota says.
“That was… yes. How did you know?”
“The way you said his name,” and this followed by laughter, “I thought you married that fop from Aalborg?”
“He died,” I answer sternly.
“I’m sorry,” Rota says.
“I helped. A little.”
Rota laughs louder, pounds me on the shoulder, which makes me wince with pain I’d forgotten. “So, not sorry then! Come, let’s find some ale.”
Winter by Winter Page 14
