Hildigunnur’s voice carried around the corner and she knew her mother would be out in the farmyard, the setting sun at her back, beaming at Agla.
‘Oh, you are precious, you are. That’s more than we manage to pick in a season!’
Helga could hear the smile in Gytha’s voice as she announced, ‘Five baskets!’
‘We were good and ready to be of some use after eating you out of house and home,’ Agla replied.
‘I can see,’ Hildigunnur said. ‘We’ll have to get this stewing as soon as we can – it’ll be good for afters. If you’re still up for picking, I could use you to help me get some herbs in. Come!’
Helga heard the slamming of the main door and grabbed the next bit of firewood, but she paused. Something was nagging at her; something from before.
Her mother had been out the back when the dogs barked.
In her mind, she traced the journey – through the side door, through the open space inside, out the main door – and reversed it.
Karl had been in there when she got to him, but it could have been anyone. Anyone could have been indoors, talking to Bjorn, telling him what to do and where to go, before sneaking out the side door, shielded from the brook. Karl could have entered moments later, none the wiser. Or maybe he was? He’d said something about skulking, hadn’t he . . . ?
Helga thwacked the axe into the log and split it neatly. Who was it? Who’d made the big man bow his head?
‘What did that firewood ever do to you?’ Einar’s voice startled her, and instinctively, Helga pulled the axe free and to elbow-height, on the defensive. ‘Whoa—! Easy,’ he added, concern etched on his face. ‘It’s only me. What’s going on?’ Behind him she could hear Hildigunnur and Agla prattling as they headed off towards the herb garden.
‘I don’t know, Einar.’ She looked at him then, her sworn brother for as much of her life as she could remember. ‘But promise me one thing.’
‘Anything,’ he said, blue eyes trained on her, easy smile on his face. ‘What do you need?’
‘I need you to be careful.’
Einar shrugged. ‘Pff. Don’t worry, Helga, they’re all old and stupid. I have to go now, though. Apparently we’re bringing up four barrels of mead for tonight.’ He winked at her. ‘It should be a proper feast, and no mistake.’
*
The rhythmic tak-tak-tak of Thyri’s knife on the wooden board set the tempo for Jorunn’s steady strokes as she started slicing finger-length peels off the turnip in her hand.
‘I just feel sorry for your brother,’ Thyri said over her shoulder to Jorunn, breaking the silence.
She pursed her lips. ‘He could change his situation, but he doesn’t. And in the end we all build our own house.’
‘Still, is there something we could do? Maybe talk—’
‘I don’t know,’ Jorunn interrupted, without looking up, ‘I don’t know that talking is the right thing to do. I want no part of any of it.’
The tak-tak grew quicker. ‘Still not right,’ Thyri mumbled.
‘Lots of things aren’t,’ Jorunn said firmly.
For a couple of breaths there was no sound in the longhouse other than that of work being done. Hildigunnur’s big cauldron taunted them with its open mouth, and it didn’t matter how many vegetables they threw in, the damned thing still stayed more than half-empty.
The door creaked and Runa came in.
Thyri looked up, eyed her, then went back to chopping, not saying a word. Jorunn too remained focused on her task.
‘And hello to you too,’ Runa said. ‘Warm family greeting, as usual.’
‘About as warm as your bed, I reckon,’ Jorunn said.
‘Sorry,’ Runa said, ‘what did you say?’
‘You heard her,’ Thyri said.
‘I did,’ Runa said slowly. ‘I just didn’t understand her.’ There was silence in the longhouse. ‘See, her accent has gone all funny from too much Swedish cock in her mouth.’
Jorunn’s knife stopped moving, but she still didn’t look up.
‘Oho! And your husband is happy, is he?’ Thyri said.
Runa snorted. ‘He hasn’t said otherwise.’
Jorunn’s knife started moving again, flicking the peels onto the board, tossing the slices into the cauldron. ‘You mistreat my brother,’ she said, quietly. Runa glared at her, but didn’t respond. ‘I don’t care what you do in your bed, but when he is near us, he is happy. When he is near you, he looks like a beaten dog.’
‘And yours is a pansy. You can go sit on a pinecone, bitch,’ Runa snapped. ‘Your brother is supposed to be a grown man.’
‘And he is,’ Jorunn said, ‘but he is also both kind and gentle.’ She looked up and straight into Runa’s eyes. Without wavering, she placed the point of the knife at the middle of the root and slid it in. ‘I am neither.’
Runa’s eyes narrowed and her lips pursed. ‘Are you threatening me?’
Jorunn rose, dropped the knife and squared up to the shorter woman. ‘He is my brother. He’s family. And our father has taught us that whoever threatens the family—’
‘Jorunn,’ Thyri muttered.
The main door closed and Hildigunnur’s voice rang out. ‘I’m glad you ladies have found each other – now get to work instead of all of this chatter!’
With a slight tilt of her head to Thyri in thanks for the warning, Jorunn sat down and reached for her knife. ‘Glad we had this talk, Sister,’ she murmured. Her knife started moving again, slicing the turnip, but her eyes never left those of her brother’s wife.
Chapter 9
Feast
Sigmar’s face was flushed in the warm light reflecting from Unnthor’s burnished shields. ‘What I want to say,’ he slurred, ‘what I want to say, is that sometimes – sometimes kings can be pitiful little things.’
‘Hah!’ Karl said, throwing his arm around the Swede and banging his free hand on the table. ‘What happened? Did the other one drop? First time you’ve made any sort of sense since we got here.’
‘He’s not wrong,’ Jorunn said. ‘We sometimes get requests from the court that you wouldn’t believe.’
Helga watched as conversation sloshed back and forth and siblings leaned over the table, grabbed each other by the arm and interrupted loudly. It had become background noise a while ago as she and Einar cleared plates and filled mugs, then settled back in their corner to observe from afar. Unnthor had slaughtered a pig especially, and they’d prepared plenty of the freshest vegetables. From his saddlebag, Karl had produced a bulging skin of rich red wine from the south, and Bjorn had carried in two in each hand. Aslak had offered two wine skins, under the glare of his wife, but Sigmar and Jorunn had gone one better, producing three skins full to the brim of Swedish honey-mead, which the family was getting through quickly and increasingly rowdily.
‘Saw Gytha talking to you again this afternoon,’ Helga said to Einar.
The boy looked up at her from his bowl of stew and shrugged. ‘So?’
‘Come on now,’ Helga said, ‘she’s pretty and she’s throwing herself at you. Why do you keep turning her down?’
It was gone in the blink of an eye, but she caught it: he’d glanced at the table, where Jorunn was busy telling a story that had her brothers chortling, all yesterday’s animosity forgotten. Her beautiful face beamed with life and joy.
‘Dunno,’ Einar muttered. ‘She’s young . . .’
Helga thought back and almost wanted to slap herself. Of course. The flirting and the chasing all those years ago; the way Einar had been getting more and more tense all through the long build-up to the visit . . . ‘I suppose,’ Helga said, and left it at that. The warmth of the longhouse was getting to her. ‘How are they for mead?’
‘Good enough, I’d say,’ Einar said without even looking. ‘They’re getting louder, at any rate.’
‘’s jus
t not right,’ Agla said, her voice cutting through the din. ‘She’s so young.’
‘I agree,’ Runa slurred next to her, ‘but she’ll be married soon enough.’
Helga glanced at the shape of Gytha, twisting in her bunk to try to get away from the sounds.
‘And happy,’ Jorunn added. ‘Or just happy.’
‘Does she keep you happy, Sigmar?’ Runa said.
‘I can’t complain—’ Sigmar said.
‘—or I’ll beat you senseless,’ Jorunn added.
Bjorn laughed first and loudest, but the rest of them followed. At the far end of the table Unnthor started up a song, and Karl joined in enthusiastically.
‘Husband,’ Hildigunnur shouted, ‘stop your howling! We’re parched! It’s time to bring out the barrel!’
Unnthor rose unsteadily to roars of approval. ‘This – you ungrateful little whelps – is a barrel of the best—’
‘—and strongest,’ Hildigunnur added.
‘—and strongest mead I’ve ever brewed,’ Unnthor said. ‘What you don’t drink tonight will be used for me to dip my arrow in and hunt bears!’
‘Give us the mead so we can dip our arrows ourselves!’ Bjorn roared to more laughter.
Helga glanced at Einar. ‘I’m going to crawl into a bunk like the little ones and hope they all fall asleep soon,’ she said.
‘They will,’ Einar said. ‘I’ll watch over them.’
As she stood up from her corner, she found her mother’s eyes across the room. Helga glanced at her bunk and Hildigunnur nodded, smiling.
She wrapped herself up in her blanket, and moments later the voices became like the wind in the trees and the waves of the sea, dancing this way and that, rising and falling, rising, and falling . . .
Sleep took her.
Chapter 10
Blood
Helga’s eyelids twitched and she shook her head, turning over to get away from the noise in her dreams. Something was bleating, an animal in pain, maybe? It stopped, but then it started again, twice as loud, and close – too close. She frowned. It wasn’t an animal, it was screaming. A woman. A woman screaming, very close, her voice raw with horror. The warm comfort of sleep washed off and she sat bolt-upright. There was a moment of silence – had she dreamed it? – then more noise, a twisted, crazed sound that rose and rose into the air.
‘Mum!’ Gytha’s voice sounded terrified. There was a breath, then another anguished wail. ‘Mum – stop!’ Gytha shouted, ‘what’s wrong?’
A moment later, Gytha was screaming too.
Helga took a deep breath. There was a sour smell on the air: stale mead, sweat – vomit? But something else as well. And there were voices coming from all over, and now Unnthor was shouting for calm and Hildigunnur was shouting at someone to bring water.
Her eyes were adjusting to the early morning sunlight leaking in through the shutters, but Helga was still struggling to make out the shapes inside. Jorunn was screaming for Bjorn now, and somewhere over her shoulder the door smashed open and the big man bellowed something in reply. Helga swung her legs over the edge of her bunk and stumbled to her feet, self-consciously stroking the wrinkles out of her shift and feeling ridiculous as she did so; whatever was going on meant no one was going to notice her this morning.
Her eyes were still befuddled with sleep, so the picture in front of her made little sense.
Agla was bent double over something; Hildigunnur had wedged herself in beside her and was trying to push the woman away. Sigmar was levering Gytha to the side, then pushing her towards Jorunn, who was grabbing the girl and awkwardly embracing her, pressing her head to her shoulder. As her vision sharpened, Helga realised Gytha was shaking violently.
What in the name of the gods—?
As Helga watched, her mother jabbed her fingers into the crook of Agla’s elbow, breaking the grip and shouldering the woman away from whatever she had been clutching.
She was leaning over Karl’s bed.
Slowly, ever so slowly, a path opened to the wooden frame and the room suddenly dropped into unnatural quiet after the storm of voices, until the sound of children crying fell like ripples into the silence.
Helga’s feet took her towards the edge.
Be careful when the knives come out . . .
Around her, the adults of Riverside started shouting at each other, incomprehensible noises in her head, and probably in theirs as well.
Darkness in their hearts.
She saw the shape before she saw the face, but first there was the smell.
Blood.
Iron, salt, life – everything that flowed in a human.
Karl’s face was pale and tilted to the side. A thin line of spittle had leaked into his coarse dark beard. His hands lay by his sides, and he looked exactly like someone sleeping off a particularly heavy night of drink.
The entire lower half of the bed and the blanket covering him, however, were soaked in blood.
Without even thinking about what she was doing, Helga reached slowly for the corner of the blanket and pulled. The thickening tendrils of blood came away with a wet, sucking sound. Karl was still wearing his trousers, but they were as dark red as the blanket. Two big black spots on the inside of his thighs drew her eye. Here, the fabric had almost disappeared under a solid, shiny coating of blood.
Helga felt the heat by her shoulder even before she sensed the presence of her mother. ‘Pull,’ she said, her teeth clenched in fury.
Fingers suddenly trembling, Helga reached out and placed her hands on Karl’s thighs, feeling the sticky residue on her palms, then gently, she pulled on the material and the fabric came away to reveal a neat cut, maybe the length of a thumb, placed just by the big vein in the groin, with a matching one on the other side.
‘Both sides,’ Helga muttered, and Hildigunnur’s hand on her shoulder squeezed so hard that Helga thought she could feel the bones in her shoulder breaking.
‘My son,’ her mother said, loud enough for everyone to hear, ‘has been murdered in his sleep.’
*
The beautiful blue sky was warmed by the rising sun, and stood in stark contrast to the family of Unnthor and Hildigunnur, gathered in a circle in the farmyard.
Aslak had his arm around Runa, who stood stiff as a board, her eyes closed, her jaw working furiously. Bragi and Sigrun hung off the skirt of her dress, their faces buried in the folds of the material. They might have been too young to understand what had happened, but they were old enough to have picked up the uneasy atmosphere of grief and fury.
Sigmar and Jorunn, side by side, were grim-faced and straight-backed.
Bjorn, towering over Thyri, had a hand on Volund’s shoulder as he blinked sleepily in front of them.
Agla hung off Hildigunnur’s shoulder. She was wrapped in a blanket and her eyes were unfocused, as if she were looking at something not of this world. Gytha, standing next to her, was half-heartedly trying to comfort her mother.
Helga thought Gytha looked like she needed a fair bit of comfort herself.
She dared a glance at her father, flanked by Einar and Jaki. Unnthor Reginsson looked like thunder. His massive chest heaved with each deep breath, his jaw was solid, to keep his lips from moving, and his big hands clenched and unclenched like beating hearts. He shook with a pure fury that looked barely under control.
‘I will keep this very simple,’ he said, his voice a grating, growling stone-slide. ‘Einar will tie down your horses. Jaki will watch the gate. And I will hunt down and kill anyone who leaves before I say they can. Is that understood?’ Nods all around, some sharp, others hesitant, all respectfully terrified. No one who looked at the man standing before them could have doubted that this was no idle threat.
But no one spoke.
Unnthor stood, furiously quiet, and waited.
Even Bjorn had trouble meeting his gaz
e, but still no one spoke.
A deep breath, and then—
‘So what happens now?’ Jorunn asked.
Helga’s heart bounced in her chest, but if there was one person in that circle who could risk speaking without Unnthor taking their head off, it was his beloved daughter.
‘Whoever killed Karl steps forward and we negotiate the blood-price to be paid to Agla and Gytha,’ Unnthor said.
‘What if no one steps forward?’ Bjorn said.
Unnthor glared at each one of them in turn. ‘I’ll find you,’ he said, ‘and when I do, the price will be a lot higher.’
No one spoke, and even in the sun, Helga shivered.
‘Jaki,’ Hildigunnur snapped suddenly, ‘set these people to work. Everywhere. Right now. Helga—’ A quick nudge towards the house, with no more words attached.
With that, Hildigunnur took Agla in one hand and Gytha in the other and led them down towards the river, muttering in Agla’s ear all the way, like she would soothe a skittish horse.
‘Wood to fetch, roots to grub, logs to chop.’ Jaki listed the chores. ‘Get to it. After midday, we dig.’
Letting her feet guide her, Helga walked towards the longhouse. The main doors looked a lot less inviting than they had only last night.
*
The smell had had time to spread, and the scent of Karl’s blood was filling her nostrils. She was in no great hurry to get to the corpse itself, so instead she allowed herself to just drift towards his bed, past the bunks where Aslak and his family had bedded down. She noted that there were two small blankets for the children and two for the adults. The indentations suggested that the youngest of Unnthor’s sons hadn’t been sleeping very close to his wife.
Kin (Helga Finnsdottir) Page 12
