Chapter 22

He is Truly Wise who’s Travelled Far and Knows the Ways of the World

A fter an evening of fitful sleep. I had been visited only by nightmares. Sigurd had slept soundlessly, as though he were entombed beneath his heavy furs. I had my suspicions that it had been the honied mead that stilled him for even the grinding of his teeth had not been enough to wake him. It had sounded as though the bed were being gnawed by rats. He did not move a muscle until the sun rose.

By the time Ligach woke me with a bowl of last night’s broth he had already left. No doubt trying to avoid any more talk of my sister and her impending wedding. I dressed hastily, in one of the gowns that Estrid had helped me expand, to cover my ever-growing frame. Her gowns were not as close-fitting as my own.

At the table, I pecked at the food. Not knowing how long it would be before I would eat again. Ligach watched from the doorway.

‘You’ll be alone with him for days. What is it he intends you to do?’

I stopped bowl at my lips. ‘I think he intends to show me the workings of the Jarldom.’ I thought on it. ‘It can only be a good thing. The more I learn of it, the better prepared I am when my husband leaves to raid and I am left here alone.’

‘I wouldn’t trust him. He’s as slippery as an eel.’

‘He isn’t so bad. He allowed me to free you, after all.’

‘Aye, weel. I dinna trust him and you shouldn’t either.’ She rested her back against the door frame. ‘They are not our people. They’ll burn in hell for what they do.’

As she said it, Sigurd breezed past her. ‘I am not scared to burn in your hell. At least it will be warmer than my own.’ He planted a kiss on the top of my head.

Remembering moments like this, I know if they had had more time they would have liked each other. Sigurd would have taken her as one of his shield maidens. He always loved anyone with spirit.

‘I see you have returned.’ I waved a hand to dismiss Ligach. She scowled before disappearing through the door.

‘The horses are readied. I have had Thorkell tie both falcons to my gelding.’

‘You intend us to hunt?’ I was unsure of what our journey would entail but I had not planned on hunting. I needed my husband’s attention. It would be the only way that I would be able to persuade him to sail to Atholl and bring my sister home.

‘While we travel, I was hoping you would teach me?’

‘Of course.’ I smiled. ‘It would be good for us.’

‘Come,’ he said, holding out my travelling cloak. ‘We must leave if are to be there before nightfall.’ He looked down at my frame. ‘We will need to travel slowly.’

Outside, the horses were waiting for us. The air was chilled with a winter that I had not felt since I was eight summers old. I pulled my cloak tighter as I watched snowflakes drift slowly down, coming to rest on my cold cheeks.

‘It is going to be a cold winter,’ I said.

‘It never lasts long on the islands; the snow soon makes way for rain.’

I could not have imagined it then, but Sigurd was right. The snow did not lie long, the winds that buffeted our islands would always take the snow and bring with it fresh rain clouds.

‘Will you help me?’ I asked.

I had grown clumsy as my belly got larger. He helped me on to a small stocky mare, the one that I had seen out in our pastures grazing. She was sturdier and broader.

‘These are not our horses?’

‘No. Neither you nor I will be riding those beasts your father tried to kill me with.’

I snorted. ‘He did not try to kill you. It was your poor riding and your arrogance that saw you on the floor.’

He ignored my taunts.

‘I had these travelled from Iceland,’ he said, mounting his own. ‘She is yours. What will you name her?’

‘She is mine?’

He nodded, resting on the pommel of his saddle so that he might get a better look at me.

‘I do not know.’

‘Who are your ancient ones? Your gods?’

When I was a little girl, in the time before, my mother would take me on her lap and smooth my curls and tell me stories of the ancient ones. She always seemed so proud of our ancestors, of the women that had come before. Then, no matter how my father’s pious priests told her she would be punished, she refused to give us those stories. Now, I wonder if it was their lies that crushed her spirit. If she truly believed it was her belief in those pagan gods that had made a vengeful God take her only son. I loved those stories. Words do not kill, not like a sword swung by a pious man. Women are gods, women create life.

‘We had many gods, but they were banished when we took the White Christ into our hearts.’ Women no longer had a female god to look up to, not like the Danes had with Freyja. ‘When I was a wee girl, my mother would tell me of an ancient goddess, the most powerful and feared of all. She would rule the winter for its entire duration, all the way to Beltane.’ I looked skyward. ‘In honour of our first snowfall, I shall name her Beira.’

‘Beira, it is beautiful,’ he leaned over and placed a huge hand against the curve of my belly. ‘Now, what shall we call you?’

‘I have not thought of a name.’

I had been too afraid to name him. That by naming him it somehow made the words of the Volva hold more weight.

‘We shall name him Thorfinn, after Thorfinn Skull-splitter. He will be in my place when Odin welcomes me into Valhalla.’ He nudged his horse on and mine began to follow.

‘Do you not name a son after his father?’ I asked curiously.

‘A child is named after his ancestors, yes, but those that are already in Odin’s Great Hall or with Hel.’

‘Who is Hel?’ I asked, pushing my horse on so that I could ride next to him. ‘Estrid has not told me of her.’

He laughed. ‘Estrid must be getting too old and forgetful. Hel is the daughter of Loki and the giantess Angroboda. She rules the underworld of the dead.’

‘You have two places for your dead? Like Heaven and Hell?’

‘Our warriors who die in battle get to feast with Odin in Valhalla and the dead, they dwell with Hel in the underworld on the mountain of the dead.’ He pushed on further.

‘Where are we going, Sigurd?’

‘Before our son arrives, I must show you the Jarldom, there is not just Byrgisey.’

We travelled until the sun passed into noon. As the farmhouses fell away into the distance the land opened into flat plain. It is not made as the same land as Alba, it is as though God has taken his hand and flattened it, like hammered silver. It is why they are fertile for certain crops. I listened to the soft clicks of Drest and her new companion as their cages rattled against the hindquarters of Sigurd’s horse.

The air was clean and peaceful, and the snow clouds had given way to an ice-blue sky. Deeper into the grasslands, we passed fewer and fewer farmsteads. They were merely black ink spots against the heather. No smoke spiralled from fires lit to warm the hearth.

‘Where will we sleep?’ I tried to disguise the panic of a woman who feels very nearly ready to bring a child into the world and is not ready to do it in someone else’s home. ‘Surely we cannot sleep out under the stars when I am in such a way?’

‘Someone will give us food and shelter.’ He waved a hand dismissively. ‘Who would turn away their Jarl and his bride? They will be grateful for our presence.’

He reined his horse left before coming to stop near a brook.

‘We can rest here a while, and I will find us shelter before nightfall,’ he said, lifting both our falcons down and resting them against rocks that jutted from the ground.

‘I need your help, Sigurd. I think my body has seized. It has been a long time since I have ridden a horse any distance and never while I have been this shape.’ I looked down at the curve of my gown that was hiding the pommel of the saddle from my view.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Lean on me.’ He helped me down from Beira. ‘There is a place you sit.’

Out of the saddle I arched my back, trying to stop it aching. ‘Out of one seat and into another,’ I mumbled sitting down against the cold stone, trying to tuck my cloak beneath me.

‘Are you travelling well?’

‘Aye, I am,’ I said, feeling more like the Blessed Virgin, being rattled around on a mule trying to find shelter than the wife of a Jarl. ‘How long do you intend us to be travelling?’

‘I want to show you Hamnavoe, it is our busiest trading port. If you are to make a good Jarl, you need to understand our ways. We will be home before the moon rises tomorrow.’ He glanced down at the falcons, eyes alight with interest. The sight of Drest made me think of Elpin, for the first time since I had arrived on the island. I wondered, for a moment, what he would have thought, seeing me carrying a child, watching me rule the Jarldom and teaching a Dane how to hunt with a falcon. I pushed the whole thing from my mind. Sigurd and Elpin could never have coexisted together.

‘Shall I show you?’ I said, hoping that being close to him would bring me some comfort.

Without another word, he brought them to me. Gingerly I opened Drest’s cage and placed my arm before his feet. Sigurd stood behind me, warm breath against my neck.

‘See this here,’ I whispered to him, touching the thin leather strap tied to Drest’s foot. ‘This is a hunting jess; you use it like this.’ I slipped the piece of leather between my thumb and forefinger coaxing him onto my arm and holding him there. ‘Now, I have control.’ I slipped off his hood and with a flick of my wrist he was gone.

He soared skyward, twisting and turning and stretching against the breeze. I squinted against the midday sun, my gaze settling on a skein of geese flying noisily before him.

‘He is astonishing,’ Sigurd whispered.

‘I have you to thank.’ I had not forgotten what he had done for me all those months ago. ‘If it had not been for you, he would be dead at my father’s hand.’

‘I could not see you parted from him.’ He kissed my cheek. ‘I am not like your father.’

I knew. Just as I knew the sun would rise again tomorrow. Sigurd was a good man until his last breath. I smiled and turned my eyes to the heavens. ‘Now, it is your turn.’

I opened the arched door of the cage and guided his hand with mine. He took the jess nimbly between his fingers and lifted the bird out. It gripped tight onto the sleeve of his tunic. She was snow white. The most beautiful creature I had ever seen. She looked as though she had drifted through the embers of a fire and been speckled with charcoal.

‘Hold her steady,’ I said, walking behind Sigurd, bracing his arm with my own. ‘Feel the weight against you.’ I moved slowly removing her black hood. Black eyes blinked rapidly before staring fixedly at the sky. ‘Before you let her go, what will you name her?’

His eyes met mine. ‘I will name her Freyja.’ He let go.

We watched as Freyja tore towards the heavens; feathers as bright as the clouds. Against the sky, their figures were like tiny flecks. I listened to his steady breathing as he watched. It is always wise to ask a man for his good favour when he is at his happiest, it seemed like there was no better time. I would dazzle him with all he could gain.

‘Sigurd,’ I tried, a trill in my voice like a child who wants. ‘Would it not be better that my sister marries a Dane? What of one a man from Norway?’

‘I thought we were not going to talk of it anymore?’

‘You said we were not going to talk of it anymore. I was not in agreement. So here I am talking.’

‘Woman, I have told you. If your father has given your sister to Jarl Finnleik, there is no Dane, no Norseman alive who would go against him and marry her without Jarl Finnleik’s say. Your father may as well made himself a bed in J?rmungandr’s nest. Now, let me watch my bird.’

‘But Sigurd,’ I placed my hand against his arm. ‘Surely it would be safer for us all if it were anyone else but Finnleik? Our own Jarldom would not be safe.’

‘It would have been safer for us all if your father had married your sister to a Pict. He would have been wise to give Finnleik what was asked, and he would have sailed on to Northumbria. Now, he will be King on Finnleik’s short leash, and your sister the bait.’ He turned his eyes back towards the birds.

‘So, my sister can be swallowed up?’ Like I had been when I had to suffer the loss of both a brother and a mother. ‘I hope Finnleik holds my father’s leash tight enough that he might choke and while neither of them is looking I will set her free.’

He chuckled at that. ‘You? And what army?’

Sigurd’s army was vast then. As big as my father’s, but not what we have now. I knew then, that if it came to it, the Danes would back us. They would send ships.

‘Our army.’

‘It is ours now?’

‘It is if it means it will keep my sister safe. The day I agreed to marry you, I did it for the love of my sister. I did it so that she would not have to marry at my father’s whim. So that she may have a life she would choose, not a one that is chosen for her.’ My eyes met his. ‘If she is married to Finnleik then all of this has been for nothing?’

‘Nothing?’ He swivelled to face me, staring at me, his expression dumbfounded. ‘We are nothing? This is nothing?’

‘You are twisting my words. That is not what I mean–’

‘Your sister will marry Finnleik. It is your father’s decision, and you will not use MY men in your fight. If you chose this path, I would not stop you, but you are on your own.’

I hesitated for a moment. I watched as his jaw clenched and unclenched. It was the angriest I had ever seen him. If I chose to save my sister, he would not stop me, but it would be me alone. I would have no army. It did not matter.

‘No,’ I said, lifting my chin. ‘I will have no army, but I do not need one.’

I stood and watched my husband mount his gelding and leave.