Chapter 36

A Leader Bold Enough to Take the Banner

B ring her to me,’ I said again, my words drifting on the commotion. ‘Bring her!’

All around me was noise. That much I remember. Men running. Women screaming. Boats jostling against the hardness of the dock. A deathly silence lay upon my lap. No sound. No flicker of mischief behind dead eyes. I placed a hand against his chest and waited for the tap, tap, tap against my palm. Stillness. Nothing.

‘Please…Please don’t leave us,’ I whispered. ‘Come back to us.’

I held his limp fingers, trying to drag him back from wherever Odin had taken him. I could feel a hundred eyes upon me. Tears stung my eyes. I can still feel my throat closing now, at the thought. His beautiful plait. The line of his jaw. The neatness of his bloodied beard. How could it be that he would no longer exist? I wanted it to be a trick of Loki. That I would not soon be washing my husband for burial. Beloved by all, like Baldur, but even the gods could not bring him back.

Pulled in two I stayed on the ship. Thorfinn sleeping soundly at my breast and Sigurd lay in an eternal sleep in my lap. How could fate have been so cruel? To make me think that I could outrun it.

My wet tears now wound clean lines through the dried blood upon his cheek. I rocked, tucking Thorfinn closer to me. I stroked a hand gently through his hair.

‘She will be here soon,’ I whispered. ‘She will know what to do.’

On the dock, people clustered. Sombre eyes stared down at us. I curved myself closer to him, placing Thorfinn between us.

I felt the movement of the boat against the water as someone stepped behind us. ‘Olith.’ Donada gently squeezed my shoulder. ‘We have to go inside. You cannae stay here.’

Suddenly, I was all too aware of the biting darkness. My breath hung frozen in the air. Thorfinn. I stared down at my child, naked but for furs. ‘Please,’ I said, words shuddering. ‘Bring Sigurd by the fire, he must be so cold.’

‘We will.’ Ligach nodded to Thorkell and some of the men, who climbed down into the ship.

Donada wrapped an arm around my waist to steady me and Thorfinn. Clumsily I managed to get out onto the dock and Ligach and Halldora wrapped a cloak around my shoulders. My legs would not respond no matter how I urged them. Melded to the floor like hardened tallow.

Gently, they lifted him from the hull where he had died and carried him slowly up the winding path towards the Mead Hall. I could not tear my eyes away from him. A procession of candles fell in behind. From somewhere beyond the guttering torches, I heard the Volva’s voice. ‘All this I had foreseen.’

I turned to face her. White buckskin cape over her tiny, wizened frame and wreathed in her ring of maidens. She wore no headdress now, a cloud of grey hair billowing around her and a white ink line of runes around her forehead.

My anger burned like a fire. ‘It is you who brought this upon us! No one else!’ I twisted unsteady as a lamb. ‘You sent our men to slaughter with your riddles! You did not foresee it. You willed it!’

Anger. I could taste it on my tongue. I could feel it through my bones. The tears came hot now. Thorfinn let out a terrified wail. ‘You willed it. You.’ I tried to rock him but he would not settle. ‘Now you must fix it.’

All around us, men and women were standing in silent witness. Chieftains. Farmers. Shieldmaidens and thralls. I could not look at the sea of faces or I would be lost. All would be lost.

‘Bring him back to me,’ I pleaded. ‘I will pay any price. Bring him back.’

Her steel gaze settled upon me. ‘He is in Odin’s palace now, roofed with shields. He sips honied mead in Valhalla.’ She glanced up at the sound of a falcon. My eye followed, in the darkness they looked like spills of ink, but I knew their call. ‘Daughter of Freyja, it is you who will lead us. Where you go, they will follow.’

‘A mother with a husband who is to be food for the worms, and I am to lead us?’ I shouted through a hail of tears. ‘I am your charge?’

The old woman turned, using her staff to guide her on the uneven path. The maiden’s followed, disappearing through the darkness as though it had all been a dream.

How could he be lost to me forever? I was not ready for him to leave. Not ready to rule. I buckled at the knee with the force of my shuddering sobs, but Ligach and Donada caught me, guiding me back towards the Mead Hall. Blind from tears with legs that were not my own, I gripped Thorfinn to keep out the chill as we followed the horseshoe of the bay.

‘You need rest, Olith,’ Donada whispered. ‘Let the women see to the Jarl and I will make you a warm bath. You must sleep.’

I knew then if I lay down, I would not get back up. He was dead. Dead, and I would be too.

‘I must prepare him myself.’

Prepare him for what, I did not know. There would be no priest. No church. Where would he go? My hands began to tremble.

‘It’s all right,’ she said, cradling Thorfinn and I. ‘We can do it together.’

?

The heat inside the Mead Hall felt thick as a wall. As we pushed open the door I stumbled, weak with grief and numb with cold. A hush fell over the room.

As we moved through the throng, men and women parted bowing their heads. Through the smoke of the fire, our chairs lay empty at the head of the room. Now there would just be me.

Two large oak tables had been pushed together crudely before the fire. Sigurd lay prone, dressed in his tunic with a bloodied raven at his chest. His feet splayed and boots still crusted with thick clarts of mud. His hands showed the wounds of battle, knuckles twisted and swollen with skin that was split and bloodied. His beautiful face, pale as carved stone stared up at the ceiling while the ink of Vegvisir smoked beneath the pallid skin of his throat. I reached out a hand to trace the line of it. The shock of the coldness of his flesh ran through me like a bolt.

‘You are cold, my love,’ I whispered for no ears but his. I took the cloak from around my shoulders and laid it over him.

‘How can you leave me like this? There is so much I do not know.’

Soft hands guided me towards the seat I had always taken to the left of my husband’s.

‘Jarl Olith,’ said Thorkell gesturing to Sigurd’s empty seat. ‘This is yours now.’