Thorbjorn came home with a victor’s swagger to find that he’d missed Sweyn’s visit by a few days and that, as Harald’s guardian, he was to take Rognvald’s place while the Jarl went to Ness to be with his wife. If disapproval was expressed, it made no more impact on Thorbjorn’s jubilation than it had on Sweyn.
Skarfr couldn’t resist discussing the dramatic scenes he’d witnessed with the only person who would never tell. He went further in trying to win back Hlif’s friendship and said he was willing to accompany her to Kirkjuvágr while Rognvald was away from Orkney, to petition St Magnus on lifting the curse.
Although he’d made the offer, he’d hoped the crazy plan to visit St Magnus’ shrine would be forgotten but no such luck. And he had given his word he’d go with her. When Hlif appeared in the kitchen and told Arn that the table-boy was to accompany her on a trip the following day to check supplies from Kirkjuvágr, Skarfr had hidden a groan and tried to seem enthusiastic.
Sharing the back of a wagon with sacks of wool, they talked as if Skarfr had never chosen Thorbjorn over Hlif and his guilt eased. But his misgivings about the trip returned.
‘We shouldn’t be doing this,’ Skarfr told Hlif as they bumped along the track in the back of a trader’s cart, with sacks of wool for company. ‘If the Jarl finds out, he’ll be furious.’
Pale pink lips pursed in irritation. ‘He can hardly object to me making my devotion.’ Then she grinned, her cheeks flushed and freckled. ‘Especially if he doesn’t know about it until afterwards, if at all. Everybody is used to me carrying out my duties as housekeeper.’
‘Apprentice housekeeper,’ corrected Skarfr, who had listened well while about his boring errands.
‘Not for much longer,’ retorted Hlif. ‘I’m of an age now to run the Jarl’s household and he owes me that status.’
‘Then why do you want the curse lifted? If you want to be the housekeeper and you’re going to be the housekeeper, you would only lose all that if you were to marry, so why does it matter that you can’t?’ He kept to himself the thought that with her looks she should be grateful to have such an appropriate role, given that nobody would want to be her husband without some large incentive. Perhaps a farm, some livestock. As she had no father or brother, Rognvald would be the one to agree mundr for Hlif. And pigs would fly before he did so!
A thought struck Skarfr.
‘You don’t have some man in mind for husband?’
Hlif’s face went a blotchy beetroot. ‘No,’ she said. Then, after a long pause, ‘I would just like the choice.’
‘And,’ pursued Skarfr, enjoying his own logic and heedless of its impact, ‘you said being cursed was protection against—’ Being backed against a wall and forced. ‘unwanted attentions. So you’re better off as you are.’
She said nothing and he felt smug, having won. It wasn’t like her not to have the last word though.
‘The ghosts are getting more violent,’ she said, in that quiet voice which made Skarfr shiver. ‘I don’t mind how people look at me or not getting married and not having children. And I do want to be a housekeeper. But if the curse was lifted, I wouldn’t have to see them. And I don’t know what they want from me.’
He asked. ‘Who do you see? What do they do? Tell me everything.’
She paused. For a terrible moment he thought she knew why he was so curious.
‘It helps me to have someone to talk to,’ she confessed.
Skarfr felt even worse. But he needed Hlif’s visions so he could feed them to Thorbjorn and stay safe.
‘I don’t just see Frakork,’ she said, her eyes distant. ‘I feel her death. Smoke slipping into my nostrils, then my throat, choking and burning from inside while the charred scent of my own flesh mixes with flame and pain. She carries that death with her even as she walks, whole in my visions, brandishing her wand, her magic intact.
The timbre of Hlif’s voice came from some dark underworld, as if from Helheim itself. ‘I see you too.’
Skarfr shuddered but he couldn’t help asking, ‘Older, like Harald? What am I doing?’
She opened her mouth to answer, hesitated, then shook her head. ‘I won’t say. Maybe saying will hang the loom-weight, fix the cloth and the pattern. Maybe I’m not seeing it true.’
Not knowing what she saw was an itch to his curiosity that he couldn’t scratch but he knew she wouldn’t tell him. Not now but maybe in the future – before the vision became the future and was no use at all.
She shuddered, whispered, ‘Do you think of your own death, Skarfr?’
The cartwheel caught in a pothole, jolted sacks and people against each other as it bumped out and the cart straightened again.
‘Up, up, Loki,’ Viggo, the trader, encouraged his horse. Any beast less suited to bear the name of the mercurial sex-changing god of trickery, Skarfr could not imagine. To his ears, the alternation of praise and reproach guiding the horse was in some foreign language, with as many clicks of the tongue as syllables. And Loki plodded on, with no noticeable change in rhythm or enthusiasm.
‘Of course,’ he answered, already thinking how he would use Hlif’s words to make Thorbjorn feel good about avenging Frakork. He shied away from the thought that two men had already died because of Skarfr’s fake visions. He wasn’t a target anymore, and neither was Hlif, which was all that mattered.
‘I shall die with an axe in my hand and carouse in Valhalla until the last battle. No hearth-waning for me.’ Carouse is a good word, he thought, and hearth-waning too.
To show Hlif that he was not thinking only of himself, he added sympathetically, ‘It is a terrible fate to be a woman, inferior in this world and barred from Valhalla. I admire the courage of women bearing such a burden.’
However, Hlif had clearly not quite forgiven him for choosing Thorbjorn. ‘The main burden for most women is men’s stupidity. As a skald, surely you know of Freyja’s Hall.’
‘An inferior afterlife, for failed men and for women,’ Skarfr dismissed it airily.
‘Well perhaps a failed skald might consider the company there to be quite suitable.’
How could any man keep patience with somebody so determined to provoke him? ‘I’m no longer a skald. I’m training as a warrior. With Thorbjorn. And with Rognvald’s blessing.’ There, take that.
But she’d followed her own thoughts. ‘You don’t know the names of Freyja’s cats.’
He sighed. ‘Nobody knows the names of Freyja’s cats.’
‘And you’ve never thought that strange? I hate to be the first to tell you but women do know the names of Freyja’s cats and a lot more besides. It’s for women to know and pass on to other women. And I’d rather go to Freyja’s Hall when I die and call her cats by name than endure more banquets and drinking competitions among bragging warriors.’
He shrugged, ‘Then I hope you get your wish.’
Considering the matter further, she said, ‘Rognvald wants us to go to Christian heaven. We could be together there.’
Skarfr doubted any such heaven would accept as sinful a man as himself but he didn’t want to explain this to Hlif so he let her have the last word on the subject. He would be happy in Valhalla. With Thorbjorn. And Sweyn, suggested his impish imagination. No doubt Óðinn was more skilled than Rognvald in dealing with belligerent guests. Otherwise, Hlif might have a point.
‘Why doesn’t Inge ask for a divorce?’ he asked Hlif, changing the subject. She was always happiest explaining women or politics to him. ‘She hates Thorbjorn and it’s even worse since he killed Sweyn’s men.’
‘Pride. Divorce is a public admission of failure. If she could accuse him of something, that would sweeten it but he has done nothing a husband shouldn’t do and much that shows her respect.’
‘But—’ objected Skarfr.
Hlif rounded on him. ‘You want her to talk of intimate matters? Make herself a laughing-stock? Worse – get a divorce by making herself into a woman no man will marry? It’s not as if she’s produced an heir. No, she won’t give up on the power she has as Thorbjorn’s wife, guardian to the young Jarl. And she won’t give up on needling him. It’s the only way she can cope.’
‘One day, she will go too far and he will hit her,’ Skarfr said.
‘What happens in the sagas when a man hits his wife?’
‘Trouble always comes of it.’
‘Then trouble will come of it. But for now, trouble comes of it for other women instead. And you don’t care.’ There it was again, the burr fretting at their friendship, his enjoyment of Thorbjorn’s patronage.
‘A man can appreciate another’s talents without condoning his behaviour with women,’ Skarfr defended himself.
‘No,’ declared Hlif, ‘he can’t. Some defects are too important to overlook.’
He glanced sideways at her and looked quickly back at the dust blowing up from the track they’d travelled over. Her eyes were screwed up, her fists clenched and he did not think how ugly she looked. And she had confided in him so he owed her something of himself in return. He had an overwhelming urge to hug her as Brigid had hugged him.
But he didn’t.
‘I brought my bones,’ he said and immediately regretted opening up so much.
‘What bones? Why?’ she asked, as he’d known she would.
He hesitated but he couldn’t with any courtesy tell her it was personal and to mind her own business.
‘Just things I collected on the beach, birds’ bones.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t have precious things and you’re supposed to offer something to the gods when you pray so I suppose it’s the same for a saint.’
‘And you brought them for me so St Magnus would hear my prayer.’ She spoke softly. ‘Nobody has ever done anything like that for me before. Thank you.’
It was his turn to flush crimson. He could hardly tell her that the bones were his offering for his prayer. Now what could he give? His mind shied away from the other object in his pack. He had lied. He did have precious things.
The cart shuddered to a halt and Skarfr realised the people around them were not walking to market. They were in the market and Viggo had drawn up his wagon in the space between a leather goods trader and a cheese stall.
‘This is where you get down,’ confirmed the carter, dropping the back of the cart so his human cargo could descend and his wares be displayed.