Chapter Twenty-Five

Sigurd’s Mother

The weight of betrayal was a block of ice upon Thorvald’s shoulders. Because that’s what it was. Betrayal. Was this how his father had felt when he’d fled into the woods?

No, the comparison was invalid. Thorvald was nothing like that man. He didn’t run in fear. He knew his obligations and adhered to them. His vow to the jarl had cost him the princess. And had cost the princess far more.

Thorvald pulled free of Ozrik’s grasp and trudged forward toward Birna. Neither of them wiped away the rain falling on their faces. Grief seemed to intensify the years incised on her skin. In her younger days, her hair had fallen below her waist and had been shiny and smooth. It was still long, but had turned wild as more and more strands turned from pure gold to stark white. She wore simple, clean garments, with only oval brooches for decoration.

When they stepped from the dock to solid ground, Ozrik went toward the hall where the jarl and many of the warriors had gone.

She took Thorvald’s face in her hands and gazed up at him, eyes wet and shining with love.

“Children grow so quickly.” Her lip trembled. She swallowed and continued. “Before me is a full grown man, but every time I see you, I see the child I loved, and I want to pull you into my arms to protect you.” She laughed a little. “Not that you or Sigurd much wanted such things, two wild ones that you were.”

Most of the other people had cleared the shore, returning to their lives and leaving them alone.

Except for one. She was the only being who could have drawn Thorvald’s attention away from the reunion with his aunt. One glimpse of her and Thorvald’s blood froze.

The woman was a mass of brown blending into the landscape. And his focus was so intense on what lay ahead, he hadn’t seen her until she moved.

Old Ingerun. With what was perhaps the last vestiges of sight in her clouded eyes, she squinted at him. Hunched over upon herself, she was small the way a fox seems to people after a long winter of seeing only wolves.

It’d been years. She lived alone, deep in the woods, keeping a few goats for milk and meat, a few sheep for wool that she spun and wove, trading cloth and needle-bound socks for what her garden could not provide. For any price between a bowl of warm broth and a silver coin, depending on the status of the one seeking help, she sold herbs for any number of maladies.

But nothing she grew could ease what ailed him.

That’s not why she was dangerous. She’d been the only other person that day alongside the fray of battle who’d witnessed his father’s cowardice. Although her vision failed now, her eyes had been perfectly clear and strong then.

Thorvald faced her, wary as a hare hearing a hawk’s cry. “You’re not dead.”

Birna grabbed his arm and squeezed in objection to his rudeness.

“You’re not so lucky as that, are you?” Ingerun spat at his feet and turned, hobbling away.

His aunt stayed silent until Ingerun was a goodly distance away. “Why did she do that?”

Lying to Birna, the one who’d nurtured him with the same wholehearted warmth she’d bestowed upon the son of her body, wasn’t easy.

It was, however, necessary.

“Who can say?”

He rubbed the place where he used to wear the arm ring. Giving it to Gorm seemed a weak and pathetic defiance in the face of what he’d done to the princess.

They walked in silence up to where her small hut stood nestled in a copse of pines, set on the far reaches of the village. Not quite with the rest, but not quite separate. The air smelled of home, full of the rich muddiness of earth newly dampened under a fresh rain. The trees were right and the sounds of the birds as familiar as his own voice.

Yet nothing was right. The princess…

His stomach wavered dangerously. About to be sick, he took a deep breath, willing himself not to bring up the contents of his belly and fighting for something else to focus on.

Being submerged again and again in saltwater had stiffened the goatskin leather of his shoes. It would be good to change his garments.

Birna brought him inside. He stepped over the threshold, leaving his sack by the loom adjacent the door, and took a seat upon a small stool. A web shimmered in the corner, a spider in the center—the weaver who watched over Birna’s own work. She’d always said spiders brought good luck.

The windowless space was smoky from the fire burning year-round. As a boy, whenever she’d finished weaving a piece, he’d always loved to bury his nose in the wool and inhale. His father said one wood fire smelled like all the rest, but, as a child, Thorvald thought them all different. A fire outside on a summer’s evening was different from a cooking fire, or the fire they huddled around together as a family during howling snowstorms.

While Birna saw about some food, he stripped away everything from the waist up and splashed water on his face and under his arms. From a small stash of Sigurd’s things, he found a linen undershirt—worn soft with age and laundering—and a fresh wool tunic. His cousin would have no more need for it.

She spooned food from the riveted iron cauldron and handed him a bowl full of pig meat cooked with vegetables and spices. While he ate, she spun yarn with her drop spindle. Rarely were her hands unoccupied.

He broke the silence because he needed to say something that would be uncomfortable to mention after they discussed Sigurd. “You’ll watch her for me, won’t you?”

“You’re not leaving, are you?”

“Don’t think I’m much welcome or wanted around here.”

“If there is something between you and she—”

“No. I merely protected her for a while.” If the words sounded as hollow as they felt… All he could think about was the kiss they’d shared. Denying that there was something between him and Alodie was supposed to protect him. She didn’t belong to him. He’d seen to that. And it felt like…like another death to mourn. “I feel…somewhat responsible for her now.”

She paused, not looking like she believed him. “Stay. Welcome or not, you’re needed here.”

“I’d only be a danger to her.”

Birna raised her brows with a dubious frown as if to say, you claim there is nothing between you, but I strongly suspect otherwise. “Sometimes, Thorvald, you’re as stupid as a boil on an ogre’s ass.”

Unable to argue, he finished his meal in silence, wiping the sides of the bowl as best he could without a piece of bread to clean them, hungrier than should have been possible given the conversation ahead.

“Have more.” She moved to spoon him another portion. “You’ll need extra food if you’re to be walking out there.”

Thorvald rested a palm over her arm. “I think it’s time we talked.”

She took his hand and looked at it. Her voice wavered when she spoke in an unnaturally high register. “I’d always hoped it would be the two of you with me at the hour of my death. Each of my dear boys, sitting by my side as I…”

Her face crumpled and she took refuge behind her hands, knuckles thick and knobby, tips of each finger blunt and red from a lifetime of hard toil. She did not have the white arms so praised by skalds in song and verse; she worked too hard. But to him, she was beautiful. Always had been. Always would be. Even now when she was twisted in the agony of profound grief.

They stayed together a long time, quiet, neither venturing to speak. When the fire burned low, Thorvald added more wood. The task gave him purpose. He moved around the enclosed space, searching for another chore. She kept the room too neat and tidy. There was nothing for him to do.

He was half a caged animal, half ready to never venture from the walls again. If only he could be a carefree boy again, at home with Sigurd, with animals to feed, cheese to make, beer to brew, earth to turn, and a father who would never dream of turning coward in battle.

Birna rose. Thorvald came to her. She stared away into nothing. “It’s different than you can ever imagine. When your children are small and they fall ill, you always wonder—will this be the one in which you will be called upon to help your children die?”

A sensation like a pine cone wedging down his throat made him claw at his neck. He’d never given much thought to the terrifying side of becoming a parent. His dreams of life after winning back his land were all golden morning sunshine on dewy leaves. Or children piled in fur and wool around a fire, singing yet somehow still managing mischief. Laughter and birdsong.

Foolish.

Birna moved away, putting her back to him. “And then they grow to men who go off seeking glory in battle and you have to wait and when the sails are sighted off shore—if they are ever seen again—you have to hope that your son will be one of the ones who…”

She hung her head and her shoulders shook. Tears poured down her cheeks.

“We met a terrible storm.” Guilt filled Thorvald with heavy shards of broken rock. Had he been tossed in a lake, he wouldn’t have been able to surface. “The sea took him.”

His aunt turned. “May he live again with the gods.”

“I expect he’s joined Ran in her great hall.” Thorvald spoke more by rote than anything else. What comfort did such thoughts bring? Sigurd was at the bottom of the sea while they were left to roam the realm of men without him. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair.

From the sack, Thorvald took the stone upon which he’d spent the last part of the voyage carving Sigurd’s name. It was small and rectangular, like it had been cut for part of a wall, then discarded or lost. “I thought you and I could see him off tonight.”

Birna wiped her face and sniffed. She eyed his work, understanding softening her face. “I’d like that. Shall we go now?”

“First, perhaps you can read the runes for me, Aunt.”

She smiled and touched his face. “I saw what passed between you and the jarl there on the dock when you returned. And it wasn’t the first time. So what good do you suppose the runes would do?”

Taken aback, he shook his head. “What do you mean?”

“What could they tell you that you don’t already know?” Her light eyes were clear and steady, studying him as if she expected something he ought to be prepared to give.

“I don’t know anything.”

She paused, then nodded. “Until you realize otherwise, you will continue to fail.”

Needing air, he stumbled outside. The rain had ceased and he was left to stand in the lingering low light of a summer’s evening.

He turned away from the glaring sun only to start when he found himself face-to-face with Ingerun. The old woman curled her lip in rank contempt. “She didn’t say as much as I would have.”

It didn’t matter that the old woman had been listening. What could be more dangerous than what she already knew?

Thorvald ran a hand over the top of his head. Perched on the top of the slope, there was nobody nearby to overhear them. He looked back to the hut. The door was shut. In the knotty branches of an old tree, a few stray crows perched. They cawed as if they too condemned him.

He turned back to Ingerun.

“How can I be a man and a warrior”—all the anguish weighting his heart emerged in his voice—“if I let it be known I’m the son of a coward?”

“How can you be a man and a warrior if you continue to deny the truth?”

A vision formed in Thorvald’s mind. It was not his father. He closed his eyes, but couldn’t shut away what he saw. It was the princess.

Ingerun hobbled a few steps closer. “Without light, gold does not gleam.”

He turned his face away. “I don’t care about gold.”

“I think you do.”

“Go away and leave me alone.”

She stayed put. “You only need to admit what true gold is and its value to you will be without measure.”