wet tickle on her upper lip rouses Princess Gertrund from the most vivid dream she’s ever had.
In this dream, she saw Sigurd—or more like she was Sigurd—crouching in a dug-out trench. A thunderous rumbling shook the earth. The air was thick with a sulphurous cloud that burned her skin and stung her eyes, making them water worse than the cook chopping onions. But more potent than the dry stench of rotting eggs was another foul smell she inhaled with every frantic breath—wool soaked in urine.
A scream rang out over the thunder—a scream of such complete and utter terror that she was unable to tell if it came from man or woman. The thunder rattled her bones, making her weak with fear. Balmung’s hilt trembled in her hands.
Light flickered above her, and as she stared up into the yellow cloud, watching for the horror she knew would follow, a humungous serpentine body blew over the trench like a tidal wave, blotting out the setting sun, and entombing her in the shuddering dark. Another scream, her name this time, and with a desperate shout, she thrust Balmung deep into the creature’s underbelly.
So lifelike was the dream that she can still taste the geyser of blood bursting from the creature’s punctured heart.
Gertrund cups her hand under her chin and tips her head back as she slides out of bed. She pinches her nose and calls quietly for her maids. There’s a sigh and the rustling of cloth in the dark as the two women get up for their mistress, and Gertrund squints as one of them lights a candle.
“What is it, lady?”
“My nose is bleeding.”
“Again? Heaven’s sake.”
One of the women fills the washbasin with water from a silver pitcher and brings it over to the bed. She dunks the cloth into the water, rings it out and starts dabbing Gertrund’s lips and chin. The woman holding the candle examines the dark stains on Gertrund’s shoulder.
“Nightgown’s ruined, and that pillowcase.”
Gertrund lets the maid tilt back her head as she presses the wet cloth under her nose. She wishes she could tell them about her dream. Her mother’s maids, the Gaelic women who had come with her from Britain, had always listened to her dreams. One of the maids once told her that when her mother was a child, she had a lucid dream where the King of Burgundy watched her bathing in the Rhine; and that she had always known she would become his queen. The Gaelic maids knew that she too dreamed of what would pass. When they still attended her they would always wait with anticipation as she awoke for her to tell what she had seen.
But that was before her mother’s death.
When her mother drowned in the Rhine, her father brought all her maids together and asked them how he might honour her according to Gaelic customs. They answered, “build a wooden statue seventy feet tall, an image of her likeness. Then place her in it, along with as many living men and women as can be fit inside, and burn them to death at sunset as a sacrifice to the sky-god Taranis. This would have greatly pleased our lady.”
Perhaps her father interpreted this to mean that the maids wished to accompany their mistress into the next word, or perhaps in his grief he blamed the maids for her mother’s drowning, but her father did construct a wooden statue in her likeness and place her body in it. The rest of the statue he filled with all the criminals in the land, captured Roman soldiers, and thralls who were too old or injured to be of use. Finally, when the statue was nearly full, her father ordered that the Gaelic maids be put inside. They wept, struggled, dug their heels into the ground, but in the end, it was their wails that rang out from the blazing monstrosity as a pillar of black smoke bore her mother from the earth.
Gertrund’s new maids are Christians—Roman women captured and enslaved by Frankish troops in Gaul, a funeral gift from Sigurd. They’re good women, her maids, trustworthy, loyal, kind—but they do not speak of dreams and magic.
The woman lowers the cloth from Gertrund’s nose. “Looks like the bleeding’s stopped. Let’s have you back to bed. We can take care of the rest in the morning.”
But Gertrund can’t go back to bed. Not until she understands the meaning of her dream. She isn’t sure why, but she knows she can’t wait until morning.
“You two can go back to sleep, but I have an urgent matter to attend to.”
“The toilet you mean, lady?” says one of the women as she goes to fetch the chamber pot.
“No, I have to go to my mother’s study.” She opens the drawer on the bedside table and takes out a black key on a thin chain and hangs it around her neck.
The maids frown. “Your mother’s study? At this hour? But how will you get there without waking the queen? We must insist you wait until after she has risen for the day.”
“And I insist I must go there now. And if I must wake her, then I will. It’s important.”
The maids are distressed but can make no further resistance, and Gertrund shifts between them towards the door. A sliver of light spills into the bedchamber with a quiet squeak.
“You two stay here,” she whispers, “I don’t know how long I’ll be.”
“But lady! Your father will have our heads if he finds out we let you wander around the palace in the middle of the night alone!”
“Oh, that’s not true.”
But the two women don’t look so sure.
“If anyone asks, I’ll tell them I crept out quietly without waking you. Now please go back to sleep.”
“As you will, lady …”
Gertrund shuts the door and hurries down the hall, shaking her hands in irritation. Her father having their heads—perhaps a Roman king might be so inclined—but the truth is, her father probably wouldn’t notice if she wandered around the palace naked in the middle of the day. He didn’t even show his face the previous morning to tell her she wouldn’t be going to Xanten.
She and her maids were packed and ready, and on their way down to the palace docks, when one of her father’s huskarls intercepted her on the stairs.
“Princess Gertrund,” he said, “there’s been a change of plans. The king says you will remain in Worms.”
She had done her best to pry more out of him than that, but it was all that he could say. He left her in tears of silent rage to look down from the window as the ship that was meant to carry her down the Rhine disembarked without her.
Her father suddenly deciding to go Xanten is puzzling; it isn’t like him to make last-minute changes. He must have received some urgent news—perhaps Stilicho is making a move and her father must act swiftly to counteract him. But then, why rush off to Xanten? Her father usually communicates with his complex web of allies by written correspondence. Messengers are nearly always lined up in the hall outside his study, waiting for one of the scribes to open the door and hand them a letter addressed to some pagan lord or chieftain. Sometimes a letter is meant for Stilicho himself, who always responds quickly and with careful tact. A letter or two has even gone to Emperor Honorius Augustus in Milan, though the messengers never returned.
In an emergency, her father would send out a homing pigeon with a tiny scroll attached to its foot. While such instances were rare—as the pigeons had to be bred in the recipient’s location, then shipped to Worms from where they might be released to fly back to their nest with the message—a pigeon could reach Xanten within three hours, where the trip downriver would take a whole day and a half.
No, Gertrund cannot make sense of it. Ah! And the timing, too strange! And then this dream! Something is afoot, that she knows; and whatever it is cannot wait until dawn.
It’s a cold night and Gertrund shivers in the crisp fall air as she reaches the gallery overlooking the Rhine. A huskarl on guard duty is standing at one of the open arches, watching the moonlight shimmer in the river’s current. “You should be in bed,” he says as she hurries past him.
“I can’t sleep. I’m going for a walk.”
He nods and turns back to his view. “They’ll still be up in the kitchen if you get hungry.”
“Thank you. Have a good night!”
He says no more, and Gertrund is relieved he didn’t notice the blood-stain on the shoulder of her nightgown. She hopes there aren’t many more guards between the gallery and the queen’s chambers.
She turns a corner at the end of the gallery and heads down a dark hall, passing the life-size wooden idols of the Three Mothers. She’s in the queen’s wing of the palace.
Brünhilda hasn’t yet convinced her father to take down her mother’s Celtic gods. She’s certain it will happen. Sometime before the Yule altars are reddened, Sirona, Taranis and the Horned God Cerunnos will be taken down and replaced with Freya, Thor and Odin.
She turns down another hallway. Voices. An orange glow fills the stairwell at the end of the corridor—guards coming up. So close to Brünhilda’s chambers, they’ll question her and send her back to her room.
She sprints for the middle of the hall, her bare feet falling silently on the cool stone; and ducks into the next passage just as the guards appear at the top of the stairs.
Her heart is pounding from the run and her chest feels like it’s going to burst. She tries to breathe quietly. There’s a stitch in her side, and as she turns down the passage to Brünhilda’s chambers, she stands at the big oak doors for a moment with her hands on her hips as she waits to regain her breath. Fortunately, since the departure of the wedding guests, her father relaxed the palace security and the sentries no longer stand guard outside the queen’s chambers. Gertrund knocks.
Dead silence.
She knocks again, a little louder this time, her courage wilting as someone inside whispers a slew of profanity. The door opens and the shieldmaiden Birta peers sternly down at her. She’s in her nightgown and her blonde braid is draped over her shoulder—hatefully beautiful despite being woken up suddenly.
“Sorry to wake you, Birta. I need to get into my mother’s study.”
Birta scrunches her nose. “Why?”
“I had a dream—It’s quite important. Won’t you let me in? I have the key.”
“You must be joking. Go back to bed.”
“Please, Birta?”
“No. Go away.”
“But—”
“Goodnight, Gertrund.”
Birta shuts the door very quietly; but Gertrund knocks again. Birta whips the door back open, glares at her, and jabs her finger into her chest.
“You knock on this door once more, and I swear by Frigg and all her maidens I will drag you back to your room myself and have your father’s men stand guard outside your chambers.”
“You can’t do that.”
“I think you’d be surprised at how much influence a beautiful woman actually has. Of course, you wouldn’t know much about that, would you?”
Gertrund says nothing, and Birta smirks triumphantly. “Sweet dreams.”
She shuts the door again.
For a moment, Gertrund stands there, clenching her small fists. Then she begins trudging back to her bedchambers in defeat.
Starlight glistens on her cheeks as she passes the open arches of the long gallery. The huskarl from before is gone, and as Gertrund looks out at the moon basking in the water, nervous excitement throbs in her chest.
A cornice juts out from the palace exterior below the open arches, a flat ledge about six inches wide—just enough room for her to stand. The cornice runs around the entire palace; if she were to shuffle sideways along the ledge, she could creep around and climb into her mother’s study through the window.
That is, if there were any windows in her mother’s study.
As far as she knows, the only way inside is through the heavy door at the back of her mother’s wardrobe—Brünhilda’s wardrobe. She, could, perhaps sneak into her bedchamber through the window and creep into the study through the wardrobe without waking anyone.
Her courage fails her and she backs away from the open archway. It’s a horrible idea. If the fall doesn’t kill her, it will break every bone in her body. And it’s rained recently. She can see the moon’s reflection in the water gathered on the cornice; her foot would shoot out from her under her as soon as she stepped out onto the ledge. She shudders, imagining the dull crunch of her body smacking into esplanade fifty feet below.
And then there’s Brünhilda and her shieldmaidens. They aren’t fond of her. It would be nothing for them to fling her out the window and tell everyone she fell. She’d really just be offering them the opportunity to get rid of her. She should just go back to bed. She can go to her mother’s study when Brünhilda is up for the day.
Gertrund turns away to head back to her bedchambers but freezes as again that shrill, frantic scream echoes through the night. She pauses for a moment, listening, then moves toward the end of the gallery. She stops again. A hissing, yellow vapour swirls across the marble floor, coiling around her ankles, rising to surround her in a shroud of poisonous smog. Her eyes are watering. Her bare arms itch and burn. She gags on the thick stench of rotting eggs—as she does, she inhales a yellow tendril of the toxic fumes. Searing agony swallows her breath. Her eyes bulging, she clutches her throat and sinks, gargling, to her knees as her lungs blister, bubble, and burst inside her chest.
She opens her eyes. The yellow fog is gone. She can breathe normally again, though her hands are trembling and the back of her nightgown is damp with sweat. Red drops dribble to the floor.
Gertrund pinches her nose with the hem of her nightgown and returns to the open archway. She leans out to look at the cornice, knowing with utmost certainty that she cannot wait until morning. If she does not go into her mother’s study this very hour and search through the lore contained within her ancient tomes, the man she loves will die most gruesomely.
Her hair flutters in the cold wind as she climbs through the arch. Now that she’s about to do it, the fall seems farther and the ledge seems slipperier and narrower. After a final glance to make sure no patrolling huskarl is present, she squeezes her eyes shut and whispers a desperate prayer to Andraste, goddess of victory. Then, with short, frantic breaths, she lowers her foot to the cornice. Then her second foot. And then, with great reluctance, she eases herself off the arch until all her weight rests on the ledge. The cornice isn’t wide enough for her feet, and her toes are sticking out over the edge. She presses her head and shoulders against the back of the wall, focusing on the moonlight shimmering in the river, not daring to glance down at the dizzy drop below.
At a snail’s pace, she shuffles sideways, unsure how she will make the turn around the corner. She comes to the end of the wall and her heart stops as she inches her foot out over the edge and brushes empty air. Somehow she must get around this corner. It would have been easier and less perilous to be facing the wall. Perhaps if she swings herself around …
Tears fill her eyes as she fights against the panic rising in her heart. She glances back at the open arches. It’s only a short distance she’s come. Oh how she longs to hurry back that way and scramble again into the gallery and break down weeping on the floor.
She shuts her eyes, breathing deep, then turns her left foot in towards the wall.
“Oh please,” she whispers. “Oh please.” And with a yelp, she swings herself around to the perpendicular ledge; out over the edge of the cornice, where there is nothing beneath her but a squealing fifty-foot plummet to her death.
There’s a flash of lightning as her face slaps against the palace exterior, and the blow nearly knocks her back. She presses desperately into the wall, hugging the cool, flat surface like the mother of a condemned criminal. Cold tingles shoot through her limbs and up her spine. Her legs have turned into seaweed, and she pauses for a moment to regain the feeling in her knees before continuing on.
It’s better going, now that she’s facing the wall, and she finds she can progress along the cornice more quickly and with greater ease. She can even navigate around the corners, both and inward and outward, without too much added stress and peril.
After what seems like half an hour, her nerves shot and her cheek scraped raw, Gertrund creeps through the open window into Brünhilda’s bedchamber.
The shadowy forms of the slumbering shieldmaidens are strewn out on the floor around the immense bed, their dark shapes slowly rising and falling with the deep breaths of sleep. A snort comes from the darkness over the bed, followed by quiet snoring—which masks the faint sounds of Gertrund’s movements as she tiptoes over the dreaming women.
She’s halfway there. Her heart is fluttering with exhilaration and pride. She’s grinning in the dark as she touches the key around her neck.
A noise behind her causes her to freeze in terror.
She holds her breath, and very slowly, twists around to look over her shoulder. One of the shieldmaidens is sitting up. She’s staring right at her, her grey eyes gleaming from the darkness like two crescent blades.
She’s done for. She’s about to cry the alarm and rouse the other shieldmaidens. At best, they’ll tell her off and send her back to bed; at worst, they’ll fling her out the window.
But, as she awaits the shout that will startle the Valkyrie queen and her elite warrior women into violent awakening, it does not come. The girl continues staring at her in a wide-eyed stupor, not fully awake.
“Shh,” Gertrund whispers, “It’s only me. Please go back to sleep.”
To her amazement, the shieldmaiden lies back down, resuming the deep, slow breaths of slumber. Gertrund hurries to the wardrobe, pushing through Brünhilda’s elaborate collection of exotic furs, extravagant gowns, chainmail dresses, and jewel-encrusted breastplates. Finally, she reaches the door to her mother’s study.
She removes the key from around her neck and fits it into the lock. The bolt clacks loudly and the heavy door grinds open on rusty hinges. She slips inside, and as she shuts the door quietly behind her, all light is swallowed up in dense blackness.
“Solas mo dhòigh,” Gertrund whispers.
A gust of wind blows between her legs through the crack under the door, and one by one, tongues of supernatural fire flicker to life in the iron sconces, casting a purplish glow throughout the eight-walled chamber. A high bookcase crammed with ancient tomes and scrolls takes up an entire wall. Beside it, another smaller shelf displays her mother’s colourful collection of potions, all neatly labelled in the Gaelic tongue. In one corner of the chamber are the idols of two naked goddesses—Belisama, the Bright One, holding up a lantern glowing with the same purple fire as the iron sconces; and Sirona the Wise Healer, carrying a basket of eggs on her hip and a snake around her shoulders. An extravagant mirror stands between the two goddesses—a mirror which her mother warned her never to look at. Usually, the mirror is covered with a sheet, and the sight of it bare and glimmering in the eerie luminance causes the hair to rise from the back of her neck. Furthermore, someone has taken a stick of chalk and drawn a sloppy circle in the middle of the floor.
Her father’s been in here, meddling with things he should not be meddling with.
Gertrund shuffles around the outside of the circle, taking great care not to step inside. Shielding her eyes from the mirror, she stoops down and gathers the sheet lying in a heap at the golden base. As she drapes it over the top, an eerie moan comes from the mirror. She shudders, and backs away toward the bookcase.
She squints in the purplish glow, muttering the Gaelic titles under her breath as she runs her finger along the ancient leather spines. She stops at the second shelf from the bottom and carefully eases out a thick volume so worn with time she’s afraid it might crumble into dust. But time has made it no less heavy, and she grunts with effort as she lifts the tome onto her mother’s workbench.
There are some other books on the workbench, and some sheets of parchment strewn with her mother’s handwriting. Temporarily forgetting her mission, she glances at their contents, lest she find some last musings that might grant her some new insight into her mother’s heart—or, she dares to hope, the beginnings of a letter addressed to her. To her disappointment, in the final days before her drowning, her mother was only concerned with preserving her ageing outward beauty, and her writings allude to nothing more than failed attempts to retain her youthful appearance. It is perhaps merciful that she died before she was able to explore her most recent hypothesis—which suspected that soaking in the blood of beautiful virgins would keep her skin looking smooth and young.
Gertrund shoves the clutter aside and opens up the great compendium of beasts, sneezing as a plume of dust rises from the yellow pages. She flips over the lengthy preface concerning the Fomorian Goatmen who once inhabited Britain before the arrival of the Celts, and scours through the drawings of trolls, ogres, unicorns, chimeras; impatiently turning past a chapter on faeries, dwarves and forest-folk. She pauses to look at a sketch of a dragon perched on a high ledge, its wings spread as if to take flight, spewing fire into the air. She keeps looking.
As she nears the end of the bestiary, the drawings bear greater resemblance to the creature from her dream—though they are growing larger and more terrifying. The Basilisk. The Loch Ness Monster. The Serpent of—Her heart stops as she stares at the hideous likeness of that final monstrosity. It fits perfectly with the fleeting glimpse she’d caught of the massive creature from the dream. Now she is relieved that she risked so much to come into her mother’s study and find the creature’s weakness, for had she neglected to do so, Sigurd would surely be going to his doom.
She reads the description aloud to herself three times, her voice quivering with excitement as her clever mind works out a method for Sigurd to vanquish this impregnable abomination, recalling certain details from the dream and interpreting them in the context of the druidic lore. Finally, she reaches for the ink and parchment, and using very small letters, she writes instructions for Sigurd in a long strip on the edge of the page. When she’s done and has looked it over, she carefully tears off the message and rolls it up into a tiny scroll.
No longer worried about Brünhilda and her maidens preventing her from fulfilling her mission, Gertrund locks her mother’s study behind her and sneaks out of the bedchambers through the big oak doors into the hall.
Hours later, in the bluish light of the early morning, as Sigurd slings Balmung over his shoulder and makes his way to the dock where the sailors are loading the ship with gear and provisions for the voyage, Alberic the midget is awoken by a pigeon cooing on his windowsill with a tiny capsule on its ankle.