9th Century
When I wake up, I am disoriented and alone, but nestled into soft furs. Where am I? Oh, yes. Embers glow orange in the fire-pit and I'm thankful for the warmth. I push myself up on my arms and look around – is Hildy lurking? No. I lie back down and listen attentively for any sounds. A dog barking in the distance, nothing else. The feast must still be happening? I have no idea if I've slept for two hours or twelve.
Beside the bed the blanket Hildy wrapped around me has been thrown over a wooden stool. I pick it up and wrap it around my body twice, pulling the corner over my shoulder the last time before tucking it underneath itself near my armpit. Then I walk to the door, which is less a door than a sheet of leather hung over a tall opening, and pull it aside, leaning out into a cool, dark night. It's only late September but there is already a thin layer of frost covering the ground. In front of me, my breath is visible in the dim light from a crescent moon. I look to the left, then to the right, and see no one. In the distance, now, I can hear what must be the feast still going on, the shouts of high-spirited men carried to me on the breeze.
Where is Hildy? I don't know. Does this Viking camp have guards? Has someone been tasked with looking out for me? I don't know any of these things. I slip out of the roundhouse, pulling the blanket tightly around me and trying not to acknowledge the fact that it is far, far too cold to try and slip out of the camp without more to cover myself with. Just reconnaissance, then.
Within minutes my feet are wet and numb, but I seem to have found one side of the camp, because I'm running my hands along the thick posts of the palisade and standing on my tiptoes trying to get a look over the top so I can figure out which direction I'm facing.
"HEY!"
I turn quickly and make an instinctive attempt to flee, but am stopped by a hand wrapped around my upper arm. So the Vikings do have guards. This one is young, but he's tall and wiry and he's lifting his hand above his head. I squeeze my eyes shut tight, presuming it better to take the blow rather than to try to duck away and risk angering the guard further. But just as it should be about to land a female voice – Hildy – interrupts.
"No! No! The Jarl chose her, and he won't be happy if you mark up her pretty face."
Once again the word strikes me, even in a situation like that – which might not say too much about me. Pretty. These people seem united in the belief that I am pretty. Perhaps I can have them sign something before I go home, so I can take it back to River Forks and show it to Kayla and all the rest of those mean girls from high school. See? I'm not an ugly witch. These Vikings said so.
Hildy instructs the guard to take me back to the Jarl's roundhouse, and laughs at my attempts to claim I was looking for her.
"Save it, girl, for Veigar. He's the only one who might believe you. But hear this – it's cold and you've no furs, no leather boots for your feet. Even if you did manage to get out, you'd be dead of freezing by dawn. And if somehow you weren't, the Jarl's men would find you and drown you in the marsh."
Back in the roundhouse, the guard declines to leave me alone. He throws more logs onto the fire and comes inside with me, standing by the door and staring at me shamelessly.
"I'm not taking the blanket off," I inform him prissily, trying to salvage some of dignity after being unceremoniously dragged back here. "So I don't know what you think you're looking at."
Stupid. So stupid. I probably will learn to keep my mouth shut at some point, but apparently not yet. The guard simply crosses the distance between us in a couple of easy strides and tears the blanket off me, yanking it out of reach when I move to grab it. He gets an eyeful then, and I turn away from his gaze, humiliated.
A couple of moments later and I feel him there behind me, his hot breath on my shoulder. And virgin or not, I know what he's interested in.
"Hildy told you," I tell him, in a voice that shakes too much. "She told you the Jarl chose me. You should keep your hands off –"
The guard grabs at my breast and I try to twist away but it doesn't work. He pinches my nipple, hard, and I yelp with pain and surprise.
"Hey! Stop! What are you doing?! Please – I told you the Jarl –"
A smelly hand closes over my mouth and I reach up, clawing at it, screaming now although the hand prevents anyone from hearing it. The guard is too strong for me – even as I writhe and kick he's pushing me down – not onto the furs but onto the bare earthen floor. His hand slips briefly off my mouth, allowing a shriek to pierce the smoky air, but it's soon back in place.
I'm panicking now, because I know I can't get away. I know, even as he forces my legs open with his body, that I'm not strong enough to fight him off.
He's fumbling, trying to untie the leather straps around his waist and his breath is coming fast against my neck. So this is it. I stop fighting, knowing it's useless, wanting only to lessen the pain that I'm about to experience. I squeeze my eyes shut and then suddenly a great roar fills the roundhouse and the guard is no longer on top of me. My eyes fly open and I look up. The Jarl. He's standing over the cowering guard and I am flooded with relief.
The guard is whimpering, apologizing and begging. "I'm sorry, Jarl. I'm so sorry. She took off her blanket and I couldn't resist. She spread her legs and showed herself to me! I couldn't –"
"No I didn't!" I shout, desperate for the Jarl not to think I did anything to bring the guard's behavior on. "No I did not open my legs for you, you lying pig!"
The Jarl cuts in, speaking to the guard. "It doesn't matter. Hildy told you she was mine. Boy, you know the punishment for this!"
At that, the guard begins to physically grovel and I wonder what horrifically painful ordeal is now to be meted out by one of the Jarl's men – or the Jarl himself. I don't have to wonder for long, though, because the Jarl picks up a heavy stone axe laying by the door and brings it suddenly – and with a sickening thud – down onto the guard's head.
I look away swiftly, the vomit already rising in my throat, and the absolute silence tells me the blow has been final. I've never even seen an animal die.
The Jarl busies himself, doing something with his axe that I do not want to see – cleaning it, probably – and my heartbeat sings high in my ears as a terrible smell rises around me. It is the smell of blood, of flesh and bone and sweat and fear and all the things us humans are made of. I breathe through my mouth, desperate to get that smell out of my nose, but it's too strong to escape.
"What is it?" The Jarl asks, after instructing another guard to bury the one he has just killed, and to send the dead guard's father to see him the next day. I make the mistake of looking up, then, and subsequently seeing some lumps of something pink on the dirt floor next to the door. A girl appears, gathering them in her hands, but not before my brain has taken in the fact that it's looking at pieces of a person. I look up at the Jarl, filled with a terrible kind of awe – how is it possible to end a human life like that, with less guilt than I would feel over killing a spider? – and barely manage to lean away from the pile of furs before vomiting copiously onto the ground.
"Girl!" The Jarl barks at the servant. "Clean this first, I can't stand the smell of it."
But you can stand the smell of brains? I want to ask. You can stand the fact that there are flecks of another person's blood on your cheek right now? It's not even terror I'm feeling, it's a plain lack of comprehension, an inability to understand what has just happened.
The Jarl must see the look on my face as I retch and wipe the back of my hand against my sweaty brow. "What's the matter?" He asks, sitting down on the furs beside me and wiping one bloodied hand across one of them. I look at him, searching his face for some sign he's showing off, or pretending a nonchalance he does not feel. There is none. "What?" He repeats."Have you never seen death before, girl? It's not possible. But your face –" he takes my chin in one hand, a gentler touch than I'm expecting, and looks into my eyes – "you're as pale as winter milk. Come now, speak."
"No," I try to say, but all that comes out is a cracked whisper. "No," I repeat, my voice louder but still a whisper. "No I haven't. I – I haven't."
"It's not possible," the Jarl repeats, looking at me the way you look at someone you think might be pulling the wool over your eyes. "Even if you are the King's daughter, as I'm beginning to think you are, you cannot be ten and ten – or even just ten alone – and not have seen death before, not have smelled the blood I see you drawing away from now, as if a single drop of it will soil you. Are you surprised, girl?"
I shake my head because I do not want to displease the Jarl. I do not want to anger him. I do not want to give him any more reasons to question me, when I know most of my answers to his questions will not be adequate. "I'm not surprised," I lie. "I'm just sensitive. I don't like to see it. I don't know why you had to –"
The Jarl pulls back, an openly baffled expression painted onto the broad, sharp angles of his face. "He would have raped you – you know that, do you not? Are you slow, is that it? Have I chosen badly, a pretty face and a dull mind?"
Again I shake my head. "No! No, I'm not slow, I –"
"You don't have to explain it to me, I can see it in your eyes. You're sorry for him. Sorry that a man who intended to rape you has had his injustice turned back on him."
The Jarl is not the only one with questions. But he is the only one who dares to ask them.
When the roundhouse has been cleaned and the servant girl has left, Hildy enters and I notice that she is not meeting the Jarl's eyes. "Is there anything else you need, Jarl?" She asks.
A man has just died for putting his hands on me, but even I know it has nothing to do with the fact that it was I who didn't want them there. No. It was the Jarl who didn't want them there. And now I suspect the Jarl will put his hands on me, and it won't matter what my feelings on it are. I won't fight him. Not because I don't want to, but because I can't. I've just seen it spelled out for me in the most graphic terms possible what happens to people who don't do what the Jarl wants them to do. So I will not fight.
Maybe it will be over quickly. Emma and the girls at college joke about that, about it being over quickly. Maybe it will be the same now?
I try to turn away before anyone can see the fat tear that drops from one of my eyes onto the furs, but I'm not quick enough. Again, the Jarl is lifting my face up to his, gazing at me the way one might gaze at a creature one has never encountered before.
"I think this one might be dull," he says to Hildy, who immediately begins to apologize. The Jarl ignores her and continues. "Look at her, she's weeping over the guard. Whoever saw a woman weep over the death of a man who meant to rape her?"
He looks at me for a few more seconds, still with that same curiosity in his eyes, before turning away. "No matter, I'm not in the mood for weeping girls tonight. Take her and put her with the others, I'll decide what to do with her in the morning. Bring me Alva – and Hildy? Make sure she's clean."
I stumble ahead of Hildy as she prods me in the back, pushing me out of the roundhouse. And as soon as we're out of the Jarl's earshot she leans in close. I pull away, expecting a slap. Instead, she yanks my head back and hisses in my ear:
"What are you doing?! The Jarl chose you, girl, and now you sit in front of him like an unhappy child – have you any idea what will happen if he gives you up? You'll be a slave like the rest of them he rejected. Is he right, are you dull? Would you rather eat bones that the freemen and women have already picked clean, is that it? Would you rather there was no one to care if the guards take you ten times in a night?"
I don't respond right away – not because I don't want to but because by then I have no idea where to start – and Hildy spins me around to face her. "Well?! Would you?"
"No!" I reply. "No! I just – I don't understand how things work here. I don't –"
Hildy grabs me by the shoulders and gives me a shake. "Well you'd best learn soon, do you hear me? Do what he wants, girl. If what you say is true and you're truly ten-and-ten, then you already know what it is a man wants, be he a freeman of the North or be he one of the high men here, in your own country."
Hildy is right, I do know – theoretically – what a man wants. I wonder if this is how it was for Willa. Did she choose her husband, as I had always assumed? Or did he just take her, like she was livestock? And has Eadgar done the same thing – chosen a woman from a group and made her his companion without anyone ever wondering if she had any interest in the role? Hildy is probably also right about me needing to wake up. Will I be a slave if the Jarl rejects me? Will it be me cleaning still-warm brains from the dirt floor of his roundhouse?
"Think," Hildy instructs me when we get to a small, squat building near the fence. "Think about what's best. I already told you that you won't be escaping from here, and you won't, not unless death is preferable to life with us. I don't understand you, girl – you'll be better off as one of the Jarl's girls than you would ever have been as the wife of one of those peasants back in whatever village it is you come from. Do you want your children to eat or do you want them to starve?"
With that, she pushes me into the building and leaves me there in the pitch black, where I soon become aware of the sounds of other people sleeping. Everywhere I try to step I run into a warm body, so in the end I just sink to the ground where I stand and curl into a ball.
I don't sleep, though. I think about the things Hildy has just said to me, specifically the part about escape being impossible. Of course she would say that, wouldn't she? She's one of them and she seems to be nominally in charge of the women taken from Caistley – she would probably be in trouble if any of us went astray. She's not wrong about the weather, but the Vikings have furs and garments made of wool and leather. If I can manage to get my hands on some of them and if I can find my way out of the camp – another task which does not seem impossible – I can do as planned and follow the coast south again, back to Caistley.
The question of what to do in the meantime – because as naive and plain old stupid as I may be in this world, even I know I can't just blunder into an escape attempt and give the Vikings any more reason to supervise me – presses down on me. Hildy said to make him happy and I know what she means. I don't want to make the Jarl 'happy.' I don't even know the Jarl. And by the looks of him, whatever he wanted me to do would probably not be too pleasant, or gentle.
A conversation pops into my mind suddenly, one I had with Emma and a few of our friends from class one Friday night as we shared a bottle of wine before heading out to a party. We had been discussing prostitution, how desperate we would have to be to do it. And the consensus, apart from a single woman who had spoken up to admit she did have a price, had been that there was literally nothing on earth that would make us choose to use our bodies in that manner, to gain favor or money or gifts.
Lying on the cold dirt floor of a Viking roundhouse, surrounded by women who are now slaves, it's safe to say I begin to feel a new flexibility creeping into my perspective. I need food, for one thing. I've seen what a lack of food does to people – to Willa and Eadgar after their father died. How do I mean to escape, to walk for hours, probably days, along the coast, to evade anyone sent after me if I am weak from hunger?
The truth stares me in the face. I have to do as I'm told. I have to acquiesce. There's really only one question that matters, and it isn't what will I do to get home – it's what won't I do. The air in the roundhouse is stale and, in spite of the bodies packed in with me, cold. What is there I won't do to get home, to get back to my actual life? Here, right now, there isn't a single thing I can think of.