“Would you kill me? If you knew you could not be caught?” he asked.
Mia pushed the hilt back with her palm, slowly, careful not to push the blade into his stomach. She turned and bent over the cooking pot, pretending to stir. It had gone bone dry while she had been out. Any good wife would know this meant disaster. Anything she put in it now would scorch or curdle. Bjorn would taste her neglect for weeks.
“Does it look good?” he asked. “I would like a good meal tonight.”
“I can’t say. I need to fetch some water for it.”
He caught her by the arm, pulling her face to his.
“Where were you?” he asked.
Mia looked at the floor. Always best not to look someone in the eyes when they grew angry. Thomas had taught her that, though not because he beat her, as others would, but because he relied on her hard work to buy his beer.
“I went to Mass. Then I got some more wood, for later today. I ran out of wood.”
“You went to church? Father Stefan was there?”
“Of course.”
Bjorn moved around her, to her back. His arms went round her waist, one of his hands still holding the sword.
“But you went yesterday, too. There could be only one reason to go back again today.”
“Mass makes me feel better. That’s the only reason.”
He brought the sword up along her body, resting it under her chin, the sharp blade cold against her throat. Alma dropped her doll, her eyes wide.
“And what did you say to the good Father today?” Bjorn asked. “Did you complain about me? Did you whisper my secrets to him? Are you the reason he resists Bastion and me?”
“I don’t know any of your secrets. I didn’t know you had secrets.” She tried not to think of what Bastion had told her about his adulteries. Bjorn would hear those thoughts in her tone.
“Then you’ve told the other women. Everyone knows the women of this village love a bit of gossip. How they must enjoy yours.”
“They don’t talk to me.” Mia would not add that they did not like her, that they treated her with indifference. She would not humiliate herself to escape his wrath. She had grown tired of that escape.
“I may be bewitched by another woman, but I will not be cuckolded by my own wife. Keep your petty complaints, your stupid, baseless suspicions about me to yourself from now on.”
He lowered the sword but did not step back. His body pressed into the curves of hers.
Alma’s expression changed to one of anger. She marched to Bjorn, holding open her palm and pressing her other hand into her stomach. Bjorn stepped back with a short laugh. “Give your child something to eat.”
Mia tore a piece of bread from the morning’s baking and gave it to her. Alma flopped to the floor, tearing at the crusts, nibbling at it like a mouse, her eyes watching Bjorn with a fierce interest.
“Why did you marry me?” she asked.
Bjorn replaced the sword over the doorway.
“I asked a question,” Mia said. She kept her voice soft, more interested in an answer than in an argument. She moved away from Alma so she would not hear.
“I never wanted to marry,” he said. “It’s too much effort to please a woman you have to see every day.”
“So you married me because I did not need to be pleased?”
“I needed a wife. You did not ask questions back then. I thought you would give me peace. I thought you would be a good wife.”
“Am I not?”
Bjorn laughed.
“What will become of us?” she asked. “When Bastion is gone and the village is quiet?”
Bjorn ran his hand over his chin, walking to settle himself at the table for his meal. Mia ignored the rising panic, knowing she had no meal to feed him.
“Nothing,” he said, his eyes cold and hard. “Nothing at all.”
The word sank like a stone in her stomach. Mia looked around the little home, her pathetic attempts to copy the other women of the village by setting things in order, behaving as the marriage book had said she should, trying to please Bjorn no matter how it crushed her spirit. She had failed. Everything looked a mess. She had no meal to feed him, never mind her own empty belly.
Bjorn reached for the plate on the table with a glare toward Mia. He knew the pot held nothing for him. She saw it in his eyes, everything it told him about her and these years together. She had nothing to offer him.
Mia rubbed her hands together, nodding.
She bent down by Alma, whispering in her ear. Alma stood, raising her arms over her head. Mia scooped her up and walked out.