Vigdis put the pitcher of ale down on the table with a clatter. “Come with me, Svanhild. Your mother will need your comfort now. You are her only living child.”
Svanhild let Vigdis guide her into the kitchen. There sat her mother at the table, slowly grinding grains. She looked up at Svanhild blankly. Svanhild wished she saw some sorrow she could share. That look on Ascrida’s face, that emptiness, was the expression she had worn for so long, whenever Svanhild went to her with hurts large and small. Even Vigdis, with her selfish cat’s ways, had more comfort to give.
“I am grinding grain for the morning porridge,” said Ascrida. “People will need to eat.”
Svanhild sat down across from her and pulled the stones gently from her grasp. They had little to offer one another, but she would not leave her alone. “Let me, Mother,” she said. “You are tired.”
*
Svanhild ground grain in the stone quern until she could hardly keep her grip. All the muscles in her hands and arms ached. She emptied out the bottom stone and put another handful of grain in it. Why care if her hands hurt too much for her to spin tomorrow? If she did not hurt herself this way, she would scratch her flesh instead with the grinding stone, anything to distract from the pain in her throat.
The rest of the household had gone to sleep. Still Svanhild worked on, while her mother tied up bundles of herbs to dry, hands deft, eyes unseeing. Finally Svanhild grew too angry even to keep grinding the grain. She flung the stone down on the table, sending a fine mist of flour into the air.
“Svanhild, you’ll waste it,” said Ascrida.
“Mother, what will happen to us now?” Svanhild asked. “Ragnvald was supposed to—” She stopped. The list of things that Ragnvald had left undone was too long. Add it to the list of things that their father had not done, like live to protect their land from raiders, from Olaf.
“Did Olaf kill our father?” she burst out.
Ascrida sighed. “Ragnvald asked me that too. Come here.” She opened her arms, weariness written on her face. Svanhild wanted to fall into them as she had done as a child, but she recalled her mother’s treatment of her after she had confronted Sigurd. Her mother shared Olaf’s bed.
“No, Mother,” she said, crossing her arms. “Tell me the truth.”
Ascrida pressed her lips together. Had she judged Ragnvald a necessary sacrifice? The Norns, the three fates, sat at the foot of the world tree, spinning, measuring, and cutting the threads of men’s lives. Had Ascrida measured Ragnvald’s as well, and decided its end?
“The only person who knows that is Olaf,” she said, “and he has not seen fit to share that with me. If he truly tried to plan Ragnvald’s death—”
“If? Mother, he is friends with King Hunthiof. He held Ragnvald at home, refusing to outfit him for a raiding trip with any other king. And now—”
“I will tell you what I told your brother,” said Ascrida. “I did what I must so our family would survive.” Her voice sounded hollow. “You love the old songs so much: Brunhilda’s revenge for being married to the wrong man, Gudrun who survived as wife to her husband’s killer and murdered her sons as they issued from her womb to avenge his death and her captivity. Life is not like that. You must learn how to survive, and how to make the hard choices. Men can be uncompromising. They can kill or die. It isn’t so simple for women.”
“You could kill him,” said Svanhild. “He still takes you to his bed. He killed your husband and your son.”
“I am no warrior. And no Gudrun either.” She touched Svanhild’s chin and pushed it up so Svanhild must look at her. “Neither are you. You still turn your face away at the summer sacrifices when the animals die—could you drive a blade into a man’s throat?”
Svanhild thought of hitting Sigurd, of the anger and impotence that had gripped her, how she had only managed to hurt him by surprise. She could kill an animal caught in a snare, because they had no weapons to hurt her back.
“You could still try,” she said. “Your family deserves that much.”
“What happens next in this story of yours, daughter?” Ascrida asked. “When you kill your husband who has kept you safe these ten years? Do you then take up a sword to defend those lands from raiders and predatory neighbors? A woman waits and watches. She swallows a bitter draught when she must. As I did when I took Olaf to my bed. Wait now. Choose a strong man who will keep you safe.” She picked up the corner of her wimple and brushed a smudge of dirt off Svanhild’s face. “And go to sleep. It is too late. You will be tired tomorrow.”
“I don’t care,” said Svanhild.
“Thorkell comes to feast before the Sogn ting,” said Ascrida. “You should rest so you can look beautiful for him.”
“I don’t want him to think me beautiful,” Svanhild cried.
“You should,” said Ascrida sadly. “It is the only power you have now.”
*
Egil departed the next morning, to bring his terrible tidings to his sister Hilda. It comforted Svanhild to imagine Hilda crying for Ragnvald as well. At least someone mourned him, other than her mother, who seemed to be grieving for her own choices more than for her son.
On the feast day, Thorkell came with his hird, his followers: ten men at arms. Three of them were his sons, none were younger than twenty, and each had far better armor and weapons than the young farm boys Olaf recruited when he needed to run off bandits.
When the men sat, Svanhild brought in the trenchers and then the cups of ale with her eyes cast down, serving the opposite side of the table and never raising her eyes to Thorkell’s. Olaf took hold of her wrist when she went to serve him more ale.
“Daughter,” he said, coolly, “you have not greeted our guest. I think he would like your company at his seat.”
Svanhild flushed red. She had never been asked to share a man’s seat at a feast before, except in her earliest memory, when that man had been her father. Now it marked her as property Olaf wished to display, and Thorkell might wish to buy. Olaf had gifted Thorkell with part of the land he had taken from Eystein, and now Thorkell was the richer man.
“As you wish, Stepfather,” she said.