That was the first time that we looked upon one another, Sumardil. That was you, my child.
I was to take you to some quiet place and open your throat, for I would not have left you to wander lost and frightened on the snow. Your killing was a payment, a settling of a debt, not an act to be relished. And I thought I would die out there with you, that I would lie down on the cold ground beside you and let myself sleep. There seemed to be nothing else left for me to do.
Yet there seemed no need to hurry, if that night was all that I was to have left. And so I wandered in the cold, looking for a fine place to die. I was weeping, though it shames me to admit it, for the life that could have lived. I could feel your hot breath against my neck as I walked around and around those empty fields, up the rolling hills and back down towards the whisper of the sea.
I could not find the place, for that country held too many memories for me. A curve beside the river seemed as though it would do, but as I drew my knife I saw that we were too close to where Sigrid and I had made love. I wandered further, up towards the high ground, so you might see all of that beautiful valley one more time before I cut your throat. But now we were close to the stone and the tarn where Dalla and I had spoken together, and left no secrets untold. I could not do it there.
Again and again I thought I had found a place of killing, only to be halted by a memory. Like those great heroes of the old stories who have grown tired of life – their friends all dead, their women lost to them. And so they wander the battlefield, looking for the warrior brave enough to give them peace. But none will stand against them, for their reputation is so fierce, and so it is that they cannot die. I was no great hero, but perhaps that was my gift, too.
At last, I found myself at Gunnar’s longhouse, or what remained of it. As I sat on the blackened ground, leaning against one of the broken pillars, I thought to hear their bodies beneath the ground calling to me, begging for your blood to be spilt. But there was only silence from the dead.
You had not woken. You pressed your face close against my neck, huddled under my cloak, and you did not stir or cry out. I held you close and I thought to join you in sleep, a sleep we would not wake from. I thought to let the cold take us both to the next world.
Yet the sleep did not come to me. You did not wake. At some time in the night I found myself singing.
Soft, so as not to wake you, for I wished my words to find their way into your dreaming. My throat raw with weeping, dry and unpractised. Yet still I tried to sing, some of the old songs returning to me. Not the high, great songs of heroes and kings and gods, but the little songs I gave to children. Foolish rhymes, tales of tricksters and elves. I knew then that I did not want to die.
The night drew on and the sky began to lighten. I stood at last, my muscles aching from the trembling, stumbling on my numb legs. I no longer felt any pain from the wound in my side.
As we moved, you woke. You looked on me and there was no fear in you. You found yourself waking beneath the stars, in the arms of a stranger, and you were not afraid. You rubbed at your eyes and you said: ‘I am hungry.’
I was hurrying then, running across the dale, laughing and singing to you so that you would not see my fear. I went back then, to the house you were born in.
I would give you back to your mother – that is what I told myself. And I would give myself up for judgement for the killings. They would outlaw me again and there would be none to give me passage this time. I would die upon this land and my death would end the feud at last.
At the longhouse once more, the door swinging open against my hand. And the fire reduced to embers in the hearth, the back door swinging open with every stroke of the wind.
I had returned too late. She was already gone.
34
Do you remember those days of waiting?
One day passed, then a second, a third, as we waited for Vigdis to return. She would come back in the company of what kin remained to her, seeking revenge. I would give it to her without a battle. All that I wished was for you and her to be reunited, that I might undo what I had done.
You asked me when she was coming back and I told you that I did not know. But you did not weep – I did, but you did not. There was such strength in you, it made me humble to see it.
Was it Vigdis who gave that to you? It must have been. Do you remember those days that you spent with her? You do not? Her holding your hands and pacing you around the longhouse as she taught you how to walk, even as she plotted my murder. Her carving a wooden horse for you, tears springing to her eyes at your smile, before she spoke the words that goaded those men to burn my friends alive.
She destroyed all that I loved – almost all, at least. Yet with you she became what she was meant to be. And I took that from her.
Now I see your eyes asking what your words will not, Sumardil. You want to know what became of her. And that, I cannot tell you.
She was lost in the storm or she cast herself from some cliff into the sea. Perhaps she fled to some other part of the island or a distant land far from these shores. None know, and you must believe what you will.
But there came a time when we both knew that she would not return. I asked you if you had any other kin in the valley and you named the men that I had killed.
I knew not what I should do. I only thought to wait a little longer, for some visitor to come to that longhouse. They would know where to take you. They would take you from me and then they would take my life. And in time, that man did come.
I woke in the night, my arms about you. For though you were brave in the day, you were afraid at night and you would not sleep outside of my embrace. I woke and I saw a man watching me from the doorway.
I thought him a ghost at first. It was only once the sleep had truly left me that I recognised him, a man I had not seen for many years. Olaf Hoskuldsson, the man they called The Peacock.
‘Kjaran,’ he said. He wore none of his finery, had none of his thingmen at his back. He looked not like the chieftain he was, but a simple traveller – an outlaw, even.
I held a finger to my lips. I looked down at you, but you did not wake. I broke away from you carefully, wrapping you tight in the blankets.
Olaf and I sat together by the embers of the fire and we spoke in whispers.
‘They speak in the valley of a ghost in this place. A fire lit, but no man seen coming or going, except by night. I came to see if it were true.’
‘It is true enough,’ I said.
‘We buried the dead many days ago. Björn and his kin.’ He looked around the longhouse. ‘Vigdis is gone?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
He nodded. ‘So only you and the boy remain.’
‘That is so.’
‘There is much I could have done to prevent this. I should have had them outlawed for the burning. I wish…’ Olaf’s voice trailed away.
‘This is not your burden to bear. It is mine.’
‘Perhaps. But I think that the gods will remember this. And there will come a time when I shall pay for what I did not do.’
‘Another vision of yours?’
He tried to smile – I saw the firelight upon his teeth for a moment. But what I said to him next stole that smile from him.
‘You must take in the boy,’ I said.
He shook his head. ‘I cannot take in Sumardil. There will be too much talk. You shall not survive, if it is known that you live.’
‘I care not.’
‘I do.’ He hesitated. ‘Why do you not return to Ragnar? And Sigrid?’
‘They cannot protect me. And it is better that they think me gone,’ I said.