13 Chapter 13

The walk from the darkness of the hut into the light of the moon that had full risen, to a spot where the others could see him, took only a few steps. To Thorvard, however, it seemed like an eternity. With every step, his feet felt heavier, as if they were made out of lead. The body slumped across his shoulder was heavy and almost naked, and he was grateful to know that she had passed away. In a way, he was almost relieved when the others began approaching and he could set down the burning weight of Freydis and straighten up.

"What happened, Thorvard?" Stein cried out. "Just look at her - what - "

"I thought you were only going to take her captive," remarked Njall, a vigorous man of about forty years, "not beat her unconscious."

"Don’t be a fool, Njall," snapped Stein. "Thorvard would never…" but his voice trailed off, and suddenly the assurance was gone from his face. After stealing a glance at his cousin, he looked suddenly fearful.

"Svein Einarson did this," said Thorvard, and each word was heavy as a stone. "He is gone."

Someone bent over the unconscious woman, examining her, gingerly feeling her broken ribs, clucking his tongue. Words, remarks, exclamations, empty guesses blended in the air. Njall looked at the woman’s bleeding, bruised thighs, and his eyes met Thorvard’s. Though no muscle moved in the latter’s face, that one look told Njall more than he expected.

"The trail has gone cold, I expect," he remarked. "We won’t get our hands on him tonight." Thorvard only nodded, almost vaguely. "Look, if you intend to keep this woman alive, she needs to be taken care of as soon as possible. If nothing else, she will freeze to death."

Looking startled, Thorvard nodded again, took off his warm cloak and wrapped it around the woman - around his wife - covering her near-nakedness. "We will take her to my uncle’s house," he said brusquely. "After me, all of you."

And, having said those words, he lifted her up on his shoulder again and stepped out into the night.

The way home seemed longer by far than the route they made earlier that night. Thorvard strode quickly, as quickly as he could, as if anxious to be rid of the weight he was carrying. The others found it hard to keep up with him, although none of them had to bear an unconscious woman.

There was, of course, a commotion once they arrived, and Thorvard took advantage of this to be able to slink into the shadows. He let others do it all - answer questions, speculate about possibilities, and take care of the woman. Half-conscious by now, Freydis was half carried, half ushered into one of the few separate rooms at the back of the house. A bed was hastily made up and a warm fire lit in the grate. He wouldn’t have followed the women there, but someone - he didn’t fully realize it at the moment, but it was his aunt Brunhild - pulled on his sleeve, and he walked in almost unconsciously after her.

Freydis, who didn’t seem to understand where she was or how she got there, was sitting on a bench with warm furs piled on top of it. It seemed it was all she could do not to slump forwards. A blanket was wrapped around her shoulders, and she was supported from both sides by Finna, the oldest servant in the house, and Dalla, Thorvard’s cousin and intended bride. Brunhild stood aside and looked on with a wary expression on her face.

"She should be taken to the bathhouse, I think," she said. "I will tell the servants to fetch some firewood and heat it. These wounds need to be washed and bandaged… and perhaps some wine will help her regain her senses." She was mistress of the house, but she looked at Thorvard as if asking for his permission.

"Do that," he nodded. "Treat her. Bathe her. Clothe her." And having said that, he turned around and walked out of the room, and no one dared to follow him.

And so it was done. The women gingerly peeled off what remained of her stained and torn clothes, and Finna carried them to the fire and threw them in with a look of mingled pity and disgust. Rather than attempt to move Freydis, Brunhild eventually decided to call for a wooden tub to be brought into the room. It was filled with pails upon pails of steaming hot water, and with the help of Dall and Finna, Freydis stepped inside. Finna supported her head so that it remained above water, and Dalla mopped her wounds with a clean cloth and washed the mud and blood out of her red hair. Freydis’s eyes were open, but she stared vacantly ahead of her, as if looking at something distant and terrible. A goblet of hot spiced wine was forced upon her and she managed a few swallows, but her face remained deathly pale.

Later they helped her out of the tub and toweled her dry. Finna bandaged Freydis’s wounds with her wrinkled, deft hands, and Dalla brought her clothes - the thickest, warmest clothes she could find - but still the woman continued to shiver, even though the small space was still full of steam. During all that time she didn’t say a single word, and when she was led to sit on the bed, her eyes remained closed - as if she were afraid to open them and see once more the cold narrow room of the hut, and smell violence and fear.

When the night was almost over and the crisp cold smell of autumn dawn lingered in the air, Brunhild got out to search for her nephew. She found Thorvard just outside the doors of the house, looking at the dark sky, quiet and motionless as a stone statue. When she approached, he looked at her and they both knew, and each knew that the other knows, but still she felt the need to speak.

"I always knew Svein Einarson was a beast, Thorvard."

He merely looked at her and said nothing. The expression of his face was unreadable. Brunhild squirmed with discomfort. "Do you believe she knows where he might have gone?" she asked.

"I doubt she knows or cares," Thorvard said in a hollow voice. "Right now, she hardly remembers who she is."

"I believe you are exaggerating, but - "

Thorvard turned to face her. "Do you?" he asked sharply. "Freydis is the daughter of Erik the Red," he went on. "If he were here, he would have made certain Svein Einarson is caught - and killed."

"Well, Erik the Red is not here, as it happens," said Brunhild, "he is thousands of leagues away, in Greenland. Her brother, though…

She gave her nephew a quick, almost furtive glance. An odd sound came out of his throat. "Yes," he said. "Leif will want vengeance for this, of course."

"Then let him come and have it," Brunhild said, relieved. "He will be here again soon, will he not?"

"Freydis and I grew up as members of one family, but a day came when she attempted to usurp my place and ruin me in the eyes of my men. I had not seen her for years. She spit in my face and mocked me and rebelled against me..."

"Yet all this is not enough to severe the connection between you," Brunhild heard the voice of another man who quietly approached them. It was Egil, an old slave who accompanied Thorbjorn when he was a boy, helped raise Thorvard, and treated him with love, loyalty and compassion as if he were his own son. Accordingly, Thorvard also respected the old slave much beyond his seemingly low rank, almost as if Egil were his father. He was a short, stout man with a long white beard. His voice was low, rough and hoarse, but almost always it sounded cheerful.

"What about that plot of theirs?" asked Brunhild. "The conspiracy Leif suspected them of?"

"To know exactly what the plot is, I must get my hands on him," said Thorvard, "and I will do it."

Brunhild took notice of his enormous balled fist. This was not the first time, of course, that she saw Thorvard's hands, but she never ceased to be amazed by their size - and his jaw had never looked quite so set.

"When such a foul deed is done to a woman, one of the men in her family must avenge her," Egil went on in a thoughtful voice.

"She has no family here," said Thorvard, raising his fist ever so slightly. "There is Leif, of course - but a while may pass until he returns…"

"She has you, son," said the old man. "She had rebelled against your authority, of course, but she has no power of cancelling it."

Brunhild did not know what to say. If she could have done this without anyone noticing, she would disappear quickly and quietly. Somehow, she did not think this was quite the right moment to speak with Thorvard.

"My authority and responsibility were always worthless in her eyes."

"The trouble," the old slave went on, without looking at Brunhild even once, "is that you had always been too soft with her."

Brunhild suppressed a mirthless chuckle that came up her throat. She could have said many words if someone had asked her to describe the giant, stern man who was her nephew - but soft would not have been one of them.

"I could never make her see things from a truthful, sensible point of view," said Thorvard. "The only one who could do something about her folly was Erik... and even his influence dissipated when she was about twelve years old. She has been utterly uncontrollable ever since."

"Why did you take her for your wife, then?"

... Dalla, who stood quietly behind one of the partitions, covered her mouth with her hand. Could it be that the pitiful creature in the back room is the same Freydis, the separated wife of Thorvard, of whom she thought and whom she pictured to herself with curiousity, resentment and envy at once?

"This does not matter anymore," said Thorvard, looking above the heads of Egil and Brunhild. "It has been years since we parted. But I will do what must be done."

He got away with quick, hard steps.

"Does not matter anymore..." the old man said quietly. "Whom is he trying to fool?"

"He has a point, Egil," said Brunhild. "In truth, she is no longer his wife."

Dalla continued listening secretly, trying to make a connection in her mind between the miserable woman and Sygni. Many times she thought of how Sygni's mother is alive, yet abandoned her little daughter - and this made her angry. But now she could feel no anger when she thought of the poor woman she and Finna had bathed and treated earlier, the broken woman with empty, fearful, haunted eyes... what had she been like, what did she look like before?

Now that she had met Freydis in such a pitiful state, Dalla felt no more envy, only pity. Somehow, despite Thorvard's rough exterior, she pitied him as well. She felt no resentment when she thought that he might not marry her after all, despite the expectations of her family and herself. She had wondered, sometimes, whether she can truly be happy as his wife, despite the deep admiration she felt for him.

"You treat the cancellation of a marriage too lightly, if I may say so, honorable Brunhild," said Egil. "No matter what has come to pass between them, Freydis is still his wife. He has a duty to protect her and make the one who had done the foul deed to her pay with his life. Thorvard must kill Svein Einarson."

Dalla felt goosepimples erupt all over her arms, and the hairs at the back of her neck prickled. She rubbed her arms with her hands against the morning chill.

"Kill him? I thought we were talking of Thorvard capturing him and handing him over to the king's men under accusation of treason..."

"It might be so if, to Einarson's good fortune, Leif is the one to reach him first," said the old man. "But be certain, mistress, that if Thorvard finds him, he will tear him limb from limb."

"I do not wish to give the wrong impression," said Brunhild, "the bastard can die as far as I am concerned. He deserves no less. He is a dangerous man in possession of important knowledge. Ulf and I believe he must be captured and interrogated."

"But as soon as the king gets his hands on Einarson," said Egil, "no one will allow Thorvard to have his revenge. Isn't that so?"

"Revenge?" Brunhild raised an eyebrow. "I thought he only does what must be done - or what he believes to be his duty... is it not so?"

Breakfast was a quiet, subdued affair. No one talked much. Freydis remained in her room.

"Had anyone brought a meal to her?" Thorvard surprised Finna with his question.

"She had eaten," said the old woman. "Not much, but at least she does not refuse food. But if I may say so, master, she must not be given any more wine. She seems to have drunk too much as it is."

The serving girls had brought Freydis bread and cheese, eggs and butter and honey. She only ate half an egg and took a bite of bread, but drank a generous portion of spiced wine.

"Well," Thorvard nodded, "I will go to her, then."

"Wait, do you mean to question her?" his uncle Ulf interrupted. "I will go with you, if so."

"I will leave the questions for another day," said Thorvard in a low, hoarse voice. "Right now, I have no questions to ask her. I do have a few things to say, though."

She was sitting on the bed and looking at the fire when he entered. She was paler than the night before. Some of her bruises had begun to fade, but the sight of her face was ghastly.

"Came to gloat?" these were her words of welcome.

"You need to stop drinking," he said, recognizing the patches of color in her cheeks. "You always despised those who do so to dull their pain. Surely you do not want to become on of them?"

An unrecognizable sound, something between a derisive snort and a snarl, was all her answer.

"You brought me here," she said after a few moments of silence, "as a prisoner?"

"Feel free to go, you fool," thundered Thorvard, "but Einarson is still out there, I know not where. Next time he sees you, he will kill you, and you are in no condition to shift for yourself. I do not even know why he left you alive in the first place. Perhaps he thought that you will not have the strength to get up, and will freeze to death anyway."

Or perhaps, he thought to himself, Einarson knew that what he had done to you is worse than death.

"I would have died," said Freydis, "I did not plan on anything else. He befouled me. I am full of muck and rot. You did me no mercy by bringing me here, Thorvard."

For one pregnant moment, they were both silent.

"Whether you are alive or dead," Thorvard said finally, "he must die for what he did to you. Someone must get rid of him. That is the law of honorable men. You know it."

She laughed - a hollow laugh, a mere shadow of her former confident, mocking laugh he had heard so long ago.

"The law? I have no law but my own."

"You don't," he said, "but I do. And according to the law you cast off, you are still my responsibility."

Neither of them went on and said that according to the same law, she is also his wife. She threw him a sharp, calculating glance, a glance in which she appraised the roughly hewn, wild, handsome features of the one whose life was joined to hers so long ago.

"Are you going to kill him?" she finally asked. "Is that what you mean to say?"

He was silent.

"But why?" she didn't relent.

"Because it must be done. I have no choice. It is the law. Right now, it doesn't matter what you had done. It only matters who you are."

To avoid further inquiry, he bent to arrange the fire in the grate so that it would burn more strongly. Freydis wondered how he guessed she was cold. She did not think it could be perceived, but even in this room, which was quite warm, she was shaking from head to foot. Or maybe it was only perhaps she had just conversed with Thorvard for the first time in years.

It only matters who you are, he said. Well, who is she? She had lost her family, her husband, her daughter, the axis around which her life should have revolved. What did she have left now? Her sorcery and her desire for revenge. And last night, upon the dirty floor of the abandoned hut, both were taken away from her.

"The ring," she recalled, "he took my ring."

Thorvard looked at her suspiciously, only half understanding the meaning of her words.

"Does he know... use that ring the way you do?" he asked.

"Not yet," Freydis replied hesitantly. "But I assume he will soon find out."

Thorvard balled his enormous fist. "I will not give him the time," he said.