Page 23 of A Song of Ravens and Wolves
‘It is a symbol of your death as a maiden.’ Estrid took me gently by the arm. ‘Now, the rest.’
My maidenhood had died long before this night.
I shed the last of my things and waited, shrouded in goose flesh.
‘Into the water now, Lady Olith,’ Estrid said, soothingly.
Trying to cover my nakedness with my hands I gingerly took a step, dipping my toe beneath the water. It felt warm.
‘Is he your first?’ tried Halldora, fingers lapping at the water.
How was I supposed to answer that? I did not know. I went with indignation.
‘Aye, do you think I’d let a man take me without an offer of marriage?’
That was met with laughter.
‘It is not the same for our women,’ Estrid said eventually. ‘It is cold where we come from, we either find warmth with each other or warmth with the livestock and I know which one I’d sooner choose.’
‘You do not have to lie with my husband,’ said another. ‘I would sooner lie with the hogs.’
Rutting like goats in a barn. We were all the same. Christianity has always been a soft religion. Their men could carry out whatever atrocities pleased them and repent them just as quickly, with enough remorse to fill the sky twice over. Redemption. They all wanted redemption. An afterthought. It is a shame that they could never seem to see before they committed their grievous sins.
Somewhere between hunger and exhaustion, as the water lapped at my chest, I sunk my head beneath it. Ripples danced across the surface. Distant ethereal voices echoed. For the first time since I had left our shores, I was alone. I held on to my breath until my lungs burned.
I broke the water’s surface with a gasp.
‘There now,’ said Estrid. ‘We shall make a woman of you yet.’
Chapter 9
Groom’s Preparations
We left the bathhouse, a little worse for wear. With my hair neatly plaited down my back with charcoal smudges around my eyes.
I wore the dress that Halldora had given me. My wedding dress still hung in the bathhouse. In my head, I tried to remember where everything was placed. My dresses. My belongings. I did not know what was about to happen, but I knew that if the time came, I needed to have everything at hand.
The mead hall looked as though it had been sculpted from tree bows growing from the earth. It was almost twice the length of the longship we travelled in.
‘There,’ whispered Halldora, pointing towards the rear of the hall to what looked like mounds of earth. She grabbed me by the arm. ‘Come on, we must see.’
‘See what?’
She placed a finger to her lips and pulled me harder.
In the distance, flickering torches moved between the stones like will-o-the-wisps. Flitting and moving with a clang and a clink of metal against stone. I could make out the shapes of the men, the Jarl like a bear between them. Almost as drunk as we were, stumbling around amongst the stones.
I strained to listen but between their drunkenness and Norse, I could make out none of it. Even now, after all these years when they are rowdy with ale I could still do with someone to interpret.
‘What are they doing?’ My tongue felt much looser greased with honied mead.
‘The Jarl must break into the tomb of an ancestor,’ she said with excitement, her head shot back to the spectacle. ‘He has to find a sword and he will exchange it at the wedding, with your ring and his fealty.’ She smiled, ‘look at them. Drunken oafs.’
I can tell you now, that when my husband was that drunk, he could not find the fastening to his trousers, never mind find a sword hidden within a tomb but I found myself watching on curiously, at these strange men from places that I had only heard of in stories. I could not take my eyes off them, huge men moving great boulders that were almost the size of them. My husband, from experience, would be standing with his mouth open and one eye closed trying to concentrate on not pissing on his own leg.
‘You are saying that those are your dead?’ My hand shot to my mouth.
I thought of them as no more than barbarians. Surely, they would have to be to dig up their dead. Such desecration. ‘I cannot be part of this.’
