Against a Darkening Sky Read online

  Caelin’s hand is round Touilt’s throat and he has her pinned against a timber, the back of her head thudding loudly on the wood, before she has a chance even to cry out. Touilt’s rune-hallowed palms are open, held at her sides, for she dares not fight him. She grimaces and chokes, the cords in her neck standing out. Caelin’s face is so close to hers his spittle sprays her. “You wolf-bitch! You dare?”

  Touilt’s voice is a harsh whisper. “Forgive me. I mean no disrespect. I only meant to lighten my lord’s mood.” She coughs and her hands twitch, but she does not touch him. “Stupid,” she gasps.

  “If you cannot persuade the gods to save them, I’ll see you burned. You can argue with them from the shadows of Hel!”

  “Husband!” Elfhild raises her hand. “I beg you. I need her.”

  Caelin drops his hand. “You are warned, seithkona.”

  The mark on Touilt’s neck is livid. Sour fear squirts into Wilona’s stomach. Shadows flutter in the corners of the room.

  The seithkona bows her head. “She will not die, my lord. I swear by Frige, Woden’s beloved wife.” She glances at him. “I’ll call you for the breath.”

  Caelin stomps out, slamming the door behind him so hard the walls shake. The wavering shadows in the corners go still.

  “Forgive my husband,” says Elfhild.

  Touilt rubs her throat and surprises Wilona when she makes a dry little sound meant to be a chuckle. “Men are fools,” she says to Elfhild, patting her on the shoulder, “and softer when in love than women. We endure birth and watch as our men run off seeking death at every opportunity. But men bluster and demand and lay down rules, as though the gods were slaves to be bullied.”

  Softer? Wilona cannot see much softness in Caelin, and while she understands his fear for his wife and child may be the root of his violence, she marvels Touilt can be so calm in the face of it. Wilona knows if things go badly, she’ll be placed as kindling on Touilt’s pyre. A seithkona might be honoured by a seat close to the fire in the lord’s hall, but only the gods lived beyond reach of his axe.

  Touilt turns to her. “You’re doing well.” Only then does Wilona realize she still holds the charm against the lady’s thigh. “Keep your wits, girl.”

  Touilt hums, as though Caelin had never been there, and sings the charms. She places her palms along Elfhild’s belly. She chants the old, sacred words. “May the holy ones thee help, Frige and Freo and favouring gods, from sorrow now.” She reaches between Elfhild’s legs again and feels. Her eyes meet Wilona’s. Touilt winks and the girl nods. Touilt whispers in Elfhild’s ear, “The time is come, little mother, the time is come.” She gestures to Wilona. “Move away, child.” With her free hand, Touilt pulls open the thongs of the leather pouch tied to the girdle of her tunic. Her fingers root around inside. Then, finding what she wants, she grunts. In her palm lies a polished river stone with runes carved upon it. She holds the stone against her own breast and then crawls behind Elfhild, holding her upright as she squats. Elfhild moans and grunts and blood spills onto the straw. The baby’s head is halfway out. Touilt passes the stone over the straining woman’s throat and breasts and stomach, intoning a sacred song. Elfhild’s teeth grind with effort.

  “One more, one more, that’s it. Push!”

  Elfhild screams—a short, sharp cry—and from between her legs, the baby falls onto the waiting linen. With a great shiver, Elfhild’s head falls back against Touilt’s shoulder. Touilt carefully arranges the mother and untangles herself to view the child. The bloody, mucus-covered form lies steaming in the chill air. A girl, quiet yet, still not quite of this world, the blue birth-cord pulsing. Touilt picks up the slippery baby and uses her finger to clear the airway. She rubs the child vigorously, as she would a pup or a calf. As though awaiting the birth, the storm passes. Thunor’s hammer pounds the distant hills, and his great lightning spear slashes far-off skies. The baby is still. Unnaturally still. For a moment, all creation waits, some tilted toward life, some to death … and then … and then … a hearty howl enters the chorus of the world.

  “Oh, a fine child, yes. A scrappy little wight.” Touilt puts the baby on Elfhild’s breast.

  “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” Elfhild runs her fingers over the child’s head and neck and belly and legs and toes, holding her fingers one by one. She looks at Touilt. “Do you think he’ll be disappointed?”

  “A daughter’s a great blessing, and there’s time for many sons yet. Wilona, tell the father to come.”

  Wilona opens the door, and Caelin, seeing her, knows, and pushes past. He smiles at last, picks up the child and looks in her face for a moment, then puts his mouth over hers and breathes into her the life of her ancestors and the kin-clan. In nine days the child will be named.

  Caelin takes Touilt’s hands in his, placing a gold shield-knot brooch in her palms. “I’m in your debt, Touilt.” It is an apology of sorts.

  “You and I are both, as always, in the debt of the gods,” says Touilt. “Sif’s swan was here tonight. Your wife has promised a sacrifice.”

  Caelin nods. “As is only right. We’ll feast in her honour. And make offerings, Touilt. The next must be a son.”

  When Lady Elfhild and the child are settled and safe in the care of servants, Touilt and Wilona prepare to leave. At the door, Margawn, Caelin’s doorkeeper, meets them. Next to him stands his enormous grey wolfhound, Bana, his tail beating a calm tattoo on the door frame. Wilona scratches behind the dog’s ear. Margawn is a muscled slab of a man, well-suited to his task. Wilona thinks of him as a golden bear, and suspects that beneath the somewhat serious exterior is a man of some kindness, for more than once she’s seen him stop a larger child from bullying a smaller one. The other warriors egg on such conflict, seeing it as the making of a future warrior. Now the expression on his face, more uncomfortable than formidable, nearly sets Wilona to laughing. Men are so unsettled by women’s labours.

  He says, “The hour’s late, Lady. May I send an escort to see you safely to your home?”

  “No need, friend,” says Touilt, “although it’s a kind offer. I have no fear of the night.”

  Margawn nods his shaggy head. “Will you at least humour me by taking a lantern—to guard against disrespectful stones in the path?”

  Touilt smiles and takes it. “Your thoughtfulness does you honour.”

  From inside the chamber comes the baby’s thin cry. Bana’s ears prick up and he cocks his head. The muscles in Margawn’s jaw work.

  “All is well,” whispers Wilona as she passes him, and he nods.

  The storm has cleared and blue-white stars float high above in the indigo sky, revealing King Edwin’s massive, richly carved hall, temple, and living quarters on the grassy plateau between the village and the sacred mountain. King Edwin visits Ad Gefrin every year during slaughter-month, when the people from across the estate bring their tithe of cattle and sheep to fill the pens. As well as maintaining a battle-ready army, it is Lord Caelin’s duty to keep the royal enclosure ready for the comfort of the king and his court whenever it pleases him to visit.

  The women walk through the darkened snickets, past the workshops and the weaving house, the tavern and the ovens and the marsh pond. They nod to the keeper of the stockade gate, and he wishes them a good night and a blessing on them for bringing Lady Elfhild safely through this night. Light from a waning gibbous moon shines between the buildings. The people of the village are deep in slumber; neither the hens in their triangular coops nor the geese in their pens raise their heads from under their wings as the women pass. Here and there, through chinks in a door, the red-orange glow of a fire twinkles from a hearth. The seithkona is deep in thought, her brows drawn together, her lips pursed, and Wilona walks slightly behind her, loath to intrude. From the forest edge an owl hoots.

  An ancient yew tree, its limbs twisted and gnarled, is a benevolent giant standing guard over Touilt’s dwelling. Prayer offerings flutter from the lower branches—pieces of brightly dyed cloth, red and green, some mor
e faded than others. Nearby is the sacred well. On a post, carved with Eostre’s likeness and the hare and egg that were her symbols, a drinking bowl hangs by a chain. As they approach the small, whitewashed hut, with a wolf head and the symbol for peace carved on the lintel, Elba, the sow, faithful as a waiting hound, snuffles through the willow hurdles of her pen.

  “Good pig,” says Touilt absently, and lifts the door latch.

  “Hello, Elba.” Wilona offers the pig a dried apple she had tucked in her tunic. The sow takes it delicately from her fingers and shakes her head in pleasure. She lets Wilona scratch behind her ears and then huffs contentedly down in the earth.

  Wilona finds Touilt inside with the wolf pelt around her shoulders, huddled over the fire, a stick in her hand, stirring the ashes. In the middle of the dry wooden floor a stone hearth boasts an iron chain from which hangs the cooking pot. Wilona has a bed of her own—wooden, the mattress stuffed with straw—and fine pelts to keep her warm. Next to her bed, on a small shelf, she keeps the antler comb she believes belonged to her mother. Dried herbs festoon the rafters, and clay jars of various unguents and roots and powders line shelves above a rough table. Smoke, thyme, yeast, roasted meat, lavender, and the perfume of grasses and river weeds scent the air. Touilt’s large wooden chest, hinged and decorated with iron, stands by her bed. Inside it are Touilt’s sacred things: her blue cloak, her cat-skin brodekins, certain special runes, her wolf pelt, and a staff with a knob on the top, set with brass and precious stones.

  “Come here,” Touilt says.

  Wilona squats next to the older woman. She has drawn symbols in the cinders and spread the still-glowing embers in a half-circle.

  “Look into the embers.”

  Wilona does as she’s told. Touilt begins to hum. The air in the room thickens, and a thin wisp of smoke trails from a chunk of half-charred wood. Touilt rattles the stones in her pouch and continues humming. Tiny bluish flames tremble and ripple in the embers. Something touches Wilona’s neck. Something wet and blunt. She is startled but keeps her eyes on the fire, even as they water and burn. She senses the fluttering of silent wings, feels the wet-knuckle prod at the back of her neck again. Warm. And then it’s gone, but the embers have fused into something darker, ragged. Touilt’s voice rises and she parts her lips, turning the humming into a long note from the back of her throat. Wilona watches the red-hearted embers and curl of smoke. Something sharp and yet feathered. Her hair seems to lift, as though with the movement of passing wings. Desolation washes over her, a sense of being lost, alone. A beak, it looks like, in the smoke, talons and a clean, sweet smell, like on the moors on a star-bright night. A flutter! With a crackle and puff, whatever was there vanishes and only the lifeless grey coals remain. The desolation evaporates, and she is left merely exhausted.

  Touilt asks, “What did you see?”

  “A bird, I think.”

  “You think, or you know?”

  “A bird. A dark bird. Sharp-taloned, large. An owl. Yes, an owl.”

  Touilt sighs and stands up, her hands on her creaking knees. She opens the chest, flipping the iron clasp with a clank, and takes off her cape and pelt. “I thought so. I felt it. You have a strong spirit.” She faces Wilona. “Stir the fire into life. This room needs light.”

  Wilona blows on the embers until a flame licks upward. “I felt something poke at me, Lady. Not a bird.”

  Touilt chuckles. “My wolf is a curious beast.”

  Wilona shivers. “What does the owl mean?” She adds more sticks to the flames, and then larger pieces of wood.

  Touilt moves behind a woven screen to use the night jar. When she reappears, she doesn’t answer Wilona’s question right away but removes her outer tunic and shoes and climbs into bed. “Owl is a creature of the night. Does that frighten you?”

  The room is brighter now, and quite cheerful.

  “No. I don’t think it does. I smelled the moors. And a sweet night.” Fearful? No. But what about that great loneliness?

  Touilt grunts. “Owl is a spirit of wisdom and prophecy. You already have knowing beyond your years. Another sign of owl. The moors, you say?”

  “It seemed that way.”

  “Perhaps it took you there, when you wandered,” Touilt says, and then falls silent.

  When you wandered. Wilona remembers the moment, five winters ago, when she stumbled out of the moors upon some shepherds tending sheep on the hillside, the only one of her people to survive the sickness that claimed her kin. She was half-mad and could not say her age or even how long she’d wandered. She was little more than a bundle of stick-thin limbs, sunken, pale-grey eyes, dressed in tatters, with a carved antler comb clutched in her hand. Had Touilt not interceded it’s almost certain Lord Caelin and his priest, Ricbert, would have hanged her in sacrifice to Woden, so she wouldn’t bring to Ad Gefrin whatever wrath the All-Father, Lord of the Dead, had wrought upon her people.

  “I see the mark of the gods upon her,” the seithkona had declared. “The gods whisper to me. We will name her Wilona.”

  “Take her if you will, Touilt,” said Lord Caelin, “but know you’re responsible for the luck she brings. It’ll be on your head if the dark folk come to us because of her.”

  Now, Touilt says, “The owl is a mysterious bird. You’ll be able to see the truth beneath a lying tongue. You’re gifted with sight into the dark, that’s true, but it’s a lonely gift. People will shy away from you. You will be alone, but that’s what a seithkona’s life is and you must accept it, for it has chosen you. You understand?”

  Wilona is torn. She always is when Touilt talks this way. She craves the mysteries, craves the power and the knowledge, the sense of being used by the gods. But she fears it. Would she have the strength to stand before Lord Caelin as Touilt did, secure in the gods’ protection? She doubts it, but she can’t say such a thing. She shouldn’t even think it. “I understand. I think.”

  “Don’t think. Do!” The fire has settled down and seems like a friendly, living thing. Touilt’s voice softens. “But don’t let yourself slide into darkness and bitterness. That’s your danger, particular to you. Believe me, all gifts come at a price.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  First Travelling Month, Ioua Insula

  Egan kneels on a rocky crag near the sea outside the earthen rampart and outer ditch that encircle the monastery. He faces east to the rising sun, and as the first light struggles to pierce the heavy fog he prays. At this pre-dawn hour, when there is almost no wind, the world seems poised in anticipation. Egan is ginger-haired and thin, with large hands and feet, and knobby knees beneath his cassock. His lips move. His knuckles are white. His brow furrows. His teeth clench. There is so much he doesn’t understand. He thought when he followed the angel and she led him here to the holy island that all would be well, that the journey for his soul’s home would be over, but even here he doesn’t fit in. He took his vows two years after arriving and yet is still treated by most of the community like a leper.

  The other monks whisper about him. They say he’s mad. They say his vision is unholy, possibly the work of the Adversary. If not mad, they say, then duplicitous. Only yesterday he was milking one of the cows, sitting on a little stool in the barn. He overheard Brother Donnan say, “He shows up here, professing to have been led by an angel of the Lord? More like his people ran him out as Our Lord Christ ran the possessed swine into the sea.” And then Brother Niall, a recent novice, said, “Maybe we should all invent visions of the Lord so the abbot might look as favourably on us.” “And his facility for languages,” said Brother Donnan, “it’s not natural. It strikes me not so much as a gift as … well …” He said something Egan couldn’t catch. When he realized he was straining to hear, he blushed. If it was a sin to speak ill of others, it was no less a sin to eavesdrop.

  Egan chooses to believe they didn’t know he was there. Surely if they did they wouldn’t purposefully speak so cruelly. He must try harder to be liked, not to stand apart so much. Even after all these seasons
, they speak of him this way and turn the new brothers against him. Being the cause of disunity makes his heart cramp.

  Since long before the day the fishermen first brought him to Ioua Insula, the idea that God had a plan for him lived like a live coal in his chest. He doesn’t remember the creatures of the sea, the seals and dolphins the fishermen swore kept him afloat and nudged him toward their boat, but he’s heard the tale often enough that the details are as embedded in his imagination as his own memories—the limpid, watery eyes and soft prodding muzzles of three seals, the sleek pair of dolphins. The seals lifted him when he began to slip below the surface. The dolphins circled him as he clung to a spar from his ruined craft. They chattered, the fishermen said, as though speaking, calling out for him not to lose heart. When he had been safely hauled into the fishing boat, semi-conscious and vomiting water over the fish and ropes, the seals and dolphins swam away, the dolphins east, the seals west, uttering cries of praise, perhaps, or farewell, and disappeared like dreams. The fishermen crossed themselves and made to shore as quickly as they could, for surely this strange boy, found so far from land, guarded by Christ’s own creatures, must be sent to the brothers on the holy island.

  All Egan remembers clearly is being below the water, his coracle wrecked by a great wave; he was convinced he had proven himself unworthy of his vision’s angel. He had been so sure all would be well when Abbot Ségéne agreed to take him in, to let him take the vows first of novice, then of brother. However, since the moment the wave destroyed his boat, inexplicably, heartbreakingly, the visions stopped. Perhaps there is no more need for visions; perhaps, his arriving where he is meant to be, the angel’s work is done. But, if this is where God means him to be, why is he so disliked?

  There was a time, not long after he arrived, when he had hoped his fellow monks would be true brothers to him, that they would be a family and he would belong here as he never did at home. At first he took their distance to be kindness, giving him the space and time necessary to heal and to accustom himself to life at the monastery. How wrong he’d been. They envy him. It is a terrible thing to accuse them of, but Egan can’t help but see the dark emotion in their faces as they walk past him, refusing to weed the same patch in the garden in which he works, pulling their cassocks away from his in chapel. What they say is that they don’t trust him and that he’s not sincere, but he knows differently: it’s envy. They wish they, too, had had a vision.