‘When?’
‘When they told me that you had not left with Ragnar. That you had chosen to stay.’
‘You did not think that I stayed for you?’
‘Did you?’
‘No.’
Her mouth twisted. ‘You see? I am not such a fool as you think. Tell me why you stayed.’
I could not answer for a long time. When I spoke, I said: ‘I looked on the mountains and the sea and I thought it beautiful. I thought my country too beautiful to leave. So it was not for love of you. But for this island.’ I looked down at my one good hand, turned palm upward to the sky. ‘I suppose that sounds foolish to you.’
She said nothing for a time. Then: ‘I have often wondered at the lies men tell themselves. I see that you tell them, too.’
‘You think that I lie to you?’
‘I do.’
‘Tell me, then, why it was that I stayed. Since it seems you think you know better than I do.’
She closed her eyes and shook her head, and it seemed at first that she would not answer.
‘For pride,’ she said at last. ‘You were too proud to run.’
To that, I found I had no answer.
She finished her stitching and rolled it up.
‘Will you stay with us, this winter?’ she said, and there was a challenge in her tone.
‘Do you want me to?’
‘I do.’
‘Then I shall. For I have no place else to go.’
‘And if you did, then you would.’
‘Yes,’ I said. But when I looked at her I could see the hurt that word gave. ‘But I thank you for your kindness. I will stay with you.’
She leaned forward, letting her hair fall across her face, hiding it from me. ‘What will you do now?’
‘Wait for the boy to die.’
‘And after that?’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘I think that whatever I ask of you, you shall do the opposite. I will not say such things to you again.’
‘After the boy has died…’ My throat closed for a moment, but I willed it open once again. ‘I will ask Ragnar to take me on his ship. I do not know what work there is for a one-handed sailor. But there must be something I can do.’
‘You will not continue the feud?’
‘No. They have won.’
‘Does Gunnar not whisper to you of vengeance?’
‘No. I do hear him, but that is not what he says to me.’
‘And what do you hear him say?’
‘He wishes for me to love you. And he wishes for me to live and to sing. I cannot do one of those things. But perhaps I may do the other.’
Her hand drifted towards my shoulder for a moment, before she drew it back again.
‘You will do what you must,’ she said. She hesitated, and then said: ‘Will you sing for us? I would like to hear you sing.’
I thought of all the times that I had been asked that. Perhaps that was all that was left of me. A pair of aching lungs, a tongue and lips, a mind filled only with songs. And I answered as I always had.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I can still sing.’
‘I am glad to see that you live.’
‘Is that the truth?’
‘It is the truth,’ she said. And perhaps I was a fool, but I believed her.
I stood and looked upon the valley, and listened to the calling of the sea. I went inside the longhouse and I waited for the boy to die.
I had hoped that Kari would not wake again. That he would slip from this world quietly, at peace. But I had never seen a man die by fire. I did not know what was to come. For he woke soon enough and he did not sleep again.
Each day, Sigrid and I scoured his weeping skin with sand, even as he screamed and begged for us to stop. We dripped milk and honey into his mouth, for his throat was too far closed to take any more than that. He did not sleep and so neither did we. Each night one of us would walk up to the shieling, for there we could sleep. Two of us stood as sentries on the watch, waiting for the night to pass so that we could sleep. Waiting for him to die.
I began to long for it, and it seemed as though I had never wanted anything so much before. At night when I could not sleep, when I listened to him cry out in pain, I prayed to the gods to let him die. I felt my hand drift to the knife at my side, and it would have been a kindness to do it, the greatest gift that I could have offered to any man. But Kari was all that was left in the world of Gunnar. I knew I could not destroy him. I would have taken that knife to my own throat before I took it to his. And so we waited for the slow death to take him, and we fought it as hard as we could.
It was on a morning, as the summer began to turn towards winter, when I came back from the shieling, that the change came. I walked towards the longhouse, and there was a strange silence within. I listened at the door for a time, waiting for the choking cries to begin again. But there was nothing, and an ache of joy crept through me.
I thought to find Sigrid there, beside the body of the boy. But it was Ragnar who sat beside Kari, a fresh catch of salmon still dripping in his net. He spent much of his time working the rivers, sleeping at the shieling or in his ship. He took little part in nursing the boy – not out of cowardice, I think, but out of a particular courtesy. He knew that I did not want him there.
He started as I came in, like a man caught speaking conspiracy.
‘Sigrid asked me to watch him for a moment,’ he said, ‘She will be back soon.’ His eyes darted back to where the boy lay.
‘Is he dead?’ I said.
‘No. He sleeps.’
‘Then what concerns you?’
‘It is no matter.’
‘Tell me.’
He hesitated, then beckoned me forward. ‘Listen to how he breathes.’
I came forward and I saw that the boy did sleep. A change there, for the pain always kept him awake. I put my ear to Kari’s chest, and listened to the wheeze and rattle of his breath. I heard nothing different.
‘Does he seem to breathe easier to you?’ Ragnar said.
‘I think that you imagine it.’
‘Perhaps.’ He sat beside him, reached out an uncertain hand. The slightest touch could hurt the boy, and so Ragnar merely extended one finger, and gave a gentle stroke to Kari’s hair. The boy did not stir. ‘I do not want him to die,’ Ragnar said.
‘I do. I want his pain to end.’
‘Sigrid said that after winter you will go abroad. That you think to take a place on my ship.’
‘If you will have me.’
‘Of course.’
‘I should have gone with you three years ago. It is too late now, but there is nothing else for me to do.’
‘It is not too late.’
A sudden anger stole my sight for a moment, and when it returned I saw him with his hand to his mouth, his eyes open wide. I suppose I must have looked murderous.
‘I am sorry,’ I said. ‘But it is a simple thing for a man like you to say that.’
‘Yes.’ He stood abruptly and made for the door, leaving his catch by the cooking pot. He paused at the doorway and said: ‘I do not imagine it.’
‘What?’
‘I am sure of it.’ His eyes drifted to Kari and then met my gaze with a rare confidence. ‘The boy is healing.’
‘I wish that were true,’ I said.
I could not trust the word of a coward: it is all that we are taught, that brave men speak truth and cowards lie. But Ragnar never lied to me. In that, at least, he was brave.
The boy began to crawl back towards life, one breath at a time. He bore the dressing of his skin with hisses of breath, not with screams. He slept entire days at a time without making a sound.