2. TWO
TWO
HERVOR
Ifly up the wooded path to the house. There's blue smoke coming from the chimney and two of our thrall-women are sitting out on the grass plucking chickens. I'm on them before they can get to their feet.
“Where is she! Where's my mother!”
They cringe away like I'm about to hit them, and I jump down from Trumdi and thrust the reins into the hands of the nearest girl.
“Mother!”
My mother comes out of the house, wiping her hands on her apron, “Loki's children, what are you—”
“Is it true?”
“Is what—”
“That Frodmar is not my father, and that you got drunk and went into a swineherd’s hut!”
“Obviously it isn’t true. Who told you that?”
“One of Grandfather’s thralls. I was jumping the fence and knocked down some of the rails—and when he asked me to leave I tried to fight him, but then he lost his temper and said a swineherd is my father, not Frodmar—and the other thralls were trying to stop him, saying that Grandfather was going to put him to death because he had forbidden all H?logaland from speaking about it—and then they were all afraid and he ran for his life into the woods! ”
I burst into tears and sob like some stupid little girl.
I’m pathetic. All I want is for her to hug me close and tell me it’s all a lie, that those thralls somehow knew I’d go up to the sheep pasture today and conspired together about what they would do and say, and that my grandfather will muster his huskarls and take me with him to hunt them down and get our vengeance.
But my mother doesn’t hug me.
She stands there with her mouth open like she’s about to speak, her blue eyes averted up and to the right. “Bolla, Almveig,” she says, addressing the two thrall-women, “go fetch more wood for the fire, and take your time.”
“Yes, my lady.”
She waits for them to leave, listening with her hands on her hips until she’s sure they’re gone.
“You were never meant to know,” she says quietly.
“No! No Mother!” I cover my ears. I don’t want to heart it. My world is splitting apart.
But my mother continues, her voice stern and calloused. “I was younger than you are, and stupider, and very fond of drinking mead. It’s true. I got drunk and slept with a swineherd.”
I pull my hair, struggling for breath. I can’t believe what she’s saying. My own mother!
“After it happened,” she says, “and I knew I was with child, your grandfather did not want us to live in shame, so he forbid anyone to speak of it ever again. The swineherd disappeared, and Frodmar married me before you were born.”
“It isn’t true. Tell me it isn’t true!”
“It is true.” My mother folds her arms across her chest. “For sixteen years I’ve kept this from you. I always thought it might feel good to speak of it together. It doesn’t. But now you know.”
I sink to my knees, sobbing wretchedly. “I’m a bastard.”
“You’re no such thing. The day you were born, Frodmar picked you up into his arms and carried you down to the fjord to sprinkle you with water. ‘I own this girl as my daughter. Her name will be Hervor.’ That’s what he said in front of everyone, and he was smiling proudly.”
“So what if he adopted me? My blood is swineherd’s blood!”
“Well, Hervor,” she says, a bit more softly, “you can choose to see yourself as some swineherd’s bastard daughter if you want.
But no one else looks at you that way. And as for that thrall who said that, we can go up to the hall right now and tell your grandfather about it, and he’ll make sure he’s hunted down and brought to justice. ”
She reaches out to stroke my hair, but all I can think of is her stumbling out of her dress in that stinking hovel and letting some gawking swineherd grope her with his filthy hands—the two of them sighing and moaning in the dark. That's how I was born. It's disgusting. I'm disgusting.
I pull away from her. “Don’t touch me.”
“Oh don’t be like that.”
“I don’t know how Frodmar lives with you. He must think about it whenever you’re together—you gasping underneath another man. A swineherd! A swineherd, Mother! How could you do this to me! Why couldn’t you just leave me out in the woods to die!”
Her eyes flash with emotion and she draws back her hand like she’s about to slap me. But she doesn’t, and the pain in her face hardens into iron.
“When you were born,” she says, her voice as cold as the winter wind, “that’s what everyone told me I should do. Sometimes, Hervor—the things that come out of your mouth—I wonder if I shouldn’t have.”
For a moment I stare at her in silence. Then I head inside and put my axe and knife into my belt and take down my bow and quiver of arrows down from where they’re hung up on the wall above my bunk.
“What are you doing?”
I don’t answer.
“Come on, Hervor, where are you going with that?”
“I’m going to live out in the woods where I belong—since I’m only a bastard and you never wanted me anyway.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You did.”
She shifts her blue eyes back and forth, then smiles thinly. “Well, are you sure? Lunch will be ready soon.”
“I’m not hungry.”
Sniffling, I head past her out the door and fasten my quiver to my hip. She stands in the door frame, watching me. “Be home before dark,” she says.
“I’m not coming home.”
“Ever?”
“No.”
She opens her mouth like she’s about to argue. But she decides to let it go and I trudge off into the woods.