Chapter 24 The Wyfe’s Hunt #2
Night fell. The smoky fires shone crimson on faces and hands and the men’s bare ankles beneath their kilts.
The glowing peat blocks reminded me of a smith’s brick-lined forge, although this heat was pleasant, not the eye-watering inferno of hard coal fanned by a bellows.
The food was solid and good, if salty, and I tried the savory pudding, called a haggis. It was tasty but rich.
With the meal done, tables were pushed aside and the benches dragged into two rough rows.
The bound wyves’ draca wandered around the periphery, an unusual show of interest from the creatures.
A half-bottle of sherry was shared, and tea.
Mr. MacLeod asked Darcy to uncork the whiskey, then he doled it out in drams indeed, little more than wetting the bottom of each glass.
Two dozen villagers took a taste, and there was much sniffing and tilting of glasses while arguing whether a few drops of water would open the flavor or flatten it.
Finally, the whiskey was sipped and declared a bonny batch, indeed.
Mistress MacLeod, in a wool cap decorated with tartan and a shawl to fend off the cooling air, walked into the cleared area in front of the benches.
“Now we tell the tragedy of the wyfe Brynhild,” she cried out, “and of the hero Sigurd, and of the Wyfe’s Wild Hunt.” She moved to the side of the improvised stage.
A woman strode out dressed in a gray riding cloak. She was my mother’s age, with a few wrinkles and streaks of gray.
“The wyfe Brynhild was a noblewoman,” intoned Mistress MacLeod, “strong of arm and mind and terrible to cross.” The woman posed like a warrior, shoulders square, and her years fell away.
She looked young and strong. “She was courted by a hundred men, but they may as well have been chasin’ their tails, for one of the hundred was Sigurd, a hairy bull of a man who would melt any lass’s heart. ”
A stocky, balding man, his skin tanned by sun and sea, rose from a bench and came forward grinning, surely the woman’s husband as they shared a private smile.
The woman called out, “I, Brynhild, know that a great draca lives in these hills, unbound for two hundred years. I will bind that draca, but I need a grand lover. A hero.” Brynhild and Sigurd approached each other and trailed fingers across each other’s shoulders, the image of youthful, carnal attraction.
My cheeks flushed as some men hooted approval.
Now, the red-cheeked woman who invited me to braid decorations joined the performance.
Serious as any actress at Covent Garden, she stole forward dripping deceit.
“I am Gudrún, and I’m as bonny a lass as Brynhild.
I should be the one t’bind the great draca.
” She circled Brynhild then whipped Brynhild’s riding cloak free—the crowd hissed—and wrapped it around herself, hood forward to hide her features.
“With this disguise, I’ll steal into Sigurd’s bed. ”
In pin-drop silence, Gudrún approached and embraced Sigurd. They turned in slow circles, hands on each other’s hips, half a dance, half lewd mimicry. Under the blackening sky, the audience began a slow stamp, one thump each time the lovers circled in the flickering red firelight.
The emotions of the performers and audience spread to the world of draca, and in the shadows, feral draca joined the bound watchers, their eyes reflecting the crimson of the fires.
Then, as the turning couple quickened, a firedrake scaled dark as iron strutted into the firelight.
Most people lived their lives without seeing an unbound drake, but only one young child exclaimed.
Everyone else continued their relentless stamp, quickening with the spins of the actors.
The firedrake’s gleaming black eyes fixed on the writhing couple as if it were a true consummation—a consummation and a betrayal, for Brynhild was watching Sigurd’s seduction, and the wyfe playing Brynhild was watching her husband in life with another woman.
Her face, whether in performance or truth, was filled with fury.
Abruptly, the red-cheeked woman’s back arched, and she screamed in ecstasy and triumph. The iron-dark drake opened his wings wider than a tall man’s spread arms, and the thumping stomp ended.
I startled as a hand fell on my shoulder. Mistress MacLeod whispered in my ear, “Come away, lass. I would speak with ye.”
Darcy was engrossed in the performance. I tapped his arm to signal I was leaving, then with a few swift steps, Mistress MacLeod and I threaded between the benches until we stood behind the audience.
“Do ye ken the story of Brynhild?” Mistress MacLeod asked me as the play continued.
I shook my head. “I have heard the names but not the story.”
“Brynhild has been betrayed.” Her eyes glittered. “What d’ye think will happen?”
I had read enough fables to answer. “Revenge. Disaster.”
The crowd reacted to the play by bellowing an animalistic, rolling snarl. Brynhild’s shout reached us. “With the black dagger I summon the Wild Hunt. Rise, river dragon! Freeze the land in bitterest winter!” Steam hissed as people threw water on the peat fires, and the red light dimmed near black.
Mistress MacLeod’s eyes never left mine. “Revenge, aye. ’Tis the story of the north. Honor is valued over life. This village is awash in honor, like oil poured on tinder awaiting a spark. Hae the men come to ye yet?”
“The men who are plotting violence.” Without Fènnù’s presence, my past selves had faded to shadows, but those wyves remembered their own starved villages. Famine always bred war. “Not yet.”
“They will, lass.”
From beyond the audience, a woman’s voice carried, “Through dark and ice, across frozen turf and dying trees, the draca led Brynhild on her hunt. And when the sun rose, feebled by ice, she caught Sigurd and deceiving Gudrún…”
Mistress MacLeod grabbed me, her fingernails digging into my forearm. “Ye carry the black dagger, lass. Did ye burn London?”
I shook my head. “The black dragon attacked London. She seeks me, but I do not command her.”
“If Helmsdale rises up, it’ll be a hot fire but a short one. There’ll be naught left but ashes to mark our graves. Will ye set that fire, wyfe of war?”
“No,” I said. “I swear it.”
Her grip eased on my arm, and she nodded. “Tomorrow morning, then, we’ll read the stones. Yer husband will hear the truth of the flute.” Her gaze bored into mine. “I think a wyfe of war, and a Bennet besides, already knows the tale.”
She tugged my hand, hustling us through the crowd while tossing over her shoulder, “Hurry up, lass. Time to see how revenge turned out.”
Uneasy, I found Darcy in the crowd and sat beside him on the bench, wrapping my arm in his.
On the stage, Gudrún was cowering before Brynhild.
Sigurd stepped toward them, hands beseeching. “Brynhild, ye wielded the dagger. Ye commanded the dark dragon. Now show a wyfe’s mercy. Spare fair Gudrún, who is but a lass.”
Silence stretched. Brynhild raised something sharp and black above her head, and even though I would know if Gramr were touched, my hand reached to check the hilt was secure.
Brynhild spun and stabbed Sigurd. Darcy started up as if to intervene, his arm stretched in hopeless intercession, but the black point did not strike like a blade—it folded in Brynhild’s hand, a prop. Sigurd, the woman’s husband in life, collapsed in a credible stage death.
Mistress MacLeod strode onto the stage, narrating, “Then Brynhild saw what her fury had wrought. As her love died, she repented, and her sorrow lifted the black dragon’s winter from the land.”
Thin-split kindling was tossed on the half-doused fires. Sun-yellow fire bloomed, and warm light spread.
The audience passed the Wyves’ bannocks hand-to-hand. Each woman tore a burned ray from the breads. Even the elderly wyfe beside me took one with a toothless grin before passing the half-used loaf to me.
Around us, wyves stabbed their husbands with the mock-knives.
Young, unmarried women chased young men.
They yelled, tripped, and collided. Each stabbed person shuddered their death then miraculously recovered and embraced their attacker.
The red-cheeked woman who had played Brynhild caught a bearded young man. He did not put up much of a fight.
The embraces turned passionate. Pairs fled, hand-in-hand—toward houses, into the secluded night. Only the children remained, watching the adults vanish as if this were perfectly normal. Then the older children got up and began collecting plates and cups.
“Are ye nae going to stab yer husband?” the MacLeods’ young daughter asked me. Her parents had rushed off like the rest. I turned the burned knife of bread in my hand, and she explained seriously, “It means yer fond of him, ye ken?”
I nodded that I understood. When I did not immediately disembowel my husband with the crust, she rolled her eyes and trotted off with a bored expression.
My other senses, my draca senses, vibrated.
The passion of hidden lovers was like whirlpools churning a rising sea.
I closed my eyes. Draca of every breed moved through the village.
The iron-dark drake flew in pursuit of the red-cheeked woman and her man, and through his alien mind, their arousal trickled down my spine like hot oil.
“A strange play,” Darcy said. Flushed, I opened my eyes as he continued, “It does not match what we know of Fury and Gramr’s history, nor what I recall of the Volsunga saga, but there are connections. The origin must be Nordic or Germanic…”
“Leave the scholarship to Mary,” I said hoarsely. The draca around us were fueling a sensuous awareness of Darcy’s closeness, of his scent. The two cream-colored firedrakes crisscrossed in the sky above, waiting, watching us, two heated bodies in their vision.
Awkwardly, Darcy raked back his hair. Despite his dry topic, the mood had affected him. His pupils were huge, his pulse quick in his throat.
“Tomorrow,” I said, “Mistress MacLeod will take us to the Pictish stones and tell the story of the flute.” This escape, this pretense, my parade of lies would be exposed. How could it end but disaster?
My despair must have shown on my features, and Darcy’s brow furrowed. “I know you are troubled about the flute. What are you not saying?”
“Quiet,” I whispered and pulled him to me.