If I Had a Heart: The Saga of Ivar and Ita

Chapter 2

Ita spent the first few weeks in the Norsemen's settlement in bed. She had hoped to conceal her illness from them until she got better, but when she awoke the morning after her arrival, her head was spinning and so it seemed was the room. The dim yellow glow of the dying fire lit her way as she stumbled across the floor, uncertain of which way she was going, but glad she had made it to the door in time to vomit in the dirt outside rather than on the floor of her kind hosts' home. She held herself up with one arm against the wall and sobbed as her head pounded and she shivered and fell onto the ground in front of her, surrounded by the cold, wetness which was everywhere. It had rained the night before and there was still a gentle, steady mist falling. Water clung to her hair and her clothes, and it burned and stung her skin in the frigid wind.

It was Hvitserk who found her after an indeterminable amount of time when he finally woke up and came out to piss. He didn't know how long she could have possibly been sitting there, leant up against the outside wall next to a puddle of vomit, and when asked much later, she couldn't remember how long she had been outside before she was found. He picked her up and carried her small, light body back into the house and deposited it again in front of the fire on the pile of furs and blankets where she had spent the night. Her dress was soaked through with a long streak of vomit down the front of it. He knew she would never get warm again with that on, so he tore it from the neck all the way down to the hemline and pulled it off of her; he covered her hastily then with one of the furs.

"Wake up," he said, to no effect. "Ita, wake up."

She was still unconscious, or, at least, half conscious. Every so often, he would see her try to open her eyes, only to have them to fall shut again, and she would groan or let out a soft whimper or sob as she curled up into herself. After a moment, he gave up trying to talk to her and left her. Hvitserk rushed into his brother and Margrethe's bedroom without knocking, slamming the door open against the wall with a loud bang. They jolted awake and looked at him like he had gone mad. In fact, he looked quite like he had gone mad as he began searching through the trunks and under the bed and in cabinets frantically, leaving clothing and other trinkets and things on the floor everywhere he looked.

"What are you doing, Hvitserk?" Ubbe asked groggily.

"I need a dress," the younger man said, still plundering through their things.

"Isn't it a bit early to be playing dress up?" Margrethe teased with a tired giggle.

"Not for me," Hvitserk said. "For the girl."

"Why for the girl? What's happened to the dress I gave her last night?" she asked, sitting up and coming to stand beside him. "What did you do to her?"

"I didn't do anything to her," he said, agitated. "I found her outside, passed out and covered in vomit. Her dress was wet and soiled. She needs a new one."

Suddenly concerned, Margrethe pushed him aside and grabbed a wad of gray wool from the trunk he had been looking through, and she rushed out to where Ita lay by the fire followed closely by the two men. With their help, Margrethe dressed Ita and bundled her once more in the furs. Roused by the commotion, Ivar appeared at the threshold between his door and the main hall.

"What on earth has happened?" he asked, dragging himself toward them.

"Your little friend is sick," Ubbe said. "Hvitserk found her outside, freezing to death, soaked and covered in her own vomit."

"You poisoned her," Ivar said accusingly to Margrethe, who stared back at him scornfully but said nothing in return.

"Let's not go making accusations," Ubbe said, shutting Ivar down before he even got started. "You know as well as I do that that is not the case."

"Do I?" the younger man spat.

"If you don't, then you are far more stupid than I give you credit for," Ubbe scoffed. "I've seen this many times. When we come to a new place, the people will sometimes die of some illness or other before we ever even reach them. You said her village already perished but she seemed better. She obviously is catching a second wind of whatever they all had."

"Or it can happen the other way around; sometimes our men will fall ill as soon as we reach a new land, before we even encounter the people who live there," Hvitserk chimed in.

"Right," Ubbe agreed.

"I have seen it, too," Margrethe said, "with the slaves, all the time. Let's hope she is stronger than that."

Instead of arguing further, Ivar moved to sit beside Ita and he put a hand on her forehead to find it burning hot while the rest of her shook as though she were freezing still despite her skin that felt like fire and the heavy pile of furs and blankets on her. His face twisted into a look of confusion, which faded into worry, and after a moment, his face softened and he looked up at his brothers.

"Is she going to die?" he asked in a whisper.

They remained silent for a long moment, then Margrethe said, "Maybe not."

She began feeling Ita's face, her neck, her hands, tending to her with such maternal instinct and care that the three men had not seen in ages.

"Maybe? Can't you be certain?" he said.

"No one can be certain of anything except for the gods," she said, barely even looking up. "You know that. Just let me care for her and I will see what can be done."

For the next two weeks, day and night, Ita lay in front of that fireplace with Margrethe keeping watch over her by day and the men taking shifts to watch her by night. There was another woman there, too, but they had never been properly introduced as Ita was never fully aware of anything going on around her. The woman's voice was soft and she was so pale and beautiful, with the longest, waviest blonde hair Ita had ever seen; she thought the woman must have been an angel sent by God to protect her and help her heal for nothing about her seemed very real to Ita.

The angel would assist Margrethe with feeding and cleaning Ita, and she even combed her hair and plaited it loosely to keep it away from her face. She would sometimes sit with Ita's head in her lap and sing to her or tell her stories all about adventures in far-off lands and brave, fierce men and beautiful ladies and victories followed by massive celebrations. Something about her seemed almost motherly and the comfort of her voice and her company made Ita feel a lot more at ease as she regained her health.

It all seemed a dream until finally, one night, Ita sat up. She still felt a little weak, but she was much stronger than she had felt since leaving home. Her head had stopped throbbing and the room was no longer spinning. Beside her in a chair, Ivar sat cleaning his fingernails with a small knife. He looked different than he had the afternoon they met. He wore a simple green shirt and brown trousers, and in place of the heavy metal braces he had been wearing, his legs were now tied together at the calves with strips of leather. When he saw her looking at him, he put the knife down and looked back at her.

"Well good morning," he said lightly. "How are you feeling?"

"Hungry," she said in response.

"Good," he said, sounding relieved. "That is a very good sign."

He was able to reach a table to his left and retrieve a plate of food that looked as though it had been picked at a bit but not really eaten. This he passed to her and she set it in front of herself on the pile of furs.

"Thank you," she said, and she started eating hurriedly, taking large mouthfuls of food at a time.

Ivar laughed. "Hey, maybe you should eat a little slower. You haven't had anything but broth and water in almost two weeks. Your stomach probably isn't very strong yet."

Guilty and embarrassed at his comment on her eating, she slowed down and he laughed again.

"I thought you were going to die," he said bluntly, and she paused to look at him nervously.

"Did you?" she whispered.

He nodded. "I was…concerned."

"Why do you care?" she asked as she chewed on a bit of bread.

He did not answer, so after a few seconds of silence, she returned her attention to the food in front of her. She couldn't decide if it was as good as her body was telling her it was, or if she was just so hungry that anything would have tasted good.

Ivar went back to scraping underneath his nails with the blade of his knife.

"Who is Ragnar Lothbrok?" she asked abruptly, making him startle.

Ivar accidentally cut too deep and broke the skin under his nail. He hissed at the sharp pain and wiped the blood away on his trousers. Then he paused and looked at her again, confused.

"My father," he said. "Why do you ask? How do you know his name?"

"There was a woman," she said as she looked around for something to wipe her hands on; finding nothing, she used the bottom of her skirt.

"Where?" he asked.

"Here," she said. "She stayed with me and told me stories."

"Do you mean Margrethe?" His eyebrows furrowed and he leaned forward, intrigued.

"No," she shook her head. "Another woman."

He thought a moment. "The wife of my half-brother came by a few times to help. Maybe you are thinking of her. What did she say about my father?"

"I…I don't remember…everything exactly," she said. "But it sounded like a wonderful story. He must have been a very great man among your people."

"I believe he was," Ivar said with a smile. "He was a brave and strong warrior, and a great king."

"She said that," Ita said, nodding. "But she also said that there were many against him."

"Any king has opposition," he said.

"This man, Ragnar, your father, he must have had more opposition than most," she said. "Am I correct?"

"I think you are," he said.

"She said he had many sons," Ita said.

Ivar nodded in confirmation. "Yes, five that we know for sure are his, and one daughter. There is another, a boy somewhere in England, who is believed to be his son."

"My," she mused, looking at something past him for a moment before looking at him again, a small smile on her pale, sunken face. She continued eating as she spoke: "My father had three sons," she said with a mouthful of food. "I was his only daughter, and I was the youngest. Like you, right? You are the youngest of your father's sons. The ones that are confirmed to be his anyway."

"Yes," he said. "And I grew up with three older brothers just like you did. My father wasn't around for much of my youth, though."

"Neither was mine," she told him. "He was always away. But…being the youngest, and the weakest, forgive me for saying," she said, and he raised an eyebrow; "you probably had to work a lot harder to keep up and to prove yourself to be just as strong and smart as your older brothers."

He nodded. She could see in his eyes that he was very interested in all that she was saying, as though he had never met anyone who even had a hint of understanding of what it was like for him growing up.

"Me, too," she said with a little half-smile. "I was raised much in the same way they were – dogs and hunting, wrestling and sword-fighting and archery and the like – but I was a girl, and much smaller and weaker than they were. And I had a bad hip. But I pulled my weight, more than my weight, and I became as good as they were at a lot of things. What I lacked in physical size and strength, I made up for in speed and dexterity and cunning."

Ivar set his knife down on the table he had gotten the food from and leaned down to look at her closer, studying her almost as he had the day she had found him in the woods. In two weeks he had watched her walk, watched her sit, watched her easily disarm him and defend herself against him, watched her fight his older brother, watched her drink, eat, vomit, sleep. In two weeks, he had seen every human aspect of this girl, but she was still a mystery to him, and therefore, she was a threat. He knew since the moment that he met her that she could have killed him, so why didn't she? He wanted to be angry, to hate her, but now he understood why he did not. She was strong when anyone else in the same situation would have been weak, she was smarter than she should have been – she not only survived, she thrived when she should not have, when any other person in her position would have simply died or been submissive.

She was like him in many ways, but he saw that she was a different incarnation of what he was. She had the same strength, the same intelligence, the same will to survive, and she harnessed it so gracefully. She thought things through where he acted so quickly. Thinking back to the day she walked up on him at his fire, he realized she had to have been watching him long before she approached, that she had strategically kept her weak side away from him the whole time, and that she had likely known the whole time that he would likely have attempted to take the life of a strange, lone woman whether she had offended him the way she had or not and known that she would likely have needed to use her weapon, and that was why she kept it concealed, so that he wouldn't expect her to fight back.

Ivar the Boneless now understood that he did not hate this woman because she was him. Or rather, she was what he could have been under different circumstances. And now that he had heard her story, though it had come to him in two parts, the first the day they met, and the second only moments before this one, he knew this to be a fact.

She hid her strength, masking it with her weakness and using it only as needed; the same, she did with her skill and her intelligence. Not only that, she was kind and harnessed no hate or bitterness the way that he did; instead, she had a certain amount of sweetness about her. Should she want to – and she certainly did want to when they first met – she could hide behind the guise of a kind, simple, beautiful girl with a bad leg. He, on the other hand, was always trying to intimidate people with these same characteristics.

His eyes met hers, and just for a moment – no. He stopped the thought before it really had the time to form, and to his relief, she blinked and in an instant they looked as they had before.

"So, Viking," she chuckled. "Say something."

He looked away for a moment and sat up again. "Like what?"

"I don't know," she said. "But am I right in assuming we understand one another?"

"Huh?" He felt rather stupid right now, and his cheeks burned; he only hoped they weren't red. "Oh, um, I think you are right."

"Good," she smiled. "Then it will be easy for me to train with you."

"Oh, you won't be training with me," he said.

"I won't?"

"Of course not," he said. "My fighting style is worlds different from what you will be doing. You will learn from Ubbe and Hvitserk."

"Oh," she said, deflated.

She stood slowly, having to steady herself with one hand on the wall behind her, and she carried the plate over to the table, set it down, and pulled a chair over to sit closer to Ivar. The whole time, he watched her, considering whether or not he should help her, then remembering that even if he decided he would help her, he probably wouldn't be much help. She smiled smugly, now eye to eye with him.

"Perhaps every once in a while, if you like, we might be able to train together, but you need to perfect your footing and your swordsmanship," he said. "I could teach you to use an ax. If you like."

"How hard could it be?" she asked teasingly. "You just swing it around or throw it."

"There's more to it than that!" he defended.

"If you say so, Viking," she said, smirking.

He narrowed his eyes at her.

"I would like to learn if you would teach me," she said more seriously this time, receiving a softer expression from him in return. "And perhaps there are a few things I could teach you."

"Alright, Ivar, you can go to bed now. I'm sorry I'm late; I was –"

Hvitserk was just walking in when he looked up to see Ita out of bed, sitting in a chair, eating and talking to his younger brother. He stopped where he was and looked at her, eyes wide and jaw slack, astonished.

"You are awake," he said, "and eating. Good." He eyed Ivar suspiciously. "Eh, he didn't wake you up, did he? He's asked a few times already if he could."

"No, he didn't," Ita said. "I just found myself awake. By the way, thank you for bringing me back inside. I would have died out there had you not found me."

"You don't have to thank me," Hvitserk said, shaking his head. "You were in need and I helped you. That's just common decency. It was the least I could do."

"New concept to you, eh, brother?" Ivar smirked.

"Oh, fuck off, Boneless," Hvitserk said to his brother. To Ita, he said, "Since you are awake now, do you want someone to stay with you, or would you like to be left alone for a while?"

"Em…." She hesitated, looking at Ivar, who looked quite tired. Who knew how long he had been awake? Then she looked to Hvitserk, who looked as though he had just woken up, but was equally as sleepy. "Well, I was having a nice talk with Ivar, but he is probably very tired and should go to bed."

"I am fine," Ivar said, his lie evident by the stifled yawn that came a moment later.

"You should go to bed," she said. "Hvitserk, you look very tired as well. How long did you get to sleep just now before you had to wake up?"

"About three hours," he said. "But I don't see why that's impor–"

"Go back to bed," she said. "I will be fine on my own. I may even go back to sleep in a little while. I am still weak and a little tired, but I am not so sick that I need someone watching me when he should be sleeping."

"Thank you," Hvitserk said. "Goodnight, Ita."

"Goodnight," she replied, and then, once he had gone, she turned to face Ivar once more. "Now you go to bed, too, Boneless." She giggled. "I like that little nickname. I don't think I've heard them call you that before."

"Hm," he intoned, giving her a bemused but tired half-smile. "I will go to bed. And I will think of a name to call you."

"Ita," she said, and stood to move back to her own bed. "I am Ita; nothing more."

"Oh, no," he said. "You will have an epithet."

"My people don't use them."

"My people are your people now," he reminded her. "So you will need some sort of second name. What was your father's name?"

"His name was Áedán," she said. "But why –"

"Ita Áedánsdottir," he said. "That is your name until we find you a new one."

"I don't want a new one," she said.

But he did not hear her. He did not want to hear her. He simply told her goodnight and went away to his own room.