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

Chapter 3

Late into the night, Ita lay awake, even weeks later, barely sleeping at all until several hours after the others had gone to bed. Time wore on, and she still had yet to train with the Sons of Ragnar.

Ubbe had told her, "One more week, Ita, just to make sure you're better." And she had accepted that. One week sounded reasonable enough to her. So she stayed home with Margrethe while the men went out to work or to train.

But, reasonable or not, one week was enough time for Ita to become rather restless. Every morning, she would awaken to the sound of Ivar hobbling down the corridor outside the bedchamber she had been given once it had been decided that her place was with them, and she would run to the door and peer out without him noticing to see him leant tiredly on his crutch, pulling himself along. Hvitserk would often come after Ivar, then Ubbe, and they would go out into the main hall to gather their swords, axes, and bows and quivers. They would, some mornings, be laughing and talking. Mostly though, they were in complete silence or they bickered, but Ita paid no mind to that. She only heard the laughter, the mirth, and it made her jealous that she was not going out with them.

She had run after them a few times, sword in hand, her feet bare and her hair flying out behind her, still in her nightdress, and she would grab hold of Ubbe's arm and beg him to let her go with them.

"Just a few more days, Ita," he would say, and she would trudge back into the house, her head low and her spirits depleted.

Margrethe would meet her at the door and give her a reassuring smile and a blanket around her shoulders and tell her, "Go back to bed and in a little while you can come out and help me with the chores, hm?"

This happened three or four mornings at least but it felt no less hurtful each time. That week felt like an eternity, but it finally ended and on the eighth morning, as the men were having their breakfast, Ita came out to meet them wearing a tunic and a pair of trousers she had borrowed from Hvitserk, which were a few sizes too big for her, her sword tucked in her belt. Ivar, she noticed, had his legs tied rather than in their braces, and he was wearing what Margrethe called his "around-the-house clothes." The other two men, too, she saw were dressed rather casually.

"Are we not going out?" she had asked, her smile beginning to fade.

"It rained last night and the ground has iced over. It is too slick," Ubbe had said.

She said nothing, but her disappointment was plain to see.

"Sit. Eat," he said then. "You must be hungry."

So she joined them at the table, and she ate in silence, her shoulders hunched and her elbows resting heavily on the table as she picked at her food. Ivar watched her but also said nothing as the five of them ate spread out around the long table.

Later that day, as she sat in bed yanking out the scalp-tight plaits Hvitserk had helped her with, though, Ivar came to see her. He pulled himself up into her bed and sat carefully on the edge, just watching her. She looked so angry, so defeated; it wasn't a look he had yet seen on her face. He didn't think he liked it much, either; the way her eyebrows furrowed and her face scrunched up ever so slightly was troublesome. It made her typically pleasant face look rather unpleasant. He wondered if he looked as terrible when he was in one of those moods.

Feeling the mattress sink a little when he joined her, she looked at him from the corner of her eyes and tried to fix her expression before she acknowledged him. Though she looked less angry, that didn't fix how she felt in her heart and in her mind.

"What do you want?" she muttered spitefully.

"You wanted to go train," he said.

"I asked what you wanted, Boneless."

"I know. I want to talk to you about why you are angry," he said, trying not to become frustrated, too.

She pulled her boots off roughly and threw them onto the hard wood floor below; Ivar flinched at the noise.

"What does it matter?" she asked.

"It matters," he said.

"Why?"

"I understand. You have waited. You are finally well enough to go and you cannot do what you have waited so long to do," he said.

A metal clasp on one of her fingerless gloves caught in her hair and she uttered a pained whimper, stopping mid-yank. Ivar reached out to help her. As he was able to see the problem better, he easily detangled her hair from her glove and she offered him a small smile that reflected both her gratitude to him for helping her and her sorrow for having been so harsh.

"There," he said softly, returning her smile.

"Thank you," she said, and she realized her hand was still in his.

He studied it carefully, seeing the small white scars and the calluses that peppered the pale skin of her fingers. Under the gloves, he assumed, must have been the same or much worse. She pulled her hand back protectively and continued de-plaiting her hair.

"It is nothing," he finally said. "Anyway, as soon as the ground thaws, you will be able to train. Don't worry."

"That could be weeks," she said as she tugged the thick leather gloves off her hands and tossed them onto the floor with a thud.

"Still, you will train," he said. "I will make sure of it."

"Thank you," she said again, more out of habitual politeness this time than sincere gratefulness.

He shifted his weight a little and leaned back to look around the room in an attempt to build a façade of casualness. She knew that it was a ruse and she eyed him curiously as he sighed and looked her up and down.

"You have something to say, so say it, Viking," she said with a small smile which she would have rather kept hidden. "Don't leave me wondering."

"Oh, I was just thinking that even if the ground is too slick to fight, it wouldn't be too slick to go for a walk," he said.

She looked at his legs, and then up at his face, one eyebrow raised skeptically.

"Oh, a cripple can't enjoy a day outdoors?" he laughed.

"You are up to something," she said.

"Why do I have to be up to something to want to go outside?" he said in mock defense.

"It's cold and wet," she said with a laugh. "I don't think it would do either of us any good to go out in that."

"What? One of us may fall and the other may get a good chuckle out of it," he said, making her laugh.

"I don't know," she said hesitantly.

"So what, you want to stay here then?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Seems better to be in a warm, dry house than out in the cold, wet, frozen outdoors, so yes."

Ita spent the rest of the afternoon in Ivar's company. They talked for hours, exchanging stories, their own ancient histories, some religious and some otherwise, and many personal anecdotes. He taught her to play chess, and though she wasn't very good at it yet, he let her win a few games. The first false loss hurt his pride a bit, but after the second or third, it only felt right. It made him happy to see her smile and to know he had made her feel like she had accomplished something. To keep things balanced, he did win a few times as well so as not to boost her confidence too terribly much, and secretly not to utterly destroy his own.

It had been a wonderful day. That is, until nightfall, when she had gone to bed and the all-familiar restlessness and the fear and doubt began to creep back into her thoughts. Ita began to see that even when she had a wonderful day, the night still held fear and a loneliness that was nothing but cold and damp and vacant.

As Ita lay awake in her bed every night since recovering from her illness, staring up at the ceiling, watching the firelight flicker and the shadows dance above her head, she was anything but happy and content anymore. She was tired and wanted nothing more than to sleep and hope for a day that would allow her to forget her night, but the thought of wasted time crept in, followed by the fear that she wouldn't be able to be what they needed her to be.

The fighting techniques she had grown up using were much different than what Ubbe did when she fought him. Time continued to wear on and two months now had passed without being allowed to train or even practice her skills. Ita didn't know if she could adapt what she knew into what these people obviously practiced. And not only that, she only knew how to use a sword in self-defense, and the extent of her fighting experience was all pretend. Ivar wanted to put her on a battlefield, something she knew nothing of.

These thoughts consumed her each night, and on top of them, she began to worry that if she absolutely could not make it as a shield maiden, she wouldn't ever be able to make it as a Norsewoman, either. Margrethe had taken the time to attempt to teach Ita some womanly duties like cooking and sewing; cooking was a feat, and after two kitchen fires and many burnt or undercooked dishes, Ita finally got the hang of it, but sewing was much more difficult. She couldn't mend a simple trouser leg along the seam or even thread a needle without pricking herself and bleeding all over the fabric.

That had given Margrethe the opportunity at least to teach Ita to do the laundry, yet another task she had never done. It was shocking for Margrethe, who had spent so many years a slave, forced to do these duties and more day in and day out, to learn that this girl had never done housework a day in her life beyond sweeping the front steps or carrying buckets of water from the well to the house. Internally, the young Norsewoman prayed Ita's skills as a warrior would prove better than these. So did Ita, for deep in her mind, she knew that if she could not find her place among these people, she would be lost in more ways than one.