After some thought, I feel that I should add a warning that this chapter contains material that may be upsetting, including violence against a pregnant woman and some brief discussions of abortion.
She's there again, in that little room with the moonlight shining down on them as he holds her to his chest. Once again, his mouth starts to press to her neck. It starts a fire deep inside her that grows with a speed that seems incongruent to the innocence of the kisses that lit it.
She arches into him, reaching back to curl her fingers in his thick hair and urging him closer. They move against each other, luxuriating in the sensation of skin on skin. The only sound is that of heavy breathes and her own soft, plaintive moans urging him on. His hand curls around her thigh, opening her for the invasion of his body into hers. There is no pain this time.
No, that's not quite true. There is a sort of pain. But it's a sweet, deep aching that is both soothed and intensified as he moves inside her. Something like a wail falls from her lips as it grows inside her, like nothing she's ever felt in the waking world.
They move together like a duet, she and her moon lover. Harmonizing, like the voice of a tenor and a soprano, each one singing their own notes but their voices melding together to create a melody. The hard snap of his hips in counterpoint to the easy rolling of hers.
She's not sure when it ends, or if she even reaches a climax. Time skips and the next moment she can feel his breath against her neck as he clasps her even more tightly than before. One calloused palm flattens over her belly, and his voice rumbles out, low and possessive.
"Mine."
~...~
That's it, Rowan thinks the moment her eyes open and she remembers her dream, if this is what staying huddled up in bed is going to do to me, I'm dragging my carcass out of it if it's the last thing I do.
Waking up in another time, losing her family, Oddune's death, being sent away from England, and now this. Like a dam breaking, all the pain and grief of the past two years had come over Rowan at once. Like someone took the cornerstone out of the wall she had built up to keep reality at bay. And when it had finally become too much for her body to sustain, numbness came over her like a familiar friend.
The last time she'd curled up in bed for three days straight, her father had been there to physically pick her up and carry her to the hospital. Then she'd had her mother to guide her back to the world. There were doctors and medicine to ease the worst of it so she could begin to rebuild herself.
Here, she has a would-be foster mother hopelessly out of her depth when it comes to nervous breakdowns, and a man-child who lurks outside her door at all hours with a worried expression firmly fixed on his face.
Torvi had finally become so irritated with Ivar trying to peek inside every time she opened the door to enter or leave the hut, she'd pretty much ordered him to find something better to do with himself. For some reason he'd actually listened, and Rowan has been saved having to hide her face in her pillow so as not to look at him for hours now.
After that dream, though, she is determined not to continue wallowing for another minute. The last thing she needs in the grand opera that her life has become is to develop some hormone-fueled fixation on a teenage boy.
She pulls her clothing on and sets out. She walks through the village aimlessly, just trying to keep herself moving and hoping the cold air can help clear the lingering fog from her brain. It's hard to miss the stares as she passes by. It seems like every step she takes is followed by the start of whispered conversations.
A voice calls out to Rowan. Sefa, a seven-year-old girl she has often played with, runs to her, followed closely by her three younger siblings. She throws her arms around Rowan, laughing.
"We haven't seen you in so long, Rowan!" The girl says. "We have been playing lots of the stick-and-ball game."
"Have you?" Rowan replies. She knows she feels happy to see the children, but the mist clouds her emotions as well as her mind. All she can do is smile vaguely and return the girls embrace.
The children decide to follow along with her as she continues her walk, babbling excitedly about everything she's missed. A tall, middle-aged woman with reddish hair watches as they come closer. She stands just outside the door to a hut and, as Rowan draws closer, she gives her a strange sort of a smile and gestures for her to approach.
"You!" the woman calls her, "Yes, you! Come closer. You are Rowan Hildigunnsdóttir, yes? Come, come inside from the cold!"
The woman urges her with such excitement that, in her still numbed state, Rowan can't help but allow herself to be ushered towards the small, warm dwelling.
Sefa, however, clutches her arm tightly and whispers nervously, "No, Rowan. Not there."
Rowan hushes the girl, telling her that it would be rude to decline the invitation. Sefa continues to eye the older woman with unease, but she holds tight to Rowan's arm, refusing to leave her side.
Inside the hut sits another woman, also with reddish hair, and probably a little younger than the first. She looks up in surprise when Rowan enters, but her eyes quickly light up.
"Look who has come to visit us, sister!" says the first woman, "Rowan Hildigunnsdóttir. I found her walking outside and I thought, surely a woman in her condition shouldn't be wandering about on a day like this."
The second woman smiled prettily. She carried less frenetic energy than her sister, but Rowan still feels a little strange about the way she looks at her. Only she is just too drained to give it much more thought than that.
"Of course she must come in! Sit down, and tell us how you are faring."
"I am well." Rowan replies mechanically as she's tugged onto a seat near the fire, Sefa following close by. It was very cold out, and the fire feels wonderful on her face and hands.
The second woman sits across from her and says, "You may not now us, but we know you. We were there the day the Queen presented you. Is it true you lived among the English, and that you were with Ragnar Lothbrok before his death?"
Rowan nodds dumbly. "I did meet him, yes."
The two women share a strange look, and then the younger turns back to her. "And now you are here, alone, and with child. It must be so distressing for you."
Before Rowan could formulate a response, the older sister spoke up. "But of course, all of Kattegat will be there to support you. Why, my sister and I have only just now finished preparing a tincture to help strengthen the child."
She doesn't understand. What are they talking about? Why would they do that? They place a cup before her with bright, eager eyes, and Rowan frowns. The herbalists have shown her how tinctures are prepared by soaking herbs in wine. They were only occasionally used due to the expense of using imported wine. They were also highly concentrated, and she'd never seen someone take a whole cup at a time. Besides that, there is the sudden, niggling thought in the back of her mind that the tincture uses a far stronger alcohol than in the weak ale she consumes on a daily basis.
"I thank you for your kind thought. I am not thirsty just now." She tries to formulate the politest refusal possible, not wanting to offend the women.
Something flickers in the older woman's eyes. It is there and gone in an instant, but in that moment Rowan sees and she starts to feel a wariness building up inside her that struggles to break through her daze.
"But you must drink it." The younger woman says through lips stretched thin over closed teeth. "We made it especially for you."
Wariness starts to grow into alarm as some heretofore unknown instinct in Rowan tells her to get out of the hut.
"I'm afraid I must-" She starts to stand up, but one hand closes around her arm to hold her there.
The younger sister's fingers dig into Rowan's bicep, but the thing that makes her wince is the look on the woman's face. All trace of warmth is gone, replaced by a look of pure malevolence.
"Quickly, Lofn!" She says to her sister as Rowan starts to struggle. "I will hold her!"
"Yes, Mabil." Her sister replies obediently as she grabs up the cup and approaches Rowan with it.
Realizing that they mean to force her to drink it, Rowan starts to fight in earnest her mouth shut tightly. Sefa begins to wail in terror as she runs for the door. The two women are so fixed on Rowan that they don't even seem to notice the little girl screaming for help.
Despite the fog, Rowan can now clearly see what she'd failed to comprehend earlier. These women are totally and completely out of their minds.
"Do not struggle, girl." Mabil hisses in her ear. "We mean you no harm, it is the one inside you who must answer for its father's crimes. Won't it be easier for you not to carry and bear a child alone at your age?"
With those words, a darkness falls over Rowan's mind. It is the cross between panic and blind rage, and kicks her leg out, catching Mabil in the knee. With a cry of pain the woman releases her, but her sister is right there. Lofn towers over Rowan, and she wraps one arm around her neck, trying to force her head back with one hand and pour the contents of the cup into her mouth with the other.
Rowan spots a small knife sitting on a table, and in an instant snatches it up. It's as if she can hear Edmund's voice in her ear, drilling the words into her until her body moves before her mind can think.
Step one, get out of their grasp.
The knife cuts across the woman's arm, and she releases Rowan. She turns quickly, the next part little more than a blur of panicked instinct.
Step two, go for the throat.
Lofn goes still in shock when the blade stabs into her neck. Rowan doesn't even have to stop to think to find the carotid and push the knife as hard as she can into it.
There's blood, blood everywhere. It pulses from the wound and splatters her face and hand. Nearby, she vaguely hears Mabil let out a sound like a howl.
Step three, get the hell out of dodge.
Her brother's training is the only thing that breaks her out of her shock enough to turn and run from the hut. Outside, people have noticed the commotion and are starting to approach. Rowan falls to her knees in the middle of the dirt street, suddenly unable to move any further. She looks down at her lap where her hands lie, spattered red with the woman's life.
In the distance, Sefa comes running as fast as her legs can carry her, sobbing hysterically. Following right behind her is the surprisingly comforting sight of Ubbe, face creased with worry as he kneels down beside her. She can see his lips moving, but her stunned mind can't process what he's saying. There is a ringing in her ears and her vision has gone strange as shock starts to set in.
~...~
Rowan sits beside the throne in the Great Hall, trying to process the last few hours. Just after Ubbe had arrived, Mabil had come tearing out of her house, screaming that Rowan had murdered her sister. Ubbe had immediately put himself in between them, calmly informing the woman that the matter would be brought before Lagertha. He'd pulled Rowan to her feet and taken her directly to the Queen.
In the end it was Sefa who had described the cup and the way the two women had tried to force Rowan to drink from it. Now, two herbalists stand before a gathering of villagers, holding out a pouch filled with strange black things. Lagertha had sent them to search the hut for whatever the sisters had used to make the tincture, and this is what they had found.
Ergot. A fungus that infects rye grains and could cause hallucinations due to the presence of lysergic acid. It was most familiar in Rowan's original time as LSD. In this time, however, it is occasionally used to induce uterine contractions.
Hearing this, Lagertha's face becomes filled with a cold rage as she turns to Mabil. She stands before the queen, surrounded by shieldmaidens to prevent her from coming any closer to Rowan.
"You and your sister meant to cause this woman to lose her child." She says.
It is not a question, and Mabil doesn't even try to argue otherwise. Instead she holds her head high and proclaims, "My sister and I sought blood revenge. My husband died in Ragnar Lothbrok's attack on Paris. My sister's daughter went with him on his last journey to England, and never returned. But more than that, my son, my only child was murdered by Ragnar's. Ivar Ragnarsson drove an axe into my boy, and nothing was done."
The whole room is silent. Several people exchange looks that suggest that they know exactly what the woman is talking about. Rowan glances at Ubbe, standing nearby, and his face has gone gray.
"Ragnar and Aslaug protected the little cripple, they made it as if nothing had ever happened. I was given no weregild for the loss of my son."
Lagertha winces slightly, her voice softening. "I feel for you, Mabil Geirssdóttir, I too know the pain of losing a child. But what does this have to do with Rowan?"
Mabil laughs. "Do you think we are fools? The child in her belly is Ragnar Lothbroks!"
A gasp runs through the crowd. Rowan feels like she might pass out, throw up, or both simultaneously.
"She said with her own mouth that she was with Ragnar before his death, and now the whole village speaks of how she is carrying a child. Why else would she have come here? Ragnar himself sent his concubine to our lands to be safe. It is fitting that the life of my child be payed for with that of the last child of the man responsible for his death. The Gods agree! They brought her straight to my home just as the tincture was finished!"
It was obvious that the woman was deeply unstable. Rowan could understand how her mind might have taken a few facts and twisted them into something she could use to satisfy the anger she had lived with.
The herbalist interjects, shaking her head. "The amount that you tried to give her would surely have killed them both."
Lagertha nods. "That is true. And besides that, you have no proof that the father of the child is Ragnar. It is true, a great wrong was done to you, but you did not seek revenge against those responsible. You and your sister sought out someone who was weak and vulnerable who you believed you could overpower, and there is no honor in that. As Rowan has been under my protection, I feel it is my duty to see that justice is done for the attempt on her life."
"No. Let her be." Rowan speaks up for the first time, and Lagertha raises her eyebrows, encouraging her to elaborate. "She's suffered enough. Her own existence is punishment enough."
After a moment of thought, Lagertha looks back to Mabil. "Very well. Since Rowan has spoken on your behalf, your life will be spared. When I became Queen of Kattegat I said that I intended to rectify the mistakes of the past, and I shall. I will personally pay the weregild for your son, your husband, as well as for your sister and her daughter. You will then pay the weregild to Rowan, her price and half again as is the custom for a when a woman with child is injured."
Mabil laughs bitterly. "Of what use is money to me? I have no family, no heir to give my possessions."
"You will accept it," Lagertha says in a commanding tone, "and I say this for your own benefit, you would do well to leave Kattegat and never return. This is my only warning to you, be grateful for Rowan Hildigunnsdóttir, the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok are not as forgiving as she is."
~...~
Ubbe walks with Rowan back to Torvi and Bjorn's home. It's probably a good thing that they weren't present today, she thinks, or there would have been a great deal more bloodshed.
"Will you be alright?" Ubbe asks.
Rowan sighs. "I have to be, don't I?"
He nods. Perhaps he's one of the best people to understand her at this moment. After his father left, he'd been forced to become a kind of father to his younger brothers. Like her, he hadn't had the luxury of time to sort out his own feelings. His immediate priority had been those who he felt responsible for.
Later, Rowan has to spend a long time trying to convince Torvi that she's alright. No lasting physical damage was done. But Torvi still sits her down and tells her about the first time she'd taken a life. That night, they sit up together for many hours, talking quietly.
Torvi had killed her own ex-husband to save Bjorn and, although she didn't regret it for a moment, it had still taken her some time to come to terms with having taken a life. She gently coaxes until, finally, Rowan starts to open up a little, confiding her conflicting emotions.
Then, just before she takes her leave, Torvi gives Rowan a small package. Inside is some of the softest linen imaginable, perfect for little clothes meant to be worn next to the most delicate skin.
~...~
"We cannot leave her behind."
Rowan freezes outside the door of the fishing hut. She's been avoiding going there, knowing that she would have to face the other brothers eventually, but Torvi had forced her hand by sending her to find Bjorn.
On the one hand, she's starting to develop a terrible habit of eavesdropping. On the other, the brothers are talking about her. She leans closer, curious as to what they will say.
"Ivar's right. After Paris and the settlement, there are too many here who might decide that those women were right. That they could get revenge on our father by hurting her." She hears Ubbe say.
Ivar's voice is strained, urgent as he speaks. "And who is to say that they would be wrong? Hm? Even I cannot say that the child is not Ragnar's."
"Absolutely not. A raid is no place for a pregnant woman." Bjorn interjects.
"Who asked you, Bjorn? You may be the army's leader, but Rowan is not part of the army or your family." Ivar's voice has that strangely pleasant tone he gets when he's deeply annoyed.
"And besides," Sigurd adds, "I'm not sure that the village is any safer right now."
When Ivar and Sigurd actually agree, either it's a fantastic idea or an absolutely terrible one. Either way, Rowan wonders if Ivar even registers that his brother is taking his side for once. All he seems to be aware of is how he can get his own way.
"We will have to stay in England for the winter. If she stays in Kattegat, the child may come before we return."
They all fall silent, considering the implications of Sigurd's words.
Ubbe speaks slowly, choosing his words carefully. "Many of the men are bringing wives and slaves with them. There will be plenty of help for her when the time comes."
"Then it's settled-" Ivar cuts off his own words as he opens the door to find Rowan leaning against the doorsill. She raises an eyebrow at him, and she can see him visibly shrink under her unamused gaze. He knows exactly how she feels about everyone making decisions for her.
She turns to walk along the shoreline, hugging herself tightly, and she can hear him following close behind. She speeds up her pace, hoping he will give up his pursuit.
"Don't you dare walk away from me!"
The harshness in his voice causes her to halt mid-stride and turn, only to find herself tackled to the sand with Ivar's arms around her legs, pinning her in place.
"Ivar-!"
"Shut up, Rowan! All I have ever done is try to care for you, and this is the thanks I get? You ignore me. You shut me out like an annoying child!"
His voice rises steadily till he is shouting. His hands shake her by her legs as if it could force her to listen to him.
"I have trusted you. I have given you everything! And what do I get in return? You keep silent and then you almost get yourself killed because you trust me with nothing! You treat me like some kind of a pet, merely there for your amusement, feeding the tiniest scraps of affection like a stray dog! I am not a pet, Rowan, I am a man!"
At some point during his tirade, she's curled her body downwards. Now she is in a fetal position, as much as his grip on her legs will allow, her arms wrapped around her abdomen protectively. When Ivar finally stops to take a breathe, he realizes that she's trembling.
"Reynir?" He asks, suddenly uncertain. When he hears her muffled sob, he reacts with instant horror. Crawling up beside her, he tries to pry her out of the ball she's formed herself into.
"I'm sorry." Is the muffled whimper that comes out.
Now panicked, Ivar gives up and pulls her directly into his arms. Softly, he pets her hair, babbling, "I would never hurt you. You know that, don't you? You must believe me."
While at the same time, Rowan cries and apologizes over and over. When she finally stops, Ivar gives a sigh of relief.
"I'm sorry." She says one last time.
"It is alright to cry." He whispers as if telling her a secret. "I can be strong enough for both of us."
"I'm scared, Ivar." She admits.
Ivar smiles against her hair. "Don't be. You're my person. You can't die without my permission."
"That is a marvelous comfort."
They give simultaneous snorts of amusement.
"You will come, won't you?" He asks. "It isn't safe for you here."
Rowan sighs. He's right. Beyond the threats from those who might make incorrect assumptions about the father of her child, she has to acknowledge the possible threats from those who could make the right one.
"Alright, since you asked so nicely. I'll go to England with you."
*.*.*
Generally speaking, I couldn't care less about the decisions other people make for themselves. But for myself, there are a few choices I just knew I could never make for myself. After all, I had a trust fund and love kids. The usual reasons just didn't apply to me.
But then this. This, and the first thought that went through my head was, "I have to stop this."
I don't know what made me feel more sick, that it was the first thing I thought, or that my second was that there was literally nothing I can do. I've spent enough time with the herbalists to know that they have some things they can try early on. But they work less than half the time, and they become less effective and more dangerous the longer you wait. I'm at what, 11 weeks (9+2) at the most conservative?
But when I realized what that woman was trying to do, all I could think was that I couldn't let her hurt this.
I'm sorry she's dead. I feel for both of them, here in a world with no psychiatric help. Maybe it would have been more merciful to let Lagertha execute the sister. But that's not my judgement to make, and I can't bear the thought of someone else dying because of me.
If only this were all a dream I could wake from. But it feels like, right now, the only thing I can be sure of is that this is mine. The choice back then was mine and so are the consequences. No one will take it from me. I'll burn down all of Kattegat before I let them.
A couple of notes to expand on this chapter.
In order for a baby to be legally considered a person, they had to be acknowledged by either the father or a male relative of the mother. They're thinking that one of them has to do it, but they have to be physically present.
From all my research about herbal abortifacients, it's not as simple as, "She drank a tea and then everything was hunky-dory." They are in no way reliable. They work something like 45% of the time, and that's with a very early pregnancy that's only in the first few weeks. Later on, that percentage begins to drop very quickly. The other thing she doesn't mention is that certain herbs, if they don't succeed, can cause mutations in the fetus.
With that all out of the way, I want to say that I realize this chapter especially touches on some very sensitive themes, which is why I chose to have trigger warnings at the beginning.
Question 1: How do you think Ivar's blowup will affect Rowan and the way she sees/acts with him in the future?
Question 2: What do you think the other Ragnarssons might want to do to make sure the child is provided for?