Liars and Saints
Ivar's mood is sullen when he gets carried back to his cell. His father will be given to King Aella and, if the girl is to be believed, he will die soon after and Ivar can do nothing to stop it. He can't fight or argue or plead.
All he wants to do is curl up on his cot and forget the world but he remembers the girl, Mary, will be there and he doesn't think he can stand to look at her right now. His people are taught that death is glorious. That his father will surely enter Valhalla if he goes down fighting (something Ivar does not doubt for a second) and that he will be feasting with the Gods very soon. Yet, Ivar cannot help the feeling of hopelessness that overcomes him and makes him feel like a foolish young boy again.
If it had been Bjorn or even Ubbe who had come with his father, they could have fought together, could have escaped the English and made it back to the coast but Ivar is a cripple, useless in any fight and his head too clouded by anger to be of much use as a diplomat. And now his father will pay for Ivars shortcomings with his life.
He doesn't say a word on the way back, keeping his eyes on the stone floor and thinking of ways to avoid the Seer girl in his cell. He doesn't want to stand up to her challenges, not when all he wants is to scream for his father to come back..
But when the guards open the door, she is curled up on the cot, her knees drawn up to her chest, her bare feet poking out from under the long skirts, and her face is hidden from view by the long, dark waves of her hair.
They drop him into the chair she had been sitting on earlier and it is only when the door is closed and they are left in silence that she looks up and Ivar is surprised to see her tear-stricken face.
"I'm so sorry." She says, and practically throws herself on her knees in front of him, anguish clear in her voice and Ivar doesn't know what to do, so he says nothing and she buries her face in his knees and cries.
Ivar wants to cry as well, wants to wail and sob but all he allows himself to do is to let the tears fall in silence while he strokes the girl's hair.
Mary doesn't know why she is crying. Actually, scratch that, she knows exactly why she is crying. She isn't only crying about being trapped in this time, or about sitting in a medieval cell, or even about having carelessly hurt someone. No, she is crying because of all of it. She is crying because she hasn't slept in days, because she is alone, and she is scared and she even cries because she misses her clothing and her phone, and she just doesn't want to be here. After a while, her sobs subside, and she becomes uncomfortably aware of the fact that she is crying at the feet of what is basically a stranger. Awkwardly, she leans back, her knees aching from being on the hard stone floor for so long, and when she wipes away the last few tears, she looks up to see him watch her intently. His eyes are glassy and red, and she realizes with a start that she wasn't the only one who had been crying.
"I'm sorry." She says again, looking up at him "I was careless with my words."
He nods but doesn't say much more so she moves back onto the cot and realizes that the cell is much darker than it had been before and, thinking back to the time she arrived, she realizes that it must be coming close to night time.
"Have the cot." She says but he shakes his head.
"I will take the floor. You can have the bed." He says and Mary doesn't know if it's politeness, stubbornness, or the condescending chivalry she has encountered several times since she arrived here, but in any way, she refuses to accept his offer.
"Nonsense. You will get sick if you sleep on the cold floor. You can have the floor and ill sleep on the chairs." He looks at her with scepticism so Mary goes on "if I put them beside each other I can curl upon them. I'm much shorter than you."
He still doesn't look convinced and she sighs "Please, Ivar-" she stops, not knowing if she is allowed to call him by his first name, but he doesn't seem bothered "Let me make it up to you."
"Fine." He finally agrees Mary smiles as she stands and offers him her help getting up.
"You can't carry me." He says with a shake of his head.
He might be right, she has to admit, but she doesn't know how else he is supposed to get from the chair to the cot, so she stays where she is and after a few seconds of them staring at each other in silence, he gestures for her to lean down.
He puts one arm around her neck and it is only when she pulls herself upright, that she realizes she might have overestimated her own strength.
But she isn't going to just drop him, she would die of shame if she did, so she grunts and huffs but she manages the three steps that stand between the chair and the bed and then unceremoniously lets go of him only to be pulled down with his weight.
He catches himself but she gracelessly hits the hard surface and slips from the edge, landing on the stone floor in an embarrassed heap of skirts, hair, and curses.
At least it seems to have lightened his mood considerably as he stares down at what must be a joke of a woman for him and Mary glares at him in mock anger.
"This wouldn't have happened if you weren't so heavy."
He leans back onto one elbow, his feet still on the floor and shrugs. "This is muscles. Its strength. Something you see to be lacking."
She gets up, dusts off the skirts of her dress, and starts assembling her own bed. It doesn't come out quite as she has hoped, but it will do and when she lays down, her knees bend at almost 90 degrees, she finds that she is quite tired. Exhausted really.
Before she can drift off to sleep, she remembers a little piece of information that she had forgotten until now.
"Ivar." She calls out and he looks up. He is still sitting up but has turned slightly and is trying to pull his legs onto the cot with him.
"When the Great Heathen Army invades England, it's Ivar the Boneless who kills King Aella and carves the blood eagle into his back."
When she had first read about it, she had grimaced, closed the book and moved onto something less violent, but part of her thought that the young Viking prince might enjoy knowing that he would avenge his father's death.
She is right, as Ivar lays down with a villainous grin on his lips and stares at the ceiling, no doubt already planning his enemy's demise.
They wake in the morning from the sounds of a guard bringing food, if it can be called that, and Mary notices the ravenous hunger that is making her muscles cramp and her temples throb.
"Thank you." She says when she notices that it is Beecher who has brought the food and he nods, smiles, and disappears.
She passes one half of the dry bread to Ivar and they eat in silence, but she can feel the curious glances he throws her way. At first she ignored him, too focused on finally getting some food but after a while she cannot stand it anymore and turns, looking directly at him "What?"
"How do you speak my language?" he asks.
Mary frowns. Honestly, she doesn't know. It has occurred to her that she is having a surprisingly easy time communicating with the people, but after the last few days, she had no energy to worry about it.
"I don't know. Maybe whichever Gods send me here gave me the ability to speak with you." It's supposed to be a joke, but Ivar seems to be seriously contemplating the possibility.
"You are not a Christian then?"
"I am not sure. Where I am from, we don't believe in Gods anymore. Not really. Not like they do here." Ivar frowns disapprovingly.
"If you are godless, then why would they believe you to be a Holy woman?"
She snorts at the question and gets to her feet. Her mother had called it childish and impulsive, but look now, mum, it saved my life!
She gathers her skirts and pulls the heavy material up, over her legs, her hips and just below her left breast and even though the cold air makes her shiver, she cannot help the grin on her lips.
She is still wearing her underwear (no matter what, she refused to take it off) but still Ivar seems taken aback by her sudden nakedness. God, this time is prudish.
His eyes wander over her and she raises a single eyebrow at the almost innocent curiosity in his face, but it is quickly replaced by deep confusion when he sees what is on her lower ribs.
The mark. The sign of God. The thing that had the bishop (and possible peeper) falling to his knees in prayer. A tattoo of a cross, in all the colours of the rainbow.
She smirks at him from behind the gathered cloth and he leans forward, unable to get up and take a closer look, but clearly curious.
"They think it's a mark of god." She explains.
"But it isn't?" Ivar asks and she shakes her head "It's actually a sign I got on purpose. And I did it against the church. Well, against a church. The one where I am from." She explains and drops her skirts again.
"You see, there was this man. He goes to church and calls himself a man of god but he was very hateful, especially against people who-" what are the Vikings take on homosexuality again? "who don't live like he wants them to. The rainbow is a symbol where I am from, used to represent those people he hated so much and just to spite hm I got this done."
Ivar leans back, clearly approving of her spite, and crosses his strong arms across his chest.
"Not a holy woman, then?" his lips quirk into a smile.
"Not a holy woman." She agrees.
"But a Seer."
She winces at the words "Not a Seer either. Not really at least. I don't get visions, I just…know things."
"How?"
Mary stays silent. Whatever she could answer, it would sound ridiculous.
"You do not want to answer me." He says, leaning his head forward and watching her through long lashes "Why not? Are you a liar?" he asks in a mocking tone.
She knows he wants to bait her.
"I am not a liar, Ivar the Boneless." She says calmly. "But I don't know the whole truth either. I can tell you what I do know, but you won't believe me."
"As far as I can see, you are the only non-believer here." He says, opening his arms wide "Even the Saxons believe in a God, a false one, but still." Mary rolls her eyes at his easy dismissal of the Christians, but she has to confess that she is tempted.
"The gods have never favoured me, but even I know that you have come from a place beyond us mortals, Mary," Ivar says solemnly.
"I-" she begins, but stops and thinks carefully about her next words, "In my mind, this, all of this; The age of Vikings, the kings of England, it seems like a memory." She says and prays to whichever God has sent her here, that he won't just burst out laughing and her clumsy words.
But Ivar just cocks his head, a gesture that seems common whenever he is trying to figure something out, and when the silence stretches, Mary nervously plays with the dirty cloth of her dress.
"Tell me some of those things you know," Ivar demands and pats the cot beside him, inviting her to sit down.
She looks at him carefully "I won't tell you anything about your life." She warns.
He shrugs. "You know my name, that is enough for me. I will avenge my father's death and I will be known to history."
So, Mary sits on the cot in this dirty prison cell, besides the Viking prince that had died centuries before she had ever been born.
"What do you want to know?"
"What will become of the world?"
She grins at the dramatic words, and while she sure as hell won't tell him about anything to come in his lifetime, she longs to speak about home.
"In the future, the cities you know today will grow to be a hundred times the size they are now, and they will stretch into the skies. People will continue to fight, but it will change. Power will be something different than muscles. It will be brains and money, even good looks at time."
Ivar gives a rather ugly snort at that.
"That is nothing new, little Seer."
"Maybe not." She agrees "But rather than soldiers, we will have scholars. Men and women alike will chose to study and learn rather than to fight."
"Women will be allowed to study?" he asks curiously and Mary smiles proudly.
"Oh yes. Not everywhere, but in many places they will. Women will be able to have their own money, they will work, they can divorce their husband and if he lays a hand on her, she will have the ability to have him imprisoned for it."
He doesn't completely believe her, she can see it in his eyes, and when she starts talking about busses and cars, he looks at her like she is mocking him. She can't blame him, but there is something highly entertaining in watching him as she speaks.
They spend a few hours like that, side by side as she talks and talks. He laughs as she tells him about rollercoasters (is life so boring you need to experience the threat of death?), smiles slyly when she teaches him what it means to give someone the finger, and huffs in annoyance when she criticizes his haircut.
It's already afternoon when they settle into silence and Ivar starts picking at his nails.
"I am leaving tomorrow." He says and Mary feels her heart sink. Because she actually likes spending time with him, even in this grimy prison cell, surrounded by strangers, and even though he tries to challenge her in almost everything he says. The thought of being left alone makes her heart constrict in fear.
"Oh." She just says.