Journey North
They are on the back of the cart, a few hours from the castle, when Mary cannot take the constant jolting of wood underneath her and grabs the heavy coat that she was given for the sea journey, folds it, and sits on top of it.
The men accompanying them look at her curiously as she curses and whines while she tries to take the damn cap off her head and finally gives up and asks Ivar to take out the rest of the pins.
He does so with surprising ease and when she settles across from him, her hair still braided but free of the tight restraints, he asks her to tell him a story. She knows what he means but still asks.
"What kind of story?"
"Tell me about the war you mentioned. The one with weapons so powerful they are unimaginable." He asks and there is something in his eyes that makes her shudder, but she still talks.
"A long time from now, a country called Germany elects a man- elect means that all the people in the country vote on who will lead them." She quickly explains at his confusion. Yet another thing that she misses. Democracy. "And that man is angry, and he is an evil man. His country is in a dire state, having just come out of another war and his people are suffering, but that is not why he does it. He is hungry for power and he uses the despair of his people to accomplish his goals. He lies to them and tells them that the Jewish people, people of a different faith than him, are the root of all evil and that the Germans are a race much more advanced than the others, that they should enforce their dominance though violence."
As she talks, she can't help but notice the similarities to the world she is in right now. One group blaming another for the evils of the world and proclaiming themselves as superior.
"The war he starts lasts for years, as soldiers and armies march across countries and burn everything in their way. It's not like the wars here either. It's not man against man, fighting on a battlefield. The men then will hide in the giant metal structure, indestructible and the weapons they have can kill a man a hundred yards away, they can destroy houses in a single attack, and break through the strongest walls." And while the other men on the cart either ignore her tales or turn away in disgust, Ivar hangs on every word she says, taking pleasure in the gruesome details and she frowns. Anger bristles in her chest and she watches him revel in the gore and death.
"This is not a glorious war." Mary hisses at him, but Ivar doesn't look convinced "This is young men dying on a battlefield where no one will find them, their bodies left to rot while their families wait at home. This is women and children starving to death, being raped and abducted, dying with no knowledge of why. Innocent people died, fighting the wars of strangers who will never even know their names. People were transported into camps where they knew they would die, worked to death or simply killed because someone, somewhere, decided that their lives are worth nothing."
He still doesn't seem perturbed "That is battle. People die."
Mary realizes that she has made a mistake. A big mistake. She gapes at him, at his coldness and she wants to hit him because he doesn't understand. She should not have started this, should have told him to pick another story, but she also cannot let it go now.
She leans onto her hands and knees and grasps his chin in her hand. She sees him move to stop her, but she only grabs him harder and forces him to look at her.
"This is not a war of glory. It almost destroys the entire world, all the countries and continents you know, and all the ones you don't. It kills 75 million people, most of them innocent and you should pray to all of your Gods that you will never see anything like it because it is the lowest humanity has ever gone. It's mothers killing their babies rather than letting them starve, and it results in the invention of a weapon so dangerous and enormous that, should it ever be used, it will be the end of humanity."
Maybe he understands her, or maybe he just wants to appease her, but the smile drops from his face, even if he shows no shame.
She lets go of his face and leans back, crossing her arms and refusing to speak to him for the entire next day.
When they reach the shore and Ivar is lifted into the boat, a dingy little thing that Mary doubts can make the journey across the open sea, she falls beside him, wrapped in her expensive coat. The set sail and she is thankful for the furs, because even here is wind is fierce. When the last seagulls disappear from view, Ivar asks for another story.
"No." she refuses without even looking at him.
She won't entertain his sick lust for violence again. Ivar shakes his head.
"Tell me a story you like." He clarifies and Mary thinks about his request, before nodding.
"I can tell you about the stories we tell each other where I am from. Or I can tell you the places you haven't discovered yet." She offers but he shakes his head again.
"Tell me a story about you. What is it you miss from home?"
Her first thought is indoor plumbing, her second is tampons, but none of those makes for good stories, so she tells him about something else. She tells him her friends, in the faraway land that she refuses to name. She tells him how women there wear pants and are no ones property. She tells him about a man putting his hands on her ass when they were drinking, and about her kneeling him in the balls. He laughs at that, almost proud to her her defend herself. She tells him all of those tiny stories, fragments of her life that come alive in her memory. But she is careful about her words. Nothing to explicit, nothing that betray her secret. No cars, or flights, or computers. For all he knows, she is from a place, far south where the sun always shines and the rain brings humidity but no cold.
She slips up when she starts telling him about a club, ready to talk about her friend being high on herbs and trying to go swimming in his clothes, but his question stops her.
"What is a club?" she notices her mistake with a flinch.
"It's a place in my town where they play music and people dance." She answers. Not quite a lie, but still, she will have to be more careful.
"You dance?" he asks curiously and she nods enthusiastically.
"Yes. Well, actually, it depends on what you call dancing. My mother is from-" South America"- A faraway land. She taught me how to dance, but I am not sure if it is the same as here." She explains and Ivar can see her in front of him, dancing and laughing to music, being carelessly young and far away from the cold north. She smiles dreamily, deep in thoughts at the memories of her home.
"Do you dance?" she asks and then her face falls when she realizes what she asked.
But Ivar just smiles at her discomfort "No, little Seer. I do not dance." He says and watches amused while she covers her face in embarrassment.
"I'm so sorry. That was so stupid." She apologizes.
He laughs, she groans, and he laughs louder.
Three days after they set sail, the air has turned fiercely cold and Ivar laughs when Mary starts huddling against him for warmth. Little sunbird, he calls her, cannot stand the cold, but he never pushes her away, lets her sleep on his shoulder and throws the guards haughty smiles when they look at the pair in suspicion.
Late one night, Mary guesses that it's after midnight, they are both awake. While she is happy that she doesn't have to walk back and forth like the guards and can hide from the wind behind the ship's walls, she can feel an ache in her legs from sitting for so long. She has started shifting around, standing up and stretching every few hours and, when she absolutely has to, go to the bathroom.
Reliving yourself on a tiny boat like this one is a rather unceremonious affair, involving a bucket and the ocean and she is thankful for the medieval fear of the naked woman, because every time she approaches the bucket, all men turn around immediately, including Ivar.
For him, things are far more complicated. It's when Ivar's anger comes out the most. When he feels ashamed and weak, and it's when he lashes out at her. She ignores it, refusing to let him rile her up just so that he can have someone to scream at. For every word of anger from him, she smiles and after every outburst she leans against him, not saying a word until he has calmed down.
She can hear the guards speak, of course, talking about the cripple and the Saint, about how helpful she is, about how kind to treat him as if he were a man and once, when one of the guards said something particularly cruel ("It's the best the bastard is ever gonna get, the pity of a Christian. No woman will have crawl into the bed of a cripple.") she had actually grabbed the guard's boot and, without even looking pulled hard. He had lost his footing and fallen into the icy waves of the north-sea. It had taken a good hour to fish him out again and Mary had earned a hard slap in the face for her actions, but it had been worth it. Ivar had cursed out the guards at it, threatened each one and their wives until they poured a bucket of cold water over him, which shut him up.
Mary had glared and pulled her coat off, instructing Ivar to take off his soaked shirt and let it dry while he wrapped himself in the furs and when one of the guards had dared say something about it, Mary had simply warned him that, should they continue their disrespect, God would let their fields rot and teeth fall out.
The night after, Ivar is dressed again but still hasn't warmed up and when everyone but the lookout is asleep, Mary pulls out the bottle of wine she stole. They bribe the lookout with a cup of it and then Ivar takes to the bottle like a man in the desert, using the alcohol to finally warm back up.
Mary took a few sips herself, but even those are enough to make her feel tipsy. It might have been the little amount of food she had in the last few days, or just the strain of the journey, but the alcohol hits her hard and an hour later, they are staring up into the night sky as Ivar points out constellations hidden in the vast sea of stars.
She feels sleepy and, for the first time since getting on the ship, at ease and when she turns to put her head in Ivars lap and sleep, he looks at her in alarm.
"What are you doing?" he asks, holding her at arm's length, his eyes wide with apprehension.
"Relax, I just want to sleep." She says smiling, her face serene and Ivar's brows furrow but he lets go of her and she sinks to the floor. His thighs are warm under her cheek and she feels him cautiously putting a hand on her hair. Looking down at her, he tries to remind himself that she is not from here, she doesn't know their customs and this is an act of friendship and nothing more to her. But she is also a woman comfortably in his lap, something he had never thought would be possible. The shame of what happened with Margarethe sits deep and whenever he thinks of it, his throat closes up and he wants to vomit. He knows he will never be with a woman, he will never have children, never have a family, but having Mary lay down like this, no worry in her face, he thinks it might be alright.
"Are you married?" he asks then and she blinks owlishly at him.
"Where you come from, are you married? Is there a man waiting for you to come back?" he asks, his words tumbling out of his mouth when he first considers that this woman might have someone else, someone from her place, probably handsome and well respected. But she just shakes her head with a small laugh, as if the question is ridiculous.
"Where I come from, we marry much later than here." She explains, and then she looks at him, still drunk but curious as well.
"What about you?" she asks and then worries that their position, mostly innocent for her, might be the equivalent to cheating in these times.
Ivar has to bite back a self-deprecating laugh.
"No, there is no one waiting for Ivar the cripple." He says sarcastically, and she frowns at the word.
"Don't say that, please."
He raises an eyebrow. "Are there no cripples where you come from?"
She slaps his should lightly "Of course there are. But that word; it's ugly. You shouldn't use it."
He doesn't say anything, for the first time in his life, biting his tongue instead of starting a fight. Leaning back, he looks at the stars above and strokes her braids, running along the intricate pattern the servants have braided it into.
"Tell me about your home." She asks sleepily and Ivar describes the bay of Kattegat, the mountains to its side and the lush forests that run by the coast and up the hills.
She sighs happily as she imagines it all, beautiful in front of her mind's eye, and gleaming in the sun.
"What about your brothers? The famous Northmen?"
She doesn't notice the sudden onset of anger, only feels his hand still on her hair and when she looks up, his jaw is clenched as he stares into the darkness, the little boat swaying gently on the waves.
"You know my brothers?" he asks and Mary nods, the alcohol making her oblivious to the hard edge in his voice.
"Of course. Bjorn Ironside, Sigurd Snake-in-the-eye, Ubbe Ragnarsson. Your family is full of important men."
Mary doesn't know it, but the words make something in Ivar freeze and then shatter into a million pieces. Because he had expected to come home to his family, to the teasing of his brothers and the condescending and pitying looks of the people, knowing that he would surpass them. Taking pride in knowing that history will remember him, Ivar the Boneless, the son of Ragnar Lothbrok. More importantly, however, he had expected to have someone at his side who would see more than a cripple, who would think he was better than his brothers, stronger and smarter, who would be proud to sit at his side. But that would never happen because his brothers will be famous as well and his only leverage is gone, his pride taken by the knowledge that he won't surpass his brothers after all. To her, they are all the same, but soon she will be faced with Bjorn, Ubbe, and even Sigurd the little rat, and she will look at him the same way the others do.
He looks down at her, eyes closed and breathing evenly and he realizes that in only a week she has become his best, and only, friend, and soon she will be off fawning over strong Bjorn, over handsome Ubbe, or charming Sigurd. And the rage is back, the rage that had seemed to ebb with her by his side, with her kind smiles and stubborn mind and even the thought of watching her leave makes his blood boil. He knows he has to prepare himself, prepare for the moment she stops visiting, the moment she goes off with one of his brothers, eyes full of wonder. Should his brothers notice his infantile infatuation with the odd girl, they would tease him mercilessly, taking joy in luring her away from him. She is asleep now, lips slightly open and her nose curls when a particularly ferocious wind blows by and she burrows deeper against him. He won't drive her away, there won't be a need for it, but he won't let this feeling continue either, because there was no place for misguided affection in his plans. Be ruthless, his father had said, so he would be.
Two days after, Ivar gets sick. Mary wraps him in her jacket, her blanket, tries to keep him warm and fed and screams violently at the guards when they refuse to give him more food.
She threatens them with every biblical punishment she can think of, drawing a smile from Ivars lips when she, unbeknownst to her, starts ranting in Norse. The guards look confused, then indifferent at the screaming, making rude comments about women and emotions.
"You men are pathetic." She snarls "Judging us women, even though we are the ones putting up with you. Feeding you, washing your clothes, cleaning your houses. Your wife won't have sex with you?" she asks, foregoing the word fuck simply so that they will understand her "She has had five children in 7 years and will die without ever getting an orgasm from the sweaty romp and tiny prick you offer her."
The guard closest to her pulls a face, used to the alleged Saints lewd words but still uncomfortable with her brashness.
She turns back and sits down beside Ivar again who is covered in so much cloth he is barely visible and when she looks at him, he asks her "What is an orgasm?"
The question makes her break out in deep laughter, holding her belly and putting one hand on his shoulder.
"Oh, Honey." She says, her words affectionate but amused and then she leans in and tells him.
"When you have sex with a girl, whoever she is Ivar, make sure that she enjoys it. Men always assume that, if she doesn't enjoy it, it's her own fault, but that is not true." She explains and even through the fever ravaging his body, he feels his cheek grow hot. If his brothers saw him now, he would not live it down until the day he dies. He bites his tongue at her naivety, her words light and ignorant to the truth that Ivar will never be able to do what she describes. There will be no girl moaning his name, or pulling him closer, like he had seen others do.
"Don't be selfish, there are enough selfish men in the world and none of them have ever satisfied a woman."
He doesn't say anything and she leans back against the wood. When the first seagulls appear in the sky and they sail into the bay of Kattegat, he asks her to take the coat off of him. It's clear to her that there is some unnecessary pride involved in the request, but she does so anyway, wrapping the warm furs around herself and when the boat finally reaches the harbour, she sees a crowd of people already waiting.
Two men, Mary has to assume that they are giants, because they tower over her like skyscrapers, step into the boat and lift out Ivar, who is looking like he might pass out at any moment. The english soldiers have their weapons drawn, barely waiting for Mary to step off the boat to set sail and leave the Viking town.