The Last Wife of Attila the Hun Read online

  Mother had given birth to a child sometime before the siege, but the child, a girl, was blue and sickly, and Father refused to accept it. He had it laid out under one of Wodan’s sacred trees in a cold bed of new snow. But Mother had longed for that child, and when Guthorm was born in the midst of Father’s enforced celebration, another blue and sickly child, and this one marked with the sign of the vacant as well, Mother cried out when she saw Father’s scowl appear on his face. He paced the floor and eyed the child who had been placed upon it for his inspection. In Mother’s long shrill cry there was something that made Father cease his pacing. Perhaps he was thinking of the gods and of how he had prayed to them that the Burgundians should be blessed with many children. Or perhaps he was thinking of the example he had promised to set for our people. In either case, to the amazement of us all, Father took Guthorm up and sprinkled him with the water of life and smeared his lips with sweet honey and gave him for his birth-gift the sword which he had intended for a healthier son.

  Within the span of every evil there lies a core of solid goodness. Guthorm was that core. Guthorm, whose existence was merely the consequence of the death and destruction that had preceded him, brought great joy to all of us, despite his flaws—or, perhaps, because of them. For in his face we saw the simple innocence our sufferings had caused us to cast off in ourselves.

  In the sixth year after the siege, Father struck a bargain with Aetius, and we were granted new lands farther south. And thus we came to settle in Sapaudia. But my father the king, who had breathed new life into the Burgundians, lived only long enough to see his new hall erected. He became ill on the way to Sapaudia and died some weeks after our arrival.

  Father had been dead nearly a year when Sigurd came to our new lands, a day I recall as well as if it were yesterday.

  5

  I CLIMBED UP onto the roof of our hall to chase the goats down, but then I stayed to sit for a time among the dandelions that had come to life in the turf there overnight. From my post, I could see beyond the steep, reed roofs of our servants’ dwellings all the way down to the forest that marked the southern boundary of our pasture, and just before the forest, the mound of turf that marked Father’s grave. Someone was playing there, running up one side of the mound and rolling down the other. “Guthorm,” I said warningly.

  Of course he did not hear me, or at least not in the way that other people hear; he was much too far away for that. But he heard me in another way, a way which was particular to him, his gift. He froze at the top of the mound and studied all that fell within his scan until he discovered me. Then he jumped to his feet and came running, his short legs sprawling crazily and his arms making great circles in the air. The cows and sheep and goats took no note of him as he went flying through their pastures. The servants, some of whom were afraid of him, went about their plowing more earnestly as he passed them by. He tripped once and tumbled. Then he picked himself up and stood for a time staring at his feet. Perhaps he was wondering why they worked so often against him. Whatever his distraction, it was clear that he had forgotten me.

  “Guthorm,” I whispered again.

  And soon he was just below me, jumping about at the edge of the roof and making a noise from deep within his throat. I pointed to the flat-topped rock that the goats used to step up onto the roof, and when he mounted it, I grabbed his arms to hoist him up. But he had depended too much on my strength, and instead of him being pulled up, I was pulled down.

  I hit my knee on the side of the rock as I tumbled. Guthorm fell on top of me. The pain in my leg and his weight across my body caused me to throw off the tenderness I had felt for him only a moment before. “Monster!” I cried. “You know you are not supposed to play on Father’s grave. I cannot count the times I have told you.”

  He rolled off me and sat up. I sat, too, and observed the place where my robe had been torn. I could see my bloodied knee through the tear. “What if Gunner had seen you? What do you suppose would have happened then?”

  Guthorm began to cry. Although he was seven, he still cried often. Since he did not talk, his cries and grumblings were all we heard of him. “Do not cry,” I said. “It cannot do any good. Come. We will go to Father’s grave together and ask him to forgive you—or surely something terrible will befall us all.” He gave me his hand.

  “Go down now,” I said to him when we had reached the grave, and I prostrated myself to show him what was needed. He had stopped crying by then, and he took my prostration to be a game of sorts. He had it in his mind that if he poked at me long enough, I would be happy to roll down the mound as he had done earlier. It was some time before I could calm him and rid him of his mirth. But then, when I had put together in my mind the words I would use to beg Father’s indulgence on Guthorm’s behalf, I heard the trample of horses and the laughter of men coming through the forest, not from the path to the west that led to the halls of our freemen, but from the south, where my brothers hunted.

  I sat up quickly, thinking, Huns! Like the servants, I had come to believe that once the Huns learned that enough of us had survived to warrant a new settlement, they would come again to finish us off for good. Before leaving Worms, we had heard that the leaders, Bleda and Attila, of the great tribe which had attacked us were calling for all Hun tribes to unite under their dominion, and then they would come down hard on all their enemies. I had never seen these fierce brothers. Along with Mother, I had been hidden away when the siege began. But it was said that the Huns were as strong and as powerful as horses, and that they loved war better than they loved life. Of the two leaders, I was told, Attila was the more hideous to look upon. And indeed, many times in my dreams I had seen him as he had been described to me, a small, broad-shouldered man with a flat nose and a scanty beard and something in his eye so evil that it made men shudder and women swoon. I never considered myself to have the Sight, but these dreams were so real that they convinced me that the day would come when I would look into Attila’s evil eyes and see my own reflection staring back at me. And thus, despite my brothers’ insistence that the Huns were too preoccupied making war on whole countries to care that some few hundred from the kingdom which had once numbered eighty thousand had survived, I continued to live in fear of them. “Oh, Father,” I prayed hastily, “rid me of my fears and give me the courage that befits a Burgundian.” But the men came closer and I grew more afraid.

  There was no time to run up through the pastures, so Guthorm and I crawled around to the far side of the mound. As the men came out of the forest and entered the clearing to the east of us, we slipped from the back of the mound into the forest. There we clung to the trees and waited to hear the war cries of the Huns. Once I opened my eyes to glance at Guthorm, and seeing how ridiculous he looked with his eyes squeezed tight and his cheek so hard against the bark of the tree that he seemed to be merging with it, I was ashamed, for his stance was merely an imitation of my own. Still, it was some time before I could bring myself to relinquish my hiding place and stand where I could see what was happening in the pastures.

  I can only suppose that it was the drumming of my heart, a drumming which the thought of Attila had initiated, that had kept me from realizing sooner that our visitors were too small a company and riding too casually to be the despicable enemies I had imagined. I flushed at the thought of my own foolishness as I watched Gunner come down the hill from our hall with his arms spread to greet the men. Two of them had slipped off their horses and were moving toward Gunner, also with their arms outstretched in greeting. One was old. The other was young and wore his hair longer than that of his companions, a distinction in Frankish lands which marks a nobleman. Gunner embraced the older one first, then Sigurd.

  I knew that Gunner would be angry if I came up directly, and yet I did not see how I could stay away. I ran along the edge of the forest, careful to keep myself hidden, and then up along the east end of the pastures where the servants were plowing in the fields with their oxen. Wh
en I reached the servants’ huts, which were all in a row, it was easy enough to go from one to the other without being noticed. The Franks had gathered to accept my brother’s greeting just to the west of the last of these dwellings. It was behind this one that I hid. Guthorm, of course, was at my side.

  I dared to peek out once, and when I saw Sigurd falter and blush in the midst of what he was saying, I knew that he had seen me out of the corner of his eye. My own face grew hot, too, and I sank down beside my hiding place to bask in my pleasure. Guthorm, however, was still peeking out and would give us away if he continued. I grabbed at him, but he had recognized Sigurd, too, and he would not be contained. I could imagine how we would appear to the onlooker, a vacant-faced child lunging forth from behind the hut and being pulled back by the arm of someone otherwise concealed. And when I heard a sudden burst of laughter, I knew that we had been discovered. I waited to hear whether Gunner would scold me, but as his reprimand did not follow, I came out slowly from my hiding place, holding my robe so as to conceal the tear in it.

  “Lift your eyes, sister,” Gunner called. “A friend of yours honors us today with his visit.” I lifted my eyes to meet Sigurd’s, but then Gunner put his arm around Sigurd’s shoulders, and, laughing, turned him toward our hall.

  All the Franks had dismounted by then, and some of the servants had left their tasks to take charge of their horses. With the Franks going one way and the servants and horses another, it was a moment before I could look the men over to see who had ridden to our lands at Sigurd’s side. Of course the old man was Gripner, Sigurd’s uncle, and now that I was subdued enough to think about it, I was astonished to see him. The last time I had seen him, more than a full year earlier at Worms, he had complained that he was already too old to be riding, and that his eyesight was quickly deteriorating. And now we were so much farther away. In fact, it was a curiosity that the Franks had come to us at all so early in the growing season.

  The last of the group to enter our hall was also familiar to me. Regan, the dwarf, had been an advisor to Sigmund, Sigurd’s father, before he died. As Gripner and Regan had never gotten on well, Regan had ceased to join Gripner in his travels after Sigmund was gone. I had not seen him in some years, and I was not pleased to see him now. Dwarves, of course, are as old as time, and to see one is bad luck—unless he loves you well. Regan loved me not at all. He had no love for anyone whom he suspected to have as much power over Sigurd as he did. His presence, along with Gripner’s, portended some matter of importance.

  I took Guthorm’s hand and we ran to Marta’s hut. Old Marta was not within—she had probably been summoned up to our hall to help Mother when the Franks first approached—but I knew she would not mind if I went in and used her threads to mend my robe. When I was done, Guthorm and I went down to the river which wound its way to the east of our fields, and there we bathed in one of her quiet pools. Clean and respectable again, we made our way back to Father’s grave to finish the business we had begun earlier.

  Guthorm, who liked to sleep when the sun was high in the early afternoon, was drowsy by then, and he listened quietly by my side as I begged Father to forgive him his mischief-making. When I felt certain that Father had been satisfied by my words, I begged him to forgive me as well, for having desires that were contrary to his. For although I had no reason to believe that Sigurd’s visit had anything to do with me, I hoped with all my heart that he had come to ask my brothers for permission to marry me. Sigurd and I were both eighteen years, the right age to think of such matters. But I knew, even as I begged Father to give me some sign that he had come to change his mind, that my wish was a foolish one. On our way to Sapaudia, Father, who had known he would be leaving us soon, made it clear to my brothers that his only daughter was to make a marriage which would serve the needs of the Burgundians. We were already on the best of terms with the Franks; there was nothing to be gained by my marrying one of them. His declaration was no surprise. Even at Worms, when the subject of my marriage came up, Sigurd’s name was never mentioned. Since Father’s death, Gunner had taken it upon himself to remind me of Father’s wishes. A harsher man than Father had ever been, he insisted that I was not to spend time with Sigurd alone when he came.

  I led Guthorm to the cluster of sacred oaks nearest our hall and let him lay his head on my lap while I sang him Balder’s song. I knew it by rote, and I knew too that I could sing it through and linger on my self-pity simultaneously. Balder had a dream one night, and in his dream he had been killed by violent means. In the morning he awoke and told Frig, his mother, of the terrible dream he had had. Balder was not one to have such dreams, and Frig knew immediately that the dream was a warning. And thus she went around to every living thing—moon and sun and Earth and night and day and wind and fire and sea and tree and rock and river and mountain and flower and bird and beast—and made them all give her their word that they would bring no harm to Balder, the sweet god of innocence and light. And every living thing was agreeable. Only from the mistletoe had Frig failed to extract a promise. When she realized her oversight later, she shrugged, for the mistletoe was quite harmless anyway.

  Oh, what a time the gods had then. They spent their days throwing rocks and tree limbs and fiery torches and other such things at Balder, and all the things they threw ceased in flight just short of hitting him and dropped to the earth at his feet. And no one enjoyed these games as much as Balder. But one day, destructive Loke, who knew about the mistletoe, who had caused Frig to overlook its presence in the first place, made a sling shot for Hoth, the blind god. And putting the mistletoe into it, he showed Hoth where to aim. Because he was blind, Hoth had been outside the games previously, and he was pleased now to be included. He laughed as the mistletoe flew through the air, as did all the others. But when the mistletoe struck and Balder fell down dead, all the laughter ceased—except for Hoth’s and Loke’s, which could be heard thundering over every hill and down through every valley in every land all the world over.

  Guthorm had fallen asleep. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that he was very like the innocent Balder, and every bit as vulnerable. I looked up from his sweet face and saw Mother coming down from the hall with a bowl of milk in one hand and something bundled and held in her skirt with the other. She smiled when she saw how sweetly Guthorm slept, but as she handed me the milk and unwrapped the bread and cheese from her skirt, her smile slid away. “What are they talking about?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

  “Nothing that pertains to you.”

  My heart fell, but I took a hunk of cheese and tried to appear untroubled. Guthorm opened his eyes, and seeing the food, he sat up quickly and joined me. Mother ate a little too, but distractedly, and continually glancing over her shoulder toward the hall.

  When we had finished, Mother dusted the crumbs from her lap and got to her feet. In the sunlight, her aging, white skin appeared fragile, and the lines at her mouth and brow, more deeply etched. “When the men come out,” she said sternly, “I will expect you to come right in and help. We will be baking many loaves of bread tonight.”

  “When will they come out?”

  “Soon enough, I wager,” she replied. Then she turned back to the hall.

  Guthorm had closed his eyes and was already at rest again with his head on my lap, and I leaned against the tree, thinking to follow his example. But knowing that Sigurd was just within the hall made repose impossible. I stared at the hall door and waited. In a while, it was lifted, and the dwarf came out to stretch his short arms toward the sun. Since I could not very well scramble out of sight with Guthorm’s head on me, I held my breath and looked aside and hoped he would not notice me. But I heard him call out “Girl!” and I knew I had been seen. I roused Guthorm and stood up. “Tell your servants to fetch our horses,” Regan demanded.

  “You cannot be leaving already!” I blurted out before I had time to recall that Mother had indicated that the Franks would be staying. But the dwarf
only laughed and re-entered the hall.

  I did his bidding, and then I hurried back to stand amid the oaks while the men emerged from the hall to mount their horses. Sigurd was the last of the visitors to come out, but as both Gunner and Hagen were at his side, I dared not approach. Still, I stood boldly now beneath the trees until I caught Sigurd’s eye. When he saw me, he gestured to the north with a thrust of his chin so subtle that anyone watching would have thought he had meant only to free his face from the golden curls that clung to it on so warm an afternoon. Then he mounted his horse and rode off with the others, down through the pastures and into the forest to the south.

  “Listen carefully, little brother,” I said, taking Guthorm’s shoulders. “You must go up beyond the hall, over the hill, and into the forest and find our rock-horse. When you get there, you may hear Mother call. I may call too. But you are not to come back. You are to stay with the rock-horse until I come for you. Then we will mount him together and ride away to far off lands. Do you understand?”

  The rock-horse was a large rock, the shape of which resembled the head and back and rump of a horse. I had taken Guthorm to play on it many an afternoon when my chores were completed. I had no doubt that he could find his way alone. Whether he had understood the latter part of my instructions, I could not say. But there was nothing to be done about it. I turned him in the right direction, and with his eyes dancing and his arms swinging at his sides, he skipped off. When I could no longer see him, I furrowed my brow and rushed in to Mother.

  “Guthorm has run off again!” I exclaimed, panting to suggest that I had been running.

  Mother was down on her knees beside the stone hearth at the center of the earthen floor. She had been using a small iron shovel to make a pit in the ashes for the breads that we would soon be baking. Now she looked up at me and blinked. “How is that possible? He was just with you.”