The Last Wife of Attila the Hun Read online

  Now it was my turn to be astonished. “Cunning Gunner?” I asked.

  Sigurd laughed again. “Do not be a fool, Gudrun. In all the years that I have known your brothers, they have never once spoken of their love for Sigurd, son of Sigmund and Frankish noble. But now that there exists the possibility that I may soon be Sigurd, slayer of the dragon and possessor of his hoard…

  I moved away and answered harshly. “You do my brothers a great injustice. They have always loved you well. If they have offered to mingle their blood with yours, it is because they love you and for no other reason. They would not do such a thing for a few gold coins. And if you accept their blood only because you hope to secure me…”

  Sigurd dropped his eyes. “Of course,” he whispered. “Forgive me. I only meant to show you—”

  I put my hand up to keep him from repeating his offense. My brothers’ motives were their concern. Our blood ties obliged me to defend them, as Sigurd well knew. “What does Gripner say about all this?” I asked to change the subject.

  The question seemed to startle him, and he hesitated before answering. “My uncle is an old man.”

  “Aye, but he has the Sight. Surely he has had something to say.”

  “His visions are no longer reliable. And he is the first to admit it.” Sigurd brushed his hands off on his tunic and got to his feet. “We should go before we are missed.”

  I got to my feet quickly and turned toward Guthorm. He had been standing beside Sigurd’s horse, but now he was already approaching us. Sigurd put his arms around me, but I could not bring myself to return his embrace. He released me promptly and moved toward his horse. As Guthorm was passing him, however, he swept him up in his arms, much to Guthorm’s delight, and kissed his forehead loudly. Then, after setting him down again, and without looking back at me, he mounted Grani and rode off through the glimmering birches. I regretted my anger immediately, but I had no courage to call him back.

  * * *

  Mother was at work on the loaves when Guthorm and I entered the hall, laying out the dough on the stone slabs surrounding the hearth. She did not look up. Gripner was no longer about. I got to my knees and began to work at her side. “You saw him, did you not?” she asked moodily.

  “You said his mission had nothing to do with me.” Guthorm was poking at the dough. Mother slapped his hand and gave him a battered wooden bowl to play with. “But you see, if Sigurd returns with the gold, Gunner would be a fool not to let us marry.”

  “If he returns, it is very likely Gunner will agree to let you marry.”

  “Then why did you say—”

  She looked at me significantly. “You are your father’s daughter, Gudrun, not Gunner’s.”

  On the way to Sapaudia, before he died, Father had taken to saying that he had grown too old to be useful. This was, in some sense, true. Unable to endure the trek on horseback, he had ridden up in the oxcart among our possessions like a child, watching and speaking little. Sometimes his head drooped down on his chest and he slept. Many times he was in pain, though I knew this not because he complained but because his features twisted suddenly for no apparent reason. His hair had grown white by then, and his face so deeply etched that when his smile came, a thousand creases wavered and changed direction. Sometimes his memory failed him, and other times he simply could not seem to find the words he needed to express himself. When this happened, he would demand to have Guthorm put up in the oxcart beside him, and with his arm around his youngest son, he would smile and scan the sky as if his destination were other than ours.

  There is no dignity among our people in the straw-death, the death that is the consequence of old age. Valhalla is a place for brave men who die in battle. Those who succumb to the straw-death are carried instead to live in Hel among the women and children and cowards and all the others who in life failed to wield the sword, to be ruled over by the dark goddess whose name is the same as the place she governs. But there is an alternative, and Mother took us aside and prepared us for it. And indeed, one evening after we had eaten, Father called for his skins—the bear skins which men wear to give themselves courage in battle—so that he might sacrifice himself to Wodan and thereby buy his way into Valhalla by his own hand. It took both Gunner and Hagen together to dress him in them. They did so silently, each eyeing the other meaningfully. When Father was dressed, Gunner and Hagen came to sit with Mother and me on the long bench against the side wall of our hall. Guthorm was there too, playing at my feet with the hem of my robe. But even he seemed to know that something was different, for after a time he stopped playing and watched Father along with the rest of us.

  In the distance we heard the first rumblings of thunder. Thunor was welcoming us to our new lands, letting us know that he would shortly provide the rain that we needed for our early crops. We listened to his greeting and watched Father in the firelight. He was breathing deeply, through his nose, staring straight ahead with his eyes wide open. He seemed to be oblivious to us. He seemed to be listening to a voice that we could not hear. As the moments passed, his breathing became deeper yet, and his eyes wider, until they looked like they would burst forth from their sockets. His mouth hardened, the skin around it quivered, and he seemed to grow taller in his seat. And meanwhile the thunder grew louder. Then all at once Father let out a scream and rose from his chair. I felt my own body lift, my impulse being to run to him. But Hagen, who had taken my hand, tightened his grip on it. And Father did not fall. Shrieking, he went running out through the open door, his sword flashing overhead. As if we were separate limbs of the same body, we all got up at once and went after him, pressing ourselves together at the threshold to see what he would do. In his bear skins, he looked much larger, and his vigorous howls seemed those of a younger man—indeed, a warrior. And Thunor saw and heard him too, it seems, for all at once a great, jagged bolt of fire lit the dimming sky and brought Father down where he stood with his sword held up to Vahalla. There is no greater honor for an old man than to be brought down by lightning. Thunor had singled out Father for Valhalla after all.

  Had I a right, I wondered as I worked at Mother’s side, to desire to go against the wishes of a man so well loved by the gods? Would it set the gods against me? And surely I tainted my brothers as well as myself, for it was doubtful that a few gold coins were what my father had in mind when he said that my marriage should serve all of the Burgundian people. If my brothers were seeing now that my marriage to Sigurd might benefit them directly, it was because I had, by making my desires clear to them over the years, made accomplices of them.

  * * *

  We had our feast with the Franks, and then we took torches and went down to the edge of the forest, very near to the place where Father was buried. The men had all drunk great quantities of mead by then, and there was much shouting and singing among them. Our servants heard the uproar and came out from their huts to join us in the cool night air. And thus we stood, voices and light in a half-circle, the Franks and the Burgundians and the servants of the Burgundians, as Gunner and Hagen and Sigurd went down on their knees and dug a hole in the earth with their hands. Hagen was about to draw his short sword when he was stopped by Gunner’s grip on his wrist. “Guthorm should not be outside our blood-bond,” Gunner declared.

  “I should be honored,” Sigurd said as he scanned the half-circle for Guthorm. Finding him, he beckoned, and Guthorm went forward hesitantly. Then Hagen drew his sword, and holding it in one hand, he drove the tip into the palm of the other while the Franks and the Burgundians cheered behind him. Guthorm, who seemed mesmerized by the sight of the blood gushing from Hagen’s palm, began to make a grumbling noise which, when the shouting had subsided, threw all the Franks who were within earshot into fits of laughter. Sigurd stopped them with a gesture. Guthorm tried to flee then, but Gunner grabbed his arm. Mother, who was standing beside me, bit her lip. “He is frightened,” I called out.

  “Be still and take your
turn,” Gunner insisted, ignoring my plea. And he prepared to prick Guthorm’s palm with the bloodied sword. But all at once Guthorm broke loose and charged to my side. Again there was laughter among the Franks. Gunner was about to come after Guthorm, but Hagen shouted, “He is not sensible of our rites. Leave him to stand among the women.” Gunner relented and turned back to Hagen. He took the sword from him and quickly slashed his palm. Then he passed the sword to Sigurd, who did likewise. Then Sigurd and Gunner gripped each other’s hands, palm to bloody palm, and the blood ran down their arms and along the sides of their tunics and into the receptacle they had fashioned out of the earth. “Brother,” Gunner cried. “Brother,” Sigurd responded. Then Sigurd and Hagen joined their hands and did the same. In the firelight one could see a glistening in Hagen’s eye as the rite was completed. There was a great shouting from the crowd as Gunner and Hagen and Sigurd covered the earthen vessel that held their blended blood with more earth and marked the spot with a rock.

  Back in the hall our party took up their drinking horns again and there was much merriment. A brother to my brothers now, Sigurd soon grew bold and abandoned his place next to Gripner in the seat reserved for honored guests and came to sit by my side on the long bench. I pressed my hand into his to show him that I was no longer angry with him.

  Gripner asked for Gunner’s harp. When he had it, he began to sing in his aged voice about the Visigoths, the brave and cunning Thuets who broke into the empire a long time ago and who, under the leadership of Alaric the Bold, waged a great war upon their hosts so that the Romans might come to know that they were not invincible.

  A young Frank whom I had never met before took up the harp next. He sang a sad song about how the first Thuet tribe to be conquered by the Huns, the Ostrogoths, was made to give up its customs and put itself in the Huns’ service.

  Then Gripner asked for the harp once more. This time he sang of the lament of the Franks when they had been defeated by the Romans, and of the brave men among them who had drawn their swords against the mighty Aetius.

  His song was so beautiful that Gunner, who had tears in his eyes, removed one of his gold arm-rings and offered it to Gripner to thank him for his words, for there was nothing Gunner appreciated more than beautiful words strung together to recover the past. While the rest of us lived with some hope of the future, Gunner had given up his hope sometime between our preparations to leave Worms and our resettlement at Sapaudia. His hopelessness had made him bitter, and his bitterness had made him mean. Music and poetry were the only things that stirred him anymore. Inspired by Gripner’s song, he took his harp back and sang the Franks the song which they had all been waiting to hear, the lyrics of which described Father’s passing. Although they already knew the story, they were anxious to hear the details, and there was great joy among them when they heard the elegance that Gunner lent them.

  While the Franks were still lifting their drinking horns and toasting to Father’s good fortune and Gunner’s gift, Sigurd whispered to me, “One day men will sing of me that way.”

  I looked at him. He was smiling, and his eyes, shiny with constrained tears, were set on the men who were still exclaiming over Gunner’s song. “Is that so important to you?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he answered bluntly. “There is nothing I want more than to be remembered at night in the halls of good Thuets when their hearts are light and their minds are at peace.”

  Although my love for Sigurd was as vast as the sky that holds the world bound from end to end, I had all afternoon been fighting off the thought that Sigurd was either a fool, for allowing himself to come so easily under Regan’s influence, or worse, that he was greedy and cared more for gold than for men. But now, in Sigurd’s rapturous face, the counterpart of his pleasure, I saw the truth clearly. Sigurd wanted what all men want—to be remembered, and through remembrance, loved.

  The fire was low by then, and some of the Franks had fallen asleep over their drinking horns. Although Gunner could not be coaxed to sing anymore, he still played his harp, repeating the melodies that we had heard earlier and reminding us of the stories that had accompanied them. And so sweetly did his fingers work at their task that those who were sleeping smiled, and those who were awake rolled their cloaks into bundles and used them to rest their heads. Hagen brought in his straw-stuffed mattress, still rolled and bound, and offered it to Sigurd, but Sigurd refused it. Then Hagen brought me the sheepskin rug that I used to cover myself at night. He and Sigurd draped it around me. Then Sigurd took my cheek into the palm that was still covered with my brothers’ blood and pressed my head toward him until it came to rest against his shoulder. And thus we slept together, seated on the hard bench against the hall wall, surrounded by our peoples, and without the need to describe to each other the immensity of our happiness.

  6

  THEY CAME ALL AT ONCE, the geese, hundreds and hundreds of them, filling the sky above the moor like a storm. Having become used to Guthorm and me the summer before, they went about their business directly, and, for the most part, paid us little attention—except on the days when we could spare them some crumbs. Then they were all over us, fighting amongst themselves and pleading to be recognized. A few times, when we had no crumbs, one of them would waddle over idly and speak to me in her goose tongue, telling me that she understood my concerns, or so I liked to think.

  Their young came into the world covered over with downy feathers and with their eyes already open. In no time they were ready to leave their nests to swim and eat beside their elders in the shallow, murky lake. When they abandoned their nests for good, having grown too large for them by mid-summer, Guthorm and I gathered the down feathers which their mothers had plucked from their own soft under-bodies to make the bedding for their young. The feathers would be given to the Romans, a portion of the tribute they expected each year. But I had it in mind to hold some aside for myself, for it was my wish that Sigurd and I would sleep on a feather mattress when we married. Yes, I had decided that I would rather marry Sigurd and spend the rest of my days begging Father’s forgiveness than refuse to marry him and spend the rest of my days in despair. Of course this decision, which cost me little time and less thought, was based not only on the assumption that Sigurd would return from the high mountains, but that he would have the dwarf-dragon’s gold in hand as well when he did. As Sigurd had observed, it was the gold—and not the man who had gone after it—that would have the power to prompt my brothers to go against my Father’s wishes. I had no way to know then how grave would be the consequences of my resolution.

  While my days on the moor were quiet, my evenings were noisy events filled with many people. As we expected the Roman tax collectors shortly, our freemen came up to our hall regularly to meet with my brothers and to take stock of our possessions and decide what portion of them could be spared to appease the Romans. Hagen felt that we might be conservative in our offerings that year. Since the Huns had marched on the Eastern Empire, he argued, the Western Empire would have come to realize that it was to their advantage to be indulgent with their ‘barbarian neighbors,’ as they called us. The greater part of the Western Empire’s army had for many years been made up of Hun mercenaries. But the Huns were fickle now, as we had learned from the Franks, and the Romans would be looking to fill the void. And who knew better how little we had to begin with than the Romans? Gunner, however, disagreed. He insisted that Bleda and Attila’s pact with Aetius was as strong as ever, and thus it would be a dangerous thing to provoke the Romans by giving them less than they expected. Our freemen were divided on the issue, and it took the space of several evenings before it was decided. In the end, there was a compromise. We would hide what little gold we had, but we would offer the Romans salt and skins and soap and turnips and beets and down and half our season’s honey crop. The Romans had a great love for honey, though they did not ferment it and make it into mead as we did. They used it instead to make cakes, and their women, it was said, mixed it w
ith milk and made a lotion that turned their skin to silk. Furthermore, we would give up half of our servants to march in the Roman armies. This was not an easy decision for our people to come by, but since there were more servants among us than there were Burgundians, there was no alternative for it if we were truly to rebuild our kingdom as Father had decreed. And the Romans would not know the difference. A barbarian was a barbarian to them, a Thuet a Thuet. Our freemen drew lots to see whose servants would go. Our own personal servants were not to be affected.

  When these matters were behind us, we occupied our evenings with hive-hunting, for the nests were full of honey by then. Everyone took part in this activity. The servants repaired the ladders which had been weakened the summer before or fashioned saplings into new ones. Guthorm and I were given the task of carrying the vessels which would be filled with the honey-combs that Hagen collected. Gunner assigned some of the servants to work with him. Our freemen, along with their families and servants, did likewise.

  We were at this task the evening the Romans came. Hagen carried Guthorm up on his shoulders as we made our way into the depths of the forest that night. He liked to sing while we hunted the hives. Since he never sang when Gunner was about—for Gunner always mocked his loud, tuneless voice—Hagen saved it up for the times when he was not. Like Gunner, Hagen composed his own songs. But unlike Gunner, whose songs were always the melancholy laments of days gone by, Hagen’s generally reflected his mood, which was jolly more often than not. On this night he invented a song to appease the bees whose hive we planned to plunder. In it, he equated the upheaval of their hive with our own upheaval at Worms. But he assured the bees that they would build a new hive, and that now, knowing of the dangers of the world, their new hive would be stronger and higher up. I followed behind Hagen, and when he started his song for the second time, I sang along with him. One of our servants, a man called Clumar, followed behind me, carrying the ladder and the torch. Clumar did not sing, and I could tell by his look that it did not please him to hear us either.