mouth she’d almost found herself kissing curved up at the corners. “Oatmeal?”
“Please.”
The heavy earthenware bowls waited in plain sight on open shelves. She set the table, doing her best to keep clatter to a minimum as he, equally quietly, fixed the food. They even had milk, which he removed from a small cellar under the floor. There was honey for sweetening. And a lovely tea that tasted of cinnamon—a tea almost good enough to make up for the lack of her usual four cups of morning coffee, strong and black.
She was tired again by the time the meal was over. She helped him clear off, and then he took the single-barreled shotgun from the rack above the door and a pack from under his sleeping bench and left.
Miraculously, Asta hadn’t stirred through the changing of the bandage or the meal preparations. Brit plodded to her own furs and stretched out. She was clean and her stomach was full. Life, at the moment, was good.
She was asleep within minutes.
Brit woke again in the afternoon. Asta was up, surrounded by her grandchildren, her daughters-in-law sitting with her near the fire. For a while Brit lay there, feeling cozy and comfortable, listening to the children laugh and whisper to each other—to the women talk. Sigrid was the quiet one, very controlled, it seemed to Brit. Sif, on the other hand, chuckled and chattered and spoke of the neighbors, of what she had heard about this one or that one. Sif was the one who saw that Brit was awake. She looked over and smiled.
Brit smiled back. Then she rose, put on her boots, got a bra from her pack beneath the sleeping bench and excused herself to visit the lean-to. When she returned she washed her hands at the sink, enjoyed a big drink of water and turned to gesture at the two forlorn-looking piles of feathers lying on the table. “What have we here?”
“Eric brought them,” said Asta, confirming what Brit had already guessed. “A pair of fine partridges. Aren’t they beautiful?”
“They certainly are.” She couldn’t keep herself from asking, “He’s been back again since morning, then? Eric, I mean.”
Sif and Sigrid shared what could only have been called a sly, knowing look. Asta nodded. “He’ll return for the evening meal.”
Brit set her cup on the counter—firmly. Enough about Eric. “So how ’bout I make myself useful and pluck those birds for you?”
Asta tried to talk her out of it. It wasn’t necessary, she said. She’d do it herself in a little while.
But Brit insisted. In the end, when she had sworn she could handle it, she was allowed to do the plucking. Eric had already gutted them in the field, which, her uncle Cam always said, was the best time to do it. The birds cooled faster that way; less chance the meat would sour.
“I’m guessing you have some sort of game shed,” Brit said when the task was done.
Asta, still near the stove with her daughters-in-law, sent her an approving look. “We do. Out in the back.”
Brit took them out and hung them in the wire cage behind the longhouse, where they’d be safe from scavengers until the meat had aged properly. When she returned, Sif was preparing to take Asta’s laundry to the community washhouse.
Brit added her borrowed nightgown and a few other items to the big net bag. “I wonder—could I tag along?”
Sif, who had skin like fresh cream and wore her long red hair in two fat braids wrapped around her head, looked doubtful. “Are you certain you feel well enough?”
“Positive.”
“She’s a determined one,” Asta remarked, never dropping a stitch. “Take her with you. Fresh air will bring the color back to her cheeks.”
“I go, too,” announced little Mist, rising from her seat on the floor and tucking her rag doll beneath her arm.
“All right,” said her mother fondly. “You may come along.”
“Don’t overextend yourself,” Asta told Brit. “If you tire, return immediately.”
“You bet.” Brit grabbed her coat from the peg and followed Sif and Mist out the door.
The washhouse was just beyond the bathhouse. Inside, there was running hot water and six deep concrete sinks, set up in pairs, one for washing, one for rinsing. Hooked between each pair of sinks were old-fashioned, hand-cranked clothes wringers. A washboard waited in each washing sink. Clotheslines ran everywhere, crisscrossing back and forth, about half of them hung with drying garments. One wall had a long table tucked against it—for folding the dry clothes, no doubt. And there were metal racks where sweaters, blocked back into shape, were drying.
Sif explained that each family had washhouse hours. They hung their clothes on the lines and came back for them after they’d had time to dry.
Brit wasn’t much use at the wringer or the washboard. Her shoulder was still way too tender for that. But she helped feed the clothes into the roller while Sif cranked the handle. And then later, she shook out the wet things and handed them to Sif for hanging on the line.
And of course, while they worked, the two women talked. The usual getting-to-know-you chatter. Brit insisted she preferred to dispense with the Your Highnesses and asked how long Sif had been married and if she was born in the village.
“Gunnolf and I have been married eight years—and no, I come from a village to the east, near Solgang Fjord.” Asta’s wasn’t the only village where the people known as Mystics made their home. There were several in the Vildelund.
Brit spoke of her sisters and their new husbands. And then she asked quietly, “Why is it neither Asta nor Eric will talk to me about my brother?”
Did the other woman’s eyes shift away—just a fraction? After a moment Sif said carefully, “I think it’s more that you were so insistent you’d seen him. They didn’t know what to say about it, except to tell you that you couldn’t have seen him, as he is dead.”
He wasn’t, of course. He lived. She knew it. She had seen him. But constantly insisting that she knew he was alive didn’t seem to be getting her anywhere. A new approach was called for. “Did you ever meet my brother?” She shook out a wet shirt—from the size and cut, probably Eric’s—and handed it to Sif.
Sif took so long to answer Brit began to think she wouldn’t. But then she said, “For our wedding trip, Eric took Gunnolf and me over the Black Mountains to the south, to see Lysgard. We stayed for seven nights at Isenhalla. Gunnolf already knew your brother, since His Highness had visited this village often as a boy. But I had never had the honor.” Sif hung the shirt on the line. Brit shook out a gray gathered skirt and glanced up to find Sif staring off toward the sinks, a musing smile on her full mouth. “It was a wondrous time for us. Newly wed. So happy. Looking forward to our life together here, in the village of Gunnolf’s people. And being honored to tour our country’s capital city as guests of the royal family.”
Brit handed her the wet skirt. “You met Valbrand during that trip?”
“Yes. He was… so very handsome. And kind. Thoughtful for one so young—he was barely twenty at the time, I believe. On more than one occasion he paused to speak with Gunnolf and me. He would ask how we were enjoying our stay
