Chapter Text
“I must speak with you, Husband,” Lagertha said, not acknowledging the beauty that stood beside Ragnar as the ship finally reached the docks. Athelstan’s mind raced for an explanation for her. Some kinswoman, or a widow he had found in his travels, perhaps.
Ragnar stepped forward quickly, placing himself between the shield maiden and the strange woman. “And I you.” He started to raise his hands in that supplicating gesture Athelstan had seen him use when he’d snuck ice-cold fingers around Lagertha’s neck to warm them after coming inside for chopping wood. “Let us not be hasty,” he said, in the same tone that he used to persuade the axe out of her hands after such attempts.
He glanced around, blue eyes darting from person to person. He faltered.
A young man with Bjorn’s haircut pushed past the warrior. Nearly Ragnar’s match in height now, though barely half the girth. “Where is my sister? Why isn’t Gyda here?” he demanded. The body had changed, but not the spirit.
Athelstan looked away. He couldn’t bear to see the pain he knew would soon be reflected in those blue eyes, not of the father or of the son.
“I must speak with you, Husband,” Lagertha repeated.
The stranger started to say something, but Ragnar hushed her. “We will speak in the hall.”
“Come, Bjorn,” Lagertha beckoned. She turned and walked toward the great hall. The two warriors left everything- weapons, treasures, and the strange Madonna and child- and trailed after her. Athelstan didn’t try to follow. It wasn’t his place.
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In the days of feasting that followed, no one seemed quite sure whether to rejoice or grieve. The returning warriors had all lost loved ones to the fever, and many of Ragnar’s men had fallen in battle during the war. Ragnar’s brother Rollo had betrayed them. Yet they had been victorious in battle and had brought home great plunder to the glory of themselves and their gods. They did not know whether to laugh or cry, but all agreed it was a time to be drunk. Athelstan thought he might be the only soul in Kattegut not trying to render himself insensate with mead.
Ragnar and Lagertha sat side by side at the high table, Bjorn taking the seat beside his mother rather than by his father. Judging by the tension hanging heavy over the family, they had not spoken about the woman hidden away in the back rooms of the Hall. Until this strange, mournful celebration ended, it seemed there was an agreement not to broach the subject.
Athelstan stepped over Siggy, sprawled out on the feast room floor, reeking of alcohol. The news of Rollo’s betrayal had snapped that last thread of strength that had kept her aloft since Thyri’s death. There was nothing to be done for her but pray, as far as Athelstan knew.
While the Norsemen burned animals and poured out mead to honor their dead, the monk crept away to attend a memorial service of his own.
The first candle he lit, as always, was for Gyda. He prayed to the Virgin Mother to guard her soul and to speak to the Creator on her behalf. A second candle he lit for Thyri, and a third for Siggy in her grief. The priest had never cared for Rollo, but he lit a candle on his behalf all the same. Cain had been cursed for betraying his brother Abel, but perhaps Rollo might still be saved. Athelstan, sinner that he was, didn’t personally mourn his loss, but Siggy did, and Bjorn, and Ragnar. He prayed for his master’s family to find comfort for all the losses they had suffered.
As he gazed at the flickering lights, he prayed a final prayer, for himself. He called upon the saints for comfort and strength, for wisdom, and forgiveness. He tried to remember what it had felt like, that lifetime ago when he’d lived with his brothers at the monastery. He had been so sure, then, that he could feel a divine presence when he prayed. Here, now, he felt nothing but the stone beneath his aching knees and heard nothing but the echoes of the Viking feast. When he crossed himself, the gesture felt clumsy from disuse.
Athelstan blew out his candles and knelt in darkness instead.
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The baby Ivar was a tiny, boneless thing. Living in a monastery, Athelstan had not interacted with many babies, but the few he’d seen were more…substantial than the one Lady Aslaug carried. The word circulating the hall was that Ragnar’s return had been delayed for so long because the child had been born so weak.
No one spoke the words, but everyone knew. Ragnar Lothbrok would not delay his homecoming for any child but his own. The child barely ever opened his eyes, but on the rare occurrence, it was Ragnar’s eyes that peeked out of those thin, pale lids.
On this final day of feasting, Athelstan finally crossed paths with the lady and child. Presumably tired of being trapped in the guest room and ignored, Aslaug had found her way out of the hall. She sat on a rock overlooking the water, swaddled babe suckling at her exposed breast. As Athelstan left the feast to presumably fetch water from the well but actually to seek out solitude, he came upon her.
As he saw her uncovered bosom, he quickly diverted his eyes and recited a silent prayer. “My apologies,” he murmured, turning to continue past her.
“You are Athelstan, I take it?” she asked, not sounding at all bothered by the fact that she’d been happened upon in such a state of undress. But perhaps, if she’d traveled on a ship with Ragnar’s men for weeks, she’d had to get used to such things. Or maybe, seeing as he turned back to her how at ease she and her child both seemed, she found nothing lewd about this act. It was a natural thing, after all, something even the Madonna had done with the infant Jesus. Athelstan felt ashamed that he had thought it a sin.
“I am,” he replied to her. Although it was not wrong for her to care for her child thus, he still did not wish to see her unclothed, and neither could he look into her eyes knowing that she had lain in sin with his Master. Since he could not look at either woman or babe, he instead gazed out at the sea as she had been doing when he’d first passed her. “How did you know?”
He heard her chuckle. “You are rather different from the rest of them,” she explained, presumably indicating the citizens of Norsemen back in the halls. “Ragnar spoke of you.”
‘Before you seduced him, or after?’ an inner voice accused, but Athelstan refused to speak it aloud. It was not his place to cast judgment, especially not after he had sinned with Lagertha.
“He spoke to you about a slave he tried to sacrifice to the gods?” he said instead, with more bitterness than he had meant. Still uncharitable, but the accusation was at least not directed toward the lady this time. He did not know her story yet, whether she had seduced Ragnar or he her, but the fact remained that she was not married and Ragnar was. Ragnar should have known better. The jarl would have much to answer to when the feasting ended.
“He spoke to me about a foreigner he brought into his household, with strange beliefs and a clever tongue. He said he was able to win great wealth and power because of what he learned from you. I do not think he would lightly throw away your life.” No doubt touched her voice. Whatever Ragnar had said to her, it seemed he had instilled faith in this lady. Or maybe she had to believe Ragnar took care of those he brought close, because she was here, in a foreign land, with a child and no friends. If she didn’t believe in Ragnar, she had nothing else to cling to.
Athelstan turned back to her after a moment of silence. Ivar had finished his meal. She had him held against her shoulder now, caressing his tiny back.
“I did not think so either, my lady, but he did so.” For the sake of the innocent child, if not for his temptress mother, Athelstan hoped Ragnar did not do the same to Aslaug.
The monk excused himself and hurried away quickly to find water and silence and escape from the reminder that people seemed to come and go from Ragnar’s favor with alarming speed.
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