Vol.6, Ch.1, P.8
Today was another special day: a bit of carousing to both welcome and more acquaint ourselves with our new comrades. It was to be an intimate sort of affair, comprising the battlers on that day in the Dēlūbrum: Lise, Sig, myself, Alf, and Malena. And as evening fell, we gathered at the venue: a room in Lise’s home. But being the jarl-daughter, her home was, of course, the jarlshǫll itself, with the room being an entire hall—one already wide of berth, but bafflingly so for just a party of five. In any case, everything was arranged in the usual Vílungen fashion: without tables nor chairs. There in a circle we sat, upon the floor with cushions to bear our bottoms—and soon enough, with vintages and spirits to wet our throats.
“Here we… are!” Lise said, dropping down in our midst a basket absolutely stuffed with bottles. “Wine, mead, and more—all kidnapped from that codger’s secret cellar! Ought be the good stuff, or so I think… Anyway, have at it!”
…The “codger” being Alban, I suspected. To be sure, Lise loved her father as any daughter would; but ever and anon would she betray a more, how do I put it… “rumbustious” flavour of filial love.
“‘Have at it’?” I said dubiously. “He wouldn’t be after your tail for this, would he?”
Lise waved her hand. “Would or no, I don’t worry,” she answered. “Serves him right, I say—for always dabbing himself with my perfumes!”
Poor Alban. It must be a handful and a half to raise a daughter coming of age. Well, more than I could imagine, doubtless, being daughterless myself.
“Ah, uh…” uttered Malena, twiddling her thumbs. “I, er… s-sorruh. I’m li’l used to this sort o’ thing…”
“‘Sort’?” said Lise, as she put out our bowls. “What, carousing?”
“A-aye, that, too,” answered Malena. “Well, no. I-I means ’avin’ frien… er, c-’cquaintances to be with…”
“Ah? First time makin’ merry with some mates, then, eh?” said Sig. “Heh. Sounds piss-awful lot like some other sop I knows,” he added with a toothy sneer sent my way.
“This would be mine, as well,” Alf put in unabashedly.
An ungraced, a firebrand, and two former zealots—goodness me, if we weren’t a jolly company of outcasts.
“Oh, that’s all fine,” Lise brushed it off. “Come on, up with your bowls. To new friends, everyone!”
∵
“I see…” said I. “That’s a hard road you’ve trodden, Malena.”
The evening had worn on a little, and some bowls and bottles were now sitting half-empty. Through much of that time, Malena had told us her story. Before then, she’d sat very quietly, sipping and listening, but altogether seeming too timid to talk at all. But after some gentle encouragement from Lise, the former Salvator had let it all out, by which end I realised just how off the beaten path her life had led her.
“Hmm… but quite the myst, that,” Lise mused aloud. “A child of Man, yet born bestowed with óðilr. How, I wonder?”
Malena looked down at her large hands, which fidgeted and trembled as she then answered quietly, “A-aye. I’ve got a drop o’ Nafíl blood in me veinses. Or w-well, methinks, leastways…”
Alf rubbed a meditative chin. “Hmm… True enough, once or thrice before have I heard tell of such cases,” he confirmed. “Though in regards to them, the Church keeps a tight lip and a blind eye, as one would expect.”
By her words, it’d been at a very young age when Malena was first found to flow with odyl. Doubtless no Rounic rite had ever dared receive her, therefore. But if so, then truly must it mean that Malena had been “blessed” since birth.
A “drop of Nafíl blood” in her veins—that spells naught but trouble to the Church. “Devils” they already make of the Nafílim, but for a Man to bed with one and beget a babe? Alf was right: aface such “sin”, it is in the Church’s utmost interest to sweep it all under the rug and burn the broom thereafter. Poor Malena; on one hand, I could scarce imagine what duress she’d endured. But on the other, I very well could. The devotees of Yoná can be a very devout lot, to put it lightly.
“Some fool forebear o’ ’ers must’ve ’ad ’is way with a slave Nafíl, if ya asks me,” Sig spouted after a swig. “Got in ’is cupses, drop’d ’is braies, an’ left the poor bird bag’d, maybe.”
“Oh, come on! That can’t be it!” Lise objected. “There was love between them, mayhaps! Romance!”
“Erm… or maybe not,” doubted Malena. “Master Sig’s got it, I reckons. Aye… maybe that realluh were the way o’ it, cold and dry.”
Sure enough, sadly. That some master most despicable had caved to carnal desire, and thence against her will imbrued a Nafílim slave with his seed, seemed most plausible. And from the act, a child was conceived. Only…
“Suppose such a babe were begotten,” Alf put forth. “I cannot see the inquisitors sitting idly by for very long. For true: they would bury the matter, and with all their mighty weight, I don’t doubt. Granted, never have I got wind of such wickedness. But knowing the Church…”
He spoke aright. Still, to every rule, an exception: no matter how almighty the Church were, something or someone was bound to have escaped their “burials”; a surreptitious soul slipping the net, say, from whom our former Salvator would someday descend.
“But what about Malena, then?” Lise said, seeming to have got the same idea. “The heart had much to do with her, I’d think. Yes; long ago, a father wishing to spare his babe. That ought explain things for her. See? There was love!”
Sig snorted and shook his head. “That sort o’ love? In Londosius? Peh,” he huffed. “Nah. The babe were ’bandon’d in the bush, more like, an’ then rear’d by some soppy beast or summat.”
“Oh, you!” Lise scowled at him. Unfortunately, I had to agree with Sig. His at least seemed slightly less the cock-and-bull story. Nevertheless, that changed little that Malena was sitting and sipping with us now, and in that, I thought, was much meaning to be had.
“It’s a miracle and a marvel, regardless,” I said. “Wouldn’t you say, Malena?”
“Eh?”
“Think on it. You’re living, breathing proof that what separates Men and Nafílim is less wall and more cobweb—that complexion and preconception are naught to stand in the way of love and family.”
At this, Malena became very quiet. If her pedigree had come about as suspected, then that is very tragic, indeed. Tragic, and unconscionable besides. But, be that as it may, Malena had proved herself a most wonderful woman, and that was naught a bygone tragedy could change.
Before I knew it, however, astonishment had grown on Malena’s mien, such that I began to worry whether I’d said something amiss. But as she next murmured, I found that my worries were unwarranted. “Ehm… th-thank ya, Master Rolf. Thank ya lots. ’Earin’ that’s made me right glad as a goose, it ’as.”
And then, for the first time this evening, Malena smiled, like a flower in its spring blossom.
∵
“…For true,” said Alf, looking into his bowl. “Generations ago, the king conferred to House Isfält the titles of bishop and marquis both.”
Evening had oldened into night. More empty bottles stood about, and from more still were we sipping away, but now with Alf’s own tale to digest on the side.
“The king himself?” said Lise, as though having figured something out. “No wonder so genteel you are Alf. Rolf’s a bit like that, too, speaking of. Strange; does nobility do that to a Man? Make him sleek and urbane and all?”
“Hamph. I’ll be damn’d if it does,” scoffed Sig. “Wool or silk, a man stinks underneath all the same.”
“I am a foster, in my defence,” Alf revealed. “I was conceived in Sejdelia, my blood-family being common but well-to-do merchants.”
“Aye? Sejdelia, ya says?” echoed Sig. “Been there once ’fore, I’ve done. Saw there the sea for the very first time, matter o’ fact.”
The sea… Only ever on a page or in my fancies had I seen the endless blue. I should like to visit the real thing someday, and maybe with Mia in tow.
“How was it? Life back there, I mean?” Lise asked Alf.
A solemn look then passed upon the sorcerer’s otherwise unflappable face. “…‘Grey’, in a word,” he answered after a moment, “till came along a friend unforgettable. For true, one could say any semblance of a ‘boyhood’ I had was spent all by his side.”
“And… where is he now, this friend of yours?” Lise asked on.
“He endures—in memory.”
“Oh… I see.”
A fast friend to frolick with in the fields of childhood; indeed, it would seem Alf and I had another thing in common. But unlike him, mine yet lived and breathed upon this earth. A blessing, to be sure. Only, not since that bright, blue day at the gates of the 5th had I tried to see her again. No; not even once. And for it, some might think me hard of head, and of heart, even. Aye, fair enough.
But then I began to wonder: would we meet ever again? And were we to, would I be by then a greybeard? Or bones beneath a grave?
“Through the winters thereafter, I fared with nary a friend,” Alf continued. “It was a very lonesome time; only spells and spite kept me company.”
“And many admirers besides, I imagine,” Lise remarked.
“I suppose. Women did oft mingle in my circles, certainly…”
Sig snorted again. “Oh? That right?” he sneered. “Then out with it. Who were the most womanly o’ ’em all? Come on!”
“Malena, I would say,” answered Alf.
The wondrously sized woman veritably jumped whence she sat. “Heh!?” she yelped, as a frog stepped upon asudden. Quite the expressive character, this one.
“She has heart,” Alf said on, “as any proper person ought. And withal I think her quite fair of face.”
“Hah. ‘Face’, ’e says,” echoed Sig, taken slightly aback. “Well, whatever, then. Prim an’ dainty sorts like ya nettles me sore, but leastways, you’ve got some taste in women, I’ll gives ya that.”
By this point, a beet-red Malena was beside herself in astonishment, yipping and yelping like a pup with a hiccup. “Good taste, for true,” Lise noted, “unlike a certain child-chaser here.”
What an outrageous thing to say. But too late; Malena then let out a bellow of utter disbelief. For her part—and unbeknownst to anyone till now—Lise had in her eyes a very fixed and very dead stare. Without question had all the firewater got into her veins. Trouble was, that dead stare was now dead-stuck on me. Whatever had I done to her, I wondered. There was nothing for it: time to turn the eyes of the tiger elsewhere.
“How now,” I said. “Sig himself has got a springbud boy for a bedfellow, remember.”
A mid-sip Sig spat out his spirits. “Oy! Don’t ya go draggin’ me into this dog’s dinner!” he barked slobberingly. “I shoos ’im off ’ev’ry chance I get, I does! An’ still the li’l goblin gets under me blanketses! Bugger all!”
“Come now, everyone,” Alf said sternly. “Fine fare as this is best paired with peace.” Then, taking up a bottle, the former lordling topped off each of our bowls. Or rather, he flooded them. Blup, blup, blup—all over the floor the fine wine went. Looking closely, I discovered Alf, too, to be absolutely cherry at the cheeks. If I had to guess, Lise really had brought out the “good stuff”. But no going back now. For better or worse, our banquet of booze was now in full swing.
∵
“Nngh…”
“Ugh…”
“Pwa—ah! My, my! Ne’er ’fore was a sp’rit so sweet!”
Alf and I groaned and languished. Our bellies and brains were on the brink. Then there was Malena, swigging away without so much as a tinge of tipsiness.
“Malena,” I managed to say, “whence’ve you got that iron gut of yours, I wonder?”
The woman chuckled. “Iron? No, no, ain’t nowt iron ’bout this belluh,” she said, before gulping down yet another bowl. That’s an absolute abyss of a stomach she had got in her. But to keep the good cheer, I went and filled her bowl right back up. “Oh! Why, thank ya,” she said, and taking a bottle near at hand, offered to return the favour. “Come, Master Rolf. There’s more merruh yet to be made.”
“Nay, not for me. Had my fill of firewater, I think.”
“Oh? Too bad. ’Ere then: some fresh water, instead.”
“Right. Can’t forget that.”
Into my bowl Malena then poured a pool of clearness. How very gentle a drinker she was. Even her manner of pouring was pacific.
“Ngaaa—ah!”
…Ngaah?
Turning aside, I found Lise tottering on her feet, swaying this way and that like an indecisive storm. Had she always been so dreadful a drinker? Well, she was meaning no ill, at the very least, all jubilant and abeam as she was—a jubilant, beaming vortex of violence.
“Oy! Bugger—” exclaimed Sig as Lise stamped and stumbled all over him. “Sit that arse down, or I’ll sit it down for ya!” The jarl-daughter was proving herself three handfuls to the former mercenary, too, it well-appeared. Not surprising; little in the world’s worse than keeping a souse company.
“Wot ’bout ya, Master Alf?” said Malena off to the side. “’Nother bowl for ya?”
“N-nay. Ng… guh…”
“Oh? Why, shame; they’re all so sweet an’ smooth to drink, too. I reckon it were some right proper soil wot’s grown ’em.”
“F-for true.”
How peaceful, that pair. And then, of course, there was the other.
“They come… and I cut!” lilted Lise. “They come again… I cut-cut!” There she was, flailing about with blades in hand. Goodness me. This little celebration had gone off the rails—and off the cliff, for that matter.
Sig screeched asudden and clucked an angry tongue. “Bloody ’ell…! Blades an’ booze bring bad news! Ain’t your ’codger’ e’er teach ya that, ah!?” he grumbled in a roar. “Bugger—oy, Rolf! Deal with this damsel ’ready, damn it!”
Sorry, Sig. Sorry, and no thanks.
“Oh, my, my. This sp’rit tickles the tongue, too.”
“Unngh…”
“Cut-cut-cut! Aha hahahah!”
“Gwaah!? Why, you—ya bloody got me there, ya gowk!”
On and on our carousing continued, till at last, Malena was convinced to very gently catch and quiet down our delirious jarl-daughter.
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