บท 166: Servant of the Axe, 66 - Idle? Hands

Servant of the Axe

Chapter 66

Idle? Hands

Again, these are not my words, trust the source at your own risk.

Madonna had a vial of sting-berry juice, but dared not to use it while preparing the meal. Unlike how her husband cooked, it seemed that every woman who could physically fit into the kitchen was there. Two women were sawing off pieces of bread from opposite ends of a loaf with serrated knives, and the same with meats. Vegetables were diced into large chunks by one woman, and passed either left or right to be diced into smaller chunks.

There was no artistry, no time taken to imbue anything. The men would be home soon, and woe unto the woman who had no food to present to them. On or in a vast triple oven, a dozen different iron or bronze pans cooked. Two women wearing quilt-gloves would check the dishes inside, sliding most in to cook further, sometimes flipping or adjusting their contents. A double layered cart would be nearby for completed dishes, which were rolled away.

There were no soups, no salads. There were sandwiches, if things by the portions served could be called such. There were egg-toast, and butter melted into bread. There were leaves of cabbage, stuffed with diced herbs, fruits, and vegetables. There were palm-cakes and meat-filled muffins, and fish wrapped in blankets of ham and cheese.

And none of it was for the women, who prepared the food as though in a race. Their stomachs grumbling, they sweated together for nearly an hour before the cart slowed, and finally was not there.

Completed dishes were then served to children, the youngest first, as well as to nursing mothers. As the cart came by, scraps were compiled into new dishes. Whenever the cart came, it was filled with every dish that would fit. Only in the second hour did the cooks eat, though they ate no less well than those they had served.

Only then did talk other than what they were doing began. Madonna had no clue where all the rumors came from, but they somehow already knew which huscarl had claimed her, and other things such as normally took Gamilla's spy network to uncover.

But then, the food finally gone into stomachs, did the cleaning begin. In the adjacent room, equally packed with sinks, filled by children with pails of soapy water, dishes were washed and rinsed and soaped, again at a speed that defied mortal agility. Cracked dishes were thrown into a bin in the corner, where children would carry them outside to break them. (With the relish only young children can bring to such a task.)

Madonna was ready to collapse, but was not permitted to. With impossible energy, the others swept her along to the spinning room. Each woman was assigned two young girls, one to feed the distaff into the spinning wheel, another to manage the spools of spun thread. The women themselves moved with practiced hands, tirelessly spinning and maneuvering the threads to ensure both quality and production.

That task and the endless chatter of marriages and chickens and who was overdue for their monthly bleeding lasted deep into the night, women taking turns putting their children to bed, only to return and take up either a wheel or the task of assisting another.

Madonna was almost relieved when her husband's message arrived, summoning her from the spinning room.

Almost.

No wonder so many Norvik women took up the combat arts! It was surely less work and stress than their normal work day.

She woke to her adopted husband slapping her. "Huhh? Wazzat?"

"You BITCH! Did you just fall asleep?"

Before she had even fully woken, she found herself escorted by the elbow through the longhouse, and hurled outside near the pigsty. Feet in the snow, she turned and blinked twice.

"You can come inside in the morning, but be ready for the work that goes with being a warrior's wife. ALL of it. You fall asleep on me, you can spend the night gathering warmth from the pigs."

He then closed and locked the door.

"Warmth." She said, melting the snow off her naked body. A quick circuit of the long hall confirmed for her that all three doors were locked, front, back, and side.

Well, she knew how to get them to open those doors. "Ignition." She cast. "Ignition. Ignition." The longhouse itself was warded against fire, but that wouldn't stop it from catching from either the pigsty or the woodpile. And, it allowed her to release her focus on Warmth, once both fires were going.

The pigs panicked long before the humans realized anything was wrong, so she let them out of their pen before they panicked.

She pondered what kind of fools built an airtight yet flammable residence, and was composing a poem to the effect when the side door casually opened, to find the outer side of that same door blazing. The woman screamed, and retreated inside.

Madonna walked in the open door, getting a streak of black where she grazed the burning doorframe.

The shouts were circling through the house, and the menfolk hadn't realized (yet) that the fire cut them off from the most direct access to the well.

She made her way to the laundry room, and picked a child's dress nearly her size. It hung in places, and bound in others. It was clear she would have to take time tomorrow re-sewing the thing.

But something else was even clearer; her use of magic had not been foreseen. There was, in fact, no evidence that she had been behind the fire at all, if she could make her way to the children's quarters without being seen.

Which, although she had to move in spurts, and avoid rampaging menfolk (and in one case, womenfolk), she thought she had managed.

This, she thought while comforting children that the adults had matters well in hand, had the potential of being fun.

But, neither her new husband nor any of those marked for death had actually died.

Room for improvement, she thought, falling asleep holding a child's hand in each of hers.

The damage didn't look so severe in the morning, although the search for the wayward pigs had cancelled breakfast. Those, at least, had suffered casualties, placing ham and bacon on the dinner menu.

Grumpy pigs required multiple children to guide them back to their scorched pens, but once there they calmed themselves and began feeding. Foolish pigs, so like other mortal creatures.

In spite of her efforts to remain with her age-mates, her status as a wife trumped that. She was called away to sew and weave, and generally made a mess of her dress.

"Useless child, if you don't know how to open and re-sew a dress, ask for lessons." The one called Solief said.

"Oh, thank you so very much." She said, while thinking about how Solief would look if shoved into the nearby fireplace.

"Do any of the men know how that horrid fire got started?"

"Probably Thane Oen, drunk off his keyster and unable to get in after dusk." Solief said.

"Might as well blame your own husband." Agnar's second wife blurted out. "Like as not, someone was sleeping in the sty with someone they ought not, and was careless with where they put their torch or candle."

"Really? Because last time, there were tracks that indicated…"

Inga sniffed as she approached the loom where Madonna was working shuttle. "This woman needs to bathe!" she said, hands triumphantly on her hips. "She smells of urine and vomit!"

Such are the risks of sleeping with a bedful of small children, Madonna tells me. That, and drool and bite marks, from both the children, and the insects that feast upon them.

Bathing, like much of Norvik life, is not something one does in private, but it is relatively quick. Four women, each with a brush and overlapping zones of responsibility, and then a quick rinse in cold water, and then the same overlapping with towels. And, on days when one isn't supposed to bathe, the brush handlers are NOT gentle.

Delayed as the morning was, there was far more work than normal, although butchery duty allowed Madonna access to a butcher's knife. With that… well, she was still a child with a knife. But she could still find…

Actually, she couldn't.

"Where are the menfolk?" she asked Ingrid.

"Oh, they're still out, trying to keep us safe from snipes and snarks and the troll. And whatever other made-up things that men fight off for us here."

"The Cousin of Fenris is real enough." Madonna said.

"Yes, that bit is my husband's foolery, biting him in the arse. Well, come along. We need to forage for vegetables, and that's best done before the sun reaches its height and begins descending."

"How many vegetables?" Madonna asked.

"Oh, I think three or four bushels will do."

"Three or four bushels? I see barely a dozen women here with baskets."

"Yes, the sooner we start the sooner we finish."