The Monstrous Child (9 page)

22

THE SERVANT PROBLEM

Y DEATH HALL
was ready. For a long moment, I took in the silence, Eljudnir’s desolation before the pit opened and the dead flowed in. My home would never be empty again. I listened to my breath, soft in the shadows. Fog to fog. My shuffling footsteps echoed in the vastness. My doors would be ajar for eternity, open to the howling wilderness.

I didn’t want this peace to end. But since when has anyone cared what I want?

Let them come in.

I was tired and needed to rest after my great labour, but I stumbled towards the massive doors and pushed them open for the first and last –

Wait. What’s wrong with that sentence? Not the exhaustion – even gods need to take it easy occasionally –

Why am I opening the doors? I’m the queen. Where are my servants? Who will get out the buckets, unpack the drinking horns, set the holders on the tables, start brewing the mead and kick the goat who at this moment is gnawing on a table leg and splintering it?

Who’s going to collect and sort and stack all my grave goods? And change my bedlinen? And freshen my drink? Someone’s got to milk the mead goat and fill the horns. That someone isn’t me.

I needed a man and maidservant.

When I lived with my mother in Jotunheim, we had servants. I had no idea how they came to live with us, or
where they came from. I never asked. They were slaves, and beneath my notice.

How was I to find servants down here?

I sat on my uncomfortable throne – I would seek out cushions from my tribute as soon as possible – and watched the dead pour through the open doors and spill into my hall, stumbling as they crossed the threshold, ducking their rotting heads and stooping at the entrance, accustomed as most of them are to low hovels. (I told you I get the riff-raff.) It’s like emptying a bottomless chamber pot; a river of corpses which never stops flowing, the way the dead slop in here. They shivered in the cold, dripping with hoar frost.

The rich ones brought their tributes of gold and jewels and ivory and swords. The poor held tight to their useless wooden cups and needles and buckets. I took it all. Every night down here will be my birthnight, a feast of never-ending gifts. I’d never had a gift before. I lurched off my throne and grabbed an arm bracelet, heavy with bright gold, then another and another. I sieved through
the growing pile of grave goods, tossing aside the broken pottery and soapstone bowls and dried fish, snatching up earrings and a silver buckle. I snatched like Fen after rats.

I placed the jewels on my wrists and fingers, pinned a filigree brooch to my robe while the newly arrived, bewildered and angry, flailing, smelly and grumbling, milled about the ghastly hall seeking their place.

‘Sit anywhere,’ I said. (Except next to me, of course.) ‘There is no rank here.’ Oh, how they wailed and gnashed at that.

I eyed the dead for likely servant material.

What are my requirements?

1. Ugly.

2. Quiet.

3. No one decomposing.

Like I said, I’m not Miss Fussy.

Number one was easy. Two and three seemed impossible.

I saw wraiths and cadavers, decaying and freshly buried; fretful spirits fluttering about like greasy shadows; and corpses with peeling skin and maggots dripping from their heads.

Every body was worse than the next. Most were old. And bony. And putrefying. All talking at me. I thought the dead would come in quietly. Sit down. Be still. Act dead.

But oh no. The din was horrendous. Jabbering, querulous voices. Moaning. Yelling. Gathering around my High Seat, shrieking and screaming like stuck pigs.

The shrieks of those fathers whose sons were too mean to bury them with gold and who discovered they’d arrived here with a wooden bowl and a dented axe.

The stupid slave girls who’d volunteered to be sacrificed, thinking that if they follow their chieftain in death they’ll be his wife here in Hel.
Where
do they get these ideas? Ladies, it isn’t going to happen. Save yourselves. Don’t volunteer for any funeral pyres. Everyone journeys to me alone.

‘Have I been chosen by Freyja instead of Odin to live in
her
hall?’ asked one pudgy, bloodstained warrior, looking around in amazement. He gazed at me uneasily, seated on my throne, my silver hair exploding around my lead face, a blanket covering my legs.

‘Is this Asgard?’

‘Does this look like Asgard to you?’ I asked.

His eyes widened.

‘I thought every warrior who fell in battle went to Valhall!’ he howled.

‘Well, you thought wrong,’ I said. ‘Only the best and greatest warriors go to Valhall. Which obviously excludes
you
.’

His fellow warriors shuffled unhappily.

I braced myself.

‘Where’s the banquet? Where’s the never-ending ale in the curved horns?’ they screamed. ‘Where’s the roast pork and the maidens serving?’

The disappointment and fury of the first-class arrivals, the kings with their servants and animals aboard their
iron-shielded ships, when they end up here. Just as stinky as the grimiest thrall, the filthiest troll. I wanted to laugh.

One stormed up to me, haughty and full of majesty in his silken tunic with gold buttons and fur hat, his slaves dragging in carts and wagons and jewels and bright swords.

‘I demand you receive me as a great lord,’ he boomed.

‘Or what?’ I said. All the timber and amber and rings didn’t alter the fact that he was – er – dead.

‘There’s some mistake,’ others protested.

Nope.

I covered my ears, ignoring them all. The corpses buzzed and whined around me like angry wasps.

‘Where’s my throne?’

‘I’m not sitting with him!’

‘Don’t touch that jug – it’s mine.’

‘You stink!’

‘Give me that –’

‘I want to go home …’

‘What am I doing here?’

‘My sister, the greedy cow, she kept my ivory comb!’

‘It’s not fair –’

Then out of the gloom I saw an old crone, carrying an empty gold plate, coming towards me.

An ancient man shuffled beside her, holding a knife and a cup.

I watched them approach. I am not sure that
approach
is the right word. Were they actually moving? It was hard to say. Time slips away here. Time is of no importance. I was having to learn this.

But one thing became clear as inch by inch they came closer to my throne. Both of these grey-haired, filthy thralls were alive.

The hordes of the dead parted to let them through.

‘We’ve been waiting for you, mistress,’ said the crone. Her thin, grey plaits twisted beneath a dirty cap the colour of dung. Her words fell out of her mouth in long, slow syllables, like pus oozing from a wound.

‘We’ve been waiting forever,’ said the old hag spawn.
His matted tufts of white hair stuck up on his bald head like horns.

They had no names, so I named them: Ganglot the Lazybones and Ganglati the Slowpoke.

‘Here is your plate – Starving,’ said Lazybones.

‘Here is your knife – Famine,’ said Slowpoke.

‘Here is your cup – Thirst,’ they said together.

Fine dining was evidently not going to be their forte.

When I write that they said these words, I have written them down as sentences. That’s not how they talked. Slowpoke and Lazybones spoke as if they died after every word, and then slowly came back to life to speak one more word before dying again. It took them a day to cross a room, a night to cross back. They moved so slowly they almost appeared not to budge. In the time it took them to set down my plate, knife and cup, I could have staggered up the fog road back to Midgard (if only). Watching them lift an arm to wipe their noses on their crusty sleeves could take an eternity.

Not exactly first choice for servants.

But they, like Modgud, were alive. And I loathe the dead even more than I hate the living. I too can only move slowly. And in a world without time, what’s the rush?

23

YOUR WOLF-GRACIOUS HOST

LL RIGHT. I’M
feeling chatty. I’ll throw you a bone, so to speak.

I’ll tell you what happens when you die. How it all works. Yes, the greatest secrets of all. So there will be no more need to seek spell songs to raise the dead to make them talk. I’m spilling the beans.

Deal? Good.

You die. ‘Wah wah wail wail.’ (That’s you by the way.) Don’t kid yourself. No one will miss you.

If you’re shoved into a grave mound, you rot and stagger down to me looking pretty rough and smelling worse.

If your body is burned, you waft to me in spirit form. Either way you all end up pouring down the Hel Road.

At the bridge between the worlds, Modgud checks you’re dead, asks your name and lineage, and quietly you cross over the frosty river and into my melancholy world of sleet and weeping darkness. There’s no turning back.

The dead whose bodies have burned on pyres pass through a wall of flames. Smoke meets smoke, and the last remnant of their mortal selves blows off, like sparks from a sword being burnished, like ash from sputtering wood.

Fading, fading, gone. Poof.

But, once across the bridge, everything changes. The yowling they make, you’d think they were the first who’d ever died. Well, you’re not, so get over it.

I, your reluctant and wolf-gracious host, will greet you. Greet in the sense that I’ll allow you into my windy hall. Please do not look for any more recognition because expectation will always be disappointed. Don’t imagine you can please me.
No one
can please me.
NO ONE
.

Hopefully, you’re bringing lots of gifts. Remember, grave goods are a tribute for your new lord – me.
You
will not need anything with which you’ve been buried.

Please note: I have enough wooden serving platters, buckets, spindles and broken swords to last for eternity. I like goblets, carved ivory animals and brooches. You can’t have too many of those. And gold. I love gold.

In fact, let me repeat: NO MORE WOODEN PLATTERS. I know some mortals make greedy lists of the gifts they desire when they marry, and circulate this among their kin and their friends and followers. Here’s my list: just gold and silver.

And, please, no looms. No one’s weaving down here.
Leave looms behind. No need to lug a loom down the fog road. Load your wagon with treasure instead.

Treasure. Sadly, all too rare. Too many relatives planning to place that gold armband in the grave, snatch it back at the last moment and substitute – for shame – a broken old pot. Or a rusty axe instead of a jewelled spear. No wonder there’s so much shrieking and gnashing down here when the dead sift through their possessions and discover a pile of junk.

My entrance requirements are minimal – that you’re dead.

That’s it. Modgud, my bouncer, lets everyone into the club. We’re not exclusive. No VIP section. No velvet ropes.

Welcome.

My gate slams on your heels. Your name passes out of use like withered grass.

Goodbye. Good riddance.

You who are full of easy time, gloating and careless, singing in your chains –

Remember.

Everyone is mine at the end.

While we’re on the subject of death journeys, here’s a useful tip. Pack your jewels and inlaid shields and gold arm rings and ditch the rest. Because you would not believe the junk the deceased bring with them. Hams. Sheep’s heads. Apples. Mead buckets. Why? Did they think it was going to be one non-stop feast here? One eternal party with dancing bears and fighting? Swords, axes, brooches, pots, coins, cauldrons, grindstones, helmets, sickles, stools, goblets, horses, dogs, slaves, hawks. Thanks awfully for the silver spoon and I can always use another gold ring, but no thanks for the broken pots and bent swords.

When the corpses find out that I take everything valuable they’ve brought for tribute – which is only fair, mind you; they are living here for eternity, the guests who never leave, the guests who stink like long-dead fish – they yell and scream even more. But what were
they hoping to buy – a new body?

Once I’ve grabbed what I want, the gold and jewels to decorate my hall and fill my treasure rooms, I have the trash flung outside. Let them fight over it. They drift about rustling like dry leaves, gripping some old cup as if their life – ha ha – depended on it. I tell you, it’s like a grisly bring-and-buy sale held on a reeking rubbish tip.

That One-Eye. What a mean trick he played on his followers, telling them that every man who died in battle would enter Valhall with as much wealth as he had on his pyre. What a death jest. What a liar.

Those Valkyries nabbed everyone they needed in the time before time. Valhall’s doors are shut. The benches are full. No one can budge up at the nightly feast.

Hero, you’re too late.
I’m
your hostess in the afterdeath.

Hard luck.

Bad fate.

Yeah, whatever.

You might as well drop that sword now and be a farmer. Forget the battle heroics and do something else. Because, whatever happens, you’re coming to me.

Sorry to be the one to break the news, but at least this way you’ll be prepared for the inevitable rude welcome Chez Hel.

Some of you decide to stick around in your grave-mound, sitting blank-eyed and staring on your high chair, throttling any of the living who dare to break in to steal your treasure. Or, worse, you go haunting your former homes, savaging the sheep or scaring the Hel out of your family.

If the living are wise, they’ll cover up any mirrors or water in their homes, in case the dead souls are drawn to their reflections and sneak inside to hang around Midgard a bit longer. I honestly don’t know why they bother. Is it really so much fun terrifying your family by creeping up the stairs or popping out of chests? What good does that do? You’re still dead. Face it: however
much they loved you in Midgard, they really don’t want you lurching about now.

But even you restless ones finally descend to my dark kingdom, after those who have carved your name upon your gate posts have gone, and your memory slowly vanishes from the worlds. Then you’ll drift down the fog road to me.

The mists of Niflheim and my beckoning voice will fill your grave barrow. Slowly you’ll sink to my world beneath the worlds. And ultimately you’ll join the oldest corpses, who flit like smoke. They stare with glaring eyes from which all speculation is banished, as one so-so poet once wrote. The dead live here in an everlasting past. Then present. Then …

However, there is no point in complaining. I never listen. I just don’t care. You’re not happy? Go somewhere else. There’s a nice dragon I know who always needs feeding …

I’ve told you too much. Far more than I intended. But storytellers get carried away. Words spill from unlocked word hoards.

Want to know more about my life here? Actually, I don’t care what you want. You would do well to listen until I am no longer willing to speak.