“You’ll get no quarter from the baron if you ruin his banquet. Hurry now! If everything’s not ready in half an hour, they’ll have our heads.”
The tremor in the assistant’s hands tells me that this isn’t an idle threat. Though I don’t understand at all what’s happening because this seems too real to be a dream—it’s more like I’ve traveled back in time—it must be that the keep is allowing me this glimpse of how things used to be. And while I’m alarmed, I’m also curious enough to step out of the kitchen and follow the footman down the long corridor that leads to the great hall.
He edges the door open and I slip in after him. The table is highly polished with gilt dishes at each setting, fluted goblets shimmering with wine as dark as blood. None of the guests in their silks or brocades even look at the young man carefully setting food on their plates, skewered meat and stuffed eggs. They don’t notice me either, but I think that’s because I’m not actually here. Otherwise someone would surely point at the bedraggled, barefoot woman in her nightgown with sleep plaits coming unraveled. Instead, I circle the table taking note of each face. The ones at each end must be the baron and baroness, and I can’t say that I think young Njål exaggerated their twisted nature in his journal. If anything, their blank stares fill me with even more foreboding.
Is Njål at this party?
I take a second look, but none of the guests are as young as I imagine him to be, and they’re all falsely effervescent, as if forced laughter can stave off whatever dreadful thing lurks on the other side of this lavish meal. As I watch, the staff come and go with tray after tray of beautifully prepared food while these ungrateful bastards take one or two bites and then display ennui, waving away their nearly full plates. The waste sickens me.
I hope the kitchen workers get to eat the leftovers. Otherwise I might expire of rage before this dream ends.
“What will you do with him?” A man with a full beard poses the question, snagging my attention.
Before now, the conversation has been related to some hunt that I don’t give a damn about, but this feels pertinent.
“Does he know that his family is dead?” an old woman asks.
The casual cruelty stuns me. I know that people can be terrible, but the pleasure thrumming in this room, the anticipation of Njål’s pain—and it must be Njål they’re speaking of—it enrages me. I wish that I could reach into the past and destroy them before he’s locked into his current torment.
The baron and baroness share a speaking glance. Then the baron replies, “Do we not treat him as our own already?”
Even these terrible people find that statement of ownership alarming, but nobody pursues the matter. Suddenly, a boy bursts into the room in his pajamas. He’s thin with a strong jaw, a sharp nose, and narrow eyes, impossible for me to guess the color in this light. He glares at the baron, hands curled into fists, and I can see that he’s furious but also frightened. He knows there will be punishment for this defiance.
“Why have you told Gerard to stop posting my letters?”
The elderly woman with hands bedecked with too many rings answers before the baron can. “Child, I weary of this game. There is no one to reply, even if he sent them.”
“That’s impossible. Mother and Father are healthy! I have three brothers. Why—”
“That is how the plague works,” the old woman replies in a frosty tone, as if his ignorance affronts her.
“What about the estate? I should be there to—”
“The crown has appointed an executor,” the baron cuts in. “I have been your guardian for the past year and shall continue in that role for the foreseeable future.”
This is the moment when Njål learns that he has nothing. No power, no home waiting for him. His family is dead, and his inheritance has been stolen. They’ve kept this knowledge from him for entertainment and now his grief amuses them as well. Young Njål lets out a choked cry and wheels to run. He dashes past a startled servant, desperate to keep the avid audience from feeding on his pain.
With an aching heart, I follow.
10.
Dream Njål heads for the east wing.
I pause. I’ve been instructed to steer clear, but surely that doesn’t apply to time travel dreams. Another possibility occurs to me. Maybe this entire scene is nonsense? I’ve heard that people will create their own answers if none are available, and that might be what I’m doing. Trying to frame Njål’s imprisonment in a way that offers a palatable explanation. Since I’m drawn to him, I don’t want to entertain the potential that he could’ve been truly bad, so my mind supplies a suitable scenario, encouraged by the journal he claimed not to remember writing. The suspiciously new-looking journal—
I’ll drive myself mad like this. Even if Njål wrote that recently and none of it is true, he can’t walk into my dreams.
Can he?
I’m alone with only my wits to save me, and all my instincts shout that I should follow young Njål, who’s just learned that he’s alone in the world, fully dependent on the baron and baroness. From what little I’ve seen and heard, that’s a dreadful predicament. Maybe I can’t console him, but I should witness this moment, assuming it’s real. Quickly, I decide that this doesn’t count as disregarding his orders regarding the east wing because I’m not really there.
Or am I? What if I’m sleep walking?
That alarms me enough that I almost wake, and for a spit second, I feel the bedsheets beneath my hand. Then I’m solidly back in the dream, committed to this course. I dash the way Njål came, stopping every now
