Edin's embrace (14 page)

The armed man made a lunge for her. Somehow she dodged back out of his reach, but how long could she keep that up? Where could she go? The jarl had earlier forbidden her to leave the hall without an escort, even to visit the privy.

The jarl! No sooner did she think of him —the thought was of an immense and implacable power— no sooner did she picture his face in her mind, than she turned. The Viking behind her made another lunge. She felt his hands catch and yank out a few strands of her hair. She ran—to the jarl.

She dared not step up on the dais of his chair, but took mindless shelter at his side. By now the hall was completely silent. Edin felt censure coming at her from all directions. The man came on.

Casually, the jarl reached for her elbow and drew her up to the arm of his chair. The man stopped a few feet away. He spoke in Norse, with that undercurrent of hot fury, jabbing his finger in Edin's direction. When he was finished, the jarl spoke, in a calm, slaying voice.

Not a man or a woman moved. All sat on their benches as if their limbs had turned to stone. Only their shadows swayed on the walls.

The man seemed taken aback. Slowly, he found a smile, a carefully courteous smile. He inclined his head to his chieftain, then turned stiffly and marched back to his place. The jarl looked around at all the faces staring at him. It was a challenge, clear and simple. One by one, people picked up their cups, turned to their neighbors, and gradually the celebration grew noisy once more.

He still held Edin's arm. He observed her now. His face was stony; she could feel his wrath.

"He took liberties," she said in her own defense. "Mayhap I should not have spilt the wine on him, but-"

"But you did. And just as well, since if his hand had traveled an inch higher up your skirts I would have had to kill him."

"Kill-! What did he say?"

He frowned. "When are you going to learn your new language? He said he found you desirable."

That explained nothing, and she waited for more.

He gave her a vexed look and began a surprisingly glib fabrication: "Aye, and so I said, 'Asmund Wartooth, this woman is truly a rounded morsel made for a man's fondling, but she is mine and I am a jealous owner.' 'Pardon me,' he answered, 'but I seem to have a serpent in my breeches that rears up most peculiarly whenever she passes. It is very hard to control.' So I asked him to try a little harder.

"Now come sit at my feet, Saxon; no one will tease you there, or find the serpents in their trousers rearing up."

Not for a moment did she believe this report. She was still thinking to understand what had really happened when his fingers tightened around her arm. "Do as I tell you."

She had no choice. She was as good as chained by his strength, and there was no one to free her from him. She was a captive, without defense or refuge. She sat as he wanted, on the dais between his feet, so that she felt his right leg up the length of her back and his inner thigh touched her shoulder. Mostly he seemed to ignore her, though now and then, as he drank and chatted, he toyed with her hair. No one chided him for it, for he was her master. And whatever he'd said to Asmund Wartooth had made clear his claim to the others. She was his and completely at his disposal.

Her sense of humiliation grew until she pulled away from his touch a little —and discovered that she had more of his attention than she'd thought. Putting one large hand on her bare shoulder, he said, most gently, "Be still."

Not long after, her eyes roamed past Inga —and something made them return. For a long moment she was held by a steady, icy look.

The evening went on, oblivious to her sufferings. At the tables, the guests conversed and cleaned their teeth with toothpicks. The noise was terrific. After a while the red-haired girl Dessa had admired earlier approached the jarl's chair. She bowed her head before him, then asked a question in Norse. Edin looked up to see him nod perfunctorily. The girl came forward and offered Edin her hand. "Come," she said in Saxon, "soon the
skald
will tell his tales. They say you still can't speak much Norse; I'll translate for you."

Edin cast the jarl a questioning look. Only his fingers moved on the wide arm of his chair, gesturing his permission.

The girl's place was one of the less desirable ones toward the end of a bench, which Edin found puzzling, for she'd arrived with a wealthy-looking family and seemed very sure of herself. She was called Red Jennie of Odinlund Steading. She was pretty, as Dessa said, with agreeable features and a tiny double chin.

"Why don't you sit with you family?" Edin asked.

The girl gave her coquettish, coy smile. "My master treats me well, but I am only a thrall like you." She spoke glowingly of her protector, pointing him out for Edin: "There — Ottar Magnusson's father, Magnus Fair-hair. Isn't he handsome? Oh, I love him so!"

Edin looked again at the middle-aged man, who was tearing at a great hunk of meat at that moment.

"Everyone is talking about you," the girl said. "The jarl has never taken a thrall to his bed before. I would be afraid —doesn't he seem mysterious and frightening to you? And so big!" She giggled.

Edin tried to change the subject. "How long ago were you captured?"

"Three winters past. I was but a child. That probably made it easier for me than it must be for you."

"It is hard" Edin agreed.

"But now you have the jarl's interest." She said it with a sigh and a wave of her hand.

Her hand was not particularly delicate, Edin observed fleetingly, not so refined and well cared for as the hands of ladies she'd known. It was too broad with stumpy fingers, and seemed a bit primitive and childish.

The girl went on. "No matter how frightening, I could never think a man anything but wonderful if he was a jarl."

"He is a Viking."

"Mayhap, but he desires you, and you can use that to gentle him —domesticate him—" she giggled —"and then make him love you."

"I don't want him to love me."

"Why not? Why shouldn't you sweeten your life as his is sweetened? He uses his weapons on you"—she winked—"why shouldn't you use your weapons on him?"

"I don't-"

"The difficulty will be the way his father died. . . ." Jennie went on, thinking aloud to herself. "Since Kirkyn was murdered in his bed by his own Saxon pleasure-thrall —oh, you didn't know that? Oh, aye, it's told all over —though mayhap not here on Thorynsteading." She giggled again, then looked all around to be sure they weren't being listened to. "They say that Inga's love for the old jarl was obsessive, almost an insanity. Then Kirkyn captured Margaret in a raid and fell madly in love with her. One night, no one knows why, Margaret suddenly stabbed him with a kitchen knife —one so sharp you need only touch the edge and it would slice" —she made a gesture —"like cutting butter. She killed herself afterward. Inga claims Kirkyn had spoken to her about selling Margaret away —but who knows? A lovers' quarrel mayhap. Anyway, he was murdered, and Inga turned all that strange love onto her son."

Jennie lowered her voice to a whisper. "My master says Inga isn't always sure who Thoryn is, that sometimes she actually talks to him as if he were Kirkyn." She looked down the tables toward Inga. "I would watch out for her.

"But back to the jarl." She changed the subject with a turn of her head. "Whatever possessed you to run away from him? I heard Ottar telling Magnus that Inga wanted the jarl to use hunting dogs to track you down, but he refused, saying he wanted you to be very much alive when he got you back.

"The very day you left, he sent messengers to every steading on both sides of the fjord, and himself scoured the countryside from sunup to sundown. Most of us thought for sure when he found you — well, some of the younger men speculated they might find you staked out in the stables for them to use, well, as part of the evening's entertainment. They were disappointed, to say the least — " she giggled — "for there you were, seated at the jarl's feet with his hand petting your hair."

Edin felt her face pale. Staked out in the stables? She looked about at the Vikings washing down their captured wine and huge draughts of Inga's mead. If she had forgotten it, she was reminded anew that they were men who thought nothing of slaying hither and yon, and filling their longships to the gunwales with stolen treasure, including captured women.

"Everyone is quite put out with him now. They think that letting a thrall get away with what you did threatens them as masters and mistresses. Of course, they don't dare show too much disapproval. Asmund Wartooth tried, but the jarl shut him up easily enough, asking him so coolly, Just how important is this matter to you, neighbor?' But they feel safe in being as unsociable as they please toward you."

So that was it! The jarl wanted her badly enough to defy criticism, to risk censure. The realization gave Edin no sense of pride. Quite the opposite. She turned in anguish to her new friend. "How do you bear it —the shame?"

"Shame? You mean . . . oh" Her smile never faltered. "But the jarl has claimed you, and you must do as he commands. It's no shame on you. There Eire women who would give everything to have your chance —and your beauty."

"Life is so brutal and merciless here!"

Now the girl's face changed. All her irrepressible romanticism disappeared in an instant. "Life is brutal and merciless everywhere, in England no less than here. They say you were a lady. I was the daughter of serfs. When I was eleven, the earl's son —a bloodthirsty lad if I ever met one —did me. He was nigh a grown man, and I cried with the pain; but it was a thing of little import really, since in the hovel where I lived with my parents and married brothers I saw bluff couplings every night. I was more troubled by never having enough to eat, never being warm enough —or rested enough since I had to work in the fields from dawn to dusk. Before my new master bought me from the longship crew that captured me, I'd never had a bath in my life. The thralls he set on me scrubbed me so hard I nearly bled." She laughed again, her memories pleasant once more. "It was a year before I caught Magnus alone and coaxed him into taking me. Never will I forget that delicious afternoon. And now I know more ease than I'd ever dreamed of.

"Vikings are betimes brutal, and betimes sly, but if they make a pledge, they keep it; if they give their affection, they remain faithful; and —" she touched a fingertip to one of the jeweled combs in her hair, the movement causing her finger rings to flash—"now and then they're almost foolishly generous." She grinned. "I've learned to love every fair hair on my master's great fair head —as you should learn to love yours."

Edin looked at the jarl and remembered him looming above her on his naked, muscled arms, his masculine weight pressing her deeper into his bed, his eyes two fragments of evening, his mouth moving on her exposed throat. Her mind fluttered in a dozen directions, and she shivered. Love him? For a girl like Jennie it was different mayhap. She'd never known anything better. Edin's case was not the same.

She had no more chance to think about it then, for though the midnight was worn through, the skald hadn't yet been heard from. He now rose from his seat, a ragtag scarecrow of patched robes and tangled gestures as he took a place before the longfire. A hush fell over the gathering. Edin heard nothing but a rustling as the Vikings and their ladies made themselves comfortable. The skald's voice began to caress them.

Red Jennie was quietly translating when Juliana appeared behind Edin. She said sullenly, "If you want to go to the privy, you'd better come with me now while I have a minute."

Edin colored. The jarl had said she could leave the hall only if she had an escort. She excused herself from Jennie and followed Juliana out the door.

They were barely around the outside corner, when the door opened again. Juliana stopped in the shadows. Edin paused. "What's wrong?"

Juliana said, "You go on. You won't run away again —even you aren't that stupid."

And so Edin continued alone. On her way back to the longhouse, she heard voices in the shadows by the long outer wall. A man's voice: ". . . the sweetest little wooly-fringed notch. Lean back."

The laugh that followed was Juliana's.

A pale mist had drifted in on the night, but Edin's eyes picked out the two in the dark. She saw Juliana leaning against the longhouse with Jamsgar Copper-eye, that alarmingly handsome young man with the great burning eyes. He was holding her skirt up, and she had one leg twined around his waist.

Edin was sickened. How could Juliana invite ravishment?

She slipped back into the hall. No one seemed to notice she'd lost her escort — except the jarl, who'd been watching for her return. She quickly took her place beside Red Jennie again and pretended close attention to the girl's translation of the skald's tale. When next she stole a glimpse of the jarl, he seemed to be listening, too.

Thoryn felt easier with the Saxon back in the hall. He wished the evening would end. The air seemed heavy with the odors of food, and the ale was beginning to go to people’s heads.

The skald stood opposite his high-seat, beyond the longfire, and despite the warmth, the old man adjusted his patched cloak regally as he spoke. He was grey-bearded, one-eyed, baleful, and ugly, but there was the gleam of poetry on him, like moonlight on water. His voice had range and great vigor, conveying a sense of endless untold legends: mountains too far away to be climbed, distant seas never to be crossed, great heroes of lands utterly remote.

His first tale had been a saga, a long poem about the heroic activities of a mighty chief, demonstrating the theme that neither man nor god could fight his fate. Vikings liked legends full of storm and passion. Strong emotions were born into them by the fjords, the islands, the skerried waterways of their lands. Add isolation, cold, the intimidating darkness of January; add, too, dreams of domination and delusions of grandeur, and anyone could see that Norway could never be a nursery for a weak-natured people. The Norse were well-tempered to endure. They endured ice, they endured wolves, and, most important, they endured one another.

The next tale was one Thoryn hadn't heard before, about a big she-bear who'd made life a trial near Sognefjord by standing in the middle of a road there and refusing to budge when travelers came along.

As the skald spoke, Thoryn observed Jamsgar's return to the hall, and how he took his seat and stuck a toothpick between his lips in a self-pleased and relaxed way that was as telling as a shout.

"A man named Gudbrod Ibsnsson heard about this bear," the skald went on. "Gudbrod walked along the road to seek the beast out. After stumbling over the bodies of six men, suddenly, there was the bear. A truly
big
bear. She reared on her hind legs, and her lips pulled up in a sneer. But Gudbrod retained his strength of will and his mind for command, and he went right up to her.

"'Do you realize you're nothing but a miserable, common animal?' he said in a firm voice. "Why, how do you dare stand there and block travelers, knowing you're nothing but a miserable animal, a miserable
black
bear —not even a polar bear or anything honorable.'"

"The bear's head began to droop, she lowered herself onto all fours . . ."

Thoryn lost the thread of the tale as Juliana came in through the outer door, trailing tendrils of fog, looking tousled and languorous: A few curls of her short hair drooped down over her eyes, and her round-necked dress hung off one shoulder.

When the tale was done, the skald was treated to laughter. The Saxon's fleeting smile seemed to light her corner of the hall like a touch of sunshine. Thoryn presented the old man with a broad-bladed dagger. And added a magnificent three-ringed collar, for the Saxon's smile.

Herjul the Stout, who, like many others, was getting to be full of beer, shouted, "Music! Have you no minstrels to treat us to a song, Thoryn Kirkynsson?"

He had cheerful crow's feet all the way from his narrow blue eyes to his ears. It was easy to see where his sons, Jamsgar and Starkad, got their good looks.

Elderly Finnier Forkbeard echoed: "A song!"

The answer came to Thoryn suddenly, a wizardly inspiration which he voiced immediately: "I have a new Saxon thrall who can sing like the breeze on a sweet spring morn."

He looked at her, saw that Red Jennie was translating his words and saw the Saxon pale; yet, without a flicker of apology, he said, "Come! Let us have a song, woman! Amuse my guests."

Everyone in the hall was staring at her again. She came forward hesitanty, until she stood before him, wrenching her hands in distress. In front of all these people? she seemed to ask as she looked up at him. She could feel, no doubt, the disapproval of the gathering. Did she realize what it was about —the favor he'd shown her, the mercy? And now he was going even so far as to parade her before them.

"I have no lute," she said in a small voice that carried in that ringing silence. "I can't sing —not well— without—"

"Who has a lute?" he called in Norse.

In a moment, Hauk Haakonsson was up and striding to his wall-chamber. Thoryn could see him with an iron key unlocking a cedar chest studded with copper nails. He pulled out a lute and brought it to the Saxon, his light eyes amused. She took it, looked at it, then looked at him strangely. Thoryn grasped that the instrument must be familiar to her, mayhap taken from her own chamber in England.

She stood holding it awkwardly. He said, "Give her a stool, Hauk."

An apple bucket was turned upside down for her beyond the fire, in the place the skald had recently held. She tested the instrument, her long white fingers rising and falling in a lovely pattern, and a new hush, this one born of curiosity, dropped over the hall. The first sweetly plucked chords fell; then into the quiet her voice lifted sweetly, as gentling as Thoryn remembered it, music fair past all telling. Mayhap such was the music the Lorelei made in the famous river that flowed into Fresia, which caused pilots to drop into visions and shipmasters to stand dazed and rowers to pull their oars in madness toward their doom.

***

"O who will shoe my bonny foot,

And who will glove my hand,

And who will bind my middle slim

With a long long linen band?

O who will comb my yellow hair

With a new-made silver comb?

And who will be my babe's father

Till Gregory comes home?"

***

There were more verses. Tears appeared on her cheeks. Then the last trembling notes died away. The surprised gathering sat silent, recovering from their unwilling enjoyment. The Saxon was flushed where before she'd been so pale. The firelight gleamed as yellow as afternoon light in her long, thick, amber hair. There was not a man there who was not hot, perspiring with the warmth in the hall, with the ale, and now with strong Norse lust.

Now at least the men understand why I spared her,
Thoryn thought.

It unsettled him, however, to know they were thinking of her pretty mouth, her unusual green eyes, her fair flesh that looked as if it would feel quite cool. And her voice that had the color of the dawn. He felt a pang of possessiveness. That amber-yellow hair and that flower face belonged to
him.

Suddenly a deep but slurred voice filled the hall. "She bewitches you all! The woman's a witch!"

Sweyn. Thoryn had noticed him drinking steadily all evening. Now he was shuddering a little, and putting on that daft, battle-mad look of a berserker. Once Thoryn had been moderately fond of that craggy-headed fool. Now he found himself avoiding the sight of him.

"That hair . . ." he slurred, "t'was fashioned by dwarves!" His pale blue eyes moped over the lip of his mead horn. "She's a Lapp spaewoman . . . c'n turn a tide. Beware! or you may end like me! She made Thoryn Kirkynsson attack his shipmate, and now . . . now I am as I am." He gestured to his maimed right arm with his drinking horn. In another moment he would start to foam at the mouth —and then who knew what kind of mayhem would break out?

Thoryn rose and strode to where the cripple was lolling on his bench end. Gently he took the horn away and gave it politely to another man. Sweyn stared up at him in a daze, with a young child's utterly shallow receptiveness — for the moment. Thoryn knew that look could change in an instant. He took the cripple by his neck and pulled him up. There was no resistance from Sweyn's once strong nature. His body merely swayed like a pine in the wind.

Thoryn led him to the throne poles of his own chair, and there tied him by his wrist —the good left wrist. There was no need to tie the right one, which was as useless as a broken axe. He said to Rolf, "See that no one unties him till morning."

Sweyn laughed —too loudly for any joke.

As Thoryn turned, he met Inga, who said quietly, "There is danger brewing here, my son. Mark my words, for I do not speak them lightly."

"What danger? I'm always anxious to learn of danger. It gives flavor to my meat."

A bright, brittle mocking expression contorted her face to ugliness. "This danger may not suit your taste. You are unwise to keep enemies in our house. You are unwise to take them to your bed."

His voice came out dry and rough. "Thunder threatens, but lightning may not strike."

At that moment lightning did strike, however, for Inga suddenly burst out, "'Norseman' you call yourself! Yet you can find no better plaything than that-that slut! You dishonor yourself, Thoryn and you dishonor your father. And you dishonor
me!
"

He was aware of the multitude of ears listening, but he eyed Inga as narrowly as if there were no one else in the hall except the two of them. "Am I not a man yet, Mother? Do I still need to say 'yea' and 'nay' to my dame? Would you choose for me whom I may take to my bed?" He consciously lowered his voice, made it seem calm, cold: "There is no reason to worry. I'm not the man my father was, to become besotted by a mere thrall. But meanwhile— " he made himself smile a little, and shrug, for the sake of his audience— "the time passes pleasantly enough."

Smiles were restored, though at Inga's expense, which he liked little. Looking about, he saw that many of his guests were nigh to collapsing into drunkenness. He judged with relief that it was time to bring the night to an end. He crossed around the firepit to where the Saxon had risen and was watching his advance in fearful confusion. He knew he must look furious to her. And he
was
furious. In him was a storm of conflicting emotions — irresolution and obstinacy, exhilaration and anger. As he took her arm, she lifted her eyes to his. He saw they were still wet with her tears. What was she crying about?

He didn't ask; instead he said, "Come, I have need of you." She stiffened and tried to pull her arm from his grasp. Her long amber tresses moved on her shoulders, catching the light of the fire. He warned, "Would you prefer to take your leave slung over my shoulder again?"

"You-"

" — wouldn't? Is that what you think? Come, lead the way. I give you this chance to retain the regard you've just earned with that pretty song,
my lady.
"

As she started toward his chamber, Sweyn laughed loudly, a dreadful noise, and then began to hurl abuse at all the gods in turn: "Odin! You travesty! You dabble in bedevilment and award victory to cowards!"

Edin looked at him, then at Thoryn. Her eyes were wells of fresh water. He prodded her on.

"Freya! You whore of the gods —even your own brother!"

The cascade of bitterness was cut off as Thoryn drove the woman through the door of his bedchamber and slammed it behind them.

He lit the lamp in the corner. The room, its opulence of furnishings, leapt to life, strange and exquisite to Edin's eyes. He turned, and she met his look with one of pure hatred. He seemed —what was it that he seemed? Certainly something new for him. Dismayed?

"If I had my dagger back right now, I most certainly would try to kill you." Her voice was thin and high.

He fingered his beard beneath cloud-filled eyes. "Indeed. And what have I done to deserve such affection?"

She glared at him. "That lute —it was Cedric's."

"I'll buy it from Hauk for you," he said dismissively.

"Buy it? You think —are you stupid as well as savage?"

"You forget yourself, Saxon."

"I do not forget myself, Viking!"

He tilted his head and said softly, "Though it seems my generosity little affects you, you might at least consider my anger. There are those who think it a thing to avoid at all costs. You are graceful and lovely, and for the time being I've decided to favor you; yet you should have a care."

"I had a care." Her voice became lower, huskier. "He is dead now, by your hand."

He reached for her, chewing Norse curses under his breath. She didn't try to move away from the hand that curved around her waist and yanked her toward him. Instead, she spat out an epithet so full of feeling that by rights it should have branded his flesh:
"Murderer!"

It gave her great satisfaction to see the word penetrate him, to see him receive it like a knife in his heart, to watch it turn him to stone.

His hands dropped stiffly from her body. He seemed to brace himself, as though he were standing athwart a slanting deck. "I have never killed any man who did not show his arms to me."

"You invaded his home and threatened his bride-to-be." Her voice broke. "Did he deserve to die for trying to protect me?"

Would he have tried? She recalled that instant when it seemed he might not love her quite that much. Then her mind covered that crack with a flood of other images, recollections: wild screams . . . her dagger, its jeweled handle . . . her hands trying to cover Cedric's gushing death wound. . . .

"I am a Norseman," he said; his imperious tone bounced off the walls.

"You are a Viking." She turned her head away to hide her pain.

"Aye, if you will, a Viking. And there is nothing as cold as a Viking's heart. Remember that, Saxon. Now undress and get into bed."

She refused to move. He himself unfastened the brooches at her shoulders and unwrapped her gown. He bent to unloose the thongs that fastened the soft kid boots he'd given her.

When she was naked save for her mantle of hair and the torque around her throat, his eyes fastened on her breasts. They were trembling; she couldn't keep them from trembling. This was like a bad dream. His nearness was taking hold of her. His first caress made her nipples ache. She couldn't yield to him again! And yet there was no point in trying to resist. The things he might do to her. Memory had made her imagination very ripe of a sudden.

He scooped her up and tossed her onto the feather bed. She lay where she landed, unmoving, unrelenting. He studied her, and her hands closed unconsciously into fists; but she kept her eyes on the low ceiling.

He disrobed, pinched out the light, and joined her. When he reached for her, she refused to react; she lay limp in his arms. Angry, he seized the back of her head and ground his mouth against hers, forcing her lips apart so he could drive his tongue in. Her silver-collared throat arched back. His free hand found and used her breasts roughly.