Edin's embrace (27 page)

When the jarl bent over her again, she asked, "How did you find me?" Her voice was failing; it was no more than wind whispering to his ear.

"We were out harpooning seals, sailing along the coast and leisurely picking our targets. Then we heard a funny sound, something like 'Viking,' in Saxon —a dog's tongue if ever there was one. I wanted to go on, but some of my brothers begged to investigate."

She accepted that without a murmur. She had no more strength to murmur. The long wait for death, the fear, and now this sudden release. Soren . . . seals . . . she couldn't sort it out anymore. Her eyes refused to focus, the lids closed, and she drifted. It seemed a dragon had her in his talons and was carrying her high above the star-sparkled sea. The thought of resisting didn't so much as cross her mind; resistance was impossible, and she knew it. He carried her clutched in his claws while his powerful wings beat and beat and beat.

Thoryn raised his voice until echoes of it reverber-I ated off the high cliffs. "If she lives, in honor of you, Odin, I will sacrifice in thanks. This I swear—
if she lives
"

***

As soon as Hagna, the medicine woman, arrived at the longhouse, she expelled Thoryn from his chamber. That was when he discovered that though everyone else had long ago found their beds, Inga was still up. He'd almost forgotten about her. He wished he could forget about her.

He made his weary way to his high-seat and sprawled in it. Inga crept close —but not too close.

"Son . . "

He didn't raise his voice, didn't bother to make it hard, but said quietly, "Let me tell you, Inga Thorsdaughter, I am not your son, so do not use that name to me again."

"Oh!" Her hand went to her mouth as if he'd struck her.

He steeled himself with what he'd learned in the last hour, from Dessa and from the evidence of Edin's body —the calluses on her hands, the snarled filth of her hair, the pitiful thinness of her. "In the morning," he said, "you will leave my longhouse forever."

"Where —Thoryn, where will I go!"

He thought for a moment. "You will go to Soren Gudbrodsson's hut." It seemed a fitting exile for her.

"Alone?" The word came out of her with a shiver.

"No, you can't be trusted to be alone. I'll send that troublemaker Juliana with you."

She stared at him without answer. Tears filled her eyes. She turned away.

"You will never come here again. You are banished. Do you understand?"

"But . . . who will cook your meals, make your clothes, take care of you?"

"I have a thrall," he said dryly, "who was bred to manage a manor house" His tired mind took him back briefly to England, the large hall, tapestried and bannered for a wedding that never took place.

Inga had moved to her kitchen area, and her hand was idly moving over objects, as if to say good-bye to them. He could hardly bear to watch her, and so turned his eyes away — therefore not seeing her grasp the knife handle.

Inga stood very still in the shadowy darkness. Her mouth tasted of copper. The Saxon had taken Kirkyn from her, had taken her home from her, had taken her place from her. How dare she? Her with that hair as pale as barley beneath a white spring sun! Those eyes as blue and clear as the best sky of summer! How dare she when . . . when she was supposed to be dead? Inga remembered ... or had she only dreamed that? The dark chamber, the knife, the lovers lying abed, Kirkyn snoring a little, the Saxon's head on his shoulder? It must have been a dream, since the thrall was still alive.

Well then, Inga had to take care of that. She felt a gathering in the air, a racing current that made it difficult to stand still. Aye, she would take care of it this minute.

It wasn't until she started for his chamber that Thoryn was alerted. By the time he stood, she was holding the kitchen knife up, dagger fashion, and was rushing toward his door. He rose and raced after her. She was already half inside before he caught her arm and spun her about. Even then she tugged to get away. Her eyes . . . she was mad!

Loathe to touch her, he shoved her away from the open chamber door. She fell, and when she lifted her head, she was grinning and making a sound, a hiss, like frying oil, like rain. "I'll kill her. You can send me to the ends of the world, but somehow I'll get back." She looked past him toward his bed. "Do you hear me, Margaret? He can't stop me! If he tries . . ." She lifted the knife. For Thoryn, the night fell away from any pattern and shattered.

"Odin, save us!"

"By the gods!"

The hall was awake; there were witnesses to this scene of shame. Edin lay unmoving in his bed. Thoryn told Hagna, "Close the door!" Now Inga was crying in low broken sobs, hugging the knife to her breast, appealing to Thoryn, "I love you. My beloved! And you loved me until she came between us. I have to free you, somehow I have to—"

"I am not my father!" he shouted, feeling with horror a start of tears in his own eyes.

Her tears stopped flowing; she started laughing. "Thoryn! He told me he was going to free her, that she would never be easy with him until he did.
Easy!
He wanted
her
to be easy! He said that she would always think of herself as somehow his thrall, his property."

There was a froth of foam on her lips. And those eyes!

She got to her feet, lifting the knife again. "But she is a thrall! She has no right to more. She has no right to my place, my bed, my husband . . . my son!"

Thoryn stood unmoving. It was Rolf who appeared behind her and disarmed her, and Eric who helped him drag her to her chamber.

***

The two sennights following her rescue were vague in Edin's mind. Every moment had a plausible meaning; but none of them seemed connected, for she had not survived unscathed her time in the North Sea.

There were hours when she thought she must be still caught in that taloned dragon's grip, which seemed to choke off her breath and make her cough painfully. There were hours when she shivered, suffering one spasm after another, until it seemed as though she would never be warm again. There were hours when she feared she'd drowned after all, for her lungs seemed full of sea water.

As she struggled to sit up, to rise above the water and draw air, unknown hands braced her. When she was hot and fretful and ached for coolness, hands bathed her face with cool cloths and provided her with little spoonsful of water to partially quench her great thirst. The feel of these hands varied, from a young woman's, to an old woman's, to a man's. They too were blurred in her mind, for all were equally gentle; all equally served her as lifebuoys in that vast sea that threatened to swamp her.

Another thing: Sometimes weak sunlight came through a window; other times lamps burned about her. It seemed to make no sense, unless time had spun out of control so that the days and nights were revolving minute by minute.

Within that crazy spin of time she lived an almost inaudible life of heartbeats and recurring dreams, a life of fever and privacy, a delicate yet laborious life which weakened her, which wore her down finally to simple coma.

Then came a day when she awakened. It didn't happen all at once. First she was only aware —of her mind and her thoughts, of being a person who was called Edin. She roused slowly, realizing she hadn't been fully conscious for a long while. She remained at that level of torpor for what seemed forever, but then eventually noticed her body, how it lay nestled into —not a dragon's underbelly — but a feather mattress. She felt pillows behind her head. She forced her unwilling senses to take stock: Where were her hands?

There, yes, lying along her sides above the blankets. The instant she located them she felt the pulse in her palms leap like a trout in a brook.

And where were her feet?

There, somewhat weighted by quilts.

Her tongue ... lay in her mouth like a dry wad of wool.

The chamber in which she lay was quiet, but through the window she heard shouts and dogs barking and the pounding of hoofs. Life was going on without her. She heard the door open, heard quiet footsteps on the rushes. She forced her eyes to open, which they did only narrowly. She saw a girl in a chair with a high carved back and arms. Her head nodded drowsily.
I know that girl, who is she?
The girl leapt up as though stung by a bee when she saw the figure of the person who had just come in, a large, familiar figure. A big enough man, with a sword slung on his hip, partially concealed by his cloak. He looked exceedingly strong.
I know him, too.
Edin couldn't remember exactly who he was, yet the sight of him made her heart behave peculiarly.

The girl said, "Her hair's been made tidy, Master."

His face was set like flint. Edin heard him say over the wordless blows of her heart, "Aye, you've done your day's work. Go now and get you some food and rest. Tomorrow Hagna will come again and — "

Edin listened to the words and tried to follow them. But it was hard going, and she gave up before long.

The girl—
Dessa! that is her name
—had meanwhile crossed the room. Paused at the door, she said, with something like sympathy for the man, "There's so much we can do and no more, Master."

When she'd closed the door behind her, he unfastened the brooches holding his cloak to his shoulders and tossed it aside. He came to the bed. He stood looking down at Edin, then reached to adjust her blankets. Through the slits of her eyelids, she watched him, the father of her unborn babe, her owner, the man she loved —and hated.

He said, "Your eyes are open again. What do you see, Shieldmaiden? I would give Odin my best lamb bearer to know."

Exerting a terrible effort —no one would ever know what effort it cost her —she forced her woolly tongue to move, made her dry lips part, forced her jaw-hinge to unlock, and she murmured, "I . . . see . . . you . . . Viking."

There was a pause full of silence, then, without warning, he reached out with both hands and gathered her to his chest. It was a fierce and muscular hug.

"Your best lamb-bearer?" she struggled to say into his ear. "What terrible men you Norse are for making bargains. You would bargain with Christ himself."

"I would have if I'd thought of it. But it was Odin to whom I spoke, who doesn't mind if a man is wicked or not but only whether he is known to keep his word."

The next morning was cool with an overcast sky out the bedchamber’s high window. Dessa was helping Edin to some warm wine and a dish of boiled mutton mashed into shreds so that she might swallow it without too much chewing. Even so, she lay back wearily before much of the food was taken.

The Viking came in. She moved her head on her pillow to see him. At a gesture from him, Dessa hurried out. "You have color in your cheeks," he said when they were alone.

She blinked slowly. This was the man who had saved her from being washed overboard by the monster storm on the open sea coming from England, the man who had pulled her out of the depths of Dainjerfjord, the man who had kept her from death punishment when she’d broken the
Thing
-law, who had lifted her from the flooded tide pool. He was also the man who had killed her Cedric, burned her Fair Hope, stripped her of her
self
and made her an object of property; he was the man who had ravished her, and impregnated her, and then left her to be persecuted and almost murdered. He was a Viking, a man who could be gentle one moment and savage the next. He followed no rules but those he made himself, and was therefore never to be trusted, no matter how much she might love him.

He stood with one shoulder negligently leaned against the bedpost, at home against the frieze of coiled serpents and taloned beasts carved into it. He crossed his arms loosely over his broad chest. Something flickered in his stone-colored eyes; a smile played at the corners of his mouth. He moved to sit beside her on the edge of the bed, and she slid over, as if to accommodate him, but really because she had no wish to be any closer to him than was necessary. By the way he fixed those close-lidded eyes on her, she had the feeling he knew everything she was thinking.

It took her a long time to speak, and it took courage. "I wasn't running away," she said in a husky voice. "Your mother sent me down to the fjord— "

"I know." He paused. "Soren drowned. We found the boat smashed by a skerry."

She bit her lower lip.

"Was it my mother's plan that you be left to die slowly, or was that Soren's own idea? I cannot but wonder, since he had an axe, why he didn't simply take off your head."

Visions rose up. She closed her eyes against them, swallowed hard, then said only, "I reasoned with him."

The Viking raised his brows inquiringly, but she said no more. She would not tell him she was carrying his child. Let her keep that much from him as long as she could. Something had happened to her in that instant when she'd realized Soren was going to knock her unconscious and take her away from the fjord to kill her. Her heart had hardened. There was now a case of stone around its soft core. The Viking would have this child eventually, and no doubt he would have her passion again, and he would have her love in moments when she was weak and weary; but never would she give the smallest part of these things to him without a struggle.

His look was inscrutable. At last he said, in a voice that was chilled and charged, "I've sent Inga from the longhouse. There are those who say I should kill her. Not for what she did to you — "

No, of course not; she was but a thrall.

" — but because . . . she confessed to my father's murder. It was Inga all along. Not Margaret. They say I should avenge my father . . . but I seem unable to do the deed, and so she is alive yet."

Edin said, "She is not right in her mind. You can't kill her for what she can't help."

"Aye. So I thought you would say. Kindness is ever a habit of yours."

How strange that he should say that, the very thing Uncle Edward used to say to her, which she always wished were true! Now she hoped fervently it was not, for kindness would doom her in this place. These Vikings showed no mercy to those who were kind.

He took her hand in his and turned the palm up. She was conscious of the calluses that had not been there when he went away. He muttered in a much quieter voice, "I never dreamed so many labors would be laid on you. I didn't realize my mother was . . . mad."

She was tempted unbearably to comfort the pain he was trying to keep hidden.

"I found changes on the steading after my return —when I was sufficiently sure you would live so that I could look about me. Sweyn, for instance, is changed."

She lowered her gaze to his big hand still holding hers.

"I am told you played shieldmaiden in earnest and gave him many a good wallop with a blackthorn staff, risking his temper with a nerve as steady as my own shadow."

"It wasn't nerve so much as fear. He told me to swing at him, and one doesn't argue with a Viking holding an axe."

"That defiant pride of yours has more than once argued with my sword, as I recall. And you say you 'reasoned' with old Soren's axe. It seems to me you know not how to cringe any better now than the first time I ever set eyes on you. And because of it, Sweyn is a man again, and seemingly bent on wooing Beornwold's widow."

Her interest was piqued. "Do you think he will make a farmer? Will he treat Gunnhild well? I wonder if I did the right thing there."

"You are late in wondering," he said with severity.

She fluttered her eyelids to cover her returned resentment. "But you were absent so long, and the matter could not wait."

"And you have been ill so long . . . you've slept so many days and nights that there is a matter with me that cannot wait." He cradled her face between his two hands and leaned to kiss her. He took her mouth as he would take a first long drink, thirstily, looking into the bowl as a child would. It was a gentle kiss, full of consideration.

Afterward, he toyed with a strand of her hair. He said, so softly she wasn't sure she'd heard right, "Sometimes I fear I'll never master you, Edin, and that I couldn't endure."

She felt gulping and tremulous. She wanted him to kiss her again. She saw how it was going to be, how desperately hard the battle between her love for him and her hate for all that he was.

"I see you haven't finished your wine."

The change in subject was hardly subtle, and he gave her no choice but to drink deeply from the bowl he held for her. But as he caught a drop from her lower lip with his thumb, she couldn't keep herself from whispering, "I missed you."

His smile was sudden, a full dawn in the low-vaulted chamber. This time his kiss was long and hungry and thorough, and it drained her mind of all thought, so that when he lifted his head, she was caught unprepared for his question: "What did you think about when you were alone; did you daydream?"

What a strange question! But he seemed very serious. "Did you think of your life before, and long to be free?"

"Not really" she said slowly. "I-I thought rather of what might happen to me next"

"And did you think of me? Did you ever think of me?"

"I . . ." She closed her eyes. "I thought of you. Constantly." She looked at him again and saw he was beginning to smile. "I thought of you when my hands stained the scythe with blood, and when I couldn't eat or sleep for weariness, and when Soren's axe swung toward my throat —I thought of you then especially, and wondered if it was really the wisest thing to duck."

***

The sun rimmed the western horizon, sending out its last slender shafts of radiance. They seemed to vibrate slightly, with a soundless music, like harp-strings playing a song that was great and deep and fair but mingled with a yearning sorrow. When they were gone, silenced, there was only a razor-edged blueness everywhere. In the far distance was a hint of knife-edged, blue peaks capped with adamantine snow. A cold blue country was Norway.

Up on a little hummock above Dainjerfjord, under the storm-writhen hawthorne tree, Thoryn Kirkynsson hunkered down and let the blue twilight wrap him. Before him was the
hogre
, the sacred pile of stones. There was a peculiar stillness under that tree where blood sacrifices were made to the gods.

Thoryn was dressed simply, with nothing except a torque of twisted gold strands to pronounce him a man of wealth and strength. He sat alone, with only the curlews crying and the sheep's melancholy bleating in his ears. And he thought about all that had passed since he'd taken the
Blood Wing
a'viking last spring.

After a while a shaggy grey and white sheep dog came to sit with the jarl of Thorynsteading. The animal was one the thrall-boy Arneld had been making a pet of. Thoryn had spied the boy talking to it in that special dog-doting voice.

Eventually he took out his sword. His father's armorer had written upon it: "May the Tester spare no one."

In Thoryn's youth, Kirkyn had let the steading fall into poor times while he went raiding year after year. He'd shown no interest in his homefields or his longhouse. It was only when he brought Margaret home that he seemed to notice his holdings and grow interested in being a steading owner. Thoryn had accepted the change in him without considering what it had to do with Inga and Margaret. It seemed to him now that he'd accepted a lot of things without thought.

Margaret, a captive thrall, had won his father's favor. His
love
. And Thoryn's. He could admit that now—now that he too loved a thrall. As a boy, he'd loved Margaret more than his own mother.

He felt a strong, hurtful instant of guilt, like a fast deep stab wound. Inga had wanted his love so desperately, and Kirkyn's. She would stare at Kirkyn endlessly. Her gaze had frightened that young Thoryn who would turn away and shiver, seeing for an instant a shameful and obscure side of human existence, seeing, as he knew now, an evil as far from the sun as the depths of the utmost dark places. That tender, melting look of Inga's —he'd come to feel repulsed when she looked like that. And so in the end it was Margaret who had earned his affection. Which had made her seeming treachery all the more painful.

Oh, these ceaseless, obsessional thoughts! The past was dead. Kirkyn and Margaret were dead. And Inga was past help. He had to think of the future. Of Edin. She was all that was left to be glad for. And she was enough.

Edin. Her very name made gladness roar through him. He felt a giddy uplift of his heart. He loved her —and his love was
proud
of itself. He was afraid it seeped out of him even with his tightest security. Even now —just look at him, sitting here like a fool atop an imaginary ocean heave of happiness, atop a glistening wave of hope! He had to restrain himself, because the wall had been breached, the wall that had sealed off his childhood, his best self, his early aspirations. Since the framing of that wall, his shape had become harsh, brutal, and . . . somehow wrong. But now the air flowed in, air from a springtime he'd forgotten. The imprisoned energy of those young and wasted seasons was blowing into his limbs and his spirit.

He still didn't understand exactly what Edin did to him, but her effect was so unfailingly powerful that he believed he'd been born to love her —her face, her throat, her shoulders, her form full and perfect, her body of velvet, her cool, soft voice —born to feel this heat and spaciousness that no single word could begin to express. She made the blood hammer like a prayer through his veins. He had to stop himself from shouting aloud with joy. And her remoteness, her suspicion, and even her resentment were part of his youth regained. It was only right that he should have to overcome these obstacles. Nothing of value was easily gained. He felt confident, however, that there would come a time when her struggle against him could not be sustained.

He sighed and threw his head back. The great timeless tree above him held intricate patterns against the motionless sky. Was it only a season ago he'd still tried to maintain a distance between himself and his new thrall? He'd wanted her to be an unknown Saxon female so he could put her on the auction block without feeling. It was better not to feel anything for people you sold. And impossible to sell one whose every touch drew reaction.

He reached to touch the dog and found it willing to be scratched behind the ears. The animal's big head hung over its breast. The two of them sat in companionable silence. Then, when it was full dark, Thoryn rose and found the sheep, and he put his sword edge to the gentle pulsing throat of his best lamb-bearer offering it to Odin, the Lord of the Gods, as he had sworn he would do.

***

Early in the afternoon, two days later, Edin ignored Dessa's protests and left her bed. As she dressed, though she'd been surfeited with whole-meal breads, a great deal of fish, goat meat, eggs, wild greens, and whey drinks sweetened with honey, she found that she was still remarkably weak. Nonetheless, she went out into the hall, determined to take a turn around the tables.

Olga, who had been trained by Inga, was in charge of the kitchen in her mistress's absence. The place smelled of the same horrid mutton and cabbage of previous days. Luckily it was afternoon or the odors might have made Edin sick. If she ever had a kitchen of her own again, she vowed there would never be a scrap of cabbage allowed into it.

She felt shaky as she started on the last stretch back toward the bedchamber. Icy perspiration drenched her body, and she felt as white as a linen apron. Her heart was going all ways, now just a thread of a pulse, now pounding. At the halfway point, she had to lean against one of the jarl's high-seat pillars.

Dessa had disappeared or Edin would have asked for her arm. Olga was there, but she was busy with a long-handled pancake griddle making
lefse
, thin cakes spread with butter and honey. It was a job that couldn't be easily interrupted.

Ottar was there also, but being a mere thrall, Edin could claim no right to request a favor of him; indeed, she didn't even think of it. Besides, he was busy in his own way —almost as quickly as Olga could cook the hot and smoking
lefse
, he stole the folded cakes from her and wolfed them down.

Edin eventually stood away from the pillars and started on, lurching a little like an old woman. Before she got too far, she learned where Dessa had hied off to: The girl had gone to tattle on her.

The jarl's voice boomed curses all the way from the door. It had the sobering effect of sudden intense light. Edin turned her head —and there he was, tall, forthright, and angry. He advanced on her so aggressively that she held out her hands and stumbled back. As he reached for her, she tried to catch his thick wrists. Neither tactic kept him from sweeping her into his arms and lifting her as effortlessly as if she were a sack of feathers. She was left stunned by the terrible deadly elegance of his swiftness and his strength as he carted her back to bed.