Edin's embrace (28 page)

He stood scowling over her, his muscles knotted, while she stared at the handmade silver buttons of his tunic. He said, "I may have to beat you after all. Take care, Saxon." His eyes glistened with steely pinpoints.

She was briefly afraid; after all he was an immensely powerful man, and there were still ways in which she regarded him as a mystery, even dangerous. And she was more vulnerable than usual just now.

Yet the very next day she did the same thing. Twice.

The first time was when Dessa left her alone for half an hour to tend to some chore or other. Edin was so successful in getting up and walking around the hall tables that she decided to try it again that afternoon. But Dessa came back sooner than expected, and caught her. Still, Edin managed to get back to bed on her own before the girl's tale-bearing brought the Viking barging into the chamber like a longship under full sail.

He was cool today, where yesterday he'd been hot. He said —coolly, "You see the posts at the foot of this bed, and at the head there? I count four. And you have four limbs."

I'm sorry that — "

"It surprises me to hear you say so," he continued quietly, "for truly you seem not a whit sorry, Saxon. But I can make you sorry. Shall I?" He blinked slowly, in a way that made her feel as low as a fly in a bowl of milk. Briefly a seasick misery ebbed through her. She felt the weight of his eyes as he continued to watch her in such an unwavering manner.

She said, "How can I get my strength back if I don't work at it? A Viking doesn't pamper himself this way. I want to go out, to breathe clean air, to see the sky again."

She watched his mercurial mood make an obvious, abrupt, bewildering reversal. He smiled! It was a lazy, intimate smile that made her catch her breath. Everything washed out of her mind when he smiled like that. He was so . . .
beautiful
. His limbs and features seemed to be formed as exactly and wonderfully as if some colossal woodcarver had made him. He said, full of relaxed amusement suddenly, "You want to be treated like a Norsewoman? I find that a good sign. All right. You may walk outside a little tomorrow — but not until I can attend you myself."

He started to go, but paused at the door. The smile was gone again, as suddenly as it had appeared. "You will
not
walk about without me. And I will
not
be called in like this again. Think carefully before you defy me another time, or— " he added with shrewd sarcasm— "I shall have to risk becoming the object of all your anxiety and hatred."

She lay back in her pillows, stiff with refusal, yet helpless to disobey, atremble with conflicting need and fear. She felt as if she'd just done battle with an army of giants —and lost.

In the late afternoon of the next day, she brushed her hair and parted it in the center so that it fell in waves that framed her face and spilled onto her shoulders and down her back. She put on a grey-blue gown and a black cloak fastened with two brooches joined by a chain across her breast, all gifts from the jarl brought home from his trip to Kaupang, and she strolled beside him out of the bedchamber.

He somehow tamed his long-legged pace to accommodate her slower one as they stepped up into the day. After more than two sennights indoors, the sunlight felt like a pour of golden nectar. He told her she could take one slow turn around the longhouse, but this was done all too soon. They paused to watch Laag saddle four horses for men who intended an evening deer hunt. When the men came to claim their mounts, Rolf asked, "You aren't going with us, Jarl?"

"Not this time."

"He's too busy walking his amber-haired pet," Hauk said.

"Better to ride than to walk, Jarl," Ottar jested.

"That depends. If you have a thorough-bred, there's her care and her temperament to think about"

"Aye," said Fafhir, "if you've got a filly with some pluck to her, you don't want to ride her into the ground."

On their horses, they saluted him —and grinned and nodded to Edin —before they galloped off. She was a little surprised by that farewell nod. Seldom had any of them ever acknowledged her presence except as an article of service, an object. That nod had said she was a person. What did it mean? Would the jarl comment on it?

He didn't. He stood beside her, not touching her, watching his men ride away. The sun-drenched afternoon seemed to contain a quiet, easy domesticity that she was loathe to interrupt. At last he turned a little toward her —a minor movement of his body, yet it spoke of power, reminding her of how easily he'd lifted her the day before, and also reminding her that he was a man of raid and conquest. She sensed he was about to order her back to her dreary bed, so she said quickly, "Can we not go up the path to the lookout point? I would so like to see a clear view. My landscapes have been barriered for many a day." She stood hoping, under those imminent and unclosing eyes that were watching her with such terrible, unrelenting
tenderness
. "Really, I'm not at all tired."

The path, however, seemed steeper than she recalled. He noticed her lagging steps and gave her his hand. She couldn't quite look at him as she took it, but by the last few paces she was gripping it with all her strength. The climb done, he pointed out a boulder near the very edge of the point. "Sit," he said.

"I'm fine."

He gave her an exasperated look. "Simply remaining on your feet costs you an effort. Sit."

"I'd rather-"

"By my sword,
sit!
As far as I know, I am jarl here yet, and you will do as I say!"

She sat.

For a moment more he stood with his arms folded over his chest, staring at her as if his glare were a spike he meant to drive through her. Meanwhile she was miserably aware of growing weak and will-less.

But eventually he turned away. The sky above the valley was a profound autumnal blue, and the pastures, with the sheep tracks intersecting and intersecting, were still a jade color. From the rugged slopes came the notes of a cowbell, a peaceful clank-clank that floated through the quiet, thin, empty afternoon.

The Viking seemed oddly restless. She watched him from the comers of her eyes, thinking him so bronzed and sleek, so difficult and bright in the level sun, so insolent and inaccessible. Suddenly his shoulders bunched, his hands clenched, and he turned to her, saying, "Freya's belly!" She was startled by his sudden fierceness, by the lightning flare in his eyes. "I need a woman to run my longhouse. I need a wife to give me named sons. I've decided to wed you, Saxon"

Just like that. For a long moment she ached to run to him. A wave of dizzying temptation swept over her, and she bent her head.
Yes!
The word came to the tip of her tongue —but there paused in a half-sweet, half-agonizing balance, like the rainbow on a waterfall, like the flame on a candle. She wanted to be everything to him, wanted to have everything she couldn't have. ...

He'd come near and bent over her; his big hand closed on her shoulder. "What have you to say?" His ferocity was as awesome as fire. His bent figure reminded her of a dark dragon flying toward her with his talons forward, ready to catch up his prey. She couldn't seem to make her mouth move. He said, now in a completely contrasting tone, in a voice strong and formal —and strangely suppliant, "Edin, will you wed me?"

Her tongue loosed at last. "Wed the glittering serpent who ravished and ruined my life?"

His hand dropped away. It took a breath for all the suppliance to drain from his expression. It became stony. There was about him a warning.

"Why do you want me?" she asked bitterly. "Why should you marry a thrall you already take at will?"

He turned his back on her. His voice was suddenly throaty. "I ... I seem to need you."

What was he saying? She struggled against a stupid, credulous feeling that mayhap she meant something to him, that she'd succeeded in melting that iron in him, that mayhap she'd somewhat softened and gentled this barbaric Viking.

He came to take her arms in his hands and pull her up. Her heart fluttered, sorely affrighted by what he intended. She felt so terribly, terribly slight in the circle of his powerful arms. Her head didn't even reach his chin.

"We know each other so little in some ways, but there are other ways in which we know each other full well." His eyes were shining; they were demanding her very heart; they were shifting the ground beneath her feet. His look was blatantly sensual, and she hid her face from it against his chest. Just that look from him, and she felt a bottomless, insatiable need to be weighted by his body and kissed savagely, to belong to him entirely.

"You believe you face a terrible fate. I admit I've been graceless in the past. I am, after all, the man I am. But you won't find me a cruel husband. I will prove to be less terrible than pleasant." He spoke with hypnotic sincerity. "I will try to make you like me, Edin. I ... I love you." He seemed overcome by feeling as he gathered her and kissed her thoroughly.

After a while he held her head against his shoulder and stroked her hair. She lay against him in a kind of lethargic torpor. She had to struggle. She had to think of Fair Hope, which in her mind was always a place where clouds threw no shadows but were ever fleecy white, where the grass grew greener and taller, the strawberries big and plentiful, where the garden and woods and people never changed.

He lifted her chin and tapped her on the nose. "Are you getting used to the idea, Shieldmaiden?"

She swallowed hard. "Will you swear to me never to use your sword again, never to sail away to raid and kill, never to worship your warrior gods? Will you swear that my children will be reared as a peaceful farmer's sons and daughters? If you will then swear this to me, I will wed you, willingly."

His hold on her loosened. His lips parted.

"I thought not," she whispered. "You are a Viking and ever will be a Viking. Unflinching, wrathful, purely pagan, more skilled in making battle than love. And rather than wed myself to you, I would be a thrall all my life."

His shout had a horrifying ring. "You obstinate, wicked creature!" He was abruptly glowing with monstrous anger. She hadn't seen him so ferocious since the night he'd killed Cedric and burned her home and made her a slave. "You are my thrall," he said, "despite the fact that you own a sharp, ready, cool, never-shrinking, brazen tongue! My power over you is the mightiest you are ever likely to feel. And if I tell you to dress yourself in scarlet and become my wife, by the gods,
that is what you will do!
"

The jarl had slept in the hall during Edin's illness and recovery. That night he moved back into his own bed. He didn’t touch her, but she was aware of him all through the night. He rose early and left without speaking to her. She fell back into a troubled sleep. Dessa woke her later, saying he’d left orders for her to dress and take her first meal in the hall with the others.

He was in his high-seat when she came out. She avoided looking at him and started for her usual position at the end of the table. Hauk Haakonsson intercepted her. She’d never received much attention from this hooked-nosed, violent-eyed Viking, and was confused when he took her elbow now, muttering, "This way." His grip was firm, and she had no choice but to go where he led her, which was to the head of the table nearest the jarl's right hand. There was a stir among the blond, bronzed, blue-eyed men there, but Hauk said to them, "Make room —the jarl's orders." Edin sat without looking at anyone, her face hot with embarrassment, her heart pounding with anxious anticipation.

The meal proceeded. The jarl was near enough to speak to her, but he didn’t. No one else did either. She fought back her terror with the useless fantasy that really nothing terribly serious was happening.

When the men finished eating, the jarl stood. The hall quieted, and he announced casually, "In two sennights I am going to spread a great banquet and take a wife. Messengers will be sent out today to invite everyone on both sides of the fjord." He didn't mention her name, and for a moment there was a waiting silence in which Edin heard the crackle of wood in the longfire. Everyone seemed nailed to their benches in astonishment, her among them. When it became clear he was not going to say more, faint toasts to his news rose up.

Olga came to Edin as soon as the men went out, "The jarl says I should ask you what to do about the cooking for the feast." It was clear she felt awkward. Technically Edin was still a thrall. It was clear the jarl was not going to free her before the wedding. Whether they guessed the reason —that as a freed woman she would refuse him —she didn't know.

While her heart held on to the possibility that this disaster would suddenly stop, turn around, and vanish, her practical mind told her she'd be wise to make the best of things in case it didn't. She said tentatively to Olga, "Mayhap we should go through the stores together and see what we have." Without ceremony, Olga relinquished to her the keys that made her the factual, if not yet recognized, mistress of the steading. It was no great transition for her. She was experienced in running a home; she'd even planned her own wedding once —before that night that had divided her life.

Once she saw that Olga was going to accept her word as law, she grew more confident. She decided what dishes would be served at the feast —excluding cabbage from the menu —then encouraged Olga to plan the cooking herself. Edin's ways were very different from Inga's. It was her wont to point out to servants what needed to be done and then step back and let them get on with it in their own best way. Olga seemed unsure at first, and kept hesitating, as if waiting for Edin to direct her every idea, but Edin refrained from giving more than reassurance.

Later she spoke to Dessa about changing the old floor rushes for much-needed new ones. Dessa said, "I could ask Blackhair for some field thralls to help us."

"Ask Yngvarr," Edin said.

"But Blackhair is the one—"

"Yngvarr is the one to ask from now on," she said with more satisfaction than any Christian woman ought to feel in an act of revenge.

When she tucked her hair into an apron belt, intending to get down to some real work herself, Ottar Magnusson, who had been loitering about the hall, suddenly claimed he had no partner to play chess with him. "Edin!" he said, "come out on the green and learn the game."

How could she refuse? She was still a thrall, and he wasn't asking but rather firmly assuming that she would do as he wanted.

They sat beneath the great, wide-spreading tree where Ottar proceeded with a slow instruction. Yngvarr, who was already organizing the cutting of the new rushes for the hall, came to her with several questions. Unlike Blackhair, no sarcasm salted his comments. He seemed eager to please, and grateful for the chance to better his position. Ottar patiently waited while Edin spoke to him, using the same technique of encouragement and reassurance. Next Dessa came with a message from Olga, and again Ottar waited. When Dessa was gone, he went back to holding up one walrus-ivory chess piece after another, laconically explaining its use in the play of the game. Edin interrupted him with, "Did the jarl order you to teach me chess specifically, or simply to keep me from doing anything useful?"

Ottar grinned. "He suggested, casual-like, that you shouldn't be doing anything too strenuous yet, and that if you were to learn to play chess it might help you pass the hours and keep you out of trouble —and then he looked at me. You know how he can look at you until you realize you've always longed to do what he's just said?"

"I know that look, yes." She'd often enough stood within the sweep of his personal aura.

There was more to the jarl's plan than just keeping her from overwork, however. It was clear to Edin that he was insuring her presence at their wedding by maintaining a rotation of Viking guards over her. Rolf would appear and politely pull her away from the foaming busyness in the hall to take her for a maddeningly pointless morning stroll in the harvested fields. Sweyn, who was becoming known as the One-armed, was learning to manage a horse again and insisted he needed her help. And so she took an afternoon ride with that awkward man through the moist, earthy, scent-laden woods. There was one whole day with Starkad Herjulsson, in which he taught her to fish for
seith
, "the best fish in the fjord" This required going out in a boat. At first she was nervous, but the craft he'd chosen —or had the jarl chosen it? —was very steady. And because the cliffs of the fjord were so high, breezes rarely got down to ruffle the surface of the water much. Starkad told her as he rowed them slowly along, "You need to learn to swim. People who live on the shore must learn to get along with the sea. You can't always depend on the jarl to save you from drowning."

Though her heart beat with a feeling of audacity, she said, "Actually, I've decided that the sea doesn't want me. It's had three chances at me, and tossed me back each time. I've all but lost my fear of it."

"Aye. Well then. That's good."

She felt ridiculously pleased to have gained this young Viking's approval.

And so it went, nights of intimate silence beside the man who intended to make her his wife, and days of clumsy companionship with men from whom she'd once shrunk. And meanwhile a grand preparation going on for her own wedding, despite her racing heart, her queasy stomach, her frantic sense of opposition and disbelief.

She shuddered at random instants and told herself it wouldn't really happen, right up until the day before.

She woke feeling wonderfully well, completely recovered, ripe for the world once more. When she sat up, she found on the footboard of the bed a pile of garments left offhandedly, a lady's wardrobe such as would serve a king's wife, let alone a remote Viking chieftain's. There was a gown made of red brocade from the Byzantine Empire; another of woolen fabric dyed blue with woad from Fresia; one ornamented with meticulous English embroidery; and one of shimmering patterned Chinese silk.

She found the jarl supervising the digging of the oval pit and the building of the cooking fires and great spits for the ritual roasting of the sacrificial animals. His blond hair gleamed in the silvery light, for the morning was cool and cloudy A trailing mist lay motionless across the valley, while great clouds, grey and white, hung down over the distant peaks. Edin hung about until he grudgingly took note of her presence. There was no caress, no sentiment in his greeting. He simply said, "Did you want something?"

"I . . . the clothes. . . "

His mouth thinned. "I didn't gain them by plunder. They were Margaret's, bought for her by my father."

"I didn't come to accuse you, but to say thank you."

He nodded. "You'll wear the scarlet tomorrow. It's the traditional color for brides here."

"All right."

"You agree, then? You won't make me bind and gag you to get you through it?"

She realized that he must have been worrying about that. She saw that his eyes seemed a little bloodshot, as if he hadn't been sleeping well. She said, "I have no wish to humiliate you. And I have no taste for being made a spectacle. If you say you mean to make me marry you, then, according to all I know about you, that is what you will do." She could have stopped there, but in full obedience to her heart's most urgent commands, she dared to reach out and touch his sleeve. "Can't we talk?"

His fair brows furrowed into a deep crease. "I have something I must do today."

"Of course." She started to turn away.

His hand on her arm stayed her. "Edin" When she looked, she found his expression open. "We'll talk tonight."

Relief flooded through her. She hadn't realized how painful had been the silence between them. She nodded, even smiled a little.

***

The low hut, once Soren Gudbrodsson's, to which Inga was exiled, was to be visited regularly by supply bearers who would also see that the place was kept in good repair. Thoryn had decided to visit the place himself that day. His honor seemed to insist that he see the place and know it, but he intended this to be his first and last visit.

It was a warm autumn day, that day before his wedding. Evidently Juliana had let the fire go out in the hut, for no smoke came up through the roof hole. As Thoryn stepped off Dawnfire, he heard the two women's voices arguing about it through the low, open door. Inga tended to get frantic if anything kept her home from running smoothly. The slightest mishap bound her up into a tight-smiling fury.

Thoryn saw that the two women were facing one another like fighting cocks. Juliana's raven hair, cut short according to the custom, was in dramatic contrast to the blond head beyond her. He stood watching them, his arms folded across his chest. The thrall looked harried. She was going to suffer, no doubt, being away from the men. By spring, mayhap she would be ready to behave herself back at the longhouse. And by then, mayhap Jamsgar would have found another wench.

He'd given as little thought as possible to his mother since the night the egg of her madness had cracked open. Now the sight of her stabbed his smugness to the core. She looked diminished, hardly dangerous.

He ducked his head and stepped down through the low door, prepared to have to judge the right or wrong of their quarrel. To his surprise, he wasn't asked to take sides, however. When Inga saw him, she seemed to forget Juliana altogether. She put on that sweet, repulsive smile and said, "My son." Juliana slipped past him and disappeared outside. Inga said, "Come to the table, son, and drink your broth. I thickened it with oatmeal just the way you like it. And I have a dried onion for you; I save it especially for you."

He managed not to shudder as he sat down at the small table, momentarily amazed by the rush of mixed emotion he felt, and the force with which it wrenched up from some hidden pocket inside him. But then she smiled again and served him, and he said, "This is not broth and onions, woman; it's meat and honey ale."

"Oh . . . so it is." She sat and poured herself a cup of the ale. A mercurial shadow passed across her brow. She leaned over the board and said, "You may not want to call me mother, yet you can't stop me from knowing you as my son, Thoryn. I know the sadness in your heart at what you're doing to me, though you try to hide it." She shaped her mouth into pathos. It was soft, pale coral, atremble.

He avoided making an answer. Instead he took a deep swallow of the ale. He said, "I came only to satisfy myself that you will fare the winter satisfactorily."

"The worst thing is the bed. I'm unused to a pallet."

Guilt ripped through him.

She looked down into her cup, as if she were staring into the cup of her own brain. At last she said, in the same dulcet and winsome fashion, "You will have a son of your own come spring." She presented him a face that seemed never to have known malevolence. "The girl is with child, you know."

He said nothing, thinking this was more nonsense.

"Oh, aye, that is why I had to act when I did. She was sick each morning. Her breasts were beginning to strain at her dress. It was clear to me, to any woman who has born a child." She showed no bitterness; in fact, she said, "When he is born, bring him to see me. Bring my first grandson to me —please, Thoryn!"

The pleading in her voice touched him. His heart turned in pity and guilt to behold this formerly brisk, sturdy woman looking like a ghost of herself and pleading with him. Her face was chalky, and her pale eyes were glazed and sunken into dark hollows. They were the eyes of a farm dog not well treated. Her hair, going white now, fell from a careless topknot. Her gown was wrinkled with a spot or two down the front. There was only a trace of pride left in her: He saw it as her will to keep her stinging sense of shame hidden from his sight.

He quickly finished the rest of his ale, which tasted mawkish and dishwatery now, and rose to leave. Outside, he met Juliana again and took her arm to speak with her: "You have little to do here but care for your mistress. Can you not keep her dress clean and see that her hair is combed?"

"Master, I try." There was something new in the girl's manner. When before she'd projected an aura of boredom and sullen muteness toward him, now there was anxiety. "She orders me off and-and sometimes she makes threats."

"What sort of threats?"

She glanced nervously at her charge, who was waiting near his horse. "She says that she will kill me in my sleep, Master, and then return to the longhouse where she says she left something undone. And then she laughs —not the way a human being laughs. Master, it's the most indecent, ghastly laughing I've ever heard." He felt a sudden sympathy for this poor girl who all alone cooked and cleaned and chopped and nursed a tyrannical mistress while he was living far from her concerns. He said, "She is mad. She will say things . . . but give her no chance to handle a knife. Do you hear me?"