Loveweaver (21 page)

Steamy silence filled the hall. Thralls stared wide-eyed and gape-mouthed at the couple’s display before they bent their heads back to their work. Llyrica’s face glowed with heat, her lips wet and red. Slayde touched the burning spot his own lower lip, swelling from her assault. He looked at his fingertip and saw that he was not bleeding.  

She shook her head at him with a look of worried disbelief, and smoothed the wrinkles from her cyrtel with trembling hands. Her face now paled as she stumbled a step backward. “I-I become like you when I am with you. S-storing all these feelings until they burst forth in an unholy outlet. I am glad you stay away. Continue to do so.”

Grieved, a sharp pang gripped his chest and he clutched at it with a fist. StoneHeart had tutored this soft, giving loomstress, plucked from innocent obscurity, in the ways of anger and callousness, taught her how to harden her heart.

Fear, real and unfamiliar, flushed through Slayde. He would lose her before he had a chance to clear the way and make a life that could include her. Yet StoneHeart persisted, knowing what needed to be done. “It will not be difficult to stay away, vixen. I will be twenty miles up river.”

Keep yourself safe. I pray you keep yourself for me. I will be back for you.

Slayde brushed past her, took the bundle of tunicas and made a hasty retreat. Wordless, she watched him go, and he knew the tears that gathered in her eyes were from confusion and dismay. Damn the tears
he
needed to shed. Partings did not come much worse than this.

Mysteries wait beyond the known, not found by sail or wheels,

And sights and sounds as yet unshown, a patient heart reveals.
 

A swirling breeze lifted Llyrica’s whispered words from the window, delivered them high unto the chasm of heaven. She was accustomed to these prayers of the night. From age eight to twenty, she used to wander outside of the Crone’s Cave, free of the hiding place behind the loom and of the cloak that hid her ventures in Hedeby. Overhead, the moon would find her, but not steal her away. Cool underfoot and spread wild under a slumbering mist, the heath knew of her, but would not tell a soul. A vast stillness quieted, for a time, the dark promise made to her mother.

For years, Llyrica had lived her craft, weaving songs that were gifts to strangers. At night she sang lyrics to herself and to the sky, a respite. Stars listened to her words swept on sea-scented air, winked silent, benevolent replies. Half-formed hopes, intangible dreams, her longings remained undefined, but coursed deeper and stronger than if she could name them. It was a kind of joyous melancholy without remedy, wondering at the change of seasons or a distant night bird’s song with just a shrug, knowing there is only a question and no answer.

Life eluded her, but she had not known it. Love demanded discovery, but she had never before heard its calling. For years content to weave, to look after her wild Broder and ponder an unknown future, Llyrica had not imagined this. A series of events landed her here, in love with one man, in contention with the other, yet finding them one and the same: The man she would use to destroy her father. The fate to follow was equally unforeseeable.

Revelry advanced louder and brighter through the loft window, and Llyrica looked down over the garrison at its send off celebration. Torches bobbed and fires dotted the yards, casting hundreds of warriors and guests into silhouettes and shadows of strange shapes. Smoke smelling of roast pig and lamb arose, a vile odor to a loomstress who did not eat animal flesh. Lutes, recorders and drums rendered haphazard music attended by drunken male voices raised in war songs. An odd item of note, she heard the name
Songweaver
among the bloody lyrics.

From the sill of the dark loft, Llyrica ignored her habit of looking for Slayde below. If she permitted more than a fleeting curiosity as to his whereabouts, her heart would begin racing again. A furious passion had beset her that afternoon, and she could neither account for it nor find ease with it. Responding to the sensitive sleepwalker was understandable, but she could not reconcile her reaction to StoneHeart’s ungoverned voracity. In the grips of raw impulse, she had needed to punish him with her kiss and strip him bare, felt thrill with the thought of it. Dangerous, this newly discovered side of her nature frightened her.
Set it aside for now. There will be hours ahead with nothing to do but sort it out.

Over her arm, Llyrica folded the old cloak, a dark cast off of Slayde’s found in an abandoned chest. She turned away from the window to climb down the ladder. By her bidding, Eadgyth and Wynflaed had been sent to join the thralls in their own merry-making, a good excuse to have them gone. None would witness Llyrica’s leaving.

Talismans all, her tablets, shuttle, and vial hung from her shoulder brooch. She readied to swing the cloak around her shoulders. A scratching sound came at the door, it cracked open and Byrnstan peered around. Llyrica let the cloak fall to the floor, nudged it under the table with her foot.

Byrnstan held up a torch to light the darkened room, slid it in the bracket on the wall. “Good. You have not yet gone to bed. I have come for a farewell. ”

She crossed to him, took his hand. “I am glad to see you, Father, before you are off to war.” Together they sat the bench. Wild, white hair framed Byrnstan’s charitable expression. He looked ready for her confession, but she steered toward the mundane, felt her face heat with the sin of deception and violent lust. “Will the garrison be fit to rise and row ships of a morn?” she asked. “Too much ale makes men bleary-eyed.”

“StoneHeart has commanded all be abed by midnight, though they might imbibe freely until that hour. If you are of a mind to know, he spends the night on the OnyxFox, sober. I will, of course, be sure he stays put during the short hours he sleeps.” His raised eyebrow was another invitation to tell all.

Llyrica yet resisted sharing the contents of her trodden heart, while pondering Slayde’s presence at the river. She had not counted on that, hoped it would not hinder her plan. “As the leader of this campaign, on his longship is where he should be. I can think of no other place that would welcome him.”

He must have perceived her brittle tone and shook his head at her. “Would that you had witnessed the preening of Slayde’s co-captains in their refurbished tunicas and braid woven by the Songweaver herself! The spirits of StoneHeart’s men are greatly heightened and have spread renewed anticipation throughout the troops. Surely you heard the songs tonight:

Her braid is a shield around me, a blade cannot pass through.

And woven in its fibers, is strength both great and true.

She carries me to victory, with spells of colored thread.

I will leave my sword behind and take Songweaver instead.
 

After her initial disbelief, Llyrica dismissed the song as a product of too much ale. “Then they did not share StoneHeart’s fear that the change of uniform would bode ill? I am astonished he let the men have them.”

“Cease taking all he says to heart! Think instead to the sleepwalker who has found you and needs you. The man at night tells you the truth.”

Llyrica drew a sharp breath as the floodgates opened. “He sees one sort of truth and StoneHeart another! You, yourself told me that neither half of the man is more or less than the other, therefore I can not give greater credence to either. It has been a fruitless effort, this marriage to ealdorman Slayde of Kent. StoneHeart cares not for me, and the sleepwalker cannot come to me at will. I have not the mettle to live torn between the two halves of the man.”

Worry wrought creases in the priest’s torchlit face. “Do not give up now, lass. The man will be lost without you and destined to live without love. StoneHeart does care for you, I am sure of it. Else would he leave six men here to keep you safe?”

StoneHeart does care for you.
A sweet if-only. Hope sparked and snuffed out in a single instant. “I suspect he leaves guards because it is written in his daily log or because performing such duties protects his impeccable reputation.” 

“That would be his pretence, aye, but ...”

“You have asked too much of me and I of myself.” Llyrica put a hand to her stomach where heaviness bored a hole within. “What began so sweetly has turned to stone. In my naive and unschooled heart, I wanted a part of a man not at liberty to be given. Shall I go on playing the besotted gull to the sleepwalker and the resented and unwanted wife of StoneHeart? Nay, I cannot ere I become as he - split in two.”

Byrnstan squeezed her hand, hung his head in resignation.  “I have naught else to do for him, then, but to continue alone, to steer him toward his better self.” The priest lifted his gaze to Llyrica, pinned her with a last entreaty. “But if you have made up your mind, why do tears fill your eyes?”

She swallowed hard lest she succumb to a pitiable scene of weeping. Another moment passed before she trusted herself to speak. “If he would have let me, I would have spent my life loving him.”

Silence then, of discouragement and disappointment, fell between them. The torch in the bracket sputtered, threatened to extinguish. Llyrica thought of the lovespell woven into StoneHeart’s braid and deemed it too potent. The lyrics bade lovers never part, but they did not allow for the differences that made staying together impossible. Neither would they ease this tightness in her chest or sooth the longing for the sleepwalker’s kiss. A fool, she should have learned from Mother’s mistake, the lovespell that kept Haesten ever searching for his hidden wife and children. To this day, he might yet endure the torment of lost love. Llyrica despaired of spending the remainder of her life thusly, under the shroud of what might have been.

“Where will you go?” Byrnstan asked.

She would not answer about tonight and tomorrow. “I still must find my Broder and will search for him in Danelaw. Perhaps there I may choose to make a home or perhaps in London with Athelswith’s help. I also miss Solvieg in my old country, but I should not like to be so very far from you.”

“You think so, though I sought to use you as a remedy for StoneHeart’s malady?”

“Aye, even though, since it was more my doing than yours.”

Byrnstan shrugged at this. “We both did it for love. But pray do not go until Slayde’s campaign is over. If the sleepwalker has peace of mind knowing you are safe, then StoneHeart’s strength will be assured in battle.”

Hopelessness descended. “I am sorry, Father. But tonight I can make no promises.”

Soon after Byrnstan left, Llyrica covered herself with the old cloak. With the hood pulled low, she curved her posture to a stoop, then put her hand to the latch to leave the house. She prepared to speak in a crackling voice. Two of Slayde’s appointed guards, straightened at their posts on each side of the door as it opened.

“Wave me on, lads,” Llyrica rasped from her hunched position. “I am on an errand for my mistress.” With no resistance from the unsuspecting sentries, Llyrica passed through, affecting the crooked gait she had perfected in Hedeby. The pre-battle celebration dwindled, but revelers yet lingered in the yards, some filtering toward the stronghold’s gate. She hobbled among them in the torchlit dark, an old woman of no consequence, made her exit, then followed the wall on the outside of the garrison.

With wet, grassy turf beneath her feet and cloud-concealed moon above, she scurried along the stone enclosure and came to its far corner. From there, a gentle slope declined to the shore of the Lea, a short, unobstructed distance away. The complex scent of the river rose up to meet her, currents of air ... first fresh, then fishy ... clean, then muddy. Tar and fresh cut oak, the smells of ship repairs, added to the blend. To her ears approached subtle sounds - the rushing of river waves and water lapping against the hulls of StoneHeart’s fleet. Crickets’ songs chirped in the still, moist air. Llyrica crouched in the nightshade of the wall as a sliver of moon granted a brief light to the black shape of the OnyxFox, its sisters and two score of other vessels.

StoneHeart was there, a dark form standing at the stern of his ship, close enough for Llyrica to hear him giving a quiet order to another man. Left alone, he lowered himself to disappear into a shadow, perhaps reclining to the deck to sleep. Odd emotion, for pain and joy to be so closely linked when she thought of him The StoneHeart: a man too impervious to win over unless he slept and became the sleepwalker.

Llyrica prepared to wait until a chance came, dozed until low voices brought her to attention. The veiled moon had sunk considerably, signaling that night waned, and she took a last opportunity to empty her bladder. She heard snippets of words about loading weapons. Someone summoned StoneHeart away to business on another ship. Guided by a fleeting shaft of moonlight, he arose and followed the complainant. Llyrica paused until a cloud passed over, then in a quick scramble fled her concealment at the wall and ran to the silent, abandoned OnyxFox.

Though effective camouflage, the night and her cape proved formidable hindrances when boarding a longship. Her feet were soon in mud, then ankle deep in water before she swung a fabric-tangled leg awkwardly over the rail. Once on deck of the rocking vessel, she crawled to the hold, and dropped into its depth of three feet. Only by feel could she discern it full of wooden chests, tied furs and blankets of bedrolls, and oiled wools of tents.

A prayer answered, moonlight came and went, sufficient for Llyrica to see the two-man faering. Upside down and lashed firmly in the hold, supplies were piled around it. She moved a roll of furs aside long enough to slip beneath the small, spare boat. In this place she would spend hiding, lying flat. It provided more comfort than she had hoped, far more than her three-day adventure in a barrel. This journey, once underway, should be over by mid-morning, with the arrival at Haesten’s fortress.

Llyrica fell limp, her body weary but her mind, anxious. She could not envision the events that would unfold within hours. Plans evaded her. So much depended on timing, this fulfillment of a deathbed promise and StoneHeart’s part in it. And she feared seeing her father for the first time.