by Joanna Bell
"I'll be back to get you soon," Hildy says, dropping two more logs onto the fire. Dry yourselves and pinch your cheeks – the Jarl will choose his favorites before the feast."
And then she's gone and we're all standing there looking at each other with wide, scared eyes.
"What about those of us he doesn't choose?" Asks one girl who looks to be about my age.
"They'll chop off our heads," comes the reply and then, followed by that, a rising collective wail.
"They don't seem like the type," I respond, an attempt to convince myself as much as it is any of them. "Why would they kill –"
"They killed my brother," a woman with long, wet hair hanging down over her shoulders tells me. "Back in the village, the big one bashed in his head with a rock."
I almost laugh when she says this, because it sounds like a joke. Willa and Eadgar have told stories of savage 'Northmen' before, but I always assumed their tales of brutality were more exaggeration than faithful description. But the woman isn't exaggerating and soon I'm hearing more of what the Vikings have left behind in Caistley – of destruction, of brothers and uncles, fathers and sons murdered. A pit opens in my stomach.
"What? You don't believe us?" Someone asks me. "You're that girl from the woods, aren't you? The little witch from the ealdorman's estate? This your first time with the Northmen? You're lucky. Mark my words, their Jarl is more likely to slice you open than he is to set you free tonight, if he doesn't like what he sees. Not that I reckon you're in any danger, not with that body."
I look down at my body, still naked, as the light from the flames dances across my skin. The woman speaking is right, I don't look like the rest of them. Even the youngest of our group are bent and pock-marked. A couple of them have limps and at least one has a withered, useless arm that dangles from her shoulder. Breasts appear deflated, nipples rough and cracked from breastfeeding infants and bellies sag low, marked with silvery webs of stretch-marks. My own skin, in comparison, seems unrealistically flawless, almost photo-shopped, like a model in a men's magazine. It's literally the first time in my life that I have ever been in a roomful of other girls and found myself to be the most attractive one. It's a strange feeling, heavy with importance. Will I, Paige Renner, be saved by my beauty? Once again the urge to laugh out loud seizes me. Talk about a fantasy story – none of the girls back at River Forks elementary school would ever have believed it, not in a million years.
Too soon, Hildy returns. She's quieter this time, her expression more serious.
"Come," she says, gesturing for us to follow her and we do, emerging into the sunlight blinking and cringing.
I can't get over the feeling of being naked out in the open, of the breeze skimming over parts of me that weren't meant to see the sunlight. There's a tension inside me, too, a submerged shot of adrenaline waiting in the wings and ready to surge into my bloodstream should a chance present itself. I look around, to try and get some idea of where I am, and see more wooden buildings and, to my grim disappointment, a palisade of upright wooden posts that appears to encircle all but the eastern edge of the makeshift village. I try to get my bearings, shading my eyes with one hand and looking up to find the position of the sun in the sky, but the sound of – is that a party? – interrupts me.
In front of us is another wooden structure, long and narrow, and filled with what sounds like a great number of shouting, singing men. As Hildy moves to push me inside I balk, digging my heels into the sandy earth without even meaning to and she grabs my ear, yanking me towards her.
"Keep going girl, I promise you you'll begging to spend more time with me if the Jarl sees you hesitating."
So I keep going, putting one foot robotically in front of the other as my eyes adjust to the candlelit darkness in the windowless longhouse. A series of ornately carved wooden tables set end-to-end run the length of the room, and every single inch of them is covered with either candles or food. And the smell! Roasted meat, bread, vegetables, bowls heaped with bright yellow butter, ale, plates of fruit. It's been hours since I last ate, and the urge to step forward and snatch an apple or a scrap of meat is almost impossible to resist.
Resist I do, though, because as my eyes travel the length of the table I see many pairs of eyes looking back at me, and none of them appear particularly friendly. I'm starting to recognize that look, actually. It's the look you give a thing – a piglet, a slice of buttered toast – not the look you give another human being. Slowly, the attention in the room comes to settle on the group of frightened women I am part of, and a chant I can't quite make out begins to rise from the seated Vikings as they beat their curved drinking cups on the table in time to it.
I don't have any idea what's happening, but it would take an idiot not to feel the tension rising, the anticipation of the room reaching a raucous, shouted peak.
And then he appears. The Jarl. It must be him.
I don't even see him at first. No, what I see is the way everyone's eyes move to the other end of the longhouse and then the way they fall respectfully silent as a large figure emerges from the gloom. He begins to walk towards me – towards us – and he does it slowly, accepting congratulations, big manly bear-hugs and slaps on the back that would send a lesser man sprawling across the ground. He's being congratulated for the raid on Caistley, I assume. The longhouse has been packed with the fruits of that raid, too, the sacks of grain piled against the walls and the crates of dried fish and apples stacked one on top of the other in a proud, victorious display.
As he gets closer, I see that, if anything, the Jarl outdoes his own reputation. He is – for one thing – huge. Huge enough that he towers over men like Veigar as they follow behind him. He wears a thick, silver-tipped fur around his shoulders, bound with leather ties, but his chest – broad and muscled and marked with a single curved scar – is bare. His eyes are a piercing, icy blue, the kind of eyes that can cut like a blade, and his hair is black.
At once I understand that the singing and back-slapping, the display of spoils, all of it, are tradition, not necessity. The Jarl – although I don't quite understand how I know this, but I do – is the kind of man who draws attention to himself the way iron draws a magnet. He doesn't strut or preen, because he doesn't need to. His authority is self-contained, naturally manifested, in need of no outside praise or acknowledgement. I, like everybody else in the room, cannot take my eyes off him.
Hildy kneels as the Jarl approaches. Beside her Veigar and three other men I recognize from the journey north take their places. The men don't kneel but they do cast their eyes down reverently.
"The girls," says Veigar, his voice soft. "We chose the prettiest and the strongest for you, Jarl."
We are lined up, us women, one next to the other, and I feel the Jarl making his way towards me rather than seeing him, because my eyes are cast down then, too. There are sounds – a male grunt – the Jarl? Is he pleased? Displeased? A woman's gasp. I want to look up but I don't dare. The longhouse is warm, much warmer than outside, but I feel my nakedness acutely as the Jarl closes in on me. I force my arms to stay at my sides rather than crossing over my breasts, which is what they desperately want to do.
A pool of light follows the Jarl, cast by a torch he holds in his hand. It is this light on the bare dirt floor that I watch approach the woman next to me. I make a mistake, then, flicking my eyes up and to the side before I've even had time to think about it. And there he is, not just right beside me but looking right at me. His eyes are a bright, piercing blue, his gaze unwavering.
"I'm sorry," I mumble, looking away, balling my hands into fists as they begin to tremble. Please go back to looking at the other woman. Please. Please.
But the Jarl does not go back to looking at the other woman. He turns to me and reaches out, brushing the fingers of one massive hand down over my waist in a gesture that tightens every single muscle in my body.
"Look at me."
His voice is a deep rumble, devoid of all uncertainty. He knows my disobedience is
as likely as the sun rising in the west the next morning. I swallow and my mouth is so dry my tongue gets stuck so I swallow again. And then, I look at him.
It's difficult to look at the Jarl. I fight the urge to blanche, to turn away the way one turns away from looking at the sun.
He's gorgeous. You might think it a stupid thing to notice, given the circumstances but the thing is, it's impossible not to notice. It's difficult to breathe standing there in front of a man like that, with his attention like that of a tiger's taking in a gazelle. His cold eyes flicker down over my mouth, and then further still. I feel goose-bumps rising on my skin, shame and embarrassment boiling pink and hot into my cheeks as he keeps going.
"Bashful," he pronounces, running a finger down the left side of my face. "Where did you find this one, Veigar?"
"Just outside the village, Jarl. She was watching."
The Jarl, who hasn't looked away from me for one second, peers at me with interest. "You're not from the village are you, girl? Look at you, look at –" he pauses, then, and opens my mouth with one finger – "these teeth. Where did you grow up to have teeth like this? Not a single one missing – not even the King can say as much."
"I –" I stammer, my brain whirring with multiple possible responses but refusing, in its panic, to settle on a single one. "I – I'm not –"
The Jarl laughs then, and the entire row of women, myself included, jump slightly at the sound. "It doesn't matter if you're the King's daughter herself, girl – all the better if you are. But tell the truth, now."
"I'm not the King's daughter," I rasp, my mouth still dry with fear.
"You're someone, though, aren't you? You're someone who knows how to be evasive with a Jarl."
"No!" I cry, desperate not to anger the man mere inches in front of me. "No, sir. Uh, Jarl. No, Jarl. I'm telling the truth. I'm not the King's daughter."
Seeming to forget his interest in my origins, he reaches out again, pressing the tips of his strong, agile fingers into the flesh of my hip. When he takes his hand away my skins burns warm where the contact had been made. "How old are you? Ten and three? Have you had your blood yet? You're tall, but there's less wear on you than I see on babes in arms."
"Ten and ten," I whisper, causing the Jarl to chuckle aloud again.
"Ten and ten – who do you take me for? An idiot like Veigar? Do you think they catch me out in the fields at night, trying to grasp the reflection of the moon in a puddle of water?"
There is general laughter in the room at this comment on Veigar's stupidity, but I'm being asked questions and I'm going to have to answer them. I lower my eyes to the ground in a manner I hope the Jarl sees as respectful and repeat myself very quietly.
"Ten and ten."
He's staring at me, I can feel it. "You're lucky it's a feasting day," he tells me calmly. "You're lucky the men came back with spoils and not empty hands. I've killed men for less than lying to –"
"I'm not lying! I'm ten and –"
I stop talking when I hear a collective audible gasp and realize I've just done something very bad. Hildy marches forward and slaps me across the face so hard it stings.
"Who are you talking to the Jarl like that?!" She demands, slapping me again for good measure.
Suddenly Veigar is at my side, his body tense, ready for action. "Shall I take her outside and kill her, Jarl? Nothing would please me so –"
The Jarl raises his hand, silencing everyone, and then he smiles at me. A man has just casually offered to kill me, and the Jarl smiles.
"Veigar's bloodthirsty," he tells me, in a voice that suggests we're participants in a private conversation and not surrounded by people. "Here, Veigar, look at her eyes – she's not afraid of you. Are you, girl? No, there's been enough flesh for your blade today, go and bring us another cask of ale."
Veigar looks at the Jarl briefly, as if he's about to say something, but the Jarl just looks back at him and that shuts him up. He storms out of the longhouse and the attentions refocuses on the Jarl – and myself.
"Are you hungry?" He asks.
Is it a trick question? I look into his eyes and see no trickery. I nod.
"Her alone?" Hildy cuts in. "None of the others?"
The Jarl glances down the line of other women, distracted and then shakes his head after a few seconds. "No, Hildy, this one will do. And I'll have her sit with me during the feast, you can bathe her later."
With a nod, Hildy leads the other women out of the longhouse and the Jarl walks to the other end of the longhouse to take his seat at the head of the room. I follow behind him, because it seems to be the most obvious choice, and stand to the side after he sits, waiting for instruction, praying I haven't transgressed. The smell of the food is torment now, my stomach aching with hunger and my mouth watering. The feast begins again when the Jarl reaches for his cup and drains it, to the cheers of his men, and I stay where I am, still naked, still terrified.
It's minutes later when the Jarl turns and gestures to me to come to him, pulling me onto his lap as I get close. He's wearing a skirt-like leather garment, like his men, but his is tied at the waist with straps from which hang various beads, shells and tools. Leaned against the table is a sword, it's pommel inlaid with what look to be colored gemstones and its blade gleaming in the firelight. It's still difficult to believe that what's happening is – well, what's actually happening. I am naked on the lap of a Viking warrior, his arm slung casually around my waist, and surrounded by roaring, feasting men. Mostly, they keep their eyes to themselves but every now and again, when the Jarl's attention is elsewhere, I feel eyes on me, drinking me in.
"Here," the Jarl says, passing me a roughly carved wooden bowl full of what looks and smells like meat stew of some kind. "Eat this, girl. Your eyes are just about bursting out of your skull looking at all this food. Are you thirsty? Bring her some ale!"
A few seconds later there is a cup of ale in front of me, but it's going to have to wait. Someone hands me a wooden spoon and I dip it into the stew.
"Oh my God," I breathe, the only words that have time to slip out of my throat between mouthfuls of stew. It's the best thing I've ever tasted, meaty and thick and steaming hot. I keep going for quite a long time, too, cramming spoonful after spoonful into my mouth until it's dripping off my chin and onto my bare thighs and I'm breathless with the sheer effort of eating. It's only then that I realize the Jarl himself has stopped eating and has instead chosen to watch me, leaning back with a deeply amused expression on his face.
"Ale?" He asks, causing the men seated nearest to us to break out laughing as he passes me the cup of ale. I gulp it, pausing after the first taste because it's sweet – not what I was expecting – and then drinking the rest.
"More ale!" The Jarl bellows. "And more stew!"
Halfway through the second enormous bowl of stew, I begin to slow down. And as my hunger and thirst are satisfied, I become more conscious of the hand resting heavily on my thigh.
Well what did you think he was choosing women for? The words flit through my mind as I look at the Jarl out of the corner of my eye. The man is a colossus. Surely he has a wife? Many wives? But there is the fact of that hand.
There is something else, too, besides the hand. Something I don't understand. I'm afraid, that's true. I need to get home, that's also true. The man whose muscular thigh I'm perched upon is as clear a danger to me as there has ever been – and not just to my honor (my virginity has, if anything, been more of a millstone around my neck than anything I've sought to preserve). One of his men was threatening to kill me not an hour ago!
I should feel fear, and I do. But I'm not as afraid of the Jarl as I would have expected, and it doesn't make much sense.
As the feast goes on, and my belly fills further, the lack of sleep over the past 24 hours begins to catch up with me and I catch my head nodding. The Jarl notices it too, catching my chin at one point before it hits the table.
"You're tired," he says, speaking only to me. It hasn't been long but
I've already noticed that when the Jarl speaks, it is often to a whole group of people at once. And when it is directed at one person, they glow from head to foot.
The food has hit me hard – my eyelids are so heavy I can barely keep them open. I'm aware that the Jarl is looking at me, though, perhaps trying to assess whether I'm trying to fake him out so I can make and escape attempt. A few seconds later he gestures for someone to come to us. Hildy.
"Take her," he instructs the woman. "Put her in my bed but let her sleep."
The words 'my bed' barely register and Hildy helps me up, throws a rough woolen blanket around my shoulders and guides me out of the longhouse. Outside it is still daylight and if I were any more awake I would enquire as to how long the feast is expected to continue. But I'm hardly awake at all so I just allow Hildy to lead me to a round wooden building like the one we were first made to wait in, and set me down on a bed of furs. She begins to place wood in a central fire-pit to start a fire but I've drifted off to sleep before I can begin to feel its warmth.
Chapter 7
9th Century
When I wake up, I am disoriented and alone, but nestled into soft furs. Where am I? Oh, yes. Embers glow orange in the fire-pit and I'm thankful for the warmth. I push myself up on my arms and look around – is Hildy lurking? No. I lie back down and listen attentively for any sounds. A dog barking in the distance, nothing else. The feast must still be happening? I have no idea if I've slept for two hours or twelve.
Beside the bed the blanket Hildy wrapped around me has been thrown over a wooden stool. I pick it up and wrap it around my body twice, pulling the corner over my shoulder the last time before tucking it underneath itself near my armpit. Then I walk to the door, which is less a door than a sheet of leather hung over a tall opening, and pull it aside, leaning out into a cool, dark night. It's only late September but there is already a thin layer of frost covering the ground. In front of me, my breath is visible in the dim light from a crescent moon. I look to the left, then to the right, and see no one. In the distance, now, I can hear what must be the feast still going on, the shouts of high-spirited men carried to me on the breeze.