Her crying slowed, and now she felt ill, and vomited up the little food she had eaten that morning onto the sand. She stood, and Solvi’s men immediately grabbed her arms again. “I will not,” she said, hating herself. She would not die today; she had not loved Eystein enough. “I want to rinse my mouth.”
One of them poured from his ale skin into her cupped hands, and she splashed it into her mouth, onto her cheeks, washing away the tear tracks. Svanhild breathed slowly to steady herself. She knew this roiling in her stomach. It was not grief alone that wrenched her breakfast from her. Nor was it some delayed sea sickness. She was with child again. It had been a long time since she had reason to hope. A few times her courses had been late, but then they came, so if Solvi’s seed had taken root, it had not stayed very long. This might come to nothing as well. She hoped it would pass early, so she did not have to worry for long about another of Solvi’s children dying.
* * *
That night, Solvi came to their tent. He had avoided it since leaving Iceland. “Svanhild, are you in there?” he asked.
Svanhild looked up at the roof, shrouded in shadows. “Where else would I be? I am wherever you put me. I obey you, and go where you say, even when it means the death of my son.”
“Good,” he said. He blew out the lamp and came to her pallet. He pulled her blankets from her, and tugged up her nightgown. She wanted to turn him away. She was too full of her grief, of another child that she would likely mourn alone, to take him into her as well. She felt outside her body, as she had on the ship, as he pushed in between her legs, slicking himself with spit to ease the way. She did not expect to feel pleasure from it, and she remained detached until the end when sensation grabbed her as though she were crushed in a giant’s hand, and wrung a sob from her. She clung to him. If he said one kind word to her, she would cry, scream out her grief. He pulled away.
“Stay,” she said. “Please. Let it not be this way between us. I am . . .” She hesitated. She did not want to tell him of her pregnancy this early, but if it could forge a link between them, she must take that chance. “I am pregnant.”
“You are?” he asked, sounding half skeptical, half hopeful. “Are you sure?”
“It is early, but I was sick on the beach . . . ,” said Svanhild. He stiffened at the reminder of their son’s funeral.
“Keep better watch of this one,” said Solvi. “You let the first one die.”
His words cut too close to her fears, that she should have guarded Eystein better, insisted on dry land for his bed before it became his pyre. “You’re the one who made him sail when it weakened him,” she cried.
“It was the air in Iceland.”
Svanhild set her jaw. “Do you deny that sailing made him weak?”
“He was always weak,” Solvi yelled, and then quieted to a whisper. “If anyone killed him, it was you performing that ritual in Iceland with your witch.”
“You hate me,” said Svanhild, crying. “Everyone—Geirny, my brother, said you were cruel, they told me of your father’s death-worship, and said you were the same. I thought you a living man, but you are dead. Your seed is dead. You died as a boy, and I am married to your shade.”
He slapped her, hard enough to stop her speaking. “If you were more of a woman, you would have kept him alive. You said he hated being on board a ship—but you didn’t. A good mother would have made a home for him.”
“You had a proper wife before, and you hated her,” Svanhild cried. “Many children die. Your children die.”
“Yes, and you should kill this one too—if it is even born. Better than letting it be our child.”
“If you felt that way,” said Svanhild quietly, “you should have divorced me.”
“So I should have,” said Solvi. “Then I wouldn’t have had to watch you kill my son.”
“Get out,” said Svanhild. He hesitated, seeming aware that he had gone too far; they both had. Svanhild held herself motionless, waiting for his decision, willing him to defy her now, as he had so many times before. He cast his eyes down, and then turned and left the tent.
Svanhild only delayed for a moment before gathering her belongings. She kept her jewels with her at all times, in a bag that she wore tied around her waist. Solvi had been generous with her and always gave her gold, so she could carry the most value in the smallest volume. She had some silver as well, worked up into beautiful rings, brooches, and necklaces she had chosen to remember the lands they visited. It made a heavy package, stuffed with wool to keep it from jingling. Solvi trusted his men, usually, but a thick package of gold might be enough to tempt them. Her tent also contained a skin of watered ale, and the cakes that she had been feeding to Eystein, soaked in goat’s milk to keep his strength up. It had not helped Eystein. Nothing had.
Svanhild tied her knife onto her belt, pulled on her cloak, and left her tent, walking out onto the beach on the edge of Trondheim Fjord. She could still stay with Solvi. She knew that his words had been a cry of pain, poorly masked by his anger. She might comfort him once the rawness of his grief passed, but she could never forgive what he had said. Without Eystein, she had nothing to bind herself to him. Ragnvald had offered to take her once with Solvi’s child growing inside her. She hoped he would accept her six years later, in the same condition. He must. Ragnvald would count her return as a victory over Solvi.
The moon was big, though waning, and clouds shadowed it from time to time, plunging the beach into darkness. The tents of Solvi’s men made dark shapes against the lighter background of the sand. None kept watch tonight. Who would suspect that one of Harald’s enemies had washed up on this abandoned beach, next to rocky ground and a thick forest?
Svanhild trusted herself and her sense of direction from years of adventure with Solvi. He would hate her for leaving, she knew. But he already hated her for Eystein’s death. This night, he had taken her body the same way he did early in their marriage, when he had hated her for her rejection of him almost as much as he hated her now. She did not want to win him back this time, though, with nothing to gain but more misery, more lost children.
When they came this way the day before, Solvi’s ships had passed by a broader and more welcoming beach, with a slope that led up to a smallish hall on some farmland. Every day traders sailed these waters, as well as fishermen whose catch kept Harald’s court fed. Svanhild set off through the trees toward that hall, moving slowly, from one tree to the next. It would only take half a night of walking to reach the farm, and someone there would bring her to Harald, then to Ragnvald, to safety.
The moon set well before dawn, leaving her in full darkness, too dark even to feel her way from tree to tree. She wrapped herself in her cloak and covered herself with a blanket of leaves for shelter. Her grief too kept her insulated. With this pain in her chest, how could cold or hunger hurt her? If Solvi came and found her, she would endure it; if someone else wanted to harm her, she would endure that too.
15
Ragnvald could spend more time with his sons at Nidaros than he did at Sogn, where he always had other work to do, disputes to settle, and farm business to oversee. Here his sons provided a welcome distraction from the endless games of power and favor at Harald’s court, so after a breakfast where it seemed to Ragnvald that every petty noble in Norway wanted him to use his influence with Harald to better their position, Ragnvald brought his sons to see Harald’s new stallion.
“Pretty,” said Ivar. The stallion danced around its paddock, tossing its glossy black mane. Compared with shaggy fjord ponies and their crossbreeds, it looked delicate.
“Maybe too pretty for Harald,” said Ragnvald. “It might want a smaller rider.”
“You, Father?” Einar asked.
“Not me. That gift would be more trouble than it’s worth.” Like much of Harald’s generosity.
“What kind of horse is it?” Ivar let go of Ragnvald’s hand and pressed himself up against the fence, looking between the slats. Einar followed him, watching the horse warily.
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“I’ve heard it’s an Arab,” said Ragnvald.
“What is that?” Einar asked.
“It is from a faraway land,” Ragnvald answered. The horse was beautiful and had a wild freedom to its movements, even in the paddock, that made Ragnvald’s chest tight with longing, not to ride the horse, but to free it, or to be it, in its native land of sand and sun. “Where it never snows and men have dark skin. They are like us though—great explorers and merchants. Sometimes their explorers come here. And a few Norsemen have gone to their great cities. When we are friends, we trade things.”
“Like this horse,” said Ivar.
“Like this horse,” Ragnvald agreed.
As Ragnvald shepherded the boys toward the women’s chamber to leave them in the care of Hilda or one of their servants, a woman overtook them. Her blue silk overdress caught the sunlight as she moved and Ragnvald knew her to be Vigdis by the shape of her hips and the way she moved, even before he saw her face. Golden hair tied back by a narrow band of the same blue snaked down her back in a long, complicated braid. She knelt down to greet the boys.
“Einar Ragnvaldsson,” Vigdis said in her honeyed voice. “You look just like your brother Hallbjorn.” That was her son by Ragnvald’s stepfather, Olaf, named after Vigdis’s father. When Ragnvald became king of Sogn, he had sent Hallbjorn to his grandfather, along with a wet nurse, so he would not have to raise up his enemy in his own household.
“Vigdis,” said Ragnvald in a choked voice. “What do you want?”
“Do you remember me?” she asked Einar, not turning or acknowledging Ragnvald. Einar’s eyes flicked up at Ragnvald, who remained carefully impassive. He wanted to know the answer as well. Ivar moved closer to his brother.
Einar nodded, once hesitantly, then again more emphatically. “You used to be one of the king’s women.”
“One of?” said Vigdis with a low laugh. Now she turned to look at Ragnvald. “I did not know there were so many.”
“There were not—I mean . . . ,” Ragnvald trailed off. He should have known better than to respond to her question. He had learned, when she still shared his bed, to keep silent when answering could not help him.
She looked satisfied at having flustered him, and turned back to Einar, though her words were still for Ragnvald. “Should I hate you?” she asked. “For making my son forget me?”
“I remember you,” said Einar coolly. Vigdis’s face tightened.
“Einar, this is your mother. Vigdis, what are you doing here?” he asked, feeling helpless. “Did you not return safely to your brother?”
“Yes,” she said with a hint of bitterness. “Safe and sound.” Vigdis had grown up in a trapper’s family in the mountains east of Stavanger Fjord.
“Did you miss the sea?” Ragnvald tried for sarcasm, yet to his ears his voice sounded as though he yearned for her still. “Why are you here?” he asked more roughly. He wanted her to reveal something that would help him against Atli. As much as he might wish it, that business would not be over until Harald gave his judgment, and perhaps not even then.
“I am a widow,” she said, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “I may go where I wish.”
“I wish—” Ragnvald cut off his thought. He wished she were anywhere else. He wished that Hilda had not forced him to send her away. She smiled up at him past a veil of hair that had come loose from her braid. The silk of her dress rippled against her thigh, over the curve where hip met waist. Ragnvald tried to think of Hilda’s instead, pleasing and golden in candlelight, as if she spent all day sunning them instead of hiding them under her skirts. Hilda had no dress of such a vibrant blue. Ragnvald did not think such a bright color would suit her; it would make her look brown and worn.
Vigdis seemed to see all of this pass over his face. Ragnvald could not tell if it pleased her or not, to know that she still moved him. He had been unable to satisfy his craving for her in those early days, greedy for the feeling of her skin under his hands, her legs parting for him, the pleasure she gave him and the pleasure she sometimes took.
“I am glad I am here, though I am sure you are not.” Vigdis stood, moving well away from Einar. “And your wife is not. I did not think you would bring your wife here.” She smoothed down her dress over her waist. “She did not seem as though she would happily stir from Sogn.”
“You hoped to find me alone? Ready to fall into your bed again?” Ragnvald asked. The boys watched silently, eyes round with interest. They could hardly understand these adult concerns but must sense their importance. “I would rather not see you at all. If more payment will make you leave, you shall have it.”
“You cannot buy me off this time,” she said. “I will stay clear of you, if I can. If that is what you wish.” Her gaze dropped from his face to his belt, and Ragnvald had to grit his teeth to keep from putting his hands there, to adjust his tunic to make sure his clothes fell well, that he looked as trim and strong as when Vigdis had left.
“It is,” said Ragnvald.
“Very well. I will do my best, if you grant me some time with my son.” Her eyes finally left him. She looked down at Einar.
“What of the son you left behind in Stavanger?” Ragnvald asked.
“It is not Stavanger,” said Vigdis, showing a rare irritation. “It is forests and nothing more. The river there is called Hel. But my son is well cared for.”
“So is Einar,” said Ragnvald, taken aback at the bitterness in her words. She must have been desperate to leave her brother’s household.
“He is bruised,” she said. She reached down to caress Einar’s face, but he ducked her touch like an unfriendly cat.
“Boys fight,” said Ragnvald. “He is fine.”
She nodded her head and walked by him, leaving plenty of room between them so not even the hem of her dress touched him.
“Do you remember her truly?” Ragnvald asked Einar when she was out of earshot.
Einar glanced at Ivar, who had remained quiet throughout. He was a happy child who did not often react to the tensions between his elders, unlike Einar.
“I don’t know, my lord,” said Einar. “I think so.”
“You may see her,” said Ragnvald, “but tell me if she asks you to do anything.” If he had said such things to Ivar, he would not have understood, but Einar seemed less a child than a small man standing before Ragnvald, one whom Ragnvald must meet on his own terms. “If you do not want to see her, you do not have to,” he added.
“What do you wish of me?” Einar asked.
For you to behave as a child, thought Ragnvald. “For no more questions,” he said brusquely. “Do as you please.”
Ivar twisted his hands together. He plainly felt left out, and disconcerted by the conversations he did not understand. “What about me, Father?” he asked. Ragnvald looked down at both of them. Einar, six months older, a head taller, and years older in his spirit, still deserved better than to face Vigdis and her manipulations.
“Help your brother and be kind to your mother,” said Ragnvald. “Things are strange for all of us here.”
* * *
A commotion near the water drew Ragnvald’s attention away from the boys. Beyond the paddocks and shore buildings, he saw the mast of a ship drawing near. The sail, striped blue and white, hung at a slant, poorly trimmed. Dirt streaked its edges, and decay darkened the holes that ropes passed through. Halogaland kings—Hakon and his sons—used blue and white.
Ragnvald ran toward the shore, then slowed when he realized he had left his sons behind. He waited for them to catch up as Heming Hakonsson emerged from between two of the buildings. When he came closer Ragnvald saw he had dried blood streaked across his clothes and a cut above his eye.
“Are you hurt?” Ragnvald asked him. “Do you need a healer?”
Heming tugged at his shirt of saffron silk, and drew his fingers absently across the brownish spatters. He flexed his hands, which were streaked with blood and mottled with bruises on his knuckles. “No,” he said after a moment.
“Most of this is not my blood.”
Heming’s men, no more than ten, assembled behind him. A sorry lot, all young and richly dressed, but looking ashen, and bearing wounds and stains similar to Heming’s. “I do not have time to greet you, Ragnvald. I must see Harald.”
“He is usually at the practice ground at this time of day,” said Ragnvald. “I will lead you.”
“I know the way,” said Heming. He pushed past Ragnvald.
“Go find your mother,” said Ragnvald to his sons. “My lady,” he added for Einar, who was very conscious of titles. “I want you both safe.”
He followed Heming to the practice yard. A wooden fence enclosed an area big enough for a hundred men to spar without danger to any but their adversary. Harald stood at the top of the gentle slope, instructing Oddi and another man, whom Ragnvald recognized as Atli’s son, Aldi. Hakon stood talking with Guthorm, in a low voice. Something in the way Hakon’s eyes flickered at Ragnvald when he approached made Ragnvald think that he was the subject of their discussion.
Ragnvald never grew tired of seeing Harald fighting, either in practice or in battle. His ability with the sword seemed inborn, natural, but he also had the wit to be able to break his skill down and teach it to other men, and it was in these moments that he was most kingly. He forged bonds with his men this way, and made them into a force of warriors who would pour out their blood and effort every summer to build his kingdom. Six years of fighting by Harald’s side and sparring against him had improved Ragnvald’s swordsmanship until few could withstand him.
Harald stood, holding a practice sword in his hand, and beckoned his two attackers. As soon as they rushed him, he disarmed Aldi with a quick, hard parry, and then he turned and rammed his sword’s pommel into Oddi’s wrist, who dropped his blade and shook out his hand.
“How do you guard against this?” Aldi asked.
“Tighter grip,” said Harald. “Practice carrying one of these oblong stones in your hand as long as you can.” Harald picked up a stone about half as long as his thigh and as big around as his palm. “Walk about the yard with it, to measure off distance. Whatever distance you can do today, work until you’ve doubled it by next month, and again two months after.”
The Sea Queen Page 18