“Warm me up,” she commanded. He obeyed quickly, stripping off his tunic and laying it down on the straw, and gave her pleasure before taking his own. A rush of tears stung her eyes when he was in her, for until now she had known no man but Solvi. She did not regret this, though, and when the tears passed, she knew she would crave him again.
“You are a very direct woman,” said Oddi, when he held her afterward. She pressed back against him, enjoying the full, naked length of his body wrapped around her from head to toe so all parts of her were warmed. Solvi had not been tall enough to offer that. “Don’t you believe in flirting?”
“Sometimes,” said Svanhild. “I thought it would take too long.”
“Have you always been this way, asking for what you want?”
“Yes,” said Svanhild. She did not care, but she asked anyway: “Do you mind?”
“Of course not,” said Oddi. “I should not be surprised—I have heard the songs of your deeds. I only fear you will not want me again.”
“We will see,” said Svanhild. “Do you seek to hold me beyond Yule?”
“I will hold you as long as you let me,” he said, tightening his arms around her. She suspected he had said that to many women before her.
“Yule is a time of license,” she said. “I do not promise more.”
“As you like,” said Oddi. He kissed her shoulder. She felt him stirring against her and moved so he might press into her again, and move slowly, now that the initial urgency was over. She drifted in pleasure, half in and out of a doze until he thrust more forcefully and finished. Now he fell away and asleep, his breathing gone heavy almost as soon as he finished.
She wanted to sleep, wrapped up by him, but she did not want to be discovered here in the morning. She wriggled out of Oddi’s embrace and pulled her dress on. When she opened the door, a shaft of moonlight illuminated his face, slack in sleep. She waited to feel ashamed of her forwardness, to feel some grief that she had betrayed Solvi, but all she could feel was the satisfaction in her body. In her spirit too, proud that she had taken what she wanted. If she were a more foolish woman, this feeling could make her want to marry Oddi—her brother’s best friend, a choice that would mean she need never part from Ragnvald again. Part of her joy in this night came from her free choosing of it, though, and knowing that she could choose differently tomorrow.
* * *
At the games the next day, Svanhild felt Oddi’s presence among the competitors like a current pulling at her, though she found as much pleasure in resisting it as giving in to it. She could take Oddi back to bed, or not, as the mood struck her, and it seemed pleasant simply to dwell in the longing, the waiting that would lend savor to their next joining. Her memory of Oddi’s embrace made it easier to ignore Harald’s looks as well. Harald wanted another wife for his collection, and an unbreakable connection to Ragnvald, considerations far more important to him than Svanhild herself. And she enjoyed the knowledge that Oddi’s dark eyes followed her everywhere. After six years of marriage with Solvi, he had often taken her for granted, except when he first came home from a trip away. It was the way of anything that ceased to be new, the question at night no longer whether she would let him into her bed, but if she had enough energy to enjoy it, or only to satisfy him so she could get her sleep. That would happen in time if she married Oddi or Harald or anyone else.
She had no time to seek out Oddi’s company until late that night. He had won a knife-throwing contest, and Svanhild cheered him with an enthusiasm she had not felt for anything so simple in a long time. She met him in the same barn as the night before, where he touched her as if he craved her skin against his, and then afterward as though she were something precious. A woman could fall in love with this feeling. She fell asleep next to him this time, and woke at the sound of servants stirring in the early morning before crawling back into bed with Mafa and Hilda.
She spent much of the day tending the meat cooking in the sacrifice grove, now stewed to perfect tenderness for the final night of feasting, and then at the bathhouse, washing off the grease and ash. Ragnvald met her as she left in the late afternoon, as the sky grew dark.
“Do you mean to insult Harald?” Ragnvald asked, without even greeting her first.
She considered angry denial, or feigning bafflement, but his words only made her feel weary. She had been gone for six years and returned to exactly what she had left behind in Vestfold. A brother who loved her, but less than he loved his own honor, his king, and his pride.
“This has nothing to do with him,” she said. “Or with you.”
“My sister and my best friend—and after I told you of Harald’s offer,” said Ragnvald.
“Every man I know is tied to you in some way, by duty, by friendship, by enmity,” Svanhild answered. “I thought you wanted to put distance between you and Harald.”
“If he hears of this, it will be far more distance than is safe for me.” Ragnvald spoke in a low, urgent voice. “I told him that you want to wait to make sure you are not pregnant by Solvi before coming to his bed. Not that you preferred Hakon’s base-born son.”
“And you think that he will blame you? I was Solvi’s wife, raider, and sea queen, and he still thinks that you can control me?” Svanhild laughed. Ragnvald’s worries seemed so small compared to all that she had endured. “He values and loves you, Ragnvald. It will take more than my choice of men to break the two of you apart.”
“When you are delivered, you should marry Harald. His wives are well treated. They live with their families if they like. They are wealthy.”
“You sound like Vigdis when she told me the joys of widowhood,” said Svanhild.
“When was that?” Ragnvald asked suspiciously.
Svanhild waved the question away. “A long time ago. Tell me more of how wonderful it is to be one of Harald’s wives. They don’t have lovers, do they?”
“No,” said Ragnvald in a choked voice, “but Princess Gyda commands upland armies.”
“I do not wish to command armies,” said Svanhild, and immediately knew it for a lie. If she could trade fates with any woman living it would be with Gyda, not for her betrothal to Harald, but for her power, and the way nothing seemed to touch her. Svanhild did not have the knowledge to command armies, but she might command a sea battle, if it came to that—she had been in enough of them.
“What do you wish?” Ragnvald asked.
“For now?” Svanhild’s anger turned to grief and she faced him with tears in her eyes. “To mourn my child and my marriage. To care for my brother and his sons. To see if this child of Solvi’s I carry draws breath, or if I must mourn her too. Would you add something else to that list, brother, or may I live my own life?”
“Oddi would marry you, even if you bear Solvi’s child. He would acknowledge it, I am certain.”
Svanhild shook her head. “I will not marry him, and I do not think he wishes to marry me, although he would do it gladly to please you.”
“What are you doing then, Svanhild?” Ragnvald asked more kindly.
“Pleasing myself, taking a lover, nothing less than you did with our stepmother.” Svanhild smiled wryly at him.
“It is different for you,” Ragnvald replied.
“Today it is not,” said Svanhild.
“I will forbid Oddi.”
“If you must. It was not meant to last very long between us.”
“Did Solvi make you like this?” His voice carried a grief that made Svanhild’s eyes burn again.
“Perhaps,” she said. “I have learned to take what I want when I can, for I may not keep it long. Is that such a terrible lesson to learn?”
Ragnvald stopped his swift walking and faced her. “What was he like, Svanhild?” he asked. “This boy that I will never meet?”
“Please, brother,” she said, turning away. “I can survive anything but your kindness. See, I have put it behind me—I have already taken a lover.”
“If I make you mourn him, will you then leave Oddi be?�
� Ragnvald asked, his voice soft, making it a gentle jest. Their walking had carried them down to the harbor. In the still air, the water hardly moved. Ragnvald sat on a wooden bench and waited for Svanhild to sit next to him. “You named your son after our father. Was he like him?”
She gave a short laugh with tears in it. “Nothing like. I don’t remember our father very well, but you told me he was reckless, joyous. I thought he might like . . . Solvi, even if you did not.”
“I did like him once,” said Ragnvald. He hesitated. “I am sure our father would have liked him.”
“Eystein was nothing like our father. He was quiet. Long limbed. He reminded me of you a little. Too much dignity for his own good.” Ragnvald laughed ruefully at that. “But he was himself, and I have never known anyone like him. He was not bold.” Her tears flowed more freely now, easing the pain in her throat that she had felt whenever she cried before. “He loved Iceland. He loved the land. He told me he was not in pain when he was dying. Only tired, he said. Do you think it was true?”
“Do you think he would lie to you about something like that?” Ragnvald asked.
Svanhild hesitated, then nodded. “Perhaps. He hid his coughing from me until it was too late.”
“No one recovers when they have been coughing blood for long,” said Ragnvald. “I have never seen it. You can ask Ronhild. She is a notable healer. And you say he was not strong.”
“He was strong,” she said, sitting up. “It was not the sort of strength that . . .” Then she fell back against Ragnvald’s side. “I thought he might grow up to be a strong and just farmer, whose stock always increased because he knew it so well. I wanted to find a place for him. Solvi would not . . .” She could not continue, though, to share what had been wrong between her and Solvi with Ragnvald, to give him that triumph.
“You can tell me about Solvi if you want,” said Ragnvald. “I forgive you for that.”
She sat up angrily. “You forgive me, do you? Keep your forgiveness, brother, I do not want it.”
“Fine, then. I do not forgive you. But I love you.”
She smiled a bit. “We never fought like this when we were children.”
“Perhaps now we can make up the time,” said Ragnvald. “We can fight in Sogn and then in Naustdal.”
“I would like that,” said Svanhild. “Very much.”
24
The sound of Hilda and Svanhild arguing in the kitchen woke Ragnvald from his dream. He could not hear the words, only the cadences and tones—this fight was just beginning, polite, with an edge of tension in Svanhild’s higher-pitched voice, and resignation in Hilda’s. Soon, Svanhild’s would become shrill, and Hilda’s more plodding, then something would fall or be thrown, and someone would storm out of the kitchen in disgust. Since the birth of Svanhild’s daughter and a long recovery that kept her confined to her bed for most of the summer, she had found fault with everything Hilda did.
Ragnvald rolled over next to Alfrith and kissed her shoulder, glad every morning that she had come with him from Smola. His traveling party had stopped on the island on the way back to Sogn after Yule. Alfrith met Ragnvald and his family as they walked from the ships to the main hall, as if her magic had told her he would be coming. She had worn dark homespun, woven finely enough that it molded over her breasts and her long waist. She carried herself as upright as a queen. A streak of white made the rest of her hair look as dark and glossy as a raven’s wing.
“Ragnvald the Mighty,” she said. “We hear of you always and wonder when you will return.”
“I am here,” he said. “And this is my wife, Hilda, and my sister, Svanhild.”
Alfrith bowed again. “Would they like to see the grounds where you became a saga-hero? It was on this very plain that you fought the draugr.”
Ragnvald thought he heard a touch of mocking in her voice, and did not mind, for it meant that Alfrith saw him clearly. “Hilda and Svanhild both know the truth of that,” he said. “That the creature I fought was only your brother, wounded and near death.”
“King Hakon has passed by this way again,” Alfrith had told him. “He seemed less pleased with you than last time.”
Ragnvald shrugged and Hilda stepped forward. “I have come to meet you,” she said to Alfrith. “My husband has spoken well of you.” Ragnvald was caught between embarrassment at Hilda involving herself in something so personal, and pride at her calm and dignity. She and Alfrith walked aside and spoke while Rafni, the new master of Smola, made Ragnvald and his family welcome.
Alfrith joined him later, after dinner, sitting down next to him before the long fire. “I have a husband now,” she told him, “but your wife thinks I should leave him and go with you.”
“I think you should too,” Ragnvald said. She sat forward, her hands under her thighs, her hair swept over one shoulder so he could see the tan skin of her neck, marked with small brown dots from the sun. He had come to Smola for her and no other reason, and if she refused him, he would sail away and never return. That, combined with Hilda’s approval, made him bold. He put his hand on her shoulder. He had not touched her before, when he had known her for the sister of his draugr and she had known him for a scared young man, not a hero. When his fingers brushed her skin, all of his memories of her, his imagining her as a creature as supernatural as her brother had seemed, solidified into a living woman with warm skin. “Is your husband a king?” he asked, in a low voice.
“No, he is a farmer and a horse breeder,” she said.
“Is he kind to you?” Ragnvald asked.
“Not particularly,” she answered.
“Tell me you will come with me.”
“You could have me and go away again,” she said, leaning back against him.
“Would he not mind that?”
She shrugged. “You are a king. He will understand. You will get bored with me. You only want the excitement of a new woman.”
“I have many faults, but fickleness is not among them,” said Ragnvald. He thought of Vigdis. He would have kept her in his household if Hilda had not insisted on her going, even if he no longer shared her bed. He owed her that much for his killing of Olaf.
Alfrith did not have Vigdis’s melting allure, or Hilda’s solidness, or the otherworldliness of Gyda. Instead she reminded him of driftwood washed up on a shore, whorls and curves and complications, a purely natural thing shaped by wind and waves. She did not need him, and so if she chose him, it would be for himself, not for her ambition.
“I have thought of you often,” said Ragnvald.
“I am flattered that you remember me from your short time here, when so much has succeeded it,” she said.
“Do you hate me for ending your brother’s . . . walking?” He did not say life, for the man had been nearer to death than life when he fell upon Ragnvald’s sword.
“No,” she said. Some tension went out of her body where her back pressed against his flank. “He was already dead.”
“What did you and Hilda talk about?” Ragnvald asked.
“She said she did not want to bear any more children. I told her I could give her magic and herbs to prevent that, but she wants you to have children if you want them. She said you are hard to please but worth the effort.”
Ragnvald put his arm around Alfrith’s waist, moved by a wave of affection not only for her but also for Hilda, who loved him more than he deserved, and for Svanhild, who loved him also. If Alfrith consented to be his, he would consider himself more blessed in his womenfolk even than Harald. “Come with me,” he said. “If you bear me sons, they will be wealthy warriors. Do you have any children already?”
“A son,” said Alfrith. Ragnvald immediately felt a mixture of jealousy and pride—she had borne a son to another man and could soon produce sons for him. “I will leave him with his father, I think. They are of one spirit.”
“I can elevate him, if you like,” said Ragnvald. “He could train with Harald’s sons and become a wealthy warrior.” He spoke in her ear now, close enou
gh to smell her hair, which had been washed with something sharp and herbal.
“He has brothers and friends. He will train the horses of Smola and fish its waters. I am happy to leave a part of myself here.” She tilted her head in invitation. “I will be happier still to be gone.”
“You can send for him anytime you like,” said Ragnvald. “He will always be welcome with me.” The following day they departed Smola, Ragnvald’s ship heavier by another woman and a pair of foals he had bought from Alfrith’s husband, paying many times their worth to soften the blow of her going.
On this chilly morning in Naustdal, as he looked at her in the dimness of his room, he saw only a curve of pale shoulder and a spill of dark hair, and the voices of the other women receded into meaningless noise. Alfrith woke at his touch, and welcomed him into her arms.
“I dreamed,” he said.
“Tell me,” she replied. She had shared his bed for more than half a year now, and every morning, he told her his dreams, when he remembered them. Often they contained scenes of battles he had fought, though in these he fared far worse than in his memories: he could not fight his way past his opponent, while in the distance men he loved fought and failed without his help. These she called only fears and dismissed. Others she listened to with more concern.
“I dreamed of Vemund’s hall again,” he said. The dream fell away as he tried to grasp it, breaking apart like threads of rotten fabric. “I was inside. It seemed that King Hakon held the torch.” He could remember no more than that, it seemed, though some details lingered just out of reach. “If only I could see more . . . I think this is an important dream.”
“It may be. Or it may only be that burning alive is a terrible way to die and it haunts you still,” she said.
“And King Hakon?” Ragnvald asked.
Alfrith placed her hand on his cheek, her thumb tracing the path of the scar on his cheek. He had seen her scars too, one made by an errant coal from a cook fire, another from a man’s knife. “You fear he moves against Harald,” she said. “And you.”
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