Season of the Sun

by Catherine Coulter

  Lotti giggled, and Olav, rather than looking at her with ill-disguised loathing, smiled. He said slowly, looking directly at her, “I’m hungry, have been since my wedding day. But not now. Aye, methinks your sister’s fine soup will settle without contempt in my belly.”

  “I pray God it will do so, Olav.”

  It did. The next day, he was afflicted with bloody bowels but once. The next day not at all. He smiled, he laughed, and he even worked in his shop for an hour. And that night he looked at Zarabeth and she knew what he was thinking. He wanted her and soon he would have the strength to take her. She swallowed. Endure, she would endure. There was no choice. She looked at him whilst he sorted through several otter pelts, here, in the living area, not in his outer shop. He had changed, becoming kinder to her and to Lotti, gentler in his dealings with both of them. This was owing to Toki’s vicious attack, and, Zarabeth guessed, it was also the specter of death that had made him judge things differently. Still, the thought of him mounting her, of him touching her, made her recoil.

  She could say naught against him. He was her husband, and thus to take her was his right.

  The following day he said to her at the noonday meal, “I have met with the council of elders. I have told them that my son is no more a son to me. I have told them that in the case of my death, it is you who will have all my earthly goods.”

  She stared at him in surprise. “Why, Olav? This cannot be! You still do not hold Toki’s silly words against Keith? Of a certainty, she brings anger with her barbed tongue and her ill-humor, but Keith is your only son and he deserves something from you. He has not your talents and your gifts. He has need of you.”

  “You are too generous, Zarabeth. The boy became a man, and thus he is responsible for himself. It is done. I will not change it.”

  “But you arranged for his marriage with Toki. Do you not remember? He was not overly pleased, but he did as you bade him do. How can you turn your back on him now?”

  Olav didn’t like that reminder, but he said naught to her. It was true that Toki’s parents had brought him much gold, but that had been spent in foolish ventures, by Keith, within a year. Still, it gave him pause. Not that it mattered much what he did in the near future regarding his heir, for now his sickness seemed to have abated.

  That night Zarabeth lay stiff and silent on the box bed beside Lotti, listening to Olav move about in the living area. She felt her flesh grow cold. He would come to her and ask her to visit him in his bed. She knew it, and she prepared herself for it, yet when it happened, when he pulled aside the animal hide that separated her sleeping area from the living area, she pretended sleep.

  “Nay, Zarabeth, ’tis time. I know you’re awake. Come with me and I’ll teach you things you will enjoy.”

  She rose, knowing there was naught else she could do. She was wearing her sleep shift, and it came but to her knees. She felt exposed and ashamed and helpless. She had braided her hair and it hung in one thick tail down her back. He took her hand and led her into his sleeping chamber. His box bed was large and made of sturdy oak planking, covered with soft furs and wool blankets.

  “I will try to become husband to you, Zarabeth.” With those words he leaned forward and kissed her. She forced herself to bear it. She tried not to think of Magnus, but he was there nonetheless, deep in her mind, a part of her that would never be gone. In time, perhaps, she thought frantically, he would be a ghost, a whisper of a smile, and a look, but now he was real and alive and vital within her. And another man was kissing her.

  “Unbraid your hair. A woman shouldn’t have her hair scraped back from her face. It pleases me not.”

  She pulled the braid over her shoulder and untied the leather tie. Slowly she pulled the loosely woven hair free of its braid, smoothing her fingers through it until Olav stopped her and freed the tangles himself. “Soft,” he said, and brought her hair to his cheek, rubbing it back and forth. “Red as a sunset that tokens a night storm, and so very soft.” He sifted his fingers through her hair as she stood still as a stone. When he was done, he stood back.

  “I require stimulation even though I have gone a long time without a woman’s body. My illness did me no good and dulled my body’s appetites. I will sit here and you will disrobe for me. ’Twill make my manhood spring to life again, Zarabeth.”

  He sat on his box bed, leaned back against the smooth-planed wooden wall, and crossed his arms over his chest. He watched her. His heart pounded in slow, deep strokes. He had left the animal skin pulled back, for he was always cold, it seemed, and he needed the heat from the fire even in the summer. He felt the warmth of it on his flesh now, even as he watched her.

  She stood there in the dim light of the dying fire, her hair wild around her face, and wanted to die.

  “I cannot, Olav.”

  He didn’t move. “You will not deny me this time, Zarabeth, like you did before. I understood then, for I was unable to become your husband, but now it will be different. You have made me well with your fine care. Now make me a man again.”

  What could she do? She wished in vain for the numbness, the blankness, that had kept her from feeling much of anything after Magnus had left. But the numbness was only a faint memory now. She felt fear and hideous shame, and she wished wildly that Olav had remained ill.

  “Now, Zarabeth.”

  Her hands went to the narrow straps on her shoulders. Slowly she pulled the straps down until the shift dropped to her breasts. He was staring at her, and she froze. He sat forward suddenly and touched his outstretched hand to her breast. His fingertips were smooth and soft. He jerked the shift down to her waist and stared at her until she was trembling with the strength of her fear. She doubted he saw the revulsion in her eyes, for he wasn’t looking above her breasts.

  “By Thor’s ax, you are beautiful. I hadn’t realized . . . so white and soft.” He sighed then, and sat forward to press his face against her breasts, his arms wrapped around her back. She didn’t move. She closed her eyes and held herself perfectly still. She felt his hot breath against her flesh, felt his tongue lick her cold flesh. His breathing quickened and his arms tightened around her, pulling her more closely against him. His hands went to her buttocks and he was jerking at the shift to have her naked.

  “So beautiful,” he whispered, then drew back, staring up at her white face. “You don’t want this, Zarabeth, but you will learn to accommodate me. Now, I will show you my manhood and you will help me.”

  He bared himself quickly and she saw how very thin he was, his flesh hanging loosely on him, his man’s rod flaccid and small, nestled in the thick gray-gold hair of his groin.

  She watched him touch himself, watched as he tried frantically to bring himself to life, but his man’s rod remained as it was.

  He looked up at her then and saw the disgust on her face, the revulsion she couldn’t hide. He felt fury and frustration in equal amounts. “Didn’t that damned Viking show you his man’s rod? Didn’t you touch him, caress him with your hands, take him in your mouth? Was his rod so great, then, Zarabeth? Aye, he is young and vigorous, but I tell you, even he is sometimes like this. Touch me, damn you!”

  She took a step back, then another. She was shaking her head, covering her breasts with her hands. “Please, Olav, I cannot. I am a maid. I have never before seen a man’s body, nay, not the Viking’s. Please, you cannot want me to caress you now . . . not like this.”

  He stared down at himself and knew it was no good. He was shriveled and dead. Then he looked up at her, saw that she’d covered herself again with her nightshift, and laughed, at himself, at the irony of his life.

  “A beautiful young wife . . . just look at you, all that red hair, and your body, so glorious and soft, so very white your flesh, and I can do nothing save gaze upon you. Ah, yes, you’re a maid, Zarabeth, and I offend you by showing you my limp manhood. Go to bed. I wish to sleep. I will regain my strength, you will see. I will cover you and come inside you and you won’t have to see me like this again. A
ye, I’ll be a man again and you’ll be obedient to my demands.”

  She fled, dumb with relief.

  Magnus stood on the high mound outside his fortified farmstead, Malek, and looked west toward the upper end of the Gravak Valley. It was high summer, and there was much work to do in the fields. Soon would come the harvest and he would join all his men and women and work from dawn until twilight dimmed the night skies and he fell exhausted into his bed. He looked at the steep fir-tree slopes on the far side of the fjord, immensely beautiful land that dropped gradually into water that was in many places over one hundred feet deep at the shore. The green of the tree-thick mountains was vivid against the crystal blue of the water. It was his home and he’d know no other. It was always with joy that he returned here to the valley of his birth, the valley that had belonged to his family for more generations than he could remember. There were many people in the valley now, and soon, like so many other Norwegians, they would be land-hungry, for the earth could not feed their numbers. But for now, the land was fertile and the weather had blessed them with rain aplenty and the wheat and rye and corn grew deep and rich in the soil. It would be another generation, at least, perhaps his son, who would leave the valley to conquer new lands and settle them and rule them.

  Upon his return to the valley this time, his wealth had further increased, but it had brought him no joy, for there was the gnawing emptiness and savage fury that mingled in seemingly equal parts within him. He moved, restless now, striding to the edge of the cliff that formed the outward boundary of his farmstead, and felt the pain of it, the sheer rage of it fill him. By Odin’s wounds, what was wrong with him that she would scorn him? Was he so repellent of character? So scrawny of body that she didn’t like the notion of bedding with him? Perhaps it was just that, in the end, she found she couldn’t leave her home to journey to an unknown foreign land. Perhaps she simply hadn’t trusted him enough. Perhaps she had lied throughout.

  He slammed his fist against his thigh and winced with the pain of his own blow. Damn her! He should have simply taken her and brought her back with him. He’d given her choice, and she’d turned on him. To give a woman choice was foolishness. He hadn’t been a man with her, he hadn’t taken away her fanciful, capricious choices as his father would have done, as both his brothers would have done. Aye, they would have laughed at her if she had dared to dismiss them so plainly, and carried her away screaming, paying her no heed. Aye, he’d been a fool.

  What was wrong with him that she would scorn him? No woman before had scorned him. Why Zarabeth? Why the one woman he’d wanted to wed?

  He turned at his sister’s voice. “Aye? What is it you want, Ingunn?”

  “You brood. It worries me, Magnus. It worries all of us, your men included. You say so little, criticize your men more than is their due, and yell and scowl at your slaves. You don’t even take Cyra to your bed as you used to.”

  “Ha! I did naught but plow her belly when I came home. I took her until she could scarce walk.”

  “Aye, but then you dismissed her. She feels sorely tried, as if she’s failed you in some way.”

  He shrugged, not looking at Ingunn, but staring fixedly toward the northern side of the fjord. Why in the name of Thor’s hammer Ingunn should care a whit about Cyra’s feelings was beyond him.

  “It’s a woman, isn’t it? You met a woman on your travels and she gnaws at you.”

  He laughed at that. “You make me sound like a bone our father’s hound would tease.”

  He felt her fingers on his tunic sleeve. “Nay, brother, jest not, for our father also wonders what eats at you. He said you weren’t interested in the men’s drinking or the tale-singing at his hall. He said you moped and said aught and acted a morose lovesick boy. But he always says there is a raging anger in you, great anger, and there will be bloodletting before your anger finishes its course.”

  Again Magnus shrugged. It was true, all of it, yet it was a private matter and he wanted to hold it to himself alone. He supposed he should be pleased that the men who knew of Zarabeth had kept their mouths firmly closed. It concerned none other, not his father, not his brothers, certainly not Ingunn.

  Suddenly he smiled, a grim smile, a vicious smile. He turned then with sudden irrevocable decision, and felt that a rock had lifted from his chest. “I am leaving on the morrow. Prepare food enough for a journey of thirty days for twelve men. I will do more trading in Birka. Hurry now, Ingunn.”

  She didn’t want to obey him, but she had no choice. She disbelieved him. Birka was the last place he was going. She left him without another word to do his bidding. She turned once to see him standing in the same spot, staring off at the fjord, but not looking at the clear cold water.

  What was he seeing?

  9

  Olav was dead. He had died early in the morning, just after dawn, whimpering and clutching his belly. All during the night Zarabeth had stayed with him, helpless and frightened, afraid to leave him, yet knowing there was nothing she could really do if she stayed. He hadn’t even been able to rise and relieve himself. Toward the end, he hadn’t known her. He raved of her mother, how he’d loved her and how she had betrayed him. Zarabeth had held his hand.

  It made no sense. He had been well the previous evening, whistling even as he sorted through goods he had traded during the day. And now, only twelve hours later, he was dead.

  Zarabeth helped Imara and Lannia, two older women who’d seen their share of death and prepared their share of corpses, ready his body. She was numb, doing the simple tasks Lannia assigned her, not really understanding when Toki came into the living area, sniffed, and said, “By Thor, it stinks in here! Can’t you do something, Zarabeth?”

  Imara turned on Toki and gave her a malignant frown. “Mind your tongue. ’Tis a place of death, and it will remain so until the morrow.”

  Zarabeth turned then to face Toki. She was so tired, all she wanted to do was crawl onto her box bed next to Lotti and dream away all the horror. But she couldn’t. She had to assume the responsibility of Olav’s burial; she had been his wife. She said, more puzzled than angry, “Why did you hate him so much? He allowed you to come back, he forgave you. You shared our evening meals with us again. Why do you speak so cruelly of him now?”

  Toki shrugged. “I didn’t hate Olav, ’tis just that I didn’t want to marry Keith, but my parents forced me to, and he is not the merchant his father was. Olav owed both of us, and he gave little. No, Zarabeth, Olav cleaved to you—his fancy young slut of a wife. He turned his back upon his only son because you seduced him away from Keith.”

  Imara straightened now, her shoulders wide as a man’s, her upper arms thick with muscle, and walked to Toki, towering over the shorter woman. “Get out, Toki, and do not return until you can control your tongue’s venom.”

  Lannia, bent and scraggle-haired, never looked up from her task. She said, “Toki’s mother is a witch, and she birthed a witch. Pay her no attention, Zarabeth.”

  Actually, Zarabeth had already dismissed Toki from her mind. Her attention was on Lotti, sitting in the far corner, playing with six carved sticks Olav had given her many years before. The child was quiet, too quiet.

  She felt the nibblings of fear. Olav was dead. What would become of her and Lotti?

  She found out the following day after Olav’s funeral. Two of his friends, both on the York council, came to see her. They were old men, gray-haired and toothless, yet they were kind. She gave them sweet mead to drink, then waited respectfully for them to speak.

  “. . . And so, Zarabeth, Olav has left you all his goods, his shop and his house. He didn’t wish his son to have anything.”

  She hadn’t really believed Olav when he told her he’d done this. She’d known, had been certain, that he would look after his son, that he would change his mind, that he would overlook Toki’s viciousness and not strike out at Keith to get back at her. She shook her head now. “But Keith . . . it isn’t right. Surely Olav—”

  “It is as we ha
ve said to you.” Both of them looked at her then, closely, as if she were some sort of oddity. “All wonder at it, yea, ’tis true, but you are young and comely, and therein lies the answer to all our questions. Thus it is, and thus it will remain. It is what your husband wished.”

  And they left this house of death quickly, for a man didn’t like the thought of a dead spirit leaving with him and cleaving unbeknownst to him to his own soul. Still, Zarabeth wondered at their abrupt retreat, their curtness. She had known but kindness from them until today. They hadn’t disapproved of Olav’s marriage to her before, or if they had, they had hidden it well. She remembered both of them clearly on her wedding day, the two graybeards drunk and stumbling and pinching a female buttock when a woman came near to them. They’d laughed and clapped Olav on the back and laughed more when they gave him their old men’s advice in loud whispers. They weren’t laughing now.

  For the next two days Zarabeth slept and tried to regain her strength. Olav’s funeral had been the familiar blending of Christian and Viking, and he’d been laid to rest with a rune stone over his burial mound. All her neighbors left her alone, as if guessing that she needed to be alone, to mend, to regain her balance. Two days later, Zarabeth took Lotti outside. It was high summer and hot, no breeze stirring the still air. There were the familiar smells of animals and human sweat and excrement. She saw neighbors and waved to them, grateful that they’d left her alone. Then she realized suddenly that they were ignoring her, or turning quickly from her. What was wrong?

  As was her wont since Magnus had left, she and Lotti walked to York harbor. She stared over the trading vessels moored there, Viking longboats all, with covered cargo spaces, knowing the Sea Wind wasn’t there, but looking nonetheless, hunger in her soul. Lotti shook her hand and Zarabeth looked up to see Keith approaching, three men of the York council with him. He pointed to her and yelled, “Don’t move!”

  Move? Why should she move? She waited patiently for them to reach her, Lotti’s hand held firmly in hers.