“Oh.” I picked out sprigs.
“—Leave them.” He demanded, and then he softened as he always did for me. “Like the grass was, after the field.”
Gods, he had been watching me, closely today, liking and memorizing what he saw. A gorgeous reaction to this came from deep in my body. I sat, settled in the brush like he was, my foot just an inch from his. I shifted, and he did, and our boots touched.
The pendant at his throat captured a bit of sunlight and I tried to focus on it.
“What is that?” I gestured at my own blushing throat.
“This?” He touched the silver, surprised, and while he answered he slipped his fingers absently under his collar and left them there. It was so raw, him touching his own body, I wanted to cry.
“You don’t remember Thor’s hammer.”
I did, but it was easy to shake my head dumbly, unable to take my eyes off his open shirt and hand.
“Every boy makes his. In our family.”
I conjured a vague picture of young Heirik, eight years old, hammering away at a hot piece of silver. “It’s beautiful,” I murmured without meaning to.
He laughed. “I wouldn’t say that much.”
“Okay, then,” I said, laughing too. “It is … well placed.” I blushed at my own words and hung my head.
His voice drew me back. “Don’t go,” he said, hushed, but urgent.
I looked questioningly at him, and he went on. “You will stay at Hvítmörk, já?”
Of course I would.
I got smoothly up on Drifa, feeling graceful, like I always did when I rode her. She smelled furry, her hair pungent in the waning sun. A good smell. Not like the sharp tang of a goat. I lay down along her neck, my face turned toward Heirik, where he stood speaking softly to Vakr.
I didn’t want to leave the woods behind. I wanted to stay lazily draped over Drifa’s body forever, watching Heirik talk to his horse, the orange light of day’s end filtering through the trees behind him. Vakr was one of the only living beings he touched with affection. He was part of his soul, in that way that only an animal can be. Heirik’s whispers to him were a private moment, and he’d allowed me into it.
I’d taken some flowers, not for tea, but for prettiness. A bouquet of long snowbloom stalks hung from my hand, resting along Drifa’s leg. When Heirik looked up, he saw me and froze. He looked disconcerted, almost scared, and it worried me. Again, I’d done something weird. When any of them looked at me that way, I never knew what it was, but it was always something slightly off, the way I tied my shoes or didn’t know how to hang a fish from its head. Was it the way I rested so languidly on Drifa? I sat up.
Heirik shook the look from his eyes, and in one fluid motion got up on Vakr and pulled alongside on my left. We rode home in a honeyed silence. With a slow gait, as if neither of us wanted to get there.
The sun fell rapidly as we walked, and it was evening when we rounded the woods and were almost in view of home. My heart leaped with sudden fear—a giant billow of gray smoke smudged the sky. There was a fire!
Heirik was not worried.
“Wood’s bane,” he said with a note of resignation. Fire. “Many are here, then.” He faced me with an unusual gleam in his eyes, apologizing, anticipating. “We stayed out as long as we could.”
Many people were here? Around a fire.
And then it dawned on me, and I felt dumb and a little used. I was nettled, and my words flew out in a mix of future- and now-language. “You were throwing a party anyway,” I stabbed at him. “Whether we cut the field or not.”
“Já,” he smiled at me, then laughed a little, then more. “You are like a lamb after its first shearing.” I did feel lamblike, peeved, naked. But he was so amused, I finally smiled and laughed too.
“Throwing a party,” he said. “I like that.” His voice took on the smallest note of bitterness, like a tiny sour berry between his teeth. “A spear at my own people.”
I gazed out at the smoke rising from the yard in gray billows against the dark sky. “It won’t be fun, then?”
“Oh, já, wild,” he told me with a small, strange smile. “But for me, heiðr.”
It was a simple word, but he said it with a nuance I hadn’t heard in my sterile language lessons. It meant honor, in the sense of duty. It was his job to be generous. That was what I knew. But hearing it from him, in the voice of a real Viking chief, it meant far more. It encompassed all the people who gathered just out of our sight, where that smoke originated, all waiting to revere him. He was honor bound to give a party. But he would also be honored. And it was his due. Betta had said he took it freely.
He should, I thought. He worked hard and got little in return.
Drifa moved closer to him, so close that I felt we were together under a great wing. I viewed the house and party the way I thought he did. I started to understand something I’d seen and heard before, but hadn’t got. An honor-feeding. A generosity that in itself was a reward, for all that he forewent and did for these people.
Men stoked a big fire. They gathered in the yard, boys and young men I’d never seen before, two dozen at least. Close to the blaze, a few poked at it with what looked like spears. The pyre reached as tall as some of the men themselves, and pieces of flaming wood fell dangerously at their feet. Older, bushy-bearded men stood back from the crackling fire, drinking from horns and dark metal cups. All smiling and laughing, demonic in the flares and flashes. The house reflected the fire, its grassy walls rendered colorless gray.
A few women gathered outside the door, one with a lamp shielded in her hand. It flickered softly on her face and lit up her dark blond hair—a cascade that belonged to an angel. She looked like a fairytale princess. It was Dalla! A dark dress lay snug across her bosom, then fell long and loose from just under her breasts. It moved around her legs like water rippled with a breeze. The lamp’s light dipped and danced and she cupped her hand tighter to protect it.
She looked up and stared at me and Heirik, and her face changed. Her sisters and Svana stood around her, and they lifted their heads. Alert little animals with ghost-like eyes. Every one of them stopped to watch us ride into the yard. Around the fire, the men’s voices stopped. Bonfire and lamp light raged on their frozen cheeks.
I turned to Heirik for some explanation, and he was a different man.
He sat on Vakr’s back with a different confidence, tinged with self-importance. Almost arrogant the way he held himself.
He rode slowly into the yard and nodded to the men at the fire, to the women by the door, and in the space of a breath and as if they were one, they dropped to their knees. Everyone, even Dalla. Even Hár.
Oh.
Betta’s words cut through my shock. I’d known Heirik only here in his own home with his nearest family. It was true, I had not met the chief.
Drifa walked slowly among men and women. So far above them, I noted each man’s messy hair or balding head, women’s braids and kerchiefs. I could feel their awe and curiosity reaching for me like fingers. And as we passed by, each of his people were released. Like a great wake closing behind us, they began to stand and rustle about and murmur questions.
Dumbstruck, I slid off Drifa. Heirik motioned to a boy who took our horses and saddlebags with the few leaves and flowers we’d cut. The chief nodded to me and was gone, as he so often was, into the back mudroom, taken by the dark of the house.
I had not bowed to the great man, but instead had ridden by his side. He’d led me to this yard without warning. He didn’t do things accidentally. He wanted to show me this.
Like hurled rocks, it hit me—a feeling that just moments ago I thought I’d understood. Now, I felt it truly. Beyond the responsibility and loneliness, laid a sense of entitlement and superiority. He wanted me to feel what it was like, hovering over this big family and being adulated.
I curled up inside, confused. I was glad that for this moment, the chief was respected. Maybe even in some twisted way, he was loved. But for now, my privat
e Heirik was gone.
With Heirik’s passing, everything erupted. Shouting, drinking, fluttering around with lamps and jabbing with spears. Gruff singing began around the fire, crazy flames leapt. Sounds and images whizzed past me like terrible birds. Giant men roaring in the yard, plain women rendered gorgeous, my cozy house gone mad.
I was a mess, in Betta’s everyday dress sweaty from haying, smudged and sprigged with bark and flowers. I bunched it in one hand, and lifted it up so I could walk with dignity from the stables to the house. I felt the sting of scrutiny. I felt exposed, raw and inadequate.
I made it to the back door and roughly pulled Svana aside. “Why do they stare?”
She pulled back from me, as though I were deranged. “The chief is home,” she said, as if that were explanation enough. It was clear she was hiding something.
“Nei, what else?” I kept at her.
Demure and pale, she answered. “You rode with him.” She pointed at the flowers in my hand, where I’d forgotten I clutched them. “You looked like his bride.”
I stepped back from her, stunned.
I’d assumed people stared at my wild hair and messy dress, my inappropriate filth. They must have been confused by the ugly, messy stranger who dared to even speak to the chief of this superior house. But his bride?
“A woman carries them at her wedding,” Svana stuttered out. “She rides her horse with snowblooms in her hand. For many babes.” In a second I understood. It was a fertility plant. I blushed in the dark, hoping she couldn’t see how very much that idea moved me. She was moved by the notion, too. The fear of such children—and what had to be done to get them—was plain in her light blue eyes, so pale they were lost in this light.
“Not just for children, Little Girl,” Betta said breezily, approaching from behind Svana. “For passion.” She winked and as always lightened the mood. Passion was laced with innuendo, not entirely the same as the future word, and when I got it I put a hand to my forehead and closed my eyes in mortification. The flowers weren’t just fertility plants, they were aphrodisiacs too. Was Heirik more devious and less shy than he seemed? He’d been driven by something today. Agitated and forceful and mad at Hár. And then, oh Gods, he’d taken me out to join him in a bed of white suggestion. I’d dropped to my knees with him there and cut the flowers all around us. I remembered Magnus’s words, then, about the chief’s eagerness for snow.
Betta had warned me to hide my heart, and I had miserably failed.
I was suddenly sick of it all. Of Betta’s pronouncements. Of prying eyes. Sick of every person who knelt before me when I entered this yard at Heirik’s side, and now undoubtedly talked behind my back.
Something transpired in the flowery wood, between him and me. Heirik confessed he was drawn to me, just as much as I was to him. We had felt the flowers’ call, and we’d ridden home in a sex- and hope-infused quiet. We’d stood together sharing thoughts of duty and home, before braving this yard full of honor-feeders. I would never be sorry for going to the woods with him. For coming home looking like his bride. Under the grass and dirt that stained my skin, I glowed with satisfaction. And anticipation for what would come next.
It wasn’t exactly what I’d expected. It was Hildur I heard next, and her voice drove away all sensual notions.
“See that she stays here until she’s dressed properly.”
She. Meaning me.
I entered the weaving room ready to argue, and I was frozen by the sight. Hildur stood in the center of the room, tight lipped and glowing with fierce pride in a house well prepared. Her hands were folded at her waist, and she was the one who looked like a bride, gleaming tables arrayed around her like a gigantic, flowing dress. She turned in the center of it all, turned to look at Heirik’s seat. It was higher than the rest and heaped with sheepskins. And furs! So many lush furs in brown and white and silver.
Benches had been drawn in close, and the big tables taken down from the ceiling. All the seats near to his were laid with furs and skins. Oil lamps lined the tables, casting a surprising amount of flattering light. It was becoming to Hildur, her profile lit with peach-hued satisfaction. Then her eyes found me, and her countenance turned sharp.
She didn’t say hello. She nodded at Ranka, and the little girl dashed up to me and handed me a bundle of clothing. It wasn’t mine. An ice blue dress lay folded together with other undefined things, a froth of linen and something else soft and white. I took the pile of clothes mechanically. This day was too much, and I felt myself starting to slip away. I needed to rest my head and my body.
“The chief will be up from the bath soon enough,” Hildur said.
Ranka nodded with importance and led me to a bench. “We will wait here, Lady.”
Besides us, the room was empty, barred from the guests just yet.
“Okay,” I told her, and I sat heavily and let my mind go blank. She sat next to me and swung her little legs.
While we waited, Ranka took the bundle from me and put it between us on the bench. “Look!” She gave me an orientation to what was included. The dress had a slim waist and long bell sleeves, and the color was unbearably soft, of birds’ eggs and newborn ice. The dye was from somewhere else, Norway or farther. The frothy cloth turned out to be a brand new underdress spun of the very finest wool threads, so fine, like a garment made of mist. It had long sleeves and a low cut neck. A wispy and lusciously clean thing. I held it to my face and cried in it, just a little.
“You don’t like it?” I looked out from the cloud of fabric and Ranka was watching me, her lower lip actually trembling.
“I love this dress,” I told her seriously, with my whole heart. “It’s the best dress in all the world.”
She smiled then, relieved and beaming.
“I sewed the hems,” she said, with a hint of Hildur’s satisfaction and pride, and she turned up the edge of the billowing underdress and pointed at her jagged little stitches. “Ma made the blue one longer for you, here.”
“It’s wonderful,” I told her. “I’m just so, so very tired. So confused.” I let the fabric run through my fingers.
“Já, well, you are tall, Lady.” To her mind, this explained and encompassed everything in the world. To me, it led only to more questions. Were these clothes made just for me? Why?
Then Ranka showed me a piece of fabric like none I’d seen here, made of something other than flax or wool. I ran my fingers down it, wondering if it might actually be cotton. “It’s made just to dry yourself, after your bath,” she informed me. A towel! Thin and too small, but the only one I’d seen, after months of drying off using my dress itself. Feather-soft and welcoming, it seemed to pull at me, invite me to wrap up in it. It could hide me, like a nest surrounding my new eggshell dress.
When it was safe—that is, the chief was through—we went to the bath. Once I was in the water, Ranka made sure I had the soap and then ran off, leaving me finally, blessedly alone.
The bewildering, back-breaking day had become gray night. I could see more than five stars! Even without full dark, I could make out so many more than that! They massed in the sky, a long held dream. I wanted to rest in the water all night and bask in their sparkling indifference. I wanted to spend luxurious time reliving Heirik calling me small, his words so dark and sweet, his boot brushing against mine. His urgent question—would I stay?
The hot water held me close, and I tried to avoid understanding anything. I tried to just absorb it all and let it go. Hár’s frustration, their fight, my triumph cutting the field, Heirik turning comfortable and free in the blooms, flowers of sex and snow all around us. And then the press of people, kneeling before us. I let each thought pass and discarded or savored it in turn.
“Skyndi, Kona!” Ranka startled me. She’d come back from the house.
Her scolding sounded just like Betta, telling me to hurry up. Her hair fell loose, and a little crown of flowers wreathed her head. She held a small torch, and in her other hand she cupped something precious. Her fingers we
re chubby and tight around whatever it was.
I stepped out of the bath into whipping cold and snatched up the towel. My new shift went first over my head, and for a moment I felt even colder, clammy and miserable. I pulled on the new underdress and then the frost-blue wool. I shivered and counted the seconds until the clothes started to warm me.
With a shaking voice I asked her, “What do you have here?”
She opened her tight hand and in her palm sat dark little shapes, three long ones like tiny spears and a few rolled up, indistinct balls. I ducked to look close and smelled pure summer. The aggressive scent of rosemary and the overwhelming powder of lavender flew up from her palm. It was shocking. I’d come to love the reedy, dirty fragrance of the farm, and this floral blast was like candy.
“You rub it in your hands,” she instructed, “and then you put it here.” She touched her own temple to show me, and the precious needles and dried up blossoms fell to the stones.
“Nei!” She burst out crying and went to her knees, immediately searching. The little torch wobbled, and I knelt and took it from her.
The poor child was as overstimulated as I was, emotions hanging by a thread.
“Ranka, listen.” I lifted her chin. “Shhhh, listen.”
She gulped and sniffled. A tear traveled down her cheek.
“We’ll find it.”
I brought the torch close to the ground and searched while she talked miserably. “They said I could bring it to you if I didn’t lose it.” Her voice hitched. “Only the ladies can wear it. Only a few pieces. We don’t have so much and we don’t know when we’ll get it again and …” She started to warm to her subject, and soon her tears were almost forgotten. “It’s from Alba,” she said offhandedly, as though this were the supermarket downstairs from her apartment, not a kingdom so far across the sea that men gave their lives to bring home things like these herbs.
Brosa, the chief’s brother came to mind. The indistinct image of a man on the sea, alive and well and heading home.
Beautiful Wreck Page 17