by Sandi Layne
“Eir.” No response, but that was to be expected. “Eir,” he said again, squeezing her a little to get her attention.
“Ih-shaw?” she asked. He didn’t understand her tongue, but had heard that often enough to know it was a word of affirmation or assent.
Good enough. “You are mine, and I’ve given you a good name. A Norse name. You will grow adjusted to it in time, as you learn what it means. Eir.”
It was full dark now, and he could see no expression in her face, as his own cloak obstructed it. He removed it, impatient to know if she had any understanding of what he was saying.
The waning moon had not yet risen, so it was only the dwindling fires that lit her hair, their light barely touching her face. Truly, he felt, he had chosen a good name. “You are now to be called Eir,” he said again, stopping so that he could clasp her by both arms.
He waited. She pulled back and frowned. “Ay-err?” It was close enough. He pointed at her breast. “Eir.” He pointed to himself. “Agnarr.” Then back to her again.
“Eir.”
His healer was no lackwit. “Na! Charis!”
“Eir!” he insisted, pulling her along as he reached the ramp to board the longship. “You are Eir now.”
“Na!”
“Ja!”
She struggled against him when they got on the deck, and he pulled her aft, farthest from shore, so that they might have some modicum of shelter from any curious ears that heard her shouts of denial.
“That’s enough,” he informed her, trying to sound firm but not angry. “It is time you knew your place!”
The scents of this moment would forever stay with Agnarr. The salt of the sea, the familiar, fishy smells of the ship, Eir’s herb scent blended with her own body’s smell—she always smelled of mint to him, for some reason. He placed her securely on her back on the deck, his cloak under her head.
Fighting back, she growled, “Né!”
With one hand, he held her wrists over her head and worked his trousers free with his other hand. “Yes. Now, I hadn’t wanted this to be difficult for you, but I’m thinking that it will never be any other way for a first time, so it will be here and it will be now.”
Charis—Eir—was a strong woman, but Agnarr knew that overpowering her was not his concern. He knew it was going to hurt, but he did not want to hurt her, not really. Just to make her understand her position with him. It was not a position of choice, but of submission.
So he did not crush her, but he did push her dress up, thrusting her apron and its contents out of his way as he covered her with his body.
Chapter 10
“You will tell them that we will be back in the spring, then,” Tuirgeis instructed.
Cowan nodded, resigned, and repeated the leave-taking in the language of the Franks. Latin was known in most circles, but here in the slave market, the local tongue was best. Frankish was becoming more popular under King Louis the Debonair, the son of Charlemagne.
If only slaves weren’t as popular as the local language, Cowan thought. The trade of humans for money was repulsive to him. From here, he had garnered, the unfortunate captives would be taken south to the heathen lands of the Moors. A dreadful fate, even worse than serving the Northmen, he thought. His father had had bondservants, but no longer. Branieucc had rid himself of slaves when he had become a follower of Jesu. Cowan had never owned anyone himself. Seeing the monks and villagers sold off like so many head of cattle grieved him, like a physical ache deep in his stomach.
He had no choice, though, being a slave himself now. Tuirgeis had required his services as an interpreter and Cowan felt bound to obey, for the Scriptures said that a slave should be obedient. He had read about the proper behavior for slaves in the Scriptures that he had helped illuminate with Martin.
That seemed to be in a different life, though, and Cowan had to remind himself that it had been real.
The here and now was more real to the man now called Kingson. A world of brutal men, hard and used to the ways of bartering in humanity. Men who slaughtered the innocent for their treasure or just to destroy. Men who took what they wanted, without care of the pain they caused.
They surrounded him.
Cowan chose to bide his time. He tried to be a patient man. His father had told him that patience marked the difference between a wise man and a fool, and Cowan did not wish to be a fool.
Tuirgeis moved to join some of the men as the sun disappeared beyond the sea. “Food,” he said, pointing at the roasting haunch of some sort of meat.
Mutton? Cowan wondered, not truly caring. He was so hungry his stomach was clenching in on itself. The sizzling of dripping fat reached into him like a desperate fist, pulling at him so he lurched a pace ahead of Tuirgeis.
He was allowed to serve himself; a measure of Tuirgeis’s trust in him, he supposed. Cowan froze for a moment, thinking. Could he do it? Could he?
“Oh Jesu, help me,” he breathed as he took a cautious step out of the circle of firelight. He felt eyes on his back. He stopped, making a show out of holding his slices of steaming roast mutton. His mouth watered, so this was not so hard to do. One hungry bite followed another, and soon the curious eyes left him to gaze at a woman nearby.
That gave Cowan an idea. He pretended to be enraptured by the overperfumed female and turned to follow her slow, swaying walk.
The fire’s warmth left his back as he did so, and soon Cowan was behind the shelter of a sloppy-looking tent. The fabric had long, jagged rents in it, as if there had been a vicious knife fight within in the not-too-distant past. Smoke wafted through a hole in the roof to float down in incense-laden curls under his nose.
Cowan felt a little light-headed and tried to move quickly away from the cloying scent. But his feet were heavy, his arms heavy, his whole body felt pleasantly at ease and relaxed. The meat in his hands was cooling, but that mattered not at all. The too-sweet incense beguiled him, tugging at his mouth so that he smiled and sank to the dirt at his feet.
“Kingson!”
The deep voice called to him, but Cowan’s mind didn’t acknowledge it. He could see a woman in his mind. A woman with fair hair and a gentle expression. Was she the Virgin Mary? The Mother of God? “Mairi,” he called in Gaeilge. “Wait for me!”
But before he could follow her, a rumbling laugh pierced the incense that clouded his thinking. “Kingson, come!” This was in the new language, Norse, and Cowan didn’t remember any of the other words Tuirgeis said until the leader spoke in Latin. “Are you ill? What’s wrong with you?” A pause, and then the huge Northman laughed again. “Ah! Opium. I see. Let us leave this place and find you some fresh air.”
As Cowan was half-lifted from the ground, he felt a deep sadness for having missed the fair Virgin who was beckoning to him. Remorse quickly followed, laced with deep embarrassment.
Opium? Had Tuirgeis said opium?
Cowan tucked his cold meat into the leather pouch he’d been given earlier in their trading that day. His cheeks burned with shame.
All I wanted to do, Lord, was get back to my people. To help them defend against the Northmen. Is that so wrong? Why can’t I escape?
No answer came to him, and the son of King Branieucc sighed heavily as his head slowly cleared from the opium smoke.
A heavy cloud hung over his spirit as he followed Tuirgeis to the ship. Masculine laughter, feminine shouts of protest or denial, or merely weeping came from crude shelters and flimsy dwellings in the trading square. Cowan tried to close his ears and eyes, but could not. He had failed again. Failed to escape.
Before his eyes, he saw Charis’s face as he had seen it when he had intimated that he would perhaps escape that day. She had been scornful, he recollected. Unbelieving. He could not blame her. You’ve never been successful at escaping anything, he reminded himself, his lip twisting in grave humor.
He saw nothing on the deck at first. He remembered that Charis and Agnarr were to have stayed here during the day, but in the dark and shadowed stret
ch of wooden planking, he didn’t see either of them.
He did note the emptiness, however. And he could remember, face by face, each of the ten men and women of Éire who would not be returning to the longship. The healer would be—well, he imagined she would be furious. Cowan couldn’t help but smile just a little to think of her probable fiery response. Her early struggles with Agnarr had won her admiration in more than one quarter.
With a gesture, Tuirgeis attracted his attention and he was shaken from his thoughts. “Kingson. You are better now, yes?”
Cowan inhaled deeply, feeling the disconcerting webs clear from his mind. “Ja,” he told the Northman. “I think I am.” He bowed his head. “I am sorry to have—” His jaw froze; he couldn’t continue.
Tuirgeis waved his apology off. “It is not the first time you have tried to leave, Kingson. It will not be the last.” White teeth flashed in the darkness as the Northman smiled. “I expect nothing less. But if you do escape,” he added, menace creeping under the good humor in his voice, “go fast and far.”
The threat was obvious in Tuirgeis’s tone and Cowan nodded his understanding before turning to step over the oars on the deck on his way to the far end. Air. Fresh, salt-heavy air. That was what was needed to finish clearing his mind.
The gentle, soothing sounds of the waves on the sides of the longship were welcome to his ears. No translating here. Only rest and quiet as Tuirgeis retreated to his dinner and heavy wine.
Cowan did not hear Charis at first. He was too absorbed in trying to understand why he hadn’t been allowed to escape.
Why, God in Heaven, why?
The plaint was not the first he had groaned in his soul. Over the endless ocean voyage, he had turned himself inside out trying to understand the will of God. Why had the Good God allowed him to be enslaved? What purpose could possibly be served? Didn’t it make more sense for him to be with his father’s people, helping them prepare for a future raid?
Anger had followed next. He had raged quietly on that merciless deck. He was beyond that now. The experience with the opium smoke had been humiliating, but Cowan could not even say for sure why this was. Something broke inside him, though, as he stood there and tried to understand. A hardness disappeared. He felt himself frown before a strange peace filtered into that broken space and wiped the frown away.
“Jesu, I am trying,” he whispered. He was a captive of the barbarians. Perhaps there was a purpose in it. Cowan tried to cling to the peaceful feeling within and settled himself against a large, wooden shield as he sat on the deck.
Soon he heard a sound he had heard far too often on this deck: the tuneless song that Charis had kept up like plainsong for days as she rocked herself under the canopy. He had decided it was her only way of comforting herself, and had not bothered her.
Something in the tune, though, compelled him to leave the remains of his dinner and find her.
He rose to his feet, his gaze piercing the shadowed corners of the deck as he sought the pale woman. A slight rocking motion caught his attention and he made for it—for her—near a barrel of old water aft of his position. “Charis?” he murmured, kneeling next to her.
She did not answer, but buried her head between her arms and continued to rock herself. The humming ceased.
Cowan ventured to touch her, a gentle hand on her head to ask her wordlessly to look up at him. She was slow to comply, but she did, and the starlight caught the faint lines of her face enough to show him that a new sorrow had wounded her.
She and Agnarr had been alone all day.
“Oh no, lass,” Cowan said, settling beside her. “Did he . . .?” The question didn’t come easily.
A liquid moan was answer enough. Cowan did not recognize the fierce anger that shot through him at the confirmation. He tried to shake it off. He didn’t know what to say to Charis, though. Didn’t know what to do for her. She was a healer; surely she knew her own self well enough to—to care for any physical concerns.
“Where is he?” he finally asked.
“There, see? He’s gone to talk to the lord.” Charis’s head moved back and forth as she wiped her face. She hiccoughed. “He wanted me to—to stay with him, but I couldn’t.”
Cowan clenched his jaw against a roar that was building up from his toes. “He expected you to like it?” He heard himself growl, deep in his chest.
Charis looked away. “No. I don’t think he did.” She bowed her head again, so that her voice was muffled against the cloak she wore over her hair. “I just want to join Devin and Devlin . . .”
Cowan patted her awkwardly on the back, saying, “Na, na, Healer. Life is too precious.”
“For whom?” she said, the tears gone from her eyes. Fire burned in her eyes with the suddenness of lightning in the summer. “No, I swore revenge for my men,” she whispered harshly, tossing the cloak’s concealment from her and standing in one fluid movement. “I did. And I shall have it.” She abruptly began fishing through the pockets and pouches that were as much a part of her as her pale gray eyes. “Ignorant barbarian doesn’t know his herbs any better than the idiot monks. I have Dead Man’s Thimbles. Agnarr will not have me again.”
Cowan clasped her wrists loosely but she shook him off, obviously annoyed at the interruption. “Leave me be.”
“Healer, think about what you’re doing. D’you want to be sold with the others? Lass, I’ve seen what happened to them—it wasn’t something I’d see for you.”
Her jaw dropped open. “They’ve not returned . . . Not Aine, Brigid, or even the monks. They were sold? You mean that bastard sold my people?” She redoubled her efforts, finding at last a fox-skin pouch. “I won’t wait.”
Cowan was dismayed, though relieved that the woman was not dwelling in such despair any longer. “Now, lass, think. Agnarr didn’t sell them. Tuirgeis did. Agnarr has only had concern for you since the moment he claimed you.”
“Claimed me?” Taken aback, Charis settled for clutching the small pouch in her hand. “Is he not wed already?” She had no idea.
The interpreter, though, knew more. “He’s not wed, but pledged to be so.”
“Not married? And he’s claimed me?” The implications rocked her for a moment, so that she swayed on her feet. “I—but—Cowan, do you know what that makes me?”
Cowan nodded, picking up the pouch she had dropped from chilled fingers. “Isea, lass. That makes you his wife. As long as he can hold on to you.”
“No!”
Chapter 11
His kvinn medisin was shivering when Agnarr woke up on the final morning of their voyage. He opened his eyes to see that she’d rolled away from him—again—and was curled against the hull of the longship. Both concerned and annoyed, he raised up on one arm to tuck her back against himself with the other. She resisted. Still. He brought her close anyway, knowing she needed his body’s heat to be comfortable.
“Né,” she said, pulling away a little.
He shook his head and brought her back, noting the stubborn set to her lips. “Ja,” he insisted quietly, so as not to disturb the others on deck. “You will need your own skills if you do not, Healer.”
She turned to glare up at him with those pale gray eyes. “I not want sleep with you,” she informed him in Norse.
Charis was surprised when her defiance did not provoke the Northman. Instead, he chuckled, pushed the dirty blond braids of hair away from his ears, and rumbled, “You learn well.”
She had not been seeking praise. “I not want sleep with you,” she repeated, pushing at him with her fists. He was her husband, in the ninth degree of marriage as her people reckoned it, but that did not mean she would forget all he had done to her. All he had taken from her. No. She would not. The blood of Devin and Devlin called to her every night in her sleep, reminding her that she would extract her revenge upon their murderer when the time was right.
Agnarr held her close, and Charis eventually stopped struggling. It took too much energy and soon he would be leaving her, anyway.
The pink light of dawn was stretching cautious fingers over the land and waterway, touching the top of the longship’s center mast. Even now, Lord Tuirgeis was rising and kicking some of the men to do likewise to hoist the hateful striped sail. The chill in the air crept under the cloak Agnarr had given to her, so that she shivered again.
She hadn’t wanted to sleep with Agnarr at all. Ever. Especially not after what he had done to her on the evening the others had been sold. She could still remember the sick feeling in her stomach as the longship pulled away from the warmer shore in the south. She knew then that they would be going farther away from home than she could fathom and it frightened her.
Not as much as the other barbarians had, though. The first night out on the seas again, Charis had rebelled against sleeping near Agnarr and had tried to sleep in her customary spot near the center mast. But it was no longer a place where the other women were near her. She had been all alone, and had felt the many pairs of male eyes raking her body as she tried to find a comfortable spot for her head.
Soon two of the men had approached her. She understood them better than she let on, and did not mistake the smiles and comments they tossed in her direction. She was no virgin to be protected and sold for the best price. She was a widow. The men thought that Agnarr had rejected her and that was why she was alone.
And that—that barbarian did nothing to dissuade their ideas until they had surrounded her, grabbing at her with hard, rough hands, pulling at her léine and running ragged fingernails up the bare skin of her legs.
“Né!” she had shouted, kicking and striking out with her fists.
“Charis!” Cowan had called out. He’d broken through to reach her, but Lord Tuirgeis had pushed him back with a grunt and shaken his head. Charis had wanted to ask the Northman for help, but could see in his hard, dark eyes that it would be fruitless. So she had fought.