by E. B. Brown
Marcus placed the horn into his hand before Winn could dismiss him. It felt heavy in his grip, warmed by his father’s fist, and he looked down at it in his curiosity. It was the vessel of a king, and Marcus had placed it in his hand.
“I think you hand this to the wrong son,” Winn said, turning it over in his hands before he handed it back to Marcus. Marcus flexed his jaw. They both glanced over to the long table, where Benjamin sat at the head, surrounded by the other men. His brother, nearly a replica of Marcus, laughed along with Erich and Cormaic, as the younger men hung on his every word. Yes, Benjamin had always been a charismatic one. Winn once admired that about him. Winn had also once believed his brother was an honest man, beyond reproach.
“Nay. Keep it. Think on this before you leave. You belong with these people, just as much as ye once belonged to the Paspahegh. Think of yer wife, as well, lad. She has kin here, the same as ye. It willna be an easy life if ye return to the tribe.” Marcus paused, looking toward Maggie as she danced. “Has she told ye much of the future? Of what happens to the tribes?”
“Yes. I know we will be driven from our lands. I know the English will never stop, that they will keep coming from across the sea.”
Winn felt his ire rise, and felt his muscles quiver as he gripped the drinking horn. Marcus waved a hand toward the men at the table.
“Nothing is truly gone. These men you see, their sons will live on, as will their sons. My sons will live on. Someday, your daughter will have daughters, who will survive as we always have. It is about surviving, here, in this place where ye are now, and making a life for yer bairns. We stay here, away from the cities, and someday our children will venture into that world. But not yet, not until the time is right. If I have learned naught from time-travel, I have at least learned that.”
“So running and hiding is how you wish to survive,” Winn said evenly. Over the last few weeks, his father had gained his grudging respect, but perhaps it was misplaced.
“We fight when we must. Yes, we have killed plenty of English. Erich tells me for the most part they stay clear of us here. What issue is there with knowing the future, and using it to keep yer kin safe? It canna be such a bad thing, if we can use it that way.”
“I can keep my kin safe without your magic,” Winn said. He spotted Maggie making her way through the crowd toward them, and Marcus straightened up when he noticed her as well.
“Aye, that ye can, Winn Nielsson. That ye can.” Marcus placed a hand on his shoulder. “Maggie will never be safe amongst the Powhatan, no matter what yer uncle has promised ye. Think on it before you make yer choice.”
Winn covered his scowl when Maggie launched herself into his arms. She laughed as he swirled her around, burying his face in her soft auburn hair to inhale her sweet honeysuckle scent. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright with mischief as she glanced back and forth between him and Marcus.
“Why aren’t you dancing? Does the brooding Viking have you stuck in some dull conversation?” she asked him, wrapping her arms around his waist. He shrugged out of her grasp as Marcus chuckled.
“You dance, I will watch,” he said.
“And ye haven’t seen brooding yet, my lady, if ye think that was it!” Marcus laughed. “I’ll take a turn with ye, if ye insist. I still have moves.”
“Right. Your moves? I know you can’t dance, you old fart. But we can give it a whirl if you want,” she giggled, taking Marcus by the arm. “Oh, wait, let me check on Kwetii first. I’ll be right back. Gwen put her to sleep and I need to say goodnight.”
Maggie dropped a quick kiss on Winn’s cheek and then punched Marcus in the arm before she jaunted off out of the Northern Hall.
“What did she just say?” Winn asked. “And why did she hit you?” The only meaning he gleaned from her utterance was that she was going to check on their daughter. Marcus shrugged as he rubbed his bicep.
“Future talk. I took my oath as protector seriously. Nary a lad put a hand on that hellion if I could help it,” he sighed. “She still has a mean right hook.”
Winn grunted in reply. Marcus clapped him on the shoulder and left him standing there with the drinking horn in his hand. He noticed Chetan dancing with Rebecca in the middle of the crowd, and was not surprised to see Makedewa glaring at them from the corner. When the song paused, Cormaic switched places with Chetan, and suddenly Makedewa went from indifferent annoyance to full-blown fury. Winn saw Makedewa’s eyes narrow at the dancing pair as they flew by. He also noticed the way Cormaic pulled Rebecca a bit closer when they swirled near the men.
He wanted to laugh at his brother, but after seeing how disturbed the younger man was, he decided to join him. Perhaps they would share mead from the exotic drinking horn that now belonged to him.
When Winn reached his brother’s side, Cormaic swung Rebecca so close that her skirts flared out and brushed his knee. He dimmed the grin from his face as Makedewa made a rough snorting sound and proceeded to gulp his drink.
“You should dance with her,” Winn advised his brother.
“Warriors do not dance like that,” Makedewa barked.
“I see many warriors here dancing. One with your woman,” Winn replied, his brow raised slightly.
“She is not my woman. She can dance with that Viking if she wishes. I could take him in battle with nothing but my fists,” Makedewa muttered.
“Then fight him. I will tell him you challenge him on the field tomorrow.”
“Fine. Do it.”
Makedewa dumped out what was left of his mead as he watched the dancers. Chetan walked up and gave him a hearty shove.
“She dances well,” Chetan said.
“Enough!” Makedewa snarled. Winn and Chetan watched him stalk out of the Northern Hall, and the moment he was clear they burst into laughter.
“I have never seen him act this way. Why doesn’t he speak to her and be done with it?” Winn asked. Chetan took the drinking horn Winn held and turned it over, examining it as he shrugged.
“I think he should bed her,” Chetan replied, “Before he loses his opomens.”
Winn grinned at the slur. Chetan used many of the taunts Maggie taught him from the future. Lose his balls, indeed.
As Chetan went off to fill the drinking horn, Winn looked over to the long table where Marcus sat. Did his customs mean he could not let his brother drink from the horn? Yet Marcus had offered it to both Winn and Maggie on the first night of their arrival, so he could see no error in letting Chetan drink from it. If there were rules attached to the object, his father should have advised him of such before he gifted it.
“Here, Jarl Winn,” Chetan said when he returned, thrusting the horn at him as Winn scowled. “What? The others call you such. They say you are Jarl here, as is your father.”
“Enough, brother,” Winn said. He looked around for Maggie, who had not returned. It had been long enough to bid their daughter goodnight, so he decided to check on them both. “Hold that for me. I will be back.”
Chetan shrugged and took a drink from the horn.
“Find Makedewa. Tell him to stop acting a fool and return. Tell him his woman misses him,” Chetan laughed.
Winn shook his head as he left and mumbled a retort to his brother. Rebecca was dancing happily with Cormaic, just as when Makedewa had left. Even if he found Makedewa, the last thing Winn would do was tell him to return.
Winn followed the gravel path through the village toward the Long House he shared with Maggie. The Norse strung blown glass globes from house to house, the orbs filled with lit candles that cast an eerie glow through the courtyard. A crescent shaped moon gave little light overhead, and instead they relied on the candles to illuminate the way. Maggie said it made her feel safe to have the candles burn at night, that it reminded her of streetlights in her own time. It seemed she had known little darkness in the future time the Bloodstone snatched her from.
He slowed his pace as he reached the Long House. The plank door was flung wide, and he heard the murmu
r of voices inside, one of which was not his daughter.
Chapter 23
Maggie
“How dare you follow me?” Maggie shouted. Kwetii moaned in her sleep, and Maggie immediately lowered her voice to a seething hiss. “Do you want Winn to kill you? Is that what you’re about? I won’t stop him, you know, not for one second!”
She stomped her foot for emphasis. Annoyed beyond belief that Benjamin had invaded her space, she did not understand why he could not leave well enough alone. Things had calmed down of late, and Winn appeared to be softening toward the idea of staying. Yet it would take just one stupid move by Benjamin to end her hope, and he was standing in front of her wielding it.
“I dinna come here to fight with ye! I just want a few words with ye, and then I’ll leave ye be! I never see ye without Winn at yer side, and I’d rather not cause more strife between us,” he said. Benjamin ran both hands through his unruly dark curls, clutching the back of his neck as he stared at her.
Maggie crossed her arms over her chest. Fair enough. She supposed she could hear him out. She did not feel that she owed him anything, after the way he lied and schemed, but since she loved his father and his brother, she would give him a few minutes if it would help things.
“Fine. You have two minutes. I need to get back to my husband.”
She saw him flinch.
“Thank ye,” he said. He approached, and she stepped back, shaking her head. He sighed and dropped his hands. “It’s still strange to me, ye know. Seeing ye here, and knowing yer my brother’s wife. But see ye, I must, if I wish to live with my kin, and yes, I do! I do want to be here. Do ye know what it’s like, to have no kin?”
“Of course I do. We played together as children. You know I had no parents, that Marcus was my family! Why do you ask that?”
“Oh, aye. I remember that. You were a foul-mouthed thing even then, I think ye told me to go shit myself or some other nonsense before ye kicked me out of yer hiding place,” he said.
A grin twisted the corner of her lip, unwilling, but definitely there. Yes, she recalled the last time she saw him as a child as well. Flashes of a curly-headed boy that followed her everywhere snuck into her mind, images of the future life they both left behind. Yes, she knew what it was like, to be displaced, to feel alone in another time. It was one reason she had married Benjamin when she thought Winn was dead.
“Did you come here to talk about that life, or this one?” she asked softly.
“Maybe both. I know not what to say to ye. I wish ye to know there will be no trouble from me. That bloody magic stone is something I never wish to see again, but at least it has returned me to the place I belong. It feels right, to have a place, I mean. A place to belong to. I wish that fer ye, as well.”
He coughed, seeming to cover the waver in his voice as he turned to leave.
“I did the best I could fer ye, Maggie. I know I wronged ye, and for that I am sorry. Maybe my heart clouded my judgment, and I’ll pay for it fer all my days. But yer wife to my brother now, and a good brother I will be.”
He ducked through the doorway and left without turning around. Her mouth hung open at his declaration, and she closed it with a snap. She tucked a fur around her sleeping child as she considered his speech.
So Benjamin wanted to mend fences. She thought back on the short time she had spent as his wife. He had been caring and considerate, treading carefully on the tatters of her broken heart as he tried to win her affection. If Winn had truly been dead, she would still be Benjamin’s wife. She looked down on her sleeping daughter and realized that Benjamin would have raised the child as his own. Maggie could not deny that she cared about him, but their relationship was a complicated one. Benjamin was from the future, just as she was, and if not for the Bloodstone magic, they would have grown up together with Marcus on her grandfather’s farm.
Yet reality was that the Gothi magic served some other purpose, and both she and Benjamin ended up in the past. Reality was that Benjamin served her up to be hanged as a witch in a jealous fit once he knew Winn was alive. Yes, in the end, Benjamin had saved her, but she was not sure it was enough to restore the friendship they once shared.
What would Winn say to Benjamin’s declaration? Of course, she would tell her husband of the visit. Maggie kissed Kwetii’s forehead and then left to make her way back to the Northern Hall.
Winn was standing with Chetan when she returned, and she noticed Makedewa standing in the corner with a sulking look on his face. She wondered what she had missed. Her husband gave her no time to think further on it, slipping his hand around hers. His fingers twisted into hers, and he squeezed her gently as he raised her knuckles to his lips for a kiss.
“Kwetii?” he asked. She reached over and kissed the edge of his jaw as he pulled her close.
“She’s fine. Winn?” she asked. She needed to tell him of Benjamin’s visit, but when her husband looked down at her with soft eyes and a curious stare, she decided it could wait.
“What is it, ntehem?”
She watched the dancers swirling in circles, their laughter nearly as raucous as the music and drums.
“Nothing,” she answered. “I think I owe Jarl Dagr a dance.”
Winn’s lips brushed her forehead and he released her.
“I will watch. But only him. I will share you with no other,” he murmured. She caught the hint of strain in his blue eyes, but it was a glimmer quickly passed and replaced with a smile. She turned back and kissed him square on the mouth before she danced away, leaving him with a grin on his face.
*****
Maggie left Kwetii in the care of Rebecca the next morning while she prepared to join the women gathering wool. She asked Gwen why they didn’t just shear the sheep, but when Gwen took her to the ridge overlooking the valley where they could see the herd, Maggie understood why. The Norse kept no ordinary sheep. The beasts were twice the size of any she had ever seen, with long, stringy hair and thick bulbous heads adorned with curling ram-like horns. It was easier, and safer, to gather the tufts of wool they left behind each morning than to try to procure it otherwise. Gwen said they all came from three surviving breeding stock that made the first time-travel journey with them to Virginia. She clammed up after that revelation, and Maggie made a mental note to take it up with Marcus. She wanted to know everything about their past, and she was fair tired of everyone acting like it was a taboo subject.
She poked her head inside the door to the Long House Teyas and Rebecca shared with a few other women. Teyas was alone in the house, rolling up garments and placing them in a carrying sack, her long black hair falling loose around her shoulders as she worked.
“Are you coming up to the ridge? Rebecca will stay with Kwetii. I thought we would walk together,” Maggie said.
“Go without me, sister. I must pack if I wish to say goodbye before we leave.”
Maggie bent down and gently took her hand. Tears ran down the younger woman’s face, but she would not raise her red-rimmed brown eyes.
“What are you talking about?” Maggie asked.
“My mother and father have arranged a marriage. Winn will take me to the Nansemond village today. Did he not tell you?” Teyas said.
Maggie shook her head, biting down hard on her lower lip.
“He can’t do that. He wouldn’t,” she replied.
“It is his duty, as it is mine,” Teyas said softly as she closed the sack.
“But without duty, would you still go?”
Teyas bowed her head. Maggie clasped her hands, and they clung together as she cried.
“I am happy to know I will be a wife soon,” Teyas insisted through her tears. Maggie held her as she cried, stifling her own tears in her sister’s hair. Not only was Teyas being taken away, her husband had willfully kept that information from her. Maggie felt the surge of anger and helplessness that often accompanied her through such times. Although Teyas knew she grieved, Teyas could not truly comprehend the anger Maggie felt at the woman being forc
ed into a marriage with a man she did not know. To Teyas, it was a part of life. To Maggie, it was unfathomable.
“I’ll talk to him,” Maggie insisted.
“No! Keep silent, this is no matter for you. You know this!” Teyas said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “I am too many summers to go on without a husband. I am lucky Osawas will have me.”
“He is the lucky one!” Maggie snapped. Teyas smiled.
“I hear he is brave. Winn says he has fought with our uncle.”
Maggie flinched at the mention of Opechancanough. He was the last Indian she wished to run into again, yet her family remained tied to him as if bound by shackles instead of blood. Even though she shared her knowledge of the future with her husband, Winn still retained his loyalty to his uncle and felt it best to stay in his favor. Maggie suspected this marriage pact was part of keeping that favor with the tribe, and it stoked her anger to see her husband offer his sister up for the taking. She still did not truly understand the way the Powhatan lived, and she stumbled over embracing their traditions, especially when it came to the role of women and men in society. It was just one more issue driving a wedge between them.
“Where will you live?” Maggie asked. She already knew it would not be with them. It was unlikely Osawas would be willing to leave his tribe to stay with their exiled family, so much so that it was not worth mentioning.
“I know not. My mother lives with Pepamhu now at Mattanock, she is first wife since his old wife died, Winn says. But Osawas is Weanock. Perhaps they will send us to live with his people.”
“Isn’t that far? A five-day ride, at least!”
Teyas made an attempt to smile, but it came out bitter and strained. “Yes, at least that much,” she said.