by Jen Black
“Steady, steady,” he murmured, as if to a nervous animal. “I thought you’d rather be free of this.” He gave a couple of gentle tugs on the leather collar at her neck, and before she grasped his intention, the steel sliced through the hated thing. She never even felt the coldness of the blade.
He dangled the strip of leather with its attendant piece of rope in front of her. “Do you want to keep it?”
Furious at being frightened and then gentled like a nervous horse, Emer seized the hated collar and hurled it far out over the loch.
He laughed. “Good for you. Now, come with me.”
A mixture of shame and indignation burned through her as she followed Flane over the heavy timbers that made up the jetty. Head down, dodging coils of rope, gaps in the wooden planks, empty sacks and closed kegs, Emer told herself the removal of her slave collar was a positive thing, and that if she were clever, more would follow. She did not realise Flane had stopped walking until she almost collided with the pale leather of his jerkin.
“You understand me,” he stated.
She backed off a pace or two, and looked up warily. “Yes.”
Did he think she was stupid? Many islanders now spoke Norse with their once war-like neighbours. Dutifully sewing tunics and chemises under her mother’s watchful eye, she had learned the language by listening as her father taught it to her brother. She had teased Donald because she picked it up faster than he did. Her chin wobbled at the warmth of the memory and she pressed her lips together to keep the tears at bay.
“That’s good. We’ll deal well together.”
Emer doubted it, but did not dispute his statement.
“Your life will not be hard here.”
A tingle of hope ran through her, and she hoped he meant it. But…he was a Viking, and he…owned her. It was her duty to escape if she could. She ventured a question in his language. “Where is this place?”
“It’s called Skuli’s Steading—about sixty miles from the Alban king’s settlement at Inverness.”
He seemed to understand her stilted speech. “I do not know Inverness.”
“Sixty miles as the crow might fly would take you to the eastern seaboard and Inverness, but Skuli’s Steading is my home.”
If she concentrated, she understood him easily enough. “Home!” Emer let out a snatch of bitter laughter. “How far is Skuli’s steading from my home? From an island called Pabaigh?”
“Pabaigh?” He shook his head, frowning. “Is it close to Skye?”
Emer shrugged. “I don’t know. My aunt is there.”
“Skye lies to the south of here. Maybe someone there will know of your island.”
He never knew the impact of his words. As realisation dawned, tears pricked her eyes and she stared at the sky through a sudden blur. Thank you, Lord. She’d guessed they were sailing north, away from Africa, but fear still gripped her that the ship headed to some distant part of Gotland or Russland. She looked round. This was the destination. They had sailed only for a day, and Skye was nearby. There would surely be a chance to escape now. Elation streamed through her at the thought she might see home again.
Flane took hold of her arm. Very much aware of the warmth of his hand on her skin, she waited as and he drew breath to speak and then changed his mind. They stared at each other in silence.
Stubble pricked through the skin of his jaw, and sunlight glanced off a single gold earring in his ear. The breeze blew a wisp of straw-gold hair across his mouth and in a casual, habitual gesture he hooked the hair behind his ear, but what held her still was the intensity of his eyes.
In a small voice, Emer asked a question. “Why me?”
The smile that grew slowly across his face was confident, knowing. He let go of her arm, lifted his hand to her face, let it hover in the air for some moments before he touched her cheek. The back of his bent fingers glided gently down to her jaw. “You are lovely.”
“Because you like how I look, you paid silver for me?”
“What else could it be? I saw you huddled against the stockade in the slave market and…I don’t know. I felt that…I wanted to do this.” His palm cupped the back of her head, pulled her forward and his mouth descended on hers. His warm tongue probed her mouth.
With a grunt of shock, Emer recoiled and struggled against his broad chest. He let go of her.
“Don’t tell me you’re shy.” His lazy grin mocked her.
“I do not allow men to handle me.”
“We’ll soon see about that. Why do you think I bought you?” One fair eyebrow tilted up. “How did you get into the slave market?”
Emer took another step away from him, poised to run if he should try and grab her again. “Vikings seized me, dragged me to their ship – I still have the bruises, look – and sold me. Satisfied?”
“Don’t take that tone with me, girl. I didn’t snatch you. I paid out good silver for you and brought you here.” His arm indicated the steading and the hillsides. “Is this not better than the slave market? You ought to be grateful, so get rid of that pig-headed look. You could have done a lot worse.”
“Pig-headed! Worse? My father is chieftain of Pabaigh!”
He leaned close, blue eyes sparkling. “I have only two words for you.” He spoke slowly and with emphasis. “Moorish Africa.”
Emer recoiled, and then inhaled slowly. She should not let him see he frightened her, even if her heart beat like a mad thing and her knees trembled beneath her gown.
“You may not like where you are, but you would like Africa a lot less. We passed a Moorish galley just as we left the Liffey. You escaped Africa by that much.” He indicated a tiny space between his thumb and forefinger. “I can always sell you on to the Moors if you don’t please me.”
Emer shuddered. No one ever got home from Africa. It was even worse than Russland.
“Well? Will you please me?”
She met the laughing challenge of his blue eyes, and something opened and warmed within her. It was an odd sensation, totally unexpected, as if she stood before a huge glowing fire and the heat reached out and enveloped her. She could not remember any man having such an effect on her.
Perhaps…he was certainly more handsome…better looking than…anyone on Pabaigh. She caught at her thoughts. He should be her husband, not her master. “My father would repay the silver, if you returned me to Pabaigh.”
He shook his head, grasped her arm and walked her towards a wooden hut built out over the loch. “Soon everyone will know you belong to me.”
The words echoed in her ears as Flane pulled her into the warm, dim interior of the hut that was full of dark corners, firelight and steam.
Shadowy women in various states of undress clustered around a central hearth. No one seemed unduly disturbed at the interruption, though some discreetly covered themselves.
Flane addressed one of the women. “I brought a girl back from Dublin. She needs to get rid of the lice. I don’t want to be scratching like a dog fox tomorrow.”
Emer glared at him.
He caught her look, and must have interpreted it correctly, for he reached out and held up a strand of her snarled, tangled hair. “It was a slave market. You couldn’t have avoided it.”
He left, and Emer stared wide-eyed around the shadowy hut.
Chapter Two
Flane strode away from the bathing hut and hadn’t gone far before his good friend Skeggi met him on the path to the main settlement, grasped his arm and steered him towards the barns and outbuildings.
“What’s the matter?” Flane asked.
Skeggi squinted from beneath the dark, tumbling curls hanging over his brow. “What have you done now?”
Flane glanced sideways. “What makes you think I’ve done anything?”
“The men are talking in the hall. Something about a beautiful slave?’ Skeggi’s eyebrows moved up and down suggestively, and his clean-shaven, wide cheek-boned face broke into a wide grin. ‘When you start avoiding your future bride, there has to be a reas
on.”
“Who says I’m avoiding her?”
Skeggi’s dark eyes danced with amusement “You’ve been away at Dublin nearly a week, and you come back with a slave girl. Either you don’t give a sailor’s cuss about your intended bride, or you’re avoiding her.”
Flane’s mouth pulled to one side. “The trip to Dublin went well. Nothing unusual happened. Except that I purchased a female slave on the very last day.”
“What’s she like?”
“Young, attractive.”
Skeggi broke into open laughter. “Katla’s going to take your knife and slice your nose off with it if you’re not careful.”
“Not if I have anything to do with it,” Flane growled.
“What’s she look like?”
“Small, up to here.” Flane’s palm indicated a spot level with his collar bones. “Brown eyes, brown hair and you know—” He indicated curves between his two palms.
“Beddable?”
Flane nodded. “Very.”
“What are you going to do with her? Apart from the obvious?”
“She will be my bed slave.”
“You think Katla’s going to accept that?”
“Katla will have to put up with it, that’s all.”
Skeggi shook his head. “You’re a brave man, Flane Ketilsson. Let me be there when you tell her. I very much want to see it.” He ducked to one side to avoid the sharp jab Flane aimed at his shoulder. “Why did you do it?”
Flane shook his head slowly. “We paid good silver for some strong youths to help with the ploughing.” His wide shoulders moved lightly up and down in a gentle shrug. “Skuli Grey Cloak chose them.” He rested his forearms on the fence and squinted across the paddock at the steading’s few milk cows. “I can’t say why I did it. She was trying to hide behind the other slaves, didn’t want to be spotted. I saw her, and fancied her. She wears an old gown she’s outgrown, and—”
“How do you know she’s outgrown it?”
Flane frowned and thought about it. “It’s too tight across the chest, and shows too much ankle. May I go on without you drooling over me? She speaks our language and there’s a streak of arrogance in her. She offered me silver to take her back home.”
“She sounds like trouble.”
Flane regarded his friend sorrowfully. “That’s what Skuli Grey Cloak said.”
***
Emer stood uncertainly in the warm, steamy darkness. A fire burned on the stone hearth in the centre of the room and an iron brazier glowed in the back corner. Steam billowed and spiralled in the air. One of the women rose to her feet, and moved towards her. Emer took a quick step towards the door.
“Wait!” The woman called gently. “Don’t go! We won’t harm you.”
Dirty, dishevelled, and with the smell of the slave market on her, Emer wondered how these clean, shining women could bear to have her in the same room with them. Even in one if her newest gowns, Emer would have felt nervous. The heat rising through her face told her she was blushing. She braced her spine, raised her chin and waited.
The woman stretched out a small, neat hand on which a plaited gold ring glinted in the firelight. Emer’s gaze rose to the woman’s face. Who were these women? Could she trust them? Were they slaves, too? The gold ring suggested a free woman. Their men had not been in the crew, or they would have been on the jetty rather than here in the steamy hut. The other women wore jewellery too. They all looked healthy, well-fed and friendly.
“My name is Inga, and these are my friends.” The woman gestured to the little group behind her. “You will get to know them in time.”
Emer looked around the circle of women. Inga smiled and recited their names. “Birgit, Inga, Thyri and Helga.”
Emer let her gaze move slowly from woman to woman around the hearth. Unless she wanted to be thought dim and stupid, she ought to respond. “Emer. My name is Emer.”
Inga closed the distance between them and ushered her to the fire. “Come,” she said. “Come and sit down and let us care for you while you tell us how you came here.”
Bright smiles broke out around the group, and a murmur of voices filled the air. Emer’s nervous tension lessened. People here probably loved to hear a story just as much as folk back home on the island. One of the women gathered Emer’s dirty hair into a single coiled strand and skewered it at the back of her head.
“I searched for a lost calf,” Emer began slowly. She gestured at her gown. “That’s why I’m dressed in such rough old clothes. It was a fine bright day when I went down onto the beach below the dun and set off towards the far headland. If I had known what would befall me, I would not have run so eagerly down the brae.”
She had been glad, that day, to have some time alone, for her father’s news had given her much to think about. With the island hill at her back and the sun-speckled sea stretching out to Harris and the other islands, she wandered along the beach scarcely aware of the wind lifting her hair and stirring the sand grains at her feet. After all, it wasn’t every day Father sailed to Skye, spoke with his sister and arranged a marriage for his only daughter.
Angus, he’d said, was a fine young man with a happy disposition and only two years older than Emer. But Emer had not been sure she would like him.
“When someone grabbed me from behind, I thought the other young people were playing games with me,” she said slowly, watching the listening women. “But I soon discovered this man was so much stronger than any of my friends. He tossed me over his shoulder, and then I saw the dragon ship in the shallows. I screamed and screamed but he tossed me aboard while all his men watched.”
“Oh, Emer, you must have been so scared.” Inga reached out and took Emer’s hand between her own.
Emer nodded, and swallowed around the sudden lump in her throat brought on by Inga’s sympathy. “I scrambled up, but no one helped me.” Panting and panic-stricken, she remembered staring around her. Men, women and children stared back from shocked eyes. She guessed they too had been plucked from other islands and beaches.
“I cried,” she said. “I wept till an older woman slapped me. ‘Yer greetin’ upsets the bairns,’ she said.”
“Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry.”
“I stopped crying at once,” Emer said, remembering the two white-faced, terrified children staring up at her from behind their mother’s skirts. “I heard the crew. They joked amongst themselves about how many pieces of silver they would receive once we stood before the overseer of the slave market in Dublin.”
She hadn’t wept since that first day. She had been stoic and silent, but it hadn’t done her any good. She was sullen, the other women sneered. Too pretty, they said, and full of her own importance. Too proud, the men said, to speak to them. The truth was she couldn’t speak; if she did, the sobs would break out again. The result was she endured the long voyage down the coast of Scotland entirely alone.
“What happened when you reached Dublin?”
“I had never seen anything like it. It is a vast quayside, with so many ships. Guards with spears and shields marched along the top of the huge palisade around the settlement, and there were hordes of people everywhere.” It had shocked her to see so many people in one place. “We were hustled into a big compound with high timber walls, and that was when I realised I would end my days as someone’s slave. The nights were the worst, when I dared not sleep for fear one of the guards would find me.” She shuddered and murmurs of sympathy came from the other women. “I stayed with the women and children, thinking I would be safe with them, but I know now those women would trade me for their children’s safety without a second thought.”
She fell silent, and made no objection when the women undressed her. She could not match all the names to the correct faces, but she thought it was Birgit who took her dress and chemise away, and kicked her sandals aside once she untied them.
“No!” Emer snatched at the chemise, wrenched it out of the woman’s hands. Ignoring the gasps around her, she hunted through the fabr
ic until she found the clumsy pocket, tied off with a scrap of twine. Sinking back on her heels, she undid the knot and shook the slender gold ring into her palm.
“It is my ring.” She slipped it on her finger. “I had to hide it, or they would have stolen it from me.”
They admired the ring, her slenderness, her beautiful hands, and told her, laughing as they said it, that she was too pretty for her own good. They admired her necklace of glass beads and left it around her neck when she objected to their suggestion that she should remove it. They wondered in teasing tones what Flane had in mind for her. Katla, they said with a laugh, might not be at all pleased to see her. One woman added with a sly smile that Flane would be better pleased than Katla, and everyone laughed.
“Who is Katla?” Emer asked.
“Skuli Grey Cloak’s daughter,” Inga told her. “His only living child.”
Another voice chimed in. “Katla wants to marry Flane Ketilsson.”
Emer remembered the way Skuli had seemed displeased over Flane’s purchase, and could see why he might not approve. If Flane was due to marry Skuli’s daughter, why did he want her? It hardly seemed fair to his bride.
Welcoming though they were, Emer felt strange and alone among the group of women when they chattered amongst themselves. She looked down at the shiny gold ring and remembered the day, not so long ago, when her father handed it to her on her sixteenth birthday.
“We waited, your mother and I, until the hawthorn blossom arrived just as it did the year you were born. You are a woman now, my dear.”
Remembering their love strengthened her, made her feel less alone.
The women of Skuli’s Steading laughed and gossiped in gentle voices as they scooped warm water from a cauldron over the fire, soap from a pottery jar and washed Emer from top to toe, and then set about her long hair. Deprived of friends and family for almost a week, their care and attention came as a blessed relief. The women were kind and caring and Emer quelled rising tears while soft, feminine hands touched her as only her mother and sister had done.