“And yet, Rikard didn’t attend,” Godfrid said, not really as a question.
“No.” Sanne dabbed at her cheeks with her handkerchief. “After he said goodbye to us at Arno’s front door, I never saw him again.”
Cait leaned forward and squeezed her shoulder. “Had they a falling out?”
“Not as far as I know. You’ll have to ask Arno, of course, but their behavior with each other was the same as always.” Then Sanne’s expression turned thoughtful. “Still, I’d be surprised if he doesn’t tell you that something was different about Rikard these last few weeks.”
“Different how?” For the first time, Finn appeared to be paying close attention.
Sanne turned in her seat to look up at him. “He was more tense and snappish with me and Marta. Because he was determined not to bring his business home, he always put on a serene face when he walked in the door. Of late, that mask had started to slip. But again, I couldn’t tell you why or what was bothering him. Don’t worry your pretty head over business matters, my dear. That’s what he said.” She snorted. “As if telling me not to worry could somehow stop me from worrying. Knowing what was wrong, no matter how terrible, would have been better.”
“Did he give an explanation as to why he wasn’t at the celebration?” Godfrid said.
“Business,” Sanne said. “Always business.”
“What did he tell you about when he would return?” Cait asked. “And what did you do when he didn’t?”
“He said the meeting would run late, so I shouldn’t plan to see him until today. He keeps an office on the upper floor,” she gestured towards the back of the warehouse, “where he has a bed. It has a door he can lock, and of course the warehouse is always guarded by his men.”
Godfrid nodded. “I noted the room earlier.” Perhaps twelve feet in length on a side, the room in question took up the full width of the loft. While a railing ran around the rest of the loft to prevent anyone from falling from the height, the room itself was fully enclosed by walls. “I haven’t yet had a moment to enter it.”
“He kept his account books there,” Sanne said.
Immediately Finn stopped his prowling and strode off in that direction. Godfrid watched him go with narrowing eyes, and without waiting to be asked, Conall rose to his feet and went after him.
At his departure, Sanne turned to look at Cait. Marta had fallen asleep with her head resting on Cait’s shoulder. “I would hope you would speak to your uncle on our behalf. Rikard is dead, but that doesn’t mean we don’t intend to honor our contracts.”
“Is that going to be up to you?” Cait said.
“I am confident that Finn and I can come to an agreement. My husband did not share his interests with me, but I am a merchant’s daughter. I know more about how to manage a warehouse than Finn does.” The weeping widow was all but gone, replaced by the confident daughter of Thorfin Ragnarson, Rikard’s long-time rival.
But then Sanne spun back to Godfrid. “Unless something has happened with the business? Do you know something I don’t?”
Godfrid put out a calming hand to her. “I have heard nothing untoward about Rikard’s business. Certainly, the wealth that surrounds you now is still here.”
“What about Rikard’s gold and silver?” Cait said. “Do you know where he kept it?”
“That I do know. We kept the most valuable items in the treasure chest at home.” Yet again, her eyes strayed towards the back of the warehouse.
It was time to find out why. “Do you know about the vault?”
Sanne’s mouth fell open. “You-you know about the vault?”
“We do,” Godfrid said. “Rikard showed it to you?”
“I thought he never spoke to you about business?” Cait said.
Sanne sniffed. “Business was one thing, wealth another. With Marta and me as his only heirs, Rikard made sure I knew where his valuables were hidden.”
Cait nodded in a somewhat more conciliatory fashion. “Rikard was found dead at the bottom of the stairs.”
Sanne’s hands clenched into fists. “Was everything taken?”
“Not that we can tell. It was not ransacked like the warehouse,” Godfrid said, interested that Sanne seemed far more concerned about Rikard’s wealth than the fact that he’d died alone in the dark. “We will need you to come with us and tell us if anything is missing.”
“Of course. Now?”
“We might as well.” He rose and put out a hand to Sanne to help her to her feet.
Cait had been holding the still sleeping Marta all this time, and now she stood too and carried the girl across the floor, heading towards the stairs to the corner room where Sanne had said Rikard kept a bed.
Sanne watched her go. “Rikard loved his wealth more than anything.” She sighed, her expression turning rueful. “Certainly more than he loved Marta and me.”
Chapter Eight
Day One
Caitriona
Cait had been walking away from Sanne when she’d overheard her tell Godfrid that her husband hadn’t loved her or his daughter as much as he’d loved his wealth. It wasn’t Cait’s place to reply, since Sanne had been talking to Godfrid, but, to Cait’s mind, Sanne’s assessment was exactly right. Rikard had been perfectly content to have been no more than mildly fond of his wife, but he had naturally assumed that his wife loved him. In fact, Rikard had taken her entirely for granted.
And after three weeks spent observing the relationship, Cait didn’t think she was projecting her own marriage issues onto Sanne either. Like Sanne, Cait had been married to a much older man, one who enjoyed having a young wife on his arm, so she knew both what to look for and what it felt like. Sanne’s role had been to appear beautiful at all times, with perfect skin and the softest hands Cait had ever seen on a woman, without even a needle pinprick or calluses from handling the tight threads of the loom or the shuttle.
Unusually, she did no chores, not even teaching her daughter to weave. That task had been delegated most recently to Cait. And while Sanne claimed to have slept on a separate pallet from her husband so she could take care of her daughter, Cait knew for a fact that it was Marta’s nanny, a young slave named Tilda, who slept with the girl and attended to her needs most nights. There was a reason Marta had come willingly to Cait: she was used to being ignored by her mother.
Cait hadn’t given her husband a child, but outside of that fact, her marriage hadn’t been so different from Sanne’s. It had been arranged by her uncle in an attempt to forge ties with the neighboring kingdom of Munster. She and Niall been married for eight years, which was approximately seven years and eleven months longer than Cait would have preferred. His death had freed her to be her own woman—or at least given her the courage to fight for her right to be one.
At the time of the betrothal, Cait had not protested her marriage. As the daughter of a sister to the king, she had known her duty, and Niall had been a handsome man, noble, respected, and wealthy. Unfortunately, Niall had not turned out to be the man of her dreams, and she couldn’t blame her uncle and father for not knowing about Niall’s gambling and womanizing ways. As far as Cait was aware, no whisper of his vices had come to her family before the wedding. Conall had made inquiries too, but it may be that Niall’s people were so pleased to learn of her coming to his lands that they’d outright lied about his proclivities.
Regardless, her marriage hadn’t been a success, made worse by the fact that she hadn’t conceived a child within the first year—or ever. Like Rikard with Sanne, over time, Niall became indifferent to her. She had become akin to an item on display for sale more than a lifelong companion, and as awful a person as it made her, she couldn’t deny that his death in a riding accident hadn’t come too soon.
Before her sojourn in Dublin, her uncle had suggested a new marriage for her—to Donnell, one of the princes of Connaught. Cait had objected strongly, never mind that Donnell was the heir to the throne of not only Connaught but of the High King of Ireland. As a widow, refusal wa
s her prerogative under Brehon law, though it was rarely invoked within a royal family, where every daughter and son was raised to understand the importance of alliance. Cait didn’t want to marry Donnell. She didn’t want to marry anyone.
Conall had supported her decision, in part, she suspected, out of guilt for making such a terrible mistake with Niall the first time around. She was aware, however, that her uncle hadn’t given up on the idea, and she suspected he’d agreed to her becoming a spy to humor her on the way to softening her defenses. The irony was that she’d felt less like a slave in Dublin than she had in Imokilly.
Cait laid Marta down on the bed in the office. Before today, she had only ever stood in the doorway to speak to Rikard. It had been the first place she’d gone after the alarm had been raised by the pool of blood, now known to be wine. She’d been worried about what might have been taken by the intruder, who’d pulled everything off the shelves and cleared the table of documents, but she didn’t know enough about what the office had contained in the first place to tell if anything was missing. The account books were still there, now stacked in a pile by Conall and Finn, who were leaving the room as she arrived with Marta.
She returned to the main floor, to find the others gathered around the open trapdoor. In one of Cait’s last acts as a slave, while the men had been conferencing with Ottar, she had wiped up the last of the wine, so they were able to stand at the top of the stairs without marring their shoes. Still, she hadn’t chosen to do anything about the wine on the stairs, since that would have necessitated pulling open the trapdoor and entering the vault again. While she was very curious about what Rikard had stored down there, the existence of the vault was still not common knowledge, and she hadn’t wanted to explain to anyone what she was doing.
When Cait approached, Sanne was staring down at the smeared wine. Evidently impatient with her hesitation, Finn went down the steps ahead of her.
“It’s only wine,” Cait whispered in her ear. “In death, your husband showed no sign of injury.” It still remained to be seen whether or not that was entirely true, but it was close enough for Cait’s purposes. Whatever had been done to him, his death hadn’t been a result of stabbing.
Godfrid also noticed Sanne’s reluctance—and guessed the reason for it—because he began rummaging through a pile of scattered goods near the stairs. He came up with an armful of hemp sacking, which he proceeded to lay on the steps over the wine spots. “Perhaps this will help.”
Cait watched him work, acknowledging how rare it was for a man of Godfrid’s station to be so casual about service to others. He’d had an idea, and he’d implemented it. While that might not be remarkable in and of itself, he’d solved the problem himself rather than asking a servant to fetch the sacking and do it for him. He was so sure of himself—so sure that he was worthy—that he didn’t need to prove anything to anyone. She honestly had never seen that before from any nobleman—maybe even any man—except her brother.
Brushing away further noises of concern on Cait’s part, Sanne descended the steps and stood on the floor of Rikard’s vault—her vault—shivering.
Cait followed and moved off the steps to stand where Rikard had written Godfrid’s name, in case some sign of the lettering remained. She didn’t mention that Sanne herself was standing where Rikard had died. The vault was so small that there was no way to avoid the spot.
Finn stood a few feet away. “Until today, I’d forgotten this was here. After we built it, my father never let me enter it again.”
“Why not?” Godfrid lifted the lantern he held to more fully light the room.
“He was grooming my older brother to take over the business after him, not me. I didn’t mind, since a trader was the last thing I wanted to be.”
Godfrid laughed under his breath. “You wanted to go a Viking.”
“I did.” Finn laughed back. “It’s in our blood, is it not?” Then his face fell, and his voice turned sad. “Our intent was to sail as far west as Iceland. While the seas can be very dangerous between here and there, the Icelanders are always short on supplies and profits are great.” Finn lifted one shoulder in an apologetic shrug. “Once in Iceland, I decided to strike out on my own. I have no excuse for it except I was young and criminally foolish. I left my brother in charge of the ship and our men and joined another crew sailing west.”
“To Vinland?” Godfrid actually gasped the words.
At first Cait thought he was horrified, and then she realized it was excitement, not fear, she was hearing in his voice. Three weeks in Dublin was long enough to realize that what she’d heard growing up about Danes was true: it was every Dane’s dream to sail west to the horizon. If there be dragons, so be it. Better to have seen a dragon and died in the attempt to defeat it than not to have sailed west at all. As Finn had said, going a Viking was in their blood.
She herself had no desire to leave Ireland. No land could be more beautiful—and that wasn’t just her opinion. Travelers from Europe and beyond to her uncle’s court claimed the same.
But Godfrid’s expression had turned rueful. “I gather things did not go well after that?”
“We made it as far as Greenland, but the weather was very bad, and the seas froze solid. We spent a terrible winter on that lonely shore and almost died.” He looked at Sanne and Cait. “Greenland isn’t green, you see. And although the sea ice melted eventually, our boat had been damaged in one of the winter storms. We tried three times to sail back to Iceland, but each time we were forced to turn back because our ship wasn’t seaworthy. There are no trees in Greenland with which to repair it.
“Finally, a ship arrived from Vinland on its way home, and those of us who still lived were able to barter our way on board. We arrived in Iceland to find my brother had fallen ill and died within weeks of my initial departure. I can’t help but think that, had I stayed, he might have turned for home and been spared the sickness that swept through Reykjavik.”
“Whether a man lives or dies is in the hands of God. You know that.” Though as Godfrid spoke, he retained the faraway look in his eyes from his visions of Vinland.
Sanne appeared disinterested in her stepson’s account and asked no questions of him nor professed her sympathy for the loss of his brother, who was also her elder stepson. While he’d been speaking, she’d been slowly spinning on one heel, inspecting the contents of the room.
Cait put a hand on her arm to get her attention. “Is anything missing?”
Sanne shook her head. “I haven’t been down here in several months, but nothing looks disturbed to me. What about you, Finn?”
Finn shook himself. “As I said, I was never allowed down here. Treasure chests could be missing, and I wouldn’t know it.”
“If chests were missing, there would be an outline of where they’d stood in the dirt.” Godfrid pursed his lips as he studied the young man. “You do realize that everything that was your father’s is yours by right now, providing you make dispensation for Sanne and Marta and pay the proper tithe to Ottar.”
“Which of course I will do.” Finn bowed in Sanne’s direction. “My father’s house is your home for as long as you choose to live in it. Tell me what you need or what you would like, and I will provide it.”
Sanne gazed at him, and Cait saw the moment she realized that she was truly a free woman. As when Cait had thrown off her mantle of slave girl, Sanne’s shoulders straightened and her chin came up. “Thank you, Finn. After your father’s funeral, I think I would like to return to the house in Wexford with Marta, but perhaps I could make a firm decision later.”
“Of course,” Finn said. “As I said, whatever you need.”
Sanne nodded and then climbed the stairs to reenter the warehouse proper. Cait glanced upwards in time to see a last flash of Sanne’s cloak as she disappeared, and then she heard the thump of her footsteps as she climbed the stairs to the office where Marta slept.
Conall waited until she was out of sight and then turned back to Finn. “What about Arno? W
ill you continue the partnership with him?”
“I left my desire for seafaring in Greenland. This business is my father’s legacy, and I will not abandon it. I will do whatever I have to do.” Finn made an impatient gesture with one hand. “If you don’t mind, I will do an accounting of what is here later.” He left the vault, taking the stairs two at a time as if he couldn’t wait to leave it. Cait couldn’t blame him, since for him the vault must have the smell of death about it. A moment later, Cait could hear him greeting Sanne and Marta, who had come down from the loft and were leaving too.
Conall waited until the main door slammed shut. “Does anyone else find it odd that he would leave us here unattended?”
“He appears to trust us,” Godfrid said.
“Well, he shouldn’t.” Conall looked from one to the other. “You two stay here. This is our chance to search the vault. Maybe something here will tell us why Rikard died, and also what he hid. Leave Finn to me.”
Chapter Nine
Day One
Conall
Even after living in Dublin for a year, Conall was still not entirely comfortable with the stares he garnered every time he walked the streets of Dublin alone. He was determined never to show vulnerability, however, and to that end, on the way out of the warehouse, he snagged an apple from a basket that was waiting to be taken to the market, and sauntered as casually as possible after Finn.
Learning Danish had helped in his comprehension of what made the people behave as they did, but until Conall had encompassed the importance Danish men placed on strength and bravado, the very attributes he himself was affecting today, true understanding had eluded him. The crowning of Ottar as ruler of Dublin was a perfect example.
Only six years ago, Ottar, as the son of the King of Man, had brought an army to Dublin in support of Torcall and to fight against, as usual, the men of Brega and their allies. Ottar had been instrumental in the victory, and with Torcall an old and ill man, the people of Dublin had invited Ottar to become co-ruler with him. What only a handful of people knew, Godfrid among them, was that, in order to gain the throne, Ottar had bribed a faction of Dublin’s merchants. Six years on, he still had their loyalty, in large part because he’d threatened to expose them if they wavered. Rikard had been among the bribed, as had Arno and Thorfin, Sanne’s father.
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