Erinsong

by Mia Marlowe

  “I never intended for this to happen,” he said. “You know I didn’t remember anything of my past.”

  “Aye, well, seems to me quite a bit slipped your mind.” She put a shoulder to the prow and shoved. The boat didn’t budge.

  “You knew this was a possibility from the first. Don’t you remember? Before we wed, you’re the one who insisted we only handfast, just in case.”

  Damn the man. Why does he have to be right?

  Brenna turned and pressed her back to the pointed prow, hoping to gain some purchase, but Jorand had pulled more than half the length of the coracle onto the spongy bank. She groaned with the effort but only managed to move the sturdy boat a few finger-lengths.

  “Brenna.” His voice was ragged. “Look at me.”

  She drew a deep breath and let herself meet his gaze. The pain she read on his face lanced her heart afresh.

  “I never wanted to hurt you, I swear it.”

  Too late.

  He reached for her, but she shrank back. His pained expression told her he was hurt by her withdrawal. Her natural impulse was to try to ease his suffering, but she couldn’t bring herself to give him comfort, even though it broke her heart to deny him a small kindness.

  “What ye say is true, I grant ye. I went into this marriage hoping ye had no past, yet knowing in me heart ye might. Seems a good many things slipped me mind as well.” She trembled, unable to control the shakes threatening to take her. Suddenly a new thought struck her. “When did it all come back to ye then? I suppose the sight of this Thorkill brought the remembrance of his daughter to your mind.”

  “No.” A deep cleft formed between his brows. “I won’t lie to you, Brenna. It was the night you clouted me on the head. That’s when my memory came back entire.”

  “But that was weeks ago. We’ve come ever so many leagues since then. Ye let me make plans, the things we said and did together, it was all—” Her mind rolled over the events of the recent past in a new light. His furious lovemaking had delighted her, leaving her soul stripped bare and vulnerable but unafraid. Now a tight knot formed in her belly.

  “Ye used me,” she whispered, hardly daring to voice the sickening truth.

  “No, princess, never that.” He moved to embrace her but she shoved him away. “What passed between us was real, for both of us. Didn’t you think it strange that I changed my mind and suddenly didn’t want to come to Dublin? It was because I love you, Brenna.”

  Love. How she’d longed to hear him declare it. Now it rang false as a minstrel’s play in her ear, even though the voicing of it made something inside her leap up in hopeless joy. She reined in her surging heart. Why had he waited till now when the word meant less than nothing?

  “No, no, no!” she chanted, falling against him and pounding her fists on his chest. “Ye have no right to tell me that. Not now.”

  He caught her wrists and held her arms spread-eagle. “I do have the right.” His eyes blazed at her, fierce as a goshawk with a mouse in its sights. “I love you, I tell you. I’m your husband, whether you like it or no.”

  “That’s easily remedied,” she countered, yanking herself free and attacking the coracle with fresh vehemence. “I release ye from your vows with me blessing. Go back to your Norse cow then. Ye needn’t be bothered with the likes of me one moment longer.”

  “No, Brenna. Our agreement was for a year and a day.” His voice was a low rumble, but she shivered at the core of hardness she heard in the tone. What right did he have to be angry? “I’ll not settle for anything less.”

  “Ye’ll settle for a great deal less if ye want to live out the rest of the term.” Brenna knew she shouldn’t bait him. It wasn’t unheard of for a husband to murder his wife for a scolding tongue, but she was past caring if he killed her.

  In fact, it might be a mercy.

  She ducked under his arm when he moved to capture her. “Don’t ye be daring to touch me. Not while ye have another woman who calls herself your wife.”

  She bit her lip as she shoved against the boat again. When it wouldn’t give ground, she sank to her knees in despair.

  He raked a hand through his hair in frustration. “What are you doing? Even if you could get her under sail, where do you think you’d go?”

  Home. Home to Donegal. She was suddenly overcome with the need to see her family, to be surrounded by the people she was sure loved her. She’d learned a fair bit about sailing during their sojourn. Still, however much she might wish it, she knew it would be impossible for her to navigate alone over the greenish-gray waters encircling the isle.

  “Why, by all that’s holy, did ye not tell me sooner?” she whispered.

  “For fear of this.” All trace of anger drained from him and he knelt down beside her, close but not touching. “Brenna, I’ve faced battle. I’ve escaped from a walled city with an army at my heels. Before I washed up on your beach, I spent a night adrift in the open sea. But I’ve never been more afraid than when my memory returned and I realized I might lose you.”

  Her heart strained toward him, but she pulled it back. No honey-tongued words could salvage the wreck of their marriage.

  “Ye cannot lose what ye never really had. How is it possible for ye to have me, when I don’t have ye? Not all of ye at any rate.” She worried her lower lip and let a single tear course down her cheek unheeded. “Merciful Christ, what’s to become of us?”

  “Check your bearings and remember where we are. This is a delicate situation, all right,” he admitted.

  Brenna tossed a look back up to their camp, where the four invaders had settled to empty her stewpot. Evidently, they had no interest in Jorand’s domestic affairs.

  “Fortunately, among my people, it’s not uncommon for a man to have more than one wife,” she heard Jorand saying.

  She wished he’d slapped her instead.

  Her vision tunneled and she had to remind herself to breathe.

  “I cannot live with that.” She strained to hold back the flood of tears pressing against her eyes. Once started, she feared she’d never stop. “If ever ye cared for me, even a wee bit, ye’ll not ask it of me.”

  Since he was able to broach the possibility of keeping both of them, it was obvious Jorand wouldn’t give up Solveig for her. And why should he? Solveig was the chieftain’s daughter, obviously someone of importance in his world. His dalliance with an Irish girl would be tolerated and given no more importance than if he’d acquired a body slave.

  Misere, Jesu Christe. Christ, have mercy.

  How was it she was still alive? Her chest continued to rise and fall, each breath a searing blast from a kiln. But deep inside, she was hollow as a gourd. For the first time in her life, Brenna understood why some folk did away with themselves in despair. She wished she could sink into the dark earth. It would be silent and cool and still, and she wouldn’t have to feel anymore. If Father Michael hadn’t pounded the reality of mortal sin and the terrors of hell into her head, she’d step into the black waters of the Liffey and let herself float to the sea and oblivion.

  “Take me home,” she begged. “For the love of God, take me back to me father’s keep.”

  “You want to leave without getting what we came for? Have you forgotten the child? I still mean to get that book back for you, and if I have to kill Kolgrim to do it, so much the better.”

  He ground a fist into his other palm and Brenna imagined for a moment those strong fingers laced around Kolgrim’s neck, squeezing the life out of the man who’d ruined and ultimately killed her sister. Her chest constricted painfully. Even the thought of retribution for Sinead wasn’t worth the indignity of sharing her husband with another woman.

  “Brenna, I swear to you, I’ll still help you find your sister’s bairn. Do you not think you can bear me company long enough to do that?”

  The child. A soft throb started inside her. The last good thing she could do for Sinead. She could love her sister’s child. A sweet ache longed to be assuaged by a pair of chubby arms around h
er neck. Aye. She’d come so far. To turn back now for the sake of her own heartache seemed the height of selfishness. She’d never have a better opportunity to learn what became of Sinead’s bairn. She could bear much for the sake of the child, even the indignity of seeing Jorand with his first love. With the woman he might still love.

  In answer, she rose to her feet and trudged back to the camp, leaving him to tie up the coracle again lest the rising tide pull it back into the Liffey during the night.

  The other Northmen had made themselves at home around Brenna’s fire and were fighting for the last dollops of stew in the supper pot. As she walked across camp, she felt their eyes on her, alien and probing, but she held her head high and carried herself with the remembered dignity of a daughter of the house of Ui Niall. Her Donegal pride was in tatters, but it was all she had left.

  Brenna crawled into the lean-to and curled up in Jorand’s cloak, giving her back to the fire. The boisterous conversation that had died when she emerged from the brush started afresh, raucous and crude to her ears. In a few moments, she recognized Jorand’s voice joining them in that savage, strangely modulated tongue.

  Somehow she had forgotten what he was. In the months leading up to their marriage, she’d been fascinated by him, as deceived and entranced as if he were a faerie king come to charm her into the hills with him. Since their wedding, his nearness and the treachery of her own body had led her into the delusion that Jorand was, in truth, Keefe Murphy, her own handsome sea warrior.

  Now, hearing him in his true element, surrounded by his rough countrymen, knowing he had a Norse wife he had no reason to leave, Brenna finally had to face the truth.

  Jorand was just a Northman, after all.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Jorand’s boat rode low in the water, the added weight of Thorkill and his band dragging it down. As she huddled miserably in the prow, Brenna was doused from time to time with a fine spray. Since there were men enough to man the oars, she was no longer needed to tend the steering.

  No longer needed. She resigned herself to it. Jorand had wed her so he could leave Donegal and return to Dublin. His fine talk of love notwithstanding, she’d been a means to an end. Now she was only so much ballast weighing down his craft.

  “Dublin is ahead, on the left,” Jorand called up to her. Her gaze jerked back toward him, surprised to hear him speaking to her in her own tongue. The bewildering sounds of Norse he’d been speaking with his comrades formed a protective barrier between Brenna and her nominal husband. She resisted his efforts to breach her defenses and turned away without a response.

  The village of Dublin loomed before her, surrounded by a fortified earthen dike topped with wattle-and-daub walls. She saw countless thatched hip roofs, sloping steeply above the ramparts. She understood the need for protection, but why, on God’s earth, would that many people want to live packed tightly together like so much cord wood?

  Jorand told her Dublin meant “black pool” and she could certainly see how it had acquired the name. The coracle nosed into the deep harbor created by the confluence of the Poddle River and the Liffey. The water was the color of peat and the paddles of the oars all but disappeared into the murk with each stroke.

  Dozens of dragonships lined the wharf, like winged monsters at rest, quiescent now, but capable of rousing and spilling death and destruction over the whole of the island. With their lithe necks and elegant lines, the ships were at once beautiful and terrifying. Brenna shuddered and stepped lightly on to the waiting dock, careful to tread softly, lest her Irish footsteps wake the longships to wrath.

  Thorkill and his crew strode away, leaving Jorand to tie up his craft alone. One by one, the other Northmen on the wharf recognized her husband and shouted greetings to him, a few of them coming to clasp forearms and pound him on the back. Obviously, Jorand was well thought of in this den of thieves and rapists. Other than a couple of inquiring looks, Brenna was ignored by one and all, for which she thanked the saints and angels alike.

  “Come, Brenna,” Jorand said, taking her elbow to guide her up the graveled path to the main part of town.

  It was the first time he’d touched her since she learned of Solveig’s existence, and though she stiffened, she allowed it. His hand might be hateful to her, but his touch was also the only familiar thing in this world. She resisted the urge to cling to him for comfort.

  Last night, she’d lain awake listening to the frightful sounds of Northmen in conversation, waiting to see if Jorand would join her in the lean-to. He finally did, but was careful not to brush her with so much as an arm hair as he stretched out beside her. If he’d reached for her, she’d have rejoiced to rebuff him, she told herself.

  But another, darker part of her heart damned her for a liar. The way her traitorous body still clamored for him, she knew her own senses would conspire against her if he tried to take her with tenderness.

  Spineless wanton.

  The knowledge filled her with self-loathing.

  As they crested the rise, her gaze swept over the town. All the rectangular houses were laid out, cheek by jowl, along straight narrow streets, which were covered with wooden planks to keep the paths from turning into muddy ruts. Each home had its own fenced yard and carefully tended garden, groaning with fall produce.

  They passed by a smith’s shop, tanners’ sheds, and workers of amber, the glowing orange jewel prized by Northmen and Irish alike. The marketplace bustled with the same frenetic energy of one of Donegal’s fairs, but with far more exotic wares for the offering. Brenna saw bolts of flowing fabric that shimmered like water and realized it could only be the silk Jorand had told her of.

  You’re soft as silk, you know.

  She heard his remembered words as clearly as if they hovered in the air above her head. Skin on skin, water rippling around them, his first heart-stopping penetration. Her belly clenched, the desire in her memory still hot enough to stir a fresh response. She glanced sideways at Jorand to see if the cloth had triggered a similar remembrance. He stared straight ahead, his face like stone.

  Brenna shivered. No, there was no tenderness in the man now. She forced her attention back to the merchants’ stalls.

  There were heavy soapstone kettles, fine lace, ornately carved caribou horns—some of them as long as she was tall—and countless kegs of ale. Strange spices pricked at her nostrils, along with the yeasty smell of brewing, and the less welcome stench of too many privies and midden heaps in close proximity.

  “I’ve learned a few things you might find interesting,” Jorand said.

  “Kolgrim is here?” she asked with hope. Perhaps their stay in this Norse hell would be mercifully brief.

  “No, he’s gone North for a bit, but is due back within the week.” Jorand nodded in acknowledgment of a neighbor’s wave. “Thorkill is safekeeping the Codex here in Dublin for Kolgrim while he’s raiding.”

  “Then perhaps we can petition your... father-in-law for its rightful return.” She nearly choked on the words.

  “I’ve already tried that. Thorkill does not see it as you do. The book is Kolgrim’s so long as he can hold it. But there is another way.”

  Brenna cast a speculative glance at Jorand. There was a hardness around his eyes that she’d never seen before.

  “You see,” he went on, “Kolgrim and I had a disagreement the last time we were together. He’s the reason I ended up in the sea and on your beach. There’s a score to settle between us, so I have legitimate cause to challenge him in the holmgang.”

  There’s the small matter of me sister’s lost maidenhead, as well. The spiteful words rose unbidden to the tip of her tongue, but she bit them back.

  “I’m not forgetting what Kolgrim did to Sinead either,” he said as though he’d heard her secret thought. “But that’s not likely to be considered a valid reason for a challenge. If I’m to regain the Codex for you, the law has to be fulfilled.”

  “For an unprincipled pack of thieves, ye seem to set much store by your precious law
.”

  He stiffened at her insult, but kept his voice even. “Whatever you may think, we are a people of law. If some of them seem strange, remember that the Irish way of doing things is just as incomprehensible to us.”

  Brenna felt a tingle at the nape of her neck and recognized the pressure of eyes on her. She pulled her hood up to shield her face from the prying gazes. All around her the singsong Norse voices reminded her of a gaggle of geese. A new question popped into her mind.

  “All I hear about me is Norse. How is it ye alone speak me language?”

  “It’s rather a long story.” Jorand’s voice dropped low. “When Thorkill first led sixty longboats up the Liffey, he only wanted a safe base for the winter, a place to launch raids without having to cross the sea to do it. Once he got the lay of the land, his plans changed.”

  Jorand put an arm around her shoulders and drew her closer. Since he lowered his voice, she leaned in to hear him, skittering two steps to his one to match his long stride.

  “Thorkill needed information. To get that, he had to be able to question the inhabitants. I’ve always been quick with new tongues, so we captured one of your priests, a young man from a monastery in Kerry, and made him teach Kolgrim and me to speak and understand Gaelic.”

  He slowed his pace and, seeing a thick log by the side of the path, turned aside and sat down. Brenna perched uneasily beside him.

  “I hope Father Armaugh is still alive,” Jorand said, dragging a hand over his face. “He was when I left.”

  Was that compassion? A small corner of Brenna’s heart warmed to him, but she quickly snuffed it out. “And once ye learned Gaelic, what was it ye were to do for Thorkill?”

  “When I first came here I was to build him more ships. Most of the vessels you saw in the harbor are my work.” The ghost of a smile played about his lips, a remnant of his satisfaction with a job well done. “After I married Solveig, I became Thorkill’s eyes and ears,” he admitted. “Kolgrim and I would scout out likely places for raids, looking for deep harbors and undefended shores. We’d capture and question people about defense plans, about the local rulers, how many men they could raise in battle and the like.”