“’Tis fine, indeed!” exclaimed Byrnstan taking the tunica from Slayde. The priest winked covertly at Llyrica as held it out at arms’ length, whistling his dismay. “The breadth of the thing is astonishing! And is the blackest of blacks!”
“The cloth will prove to shrink very little,” said Llyrica, peering at Slayde from within her hood. “In fact, were you to wear it in this light rain, the dampness would help sculpt the fit.”
“She has shown a measure of talent,” said Ailwin, stepping in front of Llyrica with ill regard. “It has proved that women are best useful when quietly domestic. Such a tunica would command the authority due the StoneHeart.”
“I said a verse to the braid,” piped in Elfric. “For your greatest enemy to lie helpless at your feet!”
Llyrica grimaced from the attribute so contrary to her own and from Slayde’s inevitable censure at being reminded of Elfric at the loom. But the crew laughed its approval.
“Did you now?” Slayde said, cuffing the boy on the shoulder. Fingering the frayed hem of the garment he presently wore, he studied the new tunica. His eyes moved from the cross-tied opening that Llyrica had designed at the neck, to the braid running along the lower edge and around the slits at the sides. Llyrica prayed he would put it on, but she kept wisely silent.
Without another word, Slayde removed his baldric and quiver, belt and sword, then shrugged off his faded garment in a single motion. Llyrica sucked a breath at his torso exposed, the angled patterns of his abdomen, the dark nipples on the hard, flat mounds of his lightly furred chest. When he took the garment from Byrnstan and slid it on, she praised the summer season that bade a tunica stay sleeveless. What sun deemed shine would do so on the taut caps of his shoulders, the stone hills of his upper arms, and the sinewy muscle and vein from elbow to wrist. Llyrica regarded him as the ideal of man, a position reserved in some girls’ lives, she thought, for their fathers.
The thigh-length tunica suited StoneHeart exceedingly well, more so when he refastened his belt and baldric. The black mirrored his glossy hair, made damp and wavy by the mist. Llyrica stared at him, sensing the admiration granted him by his crew.
She hoped for instant evidence of her lovesong in his expression or word, but received naught but his attention returned to landing. Thrusting failure aside, she must put her mind to an alternative plan, otherwise she would continue on this course that Slayde determined she take. A woman already marked as a whore and a thief, she would find herself wandering alone in Danelaw, searching for her wayward brother, a fugitive from murder. After this, she would crawl to Haesten with nothing. She missed her hiding place behind the loom in the Crone’s Cave.
The OnyxFox and its sister ships came to dock and were moored. “Ailwin, secure the ships, leave a stout watch, then get the men and the gear to Rochester’s garrison for night camp,” ordered Slayde. “In the morning, we meet with the bishop and the local thegns. Byrnstan, take Elfric to my mother’s and tell her I will be anon by eventide. I will take care of this other errand myself.”
In the rain, which increased to a downpour, StoneHeart’s men carried out his command. Even Byrnstan, who looked not to dispute the ealdorman’s authority in front of the others, obeyed. Llyrica and the priest exchanged a worried farewell and Godspeed before he disappeared with the crew.
With many and varied good reasons, Slayde deemed all unworthy. He would not, necessary though it be, put Llyrica on just any vessel, with any crew. To boot, the weather proved altogether unholy: dark, drenching and stifling.
The torrential rain sent most dockworkers, vendors, clients and sailors under awnings or running for houses and huts along the harbor. Yet Slayde’s nagging urge insisted he take Llyrica from ship to ship seeking passage for the short journey just across the Thames into East Anglia. He had paid a beggar a small coin to carry Llyrica’s bundles behind them and she had the money purse clenched to her chest beneath her confounding peach cloak. He hardened his heart to the pity of her circumstances, knowing it was her doing, the life she had chosen.
But one ship looked to leak, another was too crowded with hogs, and one possessed a mast that surely would attract lightening in this storm. Two knorrs showed promise except that Slayde thought one too large and another too small. Farther along as he led Llyrica by her soft hand, he decided three others unsuitable: the first with its stain too dark, the second, its paint too garish and the third, whose sail had a minute hole in the lower corner. All, for God’s sake, held crews whose eyes bulged at the sight of the wet little fox in linen. More than enough also ribbed the StoneHeart for his ingenious method of ridding himself of a female who had outstayed her welcome.
“StoneHeart!” Llyrica cried his name in a whisper and flung herself against his chest. “I know that man and dare not let him see me! I pray you hide me!” Her voice was muffled in his new tunica.
Without forethought, Slayde obliged quickly, his arms concealing what her cloak did not. He motioned for the beggar to put her bundles down, then looking over the top of her head, Slayde saw the only man not huddled out of the rain ambling toward them. His large frame was dressed in striped braccas and embroidered tunica, with his face featuring a long twisted beard.
When the man stopped, he craned his neck around the couple, trying to get a glimpse of the hidden woman, Slayde saw the x on the back of his hand. He was a Rus slaver, for sure.
“A bit of flesh pleasure on the docks of Rochester, captain? If she is the one you want taken off your hands, I will oblige.”
Llyrica buried deeper into Slayde’s chest while he tightened one arm around her, let his hand drop to the hilt of his serrated sword. He rubbed the pommel for luck. “Move on. You will not find what you are looking for here.”
TwistedBeard eyed StoneHeart’s black tunica, sword and height advantage. “No trouble, captain. Merely a friendly inquiry.” He backed off, turned and disappeared into the rain.
Slayde would soon demand to know how Llyrica became familiar with such a man and how many other secrets she hid in her nefarious past. But for the moment he allowed her to tremble in his arms. He made a pact with himself, that for the count of one hundred, he would hold Llyrica, yet again soaked to the skin, without regard for his reputation as the StoneHeart.
“Christ Almighty,” he said, resting his chin on the top of her head. “It will do no harm to take you on into London and put you across the border from there. You shall stay at my mother’s house for the night. Just be sure to keep you away from me.”
She lifted her face to his. “You will not even know I am there.”
Slayde watched the priest emerge from the weaver’s end of Judith’s house.
“Aye, she is gone to sleep. I have seldom seen a lass so tired,” Byrnstan said, addressing Judith. “She bade me thank you again for your hospitality. The meal, bath and bed.”
Slayde’s mother smiled humbly. “I have taken in a good many women in need, but never one who would rather sleep behind the loom that on a pallet. My weaver makes an early start and will no doubt give your Llyrica the boot before dawn.”
“Your charity is as renowned as your poetry, Judith. And aye, the Viking lass is odd in that way,” agreed the priest. “Now, if you will both excuse me, I too, will retire after a final check on Elfric. I have missed both Vespers and Compline and must make amends to God before I am to bed.” With a smirk to Slayde and a nod to Judith, Byrnstan took his leave to a partitioned corner of the house. He chose this instead of an upper loft, a feature that Slayde had built into his mother’s tidy house as well as his father’s. Judith’s house also boasted a window with a view of the harbor.
“Your new tunica looks well on you,” Judith told her son. “The priest said the Viking woman wove the braid within hours and sewed the garment aboard your ship. What a tale he has told me about her. Ah, and God’s blessing on your marriage to Athelswith. Before you go, take my ring for your new bride. ‘Twas my mother’s. A simple band of twisted silver.”
Slayde scarcely hea
rd her. He yet contemplated the wooden tub by the central fire, its water still warm from Llyrica’s bath, a cake of soap nearby. He considered it a curse and a blessing that he had been at the garrison and missed the sight of Llyrica disrobed, emerging from the water, her skin gleaming wet. A curse to miss her flaxen hair, which he seldom saw, hanging in damp ribbons about her soft arms and breasts. A blessing that he could do no more than imagine her shapely thighs and hips and not need wonder if the vile TwistedBeard from the docks had ever touched her. Slayde perished the thought that the man was at the end of a long line who had received the talents of her soft hands.
He diverted his thoughts and shifted his gaze to the dying embers of the fire. Smoke drifted on the cross draft created by two strategically placed vents in the timber walls. One day, if he could find a military use for it, he planned to devise a pipe of some sort to carry smoke straight up through the roof.
“But you have not come to talk about these latest of your conquests.” Judith remained seated as she motioned to her handmaid, one of eight women in her household, to light more wall sconces. The hammered silver plate behind each lamp, another of Slayde’s inventions, doubled the illumination. As the hall grew bright, he forced his attention to his mother. Dressed in fine green linen, she was a beauty of the advanced age of forty-two, soft and rosy, with bound blond hair and still in possession of every one of her whitest of teeth.
“Indeed, nay,” Slayde answered. After crossing the room, he stood with hands clasped behind him, opposite of Judith’s place in her high seat against the wall. Colorful tapestries of gardens and mythical creatures hung at her back. “’Twas in my log to visit on my way to London. I have a meeting in the morning, regardless.”
“Ah, yea. How to spend the Viking tax, newly raised upon the citizens of Kent.” She sipped from a cup of tea, gestured if he wanted one. “I have also a sprig of the fresh mint you are so fond of. It is near to taking over my garden.”
He declined her offer of pleasantry with a shake of his head, opting to keep the mood formal. “We have four thousand pounds of coin, gold and plate collected and I mean to use this Danegeld to pay for more troops, better weapons, food, uniforms. And loyalty. I have spent a good deal of my own coin, as you know.”
“Yet others will argue the money is better spent handed over to the Vikings in exchange they leave in peace.”
“Haesten has been paid time and again, yet breaks his vow time and again, still bent on conquering Wessex. He will soon see we are not the disorganized fyrd we were a mere three years ago. When he first invaded Kent with his ships of a thousand troops and their families, we were unprepared. Praise God he could not arouse those peaceful Dane settlers loyal to Guthrum and King Alfred’s treaty, else Kent would have fallen for good. Some men respect and value a signed document. Haesten does not, but he will respect a thousand arrows.”
“Will you not sit, Slayde? You are not addressing the witan or your troops. Save it for morning.” Bright lamplight shone on her smile. And on the crease of sadness between her brows.
“I am content to stand.” Not content, nay, by any means. Not with the gulf that separated him from her, his mother.
She emitted a ragged sigh. “If Ceolmund had truly realized how expertly he forged you into the StoneHeart, he might have stopped blaming me for spoiling you. It was not enough that he kept my little boy from me, would not let me love you, touch or hold you. Nay, he drilled it in you this absurd notion of what it means to be a man.”
“Not this again, Judith,” he said, with fingers pressed to temples. “Must we reduce my visits to discussions of my upbringing?” His thoughts turned briefly to the frail little boy he had been. Afraid of blood, afraid of the stern hand of Ceolmund.
“You are a result of your upbringing and it pains me to see you thus.”
“He was not satisfied with me and now you say neither are you?” Slayde pointed to the door. “Go out and ask any in Rochester or in the whole of Kent if they expect more from me. They will say they do not, Judith. Just as they turned to ealdorman Ceolmund to represent Alfred and unite the shire against the Danes, so do they now look me, his son, and know how well I serve them.”
Judith gripped her cup with white knuckles. “There is more to life than destroying Haesten. No matter what Ceolmund taught you. And his preposterous notion about women making you weak ... ”
“I will not listen, Judith. You are yet grieved over his death and bitter about his mistress and the child she produced. He ...”
“Aye, I grieve!” she cried, launching to her feet. The teacup clattered to the stone floor. “But not for him, who came to my bed only once, the night you were conceived. And not about Elfric, poor child, who was also the product of the man’s attempt to fool the world about his true leanings! I grieve over you, my precious son, and for my lap that lamented your absence and my arms that were not allowed to comfort you as a child! And my lips, dearheart, denied by him to kiss your hurts!”
Slayde’s heart protested its cage, hammered for freedom. “Calm yourself, dame,” he said, stepping forward. He took her by the shoulders and eased her into her chair. “Ceolmund was a singular man and neither did I have an easy time of it under his rule.” This admission came swiftly, unwarranted. Said aloud for the first time.
With tears that did not fall, Judith raised her eyes to her son’s. “I have a lover who is not threatened by my touch nor words of endearment ...” She raised a hand to halt Slayde’s protest on the subject. “In the years I have been with him I learned not to blame myself that Ceolmund loathed the soft womanly ways that God bestowed on me. I also discovered that your father did not care for women at all.” Slayde paid close attention to her unblinking gaze. “He did not care for women at all, son. He cared for men.”
“I will not take the meaning you intend, Judith,” Slayde said, faltering a step backward. “Ceolmund, whatever his faults, and I concede there were many, upheld the standard of man for his troops, for his comrades, and for his sons!”
“He maintained such while living a lie. No one knew save me and his male lover.”
“Say not another word, dame.”
She did not, but nodded.
Inconceivable. The idea that father harbored desire for men over women contorted every event and attitude instilled in Slayde’s memory. He stared blankly at Judith as years rushed back to drown him: remembrances of holding back tears, loneliness for his mother, and being surrounded by deep voices, bloody fights and never-ending false bravado. He recalled Byrnstan’s subtle interventions and the affections that a female thrall could occasionally impart on little boy Slayde. Ceolmund, the law of the universe, towered over all, directing his son away from any endeavor other than that considered pure male.
Impossible to think of Ceolmund as a bent sword.
“Let me take Elfric,” Judith said, a blessed intrusion on Slayde’s chaotic thoughts. “His mother was kept from him, as I was from you and she died here in this house crying for him. Would that she had lived beyond Ceolmund and taken back the boy. Leave him here with me. Do not drag your little brother to war, as you were dragged.”
Slayde swallowed a rising panic, willed his pulse to slow. He resisted the urge to stare into his sweaty palms. “’Tis much to think on, Judith. But I will consider all you have said, and give you an answer anon.” With a polite but abrupt bow, Slayde turned and left the house.
In the lukewarm rain, he walked the muddy streets of Rochester, filling his mind with plans to gather and train troops and the development of a swifter and longer-flying arrow. He must rid the Isle of Haesten, the unavoidable goal inherited from his father. With these undertakings he could resume the orderly life he had known before had he pulled a Dane loomstress from the sea. With a grating fear, he dreaded that resumption, but saw no alternative.
Returned to Judith’s house, Slayde climbed uploft to his hard pallet, where the day and its expectations finally ended, and he could find the peace of mind that came with sleep.
Chapter VI
The wool is soft: how warm the night. The rain yet patters above.
Your dream’s aloft into peaceful flight. Carried high on the wings of a dove.
“Marry me.”
The words drifted through the darkness into her dream. But it was no dream. Llyrica lay fully awake behind the loom, hands folded to her chest in a cocoon of linen. The sleepwalker’s lips to her ear were as real as the stone floor beneath her bed of wool.
“Say you will, Llyrica,” he whispered. With his arm and his leg thrown over her, he nestled closer, inhaled deeply at her neck. “I will bear anything if I have you. If I do not, I shall fly apart.”
Enrapt with his nearness, Llyrica would not speak yet, as she invited the press of his naked body to invade her senses. Praise God for the linen barrier pulled nearly to her neck, a protection against a thousand touch points threatening to ignite between her flesh and his.
“I must have you, too, StoneHeart.” This declaration came from heartfelt depths, though Llyrica felt uncertain of what it meant and of the future it might unlock. “Yet you are to wed Athelswith day after tomorrow.”
Slayde arose on one elbow, his other arm lying across her ribs. Only just, could Llyrica discern the features of his face mere inches above hers. “There will be no wedding other than that which binds me to you.”
“I think you are troubled by your heated exchange with your mother, as you should be. Even I, who knows naught the half of it, could scarce listen to the sorrow in her voice. I know you come to me for comfort, but ...”
“You do bring me solace, my soft little fox. When I am here, I can think of little Elfric content in your lap and not fear he will become a milksop. I can remember my taskmaster father and not turn to stone. And I can think of my long-suffering mother and imagine going to her without Ceolmund barring the way.”
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