“But you are a merchant, Wulf,” Genevieve said. “Do you not know how to read and write? Will Carloman not also need such knowledge?”
He shook his head. “I know my numbers,” he said, “and weights and measures. You cannot trade without knowing such. But I have no use for letters. They are for priests, not for folk who work for a living.” He blushed and looked down. “Meaning no offense, my Lady,” he added. “You being a holy sister and all.”
As I worked on my weapons and armor I often found my gaze wandering across the room to wherever Genevieve was. I noticed that although she kept her hands busy, she frequently had a distant and sad expression in her eyes, as if her mind was elsewhere. And during the afternoon, while she was bouncing Alise on her knee, she suddenly began weeping. Genevieve handed the child to a startled Wulf, then hurried through the door and out into the street. I followed her.
“Why do you weep?” I asked.
“It is nothing,” she said, wiping her eyes with her sleeve. “It is no concern of yours.”
“Do you weep for the dead?” I guessed, remembering her remarks from the previous night.
She nodded, then covered her face with her hands. Her shoulders shook with silent sobs. I did not know what to do, so I did nothing at all. It made me feel foolish.
Finally she stopped weeping, wiped her eyes again with her sleeve, took a deep breath, and spoke. As she did, she looked away into the distance, although nothing was there save the blank wall of a house across the street.
“For the dead,” she said, belatedly answering my question, “and for the living. Captain Marcus—one of the men you killed—was one of my uncle’s favorite officers. He was often in my uncle’s home, and I have met his family. He has a young daughter about the same age as Alise. She will grow up not knowing her father. And I worry for my uncle and my aunt Therese. Leonidas was their oldest son. What pain they must be feeling now in their hearts.”
I did not like to hear about the families of men I had killed. I did not like to see the pain in Genevieve’s face, either.
“I am sorry,” I said, “For the pain I have brought into your life.” As soon as I spoke, I thought my words sounded weak and foolish. I wished I could take them back. She was a Frank, I a Dane. She was a prisoner and I her captor. Torvald, or Tore, or any other member of the Gull’s crew would have laughed out loud had they heard me. Yet though I wished I had not uttered such words aloud, in my heart I knew they were true. I did regret the sorrow I’d caused her.
“The worst of it is that they died for me. They gave their lives trying to help me.” She began sobbing again. “It is something you could not understand.”
I should not have cared what she thought of me, but her words stung.
“Something I could not understand?” I repeated, and gave a bitter laugh. “Because I am a killer, too ruthless and cruel to have feelings? Just a pirate and a murderer—what could such a man understand? Or is it because you think it impossible that anyone could ever choose to give their life for me?”
“Because you are a warrior, as you so proudly told me,” she retorted. “And yes, because you are a pirate, and a killer, too. I have seen you fight. You are ruthless. I have seen how easily you kill. I’m sure you have been fighting and killing all your life. Is that not the way of your people?”
My flaring temper began to frame an angry response. But suddenly as I looked down at Genevieve’s tear-streaked face, her eyes staring defiantly up at me, in my mind the face I saw was my mother’s—when she was young, when she was Genevieve’s age. She had seen her father and her betrothed both slain before her eyes when they’d attempted to rescue her from the raiding Northmen who’d captured her. She had been torn from her home and carried away to a strange and distant land. Had she not felt feelings similar to those Genevieve was feeling now? Had she not, at least for a time, been terrified of my father? Had she not despised him? I felt my anger draining away.
“Perhaps you are correct about my people,” I told Genevieve in a low voice. “Some of us, at least. Some Danes are pirates. Some are cruel, and killers. And I am a Dane. But just a year ago, I was not even a warrior. I had never fought and never killed. I did not choose to become the killer you believe I am. It was my fate that made me what I am today, and no man can escape his fate.” I turned away and headed back into the house. At the doorway I paused and said over my shoulder, “And you are wrong—I can understand the pain you are feeling. My mother and my brother both gave their lives for me.”
Later that day, Hastein paid a surprise visit to Wulf’s home. It was the first time he had come there. “I wished to see with my own eyes where you have been staying in Ruda,” he explained as he looked around the small house while Wulf watched nervously.
It seemed unlikely to me that Hastein would care enough about the nature of my quarters to have ventured out to inspect them. I wondered if he was actually hoping to spot where Wulf might have hidden a secret store of silver. His examination did not take long. There was not much house to see.
Genevieve was slicing vegetables for a stew Bertrada had begun for the evening meal. She had not been wearing her hood and mantle all day, and her dark, lustrous brown hair was pulled back and loosely secured behind her neck with a short length of cord.
Hastein commented on it. “She does not wear her nun’s hood today,” he said, and asked me to translate his words.
“My mantle is soiled,” Genevieve explained, sounding flustered by the question. “And when I am working near the fire, it is also very warm to wear.”
“She should never wear it. Her hair is far too beautiful to cover,” Hastein said. “Tell her I said so.”
Why would he wish to say such a thing to her? She was just a prisoner. My prisoner. And why did I have to tell her his words? It made me feel uncomfortable.
Hastein’s words seemed to make Genevieve uncomfortable, too. I felt glad that she did not seem pleased by his attention, as she had that day in his quarters. She blushed and looked down at her hands when I translated his words for her. “I am a woman of God,” she murmured. “Does your captain not understand that?”
Hastein laughed when I told him her reply. “Aye,” he said. “And that is a great waste of a beautiful woman. If the Franks do not ransom her, I will be sorely tempted to buy her from you myself. You and I could both profit that way.”
I had given no thought to what I would do if no ransom was paid for Genevieve. I would not have bothered to capture her—to risk the danger of trying to escape across country with her—had I not believed it would bring me great profit for my trouble. Now that Hastein raised the prospect that perhaps no ransom would be paid, I found it disturbing. What would I do with her if her father refused to pay?
“When the two of you dined with me several days ago, I told you I needed your prisoner to write a message to be delivered to her family. Has she written it yet?”
I shook my head. “No,” I said. Hastein looked annoyed.
“I have spent the past four days making arrows,” I explained. “Ragnar said all archers should replenish their supplies.” My answer did not seem to appease Hastein’s irritation.
“And I said you should have her write a message to send to her father. It would not have taken you long to do so. Do it now,” Hastein ordered, “and bring the parchment to me as soon as it is completed. On the morrow we will take the Gull upriver to seek a parley with the Franks. We will deliver her message then, as well as that written by the Bishop of Ruda, and begin our negotiations for our prisoners’ ransoms. You will come, to speak for me to the Franks.”
Genevieve addressed her message “To my most honorable and revered father, Robert.” She wielded the little brush with precision, painting the letters in neat, even strokes. Putting words on a page was clearly a task that was familiar to her.
She told her father she had been taken prisoner by the Northmen—something he would have been well aware of by now. She also insisted on telling him—though I told her it w
as not necessary, for the Franks undoubtedly had found the body—that her cousin Leonidas, his brother’s eldest son, had been slain trying to protect her. “Please convey to my uncle and to Aunt Therese my deepest sorrow at his death, and assure them he fought bravely,” she wrote, then let out her breath with a quavering sigh.
“Were you and your cousin close?” I asked. I wondered how deeply his death grieved her.
She was silent for a time before finally answering. “No. In truth we were not. But he did not deserve to die. He was but a young man. And his parents are good folk, and do not deserve the suffering his death has undoubtedly brought them.”
Genevieve did not hesitate when I told her to write that she was unharmed. But her face flushed bright red, then turned completely white, when I told her to warn her father that if a ransom was not paid soon for her, she feared her captors would take their pleasure of her. She dropped the brush, making a stain of black ink on the parchment, and looked at me with fright-filled eyes.
“I have already given you my promise that you have nothing to fear, that you will not be harmed,” I assured her. “Those words are Jarl Hastein’s, not mine. He told me your message should say that, to spur your father not to delay or consider trying to pay less than we demand. You must trust me. You are my prisoner, and I will honor my word to you.”
That seemed to calm her. “How much will you ask my father to pay to ransom me?” she asked.
I answered truthfully. “I do not know. That is something Hastein will decide. I have never ransomed any prisoner before. And you are not just any prisoner—as the daughter of a count, you are without question worth more than most.”
“Are you truly only recently a warrior?” she asked. I nodded.
“What were you before?”
I did not wish to tell her. She stared at me, waiting for my answer. I did not wish to lie, either.
“I was a slave,” I said in a quiet voice. I did not want Wulf or Bertrada to overhear.
“Oh,” she said, looking startled. She dropped her gaze to the parchment in front of her. “I am sorry.”
I thought it a strange thing for her to say. I wondered what she was sorry for.
By the time I reached the Count of Ruda’s palace with the message Genevieve had written for her father, dusk was falling. Within the palace, the cold stone corridors were dark and gloomy. They made me think of the low tunnels and dark halls carved beneath the roots of mountains where dwarves are said to dwell.
Hastein was bathing. A large copper tub had been placed in the center of the floor in his quarters, and he was seated in it. As I entered the room, Cullain dumped a pot of steaming water over his head.
“Aahh!” he exclaimed as the water sluiced down over him. “That feels wonderful.” He opened his eyes as I drew nearer. “Do you have the message?”
I held the parchment up. “I do.”
“Good,” he said. “We will depart just after dawn tomorrow, as soon as there is enough light to see the river. You should probably stay here with the crew tonight.”
“I will fetch my weapons and gear from Wulf’s house, and return,” I told him.
“It is good you have acquired a mail brynie and a sword. You did very well when you were sent out scouting. Others—Ivar and Bjorn—took notice. You found the Franks’ army, won a fine weapon and armor, and look to gain a tidy sum of silver for the prisoner you captured. That is for her, by the way.”
Hastein pointed at a bundle of cloth on the nearby table. “They are some women’s gowns,” he explained. “They were in one of those large chests when I took over these rooms for my quarters. The nun’s robe your prisoner is wearing is filthy. As the daughter of a count, she will not be used to that. Give her these, so she will have clean clothing to wear. Tell her they are a gift from me,” he added.
Now Hastein was giving Genevieve gifts. He seemed far too taken with her. More than ever, I worried about what would happen if her father refused to pay a ransom.
Hastein stopped talking for a few moments while he rubbed a block of soap into his hair. “Cullain, where is that girl?” he grumbled. Cullain did not answer. As he straightened from where he had been bending over the fire, pouring more water into the pot suspended over the flames, he glared in Hastein’s direction. Then he disappeared through a narrow doorway opposite the main one I had entered through. A few moments later, a young woman entered the room through the same door.
Hastein waved the soap over his head. “Come here. Wash my hair,” he said to her, and to illustrate, briefly rubbed the soap against his head. To me, he added, “It is inconvenient that she cannot understand what I say.”
The woman stepped over to the tub, took the soap from his hand, and began washing Hastein’s hair. She was barefoot and was wearing only a thin white shift that looked like an under-gown.
“What do you think of her?” Hastein asked.
She was pretty enough, or would have been, had her features not looked so drawn and filled with sorrow. What has she lost, I wondered. Her freedom? Her family? Hope?
“She looks unhappy,” I said.
Hastein nodded. “She does seem to have a melancholy temperament. I meant what I said, by the way, back at Wulf’s house.”
I thought I knew what he was referring to, but I willed my features to show no reaction—to hide the growing sense of alarm I was beginning to feel.
“If your prisoner’s father should refuse to pay a ransom for her, I will buy her from you,” he explained.
If Hastein wished to have Genevieve, did I dare refuse? He was my leader, my chieftain, and I did not wish to anger him. It was the greatest of good fortune that he had taken me into the crew of the Gull, and I owed him my loyalty. Even more, I needed the support and help he could give if I truly hoped to fulfill my quest and bring down Toke and all of his men. But I had promised Genevieve she would not be harmed. She was under my protection, and I had given her my word. I looked again at the face of the woman who was bathing Hastein, and knew I could not allow Genevieve to become someone like her.
“If she is not ransomed, I will not sell her,” I said, shaking my head.
Hastein raised his eyebrows. “You will keep her for yourself, instead of selling her to me?” There was a tone in his voice I could not decipher. Was it anger, or merely surprise?
“I have given her my word she will not be harmed. I will not break my word,” I said. I hoped he would not push this.
“She is just a Frank and a prisoner,” he said. His expression was still inscrutable, but he was watching me closely now.
“Wulf was just a Frank and a prisoner,” I replied, “but you felt honor-bound to keep your word to him.”
Silence hung between us for an uncomfortably long time before Hastein spoke again. “Some chieftains take great offense if their wishes are countered—particularly by one of their own men.” He stared at me, trying to make me drop my gaze before his. But I would not. The woman and Cullain both were still now, watching the two of us.
“I myself,” he finally said, “think it is good to see a man stand up for what he believes is right. I find it easier to trust a man when I know he values honor above all else—even his life.”
I did not know whether to feel relieved by these last remarks or threatened. I suspected that was Hastein’s intention—he wished me to feel uncertain—for he stared at me for a few moments longer. Then, with a small smile, he looked away and settled deeper into the tub. “Tell her to rinse the soap out now and comb my hair,” he said to me, indicating the sad-faced woman. “And tell her to be gentle if she finds any tangles.”
I passed his instructions on to the Frankish woman and turned to take my leave. Hastein called after me. “Do not worry,” he said. “I feel certain her father will pay.” I hoped he was right.
Wulf, his family, and Genevieve had already finished their evening meal by the time I returned to their home.
“Did you eat at the palace?” Genevieve asked. I shook my head. She ladled left
over stew into a pottery bowl and set it on the table. “It is still warm,” she said.
“I will be gone for a day or two, perhaps more,” I announced as I set the bundle of clothing on the table and sat down to eat. “I have returned only to collect my weapons and gear.” I nodded at the bundle and said to Genevieve, “That is for you.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“It is clothing. Women’s gowns. Jarl Hastein found them in the palace. He noticed your clothing is soiled and thought you would enjoy clean garments to wear.” I said it matter-of-factly between spoonfuls of stew. I hoped she would think it was merely a casual courtesy on Hastein’s part, and not a gift.
She sighed and nodded. “It is true. My habit is so filthy it is stiff from the dirt.”
Genevieve unfolded the bundle and gasped with pleasure. The outer garment that had been wrapped around the contents was a short cloak of soft wool, dyed a deep black. Folded within were two under-shifts of fine white linen and two richly colored gowns—one a deep red, the other a brilliant blue.
Genevieve pulled out the gowns and held them up so she could see them clearly in the low light from the hearth.
“Look at these colors!” she said. “They are so brilliant. I have so missed colors since I joined the Convent of St. Genevieve. No doubt it is a sin that I still long for them so much.”
She looked at me. “Your captain is a very kind man,” she exclaimed. “My heart is touched by this kindness he has shown me.”
I did not think she would be so pleased if she knew Hastein wanted to buy her for himself. And I found myself thinking her judgment was unfair. If Hastein had captured Genevieve, instead of me, what would have happened? I had not harmed her in any way. I had treated her with honor. But because Hastein had given her these clothes, he was now a kind man in her eyes.
“I am glad you feel that way about him,” I said. “He has told me that if your father does not agree to pay a ransom for your release, he wishes to buy you from me.”
The stricken look on her face crushed the momentary pleasure my remark had brought me.
The Road to Vengeance Page 4