She always felt she didn't pray well, though she persisted. There were a great many things she felt she didn't do well or right. For instance, she felt she wasn't very clever, though she longed to be. She knew that she had a certain beauty, but often feared that people overestimated her because of it, and would find her out, and then she would be a cause for disappointment.
She remembered something Uncle Edward, a thick square man, had said to her just before he died. "Edin," he'd whispered, patting her hand, "you're so like your mother; you have the very beauty and flavor of her, her deep-grained habit of kindness."
That often came back to her, because it wasn't true. Her memories of her mother had an ethereal iridescence. She hardly recalled more than a figure that was mysteriously detached, but from what people told her, unkindness had been out of her mother's ken. Edin wished desperately that she could be like that, but she wasn't. Look at how she'd just made Cedric miserable. She'd failed him. She should go back . . . but dared not. Because she was certain that if she did he would want to kiss her again, and then she would disgrace herself and hurt him all the more. She might even cry She might even whisper, "I'm so afraid."
She heard voices in the hall and went to peek down the stairs. Cedric was making a stranger welcome. The man was saying, ". . . since the great heathen host quartered for the winter in East Anglia and were supplied with horses . . ."
Heathens — that meant Vikings. They'd stayed the winter in East Anglia? That was unusual.
"I see you have no walls or safeguards of any kind," the man was saying. "Have you buried your coins? Nothing's safe that isn't in the ground, neither coins nor folk."
"My father felt we were safe here as we are, and that's good enough for me." Cedric could put on a certain air of command, but he was young and carried his authority a bit anxiously. "You can't see Fair Hope from the sea. No one would know it was here."
The stranger grunted, accepting a silver bowl of ale from the servant girl Juliana. He watched the girl walk away before he said, "The heathens have an unerring nose for likely targets." He tipped the bowl to his mouth, glancing up as he did so, thus spying Edin. Driblets of ale leaked down either side of his beard as he forgot to swallow.
Cedric turned. "Edin, come and meet Ceolwulf. King Alfred has sent him to witness our marriage."
Edin wrenched herself into motion and started down the stairs. The great hall was adorned and decorated as it never had been since her coming. Even the air was fragrant. She'd had the year's old rushes swept out into a fetid heap beside the cow byre, and on the oaken planks a carpeting of new sun-dried rushes had been laid then strewn with crumbled lavender and thyme. The tables were set for tomorrow. Edward had valued beautiful tableware enough to import glass from France and silverware from as far as the Eastern Empire. At the head of the hall was the table for the bride and groom, and there Edin's own gold-adorned wooden goblet sat.
"We're honored, Ceolwulf," she said respectfully, battling the shyness that overcame her when any stranger must be met. She'd become the mistress of the house since Aunt Bertra's death, not a small matter considering the baking, spinning, and weaving to be done, and shy or not it was she who must attend to the requirements of important guests.
The man was not handsome. He had a forehead crossed with wrinkles, great bags of skin lay under his jet eyes, and one corner of his mouth drooped pitifully. At the moment he also seemed beyond speech. "Honor's mine . . . marriage of a scion of a noble Wessex family . . . King Alfred couldn't come. . . ."
She studied him. A stranger was always a curiosity. He smelled of leather, which told her that he'd come by horse along the old Roman roads. He was dressed in a dull-green, belted tunic that stretched to his knees and woolen leggings. His sword was silver-hiked. Over his shoulders lay a four-cornered woolen cloak, brown, held at the front by a large silver brooch.
She felt a hand on her shoulder. Cedric had come near and was touching her in a possessive way, smiling with a new and quiet ferocity as if to say: Mine.
Embarrassed, Edin sought to make conversation. "Did I hear you say there were Vikings in East Anglia?"
"Danes." He nodded. "All last winter, my lady."
She was unamazed that Fair Hope had heard nothing of this. They were an out of the way place, and news spread very slowly. Fair Hope always seemed to exist in a state of grace. It was a green and pleasant spot, peaceful in an era of turbulence, and apparently secure. While kings fought and kings went down, Fair Hope prospered; the farmland produced. This news of Danes elsewhere seemed not to have anything to do with Edin.
"And they're still keeping men from their sleep at night with sea raids," Ceolwulf added, eyeing Cedric. "A thane's remiss not to build a wall, or at least post lookouts."
"This is no talk for a bride," Cedric chided. "We've always been safe here. Our nights are quiet."
The man grumbled into his bowl, "It's usually quiet before the storm breaks." He tilted his head back to drink. His prominent Adam's apple bobbed as in three deep draughts he emptied the bowl.
The ale seemed to affect him quickly, for by the time he wiped his mouth, he was grinning. "You're right —no talk for a bride. And this luscious fruit is ripening fast, eh? Do you think she'll keep till the morrow?"
Edin blushed, and as she did so, even then, with awful inevitability, the savagery of the times was reaching its claws toward her.
***
As the afternoon waned, and the late darkness fell, the dragonship nosed into the mouth of the river. The moon was only a silver crescent in the midnight sky, casting down barely enough light for the Norsemen to navigate by. The only sound, besides the endless sound of the sea, was the slight plop of oar blades as they sliced the water. The ship was beautifully made, high at stem and stern, with low-swept gunwales. As she rode the bore of the tide up the channel, two of her shipmen hauled down her striped sail and folded it carefully. They unstepped her mast as well and laid it on the deck so that it could not be seen from the river's high banks.
They were well practiced in stealth. Already this season they had fallen hungrily upon two monasteries, for that was where the fortune of this land was gathered, in the gold figures of saints, in sapphire-encrusted crosiers and exquisitely wrought caskets —enough wealth to make any Norseman's grasping heart sing. And everything was easily stripped from the submissive monastic communities.
As the ship continued up the river, every man slipped a cloak and hood over his helmet and iron-mesh war shirt, so that the starlight wouldn't glint on the metals. A pair at a time, they wrapped their oar blades in old sheepskins to prevent the water from clapping on the wood.
Like a silent reptile, the dragonship continued up the flood-tiding waters. The never-ending hiss of the sea grew distant and disappeared. The river flowed placidly through a quiet valley between wooded hillocks. The banks stood still and deserted. No smoke plumed over the treetops. Saxon peasants knew better than to put their huts near a river's mouth. They usually built well upstream where they felt less exposed to those who raided from the sea.
The ship rounded a bend; the river narrowed. On for another mile. When she scraped her keel in shoal water, her rudder was lifted by pulling on a rope. Here paths along the banks signaled that a village must be close by.
On the ship's prow platform, beside her dragon's head, stood the giant Viking. Over his fair hair he wore a helmet now, bearing the insignia of a hammer. Thoryn the Hammer, he was called by some. He was known to be an amazingly strong man. He could swim across Dainjerfjord and back without pause; he could wrestle down the best of the best. From his dull iron helmet to the gold jewelry on his arms and fingers and the decorated sword hanging in his scabbard, he looked Olympian. He stood by the dragon's head as still as a runestone, his features never moving. Only his pewter-grey eyes moved, and his hand, which he lifted in a single mute signal.
The longship slithered parallel to the riverbank, where she was quickly tied fore and aft with plaited hide ropes. She tugged at t
hese moorings like a serpent that smells blood, while thirty-two sea warriors eased over her waist.
Now came the small sounds of men drawing swords, feeling for war axes. They were a mixed party, with new-bearded youths on their first sailing, tempered warriors who had fought countless battles, and a handful of older men whose beards and hair were streaked with grey. Each carried a round wooden shield, and they were variously armed with knives, clubs, axes, spears, and broadswords. Silver edges glinted in the starlight. Bearded, leathern faces grinned with anticipation. Unlit torches appeared, as did horns of strong ale, for the men would drink before climbing to the village.
"All is ready," Thoryn was told as he joined his men. Over his tunic he wore a shirt of mail, and over that, a sweeping cloak of grey, the cowl raised. Most of the men wore round or conical helmets of metal or heavy leather. His had the hammer insignia and a protecting nosepiece that divided his gaze. In his hand was his father's damascened sword, Raunija, The Tester. The blade carried a runic inscription: "Let Raunija spare no man."
The broad-faced, surly man was the only one who wore no helmet on his big shaggy head. He'd drunk twice as much ale as any of the others, and now, as he spoke, a furious white froth came from his mouth. "My axe sings with thirst!"
Sweyn Elendsson was called the Berserk. In battle, he sometimes seemed overcome with a berserk fury, the sudden insanity that legend said gave a double portion of might and took away all sense of pain. He surged into a fight rolling his eyes and howling. He would rush toward his adversaries without apparent thought of danger. He was both feared and greatly looked up to for this. But, berserk or not, he was Thoryn's sworn man, bound to obey his jarl, which he had barely been doing for some time now. Thoryn said to him, "You will let your blade suffer a little thirst, I trust. Dead people bring very little profit in any marketplace."
Thoryn smiled like winter as he looked from Sweyn to the others. "We have come for treasure. Of captives, only the most likely will be taken. We will not slaughter those we don't want. And — " he paused, looking particularly at the deeply rutted and weatherbeaten face of Ragnarr — "and there will be no sport with the children." Ragnarr had been known to throw an infant up to see if he could catch it on the point of his spear. Thoryn asked him softly, "Do you hear me, Norseman?
The river made its liquid sound nearby; then "Aye, Barknakarl" came Ragnarr's whispered response.
Barknakarl, the children's friend. Ragnarr said it with grudging respect.
He was not sworn to Thoryn. He was the jarl's neighbor at home, a bondi, a small landowner and a free man. His allegiance to Thoryn was based on respect, not on an oath such as Sweyn had sworn. Which meant that he wouldn't follow Thoryn blindly to the world's edge, where the mermaids played and the seahorses whinnied on the waters. Still, if Thoryn told him, "No sport with the children," then he more or less obeyed, knowing that if he didn't he would be challenging Thoryn's rule, which would mean personal combat with him.
A jarl had to prove himself over and over. A Norseman never admitted to fear —but there were men they treated with extreme caution. Their jarl had to be one of these. And Thoryn was.
Following his lead now, they said a prayer. A pattering of gruff voices rose as each man made his own, it not being the Norse way to pray in harmony like a herd of lowing Christian cattle. They asked Odin for the might of thunderbolts forged in fires, and asked Thor for the stealth of lightning hammered bright.
At last Thoryn said, "The time has come." They set off in a line up through the riverside growth, leaving the dragonship to wait impatiently on the dark glimmering water.
No one spoke. Leaves formed a billowing canopy over their path, through which the late starlight and scant moonlight barely sifted down. The shipload of men surged like a sinuous snake through the dark shadows. When they came upon an outlying hut, a dog started to bark. A pair of small red eyes burned. Ragnarr quickly faded from the group with his war club. There came a chop sound, like two jaws snapping together, then all was quiet again. Ragnarr returned, grinning, and the invaders continued.
They stopped on a mound an arrow's flight from the dark village. Before them was a small cluster of cottages, byres, and outbuildings. The shepherd had spoken truthfully in that there were no walls, other than here and there a low stone pen: small fences for Norsemen to leap. In the nearest, sheep bleated quietly and shuffled about.
"Child's play," muttered Beornwold Isleifsson, who wore his yellow hair in four thick plaits bound with copper wire.
Beside him, Fafnir Danrsson — nicknamed Longbeard for his pale silky beard -- gave Beornwold a comradely slap on the shoulder —and a warning: "The wise man never praises the night before the coming of the morning."
The largest building was a hall of oak with a steep thatched roof. Sweyn the Berserk lifted his bronze-and silver-inlaid axe and grinned, showing big horse's teeth. A mad light had grown in his ashy blue eyes. "That will be the chiefs hall; there the treasure resides, and the fairest women, and there Sweyn will be at the fighting's end!"
Thoryn stared ahead. The cords of his neck straightened and fell, straightened and fell. At last he threw off his cloak and raised his sword. He gripped the silver mount of his wooden shield and cried out as he lunged forward into a battle run. His deep voice was like the fog, like winter wind, like a metal sea on an iron-cold shore.
Those behind him began to bellow likewise: "Norsemen, would you live forever?" "May Thunder-Voice bring us victory!" Other cries of ferocious challenge resonated against the walls of silence. Flint struck iron, and torches flared. Faces went livid, eyes blazed with light, and throats pumped. They advanced in a wedge, Thoryn at the point, his men fanned out behind him. The village dogs clamored into hysterical barking as the Norse ran between the grey huts of the sleeping community, wreaking havoc.
Chapter Two
Edin brought her slow and barefoot pacing in a pause. The flame of a small rushlight that lit her chamber was guttering. She replaced it with another and turned, throwing her waist-long hair over her shoulders. The silence of Fair Hope seemed to be concentrated in her room tonight, a silence so thick it was all but sound. It was long past time for her to be abed, but she feared sleep, feared the swift passage of time that sleep brought. The whole of her future yawned before her, and she felt a need to watch the passing of these last few hours of her girlhood.
She went again to the dress hanging against the wall, her wedding gown, made from treasured lengths of brocade and satin. The dark peacock-blue kirtle fell to the ground and had long sleeves with billowing cuffs; over it, the lighter blue tunic was short-sleeved and knee-length. She was rightly proud of its splendid embroidery, which she and the chore-girl Dessa had produced, working silently, patiently, for hours. Over the tunic, went a creamy yellow mantle to be held by brooches, one on each shoulder. For her feet, elegant slippers of soft yellow leather. She would also wear a necklet, and a diadem to keep her hair neat and in loose waves down her back.
She knew what Cedric was going to wear as well: grey-blue trousers and a green knee-length tunic held by a belt with richly ornamented clasps and mounts. His red mantle would be fastened by a brooch of beautiful workmanship and great size.
The ceremony was to be held at noon in the small pasture that lay between the hall and the village, where a wooden cross stood. This served as the open church for the people of Fair Hope. Afterward, everyone would feast in the great hall, where the smell of lowers and thyme would rise up from the fresh green rushes. The room could accommodate one hundred people at the trestle tables arranged in a line down each side. And the feast would be splendid. Beef and venison and huge plates of fish from the river. And, of course, lots of thickly scented ale. The fire would leap on the hearth, and candles would throw shadows. No doubt the feasting would be prolonged far into the night. At the single table across the head, where the thane's wife would sit with her husband, they would be served mead and precious imported wine and —
Everything would be perfect i
f only Cedric hadn't changed so! If only he didn't seem such a stranger suddenly. His proposal hadn't been a surprise; his parents had always voiced the desire to see him wed Edin. But this unbrotherly intensity had been completely unforeseen.
She tried to force a mental picture of lying in the same bed with him, granting him what his affection demanded, but again her mind skipped away. She must picture it! She must search inside herself for acceptance. Imagine, she ordered herself, you and Cedric naked beneath the bedclothes, the rushlight blown out, the soft summer darkness. . . .,
"I have to get some rest!" she murmured, pulling open the blankets of her bed. Already undressed down to her shift, she now bent to blow out the little tallowy light. Before she could, however, a terrible noise caused her to straighten. The night's silence cracked with harsh cries, and the noise of wood shrieking, splintering, giving way —the tall double doors of the hall below. Then came men's voices, screaming like animals. What . . . who . . . ?
Her stomach filled with a sick sense of disaster: Vikings! Her mind caught on the word. To her it meant man-beasts from the cold and foggy north, hateful, reeking scavengers. Thieves . . .rapists. . . killers! Giants swinging razor-sharp battle-axes! It couldn't be. Not here at Fair Hope! Surely not!
But the demonic roar swelled.
Her door had no bar, nothing but a flimsy latch. She raced to fasten it. Then hurried to the carved cedar-wood chest at the foot of her bed to find her dagger, the pretty jeweled ornament she often wore at her waist. Then . . . she could think of nothing more to do. She sensed these minutes were priceless, but one after the other they escaped hen Frozen with fear, she clutched her little blade to her breast with both hands. Her fingers clasped around it until her knuckles went white. Could she use it on an enemy —or should she use it on herself? She felt a strange gnawing at her insides, as if she'd swallowed something cold and hungry.
The shouting got nearer, her door was tried —then abruptly there came a blow to it. She started violently. Fear moved in more tightly. She flinched as the stout wood was kicked again and finally flew back on its hinges.
Edin's embrace Page 2