Inga seemed satisfied. She said something in her barbaric language, her voice as tart, as stone-chilled, as the buttermilk the Vikings liked so well. Edin said nothing, could have said nothing with her throat burning as it was, making it so difficult to swallow. She exited the chamber just as the jarl was passing on his way outside. She tried to fasten him with her gaze, but her stare slid off. He in turn took one look at her, then lowered his head and strode on.
She found later that Inga had unwittingly done her a kindness. At the evening meal the Vikings seemed to notice her much less. The ugly dress had its advantages. At least now she wasn't a target for every male eye in the hall.
The evening passed. And so did the night, which at that time of year in the north was so short Edin didn't think a person could cook a joint of meat in it. Verily it seemed the minute she lay down she was awakened. Yet there was enough time for her to dream, and awaken with a start, enough time for that sense of horror to come to her, that absolute, sickening terror that rose from her stomach, and that feeling of total desolation.
Her heart put up a struggle inside her, but gradually the heaped shocks settled onto her and seemed to separate her from everyone around her. When she burned her fingers while cooking, she wondered, Why don't I feel pain? When Juliana continued to treat her with contempt and encourage the other thralls to do the same, she thought, My life is destroyed, everything is lost, and I don't feel anything. There was too much to bear, and gradually her mind stopped paying attention, and her heart stopped fumbling; everything around her blurred. . . .
For the hundredth time, Edin threw her hair back out of her way. The longhall was quiet. Olga was midway between the clean-up of breakfast and the starting of dinner, Dessa was working at the standing loom, and Juliana was busy with a set of wooden pressing irons. Edin had been set to the lowest job, plucking a brace of wild ducks that long-bearded Fafnir Danrsson had left hanging in the kitchen. She was in that daze, that dullness bordering on despair which had sealed her off from her surroundings. Only now and then did anything break through to fix itself in her consciousness anymore, some distinctive scene, or the occasional pang of some real, physical pain.
The pain was usually caused by Inga's wooden spoon, used whenever Edin stopped her work to go into a moment's trance. Then Inga would poke or rap her, and Edin would obediently return to what she was supposed to be doing.
She was ankle-deep in feathers when she heard Inga's word for her, a Norse word that seemed to be the Saxon equivalent of "You!" She looked up to see the woman in the door, her expression full of cold effrontery. No wonder, since Dessa and Juliana were already there, evidently having been summoned without Edin even being aware that they'd left their work. Dessa beckoned her timidly.
Edin stood and brushed the feathers from her hands as she followed them out into the light of the fine, luculent late-summer noon, a truly golden noon, though to Edin there seemed to be an undertone of grief in the sunlight. Two thrall-men met them. One was Blackhair, he of the wormy smile. Inga spoke to the other one, and he in turn spoke to the women: "I'm Snorri. I'm from England, too—twenty-five winters ago." He was a well-muscled fellow, though only a few inches taller than Edin. He seemed not to know what to do with his hands without a spade or barrow or pitchfork.
Blackhair stood grinning at the women. Edin didn't care; she didn't even wonder why they'd been called outside. She watched passively while Blackhair and Snorri took tools from their belts, the kind used to shear sheep. Dessa and Juliana, following some order, went to their knees before the men, who started to trim their hair. Edin had noticed that the thralls wore their hair short here. Olga's, for instance, barely reached the tips of her ears.
Juliana's hair hadn't been long to begin with, and as Blackhair snipped blithely, only short dark curls dropped to the ground around her. Dessa's longer, soft brown locks fell and fell. Snorri's face held an expression of pained concentration. Edin lost interest.
She looked at Inga, who was intent on the "shearing." The older woman had her own hair bound in its usual knot. She was without a cape today. Her dress was pleated, a dress of light blue with touches of black and four rows of yellow beads across the chest. It was wrapped and pinned in some exotic Viking style.
Edin's attention wandered. Under the nearby shade tree, Hauk Haakonsson, the one with the high, hooked nose, was sitting on the grass, plaiting leashes for some hounds lying about him. He'd pulled his tunic off in the heat, and Edin saw the great snake etched on his long back. Several of the Vikings had tattoos: wolves, bears, dragons. . . .
In the corral, Laag, the stable-thrall, was trimming the mane of a horse. He was a tall, always slightly frowning man with an absent manner. The dark glossy horse hair dropped and dropped.
Edin looked out at the fields visible between the dairy byre and the longhouse, stubble fields from which the barley had already been cut. There were three cots in the distance, the houses of married thralls and their families. From one of the chimneys smoke rose into the still air.
Farther up, the heat of the day had gathered the moisture out of the land to make a faint haze around the heights.
When Dessa and Juliana stood, their hands to their heads, they looked . . . different, Edin thought from where she had escaped to, a safe place a thousand miles or more from Norway. She was slow to realize that everyone was looking at her. "Your turn, lass," Snorri said. Blackhair again broke into that really cruel grin.
Her turn? Looking at the sheers in Blackhair's hand, the situation finally penetrated her understanding. Her hands went to the thick, wavy, amber hair hanging down her back and over her shoulders. Not this, too. She'd never realized she had a vanity until now. They wouldn't take even this from her . . . would they?
They would. She woke, with a punched, gasping feeling. They meant to cut her hair. She came back to awareness with a lurch. And she was appalled.
She took a step back.
"Come on, lass," Snorri said, not unkindly. The look on Blackhair's face was gleeful. His eyes were small and stony and full of evil. Inga looked smug. Snorri said, "It could be worse. In some districts thralls are branded."
Edin took another step backward. "Not my hair. It's rather pretty when I can comb it. If I had a comb — " she looked about her as if hoping to find one hidden nearby. "I have no comb," she said again, distractedly. "Mayhap I could just put it up?"
Snorri gave her a sad look. She glanced at Inga, whose look said Edin was beneath contempt. She uttered something sharp and impatient.
"Sorry, lass," Snorri said, "we have to cut it. We do what we're told, whether or not we like the doing."
Edin, suddenly awake and aware of just how close to the edge of everything she was, felt she had to make a stand. Snorri sighed. Then, as she'd expected, Blackhair made a grab for her. She side-stepped him, turned, picked up her ugly skirts, and fled.
Having surprised them, she got something of a head start. Her hair, judged too ornamental for a common slave, streamed and rippled behind her. She hadn't been allowed to look about the steading, and she had no idea where she would be led by the path she chose. It wasn't the dead-end path that went to the dock, she knew, though it went up over the lip of the valley and started down toward the fjord just as that other did. From the top, she saw the longship at anchor a bowshot out in the water, its sail furled, its timbers dry. Halfway along, the path turned around a bluff, beyond which she couldn't see.
Seagulls mewed; heavy footsteps beat the hard earth behind her. Her heart slugged up in her throat. What are you doing? It was unlikely she'd find a hiding place, and when caught, that ice-hearted Inga would have her shorn bald.
And when the jarl heard she'd been disobedient again. . . !
A little whimper escaped her as she plunged headlong around the blind turn in the path.
***
The shipyard was redolent with wood shavings and pitch. Like the dock area, it occupied a shelf of land just above the water. Much of the available space was taken up b
y stocks, which could hold a longship being repaired or a fishing boat being built. Thoryn was telling young Starkad Herjulsson about a type of ship he'd seen out of Kaupang. "It's called a knorr broader and larger than the Blood Wing, with higher gunwales to hold back the waves, and the mast fixed solidly in the hull."
Starkad was several years younger than his brother Jamsgar, but he was one of those who had the genius. When he built even a little fishing boat, he paid complete attention to each plank he cut, its breadth, its thickness. Like Jamsgar, his face was broad and brown as leather, and his eyes were as blue as the summer sky; but where Jamsgar had two handsome blond plaits of hair, Starkad's hair was a rust color, and his square-trimmed beard jutted as stiffly as though carved from rustred whalebone.
Thoryn heard a commotion coming down the path and lost his concentration. "What now?" he muttered, stalking out of the yard. Just as he set foot on the path, the Saxon maiden rounded the bluff. Running headlong downhill, she didn't see him until it was too late to avoid a collision. She crashed into him with enough impact to force a deep "Huh!" from him. His arms automatically closed about her—and with the same surge of muscles, he lifted her and swung her around, presenting his back to Blackhair, who was no more than two paces behind her, a pair of sheep shears in his hand. He ran into Thoryn's back. Thoryn bent forward a little, bearing this second collision, which brought his head down into the maiden's fragrant hair.
He straightened as Blackhair ricocheted off him and fell in a sprawl. He felt the maiden fighting for breath in his arms, yet continued to hold her tightly.
Snorri arrived just then. He paused, panted, then reached to help Blackhair to his feet. Thoryn's first thought was that they'd been attempting to molest the maiden, and his stomach clenched with ready anger. He turned to face them, still keeping her in his arms. "What fool trick is this? Speak or, by Odin, I'll skewer you both!"
Snorri tried to answer, but could only speak in infrequent words: "Master . . . she . . . we. . . ." He was too winded.
Inga now appeared on the path, her face flushed with exertion and fury. The maiden began to squirm in his arms, seeking her freedom. But he wasn't ready to let her go, not yet. He had no purpose; but he did have a good hold on her, and he decided to keep it, at least until he found out what was going on.
"Peace be with you, Master," Blackhair wheezed, "but the mistress told us to clip this thrall's hair, and we were going to — except she ran away. She doesn't know her place yet, but she will. She—"
"Mother!"
" — thinks she's too good to do what she'd told like the rest of us —" Blackhair continued in a bullying voice.
"Mother, what's going on?"
The maiden managed to twist her head back enough to say to Blackhair in her native Saxon, "You disgusting worm!"
Thoryn let her slide down his chest, still keeping one arm around her and now clamping his free hand over her mouth. "Silence!" he said, prevailing over everyone at once. He turned to Inga. "You told this . . . worm to sheer her head?"
Inga met his glare with a defensive stiffening. "You told me to supervise her. For five days I've watched her flinging that hair about. It's in the way of her work."
"But it will not be in the way of her work with the man who buys her."
Inga snapped her mouth shut on whatever she'd been about to say.
"When a man gives eight half-marks of gold for a bed-thrall, he doesn't want a bald woman "
"Hair grows. By spring—"
"By spring she might have as much hair as I do." He was having to use some strength to hold her now, which increased his irritation, and without thinking, he caught his fist in her mane to emphasize his point. He gave her head a firm shake. "A man buys a woman for his bed, not a shorn ewe."
Inga retreated into the refuge of silence. Her eyes could have iced over the fjord. Without another word she turned and started up the path. The two thrall-men, heads down, promptly followed her.
Thoryn watched them go, fuming. It wasn't until he heard a strained and feminine voice speaking in Saxon —"Please!" —that he looked down to see he still had the maiden gripped against his chest. His hand in her hair was pulling her head back so far that her throat was taut, her chin pointed skyward. The sight of her face tilted so vulnerably up to his hit him like a fist blow. Her beauty was more poignant than spring, a beauty to humble the world. . . .
He heard a chuckle and realized that Starkad had witnessed the whole scene, and the sensations which had struck him as a thunderbolt were immediately twisted into chagrin. It must have shown on his face, for Starkad made a great show of turning back to his own business.
Thoryn partially released the maiden. Keeping her arm, he said in her language, "Come with me!"
He started along the path with her, stopping only when they were hidden from both the shipyard and the steading above. Inga had tacked up the path like a sailboat before the wind, and she and the thralls were just disappearing over the lip of the valley. For the first time Thoryn was completely alone with the lovely thrall.
He released her arm. She faced him, as she always did, squarely, though she could hardly know what to expect from him. He hardly knew what to expect from himself. He stared for a long moment at her heavy, handsome hair. Ripples of water frisked around the banks of the fjord almost at their feet, but he didn't notice that. She was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. Hers was a pure beauty. Her eyes were true sea-maiden eyes. He felt an edgy thrill, like being at the brink of a cliff and gripped by the irrational, wanton urge to jump!
He had to break this silence! He said, "Tell me — " His voice came out two tones deeper than he'd expected. He tried again: "Tell me why I pander to you and protect you and give you special consideration, Saxon, when you're never anything but trouble to me!"
"I-I don't know. I wish you wouldn't." A gust of emotion seemed to unsettle her. "I wish you'd never concerned yourself with me!"
"If it hadn't been for me, you'd have been raped and gutted and left to burn—"
"If it hadn't been for you, Viking—"
"Do you dare talk back to me? Are you stupid? Do you truly not understand your position yet? Or mine? Whether you acknowledge it or not, I have the right — and the strength —to do whatever I like with you. I could have you whipped. I could take your head off. I could strangle you with that hair I just told them to let you keep!"
He stopped raging and steadied himself, fighting against feelings that seemed as powerful and mysterious as the tides.
When he spoke again, he was more sober: "Why do you bring yourself to my attention?"
"I don't!"
"What was it you just did then, running straight to me?"
"I had no idea you were down here! I-I just didn't want to lose my hair, too."
Too. He noted the word and all it meant. He said, self-righteously, "I don't know why not —it sticks out like hay in a rick. In truth, Saxon, keep that hair, for if such a prize were lost, Norway might never see its like again."
"I shall try, Viking!"
But despite her attempt to appear brave, she was gripping her hands together, staring steadfastly at his tunic buttons and visibly trembling. In a smaller, almost tearful voice, her head half-hanging, she said, "It wouldn't look like hay if I had a comb."
His nostrils dilated as he breathed in hugely. "Are you saying you are ill-cared for?"
She wouldn't look at him; her hands gripped one another.
"Answer me!"
She said at last, "No."
And he knew that for the first time she had just told him a thing she believed to be patently untrue. Of course she was being ill-cared for—tormented! She was being singled out by Inga, and clearly some of the thralls disliked her —simply because she was what she was, a gentlewoman pulled down to their own level. His men taunted her with their coarse badinage and loutish jokes. He himself had neglected —avoided —her these past days. Oh, he'd been watchful and protective in ways she couldn't know, yet he'd heartlessly
left her to accustom herself as best she could to her new condition.
And he would have to be blind not to notice how poorly she was doing: her dazed service at the meals, her lack of expression, her growing despondency.
I did this. I put a seal of midnight on her morning. It's wrong.
How small she was, how vulnerable. And how beautiful, even in that sack. He remembered holding her folded against him —he knew something of what was beneath the gross drapes of that garment. And he had a sudden strong sense of what it might be like to slide up inside her small body. It made him shudder. His eyes focused on the strange lilt of her mouth, and he found himself irresistibly drawn. Before he could stop himself, he reached out and took her arms.
The gentleness of his touch seemed to surprise her, enough so that she allowed him to pull her toward him. When she looked up into his face to see what he was up to, he lowered his mouth surely.
He took her completely by surprise. a Oh!" she said at the touch of his lips on hers, giving him the opportunity to invade her opened mouth and taste her inner sweetness. He was blind and deaf to all but her, could smell nothing but the scent of her, knew nothing but the warm round litheness of her.
Then she jerked her head aside. He buried his face in her throat, and she pressed her hands against his chest.
When he lifted his head, she looked at him as if she saw something primitive and terrifying in his eyes. Though she strained to be released, evidently she didn't really expect to succeed, for she stumbled back when he abruptly let go. She would have fallen if he hadn't caught her waist. She slid her hands up his arms, trying to cling to the very object that was destroying her balance.
For an instant he was strongly tempted to take her to the ground, to force open her legs, not simply to rob her of the only thing she had left for him to take, but to conquer her.
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