Edin's embrace

by Nadine Crenshaw

  The next day at the saeter was full of rain and foul weather. The Viking kept the fire blazing, and all was warmth inside the two rooms. His weapons leaned close by the door: his helmet with its iron nosepiece, his round, wooden shield with its dragonship emblem. His most prized weapon, however, his sword so beautifully damascened, lay across his knees at this moment. Edin watched him clean and sharpen it, and couldn't refrain from saying in her new and halting Norse, "In some ways you Vikings are children."

  His face was illuminated by the fire. He gave her a questionable look, a blank look she'd seen before, a look that could become cruel in an instant. But this time it became a smile. He said, "Very dangerous children." After another night and long morning abed with her, he seemed as near to full peace and careless contentment as she'd ever seen him.

  She said, "You carry your swords and axes about constantly, like little boys playing conqueror."

  "Every prudent man keeps his blades close at hand."

  "You think you're a prudent man?" she said recklessly, slipping back into Saxon. "Is it prudent to burn and loot and kill? Why do you do it —really? That sword you handle so lovingly carries no virtue in its edge. It has drunk enough gore that even you must feel sated."

  "Be wary," he said in Norse, in a voice of velvet, a voice as soft as a lynx's paw with all the claws at the ready, "be wary, song-singer, what you say."

  She too returned to Norse. "I only tell the truth: That sword has made much butchery in the world."

  "Shieldmaiden, any moment now the dragon is going to snap his jaws shut —and that little white sylphlike bone caught between his teeth will be snapped in two."

  He didn't want to talk about what he did during his raids. She absorbed this carefully, another piece of her growing intelligence of the man.

  From where he was sitting in his chair by the fire, he said, "If you come here, I'll put my sword away. Come; truly I would rather fondle the hidden folds leading to your treasures than this sharp, cold metal."

  He didn't want to talk about murder and mayhem —but it pleased him to talk of lovemaking. Oh, yes, that always seemed to make him glow with great good-feeling!

  With her eyes on his sword, giving it a glare of acute distaste, she said softly, "It's my shame that I let you touch me as I have. You were a plague come from the edges of the world to murder my people. I myself saw Beornwold, the one you buried at sea, crack a helpless man's skull like a ripe apple."

  He looked up from his work. "He did that? And you saw it?" He frowned. "And ever since, the sight has glowed quietly in your mind. You thought of it when I carried you to my chamber that first time —and many another time, no doubt." He shrugged. "Well, know that before we went into your village I gave the order for no senseless slaughter. And know that if I'd seen Beornwold disregard my word, I would have come down on him like the hounds of Odin. As I came down on Sweyn the Berserk, who is known as Sweyn the Cripple now."

  She muttered, "He got his just reward"

  "Aye, I suppose so. Not everyone does. Mostly it is a matter of odds. And when the odds are in your favor, you English treat captured Northmen as ruthlessly as we treat you. You flay us —skin us like deer —and nail our hides to your church doors; you fling us into adder pits; your women murder with pretty daggers hidden in their pretty bosoms —or abed in the dark of night. There are faults on both sides. No one is ever completely right. Not even you."

  As usual, he'd chosen his ground with the accomplished eye of a fighting man. She fumed for lack of an answer, then exploded back with, "I wonder how you would manage in my place, feeling like a feather blown about on the whims of one rough, ill-natured man?"

  "Ill-natured? I am that, I suppose. But rough?" He seemed to consider the words, his look harmless, mild as a spring lamb's. "Mayhap at times. But not lately that I recall. Come, you've made me wonder, and now I must check my work. Come, Shieldmaiden, let me see if I've bruised you anywhere." He gave her a great teasing grin.

  She couldn't sustain her ill will when he was behaving so oddly, so very nigh amiably.

  "Come! Don't look so hangdog, woman. You've been conquered, aye, but life is the thing!"

  ***

  Another night had come blowing down. Thoryn propped himself on his elbow and studied his slave woman as she slept. She looked as innocent as a napping child —except that her mouth was swollen from the violence of his kisses, and the tips of her breasts were yet puffy with his suckling, and the nest of down between her thighs was moist with his spillings. The soft light of the dying fire cast a pink glow over her, and these signs of his use made him want her again — unreasonably, considering that not fifteen minutes had passed since he'd moaned and thrust himself throbbing into her warmth and released his passion.

  What was this emotion she engendered in him that tore his insides like a captive eagle seeking exit?

  He covered her carefully, trying not to wake her. She was exhausted. Her surrender had been absolute tonight. He'd coaxed her to a climax of pleasure three times. He loved to watch her tension build and then overflow from her like mead from a brimming horn. She was magnificent when she cried out, begging for mercy from his hands or his mouth, writhing and sighing and pleading for him to enter her and fill her.

  Outside, it was now raining. He couldn't sleep. He'd spent much more time abed in these past few days than ever was his habit. He listened to the voices of the rain, the little torrents of running water falling from the eaves.

  He'd brought her here to wring pleasure out of her. With nothing to go by but the heavens, he'd steered her into giving more of herself than she'd known how to give. His purpose had been to further enslave her. He'd never suspected that the moments in which he conquered her would be moments in which he was as much enthralled by her as she was enslaved by him. Mayhap it was just as well that this paradise of being alone with her was coming to an end. Tomorrow he would take her back.

  He recalled the day she'd used the word love, and caused him to use it. Reflecting, he couldn't remember ever having formed that particular word in his mouth before, nor ever heard it from a stranger's.

  She'd caused many changes in him. She'd caused him to look at his way of life from a different standpoint, and betimes to question it.

  Was he bewitched, as Sweyn and his mother warned? Could it be that a man who had seen just such a spell cast over his own father might have no judgement to free himself from the same magic when it fell over him?

  Was what happened between them even real?

  It was real. His body knew how real it was.

  She was curled into a small mound. He pulled the cover back again, silent as a held breath. She was sleeping on her left side now, her legs slightly drawn up, so that the vision she offered him was her white flanks. She was only a woman, a small and helpless woman who happened to be rich in delights. He had nothing to fear from her. Only a coward would fear such a small, helpless female.

  Only a coward would fear the word love, a word that suggested watered milk, something wan and insipid.

  Only a coward would fear questions about his way of life. The Norse way could bear questioning. After all, didn't it gain him jewels, saddles of handsome and foreign workmanship, gold and silver, beautifully woven satins and silk in variegated scarlets and greens? Didn't he capture tender, youthful, bright, matchless girls and large, well-formed boys? True, he often felt like a man standing on a narrow ledge beside a precipice, but he was no coward.

  Deep and close in his soul, however, he knew that something of him was conquered, and the knowledge caused him fear.

  ***

  The code of Norse law was handed down verbally from generation to generation. The laws were many and varied. There were laws about boundary markings, about hunting rights, about the cutting of trees and the collection of wood, laws about the infringement of grazing, about libel, satire, and calumny, and light-headed young folk making love songs.

  There were laws concerning sheep stealing, souring a woman's butter,
and wooing her bees. There were laws about insulting the public morality, laws about hurting the community. Laws about severing a finger. Laws about severing a head.

  Local Things were called periodically, during which any freeman could discuss a discontent or a problem. If a man was accused of some misdeed, he had the consolation of knowing his court was made up of his peers. Since there was no punishing authority, if a man was found guilty, the burden of punishment was left to the strength and intelligence of the offended party.

  These courts were almost always called by the reigning jarl well in advance so that people could take advantage of the assembly to barter and trade. The event usually had the gala feeling of a fair. The beacon fire that blazed on the lookout point of Thorynsteading at sunrise today, however, had not been lit by Thoryn Kirkynsson. He was away, but according to the message he'd left his mother Inga, this was the day he would return.

  He first saw the beacon leaping and smoking when he led Edin down off the vidda. After a moment's pause, he goaded Dawnfire and Rushing One to hurry.

  Meanwhile, his neighbors began to collect in the open air on the lip of his valley where his father's runestone stood. This was the site where he traditionally met his people and exchanged oaths. The runestone was upright, carved with angular script. The letters were made of up-and-down and slanting scoremarks. There was a certain secrecy about runic writings. A runemaster was regarded almost as a magician. But the message carved on the late jarl's stone was really very simple: "Thoryn set this stone in remembrance of his father, Kirkyn."

  Kirkyn Atlason had been discovered murdered on a grey morning in late autumn. Thoryn recalled the gulls and the sea mews mocking him for crying—for boys of the North did not cry, no matter what. No matter what feelings a boy of only fourteen winters had to deal with: his mother's peculiar silence; his deep grief for his father —and for his father's murderer. And his fury at her betrayal.

  Her name had been Margaret.

  Hurrying beneath the waterfall in his rush to get home, Thoryn averted his head quickly as if by doing so he wouldn't see in his mind the appalling image of her. It did him no good. She was there in his memory, soft-voiced, always sweet and fresh-washed. He heard her laughter, bright as birds. She'd taught him Saxon at Kirkyn's order, because Kirkyn believed a man should speak the language of the thralls he owned. Thoryn had started the lessons badly, forewarned by Inga that the woman would try to poison his mind. But gentle Margaret soon won him over. He came to trust her as completely as his father did. And although Kirkyn ruled her, he was also enslaved by her.

  As Thoryn feared he was now enslaved.

  Emerging from beneath the falls, he drew in a deep draught of the here and now, which breathed so easily, which held no hint of death and betrayal. He brought his thoughts back to worrying about what business could be awaiting him with the summons of that beacon fire.

  Entering his own valley at last, he went directly to the Thing-place, not even pausing to take Edin to the longhouse first. The gathering looked ready for battle. Each bondi carried his shield and axe or sword and wore his battle shirt. Around the Norsemen's shoulders were not the grey concealing cloaks worn into raids, however, but resplendent cloaks caught to their chests by gold and silver brooches. With their helmets polished to sheening brightness and their decorum stiffened for the occasion, the effect they made was of a great set of chessmen, stalwart and well-built, blond, ocean-eyed, and ornate, standing there against the sky.

  "What is it?" Thoryn asked as he dismounted.

  The sun had passed its zenith, yet the day remained bright. From the fjord, the breeze blew salt and fresh. Many of the men looked toward Harold Bluetooth, and as many others toward Leif the Tremendous.

  Thoryn had little liking for Leif, a sullen man at best. It was rumored he beat his wife, Auor. For some time Thoryn had expected the woman to appear at a Thing-meet herself and demand a divorce.

  He asked again, "What is this about?"

  It seemed no one wanted to answer his question. He scanned the crowd. Finnier Forkbeard, the eldest and the honorary Old Man of the Council said, "Thoryn Kirkynsson, Harold Bluetooth's thrall Vred and Leif's thrall Amma together stole two of Harold's best horses, besides supplies, and have disappeared into the Kolen."

  "When?"

  "Five nights ago."

  "You've searched?"

  "We're not fools," Harold said. "And Vred is no barefoot girl. He's got horses and supplies and they're gone."

  Leif burst out, "I told that bitch Amma it was time for her to breed. She wanted Vred and I told her no, but — "

  "But it's your fault, Jarl!" Harold said. "You put it in their minds when you let that one there get away with breaking the law." He pointed his axehead at Edin.

  "You should have laid her down on Thor's Stone and let the thralls see what happens to runaways!" Leif shouted.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Thing fell into a din of shouts. Every man had an opinion and was sensitive to his right to express it. Their voices got louder and louder. Edin's heart raced. She automatically sought to stay near the jarl. She even dared take a fold of his cloak between her fingers. He felt it, and turned and met her eyes —and she saw something in them; but quickly he seemed to staunch whatever it was. She almost felt him pulling away from her, felt the communion they had achieved in the saeter dissolving. His bearing became that of a man unaware of Edin's presence, a man leading a separate and independent existence from her, as if he’d not held her intimately only hours ago. Would he withdraw his promised protection in favor of his own interests? Of course he would! She dropped her foolish, feminine hold on his cloak and stiffened herself to stand alone. Frowning, his carriage suggested power; his helmet and his weapons made him seem unbelievably tall and deadly. Dread filled her soul.

  She saw Inga coming up the slope with a cloth bundle under her arm. The jarl flung a cool and calculating look down at her as she arrived, puffing from her climb, her face alight with hectic excitement. He said, "This is a council of men, Mother."

  "Yet she is here."

  "Mother—"

  She gave him a look that made Edin gasp. "Traitor!" Inga cried. She had the entire group's attention. Wrenching around, she spewed at Edin, "Witch!"

  Edin looked at the jarl. His face was arranged to show nothing. Inga cried to the assembly now, "She killed Ragnarr —and was never punished. She caused my son to maim his berserker — dishonorably, I know some of you feel —and was never punished. She ran away and was never punished. She flaunts her hair as no thrall ever should be allowed to do. She wears gowns as fine as my own, and jewelry. She sleeps in your jarl's bed —and rules from there!"

  The jarl suddenly grabbed her shoulder as if he meant to shake her. Edin's hand went to the breast brooch that closed her cloak. She felt all about her hard-living, hard-dying, forceful men, each one equipped with a magnificent sword or axe which could take her head off in one swing.

  Despite the jarl's grip on her, Inga shouted, "She's escaped the law too often! She must die!'

  Edin felt the color recede from her cheeks, felt cold perspiration break out on her arms. The wild beating of her heart stole her breath away.

  Inga reached for the bundle under arm, but the jarl acted first. He dropped his hold on her and swiftly stepped before Edin. "These crimes, if they be crimes, are mine."

  Edin swayed, giddy with sudden relief.

  "Thoryn," said Kol Thurik, "why do you defend her?"

  The jarl faced him down without answering. For once Edin was grateful for his ability to create terror with his eyes and his expression.

  But then Finnier Forkbeard shouldered forward again. His face was seamed into a web of wrinkles; his stiff, parted whiskers moved with his jaw as he said, "You have shown contempt for the law, Thoryn Kirkynsson."

  "The thrall!" Inga urged. "Kill the thrall!"

  The men muttered. There was a growing excitement beneath their talk. Inga's little performance had much engaged them. The
y were like hounds who smelled blood. The jarl spoke into this muttering, each word falling from his lips individual and hard, like chips of stone: "No one will touch her."

  Finnier Forkbeard said, "The law says, 'A master should take the life of any thrall who threatens his life, who harms him or his family, who is found stealing, or who is overtaken in an escape.'"

  "He should take the thrall's life — which I interpret to mean that he may or he may not. I alone mete out justice on my steading, and I am not in fear of my own chattel."

  "Your fear is not the point. 'With law shall the land be brought up and with lawlessness shall it waste away.' It is not wise for any master to let his thralls do as you have let this woman do."

  "She is my responsibility."

  "Aye, in all ways. She is here through your venture; she is your subject. But when one thrall is allowed to mock her master, all thralls are tempted to mockery. More than once men of power have disregarded the sense of this, and they have paid a high price."

  Nods of assent went around. Inga seemed calmer, more rational. She said, "I was a good and faithful wife. My husband Kirkyn was a brave fighting man and a good husband. Yet he was a fool in this way. He . . ." Her rationality seemed to fade; looking into her face, Edin had a sense of staring into something dark and sleeping. "He let himself become besotted by a Saxon thrall. . . ."

  "They know the story, Mother." It seemed to Edin that since the jarl had stepped between her and her enemies he stood taller than ever before. It was as though his decision had physically enlarged him. All his arrogance, his pride of caste and birthright, was written on his face.

  "Yes . . . yes." Inga seemed to come back to herself. "I know they do. We all know it —and it's ending." She turned to face the storm of pride in her son's face — which didn't seem to daunt her in the least. "I stood by while your father made a mistake that cost him his life, and now I'm supposed to stand by while you follow the same path? I'm supposed to watch you lust after a Saxon witch just as he did before you? I would think you'd rather cut the blood-eagle in her back in just revenge for him who was murdered so foully —but no, you favor her."