Edin's embrace

by Nadine Crenshaw

  She turned back to the more sympathetic faces of the Thing-men. "Have I not suffered enough?" Now her voice sounded far away and forlorn. Edin saw that a flare for the dramatic must run in the family. "Must I live with another murdering harlot beneath my roof?" Her eyes filled and shone with the cool brightness of jewels.

  "Enough!" The jarl's face had slowly gone dark. "I will hear no more of this."

  There was silence. Edin wondered if she ought to say something in her own behalf —but what? After a moment, Finnier broke the silence with "Two men have lost valuable thralls, horses, and goods. What say you about that, Thoryn Kirkynsson?"

  He answered, in a soft, a dangerous voice, "Thrall, go to my chamber."

  Since he didn't look at her, Edin was a little behind time in realizing that it was her he was addressing.

  "In my chest is a box of cedarwood, inside that a sack of coins. Bring—"

  "No!" Inga exclaimed. She stared him in the eye without flinching. "You will not pay Harold and Lief and let the matter end at that. For the matter will not be ended with that!" Her eyes and mouth fisted and her nose twitched. "Here!" She unfurled the white bundle she'd brought under her arm. "Remember this, Thoryn?"

  Edin saw that it was a man's nightshirt, yellowed with age— and stained, particularly around a tear in the breast. It took Edin a moment to register what those brown stains were, what weapon could have made that small slit, and whose nightshirt it must have once been. She realized the truth all at once, and in the same instant felt a sharpening of her fear.

  The Thing-men went stiff with shock. "Kirkyn's!" came a hiss. Another whisper said, "The very one he was found in!" They all stared unbelieving at the awful, blood-starched garment in which Inga's beloved had been murdered.

  The jarl said softly, "You kept that, Mother? All these years? Where have you kept it? Among your gowns in your chest? Under your mattress?" His voice gained volume until at last it was like a rumble of thunder: "Have you kept it under your pillow, Mother?"

  "Thoryn" — her voice was tearful and pathetic again, her tone soothing—"I kept it to remind me —and you. Your father was brave, but he could be obstinate, and in one matter he was a fool. Listen to me! A man you meet in battle is a plain warrior whose only strength is in the axe or the sword he swings. You overcome that weapon and the man is finished. But this woman is no axeman, no swordsman; she is too cunning to take up such simple arms. Her weapons are her thighs, plump and pear-shaped, and—"

  "Mother."

  "— and her mind, oh, yes, her woman's mind, the craftiest weapon of all. She will attack you unsuspected, with poison in your honeycakes and cream — "

  "Mother."

  "— with a cord around your neck while you're sleeping—" she was all but clutching him with her words and her eyes, putting forth all she had to hold his attention —"or with a dagger slipped between your—"

  "Mother!"

  At last she was silent. She saw that he'd escaped her and was free. She kept looking at him, however, bent forward a little, fingering the cloth of that ghastly garment, her gaze so omnivorous Edin feared she would surely suck him back with her eyes. But then her breast wrenched out a sigh, for he turned away from her, dismissed her very presence.

  His eyes were narrowed as they slid around the gathering of men. For a tense and hostile moment no one spoke, or even moved. Finally he said, "As you can see, my dame tends a small but pure flame of hatred deep within her heart — along with a keen sense of drama. It disturbs me when she takes me for a fool . . . but mayhap she does so with some justification."

  Edin saw yet another change come over him; suddenly he was exuding a certain courtly manner. While the Thing-men were still stunned with confusion — many still stared at the stained shirt now crumpled in Inga's arms —while Edin herself still felt the echoes of that instant of awful realization, the jarl had already recovered enough to see how to proceed.

  He moved to the standing stone that dominated the place, and put his hand upon it. From there he stared back at the gathering. "I appreciate the stability given to everyday affairs by Thing-law, and I have always confirmed its standing and authority But when my new thrall ran away, she didn't even understand our language yet, let alone our laws. Considering her value, it seemed too much of a waste to see her bright lifeblood poured out for the crime of simple ignorance and fear.

  "As for my gifts to her, that is my right. I will not drown her for having hair too lovely to crop, or for seeking to please me by ornamenting herself. By the High One, brothers, I've spent too much time coaxing her to please me to undo any of her learning along those lines!"

  Laughter. Uneasy, but venting the unbearable pressure of tension that had built.

  "I will do this much to make amends for any trouble the situation might have given my battle-brothers and fellow thrall-masters, Harold and Leif. I will pay them twice the value of all they have lost." He moved forward, placing a placating hand on Harold's shoulder. "Come. Come, Leif. Let us go down to the longhouse and settle this like men who have fought shoulder-to-shoulder and won."

  Casually, he took Edin's arm and kept her close as the gathering made its way down the slope. He kept his hold as they entered the hall, and urged her to sit between his feet when he took his place in the high-seat. Though no words passed between them, nor even a look, it was clear to her that he didn't feel she would be safe anywhere else. There were still traces of bad feeling among the Vikings, mostly directed at her.

  When she did not help with the serving, the house-thralls, Olga and especially Juliana, looked at her with bare tolerance. Did even they think she was trying to rule their jarl? If they only knew how much she wished she'd never caught his eye. Couldn't they see from where she was sitting that she was more a shackled slave than any of them?

  The jarl did everything he could to make the gathering jovial. First he settled the matter with the injured men: In the eyes of Norse law, a thrall seemed to count as a superior sort of cow or horse. The jarl paid the worth of eight cows, one and one-half marks of silver, for each missing thrall.

  Leif still grumbled. "Amma was due a hiding and would have got it if I'd seen her crying over that worthless Vred just one more time. If I ever catch up with those two, they can foresee no quarter from me. I'll as soon tolerate a wolf at the foldwall as a runaway. And their death will be a wolfs death, quick and bloody." He glared at Edin again.

  The jarl turned the conversation smoothly and mentioned to Leif that he'd been thinking of improving the road through the difficult forest between Thorynsteading and Leif's hof, mayhap even placing a stone marker with both their names on it. That soothed the man's temper.

  Soon after, the jarl announced, "I thought to ready my longship and make a trading voyage to Kaupang in a sennight or so. The Blood Wing will need a crew; I'll pay for rowing arms." He added, "Any man who can't travel with me yet wishes to send trade goods, I will gladly oblige and do business in Kaupang in his name."

  A murmur of approval went around. Evidently this was a degree of generosity to which they weren't accustomed. Herjul the Stout raised his horn and said, "To our jarl, as openhanded with his neighbors as he is hard and cruel to his enemies!" The consensus of the raised drinking horns seemed to be that it was indeed a bighearted offer, big enough to make most of the men forgive him for his indiscretions concerning his Saxon bed-thrall.

  Finnier Forkbear asked, "While you are in Kaupang, will you visit your father's brother, Olaf Haldanr?"

  "Naturally."

  "I journeyed with Olaf one season," Finnier mused. "A great warrior he was in his youth. I recall a time when he was insulted by a Swede." He smiled, looking around. "Olaf swung his axe over his head and attacked so fast the Swede was still putting on his helmet when down came the blow, clear to his gaping mouth."

  Harold laughed. "Finnier, you have such a droll manner of telling a story."

  The Forkbeard went on, casually, "Olaf has a daughter, does he not?"

  "My cousin Hanne
," the jarl said.

  Finnier's voice rumbled. "A girl of noble birth, descended from Vikings, no doubt with a nicely rounded swell of breasts and a pair of pouting lips by now"

  "And a pair of knees meant to be slightly bent and widely parted!" called Jamsgar.

  "It would do well for you to take such a woman to wife one of these days, Thoryn," Finnier went on as if he hadn't been interrupted. "It would set your mother's mind at rest."

  "Somehow I doubt that," he muttered.

  The ale flowed, and conversation became easier and easier, until at last the jarl bent a little so his lips were close to Edin's ear. "You may go to my chamber now. Don't tarry along your way."

  She did as he said, but just before she reached the door, Inga loomed up before her. Edin felt the woman's boiling pride. "Soon," she warned, "I'll think of a way to get rid of you, but until that day I am content to wait."

  A mild, moist dark came over the steading. Fat spit from the meat roasting over the blazing logs in the long fire. Thoryn couldn't show his black mood. He'd paid out a lot of gold — and a lot of pride — this day. He'd been taken up like a boy before his own Thing; he'd had his manifest and passionate interest in a thrall discussed publicly; and his dame had shown her oddity yet again. All this he had to bear with a smile. Humility was not to his taste; in fact, his mouth was foul with it.

  He glanced sidelong at Inga. She was waving away Olga's offered tray of wild apples and nuts. His eyes narrowed, as if by making his vision as slim as a knife blade he might see into her mind. What kind of woman would keep the bloody shirt in which her husband had been slain?

  Don't!

  Instinctively, he knew not to probe too deeply into the heart and the inner life of his mother Inga Thorsdaughter. There were some things in this world that could knock even a strapping Norse chieftain off his feet.

  As the meal progressed, the longtables became spattered with spilled beer and milky curds of cheese. Ottar Magnusson and one of Kol Thurik's sons, a boy of eighteen winters with silky golden hair, were doing their best to make it hard for Juliana to clean up around them. So far it was only the usual play.

  At last Inga rose from her place and went to her chamber. At the door she flung a look of misery and penitence at Thoryn, and made a placating gesture, then she went in.

  The hour crept toward midnight. Thoryn lingered with his uninvited guests. Jamsgar and Starkad tried to coax him into talk. He saw the hard excitement in their faces; they were pleased by the news that he was taking the Blood Wing to Kaupang. Hauk, too. He toasted, "Here is to being off, to salt in the nostril!"

  At the edge of Thoryn's attention he saw that the arch of young Juliana's eyebrows and the slant of her glances were suggesting that she was now available. It wasn't too long before she was "accidentally" tripped by Ottar. She fell to the rushes with a flurry of skirts — which Ottar and the silky-haired Thurik boy managed to lift even higher as they pretended to help her rise. Thoryn would ordinarily have said, "Find some other amusement" but tonight he said nothing. He felt mayhap it was time for Juliana to get what she was asking for. He even felt a sudden violent temptation to command it: Rape her! He'd never seen a woman rise after servicing several Norsemen in succession who seemed inclined to repeat the experience. Meanwhile, Juliana wriggled and giggled and showed her thighs —while nearer to Thoryn, Jamsgar's face flushed dark with blood. Against the pressure of his coppery glare, the girl finally straightened herself.

  The gathering continued to toast one another and share rough jokes until they got drunk enough not to notice when Thoryn's full attention receded. He stared at the flaming birch logs in the firepit. His anger was for all women —his mother, Juliana, the Saxon . . . aye, that one too.

  The muscles in his jaw set. He felt a need for violence. Better for her if he had a raid to face tonight, or a sword fight with an enemy who would really like to kill him, or a storm at sea with his steering oar broken. Better for her if he had almost anything to face but her. For, he told himself, he preferred not to harm her. After all, she barely stood as high as his shoulder. Yet he was angry. He'd been humbled on her account. And secretly he feared there might be some truth in the notion that she was ruling him from his own bed. The wench was doing her best to make him a different man. She made him feel like a villain, a scavenger, a vulture who made his living off others' weaknesses. She spit the word Viking at him and made him feel uneasy with what he was. How dare she?

  How dare she!

  While the others drank on, he sat turning and turning his cup in his hands, glaring more and more blackly into the fire. Singing started up, then died down. At last men began to drift off to their beds or the sheepskins they'd brought. Thoryn decided he would not be the last one left at the board. Was he a coward, afraid to face a mere woman? By the gods, he would go to his bed and shape his bed-thrall in his arms and stable his steed in her as was his right! And just let her try to make him feel he'd ever done her or anyone else wrong! Just let her try. He'd teach her a pleasant lesson. She thought of him as a dragon; well, it was time, beyond time, for him to show her his red fangs!

  He stood and fixed his gaze squarely on his chamber door. Stepping off the dais, he began to place each boot firmly as he walked toward the end of the hall.

  Edin heard him come into the chamber. She lay very still, pretending sleep. She'd left the lamp burning and now heard him cross the rushes until he stood right over her. It took every ounce of will she possessed to keep her eyes closed, and for no reason she could fathom, she began to experience the acrid taste of fear.

  Suddenly he ripped the covers from her. Her eyes opened to find him looming over her, his face a mask of fury. She flinched away. A sudden gust of temper seemed to overpower him, and he reached down, seizing her waist. She struck out at him in mindless self-defense.

  It did less than no good: It hurt. It hurt her hands, for he was still wearing his battle shirt. Pulling against his grip was worse than useless, too, since it caused him to grasp her tighter.

  The face and body he showed her belonged to a stranger, a warrior. The hands on her were not the firm-but-gentle hands that had in the past coaxed her to surrender. These hands had no intention of coaxing, and this stranger cared not at all if she surrendered. Here was the dragon that lived in him, a beast simply looking for a victim.

  He fell on her. She glimpsed the glittering hardness in his eyes as she put her hands up to protect herself and locked her ankles. His mouth twisted caustically. He caught her beating fists and stretched her arms over her head. Holding her wrists hard against the headboard, he lay full-length on her, crushing her until she couldn't breathe. Finding her mouth, he took it, forced her teeth apart and thrust his tongue into her.

  After an eternity, he lifted his head an inch to stare down into her face. Carefully, trying to keep her fear under control, she squeaked, "I can't breathe."

  He lifted just enough for her to fill her lungs. Her breasts felt bruised by the metal mesh of his shirt. He said with cold purpose, "Open yourself."

  Looking up at him, she was terrified, rapt.

  "I said, open yourself. Woman, you'll either bend to my will or I'll break you with it; but either way you'll learn to obey me!"

  "What have I done? Why-"

  His head started down again. Once more the consolidated walls of his weight mashed her into the mattress. She squirmed in mindless panic, scraping her ribs and her belly against the metal of him. She shoved hard against his chest with her own chest and strained backward with her head, struggling to free her wrists. Now his legs forced hers apart. His boots scraped her shins as he wedged his foot, and then his whole leg, between hers. In another instant she was quartered. She tried to think of some way to stop him. He had no right to do this to her. He had no right!

  Taking both her wrists into his right hand, he fumbled between his stomach and hers with his left. "Daughter of Loki," he muttered, nipping at her throat with his teeth.

  Her head began to spin. "Barbarian,"
she whispered.

  He raised his head enough to snarl down at her, "You attack with words. There are more merciful weapons, but as my mother says, you spurn to fight me with those."

  "I would if I knew half the arts of violence you know."

  He hunched his hips, and she discovered that he had opened his clothes. His manhood was brought to the mark. She cried out. It was dreadful. Suddenly, losing control, she sobbed, "Please, my lord, not in anger!"

  Instantly his left palm covered her mouth. His shaggy blond head, his fine, bearded face, leaned over her almost casually. "Master —call me Master while you still can. Catch me now while I'm still in the mood to strike cleanly."

  Crying behind his hand, terrified, the sinews of her arms and thighs almost parted with his stretching, she nonetheless shook her head.

  "You will! This is a Norse land. The sea round it is a Norse sea. I am a Norseman —and you are my thrall." Bitterness crept into his tone. "I made the mistake of treating you to a softer kind of life. I let you think I'd lost some of my toughness and fire. But I'm a Norseman, long accustomed to asserting my will by force, in my home as well as abroad."

  She didn't understand. Why was he so furious?

  "Why do you think I brought you to my chamber in the first place? For one reason." He nudged forward; she felt him slide into her an inch. "For one reason and one reason alone: because I'm sometimes in need of a female body."

  She was helpless before the remorseless, bleak creed and history of the man. She came back to her first feeling that he and all his kind were benighted. In his eyes she was no more than a creature to be used.

  But in the back of her mind, she wondered: What was this really about?

  "You should never have been so beautiful," he sneered as if in answer. "It set me to craving you from the first."