Edin's embrace

by Nadine Crenshaw

  As soon as she had the words out, she saw the foam at the corners of his mouth and a new whiteness in his face. His lips spread in a mad grin. She rolled away and got to her knees, a movement that flooded her with nausea.

  He loomed over her, and she realized he was murmuring. "What a spring it was," he said, "the byres burning and the churches flaring . . . folk running! The women trying to conceal the craving between their thighs! Aye, what a season —until a Saxon witch fell at my feet. . . ."

  He straightened, became cunning, and even waggled his eyebrows. "So you're to carry water to the bathhouse today. I hope the work won't be too hard for you."

  She started to get to her feet and, by dint of extraordinary effort, succeeded. She tried not to give any sign of the nausea she felt, and got away from him as quickly as she could, before she gave herself away and was further humiliated. But as soon as she was out of his sight, she dropped to her knees and wretched.

  The work was too hard for her. Each Saturday was set aside for everyone on the steading to bathe. In a small hut was the bathhouse. The Vikings were a clean breed. They took care to wash before meals and to change their clothes often. Once a sennight a fire was built in the bathhouse, cauldrons of water were heated, and everybody, in order of rank, scrubbed from top to bottom. The tubs had to be filled and kept up to level all day.

  Each bucket of water Edin drew was a trial. Her hands were hardly healed, and her back was still sore from the hay cutting. Bearing a heavy yoke with a full bucket swinging from either end did her no good.

  The sun never shone that day, and at the spring where she drew her water, the gnats were out, those extremely small black gnats whose bite was so much larger than their bodies. By afternoon she welcomed a spitting rain that made them take cover. It didn't matter to her if she got wetter. Her skirts were already heavy with sloshed water from the buckets, and her feet were soaked. And her head ached from the blow Sweyn had delivered to her cheek.

  She complained to no one, however, not even when Fafnir Danrsson stepped between her and the bathhouse door, directed his long nose and fixed his stare down at her face. She'd never been quite so close to him before, and now saw that his eyes were a grey-sapphire, or a sapphire-grey —an indefinite, ambiguous color, like the shade of distant mountains. He blinked them slowly and said, "What happened to you?"

  The pride that had reared up in her earlier, and the anger, had not diminished. Somewhere during that day the love she'd been feeling so helplessly had become rage. She asked, Was no word or sign at all left to protect me from being cast down into this position of drudge? I gave that Viking everything —and this is my return!

  "Nothing happened to me," she said to Fafnir. The rain kept up a slow-running tapping on the thatched roof of the bathhouse. The pale silky beard covering Fafnir's chest looked as soft as duck fluff. A few drops of rain jeweled it. Beneath it, his jaws chewed indecisively, until Edin went past him with her burden. She felt his grey-sapphire glance, but got the distinct feeling that he didn't really want to know the answer to his question.

  All day she carried that wooden yoke from which hung those two big buckets, moving from stream to bathhouse in a ceaseless round. She closed herself up, shut herself against the world. Arneld was one of the last bathers. Though most of the thralls had seen the bruise on her face, only Arneld asked about it: "Who did that, my lady?"

  She tried to center her gaze on him, and make it catch, but she was so exhausted her eyes couldn't seem to hold steady. She said in a monotone, "You mustn't call me that anymore. I'm just Edin now."

  "There's white all around your mouth, and you winced when you set the buckets down."

  Once more she tried to catch him with her gaze, and once more, curiously, she couldn't. "I'm weary."

  "You aren't strong enough for that job"

  His concern touched her. She dredged up a little smile and tugged his sleeve. "We must each do what we're told."

  "Who hit you?"

  She shook her head sadly. "I bumped into a door." She knew he wouldn't believe that, but she couldn't tell him the shameful truth. She'd had enough of shame. More than enough of shame.

  Inga was ladling out the night's cabbage soup for the thralls when Edin went into the longhouse. She was last in line and so got mostly broth in her bowl. She sat bowed over it, too tired to eat, while Inga threatened Juliana with a beating: "He has no business here except that you encourage him. He's an idle, devilish boy —and you're a slut!"

  They had to be discussing Hrut Beornwoldsson.

  Juliana gave her mistress a meek answer and looked down humbly enough until she was dismissed, freeing Inga to turn her temper on Edin. She said in her hardest tone, "Come on, now, stop your pretending. Olga is waiting to clean up and there you sit, hanging your head as if you're half-dead."

  Edin dipped her slice of dry black barley bread into the thin broth. It hurt her cheekbone to eat.

  The night beside the brooding forested slopes of Dainjerfjord was damp and cold. Over Thorynsteading a great silence had fallen. The hall was quiet. Scents of woodsmoke and roasted mutton hung heavily in the air. Edin walked toward her bed while the two Vikings sat finishing a chess game. Her movements were wooden, guarding against pain, but she kept her back straight and managed not to wince or grimace as she passed them.

  In her sheepskin, she listened without hearing as Erik heckled Fafnir. She spread her hand over her bruised cheek. With luck, it would be less painful tomorrow. She was glad she had no mirror; she'd rather not see herself just now.

  Exhausted as she was, sleep didn't come. She wondered if Sweyn was still sitting up over his ale cup as usual. She'd insulted him, knowing full well that a Viking wouldn't put up with cuts of any kind, especially not from a thrall. But he'd goaded her to it, hoping for an excuse to hurt her.

  How could he blame her for his lameness? It was, as her captors would say, "a rune hard to read." Was it only that he was mean-minded and vicious? Or could it be that he felt as disoriented as she did, without any clear sense of himself anymore, and that he was frightened?

  Sweyn the Berserk had probably thought of nothing but looting villages and possessing females. He'd no doubt regarded it as a most profitable, a most exciting, way of life. But now, what was it like to be Sweyn the Cripple? What did a man seemingly made out of pure pugnacity and love for glory— mingled with a more fundamental relish for plunder — do when he could no longer participate in the far and bloody raids of his comrades, when his jarl sailed off without him, when it seemed his very gods had turned against him? What did he feel when he was faced with his weaker and more cowardly side and found it soft and squeamish?

  For the first time Edin considered Sweyn the Main —and discovered that she had much in common with him. For instance, both, in the despairing, heardess flicker of those few hours at Fair Hope Manor, had lost their identities. She supposed that for a long time afterward his mind, like hers, had moved sluggishly. He must have been as dazed and shocked as she'd been. And now they were both trying to find a way to survive as people they had never thought to be.

  And both of them were dependent in this upon the jarl, clinging to him as to an island in a stormy ocean, hoping he could in some way fulfill them, restore them, make them whole again. The same man who had cut them down was their only hope — that great blond barbarian!

  He'd taken everything from Edin, yet her heart had somehow twisted itself to love him. The fact of her love kept splintering her picture of him like a rock thrown on a sheet of water. How could she love such a man? She didn't know. But the knowledge kept coming at her with an overwhelming jolt. She'd lost her heart to a Viking along with everything else. And she knew she would never fall back from that love, never try, never wish to, even though he kept her a slave all her days, even though he made her children into his own image, so that she would both love and despise them as much as she loved and despised him. And the conflict would continue to twist her heart until one day . . . might she too be capable of
stabbing a man in his sleep?

  Sweyn shook his long thick mane. He thought he was the last man up. He preferred it when he was alone in the hall. When the others were about, he took no part in their talk, but kept his head lowered, kept his eyes on his plate or his cup, kept his face blank.

  Suddenly a voice came from behind him. "So, Sweyn, you fight daringly against a thrall-girl."

  He turned to see Fafnir Danrsson. "The witch insulted me. I taught her a lesson."

  "She belongs to the jarl, to whom I'm sworn. It would ill-befit a warrior to have to take a cripple into the woods and put him down like an old thrall not worth his keep. Don't teach the girl any more lessons, Sweyn."

  Sweyn turned back to his ale cup, laughing. He took a draught and gained courage to answer Fafnir back, but when he turned, the man was gone. Sweyn turned back to his cup with an uprush of feeling, the misery of unexpected and unbroken loneliness. For an instant, a fraction of an instant, his stern expression cracked.

  ***

  Another sennight and a day passed. Yesterday Blackhair had made Edin carry the water for the baths again. She was getting stronger, yet the work he and Inga put her to was hard. Today the recurring nausea was bothering her again, and she stirred her first-meal porridge listlessly. She studied the other thralls eating their oatmeal and wondered how soon it would be before she looked as hard and stringy as they did, before her face took on that beggared and inward expression so many of them wore?

  Had the serfs of Fair Hope been so dispirited? Though that old life was growing more and more distant, she didn't think so. There had been laughter. As their mistress, she'd felt affection from them, not this fear Inga commanded.

  She looked about her at the hall. Inga was strict and worked herself and everyone for long hours, yet as a housekeeper, she lacked a knack for creating comfort. For instance, the rushes on the floor had needed changing since Edin's arrival. Beneath the tables they were thin, and the underlayer of sand had been scuffed away so that often tired feet rested directly on the hard, cold underfloor of stone. The food they all ate was filling and nourishing, yet it was monotonous —cabbage soup, meat stew, porridge— and mostly tasteless, for Inga had no sense of the use of flavorsome herbs. And how much more satisfactory would things run if the thralls were made happier, given praise when their work was well done, rewarded with honest appreciation, and coaxed more with kindness than with threats?

  She was the last to leave the table but for Sweyn and Fafnir Danrsson. Fafnir was carving a piece of wood into an animal head. He was respected as something of an artist with wood. As Edin got up wearily, Sweyn called her name. "Clear my bowl away," he said.

  Inga had just gone to the dairy. The kitchen thralls were already clearing the table, but Sweyn wanted to humiliate her again. Taking into account her nausea and low spirits, she didn't consider refusing worthwhile.

  She gathered his porridge bowl and milk cup and the scattered shells of his boiled egg. He lifted up his useless arm and thumped it on the board. She cleaned around it until he said, "Look at me!" Her eyes lighted on his yellow hair, avoiding his face. "I used to be a warrior, woman —you may remember. Shall I ever sail over the foam and shake an axe with this hand again, do you think?"

  She studied the way his food and drink had stained the untrimmed fringe of his mustache, and finally said, "If you ever lift a horn spoon with it, it will be a miracle. It looks to me, Cripple, as if your axe days are over."

  The words fell into the high shadowy room as stones fall into a bottomless lake, sinking without a ripple. He seemed stunned; his smile shifted a few notches. Olga giggled nervously. The fire crackled. Sweyn's blue eyes burned dully with the reflected glow of the blaze. Edin turned away before he could gather his wits, before the muscles of his jaw could knot and he could decide to retaliate.

  She grabbed her cloak and went out, giving a good margin to Eric, who was axe-throwing on the green. He'd set up a cord, tied it tight between two sticks, stepped back ten paces, and now was aiming his axe to try to sever the cord in the center.

  Fafnir came out a moment after Edin and was hailed to compete with Eric. Edin soon realized that he was following her, however. He caught up with her in the byre-yard and seized her arm to stop her.

  His long face was knotted like a club. He said hotly, "You have the gall of the gods themselves. That was no way to answer a warrior. First you put a dagger into Ragnarr's throat, and now a knitting needle into Sweyn's heart."

  "Mayhap you should do the same!" she answered back —unwisely, for she didn't know Fafnir well and couldn't say how he would react. He always seemed friendly enough to others of his kind. She'd heard that he'd had a wife and children in his youth, but that they'd died in a fire. Nonetheless, he was a Viking, raised in the cruel North; she could see the bone handle of his little bright-edged carving knife protruding from his belt, and for all she knew, she could be doomed this instant.

  Her answer to him —as unpremeditated as the one she'd given Sweyn —seemed to startle him, and she took advantage of his hesitation.

  "You all treat him as if he can do nothing now." Her voice was so tight it broke. "He has another arm, does he not —and blood beating through his veins? He's not dead, is he? But none of you encourage him. You all make him feel he stopped living the night he lost his axe arm."

  "He broke his oath to the jarl."

  "For which the jarl punished him severely. But you take it upon yourselves to go on punishing him —and I don't for a minute believe it's for oath breaking. It's because he's become something you all know you could become, too. A cripple. You silently blame him for reminding you that next time it could be you who comes home with no arm or no hand or no foot. So you push him to the end of the bench, and —far worse than anything else —you show him contempt."

  Fafnir's mouth dropped open. No doubt he was used to thralls replying to him with a mere nod or shake of the head. He seemed shocked to the point of stammering. "Well . . . what would you have us do, wench? Challenge him?"

  "Yes! Challenge him! Make him use the good arm he has. I once knew of a boy who as a babe fell into a fire that withered his right arm, but by the turn of the next year he could use the left amazingly. He was a Saxon, however; there's every chance a mere Viking couldn't do as well."

  "Have a caution, thrall."

  She felt her heart give a quick beat, felt her whole body tense with a wish to be gone, yet she continued. "You Norse have a saying: 'Be a friend to your friends and a foe to your foes.' But sometimes it needs to look as if one is being a foe in order to be a friend."

  He watched her from beneath lowered eyelids. "He has no place here anymore. He eats the jarl's meat, yet he can never be a warrior again."

  "It looks that way; his strength seems to have deserted him, the way he walks around with his head down and his back sagging. His mind acts as though it's slept through a season and can't quite decide what's changed. But then, it's hard to say what a man can do. With so many warriors, does Dainjerfjord really need another? There must be other occupations of honor."

  He looked skeptical. "For a cripple?"

  "A lame man can sit a horse. A man without hands can herd goats. A deaf man can build a house. Only a corpse is completely useless." She could feel her anger tightening her throat again. "At the feast I saw a widow with a son on the brink of manhood, a son she can't manage. Every other day he's down here trying to lift Juliana's skirts. And Juliana's skirts being so easily lifted, the boy is bound to be in for trouble when Jamsgar Copper-eye returns. He thinks of the girl as his own, you know. There's already been thunder between them over her. A boy like that needs a man's guidance, and no doubt Gunnhild's steading needs work."

  "Beornwold's widow," he said thoughtfully, at the same time watching her from beneath the protection of those motionless, lowered eyelids. "Freyahof is in disrepair. Hmmm. . . . It's good for a boy to have a man to guide him. So you think Sweyn should work for Gunnhild?"

  Edin shrugged. "Her or someon
e like her. It seems you Vikings have an uncommon number of widows struggling to survive in your land." She stood with her hands quiet at her sides now. "Tell me, what was the Cripple doing when you came out here after me?"

  "He'd thrown himself down on his sheepskin again and lay staring at the wall."

  She nodded; this was Sweyn's usual way of passing his days, by slumbering off his drunkenness of the night before in his little cell of a chamber. "He needs to see more daylight," she said. "His skin is grave-pale. A friend would get him out of the hall —even if he had to infuriate him to do it."

  The man turned his head half away, though his sapphire-grey eyes remained on her. There came and went a fleeting, almost imperceptible smile on his lips. "Do you manage the jarl this way?"

  A cold fist clutched at her queasy stomach and squeezed it hard. "The jarl is managed by no one."

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Fafnir and Eric began to prick and goad the Cripple to do something about himself. Nothing changed until toward the end of the next sennight. There came a day of such heat that the two Vikings said they were going down to the fjord to swim. Fafnir asked Sweyn if he would join them. "You used to be able to swim across the fjord and back."

  Sweyn's look was ugly. He watched his former companions leave the hall with eyes that seemed to promise retribution.

  As Edin stepped out of the longhouse after the first meal, the heat closed like a sweaty palm around her. The light was brilliant. Squinting, she saw Sweyn directing Laag, the stable thrall, in setting a pine log into the ground in the stackyard. When Laag was finished, the log stump stood at man height.