Edin's embrace

by Nadine Crenshaw

  But when he was finally given a bed and sank into it, he suddenly felt an unmanly urge to weep. From somewhere came a feeling of grief too keen to bear. "If I take a woman to wife," he muttered to his pillow, "she'll at least be full-grown and have a good straight look in her eyes."

  ***

  Half waking, Thoryn realized that Edin was not in his arms as he'd been dreaming. But he wanted her there, the white innocence of her breasts against his chest, her slender back in his hands. He lay still, his eyes not yet open, loose, calm, happy, thinking he had merely to move his hand to find her warm thigh. The notion tingled through him, rushing to his nerve ends, his fingertips. He would reach for her, and she would turn to him and put her arms around his neck; he would push her hair aside and kiss her jaw, her throat, and in sterling silence they would come together.

  He came a little more awake and reached out — and found nothing, no one. His mind turned over with a start —and there it was. This was his Uncle Olafs house in Kaupang. That sense of loose, quiet happiness left him; all that pure sense of ease vanished. He opened his eyes to a strange bedchamber filled with the lavender twilight of pre-dawn. Over him loomed two sculptured animal heads, exciting little creatures with big, goggling eyes and bobbed noses carved into the headposts of the bed.

  A thrall-girl knocked lightly, then came in, keeping her head of dusty-colored curls down and murmuring "Master" as she set a basin of steaming water on his washstand then disappeared again. He rose, still painfully aroused. He washed his face and hands. Don't think of her! he told himself. Yet her memory was destined to skim across his brain like a bird all day.

  In contrast, every time he saw Hanne that day, she hid her face and hurried off to some other part of the house. His uncle kept him, on this pretext and that, pretending he placed great importance upon his duties as a host, meanwhile often calling for Hanne and obviously hoping to promote an interest in Thoryn.

  The girl had just as obviously been told to make herself attractive. Today her violet gown fell straight from her breasts with bands of ornament. It was short enough to show her feet in the front; the back was longer, trailing and pleated. A little cape was drawn over her shoulders. Her hair was gathered at the nape, from which it fell loose down her back, mingled with blossoms. All Thoryn thought of this effort to enthuse him was that he must ask Edin to wear her hair like that sometime. Meanwhile Hanne managed to come and go so swiftly that Thoryn's most enduring impression became that enticing sway of her hips.

  He noticed the Black Dane's eyes seemed to travel the same road as his in following the girl's swaying disappearances. He saw at the first meal how the Dane sat quite lost in mooning at the girl. He would turn away, speak to his fellows, but then twist back in her direction. Later he placed himself between her table and the exit so that she would have to pass by him. When she did, she seemed to give the poor fool no notice or thought, while he all but swallowed her at close range, and then followed her with a look full of sadness to the depths, his dark eyes gone velvet and natant with desire.

  Thoryn's company went out to sell their wares that day. Rolf volunteered to do the business of those of Dainjerfjord who had sent items for Thoryn to sell, since Olaf seemed intent on keeping Thoryn at hand. Starkad prowled the harbor to learn all he could, and that evening brought Thoryn descriptions of warships, small traders, even ferryboats.

  Bored with being manipulated into a courtship that interested him so little, Thoryn decided to see some of the town himself the next day. He slipped away from Olaf and went with Rolf and Ottar. Each of them were properly accoutred with pointed conical helmets, weapons, and shields. Rolf had on a new woolen cloak, nearly as red as his beard. The day was cool enough for it, with nothing but streaks of sunlight coming down through high clouds.

  The large conglomeration of sheds, stalls, tents, and wagons was thoroughly chaotic, all shrouded in the smoke of dozens of cookfires. There was a smell to the place, a mix of smoke and midden fumes and cooking and people all swirled by the bustle of mercantile activity. Buyers and sellers haggled in a dozen tongues and thronged and jostled in the dirt streets. Swedes and Danes and Norwegians, bumpkins from the surrounding countryside and warriors fresh from gory raids, hunters from the frozen north, Aland Islanders, Dniepir Slavs, Rhineland Germans, Englishmen, Franks, and Frisians, many of them mortal enemies in any other place, were here united with knowing nods above the shared coin of trade.

  Sleek merchants in doorways waited casually for business with self-absorbed expressions. Itinerant craftsmen bargained enthusiastically. By small boat came bondi with barley, fish, meat, walnuts, hazelnuts, and acorns, which they bartered for German quernstones and household bowls and decorative brooches. Evident everywhere were adventurous and acquisitive instincts.

  Shoppers fingered ornate combs, pins, knife handles, and sword mounts carved from valuable reindeer antlers. Walrus tusks became ivory chessmen as they watched. Gold was fashioned into bracelets and finger rings by the regular clang of hammers on jewelsmiths' anvils. Beads and ornaments were fashioned from amber; glass blowers contributed colored beads; wool was woven; and stonecutters chiseled with their pointed tools.

  One transaction for a large quantity of down involved a simple trade for soapstone, this item for that. In another booth, a Muslim coin was sliced up like a pie to achieve the necessary value for a purchase of Rhenish pottery. Next door a man was breaking off part of his own jewelry in payment for an ivory box lined with silk. Rolf and Ottar were less interested than Thoryn in the sheer enormity of the exchanges going on and soon managed to insult a rough woman selling foods from a tray braced on her ample hip. Already the size of a buxom-breasted knorr, she now swelled to double her size with hostility. Rolf got a gleam in his eye, and Ottar's head took on a rakish tilt. The woman put her tray aside, uttered a growl, then flew at them, swinging both fists. Thoryn decided to continue his tour alone.

  He threaded his way among the surge of people and animals, pushed himself between chesty men with dirty aprons and coarse men in mail, and passed young, well-to-do youths of the town in velvet tunics with their hands on their hips as they scanned things from a distance, unwilling to be jostled in the crowd. A pony cart trundled down a side-street carrying workers with wooden spades; two young women, lifting their hems daintily, looked over an exotic peacock pacing stately, majestic, sapphire, and emerald.

  Outside one booth a dozen shaggy-headed farm-thralls sat fettered together, supporting their chins on their knees. All of them wore garments of rough grey frieze. Included among them was a Christian monk with eyebrows like tufts and a long-nosed, ugly boy with ears that stood forward like small sails. As Thoryn paused, he overheard a purposeful customer, a young Swede of brave proportions, say to the slave trader: "I'm anxious to buy a female, higher quality than these."

  The slaver waved him inside and drew back a drab curtain behind which were no fewer than six women, varying in age from about twelve to twenty-four. Thoryn was familiar with slave trades, yet his interest was inexplicably caught.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  By the light of a stone lamp, the customer cursorily looked over each female. He came back to one, and began to examine her more closely. She was a mere girl, with a soft, sweet profile. Her face was very white. The Swede inspected her fingers, which were long and pale and delicate.

  "You have taste, sir," said the slave trader. "That one was an Irish king’s daughter —and she’s a virgin."

  Thoryn’s heart suddenly felt like a cold stone in his chest.

  The Swedish giant stood back. He put his upper teeth over his beard, drew some of it into his mouth and nibbled it. He scratched his tawny head. "How much?"

  "Four and one-half marks of silver."

  The customer grimaced in disgust. "I’m a businessman like you. Do you know how long it would take to get my money back out of her at that price?"

  The slaver said, as smooth as honey and hemlock, "Four marks, then. She’s a virgin, a king’s daughter," he em
phasized. "Look at those eyes . . . rare jewels."

  Aye, aye, but I paid three marks of silver once for a virgin Irish girl —thrice the cost of a common bed-thrall —and all she could do was get pregnant. She was always pregnant, and not many of my customers want to lay on a belly as big as squash, even if it belongs to a princess"

  "Well, of course, if you're looking for a regular whore, choose another, one of these three. They're still young and little used yet."

  Thoryn's eyes scanned the "little used" three. Two were dark, but one was fair, about eighteen years old. The customer seemed drawn by the fair one.

  "She was just traded to me," the slaver said. "She's had only one master, an old man with a taste for virgins. He takes them, uses them for a season, then trades them back to me for fresher flesh. I took her to my own bed last night, and never have I experienced such rapture, such transport, such a surpass of-"

  "And your father is Loki," the Swede said offhandedly, "the father of lies."

  Again there was haggling. The girl was stripped a little at a time, until she was naked. This was the usual pattern any competent trader followed in selling a female thrall, but Thoryn felt the stirrings of an unease, as if it wasn't quite right for him to stand and watch like this.

  And then, for an instant, he found himself looking straight into the girl's eyes, and so clear an understanding of her despair came to him that he felt the blood leave his face. He felt himself growing pale. He felt new emotions being honed out of him on the spot, leaving him focused and keen. He seemed to understand exactly how it was for her, what it meant to her to be stripped naked and revealed to unknown men, to be helpless. He could imagine too well Edin standing there, held at the attention of a stranger's scrutiny, knowing that the ordinary privileges —personal honor, dignity —were irretrievable. He could feel her horror, her hot frustration. His jaws knotted.

  At one time he would have found himself swelling and throbbing to see a man fondling a woman so intimately, but now only his blood throbbed in his ears.

  More haggling. All three men's eyes were fastened on the girl, the Swede was touching her, causing her to moan in panic, and meantime other passersby were gathering to enjoy her misery, until at last the slaver said with a tone of finality, "Three half-marks, silver."

  The customer threw back his powerful head and laughed. "Drink goat's piss, old man."

  The slaver shrugged as if to say, I've grown fat on slaves; take this one, or leave her, it makes no difference to me.

  The Swede realized that the haggling was at an end. He grumbled, "Well, for that much, I'd have to see what she can do first."

  The trader shrugged again, now calibrated, calm, judging. He motioned to the slave, who seemed to brace herself as the Swede began to open his trousers and said, "Down on your knees, little whetstone. I've a sharpening job for you."

  The slaver pulled the curtain, leaving the customer to take his free sample in the semi-private presence of the other females. He approached Thoryn. "You're interested in a bed-thrall? Mayhap a virgin to warm these cool nights?"

  "I — " Thoryn found he had to swallow to wet his voice before it would work —"I have a bed-thrall."

  The slaver laughed. "Then mayhap you would like to trade her and buy my Irish princess. There's nothing like a virgin —and nothing in the world like an Irish virgin."

  "No." There were by now distinct noises coming from behind the curtain, willful and rhythmic masculine noises, base and exploitative and relentless, accompanied by little feminine noises that spoke of fear and shame and misery. Thoryn tried to remember what he'd been saying. "My woman is Saxon."

  "Well, Saxon is good, but I always say Irish is better."

  "Saxon suits me." Thoryn turned and strode out under the light-shot cumulus clouds of the day.

  After that it seemed slave booths were everywhere along his path. They drew him like beacons. In one place there was a small clutch of a half dozen or so "princes" and "princesses" all naked or nearly so, loosely bound around a stake. They were newly captured, just taken off a longship, and not yet dispersed to the various booths. One of the younger girl's little breasts were quivering with her crying.

  A swarthy Muslim with a small chin beard and wearing a costume of striped wool paused at the same time Thoryn did. Moving gracefully with the help of a blackthorn staff that was taller than he was, the Muslim went right up to the thralls. They automatically backed away, afraid of being poked or prodded. The Muslim studied them for a moment then stepped back to view the scene from Thoryn's distance.

  "That one interests me," he said with a heavy accent, casually, idly, as one stranger will sometimes speak to another. "The one with red-copper hair." He gestured with his staff. "Notice the lovely peach-colored curls of her sex. Put her up on a block so the buyers have to look up at her, part her legs a little at the right moment. . . ."

  When Thoryn didn't answer, the Muslim looked up at him, then moved off.

  For the first time, Thoryn was conscious of the plight of the captured slave. For a thrall born and bred, existence must be hard. For a freeborn warrior captured in battle —or a well-brought-up girl ravished from her smoldering home —it must be Hell itself.

  Suddenly he'd had enough of the market, the teeming activity, the raucous jabber of foreign tongues, and the buying and drinking and brawling. He headed down a winding alley in search of a wine shop. He wandered near the harbor; the smell of the water rose around him comfortingly. Then he found what he wanted.

  The room was hot and dusty. It was a strange place. Strange music played; strange drinks were handed at the tables; the spiced oil of the lamps put out a strange, sandalwood tang.

  A dark-haired girl began to dance beside his table, making her own music with little cymbals tied to her fingertips. She was wearing a dress of pure green silk cut severely straight from shoulder to toe. Everything about her moved, her chains, her bracelets, the hammered golden rings in her ears, even her round breasts that were half-bared. The sable curls of her armpits glistened in the lamplight as she twirled her creamy arms and trailed a scarf of green silk near Thoryn's nostrils. Her dress clung to her like a mermaid's scales. Her face was full of animal life; even her mouth was in play as she showed white teeth in a laugh.

  The lascivious motions of her dance incited him; he felt his manhood taking significant and formidable shape, until it felt ready to burst from the confinement of his trousers.

  He wanted a woman; he'd wanted one for days. Any woman would do —this dancing girl in her cheap finery and her falling hair of deepest black. He was like a beast in rut who'd caught a whiff of female moisture. He grabbed her waist and pulled her onto his lap. She was startled, but schooled herself to laugh, still as unconscious of her peril as a spring lamb. "You want me, Master? There is a bed in the back room." More softy she murmured, "I have learned many curious arts of love."

  "What is love?" he said, smiling his fury.

  She laughed again. "Come." She was struggling to get off his knee. He let her rise, but held one of her hands with its blanched nails. "Come with me" —she laughed, her golden earrings swaying — "and I will show you love."

  The room was small, the bed smaller, and the girl was not able to deliver what she'd promised. She undressed with seeming eagerness, and kissed and fondled him and let him do the same to her. But something happened. In the wine shop his manhood had been like an ice pick in his trousers, now it refused to rise.

  He decided he must go more slowly, mayhap see if he could give her the pleasure he'd learned to give Edin. He admired her golden belly, her gleaming thighs, and her tight black triangle. He placed his hand on it and explored, while with his lips he excited the tip of one breast. His eyes carefully watched her half-open mouth and her neck, which was thrown back, showing the gold rings in her ears.

  The girl dutifully approached her crisis; he watched the frantic writhings of her body with satisfaction. And afterward she was ridiculously grateful. She sat up and pressed her forehea
d to the back of his wrist, as if to say something that could not be said aloud. I will be your thrall, that gesture told him. But Thoryn could still not manage to take her.

  He began to feel angry. What pleasure did Edin yield him that this dancing girl or any other woman couldn't? What was the matter with him that he could not stiffen for this embrace, that he could not quench his desire?

  For a long while he simply refused to reconcile himself to this impotence. He struggled for the enjoyment he'd always gained from having a woman in his arms. His will continued to protest in pride and misery against the dictates of his wretched spirit. The girl encouraged him, stroked him with most skillful inspiration, called him Leantri-Seether, and Aifur— Ferocious. But it seemed the dark, safe deeps he'd found in Edin had spoiled him. Finally, worn out and disgusted he pushed the girl away, threw down a coin, and went back into the wine shop.

  The scraggly occupants of the low room didn't seem half so exotic now. The place was simply dark and dusty, the gloom hardly decreased by the dozen oil lamps emitting clouds of smoke where they hung from overhead beams. The low, splintery tables were littered with pools of wine. Slumped over his wine bowl again, he felt despairing and ashamed. This raging, mad preoccupation with a mere thrall! He had an almost physical longing for reassurance — but the only one who could give him that was the very one who was causing it, and— lucky for her! —she was too far away.

  Someone came in and took the stool across from him. Thoryn looked up to see the Muslim with the little chin beard. The man was just leaning his blackthorn staff against the wall beside him.

  Thoryn said nothing. The Muslim smiled and said abruptly, "Shall I tell you the four things I dislike most about your land, Viking? First, children born here are thrown into the sea to save the trouble of bringing them up. Second, your wives have the right to declare themselves divorced whenever it suits them. Third, I have seldom heard more horrible singing —it is like a growl coming from your throats, like the barking of wolves, only much more beastly. And last, I have never been fed so much fish."