Edin's embrace

by Nadine Crenshaw

  "Viking," she whispered. She could speak barely above her breath. He had to lean his ear near her mouth to hear. "You came home."

  "Aye," he said, his voice nearly as soft as hers. He was leaning over her, speaking for her ears alone. "I had to come home when I started to hear your name inside my head. But when I arrived, you were not there to greet me. I won't punish you too severely for that, under the circumstances. Just a small beating. Never say I'm ungenerous." His voice was odd; it didn't seem to belong to him.

  He brushed the water from her face, and at the chill feel of her skin, she heard his chest fill with breath. "Shieldmaiden, I will have this dress off you and put you in my sheepskin." While talking, he was busy with a knife, though truly the garment she was wearing was so threadbare as to hardly need a blade to rend it from neck to hem.

  He braced her so that she was half-sitting, to pull the garment from beneath her. It was then that she realized she was in the longship that had brought her away from Fair Hope. She was lying on the platform beneath the dragon's head. And more than a dozen Vikings stood looking at her. The jarl had cut open her sodden dress, and she was mercilessly exposed. She flinched back, thinking to cover herself —but her numb arms hung like empty sleeves at her sides.

  He commanded, "Oarsmen, face aft!"

  For a moment the atmosphere fairly quivered with taut nerves; but then one moved, and next they all obediently turned their backs. Swiftly he stripped her of the soaking gown. She didn't feel the cold night air before he helped her into the sheepskin sleeping bag; she hardly even felt the sleeping bag. She was numb through and through, so numb she could hardly move, and certainly could not shiver.

  Once he had her safely stowed, the jarl shouted a staccato of orders. The next wave broke with a roar on the beach and simultaneously the men dug their oars into the sand so that as the surf receded, they backed the Blood Wing down the slope. Thus the dragon slithered back into the sea.

  When the jarl bent over her again, she asked, "How did you find me?" Her voice was failing; it was no more than wind whispering to his ear.

  "We were out harpooning seals, sailing along the coast and leisurely picking our targets. Then we heard a funny sound, something like 'Viking,' in Saxon —a dog's tongue if ever there was one. I wanted to go on, but some of my brothers begged to investigate."

  She accepted that without a murmur. She had no more strength to murmur. The long wait for death, the fear, and now this sudden release. Soren . . . seals . . . she couldn't sort it out anymore. Her eyes refused to focus, the lids closed, and she drifted. It seemed a dragon had her in his talons and was carrying her high above the star-sparkled sea. The thought of resisting didn't so much as cross her mind; resistance was impossible, and she knew it. He carried her clutched in his claws while his powerful wings beat and beat and beat.

  Thoryn raised his voice until echoes of it reverber-I ated off the high cliffs. "If she lives, in honor of you, Odin, I will sacrifice in thanks. This I swear— if she lives"

  ***

  As soon as Hagna, the medicine woman, arrived at the longhouse, she expelled Thoryn from his chamber. That was when he discovered that though everyone else had long ago found their beds, Inga was still up. He'd almost forgotten about her. He wished he could forget about her.

  He made his weary way to his high-seat and sprawled in it. Inga crept close —but not too close.

  "Son . . "

  He didn't raise his voice, didn't bother to make it hard, but said quietly, "Let me tell you, Inga Thorsdaughter, I am not your son, so do not use that name to me again."

  "Oh!" Her hand went to her mouth as if he'd struck her.

  He steeled himself with what he'd learned in the last hour, from Dessa and from the evidence of Edin's body —the calluses on her hands, the snarled filth of her hair, the pitiful thinness of her. "In the morning," he said, "you will leave my longhouse forever."

  "Where —Thoryn, where will I go!"

  He thought for a moment. "You will go to Soren Gudbrodsson's hut." It seemed a fitting exile for her.

  "Alone?" The word came out of her with a shiver.

  "No, you can't be trusted to be alone. I'll send that troublemaker Juliana with you."

  She stared at him without answer. Tears filled her eyes. She turned away.

  "You will never come here again. You are banished. Do you understand?"

  "But . . . who will cook your meals, make your clothes, take care of you?"

  "I have a thrall," he said dryly, "who was bred to manage a manor house" His tired mind took him back briefly to England, the large hall, tapestried and bannered for a wedding that never took place.

  Inga had moved to her kitchen area, and her hand was idly moving over objects, as if to say good-bye to them. He could hardly bear to watch her, and so turned his eyes away — therefore not seeing her grasp the knife handle.

  Inga stood very still in the shadowy darkness. Her mouth tasted of copper. The Saxon had taken Kirkyn from her, had taken her home from her, had taken her place from her. How dare she? Her with that hair as pale as barley beneath a white spring sun! Those eyes as blue and clear as the best sky of summer! How dare she when . . . when she was supposed to be dead? Inga remembered ... or had she only dreamed that? The dark chamber, the knife, the lovers lying abed, Kirkyn snoring a little, the Saxon's head on his shoulder? It must have been a dream, since the thrall was still alive.

  Well then, Inga had to take care of that. She felt a gathering in the air, a racing current that made it difficult to stand still. Aye, she would take care of it this minute.

  It wasn't until she started for his chamber that Thoryn was alerted. By the time he stood, she was holding the kitchen knife up, dagger fashion, and was rushing toward his door. He rose and raced after her. She was already half inside before he caught her arm and spun her about. Even then she tugged to get away. Her eyes . . . she was mad!

  Loathe to touch her, he shoved her away from the open chamber door. She fell, and when she lifted her head, she was grinning and making a sound, a hiss, like frying oil, like rain. "I'll kill her. You can send me to the ends of the world, but somehow I'll get back." She looked past him toward his bed. "Do you hear me, Margaret? He can't stop me! If he tries . . ." She lifted the knife. For Thoryn, the night fell away from any pattern and shattered.

  "Odin, save us!"

  "By the gods!"

  The hall was awake; there were witnesses to this scene of shame. Edin lay unmoving in his bed. Thoryn told Hagna, "Close the door!" Now Inga was crying in low broken sobs, hugging the knife to her breast, appealing to Thoryn, "I love you. My beloved! And you loved me until she came between us. I have to free you, somehow I have to—"

  "I am not my father!" he shouted, feeling with horror a start of tears in his own eyes.

  Her tears stopped flowing; she started laughing. "Thoryn! He told me he was going to free her, that she would never be easy with him until he did. Easy! He wanted her to be easy! He said that she would always think of herself as somehow his thrall, his property."

  There was a froth of foam on her lips. And those eyes!

  She got to her feet, lifting the knife again. "But she is a thrall! She has no right to more. She has no right to my place, my bed, my husband . . . my son!"

  Thoryn stood unmoving. It was Rolf who appeared behind her and disarmed her, and Eric who helped him drag her to her chamber.

  ***

  The two sennights following her rescue were vague in Edin's mind. Every moment had a plausible meaning; but none of them seemed connected, for she had not survived unscathed her time in the North Sea.

  There were hours when she thought she must be still caught in that taloned dragon's grip, which seemed to choke off her breath and make her cough painfully. There were hours when she shivered, suffering one spasm after another, until it seemed as though she would never be warm again. There were hours when she feared she'd drowned after all, for her lungs seemed full of sea water.

  As she strug
gled to sit up, to rise above the water and draw air, unknown hands braced her. When she was hot and fretful and ached for coolness, hands bathed her face with cool cloths and provided her with little spoonsful of water to partially quench her great thirst. The feel of these hands varied, from a young woman's, to an old woman's, to a man's. They too were blurred in her mind, for all were equally gentle; all equally served her as lifebuoys in that vast sea that threatened to swamp her.

  Another thing: Sometimes weak sunlight came through a window; other times lamps burned about her. It seemed to make no sense, unless time had spun out of control so that the days and nights were revolving minute by minute.

  Within that crazy spin of time she lived an almost inaudible life of heartbeats and recurring dreams, a life of fever and privacy, a delicate yet laborious life which weakened her, which wore her down finally to simple coma.

  Then came a day when she awakened. It didn't happen all at once. First she was only aware —of her mind and her thoughts, of being a person who was called Edin. She roused slowly, realizing she hadn't been fully conscious for a long while. She remained at that level of torpor for what seemed forever, but then eventually noticed her body, how it lay nestled into —not a dragon's underbelly — but a feather mattress. She felt pillows behind her head. She forced her unwilling senses to take stock: Where were her hands?

  There, yes, lying along her sides above the blankets. The instant she located them she felt the pulse in her palms leap like a trout in a brook.

  And where were her feet?

  There, somewhat weighted by quilts.

  Her tongue ... lay in her mouth like a dry wad of wool.

  The chamber in which she lay was quiet, but through the window she heard shouts and dogs barking and the pounding of hoofs. Life was going on without her. She heard the door open, heard quiet footsteps on the rushes. She forced her eyes to open, which they did only narrowly. She saw a girl in a chair with a high carved back and arms. Her head nodded drowsily. I know that girl, who is she? The girl leapt up as though stung by a bee when she saw the figure of the person who had just come in, a large, familiar figure. A big enough man, with a sword slung on his hip, partially concealed by his cloak. He looked exceedingly strong. I know him, too. Edin couldn't remember exactly who he was, yet the sight of him made her heart behave peculiarly.

  The girl said, "Her hair's been made tidy, Master."

  His face was set like flint. Edin heard him say over the wordless blows of her heart, "Aye, you've done your day's work. Go now and get you some food and rest. Tomorrow Hagna will come again and — "

  Edin listened to the words and tried to follow them. But it was hard going, and she gave up before long.

  The girl— Dessa! that is her name —had meanwhile crossed the room. Paused at the door, she said, with something like sympathy for the man, "There's so much we can do and no more, Master."

  When she'd closed the door behind her, he unfastened the brooches holding his cloak to his shoulders and tossed it aside. He came to the bed. He stood looking down at Edin, then reached to adjust her blankets. Through the slits of her eyelids, she watched him, the father of her unborn babe, her owner, the man she loved —and hated.

  He said, "Your eyes are open again. What do you see, Shieldmaiden? I would give Odin my best lamb bearer to know."

  Exerting a terrible effort —no one would ever know what effort it cost her —she forced her woolly tongue to move, made her dry lips part, forced her jaw-hinge to unlock, and she murmured, "I . . . see . . . you . . . Viking."

  There was a pause full of silence, then, without warning, he reached out with both hands and gathered her to his chest. It was a fierce and muscular hug.

  "Your best lamb-bearer?" she struggled to say into his ear. "What terrible men you Norse are for making bargains. You would bargain with Christ himself."

  "I would have if I'd thought of it. But it was Odin to whom I spoke, who doesn't mind if a man is wicked or not but only whether he is known to keep his word."

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The next morning was cool with an overcast sky out the bedchamber’s high window. Dessa was helping Edin to some warm wine and a dish of boiled mutton mashed into shreds so that she might swallow it without too much chewing. Even so, she lay back wearily before much of the food was taken.

  The Viking came in. She moved her head on her pillow to see him. At a gesture from him, Dessa hurried out. "You have color in your cheeks," he said when they were alone.

  She blinked slowly. This was the man who had saved her from being washed overboard by the monster storm on the open sea coming from England, the man who had pulled her out of the depths of Dainjerfjord, the man who had kept her from death punishment when she’d broken the Thing-law, who had lifted her from the flooded tide pool. He was also the man who had killed her Cedric, burned her Fair Hope, stripped her of her self and made her an object of property; he was the man who had ravished her, and impregnated her, and then left her to be persecuted and almost murdered. He was a Viking, a man who could be gentle one moment and savage the next. He followed no rules but those he made himself, and was therefore never to be trusted, no matter how much she might love him.

  He stood with one shoulder negligently leaned against the bedpost, at home against the frieze of coiled serpents and taloned beasts carved into it. He crossed his arms loosely over his broad chest. Something flickered in his stone-colored eyes; a smile played at the corners of his mouth. He moved to sit beside her on the edge of the bed, and she slid over, as if to accommodate him, but really because she had no wish to be any closer to him than was necessary. By the way he fixed those close-lidded eyes on her, she had the feeling he knew everything she was thinking.

  It took her a long time to speak, and it took courage. "I wasn't running away," she said in a husky voice. "Your mother sent me down to the fjord— "

  "I know." He paused. "Soren drowned. We found the boat smashed by a skerry."

  She bit her lower lip.

  "Was it my mother's plan that you be left to die slowly, or was that Soren's own idea? I cannot but wonder, since he had an axe, why he didn't simply take off your head."

  Visions rose up. She closed her eyes against them, swallowed hard, then said only, "I reasoned with him."

  The Viking raised his brows inquiringly, but she said no more. She would not tell him she was carrying his child. Let her keep that much from him as long as she could. Something had happened to her in that instant when she'd realized Soren was going to knock her unconscious and take her away from the fjord to kill her. Her heart had hardened. There was now a case of stone around its soft core. The Viking would have this child eventually, and no doubt he would have her passion again, and he would have her love in moments when she was weak and weary; but never would she give the smallest part of these things to him without a struggle.

  His look was inscrutable. At last he said, in a voice that was chilled and charged, "I've sent Inga from the longhouse. There are those who say I should kill her. Not for what she did to you — "

  No, of course not; she was but a thrall.

  " — but because . . . she confessed to my father's murder. It was Inga all along. Not Margaret. They say I should avenge my father . . . but I seem unable to do the deed, and so she is alive yet."

  Edin said, "She is not right in her mind. You can't kill her for what she can't help."

  "Aye. So I thought you would say. Kindness is ever a habit of yours."

  How strange that he should say that, the very thing Uncle Edward used to say to her, which she always wished were true! Now she hoped fervently it was not, for kindness would doom her in this place. These Vikings showed no mercy to those who were kind.

  He took her hand in his and turned the palm up. She was conscious of the calluses that had not been there when he went away. He muttered in a much quieter voice, "I never dreamed so many labors would be laid on you. I didn't realize my mother was . . . mad."

  She was tempted unbe
arably to comfort the pain he was trying to keep hidden.

  "I found changes on the steading after my return —when I was sufficiently sure you would live so that I could look about me. Sweyn, for instance, is changed."

  She lowered her gaze to his big hand still holding hers.

  "I am told you played shieldmaiden in earnest and gave him many a good wallop with a blackthorn staff, risking his temper with a nerve as steady as my own shadow."

  "It wasn't nerve so much as fear. He told me to swing at him, and one doesn't argue with a Viking holding an axe."

  "That defiant pride of yours has more than once argued with my sword, as I recall. And you say you 'reasoned' with old Soren's axe. It seems to me you know not how to cringe any better now than the first time I ever set eyes on you. And because of it, Sweyn is a man again, and seemingly bent on wooing Beornwold's widow."

  Her interest was piqued. "Do you think he will make a farmer? Will he treat Gunnhild well? I wonder if I did the right thing there."

  "You are late in wondering," he said with severity.

  She fluttered her eyelids to cover her returned resentment. "But you were absent so long, and the matter could not wait."

  "And you have been ill so long . . . you've slept so many days and nights that there is a matter with me that cannot wait." He cradled her face between his two hands and leaned to kiss her. He took her mouth as he would take a first long drink, thirstily, looking into the bowl as a child would. It was a gentle kiss, full of consideration.

  Afterward, he toyed with a strand of her hair. He said, so softly she wasn't sure she'd heard right, "Sometimes I fear I'll never master you, Edin, and that I couldn't endure."

  She felt gulping and tremulous. She wanted him to kiss her again. She saw how it was going to be, how desperately hard the battle between her love for him and her hate for all that he was.

  "I see you haven't finished your wine."