Edin's embrace

by Nadine Crenshaw

  The change in subject was hardly subtle, and he gave her no choice but to drink deeply from the bowl he held for her. But as he caught a drop from her lower lip with his thumb, she couldn't keep herself from whispering, "I missed you."

  His smile was sudden, a full dawn in the low-vaulted chamber. This time his kiss was long and hungry and thorough, and it drained her mind of all thought, so that when he lifted his head, she was caught unprepared for his question: "What did you think about when you were alone; did you daydream?"

  What a strange question! But he seemed very serious. "Did you think of your life before, and long to be free?"

  "Not really" she said slowly. "I-I thought rather of what might happen to me next"

  "And did you think of me? Did you ever think of me?"

  "I . . ." She closed her eyes. "I thought of you. Constantly." She looked at him again and saw he was beginning to smile. "I thought of you when my hands stained the scythe with blood, and when I couldn't eat or sleep for weariness, and when Soren's axe swung toward my throat —I thought of you then especially, and wondered if it was really the wisest thing to duck."

  ***

  The sun rimmed the western horizon, sending out its last slender shafts of radiance. They seemed to vibrate slightly, with a soundless music, like harp-strings playing a song that was great and deep and fair but mingled with a yearning sorrow. When they were gone, silenced, there was only a razor-edged blueness everywhere. In the far distance was a hint of knife-edged, blue peaks capped with adamantine snow. A cold blue country was Norway.

  Up on a little hummock above Dainjerfjord, under the storm-writhen hawthorne tree, Thoryn Kirkynsson hunkered down and let the blue twilight wrap him. Before him was the hogre, the sacred pile of stones. There was a peculiar stillness under that tree where blood sacrifices were made to the gods.

  Thoryn was dressed simply, with nothing except a torque of twisted gold strands to pronounce him a man of wealth and strength. He sat alone, with only the curlews crying and the sheep's melancholy bleating in his ears. And he thought about all that had passed since he'd taken the Blood Wing a'viking last spring.

  After a while a shaggy grey and white sheep dog came to sit with the jarl of Thorynsteading. The animal was one the thrall-boy Arneld had been making a pet of. Thoryn had spied the boy talking to it in that special dog-doting voice.

  Eventually he took out his sword. His father's armorer had written upon it: "May the Tester spare no one."

  In Thoryn's youth, Kirkyn had let the steading fall into poor times while he went raiding year after year. He'd shown no interest in his homefields or his longhouse. It was only when he brought Margaret home that he seemed to notice his holdings and grow interested in being a steading owner. Thoryn had accepted the change in him without considering what it had to do with Inga and Margaret. It seemed to him now that he'd accepted a lot of things without thought.

  Margaret, a captive thrall, had won his father's favor. His love. And Thoryn's. He could admit that now—now that he too loved a thrall. As a boy, he'd loved Margaret more than his own mother.

  He felt a strong, hurtful instant of guilt, like a fast deep stab wound. Inga had wanted his love so desperately, and Kirkyn's. She would stare at Kirkyn endlessly. Her gaze had frightened that young Thoryn who would turn away and shiver, seeing for an instant a shameful and obscure side of human existence, seeing, as he knew now, an evil as far from the sun as the depths of the utmost dark places. That tender, melting look of Inga's —he'd come to feel repulsed when she looked like that. And so in the end it was Margaret who had earned his affection. Which had made her seeming treachery all the more painful.

  Oh, these ceaseless, obsessional thoughts! The past was dead. Kirkyn and Margaret were dead. And Inga was past help. He had to think of the future. Of Edin. She was all that was left to be glad for. And she was enough.

  Edin. Her very name made gladness roar through him. He felt a giddy uplift of his heart. He loved her —and his love was proud of itself. He was afraid it seeped out of him even with his tightest security. Even now —just look at him, sitting here like a fool atop an imaginary ocean heave of happiness, atop a glistening wave of hope! He had to restrain himself, because the wall had been breached, the wall that had sealed off his childhood, his best self, his early aspirations. Since the framing of that wall, his shape had become harsh, brutal, and . . . somehow wrong. But now the air flowed in, air from a springtime he'd forgotten. The imprisoned energy of those young and wasted seasons was blowing into his limbs and his spirit.

  He still didn't understand exactly what Edin did to him, but her effect was so unfailingly powerful that he believed he'd been born to love her —her face, her throat, her shoulders, her form full and perfect, her body of velvet, her cool, soft voice —born to feel this heat and spaciousness that no single word could begin to express. She made the blood hammer like a prayer through his veins. He had to stop himself from shouting aloud with joy. And her remoteness, her suspicion, and even her resentment were part of his youth regained. It was only right that he should have to overcome these obstacles. Nothing of value was easily gained. He felt confident, however, that there would come a time when her struggle against him could not be sustained.

  He sighed and threw his head back. The great timeless tree above him held intricate patterns against the motionless sky. Was it only a season ago he'd still tried to maintain a distance between himself and his new thrall? He'd wanted her to be an unknown Saxon female so he could put her on the auction block without feeling. It was better not to feel anything for people you sold. And impossible to sell one whose every touch drew reaction.

  He reached to touch the dog and found it willing to be scratched behind the ears. The animal's big head hung over its breast. The two of them sat in companionable silence. Then, when it was full dark, Thoryn rose and found the sheep, and he put his sword edge to the gentle pulsing throat of his best lamb-bearer offering it to Odin, the Lord of the Gods, as he had sworn he would do.

  ***

  Early in the afternoon, two days later, Edin ignored Dessa's protests and left her bed. As she dressed, though she'd been surfeited with whole-meal breads, a great deal of fish, goat meat, eggs, wild greens, and whey drinks sweetened with honey, she found that she was still remarkably weak. Nonetheless, she went out into the hall, determined to take a turn around the tables.

  Olga, who had been trained by Inga, was in charge of the kitchen in her mistress's absence. The place smelled of the same horrid mutton and cabbage of previous days. Luckily it was afternoon or the odors might have made Edin sick. If she ever had a kitchen of her own again, she vowed there would never be a scrap of cabbage allowed into it.

  She felt shaky as she started on the last stretch back toward the bedchamber. Icy perspiration drenched her body, and she felt as white as a linen apron. Her heart was going all ways, now just a thread of a pulse, now pounding. At the halfway point, she had to lean against one of the jarl's high-seat pillars.

  Dessa had disappeared or Edin would have asked for her arm. Olga was there, but she was busy with a long-handled pancake griddle making lefse, thin cakes spread with butter and honey. It was a job that couldn't be easily interrupted.

  Ottar was there also, but being a mere thrall, Edin could claim no right to request a favor of him; indeed, she didn't even think of it. Besides, he was busy in his own way —almost as quickly as Olga could cook the hot and smoking lefse, he stole the folded cakes from her and wolfed them down.

  Edin eventually stood away from the pillars and started on, lurching a little like an old woman. Before she got too far, she learned where Dessa had hied off to: The girl had gone to tattle on her.

  The jarl's voice boomed curses all the way from the door. It had the sobering effect of sudden intense light. Edin turned her head —and there he was, tall, forthright, and angry. He advanced on her so aggressively that she held out her hands and stumbled back. As he reached for her, she tried to catch his thick wrists. Neither
tactic kept him from sweeping her into his arms and lifting her as effortlessly as if she were a sack of feathers. She was left stunned by the terrible deadly elegance of his swiftness and his strength as he carted her back to bed.

  He stood scowling over her, his muscles knotted, while she stared at the handmade silver buttons of his tunic. He said, "I may have to beat you after all. Take care, Saxon." His eyes glistened with steely pinpoints.

  She was briefly afraid; after all he was an immensely powerful man, and there were still ways in which she regarded him as a mystery, even dangerous. And she was more vulnerable than usual just now.

  Yet the very next day she did the same thing. Twice.

  The first time was when Dessa left her alone for half an hour to tend to some chore or other. Edin was so successful in getting up and walking around the hall tables that she decided to try it again that afternoon. But Dessa came back sooner than expected, and caught her. Still, Edin managed to get back to bed on her own before the girl's tale-bearing brought the Viking barging into the chamber like a longship under full sail.

  He was cool today, where yesterday he'd been hot. He said —coolly, "You see the posts at the foot of this bed, and at the head there? I count four. And you have four limbs."

  I'm sorry that — "

  "It surprises me to hear you say so," he continued quietly, "for truly you seem not a whit sorry, Saxon. But I can make you sorry. Shall I?" He blinked slowly, in a way that made her feel as low as a fly in a bowl of milk. Briefly a seasick misery ebbed through her. She felt the weight of his eyes as he continued to watch her in such an unwavering manner.

  She said, "How can I get my strength back if I don't work at it? A Viking doesn't pamper himself this way. I want to go out, to breathe clean air, to see the sky again."

  She watched his mercurial mood make an obvious, abrupt, bewildering reversal. He smiled! It was a lazy, intimate smile that made her catch her breath. Everything washed out of her mind when he smiled like that. He was so . . . beautiful. His limbs and features seemed to be formed as exactly and wonderfully as if some colossal woodcarver had made him. He said, full of relaxed amusement suddenly, "You want to be treated like a Norsewoman? I find that a good sign. All right. You may walk outside a little tomorrow — but not until I can attend you myself."

  He started to go, but paused at the door. The smile was gone again, as suddenly as it had appeared. "You will not walk about without me. And I will not be called in like this again. Think carefully before you defy me another time, or— " he added with shrewd sarcasm— "I shall have to risk becoming the object of all your anxiety and hatred."

  She lay back in her pillows, stiff with refusal, yet helpless to disobey, atremble with conflicting need and fear. She felt as if she'd just done battle with an army of giants —and lost.

  In the late afternoon of the next day, she brushed her hair and parted it in the center so that it fell in waves that framed her face and spilled onto her shoulders and down her back. She put on a grey-blue gown and a black cloak fastened with two brooches joined by a chain across her breast, all gifts from the jarl brought home from his trip to Kaupang, and she strolled beside him out of the bedchamber.

  He somehow tamed his long-legged pace to accommodate her slower one as they stepped up into the day. After more than two sennights indoors, the sunlight felt like a pour of golden nectar. He told her she could take one slow turn around the longhouse, but this was done all too soon. They paused to watch Laag saddle four horses for men who intended an evening deer hunt. When the men came to claim their mounts, Rolf asked, "You aren't going with us, Jarl?"

  "Not this time."

  "He's too busy walking his amber-haired pet," Hauk said.

  "Better to ride than to walk, Jarl," Ottar jested.

  "That depends. If you have a thorough-bred, there's her care and her temperament to think about"

  "Aye," said Fafhir, "if you've got a filly with some pluck to her, you don't want to ride her into the ground."

  On their horses, they saluted him —and grinned and nodded to Edin —before they galloped off. She was a little surprised by that farewell nod. Seldom had any of them ever acknowledged her presence except as an article of service, an object. That nod had said she was a person. What did it mean? Would the jarl comment on it?

  He didn't. He stood beside her, not touching her, watching his men ride away. The sun-drenched afternoon seemed to contain a quiet, easy domesticity that she was loathe to interrupt. At last he turned a little toward her —a minor movement of his body, yet it spoke of power, reminding her of how easily he'd lifted her the day before, and also reminding her that he was a man of raid and conquest. She sensed he was about to order her back to her dreary bed, so she said quickly, "Can we not go up the path to the lookout point? I would so like to see a clear view. My landscapes have been barriered for many a day." She stood hoping, under those imminent and unclosing eyes that were watching her with such terrible, unrelenting tenderness. "Really, I'm not at all tired."

  The path, however, seemed steeper than she recalled. He noticed her lagging steps and gave her his hand. She couldn't quite look at him as she took it, but by the last few paces she was gripping it with all her strength. The climb done, he pointed out a boulder near the very edge of the point. "Sit," he said.

  "I'm fine."

  He gave her an exasperated look. "Simply remaining on your feet costs you an effort. Sit."

  "I'd rather-"

  "By my sword, sit! As far as I know, I am jarl here yet, and you will do as I say!"

  She sat.

  For a moment more he stood with his arms folded over his chest, staring at her as if his glare were a spike he meant to drive through her. Meanwhile she was miserably aware of growing weak and will-less.

  But eventually he turned away. The sky above the valley was a profound autumnal blue, and the pastures, with the sheep tracks intersecting and intersecting, were still a jade color. From the rugged slopes came the notes of a cowbell, a peaceful clank-clank that floated through the quiet, thin, empty afternoon.

  The Viking seemed oddly restless. She watched him from the comers of her eyes, thinking him so bronzed and sleek, so difficult and bright in the level sun, so insolent and inaccessible. Suddenly his shoulders bunched, his hands clenched, and he turned to her, saying, "Freya's belly!" She was startled by his sudden fierceness, by the lightning flare in his eyes. "I need a woman to run my longhouse. I need a wife to give me named sons. I've decided to wed you, Saxon"

  Just like that. For a long moment she ached to run to him. A wave of dizzying temptation swept over her, and she bent her head. Yes! The word came to the tip of her tongue —but there paused in a half-sweet, half-agonizing balance, like the rainbow on a waterfall, like the flame on a candle. She wanted to be everything to him, wanted to have everything she couldn't have. ...

  He'd come near and bent over her; his big hand closed on her shoulder. "What have you to say?" His ferocity was as awesome as fire. His bent figure reminded her of a dark dragon flying toward her with his talons forward, ready to catch up his prey. She couldn't seem to make her mouth move. He said, now in a completely contrasting tone, in a voice strong and formal —and strangely suppliant, "Edin, will you wed me?"

  Her tongue loosed at last. "Wed the glittering serpent who ravished and ruined my life?"

  His hand dropped away. It took a breath for all the suppliance to drain from his expression. It became stony. There was about him a warning.

  "Why do you want me?" she asked bitterly. "Why should you marry a thrall you already take at will?"

  He turned his back on her. His voice was suddenly throaty. "I ... I seem to need you."

  What was he saying? She struggled against a stupid, credulous feeling that mayhap she meant something to him, that she'd succeeded in melting that iron in him, that mayhap she'd somewhat softened and gentled this barbaric Viking.

  He came to take her arms in his hands and pull her up. Her heart fluttered, sorely affri
ghted by what he intended. She felt so terribly, terribly slight in the circle of his powerful arms. Her head didn't even reach his chin.

  "We know each other so little in some ways, but there are other ways in which we know each other full well." His eyes were shining; they were demanding her very heart; they were shifting the ground beneath her feet. His look was blatantly sensual, and she hid her face from it against his chest. Just that look from him, and she felt a bottomless, insatiable need to be weighted by his body and kissed savagely, to belong to him entirely.

  "You believe you face a terrible fate. I admit I've been graceless in the past. I am, after all, the man I am. But you won't find me a cruel husband. I will prove to be less terrible than pleasant." He spoke with hypnotic sincerity. "I will try to make you like me, Edin. I ... I love you." He seemed overcome by feeling as he gathered her and kissed her thoroughly.

  After a while he held her head against his shoulder and stroked her hair. She lay against him in a kind of lethargic torpor. She had to struggle. She had to think of Fair Hope, which in her mind was always a place where clouds threw no shadows but were ever fleecy white, where the grass grew greener and taller, the strawberries big and plentiful, where the garden and woods and people never changed.

  He lifted her chin and tapped her on the nose. "Are you getting used to the idea, Shieldmaiden?"

  She swallowed hard. "Will you swear to me never to use your sword again, never to sail away to raid and kill, never to worship your warrior gods? Will you swear that my children will be reared as a peaceful farmer's sons and daughters? If you will then swear this to me, I will wed you, willingly."

  His hold on her loosened. His lips parted.

  "I thought not," she whispered. "You are a Viking and ever will be a Viking. Unflinching, wrathful, purely pagan, more skilled in making battle than love. And rather than wed myself to you, I would be a thrall all my life."

  His shout had a horrifying ring. "You obstinate, wicked creature!" He was abruptly glowing with monstrous anger. She hadn't seen him so ferocious since the night he'd killed Cedric and burned her home and made her a slave. "You are my thrall," he said, "despite the fact that you own a sharp, ready, cool, never-shrinking, brazen tongue! My power over you is the mightiest you are ever likely to feel. And if I tell you to dress yourself in scarlet and become my wife, by the gods, that is what you will do!"