The Golden Wolf

by Linnea Hartsuyker

  “How different do you think it is?” she asked. “Touching a woman?” She moved her hand up to the open neck of his tunic.

  “I think women want gentleness,” he said.

  “Do men not want gentleness sometimes?” Gyda asked.

  Einar had shied away from gentleness when it was offered, fearing that it would unman him. He feared to accept it now. He touched her tears with the edge of his sleeve. She put her other hand to his jaw and ran her thumb along the hair there, close cropped to disguise its sparse coverage.

  He touched her hand, and then took it from his face, holding it in his. “I think King Harald will want his queen untouched,” he said.

  “Are you rejecting me, Einar Ragnvaldsson?” Gyda asked, a hint of steel in her voice.

  Einar swallowed. “I think there is nothing you might wish from me that you must buy like this,” he said. “I cannot keep you free from both Frode and Harald. You must choose one.”

  “And I will, tomorrow,” said Gyda. “Go back to your lonely bed, if you like. This was a foolish wish of mine.”

  He could, and tomorrow they would both pretend this had never happened. It was what his father would advise, but his father had not resisted his mother, and Einar did not want to go, to return to his celibate life at Ivar’s side, and live with only the memory of her touch on his face. “Then it is a wish I share,” said Einar.

  She looked up at him, wonderingly, and then drew his face down to hers, touching his lips with her own, tantalizing him until he could not resist deepening the kiss. Yes, he wanted this, a far more dangerous pleasure than a stolen moment with Bakur. “Why me?” he asked when they broke apart.

  She smiled slightly. “You are beautiful to me, like a new-forged sword. I want my own choice before . . . you remember the tale, I promised myself to Harald when he and his forces besieged this fort.”

  “And made yourself the most famous woman in Norway,” said Einar.

  “And bought myself twenty years of freedom,” she corrected. “I am as close to a virgin as my life has allowed. I have power, but I have never had a choice in that.”

  “Nor will you in the future,” said Einar, understanding, a little. His choices too were limited.

  “Yes,” she said. “I will—I will surrender myself to your Ivar tomorrow, and with my men, you can destroy Frode and his followers. If my scout Radulf’s signals were right, you will have enough men. And I will go to Harald.”

  “They say he is good at pleasing a woman,” said Einar.

  “And so I will be pleased and played upon, like all of his other wives, and forgotten as quickly.” She turned back toward him, so he could see her eyes blazing in anger. He reached out to her.

  “I could never forget you,” he said. She caught his hand and pulled him to sit down in the tall grass of the slope next to her. She reached out to him and he kissed her again, feeling clumsy as he never did with a sword in his hand, and when they bumped noses, Einar broke off laughing.

  “We are not very good at this, are we?” he asked. He moved his hands over her arms, her shoulders, her back. She had little softness to her, was instead a creature of lithe strength, like an animal of the forest.

  “That was my sister’s duty,” said Gyda. “She bore Harald three daughters and a son.” She laughed. “My sister bore the son I should have had. I have never taken a lover for pleasure. I feared what would happen if Harald should find out.”

  “And now?” Einar asked.

  “You have already said you will hide the things I have done to keep my land safe. I believe you can hide this as well. But still, if you do not want . . .” She slid a hand up his thigh. He wanted her badly, foolishly. He tried to think of all the reasons he should not, that he could not have this—even if both of them kept it secret.

  “What if you fall pregnant?” he asked.

  He met her gaze for a moment. She looked up at him, and then her eyes traveled from his face down his body. “You are tall and comely and golden-haired. No one would ever know, not even you or me.” She pulled her hand back. He rolled her on top of him, and pulled her down to kiss him again.

  “What should I—how can I please you, my queen?” he asked.

  “Gyda,” she said, guiding his hand between her legs.

  There was more clumsiness and laughter before they found their way together, with her still on top of him so her clothes would not be mussed by the ground. His homespun would show dirt less than her bright silks. Even when they had both had their pleasure, he did not want to leave off touching her. Her skin was as smooth as marble, and cool to his touch.

  “I wish we did not have to hide this,” he said while she was still astride him. “I have heard of Irish queens who took consorts, young men who fought for them while they ruled, and were replaced when they grew too old.”

  Gyda’s speculative smile made Einar grow hard again. He should not have done this, but he had, and knowing she wanted him too made him feel giddier than a strong drink. He moved inside her, and she grinned with delight, rocking to meet him.

  “I chose well,” she said, her voice low and throaty. When he finished again, she rolled off him, running her hand over his side and then his hip as she went, stoking his hunger for her even as she slid away.

  “Let us speak plainly, and not of tales and songs,” she said. “I am not a fool—except perhaps in this moment. I know my only choice is to go with you and marry Harald.”

  “He will let you be queen again, and send an army with you to keep you safe.” He had to clench his fists to keep from pulling her onto him again, to feel her skin again under his hands.

  “With one of his grown sons to command it, and I will no longer be queen in truth. You know it is true.”

  “Is that not better than war and death? Do you see any other way through?” he asked.

  She sat looking out at the field again, which was lightening as the sun rose. She looked over her shoulder at him. “Perhaps, if you were the one to command Harald’s troops here. Would you be content to serve a queen?”

  “I am sworn elsewhere,” he said. “Where my brother goes, I go.”

  “I must meet this prince whom you esteem so highly. Anyone you think worth . . .” She shook her head. “But you command him.”

  “I do not,” Einar protested. How quickly she went from woman to queen.

  “You do. He may not know it but—you came here and left him behind. Is it not true that out there, on the plain, he obeys your instructions? You lead him and let him think he leads you. I have met your father a few times, and he does the same to everyone around him. He will never be led.”

  “But you want to lead me,” said Einar. That troubled him less than her words about Ivar. His brother was to be king, not him. He had sworn before the gods and his father that the task of his life would be supporting him.

  “I think we could lead together, if you can arrange to be sent to Hordaland with me. Your brother can come, if he must.” She stole a fleeting kiss and began to arrange her clothes. “You should stay here until dawn. Then none will suspect.”

  “Will we . . . ?” Einar began. Would they have this again, even after Ivar came? It did not seem likely. He should not even ask.

  “If we can,” she said. “There may be a way.”

  7

  The weather in Vestfold was mild in the days leading up to the midsummer celebrations, so the morning after her arrival, Hilda joined the young women of Harald’s court outside. After a long winter, and an uncomfortable journey from Tafjord, she longed to sit in the sun, to ease the aches in her body that had come from Rolli’s difficult birth and never left her. The servants arranged a circle of chairs in a brightly lit clearing. The women gossiped of marriages and childbirth while Hilda listened with half an ear.

  “And what do you think that Finnish woman does to keep the king so happy?” she heard one of them ask, a tiny blond girl with fine features marred by deep pockmarks from a childhood illness.

  “I’d like
to know that,” said another, plain, tossing her dark braid over her shoulder. Hilda wondered if she thought she would need bed tricks to keep a husband happy.

  “She must be a witch,” said a third. “Someone should kill her before she enchants his manhood away.”

  “Perhaps she already has, and that’s why he hasn’t been with any of his other wives,” said the first girl, giggling.

  “Children, that’s enough,” said Hilda, though she too would have liked to know what hold Snaefrid had over King Harald. She knew it troubled her husband. Ragnvald wanted to admire Harald and found it difficult when Harald had not taken up a sword or held court to give justice in years.

  The girls gave Hilda tolerant looks, and began talking of other things. Some were daughters of rich Vestfold farms, sent to Harald’s court to gain favor and husbands, while others were the wives of prominent warriors and jarls. Hilda recognized some of them from her visits to Nidaros.

  She raised her head when she heard shouts from the harbor, and set down her spinning. A newly arrived ship might bear Ragnvald, or perhaps one of her sons. She had not seen Ragnvald in nearly a year, and she longed even more to see Rolli. Such a big, happy lad. No matter how stout she grew, he still picked her up and swung her around whenever he came home from his little sailing trips. Her other sons belonged to Ragnvald, his heirs and pupils, the boys he wanted to mold into men, but Rolli had resisted that molding, until his father let him choose his own way.

  When Hilda came within view of the shore, she saw a man stumbling up the hill, carrying a body in his arms, his guards following uncertainly after him. Once he reached the soft, pine-needle-covered ground beyond the harbor’s edge, he fell to his knees and set down his burden.

  Hilda picked up her skirts and trotted toward him, gritting her teeth at the pain in her hip. She had grown nearsighted enough that she could not make out who it was until she was quite close, and then she saw that the man had the colorless hair and narrow face of Aldi, steward of Sogn. It was his own son whose body he brought to Vestfold’s shores.

  “Oh, Aldi,” said Hilda, rushing to his side.

  Aldi knelt beside his son’s body, touching his face. The boy was the same age as Thorir. The wispy beard on his jawline was lighter than the skin that had gone a grayish blue since his death. The body’s mouth was opened, and the lips purple. Hilda did not want to look, but her eyes were drawn back again and again, to check that it was indeed Aldi’s son, not one of her own.

  Aldi’s shoulders shook silently. His men stood around him, shifting on their feet, looking anywhere but at Aldi’s grief. Hilda bent down and touched Aldi’s arm. A man could accept comfort from a woman that he would not from another man, and she had known him for a long time.

  He looked up at her, his eyes red and cheeks streaked with tears. “Of course,” he said bitterly, throwing off her hand with a shake of his shoulders, “Ragnvald’s wife. I cannot escape your cursed family. You sow destruction wherever you go.”

  Hilda dropped her hand to her side. “What do you mean by this?” she asked.

  “You—your son did this,” he said.

  “Which son?” Hilda whispered. “Who do you accuse?”

  “Your giant of a son—Rolli,” said Aldi.

  Hilda’s stomach clenched.

  “He attacked my ship, and killed my Kolbrand,” said Aldi.

  “Where did he go from there?” Hilda asked.

  “I do not know, nor do I care,” said Aldi, “except to hope that justice finds him. I will accept no less than outlawry for this.”

  Outlawry—her boy to be outlawed, cast out from his family, cut off from his ancestors. Outlaws had no kin to rely upon or to intercede with the gods. Their only chance of surviving was to fight for foreign kings in foreign lands or become raiders. Hilda hated to think of her gentle boy killing men and stealing their goods.

  She knew the law, though. “If you accuse him in error, it will be you who is outlawed,” she said.

  “It is no error,” Aldi shouted. “Your son did this, just as your husband killed my father.”

  Hilda shivered from the breeze off the water. Ragnvald had set in motion the events that led to the death of Aldi’s father, though he had found his end on the sword of King Hakon. Aldi had sworn not to take revenge on Ragnvald, his father having killed his murderer in the moment of his own death. Still, men always wanted more revenge. Ragnvald’s guilt would make him feel pressured to give Aldi all he asked for and more.

  “Old King Hakon did that,” said Hilda. “I know you are grieving, but your accusations are dangerous.”

  “You know your husband caused it, just as he is behind this—depriving me of my heir so Sogn will go to his sons.”

  “You are steward of Sogn, Aldi Atlisson,” said Hilda. “And it was always meant to pass back to my son Ivar, when he wed your daughter.”

  “Wed Dota to the brother of her brother’s murderer?” Aldi laughed bitterly. “Never.”

  Hilda began to say something else, but stopped when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned to see Oddi standing by her side. He had brought some of Maer’s guards with him. “How can I help?” he asked her in a low voice.

  “This man’s son needs to be buried,” said Hilda. “Bring him to Ronhild. Her women will wash and prepare him.”

  “Not you,” said Aldi to Hilda, his voice poisonous. “If you touch him, he will bleed and you will keep him from his rest.”

  She looked down at Aldi’s son again. A shaft of light through the trees gave his skin a golden glow, and Hilda saw the boy he had once been, one of many tearing around a Yuletide feast with her sons, now dead before even reaching manhood. Darkness gathered at the corners of her vision. One of the girls put her hand on Hilda’s elbow and helped her walk toward the hall.

  * * *

  Hilda lay down on the pallet in her dim chamber. It stank of the food that rotted among the rushes, of dogs and cats and mice, of damp wool and the mud that filled in chinks between the hall’s boards and made up the floor beneath the planking. It smelled of sweat too, men’s sweat, women’s sweat, the sweat of rutting, of drunkenness, and of the livestock that spent the winter heating the hall with their bodies. Hall smells usually helped her escape into sleep, but this time, when she lay down, the dull weight of fear settled on her chest.

  Rolli was in trouble, her boy who wielded a man’s strength. Hilda remembered when he, no more than three, had come to her with a dead kitten in his hands, killed by too-rough play. He had learned to control his strength, but this seemed to her another boy’s mistake. Ragnvald was harsh with his sons, often too harsh; he might not help Rolli. He had treated Einar as a man, and potential enemy, since the child learned to speak. He treated Thorir with contempt and Rolli with wariness. Only to Ivar had he given the gentle guidance that a child needed.

  Hilda lay on her pallet until hunger forced her up. She took a piece of bread from the kitchen and returned to her bed while feasting continued beyond the curtain. She listened to the clatter of dishes, the barking and fighting of dogs over scraps, the cries of children. She was alone here, with neither sons nor husband, and now one of her sons had been accused of murder. Harald would outlaw Rolli when he emerged from his bower long enough to pass judgment.

  Or worse, his uncle Guthorm would do it. Guthorm hated Ragnvald for supplanting him in Harald’s affections, and would not hesitate to sentence Rolli harshly.

  The songs of the poets were full of women who counseled their menfolk, brought about peace and good outcomes, but Hilda could bring herself to do nothing but lie in bed, only rising for a meal each evening before hiding again under her blankets.

  On the morning of her third day in bed, Harald’s mother, Ronhild, woke her, flinging the curtain aside and standing over her.

  “Are you ill, Lady Hilda?” Ronhild asked. She was nearly as tall as Hilda, though not as stout, with broad shoulders and solid hips—a woman who could birth a man as big as Harald. Hilda felt a tide of helpless sadness tugg
ing at her again—Ronhild had a giant son too, but hers was a king, not soon to be an outlaw.

  “Did you hear about my son?” Hilda asked, her voice coming out like a croak.

  “I did,” said Ronhild. “I have also heard that your son told Aldi the death was by mischance, and further that Aldi brought no witnesses to the death.”

  Hilda sat up. She knew the law, but it seemed a thin thing, made merely of words, next to the certainty of Aldi’s dead son. “The law says there must be witnesses,” Hilda said. “Aldi has Kolbrand’s body, and says that Rolli admitted to causing his death. But he has no witnesses. No very harsh sentence can be pronounced based on those facts.”

  Ronhild nodded. “I have heard that you know the law as well as any man. So what are you going to do?”

  The question felt like a weight pressing Hilda back into bed. “Wait for my husband. He will know what to do,” said Hilda.

  “Will he?” Ronhild asked.

  “Of course,” Hilda snapped.

  “At least get up,” said Ronhild, wrinkling her nose. “Your absence has been noticed.” She turned and let the curtain fall closed behind her.

  * * *

  Hilda roused herself for dinner that night and sat next to Oddi—Oddbjorn Hakonsson—once Ragnvald’s truest friend. Now he lived in Heming’s court at Yrjar in Halogaland, far to the north. He had grown fatter over the years, as Hilda had herself, and no more handsome, but she still found him appealing, a man of cheer and appetite.

  “My lady,” said Oddi, his voice full of surprise and pleasure when he saw her. “You do me honor by sitting with me.”

  “Ragnvald has not arrived yet,” she assured him as she filled his cup of ale and took her seat next to him. He seemed to relax on hearing it. Since the breaking of their friendship, he and Ragnvald gave each other a wide berth, and when they spoke publically it was with an elaborate deference that reminded her of nothing so much as how former lovers behaved with one another, which would have amused Hilda had it not given Ragnvald so much pain.