by Joanna Bell
It went on and on, new waves crashing over me just as it seemed they would die down. I dug one of my fingers so hard into the sun-baked earth that the next morning I saw my nail was torn. My cries echoed through the woods, mingling with the sounds of other people sleeping, arguing, making love.
And when the pleasure had rolled through me like a summer thunderstorm through a valley, I lay under Ivar, my skin slick with sweat and feeling as if I would never be able to move again.
"Oh my God," was all I could muster, and even then my voice was thin and quiet. It took everything I had just to lift a hand to caress the back of his neck.
He moved up, kissing me deeply so I could taste myself on his lips. It might have disgusted me in the past, with another man. But there was no disgust with Ivar, no shame. I thrilled to taste what he'd done to me – and then I opened my legs and took him in.
"Voss," he whispered in my ear, clearly trying to control himself. "Voss, woman. Sophie, you're as wet as the ocean. I can't. I – I can't –"
"I don't want you to," I whispered back, knowing he was trying to tell me he couldn't stop himself. "Just fuck me, Ivar. Just f–"
I didn't get to finish the word, because he slammed himself into me so hard it pushed all the air right out of my lungs. And then he didn't stop. Sex had never felt like that before Ivar. In some ways it was almost combat – I struggled even to hold myself up on my arms, bracing myself again and again as they collapsed under the weight of his need for me, and my heels dug themselves into the dirt, looking for purchase. But it was sweet combat, and instead of opposing him, I indulged him, I gave him my body, my sex, a place for him to truly let himself go.
He buried his face in my neck when he came, roaring my name as his hips jerked spasmodically down against me, his cum filling me until it spilled down my thighs and onto the bare earth underneath us.
I was asleep almost instantly, my mind falling gratefully into unconsciousness, relieved at not having to think of anything except him.
Fourteen
Ivar
The dawn broke fresh, although I knew the freshness would not last for long, and I woke with my little foreigner curled against me, one of her bare, tanned legs thrown over my body. Sophie. My sweetest trial. What was I going to do with the captive who already took up too much room in my thoughts than was good for me? We would not arrive in York before the next winter, but I was even more focused on the place, given Sophie's obvious health and fitness. The land must be very fertile, I thought, to allow the people to flourish as she apparently had since birth. How else did she come by such soft, unblemished skin? How had she kept all her teeth, even after giving birth, if York was not prosperous? Of course, that was assuming she was actually from York – and on that point she had been less than forthcoming.
I wanted to stay with her, to make love to her one more time before the day's responsibilities took me away – but it was not to be. Sig came a moment later to tell me the scouts had found Thetford, which I had planned loosely – and with the other Jarls – to take, and possibly to overwinter in. So I brushed a lock of hair off Sophie's flushed cheek, and kissed her, and took my leave.
Later in the day, the Jarls Eirik, Styrr and Vidar arrived on horseback from their own camp a quarter day's ride away and I had furs thrown over fallen logs so we, along with Jarl Ragnar and a few of our most trusted advisors, could speak of our plans.
"It's no village," Eirik said, having seen Thetford for himself from a vantage point near to it. "The defenses are high, the ramparts well made."
Thetford was to be perhaps our first real test in the Kingdom of the East Angles, after even the King himself and his men gave us little trouble. We needed somewhere more permanent to overwinter, storage for our goods, stables for the horses and protection from the people who would soon enough realize that the Northmen were no longer content to raid and pillage along the coast.
We wouldn't be able to take the place without a period of observance first. We were going to have to make camp – make two or three camps, probably, to lessen the chance of a devastating attack during the night, should the people of Thetford come to know of our presence sooner than we wished.
"Their fields are lush," Styrr reported. "Harvest will come soon enough – we must take the place before the crops finish, so the people don't have a chance to burn their stores when they see us coming."
I nodded. "Aye, perhaps."
"The people of the Kingdom know of the Northmen now," Styrr continued. "They think of us as wild animals, they say we eat babies. Surely a people with no hope of mercy would rather burn their crops and die knowing we'll starve before springs arrives, than leave them to us and die knowing we'll grow fat on the fruits of their toil?"
"Who can say what the people feel?" I asked in response. "But your words are well taken, Jarl Styrr – we will take Thetford before the harvest time."
We talked into the afternoon, planning and organizing, and when our minds became weary Jarl Eirik and I set out with a few of our men on a hunt. We needed our warriors – and ourselves – strong and well fed.
"And your wife?" I asked as we rode through the sunny woods, talking only in low voices and scanning the green foliage for the tawny, telltale flash of a red deer. Eirik's wife was pregnant again, and Jarl Ragnar's wife had traveled ahead to accompany her. I wondered if it meant the pregnancy was a difficult one.
"My wife is well," Eirik told me, ducking to peer through a gap in the trees. "It is I who worry more than she does – sometimes I feel like an old man with how much. When you have a wife and children of your own, you'll understand what I speak of. Even now as we hunt for meat – meat my people need – I feel half-tethered to the hearth, a part of my mind set aside forever to think only of my family."
Jarl Eirik was younger than me by a few years, but he already had a wife and a child – and another one on the way. Part of me pitied him, the way I had pitied the older men was I was a boy, so burdened by responsibilities and cares, so beholden to other people's needs. But only part. The difference in feeling then, that day on the hunt, was due to Sophie's presence. The transformation was not complete, and I suspected it wasn't in any man until he married, until he became a father. But the idea I'd always had, that being depended on was akin to a millstone around a man's neck, was no longer as solid as it had been. I thought, as I rode through the woods, that perhaps I would not feel so burdened if it was Sophie who depended on me. Perhaps I'd been thinking of it all wrong, to see it as a burden?
We rounded a corner on the small track we rode along and came suddenly face to face with another two men, neither of whom were of our group.
For a very brief moment, I thought maybe we were going to be able to talk, to bluff it out – Eirik and I were only two, presumably the men had not seen the rest of us or spotted our camps. But it was not to be. When one reached for his sword, Eirik and I did the same and the sound of blades being drawn from sheaths cut through the afternoon's tranquility, sending a small flock of birds cawing into the sky.
"Halt!" One of the men facing us cried, holding his sword at the ready in such a way that I could see he knew how to use it. I looked at Jarl Eirik out of the corner of my eye and saw that his impression was the same. "Who goes so close to Thetford, wearing the markings of another land?"
"We're hunting," I replied in casual tones, although I did not let my guard slip for a moment. "Have we passed too close to your town? It was not our intention –"
"Northmen!" The other man shouted, before I could finish, pointing to my sword, and then Eirik's. "Look at the hilts of their swords, at the stones inlaid there. These are not men of the Kingdom of the East Angles! What is your business here, you two? Tell us at once, tell us truth, and perhaps we will let you live."
The decision was made in my head at that instant. I did not make it lightly, or even happily – all I wanted was venison for supper. The mounted men were only doing what men do – guarding their town from hostile newcomers, which Jarl Eirik and
I definitely were. Still, they were going to have to die. Before they did, though, I wanted information.
"Is that who you are?" I asked. "Are you the King's men?"
"We are," the first of the two responded. "Charged to defend the King's land and people from all who would do harm. Now –"
"And are you aware," I continued, as the air around us grew taut. "that your King Edmund is only alive due to my mercy? That he swore an oath of fealty to me and my –"
"Lies!"
I brought my sword down and across my body to block to the blow that came. Jarl Eirik did the same with his spear. The East Anglian men were good fighters, strong and brave. One of them managed, before I drove my sword into his neck, to nick my shoulder with his blade. It was not a deep wound, but the blood ran out of it and down my arm anyway, and I knew I would have to get it treated by the healers before it festered.
We took their weapons and their horses and dragged their bodies into the woods a short time later,
"A spear!" I laughed at Eirik, who had used his to bring down one of the men from Thetford. "Such disrespect, Jarl – his family would not be happy to see him killed like an animal."
"His family should have advised him to stay closer to home," Eirik replied, and I turned quickly at hearing the sharpness in his tone.
"What is it?" I asked. "There was only two of them, and short for –"
"Why are they so far from the town?!" Eirik demanded heatedly as I wondered what madness had gotten into him. We'd handled the two Angles efficiently, how much better could our first confrontation with the people of Thetford have gone?
"Clearly they were sent to patrol the woods," I replied, re-mounting my horse. "I admit it's farther than we thought they would roam but it is an important holding for the East Angles, perhaps we should not be surprised?"
"We're close to camp!" He continued. "Close to my camp, too. Paige is there, pregnant and vulnerable –"
"Surely you did not leave her unattended?" I asked, realizing what had Eirik so disturbed – not the danger to ourselves but that to his wife, his child. "I imagine she has a full complement of your best warriors to keep her from harm?"
"Aye," he agreed. "Aye, she does. But these Angles are out deep in the woods. I do not like how close they came just now. How do we know there won't be more of them tomorrow?"
"There will be more of them," I responded as we guided our horses back to my camp. "Which means we will have to begin patrols of our own, we will have to learn the paths and roads even this far away from Thetford. It's a fortunate thing we ran into those two – now we know what our task is."
When we returned, it was with some relief that I saw Gunnar and Sigvald had managed to take a large stag. Sig, being almost too loyal for his own good, had been assigned to accompany my wayward brother on a hunt, lest my sibling wander into Thetford and tell a prostitute of all our plans. Gunnar went on a lot of hunts those days, and I suppose his lack of skill at invasion did lead to quite a bit more meat than the people could otherwise have expected. For that I was grateful.
That night, after a dinner of roasted venison and berries the woman had foraged from the woods, Sophie seemed, although she was at my side, to be somewhere else.
"Was the meat too rich?" I asked, pulling her against me as she lay in my arms with her back against me. The nights were so warm during our time outside Thetford that we had no need for even a linen blanket.
"What?" She replied. "Uh – no. No, it was good."
"You think of your child."
She looked over her shoulder at me. "Yes. And you think of the battle to come."
I smiled. "It's my duty to think of the battle. All the Jarls do the same tonight. Jarl Eirik and I killed two of the Angles from Thetford today when we came upon them patrolling in the woods."
"Did you?"
Sometimes when Sophie asked me a question, I had the vague feeling of being indulged, of being spoken to the way a mother will speak to a child who has told her a fantastical story. "I flew about the treetops today, mother." "Did you?"
"Yes," I affirmed, although I did not understand why such a mundane fact needed affirming. "And afterwards, the way Eirik acted made me think of you."
"How did he act?"
Had I ever been so happy as I was that night, lying beside the dying embers of the fire with Sophie in my arms, questioning me about the small matters of my day? Perhaps in childhood, running in the fields and along the beaches with nothing but myself and the fullness of the summer days ahead of me? But the happiness felt different now, less innocent. I knew by then that endless summer days were not promised to anyone, and that the weight of seeing more of them – not just for myself but for all of my people – rested on my shoulders. It made the quiet evening next to Sophie, talking as I supposed men and women had always talked to each other, all the sweeter.
"He was angry," I told her, nestling my chin over her shoulder and breathing in the scent of her neck. "He was angry although we easily killed the Angles, and it took me some time to understand that he was angry because his wife and child were near – even the thought of them coming to harm drove him to it."
"And why did that make you think of me?"
"It made me think of the fact that you're a mother. It made me think of the ties that bind us to our families – our husbands, wives, children, parents. It made me think perhaps those bonds are not solely restrictive."
Sophie chuckled. "Oh they're restrictive. I haven't spent a truly worry-free day since my daughter was born. But when I try to imagine life without her, I can't do it. I know you don't have kids – or a wife – but don't you feel that way about your parents? Your brother? Wouldn't you do anything for them?"
"Of course. But it's different with children, I see it in the reactions of their parents. It's different with a husband, and his wife. To see Eirik today, the fire in his eyes at the thought that Paige – or their son – might come to some –'
She suddenly rolled over to face me fully, so I could see the pale moonlight reflected in her widened eyes.
"What is it?" I asked, spooked. "Did you hear something? Did you –"
"What did you say?"
"I asked if you could hear –"
"No," she cut me off again. "Before that. About Eirik."
What had gotten into her? She was fully awake, her tone demanding. "I was just explaining about his reaction today, to even the mere thought of harm coming to his wife or his –"
"What did you call his wife, though? Her name, Ivar – what is her name?"
"I believe it's Paige. An odd name, is it not? Eirik's wife is an Angle, though, from the more southerly –"
"Paige? Her name is Paige?"
I sat up, annoyed at being interrogated. "Don't speak to me in that tone," I scolded. "Haven't we been lying here together talking softly? Why must you begin demanding information in that way? Haven't I been answering your questions, woman?"
"Oh!" She replied, nodding in what I imagined she believed to be a meek manner. "Yes, you're right. I'm sorry, Ivar. I'm sorry, uh, Jarl. It's just that I think – I think I might know Eirik's wife. Or I might know of her, that is. I might –"
Sophie was babbling. In the past, with any other woman who spoke to me the way she just had, I would have delivered a blow hard enough to drive it into her skull that she was not to behave in such a manner. But I did not hit Sophie, because there was something soft in my heart, something specific to her. Maybe it was the very thing I'd been speaking of, the sentiment I'd seen in Eirik earlier that day? Could it be?
"I'll take you to see her tomorrow if you like," I said, and she agreed to it at once. After that she went quiet again, although her body was tense and her breath did not come slowly. Whatever was the matter, if indeed anything was, I would deal with it in the morning. The soft waves of sleep were already beginning to wash over me, soon to carry me away into the dark ocean of dreams.
Fifteen
Sophie
I tried to make myself busy
at the camp the next day, even as Ivar had to ride out with Jarl Ragnar before noon, and then deliver new instructions to his men, and then complete errands and take care of little social niceties until I thought I would go crazy with anticipation. It was afternoon before I found myself behind him on the back of his horse, headed towards the other camp, where I was to meet with Jarl Eirik's wife.
Ivar commented, as we rode through the woods, that I was quiet. I was. Half of my mind was occupied with managing expectations – what if it wasn't Paige Renner? What if it was some other Paige? – and the other half with imagining what I would say if it did turn out to be her.
Perhaps it wasn't halves, though. Perhaps it was thirds, and that third portion of my brain was busy with thinking how it would change my life to be the one to find the missing girl. To be the one to break the most famous – and famously impossible to solve – case in recent American history.
Calm down. Calm down, Sophie. Stop counting your chickens. It's probably not Paige Renner.
Yes! I wanted to shout in reply to myself – but what if it is?!
And as it happened, after Jarl Eirik greeted us upon our arrival, I spotted his wife – dressed in the clothing of the people and wearing her hair braided and arranged artfully on her head – and I instantly knew.
It was her. It was definitely her. My heart began to pound as I struggled to contain myself, to keep a look of pleasant courtesy on my face, as the Jarls led the way into the camp.
"Sit," Jarl Eirik said, indicating the seats made from tree-stumps and placed around a fire-pit next to a tent – the only one that I could see in the camp – made from animal skins. Ivar and I sat and I tried not to lean to the side, to try to get a glimpse into the tent where Paige had gone only seconds ago.
A moment later a young girl arrived and handed us cups of ale, and then, as I was taking my first sip, Paige Renner – heavily pregnant and as serene-looking as a Renaissance painting – stepped out of the shelter and smiled at Jarl Ivar and myself.