Cleve strode to the door of the longhouse.
“Where are you going?”
He turned to look at her, standing there, her hands clasped in front of her, her black hair loose down her back, braided strands threaded with strips of yellow linen, her linen gown of soft saffron making her skin look golden, making her eyes look greener, which surely wasn’t possible. She’d just said it in front of everyone. She would marry no man but he. She was beyond foolish. She was beyond blind. Just looking at his face should have turned her against such a notion. It was an infatuation. Surely she would wake up one morning soon and realize that she didn’t want him, and perhaps wonder how she could have ever believed that she had.
“I must think,” he said, and fled the longhouse. No one said anything until they no longer heard his retreating footsteps.
Chessa just stood there after he was gone, just stood there seeing nothing really, hearing the voices around her becoming thick now, louder, for now everything must be discussed and argued about. Everyone had an opinion. Everyone would be heard.
She heard Rorik say to Mirana, “You should have told her it wouldn’t work. To claim a man like that with no warning, especially a man like Cleve, who doesn’t really know who or what he is, a man who doesn’t want a wife, and that’s understandable given what was done to him.”
“Why doesn’t Papa want a wife?”
“Oh, dear,” Laren said as she scooped Kiri up in her arms. “Your papa, sweeting—well, it isn’t that he doesn’t want a wife, he just—”
She stalled and Merrik said, patting Kiri’s golden hair, “Your papa has much to do, Kiri. You know that. We are going to Scotland to return to where he was born. All this is uncertain, thus he can’t have a wife right now.”
“Why not? She could help him just like Aunt Laren helps you. She could tell him the right of things when he gets confused, just like Aunt Lar—”
“I know, Kiri,” Merrik said quickly, trying not to laugh. “It’s just that things are, well, very difficult right now.”
Chessa said, “Kiri’s right. Why can’t he marry me?”
“Chessa,” Rorik said, “be quiet.”
“No, I won’t. Kiri, your papa can have me for a wife right now, this afternoon if he wishes it. This evening if Mirana must have time to prepare for a celebration. I would help your papa learn about where he came from and why he was left to die as a small boy, then sold as a slave like your Aunt Laren.”
“I don’t know if you should marry Papa,” Kiri said, looking at Chessa. “You look just like my Aunt Mirana.”
“That just makes her very lucky, Kiri,” Mirana said and grinned.
“Maybe my papa doesn’t want a wife because he loved my mama so much. Maybe my papa just doesn’t like you. I don’t know.”
She wiggled out of Merrik’s hold and ran to the doorway.
“Sweeting,” Laren called after her, “just play outside with your cousins. Don’t go beyond the palisade.”
Cleve returned in early evening, a sleeping Kiri in his arms. “We spent the afternoon on the eastern cliff, watching the dunlin and oystercatchers.” He said nothing more, paid no attention at all to Chessa until late that night when everyone was preparing to sleep. He walked to her, just stared down at her, but said nothing for a very long time. There was a food stain on her bosom, her hair was loose, her face flushed from the heat of the fire pit.
“Look at my face,” he said.
She looked at his face.
“What do you see?”
She smiled up at him. Slowly, she raised her hand and traced her finger over his mouth, his nose, his eyebrows, smoothing them, then at last, she lightly traced her fingertip down the curved scar. “I see you,” she said. “I see the man I want, the only man I will ever want. I see you and I want to smile and laugh and perhaps do a little dance. I want to kiss you and touch you. What I see is the man the gods fashioned just for me. Now, Cleve, look at my face.”
He looked at her face.
“What do you see?”
He didn’t touch her as she had him. He said, “I have never seen eyes the color of yours. I had thought your eyes like Mirana’s, but it isn’t true. The green of your eyes is different, darker, nearly black in this dim light, and there is a slight tilt to the corners of your eyes that makes you look like you’re keeping secrets, that you know things that other people don’t know. Is that true, Chessa?”
“Nay.”
She wanted very much to kiss him. She’d kissed Ragnor several times and thought it strange, this touching of mouths.
“Cleve,” she said, standing on her tiptoes. Her heart was pounding so loudly she was certain he must hear it. She spread her palms on his chest, feeling the heat of his body, feeling the steady pounding of his own heart.
“Do you see anything else, Cleve?”
“I see a woman who will not do as she’s bid.”
“That’s all you see? Strange eyes and a woman who won’t be led about by the nose? I feel your heart, Cleve. It’s beating very fast now.”
“If you were closer you’d feel how hard my sex is. It means nothing, Princess. I’m a man and a man is always ready to bed a comely woman. It’s no more than that.” Then his hands were on her wrists and he was gently pushing her away from him.
He stepped back from her. “Merrik, his men, and I are taking Ragnor, Kerek, and Torric back to York. It should only take five days, no longer than eight days, depending on the weather, depending on things I can’t begin to think of. When we return then we’ll go to Rouen. In the meantime you will begin your monthly flow. I don’t think you’re pregnant. After all, you don’t want to bear Ragnor’s child. No, I feel that you are just being stubborn. You refuse to obey your father’s wishes and thus this is how you go about gaining your own way. If you refuse to wed William, I will return you to Sitric.”
“But didn’t you hear me? I’m not a princess.”
He shrugged. “I said it before and it’s true. Since you are the King of Ireland’s daughter you are thus a princess. You could have left Ragnor in here and told him that. He could have told the world. It makes no difference. Now, we’re leaving in the morning. I bid you good night, Princess.”
She stared after him. He felt he had to keep his word, both to her father and to Duke Rollo. She had to come up with a good reason why it was no longer so important. But it was much more than that. The woman he’d loved had tried to murder him. Surely that would make a man wary of women. She realized that she had to prove herself to him, prove to him that he could trust her, prove that he was safe with her, that he would have her loyalty forever.
But what if he really didn’t want her? But she didn’t believe that was true. She wouldn’t allow it to be true. All had seen him become as ferocious as a berserker those times she was attacked. She supposed she had to tell him the truth. Not only wasn’t she a princess, she was also still a virgin. By Thor’s hammer, she could just see his face when she told him that. She realized that she’d dug a very large hole at her feet and she was fast slipping into it. It had seemed such an excellent idea at the time. After all, if she wasn’t a virgin then William wouldn’t want her, thus she was free, she could have Cleve and surely, when at last he came to her, her virginity would have pleased him.
Now she knew it wouldn’t. He would know she’d lied. He would believe she was no better than Sarla, that wretched bitch Chessa wished were here right now, right this instant. Surely she’d kill Sarla for what she’d done to Cleve. She wondered how much more there was to the story than the bare bones she’d been told. Probably a lot more.
Merrik, Cleve, and all twenty of the Malverne men left the following dawn. All the Hawkfell Island men and women were there to see them off. Chessa, Laren, and Mirana stood close together on the dock as the men loaded the warship with provisions. Entti handed Merrik a large skin filled with ale, saying, “This isn’t intended for Ragnor’s gullet. It’s for the first night you’re sailing from York, having rid yourself of thes
e three.”
Old Alna was there to say good-bye to her Captain Torric. She patted his bound wrists and cackled. “Aye, my pretty boy, you would have fought to have me. I was more beautiful than those young twittering crows who stand here with me.”
Captain Torric said, “But Alna, if you were ever that beautiful, then it would have been my grandfather to have fought to have you and perhaps then I would have been your grandson.”
She cuffed his ear, then cackled. “You keep that leg straight, Captain, it will heal faster, and take this potion.” She handed him a small vial. “If you weren’t leaving, my pretty boy, I’d give you another vial and it would be a love potion and you would fall in love with your grandmother.” She laughed and laughed, and Captain Torric looked desperately toward Merrik, who just grinned and said, “ Consider Old Alna a gift from the gods, Torric.”
Laren smiled at her husband, but didn’t say anything. She’d already told him ten times to keep a keen eye, for she didn’t trust Ragnor at all. As for Kerek, he was even a greater danger, for he was obsessed with having Chessa for Ragnor, for the Danelaw.
Cleve said nothing to Chessa, but stood off to the side, speaking to his daughter. He kissed her, set her down, and told her to go to her aunt Laren.
He waved at her, and the men shoved off. Within minutes, the bright blue-and-white striped wadmal sail was but a dot in the distance. The Hawkfell men gathered up their weapons, their tools, and took themselves off to hunt.
“Look at the pinwheels,” Mirana said. “They’re fighting with the gulls. I find them fascinating. They soar and dive and drive the other birds wild.”
Chessa looked at her as if she’d lost her mind.
“Forgive me, Chessa, but I’ve always had a fondness for birds, but it doesn’t mean I don’t know what you’re feeling.” She sighed.
“You’re not a damned princess like I am,” Chessa said. “How could you begin to know what I feel?”
Mirana laughed. “That’s better. Cleve will return and then we’ll see.”
Chessa looked at all the women’s faces surrounding her. “Oh, dear,” she said. “There’s something else I’m not.”
Mirana stared fixedly at two curlews who were racing away from a spraying wave. “I don’t think I want to know.”
“I’m not pregnant.”
“You began your monthly flow?”
“Yes, but that doesn’t matter. It’s worse than that.”
“What is this?” Laren asked as she came upon the two of them.
“She started her monthly flow,” Mirana said. “She isn’t pregnant with Ragnor’s child.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters,” Laren said. “When at last you have Cleve for your husband, you won’t have to worry that you carry Ragnor’s child.”
Chessa looked from Mirana to Laren and to the other women who were clustered close. She said on a miserable sigh, “I’m a virgin. I lied. I hoped no one would expect me to go to William if I wasn’t pure. I was wrong.”
“But that’s wonderful,” Utta said, then her eyes widened. “Oh, dear,” she said.
“Aye, this is a new twist to the problem,” Entti said. “If Cleve knows you’re a virgin, he’ll carry you off to Rouen and you’ll be wed to William before you know it. Oh, dear. What do you think, Amma?”
That tall strong woman with the strength of many of the Hawkfell Island men looked ready to swim after the departed warship. “What I think,” she said slowly, “is that you must bed Cleve the moment he returns from York.”
All the women gathered around on the dock, arguing for a good long time. There were no jests.
Laren said at last, “Listen, all of you. It’s not Chessa, it’s Cleve. I told Chessa about Sarla, but not all the wretched details of it. It will help her and the rest of you understand why he is running as fast as he can away from her.”
“Sarla tried to kill him,” Old Alna said, spitting off the dock, interrupting Laren because she was, after all, older than anyone on Hawkfell Island, and thus she could do as she pleased, and Laren bowed to her to continue. “You know that, Chessa. What you don’t know, sweeting, is that she lured him with love words up to the top of Raven’s Peak, made passionate love with him, then when he was lying there blissfully happy, believing her happy as well, she struck him on the head with a rock, and shoved him over. The gods saved him. He landed on a ledge. Laren’s little brother, Taby, saw it all, but Sarla threatened him, told him that she would kill Laren and Merrik if he told anyone what he’d seen. But in the end, he told Merrik, and thus Cleve was saved, but barely in time. That’s enough to make a man’s innards cramp when he thinks about a new woman. Aye, I hear that when he beds any of the women at Malverne, there is always an oil lamp burning. When he is through, he sleeps alone. He has less trust for a woman than the men had for that Ragnor.”
“Tell me how you know all that, Alna,” Laren said. “You were here on Hawkfell Island when it all happened, far away from Norway.”
“I gave your beautiful husband a potion that loosened his tongue. He told me everything, smiling the whole time. He even told me how lovely I looked.”
“I believe it,” Laren said to Mirana. “Except for the last part.”
“I knew all that, save the details of it, just as Alna said,” Chessa said impatiently. “But Sarla was just one woman. Surely he’s far too smart a man to think that all women are like her.”
“Aye,” Laren said. “That’s true. But understand, Chessa. She was the first woman Cleve knew as a free man. He trusted her. He gave himself to her. He loved her. Then she tried to kill him.”
“But Chessa is different,” Mirana said. “I can’t believe Cleve so blind as not to see it.”
“Men,” Amma said, drawing herself up even taller, “even my precious Sculla, sometimes becomes overwrought and ceases to reason. It is what has happened to Cleve. He does think that all women are like Sarla. What’s more, he believes himself hideous with that scar. He has made himself believe this and thus it is how he sees himself. Since he is a man, it will be difficult for him to see clearly. Also he believes he must deliver up Chessa to Duke Rollo else he will have broken his sacred word.”
“Men and their sacred word,” Mirana said. “More wars have been fought because of their wretched sacred word.”
Chessa said slowly, “Surely my father wishes for my happiness more than anything. He wants the alliance with Normandy, no doubt about that, but can’t he make a separate treaty with Duke Rollo, without sacrificing me in the bargain? How can I make Cleve understand that my father won’t curse him if he weds me himself? His father is, after all, the Lord of Kinloch.”
Laren turned then to look at the top of the path. Every child who lived on Hawkfell Island was up there, all of them huddled together, the older ones holding the younger ones, all of them staring down at their mothers.
Kerzog came bursting through the knot of children and tore down the path, barking and panting. He saw Mirana and Chessa standing close together, and skidded to a stop on the dock. He eyed one, then the other. In a burst of joy, he leapt on both of them. Chessa cried out as she felt herself flying backward off the dock to splash into the water, Mirana landing on top of her.
Old Alna cackled madly.
* * *
By the end of a week, the women began to fidget. The Hawkfell Island men spoke of the weather with galling confidence. Aye, a storm had slowed them, had even blown them off course. But why hadn’t the storm hit the island? One more day passed with no sign of the warship. Mirana said after a very fine dinner of boar steaks broiled with cloudberries, “Something is wrong. I feel it.”
Rorik said as he took his small daughter Aglida from her, “We will give them two more days. If they don’t return within two days, then we will go to York and find out what has happened.”
Everyone was profoundly thankful for his decision since Kiri had stopped eating that morning, had stopped playing and arguing with the other childre
n. She looked like a pathetic little creature. It smote Chessa.
“It was always so when her father left Malverne,” Laren said. “Oh, he would be gone a week hunting or trading, but never longer. When he became Duke Rollo’s emissary, he would tell her nearly to the day when he would return. Several times he missed the day he’d promised her and when he got home to Malverne, she was a little skeleton, all pale and weak and listless. All of us were frantic. There was nothing any of us could do, and believe me, we tried everything.
“I remember once Cleve added extra days onto the time he planned to be away, but she somehow knew. He told her this time that he would be home by the eighth day. She has counted the days. If you look closely in the far corner of the longhouse, you will see a row of sticks. When she laid the eighth stick down and he didn’t come, she lost her faith. No matter what I tell her, she’s convinced he won’t come back. I stole one of her sticks, but she knew and put it back.
“Perhaps you have wondered why he brought a small child with him. Surely it will be dangerous, the journey to Scotland, his return to his home. The other children were left behind. None of us would allow our children in such danger. But this is different. She would have died if he’d left her. Just look at her. Kiri and her father are very close. None of us knows what to do.”
“What else did Sarla do, Laren, besides try to murder Cleve?”
“She was forced to remain at Malverne until she birthed Kiri. Then Merrik agreed to send her back to her family’s farm in the Bergen valley. Her father sent a dozen men to escort her home. She stole Kiri. When Cleve caught up to her, she screamed at the men that he was there to kill her, that he hated her and wanted both her and the babe dead, that they had to protect her. Whilst they argued, she ran away with the babe. Kiri nearly died. She would have if Cleve hadn’t managed to rip her from Sarla’s arms before she fell to her death. It was a horrible time for him. But Sarla was dead and we all hoped he would heal. He did, truly. He loves Kiri beyond reason. If something has gone wrong in York, then he must be frantic, knowing that she won’t continue for very long without him.”
Lord of Falcon Ridge Page 13