“Tyra,” he said, and kissed the tip of her nose again. “If I remember aright. There were so very many.”
She fisted her hand and hit him in his belly. He grinned down at her. “Do you yet carry my babe?”
She frowned. “So many times I’ve claimed to be pregnant and yet now when I truly want to be, it won’t happen. Do you think I’m barren, Cleve?”
“Nay, sweeting, I think your husband isn’t trying hard enough. Mayhap you’re worrying about it too much and it makes my seed wary.”
“It’s true you’re very tired every night now with all the work.”
He clasped her neck in his hands and squeezed lightly. Then he kissed her hard on her closed mouth. He looked at her closely, at those beautiful green eyes of hers, as green as the moss-covered rocks near the waterfall he’d shown her. “Has my father said anything to you? Bothered you in any way?”
“He just stares at my belly every time he sees me.”
“Papa, is it true?”
Both looked down to see Kiri frowning up at them, an apple in her hand, three children trailing after her, all bickering over a leather ball.
“Is what true, sweeting?” Chessa said.
“I heard Athol tell his brother that you were having my first papa’s babe.”
“Aye,” Cleve said, his single word as bald as the goat that was chewing on a discarded tunic near the newly built privy.
“He then said it wasn’t true, the tale you were telling. He said Chessa was carrying Varrick’s babe, not yours. I told him that wasn’t right and he laughed at me. I don’t like Athol.” Kiri looked at the ground for a moment, frowning ferociously. “Athol somehow isn’t right in his head.”
“No, he’s not, you’re right about that, Kiri,” Chessa said. “You keep away from him. He’s a coward and a troublemaker.”
But Kiri didn’t. Luckily, it was Chessa who came upon the two of them. She heard Kiri shout up at Athol, who was sneering down at her, “You lied to me, Athol. My second papa won’t have Varrick’s babe. It’s my first papa’s babe.”
“You’re a stupid little girl,” Athol said. “You don’t know anything. Go away. She isn’t your second papa, she’s nothing but a silly woman, worth little save for breeding.”
“Not until you tell me you lied.”
Athol swore at her. Then when she kicked him in his shin, he leaned down and picked her up. He shook her. “You miserable whelp,” he shouted in her face, spittle spewing out. “You damned miserable whelp. You’re his and you don’t deserve to live, much less to live here and take what is mine.”
Chessa had no idea what he intended, but the look on his face terrified her. There was a complete lack of control there, his eyes dark with rage. She said very quietly, “Let her down, Athol, now.”
“You,” he said, and shook Kiri again. She fisted her small hand and shoved it into his nose. He yowled and threw her down.
Chessa was on him in the next instant, shrieking in his face, cursing him with all the words she’d learned in Dublin from her father’s soldiers. When he raised his hand to her, she sent her knee into his groin. When he was bowed and yelling with pain, she kicked him in the leg and knocked him to the ground. She kicked him in the ribs, then again in the leg and heard the bone snap. Still, she didn’t stop. She was panting hard, her anger making the air around her as red as the Christian’s hell, making the loch look black as midnight.
“Chessa!”
She tried to struggle away from him, to keep kicking Athol, who was cringing at her feet, holding himself in a ball, but Cleve pulled her off. She whirled about, panting, “He was shaking Kiri. Then he threw Kiri on the ground, Cleve. Threw her!”
“Kiri is all right. I taught her how to roll off her shoulder if she ever fell. Stop it, Chessa. Look, Kiri is just fine.”
“Papa, see, I’m not hurt, not like Athol is.”
The red mist fell away from her as she heard the satisfaction in Kiri’s voice. She took a deep breath. “I wonder why I didn’t draw my knife and send it into his black heart,” she said, then shook her head. She stared down at him, raised her foot, then lowered it. “Nay, that’s enough for him.”
“My leg,” Athol said, holding it and rocking back and forth, moaning. “You broke my leg.”
“Aye,” Chessa said. “I heard the bone crack. Hold still and I’ll see to you.”
Athol screamed and tried to scramble away from her.
“You bullying coward, hold still.”
Cleve said, “She won’t kill you now, Athol. Do as she says, else I’ll have to hit your head with a rock so you won’t move while she takes care of you.”
“What is this?” Igmal said as he strode to them, wiping his hands on the leather apron tied around his waist. “Aye, Athol, you forgot her warning, eh? You’re lucky she didn’t kill you.”
Athol groaned. “Don’t let her touch me, Igmal, I order you.”
“Hold your damned tongue in your throat, Athol. She won’t kill you now.”
“My father—”
Cleve leaned down and sent his fist into Athol’s jaw. He fell back, unconscious.
“Papa, can you teach me how to do that?”
“No,” Cleve said and picked up his daughter. “Are you truly all right, sweeting?”
“Aye,” Kiri said. “Igmal, can I come with you now and help you work?”
Igmal grinned, those beautiful white teeth of his glistening in the sun, and took her from Cleve. “Aye, little one, I think I’ll let you play in the tar pot. Your papas will like that, I think.”
In late September, when in Norway the air would have turned frigid in the early afternoon, it was still warm in Scotland, the air soft and sweet from the smells of the heather. Karelia was finished. The wood smelled fresh and new and Chessa loved it. It was small, but there was enough room for three of them and the dozen men and the four families that came there to live. There was a bathing hut, just like the one in Malverne, only smaller, a privy, a barn for the grain, several storage huts, a barn for the cows, goats, and two horses, a blacksmith’s hut, and a small slave compound. Now the men were erecting a palisade some ten feet high that would surround the farmstead.
“It’s ours,” Chessa said with relish as she rubbed her hands together. Argana had given her pots and dishes and spoons and knives. She even gave her a beautiful linen cloth for the long narrow eating table. The first time Cleve lit the fire pit, the first time Chessa pulled the thick piece of wood attached to the roof beams with the serpent’s head at its end, adjusting its thick chains hooked to the iron cooking pot over the pit, she laughed aloud with pleasure. Varrick was there. He frowned at her. Argana laughed as well. Cayman just stood back, watching, saying nothing, just watching. Athol stood on crutches, watching as well, his expression so sullen Cleve wished he could kick him out.
It was that night, their first night at Karelia, the first night in their own box bed with a soft new bearskin, given to them by Ottar, one of Igmal’s men, when Chessa said, “I’m with child.”
Cleve, on the point of coming into her, stiffened, looked at her in bewilderment, then came into her, deep and full, and she laughed, pulling him closer, drawing him deeper. “I wondered what you’d do,” she whispered into his ear, then nibbled his earlobe, kissed his jaw, then his mouth and tasted the sweet mead on his breath from their feast, and said, “I love you, Cleve. I’m not barren.”
He withdrew from her, came between her thighs and brought his mouth to her. When she screamed, bowing upward, he laughed. “My babe will hear his mother shrieking,” he said, then came into her again, feeling her tighten about him, feeling her quiver from the tremors of pleasure still holding her.
“You will forget about controlling me,” he said, coming up over her, leaning his head down to kiss her as he spoke each word. “You believed I would become so befuddled at your news that I would fall off the bed and you would give me a smug smile. Ah, don’t move like that, Chessa, else I’ll—”
He said no mor
e. He loved her again, only this time, it was different, for his babe nestled in her womb and he wanted to show her how pleased he was, how much he loved her, how he would cherish her for the rest of his life. When she moaned softly into his mouth, he took that moan deep within himself. When he could speak again, he said, “I love you, Chessa. I never thought you were barren.”
She sent her elbow into his ribs, then brought his mouth down to hers. “Do you really love me, Cleve? It’s not that I haven’t believed you before when you’ve brought yourself to say it, but you’re still a man, and I don’t think men like to speak of such things. It makes them feel silly.”
“Who told you that? Surely not Mirana or Laren?”
“Nay, it’s just what I’ve observed.”
“And you’re such an old woman, just like Old Alna, cackling, her gums showing, preaching about all men’s failings, even her beloved Rorik’s.”
“Well, perhaps a bit. But you’ve only told me a few times, a very few times. Usually you just rant at me and yell at me and lust after me, which is something else that men want to do all the time.”
“That,” he said, kissing her deeply, “is true. When will our babe be born?”
“In March.”
“That’s when Kiri was born,” he said, and rolled off her, bringing her against his side.
“What happened?”
He told her about Sarla then, how he’d believed he’d loved her, how she’d betrayed him, but he’d forced her to remain at Malverne until Kiri was born. “I remember how she cursed me as she was birthing Kiri.”
“Why?”
“It hurts, Chessa.”
“Are you certain? Sira said it was nothing. She said she grunted a few times and another boy came out of her body.”
Cleve winced at the hopefulness in her voice. What did he, a man, know about birthing babes? He said, kissing her ear, “Why don’t you ask Argana about it?”
“Did it take a long time for Kiri to be born?”
He started to lie then knew it wasn’t fair. “A very long time,” he said, “but I know that it is different with every woman.”
“And many women die.”
“You won’t and I forbid you to speak of it. I’ll be with you and it will be fine.”
“My father never went near to Sira when she was birthing each of the boys.”
“Merrik was with Laren with both boys. Is there some sort of rule in Ireland that a husband must leave?”
“I didn’t think that men wanted to be close to their wives whilst they were birthing a babe. My father always left the palace and went hunting.”
“I won’t go hunting.”
She kissed his chest. “I remember that Sira wouldn’t let my father near her when her time grew near because she was fat and ugly, I heard her say to one of her women. Of course she’d never say anything to me. The truth is I never thought she was ugly even when her belly was huge.”
He caressed her flanks, then slid his hand between them to her belly. “I won’t leave you,” he said. “I won’t ever leave you.”
“You swear it?”
“Even if you look like Laren’s pet pig, Ravnold, I’ll stay close. I’ll even try to hold you every night. At least I’ll come as close to you as possible.”
She bit his chin, then came down over him.
He said, puzzled, “I don’t understand, Chessa. You’re pregnant. My seed took hold inside you. You mean we must continue to do this?”
She leaned down and bit his chin again. “This is for me, not for a babe,” she said as he came high and deep into her.
“It is a messenger from King Sitric,” Igmal said. “He claims he knows you, Chessa.”
Chessa wiped her hands on a woolen cloth, straightened her tunic, pulled off the linen kerchief from around her hair and came outside the farmstead. There was Brodan, her half brother, behind him two dozen soldiers, her father’s bodyguard, Cullic, at their fore.
She yelled his name and ran into his arms. “Ah, Brodan,” she said between kisses, “you’re here! I thought never to see you again, oh my, you’re here. How much you’ve grown. How did you find us? Oh, you’re quite a young man now, so very big. Your eyes are dark, just like father’s. The girls must adore you, Brodan.” Since he was only eight years old, this didn’t please him, and Chessa quickly called out, “Cleve, come here and meet your new brother, Brodan.”
He had grown over the past nearly six months, she thought. He would become a handsome man. She thought of Athol and said a prayer to every god she knew that Brodan wouldn’t grow crooked as Athol had. She watched him stare up at Cleve, eyeing him as another grown man would, for strengths and weaknesses, something their father had taught him. “I remember you,” Brodan said. “You were the emissary from Duke Rollo. When your messenger from Hawkfell Island came to Dublin and told my father of your marriage to Chessa, he cursed and ranted and kicked furniture and yelled at everyone who came near him for three days. He even yelled at mother. She didn’t understand that. It confused her. Then he smiled again. I remember his telling mother that you were a good man and that Chessa thought you nearly perfect, especially your face. He said she never saw the scar and thus she must love you very much. He is content now, not happy, but content.”
“I am relieved,” Cleve said, gripping the young boy’s shoulder. “I didn’t want your father to come here and slit my throat.”
“My father said Chessa would slit your throat if you ever deserved it.”
“She would,” Cleve said, nodding.
“Father let you come to Scotland,” Chessa said, marveling, for Brodan was only a young boy, after all, and such a journey was always fraught with danger.
“I wanted to see Iona where Saint Columba lived and preached. Did you know that Kenneth moved his remains from Iona many years ago to near Scone?”
“Aye,” Igmal said. “My grandfather told me that after Kenneth united the Scots and Picts together, he wanted to prove that the Scots were the better ones and he moved his capital from Argyll to Scone in Perth. He took poor Saint Columba’s bones away from Iona and moved the Stone of Destiny from Dunadd to Scone. My grandfather hated the little man for that, said that he’d gotten the Pictish throne through the female line and everyone knew that was madness.”
“What’s the Stone of Destiny?” Chessa asked.
Brodan’s voice dropped to a whisper. “It looks like a simple slab of sandstone, but it was the pillow on which Jacob, the son of Isaac and grandson of Abraham, had his dream about the angels and the stairway to heaven.”
“You’ve become a Christian, Brodan?” she said, not recognizing these names, but hearing the awe in her brother’s voice.
“Aye, Chessa. I’ve told Father that I want to live on Iona and practice the old ways.”
“Oh,” she said. He was only eight years old and he believed he’d already found what he was meant to do? He’d always been a serious child, older than his years, but he’d loved fishing with her. She remembered the glailey fish they’d caught that had been served that one night at the evening meal to Cleve in Dublin. “Father is all right, Brodan?”
“Aye, he is the same. Mother had another boy. I told father that with four other sons, he didn’t need me. He said he would consult the stars. He told me later that the signs were good, that I would be safe.”
“Ever the sorcerer,” Cleve said. He looked up to see Cullic, King Sitric’s personal bodyguard, stride forward to stand beside Brodan. He still had the coldest eyes Cleve had ever seen and his skin was even darker after their journey from Dublin. Cullic gently placed his hand on Brodan’s shoulder, saying, “We will remain here for three days, then the prince wishes to journey to St. Andrews. We have been told that a new abbey has been founded. The bishop there will become the leading man in the Scottish Church.”
“Aye,” Brodan said. “Iona is the old and the abbey of St. Andrews is the new. I wish to worship at both.” He seemed to struggle with himself for a moment, then blurted out, “I have h
eard also that the monster in Loch Ness was seen by Saint Columba. Surely it can’t be evil, not if that great man saw it. Have you seen it, Chessa?”
“Aye, I did, just once. It has a very long neck and a small head. It appeared, then quickly sank beneath the water again. Kiri has seen the monster many times. She says it isn’t a monster, but rather a mother with children.”
“Kiri?”
“Cleve’s daughter. Ah, here she is. Kiri, sweeting, come and meet my brother, Brodan, from Ireland. He wants to know all about Caldon.”
The eight-year-old stared down at the small girl and looked immeasurably depressed. “You’re telling me that this little girl has seen the creature?”
“Her name is Caldon,” Kiri said.
Brodan sighed. “How can this be possible? How can this be just? Little girls have imaginations that bubble over like stew pots.”
“Trust me, Brodan. Not this little girl. Now, brother, come into our new farmstead and bring your men with you. We will prepare a feast that will even make Cullic belch.”
The Spaniard didn’t smile, but he nodded, then turned about to give instructions to his men.
A light drizzle fell, graying the air, a soft sweet sound against the roof of the longhouse, bringing the mist to hover over the hills and sink slowly down to sit upon the dark waters of the loch. Chessa loved the rain for it stopped as suddenly as it began, bringing forth the sun to shine down upon the lush green. She left the front oak door open so that smoke from the fire pit could escape. The small hole in the roof never allowed enough smoke out at any one time. At least here in Scotland, they didn’t have to worry about freezing.
Not an hour later the drizzle stopped and the sun shone over the loch. Chessa left the longhouse for the privy. She patted the small curve of her belly. “Will I make even more trips to the privy for you when it is winter and cold and snow is blowing off the loch? Does that ever happen? I wonder.”
She was humming softly to herself when she left the privy and walked to the barn where Varrick had sent hay to feed the animals for the winter. It was dark inside and smelled of cow and goat, of closely packed grain and men’s sweat. When the hand came over her mouth and her arms were pinned to her sides, she froze, her first thought: Varrick.
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