She pulled her mouth away from his. He saw the smile on her lips, and in her eyes. She took his hand, leading him to the bank from which he had first seen her. There, on the bower of the thick and green moss, she laid him down. As he dropped down on his back he could not bear to be parted from her touch for even a moment. He kept his reaching hand always upon her, her own hand, her waist, her knee as she knelt next him.
She bent over him, kissed his lips. Her mouth lingered there, and every touch of her lips and tongue was a touch also deep within him. His body thrilled to the sight of her, her lips upon his, her flesh under his hands and pressed against his own. But the water beginning to run from the corner of his eyes came from his heart, from her desiring of him, for the gift she was giving.
She pulled back her face from his, and swung her leg over his hips. Her hand went to the base of his stones, then grasped the hardness of his prick. He was gasping, as if for air, his eyes fastened on the gentle smile on her lips. She lowered herself over him, slowly and with her eyes closing. Her body took his into her wet warmth.
For his man’s body to be embraced in this way was beyond his imagining. He had at times to close his eyes, for the bliss of opening them and seeing her there as she straddled him. He lifted his hips in rhythm with her motion. He moved his hands to stroke her face, to cover her breasts, to hold her at her firm waist as she rode him. Each stroke gave exquisite pleasure. He felt the urgency of every male animal he had ever watched mount a female. He felt the power of the great stags who reared on their strong hind legs to fall upon their does and hold them in that sacred embrace. With this urgency and power was a thrill of pleasure even greater than the need. All this was his, and the very moment he lived in, the Lady come to him and bringing him to manhood.
Each time he felt he could bear it no longer and must come off she slowed, looking down on him with her half-smile. Yearning, he took her by the waist, urging her, but she placed her hands on his chest. It was only when he loosened his grasp on her that she began to move again. He kept his hands lightly upon her waist and she rose and fell over him. Then she turned slightly, twisting her shoulder to reach behind her, one breast now in profile to him. She took his stones in her hand, and as her fingers closed around him his eyes were forced shut by the depth of the sensation. Behind his closed eyes he saw deer, leaping through his forest. Her movement quickened, and as he came with a shower of light behind his closed eyes he bucked up, driving himself deeper into her wet and welcoming depth.
He heaved out a sigh, shuddering still. His hands holding her at the waist felt the expansion and release of her own breath. He opened his eyes to see her leaning forward over him. The soft lips again touched his own. Then her hand rose and touched his eyes, stroking them closed once more. His last glimpse was the half smile on her lips.
When he awoke he looked into a paling blue sky. He lifted himself on his elbows. Across the pool from him the trees had darkened into a mass of deep green and shadow. A glinting shaft of lowering Sun was caught between leafy boughs.
He looked down at himself. Alone as he was, it was real. She had come to him. His body felt different. It knew something it had not known before.
He sat fully up. The pleasure she had given was still fresh, quelling the rising pain of finding himself alone again. He gave himself the time he needed to think on her.
She did not speak. It was like the best of dreams he had dreamt, in which no one spoke. At times he rode the night-mare and all were shouting, faces straining with effort to make themselves understood to him. She had said all by her look and touch.
Her touch. He shook his head, then hung it. Now he understood the mystery, that dance of desire and fulfillment between male and female. Why she had come now, or come at all, he could not know. He only knew his gratefulness, and now his sense of loss.
He struggled to his feet, found his clothes. He walked back through the darkening woods.
When Rannveig saw him enter the foot of the garden he saw, even from afar, the look of relief on her face. It was late; she had already milked the waiting cow. He saw the worry on her face, saw her try to swallow it. She smiled and gestured that he must have found his bees; he did not return with the skep he had taken. He had almost forgotten them.
He ate little, for which Rannveig blamed the heat and Gudfrid her cooking. He had two cups of ale, and then a third, which he rarely did. He watched his mother and Gudfrid at their tidying, then nodded at them as they bid him goodnight. His mother came and gave his hand a squeeze before she went in. He smiled at her, sorry for her worry, and she let him be. He was sitting now on top of the kitchen yard table, his feet on the bench, looking across the dusky garden into the trees that now had faded into the dimness of the forest depths behind them. To one side the sea rippled and shone under a rising crescent Moon. But Tindr’s eyes were on the woods.
He pulled off his tunic. He let his hand lift to his chest, and laid his palm against his heart. She had touched him there, and many other places. He would not be the same again.
Chapter the Nineteenth: Strangers
Late Summer 881
TINDR turned from sliding the bolt across the barn door. The fowl were safely penned for the night. He had finished his supper and gone off to complete his evening chores, and this was the last of them. His mother and Gudfrid still sat inside the brew-house, talking over a meal to which they had invited the neighbours. Fall was near, but there was still a lingering dusk which seemed bright after the deep gloom of the barn.
He paused and looked beyond the narrow strip of beach across the waters of the Baltic. His eyes scanned the distant horizon, one made sharp by the piercing rays of the lowering Sun. Sometimes when he looked thus he had a waking dream, in which his father’s boat sailed home to them.
As he thought on this, his eye dropped closer, to a small boat approaching the beach not far from the pier. The mast was still up and the sail unfurled. It was driving right for the beach.
It was a very small boat, and Tindr wondered from whence it came. He could see a figure in the stern. The neighbour’s children were playing amongst the rocks and they stopped in their play and watched the boat drive in. The sail was dropped and the hull scraped along the limestone shingle until it stopped. A man rose from the stern, and jumped out, went to the bow. Now Tindr saw a second figure, a woman. The man helped her from the boat, and had his arm about her as she walked a few steps to one of the larger rocks, upon which she sat.
The man heaved the boat a little further up the beach, enough so that the tide could not lift her. The man was tall, and Tindr watched him as he slung several packs and rolls over his shoulder. The last things he took from the boat was a round shield, which he hung from its strap over his back, and two spears.
A warrior. Sometimes war-ships landed at the pier, bearing men heavily armed as this one was. They looked for salt and fleece and iron-work and good Gotlandic stone, and had glass beads and silver neck-rings and arm rings to trade in return, sometimes even silk. This was one of them, alone, with a woman. Tindr looked again at the smallness of their craft, the number of packs the tall man carried. The boat they sailed in, the fact that they carried all they owned – these were folk who had come across seas and through danger.
The warrior and the woman stood together now, and Tindr watched the man scan the buildings of the trading road. He looked squarely at the brew-house with its half-rolled awnings, and gestured to the woman at his side. Tindr hung back, watching from the garden.
When the door opened Rannveig was facing it, as befits a good host. Their supper was drawing to a close, and her friends would soon be giving her their thanks and heading home up the hill. She did not expect customers just now; her afternoon trade was over, and it was early for those wishing to come after their own suppers to drink and perhaps throw dice.
A man came through the opened door, heavily laden with a variety of packs. The first thing that struck Rannveig was his height. He was unusuall
y tall, and quite lean. The second was the number of weapons he bore. There was a sword of great length at his side, and not one but two spears in his hand. She could see part of a round wooden shield where it hung from his back, and see also that the metal rim was badly dented from a blow. A warrior.
Just behind him came a woman, carrying a small leathern pack and a lidded basket with a handle of curious make. She took her place next to the warrior. Such men sometimes had slaves with them when they landed on Gotland, but one glance told Rannveig this woman at his side was no slave. She wore a thick necklace of braided silver about her neck, and though her face was wan it held beauty, and, Rannveig felt, told of high birth. She was not overly tall, and was strong-featured for a woman, with eyes a deep and vibrant green. She stood straight, though she looked as if she could scarcely keep her feet for her weariness. Her woollen gown was the colour of oak leaves in Fall, a shade a little lighter than the reddish gold of her hair. The hem of both skirt and sleeves was covered in thread-work, of interlinked russet and brown spirals. She was a good needlewoman, and had had time to become one. She was looking at Rannveig with the ghost of a smile on her pale lips, as if she did not believe where she was, but was glad nonetheless to be there.
Rannveig was aware that her friends had fallen silent, taking in the strangers. She nodded to the man as she approached, inclining her head to give him leave to drop his packs against the wall. He did so with a nod of his own. As he straightened up she had a closer look at him.
His hair was dark brown, and an ugly scar, now old, creased one cheek. His eyes were of a blue so dark that she was not certain of their colour until she neared him, but they were steady. Like those of the woman with him, his clothes were travel-stained and worn, but there was no hiding the fact that they had been finely woven, well-cut, and sewn with care; the clothes of a rich man. And none but a warrior of some renown bore weapons such as this one did. Rannveig had never seen a knife worn this way, not hung straight down from the hip, but sideways, across the belly. Her eye took in the jewels of red and blue that sparkled in the hilt. Garnets, she thought, and some precious blue stones. She saw on his right wrist a bracelet with a silver disk inscribed in flowing lines.
“Welcome,” she told them. “I am Rannveig. I can offer ale, and food.”
“Both, and I thank you,” the warrior said.
This was all he said at first, but it was enough to tell her he was a Dane. The hand that bore the bracelet plucked at his belt and the pouch tucked there. He spread it open and she caught a glimpse of the silver within. No matter; looking as they did, she would have fed them even if they could not pay.
She looked behind him and to the left, saw the new boat on the beach, felt the catch in her throat. Wherever they had sailed from to reach Gotland’s eastern coast, they had travelled long miles over open sea. Their boat was so small; they had Njord’s favour to survive.
The warrior’s eyes followed her, saw she had caught sight of their boat.
“You will be weary,” she said, looking again to the woman.
He nodded his head. “And my wife has suffered much from the sea, and is weak,” he answered.
“Sit, and I will bring you food.”
“I am Sidroc,” he said now.
It was an act of trust to share his name, this Rannveig knew. All, upon meeting, spoke their names at once; custom and courtesy demanded it. When a man did not name himself, there was good reason. Trouble might be following him. This Dane had reason for caution.
“Are you trading?” she asked in return. It was unlike Rannveig to ask a direct question of a traveller, but something goaded her on. She had made up her mind to feed them, but if he had reason for caution she might too. And their look, their very presence, stirred her interest.
He paused a moment. “I will be.
“My father fished, also traded for salt,” he went on. “Once when I was a boy he came here, to Gotland. He liked it well. He told me of it when he returned.”
She smiled. “So you have come to see for yourself,” she said, looking at both of them.
He nodded. The pretty wife did not seem to understand their speech. And she looked as if she were about to fall. She had placed her hand on the top of the nearest table to brace herself.
“Sit, sit,” Rannveig repeated. “I will bring you ale, and food.”
She brought two thick pottery cups and a full ewer of ale. She went out to the kitchen yard. Gudfrid had preceded her, guessing that the couple would want food, and had the browis ladled up and ready. It had the last of Tindr’s smoked deer haunch in it, which is why Rannveig had called the party, but in a few weeks he would begin hunting for the season and replenish their larder. Rannveig piled a number of small loaves on a wooden platter around the crockery bowls of browis and took them out to the couple.
“Who are they?” her neighbour Alrik asked in a low tone when Rannveig sat down again.
“I do not know,” Rannveig answered, ever discreet, “but they are hungry, so I fed them.” If the couple stayed around others could draw what conclusions they would; it was not her role to peg them early, or for anyone else.
Her friends left, and when the couple finished eating she went back over to them. The warrior Sidroc praised her for her cooking, and his wife made a gesture of thanks with her hands. Not a scrap of food was left in their bowls or on the platter.
“This place is a good one,” he added, looking at Rannveig.
She paused. They were the same words Dagr had said to her many years ago, the first day he had landed here.
“Can we set our camp nearby?” he asked now.
Rannveig stood before them, looking at their faces.
“I own the hall at the top of this hill,” she answered. “It has been empty a long time. You may stay there tonight, and also the Winter, if it suits you.”
It took the big warrior a moment to take this in. “I have gold, and will pay you well,” he answered. He looked at his wife, all unknowing what was being said, but looking hopefully at them both. His eyes went to Rannveig. “This place is truly a good one,” he said to her.
He turned to his wife, spoke in a tongue Rannveig had never heard. The wife’s mouth opened in surprise, and she bowed her head to Rannveig in gratitude.
Sidroc turned back to Rannveig, and they talked a while longer. She took the largest key from the collection at her waist and handed it to him. “Come in the morning. I will feed you, and we will talk more,” she told them. She sent them on their way up the hill to the house she had been born in.
When they had gone she joined Gudfrid out by the cooking-ring. Tindr was there. She guessed he had seen the strangers but had not wished to show himself. She began to tell him about them. She could not tell Tindr that the big warrior was a Dane. That would mean nothing to him. She gestured instead that he was from afar, shielding her eyes with her hand as if looking for something, taking her other hand and holding it out before her, then moving it a full arm’s reach away. This meant far away, not on the island. His wife she was not sure of. She spoke no Norse, and the ruddy gold of her hair and green eyes made her think she was of the fabled lands to the West, where the Danes had met such success in their raiding.
They will need help, Rannveig thought. They cannot run the hall alone. Perhaps Tindr will try going to them. He will still be so close. He can chop their wood and care for their beasts. It will be a start for him. He is too much with me, and one day I will not be here…
The first day Tindr went to the hall he travelled with his mother up the short hill. He had seen the warrior face to face at the brew-house the morning after they arrived, and named him Scar. The woman with him, with bright red-golden hair, he thought of like that, Bright Hair. She had smiled at him, looked him in the face and smiled, and had wanted him to come and live with them in Nenna’s old house. Now he was here.
He had been inside before, of course, but now he was come to live, and the barrels of grain and chests
of goods that had occupied the hall when his mother let it as a ware-house were all cleared away. It was now a swept and empty place, with stacks of new goods Scar and Bright Hair had bought and had carried in. Bright Hair gestured he should choose which alcove he wanted, and he marked it by hanging his bow and quiver above that closest to the forest.
He put his bedding in it, and took his tools out to the stable behind the hall. There was a sturdy workbench there, but the place had held no horses for long years. He raked and swept out the straw dust, making ready. There was still the remains of a pile of firewood outside the hall, and he sorted through it, restacking that which was still sound enough to burn, chucking the rest into the cold kitchen yard cooking-ring. After this he went back into the hall. Scar and Bright Hair were standing amidst barrels of stores, and the potter from the trading road was with them, showing them the cups and plates she had brought them.
As he waited Tindr’s eye was caught by the pile of Scar’s war-kit. He had seen the bright-hilted seax in its red leather sheath, so different from the knives Gotlanders wore at their hip, which Scar carried across his belly. Now he came close to where sat the long and powerful sword in its scabbard and sword-belt. He squatted next to it. There were strands of beaten gold in the pommel of the hilt, and just under the guard the steel of the blade showed the silvery blue waves of the pattern welding. It was formidable, yet had its own beauty. The weapon-smith made such things, he had seen him at his forge, and sent them on ships far away. It was a tool to kill a man, Tindr knew this; it had no other use. He thought a moment on this, and on the small arrow-heads his Da had taught him to hammer out. He looked now at the two spears, quite different from each other. One was shorter and with a lighter shaft, and a tip not too much longer than those he forged to down boar. The other was long and heavy, like the men of Gotland used when they had need to defend themselves, or to hunt boar. The steel point was incised with ribbing on the socket; the smith had taken care to decorate even this. The face of the round shield was painted in white and black spirals, and the domed iron boss at the centre embossed with small raised circles. He looked at the shield’s iron-bound rim, where the strapping protecting the wood had been hacked through. The wood beneath was fresh-looking; the blow from axe or sword which had severed the iron rim was recent.
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