by Arreana
The men slept where they dropped, draped on benches, sprawled beneath tables, curled around hearth stones. In the early morning hours, the fire dropped low. As the chill crept in, the men tossed and turned.
Disa tip-toed through the crowd, her arms laden with fresh logs and kindling to lay upon the fire. Her mother was already hard at work building up the long fire at the other end of the hall, and the men around her stirred as the reignited warmth broke through their drunken slumber.
Apron secured around her waist and blonde hair bound beneath the scarf, Disa dropped down beside the first of the huge fire pits and unburied the iron poker submerged within the ashes.
She was laying the brush and kindling upon the fire when his voice echoing through the hall alerted her to his arrival.
“And why should the daughter of a jarl be lighting a fire?”
Surprised, she dropped the poker and a cloud of ash shot into the air, settling upon her cotton apron and sweaty hands. She turned to greet the newcomer, but she already recognized his voice from having heard it again and again in her dreams.
Prince Eric stood above her, an even more magnificent creature than he had been the night before. His hair was combed, his face and hands were washed, and his beard was trimmed. The sodden traveling clothes from yesterday had been replaced by a far nobler, brighter set: goatskin shoes, forest-green trousers, a blood-red cape thrown over one shoulder to reveal the fine beige tunic underneath.
“Gre-greetings, my lord. Did you sleep well?” It was the most she had ever said to him at one time, and she had to congratulate herself for not stuttering too badly.
“Very well. Your father’s thralls are most attentive.” He paused, and she squirmed as his eyes roved over her. “Which makes me wonder why I find you in their place. Will your servants not stoke the fires?”
Her mother saw the prince’s interruption and, not caring if she woke the men, shouted across the hall, “If my daughter were never to do any work for herself, how could she ever be expected to adequately govern her future husband’s house?”
The prince’s eyebrows furrowed. It was the first time Disa had ever seen an expression other than a smile on his face. “An admirable philosophy, Lady Bergljot, but one I fear will compromise your daughter’s quite exceptional beauty.”
The happy fluttering in her stomach lasted only seconds before her mother’s response cut it down. “Beauty changes with time, my lord. And when my daughter is as old and wind-beaten as me, her husband will thank me that she can still cook and make a fire.”
“Jarl lady!” roared one of the men spread out beside the fire. “Will you please be quiet?”
“I will not be quiet!” she bellowed back, smacking the man with the split log she had been about to throw on the flames. “You guzzle my husband’s mead and eat all his pork, and now you intend to lounge about all day? Don’t you have barley to cut, you good-for-nothing lout?”
“Your mother is quite fierce,” Prince Eric observed under his breath.
Disa stared up at him, not quite sure how to respond. Her mother was aggravating and severe, but Disa had never dared to speak ill of her before.
“You don’t talk much, do you, Lady Saldis?”
“Like pulling teeth!” her mother agreed, overhearing them despite the distance separating them. “She’s a dullard. Aren’t you, Saldis? You see, that’s what beauty does to you, lord prince. Beauty or brains, you can’t have both.”
Disa opened her mouth to speak, but Eric beat her to it, “I think we can both agree, Lady Bergljot, that any dullness can be overlooked when accompanied by natural kindness and exceptional beauty.”
How was it that Prince Eric could say such things that gave her both pain and pleasure? Perhaps she really was as dull as her mother said. What had she achieved that a hundred women before her hadn’t? Her brother was a year younger than her, but he could still read runes and track deer, and he still knew the name of all the strongest knots and the proper way to hold his sword.
Disa was beautiful—she had been told as much too many times to doubt it—but what had it earned her besides the leers and resentment?
“Tha—thank you, my lord,” she mumbled, hiding her hands within the folds of her sooty apron. She didn’t know what to do with herself. She was used to feeling awkward, but never had she been so acutely aware of herself. She felt as gangly and weak-kneed as a newborn colt.
The prince knelt down beside her and fished her hands out from her gown. He didn’t seem to mind the ash dirtying his trousers. He brushed the soot from her fingers and pulled the poker from the fire pit.
A grin spreading cheek to cheek, the prince stirred the old coals.
“I shall take your place in this battle, my lady.” He thrust with the poker, eliciting a shower of sparks. “And save your pretty face from this foul ash!”
He smelled of lavender and rose water. His grin was easy and earnest. The strong, yet gentle brush of his fingers across her knuckles sent shivers down her spine.
His presence intoxicated her, and a dizzying gush of heat erupted in her belly and rushed to her head. She wished she could say more to this fiery-haired man, who secreted her smiles with each intimate touch. She wished she could be clever and well-dressed and not huddled over the edge of the fire.
“Saldis!” The voice belonged to her father, but the tone was unfamiliar, sharp, impatient, even angry.
The prince’s smile dropped from his face. Disa swung away from him as she shot to her feet. Together, they turned to face the jarl.
The big man stood in the doorway of the mead hall, the hazy morning skies casting his face in shadows. Her brother stood at his elbow, much smaller than her father but wearing the same disapproving look. For a rare moment, the resemblance between them was uncanny; both stood with their shoulders squared, their chins lifted, and their arms crossed.
The slumbering farmers and veterans and farriers stirred at the booming male voice. Their bleary eyes cracked open to witness the drama before them: the prince kneeling in the ashes, the daughter blushing in her sooty apron, and the jarl sneering down at her. They roused their sleeping companions with violent jabs to the ribs.
“Fa—father, good morning,” Disa croaked. She wanted to explain herself, but she wasn’t sure what she had done to upset him in the first place.
“Come here, Saldis,” he ground out.
Her eyes sought out the prince’s, but he wasn’t looking back. He faced the pit, threw the poker back to the ash and brushed the ash from his breeches.
“Saldis, now.”
So she tore her gaze from the prince’s stooped form and stepped over the hairy limbs and louse-ridden heads to her father’s side.
Then without explanation or even a single word, he seized her around her waist, twirled her around, and with Hakon racing to keep up, steered her from the mead hall. He dragged her down the shallow steps into the sticky wet morning.
Though the storm from the night before had tapered into a chilling mist, the front yard was still sticky and muddy. Disa had to yank her feet from the sucking sludge to keep pace with her father.
“Please!” She hiked up her gown to keep it from dragging in the midge-infested stew. “I’m sorry. I am. Please, slow down.”
He responded by tightening his hold upon her arm. She sprinted to keep pace as he led her across the courtyard and into the musty stables.
The women, up well before their men, tipped their heads and hurried from the jarl’s path as he, his soot-covered daughter, and his grim-faced son blundered past. Disa knew most of them. They were loyal to her mother; she recognized them by their frowns and scorn-filled stares.
“Father, stop!” His behavior surpassed astonishing; it was downright shaming. How childish Disa must have looked to those mothers and wives, their strong arms loaded with firewood and bundled babes.
She tried to yank herself free.
Jarl Sigurd shook her by the elbow. “That’s enough!” He opened the stable door with a clang to make the ra
fters shake. “Bjorgold, you sod! Get up and straw the streets!”
Still holding his daughter, the jarl stomped the mud from his shoes. His thundering calls woke the horses, and the musty interior filled with dust and hair as the startled creatures jumped within their stalls.
“Bjorgold! Bjorgold!”
Hakon, puffing and holding his side, cut across her father’s cries. . “Bjorgold’s still in the hall, father.”
Her father grumbled but at last released his daughter. “The hall, of course.”
Frowning, Disa reclaimed her arm and gently massaged the tender spot left by his vise-like grip.
Her father spat. The horses rolled their eyes and snorted. “Drunk on my mead, lazy oaf.”
But the jarl did not leave to locate his stableman. They were alone, and Jarl Sigurd took the opportunity to turn upon his daughter. A scowl had soured his usually ambivalent expression.
“Disa, what are you doing?”
“Doing?” Caked in soot and now mud, she thought the answer was obvious. “Cleaning, father.”
“Cleaning? Ha!” Hakon scoffed, leaning against one of the stalls and ignoring the mare that gummed his sleeve.
The jarl’s critical stare found his son. “Enough, Hakon.”
Hakon chewed his tongue but could not muster a glare to match the intensity of their father’s. Beaten, he dropped his chin to his chest and dug his heels into the straw-strewn floor.
“The prince took the poker of his own accord,” Disa insisted when her father’s jaw clenched and his flat hazel eyes locked upon hers. She had witnessed fights between her father and brother before, but never had she been the recipient of that familiar disapproving scowl. She was already a failure in her mother’s eyes; she did not think she could handle becoming a disappointment to her father, too.
“And do you not see what Prince Eric is doing? Do you not know who he is?”
His tone was condescending, but his question was confusing. Feeling moronic, she could only answer, “A—a prince?”
“Eldest Prince Eric Haraldsson. Future high king. King!” Her father spat again. “As if that lye-addled dwa—dwarf could ever compare to his father. Long live King Harald!”
“Long live,” her brother hollowly echoed.
“What have I done to upset you? Either of you?” Disa asked with a glance at her younger brother. “I have only ever done what mother has asked.”
“Thirteen, Disa. Thirteen men I’ve turned down in your name. Perhaps you’ve forgotten.”
Disa clenched her fists at her sides. “I remember, father.”
“Honest men. Good honest men. They would have made an honest woman of you. I did not disappoint their feelings so you could wantonly flirt with that orange-haired fellow.”
Her mother had often called her a tease. Her flippancy was the only reason any self-respecting viking would want to marry such a foolish maid. Until now, only her father—her gentle, loving father—had vouched for Disa’s good behavior.
The accusation from her father’s lips was far more painful than it ever had been coming from her mother’s.
“I did not flirt, father. I would never flirt.”
“Ha! Your blush gives you away,” Hakon snarled. “We saw it all. It’s not as if he’s been subtle! Did you know his men were up all night talking about you? And—oh!—you would pale to hear what they said—”
“Which is why you will keep your mouth shut, boy.” Her father demanded with a grumble like a ship’s hull moaning in the tides. “Or—Odin hear me—I’ll pull my blade and shave those wispy hairs from your chin.”
“I have done nothing untoward!” Disa said, desperate for him to understand. “Prince Eric has been kind and attentive, but I have not encouraged him.”
“I know the powers of women,” Jarl Sigurd said, his tone softening and his brow lifting. “And a beautiful woman doesn’t need to do much to inspire a man’s affection.”
Her father rubbed the muzzle of her pony. Her brother stomped the hay-strewn floor.
Disa gathered the front of her apron in a quivering fist. “But he is a prince. If he proposed, would you not accept him?”
“Then I would accept him as my future son-in-law. But it’s the asking that’s the trouble. Men like Prince Eric don’t marry jarls’ daughters, even the pretty ones. Do you understand?”
“I don’t, father. I really don’t,” Disa answered, fighting to ignore the stab of disappointment. “If a prince is too good for me, who would you have me marry?”
Her father smacked a stall door. Disa’s little pony flared her nostrils, rolled her eyes. “A Jarl! You’re beautiful, Disa, beautiful like Freyja, and there are jarls left in this country who would happily take you as their wife. You will be married in good time.”
“Good time?” Disa bristled. “I’m sixteen, father. If there are so many jarls, where are they? Why haven’t they come for me?”
“That’s enough.” The new voice startled them all. A darker, more frightening command than any of them had come to expect of the prince.
The jarl shot to attention with an uncomfortable snort. Hakon straightened to his full, measly height, but his gaze was steely as it locked upon the red-headed prince.
The man himself stood out in the mud, the drizzle settling upon his bleached hair and soaking through his maroon cloak. He had never looked more fearsome or fine as he did in that moment, scowling up at her father, beard quivering in anger, hand curling around the hilt of his sword.
“So this is what the Jarl of Hladir thinks of me?” The prince approached, his feet sliding through the mud. Watching from the other end of the courtyard were those Disa knew: her mother, Olav, the cook, thrall Bjorn. The prince’s men crowded the mead hall’s huge doorway. They were massive, still, and unsmiling.
“I know nobles, my lord,” her father explained, but his earlier confidence was gone. The prince gripped the hilt of his sword and so did the jarl, fingers nervously drumming the pommel.
Prince Eric’s scowl deepened, his dark brown eyebrows dropped low over his magnificent eyes. “You know nobles. You know women. You are a quite the worldly man, Jarl Sigurd.”
“You mock me?”
“Yes,” prince snapped backed. “As is my right. You belittle my honor and accuse me of idle flirtation. It is only fair that I mock you as you mock me.”
“My daughter will someday be the wife of a jarl. As her father, it is my duty to see that her maidenhood remain intact until that time.”
“Father!” Disa hissed, her face flushing.
The prince threw back his shoulders. “So then you accuse me of threatening your daughter’s chastity, is it?”
“Are you saying I’m wrong to protect my daughter, my lord?”
The shame was too great, the silence in the courtyard was stifling. Disa covered her face. She could not take the stares of the audience watching from the courtyard. She could not take the icy stare of the offended prince.
“Protect your daughter, Jarl Sigurd, but not from me. I will act as my honor dictates. Which is why I have come to ask you for Lady Saldis’s hand. I have hope, sir, that you shall deem me good enough.”
Disa dropped her hands from her face. Her mouth fell open.
Her father was no less astonished. His hand fell from his pommel and his chin thrust forward. The whites of his eyes flashed as he stared down at the red-haired prince.
“What did you just say?”
Prince Eric now stood an arm’s reach from the jarl. He, too, had released his sword. “I came last night in search of a good fire and sweet mead. I had not expected to find that precious gem—her.”
“My Disa? You would marry Disa?”
“Why wouldn’t I? She is beautiful and well-mannered..” The gravelly timbre of his voice dared her father to challenge him.
Then the prince sought out her gaze. His eyes, framed by raindrops and darkness, arrested her heart. She stared like a startled doe. She covered her breast where her chest ached.
Her father raked his beard with his fingers and lost himself to thought. He looked to the rafters overhead as he muttered, “Marriage… marriage. The dowry lands… What day is it, Hakon? Friday. Is it Friday? What’s today?” Then, in a booming voice that made them all start, he called, “Bergljot! Come attend to your daughter! She’s to be a princess!”
“Father!” Hakon rasped as he stepped forward and grabbed his father’s sleeve. “Can’t you see what’s going on? This is just a ploy to take control of our jarldom! We must maintain our independence.”
Prince Eric sneered, but the jarl preempted his protest. He spun on his son with a savage growl, “Our jarldom? Since when was any part of Trondelag yours? I am jarl here. Me. If this prince means to forge an alliance with my jarldom it is in my power—not yours—to accept him.”
How strange it was that she should be only a bystander as they discussed her marriage. She was detached from the implications and uninvolved in the politics. A dull girl like her could only stand apart from the others and think, I am very lucky, I shall be a woman, and won’t mother be surprised?
And Lady Bergljot was indeed surprised as she answered her husband’s call and heard the astonishing news firsthand. For once, the great lady could think of nothing derisive to say. She could not diminish her daughter’s happiness, for Disa was to marry a prince while she had only married a jarl.
Huddled together in the strangest of spots—the entrance of the musty stables—the jarl and the prince and the Lady Bergljot congratulated themselves on their good luck. Outside, the late morning sun burned its way through the gray clouds, and the onlookers whispered and smiled and spread the happy news.
Last night she had been teased by the men, but tonight she would dine with them as a princess-to-be. Come Friday, she would be wed to the handsome, chivalrous warrior standing silhouetted in the doorway.
Her brother could say nothing to change her father’s mind or derail the prince’s determination. Prince Eric would have Disa as his princess, for there was no one as fair or as well-bred in the world.
Chapter Three