by Ingrid Hahn
Would God accept what she’d tried to do for her beloved if He did not plan to allow Thorvald to live?
She studied him. His breathing was shallow and not labored. Though it was steady, it was so slight; each inhalation was a miracle in and of itself. At any moment, it seemed as if the air he drew into his lungs might be the last.
“I’ve never seen a man fight like he fought.” Ozrik’s voice was thick, as if he struggled to hold back a display of emotion. “He’s a true warrior.”
A warrior who’d wanted to be a farmer.
No. She wouldn’t think of Thorvald in the past tense. He wasn’t dead yet.
“When I think of the things I said to him…” Ozrik bowed his head. His shoulders slumped.
“Shh. None of that, now. Whatever you said, I have no doubt of your intentions. He stumbled.” Alodie was nearly babbling and couldn’t stop herself. “When the time came, he didn’t shirk his duty, heedless of whatever the consequences might be. He should be held up as an example to us all.”
“I should never have doubted him.”
“You did right. Perhaps if you hadn’t, he’d never have…” Become the person she could admire. And love. “He’s as flawed as any of us because he’s no more than a man.”
“He’s much more than that.”
Alodie shook her head, but said nothing, keeping her attention on Thorvald. Ozrik didn’t understand. Maybe he couldn’t. Anyway, it wasn’t worth trying to explain to him what she meant—how she’d thought of him and his kind as demons. It was Thorvald who had chipped away at her beliefs, one action at a time.
Now, she was ashamed of what she’d thought. She’d been afraid and selfish and…and, oh, yes, they’d wronged her. Atrociously. If good was going to come out of it—miraculous good, in point of fact—then she wanted desperately to cling to it. Perhaps she was still selfish, but if there was such good to be had in this world, how could she keep living if it was snatched from her?
She set aside the dirty cloth and ran a hand over his bearded cheek. “Where are you?”
He stirred and his eyelids cracked. Her heart leaped.
When he spoke, his voice was barely audible. “Are we dead?” He tensed, trying to sit up a little, eyes darting around.
“Shhh.” Alodie took his hand and squeezed. “No, we’re not dead. We’re here…together.”
“For now.”
The tears she’d been fighting sprang up, hot and prickly, obscuring her vision in a damp blur, and her voice wobbled. “What does that mean?” Was he dying? Did he know it? Was that his way of admitting that he was not long for this world?
He didn’t answer, only relaxed back with his eyes closed. She squeezed his hand harder.
She didn’t want to be different from what and who she’d been before the demons swept her away.
But she was.
“I want you.” The admission slid from her tongue like polished pearls. “I want you to stay with me.”
“I won’t. I don’t want to live here. I want to go home. Help me stand.”
Her lungs squeezed. “You can’t—”
But he was already pushing himself to standing, letting out a small grunt as he straightened to his full height. “Ozrik, give us a moment, will you?”
His friend glanced between them, mouth pinched in slight disapproval. He gave a slow nod and retreated.
Alodie’s lips felt numb. “Is this…” She didn’t want to venture the possibility. After all she’d faced, this couldn’t be more frightening. Turning faint-hearted now would do her no credit. “Is this goodbye?”
“It could be. If you don’t allow me to take you for my wife.”
She went silent, almost dizzy with an unexpected assault of emotion.
His expression fierce, he reached out to cup her face. Staring into the depths of his eyes, the color seemed no more real today than it had the first morning she’d seen it. Tiny droplets of rain were collecting on the ends of his long lashes.
“Alodie?”
She raised her brows imperiously at him. “Three husbands claiming me within the space of a few days? I think not.”
His expression clouded. “But—”
“Not another husband who’s not of my own choosing. You will not take me. I will take you.”
He softened, almost smiling. From his face shone the warmth of a man gazing upon the most precious item in the whole world. “You’re choosing me?”
“I am.” A critical detail pierced her thoughts. He might not have been the demon she once loathed and feared, but he was still a pagan. “You’re going to have to give up your gods and take mine, you know. I won’t be able to live with the idea of having you only temporarily. I am going to need to be with you for eternity.”
“I was ready to lay down my life for you.” The smile that finally overcame his features was thin, but full of light. “I think I can manage it.”
“It’s not as easy as that.”
“After all we’ve seen? Not only today, but…” He clasped her hands in his and brought them to rest against his heart. “Yes. Yes, it is. You saved me during the storm. Kept me alive when I wanted to die. And today…today you give me something to stay alive for. I accept anything because I accept you.”
Epilogue
The True Meaning of Terror
Thorvald had believed that he’d understood the true meaning of terror.
He did not.
Not until a late winter night when Alodie felt her first pain. His heart started beating with wild abandon. Up until that moment, he’d thought he could remain calm. Or at least rational. After all, it was only childbirth.
Only childbirth, indeed. He’d been a rank fool to believe he wouldn’t have to work to keep himself together. Standing on a battlefield facing hundreds of angry men all hungry to tear him to pieces had never been half so terrifying.
In the flickering light of the fire, Birna gave him one sharp look and that was all he’d needed. He had to remain master of himself. Inside he was more frightened than he’d ever been. Outside, he could show nothing—for Alodie’s sake.
He sat by her side, holding her hand, letting her squeeze as hard as she could each time a pain came. “I’d do this for you if I could.”
The day drew on. The light came and went quickly, no more than a brief dalliance, as it was in the dark winter.
“Might as well go out and see to the animals.” Birna handed him a bowl of food and he handed it right back.
“I can’t eat.”
Thorvald sat on a stool next to his wife. Alodie lay on her side in bed, resting during a reprieve. Having been awake a good portion of the night, she already looked tired.
Birna spooned the food back. Since Alodie had become certain of her condition, Birna had spent twice her usual time at the loom, producing fabric at an alarming rate. When Thorvald questioned her, she’d always said that though they could have enough cloth to fill a longhouse floor to rafter, it wouldn’t seem like enough once the child arrived. “All right then. Might as well go out and see to the animals.”
“See to…no, they’ll have to wait. I don’t want to miss the birth.”
“Won’t happen for a while yet.” Birna glanced to Alodie. “See to what needs to be done.”
The idea that it wasn’t going to happen for a long while made him feel like he was sinking. “How long a while is a while?”
Birna cast a critical eye over Alodie. Alodie caught the other woman looking and winced. “It’s all right. You needn’t disseminate if you think I’ll be at this a while, not for my sake. I’d rather have the tru—oh no…”
She paused to get through the agony, face contorting. Birna reached down to place a comforting hand over Alodie’s shoulder. “Go with it. Don’t fight.”
“Easy for you to say. Curse it, this hurts!” When it passed, Alodie softe
ned and took a breath. “I’d rather have the truth.”
Birna gave her a tender look. “It will probably be a while and get much worse before it’s over.”
Alodie’s head fell back on the pillow. “At least we’ll finally have our baby.”
Thorvald swallowed, but nodded. There was still a long way to go. So many things could go wrong. He’d seen plenty of animals through the business of birthing their young. A goat or sheep was a valuable commodity, and sometimes, for many, one animal was the difference between seeing spring again or…not.
But he’d give all the goats and sheep in the realm of men and travel to the land of giants to slaughter theirs too before he’d give up his wife. She was his everything. She made his life worthwhile. He’d fought for her. Put his life at dire risk, willing to die for her. If she died now, he’d have nothing left.
Outside, he wiped his hand over his damp brow. His breath made clouds before his mouth. The slanted winter sun in a clear sky made the white world sparkle. It was maddening that he couldn’t do anything.
With a huff of frustration, he went about his business with the animals, making sure all were properly watered and fed, and ensuring they had clean bedding in their pens. Yesterday the movements had been familiar. Just one more thing in the pleasant routine of his now quiet life.
Today he wasn’t fully in his body. Too many thoughts were shooting arrows in the ragged patchwork of his mind.
Outside again tending to a few fussy details, he surveyed his surroundings. All about him was his land—it had dogged his dreams for so many winters, been his motivating force. He’d thought it the only thing he’d wanted. Believed this and this alone could make him happy.
It did make him happy. But only because he shared it with her. They worked the land together, tending animals, turning earth, watching the tiny shoots emerge from the soil after the earth awoke from her slumber.
He crossed himself—something he did many times a day with his wife. Morning, late morning, afternoon, evening, night, and at every meal. At first, he’d kept to himself how strange the idea of a single God sounded. Birna made her objections known, but Thorvald had promised Alodie he’d accept her God and leave his own unruly bunch behind, and he had no intention of doing anything less.
He enjoyed the stories she told him. Especially the one about turning water to wine. A hearty drink of something a deep, jewel-tone red wouldn’t have gone amiss now, in point of fact.
When he’d learned about the saints and come to understand what he could ask of them, his silent misgivings had evaporated. There were dozens who could be called upon to help in petitioning the Lord’s intercession. He’d liked that. Cnut—who still owed Thorvald an explanation as to his choice to leave his people—had promised to come stay with them the following summer and tell him more stories of saints’ lives.
When Alodie had first told him she felt the quickening, the first thing he’d done was decide which saint he’d ask for help in keeping her—keeping them both, Lord help him—safe. For his wife and their child, though, choosing had ultimately been simple. Nobody less than the Blessed Virgin herself would do.
It’d taken a while to grapple with the idea of a virgin giving birth. In the end, he’d given up trying to comprehend and decided to accept it would simply be beyond his understanding.
Thorvald bowed his head, closed his eyes, and whispered his words of praise and thanks before begging Mary to petition her son to keep Alodie safe. Then he returned to the animals, doing what needed to be done.
When he finished his chores, he walked back slowly, his heavily swaddled feet crunching over the snow. If he returned and found the business miraculously concluded, Alodie through the ordeal, with their child at her breast, he’d not be too sorry to have missed the event.
Or so he thought until hours later in the dead of darkness when the time came. He was first to hold the slick infant as it emerged into the world, Birna by his side, exclaiming in joy and rushing to rub the little body down with a clean linen.
Lord of all, help him. This was his child. He was a father.
A rush unlike anything he’d experienced shot through his body.
The tiny thing was perfect. Utterly, brilliantly, wonderfully perfect. Birna quickly cleaned out the mouth and nose. An outraged scream broke through the air. Alodie laughed and reached out her arms.
Vision blurred with tears, Thorvald carefully laid the newborn child into his wife’s arms. Emotion cinched his throat and tightened his chest. Exhaustion and relief made him tremble, while bright joy and the warmth of profound emotion made his eyes well with tears. Alodie cradled the babe close, blood smearing on the bare skin of her chest.
“I thought I knew what it was to love.” He gently cupped the top of the tiny wet head. The scrunched face was the most beautiful he’d ever seen, second only to Alodie. “Today I learned there is more than I can know.”
Beaming up at him, her face shiny, her hair damp and tangled, her smile never more brilliant, Alodie reached to stroke his face.
He leaned down. His lips locked with his wife’s, their new daughter in her mother’s arms, howling away.
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Acknowledgments
Thank you to Erin Molta for putting Vikings on your wishlist and for all your hard work in helping to make this story ready for the world.
Thank you to Marta who told me to go for it.
Thank you to Jonathan who told me how I described a ship in a storm was probably wrong and pointed me in a better direction by plucking a book from his personal library and opening to the page he thought I ought to read. That I did not take that direction was my own choice and I apologize to readers for the inaccuracy. I liked the drama and theatricality of what I’d written too much to part with it.
Thank you to Nancy C. Weeks for your friendship, which I treasure.
Thank you to Carrie Lomax for unwavering support and an awfully cute Viking ship top for my baby (that he looked pretty rad in, if I say so myself).
Thank you to Emily for watching my older son while I wrote the first draft of this book.
Thank you to Claire and Jamie who first made me want to write a much more satisfying punishment scene which utilized spanking to its best advantage.
Thank you to the anonymous (to me) person who mentioned the tidbit about leper colonies.
Thank you to the copyeditor, J.K., for catching many errors that would have irked an eagle-eyed reader. I shudder to think what this book would have been without the gift of your expertise.
Websites consulted during the writing of this story were mainly The Viking Lady and Hurstwic. Thank you to those in the online community dedicated to providing reasonably historically accurate information (as far as that is possible when examining the past) to the wider world.
About the Author
Ingrid Hahn is a failed administrative assistant with a BA in art history. Her love of reading has turned her mortgage payment into a book storage fee, which makes her the friend you hope never asks you for help moving. Originally from Seattle, she is, as of this book’s publication, living temporarily in Canberra, Australia, with her ship-nerd husband and two small sons. When she’s not reading or writing, she loves knitting, theater, nature walks, travel, history, and is a hopelessly devoted fan of Jane Austen. Find her on Twitter as @Ingrid_Writer, on Instagram as ingrid_hahn, and on Facebook as Ingrid Hahn. Being a full-time stay-at-home parent to two active youngsters has significantly reduced the time she spends on these sites, but she trusts social media will be alive and active when her children regretfully do what all children do far too quickly.
Also by Ingrid Hahn…
To Win a Lady’s Heart
To Covet a Lady’s Heart
To Seduce a Lady’s Heart
Willful Depravity
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