Éire’s Captive Moon (33 page)

She sighed. The faces of Devin and Devlin were growing less defined in her memory.

Bran began speaking again, leaning near enough that she could smell his sour breath. “Does he know everything about you? You think I do not know that he uses you sinfully? You are not merely his healer, are you?” Charis gasped at the temerity of this man, but he silenced her with a black look. “My mistress has confided that she will stop your coupling with him after they are married. My mistress says that a
leman
is inappropriate for a married man.”

“Your mistress sticks her nose in where it doesn’t belong. She is not to be wed to him, remember? He has cast her off,” Charis reminded the other slave, shoving her sorted herbs back into their several pouches and clothes. “And I
am
his wife, in the ninth degree, monk. You remember that.” There was security in the knowledge. A husband of whatever degree was responsible for the care of the wife and the well-being of any resultant children.

Gerda dropped something into the pot that hung suspended over the cooking fire. Water splashed out with a hissing sound. “Eir!” she called out, irritably. “Fetch your thyme. We want it for the fish stew.”

At the mention of that particular herb, Bran leapt to his feet. “Keep that from me. I’ll not be eating it.” He looked panicked and Charis smiled broadly at him.

“You daft idjit, it won’t be harming you when it’s cooked.”

Charis tucked the herb pouches into her belt and rose to her feet before dusting off her hands. “Lady Gerda, I have the thyme,” she called out. Crossing to the pot, she measured out a large circle in her palm. “Will this be sufficient?”

Gerda nodded impatiently, as if the healer were a recalcitrant child. “Yes, yes, now put it in, girl.” Magda, sitting near the smaller fire with her embroidery, tossed her head.

Charis met Magda’s gaze as she sprinkled the thyme over the liquid surface of the stew. She was about to return her herbs to her sleeping place when she was interrupted once again.

“Build up the fire,
trell
!”

Magda. They had been living under the same roof for a few weeks now. Not the first two weeks of the younger woman’s residence. Those weeks had been spent with Cowan and Lord Tuirgeis. But it was a period Charis preferred not to dwell on if she could avoid it. Now she was in Agnarr’s crowded
langhús
, with Agnarr, Bjorn, Els, Gerda, Magda . . . and Bran. There were no longer any empty beds.

Without a verbal response, Charis did as she was bid. Her initial resistance to taking orders from the sly-eyed young woman had only led to Agnarr having to repeat everything Magda told her to do and it became ridiculous, even to Charis herself. She would do as she was told, but she never spoke to Magda Elsdottir. So she got two thick chunks of wood from underneath her own bed and arranged them in the small fire. She thought it would be sufficient for the rest of the evening.

That was why, when Magda backhanded her across the face, it came as a complete surprise.

“What?” she yelped, falling on her backside. Her right cheek stung from the blow and she covered it with her hand. No, no blood. But it hurt.
 

Agnarr rose to his feet, hands clenched in fists, eyes narrowed. “Enough, Elsdottir. She is my servant and has done as you bid her.”

Magda had a glad gleam under the righteous indignation that burned in her eyes. “She’s wasting wood! We need it and she used two pieces instead of one! Wasteful, greedy slave! We’ll freeze before summer!”

There was absolutely no sound in the longhouse for a few heartbeats. Charis rose to her feet again. There was nothing she could do about the situation now.

Magda disagreed. “Take it out,
trell
. Take out that one,” the young woman insisted, pointing with her booted toe at one chunk that had already begun to have flames dance along the driest part of the bark covering.

“Magda,” Agnarr said, stepping to stand next to Charis, “that is unreasonable. I am sure she will remember for next time.”

“You always stand up for her,” Magda claimed with the high emotion of adolescence. Her father, from where he sat on his bed carving runes into a length of bone, agreed. Charis had heard this claim more than once, but life inside a small place toward the end of a long winter was prone to such tempers and selfishness.

“I will remember,” Charis told Agnarr in a soft monotone.

“No, you will get it now!” Magda insisted. “I refuse to freeze because a slave was stupid.”

“No, I will not have my servant damaged. I judge that all will be well. One piece of firewood will not cost a life this winter. Eir, you may—”

“I’ll do it,” Charis said flatly. She reflected that this might renew talk about her being “magic”, but she was not going to allow Magda—a girl with no proven worth, as far as Charis could see—to try to make her look foolish. Subservient, yes. But not foolish. Keeping Magda’s gaze with her own, Charis bent to pick up the burning wood. She felt the fire lick her fingers, but the feeling was distant. Grasping the wood, watching Magda’s eyes widen in disbelief, Charis stood again, and blew out the flames.

“Let me see your hand.”

Rolling the chunk to her other hand, Charis extended her left to Agnarr, as he requested.

“You were not injured.” Agnarr gripped her hand almost tenderly, and there was both wonder and confirmation in his voice. “I knew you would not be.”

She turned slightly, finally taking her eyes from Magda. “I have never been injured by flame. Achan said it was a gift from my mother.”

“The wood isn’t even hot, Agnarr. It is no gift. It is a trick,” Magda accused sharply. “I’ll show you.”

Charis regarded her, lifting her brow in silent question. Magda ignored her, and the healer watched as the young woman tried to pick up a piece of burning wood. Her hand never even made it past the first warning heat of the flame. Weak-willed, Charis thought. Weak and worthless. All Magda had for merit was a pretty face and a talent for causing trouble.

Charis turned from her, slipping her hand from where it still rested in Agnarr’s clasp before placing the offending wood back under her bench bed. Her cheek still hurt, but her hands were whole, and her hands were what she needed to practice her craft.

Bran, of course, followed her. Even after all this time, he still made the fine hair on the back of her neck crawl as if they were so many vermin. “You deny it all you want,
Cailleach
. I know you.”

Witch
. He had been whispering that name in her ear all winter. It had gone from being an annoyance to being one of the banes of Charis’s life. She began grinding her teeth to keep from shouting at the monk. Back in Ragor, she had been able to avoid the men of Bangor Monastery. Here, she could avoid nothing. There was no room to be alone, no space to wander and absorb the quiet. Quiet was unknown this winter.

She did not turn to talk to him. “Monk.
Trell.
Slave. You are all these things,” she whispered. “Remember, I know your weakness.” She did turn slightly to glare at him over her shoulder. “Should you wish to feel that pain again, all you need to do is ask.”

He all but hissed as he scurried from her side, like an insect she could stomp on with her shoe. The monasteries, she had concluded long since, did not shape men. They shaped mice in the manner of men, timid and unwilling to face the world they lived in. They said it was because of their belief in their dead Man-God. Charis used to believe that. But she had come to know the son of Branieucc over the last several months and he, too, believed in this God. He was not a man like the monks, though he spoke as they did at times. He was not a mouse. He did not know, she thought, how to run away.

He certainly had not managed to before now, and was actually becoming a part of the community here. He even sounded like one of the Northmen.

Charis sighed, deeply and sorrowfully, moving to lean against the wooden wall and listen to the wind outside. It was the closest she could come to running away.

“I have to get out of here,” she whispered to herself. “Soon.”

Cowan pushed the door open and took a huge lungful of fresh air. Wet air, to be sure, but crisp and smelling of spring. He could feel the coming of spring in his blood, in his flesh, in his bones. The need to be up and about, doing something to put some energy back into his body.

He gave heartfelt thanks for the weather. For the ability to leave the stifling confines of the longhouse, and for the family with which he had been living. They were good people. And he’d had the opportunity to do as the saints of old had done in sharing Jesu with them. What more could a man ask? He understood that they did not want to make a commitment to the Lord at this time; it would be hard here among people who did not believe. But his job was not to condemn anyone—it was only to share what he believed. That was what he had been taught in the Frankish lands, and that was what he continued to believe. Even the blessed Saint Patrick had not been condemning when he had been alive. Patrick had just wanted everyone to know that the Great Creator God loved them, and he used any means necessary to share that.

Cowan believed, now more than he had before, that God had him here in the land of the
vikingr
for a purpose. And if those two women in his new family were that purpose, then that was enough.

“You’ve got the itch then, Geirmundr?” Tuirgeis asked, coming to stand next to him and enjoy the breath of freedom.

Cowan led them both into the open, muddy patch of dirt in front of Tuirgeis’s cousin’s house. “Itch? Is that what you call it?” He chuckled. “Maybe. I just want to get out!”

Tuirgeis chuckled as well. “Well, I think we can leave soon. I want to take you back to my home and family. And there is the summer’s work to plan as well.” He paused, stretched a bit, and scrubbed at the heavy, dark beard that had grown over the winter. “And you need a wife!”

Cowan rolled his eyes. “So you’ve said all winter. Enough, already! When my God is ready for me to marry, I will marry.”

Tuirgeis shook his head. “So
you’ve
said all winter,” he echoed in a jesting tone. Then he changed the subject. “We do have work to do, though. I estimate we will leave in two days’ time.” He tucked his hands into the heavy woven belt he wore. “Will you be ready?”

Two days? He only had two days? He would have to talk to Charis before then. How would that possibly work?

Not being completely blind, Tuirgeis cleared his throat noisily, effectively recalling Cowan to the conversation at hand. “If you have any goodbyes to make, or other arrangements, today would be a good day.”

Two days. Two days. Two days.
Those words whispered through Cowan’s mind as he ducked back inside the longhouse to get a heavier cloak for the trip across the village. Two days. It was impossible. Well, improbable, at any rate, he amended to himself. He was trying to think of what to say to the healer as he approached Agnarr’s home. To say that she shouldn’t give up on him just because he had to leave for a short time and that she should be ready, because he would return just as soon as he could, with the preplanned excuse of getting married. He was prepared for her derisive disbelief, her gray-eyed glare, and even for her anger. She would want to leave now, he knew. Likely, she would be wishing she could have left the day before. Waiting would not be her wish.

Still, he hoped to persuade her to wait for him before she affected an escape. She would never make it back to Éire without a guard, even if she did—by some miracle—learn to defend herself with a sword or spear. He was ready to tell her so, just like that, too.

What he was not ready for was to see her staggering out the door of the longhouse, hair unbound so that it snaked in greasy tendrils down her arms and linen-swathed breasts. He certainly was not ready to see the monk from Bangor follow her, a stick in his hand.

“You leave my mistress alone, witch!” he shouted in
Gaeilge
. Cowan barely noted the language, but he was right there to stop the monk from striking Charis’s shoulders.

“Stop!” he called, jumping over a half-frozen puddle to grip the thick walking stick with both his hands. “What are you doing?”

“Get out of my way! She insulted my mistress,” the monk ground out, panting. His breath reeked of rotten meat, and Cowan wondered if they all smelled like that. The fresh breeze did remind him that the winter-heavy air of the indoors was far more . . . rich in odor.

Cowan ripped the stick from Bran’s hands, keeping it tightly in his own, just in case. “I am a free man,” he reminded the other islander. “You may not tell me what to do.”