Winter Serpent (44 page)

“Then when Sweyn Barrelchest roused me, I heard the cries of the men running to tell my father how one son had killed another, and I was again
frenzied. I did not heed the words of Sweyn speaking to me; I heard only my own rage and the voice of the bjorn which had not left me, and I returned to the great blackness where there was no light, no earth, no knowledge of the place about me. I flung myself into the house to kill my father also. But my father saw me running to him as a berserkr and cursed me. Cursed me, the bjorn brother, the one on whom he had made great boasts. He struck me with his sword and was astonished that I fell at once, being filled with the bear’s spirit. But he thought he had killed me, and did not strike again. It was Sweyn Barrelchest who dragged me from that house, and the warriors who were sworn to me who carried me to the bear’s ship, and then we set sail from that place. We steered for the south, and it was a death journey to me as I thought on what had occurred and longed to go with the bjorn spirits and remain forever with them. But this was not to be so, for we raised the land of the Scots and it was here, in this fjord, that Sweyn made a camp and went to ask the Scots for a healer. And you were that healer he brought me.”

His eyes seemed to light like lamps even in the bright sunshine then, and his voice lost its labored sound as he looked down at her.

“I did not know that I lacked for anything until you came,” he said quietly. “I had longed only for death. And then when I saw you I learned that which the berserkr must always know: that I had been apart from life, alone, and without warmth. It was your body which was warm to me; the way that you moved and spoke, this was real. And when my child moved in you I could see that I lived also, that my life continued in my son and the other children which you would give me. I knew this thing, this great thing, and I vowed I would pay a great price to keep it.”

Without thinking he put out his hand to her, as if to touch her; to jar her stillness. The hand was wrapped in a linen cloth. He pulled it back quickly, putting it behind him.

“You think I have ill-treated you,” he went on hurriedly, “and that therefore you have a vengeance on me. I have not forgotten how you shed tears when I first took you to me, but the hurt was not permanent, as you know. You were docile in my bed afterward and willing to put your arms about my neck in the dark. Yet I knew also that there was hatred in you, that you were crafty. You have even boasted of your cleverness before me. Yet, despite how much you have angered me, I know there is still much gentleness, much warmth in you yet to give me. It is this thought which has followed me since then. In this may you have your revenge and be satisfied. I say this freely so that you may see I acknowledge it. Besides, it is a small thing, this matter, for my mother bore her first child unwillingly and lived to forget her hate. So will it be with you, in time.”

He waited again for her to speak, and when she did not, he looked faintly puzzled.

“So, there remains one more thing,” he told her. “It was Sweyn Barrelchest my friend who is now dead, who saw that you pleased me. At his dying he knew in his wisdom that I should not return to kill you. Such a thing was not possible, for even the bjorn turned from you in his rage. This was the sign. And Sweyn knew that I, Thorsten Eiricsson, could not then do what the bjorn had failed to do. It was my fate, instead, that I should find you and my son. In so doing, I should not carry the mark of the berserkr forever. Only Sweyn Barrelchest, who was wise, could know this. He worshiped Odin the One-eyed, and as he was dying he gave my child to his god. Thus he sealed it. I obey him. I honor his death wish. I have broken the bjorn oaths which held me on the death fire of Sweyn Barrelchest, and the bjorn oaths cannot again be taken. It is finished.”

He looked away from her, his forehead lightly beaded with sweat.

“So now you know all my thoughts,” he told her. “It has not been easy, but I have spoken so that you should know this, and so, there should be no unpleasant display before the men such as happened in the land of the Picts.”

Her mouth dropped open.

“Is this what you have been saying to me with this long-winded nothingness?” she cried. “That you feared you would have to drag me from this place weeping and resisting you? After you have boasted it up and down the land that I am your legal, loving wife?”

For a moment he looked bewildered. Then he recovered, his face stern, and stepped forward and took the spear and threw it flat on the ground before them.

“I say it is finished,” he said. “There is nothing to argue about.”

“Yes, it is finished!” she cried. “But only because my own people have abandoned me to you because they are afraid of the trouble I have caused.”

“They do right to fear you,” he said stolidly, “for I would kill anyone who kept you from me.”

To his surprise she began to weep. A tear ran down her face and then another, and she wiped them away wearily, miserably, with the back of her hand.

“I have not been willing to abandon my child,” she said, half to herself. “What choice have I?”

He waited expectantly for her to continue, but she sat weeping, rubbing her face as a child does, unreconciled. She knew he waited for her, and sullenly half-turned from him, wiping her eyes on the hem of the arasaid, composing her face. At last she got to her feet and with trembling hands bent over the child and lifted him.

The Jarl stepped forward to see his son, and then stopped as if struck. “Thor’s beard!” he said, shaken. He peered at the child’s face. “What has

happened to him?”

She whirled on him.

“Yes, look at him!” she cried. “Look well at him, for now you will see how it has fared with us! I have heard your speeches and your troubles and how you have thought on this and that” She began to weep again. “You speak of revenge. See your child I hold, for this was your revenge on me! I could have profited much had I killed him or sent him away!”

The Jarl’s face was baffled as he watched her jerking the tartan cover over the child, trying to balance him, sleeping, on her shoulder.

“So you would know what is the matter with your son!” she choked. The tartan fell to the ground and the Jarl bent and retrieved it. He handed it to her and she snatched it away. “My child has been sick to die,” she told him incoherently, “and they have been pulling me back and forth between them, seeking to gain from my misery, seeking to kill him always, death and my enemies.”

“It is over now,” the Jarl assured her. He put out his hand as if to grasp her arm.

“Do not touch me!” she cried. “You think that now it is over, that the Scots have cast me out… the Picts have cast me out… that I am defeated once more and you may now make speeches and boast on yourself…”

“Did you think then that I had boasted to you?” he exclaimed. He stopped and considered her, clutching the child, glaring through her tears. “This is a strange thing with you, that you talk always of defeat and your pride, like a man. Like a warrior. It is most unsuitable for a woman. And foolish.” He looked at the child. “You had better give him to me,” he said. “You are going to drop my son, holding him thus.”

She made no resistance to him as he took the child out of her arms. The Jarl beckoned to one of the men watching them from the smallboats, and he got up and came toward them. It was Hallfreor, the steersman of the bear ship.

The Jarl handed the sleeping child to him, wrapping the tartan over the baby’s legs. But the steersman exclaimed as he saw the child’s blotched face. Both men bent over the child, their heads almost touching, and Hallfreor said something in rapid Norse. The Jarl touched his son’s head carefully with his hand.

“No, he is cool,” the Jarl said in a low voice. “She has been looking after him, and I trust her in such matters.”

Hallfreor nodded and bore the child away. The Jarl turned back to

Doireann, standing with her hands at her face, her head bowed.

“Yes, look after him well now,” she was saying, “for he is the Jarl’s son. He lives now, but it is his dead body I thought I would be carrying this day!” The awkward sobbing wracked her. “I have not wept before, this,” she cried and her voice was angry, muffled. “I do not know why I must now!”

The Jarl looked down at her.

“Shh, compose yourself,” he said. “We have stayed in this place too long as it is.”

She gave no sign that she heard him.

“I do not see why you do this,” he said somewhat uneasily. “It seems to me that I have offered much and forgiven much, and this has not been an easy thing for me to do.” He raised his voice slightly so as to be heard over the sound of her weeping. “You are convinced that you will be unhappy now, but this need not be so. I will not raise my hand to you, if this is what you fear, although it is not to be denied that you deserve a good beating.” He could see his words had little effect. “Nor will I take another woman into my house as long as you live,” he offered. “For it is true, I claim you as my legal wife and no other.”

He bent toward her.

“Did you hear me then, what I said to you?” he asked. Her look was dull, defiant. He frowned.

“It is always so when I talk to you,” he said impatiently, “that you appear to be listening and are not. Have you understood nothing of what I have said to you in this place? It has been dangerous to come to this little island in the middle of the water, and more dangerous to linger here in order to speak. Dangerous and foolhardy for myself and for the Vikings. Yet I thought I could speak to you with the true feeling that is in me and not have you weeping and crying out, as you do now.”

But he was close to her and, almost reluctantly, he reached out and touched her cheek with his hand.

“How shall I speak to you through the barrier that is between us?” he said more softly. “I am determined in what I will do. I have broken my vows for this. But sometimes I think it is such an angry, perverse thing between us that we will spend our lives together always arguing. It is not a happy thought.”

She was moving her eyes, looking out of the corners of them at the bandaged hand which touched her face, the red fingertips protruding.

He followed her eyes, shrugged.

“So, it is burned,” he said flatly. “It is a sign that I shall lead men again, but not as a berserkr. The fire burns, the iron cuts, but I am free.”

Her eyes widened.

“Yes, now you have heard me,” he said slowly. “Now I see on your face that you know the meaning of what I have said.” He grasped her arms so that she
could not pull away. “And I see also the look which says now you are thinking what you will do, this crafty thing which is in your eyes. But I will not allow you to set yourself against me again. I will not be held before the others as the object of a woman’s spite.”

She shivered violently in, his grasp.

“You must stop weeping now,” he told her. “It will make you sick.” He turned her so that his back shielded her from the stares of the others. “Come, it is proper that you set aside this crying out and acknowledge that which is so. Look at me. See me as I am now, without the bjorn spirit. Touch me with your hand, of your own accord, casting aside this stubbornness of which you are so proud.”

At these words she stared at him, startled, her head thrown back.

“Yes, touch me,” he said suddenly, “as I see this is what you do not wish to do. For it seems you do not wish to acknowledge that I am here, that I have a true claim on you, and that it is my child which you bore. Is this what you talk of when you talk of defeat, then? Yet this is what you must admit, freely, when you touch me: that you submit, that you are defeated, if that is the way you will have it.”

“No, I cannot,” she whispered. She shuddered, and it was a strange sort of fear which attacked her. “It is not just!” she cried.

“Just?” he repeated. “What could be more just than that you obey me?” “What do you want of me?” she said. “I have said that I will go with you!” But her head bent before him, and although she could not see it, she knew
the water slipped by the place where they stood, the island sailed on in the light, and now there was no need of resistance. The boats waited.

She raised her hand and put it on his chest, on the bare skin over the breastbone where it was smooth to the touch, and she could feel the slow pump of his heart under her palm.

“So, good,” he said to her, and his voice was low as he stooped to her, and unsteady. He put his hand to hers and covered it. “This is the way it will be.”

The Northmen were shouting something.

“My son needs you,” Thorsten Eiricsson said. “Are you all right? You must not weep before the others.”

“Yes,” she said, “I am all right”

He stepped back from her and picked up the spear, turning away to shout to the others. He went quickly down the bank and she followed him, stepping where he had stepped in the tangled undergrowth.

About the Author

MAGGIE DAVIS
, who also writes under the pen names of Katherine Deauxville and Maggie Daniels, is the author of over 25 published novels, included A
Christmas Romance
(as Maggie Daniels) and the best-selling romances
Blood Red Roses, Daggers of Gold, The Amethyst Crown, The Crystal Heart
, and
Eyes of Love
, all written as Katherine Deauxville.