Ingunn wished he would just be quiet. They grew closer. When Magnus disappeared from view, only to appear the next moment on the flat ground atop the hill, he smiled at her and Ingunn ran into his arms. He hugged her, then quickly set her aside, his eyes on his son.
“Egill,” he said, and scooped the boy up high in his arms, then immediately set him down and buffeted his shoulder. He was a boy now, not a child. “I have missed you, boy. By Odin, you are larger than when I left you but a month ago. Have you been a good master in my absence?”
Egill nodded seriously, then turned in his father’s firm grasp. “Who is the woman, Father? Is she your new wife? Is the little girl her daughter?”
“No, she isn’t my wife. Now, away with you. You may go help the men bring up our new goods.” Magnus didn’t move until Egill had disappeared down the winding trail that led to the viksfjord.
He looked around deliberately. “Where is Cyra?”
“She is back there, waiting.”
The red-haired woman came into sight then. She stopped some paces behind Magnus. Magnus called out, “Cyra, come hither!”
Ingunn stared. The red-haired woman made no movement; her expression didn’t change. Ingunn turned to watch Cyra run to Magnus. Ingunn watched, stupefied, as he lifted Cyra from the ground and hugged her tight; then he bent her over his arm and kissed her long and deep and hard. “You are well?”
Cyra nodded happily. She touched her fingers to his lean tanned cheek. “Aye, I am well. I had believed perhaps you no longer wanted me, but ’tis no matter now.”
It was at that moment that the wind quickened and lifted Zarabeth’s hair from her throat. Ingunn saw the iron slave collar around the woman’s neck. None of Magnus’ slaves wore slave collars.
None save this woman.
She blurted out, “This woman is your slave? She’s not your wife?”
Magnus stiffened, then laughed, too loudly, too harshly. “Nay, I will wed with no woman. Aye, this is Zarabeth and she is my slave and will remain so. The little girl is her sister, Lotti. Take care, Ingunn, for she is without hearing.”
A slave; she was naught but a slave! Ingunn stared at her. The woman’s face was without color, but her expression was calm. Slowly Ingunn smiled. Ah, she would show the woman what a slave was for. She held no favor, as did Cyra. Aye, Magnus wouldn’t intervene with this one. As for the little girl, she was hugging her sister’s thigh, looking frightened, her oddly colored eyes—aye, they were of a golden hue—wide and wary. The child could not hear? She shook her head at the foolishness of it. A child like that shouldn’t have been allowed to draw breath. She merely nodded to the woman and stepped back, waiting to take cues from her brother.
She watched him turn to the woman, Zarabeth, and say sharply, “Stand not there like a witless fool. Bring Lotti to the longhouse. ’Tis the large one there in the center of the cluster of buildings.”
Zarabeth felt stunned at the sheer size of the farmstead as she walked through the gates of the palisade. It was like a small village enclosed behind its stout wooden walls. There were many wooden huts, some others of wattle and daub, all of them with thatched roofs. The longhouse looked like a great low wooden barn. There were few windows, narrow and covered with stretched animal hides. She saw the smoke rising from the hole in the great sloped roof. As she walked beside Magnus, he said, “Yon is the blacksmith’s workshop. The smith’s name is Rollo and he makes all our weapons, farm tools, and pots and pans. Next to the longhouse is the cow byre; the sheep are kept in the low hut next to it. The slaves’ hut is over there.” He paused, awaiting her reaction. She made none, but she did look at the mean stone hut for several moments. “Outside the gates of the palisade are the fields. We will harvest in some two months and prepare for the winter.
“There is the bathhouse, and next to it the privy. The covered hut behind it is for food storage.” It was as if he were presenting his possessions for her approval, she thought vaguely, yet she would have naught to do with any of it save as a slave. She would have no pride in anything. She said evenly, “Your farmstead is of obvious value, Magnus. I compliment you on your achievements.”
His jaw tightened. He looked down at her, but it was only the iron slave collar about her neck that he saw. Thick and ugly, and he knew that it must chafe her flesh. Make her flesh raw and ugly. But the man in Hedeby had claimed that she’d called to him, offered herself to him for his help . . . It had all made sense. Magnus shook his head. No more would he question this woman’s motives. What was done was done, and that was all there was to it.
He turned and called out, “Ingunn, will you have a feast prepared by tonight?”
She hurried to his side, ignoring Zarabeth. “We have been preparing food and ale and mead for the past week, brother. All is ready. I have already sent a messenger to Father. I hope he and Mother and our brothers will come as well.”
“And Orm?” Magnus gave her a sly smile.
He looked at her, surprised. Her eyes darkened and her jaw set itself in a stubborn line. She shook her head. “Father is displeased with him. Since you left, he has forbidden Orm to come near me. He becomes a foolish old man.”
“Don’t say that again. Our father has reasons for everything he does. We will speak of this more later.” Magnus saw that Lotti was lagging behind, her small shoulders stooped with weariness, and leaned down to pick her up. She gave a startled laugh, an odd mewling sound, then wrapped her thin arms around his neck and yelled in a loud slurred voice that was perfectly clear, “Papa!”
Magnus looked down at his son, who was so jealous he was nearly red from ear to ear. “You are far too large for me to carry, Egill. You are nearly grown, not like this little girl here.” He got no response from Egill, but continued easily, “Say hello to Lotti. She cannot hear you, so you must speak directly at her when she is looking at you and speak slowly so that she will understand.”
“Her hair is ugly,” Egill said. “Her face is ugly too.”
Magnus eyed his son. “I had hoped you had become more a man than a jealous little boy. Taunts against little girls aren’t worthy of men. I am disappointed in you.”
“She called you Papa! You’re my papa!”
“Aye, ’tis true, but blame her not.”
Zarabeth said nothing. She well imagined that the little boy, who was the very image of his father, would not be pleased at the intrusion of a stranger.
She said to him, smiling, “You will grow up to be of your father’s size, Egill. He will be very proud of you.”
Egill looked at the woman with the very red hair and eyes so green they looked like wet water reeds. “I don’t care what a slave thinks. You will hold your tongue, woman.”
Zarabeth drew back, silent as a stone. The boy was right. She had no right to speak her mind, she had no rights, she had nothing at all. She held out her arms to Lotti, and her little sister immediately pulled away from Magnus. Zarabeth moved away from Magnus, holding herself away from the hurt.
She saw the slave Cyra immediately take her place. The woman was but a few years older than Zarabeth, and her hair was long to her hips and as black as a moonless night. Her eyes were a dark brown and her flesh a soft peach color. She was exquisitely beautiful and Zarabeth wondered from whence she had come. Ha, where she had been captured was more to the point. She was also a slave, but there was no collar around her throat. A slave prized for her work in the master’s bed.
“I have worked with the flax,” Cyra was saying to Magnus, pointing to a long rectangular field to their left. “I will make you fine trousers and shirts.”
Cyra wore a gown of white, full-cut, belted at her narrow waist. The material was a fine wool, not harsh and coarsely woven. It was as fine a garment as Ingunn was wearing.
Zarabeth was tired and depressed. She wanted to be alone, away from Magnus, away from the dozens of talking people who lived and worked and spent their lives on this farmstead. She hated it.
She touched her fingertips to the cold iro
n of the collar and kept walking.
When Ingunn said loudly that Cyra would show Zarabeth to the slave hut, Magnus did not contradict her. He had no intention of allowing Zarabeth to remain there even one night, neither she nor Lotti, but he would handle the situation in private. It wouldn’t hurt to peel away a bit more of her lamentable pride, that stiff aloofness of hers that infuriated him. Let her believe for a while that she would stay in that mean hut.
He paused a moment, though, when he heard Cyra say to Zarabeth, “I do not sleep in there. I sleep in the longhouse, with Magnus.”
And Zarabeth said with sweet laughter, “I am pleased for you, Cyra. You will continue to bed the savage, and I will be free from his attention.”
Blood pounded through him. He wished now that he had taken her that day, that he had ignored Lotti and just taken her and been done with it. Damn her, he wanted to hurt her. He was shaking as he walked into his longhouse. No, he could not have done that; he couldn’t have taken her in front of the child, nor could he have abused Lotti in any way. But he would have her soon. There would be naught for her to do about it.
Did she really believe he would allow Lotti to sleep with the other slaves in that cold damp hut?
He watched Egill run to Horkel, who had followed him into the house.
Everything looked familiar; everything felt exactly the same, smelled the same. But it wasn’t. Life had changed now, and no matter how he had thought to shape it according to his own whims, he knew in that instant that the future was no longer his to control.
Zarabeth was wearing one of her gowns, a soft pink wool with a white overtunic that she had worn in York. Then she had fastened it with two finely worked brooches at the shoulders. They were gone; she assumed that Toki had taken them. Now she’d knotted the ties of the overtunic at her shoulders. Her hair was combed and hung freely down her back. Ingunn had told her to serve the guests all the mead and ale they wished. She had merely nodded, half her attention on Lotti, who had come to a beginning understanding with several of the small children who played freely throughout the longhouse. She didn’t know who the children were; it seemed not to matter. They were all thrown together and there was always an adult who chided them or played with them, or gently pushed them out of the way.
Magnus’ longhouse was rather like a low, wooden barn. The floor was of beaten earth, so hard that walking on it raised no dirt or dust. There were smooth slabs of stone around the perimeter of the room, set firmly up to the walls. The walls were made of split tree trunks set side by side in a double layer, standing upright. Zarabeth looked up to see that the roof was supported by big wooden beams and sloped sharply. At the close end of the long room were rows of clean wooden tables where all the family and guests were now sitting eating beef and mutton, venison and wild boar. There were trays of peas and cabbage and potatoes, and huge bowls of apples and pears and peaches. Over the huge rectangular fire hearth, bounded with thick stones that rose a good three feet high, were two huge iron pots suspended by chains that were hooked to the ceiling beams. One pot was filled with veal stew, the other with a mixture of potatoes and onions and garlic and beef. There were iron bars over the bed of hot coals upon which thick slabs of boar meat spit and sizzled. On a low table at the end of the fire hearth stood at least six bowls filled with a variety of herbs.
The men were drinking from carved cow horns. The women drank from wooden cups, except for Magnus’ mother, who drank from a fine glass from the Rhineland. Zarabeth moved silently with the heavy wooden pitcher that held sweet wine from France that Magnus had traded for at Hedeby. She was very careful with it, for she knew the wine was valuable. She walked slowly toward the main table, where Magnus’ father, Earl Harald Erlingsson, sat in Magnus’ own carved chair, his wife next to him. He was as tall as his son, so fair that his hair seemed white in the dim rushlight. He looked as hard and lean as a man of twenty. It was very likely, she thought, that Magnus would look like him in some years.
“Wench,” Harald called out. “Bring me more of my son’s wine!”
He had done it on purpose, she thought vaguely. He had seen her approaching with the wine, yet he had chosen to call attention to her presence. In that instant Magnus looked up at her. He frowned. It was hot in the longhouse and he saw the glistening perspiration on her forehead, the wet tendrils of hair that curled around her face. Her face was flushed from the heat and she looked more beautiful than he had ever seen her. He felt a clenching deep within him and quickly said to his older brother, Mattias, “I am sorry your babe died, but Glyda looks well again.”
Mattias cast a worried eye toward his pale-faced girl-wife. “She is very young,” he said. “She knows not how to carry a babe.”
“What is there to know?” Magnus said, giving his brother a questioning look. “She is young, yea, that is true, but you get your seed in her and a child grows and is birthed. What else is there?”
“She was foolish whilst she carried the babe.”
“How?”
“She wished always to take me into her, if you would know the truth, Magnus!”
Magnus stared at his brother and then a smile tugged at his mouth. “You complain because your wife likes to bed you?”
“The babe came early and was born dead.”
Magnus shook his head. “You seek to blame where you should not. Stop it now, Mattias. Glyda is a sweet girl. She will bear you other children, healthy children.” He shrugged, looking toward the gaggle of boys and girls who played in the corner, far away from the fire hearth, two of the women near them. Four of them were Mattias’ children from his first marriage. “Besides, even if she does not bear you other children, what does it matter? You have cast your seed to the four corners of the Vestfold already.”
“More wine?”
Mattias stilled his tongue to gaze upon Magnus’ new slave. All his brother had said was that he had bought her in York. Mattias wanted to reach out his hand and touch her magnificent hair. The color was so unusual, so rich and deep, its redness incredible. “Aye, more wine,” he said only. He turned to speak to his brother, when he stopped cold. There was hunger in Magnus’ eyes, and something else . . . it was pain and anger and perhaps frustration. There was a mystery here. Mattias continued to study the woman after Magnus had waved her away. He heard his father call out to Magnus, “I wish to buy the wench from you, Magnus. How many silver pieces do you want for her?”
Magnus said easily, “You do not want her, Father, for with her she brings a little girl who is without hearing. A responsibility that I doubt would give you pleasure.”
“Then why did you buy her if all this responsibility weighs so heavily on you?” It was his mother, Helgi, who asked the question. “The little girl with the ginger hair is hers?”
“Aye, her little sister.” He waited until Zarabeth neared his younger brother, Jon, and said loudly, “I knew not the little girl was deformed until it was too late.” He watched and was pleased to see Zarabeth react. He saw her hand shake; he saw her whirl about to face him, and she took a step toward him, stumbled on a child’s feather-stuffed leather ball, and dropped the wine pitcher to the ground.
“Stupid wench!” Ingunn was on her feet in an instant and at Zarabeth’s side. Before anyone knew what she was about, Ingunn struck her hard on the face. Zarabeth reeled back, coming perilously close to the fire hearth.
“Watch out!” Magnus leapt from his chair and ran for her, grabbing her arm as she flailed the empty air to regain her balance.
“Let her fall,” Ingunn said in disgust. “ ’Twould serve her right to have a burn or two, the clumsy slut! The wine, ’tis gone now, and not in our bellies as it should be. Nearly half a pitcher!”
Zarabeth was breathing hard. She tried to pull away from Magnus, but he didn’t immediately release her. She looked up at him, fury in her pale face. “You lied, Magnus! ’Tis true you didn’t know Lotti could not hear, but you had already agreed to bring her. You lied to your father!”
He shook h
er. Didn’t she care that Ingunn had struck her hard? His sister’s palm imprint was red and clear on her cheek. He could imagine that it still stung. He shook her again, angry at her for accepting his sister’s attack. Then he drew himself up. With his actions, he was giving all his people and his family a great many bones to chew upon.
“Be more careful in the future,” he said, his voice low and harsh. “I do not want you to harm yourself. I paid too much silver to have you.”
He flung her arm away then and strode back to his table. His brother Mattias merely arched a thick blond brow at him. As for his father, Harald, he was laughing, huge gulping laughs that made Magnus flush. He wanted the interminable meal to be done with. He saw Cyra approaching him, her eyes narrowed, for she had witnessed what he had done, and he knew that he would have to speak to her soon. She was bearing a huge tray of baked beef smothered with cumin and juniper berries and mustard seeds and garlic. It smelled delicious, but Magnus had lost his appetite.
Cyra served him, her smile deep and warm. He looked away from her. His mother said, “Cyra, come here. I wish more meat.”
The evening continued. Magnus presented his mother with a beautiful carved jewel box he had traded several soapstone bowls for in Hedeby. He gave it to his father’s runemaster to carve his mother’s name on the bottom of it. He gave his father a silver arm bracelet, thick and heavy and finely carved. Soon the singing began. Then Horkel, a master skald, began the story of a girl who managed to wed an old man only to poison him when he tried to bed her. Magnus tried to catch Horkel’s eye. To his relief, Horkel neatly shifted the focus of the story and the girl ended up a slave in Miklagard, in an Arab’s harem.
There were jests to be told then, but Magnus simply could not keep his mind on the revelry. He saw Zarabeth make her way to where Lotti was sitting alone, for the women had taken the other children and put them to bed. They hadn’t touched Lotti. He felt anger burn in his gut but knew there was no logical reason for it.