Edin's embrace (31 page)

Thoryn gave the boy a hard-boiled stare. "I'll have to have a look at it."

Edin had looked pale lately, and it occurred to him as he went for his heaviest fur cloak that she might like a day in the open air. When he invited her, however, she said stingingly, "I won't have anything to do with the making of that ship."

Frustrated, he said, "Woman, get yourself a warm cloak and mittens. You're coming!" In the back of his mind was the idea that if he could get her involved somehow, she would learn to resign herself, as a good Norse wife should.

She sat unspeaking beside him as they traveled in a sleigh, an elaborately chiseled box with an undercarriage fitted with wooden runners. Beside them rode Fafnir Danrsson and Hauk Haakonsson. Hrut proudly led the way on his skis. The brothers, Jamsgar and Starkad, skied along behind.

The tree was gigantic all right, an oak eighty feet tall. Thoryn stood peering up at it. Starkad did the same, utterly absorbed. Thoryn at last nodded to Hrut. "I think you've just earned your oar to
Miklagardur
."

The boy's red face twisted into an expression of huge pride. Edin sat looking straight ahead.

The keel tree was felled and brought home two days later. Thoryn's private army was then sent out to find other trees for the planking of the new ship. Then the men were sent out to find naturally formed oak and spruce elbows and arches for the vessel's ribs and struts. In the longhouse, they turned spruce roots into strong, naturally fibrous ropes to bind the ship's shell and frame together. Eric No-breeches was set to fashioning kegs full of metal rivets and nails, while other men handcarved wooden pegs called tree-nails, and made walrus-hide thongs.

Mists, half snow, enclosed the longhouse as the men carved or twisted lengths of rope around the evening fire. They told tales in which axes danced and sword metal pealed and blood ran free. Names for the new ship began to be proposed:
Deer of the Surf, Stallion of the Gull's Track, Lynx of the Waves, Sea Dragon's Sleigh.

Edin's belly grew high and round, and her beauty bloomed. Thoryn occasionally chafed at her obstinacy in refusing to accept what had to be accepted.

One morning, he stopped to observe an unusual sight: Jamsgar and the auburn-headed thrall boy, Arneld, with their heads bent so near they were all but touching. Edin was close by, watching what they were doing. The Copper-eye was smoothing down one side of a horse's haunch-bone, making a pair of
isleggr
, ice skates. Arneld saw Thoryn and held up a bone which had already been shaped. His excitement was bursting. "For me, master!"

Jamsgar didn't look up. He cut the remaining bone to the size of the boy's foot and attached thongs at the heel and toe. When he was done, all he said was a bluff "There!"

As the boy ran out to try them, Edin placed her hand on the Copper-eye's shoulder. Thoryn experienced a lance of hot jealousy. His heart hammered, and his arms went weak with rage —until he heard her words: "That was very kind, Jamsgar. Thank you."

"Huh! Well, he's a good enough puppy."

Thoryn stood amazed. He'd seen Jamsgar Copper-eye cuff a thrall across the head and send him flying for no reason except the man mayhap had not called him master. What manner of woman was this Saxon wife of his that she could tame men born to live briefly and die violently with words like "kind" and "thank you." And "please"?

Most of the men went out skating that afternoon. Edin pronounced a half-holiday for all the thralls. Thoryn had never heard of such a thing being done before, but the thralls didn't question it. They eagerly followed the Norsemen out to their rink, spreading the word of their good luck to their fellows as they went.

It occurred to Thoryn that Edin was proving an excellent housekeeper. The meals were tastier, there was a sense of quiet order in the hall, and yet the thralls seemed less weary and worn. Indeed, there was more laughter all around.

He suddenly had an urge to take advantage of this opportunity to have an hour alone with his wife, to mayhap coax her to their bedchamber. Her ungainly shape hardly made her less appealing to him, and the thought of taking her in the middle of the day, in the light again, ignited a fire in his loins he'd nearly forgotten.

His raid was not carefully planned; he simply crossed the hall and caught her hand.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Come and see."

She was letting him lead her. "Where?"

"To our chamber."

She pulled back, giving him a look. He gave her a look in return, and when he tugged her hand again, she followed.

He shut the door behind them and lifted her and swung her onto the bed. She laughed —laughed! after so many sennights of sobriety! —and fell back. "My lord, anyone could come back at anytime."

"Aye, but if they have a pebble of sense, they'll stay away from this door." He joined her on the bed, prepared to take full advantage of this mood she was in, to kiss and toy the entire afternoon away if possible. He unpinned the brooches holding her gown and pushed it down off her breasts. They were very full now. He could bury his face between them. He suckled one and then the other while she held his head and made little sounds and arched her back to better offer herself.

"Mistress!" The call, though muffled by the door, was unmistakable. "Mistress, I beg your help!"

Edin started to rise. Thoryn pressed her back down. "I'll see who it is."

It was the thrall she'd chosen to raise to a position of stewardship over the field workers in place of Blackhair. Yngvarr was his name. He told Thoryn a frantic tale of an infant daughter who was sick and hadn't eaten for two days. Edin came out before the man was finished, her gown properly fastened, her look properly cooled. The man's eyes immediately veered from Thoryn to her. "Mistress — "

"Yes, I heard."

Thoryn felt left out again, by his own thrall, who obviously preferred to take his troubles to his mistress!

". . . come and cheer her with one of your songs?" Yngvarr was saying.

"Of course, if it will help. I'll get my cloak."

Thoryn followed her back into their chamber. "The child may pass the sickness to you, Edin. You have another child to think of."

She said, "What choice do I have?"

He blocked her way out the door.

She stood facing him, her cloak over her shoulders. "Yngvarr and his wife were kind to me once. Is it the Norse way to repay deeds with neglect?" Her green eyes met his with a shrewd fire. He knew he was being manipulated; he knew that she understood his desire to see her become more Norse in her outlook.

In the end he insisted on accompanying her. It wasn't far to Yngvarr's cottage, and the snow was hard now and provided footing; but once in a while a man broke through the crust, and scrambling out and regaining the surface took great effort. Thoryn led the way, obdurate about at least furnishing a safe path for her.

She greeted Yngvarr's wife, Ingunn, as if they were friends, not mistress and thrall. And she took up the fretful child without a qualm and began to sing softly. Her voice had its usual effect.

Thoryn resisted it enough to motion Yngvarr outside to have the story of his "kindness" to Edin. He'd been told that she'd been overworked, and he'd seen the calluses on her hands. What struck him was Yngvarr's impression of her: a woman able to rise above all degradation. It was clear that the thrall saw her as a heroine, as brave as any warrior.

When the women came out, Ingunn said, "Master, my little one smiled — and even ate a spoon of porridge for your goodwife."

Thoryn eyed Edin and said, "Aye, she has a way with her that neither babes nor Norsemen can seem to stand against."

By the Yule season, the days were very brief and often grey. The mornings didn't lighten until late, and it was night again by mid-afternoon. Ottar Magnusson gracefully gave up his ivory chess set in front of all, but still no word of the coming child passed Edin's lips.

The year was inevitably taken from its loom and folded away on the pile of other years. The new ship proceeded. Starkad, though young, was proving his worth in deploying men. The
knorr
's plan was in his head, and as it was built he gauged each piece by his eye. A frame had been set up in the shipyard, and the great keel fashioned. Starkad brilliantly bowed it amidships so that, if need be, it could be wheeled about virtually on its axis. Construction went on in some form daily. During bad weather there was the indoor work of making sixteen pairs of long, slim-bladed oars cut in graduated lengths so that the rowers' strokes would hit the water simultaneously whether they sat in the relatively high bow or lower amidships. The task of carving the curved, monster-jawed prow and identically curved and fiendish tail was entrusted to Fafnir Danrsson's skill. The hall smelled always of resin.

Edin continued to side-step anything to do with the ship. Especially she avoided the corner of the hall wherein Fafnir did his carving.

Meanwhile more names were put forth:
Crane, Bison, Reindeer, Long Serpent.

No man, drunk or steady, right-about of backward-on, could say that it was anything but a wolfs^winter. Snow filled the bowl of the valley. The hint of night never seemed to leave the sky. Great piles of precious furs grew in the outbuildings, however, beaver and sable past counting, bales of ermine so large it was impossible to tell how many furs they contained, shiny Siberian squirrel, ruby-colored fox, dark lynx skins scattered with yellow.

Feeling helpless to make Edin happy, Thoryn's mind centered on the
knorr
. It was going to be the most beautiful ship ever conceived, a means of transport, a way of life, something to love —and to fear. Fascinated, he watched it take shape from the keel upward. Once the carved stempost and sternpost were in place, the body began to swell gracefully with the first overlapping strakes riveted together and caulked with tarred animal hair. Just as this planking got under way, however, Starkad and Jamsgar were called to their father's steading. Herjul was ill; his death seemed imminent. A day passed, then two. No word of the older Norseman's death came, nor any sign of the man's sons. Thoryn, impatient, ordered the planking to proceed. After all, it seemed a simple enough process, and he was eager to see the ship take on her skin.

The workmen sought to do their best in the shipwright's absence. They even thought to make the ship stronger by cutting the planks a bit thicker than the first ones Starkad had ordered.

Edin meanwhile finished swelling. The babe huddled in her womb, ready to be born. Winter was throwing a last fit the night she woke Thoryn to say, "My lord, do you think Hagna can make it through such a storm?"

"What is it?" he asked, awake yet not immediately clear in his thoughts. Automatically his hand went to her belly, which at that moment hardened and bunched alarmingly beneath his palm. Edin gasped, hit with the pain. Her face contorted as she endured it. In an instant his heart was full of large love. "Shieldmaiden."

He sent Ottar for the midwife, then came back to lay with Edin, hold her, and murmur encouragement through the hours it took for Hagna's cottage to be reached and the old woman routed out and brought back by sled. Then Thoryn in turn was routed out of his bed, out of his very chamber. "Here, leave off fondling that poor woman and dress yourself, Jarl! By the Thunder God's red beard, your wife has work to do — and surely you have ale to drink? And, please, Freya, if the babe's a girl, don't let her have her father's huge hands and nose and ears!"

Hagna had arrived.

Thoryn built up the fire before his highseat, but he couldn’t sit still there, couldn’t find rest anywhere. He felt as if he were being towed by a harpooned whale. Edin was fighting a battle, a woman’s battle, which had often been known to be mortal.

It gave him pause to consider that seldom did men do battle alone as women did. The courage of it, to face sure pain and possible death without so much as a shield or sword, without axe or helmet. He thought humbly that the strong quality to stand fast in the face of hardship and danger was his only at great moments, while for Edin it had become a part of daily life.

Rolf got up to keep him company. And soon Dessa and Olga joined them. Then Fafnir, Hauk, and Sweyn. They listened to the sound of Hagna's muffled voice, which was by turns comforting and frightening. When Edin's labor pangs finally grew to the point of causing her to cry out —in her native language, to her own god — the block-jawed warriors stood facing the chamber door shoulder to shoulder, motionless as statues.

The hour of dawn approached. The wind began to lose its power. Thoryn went to the heavily carved outer door and cracked it open to see that, aye, the clouds were spent; the wild weather was stilled. Nothing moved within the range of his eyes. The land was dead and white in the intense pre-dawn. Winterkill was everywhere. But then a vague glow showed over the ridgetops, then grew, and just as the night broke to a sparkling sunrise, he heard the squawl of his first-born.

The babe was a boy, still glistening with the fluids of his mother's womb when Thoryn broke into the bedchamber. Thoryn didn't know what to think. He was helplessly silent, trembling; his entire body seemed weak. Seeing his expression, Edin smiled, wearily to be sure, yet the sight of her was like something remembered from a paradise he'd visited ages ago. "You look as if you've been on an all-night revel, my lord."

He inhaled mightily. This woman, who had lived through all catastrophe and fear and loneliness, who had lately been wrung like a skein of wool by birth pains, still she had courage in her eyes —and a tart barb on the tip of her tongue!

"Look at him! A more vain father would be hard to find. You're as big a goose as they make them, Jarl," Hagna said, giving Edin the child, now cleaned and swaddled. Thoryn watched her smile down at her son and kiss the amazingly tiny hands. After a moment, he said, "Let me see him." She didn't move, and when he reached for the small bundle, it hurt him to see how reluctantly she gave it over to him. Still, he was the babe's father.

He took the child to the door, to show those in the hall and say formally, "This is my son. His name will be Bodvar Thorynsson. As my sworn men, I expect you to protect him as you do my wife."

Both parents lay abed late the next day, Edin nursing the child, Thoryn holding them both in his huge embrace and watching them indulgently. The babe fed lustily, with little grunts of pleasure. The softness of his downy fair head against Edin's breast, the tantalizing scent they together exuded, and the feel of their bodies stirring gently in his arms made Thoryn feel as if his cup of happiness was filled to overflowing. For a moment he wondered if his own father had held his mother this way —but then he sliced the thought of Inga in two. These two were all his family now; they were his home. And he felt like a king in cherishing them.

He knew there was a waiting time to be got through after a babe's birth, yet he wanted Edin more than he ever had before. Just watching her walk across the chamber could make his breath leave his body. And when she bared a breast and shaped it in her fine-fingered hand for the child's mouth . . . such an innocent thing, yet it drove him wild with desire. It seemed his manhood never lost its stiffness. He grew testy.

The world seemed to be going through a waiting time as well. The snows melted. The mornings were made up of frozen mud, the afternoons of slippery muck, which helped Thoryn's mood not at all. It was while this cloak of irritation was daily growing heavier that Starkad and Jamsgar returned, their father thankfully recovered. Starkad couldn't wait to get down to the shipyard, muddy paths or no. Once there, however, once he saw that the planking was nearly completed, he stopped and stood quite still.

Thoryn, misinterpreting his silence, stood admiring the sleek, towering
knorr
that stood in the stocks. Jamsgar said obligingly, "Never was there so large and beautiful a ship, Jarl."

Starkad said nothing.

The next morning, Thoryn took another inspection of the masterpiece —and immediately went rigid with a fuming rage. He stormed back to the longhouse, threw back the heavy door, and charged inside. All sound and, activity ceased with the sight of him. The words he had to say fell from his lips slowly, one at a time; "The man who ruined my ship will die, and I will reward whoever finds him out for me."

Starkad hesitated —mayhap his mortal life flashed by his eyes in that brief span —but then he spoke up: "I'll tell you who did it, Jarl. I did it myself."

"You!" Fury surged through Thoryn, a wrath like thunder. Only the barest thread of curiosity kept his hand from his sword. "
Why?
"

"You lapstraked her with boards so thick the vessel would be much too ungainly in the water; the whole undertaking would have been a disaster."

"You have made it a disaster," Thoryn countered in his quietest voice. Now his hand went to his sword and drew it.

"Jarl, give me a sennight, and I promise you a ship that will skim the very tips of the waves."

Jamsgar appeared at his brother's side, his war axe in his hand. Silence reigned as they faced the man they'd sworn to serve, who now felt ready to kill them both. Thoryn's expression didn't flicker; the sight of his ship as he'd seen her kept passing through his mind, and somehow he felt more violent with every passing second.

Edin burst out of her bedchamber, wearing naught but a thin nightshift and a hastily donned cape. Barefooted, she crossed straight to the brothers and shouldered between them to stand a little before them. Both Norsemen were clearly incensed. They were not much older than she in years, but knew themselves to be much her elder in experience and the ways of the world. Yet she stood straight and slim as a sword before them, snowy of skin, with her amber fair hair gleaming to her fingertips. "What is this about, my lord?"

"Starkad Herjulsson, whom I trusted, has gone up and down one side of the
knorr
, cutting deep notches in every plank. And for that he's going to die."

"And Jamsgar as well, I suppose," she said, "considering his honor will insist that he stand by his brother against such a threat."

Thoryn's eyes flicked to the Copper-eye's. "I bear him no ill-will, but if he stands between me and his brother — "

"Did I not hear Starkad ask for a sennight? That seems a small amount of time to allow him. You can always kill the two of them after a sennight. After all, you are the champion, the Hammer of Dainjerfjord. I myself watched you cut down Sweyn, who as I understand was deemed among the deadliest of warriors. If you could fell him, surely these two younger men, who have their prime yet before them, will go down before your
Raunija
. And it will cut as deep seven days from now as today. Their blood — the blood of two valiants who have always served you well and truly —will flow as red — "

"Get back to your bed, woman."

She took a step toward him so that no one but he could see her expression. "Gladly, my lord, if you will come with me." Her face was white, but her green sea-foam eyes were pure invitation.

He knew she wasn't ready to resume their marital life, and he knew with a sweet despair that the craving she was inducing would not for a long while leave him. Yet she was teasing him blatantly. He stepped forward and clutched her waist with his free hand and jerked her toward him.

How slim she was again! How sweet she smelled, all warm and milky!

His anger, in spite of his will, began to melt. Still, he managed to glare at Starkad over her upturned face. "A sennight," he growled. "And if at the end of that time that ship fails to look as I have dreamed it to look ... do you know the arts of sorcery, Starkad Herjulsson? You'd better, for only such as that will save you. It's certain my wife will not do so again."

He thrust
Raunija
back into his scabbard, and bent and caught Edin's legs up and lifted her to his chest. He heard the shipwright say just one word— "Sheepdung!"

He himself had something to mutter as he carried his goodwife back to her bed. "You'll be remarked far and wide, Saxon, as the handsomest female to be put on the market."

"You can't sell me now," she said complaisantly, her slender white arms twined about his neck. "You made me marry you, and now you must keep me."

"You can scream that at the top of your lungs. The slave traders won't listen —but it will afford me pleasure to hear it as I walk away with my gold in my hand."

He dropped her on the bed as roughly as he dared —he didn't really want to hurt her —and placed a hand on either side of her as he leaned over her. "I'll tell the slaver all your good points —how you might struggle at first, but your woman's strength is soon exhausted and at last a man can get you on a bed and have all he wants from you. I'll strip you of your gown and show him all your assets, your pretty breasts, the cheeks of your rosy bottom. He'll want to try everything before he buys, of course. And when I leave him with you to do his sampling, I'll tell him that if he keeps his place, the second finish is usually even better than the first — "

"Thoryn! How can you make up such things!"

"I make up nothing. You know naught of the workings of my barbaric world, beloved, and therefore should not take incautious risks."

He left her without another word.

He forbore to walk down the path to the shipyard during the days that followed. He was unable to know for sure that he wouldn't strike down the stiff-bearded Starkad if he were to again gaze upon the ruin of his great ship.

But then Starkad himself summoned him.

Edin, who was on her feet again, wanted to accompany him, but he said, "I forbid you to leave this hall. Do you understand me?"

At the shipyard, he walked down the once-scarred side of the ship. Starkad had painstakingly trimmed the planks down even with the deepest of the notches. Thoryn walked up the other side, which had not been changed since its planking. He came to stand beside the shipwright. Both of them looked at the adjusted side. He said at last, "You've proven your skill with a tool-axe."

There was more to it than that; Thoryn saw the improvement clearly. Before him was a large and sturdy but very light shell, a craft that would flex in the ocean like a slim leaf. The keel could bend up and down now, and the gunwales could twist out of true without damaging the ship. This would enable the hull to bend with the wave and slip through them, making the big ship fast and yet stable. These were matters of life and death.

"Well done shipwright."

From behind him came a feminine voice, a voice to stab his heart: "His name was foretold at our wedding, my lord. He is Starkad Smoothing Stroke."

***

Juliana watched Inga surreptitiously. The woman sat outside the hut, staring in the direction of the steading valley as if she could see the longhouse and all its doings clearly, despite the fact that it was miles away through the forest. Whatever she saw in her twisted mind seemed to have her in a silent rage. She made fists of her hands, digging her fingernails into her palms until they bled. Eventually she looked down and was for a long moment preoccupied by the sight of the blood. Foam flecked her lips.

Juliana vowed that no matter what, she was going back to the longhouse with the next supply bringer. No matter if the master withdrew his promise of a husband — no matter if he had her whipped! — she wasn't going to stay here another sennight.

***

At last true spring arrived, with a brilliant sun, no breeze, and the ocean murmuring gently in the distance. The cliffs of Dainjerfjord filled with the first birds, chattering and swooping for fish. Great meetings were held upon the high ledges. In those pleasant days, many things that had lain torpid through the winter started to stretch themselves. Edin's mind was one of these.

She knew that her Viking husband was doing everything he could to ignore the fact that no one ever gets everything he wants, or if he does, can never keep it, not for long. For instance, he refused to speak his mother's name, as if by pretending she didn't exist he could forget her. And he was doing his best to ignore the deep sadness within Edin. She couldn't blame him, really. Who, being happy, didn't want to keep his happiness whole?

But her misery surfaced and was clarified one evening. The sun's last gold had ebbed through the budding leaves of the tree on the green and slipped into the forest to sleep till dawn. Thin mist clouds blew, causing the stars to fade and brighten, fade and brighten. In the bedchamber, Thoryn sat with his offspring on his knee, making dreadful faces at the poor babe. He glared and looked at the child angrily —and Bodvar looked back at him as fiercely. Thoryn touseled the babe's downy hair —and Bodvar's tiny hands grabbed his sire's beard and ruffled his mustache. It could have been an hour of homey peace, but then Thoryn said, "Hm! He is brash and eager and has much to learn, but you are raising a future hero here, little mother."

Edin's shell of control then simply burst. Sudden tears flooded her vision. "I want no hero for a son!" She hurried to snatch her child from him. "There is no lack of heroes in this land. I have a hero for a husband, and what good does it do me? As soon as the planting's done, he's off for
Miklagardur
! Life is already brief enough without such a journey to shorten the time we have together. You— !" She sobered and went on in a lower, more passionate voice: "You pretend to love me, and all the while you build your ship, your big beautiful ship, so it can carry you away — " her voice faltered — "away for who knows how long? Mayhap forever."

She felt her heart in her throat like a fist, knocking there quicker and quicker. She clutched her child to her breast as he stood slowly, looking like fury itself. Yet his voice was gruff when he said, "Norse women don't weep for their men. It's not our way. Men travel —sometimes to trade, sometimes to fight —and women stay behind to care for the home. There is no more to the matter than that."