Winter Serpent (26 page)

Barra led Doireann’s pony to a clump of beach grass and the two women sat down on a woolen cover beyond the rise of the dunes. They ate some of the food they had brought with them and Doireann nursed the child and played with him until he was tired. After a while he slept, and as the watery sun was not warm she covered him with a robe.

She sat for a long time, waiting, and when Brude came to her she was dazed with the wind and sun, and her eyes burned.

“Bring your serving woman and the child,” he told her, “and come with me.”

“What is it?” she asked. “Can you tell me what has happened?”

“I would tell you if I knew myself,” he answered. “All I know is that I have been sent to fetch you.”

The line of Picts rustled with whispers as she descended to the beach, and the Northmen greeted her with interested stares.

The tide had crept in and was lapping its way toward the mark which Sweyn had made with the battle-ax. Doireann thought as she passed that the water would soon be seeping under the tents if they did not hurry with their bargaining.

The only occupant of the smaller tent was Wilfrid, the bishop of Inverness, looking extremely drawn and tired. He was holding his head in his hands as she entered with her servant, but lifted it, and managed a smile.

“I have been praying for guidance,” he said earnestly. “God in heaven knows I am no fit judge for these matters without knowledge of His will.”

“And what have you found God’s will to be?” she asked him. He gave her a sharp glance.

“I have been listening these past hours to the Northmen describe the sufferings of the captives they have taken from Lindesfarne. The Vikings made it plain that every hour the captives remain in their hands they will be tortured. As evidence they name names and produce bloodstained clothing and tell how this one and that have withstood the agony. Truly they are brutal savages! I know many of the named ones and the identification they make seems truthful. Some are my kinsmen.”

He paused, and his face showed its suffering.

“One is but a boy, a student who was at the holy schools, son of a noble thane. Two others are fine scholars recently returned from St. Gall in the land of the Germans. All are men the world needs. As opposed to this, the man called Sweyn Barrelchest speaks glowingly of the Norse Jarl’s regard for you and his desire for his child. They both give reassurances as to your good treatment should you be restored to them. It would seem the Northmen hold their women in high esteem. That is, those they call legal wives. You have never claimed they mistreated you, is this not so?”

“What would you have me say?” she cried. “I have not been tortured as were these captives. But I, too, was a captive. I was despised by them, used by this very Jarl for what he wanted. Treated like a slave because they knew I had been betrayed by my own people. Yes, taken by force by this man who now claims his regard for me, and gotten with his child unwillingly.”

“Yet you love this child now, and will not let him be taken from you. No, I am not accusing you, but in Christ’s name, consider the men who are now suffering. I could not ask you to sacrifice yourself, for you have not come to God, being still unbaptized. To offer yourself would be an act of great faith, and you are not ready for this. Yet it might be this Norse chieftain would agree to a Christian marriage.”

A cry of betrayal broke from her.

“No, no,” Wilfrid said hastily. “I would not send a woman of Christian family to dishonor or death, if such was the case.”

“Still, you have been weighing the thought of my return. This sacrifice, as you call it. And my uncle? Is his honor more steadfast?”

The Saxon bishop stared at her in unconcealed bitterness.

“I have long heard that perfidy is the child of the Picts, and now I well believe it. From the first I protested your presence here, thinking of your safety. I knew the King of the Picts was committed to some scheme of his to set your future child upon the throne in spite of your unpopularity with the Council of Seven and the Northumbrians. I had presumed he would not waver from his plan. But now the wily old man sits upon a stool in his tent and sips Spanish wine and bargains this way and that, rolling the advantages about on his tongue. The point is, how much are you worth? He has asked the Northman if he will settle for the return of only the infant in exchange for a pledge of freedom from attack on the Pictish coasts. The Northman said no to this, explaining that he could speak only for his own ships and those of his cousin Snorri Olavson, not the rest of the raiding Norse bands. Not to mention the Danes. He insists he will have the child and its mother, too. There is much time taken up in discussion of your beauty and your worth, the King of the Picts protesting that you are his sister’s daughter and bound to his protection. The Northman points out that he has the legal right to you since bride gold was paid properly in Calum macDumhnull’s house, and that you were found to be a virgin when you came to his bed. He is certain that the child you bore is his own. And so it goes, back and forth. It is a bitter fact that these pagans seem to deal with more truth than your Christian kinsmen.”

“I see you are impressed with how noble they are!” she cried.

“No one who has watched them boast of their cruelty can look upon them with admiration,” he said soberly. “They take such pride in their ferocity that it goes beyond cruelty, beyond madness almost, I can only think of it as proof of their ancient barbarity. It is like looking into the depths of an old, forgotten, very deep well to look into the eyes of these men. It is like going back to the beginning of time and hearing its echoes.”

“And what of my uncle?” she asked impatiently. “Has he said nothing to them of his plans for me and how he would have an heir at any price?”

“He has been willing to defy church law for it, and also the power of his chieftains, it is true. But now he sees the glitter of Viking gold and the fame which the rescue of the captives would bring him, If you carried his grandson within you this would be a different thing. Then I think he would attack the Northmen here and now, and try to send the ones he could capture to Northumbria for their angry justice. I do not know. I am not clever with these violent strategies.”

“Then Nechtan would benefit much by my betrayal?” she asked. He nodded reluctantly.

Elda began to sob loudly. Wilfrid was startled by the sound and turned to rebuke her, but Doireann stopped him.

“Do not scold my woman. She sees, all too plainly what you have not admitted to yourself. My fate does not concern you or God, for all you have besought Him to reveal His will. The only will we need know is that of the Old Cruithne, the King of the Picts.”

Wilfrid would have spoken again but the flap of the tent was pulled aside. A gust of wind rushed in and two men with it.

The tent seemed to bulge with their presence. Sweyn Barrelchest stood with his head barely clearing the ridgepole. The giant with him was forced to half-crouch. They leaned forward on their drawn swords, shields slung on their backs. They surveyed the Saxon bishop in his church robes and the two women.

Wilfrid rose to meet them, and for the first time that day he seemed inadequate. “You have asked to see the woman and the child. Here is the woman,” he

said, indicating Doireann. “Is this the one you spoke of?” Sweyn bent and peered into her face.

“Now, who is this under all the little beads and the crown?” He winked at her. “Yes, this is the one, the woman called Doireann nighean Muireach, and I paid bride gold for her in the house of the chieftain of Cumhainn.”

Behind him Doireann could see the stooped figure of the Jarl. He wore a close-fitting helmet without wings or horns, and it was set back carefully from the scar on his forehead. His hair was long, doubled back in loops. Both Northmen were decked in all manner of jewelry, both silver and gold, and they wore light summer tunics and no ring mail. The Jarl’s face was as expressionless as ever.

“This is the woman I claim as my wife,” he said, looking at her. “What do you say to this?” Wilfrid asked Doireann.

“I do not acknowledge these foreign pirates, savages, and common thieves,” she answered promptly. “They are said to be nameless dogs and outcasts from their own land. They are not important to me.”

Wilfrid was shocked, but before he could speak Sweyn cut him off.

“You need the flat of my hand against your backside, tassel-headed princess of the Picts,” he roared. “Is this the way to speak before great chiefs and men of rank and royal blood of the Norse? We have braved much to seek you out, seeing that the Jarl esteemed your worth. But then you would not understand this, as I have seen that the Scots and the Picts are all too anxious to give up their women if there is a good price in it.”

“Gently, gently!” Wilfrid exclaimed. “This is a poor beginning!”

“It was begun badly long before this,” the girl shouted. “Why do you expect better?”

“You need not hold your nose so high,” Sweyn roared, wagging his finger at her. “There are not many here who will hurry to defend your honor. We have been bargaining with the little man who says he is your uncle, and here is a crafty wool merchant in king’s clothing! He ill compares with the great berserkr, the Jarl of the longships. Many far-famed deeds has Thorsten Ljot accomplished, and this is not the least of them, that he beaches his ship with a crew of fifty men before a host of Pictish warriors. Be careful whom you would call a nameless dog, you who have yet to find a man among your people to honor and protect you!”

He paused and wiped his mouth with his hand.

“Now,” he said practically, “the Jarl is anxious to know whether you bore him a proper male child and whether it is well and strong.”

Sweyn looked about him, but the Jarl was the first to see the serving woman holding the child. He sprang to her, jerking the infant from her arms. Elda gave a faint scream and fell back.

The Northman held his son gingerly at arm’s length while he examined him. Ian was still, staring back at him curiously, his fists tightly grasping the man’s fingers.

“Now she has done well!” Sweyn exclaimed at the Jarl’s elbow. “She is a small woman but she has borne a fine, large child! You can see the blood of the Inglinga in him. No need to strip him of his britches, man! It is a boy, a son. Perfect, not a spot, not a blemish!”

They jostled each other in their eagerness and the child, alarmed, cried out. Doireann could not move. She was aghast at their incongruous joy and the way that they fumbled at the child, examining his linen shift, his bare, chubby feet, opening his tight-clutched fists. The Jarl touched the child’s yellow hair again and again with his fingertips as if to impress upon himself the fact that child had his coloring and not hers. Ian began to struggle, bellowing his protests. The Jarl hurriedly put his son to his shoulder, his cheek bending to touch the top of the infant’s head.

Doireann was dismayed to see the likeness in the two faces so close together. Ian’s blue eyes were not her own now, but a reflection of the man’s. Anger and jealousy wrenched her. One could never deny this was the Viking’s child.

Ian’s face turned a warning red and his voice shrieked.

“Odin’s eyeballs!” Sweyn roared. “Do not squeeze him so! They will want all the gold in the longships as their price when they see how the bear loves his cub.”

Doireann sprang forward.

“Give him to me!” she shouted. “You are going to kill him. He hates you!” She snatched at the child and the Jarl let him go. He watched her closely

as she cradled the frantic child in her arms, trying to soothe him. But Ian bounced up, clawing at the neck of her gown. She shifted him to her shoulder and patted him on the back, but he only bellowed more loudly. He was demanding to be nursed and comforted.

“What a voice!” Sweyn said admiringly over the racket. Wilfrid was trying to speak but it was as if no sound came from his moving lips. The men looked at Doireann expectantly.

Seething, she pulled down the neck of her gown and put Ian to the breast. The uproar stopped at once. There was a deep silence as the men watched the child nursing. Ian twisted his eyes about and glared up at them in triumph.

“It is because the child sucks his mother that he is so well and strong,” the Jarl offered suddenly. “She has not given him to a wet nurse. In this she has done well.”

The bishop of Inverness stood back, watching, thoughtfully stroking his jaw.

Sweyn spoke to Doireann in Norse.

“See how the Jarl is well-pleased,” he told her. He paused and nodded to himself. “Yes, you remember the tongue; I see in your eyes that you know what I am saying to you. That is good. Let it remind you that you cannot forget the Norse speech nor the evidence of the past, the child which lies at your breast. It is as the Jarl says: you are his wife whether you like it or not, and the many bonds between you are not broken. On the night when we were set upon the sea with so many wounded and dying from the battle in Cumhainn, there was again the longing in him to die. He thought you were dead. But I assured him that you lived and would yet bear his son. When he was convinced of this, he stood before the crew and urged them to keep the ship from foundering, for he vowed he had much vengeance to take upon the Scots from that night forward, and that his task was to find you and his son. I was not so much concerned with your fate as with ours then, I admit, for I did not think any of us would live to see the storm’s ending. But as I gazed upon him my heart was warm and I knew my words would come true. He is indeed a great man, set apart from other men and feared by them. He is the pride of my life. In spitefulness you call him a nameless dog and I see that you have seized upon this from what you have heard, and think yourself clever. But it is not true. He may take any name and still be far-famed and feared as the berserkr, the invincible. And the sons which you will bear him will be proud in their blood. You will live to see this.”