Edin's embrace (19 page)

The
Thing
fell into a din of shouts. Every man had an opinion and was sensitive to his right to express it. Their voices got louder and louder. Edin's heart raced. She automatically sought to stay near the jarl. She even dared take a fold of his cloak between her fingers. He felt it, and turned and met her eyes —and she saw something in them; but quickly he seemed to staunch whatever it was. She almost felt him pulling away from her, felt the communion they had achieved in the
saeter
dissolving. His bearing became that of a man unaware of Edin's presence, a man leading a separate and independent existence from her, as if he’d not held her intimately only hours ago. Would he withdraw his promised protection in favor of his own interests? Of course he would! She dropped her foolish, feminine hold on his cloak and stiffened herself to stand alone. Frowning, his carriage suggested power; his helmet and his weapons made him seem unbelievably tall and deadly. Dread filled her soul.

She saw Inga coming up the slope with a cloth bundle under her arm. The jarl flung a cool and calculating look down at her as she arrived, puffing from her climb, her face alight with hectic excitement. He said, "This is a council of men, Mother."

"Yet
she
is here."

"Mother—"

She gave him a look that made Edin gasp. "Traitor!" Inga cried. She had the entire group's attention. Wrenching around, she spewed at Edin, "Witch!"

Edin looked at the jarl. His face was arranged to show nothing. Inga cried to the assembly now, "She killed Ragnarr —and was never punished. She caused my son to maim his berserker — dishonorably, I know some of you feel —and was never punished. She ran away and was never punished. She flaunts her hair as no thrall ever should be allowed to do. She wears gowns as fine as my own, and jewelry. She sleeps in your jarl's bed —and rules from there!"

The jarl suddenly grabbed her shoulder as if he meant to shake her. Edin's hand went to the breast brooch that closed her cloak. She felt all about her hard-living, hard-dying, forceful men, each one equipped with a magnificent sword or axe which could take her head off in one swing.

Despite the jarl's grip on her, Inga shouted, "She's escaped the law too often! She must die!'

Edin felt the color recede from her cheeks, felt cold perspiration break out on her arms. The wild beating of her heart stole her breath away.

Inga reached for the bundle under arm, but the jarl acted first. He dropped his hold on her and swiftly stepped before Edin. "These crimes, if they be crimes, are mine."

Edin swayed, giddy with sudden relief.

"Thoryn," said Kol Thurik, "why do you defend her?"

The jarl faced him down without answering. For once Edin was grateful for his ability to create terror with his eyes and his expression.

But then Finnier Forkbeard shouldered forward again. His face was seamed into a web of wrinkles; his stiff, parted whiskers moved with his jaw as he said, "You have shown contempt for the law, Thoryn Kirkynsson."

"The thrall!" Inga urged. "Kill the thrall!"

The men muttered. There was a growing excitement beneath their talk. Inga's little performance had much engaged them. They were like hounds who smelled blood. The jarl spoke into this muttering, each word falling from his lips individual and hard, like chips of stone: "No one will touch her."

Finnier Forkbeard said, "The law says, 'A master should take the life of any thrall who threatens his life, who harms him or his family, who is found stealing,
or who is overtaken in an escape.
'"

"He
should
take the thrall's life — which I interpret to mean that he may or he may not. I alone mete out justice on my steading, and I am not in fear of my own chattel."

"Your fear is not the point. 'With law shall the land be brought up and with lawlessness shall it waste away.' It is not wise for any master to let his thralls do as you have let this woman do."

"She is my responsibility."

"Aye, in all ways. She is here through your venture; she is your subject. But when one thrall is allowed to mock her master, all thralls are tempted to mockery. More than once men of power have disregarded the sense of this, and they have paid a high price."

Nods of assent went around. Inga seemed calmer, more rational. She said, "I was a good and faithful wife. My husband Kirkyn was a brave fighting man and a good husband. Yet he was a fool in this way. He . . ." Her rationality seemed to fade; looking into her face, Edin had a sense of staring into something dark and sleeping. "He let himself become besotted by a Saxon thrall. . . ."

"They know the story, Mother." It seemed to Edin that since the jarl had stepped between her and her enemies he stood taller than ever before. It was as though his decision had physically enlarged him. All his arrogance, his pride of caste and birthright, was written on his face.

"Yes . . . yes." Inga seemed to come back to herself. "I know they do. We all know it —and it's ending." She turned to face the storm of pride in her son's face — which didn't seem to daunt her in the least. "I stood by while your father made a mistake that cost him his life, and now I'm supposed to stand by while you follow the same path? I'm supposed to watch you lust after a Saxon witch just as he did before you? I would think you'd rather cut the blood-eagle in her back in just revenge for him who was murdered so foully —but no, you favor her."

She turned back to the more sympathetic faces of the
Thing
-men. "Have I not suffered enough?" Now her voice sounded far away and forlorn. Edin saw that a flare for the dramatic must run in the family. "Must I live with another murdering harlot beneath my roof?" Her eyes filled and shone with the cool brightness of jewels.

"Enough!" The jarl's face had slowly gone dark. "I will hear no more of this."

There was silence. Edin wondered if she ought to say something in her own behalf —but what? After a moment, Finnier broke the silence with "Two men have lost valuable thralls, horses, and goods. What say you about that, Thoryn Kirkynsson?"

He answered, in a soft, a dangerous voice, "Thrall, go to my chamber."

Since he didn't look at her, Edin was a little behind time in realizing that it was her he was addressing.

"In my chest is a box of cedarwood, inside that a sack of coins. Bring—"

"No!" Inga exclaimed. She stared him in the eye without flinching. "You will
not
pay Harold and Lief and let the matter end at that. For the matter will not
be
ended with that!" Her eyes and mouth fisted and her nose twitched. "Here!" She unfurled the white bundle she'd brought under her arm. "Remember this, Thoryn?"

Edin saw that it was a man's nightshirt, yellowed with age— and stained, particularly around a tear in the breast. It took Edin a moment to register what those brown stains were, what weapon could have made that small slit, and whose nightshirt it must have once been. She realized the truth all at once, and in the same instant felt a sharpening of her fear.

The
Thing
-men went stiff with shock. "Kirkyn's!" came a hiss. Another whisper said, "The very one he was found in!" They all stared unbelieving at the awful, blood-starched garment in which Inga's beloved had been murdered.

The jarl said softly, "You kept that, Mother? All these years?
Where
have you kept it? Among your gowns in your chest? Under your mattress?" His voice gained volume until at last it was like a rumble of thunder: "Have you kept it under your pillow, Mother?"

"Thoryn" — her voice was tearful and pathetic again, her tone soothing—"I kept it to remind me —and you. Your father was brave, but he could be obstinate, and in one matter he was a fool. Listen to me! A man you meet in battle is a plain warrior whose only strength is in the axe or the sword he swings. You overcome that weapon and the man is finished. But this woman is no axeman, no swordsman; she is too cunning to take up such simple arms. Her weapons are her thighs, plump and pear-shaped, and—"

"Mother."

"— and her mind, oh, yes, her woman's mind, the craftiest weapon of all. She will attack you unsuspected, with poison in your honeycakes and cream — "

"Mother."

"— with a cord around your neck while you're sleeping—" she was all but clutching him with her words and her eyes, putting forth all she had to hold his attention —"or with a dagger slipped between your—"

"Mother!"

At last she was silent. She saw that he'd escaped her and was free. She kept looking at him, however, bent forward a little, fingering the cloth of that ghastly garment, her gaze so omnivorous Edin feared she would surely suck him back with her eyes. But then her breast wrenched out a sigh, for he turned away from her, dismissed her very presence.

His eyes were narrowed as they slid around the gathering of men. For a tense and hostile moment no one spoke, or even moved. Finally he said, "As you can see, my dame tends a small but pure flame of hatred deep within her heart — along with a keen sense of drama. It disturbs me when she takes me for a fool . . . but mayhap she does so with some justification."

Edin saw yet another change come over him; suddenly he was exuding a certain courtly manner. While the
Thing
-men were still stunned with confusion — many still stared at the stained shirt now crumpled in Inga's arms —while Edin herself still felt the echoes of that instant of awful realization, the jarl had already recovered enough to see how to proceed.

He moved to the standing stone that dominated the place, and put his hand upon it. From there he stared back at the gathering. "I appreciate the stability given to everyday affairs by
Thing
-law, and I have always confirmed its standing and authority But when my new thrall ran away, she didn't even understand our language yet, let alone our laws. Considering her value, it seemed too much of a waste to see her bright lifeblood poured out for the crime of simple ignorance and fear.

"As for my gifts to her, that is my right. I will
not
drown her for having hair too lovely to crop, or for seeking to please me by ornamenting herself. By the High One, brothers, I've spent too much time coaxing her to please me to undo any of her learning along those lines!"

Laughter. Uneasy, but venting the unbearable pressure of tension that had built.

"I will do this much to make amends for any trouble the situation might have given my battle-brothers and fellow thrall-masters, Harold and Leif. I will pay them twice the value of all they have lost." He moved forward, placing a placating hand on Harold's shoulder. "Come. Come, Leif. Let us go down to the longhouse and settle this like men who have fought shoulder-to-shoulder and won."

Casually, he took Edin's arm and kept her close as the gathering made its way down the slope. He kept his hold as they entered the hall, and urged her to sit between his feet when he took his place in the high-seat. Though no words passed between them, nor even a look, it was clear to her that he didn't feel she would be safe anywhere else. There were still traces of bad feeling among the Vikings, mostly directed at her.

When she did not help with the serving, the house-thralls, Olga and especially Juliana, looked at her with bare tolerance. Did even they think she was trying to rule their jarl? If they only knew how much she wished she'd never caught his eye. Couldn't they see from where she was sitting that she was more a shackled slave than any of them?

The jarl did everything he could to make the gathering jovial. First he settled the matter with the injured men: In the eyes of Norse law, a thrall seemed to count as a superior sort of cow or horse. The jarl paid the worth of eight cows, one and one-half marks of silver, for each missing thrall.

Leif still grumbled. "Amma was due a hiding and would have got it if I'd seen her crying over that worthless Vred just one more time. If I ever catch up with those two, they can foresee no quarter from me. I'll as soon tolerate a wolf at the foldwall as a runaway. And their death will be a wolfs death, quick and bloody." He glared at Edin again.

The jarl turned the conversation smoothly and mentioned to Leif that he'd been thinking of improving the road through the difficult forest between Thorynsteading and Leif's
hof
, mayhap even placing a stone marker with both their names on it. That soothed the man's temper.

Soon after, the jarl announced, "I thought to ready my longship and make a trading voyage to Kaupang in a sennight or so. The
Blood Wing
will need a crew; I'll pay for rowing arms." He added, "Any man who can't travel with me yet wishes to send trade goods, I will gladly oblige and do business in Kaupang in his name."

A murmur of approval went around. Evidently this was a degree of generosity to which they weren't accustomed. Herjul the Stout raised his horn and said, "To our jarl, as openhanded with his neighbors as he is hard and cruel to his enemies!" The consensus of the raised drinking horns seemed to be that it was indeed a bighearted offer, big enough to make most of the men forgive him for his indiscretions concerning his Saxon bed-thrall.

Finnier Forkbear asked, "While you are in Kaupang, will you visit your father's brother, Olaf Haldanr?"

"Naturally."

"I journeyed with Olaf one season," Finnier mused. "A great warrior he was in his youth. I recall a time when he was insulted by a Swede." He smiled, looking around. "Olaf swung his axe over his head and attacked so fast the Swede was still putting on his helmet when down came the blow, clear to his gaping mouth."

Harold laughed. "Finnier, you have such a droll manner of telling a story."

The Forkbeard went on, casually, "Olaf has a daughter, does he not?"

"My cousin Hanne," the jarl said.

Finnier's voice rumbled. "A girl of noble birth, descended from Vikings, no doubt with a nicely rounded swell of breasts and a pair of pouting lips by now"

"And a pair of knees meant to be slightly bent and widely parted!" called Jamsgar.

"It would do well for you to take such a woman to wife one of these days, Thoryn," Finnier went on as if he hadn't been interrupted. "It would set your mother's mind at rest."