Heart's Ease (The Northwomen Sagas Book 2) (19 page)

But he had taught her the raiders’ tongue. He had met people like these before, and often enough to know their words. He must have been on a ship like this.

She stared hard at every trader, hoping against hope to see her brother’s eyes look back at her. But she did not.

Brenna hooked her arm through Olga’s. “Do you think your brother might still live?”

Not realizing that she had been so transparent in her search, Olga felt her cheeks warm a bit. “I don’t know. It has been years, and I have long thought him lost. But I’ve never seen a ship like this. I had a small hope that perhaps the path of my life might bring me to him.” She frowned at her friend. “You should be resting.”

Brenna’s time was nearing. She had yet weeks to go, but the babe rested very high and pressed always on her lungs and stomach, and she again had trouble keeping her food and drink. She was thin and wan, with dark circles under her eyes, and her lovely golden hair had gone dull. The carrying of this child had been difficult from the first, and these months had taken their toll. Olga thought it would not be long before Brenna would be unable to leave her bed.

But now her friend smiled and gave their linked arms a tug. “The traders are here. Such beautiful things unlike we have. I cannot miss this.” She canted her head to the side. “And Vali watches like an eagle, so if I need help, I have it.” Olga followed Brenna’s gaze and saw Vali, standing with Orm and Bjarke and the ship’s leader, and paying no heed at all to the men. His eyes were on them, and he smiled at his wife and nodded at Olga.

Thus granted permission, the two women walked among the chests and barrels of strange items for trade. Olga picked up a bolt of unusual fabric, a brilliant purplish pink like rosebay, in an intensity no dye she’d ever made or seen could approach. The fabric shimmered and felt like—like
air
in her hands.

She dropped Brenna’s arm and lifted the fabric to her face. It was cool and soft, like a whisper.

“You like, pretty wee lady?” said the nearby trader, a thick and alien lilt to his words and a smile that glinted with gold. “From far, very far. Very special to make pretty ladies more pretty.”

“What—what is it?” she asked.

“It’s called silk,” Brenna answered. “Vali says that worms weave it. I think that is a story from this very far place.” She gave the trader an icy glare. “How much?”

“Five gold pieces for bolt,” the trader answered, the seduction gone from his voice. Now he was all business.

Brenna laughed. “You can wipe your arse with it, then.”

As Olga gaped at her friend’s sudden hostility, Brenna pulled her along.

“Wait!” the trader called. “You no understand the way of this. Tell me price. Then we talk.”

Her warrior’s glare in full effect, Brenna waddled around to face the trader again. “I understand. You insult me with such a high first price.”

The trader made a wounded face. “Very good silk. And the color…unlike any other, yes?”

Olga almost nodded. She had never seen its like, and it was so beautiful it almost hurt to look on it. And the way it had felt! But she refrained, knowing well enough about marketing to understand what Brenna was doing.

“Two pieces of gold,” Brenna finally countered.

“Too little! Four. I must have four. I flee bandits to bring fine silk to you.”

“Three. And the yellow as well.”

Acting as if Brenna had demanded his firstborn in trade, the man slapped his hand to his chest. And then he nodded. “Never do I make a trade bad like this before.”

Brenna pulled gold from her purse and handed it to the trader, then waved behind them, and Rikke, a servant from the hall, ran up and took the bolts. Vali and Brenna had freed the slaves under their personal control, but the jarl hadn’t required anyone else to do so, and he wasn’t inclined to make such an edict. He had brought the question up at a thing, to a cool reception, and the matter had mostly been dropped.

But at least her friends no longer claimed dominion over other human beings. Olga could take some ease from that.

“Take the silk to Olga’s, please,” Brenna instructed her servant, who turned and did just that.

“What?” Olga asked, shocked. “No, Brenna, it is too much.”

Her friend waved the protest away and hooked arms again. “When we took over in Geitland and I wore Hilde’s things because I had nothing of my own, I learned I don’t like silk. But the light in your eyes when you touched it to your face is one I haven’t seen for many months. Any little piece of happiness you can find, you more than deserve.”

In the first months that they had been in Karlsa, Brenna had tried to plead Leif’s defense. She had kept at it with dogged determination until the winter solstice. On an endless night, when the sun had never truly risen, Olga, worn to a nub by her friend’s stubbornness and depressed by the relentless bleak of the winter, had finally broken down. Sobbing like she had never before in her life, she had told Brenna everything. What had happened to her during the sacking of the castle. The sea of bodies everywhere afterward. Their terror in thinking Vali lost, too. Vali’s wild madness. How Anton had died. And how Kalju had died.

With a full understanding of Olga’s unhappiness and her hatred of Leif, Brenna had not again mentioned his name in Olga’s presence, for which she was deeply grateful.
“Perhaps you can make something for Frida to have when she is wedded.” Brenna smirked and added in a low mutter, “Or when she is bedded.”

Olga laughed. “You are bawdy with this child, Brenna. And thank you. Very much.”

Brenna shrugged. “I don’t feel well enough to act on it, so I suppose it comes out my mouth instead. And you’re welcome, my friend.”

“Summer is here. It won’t be many more weeks now.”

~oOo~

Brenna gave birth at the summer solstice, on an endless day of midnight sun. The birthing was as hard as the carrying had been; the babe was large, and Brenna had grown weak. Until Olga had made a small cut and widened the birth channel, she had not been so sure that all would be well.

But finally, as Brenna screamed and fell back exhausted, Olga caught a bundle in her arms—the little girl that Brenna had been so sure she was having, as it had been foretold.

She wiped the babe’s nose and mouth, and she immediately let loose a lusty wail. Then Dagmar leaned over, pulling something from the small leather pouch she wore always around her neck—a tiny vial of red liquid.

Olga lifted her eyes to Dagmar, who smiled. “An unguent from home. To draw the gods’ attention to her.” She dabbed a bit on her thumb and then swiped a small circle over the bawling child’s forehead.

Used by now to the ways of these gods, Olga only smiled and lifted the babe up so that Vali could see. “She is strong and well.”

His creased face smoothed into a great grin. He kissed his wife’s sweat-soaked forehead and came down to where Olga held the child. Bending low, he looped the life cord around his hand, lifted it to his mouth, and bit it, separating mother and child.

She had been both healer and midwife among her people, but here in Karlsa, where Sven had been their healer, they had had a midwife as well. It was the normal case in this world. But the town’s midwife had been killed by
Åke’s men when they took over, so
Olga had helped several children into the world here since she’d arrived.
This biting of the cord seemed one of the many small rituals of these people—so earthy, yet so godly.

Vali took his daughter, eschewing the linens Olga held, and cradled her to his chest. “I will protect you all my days, little one, with my axe, my heart, and my life. You will grow strong and fierce like your mother and live a great life. And I will be with you all the way.”

“Vali,” Brenna’s voice was soft but strong. “Please. Please.” She had never had the chance to hold their firstborn, a wee son. He had been born and died while she had been near death herself.

Without taking his eyes from the little face in his arms, Vali turned and carried their daughter to her mother. Brenna opened her shift and bared her breasts, and Vali laid the child there.

Brenna’s arms went round her daughter. The child turned toward the promise of nourishment. Vali sat on the bed with his family, his vast back blocking Olga’s view of that private, lovely moment.

Her heart felt swollen with the feeling of glad sorrow that was the closest thing to happiness Olga knew any longer how to feel. She took no happiness in her own life, though she sometimes felt some warm pleasure. And the happiness she felt for those she loved came always with loss. A dark, bottomless loss. Of all the things she could never have. All the things that had been taken away.

Or given away and then destroyed.

~oOo~

They named their daughter, born on a day of endless sun, Solveig, which meant something like ‘the way of the sun.’ She even had a tiny birthmark on her shoulder, a little kiss the color of Olga’s favorite silk shift, that made the shape of a bright summer sun.

Her personality was just as luminous. Olga had never had the pleasure of loving a child of her own, but she had known and cared for many, and never before had she known such a young one to have a demeanor so easy. The babe rarely cried. She smiled early and laughed less than a month after her birth. The entire hall was in love with the pretty, happy little girl. Even Brenna’s many wild, enormous cats doted on the child, allowing her to tangle her chubby little fists in their bushy fur.

Vali was completely besotted. On several occasions, Olga had come into the hall to find that massive, ferocious warrior on his hands and knees, hovering over the babe, making ridiculous noises and faces, drawing gales of tiny giggles. Solveig’s favorite thing to suck on was his braid, and he had held meetings with her in his arms while she noisily sucked and chewed.

And Brenna. From the first time she had been pregnant, with her son, Olga had seen the signs in her friend that she would be a natural mother. As hard-shelled as she seemed to be, as often as she scowled, inside was a soft, warm heart, one that took in stray animals and people and brought them close. She had mourned her son desperately, and now she poured a doubled portion of love into her daughter’s heart from her own.

Olga loved them all fiercely and treasured the close bond she had with them. She held Solveig and could almost feel that she was her own. But she was not, and under that fierce love and happiness for her friends was always that bitter loss.

It kept her awake at night, alone in her house with her chickens and goats.

She sat in the hall one day as another summer waned. Solveig had two months and was a fat, fair, beautiful little girl. Olga held her, bouncing her lightly on her knees and quietly singing an old tune her mother had sung to her in the world before. Vali and Brenna sat in their fur-covered chairs at the end of the hall and heard the petitions and concerns of their people.

They had not raided this summer. Vali had wanted to stay close to Brenna, and after the struggles of the previous year, he thought it good to take the year to rebuild. Olga hadn’t concerned herself with much about that business, but she’d heard enough around the town to know that some had not been happy with a full season of idleness. Now, at the end of a season without plunder, people had complaints. Vali heard and addressed them all.

Bjarke ran in through the open hall doors. “Vali! A ship approaches.” Everyone turned in his direction. Olga, seated at the side, brought Solveig close, feeling the need to protect her.

Vali and Brenna both stood. “Friend or foe?” Vali asked.

“It bears the colors of Jarl Leif Olavsson.”

“Friend, then!” Brenna’s voice rang out happily. “He comes at last!”

Leif was friend to Brenna and ally to Vali and Karlsa, but he was foe to Olga. She waved Rikke over and handed the babe to her. Without seeking the attention of her friends, she left the hall.