Season of the Sun (21 page)

But I was the one to blame, Zarabeth wanted to
say. I was the one who carried her away, who put her in that boat. I am the one who killed her.

But she said nothing, for to say the words aloud would brand them forever in her soul, and she knew she wasn't strong enough to suffer it.

When she was clean again, her hair brushed and braided, her gown fresh and unwrinkled, she found she couldn't move, didn't want to move. She stood there, seeing her little sister lying tangled in those water reeds, her hair floating out from her small head, and Lotti was so still, so still . . .

She didn't realize she was crying until she tasted the salt from her tears. She turned quickly and ran into the longhouse, ran to Magnus' chamber. She sat on the edge of the bed and cried. No one came to bother her.

She hadn't realized there could be so many tears. They choked her, made her throat raw, burned her eyes. She whispered, “Lotti, I'm so sorry. My God forgive me, I failed you.”

The men didn't return until nearly midnight. There was still the dim half-light of summer, giving the surrounding countryside an eerie glow that never failed to surprise Zarabeth. She was standing outside the palisade, looking over the water, knowing deep inside her that Lotti was there, gone from her forever. If only she could imagine her resting, at peace, sleeping, her small hands tucked beneath her cheek.

She rubbed her bare arms, for the night breeze had cooled and there was dampness in the air.

She saw the men in a long single line climbing up toward her. They hadn't found Egill. She looked at Magnus, her new husband, and he looked defeated and exhausted. She felt pain twist deep within her. The two children, both gone, one because of the other and both because of her.

The tears started again.

Magnus saw her, standing there so quietly, looking toward him, her face wet with her crying. He merely shook his head and walked to her. He said nothing, merely looked down at her. He touched his fingertip to her wet cheek. Slowly he drew her into his arms and pressed her head against his shoulder.

“We did not find him, nor did we find any trace of him. He could still be alive.”

Zarabeth raised her face. “Then Lotti could also still be alive.”

Magnus realized the fallacy of his words, but they were all that had sustained him. They were all that kept his grief at bay.

He heard himself say, “Yes, that is true.” But he knew it wasn't true. Lotti had drowned, her body either washed out by the current to the Oslo Fjord or still there, close by, strangled and trapped in the thick water reeds. Just as his son was dead. He didn't know where he was, that was all. Why had the boy disappeared? Had he run away because he feared he would be blamed for Lotti's death? Where could he be? The possibilities tortured him, for there were animals to kill a small child, animals to haul his body away and eat him. And there were men, outlaws, who would torture a child, and perhaps demand ransom for him, and then there could be . . . It went on and on and Magnus knew he must stop it.

He pulled back from his wife.

“We are together now as we should have been from the beginning. Whatever has happened cannot be changed. We must face what is and endure it.”

“It is difficult, Magnus.”

“Aye, I know.” He touched his fingertips to her cheeks, dry now, then glided them over her brows and her eyelids.

“I could not stop my crying.”

The men straggled around them, going into the
longhouse to eat, others simply going in to fall into an exhausted sleep.

“Now that I am back, I will hold you when you cry.”

But who will hold you, she wondered, for no one sees you cry.

Magnus' family remained two more days, the men searching for hours at a time for Egill. No one said anything about giving up the search, but there was no sign of the boy. It was as if he had vanished.

Within the longhouse, Helgi went about teaching Zarabeth those household tasks she'd had no opportunity to learn in York. She was brusque, always matter-of-fact, but never unfair or impatient.

“In York, your family was small and those things you didn't have, you could buy or obtain in trade. But here, Zarabeth, you must know how to do everything, for the traveling merchants who visit come rarely and you cannot depend upon them. Now, to dye cloth . . . See this lovely soft reddish brown? It comes from the madder plant. Ferns and these small onions make a lighter brown. And this beautiful golden color, we make it from this lichen. You are Irish, Zarabeth, so you must have heard of the saffron dye made from bulbs of autumn crocus.”

Zarabeth concentrated, for there was no choice, and she learned, despite the hollowness deep inside her, the constant gnawing of guilt and pain.

Helgi taught her to cure fish. She held up a trout that she had just cleaned and gutted. “We will smoke-dry it and then salt it. When there is a fierce storm and fishing is impossible, then you will have a good reserve of dried fish and thus won't go hungry. You see here, Zarabeth, you hold the fish open by these wooden skewers, and we hang them up by these tiny wooden rods passed through the heads.”

Helgi taught her to comb flax fibers, making them
fine and soft and free of all tangles. Zarabeth knew how to spin her thread on spindles, but Helgi knew ways of twisting the fibers more tightly together so that the thread was stronger and more enduring.

Ingunn did nothing more than her mother instructed her to do. She watched, and there was no more fury on her face, just blankness and a strange kind of stillness. It was the stark absence of feeling rather than the bouts of rage that bothered Zarabeth.

Cyra had decided that she would take Horkel, and announced it to Zarabeth. She seemed to have forgotten that she herself was a slave, for after all, Zarabeth had also been a slave, yet now she was mistress of the farmstead. As for Horkel, he ignored Cyra whenever he saw her during the day, but each night he grabbed her hand and pulled her from the longhouse. In the morning she was smiling and looking well-pleased with herself. Magnus said nothing, and his silence was in itself agreement with whatever Horkel wished.

Cyra did what Zarabeth bade her do, without complaint, as did the other servants and slaves.

Life went on, continuing with such an air of normalcy, with such obliviousness of what had happened, that Zarabeth realized with the force of someone striking her that she could not be a part of it. It was beyond her to pretend that everything was normal and the same as it had been before. She watched all the men and women, listened to them speak and laugh and argue. She couldn't bear it. She was plunged into such a depression that she simply withdrew into herself. She worked and she oversaw all the cooking and cleaning and planting, for it was her responsibility. But she remained apart from it. Still, she realized that the different tasks, the plain hard work, the monotonous chores, did grant her something—they dulled her mind.

Aunt Eldrid continued with her weaving; it was all
that she did, and she did it well. She played with the children, instructing the girls, but there were harsh lines bracketing her mouth now and her eyes were bleak. Helgi avoided her sister, and Zarabeth wondered at it, as would someone who was vaguely curious, nothing more.

She worked until she was so tired she wasn't even hungry. Magnus said nothing to her about it. When she fell into bed, he merely took her into his arms and held her. As for Magnus, life had never seemed so completely out of his control, nor had he ever experienced such endless pain as he did now. His son, his little boy who was only eight years old, was gone from him. His features remained impassive with the knowledge of it, but deep inside, he wondered if he would survive it. And as he lay in bed during the long hours of the half-twilight night, he tried to fill his mind with memories.

He hadn't spent many summers at home, for the sea and trading had blossomed early and passionate in his blood. Indeed, this was the first summer in five years he had been here, hunting, helping in the fields, for like Zarabeth, he found that the harder he worked, the easier the time passed. And he knew he couldn't leave her, not yet. As he lay there in his bed, Zarabeth's gentle breath warm against his heart, he shifted from memories to his brother, Jon. He wondered where Jon was traveling to this summer. He had taken his boat,
Black Raven,
and his twenty men, young and brave and eager, all of them, and had left just the week before. Magnus wondered if he would be raiding near Kiev, for he enjoyed the savages of those strange regions, particularly did he enjoy fighting them and killing them and taking slaves and earning more and more gold and silver through his trading skill when he sold them to the Arabs and to the wealthy men who lived in the golden city of Miklagard.

Magnus wished he was there now, with Jon, with the wind on his face and a fight to consider. He wished he had never met Zarabeth, never become ensnared with Lotti's loving nature, never allowed himself to go back for her. But it had happened, and as he had told Zarabeth, nothing could change what had happened. But acceptance remained hard, for both Lotti and his son were dead. Dead and gone from him. But he couldn't accept it. It held on to his mind, eating at him.

Zarabeth stirred, moaning softly, and he tightened his hold on her and kissed her temple. His wife.

On the morning of the third day, his parents packed their chests and prepared to leave.

“I have taught Zarabeth much,” Helgi told her son. “She is a bright girl, and willing. You have chosen well, Magnus.” She paused a moment, stroking her long fingers over her son's soft white tunic. “But she is so hurt and raw. She tries to hide it, but it is hard for her. I watch her sometimes and I can tell that she has gone away, deep inside herself, where the pain lessens. As for you, Magnus, it isn't as hard for you to hide what you feel, but your pain goes as deep as hers. You are more withdrawn than she is. The two of you together can heal each other, if you will but allow it. I don't suppose you have yet told her that you care for her?”

He shook his head. “I do not care for her,” he said, and his voice was firm and strong and the lie was so evident to his mother that she had to duck her head away to hide her incredulous smile. “It is true. I had no choice. I was responsible for all that happened. It was my duty to fix what could be fixed. I could not allow Lotti's sister to continue as a slave.”

Helgi continued as if he hadn't spoken. “Zarabeth is also a girl who has not known much affection, at least since her mother died. Thus, she lavished all her
love upon the child. If you would let her, she would confer all that love on you. Can you imagine such love?”

“She should give me her love, and she will. She is my wife. She owes me her loyalty. She pledged it to me, you will remember.”

“You always were a stubborn boy,” Helgi remarked with some amusement. “But, my son, facts have a way of coming to look one in the face. Do not keep your eyes closed for too long a time, Magnus.” Helgi kissed him, found Zarabeth standing alone at the end of the hall, and hugged her close, saying, “Don't forget that woad dyeing is very unpleasant in its process and in its smell, for 'tis such nasty stuff. But once you have bathed the cloth two times—forget not, Zarabeth, two times—then the beautiful blue will appear and you will think that it was worth it. It is, also, a very handsome color on Magnus. It matches the vivid blue of his eyes.”

“Two times,” Zarabeth said, and gave her mother-in-law a small smile.

Helgi blinked. It was the first time she had seen Zarabeth even attempt a smile. It transformed her face. She said a brief silent prayer and turned to her husband.

Ingunn left with her parents. Before she left, she said to Zarabeth, “I will find a way, you whore. Oh, aye, I will find a way.”

Zarabeth stared at her but said nothing. Ingunn was leaving. She wouldn't have to deal with her again.

Even though fifty people lived and worked at the Malek farmstead, without Magnus' parents and brother and their retainers, it seemed quiet, too quiet. Zarabeth found herself going every morning, after Magnus and his men had left to hunt, to the sacred place. It was a temple set inside a small circular wooden fence at the back of the farmstead. She didn't know the
rituals of the Viking religion, and no one bothered to tell her if what she did was right or not. Actually, she treated the small wooden temple as she would a Christian church. She knelt inside and prayed.

It brought her a measure of peace. She wished she could ask Magnus about it, but she didn't. He was distant, seldom within her hearing and sight, and very quiet even when he was there. There was not much laughter now at Malek.

He offered her comfort and she recognized it in his silence, in the gentleness of his hand when he touched her shoulder. It was as if he knew when the black despair overcame her.

He didn't touch her save to offer support and consolation. She was grateful, but she had no words to express that gratitude. She existed, and endured.

She had been his wife for nearly two weeks when Magnus realized suddenly one morning, just looking at her, that lust once again was swelling his member. He wanted her. He watched her reach up to pull down an iron pot from a hook. The movement drew her gown tightly across her breasts. He looked and felt the familiar swelling of his member.