After I’d inspected the fish racks and the horses, and greeted and spoken to a fair number of the torpari, we walked up the hill to look at the sheep. The breeze blew our voices away from the shepherd further up the slope: I’d had to shout to acknowledge him. He’d only raised a hand, making no effort to join us.
“Roghan,” I said, “I must tell you something. Druise and I killed three Marai men on Karlstorp’s land, six days ago.” I told him what had happened, but not Karl’s part in it. “What do you know of them, and of Earl Gosta?”
He chewed his lip. “Gosta’s hard-headed, but not stupid with it. Do you know who the third man was?”
“No. Just that he was perhaps a little younger than Eluf, wouldn’t you say, Druise?”
“I think so.” Druise had squatted, listening.
“So he could have been either Eluf’s brother, or Lotar’s father. What colour was his hair?”
“Dark,” Druise said. “I thought odd, for a Marai.”
“Then it was Eluf’s brother, almost certainly. A little better for you.”
“Better for me? I had given them my name, Roghan. Eluf knew I was a scáeli.”
He was looking out to sea, reflexively watching the waves and the fishing boats. “Neither Eluf nor his brother have children old enough to farm the land by themselves. Gosta will send a steward for this harvest, but he’ll want payment for taking that man from other work. I’d say pay it. It’s not worth all — ” He stopped, his eyes dropping.
“Speak freely,” I said. “Druise is part of it.”
“I see,” my brother said. “Then — ”
“Wait,” Druise said, straightening. “I know some things, but not all. Cillian’s choice, yes? I will go look at the ocean.” Roghan and I stood silently until he was out of earshot.
“A good man, I think,” Roghan said. “Loyal to Cillian.”
“And even more so to Gwenna, who will be heir not just to Ésparias, but to her father’s plans, some day. What were you going to say, Roghan?”
“Pay the price Gosta asks: it will not be unfair, and better you — we — are seen as magnanimous. You can say he did not know you were a scáeli, and the presence of a guard argued against it.”
“We can’t. Karl knows the truth, and I don’t trust him to keep quiet.”
“Ah. Can we not just be generous?”
“No. It weakens the traditional protection of the scáeli’en. They were riding armed, which is already against the terms that returned Sorham to us, and they attacked both a known scáeli and Ésparian royalty, although they did not know who she was. Ruar will never agree, nor — ” I paused, thinking.
“What?” Roghan probed.
“They didn’t know who she was,” I said. “What if Ésparias paid the fee asked?”
He shrugged. “I doubt Gosta will care where the money comes from. But he is the smaller problem. Lotar’s father has a hot head, not a hard one, and you robbed him of his heir. He’ll want blood as well as coin. Who actually killed Lotar?”
“I did.” A fine distinction, but the truth. He’d been dying: Gwenna’s secca had pierced his liver. A minute or two more was all he’d had, but I had cut that short.
“Who knows that?”
“No one except the three of us, and you now.”
He grimaced. “Druisius is an Ésparian officer. Gwenna is Ésparias’s heir. Lotar’s father may be hot-headed, but he’ll not go after them. It’ll be you.”
“Or you,” I said slowly. “You and your family.”
“Possibly.” No inflection, just agreement.
I swore. “I didn’t mean to put Gundarstorp at risk.”
“It’s not the first time. There was more risk when I helped bring the young prince to safety.” We turned by some mutual understanding, heading back down the hill to the path that ran along the cliff. Druise was looking out at the waves, and the seabirds wheeling and crying over the water.
“Come,” Roghan said when we reached him. “Old Iosaf rarely stirs from his chair these days, but he’ll want to see Sorley, and there will be fuisce to be had, I’m sure.”
Druise adjusted the tuning of his cithar, sitting on the edge of his bed in the room we were sharing. “Iosaf barely cared I was here,” I said, running a comb through my hair, “with you giving him something to wonder over and talk of until he dies. A man from Casil!”
He looked up. “So isolated here,” he said. “A man from Ésparias would be excitement, I think.”
“Possibly, for the torpari, at least. But even my own nieces and nephews are more interested in you than me.” Druise adored children, the smaller the better, and they him. Roghan and Betis’s youngest, five-year-old Lairís, hadn’t wanted to leave his side.
“I am different.” He was, of course, his dark skin making him stand out in Linrathe and Sorham. In Ésparias, where men from the southern coast and Leste served on the Wall, his appearance wasn’t remarkable, a matter of degree rather than sharp contrast. He put down his instrument. I bent to kiss him.
“Careful,” he said.
“I bolted the door. I didn’t want Lairís following you in here.”
“Lairís should be at a Ti’ach.” He grinned at me. “Are you sure she’s not yours? You were here six years back.”
“Of course she’s not,” I said. It was another old tease between us, ever since I had told him about Bjørn, and then Bearga.
“Could she not come back with us?”
“She’s five,” I said. “No. Why are you suggesting it?”
“She sang for me earlier,” he said. “Her voice is pure. Apulo could teach her so much.”
“Really?” I shook my head. “Even so, there is a Ti’ach half a day’s ride away now, and its specialities are the same as ours.”
“I suppose. I miss little ones. Lena and Cillian should have had more children.”
“Not from lack of trying, as you so embarrassingly told Gwenna,” I said with a chuckle.
“I had reasons,” he said.
“I know,” I replied. I put a hand on his shoulder. “She needs to be sure of them.”
After dinner we played and sang, all the family joining in. Music had always mattered at Gundarstorp; it was why my father had agreed to my years at the Ti’ach, and why, I had realized some years ago, he had chosen Betis for me: she played the ladhar with skill, and sang well. Maj, like his first wife, my mother, had musical talent too, clear indication of its value to my father.
But while they all could sing with some proficiency, Lairís’s voice was exceptional, I had to admit. “Can she play?” I asked Betis, taking her aside while Druise tuned his cithar to play a Casilani song or two.
“I am teaching her, yes,” she said. “She knows when the ladhar needs tuning, and she has started to pick out melodies I haven’t shown her.”
I clicked my tongue, thinking. “She should have proper instruction, later,” I said. “Not that yours is not,” I added hurriedly. “But with that voice, she could be a scáeli, Betis. Would you like me to ask Eithnë if she could ride over from the Ti’ach to give her lessons occasionally?”
“Oh,” she breathed. “How I would have loved that. Yes, if Roghan does not object.”
“Why would he? Shall I ask him, or you?”
“I will,” she said. She glanced at her family, but they were immersed in Druise’s music. “Sorley, I — I was upset, a little, when my father told me I was to marry Roghan instead of you. Because of the music. But not for long.”
I could have married her, I reflected. Could have fathered heirs, probably, if nothing more. But it would have been a false life, and unfair to both of us.
She smiled, looking younger than I knew she was. “He will want the best for Lairís, and if you say she might be a scáeli, well, it is an honour for the family.”
“A different life, for her.”
“That is not a bad thing. We are not all meant for the same fate.” Her eyes went to Gwenna, sitting between their oldest girl and Hairle.
“Although I would not want hers,” she said softly.
Chapter 56
The next day I went down to the harbour with Roghan before the fishing boats went out, to talk to the men who crewed them. The fishing was good this season, they told me, not halting their work but letting their hands do the familiar tasks while they talked. We watched them set off on the tide, and when the last boat was out in deep water we turned to go back to the fields. Hauled up on the shingle and roped securely was another boat, not so different than ours, and yet not the same. I frowned. “Whose is that?” I asked, indicating it with a jut of my chin.
“The lord Vidar’s. Earl Aaro’s son. He came — ”
“I know,” I said. “We met them on the road. He was in Linrathe to see Cillian, with a proposal or two. I’d have thought he’d have gone home by now.”
“He’s also the Lady Helvi’s cousin,” Roghan reminded me. “Perhaps he’s spent some time with her.”
“Perhaps,” I said, not really listening. “Is this just the shortest distance between Varsland and Sorham, or did he land here because he counts you as a friend?”
“A friend,” Roghan answered.
“I wonder,” I said, thinking aloud, “if he would assist us in convincing Lotar’s father to forgo demanding blood.”
We continued walking, Roghan hissing a little through his teeth, a habit he’d had since boyhood when he was thinking. “Did you really kill Lotar?” he asked abruptly.
“Yes,” I said, “in that I cut his throat. But he was dying when I did.”
“Who, then?”
“Gwenna. She put a secca into his gut.”
He made a face. “That can’t be known. Those in Varsland who think Fritjof was a hero already hate her mother. Eluf and his brother were firmly in Fritjof’s camp; Lotar’s clan weren’t so open with their thoughts, being merchants, but the sympathies were there.”
“I have no intention of allowing it to be.”
“What would you tell Vidar?”
“That we were attacked unprovoked. Lotar threw an axe at Druise. In the melee he was wounded to the death. I put my sword in his hand before I cut his throat.”
“Mercy and an honourable death. The same for the others?”
“Yes. Druise didn’t like it, but I insisted.”
We’d reached the barley fields. Roghan bent to pull ears from a few plants, giving me half before biting down on his. “Four or five more days,” he said.
I chewed. “I agree. The next field looks greener.”
“It was planted later. It rained for a week just after we sowed this one.” I nodded. Vagaries of weather always challenged farmers, here or at home. “They were buried properly?”
It took me a second to realize what he meant. “I left the burial to Karl. But I’d think so.”
“More than they deserved, then,” Roghan said, spitting out remnants of the barley. “I can tell Vidar all this?”
“Everything except Gwenna’s part.”
“Then when he comes back, I’ll tell him what happened, and I’ll go to Varsland with him. Put the case to the king.” He crouched, feeling the soil under the barley stems. “Can you convince Ésparias to pay compensation?”
“One way or the other.” The money might flow from Ruar, or some of it, but any payment to Varsland would come officially from south of the Wall. We had worked too long to weave our web of alliances for one group of rogue Marai to sweep it away. “Can you go to Varsland at harvest? Won’t you be needed?”
“Hairle’s here. Might delay him going to the Ti’ach, though, not that he’ll mind.” He stood up, wiping his fingers on his breeches.
“About that.” I told him what I’d said to Barì: history and politics, and managing the torp.
“Where’s the land come from?”
“Karl and Pietar.” I’d stopped to see Pietar on the way here, his lands lying between the Ti’ach and Gundarstorp.
“By Rögnir, Sorley, what made them do that? Now I have to do the same.”
“You won’t miss it,” I said cheerfully. “I was thinking the west side of Beinn Agheàr, and the sheep hefted to it.”
“You were, were you?” He stared up at the hills. “It’s closest, it’s true.”
“You can send a torpari lad, too, and his bride if he has one. Fair compensation for the lessons Lairís will be having.” Eithnë would come, I knew. As head of the council I could require it of her, but I wouldn’t need to: she’d leap at the chance to shape a voice with the potential Lairís’s had.
Roghan swore, but there was no heat behind it. I grinned. “I’ll write a song,” I said, “about the generosity of three Härren in the bleak north.” He growled something, and punched me lightly on the arm.
“Gods,” he said. “I miss you, brother. Come home more often, won’t you?”
Late in the day the wind began to blow from the northwest, heavy clouds rolling in over the sea. I stood in the courtyard of the hall with Roghan, looking at the sky. “Every year,” he said in disgust. “A ten-day more, and we’d have that barley harvested.”
The rain began no more than an hour later. It continued all the night, and in the morning it still rained, steadily, the wind hard enough to make candles gutter in the house and the fireplaces smoke. Other than the most necessary work — milking the cows, feeding the stabled horses — we stayed in. Not idly, of course, or not all of us. I sat with Roghan and Hairle, tallying the expected worth of the fleeces this year, and discussing markets. For all the ten years since Ruar’s marriage to Helvi, I’d come back to Gundarstorp every couple of years, and my brother had always treated me as if the estate was half mine. Perhaps had I not been effectively the factor for the Ti’ach, he might not have, but the price of wool and the grain harvest were my concern there too, even if I left the day to day management to others now.
Betis and Maj and the oldest girl had the endless work of women, cooking and mending, and if that was temporarily done there was always wool to spin. Druise and Gwenna played, Gwenna using my ladhar, and the women sang as they worked. The rain drummed on the roof.
After the midday meal, we lingered at the table. “How do you know all the northern tunes?” Betis asked Druise.
“Sorley taught me, over the years,” he said. I had just turned to Roghan to pour him more ale from the jug on the table, in time to see the flicker of sudden comprehension on his face. He glanced from me to Druise, and back again, tension visible — to me, at least — in his jaw and throat.
“Tell us about Casil?” Hairle asked. “It is your home, isn’t it?”
“Was,” Druise said. “I came to Ésparias fifteen years ago. It is a city, Hairle, thousands of people, and huge buildings, and always many ships at the harbour.” He continued his stories, speaking of the aqueducts that brought water from the hills, and the sewers that kept the city clean, and the massive bread ovens that helped to feed the people. Lairís slipped off her chair to crawl up on Druise’s lap. He shifted to make room for her, cuddling her close with one arm the way he had used to hold Gwenna. “Philomela,” he said to her. Nightingale.
“Lairís!” she said in protest, and we all laughed, even Roghan. But in the late afternoon, he indicated the door with a movement of his head. “Hairle, you feed the penned cows. Sorley and I will see to the horses.”
In the stable, smelling of horse and hay, he pulled the door closed behind us. Dim light filtered in through tiny gaps. “Druisius,” he said.
“Is my companion, Roghan. What difference does it make? You know the truth about me.”
“There is knowing, and seeing.”
“Seeing what?” I kept my voice down. “What have we revealed? Or are you worried about Hairle? His desires are set, Roghan. You’ve seen how he looks at Gwenna.”
“Gods, Sorley.” He had picked up a leather bucket in preparation for filling the water trough. Now he put it down again. “I — you are my brother, so I made myself not think about — that side of you. But Druisius — ” He swore
. “I like him, Sorley.”
I couldn’t help laughing. “And why shouldn’t you? I assure you that some of the other men you know and like have the same appetites, kept well-hidden.”
He grimaced at that. “I suppose,” he said. “Other scáeli — well,” he shrugged. “But Druisius is a soldier.”
“Roghan,” I said, “what in Rögnir’s name does a man’s choice of bedmates have to do with how well he wields his sword?”
He stared at me for a moment, and then he began to laugh, hard enough that he leaned against the stable wall for support. “And how well does he wield his sword?” he asked.
“Extremely well,” I said, grinning.
In the long summer twilight, the clouds and rain now blown eastward, we walked up to the barley fields. Much of the grain lay flat. Roghan clicked his tongue. “Harder work for the men,” he said. At the greener field, he shook his head. “It will mould before it ripens. We’ll try to rake it, but likely I’ll turn the cattle out on it in the end.”
“Will you go short this winter?”
“No. Just less to trade. There’s good yield on the ripe fields.” He looked westward. “Decent weather for a few days now, I think. If this wind stays strong, it’ll help dry the barley.” The baa-ing of sheep drifted down from the hills, and from below the cliff I could hear seals barking. Everything I had missed. But suddenly I saw Cillian in my mind, chuckling as he took a piece in xache; saw him presiding gravely over the meal table, questioning the daltai; the softness in his eyes when he looked at Lena. My silver bracelet on his wrist; the tone of his voice, sometimes, when he spoke my name. His fingers brushing mine. Longing surged.
I felt Roghan’s eyes on me. “We need to begin our journey back soon,” I said. “Gwenna has to be at the White Fort in a few weeks.”
“Tomorrow,” he said, “Hairle and I are going, separately, to talk with the neighbouring Härren, to agree on a price for the fleeces the Marai will soon come to trade for. He’ll go east; I’ll go to Pietarstorp. We could ride together that far, if you like.”
“I would. But, Roghan, should I stay, to go to Varsland with you? Druise can take Gwenna home without me.” I hadn’t planned to say that.
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