Lord of Raven's Peak

by Catherine Coulter

  “There is a woman, my lord,” Laren said and Rollo sighed, throwing a meaty pheasant bone to one of the huge hunting dogs who were surprisingly calm and quiet.

  Rollo said, as he took a handful of honeyed walnuts, “Tell me about the old woman who taught you to cook.”

  And she did, the story coming alive, for she was a spellbinder, and when she told of the old woman tasting her seasoned onions baked in honeyed maple leaves with peas, Merrik could nearly taste it himself, at this very moment.

  Rollo would never have enough, Laren thought, as he said now, “Tell me about this merchant Thrasco who bought you.”

  She did, her voice curt now, and she left out the beating, but Merrik wouldn’t allow it.

  “He believed her a boy, sire,” Merrik said, his voice hard and rough. “He was going to give her to Khagan-Rus’s sister, Evta, a woman who liked boys. Laren was frantic to get back to Taby and thus she spoke with insolence to him. He beat her quite savagely. Fortunately he did not discover she was a girl.”

  “But you saved me, Merrik,” she said, seeing the red flush on her uncle’s face, seeing the gnarled blood lines that veined his neck swell and pulse. She wouldn’t ever want to be his enemy.

  “Nay, not really. I merely caught you.” He wanted Rollo to understand the horror she had endured, but he didn’t want him so enraged he wouldn’t listen to reason. He said now to Rollo, “She had managed to escape Thrasco’s compound when I came along to rescue her. She’d already rescued herself. She is of your seed, sire, she would never give up.”

  Rollo laughed, thank the gods, he finally laughed, Laren thought.

  “She is a woman to reckon with,” Merrik said when Rollo had become still again.

  Laren didn’t stare at Merrik, though she wanted to. Did he really believe these wondrous things he was saying about her to her uncle? He’d never said naught about her being a woman to reckon with.

  “She always was, even as a little mite,” Rollo said. “I knew she could tell stories—but a skald! It is an amazing thing.”

  Their talk went on into the late hours. Rollo wanted every incident, every detail of the past two years. Finally, Weland was allowed into the chamber. He said, “Sire, we must speak of other things. By tomorrow, Helga and Ferlain will have heard about these guests and wonder about them. Even now there are scores of questions about the twenty Vikings who are now here and treated well by you. Aye, they’re not stupid. And their husbands have men loyal to them, doubt it not, particularly Fromm. I know he pays dearly for his traitors.”

  Rollo was stroking his chin with his joint-swollen fingers. It was odd, but his joints didn’t ache like the Christian hellfires this night. No, he felt renewed. He’d been given more than a man deserved. He knew it and marveled that either the Christian God or his Viking gods had granted him his greatest wish.

  “Aye,” he said finally. “We must talk.”

  “I have a plan, sire,” Merrik said, leaning forward on his elbows.

  Ferlain paced to and fro in front of her sister, Helga, but Helga paid her no heed She was mixing a potion and the measures had to be precise.

  Ferlain said for the third time, “Who are these Vikings? There is also a girl with them, but none know who she is. Who is she, Helga? You must do something. Look at me! Ask your miserable smoke concoctions! Look into that silver bowl of yours.”

  Helga finished her measuring. Only then did she look up at her sister. Then she looked down again and began to gently stir the thin mixture in the small silver bowl. She said in her low, soft voice, “I can see why your husband avoids you so much, Ferlain. All you do is screech and whine, all to no account, and worry and fret. It is tiring. Sit down and hold your tongue behind your teeth. I must finish this or it will be ruined.”

  Ferlain, tired and worried, sat. They were in Helga’s tower room where servants were forbidden to enter. None came in here save Ferlain, not even Helga’s husband, Fromm. He didn’t like it, either, always raged about it, but Helga held firm. He could do nothing. Indeed, Ferlain thought, staring at her sister’s intent expression as she stirred one of her vile potions, he was afraid of his wife, ’twas the only thing that stilled his vicious bully’s hand against her. She wondered what the potion was.

  Perhaps a poison for Rollo, damn the old man for continuing forever and ever. Why wouldn’t he simply die? He had lived fifty-six years, but still, despite his painful joints, he appeared healthy as a stoat, his teeth strong, his head covered with thick hair, his back straight.

  No, it wasn’t poison. It had to be a potion for Helga’s own use. Ferlain looked at her older sister and knew that she looked much younger than she, Ferlain, did. There were no wrinkles on her face, and her flesh was soft and resilient. Her hair was rich and full, so light a brown that it was nearly blond. And her waist hadn’t thickened over the years. She was nearly thirty-five years old. Ferlain was twenty-nine and she looked old enough to be Uncle Rollo’s wife, not his niece.

  Ferlain started to jump to her feet, to pace again, just to move, but her sister looked over at her in that moment, and she stilled. Her fingers began violently pleating the folds of her skirt. She couldn’t bear not to be moving, to be doing something, ah, but it was difficult now because she was so very fat. All those babes she’d carried, and all of them dead, leaving her nothing save the unsightly flesh that weighted her down and made her ugly. “Are you finished yet, Helga?”

  “Aye, I am.” Helga straightened, eyed that damned potion of hers that looked like nothing more than a light broth, and smelled of nothing at all. “Now,” she said, picked up the potion and drank it down. She wiped her hand across her mouth. A spasm of distaste distorted her features, but just for an instant. Then she lightly touched her fingertips to her throat, to her chin, and finally to the soft delicate flesh beneath her eyes. Then she said calmly, “All right, Ferlain, we have strangers visiting. Rollo and that fool Weland aren’t telling anyone who they are. Even Otta is resolute in his silence. Is that correct?”

  “Aye, who are they?”

  Helga shrugged. “We will know soon enough. Why does it bother you?”

  “I know it’s her.”

  “Her? Who?”

  “Laren, Helga. Don’t pretend you don’t know who I was talking about!”

  “Laren,” Helga repeated quietly. “Odd. I haven’t thought of the child in a very long time. Do you really believe it possible that the girl survived? That she’s actually returned? How very interesting that would be. But Taby wasn’t with her, at least you’ve said naught about a child. He would only have six years now, aye, still a child, and you know how very fragile children are. A puff of a dark wind, and the child sickens and dies. Aye, such fragile creatures they are. So if it is indeed Laren, why do you care?”

  “I hate you, Helga! You act so smart and so above all of us. I hate you! If it is Laren, she is back to brew more trouble for us, more trouble than you can concoct potions to counteract.”

  Helga smiled and shrugged. “Let her brew up all the mischief she can. We know naught of what happened to her. Calm yourself. You are looking even fatter, Ferlain. You must see to leaving off all those sweetmeats you keep next to your bed. And Cardle is so very thin, the poor man. His chest looks as if it’s next to his backbone.”

  “Damn you, Helga, I have carried eight babes! A woman gains flesh when she carries a babe.”

  But Helga had no interest, for she had lived through each of her sister’s pregnancies, each of her failures. She said, shrugging, “I do hope it is Laren, our long-lost half sister. Such a quaint child she was, always running wild until Taby was born and then she became such the little mother to him, so much more so than her own mother, the faithless bitch. I wonder what Laren looks like now. She is eighteen now, or close to it. Aye, what does she look like?”

  “Will you do nothing?”

  Helga stared through the narrow window that gave onto the rolling hills behind the city. The land was rich with summer though it was well into fall now.
The hills were still covered with trees and grass and blooming daisies and dandelions. She forced herself to look at her sister. It wasn’t a pleasing sight, but she was her sister, after all. “Naturally I will do something. We must now just wait and see if this unknown girl is Laren. Then we will see.”

  Laren wore a pale saffron linen gown, Ileria’s favorite, she’d told Merrik, as she smoothed the material free of wrinkles. A saffron ribbon threaded in and out of three thin braids artfully pulled back from her forehead and looped behind her ears. She wore two armlets, both given to her just that morning by Rollo.

  She looked like a princess, Merrik thought, and felt a sharp pang in his belly. She looked as though she belonged here. There was a new confidence in her walk, in the way she spoke. For the first time since he’d carried her away with him from Kiev, he felt a lack in himself. He hated it.

  “Are you scared?”

  “Aye,” he said without pause, then realized she couldn’t have known what he’d been thinking. “Scared about meeting your half sisters and their husbands?”

  She nodded, then took his hand.

  “You’ve told me so much about them that the fear of the unknown is long gone. No, not that. Other things bother me.” He looked down at her hand, now held in one of his, adding quickly before she could question him, “You slept deeply last night.”

  She smiled up at him. “I didn’t expect to. It was my old sleeping chamber. The men took Taby and me from that same bed. Nothing has changed.”

  She was silent, only her fingers closing and opening in his hand telling him that she was nervous. They were waiting behind Rollo’s throne in a small chamber hidden from the huge outer hall by a long scarlet hanging.

  They could hear men’s and women’s voices, the curiosity, the questions, the speculation.

  “I’ve never before seen such richness,” Merrik said. Again, he felt that curious lack, and immediately felt disgusted with himself.

  She nodded, distracted.

  He smiled, shaking his head. She’d been a slave, then his wife, and now she was returned to her opulent beginnings. But it didn’t seem to matter one whit to her.

  They stilled. Rollo spoke in a rolling deep voice that brought everyone to immediate and instant silence.

  “I asked you here to announce the return of my niece Laren, daughter of my older brother Hallad of Eldjarn.”

  There was pandemonium, then the scarlet drapery was pulled aside and they stepped forward to stand beside Rollo.

  Then voices were saying, “It is Laren, just look at that red hair!”

  “She’s a woman now. How old was she when she disappeared?”

  “Nay, ’tis a girl who just looks like Laren, she isn’t here. Laren is long dead. Whoever took her killed her.”

  “Aye, ’twas the earl of Orkney, the vicious sod, who took her and Taby.”

  Rollo held up his hand. “My niece. Welcome her.”

  Laren looked out over the assembly of people, most of whom she’d known all her life, and said, “I am home again. I see you there, Mimeric, do you still play the lute like one of the Christian angels? And you, Dorsun, do you still shoot your bow as far as before? I remember you nicked the wing of a bird some four years ago, and the bird was in flight. Ah, and Edell, you have gained flesh, my old friend. I remember that you liked overmuch the honeyed bread the cooks gave you when no one was looking. All you had to do was smile at them, and they gave you whatever you wanted.”

  She paused then and waited. Merrik watched the people’s faces change from disbelief to uncertainty to astonishment. There was a deep rumble then bursting calls of “Laren! Laren!”

  Rollo allowed the fiftysome people to continue in their calling and yelling for some more minutes. Then he raised his hand. The hall was instantly silent again.

  “My nephew Taby is not here. He was but a babe when he was abducted and all know that a babe, even well tended and protected, cannot always survive. But do not fall into grief. There has been too much pain already.” Rollo turned to Merrik, and drew him forward. “This is Laren’s husband, Merrik Haraldsson of Norway, cousin to King Harald Fairhair. I have known of him now for some time. Now he is here, for I bade him come and take his place.”

  Merrik grinned down at her, saying quietly, “I am a distant cousin, ’tis not all fabrication. Of course, many in Norway are distant cousins to just about everyone else.”

  “Here is the man who will rule if my son William Longsword dies before he produces an heir. Welcome Merrik Haraldsson!”

  It was baldly said, no easing into it, no smooth explanation or justification, just Rollo booming out his announcement in his smooth deep voice. Even Laren sucked in her breath, and she’d known what he was going to do. The shock was clear on every face in the huge outer hall.

  “Good,” Merrik said to her with relish. “Now I am the one who is the threat, not you.”

  “I don’t like this,” she said again, and not for the first time since the preceding evening when Merrik had given his plan to Rollo. “It is not your place, Merrik, to throw yourself into such danger. Look at everyone. They don’t know what to do. It is a shock beyond what they’ve ever known. Where are Helga and Ferlain?”

  She’d argued with him endlessly and he’d listened and nodded, but never wavered. Now he only smiled at her, still staring out at all the faces staring back at him in blank consternation. “They will show themselves in due course. As for the others, I will play the valiant hero, and show them as much ruthlessness as they are used to seeing in Rollo, and show them that I seethe with honor, so much honor that I can barely hold up my head with the surfeit. Perhaps Rollo will come to admire me so very much, he will beg me to remain in Normandy and rule beside him, then beside William. What do you think?”

  “I think you are mad.”

  “Mad, am I? Do you not believe I can be an heir to Normandy to everyone’s satisfaction? Do you not believe me skilled enough to persuade all the people to believe in me?”

  “Aye, you know that you can. In that, you are mad.”

  “Will this madness continue in our children, do you think?”

  She stared up at him, for the moment, all else forgotten. “I don’t know of such things,” she said.

  “You have not had your woman’s bleeding since I first came to you.”

  She turned as pale as the white of her undershift.

  At that moment, Rollo, smiling, turned to Merrik and held out his hand. “My lord Merrik, come forward, and greet my people. Perhaps they will be yours someday.”

  At that moment, Laren swayed, her eyes bewildered and wide on her husband’s face, even as she said, “I am not well.” He caught her and lifted her into his arms.

  There was again pandemonium, and Rollo, scared to his toes, leapt to his feet and shouted, “By the gods, what is wrong with her?”

  Merrik said loudly, “She has but fainted, sire. She isn’t ill. She is carrying my heir.” He lifted her high in his arms and his voice rang out deep and strong in the huge chamber, “Aye, she carries the son who just might rule Normandy one day.”

  Helga said quietly to her sister, the wide smile on her face never slipping, “Perhaps she will not carry anything for very long. Perhaps she is like you, Ferlain, and her womb is diseased.”

  “She has our father’s hair—a girl shouldn’t have hair that color, ’tis sinful, all that miserable red.”

  “Our father looked very handsome in his red hair,” Helga said. “A pity he killed that faithless wife of his and ran away. But then I have always wondered if he did kill her. She died so quickly, you know, and there didn’t seem to be violence. Aye, such a pity that our father believed he would be blamed and disappeared. More a pity that the bitch gave birth to Laren and Taby before she succumbed.”

  Ferlain felt the cold of the grave, a cold so profound that it numbed the body and the mind. She thought of her eight dead babes, aye, they were in cold graves, every one of them, naught but scattered tiny bones now. She stared at her
sister, who had now turned and was saying to her husband, Fromm, “So, husband, what do you think of this Merrik Haraldsson?”

  Fromm puffed out his chest, a habit he’d learned from Otta, only when Fromm did it, it was annoying. He said, “It is obvious he is cunning. He has taken advantage of Rollo’s advancing years, showing Rollo only what the old man wants to see, saying only what he wants to hear, doing only—”

  “Aye, I know,” Helga said, not bothering to hide her irritation. “I think him handsome. He wears his youth splendidly, does he not?”

  “Do not give me your smooth spite, Helga.” Fromm turned from her to his brother-in-law. “Cardle, I will speak to you once Rollo dismisses us.”

  Helga laughed now, overhearing her husband speak to Cardle. By all the gods, why would he want to speak to that pitiful fool? Ask his advice on how to kill Merrik? Laren?

  Helga turned to listen yet again to Rollo as he calmed the crowd and spoke of the Viking’s character and his honor, of the advantages they would gain allied to the king of Norway. Rollo did not mention that it had been that same king who had outlawed him some years before. Merrik had carried the still-unconscious Laren through the thick draperies behind Rollo’s throne. Helga didn’t listen to Rollo, it was all nonsense in any case. She listened to the questions put to Rollo from high-ranking families, but she was picturing the Viking in her mind. He was a beautiful man.

  Was she not a beautiful woman?

  Was his wife not pregnant, fainting like a weakling and probably vomiting up her guts in front of him? Laren was also still too thin, scarcely looking like a female, save for the red hair in those stingy braids. Surely no man could willingly wish to bed such a stick as she was. Surely she had not the skills to please such a man as this Merrik Haraldsson.

  Why, Helga wondered, listening to that ass, Weland, respond to Raki, a man of little intellect and great strength, nearly as great as Weland’s, hadn’t Rollo told them what had happened to Laren? She herself was very interested. She wanted to know how this Merrik had met Laren. Had he killed Taby once he’d learned who they were, guessing that he could take the child’s place in Rollo’s plans?