“What do you mean?”
“She wasn’t here by choice, so nothing that came after was her choice. I know I speak far beyond my station, Your Highness—”
“I give you leave. Speak freely.”
She bowed her head in thanks. “I see it in the way she studies herself in the mirror. She sees the prisoner lurking inside her. Her people are different from us. Even as she learned our ways, she didn’t understand them. Where she was from, she could make of herself what she wanted. She could choose. Here, men choose little about their lives, and women choose nothing at all.”
There was a tang of envy in Elfleda’s last words. But Leofric heard something else in them as well, and he was suddenly glad that Astrid had not stayed. He knew her people wouldn’t sail before later in the next day, if they meant to sail as soon as they could. He had time. Elfleda’s words, and his father’s stunning concession, gave him hope. It shone before him like a beacon now.
He might not yet have lost her.
But she had to choose to stay.
“Thank you for your frankness, Elfleda.”
Hearing the thanks and the dismissal implied in it, she curtsied and took her leave.
Before he sat with his sleeping friend, Leofric went to the door that led into Dunstan’s young wife’s room. He didn’t knock. When he entered, he found her at the window, kneeling on a pillow, her hands clasped together and raised to the night sky.
She leapt to her feet and whirled to face him, her hands clutched over her slight form as if the miles of sleeping gown covering her from chin to floor might have left something unseemly for him to see. Mercy, she was young. In that ridiculously modest gown, he could more easily imagine her giggling with Dreda than he could coupling with his wild friend.
She curtsied, dropping all the way to the floor. “Your Highness.”
“Forgive me the intrusion, my lady, but I have a pertinent question for you.”
“Yes, sir?”
“If you could leave the castle forever and retire to a nunnery, would you choose to do so?”
She paled and frowned. “I’m sorry, sir. I know that I have been a bad wife—”
He waved off the apology. “I am asking you to choose, Winifred. You are already wedded, so your choices are limited to two. Well, three, but I don’t think you’d choose death over the others. So I want you to tell me honestly, before God. If you have a choice, would you prefer to be a good wife to your husband and lie with him as a good wife should, love him with your body as well as your heart, and give him issue, or would you rather devote your life to the Lord?”
“You—I—my mother said—”
“Winifred. Answer the question.”
Her voice was very small as she answered, “Since I was a child, I’ve wanted to give my life to the Lord. But my mother and father—”
Again, he waved her off. “If that is your wish, I will speak to your parents. And to your husband. And to my father. And to the bishop, to seek an annulment. But if you choose, be sure it is the life you truly want. We cannot undo things already done. Not more than once, at any rate.”
The smile the girl gave him was the biggest and most sincere he’d ever seen on her face. “Yes, sir. Yes! I choose! I choose God!” She clapped her hands like a little girl getting a treat.
He smiled. “Very well. Go back to your prayers.”
“I shall! And I shall thank the Lord every day for you, sir.”
“Do not forget your prayers for the earl’s speedy recovery.”
“No, sir. I shan’t.”
He closed the door on a very happy young woman, and he went to sit by her husband’s side. Dunstan would be glad as well, he knew. At least he could repair that damage.
Whether he could repair his own, he would know on the morrow.
Ah, Astrid. Choose this life. Choose me. He folded his hands and rested his forehead on them. Please, Lord, let her choose her future and not her past.
Astrid stood in the center of the camp and watched men and women strike tents and carry chests, bundles, and baskets to the shore, where the eight massive skeids were being laded. She had discarded her blood-drenched gown of the day before and wore her breeches and boots, with a tunic Leif had found for her.
A black pall of unrest loomed over the camp; the raiders were angry to be leaving a land where they had the clear advantage. They’d sailed for days, they’d lost nearly a score of raiders in the battle of the previous day, and they were returning with nothing but Astrid herself.
They all turned angry eyes on her as they passed her, and no one but the jarls would speak to her—because they all knew that she was the reason they would leave in ships emptier than when they’d arrived.
The night before, upon returning to the camp, she’d sat with Leif and Vali, and with Gunnar and Tollak, the leaders from the parties of Jarl Ivar and Jarl Finn, and she’d spoken as emphatically and desperately as she’d known how. She had no good reason to offer them for turning away without taking any spoils or wiping out the force that had struck during the parley—the same force that had attacked them the year before and nearly wiped out that raiding party, the same that had taken her and abused her.
Her only reason had been that she loved Leofric and couldn’t abide the thought of overrunning the castle of his family. Watching the surprise and confusion playing over Leif and Vali’s faces, she’d known that she was a different woman from the Astrid she’d been. The woman they’d known would never in a hundred years have suggested withdrawing from a winnable fight.
The woman they’d known had never known love. Now that she knew it, had it, the specter of losing it was like to rend her in two.
In the end, it was the great change in her, she thought, that had convinced her friends, and their much greater facility with persuasive speech had grudgingly convinced Gunnar and Tollak. They weren’t going home empty-handed, Leif had argued. They’d come for Astrid, and they were returning with her.
The raiders had been deeply unhappy, and the discussion that morning had filled the misty air with shouts and snarls. And now she was a pariah among them.
Had she lost this home, too?
It was more than their anger with her now. As happy as she was to be reunited with her friends, Astrid had felt out of step in the camp from before she’d taken Eadric’s body back to the castle. She’d killed one raider and injured another during the fighting. Both men had attacked her, and Leif had seen it, but it had thrown her loyalty into greater question, even though she’d also killed one of the king’s soldiers.
No one knew where she belonged. She didn’t know where she belonged.
The thought of watching the friends of her life sail away from her broke her heart. The thought of sailing away from Leofric broke her heart.
Standing in the middle of the dwindling camp, facing west, where the sea loomed blue and calm, Astrid felt a compulsion she’d never felt before in her life, not even in the black place. There, she’d wished for death often, but she’d never seriously considered bringing it about herself. She’d begged Leofric to kill her because it had been beyond her thinking to do it herself.
Now, the thought of simply walking into the sea until she drowned had her mesmerized. She couldn’t sail, and she couldn’t stay. The sea was the only place for her to go.
“Astrid.”
A heavy hand shook her shoulder, and she turned around. Vali was there. He’d been striking a tent, and he was bare-chested and shining with sweat. New scars marred his chest, the remnants of the ragged wounds of several arrows. His back had scars to mirror these, which was likely why he’d survived. If the arrows had stopped inside him, the damage done in pulling them would probably have killed him. Or maybe not; the man seemed nigh immortal.
Astrid knew that he’d gotten these new scars during the king’s lie about her death. She knew the story now about how they’d been fooled into thinking that there was nothing of her to rescue. She knew that Brenna had nearly died in the sneak attack o
n the camp, and that Vali had nearly died when Leofric and his brother had brought the mangled head of a woman to them and called it her own.
Now Jaan was dead, killed the day before in the battle of the broken parley. Ulv might lose his leg. And others were dead and wounded. The incursions into Mercuria had been costly, in so many ways.
“Astrid,” Vali said again.
She blinked and focused on the man before her, and he smiled.
“They will forget this. You will be home, where you belong. We will raid again before the season is done, and we’ll bring back bounty from a new place. All will be well.”
Astrid nodded, but it was an empty gesture, without conviction.
With a firm pat on her shoulder, Vali left her and went back to his work. Astrid looked for a way to be helpful, but no one wanted her help. So she wandered around, awash in silent disquiet, thinking about the sea.
When the camp was nearly gone, a horn sounded, announcing a rider.
There was no reason for a rider to be approaching. The raiders were leaving. The king’s men had arrived long before, at first light, to collect their fallen dead. The raiders had burned their own the night before. Astrid felt sick at the thought that she had weakened her people by convincing them to pack up the skeids and sail, and now they might be caught unprepared and insufficiently armed against another surprise attack.
Raiders still at the camp collected their weapons and grouped at the camp entrance, expecting more perfidy from the king. Astrid held her own axe at the ready.
A lone rider approached. Astrid recognized the big grey horse before it had cleared the wood.
Leofric stopped just beyond the range of an arrow. Leaving his horse there, he dismounted and walked forward. He was unarmed and unarmored, carrying no weapon or shield, wearing nothing stronger than a brocade doublet over soft leather breeches, all in black—their color of mourning. For Eadric.
Vali moved to Astrid’s side. “That’s your man, yes?”
“Yes.”
“This must be a ruse, then. He wouldn’t approach us without defense.” He scanned the wood.
Astrid’s eyes stayed on Leofric, whose eyes were on her alone. He stopped well away from the cluster of armed raiders, and he held out his hand. Though he was fifty paces away or more, and though he didn’t raise his voice, when he said her name—only that, nothing more—Astrid heard him.
There was no ruse. He’d come to her completely vulnerable. She remembered the night of their first coupling, when he’d seen her fear and made himself entirely subject to her, not even stopping her when she would have killed him. He was doing it again, understanding her turmoil and offering himself to her.
“He’s alone.”
She could sense Vali at her side, reacting to that in disbelief, and she sensed Leif coming up between them. She felt his head at her ear, and she saw Leofric flinch and drop his hand as he watched Leif move in so intimately near her.
He was jealous. He thought she was staying for a greater love than she had for him.
“There was a time,” Leif said in her ear, “when you might have been jarl of Geitland. When I was in Karlsa with Olga, I would have stayed, if she’d refused to go. Because I knew that my true home was with her. I would have given up the jarldom and the home of my birth, because I knew the thing I needed most in my life. It wasn’t what I’d had—it was what I would have.”
Astrid turned her head and met his eyes. She had no words with which to form a response, but she needed none. They already understood each other. Leif smiled.
She handed him her axe, and she walked through her people, away from the camp, toward her husband.
Leofric watched her approach, his eyes and expression rioting with wary hope. When she was nearly close enough for them to touch, he said, “Choose, Astrid. Choose me.”
She gave him her answer by looping her arms around his neck and kissing him with all the fierce love she felt for him.
His love met hers with the same force, and he wrapped her up tight in his arms as their mouths moved wildly together. In that moment, Astrid understood that this was where she belonged. Nothing else mattered—not her past or his past, not the black place, not the lies and omissions, not anything but the peace she felt in his arms, the peace she’d always felt in his arms, from the first time they’d gone around her.
He turned his head, breaking the seal of their mouths. “Give me the words, Astrid. I need the words.”
“I stay. Home is with you.”
Even as she said the words and knew relief in their truth, a piece of her heart seemed to tear away. She was turning her back on all she’d ever known. She was rejecting this boon from the gods—her friends and life returned to her.
The pain was sharp and deep, but she couldn’t live in her past. Too much of her had changed in this year. Despite the way this part of her life had begun, she’d gained more than she’d lost.
Leofric’s hands slid up her back and into her hair. He clutched her head and kissed her again, bending her backward, taking control. She grabbed handfuls of his hair and returned the force.
He broke away again and touched a gentle kiss to the corner of her mouth. “I want to parley with your people. With your blond man and the giant.”
“Not my man. My friend only. Always.”
A new facet of happiness gleamed in his eyes. “Yes?”
“Ja. I love you only. Ever.”
He smiled and squeezed her more tightly. “Can we go to your friends in safety?”
Leif and Vali would never hurt her, and Leofric would be shielded by that unless he struck out. “Ja. But why?”
“I came for more than the hope that you would choose me. I came because my father has an offer to make to your people. One that could mean you lose nothing today.”
She couldn’t fathom what he might mean. When she frowned her confusion at him, he laughed.
“Introduce me to your friends. All will be made clear.”
~oOo~
The king’s solar was the room in which he did most of his business. The great hall was for feasts, dances, and other celebrations, and, though Leofric had told her that meetings among the sovereigns of Anglia often occurred there, Astrid had never known such a thing to happen. In the year since he’d taken her from the black place, she’d never seen any event in the hall except feasting.
The solar was a fraction of the size and appointed in a style that more reflected the taste of the king himself—luxurious, but not ostentatious. Heavy wood, dark fabrics, hangings that displayed his love for his god, and weapons that displayed his might—including the magnificent broadsword over the fireplace.
When Leofric had held her hand and led Leif, Vali, Gunnar, Tollak, and a select few other of her people, including Bjarke, one of Vali’s most trusted men, deep into the castle to the solar, Astrid had felt the tension all around her. The king had acted without honor more than once against the raiders, and they were on alert now lest he have such plans again.
Leif especially walked with a rigid gait, his hand twitching, ready to pull his longsword. Astrid remembered the day in Estland when the prince there had lured them to the castle for a parley and had instead presented them with the defiled head of Leif’s son.
Einar had been on his first raid. The boy had shown promise, Astrid remembered. He’d been big and strong like his father, and serious, too. He’d been scouting with another young raider when they’d been taken.
Einar had been the sixth of Leif’s children to die—the seventh, when Leif’s first wife and unborn child were also considered in the sad accounting. He’d been the last of Leif’s children, until Olga had given him Magni.
Leif had Olga and Magni at home. Vali had Brenna and four children. Jaan, who would not be going home, left behind a pregnant wife and an infant daughter. That wife was now twice widowed.
They had left all that behind and come for her. And they’d been willing to return empty-handed, except for her, despite the losses they’d
suffered. For her.
But Leofric had convinced them that this parley, in the castle, was to their benefit. She had convinced them to trust him.
Now, eight raiders, Astrid, Leofric, and the king sat around a heavy table in the solar. The table was laden with food and drink, and Leif had flinched sharply when he’d seen a covered tray in the center. But there had been no head of his son on this tray, only an assortment of roasted meats.
As big as the room was, and as substantial the furniture, the entire space had seemed to shrink when Leif and Vali had come into it. The king, who’d never laid eyes on a raider except for Astrid, had seemed, for the briefest moment, stunned. But he was in full command of the meeting now, sitting at the head of the table. Leif, the jarl of the largest holding among those present, sat at the other end, with Vali on his right and Gunnar on his left.
Soul's Fire (The Northwomen Sagas Book 3) Page 30
