Season of the Sun

by Catherine Coulter

  “And that’s all you have to say, Magnus Haraldsson? You believe I would suit you? You make it sound like I would be your drudge. No, no, let me finish. Too, I might be an awful creature for all you know of me, a shrew of loud and vicious tongue perhaps. As for you, perhaps you beat women? Perhaps you don’t bathe and smell sour as the rotted innards of a weasel? Perhaps—”

  “That is quite enough, Zarabeth.” He paused a moment, as if the sound of her name surprised him. Then he grasped her upper arms in his large hands. She froze, then forced herself to relax. They were standing in the middle of the Coppergate square and there were dozens of people she knew around them, some of them even now staring toward her at this moment. She needn’t worry. She smiled at him again, but it was a nervous, uncertain smile, and he recognized it.

  “I don’t mean to frighten you, but when I make up my mind it is done. I bathe often, as is the custom in my country, and I don’t smell sour. Sniff me now if you will. I have all my teeth and I don’t carry fat on my belly. Men cannot fight to their best ability if they carry fat on their bodies. I never will. I don’t beat women.” He paused, frowning, then shrugged. “I do have a slave, Cyra, who much enjoys a belt on her thighs and buttocks, but I give it to her sparingly, for I do not wish to spoil her.”

  Zarabeth could but stare at him, all else forgotten. “You have a slave who likes you to beat her? In those . . . places? That is absurd! I do not believe you. Why?”

  Magnus shrugged again. “It is as I said. She is a woman of strong and ardent passions, and the pain on her buttocks adds to her pleasure when I finally take her.” His eyes narrowed on her stunned face. “Why would you disbelieve me? I speak the truth, Zarabeth. You will soon learn that I don’t lie.”

  “I don’t disbelieve you, but perhaps you should temper this extreme truth of yours with judicious omission. The thought of anyone striking me in those places . . . well, it isn’t at all to my liking.”

  “Then I won’t. If you don’t wish it, I shan’t ever strike you, even if you eventually say you want it.”

  “I don’t desire it,” she said, fascinated anew by him despite herself. “I won’t ever want that.” He was looking down at her, and the look in those blue eyes of his had changed, shifting subtly, and she knew with a knowledge she hadn’t realized was already within her that he was thinking of her without her clothing on. “Would you please release me now, Magnus?”

  “No. I like the feel of your flesh beneath my fingers. You are warm and soft and I can smell your woman’s scent.”

  “Then will you at least ease your hold? I am easily bruised.”

  He frowned at that and his fingers quickly became gentle as sunlight on her upper arms and as warm as the middle-summer sun, though it was still early spring.

  He continued to stare down at her, his look thoughtful and intent. “You will tell me what it is that gives you enjoyment. I’m accounted a man who does well with a woman. I am not selfish in the giving of pleasure. And you would be my wife. I should like to please you, to give you the delight of my body and yours. It would be your right to be pleased by me, your husband.”

  His words were quiet and deep and confident. She continued looking up at him, so absorbed by him that she didn’t consider turning away. She said in a small, soft voice, without hesitation, “I don’t know what pleases me.”

  His face changed with the smile that suddenly appeared, and pleasure radiated from him. “Ah, that is good. We shall learn together, then. I will try not to disappoint you.” He paused then, and he looked at his long fingers that were even now lightly kneading her upper arms. “I wanted to see you closely. You are as fair as I had thought. Your flesh is very white. I’ve been watching you now for two days.”

  “My skin is very fair. More so than yours.”

  “Aye, ’tis because you’re Irish. Am I not right?”

  She nodded and he saw the pain flash in her eyes and wondered at it.

  “Both your mother and father were Irish? Are they both dead, even your mother?” At her slow nod, he said, “When did she die?”

  “Three years ago. Her name was Mara. Olav, my stepfather, met her in Limerick and wedded her when I was only eight years old. My father had died but a year before, and living was not easy for her, a woman alone with a child. We came here.”

  “The little girl I saw you with yesterday, she is Olav’s child?”

  Her chin went up and he was pleased at this unconscious arrogance in her, but it also puzzled him. What had he said to put her on guard? “Aye,” she said finally, “Lotti is my little sister. Who her father is matters not to me.”

  “Then Olav is her father.”

  “Aye, but I love her and she is mine.”

  “Nay, she is your stepfather’s.”

  Zarabeth simply shrugged and looked away from him. He guessed she wished to say more about the little girl, but his firmness had directed her away from it, and she said only, “It matters not what opinion you hold. I must go now. To find a new pail. I cannot dally.”

  “I will give you one.” Even as she began to shake her head, he added, his voice calm and low, “From this moment forward, my every opinion will count in your life. My every act will touch you, for you will belong to me. You will heed my words and consider them your guidance. Forget it not, Zarabeth. Now, shall I accompany you to your house? To meet your stepfather? Does he ask a large brideprice?”

  It was her turn to place her hand on his forearm. She’d gone from amused outrage at his presumptuousness to something like a numb acceptance that scared her to death. Was she losing her wits entirely? She didn’t know this man who’d accosted her but minutes before. “Magnus, please, you move swiftly, much too swiftly. I don’t know you. You must understand.” She stopped, realizing she was wringing her hands. She was so startled by her action that she was silent for many moments. He too remained silent, waiting for her to finish speaking. She drew a deep breath and continued in her usual calm way, “If you wish it, I will meet you on the morrow, here, if you like. We can talk, speak of your life in Norway, of other things too. I must come to know you better. It is all I can agree to now. Can you accept that?”

  “You will come to know me well when you are my wife.” He saw that she would still argue with him. He looked impatient, frustrated, which he was, yet he smiled down at her then, and it was a smile of sincerity and tenderness and it made something shift inside her, something warm and wondrous strange, something unusual and unknown. “You are a woman of importance to me. I will move more slowly, though it pains me to have to do so, but hear this, Zarabeth: I will have you as my wife and that will happen very soon. I wish to return home in ten days.”

  “Ten days! Why, ’tis impossible! You ask me to—” She broke off, words for once in her life failing her. She waved her hands wildly around her. “This is my home, where I’ve spent the past ten years of my life! I know nothing of your Norway, save that all its people are fair and blond and brutal and vicious. They sail into towns in their long boats and they murder and ravish and take everything!”

  “I am not vicious.”

  “Ah, do you not go araiding then? Do you not steal and pillage and rape and destroy?”

  “From time to time. One grows bored, and there is always need for coin and for silver and gold. It is the wanderlust too that seems to be bred in all Vikings. Undiscovered places to explore, peoples you cannot imagine living in strange ways and wearing strange clothing and speaking in gibberish tongues. I will take you with me, at least when I am trading, if you would wish to go with me.”

  “But you are brutal.”

  “From time to time,” he said again, and smiled. “When it is necessary. I am not a needlessly cruel man, Zarabeth. I will protect you with my life, you will see. It is what I would owe you as your husband.”

  “You seem to claim there is much owed to me, were I to accept you as my husband. But you command me now, when I scarce know you, and you expect me to obey you in all things. I owe you nothing, tr
uly. You must—”

  He ignored her words. He clasped her hand and turned it over in his and stared down at her palm. There were calluses on the pads of her fingers, and her hands were reddened from work. “I told you that I am not a poor man. You will have servants to see to the hardest work, and you will direct them. Aye, you will sew my tunics and see that my food is prepared properly, but your hands will be white again, for me, to soothe my temples when my thoughts are harsh, to stroke my back when my muscles are knotted, to caress me when I wish to bed you.”

  She stared at him, unable to look away. She’d never met his like before. This painful boldness of his. This matter-of-factness that gave no doubts as to his thoughts or intentions. And when he spoke of bedding her, of her hands touching him . . . it was unnerving, and at the same time, she felt excitement pool deep in her belly. She felt suddenly alive, every sense awakened by his words and by his look.

  “I will have you, Zarabeth.”

  “I must speak to my stepfather,” she said, desperate now because she’d never seen this man before this afternoon, desperate at what he’d made her feel in only a few moments. He was beyond anything she’d ever before known, and he was beyond her ability to grasp, beyond her ability to deal with in her normally forthright manner. She was indecisive still, she was floundering, and it was obvious to him and to her. She looked away, feeling at once ridiculous and confused. “I must speak to my stepfather,” she said again.

  He smiled then, for it was his triumph, his victory, and why not savor it for the moment? He had chosen her and she would come to him. He had been clear in his intentions, not mincing matters, and she’d bowed to him. He was certain of it, and quite pleased with himself. “Very well. I will be patient, Zarabeth. I will see you here on the morrow, after your Christian morning matins.”

  When she only stared up at him, unspeaking, he smiled, lightly touched his fingertips to her chin, and leaned down to swiftly kiss her closed mouth. Then he was gone, striding from Coppergate square as if he were its owner, as if all its minions were his to order.

  She stood there silent and wondering until he disappeared from her sight. She saw several of the women coming toward her. She quickly turned and walked away. She wanted none of their sly questions. Doubtless they wanted to ask her what the wicked barbarian had wanted of her.

  And he was a barbarian. She’d forgotten that, and she shouldn’t have allowed herself to. And wicked, from what he had told her he did to his mistress. She was a Christian, as was Lotti. Ah, her little sister. When she wedded, Zarabeth had always known that Lotti would go with her, for Lotti was hers now and had been since Lotti’s second birthday, that day when her mother had died. That day when Olav had told Zarabeth that her mother had run off with another man, taking Lotti with her, and he had caught them and her mother had died from the blow the other man had dealt her. But why would the man have wanted to hurt her mother? Hadn’t he run away with her? Hadn’t he loved her? Zarabeth hadn’t understood, but she’d seen the rage, the boiling violence in her stepfather’s eyes, and kept quiet. Her mother was dead, her hair matted and bloody against her head—blood seeping from her nose and mouth, she’d heard some women say. Aye, her mother was dead, long dead. Her beautiful mother, who had supposedly loved her but left her, taking Lotti with her and leaving her behind.

  Zarabeth shook away the memories. They lay in the past, dead as summer ashes, and no reason could be made of them, for there were none alive to explain them, none save Olav. And she would never speak of the past to him. Odd that the memories were still painful and frightening. Odd how she still shied away from them.

  When she allowed herself to think about her situation as it was now, she realized quite clearly that Olav believed her to have taken her mother’s place. Only she wouldn’t run away from him as her mother had. She belonged to him as any child belonged to its father.

  And now this Viking had come into her life.

  3

  Olav stared at his stepdaughter as he chewed on the potato cake she’d prepared for supper to go with the broiled beef strips. It was moist and well-baked, yet oddly, it chewed dryly in his mouth, then settled badly in his stomach. He continued to stare at Zarabeth. She was serving her little sister now, that damned little freak that Olav should have thrown into the gutter that day he’d discovered what she’d become and from whose seed she had sprung.

  The child was crazy and stupid, but Zarabeth refused to accept it. Aye, he should have killed her then, but he hadn’t. And now he couldn’t. Zarabeth loved the little idiot and he knew deep down that if he harmed the girl, Zarabeth would turn on him. She might possibly even kill him. He didn’t want to be afraid of her.

  He wanted to bed her.

  She carried none of his blood. She was simply Irish trash, just like her mother had been, trash, but not the whore Mara had been, and he would have her in his bed, soon now. And after he was done with her, why, then he might just sell her back to the slave market in Dublin, or possibly simply take her to be his wife. Her and that little idiot, curse the fates. Perhaps he wouldn’t remain in York. Perhaps, if he married her, he would take her back to Hedeby, where he’d been born and which he had left some twenty years before.

  He swallowed some of the beef, realizing even as he nearly choked on it that it was quite tasty with the honey and flour coating it. He licked his fingers, pausing a moment before he said deliberately, his voice laden with suspicion, “You seem different tonight, Zarabeth. Did something happen today? Something you’re not telling me?”

  And because she knew Olav was, unaccountably, jealous of every young man who spoke to her, she looked immediately guilty, even as she quickly shook her head and said no.

  “You met a man, didn’t you?”

  She knew her mistake and said calmly enough, “He is a Viking trader, from Norway, near Kaupang, he told me. He was at the well in Coppergate square. He startled me when he spoke, and that is how I lost the pail.”

  It sounded plausible, but Olav wasn’t satisfied. A man was stupid if he trusted a woman’s word. He eyed her closely and decided he couldn’t let this pass. “Tell me, what is this Viking’s name?”

  “I do not know. He didn’t tell me, merely spoke to me of the weather, and of you, of course. Aye, he spoke highly of you, for, as I said, he is a trader and interested in doing business with you.”

  “Perhaps he will come to the shop then,” Olav said, and this bite of potato cake tasted quite good in his mouth. Still, she was different. It bothered him.

  “Why didn’t he tell you his name?”

  Zarabeth shrugged. She hated this lying, yet the lies had come unbidden and immediately to her tongue. She wasn’t certain why. She thought of Magnus, pictured him in her mind, tall and arrogant and sharp-eyed; then she saw that smile of his, that look in his eyes when he had stared down at her. She smiled unconsciously even as she spoke to Lotti and placed her small fingers around a strip of beef and said, “Do eat just a bit more, sweeting. That’s right, just another little bite. You must grow up to be a big healthy girl.”

  Olav watched Zarabeth lean down and kiss the top of the girl’s head. Little moron! He felt his loins tighten as his eyes dropped to Zarabeth’s breasts. She’d finally grown into a woman’s body. She’d been thin and flat as a board until just a year before. Then suddenly she’d become a woman and all the young men had come sniffing around her, lust wetting their lips, all of them wanting her, badly. But, thank the fates, she hadn’t seemed at all interested in any of them, so Olav hadn’t been forced to name a brideprice that would make their eyes bulge with chagrin and disbelief. And every day she grew to look more and more like her mother, beautiful, gentle, unfaithful Mara. He hadn’t controlled Mara well, he’d been too easy with her, too tender, and look what it had gotten him. But Zarabeth, her mother’s image, wasn’t at all like Mara, except she shared what all women shared, a woman’s lying tongue. She would obey him and she would remain faithful to him, for he would bind her firmly to him.

>   His own son wanted her, and that amused Olav, for Keith was well and firmly married to a girl Olav had selected for him. Keith was always coming around, presumably to see his father, but Olav knew better. He knew that young man was infatuated with Zarabeth. He wouldn’t get her. Olav would kill his own son before he let him touch her. He suspected that Toki, Keith’s wife, would also kill him were he to stray. He wondered if Toki knew of her husband’s infatuation for his stepsister.

  Olav stroked his soft golden beard, as was his habit when he was thinking deeply about a problem. There were white strands in the gold now, but not many. He wasn’t an old man, not for many a year would he be that. His rod still stiffened easily and his back was still straight. There was a bit of fat puffing out his belly, but not enough to repel a woman. His beard was thick and grew fully, as did the hair on his head. He was proud of his appearance and stinted nothing in the jewels and golden brooches he bought for himself. He’d heard himself called Olav the Vain, and it amused him. Why shouldn’t a man of decent aspect be a bit vain?

  Olav suddenly pushed away his chair and rose. “There are furs I must inspect before it darkens more. If your Viking comes to see me on the morrow, I will tell him that you spoke of him to me.”

  He paused a moment to see her reaction, but she merely nodded, saying nothing, her face giving nothing away. That in itself made his suspicions boil, but he said nothing more, merely left her to go into the front of the house, which was his store. The way she was able to make her face blank bothered him, for it hid her thoughts—be they happy or sad or guilty. He lit a bear-oil lamp and looked at the piles of beaver, mink, and otter fur. He dropped to his haunches and began to methodically separate them according to their quality and their size, mentally setting a price to each one. He was good at this, and knew it, and blessed his long-dead father for teaching him.

  In the back living area, Zarabeth went about her chores automatically, for her thoughts strayed again and again to the Viking. She spoke to Lotti as she washed the wooden plates and the knives. She bathed her little sister and tucked her firmly in soft furs on the narrow box bed in the small chamber they both shared.