Breaking their contact, he led her to the foot of the altar, where Bodil unclasped her apron, letting it drop. Having removed her tunic, she stood naked, auburn hair loose over one shoulder, her skin pale and freckled. She was slender through the waist and hip but her breasts hung large, swollen from the milk with which she still fed her baby.
Gunnolf helped her step up, to lie upon the great stone. At his nod, the women moved closer, knowing their role, familiar with the ritual. The first raised her bowl, letting blood drip onto Bodil’s stomach, then tipping further, running scarlet rivulets. The second bowl splashed her breasts, trickling to her throat, while the third cascaded down her abdomen, bloodying her pubis. Bodil gasped and arched her spine as if in the rapture of desire, craving more.
My mouth grew dry, observing her wanton freedom. She turned her head as I emptied my own bowl upon her stomach, her eyes filled with more secrets than the forest at twilight, mocking me with her womanliness, with her proven fertility, with her seduction of the man I professed to call my own.
What did I have? An empty belly and an empty bed. Eirik had left. When he returned, it would be to bring home his new bride.
My reverie was interrupted by Gunnolf’s voice, thick and slow and deep with lust. “Ripen our seed, Freya, in the soil of this woman’s womb, and inside all our women.”
His face was transformed, eyes half-closed, while his palm stroked his erection.
Bodil cupped her breast and slid her hand through the slippery crimson, leaving a path down her torso. Her bloodied fingers reached inside her silken sheath, opening her lips.
A moment later, Gunnolf had gripped her raised knees, pulling her towards the edge of the stone to meet his penetration. It took but a dozen strokes before he groaned his release. Parting from her, his length bobbed wet, his lower torso marked with the blood from Bodil’s body.
She stretched upon the stone as the next man stepped into the Jarl’s place, elongating her bloodied body, reaching her arms above her head. She took him willingly, lying still as he aligned his cock and thrust inside her. His strokes were more measured, deeper, bringing a quickening of her breath.
I could not look away, imagining the cold stone against my own back and the stretch of this stranger entering my sex. My mouth grew dry at the thought of taking Bodil’s place, of surrendering myself to the same carnal abandon.
“Go, women,” announced the Jarl. “Find the men of your choosing. Take your pleasure, and may your coupling be fruitful.”
None hesitated, setting aside their bowls, moving swiftly to claim their preferred partners. I watched them move away, quietly purposeful, leading their men through the trees or into the shelters we’d erected.
“Come,” urged Astrid, tugging my hand and scanning the men yet to be taken, eager to make her choice. “We go together, Elswyth.”
I looked again at Bodil, beckoning a third lover to approach, opening her mouth to take him there as the other continued his slow strokes between her legs.
I fought the languor descending over my body. Stumbling to the edge of the glade, I heard Astrid call my name but, when I looked back, my eyes found not hers but those of the Jarl.
His mouth curled in a lazy smile, revealing the bloodstains between his teeth.
17
I darted through shade and light, feeling nothing but my need to escape, to run from what I did not wish to recognize in myself, fearing all I’d seen.
Emerging from the forest onto the open cliffs, I gulped the crisp air, sobbing with relief at having left behind the strange enchantment that had threatened to overwhelm me. Burying my face to the cool soil, I slept.
He visited my dreams, and we were wolves together, leaping through shadows. A night-wind rose through the trees and curled back again. A storm was coming, bristling dark. The black veil of clouds moved swiftly, claw-shredding the crescent moon.
When I woke, he was there, beneath the darkened sky. The beast in him had roused me and I could still taste the growling thunder on my tongue. Something in me was stirring, waiting to uncoil.
“No more running.” He touched his fingers above the yoke of my gown, leaning closer. I caught the strange smoke clinging to him and the faint aroma of sex. His breath was upon my neck and I waited for the warmth of his lips.
He was not the man I loved but it was not love I sought from him. I wished for the roughness of a kiss given in the service of jealousy, anger and lust. A kiss which would declare myself to be my own woman: slave to no-one.
Despite my love, Eirik had abandoned me, just as he had so many women. He’d left me to fend for myself and so I would, without regard for him.
The crows were circling, cawing their fear, before a blinding jolt of lightning stabbed jagged and I tipped back my head in surrender. There was triumph in Gunnolf’s eyes, for he was about to take what Eirik presumed to own. He placed his hands about my throat, lifting my chin with his thumbs, drawing me upwards to meet his mouth, his tongue. I was falling and there was no going back.
His hands pushed away my bodice, baring the swell of my breasts to the cool air, before covering them with warm palms, thumbing my nipples. Breaking off our kiss, he dropped to take one hard point between his teeth, devouring me with his suckling and his teasing tongue, until my cunt clenched.
“Mine now,” he growled, laying me down upon the grass and lifting my skirts. I wrapped my legs around him, wanting him inside, making me forget that I’d ever loved Eirik.
He made me whimper, delving my wet sex with a clutch of fingers before drawing out the thick column of his cock. The sky cursed us with its rolling thunder as I returned the roughness of his lust: biting his lip, breaking his skin with the drag of my nails, pinching the underside of his buttocks to drive him harder. He was wild and thorough, taking me so violently that I cried out in pain, but I had only one thought: that he must not stop.
He crushed my lips to his as he came, pulsing thick, his hands clasping me to the depth of his final thrust.
Held beneath the weight of him, I clenched against each spasm, and the first drops of rain began to fall.
18
The smoke from the sacrificial fire had affected my judgement. I’d had no warning of what Ostara would entail. If Eirik had given it any thought at all, what had he expected? Didn’t he foresee that the Jarl would take what he wanted and I’d be powerless to deny him? With such lies I tried to vindicate myself.
I’d proven faithless. Perhaps the village wives who’d looked at me askance had been right all along. I didn’t deserve their respect, for I had little enough for myself. Wandering from room to room, I couldn’t rest. I found duties outside and lingered in the barn. I willed Gunnolf to follow me, willed him to burn me again with his desire, to make me forget myself. Yet, when he had cause to pass me, I flinched away.
I could barely meet Asta’s eye, though she treated me as she’d always done. Whatever she knew, or imagined, she did not betray it in her manner. Her heart seemed far lighter than my own, without the bitter burden of reproach, though her body grew ever weaker.
The baby, now grown large and eager to enter the world, appeared to be taking her life-force to feed its own. When her cramps began, I prepared the room, bringing water and linens, preparing the knife. I knew what was done, having more than once helped my grandmother deliver new life
And yet, no baby came. Instead, Asta clutched her stomach and wretched bile, perspiration stark upon her brow. “Can you hear it, Elswyth?” Her hand grasped my wrist with strength she couldn’t spare. “It won’t let me rest.”
I soaked a flannel to cool her head. “There’s no one here to hurt you,” I soothed, raising water to her lips, but my comfort was not enough. She trembled and tossed, raking her skin so badly I had to bind her hands in cloth, tucking her nails inside her palms.
At last, she lay still but her eyes were unnaturally bright, following me about the room, until the black haw tincture I gave sent her into sleep. She woke gasping for air, thrashing in h
er sweated bed, wracked in body and mind.
Gunnolf watched from afar, fearing to come near yet unwilling to leave her altogether. His face grew hollow, watching her slip away. He could not look at me, nor I at him.
My dreams were filled with Asta, walking always behind me, through the dark shadows of the forest, her steps ever slower, hampered by her belly. Her eyes were filled not just with pain but with reproach, as if she knew that I’d wronged her and could not forgive.
On waking, I hastened to her side, ready to beg forgiveness for my offence, willing to do whatever she commanded to make it right. Except, of course, there could be no such remedy. No going back.
On the fourth day, Guðrún shook me at first light, for Sylvi wouldn’t stir and her skin bore a speckled rash.
“Bathe her in cold water and ensure she drinks,” I instructed.
As the village came awake, we saw that others had been visited by the same shadow, as if it had flown across the rooftops by night.
Had Svolvaen not endured enough? I’d seen this before, or something much like it. The pox had touched our village one summer in my childhood. I remembered my grandmother brewing birch bark, yarrow, elderflower and meadowsweet to ease the fever. Borage too, which grew between the brambles and nettles and fallen trunks, higher than my waist, its leaves rough and wrinkled.
Faline watched as I ladled the mixture into travelling pouches, bottles and jugs, but made no effort to help. Most of the time, she and I barely spoke, but the shared memory of our former home pressed hard on me. I felt her kinship and regretted that we weren’t closer.
“You remember how we came through the pox, years ago?” I prompted. “My grandmother treated us.”
“I recall.” Faline picked up one of the jugs, lowering her nose to the aroma of its contents. “Your aunt had taken my mother’s place by then. She told me that, if I scratched, the scars would disfigure me and I’d never find a husband.” She placed the remedy back upon the table. “I did everything they told me to but there never was a husband, was there…”
She and I, both, had been cheated, in various ways. I’d thought myself above her, of late, condemning her choices. I’d proven myself no better. I was worse, being a hypocrite. Faline, at least, made no pretence.
“Help me carry these?” I asked. “It’ll be quicker together.”
She regarded me a moment, then lifted a hand to her cheek. “I’m feeling a little weak… and hot. Perhaps, I should return abed...” She turned back after a few steps. “If you’ve any sense, you’ll do the same. Let them look after their own.”
I lay upon the floor, listening to Asta breathing through the night. While I heard her, I knew she lived.
She would swallow neither fish nor meat — only porridge and honey, coaxed between her lips from my spoon, though even this her stomach would not keep. I told her stories of my childhood: of the trees I’d climbed, and the joy of leaping into cool water in the heat of summer.
Waking before the dawn, she whispered. “Look after my baby.” I lit the lamp and its flame quivered thin. Her cheeks bore twin flushes, though her face was paler than ever. “You and Eirik.”
Had she forgotten the reason for his departure? Forgotten that there would be a marriage but that it would not be I who stood beside the groom?
“Beautiful in your wedding gown…” she mumbled, in her reverie of a future that could not be.
“And you’ll be there to see it.” I went along with the ‘make-believe’, promising her everything she wished me to say, bringing her jewel box at her bidding.
“To wear on the day you become his bride.” She fumbled among the trinkets until her fingers plucked two brooches, carved in bone and ringed in silver. One bore a bear and wolf, gripping one another in battle, surrounded by looping serpents; the other, a soaring bird, its wings and tail hanging low.
She placed them in my lap before resting back against her pillows, letting me sing to her while she closed her eyes.
The wick burned low, then lower, until the flame guttered and I was left in the dark, Asta’s hand cold in mine.
Somewhere beneath her ribs, the babe unborn pressed its fists to its blood-filled cage, in fluttering jabs of arm and foot. Its battle was over before it had begun.
19
Only one other grieved as I did, though he never showed me his tears. I’d never doubted that Gunnolf loved her, though perhaps only in the way men do when they believe a woman to be too noble for them: resentment and adoration in equal measure. Had he once believed her goodness would elevate his own nature? It was how I’d felt, each day, in her presence. Instead, we’d both deceived her.
Asta had never treated me as a stranger. She’d been sister and mother both; more even than Helka, whose adventures took her beyond my sphere. And how had I repaid this kindness? I’d fallen so easily to temptation, driven by anger, as much as lust.
Now, she was lost to me in every sense, taken to some realm beyond the living where she would surely know my sins. My self-loathing grew, for not only had I betrayed her trust but I’d been unable to save her from torment, dragged slowly, painfully, to the bitterest end.
Her symptoms had been strange. Not quite those of the pox, though she’d displayed many of the signs. Instead, her body had turned against itself without apparent cause.
I washed and dressed her for the final ceremony, for the burial she’d wished. One of her brooches I fastened to her robe of purest white. She’d given me so much, and I wished to place something I treasured in her resting place. The other I pinned to my shoulder.
Gunnolf carried her in his arms to the edge of the forest, to the hole dug beside the resting ashes of their child; she weighed little, and he was well strong enough.
It was a quiet affair, for so many in the village were affected by the pox, keeping to their houses in sickness or in tending others. Gunnolf took up the spade, his face hard in sorrow, casting the soil upon her body. I shuddered to see it fall, feeling its weight as if it were I who lay in the cold ground, buried slowly by the earth.
In the days to come, I attended the sick, mixing salves and tinctures. There was too much death. Illness took several of the younger babes, too feeble even to cry their hunger.
Gunnolf did not come near, except to command stronger draughts for sleep. There was danger in increasing the potency of the valerian root. It would do more harm than good, I warned. Headaches and dizziness would plague him, however strong his heart. His mind, in anguish, would rebel, losing its former reason.
He cast my cautions aside, shadows beneath his eyes telling me of his need. I gave what he asked, understanding that longing to find oblivion, each waking bringing the misery of remembrance. I, too, wished to escape, to no longer know myself. My strangled remorse was more than I could bear.
I dreamt of rotting leaves and the drip of water through earth and rock, soil cold in my mouth and crawling things. I looked into the dark, and it slithered inside.
20
I knew that they talked about me, despite all I’d done for them. It wasn’t enough that I’d treated their sores and attended them through the pox. I heard the whispers as I passed their homes, saw the narrowing of their eyes and heads turned from me.
Lady Asta had been under my care and she’d died. I was to blame.
Visiting Astrid, it seemed our friendship had grown cooler. Neither of us had spoken of Ostara night. I knew not what to say, ashamed of my fears and of my seeming rejection of the honoured ritual. Leaving her, I saw Bodil sitting outside her own door, a length of cloth in her lap, her fingers plucking with her needle. She raised her chin and met my eye, her lips drawn thin, unsmiling.
I wished suddenly to be far away, to be just myself, unanswerable to anyone. My feet took me through the fields of new shooting barley, rippling in the late afternoon breeze. The trees were already trailing long shadows, the swallows dipping and looping against a sky streaked through with violet cloud.
However far I walked, there was no escape fr
om my thoughts — from all that had happened and what might be to come. I fingered the amulet at my throat. Eirik had vowed to return; had worshipped my body as he made his promises of protection and love. Did those promises have any worth?
With Asta gone and Eirik soon to return with his bride, what place was there for me? Was I destined to perform the most menial tasks, like Sylvi and Guðrún, without hope of a home of my own, a husband, children? And then I remembered how I’d lain with Gunnolf, willingly, knowingly, and I was filled with shame. What sort of woman was I? If I suffered now, it was no more than my due.
With dusk falling, I returned up the hill. Sylvi was still suffering from the pox, banished by Gunnolf to Helka’s empty home during her recovery, leaving Guðrún with more work than she could manage. It was selfish of me to have stayed out so long. Faline, I knew, would help with only the easiest of duties.
I returned past idle-grazing livestock, skirting behind the huts. Before I rounded the corner, I heard them, sitting just beyond, not far from the longhouse. There was still much for me to learn of Svolvaen’s language, but I understood the men well enough.
“… a whole houseful of women to comfort him now…”
“No wonder he looks like he doesn’t sleep.”
They chuckled at that.
“I’ll take the dark one off his hands when he’s bored with her…”
“The blonde for me,” said another. “If she’s good enough for Eirik, she’ll be good enough to suck my old cock.”
My face grew hot but I couldn’t claim to be surprised. I knew men well enough — how they talked of women.
“He tired of her quickly, didn’t he? Won’t be long now before he’s back, and with some other pretty wench to warm his bed.”
Viking Wolf: dark and steamy alpha warrior romance (Viking Warriors Book 2) Page 9
