Brandewyne, Rebecca

by Swan Road

  "You and Morgen will bathe here and clothe yourselves in your new garments. Nay, do not trouble to thank me for this, lady, for 'tis not the kindness you believe it to be, but the law of the Northland that a master must provide for his slaves. And right now, I am your master, lady, no matter that you are loath to call me such." He untied the tether around Rhowenna's neck, then, drawing the scramasax at his waist, cut the rope that bound her hands behind her back, while Flóki the Raven did the same for Morgen. "Lady"— Wulfgar's voice, although pleasant as he continued, also held a note of warning—"do not be so foolish as to think that because we have loosed your bonds, the two of you can escape. As you can see, this hut has no windows, and Flóki and I will be waiting just outside the only door."

  This last at least relieved Rhowenna's mind of the fear that he and Flóki intended to stay and to watch her and Morgen at their toilette—or even to join them; for the Víkingrs appeared to have little regard or desire for privacy, no matter the activity. She had thought of Wulfgar stripping himself, and then her, and then pulling her with him into the tub that was surely big enough for two to share, and she had felt a strange, unsettling shiver run through her, as though she were growing feverish, coming down with an ague. Now the feeling dissipated, leaving behind only a sense of welcome expectation and pleasure as she gazed at the tub and thought of being really clean for the first time in days.

  Wulfgar, Flóki, and the old man, who had finished filling the tub, left the bathhouse; but the old woman stayed, just cracking the door a little to bring in additional buckets of water that the old man drew from the well outside and left on the stoop. Not knowing which, if any, of the other Víkingrs might make use of the hut and so feeling that wisdom dictated prudence, Rhowenna turned to Morgen and spoke to her in the language of Usk.

  "Our dark coloring is not common among these Northmen, Morgen, so 'tis likely that this old woman will remember us; and I do not know what tales she may tell about us later, or to whom. For that reason, you will bathe first, and I will assist you, as though I were, in truth, your waiting woman and you, the princess of Usk."

  "If that is your wish, my lady. However, 'tis my own feeling that now is the ideal time to attempt our escape— for we may not get another chance so good!" Morgen's voice held a note of impatience and excitement. "Old women are sometimes stronger than they look; but between us, we can surely overpower this one who has been left to guard us. We can hit her over the head— with one of those hearth stones— tie her up with the ropes the Northmen were so foolish as to leave behind, and lose ourselves in the crowds outside. If we are fortunate, we will find a trader from Britain or perhaps even Walas to help us!"

  "Nay, we would not even get past the door, before which Wulfgar Bloodaxe and Flóki the Raven stand even now, if Wulfgar spoke truly to me— and I see no reason to doubt that he did. I do not mean to pass up any opportunity to escape, Morgen. But at the moment, 'tis futile to try. Get in the tub."

  When her own turn in the wooden tub finally came, Rhowenna sank gratefully into the water, which was still wonderfully warm, kept so by the old woman's dropping hot hearth stones into it now and then, and removing those that had grown cold. This practice produced additional steam that Rhowenna found exhilarating. She longed to linger in the tub, to soak herself for hours. But she knew that at any moment, Wulfgar and Flóki could reappear; so, taking up the bar of soap, she began to lave herself vigorously and to wash her hair. When she had finished rinsing herself— with pails of the well water, which was so unexpectedly cold that she gasped from the shock of it— she stepped out onto one of the woolen cloths and toweled herself off with another, her body tingling, invigorated by the steam and the hot water followed by the cold. After that, she dressed in the plain, workaday gown of undyed wool that Wulfgar had bought for her. Then she and Morgen combed and braided each other's hair.

  "Perhaps there is another way we could gain our freedom, my lady," Morgen re- marked slowly as she worked at the tangles in Rhowenna's tresses. "Flóki the Raven is... interested in me. He looks at me... well... in the way that Wulfgar Bloodaxe looks at you, my lady. 'Tis a look I know well— and understand. If I were... nice to Flóki, perhaps I could persuade him to let us go, to help us to escape."

  "And perhaps he would only take what he desired— and then put a slave's iron collar around your neck, Morgen! Nay, I cannot permit you to sacrifice yourself in such a manner. We must bide awhile yet. My father will surely ransom us if Prince Cerdic will not; and in the meantime, we can best serve Usk by learning all we can about these Northmen, so we can better defend ourselves against them in the future."

  "Of course, you are right, my lady. 'Tis only that I have always been like a wild thing, who must live free or die, and this captivity weighs heavily upon me."

  "In that, you are not alone, Morgen. Perhaps I chafe less strongly against it only because my own freedom has always been limited by my duty to Usk. I have often wondered what my life would be like if I were not a princess. I have sometimes wished I could just run away and be nobody," Rhowenna confessed, thinking of Gwydion and how she had yearned to go away with him somewhere, anywhere— if only he had asked her. If only... Those were the two saddest words in the world, she thought. Even so, she discovered to her surprise that the ache in her heart at the memory of Gwydion had now lessened, faded to a dull hurt, like an old wound long healed, with only a scar and an occasional twinge left to remind one of it.

  "How strange to hear you say that, my lady." Morgen's face bore a rueful smile. "For I frequently have longed to be a princess— and now, in an odd way, what we both wished for has come to pass. Well, the priests do say that God works in mysterious ways."

  Or is it as Wulfgar told me: that the old gods still exist and are ever capricious? Rhowenna wondered— but did not speak the words aloud.

  There was no time for further conversation, for just then, the door of the bathhouse swung open to reveal Wulfgar and Flóki, who had obviously grown tired of waiting and decided that the two women had had ample time to complete their toilette. Rhowenna was glad then that she had not dallied in the tub, but was dressed and ready to depart— although some of her ebullience at once more being clean faded when Wulfgar again tied the rope around her throat and bound her hands behind her back.

  On the way back to the ox-cart, Wulfgar bought a basket of fruits and nuts from a Slavic trader; and once the vehicle was under way, he and Flóki, with their dinner knives, peeled apples, sloes, and plums, and cracked open hazelnuts and walnuts, feeding Rhowenna and Morgen chunks of the fruits and pieces of the nutmeat. Wulfgar's strong, slender fingers felt moist and sticky and disturbingly intimate against Rhowenna's lips as he pressed the fruits and nuts upon her, now and then slowly tracing the outline of her mouth, tugging gently at her lower lip, and wiping away the juices of the succulent sloes and plums, which trickled down her chin.

  "Don't," she implored, unable to bite back the whispered word that issued from her lips at the loverlike caresses of his fingers.

  "Don't what, lady?" he inquired softly, feigning innocence of her meaning, although she knew, from the desire in his eyes and the strange half-smile that curved his mouth, that he knew only too well the unsettling effect he was having upon her and took satisfaction in it. "Are you not hungry— as I am hungry?" Now it was she who pretended innocence of his own meaning, the double entendre he had intended with his words. Her eyes fell before his; a blush rose to her cheeks. "With your hands bound, how can you eat if I do not feed you, lady?"

  "You... you could untie me," she suggested.

  "Nay, I prefer this method— or, even better yet, this...." Wulfgar's voice trailed away as, taking a small slice of plum between his teeth, he suddenly bent his head, taking Rhowenna unaware, and pressed his mouth to her own.

  With his tongue, he slowly pushed the plum slice between her lips, so it lay sweet and seeming to melt upon her tongue as his own tongue followed it inside, twisting lingeringly inside her mouth, touching, tasting, set
ting her atremble with the wild, unexpected thrill that suddenly shot through her, making her feel dizzy and breathless and faint. Startled, frightened by the flame that seemed to ignite at the core of her being to leap and to spread through her entire body, flickering and burning, she tried to yank away from him. But his hands cupped her face now; his fingers were ensnared in the tresses at her temples, imprisoning her, and she could not free herself from his grasp. For an endless moment, his tongue swirled the plum slice over her own tongue, teasing, tantalizing, spreading mellifluous juices before, at long last, he released her, his eyes smoldering with passion and knowing— mocking her. Fury and shame and some other dark thing loosed from deep inside her roiled within Rhowenna; she felt a wild urge to spit the plum slice into his face. But reading her mind, Wulfgar laid his hand against her mouth, drawing his forefinger slowly, erotically, along her lower lip and saying:

  "I would not, lady, if I were you." He paused, allowing this warning to penetrate. Then, his voice low, husky, he demanded, "Swallow it."

  So soft in her mouth had the plum slice grown beneath his taunting tongue that it hardly needed to be chewed. Still, it was with difficulty that Rhowenna choked the piece of fruit down her throat, feeling as though, somehow, it were a part of Wulfgar that she took deep inside her, a thought that, unbidden, conjured other, even more intimate images in her mind, acts she had unwittingly witnessed the Víkingrs forcing upon the other women during the battle on the shores of Usk and, later, aboard the Dragon's Fire. Until the marauders had swooped down upon her homeland, she had known little more than the rudiments of how a man bedded a woman. Now, no matter how hard she had tried to close her eyes and ears against enlightenment, she was no longer so innocent as a maiden should have been.

  "You said... you said you would not force yourself upon me!" Her tone was accusing.

  " 'Twas only a kiss, lady— little enough payment for the garments and the bath and the basket of fruits and nuts, I am thinking."

  "And what will be the price of your clothing and housing and feeding me until Prince Cerdic or my father pays the ransom you will demand for me, I am wondering?" she shot back defiantly, a scornful mimicry of his manner of speaking, her eyes blazing with the violet fire of amethysts in the sunlight, although he thought that there was fear, too, in their depths.

  "Lady, I said I would not rape you; that much is true. But I did not say that I would not try to bring you willingly to my bed. I have wanted you from the first moment I laid eyes on you, and I will have you if I can." The declaration was blunt, matter-of-fact.

  "You speak of lust—"

  "And you would rather hear words of love? Those, also, I can speak, and will if you will listen." He paused for a moment, as though gathering his thoughts. Then he continued, his voice soft and melodious, as, with his words, he sang to her a bard's song.

  "Lady, I have never seen a woman more beautiful than you. Your skin is whiter than the snowy breasts of the wild swans that float upon the meres of summer in the Northland. Your eyes are the violet of the heather that blooms upon the hillsides of my homeland, your cheeks the rose of the morning sun that rises on the eastern horizon and sets the Skagerrak aflame, your lips as crimson as the sail of a longship, kissed by the wind— as I would kiss you, softly, like the breeze that stirs the reeds of the Northland's heaths, and then more fiercely, like a storm at sea. Gently would I nuzzle your shell-like ears, your perfect breasts, as the roe deer feed among the lichens and moss of the forests that rise, ever green, against the northern sky; and so would I stroke your trembling thighs until they opened to me, spread wide like the wings of a falcon in flight, soaring upon the clouds, as I would teach you to soar. I would bury my face in your raven hair and against your milk-white throat to breathe the heady fragrance of your woman's scent— and myself in you until you wept my name for joy and cried out your sweet surrender. Aye, all this would I do, and more, for love of you, lady."

  "You— you must not say such things to me," Rhowenna breathed, although, despite herself, she had thought his words more eloquent even than Owain the bard's songs, which had sometimes been so beautiful that they had brought tears to her eyes. "Your words are lies you spin as a spider does its web— to deceive and to ensnare. I have seen for myself how a Northman uses a woman— violently, brutally, so she cries out not in surrender, but in agony at the pain inflicted upon her!"

  "It does not have to be like that, lady— nor have I ever used any woman in such a cruel fashion. This, I swear by the gods, so you will know I speak the truth."

  Rhowenna did not answer; she did not know what to say. No man had ever spoken to her as Wulfgar had. He was not like the other Northmen; she had recognized that from the beginning. Now she told herself again that he was her enemy, her captor, and that she hated him. But in her heart, she knew that it was not so simple as that. He confused her, filled her with strange, conflicting emotions she had never felt before. Almost, she wished he had beaten and raped her ruthlessly, for then could she have hardened her heart against him, knowing with certainty that he was deserving of no less than her abhorrence and contempt. But instead, he had offered her his protection and assistance; he had kept her safe from the other Víkingrs, and for that had claimed nothing more than a few kisses as his price. Was that such a bad bargain? Deep down inside, Rhowenna knew that it was not.

  Heavily laden with the goods the Víkingrs had traded for in Sliesthorp, the ox-cart trundled on toward the port of Hollingstedt, wheels clattering over the road, the great system of earthworks that was the Danevirke rising to the south, like Jormungand, the giant Midgard serpent that the Northmen believed girded the world. On the western horizon, the mammoth ball of fire that was the summer sun sank slowly toward the sea, its rays turning Wulfgar's hair to gilded flame and making Rhowenna's fair skin glow with the luminescence of a pearl. Side by side, the two of them sat in silence, and their thoughts were long thoughts.

  From the sandy shores in the distance, the calls of the seabirds rose, achingly sweet and forlorn, a cry to the heart.

  Chapter Nine

  Olaf's Markland

  From Hollingstedt, the three longships sailed on up the coast of Jutland, past small islands and long beaches rippled with sand dunes, until they gained its northernmost reaches, a region known as the Skaw. From there, the vessels struck out across the Skagerrak, toward its northwestern shores; and presently, the end of their long journey was in sight. Like the rest of the women, Rhowenna stood upon the deck of the Dragon's Fire, silenced and daunted by the vast, craggy, heavily forested mountains that hove up in shades of dark green, blue, and purple in the distance ahead, their snowcapped peaks piercing the clouds, cutting a jagged oblique into the robin's-egg blue of the sky, where hundreds of seabirds soared and cried hauntingly along the coast. The mountains of Walas had been but hills compared to these huge, towering alps, whose steep, rocky sides fell away sharply into deep, narrow valleys through which white-watered rivers ran, and shallower, wider expanses of marsh and heath, where the morning mist still clung to the low-lying hollows of the land and swans and ducks called, floating upon still, reed-grown meres. The sea was so clear and so pristine and dazzling a blue that the glare of the sunlight reflecting off the waves hurt Rhowenna's eyes, and she held one hand to her brow to shade them.

  "Lady, you see the Northland at its most beautiful," Wulfgar remarked from where he stood at the tiller, guiding the Dragon's Fire toward the fjord-riddled coast, "for its summers are as glorious as its winters are bleak. The sun shines long hours during this season; even at the midnight hour, it can still be seen in the sky in those regions of the Northland that lie at the edge of the Frozen Sea that flows into the Grey Sea, which is dark and rough and so cold that great chunks of ice float upon its waves. There do we Northmen hunt whales and sea cows— the walrus— and seals whence come the rigging for the sails of our longships, and the tusks of ivory we trade in the marketplaces. But here"— with one hand, he indicated the sweep of wild shore ahead— "here is wh
ere we live. Here is home."

  "Home for you, Wulfgar Bloodaxe— but not for me," Rhowenna reminded him quietly, beset with longing of a sudden for the familiar, gentler green mountains of Walas. Her heart ached at the thought that perhaps she would never see them again, or the shores of the Severn Sea. "Here have I been brought against my will— a stranger, a captive, a slave. Never will your Northland be home to me."

  "Never is a long time, lady, and who but the gods know what our future holds in store? Save perhaps for the spaewife Yelkei, a yellow slave from the Eastlands, who reared me and who sees in the fires and mists and her castings of the rune stones what cannot be seen by other mortals, who possess not her power of prophecy. 'Twas she who sent me in search of you, lady. 'Twas she who said you would be mine. And now you are— as the gods ordained. And if 'tis also their whim that you call the Northland home, you will, lady; for the gods do with us as they will, and we are but shells upon the sands of life's strands, cast hither and yon by the great sea of fate."

  "Perhaps," Rhowenna conceded slowly. "But even if 'tis my destiny that I be compelled to spend the rest of my life here in your Northland, 'twill still not be home to me. And that, neither your gods nor you can change, Wulfgar Bloodaxe, I promise you. Walas is my home, and come what may, I shall never forget that!" Her voice was low, fierce, and her hands clenched at her sides, so her knuckles shone white and her nails dug into her palms.