Ice Maiden

by Debra Lee Brown

  “I told him,” Ottar said, and helped Gunnar to sit up in the bed. “You did drift off a little last night.”

  “What else did you tell him”

  “Everything.” Gunnar arched a fair brow at her.

  “All that he knew.”

  She flashed angry eyes at Ottar. He merely shrugged.

  “Lawmaker gave it to her, you know.” Gunnar nodded at the silver brooch. “Long before Rollo wed her.”

  “What?” Her hand shot to the brooch, and she clutched it protectively. “Lawmaker? But—”

  “They were in love,” Gunnar said.

  She felt her eyes pop wide as saucers. “Fritha and Lawmaker?” A thousand tiny snippets of memory screamed through her mind.

  “Ja. Before she and Rollo were joined.” Gunnar frowned. “What a tragedy—for all of them.”

  Her mouth dropped open. She shook her head, but knew in her heart it was true. It dawned on her that perhaps Grant had known, as well.

  “But…when did you learn this?”

  “Lawmaker told me the day I became jarl.”

  “And you kept it from me?” Anger sparked inside her. “Why didn’t Lawmaker tell me?”

  “Would you have wanted to hear it?” Gunnar took her hand in his and moved it to his heart. “Could you have understood it, Rika?”

  She looked at him, and knew the answer. “Nay, you are right. I was not ready to know.” In her mind’s eye she held George’s strong, tender face. Her heart swelled. “But now I understand.”

  Gunnar’s hand tightened over hers. “Ja, methinks that you do.” He loosened his grip and turned to Ottar. “I owe you much, friend. My life—and my sister’s.”

  “Nay.” Ottar rose and strode to the window. “It is Rika who deserves your thanks—and the Scot.”

  “Grant.”

  “George,” she breathed.

  “You love him.” Gunnar smiled at her, his eyes brimming with the affection she’d so long missed.

  She nodded weakly.

  “Look!” Ottar cried from the window.

  Rika leaped to her feet. “Is it he? Does he come at last?” She raced to the window and pushed Ottar aside. “Where? Where is he?”

  Ottar pointed into the mist, and a second later she saw him. “There!” she cried.

  But the man who rode into the heavily guarded bailey was not her husband. Her heart plummeted for the dozenth time. Rollo lifted a gauntleted hand to her in greeting. Two score men followed on lathered mounts and filed toward the stable.

  “It is our father,” she said, and turned to Gunnar. “He is alone.”

  Rika sat stiffly on a stool near the blazing hearth fire and waited for Rollo to appear. Her hands were like ice, and would not be warmed. A feeling of dread so powerful it made her nauseated descended on her like the reaper himself. The door to the chamber creaked open, but she did not look up.

  Footfalls sounded on the plank floor. The heady aromas of mead and tobacco confirmed her father’s arrival. She would not meet his eyes.

  “Daughter,” he said. “I have brought you something.”

  Still, she would not look up. Her hands fisted in her lap. Her eyes fixed on the fire. Rollo fidgeted beside her, as if he were retrieving something from his pocket. She held her breath, and he dropped it in her lap.

  The sunstone.

  George had worn it around his neck e’er since the storm at sea.

  The world spun. She closed her eyes, certain that for the first time in her life she would faint. “He…he is dead then.” Her fingers closed over the crystal and squeezed.

  “Dead?” Rollo’s voice boomed above her. “A bit torn up, but far from dead. What kind of a wife has so little faith in her husband’s—”

  “He lives?” Her eyes flew open. She shot to her feet and grabbed her father by the front of his fur wrap.

  “Oh God! Where is he? Is he hurt? Thor’s blood—”

  “Easy, girl.” Rollo peeled her hands from his chest and shook her until she got a hold of herself.

  Her breath came in short gasps, and she worked to control it. “Tell me. Tell me everything.”

  “Ja, I’ll tell you. But sit, and calm yourself.”

  He pushed her down onto the stool and Ottar shoved a cup of mead into her hand. She drank, and breathed, and felt her blood slow to a mere race.

  “And for you, son,” Rollo said, and turned to Gunnar. “I have this.” To Rika’s surprise, her father unsheathed a familiar weapon.

  “Your sword,” Gunnar said, and accepted the weapon from him.

  “Nay, yours.” Rollo grinned. “I took it off a dead kinsman—a snake unfit to call himself a Norseman. ’Tis said my daughter slew him.” He turned to Rika and his smile widened. “Well done, girl.”

  It was the first time in her life her father had ever praised her. She held his gaze and offered him the beginnings of a smile in return. There was much about him she now longed to understand—and perhaps forgive. But first she would know how her husband fared.

  Holding the cup, her hand began to tremble. “What of Grant?”

  “Ah, Grant. He’s gone.”

  “What?” Ottar cried.

  The cup slipped from her hand and shattered on the flagstones.

  “Ja,” Rollo said. “He and his brother.”

  Sommerled. Rika had heard from MacInnes of the youth’s miraculous return. But gone? She shook her head. “Where?”

  “Back to Wick.”

  Her blood screamed to a halt in her veins. “Wick?” she breathed. “But then…”

  “I know not why.” Rollo shrugged. “It seems there is some duty there to which he was bound. But he asked you to wait for him here, until he can return and explain.”

  A deadness enveloped her from the inside out. “Those were his words?”

  Rollo nodded.

  There are things of which we must speak—but later.

  She moved awkwardly toward the table near Gunnar’s bed. On it rested a silver chalice, now empty of the wine she’d used to tend her brother’s wounds. Lifting it to her face, she gazed at her own reflection. All she saw was that hideous scar staring back at her.

  She’d been right about Grant, after all. He was a good and honorable man who would not abandon her to her enemies.

  But he did not love her.

  “But surely—”

  Her hand flew up to quiet Ottar. “Leave me now. All of you. Please. I would have some time to myself.” Gunnar started to rise from the bed. “Nay, not you, brother. There is much we have to discuss.”

  Gunnar looked at her, and she saw pity in his eyes.

  “I would sail for Frideray as soon as you are able,” she said to him quietly.

  “Not until the spring, surely,” Rollo said.

  Ottar eased his way past him. “And not before Grant returns?”

  Rika shrugged. “Our folk have need of a jarl, and have long hoped for Gunnar’s return. You know that, all of you.”

  Rollo grunted. “Come, boy,” he said to Ottar, and clapped a hand on the youth’s shoulder. “Let us leave these two to catch up. And I could use a meal and a boatload of mead.”

  Ottar cast her a forlorn look, and followed Rollo from the chamber.

  “Will you not wait for him?” Gunnar said, after they’d gone.

  Her heart iced over, and the familiar feel of it fueled her resolve. Once, the deadness would have also buoyed the strength of her convictions, but not so today.

  “Nay,” she said, halfheartedly. “I think not.”

  A sennight later, Rika stood at the byrthing’s stern and breathed deep of the cool salt air. A light breeze toyed with her thick braids. The day was warm, the sun brilliant against a field of clear blue sky.

  It was a good day to sail.

  “Are you sure, sister?” Gunnar willed her look at him, but she would not. “We can wait. Another week. Two even. Spring is nearly on us.”

  She fingered the sunstone hanging from her neck and scanned the southern horizon on
e last time. “Nay. The weather is fair, and the tide is turned. Let us take our leave of this place.”

  Gunnar nodded and turned to join the others—Ottar, Erik, Leif, and a half-dozen of her father’s men—who stood ready to cast off. Ottar had not spoken to her all that day, and now refused even to look at her.

  Stupid boy. What did he expect her to do? Wait like some desperate, love-struck fool for a husband whose only purpose in returning was to tell her he had taken another to wife? Nay, she would forgo that humiliation.

  She was not the kind of woman he wanted, but knew now that she did not wish to be otherwise. She was Ulrika, daughter of Fritha and Rollo. Would that Grant could have loved her for who and what she was, as she loved him.

  Sunlight glinted off the hammered bronze bracelets circling her wrists. Without another thought, she removed them and cast them into the sea.

  When she turned around she caught Ottar’s bitter smile. He nodded, and she smiled back, her heart full to aching.

  The anchor raised, Gunnar called for them to push off. Leif shouted out the strokes, and her father’s men put their backs into the oaring. Ottar and Erik stood ready to hoist the sail. A hundred feet into the bay, she turned for one last look.

  “MacInnes,” she breathed. The old Scot stood on the dock, beside his wheezing horse. “Hmm, that is strange.”

  “We took our leave of him this morn,” Gunnar said, joining her at the stern. “I wonder what—”

  “Ja, but he waves us back. Look.” She raised a hand, acknowledging they’d seen him.

  “He calls to you. What is he saying.”

  She shook her head. “He says my name, but I can’t make the rest of it out.”

  Another rider topped the ridge above the bay. Rika squinted against the sun and tried to make him out.

  “Who is it?” Gunnar said.

  “I know not.”

  But she did know, and her spine prickled.

  “Whoever he is, he’s got the devil in him. At that speed he’ll break his neck.”

  The rider’s black steed thundered down the ridge and across the moor, heading straight for the dock.

  “Grant!” Ottar cried.

  Rika stopped breathing.

  It was him. She saw him clearly now. He wore a belted plaid, the same as the first time she’d seen him washed up on the beach at Frideray.

  “Turn around!” Gunnar cried, and the men instantly stopped rowing.

  “Nay, do not.” Rika clutched her brother’s arm. “Do not, I beg you.”

  “But—”

  Gunnar shot Ottar a warning look, and the youth clapped his mouth shut.

  “Rika, are you sure?” Gunnar said.

  A dozen rational reasons why they should just sail on raced through her mind, clashing with the knot of emotions welling inside her.

  “Ja,” she said, then shook her head. “Nay. I don’t know.” She realized she was trembling, and clutched the byrthing’s top rail to steady herself.

  Her breath caught in her throat as Grant flew past MacInnes and drove the black steed clear onto the dock. Grant pulled him up short just before the poor beast plummeted into the water. He slipped from the saddle and stepped to the edge.

  “Rika!” she heard him call. He frantically waved her back.

  “Well?” Gunnar said.

  She shook her head, gripping the top rail so tightly her hands began to cramp. “I…I don’t know.”

  Ottar and Erik and Leif stood behind her, silent, but she could feel their anxiety. Her father’s men waited for Gunnar’s command, oars in the air.

  A minute passed, or was it an hour? Each second twisted her stomach tighter. And then Grant did something that shocked them all. He threw off his weapons and—

  “Thor’s blood!”

  “He jumped!” Ottar cried.

  Rika gasped.

  “Look, he swims toward us.” Leif pointed at the flailing Scotsman. “Well, if you call that swimming.”

  The crazy fool! What was he thinking? He can barely swim a stroke.

  “It seems your husband does not take kindly to your leaving.” Gunnar cocked a sun-bleached brow at her.

  She leaned out over the top rail, straining to hear what it was that George shouted. Terns and gulls cawed overhead, drowning out his words. Rika’s heart swelled to bursting as he thrashed across the water toward her like a salmon desperate to make his way upstream.

  And then she heard it.

  His voice clear, his words unmistakable.

  “I love ye!”

  Her breath shot from her lungs in a tortured sort of gasp.

  “Told you,” Ottar said behind her. “Nay, but you wouldn’t listen, would yo—”

  “Ottar, shut up,” Gunnar said.

  A second later she was balanced precariously on the top rail, her eyes fixed on the man swimming toward her.

  “That water’s wicked cold, sister, but methinks you do not care.”

  She jumped.

  And gasped as the icy water shocked her to her senses.

  “Rika!” George cried, and then nearly went under.

  “George!” She cut through the water toward him, the whoops of her kinsmen spurring her faster.

  They collided, shivering, and then his arms were around her. “R-Rika, I…l-love…ye,” he said, teeth chattering from the cold, and breathless from the long swim.

  Over and over he said the words as he peppered her face with kisses, his lips warming her icy skin.

  “But…your wife. What will she—”

  “Ye are my wife.” He cupped her face in his hands, and she wrapped her legs around him in the frigid water. “My brave, bonny wife. A remarkable woman, and I will have no other.”

  “But…Anne Sinclair…your king—”

  He stilled her with a kiss. “The Sinclairs and the Grants are joined, and William the Lion is well pleased.”

  She tried to make sense of his words but could not.

  He smiled, and she remembered something her father had mentioned in passing.

  “Your brother!”

  “Aye, ’tis a good match, and why I had to leave Dunnet Head straightaway—to square things with king and clan before I found my head on the block.” He brushed her lips with a kiss. “Did ye no get my message to wait?”

  Her cheeks warmed under his scolding gaze, but now was not the time to explain the fears that had driven her to leave.

  “I, too, had things to put to rights,” she said.

  “Your father.”

  She nodded. “There is much I have yet to reconcile in my own mind, but we parted with peace between us that will lead, in time, to forgiveness.” He started to sink, and she pulled him up. “Come,” she said, “we are closer to shore than the boat.”

  She looked back at her brother and the others. All of them were smiling. Gunnar waved—a gesture of farewell.

  “Bring her for a visit in the summer,” he called.

  George raised a hand in acknowledgment.

  Together, they swam for the beach. MacInnes stood grinning on the dock, hands fisted on hips. They washed ashore, shivering and drenched to the bones.

  George pulled her close, and she clung to him. His heart beat fierce against her breast.

  “Say it,” he breathed. “What ye said at the quarry.”

  She looked into his eyes and felt the warmth of his love melt all of her doubts. “I love you.”

  And then he kissed her.

  “Lawmaker was right about everything, wasn’t he?” she said, when finally their lips parted to draw breath.

  “Aye, he was a wise man.”

  She would remember him always, with love, as a daughter remembers a father. Sun glinted off the silver brooch pinned at her shoulder, and she smiled.

  Together they watched as the byrthing sailed out of the small bay, north toward Fair Isle. But she found herself thinking of other shores, and wrapped her arms tight about her husband’s neck.

  “Scotland is beautiful in the spring,” he
said, as if he read her thoughts.

  “I have oft wondered about that.”

  He gazed at the brilliant blue sky. “Aye, and the thaw is coming. I feel it.”

  “So do I.”

  And truly, she did.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-1737-3

  ICE MAIDEN

  Copyright © 2001 by Debra Lee Brown

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