The Road to Vengeance

by Judson Roberts

  We came to a copse of trees along the riverbank that had a sunny clearing in its center. It was far enough downstream from Ruda for the water to be clear of refuse from the town and the army’s island camp. We were far enough, too, I judged, to be safe from any chance meeting with wandering warriors from our army or folk from the town.

  “We will stop here,” I told Genevieve. “The trees will conceal us and our horses from view while you bathe at the river’s edge.”

  “Where will you be?” she asked, a dubious expression on her face.

  “I will stand watch at the edge of these trees, to make certain no one comes. Do not worry. I will not be able to see you.”

  My words did not seem to allay her concerns. “I think I will keep my shift on while I bathe,” she said. “I brought a clean one, from the gowns your captain gave me, to wear when I am finished bathing.”

  I said nothing. It was her affair if she wished to bathe while wearing clothing, though it seemed foolish to me.

  We found a place along the bank where the tangled roots of a willow growing at the water’s edge trailed off into the river. “You can use these roots as steps and handholds to climb down to the water,” I told her. “But be careful and do not venture out far from the shore, since you cannot swim. It looks as though the river bottom drops off fairly steeply here.”

  I left her and walked to the far edge of the clearing, just inside the ring of trees. The grass was thick here, and looked soft and inviting. I laid my bow and quiver on the ground, unstrapped the belt that held my sword and axe, and stretched myself out on the soft, sweet-smelling turf. Although I had told Genevieve I would be standing guard, I did not really expect anyone might come upon us here. In times of war, most folk do not lightly venture far afield from places of safety. We had seen no one else since leaving Ruda.

  I was close enough to be able to hear Genevieve gasp when she first entered the river. It would still be some months before the winter’s chill was gone from the water. I could hear sounds of splashing, too, as she bathed.

  “I am going to get out now,” she called. “Where are you?”

  “I am across the clearing. I cannot see you,” I assured her.

  Suddenly I heard a shriek, followed by a loud splash. “Help!” she cried, in a strangled voice. Then there was nothing.

  I ran to the water’s edge, but could see her nowhere. Widening rings of ripples were spreading from a point a few feet out from where the willow roots entered the water. As I watched, bubbles of air broke the surface in the center of the rings.

  I kicked off my shoes, stripped off my tunic, and jumped into the river. Holding my breath, I ducked my head beneath the surface and began searching for her in the murky water.

  Fortunately, the current had not carried her away. The string of air bubbles escaping from her mouth led me to her. She was thrashing wildly, but ineffectively. When I reached her, she locked her arms tightly around my neck, and for a moment I feared she would drown me, too. I swept my left arm around her legs to keep them clear of my own, and held her body pinned tightly against my chest while I kicked my legs and pulled with my right arm, fighting my way back to the surface.

  Genevieve coughed until her lungs were clear, then rested her head against my cheek with her eyes closed. I kept us afloat with steady kicks, but did not try to swim to shore. It was as though I could not force my mind to focus on what needed to be done now that she was safe. Perhaps it was because her shift concealed little now that it was soaked through, or because her body felt so warm against mine where I held her tightly against me.

  After a time, Genevieve opened her eyes and raised her head. She looked about her, startled. “Why do you not swim to shore?” she asked.

  Her face was right next to mine. I could feel her breath on my cheek.

  “Halfdan?” she asked. It was the first time she had ever spoken my name.

  Without a word, I paddled in and helped Genevieve find handholds on the roots extending into the water. As she prepared to pull herself up, Genevieve turned her head toward me and said in little more than a whisper, “My shift exposes me. I beg you, do not watch me climb from the river.”

  I turned and swam upstream to the point where the tree line at the edge of the grove met the riverbank. Pushing off from the shore, I swam hard across the river and back, letting the cold water tire my muscles and calm my body and mind. When I returned to my starting point, I saw that Genevieve had set my tunic and shoes out for me on the edge of the bank. I climbed from the river, dried myself as best I could with my tunic, and dressed. Genevieve was seated across the clearing, close to where the horses were tied, her back to the river and me.

  She turned when she heard me approach. Our eyes met, and we both looked away.

  “Thank you,” she said, in a quiet voice. “I would have died had you not saved me.”

  I did not know what to say. My thoughts were confused. I kept recalling how her body had looked through the transparent gown, and how it had felt pressed against mine.

  “I am glad I was there,” I told her.

  She nodded her head vigorously. “Yes,” she said. “I am glad, too. You saved me.”

  I had, but that was not what I meant.

  5 : A Feast and a Dance

  We were both quiet for most of the ride back to Ruda. When the walls of the town came into view in the distance, I finally broke the silence.

  “Why did you choose to become a priestess—a nun?” I asked her.

  She looked startled by my question. “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Why are you not betrothed? Why are you not wed?”

  “I am to be a bride of Christ,” she said. “There is no finer husband a Christian woman could have.”

  “I cannot believe a dead God is the finest husband you could have,” I told her. Or would wish for, either, I thought, but did not say. It was no business of mine. Then I said it anyway. “Do you truly believe that is so? I have seen the way you hold Alise. Have you truly never wished for a living husband who could warm your bed at night and give you children of your own?”

  Genevieve scowled at me and retorted, “You should not say such things! Why do you ask me such questions?”

  I could not help myself. I laughed at her indignation.

  “It is just that I have never met anyone like you,” I told her, grinning. “You are so different from the women of my people. Is it wrong that I wish to understand?”

  She blushed, scowled again, and looked away. In a moment she glanced back at me. I saw that now she, too, was grinning.

  “It is unfair to use my own words against me,”

  she said. Then she sighed and a serious expression replaced the humor that had briefly lit her face.

  “It is true. Once I did dream of having a husband—a real husband, who would lie beside me at night and whom I would awaken beside every morn. And I dreamed of having children of my own. It was the life I expected to lead and I looked forward to it.”

  “What happened?” I asked. “Why is your life now pledged to your God?”

  “It is not a choice I made. The decision was made for me.”

  “Who made the decision, if you did not?”

  “My father. I am the youngest of four children in my family,” she explained. “I have two brothers—you have met Drogo, the eldest—and one sister. My father values his sons. They are both warriors, captains in his scara of cavalry. And they ensure that my father’s line and name will continue after his death.

  “Father views his daughters differently, however. To him, we are nothing more than a commodity to be spent carefully, to gain for him some advantage. Daughters of the nobility are an expensive burden, for a dowry must be paid to their husbands when they are wed. My father is unwilling to part with any of his wealth without gaining something for himself in return.

  “My sister was fortunate. Though she had no say in the matter of her marriage, at least the husband Father chose for her was not distasteful. The same
was not true for me.

  “There is an elderly nobleman who lives on a large estate adjacent to some lands my father owns. Though in poor health now, he has outlived all the rest of his family, including three sons and two wives. My father hoped to acquire his lands for our family through marriage—my marriage. He reasoned that because my husband-to-be had no heirs, if I could give him a child, then after he died—something everyone believes will be no more than a few years at most in coming, given his age and the state of his health—my father, as the closest male relative of the infant heir, would by right control the lands until my child reached its majority.

  “It was essential, my father stressed to me, that I get with child as soon as possible after I was wed and, of course, it would be preferable that the child I bore be male—as if that is something any woman can control. Father even intimated that if my husband could not achieve the desired result quickly enough, he would find a fertile stand-in to service me. I felt my father viewed me much the same as one of his prized mares. My value to him lay only in the fact that I could be bred, and profit could be made from my offspring. That my husband-to-be was repugnant to me—he is old and fat and dirty, his teeth are rotten, and his breath and body stink—was of no concern whatsoever to my father.”

  “Did you tell your father your feelings about the marriage?” I asked. She shook her head.

  “My father is not an approachable man. Not to his daughters, anyway. I told my mother, though. I asked her to intercede with Father on my behalf. She told me to stop behaving like a spoiled child and accept the duty I owed to the family.

  “Father held a great celebration to announce my betrothal. My future husband sat at my side and pawed at me throughout the feast. Later that night, when the household had all gone to bed, he made his way to my bedchamber and attempted to rape me. He could not wait until our wedding night. I clawed his face, scratching great bloody stripes across it until I escaped his grasp. Then, with a candlestick, I beat him about the face and head.”

  Her face looked animated and her dark eyes flashed as she described beating her betrothed. This was a side of her I had not seen before—Genevieve the warrior maiden. I thought it suited it her far better than being a priestess of a dead God.

  She continued. “By the time he was able to escape, crawling naked out into the hallway, with me following and hammering upon his bald and now bloody pate, the din had awakened the household, and his humiliation was witnessed by many.

  “The next morning, my betrothed angrily called off the wedding. Relations between him and my father have been strained ever since. My father was incensed by my conduct. ‘Why did you not let him have his way?’ he shouted at me. ‘What difference would it have made? You were to be wed! You might that much sooner have become with child!’

  “My father decided that if I would not have as husband the man he had chosen for me, then I would wed no man at all. Among our people, the holy church expects the nobles to give of their wealth and lands for its support, in exchange for which the church protects their immortal souls, and also supports their rule while on this mortal earth. This year, instead of giving the church lands or silver, my noble father, Count Robert, delivered his daughter. I am to spend the rest of my life serving the church in the Abbey of St. Genevieve in Paris. It was considered a generous donation on his part. The abbess was well pleased to gain so high-born a member for her order.”

  The tone of her voice sounded bitter as she uttered these last words, and the light I had seen moments before vanished from her face. Her looks belied her earlier assertion that she was pleased to be promised as a bride to her God.

  “What did your mother say?” I asked.

  “She said I had acted like a fool,” Genevieve answered. “She said I was fortunate my father did not do worse.”

  I recalled the words Genevieve had spoken earlier during our ride out from Ruda. She’d said that in her life she had had everything except her parents’ love. I did not agree. Fine clothes and a palace for a home were not everything. It seemed to me that despite her noble birth, in many ways she had had no more freedom than did a slave. Her life had never been her own to live.

  I could understand now why her brother had intimated her return might not be welcomed. Her father would have to part with much silver to gain her release. Yet once she was freed, there seemed no way he could hope to recoup what she had cost him.

  “After your ransom has been paid, will you return to your family or to the church?” I asked her.

  “There is no question. I will be returned to the abbey in Paris. My father has made it very clear that he will never again consider me to be his daughter, nor welcome me into his home.”

  “Then why will he pay to ransom you?” It made no sense to me.

  “He will pay to protect his honor,” she said. “I have heard you speak of honor, and I have come to understand that to you, to your people, honor is a different thing altogether than what men like my father mean when they use the term. My father’s ‘honor’ is his pride. What he calls honor is based more upon his noble birth and his wealth and position, than on his actions. He values that other men must defer to him because of his rank. He will worry it might lessen him in the eyes of others if he abandoned a daughter—even one he now wishes he did not have—to the Northmen. And I am certain he could not bear the thought of anyone of his blood becoming a slave. His pride matters even more to him than his wealth. He will pay my ransom, though it will gall him to do so.”

  When we reached Wulf’s house, Genevieve disappeared into the back room and did not reemerge for the rest of the afternoon. After returning the horses to the stables, I dressed myself in the feast finery one of Hastein’s thralls had made for me back at his estate on the Limfjord. Had it truly been only weeks ago that we had been in Jutland, impatiently waiting to sail? It felt as though those days had occurred during a different lifetime.

  Dusk was beginning to fall over the town, and Bertrada had just added more wood to the fire to brighten the dimness in the front of the house, when the door to the back room opened and Genevieve came out. She was wearing the dark red gown Hastein had given her, over one of the white linen shifts. The short black cape was draped around her shoulders. Her dark hair was twisted into a knot that pulled it up off of her neck.

  She glanced up at me when she entered the room, then quickly looked down. I felt as though I should say something, but my mind emptied at the sight of her and my tongue felt clumsy in my mouth. Finally I managed to stammer, “Perhaps I should get a torch to light our way.” It was all I could think of to say.

  “Is it dark enough that we shall need one?” she asked.

  “No,” I said, mentally cursing my own stupidity. Did I appear as witless as I felt? “You are right. It will not be that dark until later, when we return.”

  Wulf was grinning broadly as he looked at us. “Don’t the two of you make a fine looking pair,” he said. Genevieve looked embarrassed, and I felt the same. It was a foolish thing for Wulf to say. We were not a pair, fine or otherwise. Genevieve was my prisoner. I was her captor. We were nothing more than that.

  When we reached Hastein’s quarters, I felt more confused than ever about why he had asked me to dine with him, and why I had to bring Genevieve. Besides Torvald, I was the only member of the Gull’s crew who was present. It was a small gathering: Svein and Stig, the captains of Hastein’s two other ships, and—to my surprise—Ivar. This was a meeting of captains. I had nothing to say to them, nor did they have anything to say to me. At least the fare Cullain had cooked was very fine, and Hastein provided generous amounts of both ale and wine to accompany it.

  Except for his initial greeting, Hastein ignored us. The meal was nearly finished when Genevieve whispered, “Why am I here?”

  “I do not know,” I told her. “I do not know why either of us are here.” That very question had been worrying me more and more.

  As if on cue, Hastein spoke. “Halfdan, I wish to speak to your prisoner. Yo
u will translate my questions for her.” Ivar, who had drunk much wine during the evening, was now slouched back in his chair, one leg propped up on the table, staring at Genevieve through half-closed eyes. He leaned over and murmured something in Stig’s ear, and both men laughed.

  “Ask her where the towns her father rules are located,” Hastein said.

  Genevieve looked confused and somewhat suspicious when I explained to her what Hastein wished to know. “I do not know how to answer his question,” she said.

  Hastein tried again. “Ask her if the towns her father rules are on the Seine River, or close to it.”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “They lie far to the south of the Seine. All except for Paris.”

  “Ask her how large Paris is,” Hastein continued. “Ask her how it compares to Ruda.”

  “Paris is far larger than Rouen,” she answered. “Though it is not as great as it once was, in the time of the Romans. There are many very old buildings in parts of the town that now are just ruins, where people no longer live.”

  “How much larger than Ruda is it?” Hastein wanted to know.

  She claimed that more than ten thousand people lived there. I personally did not believe that could be true. I did not believe it possible for that many people to live so close together, in a single place. But when I translated her answer, Ivar sat up and began to take interest in the conversation.

  “Ten thousand? Surely there are churches there. Perhaps many churches. Ask her if there are,” he demanded. “And monasteries—ask her if there are monasteries, too.”

  “Oh, yes,” Genevieve responded enthusiastically when I told her Ivar’s question. “There are many, many churches. And several monasteries, in and near Paris. The Abbeys of St. Germain and of St. Denis are the two largest. And of course there is the Abbey of St. Genevieve, the convent where I am a holy sister.” She frowned and looked at me. “Why does he wish to know these things? Who is he?”