by Joanna Bell
But no incentive was needed, I told myself as we rode back through the sun-dappled woods. The King of East Angles had been no match for the warriors of the North.
But if I had delved deeper into my own thoughts, I would have seen that I knew it even before we left the camp that morning, that the woman had never been an incentive. It was simply the story I told myself, in the way that men tell themselves self-justifying stories about pretty women, in order to keep her with me.
As it was, the warm weight of her body behind me on the ride back to camp made the glow of victory burn all the hotter in my chest. I was hungry, and not just for the venison stew that awaited.
We made it back as the deep blue dusk swept over the hills and forests of the Kingdom of the East Angles and the first stars winked in the night sky. Sophiefoster barely awakened when I lifted her, with a tenderness that made a couple of the camp-women look twice, from the horse's back. I could not whisk her off to my sleeping roundhouse at that moment, though, no matter how insistently the flames leapt inside me. There was to be a feast – a makeshift feast, because we were no longer in our homeland, no longer eating in longhouses that stretched farther than a man could shout or around tables that required 15 men to lift them – but a feast nonetheless. The Kingdom was ours, the land and its bounty secured for our use during the winter to come.
And before the feast, the death-rounds. When a man is lost in battle, his Jarl must bring the news to his family so they do not wait up into the night, hoping that their son, their brother, their husband has not simply lost his way in the darkness. Many of the warriors had left their families behind, in the homeland, but some fought alongside relatives, and a few had wives or sisters or mothers in camp.
The people of the North are stoic, hardened by long, cold winters, summers of warfare and the violence upon which much of our prosperity was built. The brother sitting on a drift-log at the top of the beach coughed when I told him of his sibling's death, and looked out at the sea, and coughed again.
"All Valhalla lifts their heads to see him arrive," he told me not a moment later, "he who found his way to the next world in the defeat of a King."
The girl of another man, a cook who I found beside a large cauldron of steaming porridge, shed instant, shameless tears upon hearing the news, even as I reassured her she would not be forgotten in her grief, although she was not yet a wife. And after all who needed to be told of losses had been told, I retreated to my roundhouse to wash and dress for the feast with the image of the cook's distraught face in my mind.
And there it stayed, as thralls washed the grime and stink and other men's blood from my neck and underneath my fingernails. I thought the cook's reaction, although it would be scorned by many, somehow more honest than that of the man on the beach, who went straight from hearing the news of his brother's death to giving voice to stories of Valhalla.
"You're quiet tonight, Jarl," one of the thralls commented softly, as she ran a wet linen cloth around my neck. I knew the thrall – Ingmar or Inga or Ing-something – she had warmed my bed a few times before and I could see in her dark eyes that she wished to warm it again that night. "It is said you defeated the King of this land today – is it true?"
"Aye," I nodded, slightly perplexed by the lack of reaction in my body to the girl's obvious intentions but too lost in my own thoughts to take much notice. "We did."
"And there will be a feast tonight? It seems we prepared a whole herd of deer in the cooking pits today."
"Mmm," I nodded, not really hearing what she was saying. There was something I had not admitted to myself then – and certainly not to anyone else. And the man's talk of Valhalla on the beach, as well as the battle in the woods south of camp, had brought it up to the surface again.
The older I got, I found the clearer it became that my own sense of the next worlds, of Valhalla and feasting halls filled with the greatest warriors the world has ever known, was different to the sense of my people – even of my closest family. Others seemed to believe the place to be as real as our current one, the venison stew as meaty and rich as the one we were about to eat. But even as a child, the story hadn't added up. If the next world was as good as this one – better even – why was everyone so eager to avoid it? Why did women cry to hear their husband's had gone there, instead of dancing for joy?
I suspected that it was because they intuited, in some hidden chamber of their hearts, the things that I did – that whatever came after death, it was not to be compared to what came before it, and that the venison stews and otherworldly feasts were of a nature not similar to the one I was about to sit down to.
The bathing thrall slipped her hand under the rapidly-cooling bathwater as I pondered these strange matters, seeking the part of me that had given her such pleasure a few moons ago. I ignored it.
"I must dress," I told her amiably, standing up from the water in the candlelight without noticing the way she gazed at my body. "And get to the feast before the people die of starvation waiting for their Jarl."
I arrived at the feast in my finery, feeling, underneath the gold arm-bands and wrist-cuffs inlaid with intensely blue stones from the east, faintly ridiculous. It was part of the ritual, I understood that – it was the only reason I allowed myself to be dressed in silks and adorned with precious metal – but it made me think of cockerels and their showy strutting that made anyone witnessing it chuckle at their self-importance.
"Smile, Ivar," Jarl Ragnar clapped me on the back after I sat down after a speech about victory and Valhalla and the gods being on our side. "You took the Kingdom today."
"We took the Kingdom," I replied, breathing in the scents of the dark evening ale and stewed venison placed before me. "But our difficulties remain the same. Most of the people inland won't hear about their King's capitulation for a moon, perhaps many moons – and it is them we need to subdue if the we're to survive the winter."
I barely suppressed a moan as I brought the first spoonful of stew to my mouth – and then hardly stopped until I'd consumed 4 bowls – and only then to catch my breath and drain my cup of ale.
My people were happy. Jarl Ragnar was happy. Gunnar, seated at the high table only because I allowed him to do so, was happy. My younger brother had not been at the battle that day. His skills were too valuable, his advice too wise, to risk in combat. Or so I told him that morning when he demanded to be allowed to ride down south with the fighting men. And he was dull enough to believe what I told him, and not to guess the real reasons.
The girl Bryn was at his side, another questionable presence at the high table. And even as I had warned my troublesome sibling to behave himself, he indulged it as she fawned all over him like a young girl over a kitten. I watched the two of them out of the corner of my eye, saw the simpering look on her face as she slipped her hand underneath the table and Gunnar chuckled and tweaked one of her nipples though her tunic – which was too fine a garment for such a silly girl.
"We're at the high table," I said a moment later. "Take her back to your bed if you cannot control yourself, Gunnar."
My brother looked annoyed, but he pushed the girl's hand away and went back to his stew.
"You're just jealous," he mused a moment later, wiping his chin with the back of his wrist as Bryn whispered in his ear and eyed me boldly. "You've no woman at the table with you, brother – and neither do you, Jarl Ragnar. Perhaps the 2 of you should stop walking around with such seriousness on your faces all the time – girls don't like men who can't relax and have any fun, you know."
"Ragnar has a wife," I replied, popping a handful of roasted nuts into my mouth. "And your girl gives me eyes even now as we speak, brother. I reckon you should get her out of here before she changes her mind as to which of the two of us she wants –"
Gunnar leapt to his feet, grabbing at the sword fastened to his hip, and then fumbling briefly with it when he couldn't quite find the hilt. "Voss, brother! Voss! Who taught you to tell such lies at the high table! Come outside and see if �
�"
I looked behind Gunnar to one of my men who stood nearby, and gave him a nod. And then I and Ragnar and most of the people seated close to us watched as my idiot of a younger sibling was manhandled out into the evening with Bryn, who only turned to follow him when I gave her look of entreaty a definite shake of my head, following behind him.
"It's an amazement the two of you are from the same family," Ragnar said when my brother's hollow shouts of protest had faded away. "Scarcely have I met two men who are more different than you and Gunnar. He's right, though – have you no need of a woman's company tonight, after our victory? I see something in your eyes that does not match with the celebrations."
"A woman?" I asked, thinking of the captive. "Perhaps. What of yourself, where is your wife?"
"She's already gone north with Jarl Eirik. His wife is pregnant again, and very close with mine. I thought it safer to keep her from the battle, so I allowed her to go on ahead, without me."
I raised my eyebrows, surprised that Ragnar had allowed such a thing. He must have seen my expression, too, because he laughed and took another gulp of dark ale.
"You'll understand, Ivar, when you have a woman who transforms you into a creature who seems to live for nothing but her contentment. You'll see."
I surveyed the feasting hall, smiling to myself at the idea of being a slave to a woman's heart, and thought once again of the captive.
Later on in the evening, when most had left the roundhouse and the boisterousness of the people had been replaced with the post-feast sleepiness of full bellies and quenched thirst, I ordered Sophiefoster to be brought to me.
She appeared at my side a short time later, dressed in a tunic like a Northwoman and blinking in the soft candlelight.
"Sit," I told her, gesturing to the seat next to me. "Eat. There's venison stew and dark ale. Or roasted nuts. Or berries and cream. Come, woman, don't look so worried – was it not you complaining of the dry bread last night?"
That's all the encouragement she needed. As soon as she knew it was safe to do so, she surprised even me with her ravenousness, scooping heaping spoonful after heaping spoonful of stew into her mouth and chasing it with ale.
And all the while as she ate, I watched her. The conversation with Ragnar died away, although I myself did not notice it happening, and I focused on Sophiefoster and the shamelessness with which she satisfied her appetites. She had a way about her, a lack of apology for her own existence, that I had not often seen in the East Anglian women. As far as I could tell, most of them spent their lives in a kind of permanent background, constantly hanging back behind their men and cosseting them as if they were children. No wife of an East Angle would sit at the high table with the men in the manner of Sophiefoster. Instead of shrinking, trying to make herself as unobtrusive and quiet as a mouse, she looked around openly, her head held high as she made eye contact with the people sitting around us. It didn't seem to be deliberate defiance, either – it looked, to an observer, as natural as breathing.
I turned away at one point, suddenly aware that I was too taken with the guest at the high table. But even then, as I pretended to survey the room or to ponder the upcoming move inland, my entire being was most conscious of her sitting so close to me I could lean over and kiss her if I so wished.
"Maybe this isn't so bad," she said, holding up a piece of the buttered bread that accompanied the stew. "With butter, anyway. I guess I just grew up on that cheap sliced stuff."
'Cheap sliced stuff' – she spoke of some foreign dish, one I was not familiar with. But it was difficult to concentrate entirely on what Sophiefoster said that night at the feast, because the sight of her lips moving, the thrill in my heart at the merest flutter of her dark eyelashes, held my full attention. The tunic she wore was thin, and my mind stuttered hungrily over its own imaginings of how soft and warm her bare skin would feel under my hand.
"Have the captive brought to my sleeping roundhouse," I told the guard, when the ale and the soft summer night and the woman had all become too much.
I stripped my too-warm leathers off as soon as I was outside, and then my sword and the golden cuffs and adornments it was my lot to wear on feast nights.
When Sophiefoster was led into the candlelight of my dwelling, she found me naked from the waist up, running a honing stone down the blade of my sword.
I turned to her when the guard left her alone in front of me, expecting her to come to me, to lean in close to me and run her hands over my bare chest. She did none of those things.
"You've never been a prisoner before, have you?" I asked, setting the honing stone down.
Sophiefoster shook her head, and I could see a tension in her movements. "No, I haven't. Is that strange? How many people do you know who have been prisoners?"
The bottom of her tunic skimmed her tawny, finely muscled thighs. She was in fine condition – surprisingly fine condition – but she had not lived a life of idleness, not with that body. Her limbs spoke of activity, and also of abundance. I cocked my head to the side, not sure what she was getting at with her question. "I don't know. Most of those taken captive by the Franks – or by your own people – don't survive it. So when you ask me how many, I need to know if you wish me to count the dead in my answer."
"Is that what you plan to do with me?" She asked a moment later. "Kill me?"
I smiled and leaned back in my chair, allowing my body to relax after the battle and the feast. "Are you a warrior?" I replied, allowing a small smile to curl up one of the corners of my mouth. "Do you plan to snatch my sword up and fight your way out of here? Do you have the strength to carry away a few of our pigs?"
She was standing in front of me, tantalizingly close. Even as she failed to reach down and pull the tunic slowly, teasingly off over her head, it was almost all I could think of.
"No," she said, as a brief expression of annoyance flitted across her features like the shadow of a cloud across a field. "You can see that. You know I can't fight my way out."
"You answer your own question, woman," I told her, shifting in my seat restlessly. "Do you not see you're surrounded by men – by fighting men? Do you not understand that fighting men are the most dangerous kind of captives to keep alive? Warriors think nothing of death, of sacrificing their own lives if it means taking out 3 of the enemy before they go."
"Bullshit."
My head snapped up, then, at the tone in her voice. I didn't recall ever having been spoken to in such a tone. And before I could question my reckless captive on the wisdom of speaking to her captor with such defiance, she continued:
"That's bullshit. Men fear death just like women – just like everyone alive. I've seen it with my own eyes, I've seen how men react to a gun pointed at their head – and it's just the same as women."
I wanted to smack her for her insolence. Or maybe I didn't. Maybe I was just looking for any excuse to get my hands on her flesh. I reached out and slid my fingers around her leg, at mid-thigh. Sure enough, the skin felt as smooth to the touch as it looked. But Sophiefoster's body was still stiff, still as unbending as her voice. I kept my hand there for a little while, my fingers playing over the soft, womanly curve of her leg. And then, when she took a small step towards me, I withdrew it.
"You're not wrong," I told her, looking up to catch her dark eyes as she looked away. "I put it badly. Men fear death, it's true. Warriors fear death. You heard some of them dying today, crying for their mothers as the their lives leaked out into the dirt. But who is more likely to risk his life in escaping – a young man, burning with the humiliation of capture, or a woman? I see the way you react, as if I argue that men are the only ones with honor inside them. It's not my belief. Men are impulsive, especially when we're young. We act first and then we think later. Women are more circumspect, more liable to think of their loved ones. Look, I see you doing it right now. It's the reason you haven't tried to kill me, is it not? You have a family, don't you? Children? Even as part of you longs to snatch up the dagger I see you eyin
g on the table, you think of them, you think of what their lives will be like without you? And that keeps you where you are."
Sophiefoster's eye glimmered in the candlelight then, and I saw that my words had touched her heart, I saw the desperation of a mother whose child is not by her side. And seeing those things weakened me. I was twice her size, the Jarl of Jarls, with a sharpened blade at my hand – and she weakened me.
"I'm not going to kill you," I said quietly, taking her hand in mine. "It's gone beyond that. I don't know how, but it has. You will see your children again."
"Child," she cut in, her voice faltering slightly. "Just – child. And I – I know you're not going to kill me. Just – Ivar, please make sure your people know not to kill me, too."
I chuckled softly, not bothering to correct her way of addressing me. "There's no need to worry about that, Sophiefoster. Very little happens around here without my ordering it first."
She took another small step towards me. "It's just Sophie, you know. My name is Sophie."
That time, I reached out with both hands, taking each of her thighs in my grip and running my fingers up the backs of her legs, underneath her tunic. "Is it?" I asked, as the urgent stirring under my linens became suddenly more acute. "I thought you said it was Sophiefoster."
"I –" she started, before pausing to exhale as I brought my hands up over the fullness of her buttocks and then the narrowing of her waist. "I – it is. But it's just – it's just, uh, Sophie. It's just Sophie."
When I pulled her onto my lap, closing my eyes at the feeling of her body finally against mine, the rigidity in her limbs was draining away, she was softening under my touch. There is something about that feeling, a woman's acquiescence, that drives me almost out of my mind with desire. I grasped her hips and pulled her down, hard, until she gasped at the feeling of what she was doing to me.
"Look what you've done," I smiled, nodding down to my lap.
