by Joanna Bell
We got married on the beach. Not just any beach. Before we left River Falls, I spent many an evening researching the coastline of the modern county of East Anglia, looking at photos and maps until I found what I thought was the beach where I had first met the Viking, on that sunny day in the 9th century. I couldn't be 100% sure, of course, because the land was now settled, filled with holiday homes and villages and grocery stores – but the rocky outcroppings on either side matched what we both remembered, although where there had once been dense forest there was now a series of sand dunes that rose up behind the beach.
It was a mostly sunny day with the wind blowing high and little white clouds scudding across the sky, dragging their shadows across the land behind them. I wore a handmade dress of white silk and lace and carried a bouquet of white and green and pale blue flowers. The Jarl wore a suit. A suit! And underneath his suit, strapped to his ankle, he wore the dagger that he had brought with him when he came back to me.
And because we were wealthy then, and because I had not spent much if any money on indulgences, I indulged myself with a hairdresser who studied and specialized in ancient hairstyles. I flew her in from France to style my hair in one of the intricate braided styles I'd seen the Viking women wearing, and I didn't tell Ivar.
So the first time he saw me in my wedding dress, my hair in braids and my cheeks pink from the wind and the excitement of seeing my groom waiting for me on the sand, was on that day. My mother walked me down the 'aisle' as our small but incredibly tight group of friends looked on.
"Gods," he whispered, his eyes glimmering, when I got close enough to hear. "You look – Sophie, you look like a Northern woman with your hair like that. You look –" he stopped talking, overcome with emotion, and took my hands.
We spoke our solemn vows to each other, and placed the rings we had made from one of Ivar's golden Jarl's necklaces onto each other's fingers. And when it was over and the officiant pronounced us man and wife, my new husband turned to me and asked if it was so.
"It is," I replied, gazing up at my new husband, all handsome and fierce – even in a suit.
We stood looking into each other's eyes for a few seconds, two people in love, two people seeing each other in full, and then he bent and placed a slow, tender kiss on my mouth.
Twenty or so minutes later, when everyone had managed to organize themselves and head back to the country house for the party, I found myself alone on the beach with the Viking Jarl of Jarls who had left his whole life behind for me.
"What did you think?" I asked, as the wind played with his hair, and the sun shot it through with gold.
"I thought it was fast. You people in this time like to do things quickly, I should have known that a marriage ritual would be no different. It is as it is, Sophie. You're my wife now, and I your husband. I feel a peace in my heart I did not ever think was my fate."
I felt the same peace in my heart that Ivar did. It was the peace of certainty, of knowing that come what may, come what storms and trials life could throw us, we had each other. Neither of us was going anywhere, the question of whose side at which we were to spend the rest of our days was settled.
"Fast?" I asked. "Was it? How long does it take for two Northern people to marry?"
"Longer. After the gothi says the words, the couple are not yet married. They must spend some time together, at that moment, with their families around them, to think of each other and their bond. And when the bond has been forged, then they are married."
"But how much longer?" I asked. "Five minutes? A day? Are you saying everyone just... stands there, until it's done? Who decides when it's done?"
"As long as it takes," Ivar replied, taking my hand and turning to look out at the sea. "In truth, it usually doesn't last for long. It's a wedding – people are hungry, children are restless! But the couple is not considered married until it's done, until they feel it's done."
I turned, then, to face the sea at his side. He took my hand a moment later and we stood like that, the wind blowing around us, the sound of the waves in our ears, and the future on the horizon, beckoning us forwards. At first I thought it was something I was doing for Ivar, like the braided hair – and something I was happy to do for him. But after a few minutes, something happened. The world seemed to empty, as did my mind and my heart, of everything but him. The sea and the sky came together and the Jarl's hand held mine steady and I knew, I felt in my heart, that we were one.
The wedding party was a raucous, beautiful affair. Neither Ivar nor myself wanted a stiff, formal event, with scheduled 'first dances' and awkward speeches. We wanted a party. We wanted love. We wanted our guests to eat and laugh and dance to their hearts' content. And so that's what we had. A catering company set up a long table of food – roasted meats and fresh cut fruit and champagne that bubbled over the rims of everyone's glasses the way our hearts bubbled over with love. We – all of us – danced and laughed into the wee hours of the morning, until we were so tired our legs would no longer hold us up.
At around midnight, just after Ivar had carried Ashley up to bed when her determination to stay up all night had suddenly faltered, Maria found me standing by the open kitchen door, getting some fresh air.
"This is the best wedding I've ever been to," she said, coming up from behind and wrapping her arms around me. "I don't think I've ever seen so many people so genuinely happy in one place."
"Do you think so?" I asked, hoping it was true.
"Do you have eyes?" My best friend giggled, gesturing towards the beautiful old ballroom where the revelry was taking place. "Ears? You've changed our lives, Sophie. You've changed my family's life. You didn't have to –"
"I know I didn't. But you would have done it for me. And it was Heather's doing anyway – without her dagger, I never would have –"
"Are you ever going to tell me what happened there?" Maria cut in, sipping her champagne. "Suddenly you have this old friend you never told me about and she's giving you 20 million dollars from some weird old knife she sold to some rich people? Are you ever going to tell me the full story?"
I smiled. "Someday. Not today, but someday."
Two days later, after most of the wedding party had left for London to spend the next week or so shopping and sightseeing, Ivar and I boarded a sailing ship in a small port in southern Norway. Our children were in the care of my mother, my best friend and Heather – the only three people on earth that either of us trusted with them – and we had a week to ourselves.
My husband was quiet as a taxi drove us through the little town where the boat was docked, and then even more quiet when the sails were hoisted and the captain took us out of the sheltered harbor to begin the journey northwards, along the coast. He knew where we were. I hadn't told him, but he knew.
"Are you upset with me?" I asked, worried that I'd done the wrong thing when I found him standing on deck and staring out across the dark blue waves with an unreadable expression on his face.
He turned, his face softening into a smile when he saw me, and pulled me against him. "No I'm not upset with you, woman."
I eyeballed him and he threw his head back, laughing. "If I can't call my own wife 'woman' now – then when can I do it?!"
I giggled. "You can do it whenever you like, Jarl. But I explained to you that it will just make people think you're a savage."
He ran a hand down my back and gave me a short smack on the rear. "I don't care if I'm thought a savage, woman. Perhaps you care to be thought married to one, though?"
"No," I replied, grinning. "If I didn't want people to think I was married to a savage, I wouldn't have married a Northman."
On our third day at sea, when I was lying on deck in the sunshine, as sated on the love of another as I had ever been, Ivar suddenly came running from the bow of the ship, where he had been standing for what seemed like hours, gazing at the coast as we sailed along it.
"Stop!" He shouted, yanking open the door to the bridge. "Wait! Wait!"
I got up an
d went to him, putting my arm around his waist as he swept his hands through his hair and ran back out onto the deck.
"This – this little island," he panted, pointing to a tiny chunk of rock only just breaking the waves. "And that – that harbor, there, do you see it?"
"Yes," I answered. "A harbor. Is it – do you recognize it?"
The Viking blinked and looked again at the small rock island. "I – I don't know. I think perhaps this is one of the islands near to Spangar."
"Spangar?" I didn't recognize the name. "That's not where –"
"No, it's not my home village, but it was close to it. It is where a lot of trading took place, and from which many ships sets out on their raids."
I stayed at his side as the captain sailed, under Ivar's instructions, into the long, narrow bay. A small dock, with no boats tied up along its sides, lay on our left. There was a single road, but no cars could be seen on it. The place seemed deserted.
"Yes," he whispered, a couple of minutes later. "Yes, this is it. This is Spangar. Look, Sophie –" he gestured at the rocky land, almost devoid of features aside from the empty road and a few nondescript, shack-like buildings. "Look there! There, do you see it – the way that one rock on the shore stands higher out of the water?"
"Yes?"
"I have jumped off that rock as a boy, challenged by my friends. My mother almost killed me when I came home with my teeth clattering against each other and my leathers torn from the waves tossing me about when I climbed out of the water."
I turned to look, and imagined a bustling port where now there seemed to be almost nothing, and a group of boisterous boys playing on the rocks, daring each other to jump as it seemed boys were in the habit of doing whether it was a thousand years ago or today. And all around us the wind blew, and there was no sound to be heard but the sea.
A crew member brought us to shore in a rowboat and Ivar took my hand, practically dragging me up the beach. We walked for almost an hour along the road, and did not see another soul. Just when I was about to enquire about the possibility of renting a car, my husband's hand suddenly squeezed mine and his body went stiff.
"There," he said, his voice a whisper, pointing towards the sea, which had come into view again on the other side of a rocky point. "There, oh –"
I turned around when he fell to his knees, not understanding at first what was happening and then understanding all at once when I saw the tears in his eyes. The Viking was looking at his home.
I looked, too. And although I saw no village, I saw that it would not be a bad spot for one, with the rock giving way to fields that sloped gently down to a sandy beach on one side.
"Was it here?" I asked. "Your home?"
But he couldn't speak. He just reached for my hand, and I gave it to him, kneeling beside him and putting my arms around his broad shoulders as they shook.
"Close your eyes," he whispered, when he could speak again. "Close your eyes, love."
I closed my eyes.
"What do you feel?"
"The sun," I told him, as I turned my face up slightly, towards it. "The wind on my face. It smells of the sea. Is it the same? Is this what you felt, when you were a boy?"
Ivar nodded, and the tears finally spilled down his cheeks. "Our longhouse was there," he pointed towards the crest of a hill, "at the highest point. The door faced to the southwest and when you looked out of it, you could not see the rest of the village. I used to pretend, sometimes, that all the other dwellings were gone, and my mother and father were gone, and that I was all alone. And now here I am, and the dwellings are gone, and my –" he broke off and pressed his hand briefly to his chest – "my mother and father are gone."
"But you are not alone," I whispered, as my own eyes swam with tears.
The Jarl ran his fingers down the side of my face as he gazed at me. "But I am not alone."
We sat down in the grass and let the wind blow over us, both of us thinking of the place as it once was, echoing with the shouts of children and the conversations of the men and the women as they went about their days over a thousand years in the past.
"We must bring the girls here," he said a short while later. "In a few years, when they're old enough to remember it. I want to watch our children playing at the edge of the waves, as I once did. When they are old, and we are gone, I want them to remember the feeling of the northern sun on their faces."
"Yes, of course."
"This is the place that made me, Sophie. These hills, this shoreline, this sea – they molded me as did my mother and father – and they remain now, even as my mother and father do not."
"Would they have been buried near here?" I asked, lifting the Viking's rough-skinned hand to my face and pressing it to my lips.
"We do not bury our dead like the Angles," he said, looking out at the sea so his eyes appeared to be exactly the same shade of blue as the waves. "We burn the bodies, to free the souls for the journey to next world. We used to do it over there –" he pointed again, that time to a smaller rock outcropping that jutted out into the sea just north of where we sat. "And then let the wind carry the ashes away over the following days and nights."
Suddenly overcome with love, I turned to him and pulled his head down against my chest, stroking his golden hair and kissing his face. He'd given up everything for me, and for Freya and Ashley.
"I want you to know that I know," I whispered into his ear. "I know what you've given up to be with me. I need you to understand that, Ivar – that I know it."
He lay back, resting his head on my lap, and looked up at me. "Aye, woman, I know that you know it. Not that it would trouble me if you did not, as there could have been no other life for me but that I have now, with you. There could have been no other children but Freya and Ashley, and whoever else may come to be. The moment I was born, the arrow was loosed that would lead us to this day, to this place, together."
He looked up at me for a few moments and then his eyelids began to fall and I watched, smiling to myself, as he fell asleep. And then I sat, cradling the Viking's head in my lap as I watched the whitecaps breaking in the sea and the sun slipping down towards the horizon.
Author Information
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Other Books in the 'Mists of Albion' Series
Magnus: Mists of Albion Book 4 (pre-order)
1983. River Falls, New York. A troubled young woman falls through a portal to the past, and on the other side a war-hardened Viking warrior will stop at nothing to keep her there.
This is Heather Renner's story.
Eirik: Mists of Albion Book 1
Ragnar: Mists of Albion Book 2
Other Books by Joanna Bell:
How To Catch A Cowboy: A Small Town Montana Romance
(also available in paperback)
