THE VIKING AND THE COURTESAN

by Shehanne Moore

  Gentle’s face crumbled like a falling cliff.

  “There’s nothing we can do. Nothing. Not this time.”

  “We can only pray. Pray, my sisters.” Mother Bede entreated, falling on her knees with a deep sob.

  “How many times do I need to tell you? I ain’t your sister. Elnworke put me in that convent so he could steal all my money. Do you think I’d have been in that hell-hole otherwise? All that praying and grubbing for food?”

  Dear God, it was a minor point as the flames rose higher but must Gentle go berserk, trying to throw herself at Mother Bede? Trying to club her over the head with her fist? Biting, punching and kicking her captors. Snotra was who Gentle should have been trying to club. Snotra, who had always hated them. Snotra, who could not possibly know something she didn’t. Snotra who probably only wanted Juggesland itself.

  For all Malice threshed and squirmed like a madwoman at Mother Bede’s ludicrous recitation of the liturgy, into the flames I commit myself oh Lord—she didn’t—she couldn’t stop the ghastly procession. Could only shield her eyes from the glare that was brighter than a hundred suns by closing them before her eyelids fried, This was how it felt to die. Finally. Into the burning flames she committed herself.

  “Troll’s teeth!”

  At least she thought she did. She thought she heard that too. Certainly she must have heard it because she didn’t say it. How could she with her head lolling about on her neck and her throat parched as the Sahara desert?

  “What the hell is going on here?”

  “Sinarr!”

  There was no mistaking it. His voice. It was his voice. She would recognize the timbre of it anywhere.

  He was here, striding through the crowd, firelight burning into the growth of stubble on his jaw, the dusty leather boots and worn wristbands, the dark tan of his face so the blue eyes stood out like sentinels, beneath his wind-whipped hair. Smears of sweat slicked the lines on his forehead. These treacherous engravings she had come to know so well, she traced them on her heart, measured them on her soul, took the inventory of even as she’d gone to hell over them. But would he get to her in time, even if he breathed as if there was fire in his lungs?

  “Well?”

  “Sinarr . . . my darling. By Odin’s breath . . . It . . . it is you.”

  “Frigga’s sake, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Malice didn’t think. This had gone past thinking. Except perhaps for one thing.

  She must be the last person he expected to see here. Through the terror thudding in her veins Malice heard his feet scrunch to a halt. Was it any wonder she froze?

  Never mind what she thought. What did he think? Of how she had disappeared that awful day the Reindeer turned up? Of how she’d got from there to here? Or was he striving to overcome the fact she’d left him? Perhaps gone off with another man? Who had gone and given her this awful jacket to wear? That even now Snotra was in the process of having her burned in? It was rather a lot of thoughts. Although she did have one other. Should she just have stayed in the lunatic asylum?

  “Give me her.”

  “Sinarr . . . Yerkil was not going to hurt her.”

  “Now.”

  Her heart contracted. Now was something. What was more his arms were strong as steel. She realized it the instant they enfolded her. She must find true love or be doomed. He must care. He must care to hold her like this. So she could feel his heart hammering through the soft material of his tunic.

  “Get these women out of here. These are my slaves.”

  Well . . . maybe, maybe he cared. Then again, maybe not.

  “Sinarr . . . My beloved . . . My darling . . . Of course they are. And I should hope you would not think I would be so crass as to do anything to them.”

  Much. Much was the word Malice bit her tongue on. Neither the fact Snotra lied through her pearly white teeth and he’d said what he just had, were things she was going to take issue with. Not when her throat was scalded with smoke and she remembered six words.

  Find true love or be doomed.

  He stepped across the planking, away from the inferno raging in the wind at the water’s edge. Snotra followed, a tendril of hair falling loose and snaking about her pale face.

  “Sinarr . . . Dearest love of my heart, what is wrong with you? That you are angry? That you greet me, your beloved betrothed, with rage? Have I not sorrowed in my own heart? Worn sackcloth? Held your loss like a canker in my bosom, in the depths of my soul? In my soul, Sinarr. Am I not your love, your treasure? The one who has been yours since we were children?”

  “I’ll tell you what is wrong with me. You tried to burn her.”

  His eyes blazed and Malice fought to offer her most serene expression. He set her down on the shingle. The stones dug into her feet but she offered no complaint. It was hardly difficult. Not when his shaking fingers cupped her chin.

  “Malice, are you all right?”

  Now that little matter of how she came to be here was going to take care of itself? Absolutely.

  “Sinarr . . .” Snotra’s laugh tinkled uneasily. “What is wrong with you?”

  He tugged the jacket. “What do you think is wrong with me? You do this . . . this barbaric thing . . .”

  “Barbaric?” Snotra’s laugh grated. But that was all right. When Snotra was surely going to be the loser here was it not better to gaze longingly into his eyes? Especially when gazing into his eyes was so easy. “What, please, is barbaric about throwing a thrall in the flames? It is our custom.”

  He yanked the knife from his belt. “Well the custom’s wrong . . .”

  “Wrong? You mean to tell me hundreds of years of history is wrong? Sinarr, she has beguiled you. It was her choice. She knows her place, I hope.”

  “Then what the hell’s this thing she’s wearing if it’s her choice?”

  “Wearing? Sinarr, do not be ridiculous. You can see what she is wearing. One of her dreadful outfits.”

  Well, it was. And when it was she must hope he might believe it was the latest in Saxon fashion, a present from whatever lover he imagined she had. What was more likely was he, or Snotra, or some of the others for that matter, might think it was something else altogether. Something a troll, or a witch might wear. Not a good idea given how brightly these flames burned.

  “Malice, tell him, I meant you no harm. It is our custom here. As for these clothes . . .”

  Agree? With Snotra? Her throat clenched. She could but she would sooner swallow that burning boat.

  “Sinarr, it is plain she is a witch who has enticed you. That is bad enough, that you forget our custom, my right to honour you when I thought you were dead, in the ways we do for our dead. But if that is what you want, to be with something like her . . .”

  “Something?”

  With difficulty Malice set her face. She would have preferred for his gaze not to lick her, certainly not in ways that said he wanted her to be his and worse, ways that said he remembered when she was and liked it too. Certainly she would have preferred it right now when she was doing her best to appear dignified.

  “With all her talk, her quite disgusting talk. Do you think I have not heard her telling you the things to do to me? Things that probably involve trussing herself up in this unseemly fashion, for all I know. Because Sinarr, that is how she appeared back here. Having been missing for weeks. Unless, of course, she was with you and this is what you do to one another? Unless you have betrayed me?”

  All right, maybe it was not so clever to stand here and let Snotra condemn herself when in fact it was Malice who was being condemned? Maybe it was better to speak?

  And say what?

  Already the business of the green dress had shown another side of him. An unexpected one. Unexpected? He had been livid with jealousy. She didn’t need
to note the changing wind of his expression to be inside his head. See that he was very quickly adding two and two together. And when she thought how she had last vanished beneath his nose, was it any wonder?

  To agree with Snotra was to condemn herself. To disagree was much the same. Had she really come through time and space to get in an awful row with Snotra? To have him at that kind of cost?

  He flung the jacket aside. “Ari.”

  His gaze stole from her in inches and degrees. And all he had done was yell for Ari. Although she strove to tell herself he couldn’t be about to ask for anything really, the cold hand of fear clutched her heart, squeezed it, as if it wanted to extract the beats from it. “Take Malice indoors, will you?”

  “No, Sinarr. No. Not this time. I won’t. I can’t allow it.”

  “You don’t get a choice.”

  “Yes. Yes I do.”

  “Snotra . . .”

  “Very well, it is not a law I wish to impose, on this occasion but I am your betrothed and under Viking law that makes my word law in our home. Of course Ari may take her inside. But not to your chamber.” Snotra clutched his hand and squeezed it to her chest. “No. Not now you have come back to me. Let us go to the bath house, let us sacrifice a goat and then let us exchange rings.”

  His brow tightened. “Be married, you mean?”

  “I have waited long enough.”

  Malice’s throat constricted, then closed. This, to be sure, was not encouraging. She closed her eyes, because here, now, if he agreed to this, where might she be? Spinning back through that black void to Cyril? This finding true love business, wasn’t just down to her, was it?

  If he married Snotra— my God, she might never get back here. Or if she did, it would simply be to spin back again. But, what was she meant to say? You can’t. You can’t marry her. Could she? No matter how Gentle detested the fact, no matter how she did, Snotra was his betrothed. It was the one constant in this she could not change. This . . . this must come from him.

  “Gentle will help me. Gentle and Mother Bede.”

  What? Snotra swept to the edge of the landing stage, grabbing both women, as if they were her dearest friends and she would sacrifice herself to save them, having been set a few moments ago to have both thrown into the flames.

  “They will bathe me and arrange my headdress.”

  His sigh came all the way from his chest. In fact it might have come from beyond that. “Snotra, you don’t have a headdress.”

  “You have no idea of the things I have Sinarr. And after the feast . . . why should we waste all the good food that was prepared for your funeral after all . . . after the feast they will light my way to your bed. But we do it now, Sinarr. We do it now. And in the morning you get rid of her.”

  Oh, God. The ground spun. Spun so fast, her stomach did the same, her insides churning, so it was only with the greatest difficulty that she swallowed the gulp that rose up her gullet.

  She braced, tried to, all the time aware she was still here, she was still here with the shingle cutting her feet, for all the words no, no, please don’t let me go hammered at her mind and she expected any second, any minuscule iota of a second, any stretched piece of it, to wake in her own bed, or the one at Haggersly Hall. It had to be he hadn’t made up his mind. It had to be he was going to say no.

  No. Only with the greatest restraint did she refrain from tearing that word from him, from leaping the short distance to where he stood, his face still burnished by fierce flames, his eyes, those eyes she had somehow come to know and love, utterly unreadable.

  Because it would be all right, wouldn’t it? She just had to wait, patiently, causing no trouble for anyone, for once in her life, for what he was about to say. He was going to say it. That was why he tilted his jaw, why he drew that breath, why his gaze flicked Snotra, then settled on Malice. Her breath tightened. Tightened so it squeezed her lungs into the furthest corner of her chest. He was going to . . . He was going to . . . Why else would that fire burn in his eyes for her. His lips parted.

  “Fine. Just tell me when you’re ready.”

  She was surprised, wasn’t she? Snotra that was. That faithless, troll-toothed wreck Malice, now . . . well, maybe she was surprised too, certainly she gulped in the most surprised way. It wasn’t anything to him.

  How could it be? When she’d left him? When he plainly wasn’t enough for her? At least Snotra was hardly likely to have ever slept with that whinnying mare-faced schoolboy. That doddering old, one foot in the grave goat either. Whereas, with Malice, he wasn’t the least bit certain what she’d done. He had loved Snotra since the day he arrived here, a rescued slave, without hope. A boy who had sold himself for his family’s sake.

  “I am ready now, Sinarr.”

  He gritted his teeth. And she loved him, or she wouldn’t answer like that. Raise her lovely eyes to his in the moonlight either.

  “I think we can dispense with certain of the formalities. I just have my headdress to put on. I have been keeping it specially. I take it you have a ring?”

  Look into her eyes. That was what his mother always said. That is where the answer lies. That is the step you have to take. He nodded. Of course he had the ring and even if he didn’t, even if he couldn’t remember where the fury fanged hell it was, he would do without. What kind of man gave a promise like that, then broke it? Wasn’t that what his older brother had given on their father’s death-bed? Then snapped it like a twig before the stone had been laid over his grave? He knew men like that. It wasn’t him.

  “Gentle and Mother Bede will help me with the final preparations. It will be no trouble to turn a funeral into a wedding.”

  That was true. Her tinkling laughter, the lightness of her step as she scurried towards the yard, was evidence of that. Even her words, “It doesn’t matter you don’t lay your sword across the doorway Sinarr, since I am already here.” The warm look she threw him over her shoulder said all he needed to know about that. She couldn’t wait. He was a lucky man.

  “Your hearth goddess is in a hurry.” Ari’s observation was hardly necessary.

  “Yes. Sometimes it pays to make a woman wait.”

  “Are you sure about this?”

  Of course he was sure. Thor’s teeth, must Ari remind him? A little jealousy was a good thing. He had done the right thing making her wait. “What do you think?”

  Ari shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  He smothered the exasperated sigh. It was the last thing he needed to hear. Especially when the reason Ari didn’t know stood there, looking very much as if she’d been shot with an arrow. Right through the heart. Although if it was through the heart, she’d be dead.

  As for Ari, his friend who had told him to throw that same reason over the side of the Raven, asking if he was sure? What was that about? Because Ari knew he’d been unfaithful? Even if Snotra wasn’t actually his wife. His palms sweated. Or because Ari knew that somewhere, deep inside himself, something existed for this damnable woman? Something that made it hard to draw another breath. One that didn’t choke his throat.

  He didn’t dispute it. But it didn’t matter when she’d left him, vanished right beneath his nose. Twice. When he’d had to spend a whole afternoon turning up that island to find her, searching every nook, cranny, every inch and grain of sand. How could she do that to him? And still stir him, so his first thought when he saw her about to be tossed to that damned inferno, was to save her? Naturally it was. Why shouldn’t it be? The thing was barbaric.

  It was more than that. He hadn’t thought it wasn’t barbaric to burn slaves until Malice’s life was in danger. Why would he? It was custom. It was practice. Like his older brother having rights to their father’s land. No. The fang-footed creature was a witch. Snotra was right. A witch he had taken into his bed.

  And the sooner he stopped doing that by mar
rying Snotra and this—all of it—went back to what it was before, the better.

  Chapter 15

  Oh God, oh God, this couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t. And her still here. And not just her. Snotra and a flaming mass of candles on her head, gliding out of the door as if–well, she did own the place. Or she shortly would once he stuck a ring on her grasping finger. Was the woman some kind of firebug, she so loved flames she’d a camp-fire flaring from her head. One that would do Apollo proud.

  Or was this Gentle’s idea, trotting there at her side? Somewhat belatedly, as if Snotra should be the one in the strait-jacket. Was that why Mother Bede’s scrawny hands were clasped in prayer? Not because she thought the same but because Snotra might incinerate herself. Or was that what Mother Bede wanted?

  What was to be made of Sin Gudrunsson’s expression? Was he horrified? Bemused? Or was this also a Viking custom? One he thought nothing of, only that she was beautiful to do this for him?

  She widened her gaze. My God, maybe that explained why she hadn’t found herself whisked back to Cyril? When Snotra burned to death, she was still in with a chance. What Snotra’s grasping fingers clutched made it even more likely. Didn’t the stupid damned, grasping, farmyard hen have any idea that a bunch of wheat and flaming candles anywhere in the vicinity was a bad idea? Nor were the candles anywhere in the vicinity, they ringed her flowing locks.

  “Already the goldgubbers are in place, my Sinarr.”

  The what?

  “Although he is no longer game of step, my father shall give you his sword, my heart’s dearest.”

  Game of step? Hardly able to walk one was a more apt description. And what did he need to give anyone anything? Another Viking custom in this land she suddenly knew she did not belong in. Certainly now Snotra swished to a stop right before Sinarr Gudrunsson. That was as right before as it was possible to get, given what flamed on her head, her face earnest, the flickering candles casting her cheeks in an unholy glow.