9th Century
I follow Hildy when she gestures at me to do so and don't duck away when we reach the Jarl's dwelling.
"Here she is," she announces to the Jarl, pushing me forward.
The Jarl is seated on a wooden chair, dressed in the extravagant furs and leather I first saw him in and he appears to be sharpening the blade of a sword. He looks up when Hildy speaks and although I don't dare look directly at him I feel it as his gaze lands on me.
"She's bathed and clean, Jarl," Hildy says.
And then, for a few excruciating moments, no one says anything. Am I being inspected? I still don't dare to look up.
"Come here, girl."
Is he speaking to me? He must be speaking to me. I step forward slowly, towards the fire, thankful for the warmth but so nervous I'm shaking. The Jarl reaches out and takes my trembling hand, bringing it close to his face and then looking up at me. He's got that expression on his face again, the one that says he doesn't understand. I hear the leather door flap shut as Hildy leaves.
"You cold, girl?" The Jarl asks. "Come sit by the fire, have some oxshot."
There is another wooden seat, this one with a dark fur laid over it, next to the fire. Gingerly, because I'm not sure whether he means me to sit on the chair or the floor, I lower myself onto it. The Jarl hands me a cup of carved horn with a dark, warm liquid inside. I bring it up to my nose and sniff, immediately coughing and pulling away. It's sharp and alcoholic, but salty as well. I'm going to have to drink it, too, because even though nobody in the Viking camp has explicitly told me it isn't done to turn down offers of food or drink from the Jarl, I'm beginning to understand it anyway. I take a very small sip of the drink and fail to suppress a cough afterwards. It is alcohol. And it is salty. Oddly savory.
The Jarl is watching me intently. He breaks into a wide smile at my reaction to the drink. "At least you didn't spit it out all over me. The Angles can't handle good, strong drinks like oxshot. You did well, though – better than most of the men of your kind."
Suddenly, a memory of a party enters my mind. Emma standing in front of a folding table on a lawn, doing five or maybe even six or seven shots of vodka in a row as she's cheered on by the crowd, slamming the last one down on the table before lifting her arms in drunken triumph. I chuckle at the thought of the Jarl witnessing such a scene. Something tells me Emma could drink most of his men right under the table, if it came to that.
"Have I said something funny?"
"What?" I look up, worried I've caused offense. "No. No, Jarl. I was just, um. No, no you haven't."
"You're more nervous than a pig in November," he comments, taking another gulp of the oxshot. "Have another drink."
I politely ignore the fact that I've just been compared to a pig and take another sip.
"It's broth," the Jarl tells me. "The cooks boil down the ox bones until the broth is dark and rich and then we add svass, the Viking drink, and serve it hot to warm our bellies and give us strength over winter. Women aren't usually allowed to drink oxshot."
"Oh," I say, realizing that he has allowed me a privilege. "Thank you. It's delicious."
It actually isn't half bad, once you get used to the idea of beefy alcohol – perfect for a night like tonight, anyway. I hold the horn cup in my hands and a warmth begins to spread through my belly. Whatever svass is, it's strong enough to have an almost immediate effect.
And then there's the Jarl. He's right there, his presence and sheer physical bulk impossible to ignore. He seems at ease, amused by me. I'm still having difficulty looking at him, though, which he notices.
"Look at me, girl."
I gulp and steel myself before turning my head up.
Even in the firelight, the Jarl's eyes shine as blue as jewels. His jaw is wide and strong, the angles and planes of his face sharp here and solid there. He isn't nervous, he's self-contained. The anxiety, the not knowing what to do or say or what expression to wear on my face is mine and mine alone. And he sees it. I feel him seeing it, seeing right through me. It's an odd sensation, being seen like that. There's nowhere to hide and that's not helping my nerves. On the other hand, it means I don't even have to bother pretending a strength I don't truly feel.
I wonder, briefly, how Viking society works. Was the Jarl raised from birth to be the man I see sitting in front of me? Was he born into his role? Or did he take it as his own, his inherent qualities arguing for themselves?
"What do you think of?"
It's taken me a few minutes, but I'm starting to see what's happening. The Jarl is talking to me. He's not going to throw me down, rip off my clothes and have his way. Not right at this moment, anyway. He's not an idiot like his man Veigar, or a dumb, lust-driven animal like the guard he killed.
"I think of you," I reply, emboldened by the oxshot or the realization that I am not in any immediate danger, or both.
"Of me? You're afraid of me, I see it in your eyes, girl. What is it - do you think I'm going to eat you?"
"No," I tell him, shaking my head. "I wonder how you came to be Jarl of these people. I wonder if your father was Jarl and you inherited the role or if –"
"The Jarl."
"Yes," I say, hoping I haven't caused offense. "The Jarl."
"It's a title, girl. It means King. Leader. My name is Eirik."
"Yes I know," I start, before stopping again. Wait. Did he just tell me his name? He did.
"Eric?"
"Eirik. But don't let Hildy catch you calling me by that name, or she'll whip you pink."
Eirik. When I repeat his own name back to him the Jarl smiles and comments that none of the Angles can ever pronounce it quite the right way.
"I am Paige," I say then, eager to return what I have perceived as a favor.
"Paige."
And just as he has chuckled at me, I can't help doing the same back to Eirik, the Jarl, when he tries to say my own name. I say it again and he tries again, more slowly. It still isn't right but I like it. I like the sound of it, of his voice saying it. And I don't even realize this until a few seconds later, when the fact that I'm smiling hits me.
Why am I smiling? In the roundhouse of this man who means to relieve me of my virginity whether I want him to or not – why am I no longer trembling? I can't say, not specifically. It's him, though. Eirik. Eirik with his blue eyes, his easy smile and his impossible-to-ignore presence.
"You aren't from the village."
I snap back to attention. "Well, I –"
"And you're not from the estate near the village, either. We captured the estate and no one had ever heard of you, none of the ealdorman's daughters were missing. So where are you from, Paige? I'm tempted to say somewhere very far away, and if that's true the question is how did you get to where we found you? What were you doing standing in a field outside a village on fire, and thick with Viking raiders? Why didn't you run?"
Eirik has been asking his men about the night I was captured. Part of me – a small part – is flattered by his interest. Another part of me recognizes it as possibly useful. And yet another part, larger than the first two combined, knows that I don't have any answers to his questions. Not ones that would make sense.
"I have friends in the village," I respond slowly, worried about slipping up and triggering yet more questions. "I was afraid for them. I wanted to help them."
The Jarl leans forward and runs his fingers over his chin, looking at me still. "The way you speak confirms it – you are not from the village. And no one from the estate knew of you. They knew they'd be killed if we caught them lying. So where is it you from, Paige?"
My mind spins with possible stories as the Jarl repeats his questions. An outlaw's daughter? Willa and Eadgar spoke of outlaws often, people – men – who lived outside society, banished, always in danger of being caught and punished for whatever crime they had committed. They lurked in the woods, it was said, poaching what they could, stealing from the farm workers. But I'd never heard of them having any small children with them.
The Jarl is waiting for an answer. His eyes bore into me, but no words offer themselves up to be spoken. The heat from the fire has nearly dried my linen robe and I look down at my body, at the swells of my breasts under the clinging fabric. Then I reach up, tuck my fingers underneath and pull it down off one of my shoulders. The light from the fire dances on my bare skin. I'm not breathing. The air in the roundhouse is still. I keep going until one of my breasts comes free and then I stop, too timid to look up for a few moments. When I do, the Jarl's eyes are where I want them – on my body. He reaches out and I tense up just before his fingertips slide under the bottom curve of that one bare breast, his thumb brushing lightly over my nipple.
I don't know what I expected. Not the strangeness in my belly, which is not so different from the sensation of traveling through the tree, the feeling of falling away from something, of my breath being sucked out of my lungs. When I look up, wide-eyed and helpless, the Jarl is staring right back at me.
"Look at you," he whispers, and his voice seems to sound different now, slower – or am I imagining it? "You're a maid, aren't you?"
He knows. Of course he knows. It seems, sitting here in this roundhouse, in this place where Eirik's word is the last word on everything there is, that he might just know everything.
I nod quickly and he takes my chin in one hand before I can turn away.
"Do you think I mean to rape you, girl? Do you understand – do you know – who I am?"
I'm confused. He's the Jarl. I know it and he knows I know it. "You're the Jarl," I say quietly. "Eirik. The Jarl."
"Yes you know the words." He replies. "You know them, but I don't know if you understand what they mean. That guard the other night, he would have raped you – had I not been there to stop him. But I am the Jarl, girl. There's not a woman in this camp, or anywhere close to it, or in the whole of the my country – or yours – that would turn away from giving me the thing that women give to men." He pauses. "None except you, that is, and even you I doubt. No, Paige, you're not to fear that sort of thing from me. I don't take what isn't given. All is given to me."
The Jarl is speaking the truth. I've seen the way the women react – all of the women. Hildy, the other Vikings, the other women from Caistley and the raided villages. Their bodies go soft when his name is mentioned, an air of willingness surrounds them. I don't understand it.
Or maybe I do, because sitting there with the Jarl himself, I find to my surprised chagrin that the nipple on my exposed breast, the one he touched, is small and hard and sensitive to the wisps of cool night air that find their way past the fire's warmth.
All is given to me. That's what he said. And it wasn't an empty boast, either, like the ones I'm used to from young men. He didn't say it to impress me. He said it because it's true.
I shift on the fur, suddenly acutely aware of my own body, of the earth under my toes and the fact that the gown I'm wearing has only dried where it faces the fire. I'm nervous still, wired, but it's changed. I turn my face up to the Jarl as it dawns on me – I'm not fearing his attention any longer. I'm craving it. I open my mouth, wanting to speak, but I don't know how to put words to the chaos inside me.
"Where are you from?" He asks me again.
"Not here," I reply haltingly, because my mind has retreated somehow, stepped back. "Not – not Caistley, I mean. I'm not from Caistley."
I'm breathless, I can hear it as I stumble over my words. And if I can hear it, he can hear it. My cheeks burn.
"I already know where you're not from, girl. I'm asking you where you are from."
As he speaks he reaches out again and caresses my breast briefly, too briefly. It's impossible to think when his hand is touching me, that's something I didn't expect.
"Far away," I babble. "You don't know it – you don't know –" Please put your hand on me again. Please. Please. "You haven't heard of it, Jarl. Uh, Eirik. Jarl."
He stares at me and the seconds stretch out and distort around me. When he stands, suddenly, there is a quick glimpse of something – something insistent, something that glistens in the light – under the leather that is wrapped around his waist, but I look away before I can truly see. The Jarl chuckles and claps his hands. At once, a woman I don't recognize appears at the door.
"Take her back to her dwelling" he says to her, nodding at me.
No! I want to shout, looking back at him as the woman takes me by the arms and practically drags me out. No, no, no!
He sees my distress – and he knows what it is, far better than I do. "We're raiding tomorrow, Paige. I like to have my blood up when we raid. If I'm not killed by an Angle with a dull axe, I'll send for you when I return."
The walk through the darkness back to the roundhouse where the other women from Caistley are asleep is one of the most unsettled of my life. I don't know what I'm feeling. Or I do know what I'm feeling and I'm not sure how I should feel about that. One thing is undeniable, and that's the physical response in my body. I feel alert and alive, my veins surging with something that's half frustration and half awakening.
I'm wet, too. My thighs are slick with it, a response that no one has ever brought forth before – one I didn't even think was possible for me.
I lie down on the dirt floor when I'm back with the women, pulling my woolen tunic on over my head before I do so. So far, my thoughts each night have been organized, ordered. I observe during the daylight hours and at night, before sleep, I go over what I've observed, I allow my mind the space to come up with alternative plans and possibilities of escape. Mostly I give myself pep talks, reassurances that the woods outside Caistley, and the tree that will take me home, aren't going anywhere.
Not this night. Tonight my teeth are on edge, and it has nothing to do with my captivity. Tonight it's like I'm drunk, like I can't get away from the way he looked at me or the combined smells of animal fur and man when he leaned in close to me or the sharp, meaty taste of the oxshot. I've been invaded mentally as thoroughly as I had supposed the physical invasion was to be.
When I finally doze off, my dreams are not of home but of him.