9th Century
It's sometime in what I think is late November when I finally accept that I will be with the Vikings for the duration of the winter, at least another three months – probably more, barring an exceptionally early spring. I tell myself that this is a good thing, that it will allow me more time to integrate, and to allow everyone else time enough to forget the idea that I might try to escape. When the moment comes, no one will be expecting it – that's good for me, it means I'll get a head start when Hildy and the Jarl and everyone else just assumes I'm off washing in the stream or collecting oysters at the beach.
But I know, because the process is already well underway, that the others in camp are not the only ones getting used to a new situation, to new people. I am getting used to it, too. I'm coming to know some of them – not just the Jarl – and coming to like them. I spend a lot of time with Gudry and Anja who, after realizing I'm not Hildy and am not going to beat them for smiling the wrong way, both prove themselves reliable friends and confidants. Even Hildy herself has grown on me, now that she is no longer allowed to physically chastise me. She has a husband and two daughters, and they live in an oddly modern arrangement whereby she spends all day running the domestic side of the Viking camp and her husband makes sure their girls are fed and healthy.
And then there is the Jarl. There was never a period when I seriously thought I was somehow 'playing' the Viking leader, never a time when I didn't feel something for him. But as time passes I find myself more and more unable to think of my life without him. He doesn't just make my head – and other parts of me – explode on a nightly basis, he takes care of me. And the more I get used to this luxury, the more I cannot imagine being without it. It's not one-sided, either. He's come to rely on me, too – a fact he does not make any effort to hide. He comes back sometimes, after one of his men has been injured in the taking of a village or Veigar has been too stupid to understand an instruction, and buries his face in my neck for a minute or two or five, silently breathing me in, recovering from the trials of the day. He'll look up at me then, searching my face with those limpid blue eyes of his, and tell me he doesn't know what he would do without me.
And when he tells me that, and I see that it's true, my heart seizes up slightly from knowing that he is going to have to do without me – and sooner than he thinks.
He comes back late one night, after what was supposed to be a minor raid on a small gathering of peasant huts just up the coast – not even a village – and his eyes are dark with trouble.
"What is it?" I ask, immediately aware that something is wrong. "What happened? Are you alright?"
I spring to my feet, lifting his leathers, turning him around so I can see his back, searching for blood or injuries, my heart in my throat.
"Look at you," he smiles sadly, tenderly down at me. "Such busy love, Paige. Such womanly worry. Where would men be without women to worry about us?"
He's thoughtful, the way he often is, but I'm still in a slight panic. "What happened?" I ask again. "Why do you look so –"
"Asgald has been wounded, girl. Here," he turns his forearm up to me and drags one finger across the center of it. "It's deep, he's going to lose the hand – maybe the arm. He will die before the next full moon, I think. And if he does not die, he won't be able to fight again."
I shake my head, disbelieving. "Asgald?" I ask, thinking of the young man – 18, younger than me – with so much promise, the man Eirik has taken under his wing. "But you said it was just some peasant huts! You said –"
"I know what I said. One of those peasants had himself a sword, didn't he? Who knows which of the King's men he stole it from, but he caught us out, we weren't expecting a fight. He didn't even know how to wield it, he just came out of his hut and started chopping away, as if he were cutting logs for the fire. Asgald wasn't even looking."
I've met Asgald before, feasted with his parents. He's blonde, hazel-eyed and almost as tall as Eirik – although not even close to as broad. He's funny, too, capering around for the little kids, telling me tall tales about the time he and Eirik bested a giant and then goofily insisting that it's all true. Now he's going to die? Tears spring to my eyes.
"Eirik," I whisper, pulling his head down and pressing his face against my neck. "I'm sorry. Are you sure he will die?"
"I don't know. Hildy has the healers tending to him but the wound is deep, almost through the bone, and the rot may already have set in."
"Did you kill him?" I ask, suddenly infuriated. "Tell me you fucking killed the bastard who did it, Eirik!"
The Jarl pulls back and gazes down at me. "You're becoming one of us, girl."
"What?" I ask, still desperately needing to hear that the peasant who attacked Asgald had been made to pay. "Did you kill him or –"
"I see you sometimes," the Jarl continues, ignoring my question. "You think I don't see you trying to hold yourself apart from us? You still have plans to escape, to go back to your home."
I look up at him then, my mouth open, because how does he know this? And if he does know it, how is he calling it out so casually, as if it doesn't matter? "I – no," I protest. "No, Eirik – I don't know why you would, um, I don't –"
He turns my face up to his. "It doesn't matter, Paige. Because even as I see you trying to keep yourself apart from us – from me, even – I also see the roots of your life taking hold in our earth – in my earth. You keep yourself apart because you feel it too, because you're scared of how inevitable it is. Look how angry you were just now when I told you of Asgald's wound – look how you crave the news of a peasant's death. Look at your panic when you thought it might be I who was injured! And even now, your eyes betray you, my love, they speak so much more than your mouth."
I pull away from Eirik, unsure if I'm angry, or embarrassed, or oddly relieved. "What do you mean?" I bark, settling on 'angry.' "You don't know what I'm thinking, Eirik. Sometimes, maybe, but not all the time. You don't know everything of me!"
"Oh but I do, girl. It's no particular talent on my part, I'll say that. It's you – you give yourself away like a child. You've no cunning in your heart, and no skill for it. Even now it's written all over your face that I'm right."
"Well," I respond immediately – and defensively – "if you think I want to escape why don't you watch me more closely? If you know all these things why am I free to wander the camp – to go to the beach, even! You're just saying these things to make yourself seem smarter than you are!"
The Jarl is watching me, and a smile is playing at one corner of his lips. When he doesn't respond I throw my hands in the air. "And now you have nothing to say! How convenient! Look at you – you can barely hide your smile – you won't be smiling if I do escape!"
As soon as the words have left my mouth I feel that I've gone too far. I look away, and then when the Jarl says nothing, I look back. His expression hasn't changed. The smile still threatens.
"What?!" I'm yelling now. "You won't be! You won't be smiling if –"
"Yes, girl," he replies, holding up one hand. "I heard you. And you're right, I won't be smiling if you escape. Is that some kind of victory to you? Have I showed a great weakness in admitting it? You're a strange one, Paige, even still after this time with us. I smile because I know already that you won't escape. You can try, if you must, but you won't succeed."
"How do you know that?" I demand, as a hollow feeling seizes my stomach – I won't succeed? How can he know that? He can't. And even as I tell myself he can't know it, I believe him anyway, because it's him saying it, and because without even noticing it I've found myself in a place where I simply accept the things Eirik says as the truth.
He reaches under my tunic and casually cups one of my breasts. "I can answer the question if you like."
"Yes," I tell him defiantly, even as something inside my begins to crumble under his touch.
Eirik sits down at the wooden table and pulls me onto his lap, taking one of my hands in his and placing my index finger on the far left side of the table. "Here. This is where we are right now." He drags my finger in an uneven line across the table. "And this is the direction you have to travel to get back to the village where my men took you. Do you understand?"
I nod and he continues. "It's not a short journey, especially without a horse, and the land is wet and spongy – impassable."
He's waiting for me to say something, to reveal myself – maybe to reveal my plan, if I have one. Which I don't, beyond 'get from point A to point B, somehow.' When I don't speak, he continues. "There are long stretches of this coastline where the wet land and the sea are indistinguishable, neither man nor horse can pass. You need a ship – and you don't have a ship, girl, nor the ability to sail one. I suppose you could go inland but it would be too far, you would go hungry or, more likely, you would be taken again – and by far worse than me."
I remain silent, but it occurs to me that the Jarl is very possibly exaggerating. He and his men travel on ships. They sail the coasts. The Kingdom of the East Angles is not his homeland any more than it is mine – how is it that he has come to have such an intimate knowledge of its geography? I don't think he has. Yes, there is marshland between the Viking camp and Caistley, but 'impassable?' That I doubt.
Eirik runs the fingers he's using to guide my hand lightly up my forearm, sending a shiver of desire through me.
"Why do you wish to leave?" He asks, and there is genuine bafflement in his voice. "You were a maid when we took you, so it's not a man or children that pull you away. You see that even the slaves here eat better than they did in their homes, don't you? You see that –"
"Yeah but they were always on the edge of starvation in their homes," I chide, because it's not like the Vikings are exactly feeding them generously.
"There you go again," Eirik whispers into my ear, kissing the lobe gently.
"What?" I ask, enjoying the feeling of being on his lap, so small against his bulk, so protected.
"You constantly speak as if you're not one of them, girl. And you're not, anyone can see it. But you won't tell me where you are from, and that's one thing I haven't figured out yet – why you won't tell me. It wouldn't matter if you were the Queen of the East Angles herself. You're ours now. You're mine now."
He's hard, I can feel it against my back. I feel it between my own legs, too, the answering wetness, my body having a conversation with his outside of the words coming out of our mouths.
"I could tell you," I whisper, turning to him as I slip my hand under his leathers and caress his entire stiff length with my fingertips. "But I'm not sure you'd be listening too well."
I watch his face, because I love to see the way his expression changes when he's aroused, and he watches me watching him.
"There's something else," he tells me, pulling my hands closer, tighter around him.
"What is it?" I ask, kissing his cheek, and then his chin. It feels so easy to do this for him, to please him, to give myself to him, after the day he's had. Knowing it's the one thing he needs more than any other makes me glow with a kind of pride at the fact that it's only me who can do this for him now, only my body that can satiate him.
"Come the thaw, girl, we'll be married. Hildy was cursing me just yesterday, for allowing the women to keep their hopes –"
Did he just say what I think he just said? And in the tone of voice one usually reserves for telling a person what restaurant you'll be meeting them at? I pull away. "Eirik. What did you just say?"
"Hildy says as long as it goes unannounced the women still hope, that it's making them turn away their own suitors until –"
"Before that," I reply. "About – about getting married?"
It is the Jarl's turn to gaze at me as if I am some alien creature. "Yes, come the thaw. Are you offended, Paige? Hildy asked some of the women from your village and they reported no feasting between the families, no real rituals before the wedding. I suppose if you wish me to bring my family to meet with yours –"
I laugh out loud, because what else can I do? Eirik asks me why I'm laughing.
"This just – this isn't how imagined it," I reply, half telling myself none of this matters anyway because I'll be gone come the thaw – no matter what Eirik says about impassable swampland – and half helplessly besotted, even as the proposal is nothing like what I had ever imagined. If I can even call it a proposal! "This isn't how it works in – I mean, where I'm from. We don't do it this way."
"Neither do we," Eirik chuckles. "In my country, I would come with my mother and father to the house of your mother and father, and many formalities would be observed, many discussions would take place, our parents would need to be assured that our marriage would be good, and prosperous. In the end it would be your father who gave permission, and if he gave it a date would be set then. The wedding itself would involve days of feasting between our families, an intertwining not just of ourselves but of our parents, our brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles. A wedding is a joining of families as much as it is of a man and a woman."
"And we can't have that," I say quietly, "because you took me from my family, and because you don't care what my father would say."
"So you don't wish it?" The Jarl asks, pulling away to look at me like I am even crazier than he thought.
I laugh again. "How can you not see this?" I ask, leaning against his chest and playing with the beads on the leather straps wrapped around one of his wrists. "How can you be so smart, Eirik, and not understand that just because I eat better now, and just because I have you to protect me, it doesn't erase what happened? It doesn't erase the fact that I haven't seen my father in months? That he most likely thinks I'm dead – and that this keeps me up at night, long after you have fallen asleep, thinking of how he must be suffering?"
The Jarl and I gaze at each other, each equally mystified by the other. Eventually, he speaks. "How can I not see it, girl? How can I not see it? You ask me this, when it is you who lacks vision? It's as if you're angry that you can't have everything just as you want it. Even a King doesn't get angry at such things, because even a King knows what you seem not to know – that this is life. You are here with me because I took you, yes. And I would be dead and rotting in the ground if your King had found a way to make it so. It's as if you're a child sometimes, with a child's ideas, crying because someone has taken her straw doll. But a child grows up and learns that life isn't having what you want all the time, that this is an impossible thing. How many times have I reminded you that you've never eaten better, you've never been as protected from harm – that you live a life with me that would be the envy of your own Queen?!"
Eirik's voice rises as he finishes, but he doesn't seem angry. He just seems vehement – and still genuinely confused. Just as I am.
"And how can you not see that I miss my father anyway?!" I reply with equal vigor. "How many times do I have to say it? Can you imagine how you would feel, if the King's men came and took you away from here, and fed you roasted pork every day, sent you the prettiest girls? You would miss your people, wouldn't you, even if the food was good and the girls beautiful? You would miss the North? You would think of your family worrying for you, and it would trouble you. You would miss me!"
"Of course I would," the Jarl replies at once. "But I wouldn't fight the way you've been fighting since the day I first laid eyes on you. I would understand that my life was changed, I would accept it. And believe me, your King would no more feed me roasted pork and send me pretty maids as he would welcome my warriors with a feast and hand over his lands to us with a smile."
"So that's it?" I ask. "I should just accept it? I should just accept that I have no say in any of this?"
"You have a say, girl," Eirik responds, and for the first time in our conversation I hear a hint of irritation. "If it's not your wish to be married then we won't be married. You would be very stupid to decide as much but I speak the truth – you won't be forced. It isn't our way to force women into marriages they don't want."
I've made it worse. He has come to me after Asgald's wounding to be comforted, to be held, and I have made it worse. I look up from my place near his chest and shush him gently when he goes to speak again. "I'm sorry," I whisper. "I believe the things I say to you, but it isn't the time. Your friend has been hurt, you worry for him, and I heap more worries onto your head."
Eirik looks down at me, his expression soft. "I can't be heated with you, Paige. If anyone else spoke to me the way you do..." he trails off and bends down to kiss my mouth. "But you – it seems nothing you can do will truly test me."
He's wrong about that, I think, but tonight will not be the night we find out. I turn to face him, still straddling his lap, and pull my tunic the rest of the way down. There is a level of complete comfort with the Jarl that I never even dreamed of reaching with another person. My self-consciousness about my body has gone, melted away like ice under a summer sun. When his eyes drink me in I tremble with nothing but anticipation. He bends down and takes one of my nipples into his mouth, running his tongue around the very tip of it until it stands up small and firm and shiny-wet in the firelight.
"You need me, girl."
He's not asking. He's not even telling, he's just stating the truth. I know it, and I know he knows it.
"Yes," I whisper, exhaling audibly as he repeats himself on my other nipple, pinching it gently between his fingers before he moves away. "Yes, Eirik."
"And you'll be mine. Come the thaw, you'll be my wife."
He wraps his muscular arms around me and flattens his hands against my back, pulling me in close as he draws my nipple into his mouth again, harder this time, and deeper. An arrow of lust flies down, directly to my sex, and I arch back, gasping with pleasure.
"Yes," I moan. "Yes, Eirik. Yes."
He stands, then, lifting me with him and placing me on the edge of the table, where he has just drawn the escape route he claims I will not be capable of following, and spreads my thighs with his hands. I tighten with anticipation, pushing my hands into his hair and crying out his name as he runs his tongue up under my clit and over it, over and over until my body is slick with sweat and my voice shaky with need.
"You're mine," he says, pausing just before he brings me to orgasm, as I squirm and beg and try desperately to pull his mouth back to me. He waits for another second and says it again, a confirmation: "You're mine."
And then he slips two fingers into my slippery, aching sex, drags his tongue over my clit again, and then one more time, and makes his words true, whether I want them to be or not.
I reach for him with weak, shaky arms a minute later, almost crying with the intensity of the orgasm he's just given me. He lets me catch my breath for a moment, but I know we're not finished, I know the Jarl needs me still.
I reach down and wrap one hand around him, smiling at the sound he makes as he thrusts himself up and further into my grip. His eyes find mine and he kisses my mouth, letting me taste his hunger.
"I wait all day for this," he says, his voice so deep it's barely more than a rumble. "When we sail, when we discuss plans in the longhouse. Even when we fight – I think about this. About you."
Eirik's hands are on my breasts, my body – everywhere – as he speaks. His breath is coming short now, I can feel the power inside him building. I look up into his eyes.
"So do I. I think about the way you are right now, that look on your face, the way your breath sounds. I thought you finished me just then but now, seeing you this way, I need you again."
The Jarl tilts my head back so he can kiss my neck, open-mouthed. "You need me again, girl? There's no gentleness in me tonight, you understand? I don't know if you can take –"
It's too much. He's trying to warn me, I know, but it's not having the intended effect. I get off his lap and we look at each other for a few seconds, saying nothing. I keep my eyes on his even as I turn away, until the very last second possible, and then I bend down over his table, offering myself up like a choice cut of venison on a platter.
"Voss," he whispers, and I feel his fingers between my lips, opening me up, readying me. I know I should be scared – the Jarl is so much bigger than me, and strong enough to snap a grown man's bones – but there is no resistance, no hesitation inside me.
"Eir –"
The word dissolves into a little high-pitched scream as he fills me, suddenly and completely, and makes no effort to slow himself, even from the first moment. I can't turn my head, either, because one of his hands is flat against the back of my neck, holding me down against the table, and the other is clasped to my hip, keeping me exactly where he needs me.
This isn't a conversation between bodies any longer, this is an invasion, the sweetest and most longed-for conquering. I submit, relaxing underneath him, breathing in time with his thrusts, because there is no other way to do it.
His movements are soon frenzied, his body tight as he covers me. It's too much, he's too much, and yet it's all I want in the world, to give what I can to please him. I know I'm going to come again, but I'm somehow not involved with it. He's going to decide how it happens, when it happens. I cry out a little when he sinks his fingers into the flesh of my hip so hard I know there will be bruises in the morning, but he's almost lost now, moaning my name, pinning me to the edge of the table.
And when those exquisite few seconds come, just before he finishes, and I hear his breath catch in his chest as I wait, my own body gives itself up at just the right moment. A wave of fiery bliss crashes over my head as the Jarl leans his head back and bellows his own pleasure into the smoky air, filling me, yanking me back against him until everything he needs to give has been given.
We stay where we are for a few moments, and the only sound is our breathing. Eventually, Eirik slips his hand around my waist and pulls me up to a standing position.
"Have I hurt you, girl? Let me see you, come here..."
He turns me around to face him and looks me up and down. I see his eyes widen and then look down myself. A belt of redness runs across my hips, deeper at the crest of the hipbones themselves.
"What –?" I ask, confused. "What's that?"
"It's from this," Eirik replies, running his hands along the edge of the table. "You'll be bruised come sun-up, my love. I'm sorry, girl – it was not my intention to leave marks –"
His expression is genuinely remorseful and something about him right now, in the difference between the aggressive hunger of a few minutes past and the current gentleness with which he runs his fingers over my reddened flesh, fills my heart.
"It doesn't matter," I say, stretching out on the furs and pulling Eirik down with me. "I wanted it the way it was. I wanted you that way." I look away, afraid to finish my thought.
"And?" He asks, reading me like a book. "What is it you keep back?"
I take my tunic, lying within arm's reach, and begin to play with the thin leather belt that hangs from a loop at the waist. I do not look at Eirik. "I liked that I – that I could make you feel those things," I say, very quietly. "That you were, you know, that you were like that because of me."
"Your cheeks are as rosy as the dawn, Paige. You wear the marks of passion on your body and yet you flush at words. What a strange little creature you are."
"I am not a 'strange little creature!' I protest, smiling.
"Oh yes you are. Beautiful, yes, and sometimes I fear smarter than myself – but undeniably strange. No matter, tomorrow I will tell my people that I intend to marry the strange little Angle – if that's even what you are."
I stretch out luxuriously and a phrase from the psychology class I took during my first year at college pops into my mind: cognitive dissonance. The stress or upset at holding two opposing ideas or thoughts in one's head. Eirik speaks of a wedding, and part of me melts away under his blue-eyed gaze, happy – eager – to be carried down the current of his river. Another part of me knows there will be no wedding. When I take his goodnight kiss and tell him yes, yes, we will marry, it isn't a lie. Even as I know it cannot happen, it isn't a lie.