Chapter Nineteen
“Erik will watch over you.” Rurik spun around and cupped the back of her head. “If anything happens to me...”
The dreaded words spoken, he swooped low and kissed her. This was nothing kind or gentle. Lips and teeth mashed. Harshness and fear mingled. She clung to him, her mouth as demanding as his until Rurik released her. Her feet unsteady, she set a hand on the wall and watched him exit.
She was alone.
Men...they rush to battle and limp home, if they return at all. Savta’s words from long ago.
This could be their end.
Gathering her skirts, she sprinted down the hall. Legs pumping hard, she raced past benches and tables, heading toward daylight bursting through the hall’s open doors. Horses and riders amassed outside. Midday sun gleamed off shield bosses and helmets. A command was given. Hooves thundered from the warrior throng tearing down the southern road, dirt and dust spraying in their wake. Mothers clutched their children close. Geese scattered. Rouen’s merchants paused to squint at the departing warriors.
Safira held on to the carved lintel frame. Everything—land, men, women, even love—came at a price. Jarl Will Longsword would demand his due. Rurik wasn’t here to simply defend land. He was here to expand it.
“I have never become accustomed to the sight of my son riding off to fight.” Astrid shaded her eyes. She watched the horses and riders charge into the southern forest, a man’s blue tunic dangling from her arm.
“Your son?”
“Yes. Soren. Leader of the housekarls.” The matselja smiled, pride etching lines at the corners of her eyes.
“Is he a...thrall?”
“No. My son is a freeman.”
A family passed before the jarl’s hall, the matron smiling and waving to Astrid and Safira. An older, balding man in plainer clothes tagged along behind, carrying a basket brimming with cabbages and kale. Slaves abounded on both sides of the Epte River, but if Safira counted, she’d say more lived here.
“What about Soren’s father?”
“Halfdan died of a fever when Soren was young. We were never married. Now I find comfort with an old farmer, the father of Katla who made the glass bead earrings you wore last night. She sells them in the market.”
Safira eyed the southern road. The forest swallowed the last rider. “I don’t know how you do it.”
“Do what? Watch people I love ride off to fight?” Wheat-blond wisps fell across age-lined cheeks.
“Forgive me. I should not question your ways.”
Astrid’s laugh was kind. “I do not mind. My answers are an older woman’s gift of conversation. You can decide to keep my words or not. But today I cannot speak long. Today is for laboring.” She sauntered into the hall, speaking over her shoulder. “Come with me. There is something I must show you.”
She followed Astrid past columns carved with the faces of Norse gods. The matselja dropped the tunic onto a table and crouched low to stir a stick in the fire pit. Orange embers glowed. Astrid pulled a palm-sized hunk of green glass from her apron pocket. It was like a ball cut in half.
“Something tells me you have not used this before.”
Safira knelt before the fire pit. Astrid passed the green glass to her, and she tested its weight in her palm.
“What is it?”
“A green glass smoother.” Astrid pointed at the fire pit. “Place it flat side down on the embers. It will take a while before the glass is hot enough, but once it is, grab the round side with a rag to protect your hand. Then you will run the flat part over the wrinkled tunic I put on the table. Do that until the cloth is smooth.”
Safira held the smoother up to the light. Tiny air bubbles were stuck inside glass. “Why are you asking me to do this?”
“Because you prepare Rurik’s tunic for the var.”
“Var? I do not know this word.”
“His pledge to serve the jarl.”
Her chest squeezed. The shade of blue. The yellow embroidery. The jarl’s colors.
“He has won the land?”
Hands folded on her knees, Astrid’s cheeks puffed. “It is not certain. I am to prepare a tunic for Vlad. The men will still fight.” She paused, her sad gaze meeting Safira’s. “Unless something happens today.”
Safira sat back on her heels. Rurik’s death.
“Do not be afraid. This is normal. What Vikings know, what we feel is here.” Astrid jabbed five fingers to her own breastbone. “Valkyries weave a warrior’s fate in battle. It is called vefr darradar... The web of war. We do not run from it. We face it.”
“Does Rurik have to face it with such enthusiasm?”
Astrid’s laugh was hearty. “We are a passionate people.”
“He ran after this chance to fight.”
Astrid’s eyes sparkled. “As he runs after you.”
Yearning swelled inside Safira. What else did the wise woman see between her and Rurik? Love? Lust? Or something in between? Her heart ached when Rurik wasn’t in the same room and it fluttered when he returned. For all the excitement and desire the rough warrior stirred in her, her mind flashed images of storm-blue eyes watching her when they argued, watching her when they talked, watching her when they worked side by side to set up camp.
Tender skin twitched between her legs. There was no denying the Viking’s effect there.
“I do not know what you have been taught. I would think you have learned a good many things, but few of them practical.” Astrid’s smile was tight. “It is the way of highborn Christian woman. They are kept like treasures, hidden away, ill-prepared for life.”
Her nose wrinkled. “Is my status of birth that obvious?”
Astrid huffed. “Like the sun.”
She smiled. “Would it matter if I told you I am Hebrew, not Christian?”
“You are Frankish. That is enough.”
Safira sighed and set the glass on orange embers. Pagans lumped her people with Christians, and Christians regarded Hebrews as a notch above pagans.
“I must get to the weaver’s shed. Ten women are waiting for me at their looms.” Astrid began to rise, her knees cracking. “It will take time for the smoother to reach the proper heat. Why not enjoy the market? When you are done tending Rurik’s tunic, you can join us in the shed.”
Safira pushed off the ground and dusted her skirt. “I am supposed to wait for Erik.”
Astrid’s eyes softened, motherly and kind, yet full of knowing. Safira wanted Astrid to stay. The matselja’s words were like coins stacked in a treasury, meant to be counted and weighed with great consideration.
Safira picked up the tunic and fingered a loose thread. “Let me guess...you want to tell me I should claim my destiny and be done with it. It doesn’t change the fact that Rurik would have me be his frilla.”
“Not a frilla, but a fylgikonur...a mistress of high value.”
She winced at the distinction. Of course, Vikings would have a name for a kept woman’s status. In Christendom, the selection was dismal. Concubine and whore...nameless, faceless positions of low value.
“But not his wife.”
Astrid sighed and checked the door. The older woman didn’t understand. She had lived and loved outside the bonds of marriage while Safira was a game piece within it.
“I would never tell a woman to stay at a man’s side if she didn’t believe that he is her destiny. This is why we Vikings have baratta—” she squeezed Safira’s hand, searching the air “—it is struggle, and lifsbaratta, the struggle for life, a feminine word. One could believe the ancients knew a woman’s struggle is vastly different than a man’s.”
Safira set her hand over Astrid’s. “Thank you.”
The matselja made her way through the hall, swiping crumbs off a table in one spot, pushing in a bench in another. “It is your life, Lady. Find your way and be done with it.”
Astrid exited the longhouse, skirts swaying with purpose. A woman of high value to the jarl. At last night’s feast, there was talk of women owning farmsteads...common women, wealthy and poor, widows and unmarried daughters, granted the land they worked, deciding their futures as they saw fit. Rouen’s dirt tickled Safira’s skin through the hole in her boot.
Never had she been shod so poorly or lived so freely.
Setting the tunic on the table, she couldn’t say she was ready to walk away from what Rurik offered her. Could she be happy living in the half-light of Rurik’s attention once he took a Viking wife?
He’d spoken in his forceful manner this morning as if it weren’t a choice.
Men. What made them think they owned all decisions? The Breton Queen certainly made hers. So had Astrid. And Ellisif. Even quiet Gyda.
A soft laugh escaped her. No one would steal this right from her. To stay with Rurik or go was hers to decide.
First, he needed to come back.
“Safira.” Erik’s voice growled from the lintel. Legs in a wide stance and face scowling, he was the picture of resentment.
“You have watch over me, but I do not need it.”
“Whether you need it or not doesn’t matter.” His chest expanded with a long, measured breath. “Look. We don’t like each other, but we’re stuck together until Rurik returns.” Erik checked the skies. “The sun is out, and I don’t want to play nursemaid inside.”
“What a fine offer.”
His scowl deepened.
She’d not prod the surly Viking. The day was clear, and the glass smoother would take time to heat up. She sauntered through the hall and stopped in front of Erik. Wet hair slicked off his face, he chewed a long blade of grass, his black-whiskered jaws working.
“Let’s get one thing straight. You may not like me.” She poked the wolf carved into his vest. “But I like you.”
Bloodshot eyes widened. The blade he chewed twitched faster. Sharp. Controlled. These were Erik of Birka’s watchwords. She’d seen it in the precise fire rings he made, the routines when he cooked for his band of brothers, and the darker, violent edge that haunted him. Of all the Sons, life had been harshest to dark-haired Erik. She felt it in her bones...his near black eyes flashing like a wounded creature in rare moments, a primal beast in others.
“Change troubles you,” she said quietly. “More than the others, I think. But I do not fault you for that. Of all the Forgotten Sons, I’d say you value loyalty the most. You are their fiercest defender.”
His head cocked. “What makes you say that?”
“The night we camped near Abbod village. You were the first to question me about the spice trade and to doubt my learning Norse in a kitchen.”
“That makes me smart. Not loyal.”
She stepped into the open road, her face basking in the sun. Pleasant noises of Rouen’s market carried on a breeze. Laughter and conversation. She needed this to ease the tense ribbon inside her from Rurik’s leaving. And she liked the Forgotten Sons, each one talented in his own right. Knowing them was a key to knowing Rurik.
Eyes closed, sunshine poured over her. “Tell me. When you learned Rurik came here to claim a holding, who was the first of the Sons to say he’d stay with Rurik?”
“Me.”
Open-eyed, she faced Erik, fighting to contain her smile.
The dark-haired Viking fought a smile too. “Don’t let that go to your head.”
She laughed loud, startling two boys passing them with a herd of goats. Three giggling girls ran barefoot between the jarl’s hall and the weaver’s shed where Astrid’s voice carried from open doors.
“I would guess Bjorn was next and the others followed,” she said, quite pleased with herself.
Erik’s grin was grudging. “I’ll have to watch my step around you.” He tossed aside the blade of grass and notched his head at the village below. “I have to see the blacksmith about a hinge for Wandrille Abbey’s door. Why don’t you walk with me and tell me about these...insights of yours?”
She spun around, her plain skirt flaring around her legs. They walked to the village, the smell of charred wood heavy in the air. Flames licked two blackened boats sinking in the Seine. The people of Rouen must’ve cut free the jarl’s boats and let the river claim them. It was the only way to save the other boats moored nearby.
Erik tucked both hands behind his back. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Your insights.”
They walked along the river lane, passing a matron haggling over a glass bead necklace. The woman in the stall had to be the glassmaker Astrid spoke of. She was pretty, a breeze teasing her butter-blonde hair. Her cornflower-blue gaze snagged with Erik’s. His step hitched, and Safira smiled behind her fingers. Rouen might prove to have treasures for each Forgotten Son.
“For all the Sons? Or just you?” She stopped to examine an ivory comb at the next stall.
“Just me.”
Jet-black eyes searched her. Loneliness. Isolation. Bleak, poisonous rage lurked in their depths. She set the comb down. He deserved her full attention.
“I think you are an artist forced to live by the sword. You have a keen mind and a deeply wounded soul...if Vikings even believe in a soul.”
“We don’t. We believe a man or woman is born with luck.”
Nodding quietly, she digested his words. “I believe you are the most savage of all the Sons.”
“You’re not a seeress, but you read people well. I’ll give you that.” He grimaced at noisy matrons gathering and tipped his head at the road. “Where did you learn this skill?”
Tucking her hands behind her back, she matched Erik’s meander. “Savta. My grandmother. She taught me about knowing the goods and the people who wish to buy them.”
“Your grandmother is a spice trader?”
She stared at the toes of her boots as they walked. Rurik had warned her to keep quiet about this. To admit she was the daughter of a spice merchant was all but giving up her identity. What harm could come of telling Erik?
“No. My father is.”
His gaze cut sideways. “A spice merchant’s daughter. It’s a far step down to be companion to a Viking.”
Ivar’s forge was in the distance. The blacksmith pulled a flaming sword from hot coals. He doused it in a barrel with a searing hiss of vapors spiraling around his bulk.
“You soften the blow for me, Erik. Don’t you mean fylgikonur?”
“Rurik taught you a new Viking word.” Erik’s graveled voice hinted at no emotion.
He stopped ten paces from the blacksmith’s forge, the harsh mask he usually wore gone. Hair cut short and eyes blacker than night, Erik stood out amongst Vikings. More viper than wolf, his past was a tight-fisted secret. She knew it in her bones.
Erik untied a leather purse knotted to his belt. “Put out your hand.”
She did, and he dropped coins into her palm.
“What goes on between you and Rurik is for the two of you to decide. But—” his dark eyes pierced her “—I know he can be...single-minded in going after something he wants.”
Her skin pebbled. Last night with Rurik. Being the focus of his single-mindedness wasn’t all bad. But, it wasn’t all good either.
“What are you saying to me?”
“I’m saying if you want to leave, I won’t stand in your way.” Erik retied the pouch. “I ask only that you wait for Rurik’s return before you make your decision.”
That was all the help she’d get from Erik. His veiled words were a boon. Much more than she expected. The money was too. Sunlight shined on coins from Hedeby, Wessex, and Paris.
“You’re giving me money to escape?”
Erik smiled, a show of warmth that curved nicely at the corners of his mouth. “I would never do that. Rurik asked me to give you coin to spend in the market. Never said how much.”
Her hand closed over the shiny pieces. She didn’t own a leather purse in which to hold them.
“The day is yours to do as you see fit,” he said. “I’m off to see Ivar about a new hinge.”
“You do not require me at your side?”
“Stay within eyesight of me. You’ll be safe.” With a curt nod, Erik turned and hailed the blacksmith.
The sun beat down on her head, less cheery than before. Could the truth be any plainer? What went on with Rurik was no different than what went on at home. Someone else dictated her coming and going. Here in Rouen, Rurik controlled the purse strings. At home, it was her mother. Here Rurik had a say in her status. At home, such details were negotiated by her mother.
When they journeyed to Rouen, she’d felt free.
Wandering through the market, a fist full of coins, she was no less free today.
“Did you tire of smoothing the wrinkles from Rurik’s tunic?”
Her head snapped up. Vlad lounged against the side of a fur trader’s stall. A bear pelt with jaws splayed wide hung over his head. How fitting. Vlad’s mouth split with what he surely counted as a smile. It gave her the shivers.
“I am waiting for the glass smoother to heat up.”
He bit into a pear, the juice spraying his beard. He chewed the fruit slowly. Facing him was like seeing a cruel, future version of Rurik...if he followed his father’s path. Both were low-born Vikings. Both led a small band of men. Both sought fame, vying for a higher place in life.
“I’m surprised you know what a glass smoother is.” Vlad’s stare moseyed over her from head to hem. “I’m equally surprised to find a highborn woman tending to my son’s needs.”
A hot roil sickened her belly. “I must be on my way.”
She darted across the road and stopped at the first stall. The comb seller. Safira squeezed the coins in hand, the metal edges biting her skin. The young woman minding the stall conversed with a matron shepherding a gaggle of children.
A pear core rolled past her hem.
Vlad was a shadow at her back.
“You’re not losing me that easily.” His voice was a husky version of Rurik’s.
A hand closed over her elbow. Fingers pinched her, intent on keeping her in place. She checked the blacksmith’s forge. She should’ve gone straight to Erik’s side. Vlad’s gaze flicked to the dark-haired warrior deep in conversation with Ivar over a newly crafted sword.
“If Erik looks this way, you will smile and give him a reassuring nod.”
She tried to jerk her arm away, but his grip was firm. “What do you want?”
“What do I want?” he mused. “Land. Wealth. To feast in Valhalla as a famed warrior.” His chuckle was a dry rasp. “Not much, really.”
Was Vlad jesting with her?
He guided her to the river, his steps deceptively casual. His profile was a rigid line against blue sky. This close, she’d put his age somewhere in the middle of his fourth decade. If Rurik was nearing thirty, the father had to have had the son at a young age. Sixteen? Or seventeen? He wore his grey-streaked blond hair like the jarl’s, a single thick band four fingers wide, a braid starting above his forehead and trailing down his skull to his back. Sun shined on the side of his freshly shaved head.
Children scampered by, their wooden swords clacking in mock battle. Vlad’s hooded stare followed them.
“Rurik practiced with a real sword.”
“You gave him his sword?”
Vlad squinted at the river, releasing his hold on her. “No. He used mine. Until he raised it against me.”
“He was eleven.”
“My son told you the story?”
“He told me enough.”
She fisted well-traveled coins against her breast bone. The flat tang of metal in her sweating palm reached her nose. Vlad stood shoulder to shoulder with her, watching the two dying ships. A slow crackle. A hiss. Wood collapsed, and the Seine devoured the jarl’s small fishing boat.
From her side vision, she caught Vlad’s stony profile. It buckled a split second. In pain?
“It’s a mistake for a son to raise a sword against his father,” he said, folding beefy arms across his chest. “I left after that, but he probably told you that too.”
In the river, the larger drakkar ship wasn’t giving up without a fight. It listed sideways. The center snapped, and water crept up the prow. Merchants and patrons alike paused to shade their eyes for a view. Three boys raced to the riverbank to watch the drowning dragon head until it disappeared for good.
The people of Rouen went about their day, herding goats and children, buying and selling goods. Conversation buzzed. Trade carried on. A breeze kissed Safira’s cheeks, and she checked the southern forest line. A no man’s land of wildness and violence. Rurik had ridden headlong into those dark woods.
“My son will return. I am sure of it.” Vlad toed a rock through a patch of grass.
Was the brash Viking...nervous? They’d carried on a stilted conversation staring at sinking vessels. Bored of waiting, she faced him.
“What do you want from me?”
His chuckle was a valiant effort. “Who are you? Why does Rurik keep you?”
“I am Safira of Paris. With your second question, you’ll have to ask Rurik.”
“Don’t play me for a fool, woman. What were you? A wealthy man’s concubine?”
She laughed. Men. Even free-thinking Vikings wanted to reduce a woman to a role, whatever worked neatly with their needs. “Rurik asked me the same question.” A light shake of her head and, “I spoke the truth to you. What more can I say?”
Vlad’s mouth was a hard, familiar line. Like father, like son. The old Viking warrior looked ready to chew rocks and spit them out as pebbles.
“How did you come to Rurik’s keeping?”
“What makes you certain he keeps me?”
“Because the Forgotten Sons have held fast to their three laws for years.” He stared down at her. “Something made Rurik break his own law. I want to know what.”
Rurik. She swallowed the pain of yearning for him and the wrongness of it. This was confusing, her body and heart wanting one thing, her mind another.
“It was a simple bargain. I saved his life. He saved mine.” Head tipped high, she refused to let Vlad cow her. “He doesn’t keep me.”
Vlad’s face lit with Think what you want, woman. A sinew in his neck stood out. The corners of his mouth pinched white as if he bit back words...as if he had something to say and didn’t know how. He bent down and picked up three small stones and let them roll across his palm.
“But, you didn’t seek me to hear womanly whispers about a man,” she said quietly.
Vlad threw a rock into the Seine. “I want you to give a message to Rurik.” He hesitated. “I want... I want you to tell him I didn’t know Longsword had promised the land to him.”
“Why don’t you tell him yourself?”
“Because he won’t listen to me.” His voice was a desperate bark.
“Have you tried—”
“Tell. Him.” The corner of Vlad’s scarred eye ticked.
“This isn’t about the land. You don’t wish to fight him.”
She shouldn’t have said that aloud. Her feet shifted in clumps of grass. Two wolfish warriors, father and son, would face each other in combat. Her bargain with the jarl assured it wasn’t a battle to the death. Flesh and bone wouldn’t die. Something else would.
A chance of reconciliation?
Forgiveness and healing?
Or was this simply one man setting out to destroy the other’s pride? The answers to her questions were difficult to find. Rurik was sparing with words and more so with his emotions. The father was likely the same. Or worse.
This time she tried a different tactic.
“You don’t have to fight Rurik.”
His glance was sharp. “This battle has been long in coming. I can’t stop it.”
“You mean you won’t.”
He snorted and lobbed another rock far into the river.
“If Rurik won’t accept the words from your lips, what makes you certain he’ll accept them from mine?” she asked.
Vlad ignored her question. “Tell him...tell him I swear it is the truth on his mother’s amber pieces.”
His mother’s amber pieces. The words punched her. Her coin-fisted hand rubbed her mid-section. The two half-carved amber stones. Rurik, the man, said he’d never sell them, but it was Rurik, the young boy with fierce eyes, who haunted her.
“The amber pieces.”
“They belonged to his mother’s mother and her mother’s mother. Oddny refused to part with them.”
“Oddny?”
“His mother. I took them to trade for a new sword.” Head shaking, his rusty laugh drifted. “Rurik tore through Birka...never saw him run that fast, but he pummeled my leg and challenged me in front of the blacksmith. He was eight years old.” The older man cut her with an unforgiving glare. “I knocked him to the ground.”
She gasped despite already knowing the truth.
“I did what I had to do. He needed to learn.” Lips curled against his teeth. “Good warriors react. The best warriors act first.”
“But he was a boy.”
“Who learned a man’s lessons.” His chin jutted at the southern forest in the distance. “Now he reaps the benefit. He rides with Jarl Will Longsword. Skalds will tell stories of his well-earned fame.”
Air chuffed from her lungs. Fame. Destiny. A life’s weave. Were these the only things Vikings cared about? “I could not imagine my father doing such a thing to my brother.”
Light sparked in his eyes. “Your father in Paris?”
She caught herself. The fistful of coins dug into her skin. Rurik was cut from the same cloth as Vlad. Bred on battle, a leader of men, fighting hard for a swath of land, and ready to expand more of it for Jarl Longsword. Would Rurik be of the same bent as Vlad? Rurik was gentleness in private, brutish in others.
How well did she truly know him?
He made her heart and body soar, but they’d shared a journey from the Saxon outpost to Rouen. Beyond that, they had nothing. Rurik was strangely single-minded about keeping her, and he’d already planted his seed in her womb because she’d wanted her maidenhood gone.
Her hand slipped to her abdomen. If she was with child...
Rurik. Eyes closing, she felt him. Rough hands achingly gentle, imprinting on her body. His name was a whisper on her soul. Confusing. Heart-melting. Freeing her and binding her all at once. But the Viking didn’t love her. He wished to own her.
She was done with being owned.
Eyes opened again, she breathed the Seine’s clean air. “I will give your message to Rurik, but you must do something for me in return.”
“Name it.”
She opened the handful of coins and poured them into Vlad’s broad, calloused palm. “You will need this to buy a horse.”
Calmly she eyed the river, its gentle waters flowing home to Paris. She laid out her plan. Vlad, to his credit, listened. The Viking’s stony eyes never wavered as their bargain was struck.
She trod thoughtful steps to the blacksmith’s shop. Life was different on this side of the Epte River. Violence a strong thread. If fighting was the warp on their looms, passion was their weft—a weave of men and women carving out a new kingdom. Strong Viking women like Ellisif and Astrid made the intricate fabric of Rouen, women unwilling to let a man decide their destiny. She would be no different. In Rouen. Or in Paris.
Whatever her path, she would not be controlled like a docile prize.
Never again.