9th Century
My legs feel lighter and quicker as we travel north after that, knowing what awaits me. As the sun begins to sink towards the horizon, Fridleif leaves Ivor to stay with me, my baby and my dad and runs on ahead. A tingle of excited anticipation runs up my spine – we must be getting close.
"So I guess you could say he kidnapped me," I say to my dad a few seconds later, out of the blue. He's going to meet Eirik soon, he deserves to know the truth. "Not just me – everyone his men could get their hands on in Caistley."
My dad has slowed his pace to match mine and he's looking at my face, searching for signs of pain or trauma. In fact I know exactly what he wants to know – what any parent would, in the same situation. His daughter has just told him the father of her child kidnapped her. And so the question arises naturally.
"He didn't rape me," I say plainly. "You need to know that. In fact he saved me from being raped – or worse."
My dad stops walking and puts his arms around me. "Oh thank God, Paige. Thank God. I thought that maybe –"
"I'm not saying the Vikings don't do things that people from 2017 would consider wrong," I say quickly, not wanting to give my father the expectation that he is walking into some kind of cuddles-and-rainbows community. "They do. You'll see it for yourself. But I don't know them to be unnecessarily cruel. They're just – I don't know how to explain and it's as I said – you'll find out for yourself. They're very wedded to their way of doing things, that might be a good way to put it. And it will be good for both of us to remember that."
More questions follow. I do my best to answer them all. How old is Eirik? How did he treat me when I was first captured? Will he be angry that I left, even if it was because I feared for his life and wanted to help? What does he know about where I come from?
On that last question, I am halfway through the answer – underlining to my father that under no circumstances can the Vikings know anything of where we're actually from, and that their being of the opinion that we're from one of the higher social orders of East Anglian society is good enough for now, when Ivor lets out a yell.
My dad and I both look up at him and see immediately that he's waving at someone. My gaze follows Ivor's north and suddenly, there he is. His men follow on either side of him, and trailing behind. But there is no mistaking who I'm seeing, even at a distance. The Jarl. Eirik. My Jarl.
I close my eyes as my nervous subconscious pokes at me: make sure it's him first. Make sure it's not a mistake. Make sure you're not dreaming.
But it's not a mistake and I'm not dreaming and that is Eirik walking towards me, resplendent in his fur mantle, shirtless underneath, sword slapping against his muscular thigh with each step he takes. I don't know whether to laugh for joy, or cry, or scream. I lift my hands to my face, disbelieving, as my heart beats fast in my chest.
"Here," my father says, helping me to extricate myself from the baby wrap. "Let me take him."
I pass my son to my father and run forward, still barely trusting what my eyes are seeing because it seems too good to be true. Even as I race across the sand towards him part of my mind is still in denial – it can't be! It's a trick! You don't get a happy ending, Paige – happy endings were never meant for people like you.
Only when Eirik takes my face in his two strong hands, lifting it up to his, do the voices quiet down.
"Eirik," I whisper. "Eirik."
He says nothing right away. He stands strong and steady, his sapphire-blue eyes locked on mine. In those eyes, I see the uselessness of words. Eirik doesn't need to tell me he missed me, or that he thought we would never see each other again. He doesn't need to tell me that he needs me, either, or that I need him, or that the place where I am meant to be is at his side. He doesn't even need to say that he forgives me.
"Look at you," he finally whispers, a phrase I remember. "Look at you, Paige. You came back to me."
"I did," I reply, burying my face in his chest as he pulls me close, breathing in the familiar scent of him. "You were so sick," I tell him. "And I knew of some healing plants growing in the place where your men first found me – I, I wanted to gather them and bring them back to you but then –"
The Jarl silences me with a shake of his head. "There's no need to explain, girl. I knew you were either dead, or that you would come back to me. You weren't dead, so here you are."
I smile, remembering his habit of making statements like this, of stating simple truths in ways that my over-excited, worry-prone mind would never come up with. "And you," I say, touching the scar on his shoulder. "The healers were so worried, I thought you were going to die. I had to leave, I had to try to find the plants!"
"How could I die?" Eirik smiles down at me, his happiness as bright as sunshine. "Without knowing you were safe? Without –"
My father and Ivor are approaching, and baby Eirik is fussing. The second the sound hits his father's ears I see something inside him – some stoic, male thing – slip.
"Is that – a baby?" He asks hesitantly, and I see that it is no longer me who is doubting my own eyes – or ears.
My father hands me my grumpy son and I turn back to Eirik. "Yes, it's a baby. Your baby. Your son."
"But I thought –" Eirik replies, staring down at the little, noisy bundle in my arms. "I thought – your belly is gone – that the child was lost somehow. I –"
He stops talking, then, because it doesn't take a genius to see the parentage of the baby I'm holding. Everyone is watching the Jarl, their eyes following his finger as he reaches down and runs it over his son's cheek.
"Gods," he whispers. "Gods, Paige. I thought there was no way. Is the babe a boy or a –"
"A son," I say again, handing the baby to his father.
"A son?" Eirik repeats, his voice breaking on the word 'son.' He stares down at his child, examining him, running his fingers down each chubby arm and each chubby leg, counting the fingers and toes, tracing the outline of a tiny nose, a tiny chin.
"His name is Eirik," I say, not just to the Jarl but to the other Viking men who are present, a kind of informal introduction.
When the Jarl is finally able to tear his eyes away he looks up – first at me, and then at my father and his men.
"There will be a feast," he announces, his voice loud and strong again. "The longest feast our people have known in their time. Eight days! Eight days for my son, and for the return of the woman who gave him to me! It is to begin at sundown tomorrow!"
The Vikings – all except Eirik – scatter at the pronouncement, running back to the encampment to announce the news and to begin the preparations for the feast. Soon it is just myself, the Jarl, my father and the baby, and the latter's cries are becoming increasingly demanding.
"He's hungry," I say, taking him back from his father and offering him a breast. The cries cease immediately.
The crisis of a fussy baby dealt with, Eirik turns to my dad, and then back to me.
"Your father," he says, his tone questioning.
"Yes," I confirm. "His name is Daniel Renner – Dan. Eirik, this is Dan, my father. He's going to be living with us now."
Eirik takes the hand my dad is offering, unsure of what to do with it, and then pulls him into one of the chest-out, single-clap-on-the-back hugs the Vikings reserve only for other high-ranking men.
"You are welcome, Dan. Paige and I will be married soon, but we're already a family. Which makes you family, too. I'll have a roundhouse built for you by the middle of the feast, at the high point of the camp."
The highest point of the encampment is reserved only for the highest-ranking Vikings. When Eirik leads us back, I hang back and explain to my dad what it means to be offered a roundhouse in that spot. I think he understands, but the look on his face is one of pure astonishment.
"A few days ago, I was writing a Costco shopping list on my phone," my dad says to me, smiling bemusedly as the camp ramparts come into view. "And now I'm being told – by the Viking who is going to marry my daughter – that a roundhouse is being built for me in the Viking village."
I put my arm around his shoulders. "I know, Dad. I had years to get used to this, to being in the past – and even after years, the Vikings were still a shock. But Eirik is showing you respect, and that means everyone else here will show you respect, too. I'll be with you as well, to show you how things work, to help you with whatever you need."
My father's expression is doubtful, but not unhappy. "I don't know, Paige. I'm almost 50, which must be – what? The equivalent of 90 here?"
"No, not 90. There are older people here, some even in their seventies and eighties – it seems to be that if a Viking makes it to 35, they get as old as we do. Almost. They won't think you ancient."
"It doesn't really matter, Paige. You're here. And he," he looks down at my son, "is here. So I'm here. And if it means living in a – what was it? a roundhouse? – then so be it."
He's expecting the living conditions to be unpleasant. I can't blame my father for this, anyone taken from 2017 and transported suddenly into the 9th century would feel the same way. All the same, I think he's going to be pleasantly surprised when he sees what life is like for someone of higher rank. There definitely aren't going to be any more trips to Costco in an old beater car – here, his meals will be brought to him, and they're going to taste a lot better than the processed crap he's been living on since we lost my mother.
***
I don't spend my first night back with the Jarl. Gudry and Anja, neither of whom are able to contain their shrieks of happiness when they see me again, explain in the bathing hut that when a Viking woman gives birth, she is kept from her husband's bed for a moon – two if the healers deem it necessary. Instead of keeping her man warm she spends her nights in a separate roundhouse, resting on a bed of furs and drinking specially-prepared teas, eating a specific diet to help her heal and keep her milk supply abundant. Most of the woman will share the 'Mother's House' with others, but I am to have my own.
The two of them question me as they bathe me, saying that the answers will determine what I am fed and given to drink during my time in the Mother's House. Am I still bleeding? A little. Is my milk abundant? It seems to be. Does the baby fuss after he eats? Does he draw his knees to his stomach? Does he fall asleep at the breast? Do I dream of wild animals? Of forests, or rivers? On the night the child came into the world, was the moon waxing or waning?
Eventually, I drift off to sleep in the hot bath water, with baby Eirik sleeping on a pile of furs beside me and Anja and Gudry attending to the important matters – like how clean my fingernails are and which floral essence to scent my hair with.
Later that night, as I sip a bitter tea that Anja insists I must finish before I'm allowed anything to eat, and as my son suckles noisily at my breast, Hildy comes barging in.
She takes one look at me and nods knowingly. "Ah, so it's true. You've given the Jarl a son, girl. And you've brought him back to us, I see! How kind of you!"
Hildy's being mildly sarcastic, a sort of 'thanks for blessing us with your presence' thing, but I let it slide because Hildy is going to Hildy, and I'm not going to be able to change that. She softens, though, when I show no signs of talking back, and edges onto the furs where I'm lying, so she can get a look at baby Eirik.
"Beautiful," she says. "A beautiful child, he looks just like the Jarl! And strong – they can probably hear him eating all the way from the beach!"
Soon enough, Hildy reveals the reason for her evening visit – and it isn't what I expected. She's not here to harangue me, or try to involve me in one of her power games. No, she's here to ask me about my father. What was it he did all day, before he came to the Viking camp with me? Does he enjoy hunting? Where is his wife?
I try to answer the questions as best I can, but the truth is my father dropped most of his interests when my mom died, and spent the next decade and a half surfing the internet and living off the money my mother left him.
"Hildy," I say at one point, when she refuses to stop badgering me for information. "I'm not trying to be difficult right now. My mother died five summers after my birth, and since then my father – well, he doesn't do very much. He doesn't have a lot of interests. I think mainly what he's interested in is me being happy – and now, my baby being happy, too."
Gudry, who has been listening quietly, pipes up. "My mother's sister is the same. Her husband died of a fever eight summers ago. Eight? Maybe nine? But she's taken to her bed ever since, and she grows as thin as a skeleton even as my mother brings her buttered bread every day. All of what used to make her happy – growing flowers for the healers, playing with the children – only seems to make her tired now. We have to drag her to the garden, and then she complains that it's cold and her back aches and she wants to go back to bed."
Hildy, who I expect is about to smack Gudry upside the head for talking out of turn, instead looks at me. "Is this the way with your father, girl?"
"Yes," I reply, mildly irritated. "That's what I've been trying to tell you."
Hildy is thinking. "It's not always possible that people who get lost like that, halfway between life and death, can be brought out of it. But sometimes they can. Usually it's love that does it – family, friends. He has a new grandson now, that's something. We'll have to find him some companions, too. I'll see to it, girl. Now – Gudry, Anja – is she ready for the feast tomorrow night? The Jarl wants her there, and the baby, too. Jarl Magnar and his people will be in attendance. Everything must be perfect."
Anja bows her head respectfully. "We'll have her ready, Hildy. The baby, too."
I wonder, briefly, if they're going to clean the baby's fingernails as well as mine, and scent him with rosewater.
***
Eirik does not come to see me before I fall asleep for the night. I'm not really expecting him, because there is a level of activity in the camp that I don't remember seeing before – he's busy, and we're not allowed to share a bed, anyway. Still, I long for him. To see him on the beach, to see the look in his eyes and feel his hands on my body, and then to be kept from him, is something like a sweet kind of torture.
He doesn't come the next day. Neither does my dad. When I ask Hildy, as she rushes in to deliver a bundle of dried herbs to Anja, where he is, she shakes her head at me impatiently. "The feast is tonight, girl! And it is not just any feast! Your father is fine, he's been assigned four men – four! – so there's no need for you to worry. You'll see him tonight – him and the Jarl."
'Assigned' four men? I want to ask Hildy what that means but she's already gone.
As the afternoon progresses, the tempo in the camp – and in the Mother's House – rises by the minute. Gudry and Anja are almost frantic as the light starts to fade, anointing me and the baby with various oils, braiding and pinning my hair, deciding it isn't quite right, unpinning it, pulling the braids apart and then starting again. When my hair is done Gudry slides a silver cuff up my right arm, until it rests around the upper portion.
"Only a mother can wear a silver cuff like this," she tells me, "around her upper arm. Maids aren't permitted to wear any silver bangles, and wives only on their wrists until they've borne at least one child. When you marry the Jarl, you'll have a silver circlet on your head, the sign of a wife."
When the two women are satisfied with my hair and adornment, and baby Eirik has been pressed to my breast one more time (they want his belly as full as possible for the feast, so he doesn't fuss), they dress me. Another silk gown, this one open at the back. When I protest, they remind me that I'm still bleeding slightly from the birth, and show me the cloth pillow, stuffed with soft grasses and herbs, that I'm to sit on. Over the dress goes a light wool overcoat, sleeveless and split up the back, again to allow me to sit on the pillow with no clothing in between. Gudry shows me how to use the ties to tie it closed if I need to get up, and how to open them and pull the garments out of the way when I sit down at the feast.
"It's almost time!" She whispers excitedly, after poking her head outside the roundhouse to check how close we are to sunset. "An eight day feast, Paige! The Jarl must love you more than any man has ever loved a woman before – I never heard of an eight day feast before!"