The Warlord's Wife (24 page)

“Why, Axel? Hök is an honored guest of the jarl’s, so why would his presence, or lack thereof, bother you if nothing is amiss in your judgment to send his daughter to Finland?”

“She is not his daughter.” Axel glared at her. “She is the Lyyskis’ daughter, and I am fulfilling my orders to uphold the law.”

“You are making a grave misstep, Axel,” Lida said, returning her enemy’s glare. She hoped she was masking her shaking nerves with her feigned display of annoyance. “But I concede. My sons will stay with their nurses above stairs. They are never to leave the safety of these walls.” What a jest those words were. “That is the new law of Tronscar. Is that understood, magistrate?” Her husband’s men answered her question with stiff nods and scowling faces. “Come, Katia, let us go kiss your brothers farewell. I expect it will only be a few days until the jarl returns and straightens out this mess,” she said, for the benefit of the men. It would not be days, but weeks, if not a month of danger before her husband would return from his mission to find his family missing.

The responsibility to protect her children rested on her shoulders. She prayed for a calm heart. Like Hök and her sons, she was determined to find a place to hide and wait out the storm until Magnus could come home and protect them once again. Tears snuck up on her, but she banished them, dashing them from her cheeks as they fell.

Scared and uncertain that she had made the right decision in separating her family, Lida climbed the stairs to say farewell to empty cradles.

***

“Please go sit over there with Lika, my love.” Lida pointed to the stern of the small merchant ship. “I will be there shortly.” She watched her daughter walk away before turning her attention to Valto, who had his hand locked around her upper arm. “Let us speak plainly, Valto, before the ship pulls away from Swedish shores.”

Valto licked his lips. “I was meaning to speak to you. I have—”

“I prefer to begin,” she said, her teeth grinding together. “Are you certain that you want to do this? You have declared war with the jarl of Norrland. Are you truly prepared for the consequences? Take us back now, wait to speak with Magnus, and you will be rewarded as a trusted ally,” she said.

“My mother always said you were a s-s-spiteful bitch,” he stammered. “I—”

“No, that is not accurate. I am the dirty whore and fortune hunter. Spiteful bitch was what she called your aunt,” Lida said dryly.

Valto pulled her in closer. “The jarl will not come after me. The jarl sent me here. He convinced the bishop to force my father to take back the girl.” His foul breath smothered her. “I suggest you take care in how you address me. I hold the power to make your life very unpleasant.” He looked to the where Katia sat. “And hers.”

The contents of Lida’s stomach lurched into her throat.

Heavy gray clouds followed them across the gulf. Sitting alone at the stern of the vessel, Lida tucked Katia under her white cloak and prepared for the downpour ahead. The sea had picked up, pitching them back and forth, nearly sending her spilling off the bench and across the deck.

“What’s he like, Mama?” her daughter asked. She had been quiet most of the day, her bubbly vitality bottled up.

“What is who like?”

“My grandfather, the chief. If he wants to meet me, why did he not ask before?”

“Oh, well . . . there is much to tell you, my love. I never intended on telling you while you were still young.” She pushed her daughter’s hair behind her ear.

“Why? Is he very ugly or something? Does he curse too much and have bad teeth like my uncle?”

“I would imagine his teeth are unpleasant. He is very old.”

Katia continued to pet Lika, who sat with her head in her daughter’s lap. “Do you think he will like me, now that he wants everyone to know that I am his granddaughter?”

“I . . . I am not certain.” How was she to explain this horrid plight to her daughter? “Katia, there are people in Lylasku that may say mean things to us, but we must remember always to rise above it. Grandma never let me feel sorry for myself when people said hurtful things. I do not know how to explain, my love. I wish I could keep you from this ugliness. I . . . your father and I—”

“You got me in your belly before you wed my father. I know, Mama,” her daughter said serenely.

“What! Who told you that?”

“Tina, Sissi, Rena, Peter, Lourra, Garen, Soyan—”

“Enough! Why did you not ever tell me? Why did you never ask, or—”

“Mama, you loved my father. Grandma told me that love is not in our choice, but in our fate, remember? She told me that you had no choice but to love my father and that I am a result of your love. Most people do not understand these things, Mama.” Her daughter patted her hand. “Grandma understands everything. She said the same as you, that I should feel sorry for foolish people who do not understand. She says that most of those people will never understand love, even if it bit them on the bum.”

“Hush, your grandma did not say that.”

“Well, she said ‘nose’ instead of ‘bum,’ but I said ‘bum’ because it sounds more funny.” Katia beamed her contagious smile.

“You are the smartest eight-year-old in the world, do you know that?”

“And the prettiest too.” She wiggled her pinched lips in a silly way. “Jarl Magnus told me that before he left. He said that daughters have purpose. I am pretty, smart, helpful with my brothers, and . . .” Smiling like a sweet scoundrel, she looked away.

“And what?”

“And the keeper of important things. The keeper of secrets,” she whispered excitedly.
What secrets?

Her daughter looked around the deck, checking if anyone was watching her. She carefully loosened her lace at her throat and slipped her hand down the front of her clothing. She pulled a long, thin, gold chain from around her neck. “He said I could keep it our secret or I could show just one person and that was you. Not all secrets are bad. Good secrets I’m allowed to keep,” Katia said. She held out the object, locked in her cupped hand. She slowly opened her fingers for her mother to peek inside.

It was his gold and emerald stone ring—the Knutson ring, the jarl of Norrland’s sacred ring—around her daughter’s neck. Katia tucked it back away under the layers of her clothing.

“What! When?” Lida blundered.

“The day my brothers were born. He said since I was now truly his first child that I should have his ring. He said when I am big, he will ask the smith to fit it proper for me.” Her daughter smiled with pride. “Mama, are you all right? You look strange.”

All Lida could do was nod. She squeezed Katia tight.

“He loves me, Mama, as much as Grandpa and Grandma do. I think he chose to wed you, so it must be his fate to love me.” Katia patted her hand to offer support, and then giggled.

“What is so funny?” Lida asked.

“I am teaching the jarl the Finnish tongue.”

“’Tis very sweet of you.”

“He says he does not like us having a secret language, so I am teaching him.”

Lida did not trust her daughter’s smirk. “Katia, what did you do?”

“I taught him to say, ‘Your braid is very lovely,’ in Finnish.”

“That is nice of you,” Lida said with mounting suspicion.

Katia covered her mouth and giggled into her hands. “He may not get it right. It may come out sounding like ‘You are my heart and greatest love.’” She giggled harder.

“That is not very smart of you. What if he starts saying that to a maid who happens to speak Finnish?” Lida herself giggled at the thought.

“He will not, Mama. He only says such things to you and me.”

“You are terrible. What have I been teaching you?” She squeezed her daughter tighter, feeling eternally proud of her girl, her nerves momentarily soothed.

“Will my new grandfather tell me my braids are lovely?”

“Oh, my love. I do not know anymore. A big hole was made in his heart when your father died. I am not certain if it can ever be repaired. He used to enjoy music and telling stories, but I do not know how we will find him. We will try to do our best to be polite. They may say that you are now to remain there with them. Do not argue. Your father Magnus will come for us soon.”

“I will be good, Mama. Grandma told me to be kind to unkind people. They need it the most.” She nodded seriously and gazed out over the gray, churned-up sea.

Lida looked out to sea as well. With every rise and fall of the cresting waves, her ache for her sons grew greater. She pressed her arm over her throbbing, tingling breasts, which had grown heavy with milk for her hungry babes. Her eyes turned to the shrinking Swedish shoreline. Somewhere deep in that mountain range, riding deeper into the wilderness, were her sweet infant sons.

She closed her eyes and resolved to place all her faith in Magnus. She slowed her breathing and stilled her mind, preparing for the battle that awaited her.

She straightened her spine, her hand folding around the hilt of the jeweled dagger she had sewn into a concealed compartment of her skirt. If anyone so much as stepped a foot too close to her daughter, they would encounter violence. She was suddenly thankful for her many days spent admiring her husband in the sparring ring.

She was returning to Lylasku not as a shamed, beaten young girl, but as Friherrinna Lida of Tronscar, wife of the fearsome warlord Jarl Magnus Knutson.

Lida embraced her role as a warlord’s wife. She was ready to be proven worthy of the distinction.

Magnus rode through the gates of Sodermanland palace after the morning hunt. He was late for a war council meeting with a group of southern jarls.

Aleksi charged toward him, calling out. “My jarl! I must speak to you.” The warrior’s shoulders were squared, his eyes sharply focused, primed for a fight. “The fisherman has asked to speak with you—the man Otso. He claims it’s urgent.”

“What about?” Magnus handed the reins of his warhorse to the stable master. He never left Tronscar without his magnificent mount. He was always gratified when his destrier outperformed the dignitaries that accompanied him.

Aleksi stepped close to Magnus’s side and said tactfully, “He muttered something about not trusting warriors from Tronscar.”

“You must understand that the man did not have a good experience with Norrlanders, Aleksi. Tell him I will come find him at the alehouse after the meeting concludes and buy him a brew.”

“I remember the man, my jarl. He is . . .” Aleksi hesitated, his manner increasingly abnormal for the uncompromising man. “Something with him is not right. Should you trust him? Could he be a spy as once suspected?”

Magnus shook his head, about to explain how that was not possible. “What exactly did he say?”

“I only spoke to him for a moment. He said he’d completed the trade shipment Tero assigned him last week. Then he mumbled something about elkhounds sent to Lylasku.”

“Where is he?”

“By the small boats.”

Magnus yanked the reins out of the stable master’s hands and swung his leg over his horse and charged for the dock. But before he could find Otso, Otso found him.

The Finn stomped down the dock toward Magnus, his arms pumping up and down out in front of him.

“I see your men put on Valto’s ship,” Otso shouted in Magnus’s face. “You keep your steel, Jarl Magnus. I go back fishing. I not work for man I not trust.”

Magnus grabbed the man’s collar and raised him up. “Tell me what you are here to say.” He tossed the man to the ground, his horse snorting and stomping, eager to have his turn in the fight.

Snarling, pointing his finger, Otso said, “Your men load Katia, Lida, and dog on ship. You say to me that girl not sent back, you lie, but I not know why—”

“When?” Words, sounds, the sun in the sky faded to black. A pulsing pressure built behind his eyes.

“I see Valto take hold of Lida. She give you sons, now she is nothing to you?” Otso spat in the dirt.

Magnus was no longer listening to the enraged Finnish man. His mind had unraveled. “Aleksi!” he shouted. Aleksi ran toward him with a dozen of his men trailing behind. Magnus pointed to them. “Assemble the fleet. Have the horses loaded. We sail for Lylasku. Tronscar is under attack. Go now!” He thrust out his arm. “I will have words with my king.” Magnus plowed through the throngs of people toward the palace. “You.” He grabbed Otso by the back of the neck. “I may need your words.”

Magnus dragged the trusted spy behind him. He slammed the palm of his hand against the cedar doors, pushing them open, and entered the chamber filled with the delegations from Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Saxony.

“Aye, you are overdue, cousin, we have been waiting to hear—” the king began, standing as he spoke.

“I come to collect Tero and inform you that I leave for Finland this hour.” He turned and pointed at the jarl of Turku. “I will destroy Lylasku in a few days’ time. We depart, Tero.”

“Magnus, what is the meaning of this?” his cousin called out.

“Lyyski has declared war on Norrland.” He did not bother to look back.

With Tero by his side, he made a straight line for the port. “You will take twenty men and return to Tronscar. You will send me a report on what has transpired. Assess and send two hundred men across the gulf if you have no immediate threats. I will take fifty ships and one thousand men to Lylasku.” They reached the small karve boats to row out to the larger cargo ships that were moored offshore.

“Knutson!” Count Charles tripped over his feet trying to catch up.

Magnus gestured to the man to begin rowing.

“Is your wife well?” the count yelled.

“I will not discuss my family with you—”

“She is my blood, Knutson. I have a right. She is my niece!” Count Charles blurted out. “I will explain. May my ships follow? May I travel with you?”

Magnus gestured for him to get in the small boat.

***

The sea breeze snapped at Klara’s nose and ears, stripping away the warmth from the autumn sun. She adjusted the high collar of her snow fox fur cloak. Standing on top of a large red rock, she gazed down at the small wharf, monitoring the arrival of the ships from Tronscar.

Janetta stood next to her, wearing a matching cloak. “That did not take him very long.”

“It was too fast. She’s up to something.” Klara focused her eyes on Lida, who walked up the green lawns with her nose high up in the air, her little brat at her side.

“Doesn’t matter,” Janetta said. “She can’t order us around in our hall. She sits below us now.” Klara sighed. Her daughter, like her sons, had no concept of strategy.

“There have only ever been three people in my life that I have feared,” Klara said. “My father, a knife-happy cook I served under once, and that Finnish bitch. Never underestimate your enemies, Janetta.” Klara smiled to her daughter. “
After
you take your place as mistress of this house, you can crow. Valto hasn’t wed you yet.”

“He will. He promised, just as soon as he returned.”

“Beauty fades with each passing season. What never fades is power and gold. Keep your focus on what is truly important.”

Her daughter waved to her potbellied paramour. He waved in return, and her daughter began to pick up the hem to her cloak to rush to meet him.

Klara grabbed her arm. “Let him come to you,” she said quietly.

“Valto,” her daughter called out. When he reached them, Janetta cast her arms out, flinging herself at Valto. “My prince, I thought I might die from loneliness.”

“Beautiful day, Klara.” Valto greeted her with a half nod.

“I see your chattel has arrived, but not all of your cargo. Where are the infants?” Klara asked.

Her daughter rubbed herself up against the man, distracting him from giving Klara his report.

“Axel thought it right they stay in Tronscar. Said to tell you he would take care of his dominion,” Valto said while ogling Janetta’s chest.

“She just left them, no argument?” Klara asked.

“She put up some fuss. But she was never one for arguing.”

“I finished my gown, my prince,” Janetta interrupted. “And the priest has returned from Korstrom. We can wed tonight.” Her daughter had no concept of timing.

“I will speak to my mother and see what she has arranged,” Valto answered.

“Your mother?” Janetta recoiled.

“Aye. How is my father faring?” Valto addressed Klara. “Did the herbs you gave him help?”

“They brought him great relief for his stomach pain. If it is God’s will, he will recover,” Klara lied. The amount of stupidity in this fortress astonished her. ’Twas a wonder they had not been overthrown sooner. The poison she gave the chief would take at least a few more days to work. His foul wife kept diluting the potency of the tonic by overwatering him.

“We shall wed as soon as Father is able to attend.” Valto kissed her daughter’s hand.

“That might not be for months,” her daughter pouted.

“Patience, my beauty. Patience,” Valto said. He turned to leave. “Mother insisted I bring Lida straight to Father.” He smirked and strolled toward the red stone fortress.

“This is so unfair. That snotty brat and her mother will have a place of honor equal to ours. I wish we could just kill her already and get on with it.”

“Patience, girl. If we move too quickly, before shoring up support, we will risk it all.”

“Dag will take care of it.”

“Your idiot brother is uncontrollable. Unleash him at the wrong time and we’ll lose our advantage. Think ahead.” Klara ground her teeth, frustrated with her daughter. “We need Valto and his men, for now. Which means we need Helika too. Once they have both served their purpose, then you can do what you like.”

“I hate that old crow. She had me scrub her scaly old skin in the sauna yesterday. I lost my appetite for the entire day.”

“You won’t have to deal with her for much longer. The bishop’s men will be arriving in a few days. Casper is ready with the Slavic ship—they’re camped in the south inlet. After the brat has been kidnapped and the abduction blamed on the Slavic pirates spotted off the coast, full-fledged war will break out, and you know what happens in wars?”

Janetta smiled. “Jarls can die in wars, just as easily as any man. Doesn’t matter if the blade that slays him comes from his enemy or his trusted squire. After a battle, all dead warriors look the same.”

“And Axel will have Tronscar, and you, my girl, will have this miserable city to make into something grand,” Klara said.

***

Lida followed as Helika lead them out of the chief’s chamber. The older woman was limping, her shoulders hunched. She seemed to have shrunk over the years. Or perhaps it was that Lida held her head up higher.

From the balcony rail, Lida overlooked the debauched hall. Valto’s men were past the point of merry revelry and had entered into the fighting, vomiting, and passing out portion of the evening. Her hand grew sweatier as she clutched the dagger concealed in the secret pocket of her gown. She wrapped her other arm around her daughter and pulled her in closer.

“Did that satisfy you?” Helika spoke with the same amount of bitter hatred she had always held for Lida.

She was referring what had taken place just moments before. The chief had clung to Katia’s hand, pleading forgiveness before he faced his son in the afterlife. Her brave, sweet girl had stroked the dying man’s hand and said that there was naught to forgive, that her mother had not raised her to begrudge anyone. The chief wept bitterly, pleading for forgiveness nonetheless, which Katia had freely given before the chief had drifted into unconsciousness. From his gray skin, sour smell, and labored breathing, Lida expected his suffering would soon be over. His death was perhaps only days away.

“Why did you truly come here?” Helika hissed. “To gloat, to rub his face in his shame before his miserable death?”

Lida drew Magnus’s spirit into her heart and spoke with his power and conviction. “Nay.” She would not cower, nor flinch. “I want nothing more than to leave this island forever. Your son brought us here with a signed decree from the bishop. I will gladly depart if you will have Katia released—”

“What decree?” Helika demanded.

“The bishop’s decree, demanding the return of the chief’s granddaughter. Valto went so far as to state that I stole her from the chief. When Jarl Magnus hears of this, you know what he will do, don’t you? It will be war with Norrland, Helika. Are you so blind with your contempt for me that you believe Lylasku can defend itself against the jarl’s fleet?”

The old woman’s eyes grew wide, clearly overwhelmed with the new information. “You lie. You were always a liar.” With growing dread, Lida realized Helika was no longer in command nor control of her son.

Lida tucked Katia under her arm and moved quickly to their assigned chamber at the end of a long dark corridor. “Come, my love.” She tugged her daughter inside and shut the door behind them.

“Mama?” Katia said in a low voice. “I miss my real family. My father’s family is strange, and they all smell sour and in need of a bath.”

Lida’s hands shook as she slid the thin wood bar across the door. “I miss our real family as well,” she said. A kick from an average-sized man would knock the door in. She needed to find a new place to hide tomorrow. Perhaps she could find a friend among Otso’s brothers.

Lida clutched an arm across her full breasts. Were her sons hungry? Were they cold? What if she never saw them again and they grew into men thinking their mother had abandoned them? They would scorn her for sending them away, scorn all of womankind for it, just as her husband had done. Would they ever understand the impossible choice she’d had to make in letting them go? Would that matter to them?

“Jarl Magnus will come get us soon, Mama. We needn’t worry.” Katia patted her hand. Lida circled her arms around her daughter and pressed her into her chest.

“Of course he will, my love. Of course he will,” she said.