Brandewyne, Rebecca (21 page)

Or
is it as Wulfgar told me: that the old gods still exist and are ever
capricious?
Rhowenna
wondered— but did not speak the words aloud.

There
was no time for further conversation, for just then, the door of the bathhouse
swung open to reveal Wulfgar and Flóki, who had obviously grown tired of
waiting and decided that the two women had had ample time to complete their
toilette. Rhowenna was glad then that she had not dallied in the tub, but was
dressed and ready to depart— although some of her ebullience at once more being
clean faded when Wulfgar again tied the
rope around her throat and bound her
hands behind her back.

On
the way back to the ox-cart, Wulfgar bought a basket of fruits and nuts from a
Slavic trader; and once the vehicle was under way, he and Flóki, with their
dinner knives, peeled apples, sloes, and plums, and cracked open hazelnuts and
walnuts, feeding Rhowenna and Morgen chunks of the fruits and pieces of the
nutmeat. Wulfgar's strong, slender fingers felt moist and sticky and
disturbingly intimate against Rhowenna's lips as he pressed the fruits and nuts
upon her, now and then slowly tracing the outline of her mouth, tugging gently
at her lower lip, and wiping away the juices of the succulent sloes and plums,
which trickled down her chin.

"Don't,"
she implored, unable to bite back the whispered word that issued from her lips
at the loverlike caresses of his fingers.

"Don't
what, lady?" he inquired softly, feigning innocence of her meaning,
although she knew, from the desire in his eyes and the strange half-smile that
curved his mouth, that he knew only too well the unsettling effect he was
having upon her and took satisfaction in it. "Are you not hungry— as I am
hungry?" Now it was she who pretended innocence of his own meaning, the
double entendre he had intended with his words. Her
eyes fell
before his; a blush rose to her cheeks. "With your hands bound, how can
you eat if I do not feed you, lady?"

"You...
you could untie me," she suggested.

"Nay,
I prefer this method— or, even better yet, this...." Wulfgar's voice
trailed away as, taking a small slice of plum between his teeth, he suddenly
bent his head, taking Rhowenna unaware, and pressed his mouth to her own.

With
his tongue, he slowly pushed the plum slice between her lips, so it lay sweet
and seeming to melt upon her tongue as his own tongue followed it inside,
twisting lingeringly inside her mouth, touching, tasting, setting her atremble
with the wild, unexpected thrill that suddenly shot through her, making her
feel dizzy and breathless and faint. Startled, frightened by the flame that
seemed to ignite at the core of her being to leap and to spread through her
entire body, flickering and burning, she tried to yank away from him. But his
hands cupped her face now; his fingers were ensnared in the tresses at her
temples, imprisoning her, and she could not free herself from his grasp. For an
endless moment, his tongue swirled the plum slice over her own tongue, teasing,
tantalizing, spreading mellifluous juices before, at long last, he
released her,
his eyes smoldering with passion and knowing— mocking her. Fury and shame and
some other dark thing loosed from deep inside her roiled within Rhowenna; she
felt a wild urge to spit the plum slice into his face. But reading her mind,
Wulfgar laid his hand against her mouth, drawing his forefinger slowly,
erotically, along her lower lip and saying:

"I
would not, lady, if I were you." He paused, allowing this warning to
penetrate. Then, his voice low, husky, he demanded, "Swallow it."

So
soft in her mouth had the plum slice grown beneath his taunting tongue that it
hardly needed to be chewed. Still, it was with difficulty that Rhowenna choked
the piece of fruit down her throat, feeling as though, somehow, it were a part
of Wulfgar that she took deep inside her, a thought that, unbidden, conjured
other, even more intimate images in her mind, acts she had unwittingly
witnessed the
Víkingrs
forcing
upon the other women during the battle on the shores of Usk and, later, aboard
the
Dragon's
Fire.
Until
the marauders had swooped down upon her homeland, she had known little more
than the rudiments of how a man bedded a woman. Now, no matter how hard she had
tried to close her eyes and ears against enlightenment,
she was no
longer so innocent as a maiden should have been.

"You
said... you said you would not force yourself upon me!" Her tone was
accusing.

"
'Twas only a kiss, lady— little enough payment for the garments and the bath
and the basket of fruits and nuts, I am thinking."

"And
what will be the price of your clothing and housing and feeding me until Prince
Cerdic or my father pays the ransom you will demand for me, I am
wondering?" she shot back defiantly, a scornful mimicry of his manner of
speaking, her eyes blazing with the violet fire of amethysts in the sunlight,
although he thought that there was fear, too, in their depths.

"Lady,
I said I would not rape you; that much is true. But I did
not
say that I would
not try to bring you willingly to my bed. I have wanted you from the first
moment I laid eyes on you, and I will have you if I can." The declaration
was blunt, matter-of-fact.

"You
speak of lust—"

"And
you would rather hear words of love? Those, also, I can speak, and will if you
will listen." He paused for a moment, as though gathering his thoughts.
Then he continued, his voice soft and melodious, as, with his
words, he sang
to her a bard's song.

"Lady,
I have never seen a woman more beautiful than you. Your skin is whiter than the
snowy breasts of the wild swans that float upon the meres of summer in the
Northland. Your eyes are the violet of the heather that blooms upon the
hillsides of my homeland, your cheeks the rose of the morning sun that rises on
the eastern horizon and sets the Skagerrak aflame, your lips as crimson as the
sail of a longship, kissed by the wind— as I would kiss you, softly, like the
breeze that stirs the reeds of the Northland's heaths, and then more fiercely,
like a storm at sea. Gently would I nuzzle your shell-like ears, your perfect
breasts, as the roe deer feed among the lichens and moss of the forests that
rise, ever green, against the northern sky; and so would I stroke your
trembling thighs until they opened to me, spread wide like the wings of a
falcon in flight, soaring upon the clouds, as I would teach you to soar. I
would bury my face in your raven hair and against your milk-white throat to
breathe the heady fragrance of your woman's scent— and myself in you until you
wept my name for joy and cried out your sweet surrender. Aye, all this would I
do, and more, for love of you, lady."

"You—
you must not say such things to me," Rhowenna breathed, although, despite
herself, she
had thought his words more eloquent even than Owain the bard's songs, which had
sometimes been so beautiful that they had brought tears to her eyes. "Your
words are lies you spin as a spider does its web— to deceive and to ensnare. I
have seen for myself how a Northman uses a woman— violently, brutally, so she
cries out not in surrender, but in agony at the pain inflicted upon her!"

"It
does not have to be like that, lady— nor have I ever used any woman in such a
cruel fashion. This, I swear by the gods, so you will know I speak the
truth."

Rhowenna
did not answer; she did not know what to say. No man had ever spoken to her as
Wulfgar had. He was not like the other Northmen; she had recognized that from
the beginning. Now she told herself again that he was her enemy, her captor,
and that she hated him. But in her heart, she knew that it was not so simple as
that. He confused her, filled her with strange, conflicting emotions she had
never felt before. Almost, she wished he had beaten and raped her ruthlessly,
for then could she have hardened her heart against him, knowing with certainty
that he was deserving of no less than her abhorrence and contempt. But instead,
he had offered her his protection and
assistance; he had kept her safe from
the other
Víkingrs,
and for that had claimed nothing more than a few
kisses as his price. Was that such a bad bargain? Deep down inside, Rhowenna
knew that it was not.

Heavily
laden with the goods the
Víkingrs
had traded for in Sliesthorp, the
ox-cart trundled on toward the port of Hollingstedt, wheels clattering over the
road, the great system of earthworks that was the Danevirke rising to the
south, like Jormungand, the giant Midgard serpent that the Northmen believed
girded the world. On the western horizon, the mammoth ball of fire that was the
summer sun sank slowly toward the sea, its rays turning Wulfgar's hair to
gilded flame and making Rhowenna's fair skin glow with the luminescence of a
pearl. Side by side, the two of them sat in silence, and their thoughts were
long thoughts.

From
the sandy shores in the distance, the calls of the seabirds rose, achingly
sweet and forlorn, a cry to the heart.

Olaf's Markland

From
Hollingstedt, the three longships sailed on up the coast of Jutland, past small
islands and long beaches rippled with sand dunes, until they gained its
northernmost reaches, a region known as the Skaw. From there, the vessels
struck out across the Skagerrak, toward its northwestern shores; and presently,
the end of their long journey was in sight. Like the rest of the women,
Rhowenna stood upon the deck of the
Dragon's Fire,
silenced and
daunted by the vast, craggy, heavily forested mountains that hove up in shades
of dark green, blue, and purple in the distance ahead, their snowcapped peaks
piercing the clouds, cutting a jagged oblique into the robin's-egg blue of the
sky, where hundreds of seabirds soared and cried hauntingly along the coast.
The mountains of Walas had been but hills compared
to these huge,
towering alps, whose steep, rocky sides fell away sharply into deep, narrow
valleys through which white-watered rivers ran, and shallower, wider expanses
of marsh and heath, where the morning mist still clung to the low-lying hollows
of the land and swans and ducks called, floating upon still, reed-grown meres.
The sea was so clear and so pristine and dazzling a blue that the glare of the
sunlight reflecting off the waves hurt Rhowenna's eyes, and she held one hand
to her brow to shade them.

"Lady,
you see the Northland at its most beautiful," Wulfgar remarked from where
he stood at the tiller, guiding the
Dragon's Fire
toward the
fjord-riddled coast, "for its summers are as glorious as its winters are
bleak. The sun shines long hours during this season; even at the midnight hour,
it can still be seen in the sky in those regions of the Northland that lie at
the edge of the Frozen Sea that flows into the Grey Sea, which is dark and
rough and so cold that great chunks of ice float upon its waves. There do we
Northmen hunt whales and sea cows— the walrus— and seals whence come the
rigging for the sails of our longships, and the tusks of ivory we trade in the
marketplaces. But here"— with one hand, he indicated the sweep of wild
shore ahead— "here is where
we live. Here is home."

"Home
for you, Wulfgar Bloodaxe— but not for me," Rhowenna reminded him quietly,
beset with longing of a sudden for the familiar, gentler green mountains of
Walas. Her heart ached at the thought that perhaps she would never see them
again, or the shores of the Severn Sea. "Here have I been brought against
my will— a stranger, a captive, a slave. Never will your Northland be home to
me."

"Never
is a long time, lady, and who but the gods know what our future holds in store?
Save perhaps for the spaewife Yelkei, a yellow slave from the Eastlands, who
reared me and who sees in the fires and mists and her castings of the rune
stones what cannot be seen by other mortals, who possess not her power of
prophecy. 'Twas she who sent me in search of you, lady. 'Twas she who said you
would be mine. And now you are— as the gods ordained. And if 'tis also their
whim that you call the Northland home, you will, lady; for the gods do with us
as they will, and we are but shells upon the sands of life's strands, cast
hither and yon by the great sea of fate."

"Perhaps,"
Rhowenna conceded slowly. "But even if 'tis my destiny that I be compelled
to spend the rest of my life here in your Northland, 'twill still not be home
to
me.
And that, neither your gods nor you can change, Wulfgar Bloodaxe, I promise
you. Walas is my home, and come what may, I shall never forget that!" Her
voice was low, fierce, and her hands clenched at her sides, so her knuckles
shone white and her nails dug into her palms.

"Do
you not think, then, to call Mercia such when you are wed to Prince
Cerdic?" Wulfgar asked, a note of curiosity in his tone.

"My
thoughts about Mercia and my betrothed are none of your concern, and so I shall
not make you privy to them," she rejoined stiffly.

"You
just did— for if you found joy in the match your father arranged for you, you
would be glad to tell me that, to use the knowledge like a scourge against me,
to hurt me, knowing how I desire you. Instead, you are silent; so you are no
more eager, then, to lie in Prince Cerdic's bed than in my own, are you? Still,
you will submit to him— although, like a fox the hound, you do seek to elude
me, lady, and doubtless pray every night to your Christian God that I do not
grow weary of the chase."