Éire’s Captive Moon (12 page)

“She’s not a moonbeam, Agnarr,” Tuirgeis said as the
kvinn medisin
gave them her attention. His face was stern though his tone was jesting. “She’s more like Thor’s lightning.”

“Thor, yes,” Agnarr repeated absently. He was perplexed. He did not want his new woman—slave, yes, of course—to shame him in front of Tuirgeis, but it was difficult for him to be harsh with her.

Yet the men were watching. The other slaves were watching. Combined, the pairs of eyes were enough to compel him to act. He frowned in consternation and reached down to pull the young healer to her feet. “She may be lightning, but she is a skilled medicine woman as well.”

“What is her name?”

“Charis.”

“That is not a name of the Islanders,” Tuirgeis commented, looking the pale woman over. Agnarr shrugged. He didn’t care much. What was most gratifying to him was that the slave was not fighting, and that the conversations around the boat had resumed. “I’ve heard it before. It’s Greek.”

“Well, she is a good healer, no matter her name. I’ll give her a new name.” It was customary among his people. Slaves were often given names if they would be staying with a family. It helped them to blend in, to become more accustomed to remaining, to help them understand the permanence of their position. “If it hadn’t been for her, Erik might have died.”

A grunt. “He was foolish,” Tuirgeis said, disgust curling his lip. “I don’t know what you see in that boy.”

Myself
, Agnarr thought, keeping his face impassive.
Myself
.

He shook it off, much like the heavy sail shook off wind and water.

“So, are you keeping her as a
leman
?” Tuirgeis continued.

Agnarr couldn’t help the inward stiffening when his leader took Charis’s chin in his hand and turned her head from left to right. “I hadn’t considered that.”

Tuirgeis, face still impassive, allowed humor to suffuse his voice. “Well, you should, before someone else offers to buy her from you and keep her themselves. I have given her to you, and so I’ll tell Jarl Olav Magnusson when we return.”

He had expected that, but Agnarr remembered to express his thanks as Tuirgeis released his healer. “A
leman
,” he went on, thinking about it and smiling. “Yes, I might.”

“But Magda Elsdottir?” Tuirgeis said, smiling now as he turned to cross the deck. His laugh was rich. “I am not sure she’ll approve!”

Agnarr chuckled to himself. Magda, his betrothed, likely wouldn’t care. Elsdottir was not anxious for the match, for she wished to marry someone with more wealth. Though he could now afford her bride price, he reminded himself.

He brought his attention back to his slave, Charis. “I shall have to come up with a name for you.”

The woman looked right through him, not showing any sign of interest. Agnarr felt a pressure building up inside himself, tightening his muscles in the ancient battle-response. “You will listen to me!” he insisted, lashing out at her with his voice, not his hands. Her eyes flickered in response, and he grabbed her roughly by the arm to compel her to pay attention. Finally, those pale eyes were
seeing
him, not seeing
through
him. He saw the antagonism in her, felt the hatred in her rigid body.

Agnarr knew she would have to be dealt with, but not here on the ship. There would be time enough for that when they reached his home. Without a word, he pushed her firmly to the deck and turned his back on her. He had his men to see to and they carried more weight with him than the stubbornness of one
trell
.

The sea. All around him. No land in sight anywhere.

“Oh, God,” Cowan sighed loudly, not caring who heard him. “Why didn’t you get me out of this? Lord, what good can I do here instead of with my people?”

He heard a soft snort near his feet. Turning within the rough ropes that bound him to the heavy, briny mast, Cowan saw Charis propped up on her elbow staring at him. She’d been quiet, alternately crying into her arms or searching the faces on the ship for people she knew.

Until now, she had not chosen to interact with him since he had made her speak to the foreign lords. Cowan didn’t dwell on that; he was more concerned about his own situation, his father’s people, and the guilt he carried for Martin’s death.

Martin had been killed. Tuirgeis had, oddly enough, looked mildly sorry to have done so, but Cowan could only try to remember that Martin had tried to die a martyr’s death.

But had he really? Cowan didn’t know. Was Martin’s death for Christ or for his own need to stand up for something in a new land?

“What are you talking to that god of yours for?” The healer’s derisive tone sufficed to drag Cowan from his heartache and worry over the future, if not quite the guilt of the past.
 

“Did you not believe in the One True God?” Cowan asked, surprised that the village closest to Bangor Monastery would have harbored anyone who was not of the faith.

He watched Charis hitch herself up slowly, a handspan at a time. The moonlight cast her face in shadow, but it made her hair look almost angelic. The canopy that had shaded her during the day had been removed. No added resistance to the wind was wanted and seeing the stars was essential for night sailing. Charis tossed a tangled section of hair over her shoulder and made another disdainful sound. “One True God? I thought you weren’t a monk.” Her tone was soft but scathing, and Cowan had to wonder what the monks had done to earn such a comment. The way she spoke sounded as if she classed the monks with the barbarians.

“I’m not a monk,” Cowan assured her. “But I do believe in Jesu, the Christ.”

“The monks would have had me killed for not believing in him,” she asserted, tossing a hand in denial. “Because they thought I had to be a witch.”

Are the rumors true, then?
Cowan wondered silently.

Was she? He had to ask. “Well, which of the gods do you worship, then?” Many in his father’s lands worshiped the old ones, though the druids had been discredited long since. Monasteries and schools all over Éire taught of the One True God and his Son.

The wind beat at the sail overhead in the silence after his question. Finally, Charis shrugged and moved to lean against the wooden mast. He couldn’t see her as clearly, but perhaps that was her intention. “I don’t worship anyone or anything. The god you speak of is weak and a coward to have allowed anyone to kill his son. And to have such men as monks as his servants! And the Old Ones are not effective either. No, there’s only a person’s wits to get them through the world.” She laughed—a short, hard and eloquent sound. “How could those stupid monks think I was a witch? I healed one of their own, and he saw that I had no magic or power over him, just my plants and what Achan taught me.”

Her voice was determined, and he could see her hands laced confidently over her knees beside his. He was relieved that she used no magic. “Who’s Achan? Was he your father?”

Another long pause greeted his question, and Cowan thought perhaps Charis had withdrawn again, thinking of her husbands, silent tears sliding down her cheeks. He had seen that often this day. Hers had not been the only tears shed either.

“Achan, well now, he raised me, understand,” she said, her tone now more lyrical, like a bard’s. “But he was not my father.”

“Your father died, then?” It was a long time ago, of course, and he did not anticipate an emotional reaction. His own mother had died when he was a wee lad, barely walking. His father had wed another, in a marriage of the second degree, since he had far more to bring to the marriage than she.

“I don’t know who my father was,” Charis admitted, her voice quiet.

Feeling as if he had made an error in judgment, Cowan tried again. “So was Achan your mother’s husband?” Fathers, under the old Brehon laws, were liable for the support of their children, unless those children had been begat by trickery or if the mother had prostituted herself. Charis would have had a hard time of it without a man’s support, in all likelihood. How had she wed two husbands when she had not had the status of a father?

“Achan was not my mother’s husband. He said—well, he said he found me.”

Startled, Cowan stretched to turn his head as far as he could, so he could see her face for a moment. “What? You were abandoned?”

“I’ll tell you what Achan told me,” Charis said slowly.

“Achan said that it was winter when I was born, about twenty-one winters past. The tail end of the worst season ever.”

“My father told me about that one,” Cowan interrupted, remembering as he settled against the ropes again. “That was the year my mother died of the lung rot.”

“
Isea
, that was a hard year,” Charis continued, her voice seeming to become one with the moonlight and lapping waves. “Achan was out on a walk and said that finding my mother was like finding a lucky charm or something. A gift from the very earth.”

“He found your mother?” Had she been cast out?

Charis shifted uncomfortably. “Well, he said she was in a wolf’s den, but she was not a wolf. A lady, he said, by her clothes. He thought,” she went on, her voice slipping to little more than a whisper, “that she might have been of the
sidhe
.”

Cowan strained once more to see her face. “The
sidhe
?”

“Do you mock my foster father?” Charis demanded, her voice still oddly quiet.

“No, not at all. My father claims to have seen some of the fair folk, and I know I’ve heard tales of them that I believe.”

“Well, I’m not sure I believe, but I only know that the woman who was my mother died giving birth to me. I never knew her name.”

“I’m sorry,” Cowan offered, when it seemed she had finished her story.

“I was sorrier when Achan died,” Charis said. “But by then, I knew I had to stand for myself, and so I have.” She turned then, surprising him by the direct way she confronted him. “And I will tell you, Cowan, that no god could have done more for me than Achan. He was there for me, he taught me the ways of healing and surgery, and he showed me how to live. I don’t need to hear about your god.”

“He’s not the weak coward you think he is, Charis,” Cowan felt compelled to say. The scriptures reminded him that anyone who was ashamed of Jesu before men would be held in contempt before Christ, or so he had read. “He is strong beyond anything.”

Charis’s lip curled, he saw as she turned her head. “Then why didn’t your god save you from the Northmen?”

To that, Cowan had no answer.

Chapter 9

“Charis.”

Charis avoided Agnarr’s summons as a matter of principle, choosing instead to continue to plait the tangled mess of her hair as the oarsmen angled their ship into the harbor. She had grieved deeply for her husbands; the last nine days on the deck of this ship as they sailed over the wide, wide water had given her nothing but time to grieve. But now, it was time to bury her sorrow. She had a duty to her people.

The crossing had been uneventful; nine days and eight nights of good winds. Charis had been compelled—by her own need to be of use as well as by Agnarr, her captor—to help the ill and wounded.

And now they were approaching land. A warm land, with people already on shore, waving to them, beckoning for them to bring the ship into port and—

And what? Charis didn’t know.

“Charis!” His heavy feet paced the center planks on his way to the small space of decking she’d claimed for the daylight hours. Before he reached her, she pushed herself up to her feet, by now used to the swaying of the deck beneath.

Without a word, she followed him to the bow of the ship, where Lord Tuirgeis was standing, making some motions to the people on shore. The leader turned then and called, “Kingson!”

None of the captives had been bound since the second day on the water, so Cowan was able to join them without delay. “
Ja
?” he said, in the tongue of the Northmen. Charis didn’t care for the language, but she hadn’t been able to help understanding some of it.

She decided not to listen further, instead focusing on the land in front of her. So far she had been able to avoid thinking about what would happen after the trip. Getting through each day had been trial enough. Perhaps she had become complacent, becoming used to the occasional directives from Agnarr, the casual conversation of the two fellow villagers on the ship, ignoring the monks as much as she was able.