Far After Gold (3 page)

“Beddable?”

Flane nodded. “Very.”

“What are you going to do with her? Apart from the obvious?”

“She will be my bed slave.”

“You think Katla’s going to accept that?”

“Katla will have to put up with it, that’s all.”

Skeggi shook his head. “You’re a brave man, Flane Ketilsson. Let me be there when you tell her. I very much want to see it.” He ducked to one side to avoid the sharp jab Flane aimed at his shoulder. “Why did you do it?”

Flane shook his head slowly. “We paid good silver for some strong youths to help with the ploughing.” His wide shoulders moved lightly up and down in a gentle shrug. “Skuli Grey Cloak chose them.” He rested his forearms on the fence and squinted across the paddock at the steading’s few milk cows. “I can’t say why I did it. She was trying to hide behind the other slaves, didn’t want to be spotted. I saw her, and fancied her. She wears an old gown she’s outgrown, and—”

“How do you know she’s outgrown it?”

Flane frowned and thought about it. “It’s too tight across the chest, and shows too much ankle. May I go on without you drooling over me? She speaks our language and there’s a streak of arrogance in her. She offered me silver to take her back home.”

“She sounds like trouble.”

Flane regarded his friend sorrowfully. “That’s what Skuli Grey Cloak said.”

***

Emer stood uncertainly in the warm, steamy darkness. A fire burned on the stone hearth in the centre of the room and an iron brazier glowed in the back corner. Steam billowed and spiralled in the air. One of the women rose to her feet, and moved towards her. Emer took a quick step towards the door.

“Wait!” The woman called gently. “Don’t go! We won’t harm you.”

Dirty, dishevelled, and with the smell of the slave market on her, Emer wondered how these clean, shining women could bear to have her in the same room with them. Even in one if her newest gowns, Emer would have felt nervous. The heat rising through her face told her she was blushing. She braced her spine, raised her chin and waited.

The woman stretched out a small, neat hand on which a plaited gold ring glinted in the firelight. Emer’s gaze rose to the woman’s face. Who were these women? Could she trust them? Were they slaves, too? The gold ring suggested a free woman. Their men had not been in the crew, or they would have been on the jetty rather than here in the steamy hut. The other women wore jewellery too. They all looked healthy, well-fed and friendly.

“My name is Inga, and these are my friends.” The woman gestured to the little group behind her. “You will get to know them in time.”

Emer looked around the circle of women. Inga smiled and recited their names. “Birgit, Inga, Thyri and Helga.”

Emer let her gaze move slowly from woman to woman around the hearth. Unless she wanted to be thought dim and stupid, she ought to respond. “Emer. My name is Emer.”

Inga closed the distance between them and ushered her to the fire. “Come,” she said. “Come and sit down and let us care for you while you tell us how you came here.”

Bright smiles broke out around the group, and a murmur of voices filled the air. Emer’s nervous tension lessened. People here probably loved to hear a story just as much as folk back home on the island. One of the women gathered Emer’s dirty hair into a single coiled strand and skewered it at the back of her head.

“I searched for a lost calf,” Emer began slowly. She gestured at her gown. “That’s why I’m dressed in such rough old clothes. It was a fine bright day when I went down onto the beach below the dun and set off towards the far headland. If I had known what would befall me, I would not have run so eagerly down the brae.”

She had been glad, that day, to have some time alone, for her father’s news had given her much to think about. With the island hill at her back and the sun-speckled sea stretching out to Harris and the other islands, she wandered along the beach scarcely aware of the wind lifting her hair and stirring the sand grains at her feet. After all, it wasn’t every day Father sailed to Skye, spoke with his sister and arranged a marriage for his only daughter.

Angus, he’d said, was a fine young man with a happy disposition and only two years older than Emer. But Emer had not been sure she would like him.

“When someone grabbed me from behind, I thought the other young people were playing games with me,” she said slowly, watching the listening women. “But I soon discovered this man was so much stronger than any of my friends. He tossed me over his shoulder, and then I saw the dragon ship in the shallows. I screamed and screamed but he tossed me aboard while all his men watched.”

“Oh, Emer, you must have been so scared.” Inga reached out and took Emer’s hand between her own.

Emer nodded, and swallowed around the sudden lump in her throat brought on by Inga’s sympathy. “I scrambled up, but no one helped me.” Panting and panic-stricken, she remembered staring around her. Men, women and children stared back from shocked eyes. She guessed they too had been plucked from other islands and beaches.

“I cried,” she said. “I wept till an older woman slapped me. ‘Yer greetin’ upsets the bairns,’ she said.”

“Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry.”

“I stopped crying at once,” Emer said, remembering the two white-faced, terrified children staring up at her from behind their mother’s skirts. “I heard the crew. They joked amongst themselves about how many pieces of silver they would receive once we stood before the overseer of the slave market in Dublin.”

She hadn’t wept since that first day. She had been stoic and silent, but it hadn’t done her any good. She was sullen, the other women sneered. Too pretty, they said, and full of her own importance. Too proud, the men said, to speak to them. The truth was she couldn’t speak; if she did, the sobs would break out again. The result was she endured the long voyage down the coast of Scotland entirely alone.

“What happened when you reached Dublin?”

“I had never seen anything like it. It is a vast quayside, with so many ships. Guards with spears and shields marched along the top of the huge palisade around the settlement, and there were hordes of people everywhere.” It had shocked her to see so many people in one place. “We were hustled into a big compound with high timber walls, and that was when I realised I would end my days as someone’s slave. The nights were the worst, when I dared not sleep for fear one of the guards would find me.” She shuddered and murmurs of sympathy came from the other women. “I stayed with the women and children, thinking I would be safe with them, but I know now those women would trade me for their children’s safety without a second thought.”

She fell silent, and made no objection when the women undressed her. She could not match all the names to the correct faces, but she thought it was Birgit who took her dress and chemise away, and kicked her sandals aside once she untied them.

“No!” Emer snatched at the chemise, wrenched it out of the woman’s hands. Ignoring the gasps around her, she hunted through the fabric until she found the clumsy pocket, tied off with a scrap of twine. Sinking back on her heels, she undid the knot and shook the slender gold ring into her palm.

“It is my ring.” She slipped it on her finger. “I had to hide it, or they would have stolen it from me.”

They admired the ring, her slenderness, her beautiful hands, and told her, laughing as they said it, that she was too pretty for her own good. They admired her necklace of glass beads and left it around her neck when she objected to their suggestion that she should remove it. They wondered in teasing tones what Flane had in mind for her. Katla, they said with a laugh, might not be at all pleased to see her. One woman added with a sly smile that Flane would be better pleased than Katla, and everyone laughed.

“Who is Katla?” Emer asked.

“Skuli Grey Cloak’s daughter,” Inga told her. “His only living child.”

Another voice chimed in. “Katla wants to marry Flane Ketilsson.”

Emer remembered the way Skuli had seemed displeased over Flane’s purchase, and could see why he might not approve. If Flane was due to marry Skuli’s daughter, why did he want her? It hardly seemed fair to his bride.

Welcoming though they were, Emer felt strange and alone among the group of women when they chattered amongst themselves. She looked down at the shiny gold ring and remembered the day, not so long ago, when her father handed it to her on her sixteenth birthday.

“We waited, your mother and I, until the hawthorn blossom arrived just as it did the year you were born. You are a woman now, my dear.”

Remembering their love strengthened her, made her feel less alone.

The women of Skuli’s Steading laughed and gossiped in gentle voices as they scooped warm water from a cauldron over the fire, soap from a pottery jar and washed Emer from top to toe, and then set about her long hair. Deprived of friends and family for almost a week, their care and attention came as a blessed relief. The women were kind and caring and Emer quelled rising tears while soft, feminine hands touched her as only her mother and sister had done.

The thought that she might never see them again hovered always at the edge of consciousness. She closed her mind to it, pushed the worry away as she had so many times in the last few days. Somehow, being with Inga and the others made it harder to bear, harder to keep the thoughts out.

She had no idea where her home was in relation to the mainland of Alba. Names like Skye and Dublin meant little to her. She felt sure that Donald, even though he was younger, would have known exactly where Pabaigh was in the ocean. No one thought it necessary to tell her, since she was expected to stay at home with mother and Catriona, and take no interest in the wider world.

If she hadn’t gone searching for a stray calf, she wouldn’t be here today. Who would guess that such an everyday task could end in such disaster? Unless someone saw the ship and guessed that she had been taken on board, her family had no idea where she was or what had happened to her.

Her head dipped, her muscles tightened, and Inga clucked and murmured in sympathy. Emer’s throat swelled, closed and a huge racking sob shuddered through her. The chattering around the fire ceased for a moment, and then redoubled as women asked what was wrong, what was matter with her, was she ill? Did she have a pain? Their kindness only made her sob harder.

Emer shook her head, kept her face hidden between her hands and fought for control. She needed these women. If they rejected her now, she did not know what she would do. In a world fallen apart, she clutched gratefully at the kindness they offered, wiped away her tears, looked up and gave them a wobbly smile. Though her heart ached for her mother, she told herself life might be bearable after all.

“Someone has beaten her,” a voice murmured. “Do you see the bruises across her shoulders?”

That would be from her altercation with the overseer. She couldn’t see the bruises, so she had no idea how vivid or faded they might be. Once she was dressed, the marks would be safely hidden, but Birgit had taken her linen dress and chemise away.

Thyri had washed it. Hung out in the fresh warm wind, the gown would take a while to dry, but the fire was bright, the room was warm and the dreadful odour of the slave stockade had gone. If she was hungry, they had oatcakes. When her eyes lit up, Inga reached for a basket, pulled back a flap of cloth and offered rich golden oatcakes. Emer almost cried again at the sight of them, and ate eagerly.

“Come and wash off the soap,” Inga said. “Then come back and have another oatcake by the fire.”

She took Emer’s hand and led the girl out through a small doorway onto the wooden platform jutting out over the loch. Emer looked doubtfully from the clear water to Inga and back again. “Am I supposed to jump in? It’ll be awfully cold after sitting by the fire.” She shook her head, and backed away. One of the other women came out, laughing and plunged into the water, spluttered and rinsed soap from her hair and then rushed for the wooden steps and the warmth of the hearth.

Emer looked doubtfully at Inga, who nodded, smiled and gestured to the water. “I know you won’t believe me,” she said. “But it is refreshing and you will feel wonderful afterwards.”

Emer took a couple of quick steps and jumped.

The water was so cold she squealed out loud, and plunged for the steps. Someone held out a large piece of cloth, Emer grabbed it, wrapped herself in it and hurried back to the fire. Once there, warmth tingled through her and she felt truly alive for the first time since she had been captured. The woman who had leapt into the water with her smiled across the fire, a conspiratorial smile that warmed Emer almost as much as the flames. She was accepted, and a sudden flood of warmth replaced the cold memories of the last week. She bit into another oatcake and caught the crumbs in her cupped palm.

“Flane is a fine warrior,” the woman said. Emer remembered her name—Helga. “He will be Skuli Grey Cloak’s successor when he marries Katla.”

“If he marries Katla,” Thyri said on a soft laugh.

Emer sat mute, but her stomach churned and she wondered once again why Flane had brought her here if he was to marry the chieftain’s daughter. Suspecting Thyri was trying to warn her, she sent a shaky smile in her direction.

“Skuli wanted to marry her to Snorri Longnose,” said Helga. “But Katla would have none but Flane. You can understand it; she is the chieftain’s daughter, and Flane is his finest warrior.”

“But it might be better for everyone to merge our steading with that of Snorri Longnose,” Inga suggested. “The two camps would then become one, and be all the better because of it.”

“She is a strong woman, our chieftain’s daughter. He, of course, gives her whatever she asks for.”

Emer’s heart sank. Katla would not take kindly to her once she knew Flane had brought her to the steading.

“Katla talks of an agreement made at the summer solstice,” Inga said. “But I notice Flane always looks a little shifty about it. I suspect he was too drunk to remember what he said.”

The women laughed, and took turns to run a fine-toothed wooden comb through Emer’s hair while they gossiped and giggled. Occasionally they found something they tossed on the fire, and when her hair dried to its usual rich chestnut sheen, Birgit plaited it, coiled it into a bun at the back of her head and skewered a long bone pin through to hold it in place.