Far After Gold (4 page)

Thyri held out her newly washed bleached linen chemise and Emer pulled it over her head, and drew the cords at her throat. The white linen gathered neatly around her long neck and hid her glass beads.

“Show off your pretty necklace.”

Emer shook her head. She wanted to keep it private, for it was her only link with her mother.

“Better to keep it covered,” Inga replied, with a meaningful glance at the first speaker. The woman shot a quick look at Inga and then nodded.

By evening, her linen overtunic was dry, too. Someone admired the lovely rose colour as they tugged it over her head. “It becomes your chestnut hair so well.” They were kind enough not to mention how small and tight it was.

“I dyed it myself. My first attempt. It is a very old gown.” Emer smiled, but didn’t tell them she had intended the gown to be crimson. No need for them to know her first attempt at dyeing cloth had failed.

Once she was dressed and with her stout leather sandals securely tied about her ankles, her stomach started to churn with anxiety. The women would leave the bathing hut soon, and where would she go then?

***

Inga took her to the main hall, which was much bigger than the home she was used to on Pabaigh, and left her on the bed space nearest the main door. Emer looked around. Sleeping platforms ran along two sides, some partitioned off by wattle walls or leather curtains hung from wooden poles. She guessed twenty or thirty people might live here on a permanent basis. A red cloth curtain at the far end of the hall caught her eye. That would be where the chieftain and his wife retreated to private sleeping quarters.

Flane could not be Skuli Grey Cloak’s son, of that she was sure. There was no family resemblance, and he could hardly marry Skuli’s daughter Katla if he were her brother. But there seemed to be some special relationship between the two men. That much she had gleaned from the afternoon’s chatter, but quite what the relationship was she had not been able to discover.

People wandered back into the hall after a day’s work, saw her, recognised a stranger and stared. They asked one another who she was, and one man ambled across the hall in her direction. Emer kept her gaze on the hard earthen floor.

“Who are you?”

Emer couldn’t have said why she felt threatened, but she did. Since she had to look up at him, he seemed excessively tall, with a lank fringe of hair around his ears. The light from the lamp in its niche above the door glanced off his bald head as he leant toward her, smiling in a way that made Emer shudder. She looked away, for his teeth, gapped and stained, were ugly.

He straightened abruptly. “Answer me, girl! Who brought you here?”

“Flane.”

“Flane!” A blast of foul air accompanied his snort of surprise. “What does he want with you?” As if guessing the answer, his evil grin appeared again.

How could she answer such an impossible question? Emer shrugged delicately and made a gesture with her hands to indicate she had no idea.

“Let’s have a look at you!” His finger and thumb pinched her chin.

Emer jerked back and glared at him. “Please don’t touch me!”

His grin widened. “Polite, too. You’re a pretty little thing. Flane has good taste.”

“Glad you think so, Gamel. Let go of her.” The voice was cold, and came from behind the stranger. Gamel didn’t exactly jump, but his eyes lost focus as if every sense he owned concentrated on what was behind him.

Flane stood there, arms away from his sides, hands already half-curled into fists.

Emer sat back with a huge sigh of relief. How long had Flane been there? She had been aware of nothing but the leering, ugly face bearing down on her. What would Flane think? He looked calm, but there was an edginess to him she had not seen before. The two men took stock of each other, and around the hall there was a drop in the level of conversation as heads turned to watch the confrontation in the corner.

Emer hugged herself. Her heart thudded in her chest, and she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as she stared up at the two men. Should she say something? Should she keep out of it and let Flane deal with it? Gamel continued to stare belligerently at the younger man.

Flane stepped in close. His finger jabbed the other man’s chest. “Touch this girl again and I’ll beat you to death.”

Emer’s mouth dropped open. He had spoken so quietly that no one in the hall would hear but for Gamel and herself. Gamel scowled. He held Flane’s steady, threatening gaze for several long moments, then grunted, turned and stalked off towards the fire pit.

Flane stared after the lanky, untidy figure and then turned to her, and her stomach lurched at his stern expression. Her whole life depended on this man’s good will. Would he think she had invited attention? Would he punish her, beat her as the overseer in Dublin had done?

With casual ease he threw himself onto the bed platform and surveyed her from the crown of her newly washed head to the clumsy dark leather sandals at her feet. ‘I knew it,’ he said in a satisfied tone.

She stole a glance at him from beneath her lids. ‘Knew what?’ She pressed her palms together and slid them between her knees in an attempt to relieve the tension.

He surveyed her from half-closed eyes. All his fury of a moment before had gone, and a lazy, cat-like smile crept across his face. “That you would be a beauty if you were clean.”

She could not think of a single polite comment, yet she had greeted strangers in her father’s home with warm water in a silver bowl, a towel and an offer of food since she was ten years old. His presence unsettled her, and the familiar way his dense blue gaze ran over her made things worse. Emer pressed her palms harder together. Then she gathered her courage, lifted her head and looked straight at him.

He smiled at once. “So, where is this island you come from?”

Emer lifted one shoulder in an incomplete shrug. “I thought I told you — we called it Pabaigh. I cannot tell you how to reach it, for I do not know. All I remember is that we could see the mountains of Harris from the beach.”

Flane watched her attentively.

Emer ducked her head, and kept her gaze on her hands.

“I can understand what brought Gamel to you. Your skin is smooth, and begs me to sweep my palm over the curve of your neck,” Flane murmured. “This is my sleeping space,” he said bluntly. “You will share it.”

“Here?” Emer blurted. “Where everyone can see us?”

The very real dangers of the ship and the slave market had taught her that most men behaved differently to the blood kin she knew on Pabaigh, but what Flane suggested was so far from the life she had known at home she hardly knew what to say. He seemed to think what he suggested was perfectly normal. She stared around the three timber walls that made up his bed space, and clutched her arms about herself.

“What’s wrong with it?” He sounded affronted. “It’s clean and neat, and there’s room for two.”

“What’s wrong?” Emer couldn’t hold the words back. “There is no curtain to close off the front of the bed space from the hall. I had my own space at home. I had privacy there.”

He looked at her down his short, straight nose. “Lose that resentful voice, or we won’t do well together.”

Emer’s insides knotted up at the firmness of his tone. She looked away from his fierce gaze, prodded the mattress, recognised the feel of straw and heather and remained silent.

“This is a good hall, probably much better than the one on your island, so you can get rid of that pout.”

Emer schooled her face, but couldn’t quite banish the scowl. Nor could she meet his eyes. “It seems nice. But it is not home.”

“It soon will be.” He smiled, and joined her on the edge of the bed platform. “Look around. You’ll see the hall is a fair size for the number of people who live here. The slaves sweep it regularly and the fire never goes out. We have ample food, the smoke escapes through those small gaps beneath the eaves, so you won’t be red-eyed all day. The sleeping space is generous, and you’ve already seen the washing place down by the water. Everyone uses it on a regular basis. We’re clean, Emer. What more could you want?”

Emer looked round. All he said was true. Thick, square pillars of golden wood rose up to meet the rafters, and the roof sloped down to meet the walls at the height of a tall man. Unbleached linen hid the lower portion of walls free of sleeping platforms, and someone’s clever needle had sketched mythical animals around it in coloured wool.

“It is a fair hall,” she agreed. “But it is not home.”

Flane sat on the bed, grasped her shoulders and pulled her back to lie on the mattress beside him. He laughed into her wide, shocked eyes. His lips dived to the skin beneath her jaw and nuzzled towards the neckline split in her chemise while his fingers untied the knot that held the strings closed. He parted the fabric and his mouth slid down towards the newly revealed curve of her breast. His bristles rasped against her skin and Emer fended him off with both hands.

“Don’t! Don’t!”

He braced one hand to either side of her shoulders and loomed over her. “What’s wrong?”

Emer gulped. “It isn’t right,” she muttered, unable to meet his steady gaze. She looked across the hall, where children ran about, getting in the way of their elders, and a dog barked as it leapt crazily about his newly returned master. The rest of the world seemed to be going on as normal, and here she was fighting for her virtue. No one cared.

No one had even noticed.

Flane chuckled, and she faced him suspiciously. “I can’t think of anything better,” he said. “What’s not right?”

At his tone, some of her anxiety dispersed. She focussed on his leather jerkin and a part of her brain registered that someone had dressed the leather very well indeed, and threaded small tassels through the shoulder seam. She admired the pale shade, which so nearly matched his hair.

“Be brave,” he said. “Tell me.”

He taunted her now. Emer saw the mischief in his eyes, and caution vanished. “I cannot be happy in a place where we are on public view.” She opened her eyes wide and words, unheeded, shot out of her mouth. “And we should be married before you bed me!” Her breath came and went as if she’d been running and warm blood rushed beneath the skin of her throat and face.

“Really?” His voice betrayed nothing, but his silver brows drew down in a frown. “And how would marriage change anything?”

Emer made to sit up and found there was barely a hand span between their faces. They breathed each other’s air. She sank back at once.

“It would mean I wasn’t a slave!” Her voice sounded shrill in her own ears. “As your bed slave, I am no better than the lowliest slave in this hall—or any other for that matter! I would not dare refuse you, and you would never know if I cared for you or hated you…I don’t deserve this…I don’t deserve any of this!” She ran out of breath and words at the same time, and a stray, coward tear ran down one cheek.

Flane frowned, sat back on his heels and surveyed her.

Emer bit her lip. She’d gone too far. Now she was for it. Oh, why hadn’t she kept her mouth shut? Her mother had told her over and over that she must learn to curb her tongue when talking to men. ‘Say what you wish to me, Emer, but have a care what you say to your father, your uncle or a stranger.’

“My, my…and if I marry you….” Flane leaned on one long bare muscular arm, his head tilted to one side with his straw-coloured hair curled onto his shoulder. He seemed more amused than annoyed. “If I marry you, you will make a happy and obedient wife?”

“I….” She almost said yes and then hesitated. She had been brought up not to lie, and even here she found it impossible.

“It is an important question,” he said. “Take your time.”

The way his lips quirked at the corners made her think he was laughing at her and she didn’t like it. She lifted her chin and narrowed her eyes. “If I give you my promise,” she said, “I expect one from you in return.”

His eyebrows rose in exaggerated query. “And that would be…?”

“That you will not force me until we are wed,” she said in a rush.

He stared at her in total surprise. His chin dropped towards his chest and his shoulders shook as he snorted with laughter. He hauled in a huge breath, broke into a guffaw and his skin turned rosy in front of her eyes. He laughed until he clasped both arms about his midriff as if his stomach ached.

Emer scowled down at his blond head, flung herself back against the wall and folded her arms across her chest. How dare he laugh like that? How dare he?

Chapter Three

Flane wiped tears from his eyes, groaned and sat back against the wall. Small, weak eruptions of laughter threatened from time to time, but the flush slowly subsided from his skin as he regarded her. His merriment was hard to resist. Emer struggled to stay angry with him, but a small tentative smile betrayed her.

He saw it, and his reaction was swift. Rising to his knees, he reached for her and his mouth swooped down to join hers.

She recoiled, and jerked her head sideways. As he leaned in, she pushed against him, but her slender hands and reed thin wrists proved useless against his solid bone and muscle. Emer squeaked in outrage, and scrambled backwards to get away from him.

Still grinning, he seized her hand, drew it to his mouth and curved his tongue around her fingertips. Emer wrenched her hand from his as if his touch burned her, and lurched further away. Her back slammed against the wooden wall, and she pressed against it, panting, watching him.

“You’re frightened, aren’t you?” He sat back on his heels, watching her.

Emer shook her head in violent denial. “No.”

“Of course you are. You’re as pale as milk.”

When his gaze descended to the spot where her breasts surged against the too tight cloth of her old gown, Emer instinctively crossed her arms and dragged her legs up, closing in on herself. There was no escape route, and her shoulders already ached from being pressed so hard against the wall.

Pride made her deny her fears, but she was afraid, and he knew it. She could not still the slight tremor that ran through her. Her blood fizzed and bounced in her veins and she could not think, let alone speak.