Loki's Daughters (30 page)

"Seize our women, will you, Viking? Take that!" The staff swung again.

Ronan blocked it with his arms, then twisted it from the priest's hands and threw Father Hewil to the ground.

"Stop it. He's a priest!"

"I know that, Arienh. That is the only reason he isn't dead. Kindly realize it was he who attacked me."

Arienh knelt beside the priest, who groaned as he rose, rubbing his elbow.

"My poor Arienh, has he hurt you?" asked Father Hewil.

"Hurt her? The only one with bruises here is me." Ronan glared at both of them.

Well, that was true, but it must have looked very odd to Father Hewil, who had surely thought her as good as dead.

"Nay, Father Hewil, I am unharmed. He has been here for a while, as they have taken over our village, but they have not hurt anyone."

Surprise lit the priest's face as he trained his suspicious gaze on Ronan.

With a snort of frustration, Ronan retrieved his sword and shoved it into its scabbard. Well, at least there was one thing Arienh didn't need to worry about. Today she wouldn't end up in the grass making love.

"Ah," said Father Hewil as he rose to his feet and dusted off his cassock. "It is the same everywhere. Northmen are everywhere these days, spreading their heathen ways. I suppose we should be grateful they are mostly of the kind to settle."

"I am not so sure." Arienh replied. "At least the others went away."

"Ahh." Ronan almost yelled his disgust. He pitched the priest's wooden staff to the ground. "It would be nice, Arienh, to be given a little credit for what we have done. You could at least admit you are no longer living on boiled bones."

"Well, that is true, Father Hewil. They have fed us. And we have made an agreement with them."

"You make agreements with heathens, now?" The priest's eyebrows rose high.

This would not look good to the priest. She shrugged. "Since we have no men, save Old Ferris, of course, but he cannot do anything. They will do all the things that men do in exchange for our cooking and mending and such."

"Hm. An unusual solution."

"A reasonable one," said the Viking, glaring. "Save they could be friendlier."

The priest straightened his cassock and bent to retrieve his staff, then turned a superior scrutiny on Ronan. "I suppose you think they should be grateful that you have not enslaved them. But you do not know these Celts, Viking. They do not give up their dignity so easily."

"So I have noticed." A sly look formed in the Viking's eyes. "But now that you are here, you might as well get busy."

The priest cocked his head to the side and frowned. "Busy?"

"We have all agreed to convert. It is the influence of these fine women."

"They think it will help them convert us into wives," Arienh replied with a sneer. She took hold of the good father's arm, although it was clear he had no need of assistance.

Father Hewil's eyebrows raised in interest as he looked back at the Viking. "Perhaps it would, as such good Christian women do not marry heathens."

"And rebuild the church," Ronan added. "Bigger, of course, with a tall bell tower."

"A bell, of course?"

"Of course."

Arienh watched with alarm as the priest's warm brown eyes took on a gleam of newborn enthusiasm for his potential convert. He was a greedy man at heart, greedy for converts and the Glory of God. And the Viking had taken little more than the space of a moment to discern that and turn it to his advantage.

"And," Ronan added, "of course we must have a true Bible. I know of one that could be had on the Isle of Man, where it sadly languishes in the hands of unbelievers."

Arienh shifted her gaze back and forth between priest and Viking, watching in disgust as Father Hewil's excitement grew. Soon he would be bouncing about like Liam.

"A wonderfully illuminated work, embellished with gold fittings."

He was fishing, just as surely as his brother was, but he had an even better chance of landing his fish. "Perhaps it could be had before it is destroyed for its gold."

"You could obtain it? Restore it to the Church?"

"It would take much geld. But then, I have that."

The priest fairly danced with the news. "Then let us get down to the village. Come along, Arienh. I have had a long journey over the pass, and I am weary to my bones."

Arienh glared her fury at Ronan, but the Viking just let his beautiful, twinkling blue eyes laugh for him. Father Hewil picked up the hem of his garment and trod along between them, chatting amiably about his journeys, more as if he had just begun the journey than was ending it. Weary to the bones, indeed.

Even Father Hewil. Everyone was betraying her.

***

Arienh stood with Birgit and the other women, along with the wiry priest in his plain brown robes, beside the bank of the small stream at the Bride's Well, just below the falls.

She had never thought she'd see this day. Father Hewil, who had cursed and railed against Vikings as long as she could remember, had accepted a mass of converts who had no more sincerity than frogs. She had argued mightily with Father Hewil, hoping he would see the great risk the Vikings posed to Birgit, and tried to make him see how the Northmen manipulated him. But all the good father could see was the Glory of God. Sacrifices must sometimes be made, he had said.

The Vikings had indeed pleased the priest, for they had poured their great enthusiasm into the building of the church, a large wattle and daub building with thatched roof, with a tower that might someday hold the bell Ronan had promised. Even Arienh had to be excited about that. She had never heard a real bell.

Their energetic efforts for the Glory of God might well cease the moment the priest left and they had his blessing to take wives. If so, it wouldn't be long, for Father Hewil always left before the Beltane began.

Yet, she believed Ronan would keep his word to the priest, for the sake of his mother. Arienh had not forgotten the awe in Wynne's face when he had announced he was sending the broad
knarr
to the Isle of Man to rescue the illuminated Bible. Today's event was as much for the sake of his mother as to please the priest.

Arienh decided to make one last assault on Father Hewil's rational mind. "Surely you do not accept them, Father. They are not sincere."

He folded his arms as he watched the string of men that marched up the trail to the pool. A slightly wicked smile traced across his pious face. The priest enjoyed this day far too much to please her. "Be they devious as foxes, I must accept them, Arienh."

"They do it merely for their own gain."

"Perhaps, but that is for God to judge. I would not have it on my conscience that a man turned to Christ and I refused him. And if they merely fool us, well, it is only the way of pagans, who petition their gods the way a child does his father, for their own gain. We are not so different, hmm?"

"Save, they do not believe. They will go on worshiping their pagan idols."

"Well, that is not so different, either, for you have your Beltane. But God is patient with their kind. They have not been raised the right way as we have, and as their children will be."

The priest's mention of children sent a chill up her spine. Perhaps Father Hewil didn't realize it, but the Vikings intended to have their children of the women of this village. On the other hand, she suspected he not only realized it, but considered it one of those necessary little sacrifices.

Priest or no, she intended to prevent it. Somehow.

"He is right, Arienh," Birgit said quietly. "They do not know any better, and we have known the Christian way all our lives. Perhaps we criticize too soon."

Father Hewil nodded. "There are those who believe God is not patient with ignorance, but I think He must be, else no man would ever enter Heaven."

A long train of men, their fair hair gleaming in the sunshine, walked up the trail, singing their newly learned Christian hymn. At the end of the approaching procession, Egil and Ronan supported their frail father as he struggled up the long path and joined the congregation around the shallow pool of the Bride's Well. The old man chose a large grey boulder by the water's edge for his seat. Gunnar would be the last, so that he would not suffer the cold water so long. Only Gunnar wore the traditional white robe of the convert, for the entire village could not come up with enough white cloth for more. The lightest tan and grey had to substitute for all the others.

Father Hewil stepped into the water, taking up the back hem of his robe between his legs, bringing it forward to tuck into his waistcord as he went, even though he had no hope of keeping it dry. The collected women watched silently as each of the Vikings, beginning with Ronan and Egil, lined up for their turn to be dunked by the Christian priest. Their deep, warm voices resonated the hymn against the canyon walls.

Wynne wiped at her eyes. Father Hewil said his words over the only dark-haired Viking, then grasping Ronan by his hair and back, tossed him backward under the water. Somehow, it reminded Arienh less of a baptism and more of the rough water games she had watched the Vikings play.

Ronan floundered and emerged, blinking back water that streamed into his eyes. He slogged to the bank. Wynne rushed forth and hugged him, then hung leather thong with a beaten bronze cross about his neck.

The love for his mother shone in Ronan's face as he bent to kiss Wynne. Then he turned to see what Arienh thought, and his smile faded. She realized she was frowning, but she could not encourage what she felt was no more than a maneuver for his own gain.

Egil took his turn, dunked heartily by the priest, who breathed a deep, satisfied breath of triumph as if he had just slain the Viking in battle. Next, Olaf, then Tanni. Each Viking in turn, even the grumpy blacksmith with his wild, pale blue eyes, who stomped away alone, out of the water, all the way down the path. Arienh suspected the man had not voluntarily converted. Perhaps the priest was right and God would be patient with him. She certainly hoped so, for she didn't feel particularly merciful.

At last, Gunnar, helped into the water by his sons. Wynne grasped Arienh's hand, her tension pouring into the grip. The chill from the water could easily kill a man so weakened by illness. Gunnar trembled with the cold as he went under, then rose, aided by the priest, and groped his way along the slippery stream bottom to the shore. Only this one time did Arienh see a glimmer of compassion in the priest's brown eyes.

They wrapped Gunnar in blankets as soon as he stood on dry land. And Wynne rushed up to place the cross around his neck, just as she had for each of her sons.

Arienh saw then the love, the concern, the fear, in the sons who would willingly die for the crippled old man. And in the gaze between Gunnar and Wynne, she saw something more. Now she understood. This was a gift, a gift Gunnar gave to his beloved wife, perhaps his last.

"Now we will be together," the ailing man said, trembling despite the blankets, and his lips blue with cold. Arienh shared Wynne's fear for Gunnar's life.

Wynne's face streamed with tears as the procession returned, alongside the stream that fed into the larger river, through the wooded valley to the village, with Gunnar carried on the arms of his sons.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

"Now they are all Christians. Now what will you do, Arienh?" Birgit slipped the shuttle back and forth through her loom as calmly as if this day were like any other. Her green eyes followed Arienh's movements around the cottage.