Lord of Falcon Ridge (30 page)

He didn't touch her further, just pushed her legs apart and came into her, sliding deep and hard. He closed his eyes against the feeling of her soft flesh around him. She'd taken him, she'd been ready for him, yet he knew if he didn't slow, she would gain no pleasure. It would be her own fault for being pregnant yet again with his babe, but he shook his head even as he thought it. He wasn't thinking of a babe when he brought his mouth to her, nor did he think of a babe when he watched her arch upward, yelling in her pleasure. He smiled when he came again into her, harder this time, and she brought him deep and stroked her hands over his back as he moved within her. “I love you,” he said when he reached his pleasure.

When he was lying in a near stupor, his head beside hers, his body heavy on hers, she said in his ear, “What is this plan you have that you spoke of to Merrik and Laren?”

 

Cleve said to his father, “I would like to build a farmstead to the south of the loch where there are the hills and
the glens and meadows, filled with flowers. I remember the waterfall and the lushness of the trees and bushes. I remember the boulders and the thick moss that covered the earth. The land to the east flattens enough to grow the crops we would need. Perhaps some of your men would like to join me. They would learn loyalty to me, which is something I know you want.”

Varrick said, “Naturally my men will also owe you their loyalty. Igmal already would die for Kiri. She is your image, save for that scar on your face. You have yet to tell me of her mother, Cleve. Did she die birthing the child?”

Cleve only shook his head.

“This place you describe, you spent much of your time there when you were a small boy.”

“I was small when I was left for dead,” Cleve said. He paused and looked toward the fire pit. The sweet smell of mead rose strong in the air. Cayman made it. It was as excellent as Utta's. He smelled the breakfast porridge, the honey Argana gathered. “After I remembered everything, I believed it was you, my stepfather, who'd tried to kill me. Now I know that can't be true.”

Varrick stretched out his black-clad legs and looked at the rich leather of his boots, dyed as black as his trousers. He wore the
burra
at his wide belt. His tunic was the softest wool, the sleeves full-cut. Black, he wore all black. He said finally, “I know who tried to kill you. There were no doubts because there was no other who would have done it. I'd hoped you wouldn't ask me. I have no wish to cause you further pain.”

“Who was it?”

Varrick looked directly at his son. “I'm sorry. It was your brother, Ethar. He was fourteen at the time. He looked at your eyes and knew that you weren't his father's son. He knew you sprang from my seed. He knew you were mine. The girls never realized it. But Ethar did. He hated you from that moment as much as he hated me.”

Cleve rocked back with the pain of it. “Nay,” he said, shaking his head, his voice hoarse and low. “Not Ethar. I
worshipped him. He never showed dislike toward me, never.”

“That's true. He tried to kill you very soon after he realized the truth. I believe he wanted to kill me even more than he wanted to kill you, but he couldn't do it. He failed with you as well, thank the gods. I'm sorry that you were a slave for fifteen years. I cannot imagine what you did during those long years, what you suffered. I know you must have many scars, Cleve, not just the one that shows on your face, but scars no one else can see. But it's over now. You're home again. You're safe.”

Cleve thought of those long fifteen years, of the different masters and mistresses who'd made his life a living hell, of that one kind old man who'd told him stories and fed him regular meals. The old man had died and he'd been sold then to a man who was a pig. So much had happened. So many years. His father was right. It was behind him. He was home again. His father had said he was safe. He thought of Athol's attack. He imagined Varrick would deal with Athol. He looked at his father now. He knew the answer even before he asked him, “I've been told that Ethar drowned in the loch.”

Varrick stared off into the pale smoky air in the hall. “Aye,” he said finally. “That is what happened.”

Of course Varrick had killed him for what he'd done to his small son. All during those fifteen years Cleve hadn't questioned who'd tried to kill him. He'd been sure it was Varrick, his stepfather, thus his hatred had had a focus. But now, Ethar was long dead, killed by Varrick. He supposed he should thank his father for avenging him, but he couldn't find it within him. Ethar, his brother, nay, his half brother. It had been so very long ago. Ethar had been so young. Ah, but he'd been only five years old. Too young for Ethar's revenge. He cleared his mind. It had been a lifetime ago. He couldn't even remember his brother's face.

He looked at his father, so still he sat, his long white hands utterly motionless, fingers splayed on the carved chair posts. Surely then he could trust his father, in
everything except where Chessa was concerned. He couldn't trust any man where Chessa was concerned.

“You're to have another child,” Varrick said at last.

“Aye,” Cleve said without hesitation.

“She isn't ill.”

“Not as yet. It's early days. Kiri's mother vomited constantly after all the other women said she'd be fine.” He smiled at his father. “Why did Chessa tell you?”

“I'm her father-in-law. Of course she would tell me. I'm pleased that you will give me a grandson.”

He was a liar, but he was as smooth as stones washed over by the waterfall. Cleve said, “I would like to begin today to build my farmstead. Eventually, perhaps Athol could live there.”

“And you and Chessa and your children would move here after I die?”

“That is the way of things,” Cleve said. He looked up and smiled at Chessa, who was walking to him, a cup of mead in her hand. She handed it to him, then placed her hand on his shoulder. He covered her hand with his. He felt the warmth of her, the softness of her flesh. He turned to smile up at her. Let his father see that she was his and only his. He not only wanted her. He not only admired her and found her both humorous and aggravating, he also loved her, and it was nothing like the feelings he'd had for Sarla, Kiri's mother. He'd believed he'd loved her more than a man could love any other being, but it wasn't true. Much of what he'd felt for Sarla, he realized now, was anger and pity at how her husband had treated her. And he'd desired her, wanted desperately to protect her, to be her champion, to prove that he was no longer a slave but a man who could take care of his woman. But he was stupid enough to confuse lust with caring, and that's what he felt for Chessa. Caring. Deep caring. He hadn't even realized that something so intense, something so profoundly altering, could exist, but it did, and he felt it for her in full measure. He loved her. He loved her more this moment than he had the previous moment. He shook with the
realization that this love he felt for her would continue into the future until they were both bones and dust. He knew now what it was she felt for him. He didn't understand it, for he was just a man, nothing special, just a man who'd been a worthless slave, but yet she'd not seen the hideous scar on his face. She'd always believed him beautiful, and that was the truth of it. He hadn't understood her, thus he'd believed it a sham. But it wasn't. These feelings were as real as the high mist that hung over the loch. The caring he had for her, this bone-deep pleasure at her closeness, all of it made him feel warm and filled with hope and energy and the blessedness of being human and
knowing
what she was to him and what he was to her. He smiled at her, what he felt making his golden eye brilliant as the sun. “I will take you to see where we will begin our building.”

“Aye, I'd like that,” Chessa said, leaned down, and kissed his mouth. In front of Varrick. But he knew she'd kissed him because she'd looked into his eyes and seen his soul. She was accepting him into her and her delight was plain for him to see. For his father to see.

 

 

M
ERRIK,
L
AREN, AND
all the Malverne men left two days later, on a bright morning that Chessa now believed would stay bright, the mist biding its time, but not closing in about them until the evening. Eller sniffed the air and grunted. “Aye,” he said. “'Twill serve.”

Chessa and Cleve, Kiri in his arms, waved until the two ships disappeared around a slight bend in the loch. “This is our home now,” Chessa said.

Kiri said, “Papa, let me down. I want to go find Caldon. I haven't seen her for two days now. She misses me. I told her I wanted to meet her children.”

He merely nodded and set her on the narrow path that led to the wooden dock that stretched out into the loch beside the promontory. “Her imagination rivals Laren's. Unfortunately, Laren never saw the monster again. Merrik says she will droop like a withered flower for a while.”

“Let's take Kiri and go back to work,” Chessa said. “I would have our own bed soon.”

 

Varrick looked at her belly every single day, asked her how she felt every single day. She merely smiled at him, nothing more.

It was soon after that things began to change at Kinloch. There was some laughter now, some arguments amongst
the men as they ate, as they drank, as they worked. The children, led by Kiri, battled with their wooden knives and swords and axes. They threw their leather balls. They ran about the hall, tumbling over each other, insulting each other. The women chatted as they wove the wool into thread. Varrick frowned, but remained quiet. Chessa laughed more than she'd ever laughed in her life, most times not because she was amused, but because she wanted all the Kinloch people to know that laughter was a wonderful thing, that they could do it and not be struck down. She wanted them to know that Varrick would do naught to stop it. Cleve must believe he'd become the greatest wit in all of Scotland, she thought, for she laughed at nearly every thing he said. She looked over at Cayman, who still only spoke to either of them when it was necessary, never volunteering a word or a thought or an opinion. She was gone most of the time, out in the hills, Argana said. As for Argana's sons, they called Cayman a madwoman, singing to the goats, they said, speaking strange incantations over rocks, they said, then they'd stare toward their father.

 

The day Chessa broke Athol's leg began with a dull gray mist, then cleared into a magical morning that smelled crisp and clean. A falcon perched on the high ridge of rocks that formed the eastern perimeter of their new farmstead. All the men were working on the farmstead, to be named Karelia, named after an isthmus between Lake Ladoga and the Gulf of Finland, a place Cleve remembered with pleasure. When Chessa questioned him more closely about this pleasure, he simply kissed the tip of her nose and told her it would go with him to the grave.

“Karelia,” she said. “It sounds pleasant, thus I will allow it, husband, even though I know you knew a woman there. What was her name?”

“Tyra,” he said, and kissed the tip of her nose again. “If I remember aright. There were so very many.”

She fisted her hand and hit him in his belly. He grinned down at her. “Do you yet carry my babe?”

She frowned. “So many times I've claimed to be pregnant and yet now when I truly want to be, it won't happen. Do you think I'm barren, Cleve?”

“Nay, sweeting, I think your husband isn't trying hard enough. Mayhap you're worrying about it too much and it makes my seed wary.”

“It's true you're very tired every night now with all the work.”

He clasped her neck in his hands and squeezed lightly. Then he kissed her hard on her closed mouth. He looked at her closely, at those beautiful green eyes of hers, as green as the moss-covered rocks near the waterfall he'd shown her. “Has my father said anything to you? Bothered you in any way?”

“He just stares at my belly every time he sees me.”

“Papa, is it true?”

Both looked down to see Kiri frowning up at them, an apple in her hand, three children trailing after her, all bickering over a leather ball.

“Is what true, sweeting?” Chessa said.

“I heard Athol tell his brother that you were having my first papa's babe.”

“Aye,” Cleve said, his single word as bald as the goat that was chewing on a discarded tunic near the newly built privy.

“He then said it wasn't true, the tale you were telling. He said Chessa was carrying Varrick's babe, not yours. I told him that wasn't right and he laughed at me. I don't like Athol.” Kiri looked at the ground for a moment, frowning ferociously. “Athol somehow isn't right in his head.”

“No, he's not, you're right about that, Kiri,” Chessa said. “You keep away from him. He's a coward and a troublemaker.”

But Kiri didn't. Luckily, it was Chessa who came upon the two of them. She heard Kiri shout up at Athol, who was sneering down at her, “You lied to me, Athol. My
second papa won't have Varrick's babe. It's my first papa's babe.”

“You're a stupid little girl,” Athol said. “You don't know anything. Go away. She isn't your second papa, she's nothing but a silly woman, worth little save for breeding.”

“Not until you tell me you lied.”

Athol swore at her. Then when she kicked him in his shin, he leaned down and picked her up. He shook her. “You miserable whelp,” he shouted in her face, spittle spewing out. “You damned miserable whelp. You're his and you don't deserve to live, much less to live here and take what is mine.”

Chessa had no idea what he intended, but the look on his face terrified her. There was a complete lack of control there, his eyes dark with rage. She said very quietly, “Let her down, Athol, now.”

“You,” he said, and shook Kiri again. She fisted her small hand and shoved it into his nose. He yowled and threw her down.

Chessa was on him in the next instant, shrieking in his face, cursing him with all the words she'd learned in Dublin from her father's soldiers. When he raised his hand to her, she sent her knee into his groin. When he was bowed and yelling with pain, she kicked him in the leg and knocked him to the ground. She kicked him in the ribs, then again in the leg and heard the bone snap. Still, she didn't stop. She was panting hard, her anger making the air around her as red as the Christian's hell, making the loch look black as midnight.

“Chessa!”

She tried to struggle away from him, to keep kicking Athol, who was cringing at her feet, holding himself in a ball, but Cleve pulled her off. She whirled about, panting, “He was shaking Kiri. Then he threw Kiri on the ground, Cleve.
Threw her
!”

“Kiri is all right. I taught her how to roll off her shoulder if she ever fell. Stop it, Chessa. Look, Kiri is just fine.”

“Papa, see, I'm not hurt, not like Athol is.”

The red mist fell away from her as she heard the satisfaction in Kiri's voice. She took a deep breath. “I wonder why I didn't draw my knife and send it into his black heart,” she said, then shook her head. She stared down at him, raised her foot, then lowered it. “Nay, that's enough for him.”

“My leg,” Athol said, holding it and rocking back and forth, moaning. “You broke my leg.”

“Aye,” Chessa said. “I heard the bone crack. Hold still and I'll see to you.”

Athol screamed and tried to scramble away from her.

“You bullying coward, hold still.”

Cleve said, “She won't kill you now, Athol. Do as she says, else I'll have to hit your head with a rock so you won't move while she takes care of you.”

“What is this?” Igmal said as he strode to them, wiping his hands on the leather apron tied around his waist. “Aye, Athol, you forgot her warning, eh? You're lucky she didn't kill you.”

Athol groaned. “Don't let her touch me, Igmal, I order you.”

“Hold your damned tongue in your throat, Athol. She won't kill you now.”

“My father—”

Cleve leaned down and sent his fist into Athol's jaw. He fell back, unconscious.

“Papa, can you teach me how to do that?”

“No,” Cleve said and picked up his daughter. “Are you truly all right, sweeting?”

“Aye,” Kiri said. “Igmal, can I come with you now and help you work?”

Igmal grinned, those beautiful white teeth of his glistening in the sun, and took her from Cleve. “Aye, little one, I think I'll let you play in the tar pot. Your papas will like that, I think.”

 

In late September, when in Norway the air would have turned frigid in the early afternoon, it was still warm in
Scotland, the air soft and sweet from the smells of the heather. Karelia was finished. The wood smelled fresh and new and Chessa loved it. It was small, but there was enough room for three of them and the dozen men and the four families that came there to live. There was a bathing hut, just like the one in Malverne, only smaller, a privy, a barn for the grain, several storage huts, a barn for the cows, goats, and two horses, a blacksmith's hut, and a small slave compound. Now the men were erecting a palisade some ten feet high that would surround the farmstead.

“It's ours,” Chessa said with relish as she rubbed her hands together. Argana had given her pots and dishes and spoons and knives. She even gave her a beautiful linen cloth for the long narrow eating table. The first time Cleve lit the fire pit, the first time Chessa pulled the thick piece of wood attached to the roof beams with the serpent's head at its end, adjusting its thick chains hooked to the iron cooking pot over the pit, she laughed aloud with pleasure. Varrick was there. He frowned at her. Argana laughed as well. Cayman just stood back, watching, saying nothing, just watching. Athol stood on crutches, watching as well, his expression so sullen Cleve wished he could kick him out.

It was that night, their first night at Karelia, the first night in their own box bed with a soft new bearskin, given to them by Ottar, one of Igmal's men, when Chessa said, “I'm with child.”

Cleve, on the point of coming into her, stiffened, looked at her in bewilderment, then came into her, deep and full, and she laughed, pulling him closer, drawing him deeper. “I wondered what you'd do,” she whispered into his ear, then nibbled his earlobe, kissed his jaw, then his mouth and tasted the sweet mead on his breath from their feast, and said, “I love you, Cleve. I'm not barren.”

He withdrew from her, came between her thighs and brought his mouth to her. When she screamed, bowing upward, he laughed. “My babe will hear his mother shrieking,” he said, then came into her again, feeling her tighten
about him, feeling her quiver from the tremors of pleasure still holding her.

“You will forget about controlling me,” he said, coming up over her, leaning his head down to kiss her as he spoke each word. “You believed I would become so befuddled at your news that I would fall off the bed and you would give me a smug smile. Ah, don't move like that, Chessa, else I'll—”

He said no more. He loved her again, only this time, it was different, for his babe nestled in her womb and he wanted to show her how pleased he was, how much he loved her, how he would cherish her for the rest of his life. When she moaned softly into his mouth, he took that moan deep within himself. When he could speak again, he said, “I love you, Chessa. I never thought you were barren.”

She sent her elbow into his ribs, then brought his mouth down to hers. “Do you really love me, Cleve? It's not that I haven't believed you before when you've brought yourself to say it, but you're still a man, and I don't think men like to speak of such things. It makes them feel silly.”

“Who told you that? Surely not Mirana or Laren?”

“Nay, it's just what I've observed.”

“And you're such an old woman, just like Old Alna, cackling, her gums showing, preaching about all men's failings, even her beloved Rorik's.”

“Well, perhaps a bit. But you've only told me a few times, a very few times. Usually you just rant at me and yell at me and lust after me, which is something else that men want to do all the time.”