Loveweaver (5 page)

“ ’Tis all right,” Llyrica cooed, rocking him. “You have had the wind knocked from you, nothing more.” She brushed the hair from his forehead, saw the resemblance to Slayde, though one was dark and the other, light. “Lie still, a bit, and you will be good as ...”

Taking Elfric by the arm, Slayde pulled him from Llyrica’s lap, set him on his feet and brushed him off. “Tears are for girls, Elfric. Dry them. When a man takes a fall, he gets up without complaint and walks it off.”

Llyrica took Elfric’s hand, and when he turned his face from Slayde, she wiped the tears from his cheeks. “Even a man would wait a moment to catch his breath, lest he fall again. And he would consider why he fell and how to prevent a repeat occurrence.” Elfric responded with wide-eyed awe to her soft advice. “Remember, though ... God gave boys tears just as he gave them to girls.”

“Leave him to me.” Slayde yanked the boy’s hand from hers. “And stop your female nonsense.” He stood, scooted Elfric away with a pat to his behind. “Go on, boy. Byrnstan will get you a sip of ale and you will be right again.” 

The priest leaned in to Llyrica’s ear as he rose to escort the boy. “Well done,” he whispered, helping her to her feet. He disappeared with Elfric behind the wall of men still congregating around the scene of the accident.

“Return to your hiding place.” Slayde took a step toward Llyrica. “Dare not interfere again.” Crisp, aromatic, the scent on his breath was a curious enticement at odds with the intimidation she felt at his hard, imposing closeness. 

“I deem it not interference to comfort a child. Anyone with a heart would do so. His own mother would do so.”

Black eyes flashed on Slayde’s emotionless face. “His mother is dead. And he is well past the age of babying and must see the world as a man. Go back behind the loom. You need rest, I would say, if you are to begin work on redipping tunicas.” He gave her a bored look. “Besides, I have no desire for further debate.” Treating her much the same as he had Elfric, Slayde nudged her toward the loom with a pat on her backside. “Off with you, now.” Laughter rippled through the gathering.

She did not react well to condescension, turned on her heel to confront him. “Interference or not, I would do it again ... coddle him and let the poor boy cry in my arms. I would warrant you have gone without tenderness and hence grew that stone heart for which you are named.”

“You know nothing of it.” He looked at the men standing around, then increased his height by several inches. “In fact, I imagine if you were to raise a boy, he would be worthless to the world, as he would be wholly tied to his dependence on you and your mothering.”

With a stuttered gasp, Llyrica clutched at her heart from the blow his words. A small consolation, his tight mouth seemed to twitch in discomfort at her reaction. “So I would mother him.”  Tears burned at the thought of her wayward brother. “But he would know he was loved, though he might be worthless to the world. You, on the other hand, may be of use to the world. But do you know if you are loved?” She turned and ran to the loom, hiding behind it on a bed of wool.

Patronizing laughter chased her departure, but she barely heard it nor Slayde’s announcement that the stronger ale be brought forth so that the hard drinking could begin. Broder filled her thoughts, her memories of him, her present worry, and now the fresh doubt that said she loved him too much for his own good.

She wondered how it would all turn out, this business with Haesten.  Her father … and Broder’s, too.

Chapter IV

I place my heart into your keep, then take yours as my own.

And you may have my love so deep, since yours is all I have known.
 

The breeze that blew through the dark, quiet hall felt cool across her face and toes. But it did not cut through the heat as it should have. Perhaps the wool beneath her was to blame, since she was but covered in peach linen. She remembered Byrnstan bidding her a God’s good night behind the loom, his assurance that the last drunken man had long stumbled from the hall. He had reported that Slayde, Elfric and he were off to bed in the loft above. Soon after, she had stripped off her cemes and cyrtel to sleep unfettered as she was wont to do, in the safe place between wall and loom. 

She awakened to this heat that pressed upon her, and though she discovered it was not unwelcome and proved strangely familiar, she could not fathom its source.

Until it nuzzled her shoulder and murmured unintelligibly.

Slayde, more nude than she, since she was covered in fabric and
he was not,
lay stretched out beside her on the wool. One hard muscled arm rested across her ribcage. One leg, adept at treading water, draped across her thigh then hooked a foot around her ankle. The remains of his body weighted nearly atop her, and his head, with hair spilled over one of her breasts, nestled in the hollow below her collarbone. His unmistakable manpart, more firmly fleshed at rest than Xanthus’ had been at effort, pressed against her hipbone.

The state of shock and a bit of fear kept her still as she evaluated Slayde’s intent, which she deemed as benign since the man appeared to be asleep. Perhaps if she merely wriggled out from under him ... not easy in the limited space behind the loom ... and the formidable size of him ...

“I have waited for you, Llyrica,” Slayde said, a notch above silence. With a contented moan, he pulled her closer, moved his cheek to her breast as if he considered it a pillow.

His words proved him not asleep and a different man than by day.

“Waited for me to wash to your shore in a barrel?  A woman you have insulted and have called a whore?”  She whispered into the dark, dazed at this turnabout.

“Nay, Sweet Softness, I have waited for you to wash into my heart.” His breath, with its cool scent, fanned hotly against her breast, since the linen could hardly be thought of as a barrier between them. “Tell me you will stay.”

“Our agreement is that I stay a sennight, ealdorman, during which time I pray to find my brother. Then I am off to my own pursuits.”

He raised his head, lips hovering above hers as he stroked her arm, inciting a shiver. “I shall be bereft if you go. Therefore, find your brother, but I wish that your pursuits and mine might be shared, that we could remain together. Say it will be so.”

It was hard to breathe, to think, with his flesh so meshed to hers. “I am bewildered by these sentiments, since you have recently disparaged me on all points and seem to enjoy humiliating me in front of your men. And your cruel remark about my potential skills as a mother ...”

He shushed her with a finger to her lips. “If I have harbored even the least ill thought with regards to you, I will be thrashed. I could see in you, at once, only sweet affection, a gift of which there is too little in the world ... and which I value. Now give me your word that you will stay with me always.”

These were words meant for a harlot, perhaps, but highly effective. She remembered Mother once gave a this description of father:
equal parts charm, allure and cruelty.
Perhaps a man much the same as Slayde the StoneHeart, in whom she could indeed see a measure of cruelty. Now she witnessed the charm and allure. His powers worked on her, made her heart beat faster, brought a rush of pleasure to deep unnamed places within her. She wondered if it had happened this way with Mother the first time she met father. If so, then small wonder Mother had set about weaving a lovesong into a cloak of violet, indigo and harvest gold and then dressed Haesten in it. Llyrica could not help but compose the words she would sing to win a man’s heart. This man’s.

“I await your answer impatiently, so I shall pass the time thusly.” Slayde’s mouth pressed to hers, the mating of soft flesh in firm undulation.

This kiss differed from that on the ship, allowed for participation from the recipient, if she so desired. Curiosity and want compelled her open to the novel taste of the man’s moist and mobile mouth. It produced in her a hunger of the senses, lain dormant in years of solitude until now, signaled to wakefulness by the man’s caress. This newfound need silenced the inner voice that might bid her question right or wrong. She discovered wonder at this male to female joining and moved her body subtly beneath him, seeking closer contact. He responded by stroking her hair.

“Llyrica, I vow you are the softest creature that God has ever made.” With a contented groan, his fingers glided along a thick strand of her hair until they brushed the side of her breast, inspiring an unidentifiable impulse. When she instinctively shifted toward him, causing his knuckles to graze her nipple, Slayde welcomed the invitation. He unfurled his hand and took the whole of her breast in an erotic massage. With a sigh of bliss, Llyrica touched her hand to his face in reply. He turned his head to kiss her palm, then moved his lips across her cheek and down her neck and ...

“
Llyrica.
” Byrnstan whispered. The priest was behind the loom on his hands and knees, and she felt him now at her feet, hers
and
Slayde’s. “I will gently pull him from you,” the Byrnstan continued, “and you remain quiet lest we awaken him.”

Startled, she struggled to breathe. “But ... but he is not ....” She felt a subtle tug and Slayde lifted his head, began to move away.

“Aye, he is indeed asleep, child,” Byrnstan said. Groaning a bit, he coaxed Slayde’s large frame out from behind the loom. “He is a sleepwalker.”

Now unlocked from the StoneHeart, Llyrica sat up in tingling confusion, squinted in the light of a single torch at the white-haired priest. “Sleepwalker? But he ... I ... is it a disease?”

“In some ways, yea,” Byrnstan answered. He knelt outside of Llyrica’s hiding place beside Slayde, who sat propped up against the wall. “Help me with this.”

Llyrica wrapped her linen around her, crawled out from behind the loom and took the torch from Byrnstan’s outstretched hand. Looping Slayde’s arm around his neck, Byrnstan urged the sleepwalker to his feet.

“His bed uploft is a hard pallet befitting a military man,” the priest said. Open eyed, but unseeing, Slayde, gave no resistance save garbled words, as Byrnstan led him toward the ladder. “But by night, he half awakens, and seeks the softest place to sleep. Often I find him on a pile of clothes or on a bed of fresh rushes. Usually though, he comes to the loom and sleeps upon a fleece, or piles of yarn, or cloth. Tonight, I found him with you, the softest place in his house.”

Llyrica’s breath faltered. “I am dismayed, Father Byrnstan.” Her heart yet pounded from Slayde’s caresses, his professions and his kisses, and now found herself the object of his perplexing malady. “Does this happen every night?”

She followed beside them at the languid pace, her eyes taking in full view of Slayde’s torchlit body, lightly furred in dark hair from chest to ankle. Aye, she had seen one before, her brother’s, but here was a man’s body, filled in, tightly packed and truly sculpted in a god’s image, a graceful confidence in its motions and abilities. No less impressive was his erect manpart, in perfect proportion to the rest of him and given much the same astonishing description.

“Aye, every night since Ceolmund died,” said Byrnstan. “But none know save me ... and now you ... not even Slayde himself.  I have watched over him since he was a boy, kept between him and his father as much as I could, and still do.” They stood at the bottom of the ladder. “Up you go, lad.” Byrnstan put Slayde’s hand on a rung. It was enough to get him started, and he climbed on up. “I still look out for him, go where he goes, let him sleep in softness, then put him to bed before dawn. He is truly two men, Llyrica. One is no less, nor more, than the other.”

“He does more than sleepwalk, Father,” Llyrica said, after the last of Slayde disappeared. “He ... he sleepkisses and sleeptalks. He said things to me ...”

“That he cannot say by day.” Byrnstan put a hand under Llyrica’s elbow and walked her toward the loom. “If he said them, they are true. I need your promise though, Llyrica, that he will never learn from you of this thing he does. It is my hope and prayer that with time the two halves of his heart will cease to be at odds and this disorder will leave him. Else I will be inclined to tell him myself.”

She hardly knew what to think, yet thoughts still came, irrational, heart-stopping. “He will not learn it from me.”

“For your sake, I will steer him to the
second
softest place in the house.” Byrnstan took the torch from her, turned to go. “God’s good night, once more, though it be near day.”

“I should not mind if he comes to me of a night.” Llyrica’s statement impelled the priest to halt. “That is, if you would not deem it a breach of my vow toward redemption.”  

The torchlight did not allow her to see the subtleties of the priest’s expression, but Llyrica thought she read a well-pleased satisfaction. “I would not.”

Llyrica conceived an idea. “While I plan to redip the tunicas for the crewmen, I will also weave Slayde a new braid, since his old is worn.  I would require twenty weaving tablets in addition to my two, and yarns of red, black, white and violet.”

“I am agreed to ask it of the thralls and see it provided. But know that the StoneHeart will not part with his old braid, since he made a special purchase of it two years ago for him and the nineteen others who wear it. The merchant claimed that it was imbued with a song of victory, woven by a reclusive loomstress in Hedeby. A pagan superstition, I will warrant, but warriors often rely on their talismans.” Byrnstan fingered the cross hanging around his neck, inducing Llyrica to touch her own Christian amulet. “Subsequent to the StoneHeart’s addition of the braid to the tunicas, he and his men have seen an limitless number of successes against his enemy Haesten.” 

A confounding irony this, that braid woven by her own hand was in league against her father. From this pondering, a notion hatched in her mind, a scheme to fulfill a promise. “I will try to convince him, especially since it will prove him I have skills other than those I am accused of. But I will not press the matter if he is unamenable.”

“We have agreed on all things then, child. Tomorrow we will decide how best to find your brother.” Byrnstan backed away. “Now I bid you good night a third time.”

“I should not have asked for a kinder guardian than I have found in you, Father.” With his leaving, Llyrica crawled into her hiding place and burrowed into the bed of soft wool. Her mind raced and her body hummed with a desire she could scarcely name, a need for the hard feel of the sleepwalker, his full, firm lips, his warm words in a deep voice.

Yet the man of night was the StoneHeart by day, hard and unyielding, committed only to conquering his foe, Haesten. Her father, by God! Mother had sent Llyrica off to keep a deathbed promise with naught but this, “Discover a way to make him suffer for my suffering.”

But a plan needed full deliberation and she must yet make known the name Songweaver. But now she would a make start and weave a song of love, paying little heed of the cost to her heart and Slayde’s.

The StoneHeart was her key to Haesten’s undoing. And the sleepwalker was her key to StoneHeart.

“You did agree to it, son, when you gave her a sennight to find her brother.” Byrnstan reminded Slayde of the conversation on the ship. The priest perhaps thought to utilize StoneHeart’s sense of order, his need to satisfy obligations, and to fulfill contracts to the letter, whether written or spoken.

“At the time, I did not foresee it would involve carrying a Viking harlot to Rochester and beyond.” Slayde flexed his longbow of yew heart, nearly as tall as he, then plucked at the string. A memory flashed, the first time his arrow had pierced flesh. The scream of death. Blood from the wound. He had not eaten rabbit or any other meat since. Staring into the sun, newly risen over the sea, he turned his attention to his troops at target practice in the muddy yard. He swallowed a feeling of panic and desperation.

“Remember too, that you put her in my care.” Byrnstan slapped Slayde on the back. “No hardship on you and will work out quite well. Llyrica has already told the thralls which mushrooms to gather for the dye, and they can surely take on the task of redipping the tunicas in her stead. She will see to yours and to those of the men who travel with you.”