Season of the Sun (22 page)

He drew a deep breath and slowly rose from his chair.

Z
arabeth turned at his approach. Without thought, without conscious decision, she smiled at him.

Magnus came to a dead halt. Her smile warmed him to his heart, and he found that he was smiling back at her. Then, as he watched her, it seemed that she realized that she was smiling, realized that it was wrong of her to smile, for Lotti and Egill were dead, and the smile fell away, leaving that damnable blankness in her expression.

He shook his head and came to her then where she was stirring porridge in the huge iron pot. He leaned down, lifted the thick braid off her neck, and kissed her. Her flesh was moist with the heat from the fire and sweet with the scent that was hers. The slave collar was gone. Her flesh was soft and smooth again. She tried to draw away, for there were many in the longhouse, and she hated to think that they were looking and seeing Magnus kiss her. Nor did she want him to touch her. It made her want to shrink inside herself, to pull the coldness deeper and keep it close.

“Don't move,” he said against her throat, and kissed her again, his mouth firm and smooth.

She stopped her stirring, and her hand fell away from the long-handled spoon.

She waited; she suffered him. He stopped then, and he pressed his forehead against hers. Then he raised his head and simply looked down at her. It was as if
he were trying to make a decision, trying to figure something out. She said nothing, merely waited.

“You are my wife,” he said, and kissed her mouth. “Don't forget that, Zarabeth.” He kissed her again, lightly, gently, not trying to part her lips, then released her. She started back, her face pale, her hands in front of her as if to ward him off. He said nothing.

That evening when Magnus and his men returned with a freshly killed wild boar, he went immediately to the bathhouse, as was his wont. When he came into the longhouse, he strode to her as if she were the only person in the room, and took her in his arms. He kissed her in front of all his people, and if he was aware that she was stiff and unresponsive, he made no sign of it. Again she suffered him, not moving. He hugged her, kissed her eyebrows, her nose, her jaw. When he released her, he looked grave, but still he said nothing.

Whilst they ate veal stew, scooping up the thick gravy with fresh warm bread, Magnus turned to her and said, “What did you do today?”

She stared at him. Such a mundane inquiry. It shook her, this realization that life continued with no pauses in its allotment of minutes and hours, no differences to show that death had come. She was silent for many moments.

“The meal is good. You prepared it well.”

“Thank you, your aunt Eldrid helped me with the herbs. I . . . I have done the mending today. There were several of your tunics that were in need of my needle. There was blood on another one from one of your kills. Your mother showed me how to remove bloodstains.”

He smiled at her and took another bite of veal stew.

“I also had Haki make a figure stuffed with grass and straw and stick him on a wooden pole to frighten
away the birds. They would eat all our apples if I hadn't done something. Perhaps it will also be useful in the barley fields. I had heard about it from a traveling merchant in York. The farmers in King Alfred's Wessex use them.”

In the past, one of the servants would remain in the orchard banging on a brass plate to keep the birds away. Now that servant could be used elsewhere, if her straw figure worked. “It is a good idea, and we will see if the birds agree. I am very fond of apples. Will you make apple jelly this fall for the winter?”

She nodded.

“Is all in readiness for Horkel and Cyra?”

“Aye, very nearly. Aunt Eldrid is making more of her special beer.”

Since Eldrid's beer was actually from his mother's own recipe, Magnus merely nodded.

“What did you do today?”

“I killed a wild boar.” He paused a moment, scooping up peas with his spoon. “I set several of the women to preparing the meat.”

When she would speak, he added, “I knew you had no experience in it. There will be time. You need no more to do right now.”

It was kind of him, she knew. She sighed and took a sip of milk. After the meal she directed the women to their duties and listened absently to the men speak of the day's hunt.

She heard Ragnar, a man who still held her in dislike, say suddenly, fury in his voice, “It is Orm—even his father knows it, and has rejected him. It seems he failed to kill everyone on the Ingolfsson farmstead. One of the women survived. She will speak against him at the meeting of the
thing.
He will be banished, if he isn't killed first by one of the Ingolfsson men, and all that he owns will be forfeit for the lives he has taken.”

The man Ingunn had wanted to wed, Zarabeth thought. Orm Ottarsson, the man she still swore was innocent. Zarabeth tried to stir up a bit of pity for Magnus' sister, for this man was worthy of no one, but she could find none.

The other men added their thoughts and opinions—there were many, for they had drunk much beer—until one of them, a slender fellow named Hakon, who seemed to wear a perpetual frown, said, “Magnus, you agree, do you not? You will go to the
thing,
won't you?”

“Aye,” Magnus said after some moments. “I suppose I must go. My father has asked it of me.”

Ragnar made a rude noise. “He scarce hears you, Hakon, for his mind is on her.”

Magnus didn't allow his anger to show. He smiled and rose. “What you say is true, Ragnar. She is beautiful and she is gentle, and she is my wife.”

Zarabeth was sitting near the far wall, sewing a tunic for Magnus, when suddenly he was there, standing over her.

“It is time to retire. Come.”

She nodded, set aside the fine soft blue woolen material, and rose. She followed him to his chamber, not pausing until she was in the room itself. She remembered then his kiss of the morning and stilled.

The room was cast in the dim light of the summer half-night.

“Zarabeth? Come to me now.”

She didn't want to. She wanted no reminders that she was flesh and blood, that feelings coursed through her, that she had felt deep passion at one time, a time when she had been whole, a time when she had wanted all of him, all of those unknown emotions. She wanted to live, that was true, she wanted to continue, and to feel life, but this losing of oneself in another . . . no, she didn't want him to touch her and come inside her.

“Zarabeth, I will not tell you again.”

She knew there was no choice. She took off her gown but left on her shift. It came nearly to her knees.

She lay on her back, staring up into the darkness. Magnus said nothing, merely propped himself on his elbow and leaned over her. “I would take you now, Zarabeth. It is time. We have need of each other. Let me give you comfort and pleasure.”

She didn't move. She felt Magnus' mouth touch first her cheek and then her mouth. He was gentle, his tongue lightly probing against her closed lips.

Magnus realized very quickly that she had locked herself away from him. It infuriated him even as he understood it. He kissed her harder, forcing her now, furious that she would be cold as a stone when he was so hot, his mouth burning, his member throbbing with need against her thigh. Why was she doing this to him? He was her husband.

He touched her breast lightly, with just his fingertips, and was further enraged because she still wore her shift. He wanted to rip it off her, but he didn't.

He was surprised at the calm of his voice when he said, “Take off the shift, Zarabeth. There is never to be anything between us at night.”

When she didn't immediately obey him, he forced her upright and began to work the shift up over her hips. She yielded to him then, and soon he had pulled the shift over her head and tossed it to the floor. “Now,” he said.

She lay on her back, cold and alone, nurturing the emptiness inside her, focusing on it. She was fully aware of his warm hands on her body, of his mouth touching her breast. When his fingers found her and began a gentle rhythm, she felt a burgeoning awareness in that emptiness, a beckoning in the deepest part of her, and she tried to jerk away from him. These feelings weren't right, she didn't deserve them.

He held her down, his fingers splayed on her belly. “I know there is passion inside you, for I have tasted it and felt it and taken it into me. Why do you punish me with your coldness? Why do you punish yourself?”

“I cannot,” she whispered against his shoulder, her fisted hands against his chest. “Please, no, Magnus, please.”

He gave an animal growl and came over her, pressing her legs apart and settling himself between them. He kissed her again, teasing her, using all his skill to make her respond, but she was locked against him. He hated it and he hated her in that moment, and with a growl of fury he reared back, lifted her hips in his hands, and came into her. She wasn't ready for him and he felt her pain and the stretching of her woman's flesh. But he didn't stop until he touched her womb. He looked down at her and saw in the dim light that her eyes were tightly closed. “Damn you,” he said, “open your eyes!” He began to move. Soon her flesh eased and dampened and he knew he couldn't hold back much longer. She was so cold and still beneath him, so very apart from him. His body pulsed with an anger that grew and grew, and with it, his endless need for her, a need that he now accepted. Though he wanted to curse her and dominate her and force her to accept him with a passion to match his own, he knew this time he had failed.

He concentrated on his own passion, on the swollen need, and on the release when it came. He arched his back and cried out, and in that instant he forgot all but this moment of pleasure, this instant of sheer feeling that blotted out the damnable pain. He rolled off her and away onto his back. He said nothing for many moments, not until his heart slowed and he knew he was again in control.

“If you cry, I will surely beat you.”

She had stuffed her fist into her mouth. She turned on her side, away from him.

He knew she was crying, could feel her trembling, but he also knew that she was trying to keep silent, and thus he ignored it. “I will take you every night, Zarabeth, every single night, until you come back to me. I will not accept this. You must allow me to come back to you.”

She felt the wetness of him on her thighs. She nurtured the pain he had inflicted deep inside her, for it gave her more reason to stay within herself, within her own emptiness.

Magnus slept finally. When the dreams came, they were bright and vivid and filled with a fierce sense of truth. He saw his son, he actually saw Egill, and the boy was ragged and dirty, but he was alive. He saw a man strike him and he felt the blow as it landed on the boy's shoulder. He cried out in rage.

“Magnus, wake up! Wake up, you've had a nightmare!”

He was trembling, his flesh damp and cold. He jerked upright. He shook his head to clear the visions away. He whispered, even as he clutched Zarabeth to his chest, “I saw him, I saw Egill, and he is alive, I am certain of it. I saw a man strike him. By God, I saw it, Zarabeth, and it was clear and it was real.”

Zarabeth finally made out his features in the dim light of dawn. A dream, and he believed it true? She had heard of such things. Seers had visions. He was trembling, and she pressed herself more closely against him, giving him what comfort she could, without thought, without decision. She recognized only that he needed her.

Magnus drew a deep breath. He was here, in bed, Zarabeth against him. But the dream had been so solid. He eased away from her and rose. He left the longhouse, naked, and walked to the temple.

He remained there until the sun was bright in the morning sky. There had been no answers and he was left tortured by what he had seen.

Horkel and Cyra married that day and left Malek to return to the small farmstead Magnus had allotted to Horkel in return for his service. Many of Magnus' men itched to be off trading, for the summer was full upon them and it wasn't right that they remain here doing the work of the slaves and the women. They wanted to make their fortunes.

But Magnus didn't want to leave Zarabeth. The next evening Ragnar drank more than was wise and said loudly, “We become weak and fitful as women here! We waste the long hours of summer when we could be making ourselves rich and richer yet. What say you, Magnus? A quick raid to the south, at the mouth of the Seine. We sail in and take what we want from those rich villages on the coast. We'll be home before September comes and be richer than we are now.”

Magnus didn't respond. He was thinking back to his dream. He hadn't told any of his men about it, not even Horkel or Tostig, but it preyed on him endlessly.

“Aye,” said Hakon. “Or we could go trading to Birka. We have many soapstone bowls of fine quality.”

Ragnar drank more. He got no response from Magnus and it enraged him. He walked to where Zarabeth was sitting with three other women, shelling peas. “Aye, tell him to go, mistress, for 'tis because of you that he stays. Perhaps he fears you will flee him. He can bring you back gold and silver and Rollo can melt it down and give you all the jewels you could desire. Isn't that what you want? By Odin, answer me! We all know that you give him nothing!”