Surrender My Love (2 page)

The building of his house had had to wait until the war was over, and Kristen knew how much he had chafed at the further delay the weather had caused, for he had spent the winter with them. But the building was resumed in the spring, slowly, because fields also needed tending at that time, and Selig now had his own to plant.

Royce had loaned him his own builder, Lyman, as well as those serfs he could spare, though Selig had bought a half-dozen slaves in the Viking market centers of the north on his return trip that year, before he even told Kristen of his plans. He had bought men only—no Saxons, in deference to his brother-in-law—
for the express purpose of building his house and working his land. His father, however, had given him a few more, which put his blessing on the venture, since Garrick wasn’t at all adverse to having Selig live near Kristen to keep her safe; his opinion of his son-in-law was not so high that he cared to leave her safety solely in Royce’s hands.

Selig was so obviously pleased by his accomplishment, Kristen was delighted for him. “So when is the celebration feast to be?” she asked.

He laughed. “Not until Ivarr returns with some women who can prepare it.”

Ivarr was his closest friend who had been captured along with Kristen and the others. All of them had been enslaved and made to wear chains that summer, until Kristen’s father and uncle had come to free them. It was their habit now that Ivarr would take Selig’s ship to trade in the north each summer that Selig spent with Kristen.

“You sent him to buy women?”

He reacted defensively to the surprise in her tone. “I cannot come to you every time I need something sewed or a hot meal, Kris.”

She was not upset with him. Slavery was a fact of life, and Christian and heathen alike saw nothing wrong with enslaving a defeated people. Her family had always owned slaves, some captured on raids, some bought. Her husband owned them, though his were mostly freemen who had been unable to meet the fines for whatever crimes they had committed, and so by Saxon law were enslaved as punishment.
And his many serfs were not much different from slaves.

Her mother had been captured and given to her father as a slave, and so had Kristen been captured and enslaved by Royce for a time—until her father came to put an end to that. Though truth be known, Royce had already decided to marry her, so he didn’t need the inducement of an enraged father and a hundred Vikings at his gate, nor her mother’s dagger at his throat.

“Of course you will need women to care for both you and your home,” Kristen said now. “But you should have let me choose them for you. Ivarr will pick only the pretty ones, if I know him, whether they can cook and sew a seam or not.”

“You think so? Truly?”

The eagerness in his tone brought a laugh from Royce, but Kristen would have thrown something at her brother’s head if he were not still holding her daughter. “You have more women available to you than you know what to do with, Selig. I would think you would want some with the skills to do what needs doing if you are going to pay good coin for them.”

Both men burst out laughing, and Kristen added with a scowl, “Besides
that
.”

Selig was still chuckling. “Let us hope, then, that they are skilled in all areas, or I will still be visiting your hall, sister.”

“When did
you
get so particular?” she scoffed.

He shrugged, giving her the grin that could melt the stoniest of hearts, and said, “You know me too well.”

She did indeed. Selig loved all women, just as they all adored him, and he treated each one the same. He didn’t take advantage of a slave merely because she was a slave and couldn’t refuse him, but wooed her as he would a free woman. The women Ivarr bought for him wouldn’t mind in the least being owned by him, of that Kristen had no doubt.

“So when do you expect Ivarr back?” she asked.

“He was to sail to both Birka and Hedeby, so I do not expect him for a fortnight, another month at the most.”

Kristen would have offered her women to prepare his feast, but knew he would want to wait until Ivarr and the rest of his men returned before he celebrated the completion of his new home. Seven of those men had elected to settle in Wessex as well, including her dear friend Thorolf. The rest of the men would sail home to Norway with Ivarr before the winter months stranded them here, to return again next summer.

She sighed, glancing around to note the number of women still staring in Selig’s direction, their work ignored. Just about all. “I can see I will not get much done around here, now that you have idle hands again.” She turned to her husband, jesting. “Can you not find another war to send him off to?”

Royce snorted. “You would take an ax to me if I did.”

Which was more than likely. She had hated it when both her husband and her brother had ridden off to fight against the Danes last year.

She was about to admit as much when one of Royce’s men ran into the hall. “Five riders approach, milord,” he said, “one nigh dead by the look of him. They bear the king’s banner.”

And Kristen groaned inwardly, afraid war had again come to Wessex.

Chapter 2

I
T WAS NOT
war that was threatening again, as Kristen had dreaded, but a new plan devised by King Alfred and his advisors to strengthen the existing peace. The delegation of five that arrived at Wyndhurst from the west had been on their way to King Guthrum’s court to do Alfred’s bidding. They had not been attacked. The ailing man suffered no wounds, but some kind of natural affliction that was causing him severe pains, and limbs that would no longer do his bidding.

Kristen wouldn’t learn what business the men were about until after she had seen the ailing one to a bed and summoned the healers, and even then word was brought to her before she returned to her husband that the man had died. That quickly, and of what the two healers couldn’t say.

But it was this news she had to bring to the waiting men, and the four who had ridden with the dead one took it badly; not in grief, for they barely knew the man, but in the failure of their mission, which his death put an end to. They assumed the king would
be furious. Royce had doubts of that. Knowing Alfred as he did, as a friend as well as his king, he imagined Alfred would chafe at the delay, then merely find someone else to replace the man who had died.

Of course, finding a replacement wouldn’t be so easy, for it was their interpreter who had died, the one who was to speak to the Danes for the bishop in their party, who was the diplomat. The other three men were along as guards, since they had uncertain lands to pass through that were rife with thieves these days. The bishop could have easily been replaced, but there were not that many men in Alfred’s kingdom who spoke the language of the Danes to make it easy for him to find another interpreter.

Selig also had to wait until Royce could explain what the problem was, but not because he had been busy elsewhere, as his sister was. He had simply not understood a word of what the Saxons had said.

Unlike Kristen, who had learned the different languages of all the slaves during her growing years at home, including her husband’s tongue, Selig had learned only those languages he had thought would be useful to him in trading. So he could speak to any Dane and Swede with ease, could make himself understood to any Finn or Slav; and, of course, any Celt would think Selig was one of his own, for he spoke that tongue so well, thanks to his mother. But he couldn’t speak to a Saxon unless like Royce, the man also knew
the Celtic tongue, and fortunately, many of them did.

Selig had seen no need to learn the other languages that Kristen had learned, because he hadn’t entertained the idea of raiding the southern lands as other Vikings were still doing, but had planned to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a merchant prince. That one raid he and his friends had tried and failed at had been no more than a lark, their attempt to take some of the wealth from this land before the Danes conquered it all.

It behooved him, of course, to learn the Saxon tongue now, since he had decided to settle in this country, and so he was learning it. But he was no longer a child who had naught else to do but study, so he had not grasped much of it yet, was in no hurry to do so, and was still at a loss in situations like this when no one spoke slowly for his benefit. Actually, the Saxon words he was learning, he was learning from women, and those words did not exactly come up in conversations of this sort.

When Royce again joined him in the gathering area of the hall, next to the ale barrel, Kristen was also just returning from putting her children down for the night. They had shared their evening meal with the guests, but Kristen and Selig both had refrained from joining in the talk, which was mostly the lamentations of the four strangers. The hall still buzzed with activity, though, and the sky outside had yet to fully darken, it being well into summer.

After refilling their tankards with ale, Kristen was the first to speak. “Did I hear them aright? King Alfred actually wants some alliances made through marriages?”

Royce shrugged, not as surprised as his wife. “That is the gist of it. Three of his nobles have volunteered to sacrifice their daughters, all three ladies comely, all three richly dowered.”

Kristen let that “sacrifice” pass, knowing he had not forgiven the Danes, nor ever would forgive them, for the slaughter they had done at Wyndhurst all those years ago. “Do those dowers include land?”

“Aye.”

“God’s mercy, Royce!” she exclaimed incredulously. “Your king and his brothers before him have been fighting all these years to keep the Danes out of Wessex, and now he will just
give
them property here?”

“His reasoning is simple,” Royce explained. “Better three properties than the whole of Wessex when the Danish faction that is still greedy grows restless again. We know now that at least half of Guthrum’s army is as tired of war as we are. They want naught more than to settle on the lands they have already taken for themselves. ’Twas the other half, the young men who came late to the war and so had not gained much yet, that started up the last war.”

Which was the one that had so nearly succeeded. In fact, the Danes thought they had won, thought Alfred had died. And they were
not the only ones to think so, with the Danes so firmly entrenched at Chippenham and ravishing the countryside around it.

Royce had first joined the fray again when Alfred’s army had to chase the Danes out of Wareham in 876, then again at Exeter in 877. But after the Saxon army disbanded for the winter that year, as was the usual habit, the Danes made a surprise appearance at Alfred’s court at Chippenham, where he was enjoying the holidays, and he and his family just managed to escape. His courtiers were scattered, the Danes ravished the countryside in triumph, and word spread that Alfred had been defeated. But he had not. With a small band of men, he hid deep in the Somerset marches, building a fort there from which he harassed the Danes and planned his strategies.

Royce had received word where to meet Alfred in the spring last year, at Ecgbryhtesstane, and it was there that he, Selig, and his men joined the fight for a last bloody battle. They met the Danish army at Ethandune and put them to flight, but followed them back to their fortress, which they surrounded until the last peace was arranged soon after. It was a peace that no one really trusted; the Danes had broken it so many times in the past. Of course, this time there was a difference. This time King Guthrum of the Danes and thirty of his war leaders had been baptized in the Christian faith.

Guthrum had taken his remaining army back to Chippenham after all was settled, and
had returned to East Anglia this year, where word was they were finally settling down in this area they had long ago conquered. But there were still those who doubted there could be a lasting peace, given the experiences of the past. Yet others were hopeful now, considering it was the first time that Alfred hadn’t had to pay any Danegeld to get the Danes to depart Wessex. He had demanded hostages instead, as well as the baptisms. And there was one last difference this time. Alfred had finally acknowledged that the lands north of Wessex belonged to the Danes.

West Mercia was theirs, the people reduced to serfdom, and East Mercia under their firm control. Northumbria to the far north they had already settled, and East Anglia had been theirs from the start. It did seem, indeed, that it was time to give up the hope that they could eventually be expelled from all of the land. They were entrenched, there to stay, and Alfred was wise to recognize this fact and to take steps to assure that the existing peace would be a lasting one. Alliances through marriage was one way to do so.

“So Alfred is sending this delegation to King Guthrum,” Royce continued. “They are few enough in numbers not to appear threatening when they begin passing through Danish lands, yet large enough to keep the bishop from being robbed on the way. He is the one who will negotiate the marriages with Guthrum, and ’tis
hoped the three men Guthrum chooses will be high in his favor.”

“So that they will advise against war if it comes to that again?”

“Exactly,” Royce replied. “But now they will have to return to Alfred until another interpreter can be found, which could take months. And he is presently on the move, visiting his ealdormen west of here, so there could be further delay just in locating him.”

“Why delay at all,” Selig mentioned casually, “when I could take the man’s place?”

Kristen snorted at the notion, but Royce grinned, saying, “Aye, you could speak to Guthrum easily enough, but who would interpret the bishop’s words for you?”

Selig flushed slightly, having overlooked that pertinent fact. “The difficulties I am finding in communicating here are becoming a damned nuisance,” he grumbled, and said to his sister, reproachfully, “why did you never insist I learn the Saxon tongue? You got Eric and Thorall to learn it.”

Eric and Thorall were their younger brothers, and Kristen merely pointed out, “’Twas easy to get them to follow my suggestions, for they were both much smaller than I was—for a time. You never were.” To that he grunted, so she added, “Why do you want to involve yourself in this? ’Tis none of your concern.”