“The fish is cooked.” He picked up a wooden plate, realized he had only one, then shrugged. He knifed each of the fish onto the plate, then set it between them. “You will use your fingers. I have only one knife. Take that fish nearest you. It’s the smallest.”
She simply nodded, but made no move as yet. She was blessedly full. She watched him slice the bass, carefully cut it, and spear it. He eased it into his mouth as one would present a gift to a god. He chewed, the expression on his face blissful. He said nothing, just ate, one bite after another, until all that was left on the plate was the smallest bass he’d said was hers and a half of another.
He looked at that half of bass. Then he looked at his dog and sighed. To her astonishment, he offered the remaining half to Kerzog. To her further astonishment, after Kerzog sniffed at it, he wuffed softly, and refused it, looking at Rorik as he rested his head on his front paws. Rorik frowned at him but said nothing.
She said, “There is something strange going on here. I was fed all day, the most delicious porridge and fresh bread with butter and honey, and then there was stewed beans in onions and eggs, all delicious. Yet you bring that horrid swill for dinner. You are starving. What is happening here?”
He continued to stare at that half fish and at the small one that was hers. He said, more to himself than to her, “So Aslak was right.” He cursed. “By all the gods, my damned dog is full bellied! That’s why he disdains the bass I offered him. It is only the men the women are torturing. Even Kerzog is blissfully full.”
“Eat the rest of the bass. I am very full, perhaps even more so than your dog. As I said, the women fed me all day.”
He did, saying nothing until he’d wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, wiped his knife on an oak leaf, and tossed the leaf into the embers of the small fire.
“Aslak said the women are punishing us because Entti beds the men. The women don’t care if the men aren’t married, but married men are seeking her out as well and that makes them very angry.”
She stared at him. This was the man who’d tried to kill her brother, who had fought over a dozen men with naught but a sword and a knife? This was the man who’d borne the wound in his shoulder like the warrior he was, contemptuous of weakness and pain, until, finally, he’d escaped, taking her with him? He’d been cruel, treating her like an animal, abusing her endlessly, yet saving her from drowning, even though at that moment she’d wanted to drown, to end it. She was thankful now that he’d saved her. But all of it came down to this—he and his men were being punished by the women for their faithlessness.
He’d caught his own dinner and cooked it.
“I don’t know why the women fed you,” he said absently. “You’re their enemy since you’re also my enemy.”
He sat back against the palisade wall and sighed in contentment, lacing his hands over his belly.
“Aye,” he said, filling the silence, for Mirana said nothing, “aye, I must do it, there is none other. I will stop this women’s rebellion. My men said I should put a halt to it and I will, though in all truth, I don’t think they believe me able to succeed. But I will succeed. If a man wishes to bed a woman, it is his right to do so.”
“Even if he is wed?”
He looked into the fire, his blue eyes gleaming brighter than the flames. “The man rules. It is he who protects the woman, he who provides shelter and food for her. It is his right to bed with a bear if he wishes to. It is I who am the lord here and all obey me. I will endure no more.”
It was in that instant that Mirana decided to take a hand. His words, spoken with such arrogance, made her want to strike him. So, he believed a man could be unfaithful to his wife, did he? She wished now she’d known the reason for the inedible cooking before speaking to him, for she’d been too frank in her words to him, and now he planned to retaliate. She would do something, she had to.
She bided her time. He led her back to the longhouse, into the sleeping chamber, and again chained her wrist. Then he left her. Mirana waited. When she’d passed through the longhouse with Rorik, she’d looked directly at Old Alna, a look that conveyed a woman’s meaning that was instantly recognized and accepted. She waited now in his chamber, knowing the old woman would come if she were able.
Both Old Alna and Amma came only minutes later.
Old Alna said as she lit the rush light set in the wall, and pulled the bearskin down over the opening to the sleeping chamber to give them privacy, “Lord Rorik and the men are all drinking and braying like goats over their prowess on the mainland hunt today. Aye, on and on how brave Rorik was to face down the boar with his wounded shoulder. He will gain too much affection for himself if it continues. I also overheard Gurd telling the men that Rorik would stop the women’s rebellion and then he laughed and laughed, and poured mead down his throat in Rorik’s honor. Don’t you worry, Mirana, that Lord Rorik will come here to look in on you and thus surprise us. Nay, Lord Rorik won’t think about you, he’s too busy thinking about himself and how wonderful he is. We’re safe. This is Amma. It was her idea to punish the men until they learned to keep their men’s lusts at their own hearths.”
“I’m glad you came,” Mirana said. She looked at Amma, who nodded back to her. “I had wondered at the terrible food. Unfortunately I spoke of it to Lord Rorik. If only I’d known the reason for your actions, I wouldn’t have said anything. I’m very sorry. Amma, ’twas an excellent idea. Tonight Lord Rorik said he would stop it, that he would give you orders that Entti would no longer cook, that you would no longer play these games with the men’s bellies. It was Aslak who saw the truth immediately and he told the men, but Rorik didn’t want to believe it.”
“Rorik’s soft when it comes to the women,” Old Alna said and grinned at Mirana and Amma. “I wondered when one of the men would realize what we were doing and why. But Rorik is soft with women, as I said, all except with you. I don’t understand that, he is different with you, but with us, he won’t lift his voice or his hand.”
Mirana shook her head. “He is ready to order and command and yell. Perhaps he is even ready to do violence. Rorik is starving. He caught his own fish and cooked them himself tonight. I have never before seen a man look at food the way he did at that frying fish. He will do what is necessary and if that is terrorizing the women with threats and punishments, that is what he will do. That is why I looked toward you, Alna, when he brought me back inside.” Mirana drew a deep breath. “I want to help. I want to try to stop him if I can. I want you to gain what is right.”
Amma said, “I have pushed the women into this. Nay, Alna, don’t excuse me. I did think it was the best way to gain their attention. You see, Mirana, Sculla, my husband, doesn’t sleep with Entti. He is faithful, but the others, they are rutting stoats. There is something else. I wouldn’t have you fault Entti. None of the women do. She’s a simple-minded girl, sweet and gentle. ’Tis not her fault that she was captured and brought here as a slave and made to sleep with the men. We don’t blame her, even though she appears not to mind who plows her belly. It is those men who deserve punishment. ’Twas my idea to make them suffer with inedible food. What think you, Mirana?”
They’d recognized her as one of them, Mirana thought, relieved and pleased and strangely touched. They were including her, looking to her. “Aye, I do have an idea, but let me say first that yours is an excellent punishment. But now I think it is time to withdraw, just a bit, to make them guess, to make them uncertain and wonder about what we will do next. Men don’t realize that women can select a course of action and devise excellent strategy, and that is what we will do.”
Old Alna smiled at Amma, nodding. The prisoner, this girl whose brother was indeed Lord Rorik’s enemy and theirs, was one of them. She was smart and she had recognized what they wanted and agreed with it. There was something about her, perhaps a confidence, a determination, but both of them trusted her. Amma motioned Old Alna to sit on one side of the bed and she sat close to Mirana. “What do you think we should do? What do you m
ean, we should withdraw?”
Mirana sat forward, her eyes bright with plans and excitement. “Tomorrow, make the food sublime. Put no pine needles or black bark into the porridge. Don’t pour any smashed sour reeds or turnip roots and rotted oak leaves into the stew. Add no sour spices. Make all the food as sweet and delicious as if it were a gift to the gods themselves. All day tomorrow feed the men wondrous dishes, and give them fulsome smiles. Act like worshipful sheep.”
“But they don’t deserve it!” Amma said. She bounded to her feet and began pacing the small chamber. She was very tall and hardy and Mirana smiled as she watched her, this strong-willed woman who was a natural leader. “Sculla doesn’t approve of the men’s faithlessness, but he won’t chide them. He says naught, damn him! He, the man I’ve been married to for twelve years, doesn’t even realize that I talked the women into ruining all the men’s food.”
“I know,” Mirana said, “but men are different from us. Listen, Amma, we need to keep them off balance. Rorik won’t understand when everything suddenly changes on the morrow, none of the men will, and he won’t know what to do. He’ll have to think, but he won’t have any idea what are the right thoughts.”
“Ah, I see the way her ideas are stringing themselves,” Old Alna said. She cackled. “I like it, Amma. ’Twill make the louts wonder if they’re on their arses or on their heads! Aye, ’tis a good plan.”
Amma said slowly, “And then the next day, we’ll give them swill again?”
“First we will see what Rorik does. I doubt he will do anything. As Alna says, they won’t know what to make of what has happened, all without a word or an order from Rorik. Perhaps he will conclude that you’ve heard that he plans to break the rebellion and have submitted without a whimper.”
“Men reason that way,” Old Alna said. “When a woman is a submissive little sheep, he thinks it’s because she finally realizes he’s a prince and a god and is ready to worship at his feet. Dolts, all of them, even my perfect Rorik sometimes.” She gave Mirana a long thoughtful look. “You’re a bright sweeting,” she said suddenly. “Just like Rorik’s mother, Tora. Strong-willed too, and stubborn as a flea on a goat’s back.”
“Aye,” Amma said. “Tora is strong. Aye, and inventive. Her husband never knows which way to think when she weaves her web around him. I remember she always stands toe to toe to Harald, her husband. She shouts louder than he does, despite the level of his ire. He would never strike her or threaten her. Alna is right. You are fearless. You are like her.”
Mirana wondered about that, but said, pleased, even as she shook her head, “Well, we won’t shout as yet.”
“Ah, no, obedient sheep we’ll be,” said Amma and she gave Mirana a fat smile.
“Say nothing to Sculla,” Mirana told Amma. “Even though he is a faithful husband, he is still a man, and a man is more loyal to other men in many things than to his wife.”
“I’ll say not a word,” Amma said, then she laughed. “I will prepare a barley soup that will make the men weep with pleasure.”
“And what of Entti?” Mirana asked.
“Ah, that sweet little simpleton will do as she’s told,” Old Alna said. “She has cooked the swill, we’ve not lied about that. Asta hands her pine bark and she adds it to the stew. Amma gives her turnip root and she merrily grinds it into a paste to throw into a soup.”
“Aye, with a sweet empty smile on her face. Now we’ll let her watch,” Amma said.
8
SHE LAY ON her side on the floor, wrapped in a single blanket. Her left wrist was chained tonight because he’d looked at the bruises on her right wrist, said nothing at all, and chained her left.
He hadn’t fondled her again, had scarcely even looked at her once they’d returned to the longhouse. She thought about her meeting with Amma and Old Alna. She was doubtless a fool to involve herself with the women’s problems, but the urge had been strong inside her and she’d done it. She hoped her plan would work. She hoped Rorik would wait to make his threats to the women, just a day, just to see if perhaps their fear of him would better their cooking. Aye, and when it did, how he would preen. How all the men would strut about, feeling so pleased with themselves. But not for very long. She wished she didn’t like the women so very much, but she did. She felt kinship with them now.
She listened to Rorik’s deep even breathing. She closed her own eyes and tried to copy his rhythm. It didn’t work. She lay there wondering what would become of her, wondering what Einar was doing to find her, if he was doing anything. She might brag of her half-brother before Rorik, but to herself, she admitted the truth. No, she had no idea at all what Einar would do. He was a strange man; she’d never understood the way he thought, why he behaved as he did.
Suddenly, Rorik’s breathing hitched, his chest heaved, and he groaned deep in his throat. He cried out, and then moaned, his voice deep and raw and filled with pain, “Nay! By Thor, nay! Inga, don’t leave me! By all the gods, no!”
He heaved and jerked. She felt the box bed moving in his frenzy. She came up onto her knees. He was thrashing, moaning, in the throes of a nightmare.
“Rorik! Wake up!”
He cried out again and again, softly, cries of great pain, of helplessness and misery too deep to bear.
“Rorik!”
He jerked upright in the bed, gasping for breath. She could make out his outline, but not the expression on his face.
“You had a nightmare,” she said calmly, leaning forward so she could see him better. The chain rattled as it struck against the wooden bed frame.
He looked over at her, kneeling up so she could see him, the chain dangling from her left wrist. The sound of that damnable chain clinking against the wooden bed. He shook his head. The nightmare . . . always there, the horror of it, the pain of it, always there in the back of his mind, freed at night to sneak in unchecked and hurt him and make him relive it again and again. He hated it and he couldn’t seem to escape it.
He said nothing to her. He hated her for hearing him relive the monstrous memory, for sounding defenseless as a child, hated her too for waking him from it even though he knew he should be grateful to her because she’d kept the dream from continuing to its terrible end, an end that didn’t always come because he hadn’t been there to see it. He had arrived too late, too late to do anything, save witness the misery and breathe in the acrid stench of death, and he’d felt it deep within him even as he’d fallen on his knees and keened his own agony and cursed his impotence, cursing himself because he hadn’t been there. He rose, realized he was naked save for the white bandage around his shoulder, and jerked a tunic over his head.
He drew a deep breath. His hands were shaking. He hated that too.
“Are you all right?”
“Aye,” he said shortly. “Go back to sleep. Attend to your own dreams and leave mine to me.”
He left the sleeping chamber without a backward glance.
Mirana eased back down and wrapped herself securely in the blanket. Who was Inga?
The next morning Old Alna came to release the chain. Rorik hadn’t returned to the sleeping chamber for the rest of the night. It was well after dawn now. She handed Mirana the gown and tunic she’d washed the night before.
“It was an excellent plan,” Old Alna said, “but it didn’t work. I had hoped he would wait, but he didn’t. Lord Rorik is speaking right now—before he or the men have had a chance to eat the wonderful porridge and flatbread. The gods have frowned on us.” The old woman sighed. “Come along, we might as well hear what he has to say. Perhaps you will have another idea.”
She led Mirana into the long hall, where at least three score people stood about or sat on the benches around the wall. But no one as yet had eaten, curse the fates. Rorik was speaking, his voice firm, but she heard the deep anger and wondered if the rest of them did. He was standing in their midst, his hands on his hips. He looked like the ruler he was; he looked determined. He also looked calm as a Christian priest and, at the same time,
primed for violence. It was odd, but it was true.
“ . . . I have had enough of this, as have all the men. You women will cease this cruel game with our meals. No more. It is ended. If there is one more foul stew presented, one more pot of cabbage mixed with oak bark, one more dish of anything that isn’t at the very least ordinary to eat, I will personally whip the woman or women who cooked it. Then each of my men will whip one of the women in turn. The only woman who won’t be punished is Entti. She will be spared, for it is not her fault that she has no skills with food. It is not her fault that you have forced her to continue, if it is indeed all her own efforts, which I strongly doubt. All of you understand me, for I do not spout these words for my own hearing. There will be no more of this, or the whippings will take place. I am the master here and I have spoken.”
He turned on his heel and left the hall.
Mirana wondered if there was an equal number of men to women. If there weren’t, then some women might escape the whipping, or if there were more men, then some . . . her brain stopped. Once Rorik left the hall, there was a babble of protest from the women. They’d moved away from the men, and were huddled into groups, shrieking, moaning, clearly unnerved. Old Alna merely stood to one side and grinned, showing her three remaining teeth. It was a pitiful grin indeed.
Most of the men were laughing and cheering, some were even rubbing their hands together in anticipation. The blacksmith, Gurd, bellowed, “Asta, bring your buttocks here, my fine wife! Aye, come or I will whip you now, with our lord’s good wishes, nay, his orders! Aye, he is not a man to disobey. You heard him, he is the master here.”
Asta shrieked, “I will see you rot in a salt marsh, you miserable unfaithful sod!”
Gurd, whose upper body was massive, the muscles bulging in his arms and chest, swaggered to his wife, grabbed her hand, and hauled her against him. He took her chin in his smoke-blackened hand, and said aloud, for all the men to hear, “I’ll plow Entti’s belly or any other woman’s belly whenever I wish it and you’ll not say me nay. Aye, you’ll feel the flat of my hand on your plump buttocks if you gainsay me ever again. Nor will you whine or goad me with tears or plaints. Get thee to the chores and bleat not with those other sheep. Aye, and bring me porridge. It had better be tasty or you will feel my anger.”