Eric paused, gazing back at Erin. “Mother, Rhiannon—”
“She is fine and well and sleeping. I heard the horns, but I did not waken her because she slept so soundly and still tires easily. It has just been ten days, you see, and the babe does not sleep through the night.”
He smiled and nodded. Erin made her way to him and proudly touched the babe’s cheek, then pulled Eric on inside. “Really, though, she is fine.” Even as Erin spoke, the babe stared at Eric, waved his tiny fists in the air, and let out with a hearty scream. Erin laughed. “He not only looks like you, he even sounds a great deal like you! Take him to his mother, he is hungry.”
“Is he?” Eric demanded. “Well, I’m glad that he hasn’t merely decided that he does not like my face.” He kissed his mother’s cheek and strode hastily into the house and up the long stairway. He thrust open the door to his room just in time to see Rhiannon rising. She was dressed in white, her hair a flaming tangle about her, her eyes heavy-lidded and both sweetly sensual and arrestingly innocent as they fell upon him. They widened to silver saucers, and she whispered his name with surprise. “Eric!”
He strode across the room to her, laying the child at her side, capturing her hand and kissing it before drinking deeply of her lips. And then her eyes were on his again, wide and luminescent. A rueful, shy smile touched her lips, and she said anxiously, “Do you like him?”
“Like him? I adore him. And I thank you with all my heart.”
She lowered her lashes quickly as tears rose to glisten her eyes. He caught her chin, raised it up, and studied her eyes demandingly. “What is this? What did you expect?”
She went very pale and tried to twist away, but he would not allow her to do so. “Rhiannon, I would know what is going on in that mind of yours.”
“I—I was afraid!” she whispered.
“Of what? Of me?”
Her lashes fell despite his command. And then he smiled and counted days; it was probably an exact nine months since their wedding night, and there certainly had been tension regarding it.
He threaded his fingers through her hair, turned her face to his, and seized her lips with a startling passion that brought her eyes flying open to meet his. “My dear wife, I have always known that I bedded a maid that night. Whatever caused you to take me for a fool at this late date?”
She flushed and freed herself from his touch. Staring down at the babe, she felt her temper returning with a rise. “Well, you didn’t notice the child when he was coming along quite nicely within me!”
He shrugged, a grin upon his lips that tore at her heart and caused it to thunder with a new excitement. “I’m afraid, my love, that I was fairly well versed at sex but quite unaccustomed to the matter of siring a child. Rhiannon, we have made a son. God, he is gorgeous!”
“Hmmph!” came a voice from the doorway. “‘We’ made a son! You should have been here for the labor. And according to Rhiannon at that time, you should have been swallowed up in the sea for your part in it all!”
Eric spun around to see his sister Daria standing there smiling. He stood and caught her when she rushed into his arms and kissed him fiercely. Tears stung her eyes. “Oh, Eric, I am so grateful to see you all home and alive and well!”
“I’m grateful to be here,” Eric said, holding her close. Then he looked down at his wife. “I should have been swallowed up by the sea?”
She flushed furiously, and Daria laughed. “I’ll be back for Garth, Rhiannon, when you two have finished doting, to give you a few minutes alone.”
She left them, and there was silence for a moment. Then Garth started to scream again, and Rhiannon flushed and murmured that he was hungry. She adjusted her gown and led the babe’s questing mouth to her breast. He latched on hungrily, letting out startling little noises. Eric laughed. Forgetting his travel-stained clothing and weapons, he stretched out beside his wife and felt a warmth and languor steal over him. So this is it, he thought briefly. This is peace and happiness, a taste of it at least, a taste to reach for. Feelings surged hotly within him, the desire to protect against all odds, to hold his son, to hold Rhiannon both with passion and with tenderness. There had never been anything so beautiful in life as the sight of his wife cradling his child.
He touched her cheek as she fed the child. “Did you really wish that I should pitch into the sea? You merely could have prayed for a battle-ax to take me.”
She kept her eyes on her son. “You don’t understand, Eric. I’m not at all sure what I really said at the time.”
“It was so painful?” he asked her tensely.
“It was horrible!” she replied, but then she smiled, and her eyes turned to his at last. “But worth it! Oh, Eric, he is worth … everything! Everything.”
He inhaled, watching her eyes. He touched his son’s platinum hair. “You love the grandchild of a Viking from the house of Vestfald,” he reminded her.
She watched his eyes, and then she smiled very slowly. The blood within him heated, and he warned himself that he musn’t feel so, that it was far too soon after the birth of their child for him to be feeling desire at all.
“I like your father very much,” she told him primly.
“Do you?”
“Indeed.”
He smiled, then caught her hand and kissed it. They stared at each other for a long moment, and then Rhiannon let out a startled “Oh! Take him, Eric, he’s sleeping already, and he really must burp.”
He swept up the baby, casting him over his shoulder with ease. Rhiannon adjusted her gown and pushed up on the bed, shivering with the pleasure of her husband’s return and his delight in their child. “You do that very well,” she murmured, and indeed he did. The splendid warrior with his golden head, royal crimson mantle, and massive sword arm seemed completely at ease with the child upon his shoulders.
“I am an uncle many times over,” he reminded her, grinning. Then the baby burped, and Rhiannon laughed, and Eric playfully charged his son with insurrection for spitting up on his father’s formal attire.
“Oh, Eric! I was so afraid so many times!” Rhiannon admitted, watching him.
“Afraid?”
“That you would not come back,” she said, and again her gaze fell and she plucked at the covers. She could not give too much to him. She did not dare. “But you see, you have returned, and your father is well, and your brothers, and your mother is so happy, and I am so very glad ….” Her voice trailed away. Eric suddenly had gone very still.
“Eric—?”
“Garth sleeps. I shall have Daria take him.” He strode to the door. Daria was down the hallway, talking excitedly with Bryan. Bryan, seeing Eric’s eyes, seemed to know that the time had come to tell Rhiannon that her countryman had been slain.
“Daria, go get our nephew,” Bryan told her. Eric nodded briefly to his brother. Daria frowned but quickly swept the baby away. Eric reentered his room, closing the door. Rhiannon was sitting up now, staring at him with deep concern in her eyes, a frown knitting her brow.
“Eric, what is it?”
He couldn’t hedge; he couldn’t ease his guilt or her pain. “Rowan was killed,” he told her simply. And then he watched her features as she comprehended his words, watched the anguish seep into her eyes, the tears rise within them. His voice became rough as he continued. “I swore to protect him, but I failed. I had him buried with special prayers. I could not bring him back; circumstances would not allow it. I—I’m sorry.”
He wanted to touch her but knew she would not want him to do so. She had loved Rowan. Loved him with youth, with innocence, with passion, and with laughter. She would not want the man who had destroyed that love to soothe her now.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. Then, awkwardly, he added, “I’ll leave you. If you need me, send for me.”
He left the room, closing the door behind him. He heard the soft sobs that escaped her, then winced and hurried down the stairs.
She did not need him, or so it seemed. The hours in the long d
ay passed, and she did not send for him. He ate with his family as dusk fell, then he found solace before the fire with a horn of ale as the night darkened and the hour grew late.
No one intruded upon him until quite late, when his father came and sat beside him, staring into the fire. “You should go to her,” he told Eric.
“She does not want me,” he said simply.
Olaf leaned forward, watching the flames. “Once I came back from a battle and I had to tell your mother that both a very old friend—the Irish king she might have married—and her brother had fallen in the same day. And when I did, I stayed away from her. I left her to cry alone.”
“So what would you have of me?” Eric asked him.
Olaf smiled slowly. “I made a mistake. I would not have you make the same mistake. Go to your wife. Hold her. Ease what pain you can.”
“What if she does not want me?” Eric asked bitterly.
“She wants you!” a soft voice answered him as Erin came out of the shadows to stand behind her husband and smile down at her son. “I know she wants you. She needs you. Just as I needed your father. Go to her, Eric.”
He rose, looking at them both. Then he left behind the light of the fire, strode up the stairs, and walked down the hall to his room. There he paused, then he pushed open the door. He found her in their bed, tears still glazing her eyes. He lifted her into his arms and carried her before the fire, and he held her there, close. Her arms wound around his neck and she sobbed softly, but she laid her head against his chest.
He lifted her chin and gently kissed her tearstained face. He smoothed back her hair, and then he murmured, “Let me hold you, my love. Just let me hold you.”
Her arms tightened about him and she trembled. He asked her what was wrong.
Her silvery eyes looked into his. “I am just afraid that you will let me go!” she whispered.
He stared at her for long moments and then replied, “Never. Never, my love.”
She leaned back against him, sighing softly. And then her eyes began to close.
She slept there in his arms, slept until the very wee hours of morning came, and they were both awakened by Daria’s appearance with their very precious—and very loud—son within her arms.
Another day would soon begin. They had weathered the night, Eric thought.
Indeed, perhaps they had begun anew.
17
Christmas Day came upon them and was celebrated with Christian fervor. Eric presented Rhiannon with an elegantly jeweled and golden filigreed mantle brooch with a Celtic design, and her gift to him was a very fine dagger she had purchased from one of the peddlers who brought in Viking treasures from the Baltic lands and a fine tunic sewn with gold thread that she had fashioned herself in the long months when they had been gone.
It was a happy occasion for her. She had come to love Dubhlain and Eric’s family very much, and it was difficult to remember that she had loathed and despised the very idea of coming here.
Two things disturbed her, though. One, that Rowan had died, and had met his death in a foreign land, one where he had come—albeit indirectly—because of her. The second thing that disturbed her was that she had long, empty hours to dwell on Rowan’s death, because after the night in which he had offered her comfort, Eric had chosen to move across the hall, stating that he was afraid to disturb her or the babe.
Her son was still her absolute delight, and it seemed that when she would she let her mind wander to the pain of losing Rowan, Garth would cease his suckling and stare into her eyes with wisdom and wonder, and she would smile again and be eased.
There was Daria, too, so close to her own age, such a very good friend. And Olaf the White, King of Dubhlain, who sometimes spoke with thunder, more often with gentle tones, and who was definitely the master of his house. Erin, with her quick smile, was as beautiful as any young girl, a whirl of energy and sweet wisdom. In truth, Rhiannon enjoyed all of the household, all of Eric’s many brothers and sisters and nephews and nieces. It was a home filled with laughter, and sorrow, too, as on the night when Aed Finnlaith had departed to his heavenly rest. Yet they were all fiercely together in their sorrows and their joys, and perhaps that was the enchantment of the place.
But even as the January winds whipped and tore at the great stone walls of the town, Eric rode out daily. His ships were repaired and provisioned for the journey eastward, toward her home. It seemed that he was far more eager to leave than she.
A date was set for the end of the month. Rhiannon found her husband in the simply furnished room he had taken as his own and protested their departure. “You would bring your son across a frigid, wind-tossed sea! Eric, we must wait—”
“I cannot wait,” he told her impatiently. Seated before the fire, he carefully honed his sword blade with a stone. He called the sword Vengeance, she knew. Even the death he wielded had a name. He looked up as she remained there, his eyes as frosty a blue as she could ever remember, distant, chilling. Nothing had really changed. He was master of his own destiny, and she was still his property to command, even if he did love his son. “I cannot wait! I vowed my sword to Alfred of Wessex. I left him to do battle for my kin, which Alfred understands, but he plans his assault on Gunthrum in the spring, and I must be with him.”
“Eric—”
“My lady, it is a matter of my honor.”
Tears stung her eyes. “Is death so very honorable, then?”
His eyes fell upon her once again. “Indeed, milady, ’tis the only entrance for a man into the halls of Valhalla.”
She swung about and left him. They seldom spoke as the days passed, and Rhiannon watched the gray and forbidding skies. Then came the date that he had set, and she was relieved to see that the wind had calmed somewhat, even if the sea did still seem to be alive with froth.
Rhiannon found her father-in-law and pleaded with him to attempt to stop Eric, but Olaf smiled gently at her and offered no help. “He must return. He has sworn to support Alfred. He has taken the land, he has taken you as his wife, he has his fine new son. He must return.”
“But—”
“Rhiannon, there is no stopping him. Come, it will be well. Mergwin has predicted a fine sailing, and he is never wrong about such things. Indeed, I shall miss him most sorely.”
“He is coming with us?”
Olaf nodded and wrapped his arms about her gently and kissed the top of her head. “It is time. There is no other course that a man can take. If you ever wish to return, if you ever need us, do not hesitate. The sea is truly not such a vast distance between us.”
There would be no help for it at all. They were leaving. But Mergwin had said that they would be safe; yet he was coming with them. If he was so certain that they would be safe, why was he coming when his heart lay in Ireland?
The household came to see them depart down the river. Rhiannon found herself clinging fiercely to Erin, who assured her that there would be better times ahead and that they would meet again. Rhiannon thanked Eric’s mother for her hospitality and expressed her condolences again for the loss of Erin’s father. The queen smiled and assured her, “I feel that Father merely bided his time since we lost my mother a few years ago. I believe that they are together again and that they guard us all. Take care of my son and grandson, I beg you.”
She could not take care of Eric, no one could, but she did not tell Erin that. She kissed her mother-in-law’s cheek again, and Erin bundled the fur of her mantle high about her throat as Megan kissed her and handed over the well-bundled Garth. Then Rhiannon discovered that Daria had decided to accompany them, and she was very glad.
Rhiannon had already stepped aboard her husband’s vessel when she saw Mergwin saying good-bye to Erin. He held her like a daughter, hugged her close, whispered something in her ear, and embraced her very tenderly again. Then he, too, came aboard. Moments later he had come past the rows of sailors and sat with her at the bow of the ship. Daria, Rhiannon saw, was sailing on Patrick’s vessel.
Cries
and commands rang out, and on that very gray morning she watched the magnificent walled town of Dubhlain slowly fade from her view. Warm fingers curled over hers. She turned to see Mergwin’s eyes upon her. “It will be well,” he assured her.
She nodded and held his hand tightly. She thought of his great age and wondered again why he had chosen to make the journey.
The sea was choppy indeed, and it seemed that they were constantly tossed about. The wind whipped at Rhiannon’s face and hair, chilling her greatly.
Hours out, Eric at last left his stance at the dragon prow and walked back to her. “Are you faring better this time?” he asked. It was a polite question. It seemed distant, though, and nothing other than a courtesy.
“I am faring very well, milord. I am an excellent sailor, as long as I am not with child.”
“Ah, well, if you had thought to mention to me that you were with child, milady, I might have been better prepared to make your voyage more comfortable.”
He did not wait for a reply. Swinging about, he headed for the prow once again and took up his vigil. She glanced at Mergwin and saw that he was smiling slightly. But then she noticed, too, that the smile did not quite reach his eyes, and she was worried. “Are you ill?” she asked him anxiously.
He shook his head. “Somewhat sad, that is all.”
“Why?”
“I will never see Ireland again,” he told her softly.
A chill settled over her. “You mustn’t say that!” she told him. “Please, you mustn’t—”
“Speak the truth? I am a very old man, Rhiannon. Very old.”
“But I need you!” she insisted.
“And I will be here as long as you need me,” he assured her. Then he swiftly changed the subject. “His temper simmers slowly at times, you know.”