The man was still ashen, Eric saw, but he sat his horse with his dignity intact. He stopped before Eric, but before he could speak, Alfred of Wessex had come between them.
“Rowan, how dare you come here thus? I have granted you the mercy of your life and you disavow me yet again!”
Rowan lowered his head. “Before God, I beg your forgiveness, Sire.” He raised his eyes, facing Eric. “But I love her, you see. Eric of Dubhlain, I offer you no disrespect, for you are invited of my liege lord. But still, I challenge you, sir, to a test of arms, as is my right under ancient law.”
“You would meet with me—and Vengeance?” Eric inquired softly, raising his sword.
The man’s face grew even paler, but he nodded gravely.
Eric paused a moment. “The maid is not worth it, lad. No maid is worth it.”
“Aye, this one is,” he said softly.
Eric thought him a besotted fool, but he was a man and deserved his test of arms.
“At dawn, then,” he said. “Upon this very field.”
Rowan raised a hand in salute. “Here, then, Prince Eric, upon this field.”
“And may God have mercy on your soul!” the king muttered gravely.
Rowan nodded in misery again. Eric decided that he liked the younger man; he had the courage to meet with sure death. Rowan turned his mount and raced back toward the annex buildings of the manor. A cry began among Eric’s men, a battle cry. It rose with the wind and was like an echo of death.
Eric lifted his hand high in angry denial. He dropped it, and the cry ceased. The white stallion pranced, sensing his anger. He whirled the mount around, facing his men. “Do you then seek the death of our allies so easily? Nay—we fight the Danes, and if we must rejoice in death, let it be theirs!”
His temper rising, he, too, turned to ride from the throngs of warriors. He raced toward the wall, not bothering to seek out the gate. The white stallion soared over the barrier, and he rode out onto the meadows and fields and forest beyond the manor fortress. He rode and he rode, and he felt it again, a love of the land that utterly overpowered him.
He paused at last upon a high cliff that overlooked the valley where the king made his home. Despite the amassing of men and weapons, he could narrow his eyes and imagine a peaceful scene. He could see the sheep grazing, and the fat ducks as they waddled along. A mare raced with a foal, and the air carried the very taste of birth, of spring.
She loved the land, too, he thought suddenly. She had fought so fiercely for it. But he would prevail, he determined. He would prevail.
That night Eric was startled to see that Rhiannon had chosen to appear at supper.
Rowan was absent. Eric wondered if Rhiannon had heard about the challenge, and then he decided that no one had told her, for when her eyes, glittering silver, fell upon his, they were filled with such loathing that he knew she felt no fear whatsoever, that she knew nothing of the one-on-one combat that honor had demanded be fought over her.
She did not sit near him, nor did she appear before the king. Indeed she ignored both men.
She appeared, beautiful and in a curious splendor, for she walked with a pride and scorn that denied any wrongdoing on her part. Eric had assumed that she would avoid him and the king. She had chosen not to do so. She was the most stunning woman in the hall—likely in all of England, Eric thought. She was dressed in soft powder blue, a color that matched her eyes, except for the flinty look of hatred and anger that came to them when they fell upon him. Her hair was swept into a coil, and the clean lines of her throat and face were artfully highlighted. She walked in beauty, a sylph, slim and agile. When it was time to sit down to the banquet, she did not come near him or the king, or even Alswitha, but chose a place at the end of the table.
For his part, he bowed to her coolly and watched her with a certain amusement and curiosity. Tomorrow she was to be bound over to the women of a religious sect to assure her continued virginity until her wedding. Many women in her position would have shunned this assembly tonight, but not this one. She was here, aloof, condemned by many, and yet majestic before all.
He forgot her presence as he discussed with the king the grave matter of the plan of attack. Rollo spoke forcefully, as did a number of the king’s men. Endless platters of food were served—quail, stuffed and still feathered; herring; boar; roast deer upon a spit. Ale and mead flowed freely. When the food seemed no longer appealing, Alswitha stood and nodded to the servants, and the platters were taken away.
“To the honor of our guests,” she cried, “Padraic, seneschal to the great Lord of Thunder, Eric of Dubhlain.”
Eric was somewhat surprised when his Irish storyteller rose and went to the rear of the hall, where he could be seen by all. The fire behind him added atmosphere to his tale. With great and dramatic clarity he described the family of Eric’s grandfather. He spoke of the Irish kings and of the battles that had raged between them. He spoke in beautiful, beguiling poetry, and he honored the family Finnlaith, coming at last to Aed, who had united the kings of Ireland; who had given his daughter, Erin, to the Norseman Olaf the Wolf, so that Ireland could find peace and be strong. Then he told of Eric himself, of his travels abroad, of his defense of his father’s realm, of the mighty battles he had waged and won.
When he fell silent at last, men raised their voice in loud, raucous approval. Alswitha flushed with pleasure, for Alfred was pleased and Eric surprised, and the company was highly entertained by the talented storyteller.
Then the noise died down and there was a stillness. Eric looked up curiously, to see that Rhiannon had come to where Padraic had stood before the fire. She had freed her hair, and the firelight played upon it and her gown, and she seemed a vision of flowing silk and sensual beauty.
“We have heard the tales of our great Norse host, and we have been greatly entertained. We thank our illustrious ally and pray that we may, in return, entertain him with our Saxon tale of pain and battle and … triumph.”
The haunting sound of a lute filled the air then. Rhiannon began to sway, and it seemed that the music entered her limbs and moved them with exquisite grace. She spun and swirled. She cast back her head and lifted her arms, and all men were silent, watching her. There was not a sound in the whole of the hall except that of the lute, the soft crackle of the fire, and the fall of her delicate feet upon the floor. She wove a spell; she held them all enthralled. It seemed that the fire dimmed and the room darkened, and that all else paled except for the seductive and beautiful maid.
And then she began to speak as she swayed. She sang more than spoke, and her melody was a haunting one. She, too, told a story. A story of England.
Her eyes fell upon Eric with a bold, taunting challenge.
“The story I tell is of Lindesfarne. Lindesfarne,” she repeated softly. Her eyes were full upon Eric, mutely challenging him. He knew why she had come tonight. She had come for revenge. She had come to do battle again—with him.
“I tell a tale of a beautiful place, stripped of God’s grace, of beauty, of peace. Lindesfarne … And I tell a tale of the savages who raided there, fierce barbarians.”
She smiled and began to move again—sweepingly, gracefully, seductively.
And not a man in the hall seemed capable of speech or movement as she began her damning tale.
Eric wasn’t certain he was capable of movement himself.
He would listen to her tale.
And if she wanted battle, then battle he would enjoin.
Lindesfarne …
If he wasn’t mistaken, there was danger in the tale. Alfred was watching Rhiannon warily, his fingers taut upon his chair.
Yet he did not move. None of them moved.
Indeed the tale was dangerous. She was dangerous. She had the power to enchant.
7
Surely some magic did lie over the hall, some deep enchantment. She cast some powder into the central fire, and it seemed to glow with special colors. The music continued to play, ethereal and hypnotic. She w
as bathed in the curious glow of that firelight, and her hair was a silken flame around her, her form lithe and fluid and haunting as she swayed and moved like Salome dancing to gain the Baptist’s head.
“Lindesfarne!” She cried the name, and then she began to describe the monks who lived in that ancient and revered monastery. She spoke of their days, and her dance flowed to image forth the peace of the place. Then her voice rose, and the sound of the music became discordant, and there was a thundering sound against the floor, like the sound of a storm.
“Lightning came to warn them. Rain and wicked winds. The people were afraid and they wondered how they had offended God, for this church and this monastery, defenseless on an island off the coast of Northumbria, was the most sacred place of pilgrimage in all of England. St. Cuthbert had lived and worked there as an abbot a century before ….
“It was the year of Our Lord 793, and the thundering came again.”
Rhiannon spun again and again, an exotic beauty in the fiery swirl of her hair; in the silver gems of her eyes; in the sensual, weightless sway of her elegant young form. Then she paused and fell to the floor, and the thunder crescendoed and then ceased ….
And then her voice came again. She told them how the horde had fallen upon Lindesfarne. How murder had fallen with the blade of the ax, how the fields had been trampled with blood, how the pages of learning had been cast into the eternal hellfire of the heathen who had come. She paused for effect. “Vikings, milords. Not Danes. Norwegians.”
Her arms stretched out, white and lovely. Slowly she unwound herself and rose, and still there was no sound within the hall. Eric himself did not move, though he knew that she fought with this last trick to discredit him before his English host. Her eyes reached across the mist of the darkness to his, and he knew that she would never forgive him for entering her life and radically transforming her destiny.
He longed to rise and strike her in fury. He didn’t believe that she wanted bloodshed; she wanted him to suffer for being what he was, a Viking. She never seemed to grant him a drop of his Irish blood, yet it didn’t matter. He was a Viking, and she had offended him deeply. She must imagine that there was nothing he could do. If he rose in anger, there would be bloodshed, for his men would rise behind him. She had spun such an aching tale, every Englishman must remember the raid that came long before their time and rally together in vengeance and hatred.
She had dared much, for the king, Eric could see, was furious.
For the moment, though, she had little to fear. The room remained silent; all eyes remained upon her. Her hair was a cascading shower of red-gold fire about her, and as she paused before them all, using the drama of the silence, she was achingly beautiful and magnificent, a woman for whom a man might readily die.
Well, she intended him to die, Eric thought dryly. He simply did not intend to oblige her.
She began to move again and to speak softly, and Eric, watching her narrow-eyed and pensive from his place beside the king, wondered how she dared defy Alfred again, when she had already suffered so for offending him. But she so smoothly changed her tale! No matter what his anger, Alfred would wait. He would not incite the men in the hall. She was clever. Dangerously clever, for while the men still sat, mesmerized by the startling beauty of the girl and the curious innocence that touched her tale, she carried her story onward. She spoke of Alfred’s grandfather, and of his fathers and brothers. In wondrous, flowing words she described the greatest challenge of his career, when he had met the Dane, Guthrum. The year was 878. The Danes held Northumbria, had murdered Edmund of East Anglia, and they pressed hard against Alfred of Wessex. Despite all odds, the Saxon king refused to accept defeat, and the fighting forces held out in the island fastnesses of the fenlands. The Welsh of Cornwall were in league with the Danes, and the situation was desperate. But Alfred’s cry went out, and the Saxon thanes of Devon came, ready to trust their fate to the great leadership of Alfred of Wessex, the one man who determined to hold an independent piece of England. The Battle of Ethandune was fought, and it was not the Saxons who were forced to seek terms but the Danish invaders. Guthrum vowed to leave Wessex for the land of Danelaw in the north. He was baptized to the Christian faith, but alas, Viking word was easily broken, and now Guthrum threatened the Saxons again.
Rhiannon fell silent. She raised her arms slowly and reached toward the sky, rising like a young deer upon her toes until she posed in a graceful line.
Then she dropped dramatically to the earth again, and her head fell as she paused once more. Then she raised her chin and her eyes to them all and her cry came out.
“Hail Alfred, King of Wessex!”
The fire brightened, and the hall was visible once again. There was silence, and then thunderous applause, and then a score of men were raising their leather tankards to the king.
And then silence fell again.
Her performance had been so provocative, so seductive, that they had all forgotten the birth of it, as well as the insult she had heaped upon the Norse. All of Eric’s men, the Irish and the Norse and the men of mixed nationalities like himself, all of them applauded her like sheep, enchanted.
But then memory slowly returned to the men, their applause faded, and Eric, leaning back in his chair at the king’s side, knew that they looked to him.
By all honor he was bound to challenge her, to punish her in some way, to meet her anger. But if he were to strike the girl who had just so eloquently praised the great King of Wessex, men who had condemned her this very day for her refusal to obey her guardian, the king would now rise wildly to her defense. She had cast him into a very dangerous and precarious situation, and he swore in silence that she would someday pay for her cunning.
She remained upon the ground, elegantly draped in her clothing, still beautiful in her pose. But her eyes were on his, and he saw the silver glint to them, the feline gleam. She knew exactly the import of what she had done, and she was sweetly savoring her triumph over him.
He sat still in the silence, and then he rose very slowly. He towered over the assembly in size and majesty in his crimson mantle with the banner of the wolf boldly emblazoned upon it.
He pushed away from the table and walked toward her. There was not a whisper of sound to be heard in the room. As she saw him come, wariness replaced the triumph in her eyes. She rose with swift and agile ease, but Eric saw then that she was not so calm as she pretended to be, for against the fine white line of her throat her pulse beat with the speed of hummingbird wings, and her breasts rose and fell rapidly with each breath she sought.
He paused before her, smiled slowly, and then bowed very low.
It was not what she had expected, She had been certain that he would lose his temper, demand some redress, and the king could not seek it for him now because she had said nothing that was not true. The first raid of note had been at Lindesfarne, and it had been Norwegians who’d savaged the sacred home of St. Cuthbert. None could deny it, and those who were reminded of it now had to see this new treaty as an unholy alliance.
His smile deepened, though she saw the clenched muscles in his jaw and the curl of his lips. His eyes captured hers, and where she had set out to hypnotize, she was caught in return, for she could do nothing but return his blue gaze. No chemist’s powder touched the fire, but the room seemed to dim, and it was if they—and they alone—were caught in a curious, bold, glowing blaze; heat and light flowed between them. The air itself seemed to crackle, as with the portent of a storm, as if lightning flashed above and beyond them. Seconds passed—it might well have been eons, for she could not tear her eyes from the deadly aqua power of his. Her head fell back and she longed to defy him, and she swore that she would not cringe before him. A charged silence remained between them; the fire snapped and rose and danced upon the walls and within her very being. It was not the fire, she realized, but the power he emitted. His arms were bare beneath the flow of his mantle, and they glistened bronze, rippling with a play of muscle with each nuance of movem
ent, with each breath he drew. She felt the warrior’s majesty of him, the burning determination of sinew and brawn and savage confidence. And she felt, too, a different power—that of his mind—and in those fleeting seconds she knew that she had set out to battle not a fool but a man who would ever think and judge and carefully weigh his options. If he determined that he would have revenge, then it would be so. Once his mind was set, it would not be changed, and he would be forever ready to parry her every thrust.
His eyes remained fixed upon hers, and she did not falter or fail. He stared upon her, then spoke to the king.
“Truly, Alfred, you have offered me the fairest gem of Saxony. She puts the seneschals of my mother’s country to shame, and likewise does she make fools of the skalds of Norway, for no man can tell a tale with so musical a voice and so lithe and beautiful a show of dance and movement.”
He reached for her hand. Too late she thought that it might have been wise to withdraw, and she felt her slender fingers enveloped within the massive size and strength of his hold. Yet though he held her firmly, he turned her hand over and rubbed the callused tip of his thumb slowly over the center of her palm. She could not draw her eyes from his.
Rhiannon was vaguely aware that the king had risen. Tension continued to crackle on the air, taut and tangible, like a swirling mist, like the fiery heat that eclipsed them together, away from all the others.
“Indeed she is wondrous,” Eric continued. “I would have jumped to my feet, longing to battle my own forebears, were they not ghosts now to ride the wind. I tell you, Alfred of Wessex, I was seduced. The fair lady here, this breath of beauty with which you welcome me to your shore, is indeed so exquisite that I am bewitched.”
Suddenly, so fiercely that she nearly cried out, his fingers tightened upon hers. His eyes blazed with a true ice-fire, with all the savage windswept cold of the north, then he turned fleetly from her to the king, still holding tight to her hand.