She frowned, stiffening at his tone, hard and commanding. But he was right in this one instance. “Very well, then. I am sorry if I disturbed you, Magnus.”
“Silly wench,” he said, and took her hand in his. He saw that four of his men followed a short distance behind, but held his tongue, and nodded his approval. ’Twas safer thus.
He shortened his step to match hers. “I would have preferred to have carried you to my small cabin, stripped off that gown of yours, and taken you to my bed. It isn’t truly a cabin, though, just a covered space on the deck of the Sea Wind.” He sighed deeply. “But that must wait until we’re wedded. Then, Zarabeth, I will keep you in my bed until we are both too exhausted to do naught but sleep.”
She looked up at him and grinned, her heart light and bounding in her breast. “Ah, but who will be master of your vessel whilst you are in your bed?”
“I will appoint all my men masters so they will have other duties to occupy them besides listening to our lovemaking.”
“I believe I will exhaust you before you exhaust me, my lord.”
“Do you think so, sweeting? Even though you have no knowledge of what it is we will do?” At her bemused silence, he laughed and lightly chucked his knuckles against her chin. “ ’Tis a contest that will draw me into a frenzy, a contest we will both cherish once you have learned the rules.”
Zarabeth was still smiling when she heard her stepfather shouting at the top of his lungs in the distance, “There he is! There’s that marauding Viking, and he’s got my stepdaughter! Kill him! Kill him!”
“He is a very foolish man,” Magnus said calmly. “Very foolish.”
“What will you do?” She turned and saw Magnus’ four men closing behind them, their battle swords drawn. Three of them held both a sword and a battleax. They looked ferocious, their faces hard and cold, and utterly without fear. Magnus did not draw his sword from its scabbard. He waited, his arms crossed negligently over his chest.
“I will see what he plans,” was all he said. “Don’t move, Zarabeth. Stay to my right so that I may see you and know you’re safe.”
She had no choice but to wait as six men, all friends of her stepfather’s, came running toward them, swords in their hands, screaming curses.
Then suddenly Magnus stepped forward and raised both his arms over his head. “Halt!”
The men jerked to a stop. Olav, panting from his exertion, came around the corner and ran into the back of one of the men.
“Kill him! You cowards, kill the Viking!”
“You, Olav, be quiet or I will cut out your cursed tongue. Zarabeth came to visit me this evening. Beyond foolish, I agree, so I am bringing her to your house. She is unharmed and I suggest that you treat her well and scold her not, for she will soon be my wife, and any chiding will come from me, her husband. Handle her gently or I will make you very sorry.”
Olav knew his friends wouldn’t attack the Viking. They were all merchants and craftsmen. They knew how to fight, and would die in the fighting if they had to, but they weren’t warriors and they would have no chance against this man. He knew that even six of his friends would not try to kill this one man. It would be suicide. He contented himself with the thought that he would beat her when he got her home. He looked at Zarabeth and smiled.
It was as if the Viking read his mind.
“Nay, Olav the Vain, do not what you are thinking. I am a man of my word, an honorable man, and you may trust what I say. You won’t harm her, else I will do more than make you very sorry. I will kill you.”
There was nothing for it. Olav felt raw hatred churn in his gut, making his belly cramp. “Come,” he said shortly to Zarabeth. “You have caused enough worry, girl.”
“I know. I am sorry, Olav.”
“As for your idiot stepsister, she is writhing about on the floor and trying to cry. It sickens me to watch her and to hear her mewling sounds. Get thee home and see to her before I take her from the city and leave her in the Bentik Mountains, as I should have already done.”
Magnus saw Zarabeth stiffen straight as the handle on his battleax. There was more going on here than she had told him. He didn’t understand Olav’s venom about his own small daughter. Magnus lightly touched Zarabeth’s arm. “Go, sweeting. I will see you on the morrow, by the well at the square.”
“Aye. Thank you,” she said. She quickly picked up her skirts and walked to her stepfather.
6
Olav fingered his beard as he looked at Zarabeth. He felt now, thank the saints, in full control of himself and of the situation. He felt good knowing he was in charge again, that it was his word, and his alone, that would determine what would happen now. That barbarian merchant Viking was on his vessel, safe from Olav’s wrath, and his bitch of a stepdaughter was here, alone with him, at his mercy, at his command. Ah, but he would make her pay for her near-defection. He looked at her in the dim light of the bear-oil lamp. It was very late now, and they were home at last, in the living area, and she knew now that her little sister wasn’t here. He enjoyed the fear and confusion on her face. He more than enjoyed it; he relished it.
“You will do exactly as I tell you, Zarabeth,” he said at last. She was standing before him now, staring at him.
“Where is Lotti?” Zarabeth asked for the third time, her voice shaking now, her desperation nearer the surface. “What have you done with her? You said she was upset that I wasn’t here. You lied to me! Where is she, Olav? What have you done with her?”
“I won’t tell you, my girl. At least, not until you have made your promise to me, not until you have sworn to rid me and yourself of this Viking bastard.”
Zarabeth shook her head at him. “You told me you wished me to know my own mind. You told me you would abide by my decision. Where is Lotti?”
Olav waved his hand, clearing away her questions. “Fret not, Zarabeth. Your idiot sister is safe, at least at the moment. You won’t see her again until you’ve done exactly as I tell you.”
“I want to marry Magnus Haraldsson. I will go back to Norway with him and I will take Lotti with me.”
“Nay, you won’t. You will remain here with me, safe in York. Perhaps, if I wish it, I will wed you, for I hold not any of your blood. No one would object, not even King Guthrum. Ha! He himself has three concubines, and one is rumored to be his niece. Nay, he won’t object.”
He saw the look of revulsion on her face then and lost control. He jumped from his chair and slapped her so hard her head snapped back and she was flung to her side onto the rush-covered floor. He stood over her, hands on his hips. “No more will you act impetuous, Zarabeth. No more will you treat me like a toothless elderly uncle or like a despised old man to be tolerated and nothing more! No more, do you understand me? Nod your head, damn you, else I’ll have that idiot sister of yours killed this very night!”
“I understand.”
“Good. I wanted to wait, truly I did. I had hoped that in the next three days you would have come to realize that you didn’t want to be allied to a savage, to that filthy Norse trader, but you left my house! Alone and unprotected, and you went to the harbor, to him! That you could be so stupid appalls me. Did you let him have your maidenhead? Did you part your legs for him?” His voice was shaking, and he stopped, breathing deeply. “Well, it matters not. You won’t have him, Zarabeth, not ever, and there’s an end to it.”
She tried to think clearly, but she was terrified for Lotti, and she felt a growing pounding in her head from the blow he’d given her. Lotti. He must have turned her over to Keith. Her blood curdled. Keith and his wife, Toki, had Lotti, there was little doubt. They felt nothing but contempt for the child and scorned her. She felt fear, thick and raw, fill her, slow her thinking, make her react sluggishly.
She had to get back to Magnus. He would get Lotti back. He would know what to do. “Magnus,” she said very quietly, but Olav heard her.
“Don’t think it, girl. I will kill her the moment you go back to that bastard Viking. Now I will tel
l you more truths, Zarabeth. Lotti is not of my flesh, did you know that? No, that whore mother of yours, my dear wife, Mara, slept with another man, the same fool man she ran away with, but she left you, choosing herself and her bastard get over you, her only legitimate child. But the whore died and the little bastard is an idiot—”
“She isn’t! She was perfect until you struck her that night when you brought her home! And all because she was crying for her mother, you struck her, so hard that she was unconscious for two days! You are the bastard, rotten to your black soul, and you don’t deserve to—”
“—and she will also die if you don’t do exactly what I tell you to do.”
Zarabeth raised her eyes to Olav’s face. “I wish I had a dagger. I would kill you.”
“Then Lotti would surely be dead by the morning.”
Zarabeth rubbed her palm over her cheek. It was still stinging. She said dully now, uncertain, more afraid than she’d ever been in her life, “You want me to wed with you?”
“Perhaps soon. Not now. Now I would simply have you remain in my house. When you are more comfortable with me, I will bed you. Then, if I wish it, you will become my wife.”
It was nearly too much to understand. She shook her head, but the pounding only increased, and with it, her despair.
His voice softened and he came down on his haunches beside her. “Listen to me, girl. I don’t want to hurt you. Don’t force me to. I want you willing and smiling. I want you the way you were before you met the Viking.” He frowned at his own words. No, he didn’t want her to return to being the way she’d been before the Viking—she’d been unconscious of him, not really seeing him, suffering his presence, actually.
She lay there, balanced up on her elbow, unconsciously pulling back from him. She smelled the sweet violets she had sprinkled into the rushes that covered the packed earthen floor. She looked toward the glowing embers in the fireplace. She looked at her neatly stacked pails and pots and wooden trenchers on the wide shelf in the cooking area. Everything looked so blessedly normal. Yet she was afraid, she felt paralyzed with fear. All the violence in Dublin, all the killing and hatred between the Viking rulers and the petty Irish chieftains, all was but a vague memory. Even the battles between King Alfred and King Guthrum seemed unsubstantial to her now, though the battles had scarred every family she knew, bringing death and tears and torn bodies. No, it was far away, that violence. The true violence was here in this house, and this was real. She stared at Olav, not knowing what to say, not knowing what to do.
Lotti. The child had no one but her, no one to understand her, to care for her. No one but her sister, Zarabeth.
She felt tears spring to her eyes and sniffed them back. Crying was good for naught. Crying was for the helpless, and she wasn’t that, at least not yet.
Olav spoke again, his voice more wheedling, more cajoling. “Come, Zarabeth, say you’ll bid this Viking farewell. Say you’ll tell him you’ve decided against marriage with him. He’ll sail away, and all will become again as it was. It’s so easy, Zarabeth. Just promise me you will tell him. You’ll see him tomorrow in the square, and you will tell him you don’t want him for your husband.”
She shook her head. “No, Olav. I won’t tell him that. I want him and I think I will come to love him. I won’t lie to him for you.”
He rose then, with finality, and dusted off his trousers. He said in an emotionless voice, “Then Lotti will be dead by tomorrow morning.” She stared up at him. His cross-garters had come down and were bunched at his ankles; his fine woolen hose were wrinkled and bagging at the knees. He looked disheveled and old. Aye, he looked like an old man, a tired old man who wasn’t getting his way, and wanted a victim to lash out at.
“Nay, I won’t tell him that I don’t want him. If you harm Lotti, he will kill you.”
Olav shrugged and looked at her with lifeless eyes. “It matters not, then, does it? The idiot child will be dead, I will be dead, and you will have your Viking. You will sail to Norway with him, alone, with nothing but the clothes on your back. And you will know that your selfishness meant death to two people who love you.”
“Love! You miserable old liar! You threaten to kill my little sister and you say that you love me? By all the gods, I would that I could kill you right now!”
She rolled over and came up onto her knees. Her face was flushed with anger, with disbelief, and Olav took a quick step backward, for he saw violence in her eyes.
Then he smiled at her, and shrugged. “Believe what you will. You are a woman and thus your thoughts are beyond a man’s logic. But know this, Zarabeth: the child will be dead by tomorrow at noon if you do not do my bidding. ’Tis up to you, girl. I offer you the child’s life for that miserable Viking’s lust.” He paused a moment, stared at her, and she fancied she could see the pounding of his blood in the pulse in his neck. “Did you let him cover you tonight? Did he take your maidenhead?”
“Hush your filth! You are much worse than your son!”
“So ’tis your lust for your little sister’s life. You’re just like your whore of a mother, aren’t you? You aren’t so much of a loving sister after all. You’re nothing but a fake.”
“ ’Tis enough, Olav. You won’t kill Lotti because you don’t want to die. I know you. I know that all tradesmen here in Coppergate snigger at you behind your back and call you Olav the Vain. You prance and strut about, extolling your brilliance at trading—at cheating the unwary, more’s the truth—and you spend all your gold on finery to adorn your sagging old body! Look at you, garbed like King Guthrum himself! Yet even he, an old man like you, doesn’t glitter like a conceited fool!”
“You will be quiet, Zarabeth!” He was shaking with fury, the life back in him at full strength at her insults.
“Nay, not now, not when I would tell you the truth, you dirty old man! I won’t remain here, wondering if you will try to crawl into my bed and molest me. I won’t pretend to be your loving stepdaughter when I know what it is you’re really thinking. I won’t suffer your hatred for Lotti anymore, your contempt, your neglect. I won’t listen to your lies about my mother. You didn’t deserve her, damn you! Now, you will tell me where you’ve hidden Lotti and I will fetch her and be gone. I never want to see your ugly face again.”
Olav was silent for many moments. Then he raised his hand in a sort of benediction, and said in a voice that was certain and cold, “The idiot child will die, slowly, and I will know pleasure from the knowledge of it. I swear it on Odin, our All-Father, and I swear it on the Christian God as well.”
She felt the room pitch sideways. In that instant she believed him. He wasn’t lying. He spoke as calmly as an insane man who would be pushed no further.
Aye, she believed him. This was the point beyond which he wouldn’t retreat. She knew him. He would have Lotti killed or he would kill her himself. He wouldn’t care. She could see Keith strangling the child with one hand, lifting her and crushing the life out of her with but one of his big hands. She could see him tossing her out as one would refuse. She could see him whistling even as he finished his murder. No, no, not Keith, she thought, not gentle weak Keith. Toki, his wife, it would be she who murdered Lotti.
Zarabeth wasn’t overly religious, and thus, in that instant, she prayed to Odin, to Thor, and finally to the Christian God for good measure. What to do?
“Go to sleep now, Zarabeth. You have much to consider. I will know your answer on the morrow. Oh, think not to kill me during the night, for if you do, the child will die very quickly after me and you will have gained naught but death yourself, for all will know you killed me, and none other.”
She moved slowly to behind the thin bearskin that separated hers and Lotti’s sleeping chamber from the rest of the room. She looked at the box bed. She slowly unfastened her wide leather belt and stripped off her soft woolen gown. She remained in her linen shift and crawled between two wool coverlets. She lay there, her eyes wide and fixed, staring into the darkness, not knowing what to do.
It was near dawn when she knew that she could not sacrifice Lotti’s life for her own happiness. Even if it meant Olav’s death as well. It was then that tears flowed down her cheeks, their salty wetness in her mouth. And it was later still, after the sun had risen over the harbor, that she changed her mind and felt hope build in her.
Zarabeth forced a smile. Her heart was pounding so loudly she thought he would hear it. Aye, a smile, for even in the short time she’d known Magnus, she realized that he knew her very well indeed. She had to persuade him, she had to leave no doubts at all in his mind, so that Olav would be convinced, and then she would act and both she and Lotti would be safe. She prayed to Odin that Magnus would forgive her lie even as he believed it. She prayed to her own Christian God that Magnus would forgive her when he discovered what she’d had to do.
Magnus saw that smile of hers, that ghastly smile, and said without preamble, “What troubles you, Zarabeth? Are you cold? There is rain in the air this morning.”
Cold! It was laughable. She turned to stand more closely to the well in Coppergate square. She knew that Olav watched from the tanner’s shop just feet away. She knew that he could see her face clearly, her face and Magnus’. She knew he could hear her and Magnus. She knew she had to tread carefully, for Lotti’s life, her own future, depended on it.
“I’m not cold. I am glad you are here, Magnus Haraldsson. I would speak to you. I will not mince matters. I am here to tell you that I do not wish to wed with you. I was mistaken in my feelings. I have decided I don’t want you. I don’t wish to see you again.”
Magnus saw her pallor, heard the tension in her voice. He didn’t accept her words. He didn’t understand her and he was not willing to be patient at her game. He threw back his head and laughed. “This is a show of your wit, sweeting? I like it not. We will jest of many things, but not of this. This is our life, not some sort of joke to be tossed about heedlessly.”