He fell flat on his back, his breathing ragged and his fingers clenching repeatedly.
Well.Thathad been unprecedented, definitely more satisfying than a mere releasing of tension. And it was all thanks to the mysterious woman laughing outside his window. Who had she been? He had no idea but he would make sure to find out. Surely no two women possessed such a laugh.
Full of a motivation he had not felt for months, Torsten stood up and wiped his stomach with the piece of cloth he kept by the basin of water. Then he got dressed and picked up the comb he was currently working on. Of the three brothers, he was the most artistically inclined. Steinar was best suited to tasks requiring physical strength and stamina, and Sven… Well, Sven had yet to find his special talent. Luring women into bed with little more than a smile and a wink didn’t count.
Torsten started to decorate the bone shaft with an intricate leaf design mirroring a coil of ivy climbing a young tree. It would be one of his finest pieces, he thought while he carved, observing how regularly the teeth had been sawn, how smooth the polished antler had become. Not that the perfection of the piece mattered,of course, as he had no one special to give it to. He might have the skill and patience to create beautiful objects, but he didn’t have anyone to lavish them on.
The burst of optimism created by this morning’s unexpected pleasure was quickly starting to dissipate. If he didn’t do anything, soon he would find himself submerged in gloom again. He didn’t want that, not today.
Abandoning the comb on the table, Torsten made his way to Steinar’s hut. When he was in a grim mood, nothing was guaranteed to lift his spirits more than seeing his new little niece, Sanna, who was only two months old and the most beautiful child he had ever seen, with big dark eyes and hair as black as her mother’s. With such a mane, it would not be too long before she needed a comb. He smiled at the thought.
Yes. If he hadn’t found anyone else to give it to before the winter, he would gift the ivy comb to little Sanna.
“Edita will be visiting us soon.”
“Will she?” Aife worked hard to infuse enthusiasm into her voice but wasn’t sure she succeeded.
“Yes. Birgit writes me that she recently lost her husband, Eowald, and needs the distraction. It might be that she arrives before the end of the week, as she was set to leave shortly after the missive was given to the peddler who delivered it earlier today.”
Aife nodded and helped herself to another slice of dried apple but did not pass any comment. Her mother had come to visit this afternoon, bearing a letter from her youngest sister, who lived in Mercia. Unfortunately, the news it contained was not the best. Her cousin lived a long way away, which was the reason whythey didn’t see one another too often. Edita was only a couple of years older than she was, fully Saxon, unlike Aife who had a Danish father, and completely different to her.
The two cousins had gotten along well enough as children, but the last time they’d met, some four years ago, Aife had been disappointed. Edita had been very quick to point out that she had wed her husband the summer she had turned seventeen. The man, a rich merchant ten years older than her, had pursued her relentlessly, while Aife and her younger sister, Hedda, were both still unmarried, aged five-and-twenty and three-and-twenty respectively. What she would say now didn’t bear thinking about, and this time Aife would be alone to bear the brunt of the attacks. Hedda had left the village two years ago, to go to Denmark. Alone amongst the five siblings, she had decided to go live in their father’s country, having been fascinated by his stories from a young age. It had been hard to see her go and they all missed her dearly. No doubt Aife would miss her even more when she had to face Edita alone.
But perhaps being widowed had dulled her cousin’s sharpest edges and restored her to the girl she had once been? One could only hope.
Unfortunately, it didn’t take Aife long to see that nothing had changed. Three days after they had received the letter warning them of her visit, Edita herself arrived. As soon as she opened her mouth that night, Aife understood that her behavior would be just as bad as before, if not worse. Far from being heartbroken or even simply listless, her cousin announced that she had already chosen her next husband, one of Eowald’s closest friends, and then spent the whole meal boasting about her stroke of luck.
“Wulfric has been in love with me all that time, and I only found out now, if you’ll believe it. He’s been waiting for years in secret, hoping I would one day become available to marry him.”
“Some loyal friend he makes, waiting for his friend to die so he can wed his widow,” her father, Sigurd, mumbled under his breath—and in Norse. This earned him a sharp, disapproving glance from his wife who, Saxon though she may be, had learned to speak his tongue. But Aife agreed with her father. It seemed particularly underhanded on this Wulfric’s part to lust after Eowald’s wife and then pounce as soon as he was dead.
An uncharitable thought crossed her mind. Edita’s husband had been one of the richest men in the village. Could it be that his friend was more interested in the money this marriage could bring than the bride herself? It was a possibility, because Aife didn’t see how anyone could fall in love with someone as conceited and frivolous as Edita had become.
She excused herself as soon as the table had been cleared and went back to her hut, leaving her poor parents to prepare a pallet for Edita.
The following morning, her cousin spotted her drawing water at the well and walked over to her. There was no way to avoid her, and just as Aife had feared, the conversation soon turned to Wulfric and what he thought of his future bride’s beauty.
“He says I don’t look like a woman entering my fourth decade. According to him, I have the complexion of a maid and the figure of a woman half my age.”
Mm. This Wulfric definitely sounded like a flatterer. Not that Edita was ugly or deformed by any means but this was the tenth outrageous compliment Aife had heard that morning. More suspicious than ever, she couldn’t help but ask what he looked like. All she knew for certain was that he had to be at least a decade older than his bride-to-be.
“Oh, you know, he has brown hair and eyes. He’s taller than me.”
No doubt this uninspiring description could apply to all the men in the Saxon village, so Aife was none the wiser. Of course she didn’t really care, she had just wanted to stop Edita from boasting about her own looks. Just as she was wondering how to change the subject altogether, their cousin Bee’s friend, Sigrid, walked over to them, her young son perched on her hip.
Seizing the opportunity, Aife introduced the two women to one another. Perhaps having a third person present would render this conversation more bearable. It could not make things worse anyway.
“Sigrid, this is Edita, my and Bee’s cousin. She is visiting us from Mercia for the first time.”
“Yes, and I can already predict that it won’t be the last,” Edita simpered, throwing a coy glance over to the forge, where the blacksmith’s son, Knut, was sharpening a sword while talking to his friend Arne. The men’s hair was wet and their chests were bare, indicating that they had just come back from a dip in the river. “The men here are simply too incredible to be believed. Perhaps I should have come here before I found my second husband. I’m a widow you see,” she specified for Sigrid’s benefit. “And after Eowald, who was darker than most, a Norseman would have been a pleasant change. A very,verypleasant change.”
Well. What would Wulfric make of this, Aife wondered? Would he praise his future wife for her candidness in front of strangers? Would he commend her on her impeccable tastes when it came to judging male beauty? Somehow she doubted it.
“Yes, the men here are rather impressive, but do not be fooled by their appearance,” Sigrid surprised her by saying. “My husband, for all his brawn, is so lazy that, more often than not, I have to use the axe myself if I want to keep the fire going. In the bedroom, it’s not always better.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” The gleam in Edita’s eyes indicated that she was anything but sorry. Aife was getting more and more ill at ease. Really, what had possessed Sigrid to make such a personal remark to a stranger?
“Oh I don’t mean for me. No, believe me, in bed at least, Bo is more than vigorous. But I was told only yesterday by a friend who lives in another village that she tried to bed one of the men from here a few years ago and he could not even…rise to the occasion, shall we say. Such a disappointment, as you can imagine.”
