There was a spurt of laughter, then silence again as Chessa clasped Cleve’s wrist and raised it high. “You will be my mate, the man who will be with me forever. I give you all my loyalty, my fidelity. I will protect you with my life. We will conquer Scotland together. I love your daughter as my own. I love you, her father, with all that is within me and I have since the first moment I saw you in the queen’s garden. You are my husband now and forever.”
Love wasn’t usually spoken of in a Viking wedding. Honor and fidelity were the important vows. Loyalty to one’s people, to one’s king. There was a moment of sharp silence. Cleve stared down at her, his head cocked to one side. “You loved me that soon?” he said, his voice low, but since no one was saying a word, everyone heard him.
“Aye,” she said. “I’d never seen a man as beautiful as you. You were golden and strong. You shone beneath the sun in the garden that day.”
He leaned over and kissed her mouth. The silence broke with cheers from men and women alike. Cleve took her in his arms and pressed her face against his shoulder.
“Papa!”
“Which one?” Chessa said, turning to look at her new daughter.
“My manly papa,” Kiri said.
Laughter took the place of cheers.
Cleve picked up his daughter, hugged her, and said, “Now you’ve a new mama who is also your second papa.”
Kiri frowned at Chessa. Slowly, she reached out her hand and lightly touched her fingers to Chessa’s cheek. “I just don’t know,” Kiri said.
“I don’t either,” Chessa said. “We’ll all find out together.”
It was very late, but the wedding banquet hadn’t slowed at all. It just got louder and more raucous. Laughter filled the air. There were several good-natured fights between Malverne men and Hawkfell men, but as Cleve told Chessa, it was their responsibility to remain sober and watchful so that no one got his head broken. No one did.
“It’s magic,” Chessa said to her new husband.
“Will you truly give me your loyalty, Chessa? Will you stay with me until I can no longer breathe?”
“Aye,” she said, stood on her tiptoes and kissed his mouth. There were cheers and shouts of advice. She felt his tongue on her lower lip and started with surprise. He raised his head and grinned down at her.
Old Alna said, “She’ll be more giving, Cleve, if you pour some of Utta’s mead down her gullet.”
Cleve lightly stroked his fingers over her throat. “Is there a gullet in there that wants mead?”
Her stomach growled and he laughed. “Come, wife, let’s stuff you with some boar steaks. Ah, smell that. They’re sizzling, just the way I like them.”
Food was piled on every surface. Ale and mead filled casks whose ladles were never still. Laren told three stories until she was giggling so hard from the mead she’d drunk, she fell from the corner of a table, thankfully into Merrik’s arms. Both of them went down amid a tangle of arms and legs. Kerzog was too full to do more than lift his head every once in a while to see if anyone was bringing him more food.
The children were all inside the longhouse, hopefully asleep, for it was very late.
Chessa hadn’t drunk even a sip of ale, hadn’t even sniffed Utta’s infamous mead. She was too excited. And Cleve knew it. He would look at her and smile, a small and mysterious smile, one that promised things she didn’t yet know, and he did. He was teasing her and doing it very well.
Rorik, whose stomach turned on him if he drank more than a goblet of mead, was as sober as Chessa. He said to her as the evening stretched toward midnight, “You have brought more change to Cleve’s life than I can imagine. I had worried about him, as had my brother, Merrik. He has known a lifetime of hardship, a lifetime that gave him nothing but pain and humiliation. That he survived it is amazing. That he still smiles, that he’s able to enjoy the beauty of the sunset, appreciate the beauty of a woman’s white breasts, ah, it bespeaks strength that only a Viking can know.”
“I will protect him, Rorik, I swear it,” Chessa said. “I will give him all that I can.”
He smiled down at her. “That is what you said in the ceremony. The women were moved, the men disbelieving, save those who have dealt with my wife.”
“Men always disbelieve. It makes no difference. I will always be there for him. He knows I can wield a knife as well as he can.”
“Not quite,” Cleve said, coming up behind her. He lifted the hair from her neck and kissed her damp skin. She shivered. He laughed, dropped her hair, and just stood there beside her, stroking his long fingers through her hair, saying to Rorik, “Black as a Christian’s sins, just like Mirana’s. Forget not that I have spent five years at Malverne. Merrik has become like a brother. He’s a vicious fighter, and he taught me everything he knows. He also taught me to trust. I have been blessed, Rorik, truly. Now, I would like to take my wife to a very private place and teach her how a man goes about planting a babe in a woman’s belly. The next time she brays about such things, at least she’ll know what she’s talking about. Aye, Freya has been nudging me all evening to begin my duties.”
“I do use a knife as well as you do,” Chessa said, and skipped next to him to keep up.
Rorik laughed and called after them, “Mirana and I give you our chamber. You can’t escape the jests of our people though.”
“We will come in a moment,” Cleve said. “First, I want to walk a bit. Unlike my wife here, I drank my share of Utta’s mead.”
He took her hand and led her through the palisade gates.
