“My leg,” Athol said, holding it and rocking back and forth, moaning. “You broke my leg.”
“Aye,” Chessa said. “I heard the bone crack. Hold still and I’ll see to you.”
Athol screamed and tried to scramble away from her.
“You bullying coward, hold still.”
Cleve said, “She won’t kill you now, Athol. Do as she says, else I’ll have to hit your head with a rock so you won’t move while she takes care of you.”
“What is this?” Igmal said as he strode to them, wiping his hands on the leather apron tied around his waist. “Aye, Athol, you forgot her warning, eh? You’re lucky she didn’t kill you.”
Athol groaned. “Don’t let her touch me, Igmal, I order you.”
“Hold your damned tongue in your throat, Athol. She won’t kill you now.”
“My father—”
Cleve leaned down and sent his fist into Athol’s jaw. He fell back, unconscious.
“Papa, can you teach me how to do that?”
“No,” Cleve said and picked up his daughter. “Are you truly all right, sweeting?”
“Aye,” Kiri said. “Igmal, can I come with you now and help you work?”
Igmal grinned, those beautiful white teeth of his glistening in the sun, and took her from Cleve. “Aye, little one, I think I’ll let you play in the tar pot. Your papas will like that, I think.”
In late September, when in Norway the air would have turned frigid in the early afternoon, it was still warm in Scotland, the air soft and sweet from the smells of the heather. Karelia was finished. The wood smelled fresh and new and Chessa loved it. It was small, but there was enough room for three of them and the dozen men and the four families that came there to live. There was a bathing hut, just like the one in Malverne, only smaller, a privy, a barn for the grain, several storage huts, a barn for the cows, goats, and two horses, a blacksmith’s hut, and a small slave compound. Now the men were erecting a palisade some ten feet high that would surround the farmstead.
“It’s ours,” Chessa said with relish as she rubbed her hands together. Argana had given her pots and dishes and spoons and knives. She even gave her a beautiful linen cloth for the long narrow eating table. The first time Cleve lit the fire pit, the first time Chessa pulled the thick piece of wood attached to the roof beams with the serpent’s head at its end, adjusting its thick chains hooked to the iron cooking pot over the pit, she laughed aloud with pleasure. Varrick was there. He frowned at her. Argana laughed as well. Cayman just stood back, watching, saying nothing, just watching. Athol stood on crutches, watching as well, his expression so sullen Cleve wished he could kick him out.
It was that night, their first night at Karelia, the first night in their own box bed with a soft new bearskin, given to them by Ottar, one of Igmal’s men, when Chessa said, “I’m with child.”
Cleve, on the point of coming into her, stiffened, looked at her in bewilderment, then came into her, deep and full, and she laughed, pulling him closer, drawing him deeper. “I wondered what you’d do,” she whispered into his ear, then nibbled his earlobe, kissed his jaw, then his mouth and tasted the sweet mead on his breath from their feast, and said, “I love you, Cleve. I’m not barren.”
He withdrew from her, came between her thighs and brought his mouth to her. When she screamed, bowing upward, he laughed. “My babe will hear his mother shrieking,” he said, then came into her again, feeling her tighten about him, feeling her quiver from the tremors of pleasure still holding her.
“You will forget about controlling me,” he said, coming up over her, leaning his head down to kiss her as he spoke each word. “You believed I would become so befuddled at your news that I would fall off the bed and you would give me a smug smile. Ah, don’t move like that, Chessa, else I’ll—”
He said no more. He loved her again, only this time, it was different, for his babe nestled in her womb and he wanted to show her how pleased he was, how much he loved her, how he would cherish her for the rest of his life. When she moaned softly into his mouth, he took that moan deep within himself. When he could speak again, he said, “I love you, Chessa. I never thought you were barren.”
She sent her elbow into his ribs, then brought his mouth down to hers. “Do you really love me, Cleve? It’s not that I haven’t believed you before when you’ve brought yourself to say it, but you’re still a man, and I don’t think men like to speak of such things. It makes them feel silly.”
“Who told you that? Surely not Mirana or Laren?”
“Nay, it’s just what I’ve observed.”
“And you’re such an old woman, just like Old Alna, cackling, her gums showing, preaching about all men’s failings, even her beloved Rorik’s.”
“Well, perhaps a bit. But you’ve only told me a few times, a very few times. Usually you just rant at me and yell at me and lust after me, which is something else that men want to do all the time.”
“That,” he said, kissing her deeply, “is true. When will our babe be born?”
“In March.”
“That’s when Kiri was born,” he said, and rolled off her, bringing her against his side.
“What happened?”
