“Neither did your mother. Remember, Merrik, women do not have the chance to be butchered in battle as do men. Do all their deaths lack honor and dignity?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought of it in that way. But women—they are different.”
“Aye,” she said slowly. “They are.” She started to say something else, then just shook her head, obviously changed her mind and said, “Aye, they are, and men are lucky to be larger and stronger.”
He said, thinking again of her burned leg, “You survived.”
She laughed, but it wasn’t a joyous laugh. “Without you I would not have survived much longer. I think that Thrasco was the final link in the chain. When he discovered I wasn’t a boy, he would have either sold me or killed me. Since Taby was gone from me, since I’d failed to keep him with me and as safe as I could keep him, why then it wouldn’t have mattered.”
“You would have killed yourself?”
She was silent for a very long time, just standing there close to him, the moonlight at her back now and he couldn’t see her face, just a nimbus of light around her head. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “I had no time to dwell upon it. I was intent only on finding Taby. And then you came. I am very sorry about your parents, Merrik. I am sorry for your pain.”
He said nothing, merely leaned back against the rough bark of the oak tree and closed his eyes.
“Leave Taby with me,” he said, his eyes still closed. “I will bring him into the longhouse when I wish to return.”
“As you will. What will you do now, Merrik?”
“I want an island like my brother Rorik’s.”
She laughed. It was a pure, rich sound, no mockery in it. He realized he’d never heard her laugh before, not like this, honest and open. Not that she’d had reason, of course. He opened his eyes. “I amuse you?”
“Where would you get an island?”
“I don’t know, ’twas just a thought, just a quick answer to your insolent question.”
She stiffened, but he didn’t care. She deserved his sharp tongue. She turned away from him and walked away. He closed his eyes again and pulled Taby closer. He felt the child’s palm on his heart.
There was a feast to celebrate Merrik’s return, but it wasn’t like the one of the year before or the year before that. There was mead and beer to drink, cheese, cabbage, onions, peas, wild boar steaks, dark pink salmon well smoked and delicious, flatbread and rye bread and apples both sweet and tart. Sarla spread a beautiful pale linen cloth on the wide wooden table. Laren looked at it and felt a sudden unexpected surge of tears. There had always been such finery in her life until that awful night: beautiful cloths to spread over surfaces, exquisite furnishings, huge spaces, not dark and low and filled with smoke like this longhouse. She remembered her own mother’s laughter as she spread a beautiful linen cloth on a table, how she’d complained that the men didn’t care, but she did, so it didn’t matter. Such beautiful cloths, their edges beautifully embroidered. She hadn’t thought of her mother in more months than she could count. It was strange. Her mother’s name was Nirea, a soft name, a name that was like music to say. “What may I do?” she said.
“You will eat, Laren, that is all you may do until you are stronger.”
“She is a slave,” Erik said, coming up behind her. “Give her tasks to perform, Sarla. You are mistress here, it is time you acted like one.”
Sarla said calmly, without hesitation, “There are spoons in the soapstone bowl on the ledge yon. Please place them beside the plates, Laren.”
Erik grunted and went out.
Laren felt anger rise from deep inside her. Erik was like Helga’s husband, Fromm. He was a tyrant, a bully, proud because of his bloodline. He was a man who would be beyond dangerous were there not others to restrain him. She wondered how much Erik had tempered his swaggering and commands when his father had been alive and master here at Malverne.
The feast passed off well enough, Merrik supposed, sipping on the sweet mead that Sarla made so very well. His mother had taught her just about everything else, he remembered, but not how to make mead. He complimented her.
Erik said, “There is too much honey in it for my taste.”
“It is perfect,” Merrik said. “What think you, Oleg?”
“I will drink ten more cups and then tell you.”
There was only a chuckle or two, but it was a start. Erik said, “After we have supped, Deglin will tell us a tale, perhaps about my young brother’s brave exploits in Kiev.”
There was silence, brutal cold silence, uneasy silence, with darting glances. The men murmured and fidgeted, waiting for Merrik to speak.
Erik raised a blond eyebrow, staring first at Merrik, then down the long table to Deglin.
Merrik said mildly, “Deglin tells us no more tales, Erik. He has discovered he no longer enjoys being a skald.”
“Aye,” Eller said quickly. “He trained another, this girl here. It is she who now tells us stories.”
