Cyra nodded happily. She touched her fingers to his lean tanned cheek. “Aye, I am well. I had believed perhaps you no longer wanted me, but ’tis no matter now.”
It was at that moment that the wind quickened and lifted Zarabeth’s hair from her throat. Ingunn saw the iron slave collar around the woman’s neck. None of Magnus’ slaves wore slave collars.
None save this woman.
She blurted out, “This woman is your slave? She’s not your wife?”
Magnus stiffened, then laughed, too loudly, too harshly. “Nay, I will wed with no woman. Aye, this is Zarabeth and she is my slave and will remain so. The little girl is her sister, Lotti. Take care, Ingunn, for she is without hearing.”
A slave; she was naught but a slave! Ingunn stared at her. The woman’s face was without color, but her expression was calm. Slowly Ingunn smiled. Ah, she would show the woman what a slave was for. She held no favor, as did Cyra. Aye, Magnus wouldn’t intervene with this one. As for the little girl, she was hugging her sister’s thigh, looking frightened, her oddly colored eyes—aye, they were of a golden hue—wide and wary. The child could not hear? She shook her head at the foolishness of it. A child like that shouldn’t have been allowed to draw breath. She merely nodded to the woman and stepped back, waiting to take cues from her brother.
She watched him turn to the woman, Zarabeth, and say sharply, “Stand not there like a witless fool. Bring Lotti to the longhouse. ’Tis the large one there in the center of the cluster of buildings.”
Zarabeth felt stunned at the sheer size of the farmstead as she walked through the gates of the palisade. It was like a small village enclosed behind its stout wooden walls. There were many wooden huts, some others of wattle and daub, all of them with thatched roofs. The longhouse looked like a great low wooden barn. There were few windows, narrow and covered with stretched animal hides. She saw the smoke rising from the hole in the great sloped roof. As she walked beside Magnus, he said, “Yon is the blacksmith’s workshop. The smith’s name is Rollo and he makes all our weapons, farm tools, and pots and pans. Next to the longhouse is the cow byre; the sheep are kept in the low hut next to it. The slaves’ hut is over there.” He paused, awaiting her reaction. She made none, but she did look at the mean stone hut for several moments. “Outside the gates of the palisade are the fields. We will harvest in some two months and prepare for the winter.
“There is the bathhouse, and next to it the privy. The covered hut behind it is for food storage.” It was as if he were presenting his possessions for her approval, she thought vaguely, yet she would have naught to do with any of it save as a slave. She would have no pride in anything. She said evenly, “Your farmstead is of obvious value, Magnus. I compliment you on your achievements.”
His jaw tightened. He looked down at her, but it was only the iron slave collar about her neck that he saw. Thick and ugly, and he knew that it must chafe her flesh. Make her flesh raw and ugly. But the man in Hedeby had claimed that she’d called to him, offered herself to him for his help... It had all made sense. Magnus shook his head. No more would he question this woman’s motives. What was done was done, and that was all there was to it.
He turned and called out, “Ingunn, will you have a feast prepared by tonight?”
She hurried to his side, ignoring Zarabeth. “We have been preparing food and ale and mead for the past week, brother. All is ready. I have already sent a messenger to Father. I hope he and Mother and our brothers will come as well.”
“And Orm?” Magnus gave her a sly smile.
He looked at her, surprised. Her eyes darkened and her jaw set itself in a stubborn line. She shook her head. “Father is displeased with him. Since you left, he has forbidden Orm to come near me. He becomes a foolish old man.”
“Don’t say that again. Our father has reasons for everything he does. We will speak of this more later.” Magnus saw that Lotti was lagging behind, her small shoulders stooped with weariness, and leaned down to pick her up. She gave a startled laugh, an odd mewling sound, then wrapped her thin arms around his neck and yelled in a loud slurred voice that was perfectly clear, “Papa!”
Magnus looked down at his son, who was so jealous he was nearly red from ear to ear. “You are far too large for me to carry, Egill. You are nearly grown, not like this little girl here.” He got no response from Egill, but continued easily, “Say hello to Lotti. She cannot hear you, so you must speak directly at her when she is looking at you and speak slowly so that she will understand.”
“Her hair is ugly,” Egill said. “Her face is ugly too.”
Magnus eyed his son. “I had hoped you had become more a man than a jealous little boy. Taunts against little girls aren’t worthy of men. I am disappointed in you.”
“She called you Papa! You’remypapa!”
“Aye, ’tis true, but blame her not.”
Zarabeth said nothing. She well imagined that the little boy, who was the very image of his father, would not be pleased at the intrusion of a stranger.
She said to him, smiling, “You will grow up to be of your father’s size, Egill. He will be very proud of you.”
Egill looked at the woman with the very red hair and eyes so green they looked like wet water reeds. “I don’t care what a slave thinks. You will hold your tongue, woman.”
Zarabeth drew back, silent as a stone. The boy was right. She had no right to speak her mind, she had no rights, she had nothing at all. She held out her arms to Lotti, and her little sister immediately pulled away from Magnus. Zarabeth moved away from Magnus, holding herself away from the hurt.
She saw the slave Cyra immediately take her place. The woman was but a few years older than Zarabeth, and her hair was long to her hips and as black as a moonless night. Her eyes were a dark brown and her flesh a soft peach color. She was exquisitely beautiful and Zarabeth wondered from whence she had come. Ha, where she had been captured was more to the point. She was also a slave, but there was no collar around her throat. A slave prized for her work in the master’s bed.
“I have worked with the flax,” Cyra was saying to Magnus, pointing to a long rectangular field to their left. “I will make you fine trousers and shirts.”
Cyra wore a gown of white, full-cut, belted at her narrow waist. The material was a fine wool, not harsh and coarsely woven. It was as fine a garment as Ingunn was wearing.
Zarabeth was tired and depressed. She wanted to be alone, away from Magnus, away from the dozens of talking people who lived and worked and spent their lives on this farmstead. She hated it.
She touched her fingertips to the cold iron of the collar and kept walking.
When Ingunn said loudly that Cyra would show Zarabeth to the slave hut, Magnus did not contradict her. He had no intention of allowing Zarabeth to remain there even one night, neither she nor Lotti, but he would handle the situation in private. It wouldn’t hurt to peel away a bit more of her lamentable pride, that stiff aloofness of hers that infuriated him. Let her believe for a while that she would stay in that mean hut.
