“Why were you crying? Is there something wrong with me?... Oh, no, is Ragnar all right?”
“He is fine. Do you have wide hips?”
“If you will let me rise, I will try to crane my head about and look.”
“Hold still.” He pulled her a bit higher over his left arm. His right hand went to her belly and he gently splayed his fingers over her. Her hipbones were beyond his reach. “That is good, I suppose. I will tell my mother of my discovery and see what she thinks.”
She tried to push his hand away. “Magnus, there are people everywhere! Someone will see!”
“I am your husband. Let them look.”
“Let me up now. I feel fine, and it is silly for me to be sitting on you in this ridiculous chair when there is naught about but...” She had pulled herself abruptly upright as she had spoken. She stared at him, and suddenly her face was as white as her belly. “Oh,” she said, and fell back against his arm. Suddenly there was fear in her eyes. “What is wrong with me? I thought I would faint again, and I felt so dizzy...”
“You carry my babe.”
“... and light-headed. I felt light-headed before, but I believed I was merely hungry, that I was afraid of Orm and what would happen, merely...What?”
He grinned at her. “Nay, don’t move, I don’t want you to faint again. It scared all the wickedness out of me. That’s right, just hold still. You carry my babe.”
She stared up at him, unable to grasp the reality of it. No, no, reality was Lotti drowning, reality was Egill disappearing, reality was lying on the ground naked with Orm over her... “I am with child? You are certain?”
“Aye.”
His eyes blazed with pleasure, the blue so vivid, so startling, that she couldn’t look away, nor did she want to.
“I have never had a child before.”
She sounded lost and afraid and strangely bereft, and he didn’t know which emotion to address first.
“Except Lotti. She was my child.”
Now he knew where to begin. “Zarabeth, we are not going to replace Lotti. She was special and she will always remain in our hearts and in our memories. Nothing can change what she was to us.” He drew a deep breath. “I cannot claim for certain that Egill is alive. It would be foolish of me to assume that I will find him and bring him back safely with me. If he, like Lotti, is dead, then both of the children will remain in our hearts. This child... we will pray that he reaches manhood and that he knows the health and happiness his parents will know.”
She leaned her cheek against his chest and he held her there, his face against the top of her head.
“What will happen?” she asked, her voice muffled against his tunic.
Magnus opened his mouth to speak, when there came a furious roar from behind him. He slewed about in his chair, clutching Zarabeth to him, to see Ragnar trying to rise, Eldrid attempting to hold him down. He was yelling and cursing, his arms flailing about. He struck Eldrid away and staggered to his feet, weaving where he stood.
26
Zarabeth couldn’t bear Ragnar’s pain. If she could have held Ingunn’s throat between her hands, she surely would have squeezed the life out of her. Ragnar was shuddering with pain and with the knowledge of what Ingunn had done to him, to Magnus, to Malek.
“Orm struck me himself,” he said over and over, even as he tried to pull free of Magnus. “She watched. She stood near him and watched. She told him that I had beaten her.Beatenher, Magnus!” Ragnar stopped, sucking in air, his face gray with pain, clammy with sweat, trying to get free and get hold of himself at the same time. “Then she told him not to kill me, she told him that I deserved to feel pain for what I had done to her. I deserved to look the fool.”
Eldrid was trying to soothe him, clucking at him, and he knocked away her hand.
“Lie down, Ragnar,” Magnus said. He didn’t wait for his friend to respond. He simply picked him up and laid him flat on his back. “Now, you will stay there. What was your intent? To go after Orm now, this minute? Control your rage or use it to heal yourself. We will all go soon enough, and you will be with us. Nay, Ragnar, keep your fury under your tongue for the moment, and obey Eldrid. She doesn’t want to see you underground. Nor do I.”
Magnus, satisfied that his friend would hold his peace, turned back to his wife. “How do you feel?”
In truth she felt weak and dizzy, and her stomach was pitching. “I’m all right,” she said instead, and tried for a sickly smile. Magnus merely shook his head at her, looked back at Ragnar, then lifted her in his arms. “The both of you will rest. I fear, though, that Ragnar will regain his bloom before you do. Nay, hush, Zarabeth. I want you happy and well.”
And that, she thought, settling down on a pile of blankets, her back propped against a tree, was that. She was asleep within minutes.
It was the oddest thing, Zarabeth thought later. The slave hut hadn’t been touched by the flames. It was the only building left intact. More men arrived from Harald’s farmstead, and rebuilding began. It was a slow process, for the old wood still smoldered, and several times men turning up stumps were burned when embers flamed up.
The sound of falling trees became a familiar one. The raw wood smelled sweet and soft. They could use only oak, and since there were few oak trees, treks to find them took time. Everything took time.
