“You sent him to buy women?”
He reacted defensively to the surprise in her tone. “I cannot come to you every time I need something sewed or a hot meal, Kris.”
She was not upset with him. Slavery was a fact of life, and Christian and heathen alike saw nothing wrong with enslaving a defeated people. Her family had always owned slaves, some captured on raids, some bought. Her husband owned them, though his were mostly freemen who had been unable to meet the fines for whatever crimes they had committed, and so by Saxon law were enslaved as punishment.And his many serfs were not much different from slaves.
Her mother had been captured and given to her father as a slave, and so had Kristen been captured and enslaved by Royce for a time—until her father came to put an end to that. Though truth be known, Royce had already decided to marry her, so he didn’t need the inducement of an enraged father and a hundred Vikings at his gate, nor her mother’s dagger at his throat.
“Of course you will need women to care for both you and your home,” Kristen said now. “But you should have let me choose them for you. Ivarr will pick only the pretty ones, if I know him, whether they can cook and sew a seam or not.”
“You think so? Truly?”
The eagerness in his tone brought a laugh from Royce, but Kristen would have thrown something at her brother’s head if he were not still holding her daughter. “You have more women available to you than you know what to do with, Selig. I would think you would want some with the skills to do what needs doing if you are going to pay good coin for them.”
Both men burst out laughing, and Kristen added with a scowl, “Besidesthat.”
Selig was still chuckling. “Let us hope, then, that they are skilled in all areas, or I will still be visiting your hall, sister.”
“When didyouget so particular?” she scoffed.
He shrugged, giving her the grin that could melt the stoniest of hearts, and said, “You know me too well.”
She did indeed. Selig loved all women, just as they all adored him, and he treated each one the same. He didn’t take advantage of a slave merely because she was a slave and couldn’t refuse him, but wooed her as he would a free woman. The women Ivarr bought for him wouldn’t mind in the least being owned by him, of that Kristen had no doubt.
“So when do you expect Ivarr back?” she asked.
“He was to sail to both Birka and Hedeby, so I do not expect him for a fortnight, another month at the most.”
Kristen would have offered her women to prepare his feast, but knew he would want to wait until Ivarr and the rest of his men returned before he celebrated the completion of his new home. Seven of those men had elected to settle in Wessex as well, including her dear friend Thorolf. The rest of the men would sail home to Norway with Ivarr before the winter months stranded them here, to return again next summer.
She sighed, glancing around to note the number of women still staring in Selig’s direction, their work ignored. Just about all. “I can see I will not get much done around here, now that you have idle hands again.” She turned to her husband, jesting. “Can you not find another war to send him off to?”
Royce snorted. “You would take an ax to me if I did.”
Which was more than likely. She had hated it when both her husband and her brother had ridden off to fight against the Danes last year.
She was about to admit as much when one of Royce’s men ran into the hall. “Five riders approach, milord,” he said, “one nigh dead by the look of him. They bear the king’s banner.”
And Kristen groaned inwardly, afraid war had again come to Wessex.
Chapter 2
IT WAS NOTwar that was threatening again, as Kristen had dreaded, but a new plan devised by King Alfred and his advisors to strengthen the existing peace. The delegation of five that arrived at Wyndhurst from the west had been on their way to King Guthrum’s court to do Alfred’s bidding. They had not been attacked. The ailing man suffered no wounds, but some kind of natural affliction that was causing him severe pains, and limbs that would no longer do his bidding.
Kristen wouldn’t learn what business the men were about until after she had seen the ailing one to a bed and summoned the healers, and even then word was brought to her before she returned to her husband that the man had died. That quickly, and of what the two healers couldn’t say.
But it was this news she had to bring to the waiting men, and the four who had ridden with the dead one took it badly; not in grief, for they barely knew the man, but in the failure of their mission, which his death put an end to. They assumed the king wouldbe furious. Royce had doubts of that. Knowing Alfred as he did, as a friend as well as his king, he imagined Alfred would chafe at the delay, then merely find someone else to replace the man who had died.
Of course, finding a replacement wouldn’t be so easy, for it was their interpreter who had died, the one who was to speak to the Danes for the bishop in their party, who was the diplomat. The other three men were along as guards, since they had uncertain lands to pass through that were rife with thieves these days. The bishop could have easily been replaced, but there were not that many men in Alfred’s kingdom who spoke the language of the Danes to make it easy for him to find another interpreter.
Selig also had to wait until Royce could explain what the problem was, but not because he had been busy elsewhere, as his sister was. He had simply not understood a word of what the Saxons had said.
Unlike Kristen, who had learned the different languages of all the slaves during her growing years at home, including her husband’s tongue, Selig had learned only those languages he had thought would be useful to him in trading. So he could speak to any Dane and Swede with ease, could make himself understood to any Finn or Slav; and, of course, any Celt would think Selig was one of his own, for he spoke that tongue so well, thanks to his mother. But he couldn’t speak to a Saxon unless like Royce, the man also knewthe Celtic tongue, and fortunately, many of them did.
Selig had seen no need to learn the other languages that Kristen had learned, because he hadn’t entertained the idea of raiding the southern lands as other Vikings were still doing, but had planned to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a merchant prince. That one raid he and his friends had tried and failed at had been no more than a lark, their attempt to take some of the wealth from this land before the Danes conquered it all.
It behooved him, of course, to learn the Saxon tongue now, since he had decided to settle in this country, and so he was learning it. But he was no longer a child who had naught else to do but study, so he had not grasped much of it yet, was in no hurry to do so, and was still at a loss in situations like this when no one spoke slowly for his benefit. Actually, the Saxon words he was learning, he was learning from women, and those words did not exactly come up in conversations of this sort.
When Royce again joined him in the gathering area of the hall, next to the ale barrel, Kristen was also just returning from putting her children down for the night. They had shared their evening meal with the guests, but Kristen and Selig both had refrained from joining in the talk, which was mostly the lamentations of the four strangers. The hall still buzzed with activity, though, and the sky outside had yet to fully darken, it being well into summer.
