“You want to know how I can justify my feelings considering we are on conquered land.”
He nodded. She was not offended, yet. But this was a delicate subject.
“We are a proud people, Giric of Alba,” she said. “We work hard for what we have. When we came to this island, the people here were barely surviving. We built homes, halls, and farms. Those people blended into our culture and are living better now than they did before.”
“But they were not given a choice,” he said quietly.
She opened her mouth to speak and closed it again. Her cheeks turned red again as she turned back to the crowd.
“My intention is not to criticize your customs or culture, Saga. I am merely trying to understand and say that there may be a way that we can marry our cultures and preserve both.”
“That’s impossible,” she said, turning back to him quickly. “If I married a Scot, I would be taken from the home I love and forced to live amongst people I do not understand, unable to live the life I choose.”
“That will happen no matter who you marry. Unless you marry someone who lives in the village and how likely is that with such limited available men worthy of you?” He took a deep breath. This conversation had become more heated than he had intended. If he was going to continue to talk to her, and he wanted to, he would need to find common ground.
Saga’s head was bent low. Christ’s teeth he had not meant to make her feel ashamed. He could kick himself for doing so. This was all wrong—and all his fault.
“Do you like music?” he asked her, tilting his head in an attempt to make eye contact with her.
“I do not know,” she said, looking up at him with a genuinely curious expression. “We tell stories for entertainment.”
“Well then let us find out,” he said.
“Gunnar, gracious host,” Giric said over the din in the room. Conversations ceased and heads turned to him. “Would you permit me to share some music in your hall?”
“If it will make my guests happy, by all means.”
Giric turned to his crewman, Lachlan, who nodded. He pulled out a long thin pipe from his tunic and stood. As he played the first few haunting notes, Giric watched the Norsemen in the room, but he was more curious about Saga’s reaction.
Her wide-eyed, open-mouthed expression told him she had never heard anything like it before. As Lachlan played, he increased the tempo, playing an old tune he’d learned long ago that had been handed down from father to son from the time the original Gael’s had sailed forth from Ireland. Before long, his own men clapped along and nudged the man beside him. Giric joined in and smiled as Saga turned toward him with brows raised, watching him clap a beat in time with the music Lachlan played.
“You should try it,” he said to her, adoring her look of surprise at his suggestion.
“I do not know how,” she said.
“Watch my hands and follow with yours,” he said.
She tried and failed a few times, her frustration apparent at every attempt. Giric placed his hands on hers and held them still. Would she let him show her how? The heat from her hands sent a jolt through him the likes of which he had never felt before. She must have felt it too for she gasped and pulled her hands back.
“Is this magic?” she asked.
“Not the kind you are thinking of, but it is a version. Let me take your hands and guide you,” he said.
Saga offered her hands again. When he touched them this time, the same feeling was there, but this time it made her smile. He liked that very much.
Giric listened to the music to find the beat. He clapped both their hands together. She watched their every movement and before long he could feel her hands moving of their own accord. He slowly lifted his hands away from hers and watched her efforts improve.
“I’m doing it,” she said.
“You are,” he said, laughing.
Giric sat back and watched as she turned to Lachlan, concentrating on his actions with her hands clapping in time. A part of him wanted to point out that this moment proved the benefit of two cultures learning more about one another, but he would rather hear that from her tongue.
He glanced over her head to see Gunnar grinning at him. He looked down at her and winked at Giric before tilting his head back and letting out a mighty laugh.
“Stop it, brother. You’re breaking my concentration,” Saga said, prompting Gunnar to laugh even louder.
When the song ended, loud cheers resounded through the hall. Could that have been the turning point in some kind of acceptance between them? Could a simple tune have been the one thing to make a firm crack in the wall?
