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Helgi recognized that honesty. “There has been too much change for you in too short a time, too much pain, too much uncertainty. It has nothing to do with your strength or your weakness, Zarabeth. But I will tell you this, daughter, you will carry your pain and your grief until you rid yourself of your guilt. You cannot really begin to be my son’s wife until you deal with this. Now, tell me, how does Magnus deal with Egill’s loss?”
“He dreamed he saw Egill alive, but in some sort of captivity.”
Helgi touched the amulet she wore around her throat. “Perhaps,” she said. “Perhaps.”
After Helgi and her men had left, Aunt Eldrid came to where Zarabeth stood, looking off into the distance at nothing in particular, and said, “It is odd—this tale about Ingunn, I mean. Ingunn isn’t stupid. At least she wasn’t stupid until you came, then she became a vindictive creature I scarce recognized. Normally, Ingunn always acts for a reason. No, my dear sister doesn’t know her daughter as well as she believes she does. Aye, it is odd.”
She would say nothing more, even when Zarabeth questioned her closely. Sour old woman, she thought, and went about preparing some turnips to roast beside the herring just caught in the viksfjord.
The next day, it rained, a thick cold rain that gave a hint of the harshness of winter. Zarabeth shivered, wondering about those cold, dark months that would surely come. Wh
at would life be like then? She watched the heavy dark clouds billow over the mountains. The waters of the viksfjord churned and heaved. She wondered what Magnus was doing, what he was feeling. It surprised her that she wondered about him.
Zarabeth found herself hoping that he was warm and protected from the rain. A wifely thought, she realized. A very wifely thought. By the Viking gods, she was a fool.
Late that afternoon the rain stopped and the sun came out. Everyone breathed a sigh of pleasure and poured out of the longhouse. No one cared about the large pools of mud that pockmarked the ground both inside and outside the palisade. The slaves went into the fields, women washed clothing in huge wooden tubs beside the bathhouse, and the children wrestled and shouted and fought and did the tasks assigned to them. Rollo’s hammer rang out loud and solid from the smithy’s hut. Eldrid spun the fine flax into stout threads.
The air of normalcy had returned. All was as it should be again, except that it wasn’t. Suddenly, as before, Zarabeth couldn’t bear it, this everyday laughter, the common jests and talk that surrounded her. She walked through the palisade gates and down to the shore. No one said anything. She walked to the water’s edge. The water still swirled, its color darkened from the churning. She looked at the boat, the one she had taken, the one from which Lotti had jumped—jumped to save Magnus—and she felt herself folding inward. It was a strange sensation, one that allowed her to feel exactly what she was doing. Head down, she began to walk up the shore, not caring where she was going. She simply wanted to be alone for a while. Suddenly she heard a dog bark and looked up. There, in front of her, stood a young man, tall, as well-formed as Magnus, his hair a rich wheat color, his complexion fair, his eyes a startling silver blue. He held a sword loosely in his hand and he was merely standing there staring at her.
“Your hair,” he said at last. “I have never before seen such a color, though my men have told me of it. Red as blood, they said.”
Her hair! What nonsense was this? She looked at his sword. She looked behind him but could see no one else. He appeared to be alone. Surely there was no reason for her to be afraid of him, at least not yet.
“Who are you?”
He smiled, revealing very white teeth. He was a handsome man, she thought dispassionately, still eyeing that sword. She wondered if people above, within the palisade, could see them, and if so, what they would do.
“I have waited for you, and the wait had become tedious. I would have attacked Malek earlier, but I didn’t really want to. I wanted only you, and now it appears that the gods have delivered you up to me. I doubted mine own eyes when I saw you leave the safety of the palisade.”
“I doubt your Viking gods have anything to do with my being here. Who are you? Why would you want me?”
“I do not like a woman’s tongue to be shrill, nor do I like demanding questions.” He took a step toward her, and Zarabeth took a step back. She eyed the distance up the incline to the palisade gate, wondering if she could outrun him.
He said, “You cannot. You are but a woman, and thus you could never outrace me. Now, I would look more closely at you. I won’t hurt you. Hold still.”
He walked to her, the sword still held in his right hand. He stopped in front of her and, to her surprise, lifted her long braid in his hand, pulling it forward. With quick, nearly angry motions, he pulled it apart. He ran his fingers through her hair, then gathered a thick tress around his hand and rubbed it against his cheek. “I hate the braid. You must leave your hair free and loose. The feel is as rich and vibrant as the color. Ah, and the smell. Lavender? You are very foreign, just as Ingunn said. The green color of your eyes is also unusual. I have never seen a green so pure and deep, like the greenest moss deep in a forest where little sunlight filters through. I wonder, is the rest of you different as well?” He grinned then and chuckled. “Of course, Ingunn would never admit that you were beautiful. She hates you, you see.”
And then she knew. Ah, yes, she knew. “You are Orm Ottarsson, aren’t you?”
He was still grinning at her. “Ah, so you still have your wits about you. My fame has preceded me. Aye, I am Orm Ottarsson and you are Zarabeth, wife of Magnus.”
“Why are you here? It isn’t safe for you to be here. Even now your deeds are being discussed at the thing.”
“I have come to take you away from here, away from Magnus Haraldsson. I have long wished to do him in, and Ingunn has no tender feelings for you. She has begged me to avenge her. She wants you dead, truth be told, but she would never admit to that. What she so prettily begs me to do is to sell you to some Arab in Miklagard and thus turn a tidy profit.” He touched his fingertips to her jaw. “I do not believe you would make a good slave, though I doubt not I would get much gold for you. Are there still marks from the slave collar Magnus put on you? No, I see that they are gone. You must have angered him greatly for him to humiliate you thus.”
“Yes,” she said. “But I meant not to anger him. ’Twas not my fault.”
“It matters not now. He forgave you and wedded you. At first I did not credit it, for Magnus is such a proud man, unbending as an oak. When we were boys, he could be more stubborn, more inflexible, than any of us. I remember seeing him pale with fear when a wild boar turned on him, but he swallowed his vomit and made his stand, and he killed the beast. Aye, a proud man, Magnus.” He was looking at her again, and rubbed her hair between his fingers. “Ingunn is as proud as her brother. She can be merciless as well. I have always admired that in her.”
“Ingunn has no reason to hate me. I did nothing to her.”
He shrugged, saying, “She is a passionate creature whose heart is easily bruised, whose mind is easily twisted. She saw you as a threat, saw you as the woman who would usurp her, and thus set out to destroy you. She wasn’t wise in her methods, though, for Magnus cares for you above all others, including that little whore of his, Cyra, but Ingunn didn’t fully realize that until it was too late—for her.”
“She has told you all these things? You kidnapped Ingunn from her home?”
He laughed then, shaking his head. “Helgi wants to believe that, I doubt not, but she is no fool and she knows that Ingunn came to me freely. I had but to send her a message and she flew to me.”
“Magnus, his father, and many others are at the meeting of all free men and they are considering evidence of your deceit and trickery. You should leave Norway, Orm. I have heard it said that many of your countrymen sail to the west, to lands discovered and settled by the Vikings.”
