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“I don’t understand what you mean,” Taby said. “Laren is my sister. She would kill to save me. She would die to save me too.”
“That may be true,” Merrik said. He didn’t want to speak of Laren. She was only important because she was Taby’s sister. He didn’t want her to be important in any other way. He thought of her throwing herself against him at Kaupang simply because he’d bought clothing for both Cleve and Taby. He clearly remembered the feel of her, the touch of her warm breath on his cheek. He said now, “I must leave Malverne soon, for now it is my brother’s home, and he and Sarla will have children, surely, and it is not large enough for both of us. Aye, I had thought of it before, thought that I must leave soon and build my own house, farm my own land. My other brother, Rorik, owns an entire island off the coast of East Anglia called Hawkfell Island. It’s a beautiful place and it is his alone. I must make my own way as he did. What do you think, Taby?”
Taby was asleep.
Laren said quietly, stepping into his line of vision, “A man must be his own master, tread on ground that is his alone, farm land where he spreads his own grain and tends and reaps it.”
Merrik was silent for a moment. He was taken off guard, and he didn’t like it. She’d come upon them, silent as a shadow, and overheard him. He didn’t like that, for he’d also been thinking of her, and he didn’t want her to get close to th
ose thoughts, to guess about them, perhaps. His words to Taby were really meant for himself, not for anyone else, for Taby was a child without a man’s reason. And yet she was here, coming upon him like a silent shadow, listening to him without his knowing it.
“I like it not that you hide yourself and listen to words not meant for your ears. It is true, though, and I will repeat it to your face: your pride is overweening. You are as arrogant as a warrior, which is absurd. Your belief in your own value is more than a female’s should be.”
She only shrugged. “I had not heard you say that, but if that is what you believe, why then there is little I can do about it.”
He sighed, wishing he’d not spoken. “Does your leg pain you?”
“Not so much now. The cream is wondrous.”
“There won’t be more, for my mother is dead. Perhaps she taught Sarla how to make it. We will see.” He stared off into the nothingness beyond her, and thought, first she is starved then beaten and then burned. His anger at her died. Her damned pride and arrogance had brought her through it; she’d survived because of it. Aye, he thought, that part of her was like his mother, or more like his sister-in-law Mirana, Rorik’s wife, perhaps, a woman he’d hated at first, for he saw her tainted and befouled with a villain’s blood as had his parents. He’d distrusted her, feared for his brother. Ah, but she’d been strong and loyal and as stubborn as his brother.
He sighed now, saying, “I hate the suddenness of death. The finality of it. To die in battle—a man is ready for that, at least he is in his heart, if not fully in his mind, because he knows that if he falls, he will go to Valhalla and live there for all eternity. But to be felled by an illness that is unexpected, to be helpless against it, to know there is nothing you can do, that is frightening. It strips a man of dignity, of honor.”
Her voice was hard, as was the line of her mouth. “That is life. Honor and dignity have nothing to do with death. I see being cleaved into two parts in battle as no more a virtue than being struck down by an illness or an assassin’s knife. There is so much death in life that soon you cannot think of one without the other. Death is always riding on your shoulder. Always. It all ends in the same thing. You are no more.”
“You speak harshly and you don’t understand the virtues of a man’s passing in a certain way, in a way of his own choosing, in a way that proclaims his valor, his worth. My father did not choose this plague.”
“Neither did your mother. Remember, Merrik, women do not have the chance to be butchered in battle as do men. Do all their deaths lack honor and dignity?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought of it in that way. But women—they are different.”
“Aye,” she said slowly. “They are.” She started to say something else, then just shook her head, obviously changed her mind and said, “Aye, they are, and men are lucky to be larger and stronger.”
He said, thinking again of her burned leg, “You survived.”
She laughed, but it wasn’t a joyous laugh. “Without you I would not have survived much longer. I think that Thrasco was the final link in the chain. When he discovered I wasn’t a boy, he would have either sold me or killed me. Since Taby was gone from me, since I’d failed to keep him with me and as safe as I could keep him, why then it wouldn’t have mattered.”
“You would have killed yourself?”
She was silent for a very long time, just standing there close to him, the moonlight at her back now and he couldn’t see her face, just a nimbus of light around her head. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “I had no time to dwell upon it. I was intent only on finding Taby. And then you came. I am very sorry about your parents, Merrik. I am sorry for your pain.”
He said nothing, merely leaned back against the rough bark of the oak tree and closed his eyes.
“Leave Taby with me,” he said, his eyes still closed. “I will bring him into the longhouse when I wish to return.”
“As you will. What will you do now, Merrik?”
“I want an island like my brother Rorik’s.”
She laughed. It was a pure, rich sound, no mockery in it. He realized he’d never heard her laugh before, not like this, honest and open. Not that she’d had reason, of course. He opened his eyes. “I amuse you?”
“Where would you get an island?”
“I don’t know, ’twas just a thought, just a quick answer to your insolent question.”
She stiffened, but he didn’t care. She deserved his sharp tongue. She turned away from him and walked away. He closed his eyes again and pulled Taby closer. He felt the child’s palm on his heart.
There was a feast to celebrate Merrik’s return, but it wasn’t like the one of the year before or the year before that. There was mead and beer to drink, cheese, cabbage, onions, peas, wild boar steaks, dark pink salmon well smoked and delicious, flatbread and rye bread and apples both sweet and tart. Sarla spread a beautiful pale linen cloth on the wide wooden table. Laren looked at it and felt a sudden unexpected surge of tears. There had always been such finery in her life until that awful night: beautiful cloths to spread over surfaces, exquisite furnishings, huge spaces, not dark and low and filled with smoke like this longhouse. She remembered her own mother’s laughter as she spread a beautiful linen cloth on a table, how she’d complained that the men didn’t care, but she did, so it didn’t matter. Such beautiful cloths, their edges beautifully embroidered. She hadn’t thought of her mother in more months than she could count. It was strange. Her mother’s name was Nirea, a soft name, a name that was like music to say. “What may I do?” she said.
