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Kiri heard the storm and just stared down at the dirt floor. She picked up one of the sticks and began breaking it into small pieces.
The next night Chessa had had enough. She went into the children’s bedchamber where ten of them were all packed together like the women’s lines of dried fish. She plucked Kiri from among the sleeping children, watching with a grin as their small bodies quickly closed the gap. She carried the sleeping child to the outer longhouse and curled her against her, wrapping a blanket around the both of them.
Before morning, Chessa was aware of a very big, very warm body curved around her back. She froze, then felt a wet tongue swipe over her cheek. She sighed. It was Kerzog.
“Why are you here, Chessa?”
She opened her eyes. It was barely dawn, dim shadowy light breaking the night gloom in the longhouse. No one was yet stirring, but soon there would be enough activity so that no one would be able to continue asleep.
“I decided you’re skinny enough. You’ve driven everyone frantic with worry over you. I won’t allow it to continue anymore. I’ve decided you will now consider me your second father. Whenever your papa can’t be with you, then I will be. When Utta has made the porridge, you will eat. Then you and I will go exploring. We will play and run and laugh, and I will teach you a song that’s sung by all the farmers in Ireland. It’s about a pig who saved his master’s life and thus sleeps with the master and mistress of the farmstead. Then we will have lunch, a very big lunch, over on the eastern cliffs.”
“You’re not my papa. You’re a girl.”
“It doesn’t matter. You may call me Papa if you wish.”
The little girl tried to pull away from her, but Chessa held her firmly. She was so thin, even her beautiful golden hair was lank and dull. It scared Chessa to death. She couldn’t begin to imagine what Cleve was thinking. She prayed he was still alive so he could think about his child.
“You’re not my papa and I won’t have you as one.”
“Aye, you will. I will tell you something else, Kiri. If your papa doesn’t arrive after the storm ends, then you and I are both going with the men to York. Since I’m your second papa, I will speak to Uncle Rorik. Since I’m your second papa, he will say yes, but only—”
“Only what?”
“Only if you do as I tell you.”
“Papa never orders me around.”
“Of course he does. You just don’t notice it. Perhaps it’s time you had a second papa to do all those things your first papa doesn’t do.”
“Do I have to?”
“Aye. Now, lie here beside me again. I’ll tell you a story about a little girl who had to grow up with a stepmother who was as nasty as she was beautiful. The stepmother’s name was Sira and I was the little girl.”
“Papa’s not soft like you are. You don’t look like a papa, not even a second papa.”
“That’s just because you’re not yet used to the idea.”
12
WAVES SPLASHED AGAINST the sides of the warship. The night was black as Chessa’s hair, Rorik told her, which was good because there was no one to alert the Danes. The air was heavy with rain, the clouds overhead dark and thick.
Hafter said, “There’s not even a gull about to announce us. I pray the rain will hold off until we’re done with this business.”
Gunleik had steered the warship through the huge York harbor, ringed with its massive wooden palisade to keep out the enemy. Such was his skill that the guards hadn’t seen Merrik’s ship.
Everyone prayed the Malverne men had been taken alive. But as warriors, they knew in their bellies that it was unlikely. A warrior would fight until he was too weak to raise his sword. Then he would use his knife until he was too weak. Then he would curse until his tongue was dead in his mouth. None said it, but few believed their friends were still alive. And Merrik and Cleve? Rorik said nothing, merely went about his tasks, his head down, calm and still.
Gunleik steered the ship slowly out of the harbor, northward. There were at least three dozen trading ships and warships tied to the dock, their masts like ghosts in the night, tall, wrapped closely in their leather sails, many of them white, swaying slightly with the movement of the ships. They pulled the ship ashore a half mile above the harbor onto a narrow beach covered with driftwood and rocks. There were no lights, no small settlements. They would hug the beach as they made their way back to the town.
They covered the warship with thick-leafed branches from the oak and maple trees just inland from the beach. When it was hidden as best they could, Rorik said quietly, “Kiri, you will stay close to your second papa. I want to leave you here, but it’s too dangerous. By the gods, everything is dangerous.” He smote his forehead, but knew there was nothing he could do about it. Chessa was skilled with a knife and she carried two of them beneath her wool cloak in a leather belt around her waist.
The child allowed Chessa to take her hand.
Rorik fell into step beside Hafter. “We are Vikings and warriors and now we go to York to find our friends and we take a woman and a little girl with us.”
Hafter just shrugged. “Sing not that song again, Rorik. It will gain you nothing more than it gained you the day we left Hawkfell, which was nothing. The child would be dead if she weren’t with us.”
“So Chessa said,” Rorik said under his breath, wondering if this were indeed the case. Kiri had eaten enough on the three-day journey to York from Hawkfell Island. She’d also eaten before they’d left. “It is because she knows she will soon see Cleve,” Chessa had said, meeting his look squarely. “If she were back on Hawkfell Island, she would soon be dead. At least with us she has a better chance to survive.”
