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“Don’t be ridiculous. How many times do I have to tell you? I’m just a man, a simple man. Now, I want you to rest.”
“But Mirana is giving me instruction on drying meat and fish.”
“That can wait. Rest, all right?”
He cupped her face between his palms and raised her to him. He kissed her lightly, gently rubbed his fingertips over her eyebrows to smooth them, kissed the tip of her nose, and lightly stroked his hand over her belly. “Rest,” he said again, and left her.
“I’m sorry, Cleve.”
“I know,” he said over his shoulder even as he grinned and shook his head. “We’ll both survive.” Odd, he thought, how marriage had focused his mind, nay, all of him, particularly his man’s parts, on sex. He couldn’t remember being so completely a slave to his body before. If he’d felt the urge, he’d slept with a woman, enjoyed himself, and hopefully given her pleasure as well, and then it was morning and time to go about his business again. But with marriage it was different. Sex seemed to be all he could think about. Or it was Chessa. No, that couldn’t be true. He liked her, admired her, was terrified of her ability to think and act and do it well. Her results weren’t always what one could wish but she never sat about and cried, unless it was a part of her latest strategy. No, this desire of his, always there, prodding at him, making him lose his concentration and look for her, it was just because they were married. She now belonged to him and that changed everything. She was his and only his. The only problem was that he couldn’t have what he was supposed to have, at least not for a number of days yet. He moaned, wanting to cry.
“Didn’t you sleep at all?”
It was Haakon frowning ferociously at him. Cleve thought Haakon would really prefer to be looking down at Cleve’s slain body. “You look like you’ve worked harder than a thrall for the entire night. I worked hard last night too, yet my eyes are at least open and my shoulders squared.”
“I did sleep, Haakon. Not a spit of work for me.” He said nothing more. Damnation, it wasn’t anybody’s business what he and Chessa did at night.
As for Chessa, the women were grouped around her, commiserating. Most of them were looking quite delighted, and Chessa knew the reason, but not how it felt to be delighted like that. Freya was punishing her for all her lies. “This will take away any cramping you may have now,” Mirana said. “Just mix this in a bit of water and drink it.”
“Poor Chessa,” Entti said after her.
“Poor Cleve,” Old Alna said. “He’s a randy lad and will be more randy by the moment as the hours pass. Mayhap I should stroke his fevered brow, mayhap sing to him.”
“Please, Alna, don’t,” Mirana said.
To Cleve’s immense relief, no word was spoken about either his size, his prowess, his endurance, or his death at the men’s hands. He noticed that the men did look at Chessa, saw that she was very tired, and wondered at it, but this time, they didn’t ask. Had they learned that the women were making sport of them? He didn’t know. He wasn’t about to ask.
Over the late afternoon meal, Merrik said, “We leave in two days for Scotland. I’ve looked through the stores and all is ready to be stowed on the warships.”
“I want to stop in York and kill Ragnor,” Hafter said. “That bastard, making you go to such lengths, Cleve, that you had to wear breasts and paint on your face.”
Cleve just laughed.
Chessa said, “He was beautiful, all the men admired him. When he came to my room he wouldn’t let me hug him because he was afraid his breasts would slip and all the paint on his face would crack.”
“But his eyes,” Mirana said. “Didn’t you recognize him immediately, Chessa?”
“He wore a black patch over his right eye. I just saw this whore with big breasts who finally came to my bedchamber and kissed me.”
“And you stabbed me,” Cleve said. “Aye, she thought I was one of the guards bent on mischief and she stabbed me. Then she hugged me so hard that my breasts were in danger of falling to the floor.”
There was much laughter, jests that made even Chessa’s ears burn. Most importantly there were no more threats of killing Cleve for his superiority.
Kiri was invited to sleep with her two papas, Cleve told Chessa, and looked as if he would cry. They wrapped up in blankets near the fire pit, Kiri between them.
“We’re going to a place
called Scotland,” Cleve told her, kissing her forehead. “Actually, we’re going to a place called Inverness that’s a trading town inland on the Moray Firth. There are many Vikings there, but also other peoples as well.”
“Aye, Kiri,” Chessa said. “There are people called Picts, an old race of people about whom I know nothing at all, Britons, Saxons, the Dalriada Scots—”
“I heard Gunleik tell Erna that none of them are clean like we are. He told her that the wool she spins is far too good for the likes of those dirty pigs. I think he kissed her then.”
“That’s possible,” Chessa said.
“Her arm is all strange looking but it doesn’t make any difference to her weaving,” Kiri said.
“Nay, her arm is withered, but it doesn’t make a whit of difference,” Cleve said. “Never forget that, Kiri.”
