Chapter Forty
The great hall fairly vibrated with tension, as if the very stones of the place strained to cast out the unwanted intruders. Quarrie, gazing about with a sudden rush of misgiving, wondered if everyone who had opposed this move on his part had been right, and he had been terribly wrong.
Yet…Hulda sat beside him, so near he could reach out and touch her any time he chose. He dared not do so, but the certainty that he could provided some satisfaction.
The table set aside for her crew lay to their right as they faced the room. Turning his gaze there, Quarrie could see that her men looked dangerously on edge, repeatedly putting their heads together and talking in their own tongue.
Quarrie calculated it would take naught more than a disdainful look to set them off. The place was filled to the rafters with disdain.
Servers began hurrying about pouring ale and passing loaded platters. Quarrie had himself chosen the individuals to serve at the Norse table. Intrepid fellows, the both of them. No lasses.
Ma, seated on Hulda’s far side, gave him a desperate look. He rose.
He had planned every word of what he meant to say.
Calming words, so he hoped, and suitable ones.
He could not control how they fell upon the ears of his listeners.
If they wanted to remain angry or outraged or offended, they would.
Yet he felt he took the leadership of the clan into his hands firmly for the first time.
This was not what his father would have done, nor anyone he knew.
He would either sail upon the strength of it, or sink spectacularly.
“Welcome to our guests, whom we receive wi’ honor.
” He did not know how many of the Norse could understand his words.
Enough, so he hoped, to translate for the others.
“We are here to feast the alliance that has been made between mysel’ and the Norse leader, Hulda Elvarsdottir.
In the past, we ha’ known much of killing and strife and mistrust in facing one another.
Members o’ both our families ha’ perished.
We can continue on inviting more death, or we can agree here tonight, in this very hall, that among us, at least, there will be nay more o’ it. ”
Mutters from the throats of his own people greeted his words, while the Norse crew stared as if trying to decide the best way to dismember him.
The hostility brought despair to his heart.
He’d been mad to attempt this thing. Everyone had told him so.
He’d been mad to hope there might ever exist between him and Hulda anything more than a fleeting passion.
Yet somewhat more did exist.
He went on steadily, “Let us prove wi’ this night o’ gathering together that more than hate can exist between us, that we might someday achieve not only an alliance, but a peace.”
At the Norse table, one of the men was busy translating for the others. Would Quarrie’s words make them decide he was weak? Did talk of peace represent, to such men, an invitation to violence?
His own people looked as if they wanted to shout him down. Only loyalty and their unwillingness to betray their vows of fealty before the strangers kept them from it.
He sat down, dismay and doubt hitting him in waves. The room fell silent apart from the Norseman’s hurried catch-up.
Slowly, Hulda rose in turn.
All eyes flew to her. A curiosity she was, for many reasons. A Norse warrior here in their hall, and a woman, no less. Tall, strong, and composed. Far more composed, Quarrie thought, than he.
Into the silence she spoke with her heavily accented Gaelic.
“We are honored by our reception here in your hall this night, and honored by Chief Murtray’s words of velkomin.
There is bad blood between us, ja. There are grievances old and recent, yet we lay them aside.
In return for the place we have been granted upon your shore, we agree to wet our blades no more with your blood.
Further, we pledge to stand with you in times of trouble. We will help you to defend this place.”
Deliberately, she gazed about the near-silent chamber, her pale-gray eyes touching on the faces of the listening Scots and those of her own men.
She concluded, “If only between your clan and my crew, let us found a new age.”
She sat down again to only faint coughs and mutters. Would it work? Quarrie doubted it. He fully expected that, come morning, there would be protests from his folk and hers. Fight alongside the Scots? Why should they? Trust the Norse? How could they?
For tonight, at least, there was feasting, and Quarrie hoped a realization that strangers were not necessarily monsters. He gestured to the servers, who once more began circulating. Conversation at the tables rose.
Under the cover of the table, Hulda’s fingers brushed his. Only a glancing touch, but it brought his whole body to life.
She inclined her head toward his. He expected her to speak of what had been said or the reactions of their audience to it.
Instead she murmured, “I must see you again.”
His very blood leaped. She did not speak of seeing him. He understood completely what she meant.
“Aye, but how?”
“The same place, mayhap. Tomorrow?”
Tomorrow. Tomorrow would be a morass of arguments and protestations. Of people waylaying him to voice their complaints and their fears. He would be constantly in sight of someone or other.
“I do no’ doubt tomorrow will be spent in meetings o’ council and hearings wi’ my folk. Do ye realize wha’ we ha’ done?”
“Ja. It is a step of which my faeir, back home, would not approve.”
“Nor mine.”
“Yet we move on through life, eh? The wheel of time refuses to stand still.”
The wheel of time.
They ate, though whether the fare was good or otherwise, Quarrie could not have told. He failed to taste it, too busy watching the room and the reactions of those within it.
The Norse, whatever their opinions, ate heartily. Opportunists, he supposed, who would take food—or aught else to benefit them—where offered. Even though he had limited the amount of drink, Hulda’s crew grew louder as the evening wended on.
If they all got out of this without drawn swords, it would be a wonder.
That was his last thought before Danoch arose. The harper had been afforded a place at the end of the head table as, Quarrie believed, he richly deserved. Now he took up his instrument and moved to the cleared space beside the fire.
Would the Norse quiet to listen to him? Or would they be rude enough to keep up a racket?
To Quarrie’s surprise, it was Hulda’s right-hand man, Garik, who leaned forward from his place beside Ma and barked a single word in Norse. Listen, it might have been.
Young men all, they shot Garik startled looks and obeyed.
The music began. Only it was not just music.
Here in this tumultuous place, Danoch gave them ripples of sound as calming as rivulets playing on the hillsides or waves kissing the shore.
Wisely, he did not, as was his want, begin with a tale that their guests might not be able to follow.
He gave them instead the magic of ancient songs, which no man could fail to heed.
He wove memory with his old hands, and longing. The tears of loss and the laughter of reunion. If the Norsemen had a place in their hearts where warmth resided, the tunes surely found it.
When Danoch lifted his voice in words, there was not another sound to be heard. He gave them an old, old tune of praise. Not for any gods, but the things all men must love. The song of birds and the softness of the south wind. The blessing of sunlight. The gift of a new morn.
Down between them, Hulda’s hand brushed Quarrie’s again. Her pinky—only that—hooked his and held tight. Very nearly enough.
For he could almost—almost—hear what she was thinking. As if the music, and the tremor in Danoch’s voice that was somehow both old and young, conveyed it.
I love you.
Did she? With everything in him, he longed to gaze into her eyes, to behold the truth there. Instead he kept staring straight ahead, listening to the music and pretending his whole being did not hang on the answer, connected to her by her finger twined through his.
While Danoch played, the servers quietly took away the dregs of the ale and began removing the scraps of food. When the aged harper arose at last, to stomps of wild approval from the Norse—apparently not too drunk to appreciate his playing—Hulda rose also.
“We thank you for your warm welcome this night, Chief Murtray, and for the wonderful playing of your harper. We go now in peace.” She looked at her men. “Ja?”
They rose with a clatter, as did Garik and Helje from the head table. Suddenly everyone was on his or her feet.
This would be the moment, with the peace of Danoch’s harping shattered, when trouble would break out. But Hulda moved down the length of the hall, gathering her men the way a hen might her chicks.
Quarrie hurried after.
At the top of the outer stairs, she paused and turned to him. “I think that went well.”
“Better than I expected.”
“Ja, sure. I much enjoyed your harper and would like to hear him again. Much as—” She caught herself and lowered her voice. “When? Where?” She repeated her earlier suggestion: “The same place?”
“’Tis dangerous,” he said with reluctance.
“Ach, by Odin’s eye, I must—” Again she caught herself.
“If this alliance holds,” he told her very softly indeed, “we may be able to see one another more often.”
She gave him a tight smile, just visible in the flaring torchlight. “And here I thought you acted on behalf of your people.”
“I do.” And, so he prayed, his own.
She left him. He stayed at the top of the stairs and watched her go at the head of her men, off into the endless dark.