Chapter 12
The sun sank into the western sea, and the coracle skimmed over shadow-dark waters as they skirted the island.
The basket that should have been filled with gull eggs was empty, but the air around them was overflowing with frustration and bewilderment and unspoken rage.
Katla’s stiff posture and deliberate failure to even glance his way signaled she wasn’t inclined to talk about it.
It was just as well. Brandr was still so dumbfounded by her abrupt change toward him, he didn’t know what to say.
She’d been so passionate, so unabashedly needy, so soul naked and hungry. In satisfying her needs, his own had been met beyond his wildest imaginings. He’d never experienced anything like her.
Then in a few blinks, she was as ice bound as a frost maiden. As if she hadn’t just melted under him. As if they hadn’t held each other’s souls inside their joined bodies.
The woman took her pleasure like the worst of men, who used their partners and moved on without the least acknowledgment that, if for only a moment, they’d taken part in something special.
Something precious.
He’d had his share of lovers, mostly married women, so there could be no mistaking the relationship for anything other than an arrangement to satisfy mutual needs.
But he’d never run so flaming hot and then so suddenly cold with any of them.
When the physical relationship burned out, the association ended with genuine affection and usually abiding friendship.
Katla’s glossy hair still shined in the rosy light of the dying sun. Her skin still glowed. No man worthy of the name would deny she was a beautiful woman.
But if Brandr wasn’t careful, she’d eat his heart for night meal and serve up his balls for breakfast.
By the time the coracle sidled next to the wharf, Finn was there to meet them. He held out a hand to help his sister from the craft. While Brandr leaped out and secured the coracle, he wondered how Katla would explain coming home empty-handed after being gone all day.
A skald could turn her near-plummet to the surf into a tale that would earn many a night meal, but Katla didn’t strike him as the type to dramatize her own exploits.
The real tale of how they tumbled into each other’s arms after her scare was ripe enough for the makings of a maidensong—a forbidden love story.
Though love had little to do with their passionate tryst, he’d learned in the end.
As it turned out, Brandr needn’t have worried about how Katla would account for their time away. Finn was too full of his own news to ask after theirs.
“We’ve found another suitor for you, sister.”
Brandr made himself busy, coiling the rope and stowing the climbing tackle. His ears pricked with interest though his head warned him not to care about what he heard.
“Oh, Finn, what nonsense is this? I thought you were going to mend the fence around the cattle byre today.” Katla shook her head in disappointment. “You promised you would.”
“And so I did. That fence is better than new. You can see for yourself when you get there,” he said with an injured sniff. “I didn’t have anything to do with this new suitor. Finding another fellow for you was Einar’s and Haukon’s doing.”
“You really mended the fence? I’m surpri—” She caught herself before she insulted her brother. “That’s good, Finn. I’m…pleased,” she finished primly. “But where did Einar and Haukon find another suitor in such short order? At the mead house?”
“Well…”
“Oh, Finn!”
“You didn’t say anything about where we had to find the men to court you,” her brother complained. “You only said they mustn’t be fools.”
“How can Einar and Haukon tell the man isn’t a fool, if they’ve got their noses in a mead pot?”
Brandr had to admit she had a point. He’d certainly been a fool the last time he was in a mead house. And he was still paying for that folly.
Finn rubbed the back of his neck in obvious frustration. “Katla, we had an agreement. The son of Ulf as your thrall in exchange for your acceptance of another husband. Will you give this new man a fair hearing?”
“Fine.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “When?”
“On the morrow.”
She rolled her eyes. “Well, at least it will give him time to sober up.”
Then she stomped away from both of them. Brandr and Finn watched her determined stride up the steep path.
“Has she always been like this?” Brandr asked.
“No,” Finn said absently. It didn’t seem to occur to him it wasn’t proper for a thrall to ask such a thing about his mistress.
“Only since our mother died. She’s the eldest of us.
When Haukon was born and we lost Mother, Katla had seen only eight winters or so herself.
But she took it into her head that she had to stand in our mother’s stead, and she never got over the notion. ”
So the mantle of responsibility had fallen on Katla early and heavily. Brandr began to understand a little of how that weight had shaped her.
“I suppose she’ll always think we can’t wipe our own backsides,” Finn said. “Nothing will get done unless she’s there to supervise. I blame Osvald.”
“Why? A man can’t help dying.” Especially in a world where men like Brandr’s father were happy to help them do it.
“No, but he might have had the decency to give her a child before he picked that fight with Ulf Skallagrimsson,” Finn said. “If she had a bairn of her own to tend, mayhap she wouldn’t need to mother the rest of us all the time.”
Brandr raised his brows in surprise. So his father hadn’t murdered Katla’s husband. It might even have been self-defense. He wondered if she knew Osvald had started the row that ended his life.
Finn was probably on the mark about the bairn too.
Brandr recalled the look of yearning he’d caught on her face when she was surrounded by children that first morning of his enthrallment.
She was warm and nurturing with the offspring of others, but a woman who was hungry for a child of her own wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less.
Having her own bairn would have changed matters for Katla.
Her burdens had made her hard. Had she also become so brittle she’d break?
Brandr wondered what would happen if he shouldered some of her duties and let her breathe. Would the smiling, laughing Katla he’d seen in the coracle return to stay?
Would the heart-stopping vixen on the cliff top welcome him to her bed again? She was young enough for childbearing yet. Perhaps he could give her a child where her husband failed.
He damn sure wouldn’t mind trying.
Despite his firm conviction that he was probably on a fool’s errand, that Katla was as much a man-eater as the black-maned lion he’d seen in the emperor’s menagerie, Brandr decided it would be worth taking a chance.
He’d glimpsed Katla’s softer self, the one he hoped was her true self.
If there was a chance he could coax that Katla to stay, he might also convince her to free him so he could see to the trouble brewing in his brother’s jarlhof.
Either way, he was willing to brave her claws should he fail.
He also decided Finn wasn’t the do-nothing slacker and general lackwit Katla took him for.
At least, not all the time.
“That fence you mended,” Brandr said. “Was it wrought in timber or stonework?”
“Timber,” Finn said. “I prefer to work with wood. I’m no farmer.”
Brandr frowned, perplexed. “Then why do you need Katla to wed so you can have your own land?”
“In truth, coin would mean more to me than land right now,” Finn admitted.
Brandr had been wearing a heavy gold chain when Finn and his brothers enthralled him. The pouch of silver at his waist had been full. It was more wealth than many fjord-bound men would see all their lives.
“What did you do with the coin you took from me?”
Finn shrugged. “We had debts. Einar’s partial to playing tawl-bwrdd, but the die is not partial to him, more’s the pity. Your silver saved him from his creditors.”
Brandr had seen men squander a fortune over dice games in Byzantium.
Gambling had never been his weakness, but he couldn’t fault a man for having one.
His failing was always a pretty face and the flip of a skirt.
The iron collar chafed his neck. Chasing a beddable maid had certainly cost him more than a fortune this time.
“What will you do with your portion once Katla weds?” Brandr asked.
“I’ll learn shipbuilding,” Finn said quickly. “If I see enough coin as a result of Katla’s match, I’ll hie myself to Osberg, where I can hire out to a master who’ll teach me the craft.”
“Katla said you didn’t like sailing.”
“I don’t,” Finn said with a sheepish grin. “But I do like wood.”
“I know a shipwright in Jondal,” Brandr said. “He’s always looking for more hands. At least he was five years ago. Things may have changed. But if they haven’t, I could recommend you to him.”
Finn cast him a sidelong glance. “Come take a look at my fence before you offer that, or I’ll suspect you’re trying to get on my good side. I can’t free you, you know.”
“I know.” Only Katla could do that.
And even if she did, he wondered if he’d ever truly be free.
***
The night meal was a much simpler affair now that her brothers weren’t trying to impress a potential suitor with the richness of her steading.
The ale flowed less freely, and no stronger spirits had been offered.
Inga and the other cooks served up a thick stew with fresh barley bread.
Nourishing and filling, assuredly, but not designed to awe.
Katla had never felt less like eating, but she knew her people expected her to share in the communal meal that night.
So she chased her turnips around her trencher and forced herself to join in conversations with others, to laugh at Finn’s jokes and scold Einar for idleness and Haukon for wolfing down his food.
The gangly youth was still growing and ate like it.
He shoveled his food in as if it might escape should he be too slow.
But her mind was back on the top of the bird cliff.