Chapter 18
“Katla!”
She looked up from the rows of peas she was planting to see Einar and another fellow carrying a litter down the sheep track from the upper pasture.
A body lay on the evergreen boughs that formed part of the litter.
She held a hand to shield her eyes from the sun’s glare and squinted to try to make out who they were carting down the steep slope.
Haukon’s red hair blazed against the green pine. Katla lifted her skirt and ran.
Brandr came from out of nowhere to fall into step beside her. They hadn’t had a private moment since she threw him out of her chamber, and their public interaction had been limited to orders and curt nods. She was surprised to see him now.
“What’s wrong?” he asked as he loped beside her.
“It’s Haukon,” she said between gasping breaths. “He must be hurt.”
When they drew near the conveyance, Katla ordered Einar and the other man to stop. The lad was conscious but white lipped with pain. Haukon cradled one arm, but even so, it was bent at an odd angle.
The bones of his forearm were obviously broken.
“How did this happen?” Katla knelt beside him and fingered the injured limb. His skin was swollen and hot under her touch. Haukon bit his lower lip, but otherwise he fought not to show his agony.
“The idiot was trying to teach me what he’d learned about swordplay,” Einar said. “He thought he’d show me how to attack from above. He leaped down from the top of a boulder and missed me.”
“You moved,” Haukon said through clenched teeth. “You said you wouldn’t.”
“Why should I let you fall on me?” Einar asked.
“We’ve been at peace on Tysnes for years. What were you doing playing at fighting in the first place?” Katla’s stomach balled in knots. Haukon could lose the use of his arm over this foolishness. If the injury went bad, she might even have to amputate. “Who put such notions into your head?”
“I did,” Brandr said. “Haukon asked me to teach him what I knew about handling a blade.” He put a hand on her brother’s shoulder. “You were doing well and showed promise.”
Quivering with rage, Katla turned on Brandr. If he wanted to hurt her, he should stick to insulting her in her bedchamber, not filling her little brother’s head with nonsense. “Why did you do this?”
“The lad wanted to defend what’s his,” Brandr said. “That’s a man’s right.”
“Ulfson didn’t tell me to leap from a boulder,” Haukon said, shooting a quick glare at his brother. “That was Einar’s idea.”
“Take him to the bath house,” Katla said, and she turned back down the hillside to fetch her medicinal supplies.
As lady of the house, it was her place to doctor her people, to nurse them through sickness and ease suffering when she could.
She knew she’d have to hurt her brother badly to reset the bones.
Her chest ached. When their mother died, a wet nurse was found for Haukon, but eight-year-old Katla did everything else for him. She soothed him when his teeth came in and taught him to take his first stumbling steps. His little fingers had curled so tightly around hers.
She’d have fought off a wolf pack for him.
The thought of what she might have to do to save him now made her want to retch.
She hurried to the bath house with her pouch of medicines and herbs. When she pushed open the door, she saw Haukon lying insensible on one of the wooden benches. Einar and Brandr stood over him.
“What happened?” She scurried to them. A leather strap was tied firmly to Haukon’s wrist, biting into his flesh.
“I reset the bones,” Brandr said. “He fainted while I pulled the ends into position, but he’ll come around. He didn’t cry out once. You’d have been proud.” He bent and untied the strap around Haukon’s wrist. “You’ll need to bind the arm to keep it still till the bones knit.”
“I know what I need to do,” she said in a clipped tone. Then she cocked her head at him. “How did you know?”
“Ja, Ulfson, doctoring is the province of women,” Einar chimed in. “Or priests of Odin.”
“We had an Egyptian physician attached to the Varangian Guard. He needed extra hands sometimes after a fierce battle.” Brandr shrugged. “I helped when I could. I watched and learned.”
Katla nodded. Haukon was starting to stir, and the worst of his treatment was done. She didn’t have to torture her brother after all. She flicked a glance at Brandr. “Thank you.”
He nodded gruffly and knelt beside her brother. He held him still while Katla started to bind up his arm. “If you have anything in that medicine pouch for pain, I suspect he’d be grateful. Bone pain is the worst sort, they say.”
Katla’s chest constricted. Being so near to Brandr made her ache afresh over the cruel things they’d said to each other in her chamber. And over the way she’d slapped him for it.
He’s wrong. Pains of the heart are far worse.
***
“Katla, you have to make a decision,” Finn said over his bowl of porridge a week later. “Gormson has sent me three messengers, all demanding to know your answer.”
She looked up from the bowls she was filling. Heads nodding and still yawning, a row of children huddled near the central meal fire against the early morning chill. Their parents were already hard at work. Katla enjoyed seeing to the morning meal for the youngest members of her household.
Haukon sprawled on the end of the bench, drawing out his own breakfast with a second bowl of porridge. The broken arm certainly hadn’t damaged his appetite.
Brandr sat in the shadows, eating in sullen silence.
“I can’t give Gormson an answer yet. You know that,” she said as she ladled a generous dollop of honey onto each portion. “I haven’t met my third suitor yet.”
She distributed the bowls, ruffling the children’s tousled heads, trying to tamp down the surge of longing their round-cheeked faces roused in her chest. The desire for a child of her own was fast becoming a guilty ache that couldn’t be assuaged.
The children fell to their meal like starving puppies.
“Einar ran into Otto Sturlson at the mead house last night.” Finn scraped his bone spoon around the soapstone bowl to eke out the last dregs of his breakfast. “Otto is anxious to know your choice as well, though he’s being less insistent than Albrikt.”
“Same answer.” Katla held up three fingers. “Two is not three.”
Brandr finished his bowl of boiled oats and honey and stomped out of the longhouse to begin the long list of chores she’d already assigned him. Katla tried not to watch him go, but the corner of her eye always seemed to find him.
She thought working together to heal Haukon might have eased matters between them, but it hadn’t.
They still hadn’t spoken to each other privately since that night in her bedchamber when she’d slapped him.
It had been a serious insult—some couples had divorced over such treatment—enough to thoroughly distance him from her.
Once during the past week, he’d stumbled upon her in the bath house while she was birching herself.
She was dripping with sweat, and she’d applied the birch branches hard enough to raise little red weals on her thighs.
She hadn’t meant to. Frustration made her strike harder as she slapped her legs with the birch switches.
Brandr stood and looked at her for the space of several heartbeats, the tendons in his neck strained and tight. But then he backed out the door without a word.
Katla had no idea what to do. One didn’t apologize to a thrall.
And yet when she woke in the night, she wished he’d slip into her chamber unannounced as he used to do. She hugged her pillow and longed for his solid presence in the bed with her. For his warmth.
For his touch.
“But surely you must have an idea which of them you prefer,” Finn was saying.
Katla wiped down the low bench and handed the big kettle with the remnants of the porridge to Inga. “I haven’t given the matter any thought.”
“You must.” Finn handed his bowl to Inga as well.
“Not until I meet the third man.”
“About that…” Finn stood and pressed his mouth into a tight line. Something seemed ready to burst out of him, but he changed his mind at the last moment and swallowed the words back. “I need to see how that bull calf is doing this morning. Walk with me, sister.”
Katla followed her brother into the sunshine and strolled beside him on the path leading to the big stone barn.
“What’s wrong, Finn?”
“I didn’t want to say this before anyone else, but…we can’t find a third suitor for you.”
Katla laughed.
Finn didn’t.
Her eyes flared with surprise. “You’re serious?”
Finn spread his hands before him. “You’re not the most amiable person, you know. And your reputation for…strong-mindedness has spread throughout the islands. No one wants to marry a storm cloud, Katla. Not even if she comes with a fair holding.”
“Well, this is a stroke of luck. I didn’t want to marry again, in any case,” Katla said, tight-lipped. It stung to be rejected so roundly, but she couldn’t let Finn see that it hurt her.
The thwack of an ax biting into pine split the air. Brandr was chopping wood again. He’d already laid by enough to keep them all warm for the next two winters, but he finished his other work so quickly, she had to keep wood splitting on the list to keep him busy.
“But not having a third suitor is no cause for concern. You can still marry. There are two good men who’ll have you, and that’s more choice than most women get,” Finn said. “All you need do is choose.”
“I need do nothing.” She picked up her pace as Brandr and the woodpile came into view. Pity they had to pass him by on their way to the barn. “I agreed to pick from three suitors, not two.”
“But Katla—”
“No, Finn. You and I struck a bargain. I intend to hold you to it.” She stomped by Brandr without a sidelong glance. “And there’s an end.”
“All right,” her brother called after her. “Brandr Ulfson is your third choice.”
She whirled around. “You’re not serious.” If he thought to force her hand by offering Brandr, when he must know a thrall wouldn’t be considered, Finn was sadly mistaken.