Chapter 16
MERRIK WATCHED HER walk to him, Oleg at her side, Sarla on her other side. He waited until she was standing before him, then said very quietly, “You will come with me now.”
He took her hand and led her away. She heard the men’s voices, some clearly angry, others simply questioning. Then she heard Oleg say loudly, “It is right and just. Merrik is the lord of Malverne now. We will all heed his wishes.”
What wishes?
He continued silent until they had walked down the wide path to the fjord.
He motioned to the pier. They walked out to the end and he pulled her down beside him, their feet dangling over the end of the pier.
The water below was a calm light blue. She could see small ripples created by fish swimming just below the surface.
The sun was bright overhead, the air soft and very warm. She couldn’t imagine snow covering everything. A cloud slid in front of the sun, but just for a moment. She waited silent.
“You have two choices,” he said at last.
She cocked her head to one side, staring now at his profile. Still he didn’t turn to face her.
“You will wed with me and remain here at Malverne.” He turned to face her as he spoke.
“Why do you look so surprised? Why do you shudder? Very well, then. If being my wife displeases you so very much, why, then, you can select the second choice. I will see that you are returned to your family. However, Taby will remain with me. I am making him my son.”
“No!”
“No what?”
She just stared at him, shaking her head back and forth. He supposed he was pleased that for once he’d taken her utterly aback, but more than that, now he wanted her to tell him that she wanted to wed with him, that she—
“I cannot wed you.”
“Oh? You cannot or you will not?”
“I cannot.”
“Are you already married? I don’t think it was Thrasco who was the hopeful husband, was it? Or perhaps before you were a slave you were married off as a child?”
“No, no, nothing like that.”
“No, of course you weren’t married. You were very much a virgin when I took you. Ah, I see. I am too beneath you to consider as a husband.”
“No, never.”
“More puzzles, more mysteries. Very well, Laren. Don’t forget you are my slave.
Regardless of what you were before, now you are nothing more than a slave, one that many of my people believe also a murderess.
I offer you the moon and the stars—at least that’s how a slave would see wedding the master of a large holding such as Malverne. ”
She jumped to her feet and stared down at him. “You cannot keep Taby.”
“I can and I fully intend to.” He rose now, more slowly, to face her. He took her upper arms in his big hands. “Will you marry me or no?”
She looked into the fjord and saw a school of herring racing through the water, very close to the smooth surface, leaping above, like darts of silver.
She felt she could reach into the water and catch one, so close they were.
She looked up at him now. She wanted to smooth the frown from his forehead, as she said very calmly, “I cannot marry you because I was promised to Askhold, heir of Rognvald, king of the Danelaw.”
He jerked back as if she’d struck him. What she said was madness, surely .
. . He stared at her, then at her loose-fitting gown and overtunic, not old or ragged, for it was Sarla’s, just very plain and too big for her, not garb the future queen of the Danelaw would wear.
Something violent moved within him, something he didn’t understand, but accepted, just as he’d accepted her and he knew he’d accepted her for a very long time now, for probably longer than he realized.
He believed her, tamped down on the fury raging deep within him, and said mildly, “The truth at last. Tell me the rest of it.”
“Taby is indeed a prince. He and I were abducted from my sleeping chamber two years ago, and sold to a slave trader in the Rhineland.”
“Who is your father?”
“Our father, Hallad, is dead. However, Taby is the second male in line to succeed his uncle.”
“His uncle, Laren?”
She drew in a deep breath. “I haven’t said his name aloud in two years. Our uncle is Rollo, called the first duke by the Frankish king, Charles the Simple. As you know, he ceded Normandy to Rollo so that he would defend France against the raids of other Vikings.”
This time he didn’t feel as if she’d struck him; he felt as if he’d been kicked by a horse. “The famous Rollo,” Merrik said more to himself than to her. “I was raised on tales about the brave and ferocious Rollo. He is truly your uncle?”
“Aye, my father was his older brother. Rollo was wedded to a girl from a royal family in Spain. He loved her, so I have been told. She bore him some six children, three of them boys. However, only the second son, William Longsword, lived to manhood. Thus, Taby is second in line after William. His older brother, Hallad, my father, had four children, three daughters and one son, Taby. Unfortunately our mother died when Taby was only a year old. Our sisters, by my father’s first wife, are much older.
They are wed to men of high rank and all live in Rouen at my uncle’s palace.
Someone betrayed us. One or both of my sisters, or their husbands.
I don’t know who. William Longsword was out of Normandy at the time of our abduction, at the Frankish court in Paris.
Also, I trust William. He would no more harm Taby or me than he would harm his own father.
He realizes Taby’s importance in the scheme of things.
He, too, has a wife, but she has borne him no children as yet and they’ve been wed for five years.
At least this was true when we were abducted.
Perhaps by now he has a son. Perhaps by now Taby isn’t so very important.
But until we know, Merrik, Taby is very important to Rollo, very important to Normandy. ”
He said nothing for a very long time. Then, “At least they didn’t murder you out of hand.”
“No, that is why I believe it must be one of my sisters, or both of them, or their husbands. It would salve their consciences were Taby and I only to be sold as slaves, not killed outright. They surely must believe that they have won, Merrik. They haven’t, unless William Longsword has died leaving no son, but I have heard naught about it.
If there is no direct heir, why, then one of the husbands would become the heir to Rollo. ”
“That is what you meant when you told me you understood vengeance.”
“Aye, I have lived with the thought of it strong and sweet in my mind. Aye, and on my tongue. I can nearly taste it. As long as I’m alive they haven’t won.”
“No, they haven’t. You have spent the last two years surviving, keeping Taby with you, keeping him alive.
” He looked back up the winding path to Malverne, now his farmstead, enclosed within its mighty wooden palisade.
He saw smoke rising from the hole in the roof of the longhouse.
Then the barley, hay, and rye fields, surrounding the palisade, the crops nearly ready for harvest. An endless cycle.
“Life is not at all what a man expects it to be. I suppose it is better that way. My parents are struck down by a plague, my brother is murdered, the assassin still unknown, and now the child I want as my son is in line to the great Rollo.” He paused a moment, looking down at his brown feet. “It is almost more than I can accept.”
“And I am his niece. It is all true, Merrik.”
“Aye, I do not doubt you. But I do doubt myself. I went to the slave market in Kiev to find a comely female slave for my mother. Instead I found you and Taby. As I told you, you have made my life a confusion. And now I learn you are Rollo’s niece.
I am impressed with your lineage. Who you are will convince my people that you could not have murdered Erik.
Your blood is too purified, too noble, to stain your hands on a man of Erik’s station. ”
“You will now return me to Normandy? With Taby?”
He became very still. He looked down at her, at the shifting expressions on her face, his own face unreadable to her. Finally, he said, with no emotion in his voice, his eyes flat, not meeting hers, “If it is your wish.”
He watched her scuff the toes of her leather shoes against the pier. They were an old pair belonging to Sarla. He could see a hole along the side of her foot. “Ah, then you don’t wish to wed me now.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Then what do you want, Merrik?”
He clasped her left hand in his and flattened her palm over his chest, laying his hand over hers.
“I won’t return Taby to your uncle Rollo until I have found out who betrayed you.
The danger is still there. To return both you and Taby there now would simply result in your deaths this time, doubt it not. I will not take that chance.”
“Perhaps, but still, I must go back. I will find out. Uncle Rollo will punish my sisters, if it is they who had us abducted. If it is their husbands, they will be killed. I would protect Taby as would Uncle Rollo. Taby could be the future duke of Normandy, if something happens to my cousin before he breeds an heir. He must go back. My uncle grows no younger. He must train Taby, teach him, just as he did William.”
“I had not expected this,” Merrik said slowly, now looking beyond at the distant sheer cliffs, her hand now clasped in his at his side.
“I hadn’t expected you to be an innkeeper’s daughter, however.
I just didn’t imagine that you would be royalty.
I imagine that your Danelaw prince, Askhold, believes you long dead. I imagine he is wed to another by now.”
“Aye, it is possible. He needed a wife to bear him children.”
“What is he like?”
“I don’t know. I never met him, but I heard my sisters talking about him. They said he was thirty and his first wife had died, and she had given him five daughters. He wanted a young girl. He thought I would produce sons for him. Uncle Rollo and the king negotiated the alliance.”