Chapter 19
Hrafnaklett – Ravens Crag
A cart was waiting at the top of the beach. Torstein's steward, Grim, stood at the pony's head with his cap in his hands, and he gave a short bow as they approached.
"The jarl's man rode ahead to tell us you'd landed," Grim said. "Thora has had the fires going since noon."
Torstein clasped his arm. "Good man."
He lifted Samira up onto the seat as though she weighed nothing, then swung up beside her and took the reins himself. Grim and two of the crew loaded her chests into the back. The rest of their belongings would follow in the morning.
The road wound south out of Kirkwall toward the shore of Scapa Flow. The light was going. The water had turned to pewter and the low hills had gone blue with evening. Samira pulled the sealskin cloak tighter about her shoulders and leaned into Torstein's side against the wind.
"You are quiet," she said in Arabic.
"I am always quiet on this road," he answered in Norn. "When the hall grows too loud I come this way, and it settles me."
"It is beautiful. Cold. But beautiful."
"You will grow used to the cold." He covered her hand with his. "Or you will not, and I will simply keep you warm. Either suits me."
She smiled at that, and for a while neither of them said anything.
The cart rattled over the ruts. Behind them, Kolbein and Estrid and the whole crowd on the shore fell away into the dusk, and Torstein felt the tightness in his chest ease with every turn of the wheels.
Once the road home had been an escape. Now he was bringing someone home with him, and the thought of it sat warm behind his ribs the whole way up the cliff.
Then the homestead rose before them.
Hrafnaklett. Raven's Crag. It stood atop the cliff above Scapa Flow with the whole of the sky behind it, the main house long and solid against the wind, smoke curling from the roof.
Around it the outbuildings were scattered down the slope, the byre and the smithy and the storehouses, and further out the lamps of the tenant homes glowed in the dark.
Torstein drew the pony to a halt and let her look.
"This is yours?" Samira asked.
"This is ours."
***
THE WHOLE HOUSEHOLD had turned out in the yard to meet them.
Torstein handed her down from the cart and kept her hand in his. He did not let go of it once as he walked her along the line of faces.
"Grim you have met. He keeps the estate when I am at sea.
This is his wife, Thora, who keeps the kitchens and everyone in them.
" A broad red-cheeked woman bobbed her head and looked Samira over with frank curiosity.
"Their sons tend the herds. Those are my tenants' families, and those men there work the forge and the boats. "
He named them all, briefly, and Samira greeted each one. She managed a few words of Norn to Thora, and the woman's face split into a delighted smile.
"This is Samira," Torstein told them, loud enough for all to hear. "My wife. She is mistress of Hrafnaklett now, and you will treat her as such."
They bowed to her, every one.
At the gate, four of the jarl's guardsmen had already taken up their posts. Their captain came forward and spoke quietly with Torstein.
"Thorfinn's men," he told her when he came back. "Two at the gate and two on the cliff path through the night. No one comes up this hill without my leave."
"Because of the Brotherhood?"
"Because of everything." He did not elaborate, and she did not ask. She had seen the look on Estrid's face on the shore.
Thora bustled forward. "There's hot food laid in the main house, and water heated for bathing. Mutton stew and fresh bread and the last of the honey."
"Thank you, Thora. That will be all tonight."
Thora glanced at Samira, then back at her lord, and something knowing crossed her face. "Aye," she said. "It will." And she shooed the rest of the household back to their own hearths.
The yard emptied. The guards withdrew to the gate. Torstein and Samira were left alone before the door of the main house.
***
SHE DID NOT MOVE TOWARD it.
He felt her go still against his side. Not with awe. With something more careful. She was looking at the size of the house, at the outbuildings, at the scale of what a man of his standing would keep.
"Torstein." She chose her words slowly, so there could be no mistaking them. "It is a large house. For one man."
"Aye."
"In the lands I come from, a man of wealth does not always keep a house for one." Her chin lifted. "How many others am I to share it with?"
Torstein turned to face her fully.
"None."
She searched his face.
"Hear me, Samira, for I will say it only the once and then you need never wonder again.
" He took both her hands in his. "There are no other wives.
There are no thralls in my bed and never have been.
The servants and the tenants have their own homes, and that is where they stay.
This house I have kept for myself alone.
No woman has ever slept beneath its roof.
No woman has ever lain in the bed within it. "
Her brow drew together. "Not one? A man such as you?"
"I did not say I was a monk." A wry warmth touched his mouth.
"Nor a virgin. I'll not lie to you, for a marriage built on lies is no marriage at all.
I was young once, and hot-blooded, and there were women in my youth.
But not one of them ever crossed this threshold.
From the moment I laid the first board of this house, I set it aside for the wife and children I meant to have.
It was the one thing I would not sully."
"And in later years?"
He let out a slow breath. "In later years the wanting changed.
The offers still came. I stopped accepting them.
It has been a long time, Samira, since I took any woman to my furs.
The desire for a night's warmth simply left me, and in its place grew a different hunger.
I did not want just any willing body. I wanted my true wife.
The one this house was built for." He shook his head.
"The longing for her overtook everything else. And I did not even know her name."
"You built a home," she said slowly, "for a woman you had never met."
"I did. I made up my mind long ago that when I took a wife she would be the only one.
No second wife, no thrall to cause strife, no children set against each other under one roof.
I saw enough of that in other houses. I wanted what my father and mother have.
One bed. One woman. A bond that holds for a lifetime. "
He looked up at the dark house.
"Every winter it stood empty and I lived in it alone, and I told myself she was out there somewhere.
Some years I began to think I was waiting on a woman who did not exist." His voice roughened.
"And then I found you, at the far end of the world.
I did not wait in vain, ástin mín. I only did not know yet where to look. "
Samira pressed her lips together, and he saw the effort it took her not to weep.
"I could have taken you to wife properly at Thurso," he said quietly.
"In Hrafn's hall, in that bed. I did not want it there.
I wanted our first night to be here, in the house I built, in the bed I made for us.
Where our children will be made." He brushed his thumb across her knuckles. "Does that seem foolish to you?"
"No. It does not."
***
HE UNBARRED THE DOOR and they stepped inside together.
Thora had done her work well. The long hearth down the center of the room burned bright and steady. A pot of stew hung over it, and bread and honey waited on the table beside a jug of ale. At the far end, behind a hanging of heavy wool, steam rose from a great wooden tub.
Torstein moved through the room lighting the last of the lamps, and the gold spread along the walls. Samira turned slowly in the middle of it all.
She saw the good timber and the care in every joint.
The carved posts. The furs and the hangings he had gathered over years without quite knowing why, since there had been no one to see them.
And against the far wall, the great bed beneath the smoke hole, wide enough for two, built with his own hands and never once shared.
"Torstein," she breathed. "It is a fine home. Finer than any I have seen."
"It was a cold one until now." He came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her, resting his chin atop her head. "I built the walls and the roof and the bed. But it was never a home. It was only a house, waiting on the one thing it lacked."
"And what did it lack?"
"You."
She turned in his arms. In the firelight the awe had softened into something warmer, and certain.
"No woman has slept here," she said, as though setting the truth of it firmly in place.
"None but the one who will sleep here every night for the rest of her life." He tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear. "You are the first, Samira. You will be the only."
She looked around the golden room once more, at the fire and the steaming bath and the wide bed that would not be empty again. Then she looked back at the man who had built all of it for a woman he had only hoped might one day come.
She reached up and laid her palm against his cheek.
"Then take me to bed, zawji," she said softly. "It has waited long enough."
Torstein smiled, and lifted her into his arms, and for the first time Hrafnaklett was full.
***