Chapter Twelve

 

Gisela trudged in front of Thorvald, his grip firm on her elbow as he propelled her back to camp. They wound their way through the marketplace, past the stalls displaying silver jewelry and beads of amber and glass, past tables of leather boots and bags and crooked piles of bark baskets.

Ahead of them walked an obviously pleased Arni and a silent Bertrada, who kept her gaze lowered and her beads firmly in one hand, even when Arni grabbed her other arm and pulled her over to show her a carved antler brooch. To Gisela, the familiar gesture bespoke rudeness, yet, she reasoned, Bertrada belonged to him now and he could do what he pleased with her.

As they passed the stall displaying multi-hued yarns and woven bolts of fabric, Gisela slowed. Pretending to look at the display, she took the opportunity to run her free hand down her thigh. During her short time with the Arab trader, the man had pinched her numerous times—her breasts, her buttocks, her thighs—leaving behind, she was sure, what would soon be a welter of blue marks, similar in color to the fabrics she now admired.

She managed to massage one particularly sore spot before Thorvald pulled her upright and urged her forward. She craned her neck, peering over her shoulder to admire a fine length of checked woolen fabric in hues of lavender and sand. Her fingers itched to stroke it, and she slowed again.

Thorvald nudged her shoulder, urging her on. “I’m in a hurry,” he muttered. Desolation tinged his voice, making it brusque.

She swiveled her head to look up at him. Her gaze slid across his morose visage, a far cry from the triumphant countenance he flashed at Arni when the Arab trader purchased her earlier in the afternoon.

Then mere minutes later, for some unfathomable reason, he had bought her back for an exorbitant sum. She’d watched him pluck the coins from his person, the pain on his face increasing with each one pried loose, until his features became misshapen.

She couldn’t deny her relief at belonging to Thorvald again—at least he treated her with a measure of respect, unlike the Arab who had made her feel like a piece of meat hanging in the butcher’s stall. She lengthened her stride. Aye, it would be good to return to the privacy of her tent.

When they reached the encampment, Thorvald released her elbow. He reached for the Thor’s hammer hanging from his neck and took it off.

“You must wear this for now until I find a proper slave collar for you. It marks you as mine.” He slipped it over Gisela’s head, tightening the loops of the band so this time the token hung higher than before and became more visible.

“Collar? Animals wear collars, not people.” Horrified, Gisela tried to adjust the carved ivory to hide it as best she could. The knots didn’t give, though, and the hammer rested at the base of her neck, where her skin disappeared into the V-neck of her kirtle. Humiliation surged through her anew. There was no end to the actions of these Norsemen and their disdain for other peoples.

“Go.” He pointed towards the campfire and the iron tripod from which hung a battered cooking pot. Two cabbages, several heads of garlic and some cod fish formed a messy pile beside the stones ringing the fire. “Make yourself useful.”

Without waiting for her response, he closed his eyes and slumped against the cart, sliding down until he sat on the ground.

Gisela stood stock still. Thorvald, the fearsome Viking, did not appear so fearsome now. He sat, shoulders hunched, knees pulled up, forehead cradled in the palms of his hands. Despair shredded his usual self-assurance, and through the tatters she glimpsed the pain of a defeated man. An unexpected flutter of sympathy caused her to lift her hand towards him. Quickly, before he could see it, she dropped it back to her side. What madness, no matter how brief, possessed her to offer succor to the man responsible for killing her father and destroying her life?

“Did I not tell you to go?” He raised his head and gazed at her with hollow eyes.

“You did.”

“Then why do you stand here?”

“Because the sight of you sitting like a lad awaiting a well deserved beating has me rooted to the spot. ’Tis not like the bold Viking you profess yourself to be.”

He continued to gaze at her, eyes devoid of hope, lips twisted in anguish. “Thanks to you, I have nothing,” he said finally.

“Nothing? I am nothing?” She placed her fists on her hips and glared at him. “After you relinquished a fortune to regain me? Why did you do so when only yesterday you told me you couldn’t wait to rid yourself of me?”

“This may surprise you, but I had plans for the coin you would have brought me. Now my plans have fallen to ash.”

“Me? I had nothing to do with it. You could have left me in Frisia. Besides,” she stabbed a finger at him. “I didn’t ask the bald headed brute to buy me from the Arab trader.”

“My half-brother.”

“Who?” Gisela wrinkled her brow and surprise caught her tongue, leaving her silent. Thorvald had a brother and never shared that with her. But then why would he divulge his history to her, she chided herself, when he only looked on her as saleable goods.

“That baldheaded brute is my half-brother, Karl Wormtongue. It’s because of him I’ve been a-Viking.”

“What did he do?” Gisela tipped her head to one side. Dark currents stirred beneath Thorvald’s muscled chest, currents doubtless stirred by Wormtongue’s actions. Wormtongue. The name conjured forth images of worms spewing from a mouth, and she shuddered at the idea before intrigue sharpened her ears to hear the tale.

“He murdered a man, then accused me of the crime. We went to trial and the court believed his word over mine. They banished me but instead of a lonely death, I determined to best them all and find my way as a Norse raider.” He opened his arms to embrace the sky. “With Odin’s blessing, I did. That gold was meant to pay restitution to the wronged family and by that, reclaim my innocence.”

Sympathy swirled through her again at his obvious pain and she struggled to find something heartening to say. “You don’t prove your innocence by buying it,” she said finally.

“What do you know of Viking law?” His voice sounded like the growl of a bear about to attack. Bitterness filtered into his eyes, turning them to mottled jade.

She inclined her head. “Granted, I know nothing of that. But I do know for your innocence to ring true you must have Karl Wormtongue recant his words.” She glanced at him. “For that there is no price too great.”

“Any price is too great.” He held out his empty hands. “I have nothing.”

“You have Arni. You have a longship. You have men.”

“Men with their own paths to follow and who wanted to throw you and your women from the ship,” he reminded her. “They’ll not be pleased to see you with me still.”

She thought of her chest of riches buried securely beneath Falkenstead. How easy that would be to turn over the chest to him. Right now she would gladly give it up just to return to Frisia and find Martinga, if she still lived. However, the chest lay buried in Frisia and served no purpose for her here. “If I recover your gold for you, would you let me go?”

He snorted. “You have no gold.”

A trio of bareheaded Vikings, boisterous and well in their cups, wobbled past on the other side of the cart and she waited for the hubbub to die before she answered.

“No.” She smiled, a rueful little moue that twisted her mouth to one side. “But I can spin gold.” She pulled forward a fold of her skirt. “My skill is great. Let me weave cloth for you to sell. I saw the stalls selling cloth when we walked through the market. Let me have a stall of my own. When you have recovered what you paid for me, Bertrada and I will go.”

Thorvald shook his head. “I cannot speak for Bertrada, she belongs to Arni now.”

Odso, she forgot Arni now owned Bertrada. But weaving required time, ample time to allow her to think on how to save Bertrada too. “If I covered our price, would you release me? Let me earn my freedom.”

“Where did you come by that notion?” He looked at her, brow furrowed, two deep lines scoring his forehead vertically from the bridge of his nose.

“The woman in front of me at the slave market knew of Viking ways. Slaves can earn their freedom.” She made her voice confident, daring him to refute her.

“What value is there in women’s work? What you suggest is ridiculous.”

“Let me try,” she coaxed, as he heaved himself to his feet.

“How do you propose to weave when you have no loom, no shuttle, no yarn? Besides, there’s nothing to hold me in Hedeby while you weave. Nay.” He shook his head. “The idea is a foolish one. Leave me be while I think on what to do.” He stepped away and turned before spinning back. “Everyone knows of you now. I suggest you stay here in our camp where I can keep you safe.”

Disappointment washed through her that he dismissed her offer so hastily. It made her words sharp. “How do you propose to keep me safe when you have no sword?”

“A loss I also have you to thank for.” He waved at Halldor and gestured him over. “Watch her,” he said. At Halldor’s nod, Thorvald looked at Gisela. “No one will bother you with Halldor at your side. I’ll have no more talk of weaving or of freedom.”

This time when he turned away, he strode off back towards Hedeby proper, arms swinging and tawny hair ruffled by the breeze.

Gisela watched him go, disappointment still bubbling through her chest. For a brief moment, she had seen Thorvald’s face soften and thought he would accept her offer. He hadn’t though. Instead he pushed her away and shrugged back under a robe of bitterness. Not that she blamed him for that; the pain of family betrayal would craze any man.

She considered what he told her, that he’d been falsely accused of a murder not of his doing. Therein lay the key to her freedom. If he could regain his good name, he would have no further need of her and what she could bring him.

How to have Wormtongue admit to his role in the misdeed was a difficult enough riddle for Thorvald to solve, let alone a captive woman with no resources.

 

* * *

 

Thorvald stood on the shoreline of Hedeby’s bustling harbor, where the curved breakwater surged away from the beach. To his right, two small longships were pulled up on shore for repair—tar being applied to the hull of one, while on the other, men lashed freshly hewn planks together with wiry spruce roots to build up the sides. Farther down, a stouter, sturdier merchant ship rested on rollers such that half of it was out of water. Slaves carried bales of hides and furs into its hold, overseen by their bored master, who shook his battle axe at them from time to time in an attempt to hasten their steps up and down the gang plank.

Desolation slapped him much like the waves slapped at his toes. Gulls keened overhead, their mournful cries perfectly mirroring his mood. A stiff breeze raked his face and he sucked it in by the lungful, waiting for the crisp, clean scent to settle his thoughts and clear his mind, waiting for the gusts to carry away the numbness chilling his veins since he regained Gisela.

He didn’t know what to do. The goal driving him all these years past had disintegrated, leaving him adrift without anchor, without purpose. He remembered what Gisela said, that buying innocence proved nothing. That what mattered was for Karl Wormtongue to tell the truth.

Yet how could he bring that about? His half-brother hated him for the actions of Thorvald’s father. Actions his father could never explain away for he, killed in battle long ago, now spent his days in Valhalla.

Thorvald rubbed his neck, trying to massage away the memories stirred up by the encounter with Karl. Instead, the memories fettered his thoughts like a heavy iron chain.

Thorvald had gone hunting alone for deer that day and came back to find the neighboring jarl dead and the jarl’s family at his door crying for vengeance. Karl stepped forward then to accuse Thorvald of shoving the jarl over the edge of a cliff into the sea below. Thorvald’s protestations of innocence fell on deaf ears, and the matter was brought to court in Kaupang.

As a callow lad of fifteen years at the time, he lacked the knowledge to mount a defense, especially as Karl played on the sympathy of the court. His half-brother recounted stories of his desolate childhood and showed the puckered scar on his right arm, put there, he claimed, when an angry Thorvald flung a burning log at him. In reality, Karl had tripped and fallen in the fire pit.

Nevertheless, Karl’s hate served him well, for the court chose to believe him and banished Thorvald, the eldest son. As eldest son, Sun Meadow—the farm of his father and his father before him—should have gone to Thorvald.

It hadn’t.

It had gone instead to his half-brother.

Later, Karl came by to gloat as Thorvald waited to climb into the longship carrying him away to his banishment. “I did it!” Karl howled with laughter. “I pushed him into the sea. They believed me when I said it was you.” He wiped away tears of mirth.

“Why?” Bewildered, Thorvald could only stare. It was then he saw the edge of madness breaking through the triumph in Karl’s eyes.

“Because he spat on me as the bastard son.” Karl’s lip curled. “Because you have everything and I have nothing.”

At the naked hate splayed on Karl’s face, Thorvald’s head reeled and he vomited, a bilious, stinking mass of betrayal, which splashed his boots and made Karl laugh even harder.

“No!” croaked Thorvald. “No!” He lifted his hands towards the ship’s master, who sneered and turned away because the punishment had been set by then and Karl’s confession bore little consequence.

With that, Thorvald left Agdir. Much had passed in the intervening five years, yet nothing had passed, for he again sat with nothing and Karl still held Sun Meadow.

A sand piper scurried past, breaking him free from the chains of the past. Thorvald lifted his gaze to eye a large longship moored farther out against the thick wooden poles of the breakwater. A smaller boat broke away from it, bristling with oars and full of men eager to sample Hedeby’s pleasures. Men as eager as he had been yesterday riding into Hedeby with his prize, Gisela, before his dreams crumbled like last winter’s hay.

Again, Gisela’s words swirled through his mind. “You don’t prove your innocence by buying it.”

The truth. How simple. How right for Gisela to voice it, for her golden hair, radiant like the beams of the summer sunshine, resembled that of Balder, the god of light and truth.

He watched another ship unfurl its red and white diamond patterned sail and drift slowly into the channel, propelled by oars until it caught the breeze and moved off on its own. Gradually the weight lifted from his shoulders, as gently as that ship catching the current.

The truth.

He would talk to Karl here in Hedeby, far from Agdir’s shores, where Karl’s accusations held no weight. If Karl did not agree to return to Agdir and tell the true story to the court, then perhaps he, Thorvald, would seek Balder’s assistance. Surely he could find something of worth to sacrifice to appease the golden haired god. Sacrifice was not something he usually practiced, for what need did gods have of human goods where they lived? But his desperation called for action.

Nay. He shook his head. He much preferred being master of his own destiny. A man must make his own way in this earthly world and not rely on gods and sacrifices.

Gisela’s image shimmered in front of him before he dashed it away with a knuckled fist.