She comes to her husband as a partner in toils and dangers; to suffer and to dare equally with him, in peace and in war. (Tacitus)
Inhale. Exhale.
In and out.
I had no arrow to loose, no spear to hurl.
My lungs refused to take in and release air. There were too many people packed inside the celebration space. The mingled scents of food turned my stomach sour, and the stench of bodies gagged me. It was too loud, too many voices, too much laughter. The clatter of cutlery rang in my ears. Sound took on a strange quality, ebbing and flowing, like repeatedly dunking my head in a rushing river. Spots danced in my vision whenever I forgot to force my lungs into their basic function.
Reimar sat next to me in our place of honor. We didn’t speak beyond the most basic courtesies. My steadfast avoidance of him throughout the month didn’t help.
As was custom, Reimar filled my plate before his and I filled his ale horn before mine, to symbolize how we were to provide for each other in marriage. I offered him a tight smile and took a bite of braised grouse. My stomach and throat clenched in revolt, rejecting the food as soon as it hit my tongue. I forced it down and tasted bile.
Jotapa’s absence didn’t escape my notice. I needed her nearby, a friendly face who wanted me to be happy. Konrada and her family took up a table toward the back, and her incessant scowling almost made me laugh. In her own way, she rebelled for me, and I appreciated her anger on my behalf. My family occupied the table to the left, while Reimar’s family and a selection of Chatti noblemen took the table to the right. Reimar and I sat alone at the head of the tent, neither speaking nor touching, no better than strangers.
Reimar watched Arminius through narrowed eyes. When I accidentally leaned close enough for our shoulders to brush, he jerked away. With a start, I realized he avoided any contact with me. We hadn’t touched since we sat down next to each other.
He knows. He knows and he’s furious.
Fear and shame swirled hot in my chest. He’d asked for one thing and I failed.
But no, he’d asked for more than that. He’d asked for my entire life, my body, my time, my effort, my every waking moment, and in return he offered nothing. What right did he have to be so angry with me when I sought love, the one thing I shouldn’t have to ask for from my husband? I understood that now, in a way I never had before. It was the height of naiveté to think I could ever accept a life without love.
When we married in the morning, it wouldn’t be long before our lives diverged completely, joined by a vow, perhaps children, if we remembered each other long enough to make them. That wasn’t even a partnership. That was two strangers sharing a house. Before Arminius, I might have embraced that future, believing it was my best option. Now I knew better and saw my future with Reimar as one of lifelong crushing disappointment.
I can’t do this.
Representatives from almost every tribe in the region occupied the tables, the most important of which gathered at Arminius’ table. They formed an island of quiet in a sea of noise and joviality. His expression was open, cocky, even; the mask he wore when he wanted something. The cowards, all of them, Chauci, Bructeri, Tencteri, Marsi, others I didn’t recognize, remained aloof, sharing loaded looks, leaning away from the table. We were so close to achieving everything we had worked toward and still they turned away.
Through the din and crush of bodies, my eyes found Arminius over and over again. Each time our gazes met, his forced smile vanished. He fumed. I felt the heat of his frustration from across the temporary hall.
The few times Reimar said something to me, Arminius’ muscles locked, like he was about to leap from his seat. His knuckles turned white around his ale horn. I was too far away to know for sure, but experience told me he ground his teeth. The muscle in his cheek that jumped when he was upset must have been exhausted.
My father noticed the way Reimar and I shied away from each other. He tracked every single detail of the feast. If he had his way, he’d have married us on the spot to be done with it.
Thinking of tomorrow’s wedding made my head swim. Give me a cohort of angry legionaries or a wall of pissed off Mattiaci warriors. Give me a knife to the gut. Baduhenna, do not make me go through with this.
Little by little, Arminius stopped pretending his participation in the surrounding conversation. Berut and Ermin took over as if nothing was wrong. They answered the chiefs’ questions, soothed lingering concerns. My joining with Reimar went a long way toward that end. That only increased my turmoil.
Everything was wrong. My entire body rebelled at where this night led.
Arminius shook his head once, slammed his ale horn back and drained its contents, then pushed from his table and marched outside.
He shot me one final, long look before he swallowed hard and pushed out into the night.
My heart seized in his wake. He took it with him when he left. Tears burned my eyes. The tent sweltered, and my gown, my lovely, striped gown, stuck to my skin. I reached for my ale, the same Ingomar presented to me, but my hand shook, so I tucked it back in my lap.
Every fiber of my soul screamed to run after him. He took with him the future I finally admitted was mine. A fissure opened up in my breast, and it would never knit back together. Not by Reimar, nor by any children he gave me.
A tear broke free and spilled down my cheek. If I wasn’t careful, I would shame myself and dissolve into sobs. I caught a whiff of Reimar’s smell—horse, cook fire, and him—something I’d never before found unpleasant, but now it revolted me. I would sob and retch, and our allies would sneer at my weakness while my world broke apart.
Reimar grabbed my arm, hard enough to bruise, leaned in close, and whispered in my ear.
“I should have cast you aside months ago.” His entire body vibrated with rage. Spittle flew from his lips to the shell of my ear. “You have shamed me over and over again, now you weep in front of our allies. If you leave, if you break your word, I will see you pay. I wanted a mature woman who understood her role, not a child following whims. Follow him. Say farewell if you must and compose yourself. But woman, if you don’t return, I’ll tell everyone that you are a faithless whore I cast aside. I’ll tell them that you begged me to take you back and I refused. Mark my words, that will be the least of the hells I visit upon you.”
Curious eyes turned to us, some snickering and whispering. More than a year of assuring myself marrying him was not only right, but necessary, threatened to strangle me where I sat. My mind couldn’t make sense of it, the answer I hadn’t bothered to consider: Reimar might be the wrong husband. I couldn’t live without love, and I couldn’t live with a man who sought to punish me every time I behaved contrarily.
I’d betrayed Arminius over and over again, in ways that might cost us everything, and he had never threatened me. We talked through it.
Reimar’s nostrils flared. Before he opened his mouth and ordered me to stay, I popped up so fast I nearly tipped over my seat.
“What’s the matter?” Wout shouted, eyes narrowed in suspicion.
Now they all looked at me, the closest tables having fallen silent.
Don’t look at Wiltrud. Don’t look at Wiltrud.
“Air.” My voice came out choked. “I need a bit of air.”
“Better keep a sharp eye on that one,” a man called from the crowd, and they all laughed.
That laughter followed me all the way outside. Reimar was right. Everyone knew. There was no choice left to make. My only choice became more clear than the springs after the snow melted.
For a few heart shattering, endless moments, I didn’t know where to search for him. I successfully pushed down all thoughts about the consequences of what I’d done and focused my energy on finding Arminius. Everything else we’d handle together.
Together. I liked the sound of that. He would make it better. For once, I wanted him to take care of me. I wanted to release control and allow someone else—him, the only one—to take my reins.
First, though, I had to find him. The festival village teemed with celebrating tribespeople. Most couldn’t give two shits about any wedding. The festivals always ended with a large party, and tonight’s feast served as an excuse for more drunken revelry.
Those who recognized me cheered and called ribald suggestions for my wedding night. I ignored them and hurried toward the fenced pastures. His men made their camp there. I didn’t want to consider the idea he may have hopped on a horse and ridden from me for good.
A wandering pack of drunks shouted curses and split apart on the path ahead of me to dodge the cantering horse and rider cutting through them, toward me.
Arminius. My heart soared with the knowledge everything would be all right. He wore his special armor, the shining metal molded into the shape of a muscular chest. It didn’t do the body beneath justice. Instead of his helmet, his wolf’s pelt hung about his shoulders and over his head. This was who he was: a Cherusci in Roman armor, a blend of two disparate worlds, too mixed to ever truly abjure one or the other.
His face broke into a grin at the sight of me. He pulled the horse to a stop and slid from the saddle in time to catch me as I hurled myself into his arms.
I didn’t care that his armor was hard and unyielding or how many witnesses we had. He lifted me clean off my feet and spun in a circle.
“Were you coming back?” I asked into his neck. The soft fur tickled my nose and I wanted to burrow into it.
“I was ready to toss you over my shoulder and carry you out of there if I had to.” He rubbed his hands up and down my back, reassuring himself of my presence, of my choice to leave for him.
I laughed against his neck. Relief ran warm and sweet through my blood. Uncertainty had cast a dark pall over my every decision. It vanished the moment he rode up in all his finery, prepared to steal me. Bride stealing was rare, but it happened. I suspected that more often than not, their stories were like mine: Women abandoned unwanted betrothals to be with a man of their choosing.
Reimar would follow through on his threats, of that I had no doubt. To save face, Segestes would declare Arminius stole me. It rankled. Arminius and I would know the truth, as would our friends, Levin, even Reimar.
It was my fault Segestes had these weapons to wield against us.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“For what?” He tightened his arms, then loosened to lean back and grip me by my bare elbows. “You came.”
“I’m sorry it took me so long.”
He pressed a kiss to my forehead. “You did what you thought you had to do. There’s no fault in that.”
“But—”
“Thusnelda!” My father’s voice roared behind us, cutting clean over the other conversations and distant music.
Wout hobbled alongside him; Lennart and Levin jogged ahead.
“We should go.” Arminius herded me to his horse. I cast one last look at the twins in time to see Levin snake a foot out and trip Lennart, who tumbled cursing into the dirt.
Arminius laughed as he swung back into the saddle. With a firm grip on his forearm, I followed behind him. The moment I settled into my seat, he urged the animal into a canter. I didn’t know what destination he had in mind, and I didn’t care. We were together.
* * *
We rode in silence until we were a healthy distance from the festival encampment. In a small clearing lined with torches and lamps stood one of our older priestesses, Berut, Ingomar, and Jotapa. Hooves pounded behind us and Levin dismounted. He shot me a grin and joined the others before I asked him how he’d slipped away so fast.
As I slid off the horse, Jotapa met me with my wolf headdress in her arms. I’d never worn it before. Such accouterments were reserved for chiefs and their queens. My mother had made it before she died, from the pelt of an inky black female wolf she and a small group of women ha hunted. I took the silky garment and clutched it to my chest.
“How did you know I would leave?” I asked her.
She set it upon my head and arranged the pelt around my shoulders. “I know you. And Berut told me what Arminius was planning.”
“And you?” I turned to Levin.
“Jotapa thought you’d want family here and I agreed.” He wrapped me in a hug and whispered, “You are going to do great things with him.”
Arminius took my hands and pulled me close. “Are you sure? It’s not too late to take you back.”
Months ago was too late. Years. Decades. I’d always been his.
“You would surrender now?”
“I would do anything to make you happy,” he said.
“The Chatti will never forgive this insult. Reimar is furious. He’s made threats. Segestes—”
“I don’t care.”
“We’re really going to do this?” I searched his eyes and soaked in his unassailable confidence, his assurance that all would work out, that same assurance that had led him to plan an entire wedding without knowing if I’d actually walk away from Reimar the night before I was to marry him.
“We’re going to conquer the world.”
My audacious man, never afraid to set his sights far beyond where we common mortals tread.
“Are you ready?” The priestess addressed us. I looked around the clearing and our gathered loved ones and didn’t find what I sought: a goat, a cow, a sheep, a chicken, an egg, anything.
“I didn’t bring a sacrifice,” I said. No one married without making an offering to the gods, lest they face tragedy and destruction later on.
The priestess shook her head. I couldn’t see her face behind her veil, but when she spoke, I recognized the voice of Cotafrit, the eldest. Some said she’d been alive more than a century. Age had hunched her posture, and she pointed a bony, brittle-skinned finger at us.
“The gods demand more of this union than trinkets. Your sacrifices will come later,” she said. “You ask much from the gods, and they will demand much in return. Are you prepared to pay the cost?”
Between Reimar’s threat and Wiltrud’s mysterious prophecy, I feared Cotafrit was right. A sacrifice was coming, something beyond an animal. I sought Arminius’ hand. He gave mine a gentle squeeze and rubbed circles with his thumb.
“I’ve known my whole life what I want won’t come easy,” he said, his eyes searching mine. “Whatever the price, I will pay it.”
My throat constricted. Could he really be certain of this? What if it cost our rebellion? Any children I might give him? What if we lost everything for the sake of calling each other husband and wife?
He brushed his thumbs across my cheeks and cupped the back of my head. “I see your mind working. Whatever you’re thinking, I’ve thought it, too, and I would change nothing. Do you hear me? Nothing. I know our plan is going to work, just as I know I love you and need you at my side.”
Everyone and everything faded around me except for him. I nodded slowly. “I love you, whatever the cost.”
The priestess spoke the rites in the old tongue. She sliced our palms with my knife, my first gift from Arminius, over the raised pink scar on Arminius’ palm, then bound them together with a leather strap, marking us as one body, one soul.
We each spoke the vows: Henceforth, we would live as one, caring for each other, protecting each other, sheltering each other from all that may come. The words left my mouth in a daze, as if someone else spoke them, as if I watched the scene unfolding from a few steps away.
Berut and Jotapa clapped and cheered, pulling me back into my body. Arminius leaned down for a deep, slow kiss while the priestess released our hands.
It was done and couldn’t be undone. We finished the steps that started when I was born and first promised to him. Our future loomed bigger than either of us imagined as children. My heart beat faster and I smiled up at him.
“Husband.”
“Wife.”
Saying and hearing these words filled me with hope, though hope was an unsatisfactory word for the feelings threatening to burst out of my chest. He is my husband, and I am his wife.
As it was always meant to be.
Ingomar cleared his throat. He held out the shield and spear. Arminius’ breath caught at the sight of his father’s old weapons. I took the shield first, surprised at its heft. Segimer had crafted a fine shield.
“Your shield.” I extended it to him, and he took it with reverence. Next, I passed the towering spear. “Your spear.”
If I wasn’t mistaken, his eyes glassed over, flitting between the weapons, me, and his uncle.
“Thank you.” He spoke first to me, then to Ingomar. “You saved these. How...?”
Ingomar waved a hand and said something so like his nephew, I smiled. “Don’t worry about it. They belong to you now.”
Arminius stood a little taller. “I will carry these with honor.”
I looped an arm through his. “We know you will.”
Berut trotted to his side with a cloth-wrapped package. He held it while Arminius unwrapped it, revealing a pair of armbands and a golden torque. I reached for them, then pulled back and bit my lip. It was his duty to present these gifts to me, the jewels to replace my mother’s and mark me as a wedded woman.
Jotapa appeared at my side and tugged my mother’s jewels from my arms, unclasped the torque from my neck.
“I had these made over winter.” Arminius held up the torque. At its center, two wolf heads faced Donar’s hammer. It was the union of our houses, our souls, finely wrought in gold, cool against my skin. He slipped the matching armbands up my biceps and stepped back.
“They’re beautiful.”
He had commissioned them over the winter, a man always thinking ahead while the rest of us thought only of today.
Ingomar produced another jug of our wedding ale, the drink he hadn’t brewed for me but made with the sure confidence it was for his nephew’s marriage to me.
We passed around cups and held our own small, secret celebration deep in an unfamiliar wald. After two cups of ale, everyone made their excuses and left Arminius and me alone in the clearing. He took me by the hand and led me to a large tent I hadn’t noticed before. Inside, they’d filled it with thick furs, stuffed cushions, and plentiful woven blankets. A covered trencher hid a late repast for the two of us. Our friends had been busy.
Though we’d lain together before, my nerves jangled, and my heart raced in anticipation. Our joining was no longer an illicit release of pent-up desires. He made it abundantly clear I pleased him, as he pleased me. There was no reason to be nervous, yet I chewed my lip and trembled when I felt him behind me.
Coarse fingers gently removed my wolf pelt and folded it into a meticulous square before setting it aside. His hands rasped down my bare arms and I shivered.
He scraped his chin against the smooth skin of my cheek and rumbled a contented noise.
“Wife.” He said it repeatedly, finding no end to the simple pleasure of calling me his wife.
I turned in his arms and reached for his own pelt, giving it the same treatment he’d given mine, as best I could. Such precise folding didn’t come naturally to me. Next, I removed his armor, piece by piece, under his unwavering gaze. He groaned and stretched his neck once free of the contraption.
“Come here.” He pulled me back into his arms. “Your mind is working hard. What are you thinking?”
“This changes everything.”
He leaned down until our foreheads touched and we breathed each other’s air. “Not for me. Everything is as it was meant to be.”
“How are you always so sure?”
“I’ve found I can brazen my way through almost anything.” He chuckled and kissed me on the nose.
“Not me.” I shook my head once. “Though you tried very hard.”
“No, I had to pray you’d come to me and, if that didn’t work, pray you wouldn’t kill me while I was stealing you.”
He possessed a unique ability to make me laugh, and I loved him for it. “I don’t think I would have killed you. Beaten you, but not killed.”
“You do love me.”
“I do. I love you.”
We met in a fiery kiss, no gentle preamble necessary. It was messy, tongues stroking, nipping at each other’s lips while our hands went to work on our clothing. Once bare, he eased me back into our marital bed.
I drank him in, his scent, his warm flesh pressing me into the soft furs, the way our bodies fit together, how his light chest hair rasped against my breasts. We were made for each other, and it was long past time I embraced it.
He slid down my body, intent on doing that thing with his mouth, but I was in no mood for games designed to delay what we both wanted.
“No.” I hauled him up by the back of his neck and kissed him with all the ferocity I possessed. “Now.”
I wrapped my legs around his hips and attempted to guide him into me. I needed it; I needed him, his body joined with mine in the most primal way. I ached for him to fill that empty place inside me, the one only he could fill.
“You greedy thing.” He laughed against my mouth. “We have all night, wife. For once, I want to take my time.”
With a push and a twist of my hips, I reversed our positions and raked my short fingernails down his chest, eliciting a hiss from him. He gripped the globes of my ass so hard I’d be bruised by morning. I wanted it. I wanted his marks covering me, so everyone knew we belonged to each other. More than our wedding, I wanted his brand on me and mine on his.
His muscles flexed and rippled. It took self-control to hold himself back when we assumed this position, to relinquish a portion of control to me. He was more than strong enough to take over, even from beneath me. He let me set the pace, though sometimes it pained him to the point of breaking, and he relished it. The veins in his neck popped from the effort of holding back.
We both groaned when I rocked myself against his arousal. My body was already slick and ready for him.
“If we have all night,” I leaned down to trail my tongue along the juncture of his jaw and throat, “then we have plenty of time to go slow later.”
“Did I say all night?” He took himself in one hand and shifted my hips with the other. “The rest of our lives. We have the rest of our lives.”
I cried out as he sank into me, both from the slight burn of his intrusion and the satisfaction of the way he touched me everywhere, impossibly full.
His talk about taking our time was all bluster. He couldn’t wait any better than I. He gripped the hair at the back of my head and set a punishing pace. I reveled in the way he lost control, more animal than man when he got like this.
The trembling in my legs that preceded my completion started almost immediately.
“Look at me.” He released my hair, only to lift my chin. I’d closed my eyes and dropped my head without realizing it. “You’re mine, and I’m yours. Always.”
“Always,” I repeated, gasping against his mouth. He had me almost insensible. He might have been asking me to rip out my heart and hand it to him, and I would have agreed.
My sex fluttered and spasmed, and then I tipped over the edge with the force of a star falling to the earth. In my lust-driven madness, I bit down on his shoulder and none too gently. His thrusting turned almost violent, faltering, before he jerked inside me and his fluid joined mine. Finally, finally he finished in me. Dizzy with euphoria, I collapsed atop him, gasping for breath. The days when he withdrew and took that part of him away from me were past.
I don’t know how much time passed as his heartbeat slowed and the sweat cooled on our skin. His fingers rubbed up and down my back, lulling me into a boneless sleep.
“Always,” he whispered before I completely lost consciousness.
“Always,” I answered.