Rurik walked into Wilfrid’s chamber to find the man sitting at the same table as the first night with the wooden game board before him. He was not as lively as that night. He sat a bit slumped in his chair with a brow furrowed as he stared down at the pieces. Something had changed and Rurik would bet his life that it was more than the death of a king. Or perhaps it was what the King’s death meant.
‘Father, I have brought the Norseman as you requested,’ said Annis.
So he was the Norseman again instead of Rurik. Interesting.
Wilfrid looked up and his eyes brightened slightly at the sight of them both. Raising a hand, he beckoned them over. The knuckles on that hand were swollen and red, while the fingers on his unusable hand were bent in on themselves. His skin was ashen, the only colour in his face around his eyes.
‘Good evening,’ he said in his usual laborious speech.
‘Good evening.’ Rurik walked over and took the chair across from him. Annis followed, but she hung back, almost as if she were watching them rather than planning to participate in the conversation.
They sat in silence for a moment, until Rurik reached forward and moved one of the figures. Wilfrid’s chuckle started deep in his chest and never managed to make its way out before subsiding. He swiped the figure from the board. It rankled to play so poorly, but Rurik reminded himself that he was doing this only for the man’s amusement which he hoped would eventually get him to discuss Maerr. Rurik moved again and this time Wilfrid did not react so happily. Slightly mollified, Rurik sat back in the chair only to look up to see the old man watching him.
‘I am sorry you lost your father.’ The words were a bit garbled, so Rurik did not quite believe what he heard. He glanced at Annis whose eyes were wide. She slowly walked forward, her hand shaking as she reached out to touch Wilfrid’s shoulder.
‘Did he say…?’ Rurik paused at her nod and turned his attention back to the older man. ‘You know who I am?’ His heart pounded behind his ribs.
‘I am as near to death as a man can be while still breathing, but I—’
‘Father—’ Annis began, but he raised his hand to stop her. She gestured to the guards who quickly left the room.
‘I must say this, Annis.’ He paused and took several breaths, as if the words had made him use up all his air. ‘I have not lost all of my reasoning.’ He paused again for another breath. ‘As soon as you said you were Norse and then mentioned Maerr…’ a pause for breath ‘…I knew that you were Sigurd’s son.’ Wilfrid stared at his eyes, not looking into them, but at them. It was almost as if he was seeing someone else there. ‘Your eyes are his eyes.’
Danr looked like Sigurd, while Rurik’s features tended to favour their mother. However, their eyes were the same and those were Sigurd’s eyes. Rurik had not thought to anticipate that part of him would be recognised.
‘When you hate as much as I hated your father, you remember things.’ His gaze looked off across the room as if he were remembering things about Sigurd. ‘I have not seen him since Grim…in many years, but I remember.’
Rurik had already begun to suspect that Wilfrid had been too ill to travel to Maerr, but he needed to ask anyway. ‘Did you not go to Maerr and see him one last time?’
Wilfrid gave a jerky shake of his head. ‘I would have gone had I been able.’
The world spun around him. Rurik closed his eyes to quiet the spin. All this way and not only was Wilfrid an infirm old man whose death would provide no sense of justice, but he had not even been in Maerr. He told himself it was enough that he could be led to the assassins, but the victory felt hollow. The door of the chamber opened and Rurik did not have to look to know that Cedric had walked in. The air changed with the man’s furious vigour. A quick glance confirmed the suspicion, though Cedric kept away, only standing inside the door.
‘I believe you,’ said Rurik.
Wilfrid took in another shallow breath. ‘You came for revenge.’
‘For justice.’
Wilfrid smiled, but it looked more like a sneer as only one side of his mouth twisted upwards. ‘What is justice?’
‘A chance to right the wrong.’
‘What of our wrong? Annis told you of Grim?’
Annis was looking at Rurik again, only this time her eyes seemed to glow with her pain. ‘She told me,’ he answered, unable to look away from her. ‘I am sorry for Grim.’ He said it for Annis, not for Wilfrid or Cedric. He was sorry for the pain he saw in her eyes every time she thought of her late husband. For the days she had spent caring for Grim in his pain. For the babe she had lost.
Her eyes glistened, but she did not look away from him. The sight of her so vulnerable made his throat ache. He wanted to hold her in his arms and give her pleasure to take the pain away.
‘You are sorry, yet you bring vengeance to our door.’ This was from Cedric and effectively broke the spell Annis had cast over him with her eyes.
Rurik stood to face the man. ‘I have brought only myself seeking the truth.’
‘You came to kill Wilfrid.’
He could not lie. ‘Obviously, that will accomplish very little.’ No one would say it, but he would be surprised if the man lived out the winter.
‘Then how will your justice be served?’ asked Cedric.
‘There were assassins. I can find them.’ Not only did he want to punish them, but he needed to find out what they knew. Others had participated in the attack and he was almost certain that someone was responsible for bringing them all together. Rurik needed to find out who it was. For himself, his family and especially for Brandt.
Cedric’s heavy gaze levelled on him before moving to Wilfrid and then settling on Annis. ‘I am told that you are the son of a princess as well as that of a king,’ he said to Rurik.
So Annis had told him. Rurik did not know whether to feel glad she had spoken of him or to feel betrayed. He decided to feel nothing and see where Cedric would lead. ‘I am.’
‘That means you can bring the warriors of Maerr as well as those of an Irish king down upon our heads were we to let you go.’
‘My father’s warriors were killed in the massacre. Those that are left serve a new king now.’ There were rumours that the sons of Sigurd had conspired to kill their own father, along with rumours that they had plotted with their father against Harald Finehair himself. The fact that they were conflicting rumours did not seem to matter—the remaining warriors had still fled and now the brothers were scattered. King Harald would not be inclined to believe him. ‘Besides, my own uncle conspired to kill Sigurd. Any proof I could bring would be suspect.’
Unless he could bring Annis. In the space of a heartbeat, his gaze flicked to her, taking in the smooth skin of her cheek and her soft, lovely mouth as she stared at Cedric. The base appeal of taking her was one he could not deny. He despised how his father had taken Saorla, but only now did he understand the allure. Annis called to something fierce and wild inside him. The idea of having her to himself was nearly irresistible. It was only the memory of his mother’s pain that made him push the idea aside. For now.
‘Then that only leaves your Irish uncle.’ The way Cedric said that made the fine hairs on the back of his neck stand on end in warning.
‘King Feann will see Glannoventa punished if I am killed.’ The heat of Annis’s body warmed his back as she came close, but he could not look away from Cedric to see if she was there in support or opposition to him. He supposed if he felt a knife slip between his ribs soon, he would have his answer.
‘Cedric,’ she said in warning.
‘We should have killed him the first night you brought him here. I will remedy that now.’ Cedric moved forward, pulling a dagger.
Rurik tensed, prepared to defend himself with his bare hands if necessary. Hot oil from one of the lamps scattered about the room could hurt Cedric enough to slow him down. He made to move towards one, but Annis stepped in front of him. Her back was to his chest as she faced Cedric.
‘He will not be hurt. I won’t stand for it.’
A swell of tenderness came over him, completely at odds with the fury of the fight burning in his veins. She stepped back so that her body touched his, a human shield. His arms ached to hold her, but he would not allow her to stay between him and the dagger, not when he didn’t know if Cedric could be trusted with her.
Cedric paused, but did not lower his dagger. ‘We cannot let him go. It will only be a matter of days before someone else is here for retribution. Their death will be followed by another seeking vengeance, and another in a never-ending cycle that will persist until a great war swallows us all whole.’
Rurik stepped to the side, but Annis followed him, keeping herself between him and Cedric. She grabbed his thigh and a frisson of longing rippled beneath his skin. He took her wrist, intending to pull her away from him, but his hand lingered instead. ‘I will go in peace as long as I have the names of the assassins,’ he said.
Cedric raised a prominent brow. ‘And we cannot trust you. There is no trust between enemies.’
‘Then we are at a standstill.’
Silence descended on the chamber, only broken by the sound of Wilfrid’s harsh breathing. A gleam shone in Cedric’s eyes and the corner of his mouth tipped up in a slow smile. ‘There is one option left unexplored.’
‘Cedric, do not!’ said Annis, the panic in her voice suggesting that she still believed he meant death.
Whatever the man was about to say, Rurik had the strange feeling that the conversation had been leading to just this moment all along, that Cedric had manipulated them towards it. He held his breath.
‘You could marry Annis.’
Marry Annis? He could hardly put the two words together in his mind. ‘What?’
‘If you are Lord, you will hardly be inclined to bring destruction down on your own people. One would hope you would not want to harm your own wife, but if you did, there is the threat of death from Jarl Eirik to stay you. When you think of it, short of your death, it is the only way to protect Glannoventa from you.’
Whether that were true or not, Rurik could not say. He could only stare in disbelief. When he could finally draw a lucid breath, he moved to look down at Annis. Her face was pale with two spots of colour riding high on her cheeks. She seemed to be as shocked as he was, which indicated that she had not spoken to Cedric about this. It was not planned. Or at least, not with her knowledge. He quickly looked down at Wilfrid, still seated at the table. The old man did not appear shocked at all. The glimmer in his eye indicated that he and Cedric had discussed this.
‘I do not understand,’ Rurik said. ‘How did we go from my death to this?’
Cedric returned his dagger to its sheath and stood as if he had not threatened Rurik only a moment before. ‘Our meal is on the table. Let us discuss it as we eat. Wilfrid needs his rest.’ Before anyone could reply to that, Cedric left.
‘Did you have a hand in this?’ Rurik knew it was unlikely, but he had to know.
Annis shook her head. ‘Not at all. This is not something you should consider. I will discuss it with Cedric.’ Turning her attention to the large manservant hovering behind Wilfrid’s chair, she said, ‘Irwin, see that Father is comfortable.’ Then she leaned down and placed a kiss on the old man’s cheek. ‘You have been plotting, I see. We will talk about this when you have rested.’
He made a sound that might have been a laugh or a grumble and then she walked out after Cedric. Rurik watched the guard close the door behind her and felt as if his legs were wooden and his feet stuck to the floor. He could not go after them even though every part of his body urged him forward. They would not move.
‘Rurik,’ Wilfrid said in that way of his that fused the R and K sounds together.
‘You agree with Cedric? You believe that marriage is the best way forward?’
The older man gave a jerky nod.
‘Why? What do you get out of this? You would marry Annis to the son of the man you claim to despise?’ Because Rurik was so shocked, his words came out more harshly than he intended, but Wilfrid did not seem to take offence. Instead, he gestured that Rurik should retake his seat. After some negotiation with his still-reluctant legs, Rurik accepted and sat down heavily.
‘I get to die knowing she is well.’
‘I came to kill you. How do you know that she will be well?’ None of this made any sense to him.
‘You’ve not killed me and you’ve not harmed her.’ His words were halting now as if he were having more trouble forming them. ‘You had chances. You didn’t do it.’
‘Perhaps I am simply biding my time.’
For the first time Wilfrid looked impatient. His face flushed and it seemed as if the words wanted to spew out of him, if only his body would co-operate. His hand slammed down on the table, rattling the wooden figures and knocking a few to the floor. No one moved.
‘Cedric will tell you. Her options are few.’ The breath moved in and out of him in a slow and harsh rhythm. Irwin came forward and touched his shoulder, urging him to bed, but Wilfrid shook him off. ‘Take Glannoventa, take Annis and be done with vengeance.’
* * *
‘What have you done, Cedric?’ Annis could not keep her voice from trembling as she faced him in the hall. She was too angry and bewildered to even try.
‘It’s not I. This was Wilfrid’s plan.’ She had caught him as he was about to take his place at the table, so he faced her with the well-laid table between them. ‘He conceived of it. He proposed the idea to me. We discussed it at length and, after a time, I understood him to be right.’ His voice was so calm in the face of her displeasure that it was a bit off-putting. It had the ominous tone of something that had been decided and now she was to receive the speech that had since been prepared to deal with her discontent.
‘You both discussed it, did you? And when did you think you would discuss it with me? Was I to wake up one morning to a wedding?’ A pang of regret crossed his face, and she felt a stab of victory.
‘I am sorry for the way that happened. It wasn’t my intention. Of course, I meant to speak with you first.’ He went to sit down, remembered himself and gestured to her own seat. ‘Please. Let us share a meal and discuss it.’
The last thing she could do right now was eat, but she sat because she wanted his full attention. ‘There is nothing to discuss. I cannot marry the Norseman. There will be no good to come of it.’
‘You can and you should.’ He picked up a loaf of black bread and pulled off the heal. The words and you will floated silently in the air between them. ‘Let us run down your list of choices, shall we? If you marry fast, your options are Lord Strang and Hrypa of Whalley. The first is older than Wilfrid and the second would embroil us in a war to bring Mercia back to its former glory. I would advise against him, as sinking Glannoventa into war is not something you want. You are welcome to the first, but he has three sons and they would tear you apart in the fight that would ensue after his death. If you do not choose to marry fast, then you will either wait for another king to be chosen, or you will wait for Jarl Eirik to arrive, whichever happens first. The new King will likely send a man to you who will aid an alliance to usurp the Danes. This will anger Jarl Eirik and we will be sunk into another war with the Danes. Or, far more likely, Jarl Eirik is on his way here now and will arrive with a Dane for you. You will be married on the eve of his arrival—my guess would be week’s end—and have a Dane’s spawn planted in your belly before the year is out.’
Her hands had come together during his speech and were clasped over her breasts with her heart pounding beneath them. She longed to refute every word of what he said, but she could only watch as he dipped the bread into his stew and took a bite of it. The problem was that it all made too much sense. Her options had been laid out before her and she did not like any of them. She hated them, in fact.
‘Then I am to marry the Norseman by week’s end and have his—’ she could not say the crude words ‘—have his child, instead?’
Cedric’s eyes gentled as they landed on her stricken expression. ‘The way I see it, you have to marry—and soon. You have five options before you. Choose one.’
Were they even really options when none of them were what she wanted? It was all so unfair that she wanted to plant her fist into the face of the first man who arrived hoping to claim her as his wife. After years of avoiding this discussion, it all seemed to be coming to a head at once. The only ways to avoid war were to wed the Dane Jarl Eirik put forward or the Norseman. Or were they? ‘How do you know that Jarl Eirik will not declare war once he learns I have wed the Norseman?’
‘Good question,’ Cedric answered between bites. ‘I do not know, but Wilfrid and I believe it can be avoided. Jarl Eirik is known to have a tenderness for his wife. If we are lucky, he will arrive with her. If we are not, then she may still have a gentling affect from afar. When he arrives you will believably profess your great affection and admiration for your Norse husband. Rurik will do his part to convince the Jarl that he will work with him. It will take a bit of doing, but I believe, in the end, Jarl Eirik will relent. Rurik has no allegiances that I’m aware of. I believe he can be convinced to align himself to the Jarl. Jarl Eirik might even consider it a boon that Rurik has ties to King Feann.’
Whether that was true or not, she could not say. She rather believed that Cedric thought the Jarl to be rational when she held no such illusions. However, there was a bigger issue with her marrying Rurik than Jarl Eirik. ‘I cannot marry him.’ When he paused in his meal to look at her, she took a steadying breath and continued in a lower voice so as not to be overheard. ‘I was in Maerr. I was there, Cedric. Once he knows, he will not want to marry me when killing me will be so much more satisfying.’
‘You will not tell him that.’
It shouldn’t surprise her that he would feel that way, but it did. ‘I cannot marry him and not tell him.’
‘You can and you will.’ He dropped his spoon and levelled a finger in her direction. ‘This will be the last we speak of this. You will not tell him. It is not information he needs to know.’
‘But he does. I cannot marry him under…under false pretences. It would be vile of me to do so.’
‘It would be vile of you not to do so.’ Cedric countered. ‘You must think about your people. Not yourself. Not even Rurik in this. This is about doing what is right for Glannoventa. These people have become your responsibility. You have spent the last years of your life shouldering that responsibility. You cannot, you must not, shirk it now.’
Bristling under the weight of his displeasure, she drew herself up. ‘I have said nothing of shirking my responsibility.’
‘Fine. Then you can marry whichever Dane Jarl Eirik puts forth to you.’
‘I… That… I…’ Annis was aware that her mouth was opening and closing like a fish tossed up on the shore gasping for air. She simply was not able to stop doing it. This was all too much and far too soon.
‘The Norseman, then?’ He raised a brow.
‘How can you expect me to decide so soon? For that matter, how do you know that he will not wed me only to slit my throat as I sleep? You are putting me in a very difficult position.’
‘It is not me putting you in this position, Annis. It is simply the situation we find ourselves in.’ Cedric sighed. ‘Rurik could already have harmed you if that was his plan.’
‘But once he finds out about Maerr—’
‘You will not tell him!’ His voice rose so that it echoed off the high ceiling. ‘Never speak of that time again. You put all of us at risk, but especially yourself.’ Pushing back from the table, he came around to kneel before her. His hands took hers in a rare sign of physical affection. ‘Please, Annis. I know that you feel compelled to honesty, but it will not help you here. By all means, tell him if you must, but later. Much later. He is still a stranger to us in many ways. If you tell him now, he could very well marry you anyway with no one to stop him from carrying out his revenge on you. My protection can only extend so far.’
He did not say it, but they both knew what he meant. At night in her chamber, no one could intervene. Though she had no doubt that Cedric would knock down doors to get to her, there were things the Norseman could do that would not be heard. A coldness crept over her and she had to fight to keep her limbs from trembling, though Cedric must have felt it in her fingers because he tightened his grip. ‘Have you told Wilfrid about Maerr? About me?’
He shook his head. ‘I saw no need to share that. We both know the risk of upsetting him. Even that scene just now left me frightened for him. Wilfrid prefers Rurik because he wants to end the need for vengeance after he is gone. It does not hurt that marrying the Norseman will likely annoy Jarl Eirik. He does enjoy thwarting the man.’ He grinned in fondness.
The door to the hall opened and Rurik stood there framed by two guards. She wanted to believe that he could be the saviour that Cedric, incredibly, believed that he could be. A large part of her trusted him, whether she wanted to or not. And the night they had spent talking had made her feel closer to him than was comfortable. But what did they know of him? What decision would he make if he knew her part in the massacre?
Perhaps he would take the choice from her. Perhaps he wanted no part of Glannoventa and would leave at first light.
But he stepped into the hall and took that final hope away from her. ‘I will wed you, Lady Annis.’