Sculla raised his head from his conversation with Old Alna and said, “Rorik is too sodden to plow a field, much less a woman.”
Old Alna cackled.
Sculla’s wife, Amma, said, “He isn’t used to so much drink like the rest of you louts. His belly won’t like him for this.”
Rorik turned and said, “All of you, keep your tongues behind your teeth. You chatter because your bellies are content.”
“Aye, that’s the truth of it,” Askhold said. “Beat the witch, Rorik.”
Rorik didn’t hear him. He was thinking about his belly and his dulled head. He prayed Amma was wrong in her prediction but knew that she wasn’t. He didn’t hold drink well.
The sleeping chamber was dark as the deepest pit. He brought in a rush torch and fastened it into its holder on the wall. He saw her on the floor, on her side, her legs drawn up to her chest. He couldn’t see the chain, but he knew it was there, wrapped around her wrist.
She was awake. She hadn’t moved, hadn’t breathed, it seemed to him, but nonetheless, he knew she was awake. He didn’t care.
He pulled off his clothes, doused the rush torch, and flung himself down onto his bed.
“You drunken lout. You disgust me.”
He laughed, a drunken laugh that sounded demented. “I begin to believe you have missed me, Mirana.”
“I would that you had rotted, you and all your vicious men.”
“You have been left too much alone,” he remarked to the darkness. “Even I am welcome after your overlong solitude. You obviously have grown bored with your own company. Aye, that’s a woman’s plaint, isn’t it? She cannot bear to be alone.”
He could hear her breathing, harsh and deep.
“Shall I tell you about the delicious meal we enjoyed? It was quite excellent, truth be told. The boar steaks were broiled; the fat sizzled on th
e sides. I decided to let your belly shrink a bit—you’ve eaten too well in your captivity. Now, it is your turn. Would you like to say something?”
“Unfasten the chain.”
He came up onto his elbow, weaved a bit, looking in the darkness toward her. “I just might if you would say, ‘Please, my lord Rorik, I would be your willing slave if you would free me.’ Say it and I will consider releasing the chain.”
Her breathing was deeper now and hoarse. He was glad she didn’t have a knife.
“Say it, Mirana, else I will leave that chain on your wrist until you do.”
He was drunk, he knew, and it was his only excuse. But he wouldn’t bear more from her. She would obey him else he would make her life a misery.
“Please, my lord Rorik, I would be your willing slave if you would free me.”
He stared toward her. He couldn’t believe it, yet the words he’d demanded from her hung in the silence between them. She’d done as he’d asked. He didn’t understand. His brain, filled with too much mead, suddenly rebelled. He couldn’t make sense of her. He wanted to demand that she tell him what she was planning now, but his belly chose this moment to rebel as well. He groaned and leapt from his bed. He managed to run to the palisade walls before retching. His body shook and trembled. He leaned his forehead against the wooden planks and waited for his belly to calm. It had been thus all his life. He couldn’t drink much of the delicious mead or even the fruity wine from the Rhineland without becoming violently ill. He would not drink more than a cup of anything for months at a time and then he would forget, and drink too much. And this was his punishment. It was the woman’s fault. If she hadn’t taunted him, if she hadn’t then given in to him and dared to call him lord, he wouldn’t have become so ill.
He shuddered and straightened. He was so thirsty his tongue felt swelled in his mouth. It was some time before he returned to the longhouse and to his sleeping chamber, his belly emptied of the vile mead as well as of the wonderful boar steaks, the vegetables, and the bread.
Mirana waited until he was stretched out on his bed. He’d run as if a Christian demon had been after him. She waited another minute, slapped down her pride, hating herself even as she said, “If you please, my lord Rorik—”
She heard a deep snore.
She fell onto her back. Her hand was numb, the flesh on her wrist rubbed raw. It hurt her so badly she would have begged him to release her, she would have called him Odin All-Father had he demanded it of her. She wanted to howl and cry at the same time. She did neither. She fell asleep with his snores sounding in her ears.
10
Clontarf, Ireland
Danish Fortress