Laren said, “You told me that Uncle Rollo was in love with Nirea, that he was mad with jealousy, that—”
“Be quiet, you stupid girl!”
Laren stared at her half sister. Never had Ferlain raised her voice, never had she heard such venom.
“By all the gods, I was stupid. I should have had my men kill you and that brat our father sired off Nirea. But no, I let the men sell you to slave traders from the south. I wanted you to suffer as I suffered and I wanted you to know pain and hunger and hopelessness. Otta wanted to kill you but I didn’t let him. By all the gods, he was right.”
“We did suffer, Ferlain,” Laren said, but Ferlain wasn’t listening to her, just continued over her, saying, “They told me they didn’t gain much with your sale to slave traders, but with what I added, the villains did well enough. Otta then killed them, for he didn’t trust them to keep silent. He never gave me my silver back.”
“Why, Ferlain, why?” It was Hallad and there was pleading in his deep voice, and such sorrow that Laren couldn’t bear it.
Ferlain held silent. She was smiling, taunting them with her silence. “I didn’t do anything. It was all Ott
a. I am innocent. I am like Helga, making myself important by teasing you with half-truths. I am more a skilled skald than Laren is. Aye, I am innocent and that is all there is to it.”
“You are as innocent as an asp and as deadly,” Rollo said. “Why did you kill Fromm? Why did you send men after Merrik? Why, Ferlain? You have always gotten what you wished from me. Your dead babes, it was always a tragedy, but these things happen. Women don’t turn into monsters because of dead children.”
“All of them died,” Ferlain said, her voice calm, too calm, staring now beyond Rollo, at the thick crimson draperies behind his throne. “Dead in my womb, all of them. Not a single cry when each of them emerged. All dead.” She turned back to look at him. “I believed it was Cardle’s fault, all my dead babes, and thus I took Fromm to my bed, and he sired the last three, but they were dead too. My body killed them, all of them. They rotted in my womb until I thrust them out. The pain, uncle, the pain would have bowed the strongest man, but I wanted a babe to live, so very badly, and that babe would have come after you, and I made myself thrust out those dead and rotted scraps, praying each time that there would be a cry of life, that there would be arms and legs that would move, eyes that would see something other than death, and I endured the pain and made myself try again and again.”
“Ah, Ferlain, I am so very sorry,” Hallad said. “I had no idea.”
“You wonder why I killed that miserable bully Fromm? He threatened to tell you he had bedded me. Even now, after two years, he threatened to tell you. The fool was jealous when he found out I had taken Otta to my bed. He made no sense. ’Twas he who told me after that third and last babe died that I was fat and ugly and he didn’t want me anymore. Why would he care what I did? Ah, but he did because he was afraid I would find Otta more to my liking than I had found him. Not that Otta did much of anything, the braying fool. He could not even sire a dead babe. All he did was hold his belly and whine of his incessant pain. Or perhaps now it is my fault and not Otta’s. Perhaps now I am too old to plant more babes in my womb.”
There was anguish on Hallad’s face. He went to her. She looked at him and the dazed expression was gone instantly from her face to be replaced by a rage so deep, so raw that Hallad flinched back from it. “Stay away from me!” she screamed at him. “You perfidious bastard, why didn’t you die? You killed my mother with your lust, and then you wed that bitch Nirea who was no older than I and you let her birth Laren and then Taby, aye, the vaunted heir, little Taby who was so very perfect, who was beloved by all, especially by Uncle Rollo who would teach him and love him and make him one of his heirs. I wanted to kill him and you. And I killed that bitch Nirea, but by the gods, not in time. Not in time, for there was Taby! And there would have been more babes, more little boys, so I did stop her, I had to and I did.”
Hallad said slowly, “You have naught but hatred and bitterness in you, Ferlain. Nirea never did anything to you. She was fond of you and Helga, and she tried, the poor girl tried to befriend you. She was so very innocent. And yet you killed her. Was it poison? Aye, I believe it was. I was accused of strangling her for there were finger marks about her white throat. But I didn’t touch her, would never have hurt her, even though we argued that day and were overheard. You took your chance and all believed me guilty and thus I had to escape to keep Rollo from having to execute me. I think you dug your fingers into her throat after she was dead. But you know, Ferlain, Rollo never believed me guilty. He hid me and then I became the old wizard two years ago. I survived. I am sorry for you, Ferlain. I would kill you if Laren and Taby were dead, but they survived. At least you spared them, though your reasons for doing so are wretched. What will you say now, Ferlain?”
“I say this, old man. If you hadn’t been accused of murdering that bitch wife of yours, then you would have wed another girl within weeks, aye, not more than several months, for you are a lustful fool for all your years, and this one would have probably been much younger than Helga or me. Then she would have birthed more boys, would she not? You always flaunted your virility before all of us. And there was Taby and then all these others, aye, you would have continued to sire babes—all of them alive and breathing and yelling the instant they came from their mothers’ wombs—and I would have had naught.”
“You have naught now,” Rollo said. “You have lost everything, Ferlain.”
“I still have Cardle.”
“Aye, he is a harmless man, a faithful man. He never knew that you had bedded with Fromm, did he? Or Otta?”
“He wouldn’t know anything if I didn’t tell him,” she said, her voice filled with contempt. “You, Rollo, you wed me to that imbecile. He would not even bed me unless I took him in my mouth and brought him to a man’s size. I had to thrust him into me, uncle, for he would just gaze at me, and I knew his mind was in the past, thinking of all those miserable Romans or King Alfred or that gallant fool, Charlemagne. At least Fromm and Otta were men with men’s appetites and men’s knowledge. I would that you would die, Uncle Rollo, but you will not. You will continue forever, I know it.”
Very slowly, she slipped to her knees. She bowed her head and held her arms around her, slowly rocking back and forth.
“Why did you try to kill Merrik?” Rollo said, quiet now, his voice oddly soothing. “He did nothing to you, nothing.”
She was silent for a very long time. Rollo started to ask her again, when she raised her head and looked toward Merrik, as if he were a stranger. “He would have been another damned heir. If I couldn’t produce a son, I wouldn’t allow the possibility that he would rule, his son after him.”
“He would never rule, Ferlain,” Rollo said, and his voice was that of the ruler of Normandy, cold and decisive and no one would gainsay him and live. “He will never rule. Taby is alive. Your father told you but you didn’t heed him. Aye, Taby is alive and happy as a child should be. He is safe in Norway, in Vestfold, at Merrik’s farmstead.”
Ferlain jumped to her feet. “No! You lie! It is Merrik who now holds your favor, it is he who will—”
“Taby is alive. Merrik found both Laren and Taby at the slave market in Kiev. I would that I could have sired a son like Merrik, for he is honorable above all things. But then so is William, and it is he, Ferlain, it is William my son who will rule after me. Taby will be at his side, loyal to him and brave, his arm and his mind strong and sure.”
Ferlain said nothing. She merely stared first at Rollo, then at Laren and Merrik. She didn’t look at her father.
Finally, Rollo said, “Weland, return her to her sleeping chamber. Post two soldiers near. We will decide what is to be done with her.”
It was Helga who came to their sleeping chamber late that night. She didn’t look as young in the dim shadows. “Come quickly,” she said, shaking Merrik’s shoulder. “Come.”
Rollo and Hallad were there before them, looking down, both silent. Ferlain lay on the box bed, a soft pillow beneath her head, an exquisite embroidered robe covering her, smoothed by loving hands over her body. Her face was smooth with renewed youth in death, her eyes closed by gentle fingers. Her hair was brushed until it shone and braided very neatly, the long ropes lying over her breasts. Her arms were at her sides, palms up.
“Cardle is gone,” Rollo said to Merrik and Laren. “She has been dead for a long time.”