Chapter 18

Where Wolf’s Ears Are, Wolf’s Teeth Are Near

M y father and his men breezed in like a storm, sending the smoke from the central fire pit swirling. His priest waddled after him, like a pet dog coming to heel. He was more obedient than my own. I got to my feet, pressing my hands together to try and stop them from shaking.

Through the sea of heads, I studied. Eyes. Nose. Mouth. Lip. Each one in turn. With every face I checked and each one I was met with disappointment. Elpin was not there.

‘Daughter,’ he oozed, taking every inch of my braided hair, my furs and my jewellery. ‘How good it is of you to welcome us.’

‘Laird King.’ I bowed before taking my seat again and offering them the benches. ‘It has been too long. How are my sisters?’ The benches ran either side of the fire like a trough. I imagined what it must be like for the Jarl, talking with his men of policy and plunder. It is how I always imagined The Thing would be, and I was not wrong, although now I prefer it when we have more women attend.

‘I trust your crossing was calm,’ I said. ‘What brings you to the isles, Laird King?’ I picked up a flagon of ale and began to pour, it would not do to leave him waiting.

As I leaned in, the sharp odour of their tunics, the smell of wild garlic and boar reminded me of home. Nights that my mother had made feasts for my father’s men, women and children all squeezed beneath the thatch, hearth fire burning. It had been so alive. Such wonderful times before my mother lost Naiton.

‘Can a father no come to see his daughter?’ he said, draining his cup.

A father could. Not mine. I was nothing more than a pawn to be moved around his board until someone was in checkmate but then, I did not know that it was my husband we were playing against.

‘Aye, I’m very grateful you could make the journey.’ I smiled sweetly, pouring him another drink. ‘Do you have business with my husband?’ I handed him the cup.

‘Not business as such.’ He licked his lips. ‘Is that falcon of yours dead yet?’

He was trying to goad me.

‘No, he is alive and well. Have you brought your falconer? You could have done me the honour of hunting with me in my new home. I have heard much about the unusual game here.’

‘I’m no here for such pleasantries. I am here conduct for a trade of sorts.’

‘A trade?’

‘Your man has something belonging to me.’ He looked me up and down. ‘Now, I have use of his men and I am here so that your husband might honour the dowry.’

Hate is a strong word but it is not strong enough for how I felt about my father. If I had my time over, I would wish that Thor would strike him down with a bolt of lightning, right then and there and then for Odin to take his eyes and let Huggin and Munnin peck at the last of his flesh.

‘Honour the dowry? I cannot imagine you were not well paid, Laird King?’ I hoped my face did not betray me, but I did not trust him. ‘What else could you possibly want my husband to do?’

‘There are Danes.’ He addressed Thorkell, not me. ‘Jarl Finnleik and his men, they have raided farms and villages, surrounding them and killing them. Those that did not fight, the old and the women and children, they were taken as slaves.’

Jarl Finnleik. I had heard that name before, but the memory was as slippery as an eel. I rolled the name around in my head. I wished I had remembered, before what came next. Maybe I would have done more. Begged Sigurd to step in?

‘Taken to the big slave markets in Frankia no doubt or sent back to Danish lands.’

‘What makes you think they were Danes?’ Thorkell’s tone did not change, it never did but I could tell his anger.

‘I know they were Danes.’ My father did not like to be questioned.

‘We do not go to war with Danes.’ Thorkell did not raise his eyes. He carried on picking at his fingers with the tip of the small dagger he’d taken from his waistband.

‘You do not speak for the Jarl.’

‘He does not. But I do,’ I said.

My father’s head snapped towards me. ‘You?’

‘When Jarl Sigurd is not resident, it is I who speaks for my husband.’

I watched the creases on his face soften at the thought. That he could control me. That he could manipulate me into doing his bidding. The priest’s stubby hands nursed his ample circumference eyeing me greedily.

‘Did I not say that she would find her redemption here, Laird King? God has rewarded you for your faith.’

‘You did, you did Edward. God has seen fit to bless us.’ He turned to me. ‘I require the Jarl’s men. We need our borders to be defended.’

I did not need to look at Thorkell to know what my answer would be.

‘I cannot allow it.’

‘You cannot? Or will not? There is a difference, Olith.’

That was the first time I felt it, that I was no longer afraid of him. I was no longer his to command. I felt myself stand a little straighter.

‘No, Laird King you are right. I will not allow you to use our men. Those are your borders, not ours. Those are for your men to guard as you see fit. They are only raiders, they will look for food and gold and when they do not find it, they will move on. Sail to Northumbria.’

A darkness passed across his face then. I can still see it, clear as anything.

‘Makes no matter.’ He licked his wicked lips. ‘If you will not provide men, I have other means of securing peace at our borders. I still have one daughter left; she will make a good bride. I should meet with this Jarl Finnleik, I have no doubt he would appreciate your sister’s beauty.’

‘You must not think much of your daughter if you would give her to a monster like Jarl Finnleik,’ said Thorkell. ‘Do you know what he did to his last wife and son?’

‘What do you mean?’ I demanded. ‘Sigurd never told me he had a wife. He said that Finnleik decreed that his son should be killed and that he made his own brother do it.’

‘Hromund did have to kill the boy after he killed Aelfdene, Jarl Finnleik’s wife. Hromund had lain with her, there was no doubt that the boy was his. Jarl Finnleik made Hromund kill them both and then he slit Hromund’s throat.’

He carried on absently, picking at his nails with the tip of his blade. His words were soft and gentle. They did not convey the horror of what he had described. I could feel my heart pound in the base of my throat. I thought I had sacrificed myself to save my sister from their barbarism. I had taken her place here, with Sigurd, who was nothing but a good man, a kind man, for all his faults, and I had left her alone for my father to gift her to a monster.

‘This is the man you would give my sister to?’

‘I have my reservations, but as I said, I require your husband’s men. If not, I will find peace another way, it has been advantageous so far, has it not?’

I glanced at Thorkell. ‘Jarl Sigurd will not put his men to their deaths against Jarl Finnleik.’

I soon learned Jarl Finnleik was the leader of a great Danish army, an army that was feared amongst even the strongest of Danes. He held estates in the north and the south and had done much raiding in Northumbria. That did not stop me from wanting to use every last one of our men and burn him to the ground.

‘I am Jarl.’ Even as the words passed my lips, I felt their hollowness. I was Jarl in trinket only. It was my lips that fired the words, but it was Thorkell that hammered them into being. I could not disobey my husband, no matter the cost but there would be another way. ‘We cannot allow our men to be used for your disputes at your borders.’

I had watched my father my whole life. I had watched and I had learned. There was none as treacherous. I watched him strike bargains. Promise enough jewels that they would never have to work again and once he had what he wanted, cut them down and take it all back piece by piece.

‘As you wish,’ he said darkly.

It would take him a long time to travel home, even on calm seas. He would not have sailed to the northern isles just to talk of my sister and his Danish raiders. I did not doubt that his next stop would be the coasts of Northumbria to see if he could rouse King Ethelred to fight his cause. Many years later, he would march south with Owain the bold, lay a bloodied siege to Ethelred’s Durham, there were Scots heads on spikes as far as the eye could see.

While he sailed and plotted it would give me time to talk to Sigurd, to arrange to bring Donada back to Orkney, there were so many places that I could keep her hidden. He would never need to know.

‘Aye, my Laird King.’

I watched as he eyed the curve of my gown. ‘Is there any sign of my grandchild?’

I shot a glance to Ligach. It was better that he thought that I was with child than without. His greed in keeping the Jarl on a tight leash would see us safe if he thought I was carrying a Dane. She swept forward, taking a flagon and began pouring for the rest of the gathering.

‘We’ll soon find out,’ she said, making her way to the next table, near two of my father’s men. I caught the flicker of fear in her eyes, unsure of what her lies might cost her. ‘He’ll be here before the end of winter, no doubt.’

The air in the room shifted. There was not a man who was not admiring her exquisite paleness as she moved from table to table.

‘Where did you find such a rare beauty?’ said the Laird King, eyeing her greedily. ‘And a Scot, no less.’

‘Jarl Sigurd gave me employ as Lady Olith’s handmaid.’ Her lies slipped freely from her tongue. ‘The morning of your daughter’s wedding.’

My skin felt flush. Burning fiercely that it might get caught out in a lie. If my father were to know how much money was to be made from the trade of flesh, I had no doubt that he would want nothing more than to be partnered with my husband in his trade in Miklagard.

‘Do I have the honour of drinking the mead that the Jarl spoke so fondly of?’ he said raising his ale horn.

‘The pleasure is ours.’ They were my lands and my home. I would never return to the lands where their God had forsaken me. ‘Taste it. Sweet, isn’t it? Tell me it isn’t the finest mead you’ve tasted. The honey is from the Jarl’s own skepts.’

Just then, one of the men, with a missing left eye, tried to grab Ligach by the waist. She tried to smile sweetly at him as she sidestepped and swerved, swiftly avoiding a grab of her thigh.

‘I have not told my husband,’ I blurted, feeling Thorkell’s look of disapproval boring through my back. ‘About the child.’

Thorkell turned and disappeared through the archway and into the open air. It had been enough to catch the attention of the men and allow Ligach room to escape. ‘I’m waiting for the Jarl and his men to return from his trading in the north so I would prefer it if we did not talk anymore on the subject. It must come from his wife and no one else.’

I tried to sit a little straighter, forcing my back, now damp with sweat, against the hardness of the chair.

Laird Malcolm looked me up and down, disgust etched on his face. ‘You’re sure?’ He nodded to a toothless man. ‘Check.’

He strode across the room, grabbing me by the wrist and yanking me to my feet. Ligach dropped the clay flagon, sending it splintering across the floor and the amber liquid along with it.

‘Please take yer hands off my mistress,’ she said, weaving through the men that were standing up in the commotion. ‘You only have to look to see she is with child.’

She pushed, but her way was barred by a line of father’s men. He pulled me again, stumbling, I lost my feet, thrusting my hands out in front to break my fall.

‘Thorkell!’ I screamed.

He was there in an instant. Along with a dozen women, all running, carrying whatever weapons they could lay their hands on, shields, axe, bow. Estrid included. They battered them back and raised their weapons in defence. Ligach caught me by the arm and helped me to my feet.

‘Sit down.’ I said breathlessly. ‘You have no right to touch me like that. When my husband is not here it is me who rules. No one else.’

In the years after, I would wonder if I was to blame for what followed. If it had always been my insolence that made my mother and father hate me the way they did.

A sea of solemn faces, lit ominously by candlelight stared back at us, waiting for their Laird King to make his move. Every able-bodied person that could hold a weapon stood at my back.

I would not shake. I would not fear him. I would make him pay.

‘You would give commands to your father!’ He tried to grab me by the arms. ‘Look at you! Half a year away and already you are living like them.’

He stared at me, white spittle forming at the corners of his mouth. His priest tittering something intelligible. Nose to nose we stood but I would not back down. I was no longer the child that he had sold to a Jarl. Now, I was of equal standing. He no longer had the right to talk to me like that. Me or my people.

‘You have no right to be disrespectful,’ said Thorkell, pushing his sword closer to the soft flesh of my father’s neck. ‘We should teach him, that he should not speak to a Jarl’s wife like that.’

‘We could teach him for a hundred years and he would still not learn,’ Estrid spat. ‘A dog needs to be shown how to respect its master.’

Shoulder to shoulder we stood. We were one.

‘Remove them. See if he can talk to me with a civil tongue in his head once he has had a chance to calm down.’

I stood and watched as they were marched from my sight.

‘What do you think he will do?’ Ligach whispered.

‘I do not know. The only thing I am sure of is that he will not let me get away with it.