Chapter 4

Wedding Night

T he sharpness of the chilled air grabbed at the back of my throat as I spilled out onto the walkway. Gasp after gasp I swallowed it, I could hold my nerve no longer.

Angus stared up at me with sad brown eyes. My same grief reflected at me.

I grasped a handful of my skirts and took off at a run; feet slipping against the bark of the walkway and out onto the shoreline. Angus’s pace matched mine. I had put space between myself and my fate. The trees around me blurred. I ran faster. Shale slashing against the bareness of my feet. Afraid to look back. Afraid they’d catch us. No idea of where I had been or where I was headed.

I slowed as the forest thickened. My legs gave up before I did. The ache of exhaustion gnawed at my bones. They would take me no further. I stopped hands on knees, chest heaving.

How had I missed the darkness creep over the stillness of the river? Here, the light from my father’s fortress didn’t penetrate the dense foliage. I sat down on a rock, curling my knees to my chest, and stared out into the blackness of the water.

I could not go through with it. I could not give myself to such a man, a man I did not love. The tears came now, hot, and wet. I wanted my sister to be safe but at what cost? My life would be over, the second I stepped aboard the Jarl’s longboats.

I listened to the sound of the earth. The rattle of wind through the trees. The zip of midges dancing together, skimming the glassy surface of the river. Then, the noise of footsteps through the undergrowth. The crack of a branch.

I stiffened.

Angus gave out a long, mournful howl. The noise grew close. Heavy, cumbersome footsteps made their way toward me. I looked north, further into the darkness. The hairs on the back of my neck rose as if I were under the gaze of something unholy.

I turned back, the way I’d come and saw it. Silhouetted against the glow of the burg in the distance, Jarl Sigurd made his way over to where I sat on the rock. I brushed my tears away with the back of my hand, rising ungainly to my feet in an attempt to greet my soon-to-be husband. I did not want to look weak.

‘You must forgive me,’ he said over the low rumble of Angus’s growl. ‘I do not wish to upset you.’

‘There is no need to apologise.’ I sniffed loudly.

Young as I was, I was arrogant. Thinking I knew it all, but he caught me off guard. Smiling to reveal a row of pearl-white teeth. He stood stock-still with a hand on the hilt of his sword. His gaze passed over me, as cold and as blue as a Yuletide morn. Then, it seemed all the more terrifying. Now, I yearn to lose myself in those blue eyes once more before I return to Valhalla.

‘You misunderstand me. I wanted a wife, not a child bride. Perhaps I was too hasty in my decision.’ His voice was thick with more than just his accent.

‘My father believed I was your better match,’ I said, as meekly as I could manage. I bowed my head. ‘He is skilled at brokering trade agreements.’

He snorted. ‘I would not let your father hear that you talk of your engagement in such a way.’

‘Then let him not sell me like a bag of grain,’ I said the words before I could stop myself.

Looking back, there was not one single moment that I could say made me fall in love with him but maybe there, beneath the stars, my heart yearned for something it had never thought possible.

He smiled at my gumption. ‘Maybe there is more to you than I first thought?’

‘Do not let my father hear you say that he will no doubt up my bride price.’

‘Who knows what else lies in store for us? But this.’ He pointed to the space between us. ‘Should have been a wedding to your sister and instead, the gods have chosen you as my match.’

‘I do believe, Jarl Sigurd that you may have had far too much of the Priest’s good mead. May I suggest some fresh air?’

He snorted again. A noise that angered me. I pushed out my chin.

‘You remind me of the goddess Freya.’ His blue eyes stared. ‘I can see it.’

Like most men, he told me what I wanted to hear, lip service to be in my favour. Any man that could make an arrangement with my father was a man not to be trusted.

‘What you can see, Jarl Sigurd is my unfortunate likeness to my mother. I bid you goodnight.’

As I tried to sidestep him, I stumbled over a rock in my haste to leave the clearing, but he caught me by my arm, righting me on my feet.

He bent close to my ear. ‘You can call it what you like, Lady Olith, but you will see.’

I turned my face to meet his, trying not to let it betray me. His grip felt as though my arm might break. With an exhale, he let go.

?

Despite how I make it seem, I was truly terrified. I wanted to save Donada, of course, I did, but in that moment, I was no more than a frightened child who wanted to run away and hide and that was exactly what I had intended to do, that was until I made enough noise to almost wake the dead.

Our chamber was in complete darkness when I arrived, with flickering torches that provided little illumination. Quiet as a mouse, I pushed open the door, feeling my way around the outside wall. My tunic and breeches were kept in a trunk beneath the shutters. In my fear, all I thought had to do was change and I could be gone into the night. No marriage. No Jarl. Only the woods. Just as I placed my hand out to reach for it, I stumbled over a shoe, clattering to the ground with a thump.

‘Olith,’ Bethóc said, ‘is that you?’

I held my breath and listened. Hoping that she would go back to sleep. Bethóc was the last person I wanted to see with her pale pious face and her righteous indignation.

She appeared sleepily in the doorway wearing her nightclothes. Her auburn curls stretched all the way to her waist. ‘What on earth are you doing at this ungodly hour?’

‘Why are you here and not Donada?’

‘After everything that happened, she chose to sleep in mother’s bedchamber.’

I could not hide my shock.

‘What are you doing, creeping around in the night?’

‘Nothing,’ I said, trying to clutch my torn tunic to my chest.

‘What do you have in your hand?’ She strained to see. ‘What is it?’

‘Nothing. I’ve told you.’ I tried to turn away.

‘Give it here,’ she said, snatching.

The fabric made a tearing noise as she ripped it from my hands. She looked at me. Then to the tunic. Then back to me. ‘What… what were you going to do?’

I shrugged, biting my bottom lip. I had begun to think that to flee could save us, that by the time they noticed I was gone, in all the confusion the Danes would have been angry, yes, but they would come to realise that it was not my father’s fault and that they could keep peace without needing one of my father’s daughters as a means of bribery. I was no more than a confused child, who did not yet understand the ways of the world.

‘Were you going to leave?’

‘Bethóc, I’m frightened,’ the words came out in a stutter and the tears rolled down my cheeks. I wanted to scream. To tell her that I could not go through with it. She could be his queen or lady or whatever they wanted to call themselves but looking into her eyes, I could only sit in silence.

‘Then why did you say you would marry him?’ she hissed. ‘Did you just want to ruin any chance Donada had of finding a husband?’

‘You know I was thinking of her.’ I whimpered back. ‘I could not see her wed that monster.’

‘Your problem is you never think, Olith. You never see how your actions affect everyone else.’

The darkness inside our chamber was made worse by the shutters, locked tight to keep out the damp. The space was so small it felt as though I was at the bottom of a cauldron.

‘You’ve heard the stories; over the years we’ve seen wives and daughters raped and our crops burned by Danes just like the Jarl’s. If father was any kind of man, he would have sent them away and kept us safe. That should be more important than securing peace, instead, it will fall to me.’

‘You are nothing more than a pretty thing to hang on his arm and pleasure him. To think you are anything else, you are only fooling yourself.’

‘Fooling myself?’

‘Do you really think this game of dressing up like a boy and playing in the woods is going to save you?’ she said, waving the shredded piece of fabric. ‘You are more half-witted than I thought.’

‘You knew?’ I blurted out. I had been so careful. Somehow, I just thought that no one had seen me, that none had recognised me. How had I been so naive?

‘We all knew. At first, we thought it was because you enjoyed the excitement of being with the falconer, but as time went on and you started selling your quarry, it became somewhat more of an embarrassment. Mother demanded that no one spoke of it.’

Always my mother. I never made peace with it; her treachery hung over my life even after she died.

‘Do not look so shocked, you were not so good at hiding it. Just like I can see now that you do not want to marry the Jarl but Olith, ye canna hide in the woods all your life pretending. Look around you, it is bigger than you and I. Father made peace with the Danes in the winter, which needs to be rewarded with a bride which means it has to be either you or Donada. This was your choice and now you are going to have to grow up and see it through.’

She said it with such scorn. I understood. Too well.

‘Mother demanded no one spoke of it out of embarrassment,’ I said, moved to anger.

‘While father paraded you around would-be suitors and touted his peace treaties our mother watched us starve. Day after day I waited for her to come out of her darkness, to see us standing before her wasting away and to save us, but she never did.’

I kept thinking if we could just hang on. Just get through another week, father would be home and he would know what to do. Bethóc had heard the stories, but she could not understand it or did not want to.

‘She was a good mother; you shouldn’t speak of her in such a way.’

‘She was a good mother to you, mebbe. You came along at just the right, time when the priest had helped her find the light of Christ and she’d finally remember that there was a world outside of her bedchamber. That she had children.’

‘She was unwell.’

‘Unwell? It was not an illness.’

‘May you never feel the pain of losing someone you love, Olith? You cannot live in the past any longer, you said you would marry the Jarl and now you must grow up and take responsibility for that decision,’ she said. ‘You are the daughter of King Malcolm; everyone is looking to you to hold peace at the borders.’

‘Father has you, why does he need the rest of us?’

‘You always have to make everything about you.’ she hissed. ‘It is my wedding tomorrow and yet here I am dealing with a pig-headed child. This is all your own doing.’

‘A child, am I?’ I snatched my tattered jerkin from her. ‘Let’s see who’s a child.’

I stormed from our chamber into the darkness with her tittering after me like some sparrow at the sight of a cat.