Brandewyne, Rebecca (34 page)

"Nay!"
she cried, distraught, to Wulfgar when told this terrible news. " 'Tis a
heathen practice, a sacrilege!— and I will not wed
with you if it
means our marriage must be consecrated by the blood of men!"

"
'Tis the way of the Northland, to which you now belong, lady!"

It
was their first serious quarrel and upset them both dreadfully. In the end,
they compromised, with the sacrifices still being planned, but in the form of
cattle, sheep, and pigs, which had to be killed and butchered anyway for the
fast-approaching winter.

At
last, the day of their wedding arrived. Long before dawn, Rhowenna was wakened
by her waiting women and Yelkei, and taken to the bathhouse, which was similar
to the one she had first used in Sliesthorp and an important part of life in
the Northland; for the Northland people were very clean, washing every morning.
Despite her new and warm fur cloak made from the hide of one of the great white
bears found far to the north, in the tundra, she shivered in the chilly
darkness, and her new sealskin boots crunched on the frost-rimed ground in the
stillness. It was Yelkei, looking even more witchlike than usual, who swung
open the bathhouse door on its creaking iron hinges, her bony, clawlike hand
seeming almost disembodied, spectral, as she wordlessly beckoned Rhowenna to
enter. Slowly, beset, of a sudden, by a tiny frisson of fright, Rhowenna
stepped inside. Because
it was close on winter and cold, the steam that filled the bathhouse was like
white clouds of mist; and although Yelkei and the waiting women had brought
whale-oil lamps, Rhowenna could scarcely see inside the shadowy, dimly lighted
interior. Like ghosts, the women moved to disrobe her; then, naked, she climbed
into the bathtub. Sitting in the warm water, with the steam rising all around
her, was like being sealed in a gossamer cocoon, she thought, quiet and eerie,
as though a blanket had smothered the earth. The only sound was the ripple and
dripping of the bath water as the women washed her hair and body so she would
be purified for her wedding rite; and into her mind, unbidden, came the thought
that the bathing ritual was not so very different from what her ancestors, the
Picti and the Tribes, must once have practiced. Rhowenna had never felt so
close to the old ways as she did now at this moment; and she wondered uneasily
if the Christ would be very angry with her for taking part in the pagan
ceremony that would shortly make her Wulfgar's wife.

Once
the bath had ended, the women wrapped her naked body in her cloak, then led her
back to the
hof,
to
the sleeping chamber, which was empty, Wulfgar having been taken away for his
own preparatory rites. In
the center of the room, she stood, while the women oiled and perfumed and
powdered her body, then dressed her in a beautiful, pleated gown of expensive
blue silk from the Eastlands, over which went an exquisite tunic of purple silk
banded at both bodice and hem by heavily bejeweled and embroidered widths of
gold riband, and fastened with ornate gold brooches above each breast. Her long
black hair the women left unbound, but plaited strands of it with fine, narrow
ribbons of gold into tiny braids. Upon her head they placed a gold circlet,
engraved and nielloed, that Wulfgar had had made for her. Her neck was hung
with a multitude of necklaces of gold and amber; armlets and bracelets of gold
and silver adorned her arms and wrists; she wore rare rings upon her fingers.

When
her toilette was completed, the women escorted Rhowenna from the long-house to
the celebrative, consecrated ox-cart that was to carry her to the
templum
in the Sacred
Grove. No common vehicle, the oxcart was embellished with detailed carvings of
runes, other magic symbols, and scenes of battle and from the tales of the
gods. It was festooned with pine and spruce boughs, branches of berries from
the sacred ash trees, acorns from the equally prized oak trees, and sprigs of
mistletoe. Wulfgar's great wolfskin
covered the top and hung down the
sides. Naked to the waist, despite the cold, the nine young male slaves who, if
not for Rhowenna's protests, would otherwise have been drowned in a secret pool
after serving her, surrounded the ox-cart, silent, heads bowed, not daring to
look upon her face; for as the bride of their
jarl,
she was this day the
embodiment of the goddesses Freyja, sister to Frey; the unchaste Gefjon, to
whom virgins prayed; and Nerthus, the Earth Mother. Only the priest, who stood
at the heads of the yoked oxen, was permitted to glance at her with impunity as
he led the vehicle to the Sacred Grove. Reverently, he handed her onto the seat
of the ox-cart. Then, with a small lurch, the oxen lumbered forward at his
command, the cart wheels rumbling, and the procession began its solemn
progression across the now-fallow fields and the wild heaths of Wulfgar's
markland.

The
sun had just begun to peek over the horizon, turning the dark sky a silver that
gleamed with a cold, frosted flame, like a blade, and the earth into a crystal,
fairy place when the pale light shone upon the sparkling rime that encrusted
the trees and the land. Rhowenna's breath caught in her throat at the sight.
Wulfgar had told her once, on board the
Dragon's Fire,
that the
Northland was at
its most beautiful in summer, but she thought she had never seen it look more
splendorous than it did now, white and glittering, the dark, soughing forests
sweeping up the craggy sides of the great, towering mountains whose snowy
pinnacles seemed to pierce the very heavens. Truly, it was a place fit for the
old gods, she thought— primordial, almost unearthly in its magnificence, this
place of atavistic mountains and ancient forests, of burning sun and twilight
darkness.

Then,
at last, the Sacred Grove lay before them, so chosen because of the massive old
evergreen tree that rose at its heart, its trunk so huge that even a
Víkingr
could not span
it with his arms, its branches so long and feathery that they were like an
immense canopy sheltering the Sacred Grove. Beneath the tree stood the
templum,
a simple structure
consisting of little more than four elaborately carved pillars topped by a
thatched roof; only
templums
at
the Sacred Groves of
hofs
such
as Ragnar's had walls. There, Wulfgar was waiting for her. Like the male
slaves, he, too, was naked to the waist; but if he felt the cold, he gave no
sign of it, for it was the lot of a warrior to endure, as he demonstrated by
baring his torso to the frigid air. A gold circlet that matched her own was
around his head; at his throat, he wore a gold torque
formed by two
dragon heads that met at his collarbones; armlets that were gold serpents
coiled around his arms. As she descended from the ox-cart to walk slowly toward
him, Rhowenna thought he had never looked more princely, more godlike.

Silently,
they stood before the priest as he intoned the requisite prayers to Frey and
the blessings upon them, then made the animal sacrifice and other offerings to
the tall wooden statue of the god— with its customary exaggerated phallus—
which had been erected beneath the
templum.
A little of the
blood that had poured from the sheep's cut throat, the priest caught in a
silver-chased cup, which he then filled with wine; and this, Wulfgar and
Rhowenna shared to symbolize their joining, drinking deep. After that, each
fastened around the other's left wrist a wide gold wedding bracelet especially
engraved with the wolf and the swan that Wulfgar had chosen as his seal. Then
he kissed her, and the ceremony was ended. She was his wife.

She
had not thought to feel truly married after the pagan rite; yet, strangely
enough, she did. In rituals such as this had her own ancestors wed, and their
blood flowed strongly in her veins, no matter the gold Celtic crucifix she wore
around her neck, beneath her gown. The Christ's priests would
call her a
sinner, her marriage a blasphemy. Yet when she looked into Wulfgar's eyes and
saw his deep, abiding love for her shining there, she could not in her heart
believe that the Christ would withhold his blessing of their union. Only on the
ninth and last day of feasting, when the second messenger Wulfgar had
dispatched to Usk finally returned, did Rhowenna doubt this, did she seem to
hear Father Cadwyr's invidious voice whispering in her ear that God's curse was
upon her. For the scroll the messenger handed to Wulfgar was written not in
Latin, but in the language of Walas; and when Rhowenna read it, the words
struck her as hard as a devastating blow:

Usk
survived, with Gwydion as its king, and he would pay whatever ransom was
demanded for her safe return.

Flight into
Darkness

Rhowenna
would never, so long as she lived, forget the anguish on Wulfgar's face in that
moment when she read aloud Gwydion's letter. She was stricken by the missive's
contents, but even more so by what she saw in Wulfgar's eyes. He was her
husband; he loved her, and she loved him. Yet she knew that in that first
instant, her heart had involuntarily leaped into her eyes, with hope that she
might go home, to Gwydion; and she knew, also, that Wulfgar had seen it.

"Do
you want to leave me,
elsket?"
he
asked her later, in their sleeping chamber, after they had made love and she
lay snuggled in his embrace. "Here in the Northland, a woman is permitted
to divorce her husband if she wishes. Do you want to do that, to return to Usk?"

"Nay,
oh, nay, Wulfgar," she said quietly
but fiercely, wounded herself by the
pain she had caused him. " 'Twas only a moment's homesickness— that's all—
a longing, really, for the time when I was young and innocent, and my parents—
my parents were still alive. Sometimes even now, I— I just can't believe that
they're— that they're really dead."

"I
know,
kjœreste."
His
voice was kind. "I know that 'tis hard. I know that your life and your
world have been changed forever because of me, because I took you from
Usk."

"Aye,
but I would not go back, not if it meant never knowing you, never loving you,
Wulfgar...."

They
made love again then, with a passion as unbridled as a storm, her hair a tangle
of heather, ensnaring him, drawing him down to her. Her breasts were mounds of
soft earth, molded by his palms. His breath was warm and inciting upon their
rosy buds. His tongue was as moist as the spindrift that spewed from the sea to
waft on the wings of the wind across the strands and heaths of the Northland,
as salty as the taste of him upon her own tongue when she pressed her lips to
his flesh. There was no part of her that he did not know, nor any part of him
that was untouched by her. Clinging tightly to each other, they came together
as, hard and swift, Wulfgar claimed her and, soft and
deep, Rhowenna
took him into her, sailing with him down a wild, tempestuous wind to a place
that was neither Heaven nor Asgard, but a mystical isle of misted mountains and
sylvan glades through which rushed and tumbled the quicksilver river of life
before it swept finally, quietly, into a boundless, tranquil sea.

* * * * *

The
gods are capricious.

And
what they bestow today, they may as easily take away tomorrow,
Ivar the
Boneless had said, as Wulfgar was to remember for many a long day after he
dispatched Gwydion's message to Ragnar Lodbrók, in the hope that obtaining the
ransom for the woman he thought was Rhowenna, Ragnar would send Morgen back to
Usk, never knowing how he had been deceived. Morgen would be glad to return to
her homeland; she would explain to Gwydion all that had happened, and if brazen
Flóki truly wanted her, he could go after her. It would, Wulfgar thought, tie
all the loose ends up quite nicely and settle everything to everyone's
satisfaction.

And
perhaps it would have, if not for the gods and Ivar the Boneless, who saw fit
to thrust a malicious hand into the affair, and for the recklessness of Flóki
the Raven.

It
was Flóki whom Wulfgar entrusted with

the
delivery of the scroll; and truth to tell, when he first entered Ragnar's great
mead hall, Flóki had no notion of doing anything rash, having heard Wulfgar's
plan and agreed that it was for the best. But after Ragnar and his sons were
apprised of the letter's contents, Ivar— who had been awaiting his chance—
announced wickedly that while they could be certain the princess of Usk was
unharmed, they could
not
be
sure she was a virgin, and that perhaps they should verify that fact before
sending her back to Usk, lest its new king think they had cheated him. A huge
clamor of ribald laughter and lewd remarks erupted in the great mead hall at
that; for with winter coming on, there was little for the
thegns
to do save to
sit, play board games, and drink, and the
nabid
and the
bjórr
had flowed
freely all day. Ragnar had swilled more than his share, and like his son Ivar,
he was not loath to rape an unwilling wench. The only thing that had saved
Morgen thus far was that he believed her to be the princess of Usk and her
virginity of some use to him. Now that her ransom was to be paid, however,
there was no reason not to take her; for now by the time she could inform
Gwydion, king of Usk, of her fate, it would be too late. Ragnar would have her
blood money in his grasping hands.