Erinsong (28 page)

Jorand’s boat rode low in
the water, the added weight
of Thorkill
and his band dragging it down. As she huddled miserably in the
prow, Brenna was doused
from time to time
with a fine spray. Since there were
men
enough to man the oars, she was no longer needed to tend the
steering.

No longer needed.
She resigned herself to it. Jorand
had wed her so he could leave Donegal and return
to
Dublin. His fine talk of love
notwithstanding, she’d
been a means to an
end. Now she was only so much
ballast
weighing down his craft.

“Dublin is ahead, on the
left,” Jorand called up to her.
Her gaze
jerked back toward him, surprised to hear
him speaking to her in her own tongue. The bewildering
sounds of Norse he’d been speaking with his comrades formed a
protective barrier between Brenna and
her
nominal husband. She resisted his efforts to breach
her defenses and turned away without a
response.

The village of Dublin
loomed before her, surrounded by a fortified earthen dike topped
with wattle-and-daub walls. She saw countless thatched hip roofs,
sloping steeply above the ramparts. She understood the need for
protection, but why, on God’s earth, would that many people want to
live
packed tightly together like so much
cord wood?

Jorand told her Dublin
meant “black pool” and she
could certainly
see how it had acquired the name. The coracle nosed into the deep
harbor created by the con
fluence of the
Poddle River and the Liffey. The water
was
the color of peat and the paddles of the oars all but disappeared
into the murk with each stroke.

Dozens of dragonships lined
the wharf, like winged
monsters at rest,
quiescent now, but capable of rous
ing and
spilling death and destruction over the whole
of the island. With their lithe necks and elegant
lines,
the ships were at once beautiful
and terrifying. Brenna
shuddered and
stepped lightly on to the waiting dock,
careful to tread softly, lest her Irish footsteps wake the
longships to wrath.

Thorkill and his crew
strode away, leaving Jorand
to tie up his
craft alone. One by one, the other North
men on the wharf recognized her husband and shouted
greetings to him, a few of them coming to clasp
fore
arms and pound him on the back.
Obviously, Jorand
was well thought of in
this den of thieves and rapists.
Other
than a couple of inquiring looks, Brenna was ignored by one and
all, for which she thanked the saints and angels alike.

“Come, Brenna,” Jorand said, taking her elbow
to guide her up the graveled path to the main part of town.

It was the first time he’d
touched her since she learned of Solveig’s existence, and though
she stiff
ened, she allowed it. His hand
might be hateful to her,
but his touch was
also the only familiar thing in this world
. She resisted the urge to cling to him for
comfort.

Last night, she’d lain
awake listening to the frightful
sounds of
Northmen in conversation, waiting to see if
Jorand would join her in the lean-to. He finally did,
but
was careful not to brush her with so
much as an arm
hair as he stretched out
beside her. If he’d reached for
her, she’d
have rejoiced to rebuff him, she told herself.

But another, darker part of
her heart damned her
for a liar. The way
her traitorous body still clamored
for
him, she knew her own senses would conspire
against her if he tried to take her with
tenderness.

Spineless wanton.

The knowledge filled her with
self-loathing.

As they crested the rise, her gaze swept over
the town. All the rectangular houses were laid out, cheek by jowl,
along straight narrow streets, which were covered with wooden
planks to keep the paths from turning into muddy ruts. Each home
had its own fenced yard and carefully tended garden, groaning with
fall produce.

They passed by a smith’s
shop, tanners’ sheds, and
workers of
amber, the glowing orange jewel prized by
Northmen and Irish alike. The marketplace bustled
with the same frenetic energy of one of Donegal’s
fairs, but with far more exotic wares for the offering.
Brenna
saw bolts of flowing fabric that
shimmered like water
and realized it could
only be the silk Jorand had told her of.

You’re soft as silk, you know.

She heard his remembered
words as clearly as if
they hovered in the
air above her head. Skin on skin,
water
rippling around them, his first heart-stopping penetration. Her
belly clenched, the desire in her memory still hot enough to stir a
fresh response. She glanced sideways at Jorand to see if the cloth
had triggered a similar remembrance. He stared straight ahead, his
face like stone.

Brenna shivered. No, there was no tenderness
in the man now. She forced her attention back to the merchants’
stalls.

There were heavy soapstone
kettles, fine lace, ornately carved caribou horns—some of them as
long as she was tall—and countless kegs of ale. Strange spices
pricked at her nostrils, along with the yeasty
smell of brewing, and the less welcome stench of too
many privies and midden heaps in close
proximity.

“I’ve learned a few things
you might find interest
ing,” Jorand
said.

“Kolgrim is here?” she
asked with hope. Perhaps
their stay in
this Norse hell would be mercifully brief.

“No, he’s gone North for a
bit, but is due back
within the week.”
Jorand nodded in acknowledgment
of a
neighbor’s wave. “Thorkill is safekeeping the
Codex here in Dublin for Kolgrim while he’s
raiding.”

“Then perhaps we can
petition your... father-in-law
for its
rightful return.” She nearly choked on the words.

“I’ve already tried that.
Thorkill does not see it as
you do. The
book is Kolgrim’s so long as he can hold
it. But there is another way.”

Brenna cast a speculative
glance at Jorand. There was a hardness around his eyes that she’d
never seen
before.

“You see,” he went on,
“Kolgrim and I had a dis
agreement the
last time we were together. He’s the rea
son I ended up in the sea and on your beach. There’s
a score to settle between us, so I have
legitimate
cause to challenge him in
the
h
olmgang.”

There’s the small matter of
me sister’s lost maidenhead,
as
well.
The spiteful words rose unbidden to
the tip of her tongue, but she bit them back.

“I’m not forgetting what
Kolgrim did to Sinead ei
ther,” he said as
though he’d heard her secret thought.
“But
that’s not likely to be considered a valid reason
for a challenge. If I’m to regain the Codex for
you, the
law has to be
fulfilled.”

“For an unprincipled pack of thieves, ye seem
to set much store by your precious law.”

He stiffened at her insult,
but kept his voice even.
“Whatever you may
think, we are a people of law. If
some of
them seem strange, remember that the Irish
way of doing things is just as incomprehensible to
us.”

Brenna felt a tingle at the
nape of her neck and recog
nized the
pressure of eyes on her. She pulled her hood
up to shield her face from the prying gazes. All
around
her the singsong Norse voices
reminded her of a gag
gle of geese. A new
question popped into her mind.

“All I hear about me is Norse. How is it ye
alone speak me language?”

“It’s rather a long story.”
Jorand’s voice dropped low. “When Thorkill first led sixty
longboats up the
Liffey, he only wanted a
safe base for the winter, a place
to
launch raids without having to cross the sea to do it.
Once he got the lay of the land, his plans
changed.”

Jorand put an arm around
her shoulders and drew
her closer. Since
he lowered his voice, she leaned in to
hear him, skittering two steps to his one to match his
long stride.

“Thorkill needed
information. To get that, he had to be able to question the
inhabitants. I’ve always
been quick with
new tongues, so we captured one of
your
priests, a young man from a monastery in Kerry,
and made him teach Kolgrim and me to speak and understand
Gaelic.”

He slowed his pace and, seeing a thick log by
the side of the path, turned aside and sat down. Brenna perched
uneasily beside him.

“I hope Father Armaugh is
still alive,” Jorand said,
dragging a hand
over his face. “He was when I left.”

Was that compassion? A
small corner of Brenna’s
heart warmed to
him, but she quickly snuffed it out.
“And
once ye learned Gaelic, what was it ye were to
do for Thorkill?”

“When I first came here I
was to build him more ships. Most of the vessels you saw in the
harbor are
my work.” The ghost of a smile
played about his lips,
a remnant of his
satisfaction with a job well done.
“After
I married Solveig, I became Thorkill’s eyes and
ears,” he admitted. “Kolgrim and I would scout out likely
places for raids, looking for deep harbors and undefended shores.
We’d capture and question people about defense plans, about the
local rulers, how
many men they could
raise in battle and the like.”

Brenna trembled beside him.
The truths in her
world kept getting
worse. Her husband was not only
a
Northman, he was a filthy spy. Connor McNaught was right, after
all. Her father should have drowned
Jorand
in a bog when he had the chance.

“Thorkill may have
originally come to your island
to raid,
but now he means to reign,” Jorand said.

“Oh, no,” she said. For the
first time since she learned her husband had another wife, Brenna
was able to lay aside her own burden and be swept up in
concern for someone else. “But that means he’ll
make
war on me father, on the Ulaid, the
Connacht, all the
clans. Hundreds, maybe
thousands of people will die.”

“Brenna, I’m putting my
life in your hands by
telling you this,
and given the way you feel about me
right
now, it’s probably not very wise.”

She pressed her lips together in a hard line,
not trusting herself to speak.

“I mean to stop Thorkill if
I can,” Jorand said softly.
“I
owe you and Brian of Donegal that much.” He
stood
and extended a hand to her. “Come,
princess. It’s not
far now.”

She rose to her feet, ignored his offered
hand and started trudging up the planked street beside him. She
shouldn’t trust to hope that Jorand meant what he said. He surely
couldn’t mean to betray his own people to save hers. “What’s not
far?”

“My home.”

“Your wife’s home, ye mean.”

“
Ja,
Solveig is there,” he said, his voice sounding
unspeakably weary. “She’ll be expecting me. Her
fa
ther went to give her the news
straightaway. Seems
Kolgrim gave out that
I was dead, so seeing me with
out warning
would have been a shock to her.”

“Not as much as seeing me, I’ll warrant.”

He grimaced. “Well, I expect you’ve the right
of it.”

“So she knows of me as well.”

“Thorkill is a brave man,
but he’s no fool,” Jorand
said, with a
frown. “He’s left the telling of that tale to
me, I’ll wager. But a second wife is not uncommon.
Solveig will get over it.”

Brenna knew
she
never would. A
thousand ques
tions clamored to be asked.
What on earth was she to
do till Kolgrim
came back and they recovered the
Skellig
Michael Codex? Did Jorand mean for her to
stay in the same house as his other wife, the three of
them in an unholy trinity, all living under the
same roof? He was daft if he thought she’d hold still for
it. Then her aching heart wondered if Solveig was
pretty.
And did he love his Norse wife
still?

She couldn’t voice any of
her questions.
It was all she could do to
put one foot before the other
and stay
upright. When he pushed open the gate to a
neat yard surrounding a sturdy-looking longhouse, and
shepherded her through the opening, she pulled back from
him.