Geirny’s eyes filled with tears; apparently she recognized the name. Svanhild wanted to apologize for this, for being here. The cheeses started to slip out of Geirny’s hands. Svanhild rushed forward and caught two before they fell into the mud.
“Come,” said Svanhild, as she was accustomed to speaking to Hilda’s littlest sister Ingifrid: firmly, but gently. “Let us take these to the kitchen.” She started back down toward the hall, and Geirny followed after her. Svanhild shoved the kitchen door open with her hip, holding it open for Geirny, and then took the remaining cheeses out of Geirny’s arms and set them down on the table.
She looked down at where her hands rested on the cloth-wrapped cheese. They were chapped red from her travels, and dirty too. She tucked them into her pockets and said, “Solvi has asked that I make myself ready to meet his father. Is there a basin for washing?”
Geirny set her jaw. “It’s not washing day,” she said, the tears threatening to spill over again. Svanhild wondered if Geirny wanted her looking slatternly to meet her new father-in-law, but the tears made her think Geirny was too upset to plot that.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I did not think—”
Geirny interrupted her by bursting out sobbing. She sat down on a stool and buried her head in her hands. Her wimple slid forward, exposing her hair, an ashy blond, braided tight against her scalp. Svanhild sat down next to her and patted her back until the sobs subsided.
“Are you . . . ill?” Svanhild asked, feeling foolish.
Geirny stopped sobbing and sat, shaking. “You don’t know what it’s like,” she said, the words hardly intelligible as she gulped down tears. “There are only a few old women thralls, and I have to prepare the feasts at a moment’s notice, and he hasn’t given me a son, he has only exposed my girl children in hopes that I will give him a son more quickly, and I—I am sorry that you are here against your will, but . . .” Geirny’s eyes were red as she turned them to Svanhild again.
Svanhild hugged her close. “Shh, I’ll help. It will get better, I promise.” Geirny’s words chilled her blood. Solvi would not leave her daughters to die as soon as they were born; she would have that promise from him before they wed.
She made Geirny look at her again. “I do need to wash myself and prepare to meet King Hunthiof,” she said. “Can you help me?”
Geirny told her where the bathhouse was and loaned Svanhild a comb. The bathhouse was next to a stream that led up into the hills. The room was cold, not surprisingly, and stocked with wood to start a fire. Perhaps Geirny’s management of the household was not as bad as Svanhild feared. She brought a coal in a small dish from the kitchen fire to start it, and within an hour, she had coaxed the fire into a good blaze.
Svanhild changed into a thin shift and warmed herself thoroughly before braving the icy stream waters. The cold water made her gasp. The stream ran swiftly here. She dug her numb feet more firmly into the rocks. Here was no place to give in to weeping. She had to meet King Hunthiof, who would probably pronounce them married on the spot. Svanhild should have attendants, be veiled, and be presented by her father to her groom, but all the legal formula required was that she share a cup of ale with her husband, and that a man recite the blessing of Frigga, the goddess of the hearth, over them. Hunthiof could do that quick as look at her.
As soon as she had gotten herself wet and scrubbed the mud off her feet, she pulled herself out of the water and bent over to wash her hair. She could take her time combing out the tangles in the warm bathhouse. She stood, swinging the sodden mass of her hair over her shoulder, and turned toward the shore. Not ten feet from her, under the eaves of one of the barns, stood Solvi, the same three warriors he had brought to the ting flanking him.
The water had made Svanhild’s shift transparent and molded it to her body. Terribly aware of her nipples tightening in the cold air, she tried to cover herself. Solvi’s warriors turned away, two quickly and one more slowly, but Solvi continued watching, not grinning now, just looking at Svanhild’s body with a concentration that made her hot with anger.
“Did no one tell you that I come here to bathe after a voyage?” he asked.
Svanhild shook her head. She had been told to clean herself up—did Solvi not remember that? He cleared his throat. “Come back later,” he said to his men. He held out his hand to Svanhild. She refused to take it, for to stretch out her hand would expose her breasts under their sheer covering, and she could not stand Solvi looking at her like that. He shrugged.
“Give me your cloak,” said Svanhild.
“No, my lady.” Some humor had crept back into his voice. “I would see you. We shall talk in the bathhouse.”
She would have preferred to follow him, but he gestured for her to go ahead, and so she had to walk before him, her shift clinging to her backside, feeling his eyes on her where she could not defend against them. As soon as they entered the bathhouse again, Svanhild’s shift began to steam. Solvi put off his cloak.
Svanhild pulled her dirty dress over her body to shield herself from Solvi’s gaze, which heated her more. Solvi looked at her for a long moment and then dropped his eyes. He took a deep breath and set his lips in a thin line. He was built on a smaller scale than most men, only an inch or two taller than her. Could his burns have caused that? He was handsome, too handsome by half, with a lean, symmetrical face and bright blue-green eyes. He kept his beard cropped so close to his chin that it was little more than a dusting of hair. Most likely out of vanity, Svanhild thought, the better to expose his elegant jaw and strong chin.
“I had thought to work harder at wooing you,” he said. “You said no, more than once.”
Svanhild went cold all over. “You said—you wanted me,” she said. Then, more angrily, “I thought you would take everything from the merchant Solmund if I did not—what else did you mean to do, if not that?”
Solvi shrugged. He looked amused. She could not have been at more of a disadvantage here, wet and by turns hot and cold, half dressed and bedraggled, while Solvi was fully dressed and grinning. “I would have taken a tax, to be sure. Perhaps required them to come along to Tafjord.”
“Where your father might torture them to death.”
“You’ve been listening to old stories,” said Solvi.
Svanhild sniffed and tried to sit up straighter, still holding her grubby dress to her chest. “That is what I heard.”
“Well, I’ve let my men have their amusements, but not here, and not from a merchant who could sail by another year and give me another tax. Ruining him or killing him would not be useful. You should know that rumors mean little. People are saying your brother killed a draugr.”
“Are they?” said Svanhild eagerly. “Perhaps he did.”
“Draugrs are a fable for children.”
Svanhild crossed her arms more firmly. She would believe the good that people said of Ragnvald.
“So you are only here to save your merchant friends from my terrible tortures,” said Solvi. “You do not mean to marry me? You will not keep your word?”