“To know you,” she said. “To show you that you should not doubt me.”
“You want to weaken me.”
She pulled her hand away. She would start crying in earnest if he continued to hate her, when she had seen all of him. Kolla had been wrong, or she had done it wrong.
“There would be no better match for me than you,” she said, “if only you did not stand opposite my brother.” She blinked, and tears did flow over her cheeks. She wiped them away angrily. “You have given me—the sea, freedom, adventure—you let me sail with you. He shut me away. I do not want you to fight my brother, but I am yours.”
She bowed her head. He put out the light, and pushed her back. He touched her slowly, without saying anything, gentler this time than ever before, until she pulled him into her with her legs around his back.
He held her and kissed her neck afterward, pressing the length of his body against hers, sweat sticking them together.
“Next time, will you let me leave the light burning?”
“Wanton,” said Solvi. “That is for me to ask.”
“Yet I do ask it,” she said, turning to face him. He kissed her again and pulled her to him so she had to put a leg over his waist again.
“What if I cannot give you a son?” he asked, his voice low and muffled, for his face was buried in her hair.
“Then a daughter,” said Svanhild. “With both of our looks, she would be comely, would she not? If not over-tall.” She could only see a son, though. Her son would have Solvi’s handsome face. Her son would inherit Tafjord, and perhaps be the king that Maer had lacked since Hunthiof stopped doing his duty.
“Svanhild—” He sounded broken. She knew he feared his seed was no good for sons, or anything else.
“Do not speak of ill omens this night,” she said. “This is a night for good magic.”
Solvi was quiet for such a long time that she thought he had fallen asleep. Finally he kissed her again and said, “Yes, it is,” before wrapping his arms around her and throwing a naked leg over hers. It felt whole in the dark, skin against skin.
She fell asleep thinking of her son, how he would be a sea king like his father and a farmer like his uncle, the best of all that Maer and Sogn had to offer. She dreamed of him too, but instead of dreaming of a golden boy running over the hills of Tafjord, it seemed instead that she sought him on a treeless plain, wreathed in mist. In the distance a mountain belched fire, and under her feet lay ice. She woke troubled, and Solvi’s drowsy touch could not soothe her back to sleep.
*
“You are dangerous to me, Svanhild.” Solvi traced the outline of her breast through the shift she had pulled on in the middle of the night. She thought she should cover up, but part of her enjoyed the brazenness of this, the luxury of it, lying long abed in the morning. Kolla had been right after all, about how to bring Solvi to her, but she had not said that the spell would work both ways. Svanhild wanted him to touch her again.
“Am I now?” she asked, leaning up on one elbow. Her hair cascaded over her face. She laughed and draped it over him as well, drawing it back so it slipped over his skin. He enjoyed that, she could tell by the way his eyes half closed.
“Yes,” he said. She ran her hand over her stomach, still flat. If she gave Solvi a son, he would deny her nothing. He would deny Ragnvald nothing.
“You are always thinking of something else,” she said. “I watch you, and I see that.”
“I watch you too,” he said. “And when I watch you, I can see nothing else.”
She rolled over onto her back again. “Then I am dangerous,” she said, not teasing this time. She was pleased, but also saddened—would he blame her for her attractions? “Shouldn’t you put me away, then?”
“I could leave you home, where you would be safer,” he said. “Would you stay at Tafjord and raise our children while I raid abroad?”
She could not tell from his tone of voice what he wanted. She had loved the past few weeks, even with Solvi’s early cruelty and indifference, more than she had loved any time before in her life. She did not mind the constant moving, sleeping every night on a different shore. She knew what Vigdis would say, that her hair and skin would become rough, that no man would love her anymore, but she could not bring herself to care about that, not when every day brought a new horizon, new adventures.
“Would you leave your father to die in his hall, leave Harald to his conquering, and sail off across the seas with me?” Svanhild asked. “Let my brother follow his kings and his fate without your interference?”
“Svanhild,” said Solvi, a note of pleading in his voice, “you know I cannot.”
“I would not stay in an unhappy hall and wait for an unhappy fate. Even if you commanded me.” She looked at him directly in the eyes, as she had not since their lovemaking, since he had given her pleasure that made her feel like an animal lying out in the sun, complete and unashamed. “If war comes to Tafjord, I will be no safer there.”
“And war is coming to Tafjord.” He looked at his fingers on her breast again, rather than her face. “Nowhere is safe now. I would rather have you by my side.”
Svanhild did not answer. She had done what she wanted to, if she could keep this, Solvi’s love for her, like a bird grasped gently in her hand. It was powerful, but fragile right now. She did not want to damage it, this newfound trust.
29
Ragnvald slept deeply and woke happy, clean and well rested, until he remembered what he had learned—that Svanhild was with Solvi, and all men knew it. The story had not made clear how she had gone from Hrolf’s farm to Solvi’s bed. It chilled him to try to guess what had come to Hrolf’s farm to make her flee. If Svanhild had not been safe there, was Hilda? She was his intended; it would be a double shame to him if something had happened to her.
He felt helpless thinking of it. This was Solvi’s revenge upon him for not dying, and he wondered if Svanhild might be pleased to be Solvi’s mistress or wife, at least in a small part. Ragnvald could not give her the excitement she craved.
While he ate dinner that night in a corner of the hall with Thorbrand and Thorbrand’s wife Erindis, Oddi came to him and told him that Hakon wanted to talk with him on the next day.
“He thinks you have been avoiding him,” said Oddi. The stewed meat in Ragnvald’s mouth tasted suddenly foul, though the kitchens of Harald’s hall produced nothing but rich, well-flavored dishes.
“Of course I have not,” he said, after he chewed and swallowed. “I will be glad to hear what he would say.” He said his good-night to Thorbrand and his wife, and followed Oddi outside.
It was a chilly night. A breeze shivered the surface of the fjord and set the ships that were not beached rocking against one another.
“You fear to tell my father that Harald wants you,” said Oddi. “It is a terrible problem you have. Too many kings wish you for their sworn man. Every man in that hall wishes he had the same worries.”