The tension released. “I’m sorry. My brothers bring out the worst in me. Olaf in particular . . .” He shook his head and ran a hand through his windswept hair, and they started walking back toward the longhouse.
“I know. And Thorbjorg all but admitted to enacting her petty vengeances just now,” Gunnhild said.
Eirik perked up. “Can we prove it? Bring the matter to my father and the Lawspeaker?”
“No. It’s only my word against hers, and I have a feeling it won’t be enough for your father.”
“At least we won’t have to worry about her causing any mischief with him in residence,” Eirik said bitterly.
“Any overt mischief, that is.” Gunnhild sighed. “While we’re on the topic of people who wish to kill you, what of the boys he mentioned, your nephews? Gudrod and Tryggvi?”
Eirik shook his head. “Gudrod is Bjorn’s son. Olaf fosters him.”
“Was Gudrod Bjorn’s only son?”
“Yes. There was a daughter, too, a few winters older than Gudrod, but long dead as far as I know. We never met. Bjorn’s wife died giving birth to Gudrod and he never married again.”
“I see. Well, is there anyone else coming to our wedding who wants to kill you? And will you scold me for defending you against them, too?”
“Enough,” he said, his voice loud enough to scatter the seabirds that had been congregating nearby. He stopped walking and gestured wildly with his hands, more annoyed than angry. “You’re to fight only specific battles for me, and only at my express command.”
“Your command? Ha!” Gunnhild poked a finger at his chest. “What happened to ‘perhaps we can work together’？ I’m going to be your wife, not your servant. You didn’t hire me. You don’t command me. Am I understood?”
Eirik waved her hand away. “Be that as it may—”
“Am I understood?”
“Gunnhild,” barked Queen Gyda from the door of the longhouse. “Is that how you would speak to your husband, let alone your king?” She turned to someone in the shadows behind her. “You see? It’s just as I told you.”
King Harald appeared beside her, his expression like thunder, pale eyes fixed on Eirik, and with one jerk of his head he ordered his son inside and disappeared without waiting to see if Eirik would follow.
Eirik and Gunnhild stood completely still, but out of the corner of her eye, she saw him swallow and step forward to heed his father’s summons.
“I was going to tell him everything,” Eirik said to Queen Gyda.
“Now you don’t have to,” said his stepmother sweetly, stepping aside to let him pass. “You need only explain yourself.”
When the queen’s eyes turned to her, Gunnhild’s heart dropped into the pit of her stomach and she followed Eirik inside.
21
KING HARALD AT LEAST had the decency to berate his son in private, which was more than Gunnhild’s mother had ever done for her. She stood outside the door to his chamber and strained to listen above the noise that two more kings’ retinues had added to the hall.
She caught the words “bewitched” and “ensorcelled,” along with “Have you learned nothing?” and “How could you be so foolish?” and pressed her ear more firmly against the door. It seemed King Harald was pacing, for his voice faded in and out.
“A king should take as many wives and sire as many children as he pleases,” he said. “And she seeks to deny you this, and wishes to be seen as your peer? As the queen? That’s absurd. How could you have ever thought to agree to such madness? Marrying a witch. And for what? To protect against threats that don’t exist? She’s cast some sort of spell on you—”
Eirik cut in. “She hasn’t. I was the one who approached her about this, Father. My hird are sworn to protect me, and I must do the same for them. My brothers—”
“Have vowed to me that they are guilty of no wrongdoing.”
“They’re lying. You don’t believe what my men and I have witnessed with our own eyes? Ask Arinbjorn. He and Thorolf—”
“Do not speak to me of Skallagrim’s son,” said King Harald in disgust. “I’ve told you before that one day you’d regret your friendship with him. I should have never allowed it in the first place.”
“That you did is the reason I’m alive. He and Arinbjorn killed four of my other hirdsmen to save me. They were—it wasn’t natural. I watched them die, Father.”
“Men die,” King Harald said flippantly.
“Not like this.” Eirik’s voice was thick with emotion. “You won’t stop this. And I can’t prove anything to you without Gunnhild’s help. What else am I to do?”
“Put that woman aside and cease this nonsense immediately, or you’ll force me to find a new successor. You can’t be trusted to rule if your mind is under the sway of some paltry sorceress.”
“And you would know, wouldn’t you?” Eirik shot back.
The silence that followed was so fraught that it made the hairs on Gunnhild’s arms stand on end; she could feel the tension even on the other side of the door. Something told her that Eirik had never spoken to his father that way before.
“Get out of my sight, boy,” King Harald said at last, venom in every word. “We’ll speak on this again when you’ve come to your senses and apologized for your disrespect.”
The door swung open so abruptly that it very nearly smacked Gunnhild in the face, but she managed to step aside in time to avoid it. When Eirik halted in the doorway, pain and rage and frustration warred on his face.
She almost said something, almost reached for him, and then—
“See what happens, King,” said Queen Gyda to her husband, “when you let his leash slacken?”
Eirik’s countenance became a storm, and he fled as quickly as his dignity would allow.
Gunnhild did not know what came over her in the moments that followed. As she’d listened to the old king carrying on, suddenly she’d been a child again, shouted down by her own mother for some perceived slight.
She realized then how lucky she’d been to escape Solveig so young. She knew that Eirik had been raised with Arinbjorn, and Arinbjorn himself seemed to have turned out well enough—but it was clear that the expectation to obey the king, to please the king, to follow his orders, to respect him no matter what, had been beaten into Eirik, most likely from birth. His loyalty to, his respect for, and his fear of King Harald were things that had not been earned. They had been expected.
And what had his father given him in return, save for the promise of a power that Eirik had never asked for, and that so far had caused only misfortune for those around him?
She remembered her words to Solveig—I would rather have been loved—and realized it was entirely possible that Eirik felt the same.
Gunnhild stepped into the doorway and peered into the chamber, and its lavish trappings faded into nothing as she regarded the king and queen. They’d been talking to each other, saying things she couldn’t hear for the blood roaring in her ears, and when they noticed her, they startled. The dogs sleeping at King Harald’s feet looked up impassively, and the king opened his mouth to reprimand her for her interruption, but Gunnhild spoke first.