She moved one hand down to the drawstring on his pants while she twined the other hand in his hair. She pulled a little harder than she intended when she tilted his head back, and confusion and irritation and desire warred on his face—he was clearly used to being the one in control in these situations—but when she moved against him, she felt him react; desire had clearly won.
Gunnhild grinned. Arinbjorn had been right about one thing—it was satisfying to see Eirik humbled. Enormously satisfying.
She whispered, “Perhaps you should get used to looking up at me.”
And he whispered back, “I can’t say I mind the view.”
28
THE ESTATE WENT SILENT after Winternights, but the armory was quietest; only half the hird had stayed for the winter, Svein and Halldor among them. Runfrid, having gone to Fjordane with Arinbjorn, had given Oddny permission to use the loft as a dedicated space for her healing work.
Gunnhild was more cheerful than Oddny expected her to be after the last failed ritual, and Oddny soon had a sneaking suspicion as to why. Now that there were so few people about—only the usual residents, Eirik’s reduced hird, and his father’s hird remained—everyone dined together in the longhouse, so she got a chance to witness Eirik and Gunnhild’s interactions. The couple still argued incessantly about trivial things, but seeing the sudden lack of vitriol between them was downright startling to Oddny.
“Good to see them finally getting along, isn’t it, dear?” she heard Thora say to King Harald one day after supper, during which the young king and queen had not had a single squabble.
“Yes, but would that we couldn’t hear them getting along all night while we’re trying to sleep,” Queen Gyda muttered, earning a sideways look from her husband and a giggle from Thora.
That night, as always, little Hakon sat in his mother’s lap, eating a boiled egg and talking excitedly about his sword fighting lessons from Eirik and the hird. Thora smiled indulgently as she listened, stroking the child’s white hair. Thora might not have been of humble birth, but unlike many people born into similar wealth, she was of kind spirit, and like Ulla, she seemed to carry sunshine with her wherever she went.
Saeunn started excusing Oddny from weaving more and more often, for Oddny had become busy. As word got around that she’d brewed a tea to relieve Saeunn’s knee pain, an increasing number of people began to enlist her services.
Oddny soon realized that she wouldn’t have enough supplies to last the winter, even after Hrafnhild had given her unlimited access to the estate’s stores in exchange for coming up with a potion to ease the cook’s chronically irritable bowels. And there were some supplies that couldn’t be found in the garden at all, so before Ulla left to visit her family, Oddny took her up on her offer to go foraging, and the two of them donned snowshoes and spent a short, cold afternoon gathering plants in the woods.
About two moons after Winternights came Yule, and after the Yule moons passed and the festivities were over with, Ulla went home for her visit. The workshop seemed colder in her absence, so Oddny took to spending more time in Runfrid’s loft even when she wasn’t grinding herbs or mixing teas. When Ulla returned a few weeks later, Oddny spent as much time at the workshop as she could between making and dispensing her remedies, and found that she’d missed the soothing, repetitive motions of weaving almost as much as she’d missed her friend.
It was hard not to feel the presence of the goddesses with her as she worked, their statues perched fierce and watchful on the lintel. When Oddny had first arrived, she’d left offerings for Eir in the workshop and continued to carry her mother’s statue in her bag, but now that she had access to the loft, she took it out and placed it where Runfrid had kept the likeness of Skadi she’d taken with her to Fjordane. Oddny felt most connected with her patron when doing healing work, so the loft seemed a better place for it. Sometimes she thought she could feel Eir working beside her, guiding her hand, whispering in her ear.
The short days passed quickly, as did the long nights. Though Oddny spent most of her time in the loft, she was reluctant to sleep there; Eirik’s hird had bedded down in the armory so that King Harald’s retinue could have the main hall, and being alone with so many strange men made Oddny ill at ease. Even knowing that Halldor and Svein would be among those asleep below her, she knew she’d be listening from the loft, hand on her knife, for any unexpected creak of the ladder.
But one night she was so exhausted that she fell asleep on Runfrid’s bedroll, shivering under her thin shawl, and awoke to find Halldor shaking her shoulder, the pale morning light softening his face. For a moment she thought she was dreaming, until he leaned down to kiss her and said with a crooked smile, “You know, you could have at least invited me up if you were intending to spend the night. We could’ve kept each other warm.”
Her heart skipped a beat. They’d had a few stolen kisses here and there, some heavier than others, but she still sometimes flinched at being touched for too long, no matter how much she wanted to be. Early on, she’d explained this to him just as she’d explained it to Arinbjorn at Winternights.
Halldor had pondered her words for a long time, and for a moment Oddny had felt a stab of terror that he’d lose interest in her. By the looks she’d seen some of the serving girls give him, she didn’t think it’d be a difficult task to find another woman to take to bed.
Then at length he’d said, “Oddny, sex doesn’t have to be the culmination of our affections.”
“But I want it,” she’d protested. “I do. I only need time.”
One night after midwinter, Halldor broke his rule about drinking too much outside of Yule when he, Oddny, Ulla, and Svein found themselves embroiled in a particularly competitive dice game. After, Oddny and Halldor stumbled hand in hand to the loft, and once they made it up the ladder, he kissed her until she couldn’t remember her name. Then his hand started wandering up her dress and he paused, remembering himself, and whispered, “Is this all right?”
Oddny, having had just enough ale to feel good while maintaining a clear head, smiled and whispered back, “Yes.”
That was the way things continued between them: “Is this all right?” and “Can I touch you there?” both learning to navigate the other’s body, what felt good and what didn’t. As the winter wore on, Oddny took to spending most of her nights in the loft with him and spent the rest in the workshop with the women, unwilling to completely give herself over to this budding romance, afraid that if she did, there would be nothing left of her afterward.
If this was truly love, it was sweeter than she could have ever imagined—and more dangerous by far.
* * *
—
GUNNHILD NO LONGER FREQUENTED the workshop. Instead, she snowshoed to the grove in the afternoons, and in the mornings she sat down in the main hall and took lessons with the Lawspeaker—Saeunn’s elderly father, a cheerful mustachioed man named Hrolf who always wore a bright yellow nalbound hat. When Oddny asked one day at breakfast if she planned on memorizing the entire law code, as the Lawspeakers did, Gunnhild laughed.
“Twelve winters away from society hasn’t done me any favors,” she said. “When we make the royal progress or go to assemblies, cases will be brought before Eirik. It’d help if I knew the laws as well as everyone else does.”