So they thought, and I let them think it. And this I remember, that it was the first I heard the murmurs, among his thanes who thought I listened not, that Gunter was minded to give me to Waldemar Selig at the Allthing, the great meeting of the tribes, and thus win the favor of the Blessed.
Once again, then, I would be a gift fit for a prince. Well, and it was no consolation. I wondered at a man that even Gunter Arnlaugson spoke of in tones of awe, and I feared. I thought of Joscelin, somewhere, shivering in the cold, and prayed he kept the wit to stay alive, for I feared I wouldn’t survive this alone. I thought of Alcuin and Delaunay…Delaunay most of all, his beautiful, noble face, the intelligent eyes forever dimmed, and I wept for him, alone by the fire, for the first time. Great, tearing sobs racked me, and the raucous Skaldi grew strangely silent.
Their eyes, curious and sympathetic, watched me with strangers' gazes. I gulped for air, and rubbed the tears from my eyes. "You do not know me," I said to them in D’Angeline, looking defiantly at their uncomprehending faces. "You do not know what I am. if you mistake the yielding in me for weakness, you are fools for it."
Still they stared, and there was no cruelty in it, only curiosity and incomprehension. I had a longing then, so acute I felt it in the marrow of my bones, to be home, to have my feet on D’Angeline soil, where Elua trod with his Companions. "There," I said in Skaldic, reaching out to point to a crude lyre in a warrior’s hand. I didn’t know the word for it. "Your instrument. May I borrow it?"
He gave it over wordlessly, though his closest companions laughed and shouted. I bowed my head and tuned it, as my old music master had taught me, running in my head the lines of a poetic translation. I had a gift for it, Delaunay’s studies had taught me that much. When I had done, I lifted my head and looked around me. "By right of your laws, I am bond-slave to Gunter Arnlaugson," I said softly. "But by the laws of my own country, I have been betrayed and sold against my will. I am D’Angeline, and born to the soil on which Elua shed his blood. This is the song we sing when we are far from home."
I sang then The Exile’s Lament of Thelesis de Mornay, the King’s Poet. It was not written for the Skaldic tongue, which is harsh to the ear, and I had not worked properly on the translation, but the Skaldi of Gunter’s steading understood it, I think. I have said it, and it is true, that I have no great skill at song; but I am D’Angeline. I would pit the lowliest D’Angeline shepherd against the mightiest singer among the Skaldi, and wager on the shepherd each time. We are all of us, no matter how faint the thread of blood, the scions of Elua and his Companions. We are what we are.
So I sang, and put in the words as I sang them my farewell to Alcuin and Delaunay, and my promise to Joscelin Verreuil that I had not forgotten what I was, and my love for all those who yet lived, for Hyacinthe and Thelesis de Mornay and Master Tielhard, Gaspar de Trevalion, Quintilius Rousse, and Cecilie Laveau-Perrin, for the Night Court in all its faded glory, and for all that came to mind when I conjured the word, "home."
When I was done, there was silence, and then a roar of approval. Hardened warriors shook tears from their eyes, clapping and shouting for me to sing again. It was not the response I had expected; I had not reckoned, then, on the deep streak of sentimentality that runs in the Skaldi nature. They love to weep, as much as they love to fight and wager. Gunter was shouting over the din, flushed with triumph, prouder than ever of his conquest.
I shook my head and passed the lyre; I had no other tunes to hand that I could work into Skaldic, and I was wise enough to rest on these laurels. Whatever cost I had paid that night, I had gained some small advantage. Though for that, too, there would be a price. I heard it again, in the murmurs when Gunter proceeded with me from the hall, his face beaming, his hand in the small of my back as he steered me back to his room.
He was a young man, Gunter Arnlaugson, and tireless after their fashion. There was no shame among the Skaldi, and I could feel his eagerness when he brushed up behind me, his considerable phallus erect and straining at the front of his trews. It would be some time before he wearied of this. To my dismay, I felt the answering moisture begin between my own legs. I would have wept again, but my eyes, at least, were dry. I concentrated instead on the murmurs. "He would be a fool not to give her up," I heard. "Even Waldemar Selig has nothing like that."
A gift fit for princes, I went obediently toward my own personal hell.
Chapter Forty-Two
Embers smoldered in the hearth in Gunter’s bedroom. He lay beside me, deep in slumber, rumbling sounds emanating from his broad chest. This too was a strangeness to me; never, in all my days as a Servant of Naamah, had I shared sleep with a patron. He had fallen soundly asleep with one arm flung over me, but hadn’t woken when I’d cautiously moved it. As well to know it; there was no lock on the bedroom door, likely I could slip out without waking him.
Gunter seemed to have no fear of my trying to escape. Rightly so, since I feared the snow and the journey as much as capture…but mayhap there was some merit in his casual trust. As I lay awake, considering the possibilities, I saw it.
It was not, I feared, an option I liked; I liked it not at all, in truth, and the prospect of success was as terrifying in its own way as failure.
Still, it had to be tried.
Unfortunately, this was easier said than done. In the morning, I attended Gunter at his breakfast, serving him with the unobtrusive grace that was a hallmark of Cereus House. It pleased him well enough, and I had hopes that he was in a generous mood, but when I asked permission to see Joscelin, he slewed his gaze round at me with that canny look.
"Nay, he’s a hellion, that one. Let him stew in the kennels a while longer. I’ll not show him softness till he learns to heel to the hand as feeds him," he said, laughing. "Leastwise he’s making some new friends a D’Angeline lordling doesn’t often get to meet, eh?"
Poor Joscelin, I thought, and let the matter go for that day. Gunter patted me on the head and went out from the great hall to do whatever it was he did while away-betimes hunting, I later learned, and betimes making the rounds of the farms on his steading, seeing that all was well with his carls.
So I was left to idle once more, only now there was some resentment in the glances of the women, whose labors seemed more onerous than mine. I would have traded places with any one of them, but they had no way to know it, and no reason to understand it. Hedwig resisted him, but Gunter was accounted a handsome man, I learned, and no small prize for the woman who would get him to plight his troth with her.
Never skilled at doing nothing, I asked for pen and paper, that I might work out more translations of D’Angeline songs for my meager repertoire. They stared at me uncomprehending-the Skaldi have no proper written language, but for a magical system of runic sigils they call futhark. Odhinn the All-Father gave them to his children, they say, and there is virtue in them. I do not laugh at this, for it was Shemhazai who taught the D’Angelines to write. It is my thought that he made a better job of it, but then, I am biased. At any rate, there was neither pen nor paper to be had in the steading, so I made due with a clean-swept table and a burnt twig.
Happily, the Skaldi women were intrigued by my charcoal scratchings, and their hostility eased as I explained what it was I did. They taught me songs, then, that I had never heard: Skaldic songs, but not of war…songs of life, of the harvest, of courtship, of love, of childbearing and loss. Some I still remember, but I wish I’d had paper to write them down. What the Skaldi lacked in melody and tone, they made up for in surprisingly beautiful imagery, and I do not think any scholar has catalogued these homely poems of house and hearth.