into the likeness of a fantastical sea creature. Never had he seen such a thing. George grasped the handles, brought the cup to his lips, and drank. What else? Honeyed mead. Another cheer went up. He screwed his face up as the sweet liquor hit his senses. Nay, there was no hope of a decent ale for fifty leagues.
Three days’ sail.
He passed the cup to Rika and she drained it.
“There,” she said to Lawmaker. “It’s done. All rituals complete.”
“All but one,” Hannes said, and rose from his seat on the opposite side of the table. “Grant,” he said,
“your hammer.”
“Nay.” Rika visibly stiffened beside him. “I won’t have it.”
“It’s custom,” Hannes said, and the crowd cheered him on.
George wondered what, exactly, this custom signified, to cause her such distress. He rose at their beckoning, slipped the hammer from his belt and handed it to the skald.
“It’s ridiculous,” Rika hissed, and turned to Lawmaker as if he would put a stop to Hannes’s antics.
George had no idea what was about to happen, but ’twas clear Lawmaker had no intention of stopping it.
Hannes moved behind Rika, whose fists were balled on the table. So profound was her anger, it radiated from her like an icy heat.
“Get it over with, poet,” she said to the skald.
Hannes placed the hammer in her lap, and every man, woman and child in the tightly packed room let out a howl.
Lawmaker smiled.
“What does it mean?” George leaned behind the fuming Rika to ask him.
“Hannes invokes Frigga, who is also the goddess of childbearing.”
George could not stop his eyes from widening.
“The gesture is meant to bless the bride’s…er, womb.” Lawmaker arched a brow at him.
“I see,” George said, and decided he’d best have another cup of that insufferable mead, after all.
Hours of feasting and drinking ensued, during which Hannes recited a host of verses—many of them love poems, to Rika’s enormous displeasure.
George relaxed for the first time since he’d arrived on Fair Isle, and decided, after all, that this marriage was no great burden. ’Twas harmless, really. A pagan rite, nothing more. Had he agreed to it immediately, he might have been home by now.
His obligations to king and clan, and to the families of his men who’d perished at sea, weighed heavy on his mind. Surely they’d sail on the morrow. His bride was as anxious to secure her dowry as he was to return home.
As for tonight…he’d make the best of it.
Rika sat not inches from him, but had barely glanced in his direction all evening. He leaned over and whispered in her ear, “This was no my idea, ye know.”
His closeness startled her, and she drew back. “I know. It will all be over soon.” Her expression was cool, but her eyes were troubled.
“No soon enough,” he said, and wondered why this much celebrating was really necessary.
She whispered something in Lawmaker’s ear, and the elder rose. “It’s time!” he shouted over the din. “The night is on us.”
“Time for what?” George asked to no one in particular.
Rika’s grim, pale expression gave him his answer.
“Oh, the—”
“Ja,” Rika said, cutting him off. “We will retire now to our…” She drew a breath, and if George didn’t know her for the icy thing she was, he’d think it was for courage. “To the cottage,” she finished weakly.
Without preamble, he and Rika were whisked from the bench and carried outside on the shoulders of a small throng of drunken islanders.
’Twas snowing. Billowy white flakes blustered down on him, clinging to his hair and garments. He sucked in a breath and realized, too late, that he’d had far too much mead. His head began to spin.
Moments later, the door to a small cottage at the other end of the courtyard was kicked open, and Rika was dropped unceremoniously onto the bed within. George was set on his feet in front of her.
Before he knew what was happening, three men relieved him of his weapons, his boots, and his tunic, leaving him next to naked in naught but his leggings. He snatched a fur from the bed and held it in front of him. He wasn’t usually this modest, but the strangeness of the situation unnerved him.
Two women hovered over Rika, and when they drew back he saw that she, too, had been stripped of her outer garments. Her undershift was thin, nearly transparent. In his mind’s eye he saw her as she’d been in the sauna last eve—her skin pearled with sweat, her hair damp and clinging to the curves of her body.
He drew a sobering breath.
One of the women, an elder, said, “Remember what I told you, girl.”
Rika did not respond, nor did she move a muscle. Hannes and Lawmaker and the few others packed into the tiny cottage fell silent. Finally she tipped her chin at George and said, “Do it then. Get it over with.”
He looked at her, uncertain of her meaning.
She set her jaw and eased back onto the bed. “I’m ready, Scotsman. Finish it.”
“What?” he croaked. Truth dawned, and his mouth gaped. “Ye mean…” He glanced at the others in the room, and shook his head. “She canna mean what I think she means?”
“Ah, what’s that?” Lawmaker said, his face as innocent as a babe’s.
Oh, nay. Surely they didn’t expect…
“It must be witnessed,” Hannes said. “It’s the law.”
George stood speechless, clutching the fur.
“Go on then,” the burly islander said, and slapped him on the back for what had to be the hundredth time that night.
“With all of ye here? Ye’re daft.” In truth, since the third or fourth flagon of mead he’d been thinking he wouldn’t mind it so very much. And why not? Any port in a storm, so the Inverness sailors were fond of saying.
But this, this was unthinkable.
Rika sat up in the bed. “You must, or it won’t be legal. Am I right?” She looked to Lawmaker for confirmation. “Unless of course, we don’t have to do it at all?” Her face lit with hope.
“We’ve been all through this,” Hannes said. “Have we not?”
“Ja, we have,” Lawmaker said. “But it need not be witnessed. That’s an ancient custom we rarely practice. I, myself, shall attest to the legality of the marriage when the time comes. Now, let us away.”
“But—” Rika flew from the bed as Lawmaker herded the onlookers from the room. “Nay, you must stay!” Her eyes widened in what George could swear was fear. “Sitryg, Lawmaker, do not leave me here alone with him.”
Lawmaker paused in the doorway and cast her a hard look. “He’s your husband now. You must trust him, as he has trusted you in agreeing to this bargain.”
She started toward the door, and on impulse George reached out and grabbed her braceleted wrist. Her whole body went rigid at his touch.
“Remember, too, what I have told you,” Lawmaker said to her. “Not all men are the same.”
George looked into the blanched face of his bride and, as Lawmaker closed the door on them, wondered what the devil the old man meant.
Chapter