‘My father acknowledged my brother and me from the beginning. We were never slaves.’
She nodded and understanding dawned across her face. ‘Ah, so then your mother was a true concubine and not a slave.’
‘My parents had a complicated relationship.’ Truer words had never been spoken.
‘Will you tell me of it?’
He never spoke of his mother to anyone except for his twin and even then the conversations were brief and rare. She had died when they were young and ever since he had felt that talking about her might somehow take her further away from him. As if speaking of his memories would release them into the air so that they might evaporate and be gone for ever. As a result, he held them close, unwilling to part with the few he had.
‘Why?’
She shrugged and he was struck by how vulnerable she seemed now. Without her guard, with Rurik bound, with her slippers on the floor, she seemed less Queen and more woman. He quite liked the transformation.
‘You do not know this about me, because, as you are a prisoner, we have not had much opportunity to talk.’ Her eyes sparkled as her tone became teasing and he found himself dangerously close to being enchanted by her. ‘But I enjoy learning about other people. Wilfrid once had a warrior with dark skin who claimed to be from Córdoba. He would talk of great, domed buildings and fantastic battles. I like to imagine them.’
Rurik could not quite keep himself from staring at her. It crossed his mind that she might have figured out his ploy to get under her skin and was using it against him. If she had, she was being very effective. As wary as he was of her new-found enthusiasm, he decided it would be best to keep her talking. With that in mind, he resolved to tell her a bit of his parents, while keeping his own personal memories to himself.
‘I am told that when she was young, men came from all over Éireann to seek my mother’s hand. She was a princess—Saorla the beautiful.’ As a child he had thought her beautiful in the way every child thinks a loving mother beautiful. Only now that he was an adult could he think back on her and appreciate her true beauty. With dark, flowing hair, green eyes and a small frame, she had stood out among the women back home in Maerr. Even knowing that she belonged to Sigurd, many men had admired her. ‘She refused all offers of marriage until my father visited. It seems that even he was intrigued by her, despite having a wife at home already.’
Clearing his throat, he swallowed down the bitterness that accompanied those words. Most of this he had learned only when he and Alarr had gone to confront King Feann. He had not known Feann was his mother’s brother and that he had confronted Sigurd to avenge the injustice done to her. His father had not told her he was already married, all but stealing her away from her home in his bid to possess her.
His mother had deserved better than the life she had had with his father. ‘My father charmed her and when he left Éireann he took her with him.’
When he paused, she asked, ‘Saorla went willingly, then? It was not a kidnapping?’
A bitter smile turned his lips. ‘I suspect it was a seduction. She left with him willingly, but only because he lied to her and promised her marriage. She would not have accepted anything less. My brother and I were born less than a year after they met. My father’s wife, as you can imagine, did not take to my father having such a beautiful concubine. My mother was relegated to little more than a slave. She asked to go home many times, but he refused to part with us, holding my brother and me hostage.’
He had not meant to tell Annis that much. It was too close to his memories. He could see his mother shaking with anger after Sigurd had refused her request to allow her to go home yet again. Could remember climbing into bed with her to comfort her at night when she cried. An unwelcomed swell of guilt thickened his throat. She might have returned home to Éireann and had a good life had he and Danr not bound her to Maerr. Or perhaps Feann was right. Her pride held her there away from those who loved her.
Fascinated by the story, Annis asked, ‘Why would Sigurd keep her? Would not letting her go have been simpler for him?’
Clearing his throat again, he said, ‘I think he cared for her in his way.’
‘And what way was that?’
The way of a tyrant unwilling to part with something every other man wanted. ‘He was not an easy man. He was brash, arrogant, unwilling to give up things he wanted.’
She sniffed. ‘He sounds like a child with a trinket.’
Rurik laughed, surprised to find humour in the telling of the story. ‘He may have been. Perhaps it was possessing her that drove him to keep her rather than a tenderness for her.’
But that was not precisely true. Just as he remembered the anger and pain, a few of his earliest memories were the rare times Sigurd had visited their small home on long winter nights. He would open his arms to the boys and tell them stories for hours. Saorla would look on with a smile and, afterwards, long after Rurik and Danr were supposed to be asleep, he would hear them talking softly and laughing. That was long before their relationship had become more bitter than sweet.
‘Why are you here fighting so fiercely in your father’s memory? If
