“She has no color in her skin or her hair, my lord. She is white like the snow . . . like a spirit. Even her eyes are pale.”
“Her eyes are like ice, Chieftain Banruud. I can’t stand to gaze at her long. She’s fearful ugly. The Eastmen must have laughed when they sent her along,” the farmer chimed in.
A memory niggled.
None of the women they’d acquired from Eastlandia had fought or resisted the trade. They’d been indentured since birth and had seemed resigned, even eager, to escape one master for another, especially if it meant they would be wives instead of slaves. None of the women they’d acquired in the trade had been mistreated, but they were all inspected. If they were female and of childbearing years or younger, they were accepted. Banruud remembered a slight woman, not much bigger than a child, cloaked completely from head to toe, huddled at the back of the group of women the Eastmen had herded to the docks. Balfor, Banruud’s overseer, had pulled the hood from her head, needing to ascertain the girl’s age and general health. Her white hair had caused an uproar.
“This one’s old. We asked for young women!” Balfor had protested.
“She’s not old. She’s just ugly.” Another woman spoke up wearily. “We call her Ghost. Look at her skin. Nary a wrinkle or a blemish. Look at her form. Straight and slim. Look at her breasts, if you must. She’s naught but seventeen. I’ve known her since the day she was born.” The woman who spoke up for the girl wasn’t much older than seventeen herself, but her tired eyes were rimmed and dark, her brown hair whipping about her face as if she were too spent to bind it back. Banruud had known then they were getting all the women no one else wanted. It didn’t bode well for the continuation of his people.
Balfor had promptly ripped the ghost girl’s gown from her neck to her navel, exposing her flesh to the cold air. She was so pale she looked like death, but her breasts were young and high and tipped in a pink so vivid, every man on the dock had turned to gape. She hadn’t protested, but fixed her odd, stone-colored eyes on the horizon, awaiting her fate.
His overseer had grunted his acceptance and turned away. The woman had pulled her gown closed and lifted her muddy cloak over her cloud-like hair, and that had been the end of it. Banruud had not looked at her again, and he’d had no idea what had become of her once they’d docked in Berne.
“Why were you allowed to purchase her? The women brought back from the Eastlands were to be taken as wives,” he pressed.
“Balfor gave her to me, Lord,” the farmer rushed to explain. “He owed me money. And, like I said, no one else wanted the ghost girl. The men were afraid of her. She’s so strange. They thought bedding her might turn their cocks to ice.”
“She’s a hard worker, though. Good with the sheep. We haven’t lost a one,” the farmer’s wife insisted, defensive.
Banruud cared nothing for hard work or sheep or frozen cocks. He was silent for a long moment, his thoughts churning. The gods were smiling on him this night.
“Who else knows about this child?” Banruud asked, his tone careful.
“Just us, Lord. We were afraid. We thought the babe might be cursed like the mother.”
“Why?”
“Because the mother is so odd-looking. And . . . the babe is a girl, Chief Banruud. And she’s not of Saylok. We thought she might be a changeling. Or a trick. What if she only appears to be a girl child but is really a monster?” the farmer reasoned.
The infant was fair, her thatch of hair almost as white as the ghost girl’s. But her skin was warm and sun kissed, her lips and cheeks a deep pink. She was perfectly formed. Healthy. Beautiful. Not odd at all.
“And where is her mother now?” Banruud asked.
“With the sheep, Lord. She has work to do, and we told her the law required we bring the child to you. But she will be hungry soon,” the farmer’s wife answered.
“I will take her to the Keepers of Saylok,” he said, his voice firm. “They will know what to do. They will know if this child is as she appears. You must tell no one until they have blessed her.”
“But Lord,” the woman protested, doubtful. “Her mother will need to feed the child. The babe will need her mother.”
Banruud thought of Alannah, her breasts already full of milk, straining to give birth to yet another dead child. The babe would not need the ghost girl. But he would need to silence her.
“Go home and await my instructions.”
The woman began to protest again, but the farmer was wise enough to quiet her with a tug on her hand. He’d seen Banruud’s temper and knew his wife was in danger of offending her chieftain.
But Banruud was filled with light. His chest. His head. His future. All were bathed in a warm glow, and he smiled patiently at the couple who had given him the one thing that would grant him the power he desired.
Still holding the girl child, he loosened the coin pouch at his waist and presented it to the farmer and his wife.
“To compensate you for your loss. Speak nothing of the child until I send word from the keepers.”
The farmer’s eyes widened in appreciation, but his wife chewed her lip in obvious distress.
“Come, Linora,” the farmer insisted, and bowed before Banruud, the gold disappearing into the satchel hanging from his shoulders. “It is for the best.”
Banruud clutched the child to his chest and turned away, signaling he was through with them. He waited until they were gone, and when he heard the door of his great hall lumber to a close, he once again stared down into the child’s face.
“You will be my salvation, Alba,” he whispered. The name was perfect, as if the Norns had chosen it and whispered it into the slave girl’s ears. Alba, the Bernian word for “white.” White, for the color of her hair and the ghost girl who had unknowingly saved him. Alba, a name that began with the sound of Alannah’s clan. For all Saylok would believe that Alannah of Adyar was this child’s mother. He would announce it, and, once he had cleared up outstanding matters, no one would know the difference. He would declare himself her father. They would call him the curse breaker. Saylok would see it as a sign. Banruud of Berne had a daughter, and the Keepers of Saylok would make him king.
5
Alannah was asleep when Banruud slipped into her darkened room, the girl child in his arms. There was a fire in the grate though the day had not been cold. A maid moved around the room, gathering soiled linens, her movements sad and slow, and Banruud knew the fate of yet another son.
The maid turned, her face pale, and dropped the bloody bedclothes like she’d been caught in a crime.
“My lord! Agnes went to find you. The babe . . . your son . . . milady . . .” she babbled, unable to break the news he’d already ascertained.
“Go,” he insisted, his tone level. Her eyes fell to the bundle in his arms, but she did as he asked, gathering the soiled linens once more, avoiding his eyes and the babe he held as she scurried from the chamber, but he knew what must be done.
Banruud laid the girl child in the cradle near the bed, a cradle built in hopes that a chieftain’s child would someday grace it. Then he followed the maid from the room. She’d been hovering outside the door, as though she didn’t quite know what to do, but when she heard him coming, her steps quickened toward the steep stone staircase at the back of his keep, the stairs the servants used to access the different floors without being seen by the lord and his lady or their guests.