To Serve and Submit Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  TO SERVE AND SUBMIT

  “You have been broached,” Lexander declared thoughtfully. “Why such girlish modesty? Your first lesson, Marja, is that blushes can be appealing on occasion, but a steady diet of them is tiresome. Who did this to you?”

  I was hardly able to speak. My hands clenched against the padded top of the bench. “Boys of the village.”

  “Oh, none were special to you?”

  It was difficult to think, but one man sprang to mind. “There was a trader who came to Jarnby. He said he helped the chieftain launch a great knarr, and the big man tossed him a copper. He gave it to me.” I didn’t add that I had given the copper to the olfs because they were jealous of their gifts.

  “And you fell in love with him,” Lexander finished.

  I shook my head as he pulled away. “No.”

  Lexander’s brows rose. “That is the first you’ve said that interests me.”

  His sharp tone couldn’t be mistaken, but why did he chastise me? Surely I didn’t know my place, but it wasn’t my fault. Yet I couldn’t seem to form my lips around a protest. I submitted to Lexander, not because he had earned or deserved it, but because something inside of me surrendered to him. It was my first taste of life in his hands. . . .

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  Published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin

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  First Roc Mass Market Printing, February 2007

  Copyright © Susan Wright, 2006

  eISBN : 978-1-429-55271-4

  Excerpt from A Pound of Flesh copyright © Susan Wright, 2007

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  One

  Do not suppose that I should be discounted because I was born a wild child of the fens. Even before I knew my true nature, I served my gods well. I lived with moss in my hair and mud between my fingers, ever at home in the land that resides in water. I suppose the lesson of yielding, of one thing giving way to the next, flowing ever back and forth, was in my blood. My da’s Noromenn family had lived in the village Jarnby between the fens and the Klaro Strait for four generations, while my mother’s Beothuk ancestors had roamed Nauga Sea for longer than memory serves.

  At birth, my mam heard my name called in the wind and knew that I had been touched by the Otherworld. Indeed, my kin said Marja was a fanciful name, more fit for a sprite than a girl. As soon as I began to walk, my da declared that I had the vanderlust, while my mam taught me how to hear the will of the land embodied by the olfs.

  So I danced and sang for the olfs until the ones who favored me showed me where the bog iron nestled. I was one of many who searched for iron, but I had a true knack because I understood the spirits that dwelled in the land. There were places that could swallow a grown man without a trace, but I knew where the water had been banished. Yet there were many times, I must confess, when I returned with my sling-carry empty because I had been beguiled by the olfs into wasting away my day. Then my da would growl fiercely at me, for the smiths needed the iron to make their goods.

  It was Lexander of Vidaris who showed me my true path. I was little more than a girl when Lexander appeared. His arrival was heralded by the beat of oars against the river and the low chanting that kept the rowers in time. I daresay I didn’t hear the boat until it was nigh because of the heavy mist that shrouded the evening. But as I emerged from the fens with my sling-carry over my shoulder, I met my brother as he was driving the sheep back to our home pasturage. He skipped in front of our ragged herd, pointing his staff toward the river. “Marja, look!”

  There, a vision emerged from the low-lying fog. The square, red-striped sail hung empty of wind as the swooping oars propelled the longship forward. The river was glassy flat, marred only by the ripples spreading from the boat. The towering prow was carved into a bird of prey with a fierce hooked beak and eyes that seemed to penetrate me even from afar.

  Lexander stood with one hand resting on the sweepback wing of the mighty bird as if taming it with a touch. He called out a word and the oars broke their rhythm, splashing as the longship turned toward the shore. I had never seen a seagoing boat so far upriver before.

  “Could it be a Hun?” my brother blurted out.

  “Hush,” I murmured. Olfs appeared around me, curious as always. I opened myself to them, and suddenly felt as if I were being swept away. I was lifted up like the wind, above my brother and the green bank of the river. It was so unexpected—and at odds with the nearly silent longship gliding toward us—that I abruptly broke my communion with the land.

  The boat ran aground on the sloped bank near us with a solid scraping sound, belying the fantastical vision I had seen.

  The sheep milled ar
ound us, clipping the rich grass along the river, while the olfs danced on the bank, showing off their chubby bodies and merry eyes in their excitement. My brother claimed he could see only the rainbow sparks that they emitted, but the olfs often revealed themselves to me, from their round red cheeks and curly hair to their tiny bare toes. When I was a small child I had often confused my kin by calling to the “babies” floating in the air, until I learned not to speak of the olfs to those who couldn’t see them.

  Now even the olfs couldn’t distract me from the sight of Lexander. I didn’t know his name, but I could feel his power. In truth, Lexander looked like a Hun chieftain, with the fierce, hawklike face of those from the land of the rising sun. My da often sang the saga of a battle with the brutal Hun who lived in the Auldland. They were said to have hair as black as midnight, but Lexander’s head and face were as smooth as my palm. His fine wool cloak was bordered with blue and gold tabards, marking him as a wealthy man.

  Lexander jumped down from the boat, landing lightly despite the height of the deck. “To be sure, I can hardly see them beneath the mud,” he declared in amusement. He strode through the sheep to gaze down at us, two skinny marsh rats. All I saw were Lexander’s tawny eyes, strangely bright with flickering depths.

  My brother’s mouth hung open, and his face and legs were streaked with dirt. His gray homespun tunic was fringed at the hem and hiked up by a rope around his waist. I surely looked no different.

  “You, the tall one, be you a girl or a boy?” Lexander asked me.

  I felt my first strange thrill of yielding to command. “I’m a woman grown,” I said, though I had only just matured.

  “Do you live in the village?” he asked.

  “Our da works the smithy,” my brother replied proudly. With a final, lingering gaze, Lexander returned to his longship. A few of his crew pushed them from shore as the others manned the oars. The graceful boat turned and headed back to our village on the bay.

  It could have been a minor thing, a chance encounter far up the river. Traders and travelers often made their way to Jarnby to acquire iron tools and gear. Yet everything around me stilled. The incessant humming of the guardian spirits and the olfs grew hushed, a warning of distance to come between me and my beloved watery world. The oars of the boat beat in a compelling rhythm, beckoning me forward. But my brother shattered my trance by calling after the straying sheep.

  When my da returned home that evening, he said that a great man from Fjardemano, a prosperous island in the commonwealth of Viinland, had come to bargain for me. Lexander of Vidaris was known throughout Nauga Sea for producing finely trained slaves in the art of personal service and pleasure. It was said that his slaves lived in the courts of rulers in the Auldland and beyond, growing powerful themselves through their talents.

  Lexander had pledged to my da that he would return next year, after the ice broke, to tender his final offer for me. He had agreed to give me fine clothes and costly ornaments, and sworn that I would be well cared for. In exchange, he would give our family two strong cows.

  My poor mam, long separated from her own Skraeling people because of her love for my da, knew many stories of the ancient Norogods as well as those of the Otherworld. But this tale clearly troubled her. Nothing was ever exactly as it seemed, and Lexander of Vidaris was not a man to be easily deciphered. I knew what she had taught us—that the inua, life force, of the dead lived on in new borns who were named for their ancestors. That certain signs in the sky and water could reveal when the guardian spirits were angered about taboos that had been broken. And that Arnaaluk, the sea-mother, provides food from her generous depths, protecting her people. My da’s stories were all about the Norogods, recounting deeds of daring and jealous sparring. The brash exploits of these gods seemed much like my fair uncles and aunts who sported and fought in our cold village.

  My eldest brother, who worked in the smithy, said that Lexander had described me as “the girl with the faraway look.” My mam, her body worn with childbearing and endless hard days, pulled me to her side at the loom as if loath to let me go. In truth I felt more eagerness than fear to hear about Vidaris, a wealthy estate that basked in the sun off the southern waters of the Nauga Sea. Though it was only a day’s sail away, to me it sounded as mysterious and far away as the Auldworld itself. But by evening’s end, my da grew ill-tempered at the thought of a man owning me. He swore that I would not be sold as a thrall and that I would marry as my older sister had. He decreed there would be no more talk of the stranger.

  Yet everything was disturbed after Lexander came to us, and word of his offer spread quickly through our iron-making village and outlying homesteads. I looked at everyone with new eyes, changed by my vivid impression of Lexander. He was different from the people I knew. His jaw was perfectly smooth like the Skraelings, but their faces were flattened and round while he had the prominent nose and cheekbones of my da’s people. He was neither fair nor dark, his skin, like his eyes, shimmered gold as if lit within by the sun.

  I wondered if he was a half-breed like me and my siblings. We were different, too. We spoke Skraeling among ourselves, and our hair was bronzed on top and dark beneath, like the peat I dug in to find the iron nuggets. From my da, I got my long limbs, while my mam gave me her almond eyes with the ability to see what others couldn’t. She would sit sometimes and chew her thumb in the deepest twilight, staring as my younger sister bobbed the spindle up and down, teasing out a long cord of wool. Sometimes she told me of her visions—that my older sister would marry and go south to live, and that my baby brother would fall into feverish fits that would dull his mind.

  I didn’t share with my mam the dream that took hold of me after Lexander came. I remembered his few words to me and the tone of command in his voice, feeling light-headed as if it were happening anew. I can hardly say why the restlessness moved me when so many others were content to live and die on the same patch of ground. Too often I was lured into climbing to the highlands overlooking the fens, and I never felt so alive as when I could endlessly trace the layers of folding hillocks spreading before me. Whenever I stumbled into a dell that I had never seen before, it nearly made me burst with pleasure. My fingers would sink into the earthy muck as I became one with the water, trickling and dripping through the hollow. I wallowed in the joy of discovery, communing with the spirits and olfs that inhabited each place.

  In this way, Lexander laid a trap for me. My da would never have sold me on first sight, and even if he had, my wild nature would have resisted the training. But thinking on it for a full turn of seasons, working it over in my mind, I made myself ready for him. As Lexander told me later, the waiting period served to weed out those who couldn’t accept the duties of a pleasure slave. He often returned to promising prospects only to discover the young man or woman had found a mate and refused servitude. The ones who were adrift, alone, or eager for something new—like I was—fell into his hands like ripe cloudberries.

  The winter was cold and wet, as it always was. Long after Lexander was no longer talked about in Jarnby, after the snows and darkness sealed the strait with ice, I still thought of him. The day the olfs whispered that our harbor would soon be free of towering bergs and would become a glassy smooth sea again, I wondered with a sinking heart if Lexander had forgotten me.

  One morning soon after, I left the village and was heading out to forage for iron. My brother caught up to me on the edge of the fens with news that a ship had been sighted. The sail sported red and white stripes, like Lexander’s longship.

  By the time we returned, the boat was close to Jarnby. The mast dipped as the waves rocked it, while the oars lifted and fell with the rowing of the crew. The villagers gathered, leaving their work as word rapidly spread that Lexander had returned. My mam appeared in the doorway of our longhouse holding the youngest in her arms.

  When the boat reached the shore, Lexander jumped out and strode through the spring mud, soiling his knee-high leather boots. Our village suddenly seemed smaller und
er his gaze. He smiled, his eyes unerringly seeking me out. “I’ve come for Marja.”

  My name sounded exotic with the rolling caress that he gave it. I should have been frightened of this stranger, but I felt only the exhilaration of being chosen. He had returned for me!

  My da arrived from the smithy, his great belly swathed in a dirty apron, as Lexander’s men lowered two cows on slings from the ship. To my practiced eye, the brown and white cattle were in milk and well fleshed, unlike our poor bony animals. It would double our herd. My da seemed fair taken with them, licking his lips at the sight.

  “What assurance do you give me of her safety?” my da bargained, and in those words I heard the end of my life on the fens. I looked at the younger children who needed the milk. It would mean more food for all in this lean time until the sea hunts. There were too many babes born in our home, and it was unlikely I would marry. My love for wandering the fens had marked me long before Lexander came.

  Lexander promised reports on my progress and offered to bring me back next spring for a visit. The bargain was concluded when my brothers were called to take the cows. I was a slave. Foreboding began to grow inside of me. It had been a stirring fancy, but now I would have to leave in truth. Perhaps my kin were right and my desire to roam was leading me too far astray. It might be best for me to stay on the fens, where I belonged . . .

  I glanced at my da, but the decision had been made. I had made it myself when day after day I went into the fens like an errant child rather than staying at home like my younger sister to do a woman’s work beside my mam. It was made in the fibers that formed me, in the blood of my da’s grandda who had set sail across the endless waves of the ocean to come to this fertile land. How could I be content to stay? And what reason did they have to keep me?

  Lexander saw my uncertainty. “I must know now, Marja. Will you serve and submit to me?”

  I felt no urge to deny him. “Yes,” I whispered.

  “Then come with me.” His tone was more kindly than not.