Eirik holds out a cherry branch

Brede carefully crossed the beam that spanned the trench. The brook had not yet been diverted to fill the moat, but the men had dug until they reached groundwater, and the bottom of the trench was full of black mud. The last thing he wanted to do now was fall in, if the tall man who was coming down between the rows of cherry trees was the man he thought he was.

Safely across, he walked up the hill to meet him. He would not let him get to the house before speaking with him.

It was Eirik indeed. He approached with a slender smile, twirling a spray of cherry blossoms between his fingers, but Brede did not soften his scowl, nor did he intend to speak first.

“Brede!” Eirik cried when they met. “I am so glad I meet you here.” He put out his hand, and Brede felt obliged to shake it.

“Eirik,” he nodded.

“I am so glad I meet you. I come directly here, so, tell me: how is my sister? and her children?”

“Estrid is well, and our children are well.”

“Good!” Brede had not realized Eirik’s smile was forced until it relaxed in relief. However, this sign of humanity did not last long.

“And my sister?” Brede asked. “Do you even know?”

“Oh, she is well, and your nephew also.”

“And when did you see her last?”

“With you.”

“I see! Nearly a year.”

“I see her again before the year is out,” he shrugged and began an intent study of his flowers, as if they were a matter of far greater importance than his wife.

“And what does she think of such treatment? Being left alone for nearly a year?”

“Brede,” Eirik sighed. He stared down his long nose at him as if Brede were an insect of even less importance, but greater nuisance. “I think you don’t know about your sister. You think she love me, and miss me, but she don’t.”

“She must have loved you at one time. If she doesn’t now, it can only be your fault.”

“But I have been only kind to her. If she don’t love me, it’s her own fault. And she is my wife now. She is mine. And she is cruel to me. You know what she say to my aunt? She say, ‘If Eirik he die, may I go home to my brother Brede?’ So, you see? She wish me dead.”

“And what did your aunt say?”

“Oh, my aunt,” he smiled, “she tell her the story of Naomi and Ruth, and so, when Ruth’s husband die, she say to his mother, ‘Whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will lodge, and where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried.’” Eirik threw back his head and laughed. “My aunt, she’s a real bitch, but she’s funny when she don’t talk to you. She have all the answers.”

“I don’t find it funny,” Brede snapped. “It only means my sister is unhappy.”

“I am not unkind to her,” he shrugged. “I could be. And so, she is rich, and she have a fine house, and fine food, and servants and dresses. And her baby. But so,” he said humbly, “when I see her, I ask her do she want to come with me to go to Whitehand and live on his island.”

“On the island?”

“I go later with Whitehand to get his wife. But perhaps I also get mine. No? Whitehand he give me a house in the south. I like it there. There is more to do here. We take Leinster next.”

“You will?”

“You will see.” Eirik smiled coyly behind his flowers. “Perhaps you like to come? I ask Sigefrith. You are no farmer.”

Brede hesitated. It was true, he was not. He didn’t know what he was. Young Sigefrith seemed to like managing his land and talking to his tenants, but Brede found the entire business a never ending chore. He didn’t understand why men would bother with the nuisance of working the land when riches could be had elsewhere so much more easily, if one were only strong enough and bold enough to take them. He was no farmer. And yet Estrid despised him a little—a very little—because he was nothing more.

“You do like to come!” Eirik laughed and tapped Brede on the head with his cherry branch. “You see? You are as Norse as I. I tell Sigefrith, and we take Eirik and Stein and Tryggve, and so! it is just like last summer.”

Brede could not help smiling at him. Oh, so long as no sisters were involved!

“But first, I take your king to meet Whitehand. You come too?”

“If I may.”

“Good! And I show you the house, and you tell me whether it is fine enough for your sister. I think she don’t like it, but so! And I remember that you take my sister to live in a barn.”

“It isn’t a barn any longer,” Brede said quickly.

The men had nearly finished work on the new wing, as large as the old but with several stories. There was a hall and a chapel and rooms above, and his wife would have a fine bedchamber that would be warm in the winter and cool in the summer, and would have a window that looked out over the cherry trees that stood like rows of wooly sheep on the hill in this season.

“I see,” Eirik said. “And I am glad Sigrid never see it now, or else she don’t like my house on the island. But, so, what do she care, so long as her beloved husband is there?” He smiled and bowed with a flourish of his cherry branch.

Brede frowned. Why did he have to talk of Sigrid?

“Ah! But I don’t think—if she know her brother Brede is so close, she might come to see you, and try to swim across while I sleep some night.”

“If she is so close, I shall certainly come to visit her.”

“And I also!” Eirik cried. “I shall come to see my sister. Do you think to make a room for me in your fine house, brother Brede?” He swatted at Brede with the branch, and Brede shoved it away in annoyance.

“Oh, God, what did I do?” Eirik cried in mock horror. “I don’t think, when I take this branch, that I steal cherries from you! I seem to always be stealing cherries from you and your kin, don’t I, Brede?” he asked with a malicious smile. “I give it to you,” he said, handing him the branch. “It is always too late to get the cherries back, but so! We like to keep the flowers, don’t we? Till they fade!”

Eirik laughed and walked past Brede’s fury, down the hill to Brede’s house, Brede’s family, Brede’s wife.