“I..you…” I stutter, shocked to find someone here who speaks my language. “I can understand you.”
She smiles up at me. “Where did they bring you from?”
“A village near Wessex,” I tell her. “What about you?”
“Northumbria,” she says with a shrug, rubbing a brush down the majestic beasts back. “They brought me as a slave. I wasn’t as lucky as you.”
I furrow my brow, not exactly sure how I’m lucky. “I don’t understand,” I admit. “I don’t understand anything.”
“The one who brought you,” she says, tilting her head back towards Anders, who I can see watching me carefully from under the awning. “He convinced the Jarl to let you both stay. He said he bought you from Harald, so you’re his property now. Wouldn’t call you a slave, but the way he held your hand today… I think he has other plans for you.”
I blink at her, surprised that he said he bought me. “He’s been nice to me,” I tell her, looking a bit embarrassed. “I can’t understand what he says to me, though.”
She nods, tossing the brush aside. “He’s not from here. Said he was raiding with people from his village and got caught in a storm. He paid the Jarl for some land here.”
That would explain why he didn't seem as excited as everyone else when we first saw land. This isn’t his home either.
“I remember how hard it was when I first arrived,” she tells me. “I’m Catherine.”
“Eleanor,” I tell her. “Can you tell me what he’s doing? He was cutting down a tree, but it was hard to move, and then he came here.”
She nods, leading the horse into a barn and motions for me to follow. I turn back to see Anders still watching me, but he makes no move to stop me as I begin to enter the building. “I could overhear some. He’s trying to hire men to help him build a house for the two of you.”
The two of us? “So I’m staying with him?”
She smiles at me and laughs. “He joked with the Jarl last night about you having his children, so I think it’s safe to say you will be.”
Children? I swallow, terrified of what she’s saying to me. He’s seemed nice, but I thought he would make me work for him, not have his children.
“The men here aren’t very patient, so if he wanted you, he would have already had you,” she tells me with a shrug. “Cooperate with him. He seems like he wants to care for you.”
I turn around to find Anders standing in the doorway to the barn watching me, his face not giving anything away. I walk towards him, and he takes my hand in his. Catherine calls out something as we walk off, and he quickly turns to her, saying something back. After a short conversation, she smiles.
“He wants me to tell you that you’re safe,” she tells me.
I smile up at him. “Will you tell him that I already knew that?”
She says something to him and he squeezes my hand. He leads me out and back to the land that I now know is his, with two of the men he was speaking with following us. They speak some, but the walk back is relatively quiet. Upon return, they pull out some tools and get to work, moving rocks around and splitting the tree that Anders had cut down previously.
After some time, a few more men appear carrying some wooden boards and disappear. I assume to get more. They work so hard, moving many things around and cut down quite a few trees, splitting them into smaller pieces.
After some time, Anders wipes his brow with his arm and looks up at me, nodding once. Walking over, he takes my hand in his, lifting his back and hooking it around himself as we walk off, following one of the men.
He leads us down a path and we come to a fence surrounding what seems to be a fairly large farm. I can see horses, cows, and goats out in a field and there are plants growing towards the house. There’s a large house towards the center of the area and a few children are running around outside as smoke billows out of the roof.
Anders squeezes my hand gently, and I look up at him, giving him a smile that he returns as we continue to follow the man inside the fence. He leads us up to the house, leaning his head inside to say something, and then motions for us to follow him around to a barn. It’s dark inside, but I can see straw about and what appears to be stalls for the horses. He speaks with Anders for a bit, both men seemingly relaxed and he finally leaves us.
Anders climbs up a ladder to the loft of the barn, motioning for me to follow him. He looks around, hands on his hips as he looks looks everything over and sighs. He moves some straw around into a pile in a corner and stacks some wood up like a table before he takes his bag off and sits it down on the ground, reaching in and finding the dress that’s wrapped around my mother’s candlestick.
Gently, he unwraps it and places it on his makeshift table and reaches back in his bag, pulling out a candle that I’m sure wasn’t there earlier. He places the candle in the holder and stands, walking back to me. He wraps an arm around me and pulls me to his side as he looks at the area, a proud look on his face. He doesn’t say anything, but I don’t need him to. I understand clearly that this is our home now and I happily relax into his side, smiling at the sight of the candlestick inside of it.
Aksara