On the Cold Coasts

inherit. Don’t you think that matters to me?”
    “Of course it matters, but can you honestly say it matters more than our love for each other?” His dusky blue eyes looked deep into her own, yearning, searching, questioning. She knew she still loved him, and she shook her head, no. How could anything matter more than the two of them?
    “What else can I do?” she asked despairingly. “There is no way out for us, you know that as well as I do. Why do you come here to torment me when you know there is nothing to be done?”
    “Of course there is something to be done,” he said fervently. “There is always something to be done. You must learn to have courage, Ragna. Come to Grenjadarstadur with me, where we can be together. Where we can stand together, against all the rest.”
    She shook her head. “I have always been frightened. I fear people’s anger, deeply and desperately. I’ve been afraid of Thorsteinn’s anger and my mother’s anger, the anger of the priests, the bishops, and of almighty God. Sometimes I have even been afraid of you. I’m not strong enough to oppose Thorsteinn or to betray the promise I gave my mother on her deathbed.”
    “Desperate measures are not the same as a promise, Ragna. And you don’t have to be strong. Just be brave, and the Lord will make you strong.” Thorkell brought her hands to his lips and kissed them. “Bravery is facing your fears and taking action in spite of them. I fear the battle ahead, but I won’t let cowardice prevent me from doing what is right. Even though I fear death more than anything else—I, who wish to live longer than other men. In due course, all will be different. Believe me, Ragna.”
    “I don’t understand you, Thorkell,” she said, baffled. “You speak so strangely.”
    He lowered his voice and glanced around furtively, like he feared someone might be nearby, listening. “In two days’ time I will summon a large group of men to Enni, Magistrate Bjorn Eyjolfsson’s farm, who will seek and capture the villains who have marauded through the districts this summer. The foreigner at Holar has given them shelter, and no help can be expected from either him or the king who sits on his throne on the other side of the ocean. We must seek our own revenge. We have no other choice.”
    Ragna drew a quick breath. “Dear Lord, Thorkell—a handful of farmers are not capable of taking on English murderers and pirates! Why has the magistrate not made plans to capture those men himself? You will lead them down an evil path to their deaths—you, a priest, ordained by the Holy Ghost to do God’s work!”
    He smiled, and when he spoke he spoke slowly, like she was a small, upset child who did not fully comprehend what was being said. “The magistrate is useless. He is undermanned, gutless, and a drunkard. It is precisely because I am a man of God that I must do this; you know there is no one better than I around these districts to rally men to action and bolster their courage. Yes, indeed, they are farmers and tenants, salt of the earth, unused to battles other than those against dung heaps and brushwood. Yet they are strong men; all their lives they have cut and felled with spades and axes, so why would they not know how to wield a sword, if that is what it takes for them to live with some semblance of dignity. We must drive away the hooligans, to rid this land of robbers and murderers. And you need not fear that I will carry arms; that alone would have me excommunicated. I can carry our emblem and mobilize the troops—that is not forbidden in canon law, to the best of my knowledge.” Thorkell reached out and stroked Ragna’s cheek gently, like he could not bear not to touch her. Slowly he trailed his fingers down her throat and along the low neck of her dress. “Many of those men have waited a long time to take on the English. Particularly those who have spent the entire summer at Klifshagi, in Oxarfjord, with my old friend Father Jon Palsson.”
    “Father Jon? Have you enlisted his allegiance?” Ragna stared at Thorkell, astonished.
    He nodded, pleased. “Jon Palsson is prepared to lay aside our differences in return for a chance to give the English their comeuppance. A few winters ago, he barely escaped alive from certain dealings with the English, and he has longed to avenge that humiliation. And I do not fear the wrath of your foster-father. He is too old to ride with us, but he supports our actions. When all is said and done, even