When she arched an eyebrow with amused interest, Tykir jiggled it slightly with a forefinger. ” ‘Tis a legacy from my father. Eirik got the dragon brooch. I got the earring.”
Eadyth could not help but smile and shook her head in mock dismay. “You are just as frivolous as your brother.”
“My brother, frivolous? Nay, you do not know him well if you think him so. He has always been stone-cold serious, even when he had only passed ten winters and chose to live in King Athelstan’s Saxon court.” He tweaked her cheek and remarked, “You wed the wrong brother if ’tis a lighthearted nature you seek in your husband.”
Eadyth laughed at his playful attitude, but she was not amused when she darted a livid glance to her right side where Eirik sat with his back to her. He talked earnestly with Earl Orm, a wealthy Northumbrian landowner of Norse descent whose estates joined his on the south. He had come with his half-Saxon daughter Aldgyth, whom Eadyth had met in the old days when she went to court. Aldgyth was the widow of Anlaf Guthfrithsson, who had been Norse king of Northumbria for a short time before his death. Also joining in the conversation with Orm and her husband was Anlaf Sigtryggsson, the sometime king of all Dublin, and the current aspiring Norse ruler of Northumbria.
Good Lord! “I am surprised he did not invite the king of Norway, as well. Or King Edmund, for that matter,” Eadyth grumbled sarcastically.
“Uncle Haakon is hunting wild boar this week and could not come,” Tykir said drolly, then smirked, obviously pleased with Eadyth’s quick intake of breath. “And Edmund, well, I would not have come if he were here—the bloody Saxon bastard.”
Eadyth exhaled loudly with disgust.
“You are upset that Eirik honors you by inviting his friends to your wedding feast?”
“Yea, I am. He humiliates me by pretending happiness in our wedding. Everyone knows just by looking at me that ’tis a mismatch, that there must be some hidden reason why he would wed such as me.”
“How so?”
“Oh, really! Just look at us. He struts like a proud raven in all his finery. And me?” She looked down at herself in self-disdain. “I, my friend, am just a crow.”
Tykir tilted his head questioningly and reached out to finger the unique head-rail she had designed to match her wedding garment. Girta had helped her fashion the tunic and over-tunic from a deep violet samite fabric, then embroidered the edges with silver threads in a design of intertwined lilies. A narrow silver circlet held in place a head-rail made of double layers of the diaphanous material she used for her beekeeping veils, which she had dyed a pale lavender.
She had known Eirik would take insult if she wore her usual drab garb and so she had compromised. She had even washed the pig grease from her hair, although she had slicked it back under a white wimple with an odorless ointment Girta had made for her.
Eadyth tried to shrug Tykir’s fingers from her head-rail. She had practiced before a polished metal the past two sen-nights how to drape the material across her face to hide her features, how to maintain a constant stoop and a perpetual scowl. She hoped most people would think she was demurely attempting to hide her homeliness. The cackling voice was harder to keep up.
“Why wouldst my brother need an excuse to marry a beautiful woman like you?”
Eadyth gasped and finally managed to pull away from Tykir’s fingers, bending her posture. He was too observant by far.
“Beautiful? Heh, heh, heh! There is naught of beauty in me these days.”
Tykir snorted rudely.
“You must share my Lord Eirik’s dim-sightedness, ‘Tis true I had rare beauty long ago. Some even called me The Silver Jewel of Northumbria. But now… ,” she trailed off with a shrug, looking down at her body as if it spoke for itself.
At first, Tykir just stared at her with a puzzled frown, furrowing his brow. “My vision is perfect, and Eirik’s impairment is only slight. Do you jest with me?” Then, as if a thought had suddenly occurred to him, he asked incredulously, “Or do you play this charade for my brother?”