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"Are you ill, Father?"
After a swallow of ale, Ragnar forced a smile. "Of course not. I am perfectly all right. Why do you ask?"
Bjorn shrugged. "It's just that you seem . . . distant these days. And troubled. Are you not excited that we will be sailing again soon?"
"I am. Most definitely. I can't wait to leave." Ragnar glanced over his shoulder. Aslaug sat alone at a table in the back. His younger sons milled about her, and Ivar, as usual, whimpered in pain as he slept in the cradle box nearby. If he could have taken them with him to Wessex—leaving their mother behind—he would have. They still needed a few more years, however, and Ivar . . . well, he might never be ready for such a journey. The boys still needed their mother, even if their father was beginning to question whether he did.
Bjorn knew all of this, though—at least by implication—and didn't necessarily seem upset by the fading of his father's marriage. Though Aslaug had been kind and welcoming to her husband's eldest, even freeing the slave girl with whom he had fallen in love, Ragnar knew Bjorn would never look at her as a mother. The woman who bore him still held his devotion and always would. Ragnar could not deny that he understood the feeling. Part of him always wished he had sent Aslaug away with a sum of treasure as payment for the child of his she carried, so that Lagertha would never have felt obligated to leave. She enervated him, no doubt, but there were things about him that she always understood without question. The true reason for his fatigued demeanor, for instance, she would have grasped far better than the woman to whom he was married, now.
His eyes returned to the place they had been resting since he sat down to eat. The door to the Great Hall ajar, Ragnar's most beloved stood in the gap, arms folded, still, staring out as if expecting someone to arrive.
"What is it, then?" Bjorn followed his gaze. "Athelstan?"
Ragnar didn't answer, choosing instead to reinvest in the hunk of bread he'd been gnawing.
His son was far too canny for that, however. Lowering his voice, he leaned over. "Are you two having . . . well . . . problems?"
Ragnar chuckled. "Sounds like the voice of experience. I could ask you the same." He looked at the table nearby. Þorunn had been practically attached to his son's side for months and now, he had learned, she was insistent on going with them to Wessex. Not that Bjorn was necessarily happy about that.
"You didn't answer my question." The boy nudged his shoulder.
Ragnar looked down at his plate, and murmured, softly enough that Bjorn had to strain to hear. "I am well. Things between us are well."
"But he is not."
Ragnar sighed, and brushed crumbs from his beard. He hadn't the heart to tell Bjorn the entire truth: Since their return from Wessex six months ago, though their private moments together had been blissful and, he believed, healing for both of them, something in Athelstan's manner the rest of the time still seemed off. Though his scars had faded well—the divots in his hands were still evident, but at least the whip marks on his body were all but invisible—something inside the man he loved was still broken, and Ragnar could find no way to fix it.
"Does it have to do with his wounds? Or rather what caused them?" Bjorn, too, watched the man in question, his expression one of kind concern.
Ragnar raised an eyebrow. "You know about that?"
Bjorn shook his head. "Not entirely. I know about the scars, but not entirely what caused them. A few months ago, I noticed them, and though he did not tell me in so many words, I believe I understand."
Ragnar set his jaw. He tore the remainder of his bread into tiny pieces. "It is something to do with that, yes. Though it is complicated, and not something I am charged with sharing with others." Doing so, he knew, would not only be a violation of Athelstan's privacy, but could put him in danger. Few in Kattegat trusted him these days. Most still believed, even after Horik had been revealed to be a liar, that the man who had come to their war camp in Christian clerical garb had in some way conspired with King Ecbert to defeat their forces in Wessex, and craft a treaty that some felt was not nearly fair enough. Some, even as several boats were being outfitted with supplies to start settling the land they'd been promised, wanted to return to Wessex to try again to conquer the Saxons by force. Were these people to know that their king's former slave had retained a great deal of his Christian faith, their attitudes toward him would have become far more toxic than mere mean-spirited gossip and unfriendly faces. Their trust in their king, as well, would falter. For even if they didn't know that Ragnar himself had begun believing, to a degree, that perhaps this Jesus about whom Athelstan had taught him over the years might really be a god after all, they would know of his affection for one who believed it even more deeply.
He managed to pull his gaze from Athelstan long enough to scan his son's face instead. Even Bjorn, much as he loved the man who had cared for him as a willful adolescent, would find it hard to accept the full truth of what Athelstan—and by extension, Ragnar—was dwelling on these days. "It is nothing you need to concern yourself with, though," he finally said, hoping that meant the conversation was over.
Bjorn was nothing if not persistent, however. "I am concerned. I cannot help it. I am worried about you, Father. And about him, too." He brought his face even closer. "I admit that I still don't understand some of the kinds of feelings you have for him, but I know you love him, and I know that whatever distresses him is undoubtedly causing you distress as well." He pulled back again. "We have a great undertaking ahead of us. I am concerned for you as my father, but also as my king. For that reason among others, I hope that whatever is troubling you passes soon. I will ask Odin for his help in this. You should, too."
Ragnar started an answer—albeit one that probably would have begun an argument--but was interrupted by the arrival, through the east door, of Siggy and Rollo. Both looked even worse than he felt; from the way they avoided touching each other, it seemed they had been fighting. Again. Siggy put on a smile and her well-practiced Earl's Wife courtesy, and sidled in to a table with some of the other women; Rollo stalked over to the fire, his expression stormy.
"Hello, Uncle," Bjorn greeted their new companion, and extended to him a plate of dried fish. Rollo didn't smile nor speak, but took a piece, and began mutilating it.
"Well!" Ragnar stood up, glad for the interruption. "Nice talk, Bjorn. I will just be . . . somewhere." He patted his son's shoulder, and strode over to the doorway where stood the only person in the room he really wanted to talk to at all.