Sandra Hill (5 page)

“He is not Toste,” her father concurred.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell everyone.”

And then his sap began to rise…

Vagn was up and about in Gorm’s keep…but just barely.

Apparently, he had not recovered as much as he’d thought. Two days ago, after Helga had washed his nude body—
and wasn’t that an experience to savor!
—and rebound his wounds, Vagn had attempted to leave the pallet, but his knees had given out and pain had shot through his chest, radiating out to all his extremities. It had probably been due to the stress of her endless questioning as to what had happened to Toste, now that she accepted he was not his brother. To his vast indignity, Helga had caught him as he’d begun to crumble in a heap at her feet. He’d learned later that it had taken Helga, her father and the guard outside the door to get him back onto the pallet, where his wounds had reopened and begun bleeding profusely again.

But he was downstairs now, making his way gingerly toward the solar where he heard voices. Gorm was off patrolling his estates, and a housecarl had brought him a morning meal of honey cakes and ale a short time ago. He could not lie on that mattress one moment longer for fear he would have more horrific nightmares, either reliving the battle at Stone Valley or suffering a harsh blow to the head, which had caused his brother’s death. Even when he was awake, his head ached and he sometimes saw visions of human crows in black garb gathering about him with squawking voices, about to peck out his entrails. Most of all, he was bored and restless. And, truth to tell, he was randy as a bull whose male-sap had risen.

Besides, he wanted to find Helga and tease her some more. She rose so easily to his taunts about their upcom
ing wedding. Not that he really planned to wed her. Leastways, he probably didn’t. Undoubtedly didn’t. Well, all right, he was still considering the possibility, but in the meantime, he would test the waters and see if he could goad Helga into revealing her true feelings.

Thus far, her voiced feelings amounted to “Dolt!” or “Lackwit dolt!”

Vagn chose to interpret that as
I think she likes me
.

He approached the open doorway of the solar and leaned against the doorjamb, not wanting to interrupt what seemed to be a business meeting between Helga and Saleem, an Arab merchant whose trading vessel docked periodically at Jorvik. Saleem was also known as Sly-Boots for his ability to pull off many a shrewd trading deal…often to the detriment of his customers. At this moment, though, he didn’t appear to be faring so well.

“Five mancuses for these simple fabrics? ’Tis thievery!” Saleem said, fingering one of the ells of finely woven wool spread across a large table. An embroidered diamond design highlighted the jade-green cloth in shades of yellow and red and black.

“This wool is the best in all Britain, and you know it,” Helga said, brushing his fingertips away. “Besides that, the exquisite embroidery makes it nigh priceless. But that is neither here nor there. I have changed my mind. I think five mancuses for these three ells is way too cheap. I would need at least six to part with it.”

“The fabric is indeed exquisite,” Saleem conceded.

“You know, I can always sell this at my own stall in Coppergate.” Coppergate was the trading section of the port city.

“It is a deal,” Saleem said, “but only if you sell me the white silk over there.” There was a bolt of cream white
silk set aside on another table. Along its edge was an embroidered pattern of gold thread which enclosed a border of red hearts. Vagn had never seen anything like it afore, and he had been in all the important trading towns of the world, including Birka and Hedeby.

“Nay!” Vagn said, stepping into the room.

Helga’s eyes widened with surprise…and concern for his health, he could tell.

I am just as surprised as you, m’lady, and just as concerned. What am I thinking? Am I thinking?
“I wish to purchase that fabric myself,” Vagn shocked himself by saying.
Has some other being taken over my tongue? Why would I want a piece of white cloth?

“You?” Helga and Saleem said at the same time.

“Yea, I wish it for a bride gift,” he announced blithely. “I mean, a possible bride gift.”
I mean, what in bloody hell is going on inside my brain?

“Not that again!” Helga groaned with dismay. “Where would you find so much coin?”

“I had a hide pouch tied round my waist, under my tunic and armor. The battlefield scavengers never got to it. Besides, I have access to other money, if need be.”

She did not seem pleased that he was not a pauper.

“I must have that particular cloth,” Saleem whined. “There is an Arab sheik who would give a caliph’s ransom for it. His favorite houri has an overfondness for white silk. Five mancuses for that fabric alone.” It was a generous amount to pay for such a small swath, and they all recognized that fact.

“I will give you six,” Vagn said.
I must be mad
.

Helga’s mouth dropped open. Causing a woman’s mouth to drop open was always a good thing, in Vagn’s opinion. Worth going mad over, he supposed.

“Are you demented?” Saleem wanted to know.

“Perchance,” Vagn replied with a shrug.
Exactly my assessment of my mental condition, if you must know. I am beginning to think I might suffer from Herfjöttr, the battered-soldier condition that leaves grown men walking about in a daze
.

“Who are you?”

“Vagn Ivarsson.”

“I thought you were killed at the Battle of Stone Valley.”

Vagn winced. “That was my brother Toste.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I am sure.”
Reasonably sure
.

Saleem shook his head as if to clear it. Then he turned his attention back to Helga, red-faced with frustration. “Seven mancuses, and that is my final offer.”

“Ten,” Vagn piped in.
Toste, are you laughing at me up in Valhalla? Are all you dead warriors placing wagers over what wooly-witted thing I will do next?

Helga gasped.

Saleem swore.

Later, after Saleem stormed out of the chamber, carrying only the green wool, Helga shook her head at him and made that tsk-ing sound women love so well. “I am not going to wed with you. So get that idea out of your head.”

He made an exaggerated moue of unconcern. Ten mancuses in coin meant naught to him. He had gambled more in one night of dice or
hnefatafl
, which made him think of something else: another gamble—one which he had won. “Where is Clod? Oh, good Thor, how could I have forgotten? Where is Clod?”

“Clod?” Helga said as she folded up some of the loose
fabrics lying about. “The only Clod I know of is you, you clod.”

“Nay, it is my horse Clod that I refer to. He was with me at the battle. I distinctly recall him standing behind me, neighing frantically, when the sword went through me.”
I have become a blithering idiot
.

“Are you referring to that sway-backed horse as old as Odin that followed you here from the battlefield?”

“He is alive?” Vagn asked, no longer feeling like a blithering idiot, just a hopeful idiot.

She nodded, bemused at his concern over a decrepit, useless animal.

Vagn couldn’t help himself then. Tears welled in his eyes. He did not know why, but Clod’s escape from death seemed to have some meaning to him. Hope, that’s what it was. If that old warhorse could survive the battle, there was always hope that…well, suffice it to say, there was hope. “Thank you,” he choked out in an emotion-thick voice. Then he did the only thing any red-blooded Viking would do in the circumstances. Especially faced with a woman with the most kiss-some mouth this side of an Arab harem.

He kissed Helga the Homely.

And he kissed her good.

Really good.

Helga’s knees gave way, and she did not even have the excuse of a battle injury. He caught her as she almost swooned at his feet. He smiled against her mouth and kissed her again. There was one good thing Vagn knew how to do, and that was kiss a woman witless. Actually, there was another good thing Vagn could do equally well, and it also made a woman witless.

“What are you doing to me?” Helga asked when he gave her a moment to breathe.

“Convincing you,” he whispered against her mouth.

“To marry you?”

He grinned. “Nay, something else.”

He thought she said something that sounded like “Clod,” but she probably said that she was “awed.” Leastways, that’s what he chose to believe, especially since she’d just opened her sinfully large and moist mouth for him.

His knees nearly collapsed…again, as they had two days ago. This time it was due to pain of an entirely different sort.

The abominable Viking…

The nun was kneeling on all fours in the dirt, arse up and outlined by her tautened robe, whistling. The whistling was mediocre; the arse was magnificent.

Well, son of a sword! I think I have died and gone to Asgard…or is it heaven? Have I sunk so low that I now lust after a nun? Pitiful…I have become pitiful
. But not in a million years would Toste inform Lady Esme—or Sister Esme—or Eat-me (don’t think he had forgotten that erotic misspeak)—of his presence in the abbey gardens…not until absolutely necessary. He was enjoying the view too much on this unseasonably warm November day…and he didn’t mean the scenic village and forests which surrounded the tidy grounds of the religious community. His brother Vagn had always claimed to favor women with big breasts, but Toste ever did appreciate a shapely female
arse.
I wonder what she would do if I dropped down behind her, real close, and—

“Go away, Viking.” Apparently, she was aware of his presence, after all, but didn’t even bother to turn and look at him, just continued trying to lure a cat out of a low bush by waving a peacock feather about. She’d stopped whistling, though.

“Pssssss,” said the cat, who backed up further inside the bush.

“Here, cat. Here, cat,” she said, waving the feather in front of the bush.

It was a futile effort. The cat would come out when it wanted to. Still, the two of them—cat and woman—engaged in a hissing-cajoling battle.

“Why do you want the cat?”

“I don’t want the filthy animal, but mice dared to enter the scullery today. Mother Wilfreda needs a mouser. Go away.”

Never one to be bullied by a lady, Toste stood still, of course. While he waited for her to give up the game, he scanned the abbey holdings. He’d come to know the spar-tan buildings and their inhabitants well these past two sennights. The well-kept grounds bespoke neatness and efficiency, and would no doubt be lovely in the spring and summer. In the distance, he could see the wattle-and-daub, thatched huts of the villagers. Many hectares of plowland lay fallow for the winter but would spring forth with wheat and oats in just a few months. Sheep grazed. Cows lowed. Dozens of conical beehives, their occupants in hibernation for the winter, resembled squat soldiers watching over the religious flocks.

He inhaled deeply. The scent of winter filled the air, but also the heady aroma of Margaret’s Mead, made from
the vast amounts of honey gathered by Sister Ursula, the resident beekeeper. A group of the nuns were off now in one of the nearby outbuildings, brewing up a new batch of mead to be sold to area merchants, as well as imbibed in the convent. Apparently, the sisters’ vows of abstinence did not include the wicked brew. They sang joyfully as they worked…some of their exuberance no doubt due to the ale-joy…a song about Sanctus something-or-other. A welcome change, to his mind, from the usual vocal fare.

Toste had spent far too much time in the bed rushes, healing. He swore to Bolthor yestermorn that time passed so slowly in this nunnery that he counted the hours by the drips of his candle. And listening to choirs practice their religious music did not help at all. If he heard “Kyrie Eleison” chanted one more time, he was going to pull his nose hairs out, one at a time, or give these dimwitted females some reason to chant, “Have mercy.”

Furthermore, who knew the church bells had to ring so many times each day? For matins and compline and vespers and this appointed prayer time or that designated prayer purpose. Betimes he felt as if he had a gong inside his sore head, with its own personal tolling bell. They even prayed over Sister Stefana’s sluggish bowel, for the love of Frigg.

The giggling novices who made excuses to peek in his doorway about fifty times a day were just as annoying. Then there was Sister Hildegard, who had an ungodly fear of Vikings and kept shrieking every time she saw him, “The Vikings are coming, the Vikings are coming.” Hah! He had news for her. The Viking was already here.

Sister Stefana of the sluggish bowel was another story altogether. The short, apple-cheeked lady had the pecu
liar habit of disrobing at odd moments and dancing naked in the halls. To say that Wilfreda, the mother superior and resident healer, was embarrassed by such behavior would be a vast understatement. Everyone ignored Sister Stefana till she invariably regained her senses. They pretended the demented nun wasn’t naked or doing anything un-nunlike. ’Twas a bit like ignoring a longship in a mud puddle.

The most outrageous happenstance of his convalescence had been Father Alaric daring to suggest that he might want to confess his sins.

“What makes you think I am a sinner?” Toste had asked.

“Well, I just thought…um, being a Norseman and all that entails…raping and pillaging and whatnot…and being well-traveled…and being a heathen…well, uh…”

“Who says I am a heathen? I worship both the Norse and Christian gods. Like many Norsemen, I have covered my back by being baptized. I am Christian when I want to be.”

“I am not certain that kind of Christianity counts toward heaven. Leastways, if you are even half Christian, ’tis a good idea to go to confession on occasion.”

“The best part of repentance, in my opinion, is the sinning,” he’d quipped.

“St. Augustine said the same thing,” the priest had admitted.

I hope he doesn’t expect to turn me into a saint
. “Did you have some particular sin in mind for me?” It was an indication of Toste’s boredom that he’d even carried on such a conversation with a priest as old as that biblical Moses.

“Fornication,” Father Alaric had replied without hesitation.

“Ah, that. Yea, I might have done that once…or twice.”
Or several hundred times
. “But not lately.”

“Then, too, there are abominations,” the holy man had added. The flush on his round jowls had crept up to his tonsured scalp.

Huh?
“What are abominations?” Toste had wanted to know.

Blustering for the right words, the priest had sputtered out something scandalous about men and animals and body orifices.

Toste was not easily shocked when it came to sex, but his jaw had dropped open then. Really, clerics accused Vikings of the most outlandish things. “You can wipe that sin…that abomination…from my slate,” he’d finally managed to say.

But now Toste was venturing outdoors…no doubt to save his sanity, or what was left of it. His head wound had been severe, but he should have recovered long before this. Oddly, the pains in his chest and back hurt him more than the head blow. Well, not so odd. It was the type of shared pain he’d always experienced with his twin brother, and he’d seen for himself on the battlefield that Vagn had been speared in just those places by a Saxon sword. But how could his twin’s pain linger on, even after death?

Enough dwelling on such morbid thoughts. Toste had more important things to dwell on now…like a beautiful woman on all fours with an upraised arse.
I’ve never made love with a nun afore. Leastways, I don’t think I have. I wonder what it would be like. Vagn would say they are all the same in the dark. Then he would laugh and suggest some
thing so coarse even I would blush. Aaarrgh! By thunder, I’ve got to stop thinking about Vagn
.

He sank down to his knees next to Sister Esme and said, “What are you doing? Can I help? I am a great cat catcher.” Actually, he’d never caught a cat in his life. Or tried. At the same time as he dropped to his knees, he clutched at the left side of his abdomen, just below his rib cage.

“What? What is amiss?” she asked, sitting back on her legs.

“Nothing. It’s just that imaginary pain again.”

“Imaginary?”

“My twin brother. We could always…well, sort of sense things about each other…even when we were far apart.”

“This is
really
far apart if you’re feeling his pain now.”

Well, well, well! A nun who can make a jest
. He punched her playfully in the arm. “Sarcasm ill suits you, m’lady.”

She stared for a long moment at the spot he had punched as if wondering whether to punch him back. That would be a sight to behold: a nun who made jests
and
engaged in physical violence. To his disappointment, she chose to do nothing but continue blathering. “I guess it’s hard for me to imagine being as close to a family member as that. My mother died long ago, but I have a father and two brothers, and the only thing I sense about them is that they’d like to see me dead.” He could tell that she immediately regretted revealing so much about herself.

“Surely you jest.”

Sister Esme really was a lovely woman. Even in the drab brown gunna she wore, her figure appeared full and womanly. Her black hair had been combed behind her
small shell ears and covered with a matching drab brown veil. No wimple. The skin on her face was as clear as new cream, her mouth a rose-colored wonder. She licked her seemingly dry lips.

Lick your lips again, m’lady nun, and I might just make bold with you right here in the vegetable patch
. Of a sudden, Toste recalled that it had been a year and more since he had lain with a woman, thanks to his Jomsviking experience. He must be randy indeed to be salivating over a nun.

“If that were only so!” she said on a sigh.

Oh, good gods, had he spoken aloud of his randiness? But, nay, he shook his head to clear it and realized that the nun referred to his remark that she must be jesting about her father and brothers wanting her dead.

“Explain yourself, m’lady.”

“Nay. I’ve already said too much.”

“You cannot tell a man that your life is in peril and then shut your teeth.”

“I can and I will.”

He shrugged. “There are no secrets in this nunnery. Women like to blab. All I have to do is ask. Someone will tell me your story.”

She sliced him with a look that pretty much said he was as bothersome as a gnat.

Undaunted, he scowled right back at her.

“All right, I will tell you. Then leave be,” she said testily. “It is four months till my twenty-fifth birthday, at which time my mother’s dower lands at Evergreen will revert to me. My father is getting desperate.”

Toste figured the wench exaggerated her peril. Women tended to do that. “I have heard of the Lord of Blackthorne, and he is already land-wealthy.”

She made a whooshy sound of exasperation at his persistence in butting into her affairs, but nevertheless disclosed, “Yea, he is, but a father with two sons never has too much. Plus, he is a greedy man.” She put her hands on her hips and bowed her back, stretching, no doubt to remove the kinks from all the bending she’d been doing.

A part of Toste’s body stretched, too. His favorite part. “Have you no love at all for your father or brothers?” he inquired as coolly as a man with a growing arousal could inquire. He would have crossed his legs if he were not still kneeling.

“Hah! I have no use for any man, truth be told. Belch and boast, belch and boast, belch and boast, that’s all they are good for.”

Toste stifled a smile.
The lady has a sense of humor. How…well, refreshing!
A wicked tongue, breasts, a nice arse,
and
a sense of humor. The nun was looking better and better.

She
was
making a jest, wasn’t she? “Has your father made actual threats?”

“For a certainty, he has…both by word and deed.”

Toste peered at her a little closer…a comely woman, even with her drab garb. “What mean you?”

“I mean that he has been threatening me for years, and that lately there have been numerous near-accidents involving myself that cannot be explained.”

He frowned in disbelief. “Such as?”

“Severe stomach cramps that the healer claims to have been due to poison. A push down dark stone steps at night. A snake in my bed. Little things like that.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Why are you asking all these questions? Even worse, why am I bothering to answer?”

“Because I am bored. Because you cannot resist my charms, despite being a nun.” Toste still could not accept a family that would do such things to a mere woman, without provocation. There were evil men in the world, though. He’d met a few. “What will you do?”

“About resisting you?”

“Nay, you saucy nun,” he said with a laugh. “About your father.”

She shrugged and pushed a strand of hair off her face with a dirty hand. Now she had a smudge of dirt on her cheekbone that made her appear ten years younger…not like the subject of some bloody intrigue. “I will survive, one way or another, as I always have. Or mayhap I will take my vows in the end. It is not such a bad life.”

“Vows? You have not yet taken vows?” Little bells went off in Toste’s head, and not the churchly kind that had been plaguing him of late.
Ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling!
these bells said,
Not a nun! Not a nun! Not a nun!

She shook her head. “I haven’t taken the final vows after ten and more years within these walls. If I do, Evergreen will go to my father. Some say I am the oldest living novice in all Britain.” Her rosebud mouth drooped dolefully as she spoke.

Toste’s lips twitched with mirth.

“’Tis not funny.”

“Yea, ’tis.” He rubbed a palm over his mouth to wipe away signs of his amusement, probably to no avail. “Are you a virgin?” he asked suddenly.

“Of course,” she replied, then added, “Your question passes the bounds of decency. It is none of your business.”

“I was just thinking—”

“Some men shouldn’t think. It strains their brains.”

“Tsk tsk tsk!” Someone needed to teach this nun-wench her proper place: beneath a man. Mayhap later he would undertake the job. “What I was saying before you rudely interrupted was that you should be more worried about being the oldest virgin in all Britain, not the oldest novice.”
There! I got my jab in
.

She swatted him on the face with the peacock feather.

He pretended great pain.

“I have noticed that you are an over-jestful man. Do you think everything in life is worthy of jest? Must you laugh at everything?”

“Life is hard, m’lady. Sometimes you must laugh, lest you break down and cry. That I will not do.”