Authors: Sandra Hill
Viking Heat (27 page)
She should have been distraught over the prospect of time travel, which Joy was increasingly having to accept.
She should have hated, not loved, a man as crude and brutal and chauvinistic as Brandr.
She should be missing her old life.
Instead, she had settled into life at Bear’s Lair with a happiness she didn’t dare question for fear it would disappear.
Working with Liv, she’d managed to get the girl to speak, and once she started, everything spilled out of her. All the horrors of the Sigurdsson attack, what had happened when she’d been captured, her fears for her future. She even mentioned with regret her lost love, Einar Egillsson, whom she had expected to marry. While still reticent in crowds, especially around men, she moved freely around the keep now, helping Joy in the kitchen until Kelda resumed her duties, then taking up embroidery duties in the solar.
There had been only one problem. One of Brandr’s soldiers, Sven the Scowler, had made a coarse remark to Liv. When he’d reached out a hand to touch her breast, Liv had gone into hysterics. Her screams had reached Brandr, who was outside. When he’d come in, taking in the scene in a glance, he’d gone wild with fury. And Joy got her first glimpse of how he would be as a berserker. In the end, Tork and Brandr’s other men had to pull him off of Sven, whose nose was broken, his face covered with blood, and several ribs broken. Even though Sven had apologized to Liv and Brandr, it had taken Tork more than an hour to calm Brandr down, and even then Brandr refused to talk with anyone, even her. In fact, he shoved her aside at one point, knocking her to the floor. “Leave be, wench!” he’d howled. “This is who I am. Do not try to change me.” Instead, he went off to the far end of the hall and began drinking, continuing the entire day.
Until he came to her near midnight, reeking of ale. She would have shoved him out of bed and told him to go sleep it off somewhere else. But she’d seen the bleak look in his eyes, and she opened her arms to him. Despite his inebriated state, he was gentle with her, showing her without words how sorry he was for his behavior.
Although Brandr still referred to her as thrall when they were alone, and he still insisted she wear his thrall amulet, he allowed her to dress “above her station” and move about as a free woman. Otherwise, she would not make love with him, and he knew it. And make love they did. A lot. And not just at night under the bed furs. He came to her at the oddest times. Once midday in one of the bed closets, with the door closed. Once up on the ramparts during a snowstorm. Once against the wall in the cellar.
And what a lover he was! Sometimes gentle, often hard. He demanded much of her in making love, forcing her to do some things she never would have considered, but then he gave much in return.
Even when they weren’t making love, he touched her often in passing, or just conversing. Skimming stray hairs off her face. Caressing her arm. Patting her rump. And she did the same to him. She couldn’t help herself. Just catching his eye across a crowded room made her heart race.
She was so much in love that she couldn’t imagine ever leaving him, even if it meant living here in the past.
Thus it was a shock when she made a discovery that changed her view of everything, even the man she loved.
Joy was still barred from going outside the keep, but that didn’t stop her from trying, even though the days were mostly dark at this time of the year. By her guesstimate, it must be about the middle of October, and it may very well be this way until late January. Christmas must be bleak in these parts, if they even celebrated Christmas. Although Brandr had told her one time that he practiced both Norse and Christian religions. Jeesh! That was like a man saying he both did and didn’t believe in God. But then, she knew of soldiers who got bunker or deathbed conversions, and others who didn’t really believe in God but went to church anyway, as insurance, just in case.
One morning, wanting to alert Bergdis, the dairymaid, that they would need more cream the next day for a special mousse she was experimenting with, Joy slipped past the guard. He was flirting with Ebba, who was still misbehaving, despite her being with her husband now.
Once she rushed into the barn, then held her nose against the pungent odors, she glanced around, even into the various stalls, unable to find either Bergdis or her husband Randulfr, who was in charge of the stables. But then she heard an odd mewling sound.
Cats?
she wondered.
she wondered.
Taking a wall torch in hand, she crept toward a far stall where she discovered not a cat but a whimpering baby. By the tear tracks on its face, the baby, no more than four or five months old, must have been crying for a long time and was petering down to a whimper of distress.
“Hello!” she called out for help. “Bergdis? Are you here? Randulfr?”
No answer.
But her voice must have alerted the baby that someone was nearby.
Opening its blue eyes, the baby gazed up at her and then let loose with an unending howl.
“Now, now,” she said, setting the torch into a holder. She knelt in the straw and picked up the child. “Shhh. It’s okay. Shhh.” She noticed a pottery jar of milk nearby and a twisted cloth that must be used for feeding the baby. Resting the baby in the crook of one elbow, she began to feed it in this primitive manner.
Its little mouth latched onto the cloth nipple and sucked greedily. She kept dipping it in the milk and returning it to its mouth. The whole time, the baby’s bright blue eyes stared up at her. It probably had blond hair, but it was hard to tell with all the grease and grime that covered it. Its body appeared too thin, but then she didn’t know much about babies.
“Oh, sweetie! You are a darling. Who do you belong to, huh? And why are you lying here all by yourself? Someone is going to answer for your neglect. Yes, they are.”
Once fed, she laid the baby back down on the straw and lifted its little gown and its cloth diaper, which was sopping wet and filled with feces. The child couldn’t have been changed in more than a day, further evidenced by its raw and chafed bottom. It was a little boy, she soon found out when it squirted up at her, dampening her apron, then smiled.
“Oh, my gods! Oh, my gods!” Bergdis said, as she rushed up to the stall. “What are you doin’ here? The master is gonna kill me. Here. Give the bratling to me.”
Bratling? I don’t think so!
Joy stood and refused to relinquish the child. “Why is the baby lying here in this filth with no supervision?”
Joy stood and refused to relinquish the child. “Why is the baby lying here in this filth with no supervision?”
“I had ta go help me husband birth a foal.”
Joy flinched at the woman’s blood-covered hands and apron. And she had been about to pick up the baby like that? No way! “Are you saying this is your baby?”
Bergdis shook her head vehemently. “He was given ta me and Randulfr ta care for.”
“What’s his name?”
Bergdis’s already flushed face got redder. “It ain’t got no name.”
“What?”
“Oh, please, mistress. Give over the child. There will be such trouble.”
“Whose child is this?” Joy demanded to know.
“I cannot say. I cannot say.” She lifted her apron up to her face and began to wail.
Meanwhile, the bright little baby’s head moved from side to side, as if following the exchange.
“Well, if you won’t tell me, Brandr will.”
Bergdis wailed louder.
And there he stood, hands on hips, his eyes blazing midnight blue fire. “What in bloody hell is going on here?” His eyes went wide as Joy turned. Whether he was shocked at her being outside the keep, or that she was holding a baby, she wasn’t sure.
“Brandr? Look. This little baby was lying out here, crying. It needs changing and a warm cradle and . . .” Her words trailed off at the expression of outrage on his face.
“Put the baby back where it belongs,” he said icily.
“What? Where? In the straw?”
“I do not care where. Just put it down and get your arse back in the keep.”
“No!”
“What did you say?”
“I said no. I will not abandon this baby here. And I don’t understand why you would even think I would.” Tears filled her eyes.
“The child is Liv’s.”
As understanding seeped in, she said, “Oh.”
“Now will you give the babe back and return to the keep?”
“I can’t.”
“And why not?”
“It’s not being cared for properly.” She lifted the diaper to show him the flame-red bottom.
He sniffed at the stench, then turned to Bergdis. “You were given care of the baby.”
“But, Master, I had to help Randulfr.”
“Give the child back to her,” he told Joy.
“Brandr, this is your nephew. How can you be so heartless?”
“Heartless? I could have . . .
should have
. . . left the child out on the cliffs to die. It is a Sigurdsson whelp, born of rape.”
should have
. . . left the child out on the cliffs to die. It is a Sigurdsson whelp, born of rape.”
“It also carries your blood. And it’s not his fault.”
“I could kill the babe now and care not a whit.”
“If you do, I could never forgive you. Never.”
“Liv does not want the baby. She could not bear to see it. Dost want to reverse all the progress she has made?”
He was probably right. It would be traumatic for Liv, especially if she was forced to see him. Still, Joy couldn’t abandon this little scrap of humanity.
With a gurgle of pleasure, its little grubby hand reached out and tugged on a strand of her hair. She closed her eyes in an attempt to stem the tears that burned behind her lids.
“Come,” he urged in a softer voice, holding out a hand toward her.
She opened her eyes and stared hopelessly at him. “I can’t.”
“So be it. Stay here in the barn then. See how long you like sleeping with cows.”
“It can’t be any worse than sleeping with a pig,” she snapped out and instantly wished she’d kept her mouth shut.
He turned slowly, cast her a withering look, and then he was gone.
She took a stand for motherhood . . .“Your name is going to be Matthew. What do you think of that, little one?”
The baby just stared up at her from his fur bed laid out on the straw. He was fed and bathed, and what a beautiful blond-haired angel he was! His little feet pumped, and his arms windmilled, now that he was free from all the binding covers.
He was too skinny, but that should take care of itself with proper feeding. She would have to ask someone how soon he could take solid food. His bottom and the area around his tiny penis were still raw, but hopefully Bergdis would bring some ointment when she came back with clean cloths and blankets.
“Yes, Matthew, you are going to be just fine, aren’t you?” She tickled his tummy, and she could swear he nodded his head at her.
“Matthew? ’Tis an odd name fer a Viking,” Bergdis remarked, having just come back. Almost grudgingly, she handed her a pile of fabric, a pottery jar, which smelled like lard, and a fresh torch to light when the current one sputtered out. Surely, she could have done better than that for diaper rash, but Joy wasn’t going to complain, since she’d already promised to do Bergdis’s chores in return for these favors.
“Well, he’s not really a Viking, I guess, since nobody wants him. I’m adopting Matthew.” Joy didn’t know where the idea to name him Matthew had come from or why, but it just seemed right that this little miracle be her dead brother’s namesake. She probably wouldn’t have any other children, stuck here in the past as she was, and, yeah, she had to accept that was what had happened, unbelievable as it was.
“Will ye call ’im Matthew Brandrsson or Matthew Igorsson or Matthew Sigurdsson or Matthew Bastardsson? Hee, hee, hee.”
“None of those. He’ll be Matthew Nelson,” Joy replied to Bergdis’s snide question, although she hadn’t really thought that far until this moment. “The ignorant people here don’t deserve this precious gift from God.”
“Yer barmy if ye think a child of rape is a gift.”
“I understand the attitude of Liv and the rest of you about the rape and about a child resulting from the rape. But the baby is here now, and it’s not his fault.”
“Make sure ye muck out those stalls.” Bergdis left in a huff.
An hour or so later, Mattie was sleeping in his new toddler gown and clean nappy, which she’d had to tie on the sides since she had no pins. And she’d just raked out one smelly stall. Holding her breath, she kept reminding herself that she could do this if it meant that Bergdis would continue to provide her with the things she needed to care for the baby.
Bergdis returned then and tossed more fabric at her. “The master says ye are ta wear these from now on.” Joy didn’t need to open the material to tell it was the damn thrall gown. So they were back to that again. Well, so be it!
Wringing her hands, Bergdis continued to stand there. “Ye should return the babe to me care. Ye should go back ta the keep and yer proper place.”
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