Page 20 of The Caged Viking

Obviously, she had no plan. “Where exactly is your longship anchored?”

“I didn’t come by boat.”

He’d frowned with confusion. Knowing where America was located, roughly…beyond Iceland…he’d pictured the route from England to Iceland and beyond. Nothing but waterways came to mind. The English Channel, the North Sea, the Atlantic ocean. There was no direct path overland. “Dost care to explain?”

“Air?” she’d said, more as a question than a statement.

“You’re asking me how you got here?”

“By sky then. Jeesh!”

He’d rolled his eyes. ’Twas as he suspected. The wench was barmy.

In an obvious attempt to change the subject, she’d called up to the king, who’d been talking to the newly arrived bishop, presumably yanked from his bed by the looks of the sleep shert peeking out from his wrinkled vestments and the mitre sitting lopsided on his bald head. “Could you not find any suitable clothing for my betrothed?”

When the king hadn’t immediately answered, she’d yelled a little louder. “You-who, Aethelred!”

The king’s eyes had gone wide when he realized that she addressed him thus.

Did that stop the wench? Oh, nay! She’d just blathered on, “Lord Hauk is a man of noble status in the Norselands. He cannot be wed in a threadbare, dirty tunic. And barefooted, to boot.”

“What boot?” Hauk had asked.

Everyone nearby glanced down at his filthy feet and long toenails. A few of the women gagged and stepped back, as if the toenails might reach out and grab them. In his experience, females had an odd aversion to untended feet. Hah! They should meet Olev the Hermit whose toenails were so crusty and bone-like that he had to use a hand saw to cut them, which is why he had nine and a half toes. As for smelly feet, personally he was more sensitive to the scent of hairy arses or unwashed ballocks, or that gods-awful gammelost, the stinky cheese some chieftains fed their warriors betimes before battle so they would go berserk.

Back to his jabbering betrothed, who had obviously failed to realize that Aethelred’s housecarls had to release his hands and feet in order to get a shert and braies on him, risking bodily harm or his escape. Instead, they’d thrown an open-sided, knee-length garment over his head and tied it at the waist with a thin rope.

“They are not about to release me,” he’d started to explain, “so you can adorn me to your standards.” He smiled to ease his criticism of her well-intended remarks.

“Shhh!” she’d said.

Truly, the wench went too far, shushing him. He’d been about to tell her so, but the king, by then recovered from his initial startlement, responded, “What difference does his clothing make? He will be naked within the hour. Unless…” He’d glanced to some of his drunken cohorts for support. “…unless Viking men have a way of consummating a marriage with their cocks covered. Which wouldn’t surprise me. It’s cold enough in the Norselands to freeze a bear’s ballocks, let alone a man’s staff, which on a Norseman probably resembles a skinny icicle. Ha, ha, ha!”

Much laughter had followed. Even the bishop, who’d been handed a cup of ale, had appeared amused.

“Actually, where I come from, condoms do cover the male penis during sex,” Kirstin had said, “and no one would argue that protected sex is not intercourse. Tell that to thousands of college guys who buy condoms by the dozens. Ha, ha.”

Hauk had no idea what a condom was or exactly what she had implied, but even he had been shocked that a woman would discuss sex, or male parts, in mixed company. “Have you no shame, woman?”

“Oh, please! Get over yourself!”

He’d recalled of a sudden how Ivan the Ignorant always said that the best wench he’d ever met had no tongue. Could be there was wisdom in Ivan’s ignorance. He’d been confirmed in that conviction when she began you-who-ing again, this time to the queen, wanting to know if a bridal bower was being prepared. Little did she know that the cage and a pile of fresh straw was probably to be her wedding bed.

But now the ceremony was about to begin. Somehow, someone had gathered some flowers together and woven them into a crown of sorts that sat on Kirstin’s head, which gave her a bridal look. And, in truth, made her look younger. Almost maidenly.

“By the by,” he whispered, “are you a virgin?”

“No. Are you?”

Again, he was taken aback by her bluntness. “What a question!” he declared indignantly. “Untried at thirty and five years? What kind of man do you think I am?”

“I don’t know. That remains to be seen.”

Did she imply…? Holy Thor! She did! “I could show you right now what kind of man—”

She elbowed him into silence as the God-man began to expound on the heavenly responsibilities of marriage. He elbowed her back, just to show he would not be managed, but his elbow hit one of her arm rings and he nigh fell over at the stinging sensation, which felt like a thousand bees biting him at once, accompanied by a brief sizzling noise, like water on a white-hot blacksmith’s iron. It wasn’t that it hurt so badly, but that he was shocked by the sensation.

He glowered at her, but she just stared ahead, unaffected. He was beginning to wonder if she was some otherworldly creature, sent by the gods, mayhap the jester god Loki, or the Christian One-God, as she’d said. And I am to be wed to her…this magical wench? Where was I when the luck tokens were being passed out by the Norns of Fate? What will happen when I put my cock inside her? Will she sting and scald me there, like she did my elbow, till I am a bare nub of my former glory? He edged away from her a bit.