Page 16 of A Tale of Two Vikings

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 something 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.”