Page 32 of A Tale of Two Vikings

“Never! I want to secure her future, but not by forcing her into wedlock. But if a good man were to convince her…” Gorm deliberately let his words trail off.

“I need time to think on this. I will not be rushed.” What he really thought, though, was that he’d better be careful with his seduction tactics. He might go too far and find himself leg-locked in a trap of his own making—or, to be more precise, cock-locked. But then, he had escaped such locks afore.

A maid named Greta walked up and refilled their horns of ale from a pottery pitcher. Then she handed Vagn a linen packet. “Here are the megrim powders you asked me to get from the village healer.”

“Still having the head pains, eh?” Gorm asked.

Vagn nodded. “They come and they go, but betimes they are so bad I can barely see.”

The maid dawdled about, wiping the table with a damp cloth.

“Thank you, Greta,” he said, handing her a silver piece for her efforts.

Still she did not leave.

Greta was about eighteen years old with blond braids, large breasts and nicely rounded hips. She kept slanting her eyes at him through half-lowered eyelids. She was a tempting morsel, and Vagn knew she would join him in the bed furs if he wished. He liked looking at her, but, for some reason, as randy as he had been earlier, he did not wish to bed her.

Just then, Vagn noticed Helga a short distance away, speaking to one of the Briarstead embroiderers. Helga glanced at him, then at Greta, then back at him. He could tell what she thought by her heightened color and the sneer on her luscious lips. When next she looked his way, he winked at her. Their gazes held for a long second, and he knew that she was remembering their meeting in the stable. Then Helga huffed out of the great hall.

When Vagn turned back to the game board, he realized that Gorm had taken in the short interchange between him and Helga. He knew because Gorm was laughing heartily. Only when Gorm had stopped laughing and wiped tears of mirth from his eyes did a beaming Gorm tell him, “Take all the time you want, son.”

Give me a peck, baby. Eew, is that worm I smell on your breath?…

That night, Vagn dreamed about his brother Toste. Or mayhap it would best be described as a nightmare.

Wherever Toste was, he was surrounded by black crows—the biggest black crows Vagn had ever seen. Some of the crows were singing, of all things. Bells rang. He saw a human shin bone split in half and fly through the air. The smell of honey and beeswax permeated his senses. And the back of his head throbbed as if it might explode.

Then Vagn saw the most extraordinary thing. Toste kissed one of the crows, and it felt good. Damn good.

Vagn slept restlessly all night and awakened in a sad mood. If the ravens of death surrounded his brother, then he must truly have passed over to the other world.

But what did the crow-kiss mean?

Chapter Five

Like sands through the hourglass…

Time was of utmost importance to Esme, but, unfortunately, her time ran out the next afternoon.

Without any advance warning, her father and two of her brothers arrived at the abbey, armed to the teeth. Obviously, they hadn’t come to discuss her health or well-being.

To her relief, Toste was off somewhere practicing his swordsmanship, and Bolthor had gone to a neighboring village to purchase horses for them. Her father hated Norsemen with a vengeance and would kill the two Vikings for no other reason than the color of their hair, if the whim overcame him, which it ofttimes did. So it was best that they stay out of sight. She’d already sent Sister Mary Rose to warn them.

Esme waited with Mother Wilfreda in her solar for her father to come to them. As soon as she’d heard of her father’s arrival, Esme had gone to her room and donned a clean brown robe and matching veil over a white wimple. Large wooden prayer beads hung from her rope belt. She looked as much like a devoted novice as she could manage on such short notice. And how pathetic it was that, at four and twenty years of age, she still behaved like a girl trying to meet her sire’s expectations.

Her strategy the past ten years had been a good one—as far as it went. Avoid and delay. Oh, it might sound cowardly and meek, but women must needs fight with the only tools they had. Mother Wilfreda had taught her every aspect of running an abbey, which was not so different from running an estate. If she only survived long enough to take over her mother’s estate.

Well, her father’s unannounced visit might very well place a cog in the wheels of that plan. Leastways, he would try his best to do so.

Father Alaric had volunteered to greet the visitors out in the courtyard. Now, the sound of Lord Blackthorne’s booming voice grew closer and closer, mean and menacing.

“Where is she? Hiding, no doubt. And well she should. I have had more than enough of her willfulness. I thought by now you would have beaten some sense into the misbegotten maid,” her father said.

“Nay, Lord Blackthorne, she is not hiding. She awaits you in the solar with our good abbess. And be-be-beating? You expected us to whip Esme?”

“Good, abbess? Hah! The only good thing about that dried-up crone is she’s so old she’s bound to die soon.”

Esme gasped and looked at her aunt, who just shook her head at her father’s coarse tongue and blatant lack of affection for his dead wife’s sister. It didn’t even bear mentioning that her father and Wilfreda were about the same age, neither yet ailing.