Page 38 of A Tale of Two Vikings

“Methinks ’tis time for a cart delivery of mead barrels to the trading vessels in Jorvik.” He and Bolthor had already discussed a preliminary plan, but the details were yet to be worked out.

“My father and brothers will recognize us.”

Women! They must know all the details. They must argue every point. Why can they not just let men, with their greater intellect, handle things? “Not if we are in disguise.”

“Disguise? What kind of disguise?”

Be quiet, m’lady, or I am going to abandon you here to your father. He decided to give her one last explanation, and that would be that. “Well, there is no disguising you. You will have to hide in one of the barrels, but Bolthor and I…hmmm…our best disguise would probably be as…”

“What?”

“Nuns.”

Big butts are timeless…

“My bottom is too big.” Esme’s voice was muffled, coming as it was from the inside of a barrel. Besides that, her brain was starting to feel fuzzy from the mead fumes still lingering in the oak staves.

“Try to lie straighter so that your buttocks go flat,” Mother Wilfreda advised.

“My buttocks never go flat,” Esme said. “Standing, bending, sitting, lying down—’tis all the same. My bottom is too big.”

It was barely past dawn on the morning after her father’s visit. Ravenshire, the estate owned by Toste and Bolthor’s friend Eirik, lay a considerable distance away. It would take a full day and mayhap more of hard riding in this cart, with unknown dangers in between, most especially her father’s troops. They must needs start soon.

But first, Esme had to fit inside a barrel, which was proving impossible. A barrel had been laid on its side in the back of a market cart. It was the biggest mead barrel they had, and still Esme couldn’t fit her whole body inside. First, she’d tried to back in, feet first, but when she’d gotten as far as her hips and buttocks, she’d had to crawl back out. Now, she was headfirst in the barrel, with her buttocks sticking out, and Sister Margaret and Mother Wilfreda shoving, to no avail.

“I do not think your arse is too big,” she heard Toste say.

Esme went stiff with embarrassment and stopped trying to squirm herself into the barrel. Oh, for the love of Mary, the Viking is here and he’s looking at my bottom.

“I agree,” Bolthor said. “A wench cannot have too big an arse, to my way of thinking. Gives a man something to hold on to.”

Sister Mary Rose giggled and Mother Wilfreda said in a droll tone of voice, “Nice disguises!”

“Methinks it would make a good poem,” Bolthor continued. “Viking Men and Their Love of Ample Arses.”

“Don’t you dare,” Esme said as shrilly as she could, still half in and half out of the barrel. “And someone get me out of here.”

Toste grabbed her by the waist and pulled her hard so that the back of her shoulders hit his chest, and the two of them almost fell to the ground. Fortunately, his greater weight held them upright, with her legs dangling off the ground. Unfortunately, once they were upright, she found herself still wrapped in his embrace from behind, and the rogue wasn’t letting go. In fact, the very bottom she had been bemoaning minutes ago was pressed against a part of him that was rather big, too.

That was when she looked up at Bolthor, who was making a throat-clearing noise as he prepared to recite his newest saga. He wore a huge brown nun’s robe with a wimple and veil covering his head. His black eye patch was gone and his dead eye stared straight ahead in a most unsettling fashion. A crucifix hung from a thick chain onto his massive chest, and wooden prayer beads dangled from his rope belt. He’d shaved his face closely and displayed not one single whisker. He was the biggest, homeliest nun Esme had ever seen. And that’s not all. His face and hands were covered with “sores,” thanks no doubt to some creative use of dough and dyes.

“Did you fall in a patch of poison berries?” she asked.

“Leprosy,” Toste answered for his friend. He spoke from behind her, against her ear. “’Tis a convenient thing that we travel to Jorvik to deliver a batch of Margaret’s Mead. We can deliver yon leper nun to the boat traveling from there to Lepros Island. Two jobs, one trip.”

Before she could express her surprise at the lackwit scheme, Bolthor started, “This is the saga ‘Viking Men and Their Love of Ample Arses.’”

“Uh, Sister Bolthora, I don’t think we have time for this,” Toste said, against Esme’s ear once again. His hands were still at her waist.

She felt his breath on the inner whorls of her ear. Who knew mere breath could feel so stimulating there! It was only an ear, after all. But ’twas best to confine her surprise to safer topics. “Sister Bolthora?”

“We call her Sister Thora for short,” Toste said with a chuckle…a chuckle that tickled her ear some more. Actually, tickle was too tame a word for what was happening. There appeared to be some connection between her ear and her breasts and that private place between her thighs.

Bolthor ignored them all and started reciting, with a forefinger pressed to his chin thoughtfully.

“What is it ’bout men

and their favoring arses,