Page 113 of Down and Dirty

“Three days? That’s impossible. I was in WEALS for more than three sennights.”

“Wheels? What wheels?”

The blood began to drain from Britta’s head as the certainty of her situation hit her. She was back in time. It was as if all the other had never happened… the time travel, WEALS, and most of all, Zachary. Had she dreamed it all? If so, how could she have dreamed in such detail? No, it had been real. Britta’s heart constricted at the enormity of her loss. Dazed, she shook her head to clear it, and it felt as if knives were cutting into her scalp. Her brain could not handle the strain of unraveling the turmoil, not now, and she fell back into the pain-sleep.

Days went by, and Britta was able to sit, then move about with a makeshift crutch. Her face and body were battered and bruised. She had a broken ankle. But she was alive. The trouble was, she felt no joy in the living.

One sennight after her “return,” whilst still bedridden, her father sent a message informing her of a new groom he had procured for her… procured being a key word. The man was a Norse merchant of much wealth but no lands… Tume Ivarsson. The young man delivering her father’s message warned that this would be her father’s last effort to deal with her amicably — as if he had ever been amicable to her — and the consequences would be on her head if she did not yield. Later, Britta realized that her crafty father deliberately put none of his threats to parchment.

Britta yearned for normal family life, due to that blasted Zachary, no doubt. So, despite the danger, trying to be amicable, she went to Father Caedmon and asked if he had ever in his travels made the acquaintance of Tume Ivarsson.

Father Caedmon recoiled at mere mention of the man’s name.

“What?” Britta wanted to know.

“Amongst other things, he is a slave trader.”

She told her father’s emissary no, but told him to ask her father if he would accept a groom of her choosing. She received a reply later that day via the red-faced messenger, “Never!”

The fact that she’d received the reply so quickly gave Britta fair warning. Her father was nearby. Oh, he would not attack the abbey outright, not wanting the powerful Papacy on his back, but her father was the master of deceit. She re-called the attack on Sister Bernice that had prompted her initial flight from the abbey and her time travel.

The next day, Father Caedmon set off for the minster in Jorvik for some priestly duties and to seek church backing if her father should dare breach the nunnery walls. The ringing of the bells and constant chapel services were lessened in his absence. Thank the gods for that.

It took more than a month for Britta’s ankle to heal, and by then her other injuries were fading. Not so her heart. She missed Zachary and Sammy and her life in the future. At night, she wept for all she had lost.

Britta soon learned what her father had meant by “consequences” if she failed to surrender to his sinister matchmaking. A young nun named Sister Gloria had foolishly left the abbey courtyard to fetch a stray lamb. She had only gone a short distance when captured by her father’s men. Her body was returned to the gate the next day. She had been repeatedly raped, but that was not the worst part. They had slit the tendons behind each knee so that the young woman would be a cripple for life. Days later, when she was able to speak, Gloria told them that Britta’s father had personally said this was the condition Britta would be in when she wed, if she did not yield soon. A woman did not need to stand to be mounted or to give birth, her father had said.

“Is there no one we can approach to protest?” Mother Edwina asked Britta.

Britta shrugged. “We have no proof. My father has friends in high places. The only weapon we have is the Church, and he has made sure there are no witnesses to his sins. Even if we were able to get an audience before King Aethelred’s court, believe you me, they would make Gloria sound like a delusional lackbrain, especially since she suffers those screaming fits. There are two Norse noblemen, Thorfinn of Norstead and Steven of Amberstead, who might help, but how would I contact them? And how long would it take?”

A week later, Britta, now physically healed, had an idea.

“We must needs prepare for an assault from my father.”

“What?” Mother Edwina was in the abbey kitchen supervising the harvesting of honey from the hundred and more cone-shaped hives on the abbey grounds. Honey was an important product here at the nunnery, their only source of income… or rather, the honeyed mead that they produced from a long-ago Margaret’s recipe.

Right now, there were a dozen nuns working on at least a hundred honeycombs. Cutting off the caps with heated knives. Draining the honey into pottery jugs. Placing the remaining honeycombs over coarse cloths bleeding into pots near the hearth fires; this would be the second extract of lesser-quality honey. Then the honeycombs would be washed, saving that water rinse for sweetening in the kitchen. Finally, they would mash the clean wax combs for winter candle making. It was a long, messy, arduous process.

“I have had dreams,” Britta began.

“Do not speak of the dreams again. Nor time travel. Nor any of your fever-induced fantasies. ’Tis not proper for a nun.”

“I am not a nun.”

“You will be if you stay here much longer.”

The other nuns and novices, working diligently, remained silent but interested in the conversation. Not much happened in a convent, and she was giving them much fodder for talk when they were back in their cells.

“Heed me well, Mother. Danger looms. And it is not just because my dreams tell me so. We live daily with what he did to Sister Gloria. I have gainsayed my father at every turn. He will not give up.”

Several of the nuns shuddered.

“Let me give the women here some defensive training in the military arts.”

Mother Edwina cringed. “Well, mayhap you could do a little training.”

“We would not have to kill anyone, would we?” one young novice asked.