by Sandra Hill
“Was that a yea or a nay?”
“It was a nay, you fool.”
Rashid’s shoulders slumped with disappointment. “That is unfortunate. You would make a good houri, I believe.”
“I would not!”
“You would,” he disagreed. “Any woman who moves the way you do, in battle-sport or sailing-sport, would move very well in bed-sport, too.”
It was hopeless trying to talk to the thickheaded Arab. “I cannot believe that Adam, presumably a noted healer … in a Christian country, no less … would countenance a harem. It is so … so … uncivilized.”
“I beg to differ, m’lady. It is a most civilized custom.” Rashid ducked his head then and confessed, “Actually, my master has not precisely given his permission for me to put together a harem for him.”
She narrowed her eyes at Rashid. “Precisely what has he given permission for you to do?”
Rashid looked everywhere but at her. Finally he told her, a hint of dismay in his voice, “His precise words were ‘No harem. Not now. Not ever.’ But I think he will change his mind once he sees what I have to offer. He would definitely change his mind if you were the first houri to join the troop, so to speak.”
She laughed at the wily Arab’s persistence … and at the image of her lounging about in some man’s troop of pleasure trifles.
“You would look good in sheer silk scarves and bells on your toes,” Rashid said, taking her laugh as a melting of her resolve.
“Mistresses are supposed to be tiny, giggly, fragrant, pretty creatures, not sometimes-malodorous, giant Amazons with big bones, big feet, and a tendency to guffaw on occasion.”
“See! You would be the first. No doubt you would set a new fashion. Every sheik and sultan from Baghdad to Samarkand would be searching for Amazon houris once they heard of my master’s prize possession.”
Possession? That aspect would rule me out. Never will I be any man’s possession. “Rashid,” she said with as much firmness as she could. “No harem. Not now. Not ever.”
Beware of a rascal’s wink …
Adam was standing at railside next to Tyra late the next morning, watching the dragon prow of the ship dip and rise proudly through the waves, like a sea monster.
“Do you have to stand so close?” she snapped.
He smiled at her, knowingly.
Holy Valhalla, she hated it when he smiled like that.
“Do I make you nervous?” he asked innocently.
Hah! The man did not have an innocent bone in his body. She hoped he was much more serious about his medicine.
“Nay, you do not make me nervous. But I do not like you touching me all the time.”
He held his hands aloft as if to demonstrate that he had not been touching her.
“You do not have to use hands to touch, as you well know.”
“You are correct, of course, my lady Viking. There is touching … and then there is touching.” The hot look he gave her both confused and angered her. Was he referring to their pact wherein he had promised not to touch her naked body?
“You promised not to touch me,” she seethed in an undertone. “I knew I could not trust you.”
Rashid leaned around his friend and advised Tyra, “There is a famous Arab proverb: ‘Trust in Allah, but tie down the tent.’”
“You and your proverbs, Rashid! Do you have one for every occasion? Actually, the Norse sagas have a similar one. ‘Pray to Odin, but sharpen your sword.’”
“I said I would not touch you in the bed furs unless you ask me. I never said I wouldn’t touch you ever,” Adam said, as if affronted that she’d questioned his integrity. “Bloody hell! I’m not a complete lackwit.” He conveniently ignored Rashid’s and her proverbs.
She was beginning to think that her promise had been a mistake. She was about to suggest a modification of the rules but had no opportunity because just then her longship made the last bend in the wide river amidst wild, mountainous terrain. The ancient forests here in the Northwest were dark and menacing, and an ominous mist arose to the snow-capped peaks. Against this backdrop, her father’s strong and imposing keep, Stoneheim, came into view.
Adam gasped, as did Rashid on his other side. It was the usual reaction of people getting their first eyeful of the most outlandish Viking stead this side of the Other World … and its equally outlandish inhabitants.
Her men groaned on first seeing their homestead. That, too, was the usual response. Not that they weren’t happy to be home, reunited with wives and lady loves. ‘Twas just that Stoneheim did not resemble the usual stark Viking fortress … especially in the far North. Here, the winters were long and bitter, often with only one or two hours of daylight; survival took precedence over all else … or it should have.
Stoneheim’s keep was a wood fortress, like most others throughout Norway. But that was the only way in which it was similar.
Stoneheim was built back a considerable distance from the river frontage, with the harsh mountain as a backdrop. Many additions had been built on to the original royal longhouse, many of them set into flat ledges or carved out of the mountain itself, some of them two and three floors in height. And that did not include the outbuildings, or the village homes that lay in an ever widening half circle below the keep. The homestead was an immense hodgepodge of styles, its door lintels and eaves highly carved with Nordic symbols, even the frames of the windows … many of which contained skins oiled and rubbed until they were nigh as transparent as glass.
All this building was the work of Tyra’s sister Breanne, who had told her father over and over that if he was not going to find her a husband, then she was going to while away her time doing construction work. That was Breanne there atop the pigsty, looking beautiful as ever, even wearing men’s braies and tunic, her red curls tucked under a stable boy’s cap; she was helping her workers put new sod on the roof. Breanne was the daughter of an Irish thrall, Fiona, who had died of childbed fever just after wedding with Thorvald, her father, thus giving the newborn babe legitimacy. In fact, all of Tyra’s sisters were legitimate. Her father had a tendency to marry his women, even more than one at a time. All the mothers were dead now. Although Breanne was wearing men’s breeches, and did so whenever engaged in hard labor, she donned women’s apparel on all other occasions, unlike Tyra.
At least the pigsty had not been decorated during Tyra’s absence.
“I have never seen anything quite like this in all my life,” Adam remarked, his mouth agape.
“Well, yes, you have,” Rashid disagreed. “Remember all the colorful gardens in the harems of Baghdad?”
There the rascal went, bringing up harems again. Adam was referring to all the flowers and vividly hued bushes and autumn-leafed trees that adorned almost every available space outside the royal keep.
“Yea, you are correct,” Adam said, “but I have traveled throughout Norway and the other Northlands and never have I seen flowers growing in such profusion. You would think the cold would kill them off in the bud.”
“That is the work of my sister Drifa. Her mother Tahirah came from your lands, Rashid … a concubine of my father’s, and later his wife. She missed the warmer climes of her homeland so much that Father allowed her to plant a flower or two to halt her constant weeping. Little did he know that it would lead to this … this extravagance of floral madness. She even brought a tree indoors one time. Tahirah died five years past … some say of the yearning for her homeland that never left her … but her daughter Drifa has carried on in her stead.”
She pointed to a nearby terraced garden where a petite woman—petite by Norse standards—was kneeling amidst a profusion of autumn flowers, her dainty hands covered with dirt. Her raven hair and slightly slanted eyes were the only signs of her half-Arab heritage. Otherwise, she looked like a dark-haired Viking woman.
“It certainly is … pretty,” Adam commented, his mouth still agape.
“Pretty!” a nearby soldier said with a snort of disgust. “What kind of keep is
this for fierce fighting men? We should have dirt-stomped exercise fields, but, nay, Drifa had to plant grass there and shrieks every time we trample it with our heavy boots. And the great hall! That is where the other sister, Vana, reigns. Thor’s balls, a man should be able to put his feet up in the hall, belch if the meal is particularly tasty, bring his dogs inside, spit in the rushes if he wants … not that there are rushes in this great hall. Nay, Vana says the dirty rushes breed maggots. We cannot even take a piss in the courtyard if the need comes on quicklike from an overabundance of mead. And we men must wipe our feet afore entering the great hall. Can you imagine that?” That last was spoken with such horror that you would have thought the men were required to cut off a limb … or a manpart … before dining.
Adam and Rashid looked to Tyra for an explanation. The soldier had stomped off with a curse to help Alrek toss ropes to the lad on the wharf so the longboat could be tied and pulled in close for landing. Twice so far, Alrek had missed his target.
“That would be my sister Vana he refers to … Vana the White she is called because of her white-blond hair. Her mother came to us, via my father’s bed furs, from Iceland. What can I say? She likes cleanliness.”
Rafn passed by and muttered under his breath, “Pfff! Like would be too weak a word. More like she worships at the altar of the god of cleanliness. The woman is a tyrant, I tell you, a tyrant. What she needs is a husband to beat her on occasion. Yea, she does.” You’d never know it by his words, but Rafn was in love with Vana. When asked by his comrades on many occasions how he would be able to abide living with such a zealot, Rafn always grinned and said, “I will give her more to occupy her time than brooms and lice.”
“Does the Norse religion have a god of cleanliness?” Rashid wanted to know.
She and Adam looked at each other and smiled … and wasn’t it amazing how her heart turned over at the small gesture of shared amusement? How pathetic she was! And how interesting that she had never noticed all these years how needful she was of a man’s attentions.
Or was it just Adam’s attentions that touched her so?
Now, that was an alarming prospect. Best to think of other things. What was it Rashid had asked? Oh, about a god of cleanliness. That was all Odin and Thor would need—a Vana-style goddess insisting that the great hall of Asgard be spotlessly clean! Asgard was reputed to be big enough to let 800 armed men stomp in with their dirty boots through 540 doors … doors with brass hinges that would need polishing.
“Alrek says there are two dozen spotlessly clean garderobes at Stoneheim,” Rashid commented, “and as many outside privies.”
“Alrek was jesting,” she said. “There are only ten … each.”
“Nice to know, though, that the bed furs will be clean and fragrant at Stoneheim,” Adam said. “I do so like to have clean bed furs when I am”—he paused long enough for her to look at him and blush—“sleeping.” He winked again, then leaned down to pick up his leather medical bags.
“I would pick you up and toss you overboard if I did not need your skills so much,” she snarled.
“Lucky me!” Adam murmured, a somber expression on his face now that the time to revive his medical talents was at hand.
“Skills? Skills?” Rashid hooted, obviously inferring that she’d meant a different kind of skill altogether.
“His medical skills,” Tyra emphasized. Then she did to Rashid what she would have liked to do to his master. She picked him up and tossed him over the side into the icy water.
She glanced around then to see everyone staring at her. The men were laughing. Her sisters were frowning with disgust.
And Adam—the bloody rogue—safe ashore … he winked at her.
A hole in his WHAT? …
A short time later, they were in her father’s bedchamber.
With an authority and expertise he hadn’t displayed before, Adam ordered everyone from the sickroom except his assistant and the king’s resident healer, Father Efrid, a monk from a monastery in Ireland. Thorvald practiced the Norse religion, but was Christian, too, when it was convenient. And everyone knew the monk healers were the best physicians … next to Arabs, that is.
Adam had also ordered Tyra to depart, but she’d dug in her heels, and he’d finally relented, saying firmly, “Stay, but keep your distance and shut your teeth, or I will remove you bodily myself.” She stood at the back of the room, watching with silent fascination as he did his work.
Adam laid his various vials of ointments, linen packets of herbs, and instruments such as lancets and cautery rods on a small side table before turning to examine her father. With gentle efficiency, he removed the king’s garments, exposing a big body which was still wide-shouldered and barrel-chested and bulky, though his muscles had no doubt lost their firmness from lying abed so long.
He pushed back the king’s eyelids and examined the whites of his eyes. He pressed his ear against her father’s chest and seemed to be listening to his heartbeats. He examined her father’s fingernails and toenails, even his genitals. The wound itself at the back of his head garnered the most attention.
Quietly he asked questions of Father Efrid, whom Tyra knew from experience to be a good man and a good practitioner of the healing arts when less serious injuries were involved. In truth, she knew of no physician who had a high rate of success when mortal wounds were involved. Mostly, it was luck, or in the hands of the gods. Still, she had heard of Adam the Healer’s reputation and knew she had to let him try his particular talents on her father, even if it turned out to be a futile effort.
“How long has he been thus? Does his condition never change?” Adam asked.
“Do you manage to get food and liquid into his body?”
“Does he pass water regularly? What is the color of his waste?”
“Any fever?”
“Does he appear to be in pain? No screams, or excessive groaning?”
“When did the bleeding stop?”
On and on his questions went. During the course of the examination, her father’s eyelids fluttered occasionally, and once or twice he even muttered aloud. Father Efrid reported that the king had regained consciousness a few times while Tyra was gone. They’d been able to feed him thin gruel and liquids, and he did swallow with ease. All these things Adam seemed to take for good signs.
When they left the room, after an hour-long examination, Tyra walked with Adam back to the great hall. “Can you help him?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I just don’t know. There are some good signs, but the length of his unconsciousness troubles me deeply. There is something I could try, but … nay, I will not do it.”
“What?”
“You have put me in an untenable situation, and I resent it mightily.”
She tilted her head in question.
“I could try drilling a hole in his skull to reduce the swelling. Trepanation the procedure is called. It has been done afore, and even successfully in some of those cases. But …”
“But?” she prodded when he did not immediately explain.
“But it is extremely dangerous. And once again, I find another person’s life in my hands, and I do not want that responsibility. I do not!”
“What is the alternative?”
“There is always the possibility that someday your father would awaken on his own, but, frankly, that would be practically a miracle. ‘Tis more likely that his brain would continue to swell within the confines of his skull, and his body will begin to wither away, and he will die a slow death.”
“Nay!” she asserted, much too harshly. Realizing she was directing her outrage to the wrong person, she lowered her voice and told the physician, “My father would abhor that kind of death. He would rather die on the battlefield, but if not that, then under your knife.”
“Do you have the authority to make that decision on his behalf?”
“I do.”
“I just don’t know. I did not think it would be this bad. I was hoping … well, I was hoping for some
thing else.”
“Please,” she said, putting a hand on his forearm. “Try this trepanation.”
He looked at her hand, big and callused; then he looked into her eyes.
“Please,” she repeated … a hard word for her to say and one she could not recall using for years and years.
His face was rigid and unyielding. She could see that a myriad of emotions warred beneath the surface.
“So be it,” he said finally. “God help me, but … so be it.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Would they have to learn to belly dance? …
“I’m thinking about joining a harem.”
Tyra’s sisters giggled at their sister Drifa’s remark, but Tyra reacted quite differently. The remark was so unexpected and outrageous and out-of-character for her timid sister that Tyra just about fell out of the tub as she was rising from her bath.
The big brass tub that she and her sisters shared had been set up in the kitchen so that all of them could grill her with questions without pulling their sister Ingrith away from her cooking. Actually, there were a cook and several kitchen maids to perform such menial duties, but Ingrith’s special interest was cooking and she made sure all her directions were followed to the letter. In truth, all the meals at Stoneheim were feasts, thanks to Ingrith’s talents, unlike the unpalatable fare the men had eaten aboard ship. Some of Ingrith’s dishes were basic recipes that appealed to all, but some of the frothy, sauce-covered concoctions had the big Norsemen blinking down at their plates with confusion … and a fear of ruining their fine physiques with excessive fat.
In most Norse households, the cooking was done on a large central hearth in the great hall, the site of most communal activities. Because of the large size of the resident population at Stoneheim—more than three hundred fighting men alone—most of the cooking was done in this separate kitchen with its immense hearth and stone ovens. Meanwhile, the five open hearths down the center of the great hall were there to provide heat during the cold winter.
But a harem? Drifa is thinking of joining a harem. “Drifa!” Tyra exclaimed.