Bryk slapped him on the shoulder, grinning broadly, then snaked his big hands under the garments and lifted them out.
She half dreaded he would get to his feet, unfurl the robes and put them on. Instead he set them aside and delved into the chest for something else. He handed a few candle ends to Torstein who pulled a glowing twig from the fire and lit them. Their soft flickering glow brought comfort to the dark hovel.
He then pulled out a misshapen chunk of candle still wedged onto a candlestick made of gold. He yanked it off to reveal a pointed holder as long as Cathryn’s hand. He handed it to her. “For you.”
Cathryn had never owned a personal possession. Nuns were forbidden attachment to worldly things. She longed to accept the gift, moved beyond imagining by the pleasure in his gaze. She wiped her palms on her skirts and glanced at Ekaterina. The old nun nodded.
With trembling hands she took the treasure from him. “Thank you.”
It was heavy, an object of value. She should have been mortified that it had been plundered from a Christian church, but joy tingled up her spine as she slowly traced a finger from the base to the tip.
Kaia suddenly giggled. Ekaterina’s face reddened. Bryk coughed, then held out his hand. “Keep safe. In sea chest.”
She handed it back and watched as he nestled it into the folds of his extra clothing. Then he came to his knees and carefully unfolded the vestments.
The expectation on his face showed he thought there was something wrapped inside.
Ekaterina sucked in a breath when the object was revealed—an exquisite triptych, a small folding altarpiece. “Gilded copper,” she breathed, “made for a rich patron.”
Bryk traced a fingertip along the ornately curved top then carefully opened one of the wings to reveal the figure of a man embossed on the inside.
“Saint John Baptist holding a lamb,” Ekaterina explained to Bryk. “The Baptist named his cousin, Jesus Our Lord, as the Lamb of God who would be sacrificed to redeem sinful humanity.”
“Poppa has spoken of this lamb before,” he said thoughtfully, stroking the animal.
Then he slowly opened the second wing. The center panel depicted Christ on the cross with Saint John and the Blessed Virgin Mary on either side.
Cathryn had expected this. What stole her breath away and had Ekaterina and Kaia exclaiming out loud was the scene engraved on the interior of the right wing—there was no mistaking the figure of Saint Catherine with her attributes of Sword and Wheel, symbols of her martyrdom.
Ekaterina launched into a mantra in some incomprehensible language, her eyes turned heavenward, hands raised in supplication.
Kaia burst into tears.
Cathryn stared at the triptych in disbelief. Her patron saint hadn’t abandoned her.
Bryk sat back on his haunches, looking from one stunned woman to the next, obviously at a loss to understand what was happening.
Cathryn pointed to the panel, then pressed her palm to her breast. “Catherine is my saint.”
The warmth of his hand over hers calmed her instantly. “Cath-ryn,” he whispered, gazing at the artifact. “What is this?”
“Catherine was a princess who was scourged and imprisoned by the Roman emperor Maxentius because she refused to give up her Christian faith. Many people came to see her, including the Empress. All became Christians. Then, Maxentius proposed marriage.”
Cathryn waited while Ekaterina explained these details, wondering if she had the courage to tell him the rest of the story. Bryk nodded thoughtfully, then looked to her.
She swallowed hard. “She refused, declaring she was the bride of Jesus Christ, to whom she had pledged her virginity.”
Ekaterina hesitated, but somehow managed to convey the details to Bryk. Was he blushing?
She gathered her courage. “The furious emperor condemned Catherine to death on the spiked breaking wheel, but, at her touch, this instrument of torture was miraculously destroyed. Maxentius finally had her beheaded.” She sliced her hand across her neck, smiling weakly.
Bryk remained silent for long minutes. Many of the candles guttered out. Only the glow of the embers lit his pensive face. Ekaterina fell asleep, snoring softly. Kaia dozed, slumped against the wall. Torstein gazed into nothingness.
Her Viking turned to look at her, his hand resting on the figure of the saint. “You are like her. Brave.”
~~~
Bryk had stood at a fork in the road of life before. He’d made the decision to turn away from murder and mayhem. It hadn’t been easy. Myldryd might still be alive if he’d chosen differently.
Whichever path he chose now might lead to destruction. The cult of the White Christ that he and his compatriots mocked perhaps had more to it.
What caused a god to sacrifice his son? Some of the Norse gods he revered seemed like a gang of squabbling nithings in comparison. Why had the saint held fast to her faith despite the threat of torture and death? She’d claimed to be the bride of Christ and remained faithful to her husband.
Myldryd had abandoned him, unable to face being shunned by her family. Would Cath-ryn be willing to give her life for him? Deep in his heart he believed she would sacrifice herself for someone she loved, but these musings were a waste of time. He could never marry a captive, a foundling at that.
If he abandoned the Viking gods, he would never feast with Odin in Valhalla, nor with Freyja in the banquet hall of Fólkvangr.
Cath-ryn had fallen asleep against him. He watched her breasts rise and fall, listening to her steady breathing. That she felt safe enough to sleep calmed his troubled heart.
He eased down to lie on his side, drawing her into his arms, then pulled the heavy Christian robes over them. She murmured something and cuddled into him.
Need pounded in his loins like Thor’s hammer. Why not take her now? This woman fired his blood, stoking desires dormant since Myldryd’s death.
But she was an innocent, and rape lay like a grim ghost deep in his bones, reminding him of the evil he’d once been capable of. Christians preached the forgiveness of their god, but was there salvation for a man haunted by past misdeeds?
She wouldn’t fight him, he was certain. She was his, but their bodies would join for the first time on a bed of thick furs, in private, crying out their fulfillment. He liked the notion of watching Cath-ryn scream in ecstasy.
His already hard pikk turned to granite. He’d get no sleep this night.
SIMPLE THINGS
Cathryn stretched lazily, then startled. It was fully light. She and the other sleeping nuns remained in the hovel, but she was the only one covered by a mound of priestly robes. She threw them off, guilt and panic gripping her heart. Where was Bryk? Had he abandoned her?
A slight movement in the corner caught her eye. Torstein sat cross-legged, watching.
Bryk had left his thrall to guard her—and his chest was still where he’d left it, the padlock hanging open.
A memory of his gift—the first she’d ever received—drifted back. It had been too dark to see the candlestick and the triptych properly. An urge to touch them again seized her.
She crawled over to the chest on all fours and put a hand on it. Torstein scurried to her side. She assumed he would stop her, but he opened the lid.
“Thank you,” she said. “Takk.”
He looked at her curiously, then retreated back into his corner.
She was lifting out the precious objects when Bryk entered the dwelling. He eyed her suspiciously.
“I wanted to see them again,” she explained, feeling her face redden. Did he think she meant to steal his possessions?
To her relief he smiled, coming to kneel beside her. “You like?”
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him she loved them, that she loved him, but God might strike her dead for coveting stolen religious objects, and for loving a pagan.
He was a warrior, a barbarian who would laugh at the idea of a silly girl pining for him.
Ekaterina and Kaia stirred from their s
lumber.
Bryk put the loot aside and removed two water skins slung across his body and gave one to Torstein, along with a small sack. The slave scurried off to rekindle the fire.
“For apples,” Bryk explained with a smile, holding up the second water skin. He took all his possessions out of the chest to reveal a layer of sacking in the bottom. He removed the first layer. The three women stared at neat rows of twigs with their roots wrapped in straw. He touched the back of his hand to the straw, then sprinkled water from the skin over everything.
Then he carefully lifted the layer with the twigs. Below were hundreds of densely packed shiny black seeds. They glistened like the scales of a tiny dragon. Bryk picked up a handful, spread them in his palm and stared.
There was more to this man than she had ever imagined. “Why are apples important to you?”
Bryk touched a fingertip to the seeds in his palm. “In our legends, the goddess Ydun gives apples to the gods, thereby granting them eternal youthfulness. When I win land here I need something to grow people will want.
“In the legends of the Vanir, eleven golden apples were given to woo the beautiful Gerdr by Skírnir, who was acting as messenger for the god Freyr.”
Cathryn was lost, despite Ekaterina’s explanations. “Who are the Vanir?”
He blew into the air. “Njord is the god of the wind who fills our sails, important to seamen.” He looked her in the eye. “His children Freyr and Freyja are the gods of fertility.”
Ekaterina grinned naughtily as she explained the word that had rolled off his tongue like honey from the dipper.
“Fruktbarhet,” Cathryn repeated, elated at his smile of pleasure.
“As well, the goddess Frigg sent King Rerir an apple after he prayed to Odin for a child. Frigg's messenger was a crow who dropped the apple in his lap. Rerir's wife ate the apple and bore a son—the heroic Völsung.”
The only apple in the Christian tradition that Cathryn knew of was the fruit of the tree that symbolized Adam’s fall from grace. Bryk’s legends were richer, more in tune with the life giving and healthy properties of the fruit.
The stories were an important part of his history and culture. Their backgrounds and beliefs were very different, perhaps too different. What did he think of her God his people called the Vite Krist? “Too many strange sounding names,” she murmured weakly.
He rummaged through his pile of belongings and drew out a small silver pendant. The circular keepsake with the figure of a woman at its center lay like a fragile jewel in his palm. He held it out to her. “For you,” he said, pointing to the woman. “Freyja.”
Cathryn accepted the precious object with trembling hands. It was a woman’s talisman. Who had it belonged to? His mother or his wife? She feared any attempt to utter words of thanks would reveal her longing to know more about him.
“My wife’s,” he said, his eyes bright.
Cathryn smoothed a finger over the goddess, deafened by the frantic beating of her broken heart. “What is her name?”
“Myldryd,” he rasped. “She died.”
~~~
Shackles fell away as Bryk spoke his wife’s name out loud for the first time since her death. He was seized with a desire to tell Cath-ryn the whole story, to reveal fears and torments he’d never shared with anyone.
But he hadn’t learned enough of her language, and these were things he wanted to whisper without an elderly woman as a go-between.
However, he could share some of the things he’d brought from Norway. He found the ceramic oil lamp his mother had made when he was a boy, small enough to fit in his palm. “Light,” he explained as they passed it from one to the other.
The tiny flute he’d fashioned from the bone of a goat needed no explanation. Cath-ryn’s eyes filled with tears as the plaintive notes emerged from an instrument he’d sworn he would never play again after the child he’d made it for was lost. He wasn’t sure why he’d brought it with him, but was suddenly glad he had.
Her tears turned to laughter when he switched to the jaw harp, a memento of a journey to Pomerania. He laughed with her, rendering it difficult to keep playing. When was the last time he’d laughed? Even the sullen Kaia seemed caught up in the merriment as she held Ekaterina’s hands, steadying the old woman who danced tottering steps to the resonant twang of the instrument.
Winded, Ekaterina sat down heavily, a gleam in her eye when he located his hnefatafl board and playing pieces. “Da! I know how to play,” she exclaimed, then rushed into an explanation of the rules partly in the Frankish tongue, the rest in some language only she understood.
But he caused the biggest uproar when he produced a glass mirror and a comb made of deer antler. For a moment he feared the three women might come to blows over who should get to use them first. He held up a hand to calm the squabbling and handed the mirror to Ekaterina.
~~~
There were no mirrors in the convent, and Cathryn suspected this was the first time in many a year Ekaterina had seen her own face. She stared into the glass, barely touching her fingertips to her forehead as she traced the deep wrinkles. Cathryn wondered if she would remove the coif and wimple she had steadfastly clung to, but it was a forlorn hope. Instead, the nun smiled broadly and exclaimed, “Still a beauty!”
Everyone laughed with her. “Ja!” Bryk said with a smile that made her throat go dry. He handed the comb to Kaia. Cathryn pouted at her smug friend, but was secretly glad he had left her to the last.
Kaia tugged the comb through her tangled hair, preening this way and that as she looked into the mirror then reluctantly handed the items over.
Cathryn noticed some sort of decorative lettering along the spine of the comb. She traced a finger over it. “This looks like Greek. What does it say?”
Ekaterina clucked. “Not Greek. Runes.”
“It says Bryk Gardbruker made this,” he rasped, covering her hand with his and guiding her fingertip over the symbols.
“You made it?” she asked, savoring the warmth of his skin and filled with reverence for the fine carving that must have taken hours of patient work. “And the mirror?”
He shook his head. “Trade.”
Then he delved into the pile again, this time producing a tiny silver spoon no bigger than her little finger—too small to use even for a quail’s egg.
When she looked at it curiously he put it to his ear and rotated it. “For cleaning,” he explained.
If she still harbored the notion of Vikings as crude barbarians it disappeared like a puff of smoke. Her admiration for these resourceful people increased when Torstein brought forth steaming bowls of barley porridge he’d quietly boiled up on the fire.
CHOICES
In the late afternoon, Bryk mounted Fisk. Torstein lifted Ekaterina into his arms. She beamed up at him as he nestled her on his lap. He smiled back.
Cathryn and Kaia fell in behind as the horse, led by the slave, walked slowly up the hill to the abbey. Fifty Viking warriors followed.
Ekaterina had said nothing, but Cathryn recognized in her heart the old nun would want to live out her days at the convent. Communicating with the Vikings would henceforth be more difficult. However, Bryk was quickly learning her language and anxious to speak it at every opportunity. Somehow they seemed to understand each other.
And there was always Poppa and Hrolf.
The chieftain and his wife and son led the procession. She hoped Hrolf’s presence wouldn’t be too intimidating for the people who’d sought refuge in the abbey. He had agreed with Bryk on the importance of normal life resuming as soon as possible. “There can be no prosperity without people,” Bryk had argued.
“And certainly no progress without the support of the Christian clerics,” had been Hrolf’s reply. “Our intention to stay and rule this town and its environs must be made clear to the Rouennais.”
To Cathryn’s surprise, once they neared the abbey, the Archbishop of Rouen emerged from within the walls. She had seen him only once, at Mater Silvia’s i
nterment. He was tall, and dark-haired. Accompanied by several men in fine clothing, he walked forward, head held high. She had to admire his courage in facing the enemy, but supposed he hoped to dissuade the Vikings from sacking the abbey. He would also have watched the goings on in the town from atop the hill, and known there had been no mass slaughter, no wholesale destruction.
Cathryn steadied Ekaterina as Bryk lowered her to the ground before dismounting.
“Very strong, your Viking,” the elderly nun whispered, her face flushed.
She didn’t have a chance to reply that Bryk wasn’t her Viking. Hrolf’s booming voice rang out. “I am Hrolf Ganger. I have taken Rouen, and intend to rule here.”
The Franks tried unsuccessfully to hide their surprise at the Viking’s command of their language. Or perhaps they were amazed to be still alive.
The Archbishop stepped forward, his black robes billowing in the stiff wind blowing off the river. “I am Franco, Archbishop of Rouen. We are subjects of Charles, King of West Francia.”
Cathryn hazarded a glance at Bryk, wondering if he’d understood the Archbishop’s antagonist reply. His tightly clenched jaw and rigid shoulders indicated his dismay.
Hrolf, however, ignored the prelate’s remarks. “Under my rule, Rouen will prosper. Norsemen work hard. Your people have naught to fear if they obey. There is to be no looting, no rape, no murder. You can continue to worship your god. Punishment for those who defy my commands will be severe, whether they be Frank or Viking. Lead the way from this place and return to your homes and churches. This is my command.”
The Franks stared at Hrolf, then murmured amongst themselves for several long minutes before the Archbishop again came forward. “Since you purport to come in peace, we will obey, until King Charles arrives with his army.”
Hrolf chuckled as refugees emerged from the abbey and walked to the downhill path, led by the Archbishop. “Rouen is ours,” he told Bryk. “We won’t wait for Charles the Senseless. We’ll take the fight to him.”
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