Sandra Hill - [Vikings I 01]

by The Reluctant Viking

“Barbaric?” Thork exclaimed. “These are my enemies. They tried to kidnap my grandfather. They would have, no doubt, killed him.”

  “They are human beings first, Thork. For you to do this”—she indicated with a wave of her hand the two corpses—“makes you less human.”

  Coldly, defensively, Thork told her, “No man threatens my family and goes unpunished. It is the Viking way. I would be less the man to do otherwise.”

  Ruby’s icy eyes stabbed him accusingly.

  “These men came from Ivar,” he said defensively.

  “I know?”

  “You know?” Thork roared. He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “You know! Your words condemn you, wench. Know you that?”

  Ruby’s upper lip curled contemptuously. “Your Viking justice stinks, Thork. I know they came from Ivar because Ella told me so.”

  “Ella?”

  Ruby sighed. What difference did her explanations make? They wouldn’t believe her anyway. “A servant in the hall.”

  Thork blinked. She had an answer for everything, the cunning wench did. “If you know they came from Ivar and you are already accused of being a spy, then you must be aware that all in Dar’s hall think you guilty and would have you killed, as well.”

  Fear flickered in Ruby’s eyes for a moment, but she quickly masked it with lowered lashes. “Would you kill me, too?” she asked softly with strangely saddened eyes.

  Thork’s heart hammered loudly in his chest. Could she hear it? He searched her face for answers she hid too well. Ruby was the accused, and yet he felt oddly guilty.

  “Mayhap,” he finally admitted wearily. “Mayhap you would force me to do so.”

  Ruby’s eyes filled with tears. She opened them wider to stem the flow. Devastation wracked the weepy wench, and tore at Thork as her fragile heart seemed to splinter at his cruel words. Like his own, damn her soul! What had she expected of him? Protection? Betrayal of his people? Bloody hell!

  “I don’t know you, Thork,” she whispered bleakly.

  “’Twould seem you never did.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Defend yourself, damn you,” Thork demanded, raising his voice in exasperation when Ruby stubbornly refused to answer questions hurled at her by Dar and Olaf. She stood defiantly before her accusers in the privacy of a small chamber off the great hall.

  Ruby glared at him obstinately. “Why should I? Would any of you believe my innocence?”

  The deep greenish-gray pools of her eyes clouded with tears, and Thork felt he could drown in their murky depths. Thor’s blood! He could not be so foolish as to allow himself to surrender to the sea witch’s seeming innocence!

  “Never have I condemned a man—or woman—unjustly,” Dar fumed indignantly.

  “And yet you would believe the lies that black-haired spider spins in her web—despite a lack of evidence?” Ruby jeered. “What proof has she that I carried poison?”

  “Do you claim Linette missays the events of this morn?” Dar asked with narrowed eyes. He drummed his fingertips pensively on the arm of his chair.

  “I say she is a bald-faced liar. I’m surprised she doesn’t have to pin her nose to her forehead with one of those infernal brooches you Vikings favor.”

  “What is your meaning, wench?” Dar demanded to know.

  Thork explained tonelessly, with no humor, Ruby’s story of Pinocchio.

  Dar reddened and stood abruptly. In a fit of temper, he slapped her hard across the face, causing Ruby’s neck to snap back. She faltered and almost fell. Thork had to willfully restrain himself from going forward to help her.

  “Your insolent remarks bode ill for your fate, wench,” Dar warned. “Lest you convince us otherwise, I see naught we can do but torture the information from you, then confine you bodily till the Althing meets.”

  The unexpectedness of Dar’s slap after his earlier kindness seemed to have caught Ruby off-guard. She gazed at Thork’s grandfather with hurt confusion—those miserable, piercing doe eyes again!—probably trying to understand why her light remark about liars would provoke such strong reaction.

  After witnessing her sympathy for the two men in the courtyard, however, Thork had to share his grandfather’s condemnation of Ruby. All facts pointed to her guilt.

  Truly, he should not be surprised. Most women Thork had ever encountered proved deceitful, self-serving bitches in the end. ’Twas the nature of the female breed. He had not really expected more from Ruby. Thork combed the splayed fingers of his right hand through his hair in self-disgust. In truth, though, he admitted with a sickening lurch in his stomach, he had expected more of Ruby.

  Finally, unable to take any more self-recriminations, Thork lashed out, “Lies! All lies! Lay not your lying tongue on Linette again. Much has she suffered since her husband’s death. Naught does she have to gain in your disfavor, I assure you.”

  “Perhaps that part of your body you cherish so well blinds you to Linette’s true character.” Ruby’s upper lip curled in contempt as she turned on him.

  Thork lurched forward and almost backhanded Ruby across the other cheek for her insult. He halted abruptly at the sight of white fingermarks from Dar’s blow still highlighted against the flushed skin of her cheek. She’d expected his blow, as well, indeed had provoked it, but, instead of cowering, she held on to the back of a chair and glared back at him in challenge. Thork grabbed her by the upper arms and lifted her off the floor, shaking her until he heard her teeth chattering.

  “Thork,” Ruby whimpered imploringly, and he dropped her like a hot coal. Holy Freya! The wench drove him to madness.

  “Stupid bitch!” Thork snarled as he turned away, raking his fingers through his unruly hair once again. He forced himself to sit back down, flexing his fists tightly to bring his emotions under control. What was it about this wench that sparked his emotions afire so quickly?

  “Were you in my sleeping chamber this morn?” he asked stiffly, once he had his temper banked.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t know it was your room. I was running…looking for my room…and got lost.”

  “Why would Linette missay you carried poison?”

  “She fears I will replace her.”

  “How so?”

  Before Ruby could answer, Dar interrupted, clearly disturbed by the direction their interrogation had taken them. “Linette is a guest in my home, much as you were. She is the widow of my faithful hesir, Godir. Why would having another guest in my keep threaten her?”

  “Perhaps she fears I’ll bump her from your bed,” Ruby sneered, looking directly at Thork.

  The eyes of all three men widened in understanding at the same time before they burst into laughter.

  The gall of the brazen wench! Thork thought, not unimpressed by her arrogance.

  “Nigh every man who enters this keep asks to wed or bed the fair Linette, whether they have five wives or none already,” Dar said, explaining their laughter. “Her charms be known far and wide.” He chuckled aloud and added, looking Ruby over from head to toe and obviously finding her wanting, “Nay, Linette fears naught from your competition.”

  Thork also scrutinized her boldly, not quite so sure that Ruby would come out on the short end in a comparison with Linette. He would not let her know that, though. Instead, he mocked her: “Think you I would choose you—bony arse and all—over Linette? I am not yet in my dotage!”

  Dar and Olaf snickered, nodding in agreement.

  “Men! You’re all the same.” Ruby lifted her chin contemptuously, putting her hands on her hips. “Put a pair of bosoms in your faces and that’s as far as you can see!”

  Her earthy language disconcerted them all.

  “’Twould not take much to see past yours,” Thork choked out insultingly with a quick sweep of his hand toward her small, pert breasts.

  “You were anxious enough back in Jorvik.” Her flashing eyes challenged him.

  “I must have been desperate.”

  “
Hah! If I wanted you, I could have you just like that,” Ruby boasted with a sharp snap of her fingers.

  “Why, you arrogant little baggage!” Secretly amused by the wench’s overconfidence, Thork wondered if she truly thought she could seduce him if she chose. Probably! He’d behaved like a horny goat thus far. ’Twould be amusing, though, to see what tricks she would employ. His eyes narrowed speculatively.

  Leaning her face closer, Ruby taunted him, “You Vikings are great ones for sagas and riddles. I have a good one for you, Thork. Would you like to hear it?”

  A muscle twitched in his jaw, but he refused to rise to her bait; so, she continued, “What happens when a Viking man drops his braies?” Like a master skald, she waited in the silence, choosing just the right moment to answer her own question: “His brains fall out.”

  It took a moment for her words to register. When they did, Thork reached for her angrily, but Dar and Olaf held him back.

  “Enough! Leave off, you two,” Dar ordered. “We have dawdled enough on silly prattle betwixt you two. Thork, I cannot believe a grandson of mine would allow a chit of a woman to goad him so. And you, Ruby, truly you seek the henchman’s axe with your foolhardy words.” When they both looked properly chastened, Dar went on, “What do we with the wench?”

  “I trust her not.” Thork glowered sullenly.

  “Nor do I,” Olaf added. “And I do not want her in the same sleeping room with my daughters.”

  “The tower room then,” Dar decided finally, “with a guard present at all times.”

  “Should she be bound?” Olaf asked.

  Dar thought a moment, then replied, “Nay, not unless she tries to escape or causes further trouble.”

  “She must also be guarded against those who might try to rescue her,” Thork cautioned. “Ivar may make a move. Then, too, some of our own villeins would have her head in a trice on the suspicion alone.”

  “And what of Hrolf?” Ruby asked, realizing the dangerous predicament she was in, looking for a last out. “Will you risk his anger to satisfy a suspicion, without evidence?”

  Thork had forgotten Ruby’s claim of kinship with the Norman Viking and Sigtrygg’s fear of reprisal. “Do you still make those ridiculous assertions?”

  “Of course, I do. I never lie. Why don’t you take me to him for proof?”

  Ruby’s cunning surprised Thork. Surely she knew her lies would be proven false on Norman soil. What game did she play now? ’Twas probably just a ploy for time.

  “You could always pay Hrolf wergild for her if he protested her death,” Olaf suggested.

  “Wergild! A man’s worth, not a woman’s!” Thork snorted. “Never have I heard of paying for a woman’s loss!”

  “And the torture?” Olaf prodded. “Shall I order her torture? If so, how far should we go? To the death?”

  “Let us talk on this more,” Dar offered judiciously. He leaned back in his heavy chair, feet outstretched, fingers steepled thoughtfully in front of his face. “Olaf, take her to the tower room and make sure you post a guard at the door.”

  After they left, Dar and Thork shared a glass of rare Frisian wine he kept for special guests. Thork rubbed his eyes wearily with the fingertips of both hands.

  “What think you?” Dar asked as Thork stared solemnly into the finely wrought silver cup he held between his two palms.

  “In truth, I know not what to make of the wench,” Thork answered, shaking his head. “She vexes me sorely with brazen statements and her tales of the future, but still I cannot be certain of her guilt. All signs implicate her, and yet something is amiss in this puzzle.”

  “Perchance you just want to believe her.”

  “Mayhap, but I swear on Thor’s hammer, as well as the Christian cross, Sigtrygg knew exactly what he was doing when he placed the waspish wench in my hands.”

  “Yea, that he did,” Dar agreed, then burst out laughing. “Did you hear what she said about bosoms? And men’s brains?” He slapped his palm on his knee appreciatively and said, “God’s blood! I swear she would be a fair match for you if things were different.”

  “’Tis easy for you to find amusement in my discomfort,” Thork grumbled. “Do you know, she asked if I would kill her?” Thork tilted his head back and drained his cup in one long swallow.

  “And what said you to that?”

  “I said I knew not, but, in truth, I misdoubt I could—unless I saw with my own eyes her raise the knife to my sons.”

  For two days, Ruby brooded alone in her tower room—a damp, stark cubicle with a pallet and table, not even a chair. The two small slits of windows were too high for her to see out.

  The only person she’d seen since her interrogation was the guard who handed her food, drinking water and a clean chamber pot each morning.

  Aside from feeling dirty and frightened for her future, Ruby was bored. What she wouldn’t give for a good book!

  When her guard, Vigi, opened her door that morning, Ruby sensed something different in his shifting eyes, but she knew from experience that he wouldn’t answer her questions.

  She lay daydreaming on her pallet several hours later, smelling the crisp coolness of the air coming through the little windows. Autumn would be coming soon. Ruby wondered sadly if she would be home for Christmas.

  Autumn was Ruby’s favorite time of the year. It reminded her of a special time in her life with Jack. She closed her eyes tightly to shut out the pain of those memories.

  Twenty years! How had the time passed so quickly?

  She and Jack had dated all through their senior year in high school, wildly in love. As much as she had loved him, though, Ruby had held off his heated advances, wanting to be sure, even hoping, perhaps unrealistically, that she could wait until marriage. When she told women friends about that today, they laughed at her unbelievingly, not understanding the different times and mores of twenty years ago when an eighteen-year-old virgin hadn’t been an aberration.

  Each night, though, they’d tempted fate, as youth always does, finding it harder and harder to halt the petting which step by hot step had approached a point of no return.

  After graduation, Jack had gotten a football scholarship to a university more than a thousand miles away, while she’d enrolled at a local state college. By the end of September, Ruby had lost weight, and Jack’s telephone bill had increased astronomically. The two months until Jack’s Thanksgiving vacation had stretched ahead endlessly for them. Neither had been able to afford visits.

  So Ruby had been surprised to open her dorm door one autumn day to find Jack standing there solemnly in his tight jeans and varsity jacket. The smell of the spicy cologne she’d bought him last Christmas hung enticingly in the air.

  Jack’s blue eyes had held hers in an imploring caress. He traced the sharp plane of her cheekbone lightly with a finger but did not lean down with his usual kiss of greeting.

  “Let’s go for a ride, Rube,” he’d said in an oddly raw voice, drawing her outside toward his old MG.

  She’d been frightened, wondering if he’d come to break up with her. Maybe he’d met someone else. Jack had said little, despite her nervous questions, as he’d driven to the outskirts of town. Strangely distracted, he’d parked on a little out-of-the-way road leading into a secluded, wooded area.

  “How’s football?”

  “Okay.”

  “Do your parents know you’re back in Pennsylvania?”

  “No.”

  “Did something happen? Are you hurt? Did you fail a course?”

  “No. No. No.”

  Jack had folded his arms over the steering wheel and had pressed his forehead down on them. Truly concerned now, Ruby had moved closer, but the gear shift on the floor had impeded her. She’d put her left hand on his wide shoulder and had felt corded muscles tense reflexively.

  “Jack? Jack, honey, what’s wrong?”

  “Rube, I love you. I love you so much,” Jack had groaned, pulling her into his arms.

  Ruby had smiled broadly then,
in relief and reaction to his loving words. He hadn’t planned a breakup, after all. She’d kissed him quickly on the lips.

  “I love you, too, Jack. I was so scared—”

  Jack had never let her finish. He’d put hands on either side of her face and pulled her toward him in a hungry kiss that had conveyed all the loneliness and unfulfilled wanting of the last month. “I…love…you,” he’d repeated huskily, and between each word, his breath had feathered her parted lips. His tongue ravaged all the secret, familiar recesses of her mouth, willing her to open all her intimate places for him.

  Like a starving man, he’d passed his hands frantically over her body, grasping, caressing, never seeming to get enough. In his ravaging need, he’d jerkily unbuttoned her coat and lifted the hem of her sweater. When his fingertips had found the lace-capped tips of her breasts, she gasped, “Oh, Jack! A-a-h!” Instantly, he’d brought them to hard points of aching fruition with a mere grazing of the backs of his knuckles. Jack had moaned throatily then with his own intense pleasure.

  This had been too fast for Ruby. In the past, it had taken them hours to reach this point of sexual frenzy. She’d started to get frightened, and excited, at the same time. Jack had tried to pull her onto his lap in front of the steering wheel, but Ruby had cried out in pain. The stupid gearshift had scraped her thigh.

  They’d both started laughing then.

  “Come on. Let’s go for a walk,” Jack had suggested in a hoarse, raw voice. His kiss-swollen lips and passion-glazed eyes had lured Ruby onto the multicolored carpet of crisp autumn leaves which had crunched under their feet. They’d walked, arm-in-arm, into the heavily canopied forest while industrious nut-gathering squirrels scurried out of their path, squealing in outrage at being disturbed.

  Jack had stopped abruptly and twirled her round and round in his arms, happily. Like young, carefree children, they’d fallen laughing to the luxuriant bed of leaves. He’d leaned over her and brushed some of the errant leaves from her hair, then held her eyes seriously, “Let’s get married, Rube.”