Viking Hostage

by Warr, Tracey;

  She smiles up at him. Their kiss is long and begins tentative and then becomes avid. His hands move on her breasts and hips. She pulls away from the kiss and sets to the difficult task of unlacing the sweat-hardened thongs of his jerkin.

  ‘You have dust on your nose,’ he says, wiping at it with his thumb.

  ‘And you, my lord,’ she says laughing, ‘are covered in the stuff!’

  He reaches into a pocket inside his jerkin and produces a crumpled but fine linen handkerchief. She takes it from him and wipes the smears from his cheeks and forehead, while he smiles at her.

  ‘I was on campaign in the north with Fulk and your brother put me off at Charroux when I asked him about you. Your letter went first to Bellac and then came forward to me at a snail’s pace,’ he says. ‘I came as soon as I read it. I am sorry, Adalmode, that I did not know and did not come sooner.’

  She nods, making slow headway unlacing his jerkin.

  Audebert sniffs. ‘I need a bath.’

  ‘I will arrange a bath for you later, Audebert.’ She hesitates, but wants no pitying duty from him. She lays her hands flat on the leather jerkin, leaning into him. ‘I would be an old wife to you now.’

  ‘No!’ he says, cupping her chin again. ‘I love you Adalmode now, and since I first saw you. You kept me alive in that hole, looking at you, talking with you, gave me the strength to survive and now you are still so beautiful you take my breath away. Every time you came and looked down at me with these beautiful green eyes,’ his finger gently traces her cheekbone, beneath her eye, ‘you conjured visions of a rope hung down for me to climb out of there.’

  ‘I lacked the courage to help you escape,’ she confesses. ‘I thought about it often, how I might take a rope long and strong enough from the stable and find a way to steal the key to the grate from the jailor’s belt. But I was afraid that if you were caught escaping they would kill you.’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘you did not lack courage. If you had not given me hope and kindnesses, I might have taken a jagged rock one bitterly cold winter night and carved my own throat in my despair.’

  Swiftly she placed her fingers on his mouth. ‘No! Do not say such things. Here you are now. You survived that awful misery. Here we are.’

  ‘Yes, and yet I do confess myself angry. Angry for our lost years together and for the lost years of my life. Someone will have to pay for this anger.’

  ‘Think of anger another time,’ Adalmode says, loosening the last loop of the jerkin’s thong, so that it falls open. He is wearing no shirt beneath it. She places her hands on his exposed chest, traces the contours of his collar bones, twirls her fingertips through the swirls of thick black hair. His skin is brown from the sun and she imagines him moving around in the mornings amongst his war tents, bare-chested. She will ensure that Audebert never knows that his capture was Guy’s idea. She softly bites her bottom lip looking at him. She is breathless as if she has run up the battlement staircase. She traces his hard stomach with the flat of her hand, and sweeps her fingertips lower towards the top of his breeches where a thin stripe of black hair rises towards his belly.

  ‘Adalmode, will you marry me? I wanted to ask you and not your father or your brother.’

  ‘Yes,’ she smiles into the astonishing blue of his eyes. ‘Yes, Lord Audebert of La Marche. I will marry you and no other. And Audebert, will you take me now?’ She watches him digest this.

  ‘Here? Now?’ He looks around him.

  She nods and forces herself to keep her eyes on his, despite her embarrassment. ‘We have waited far too long already.’ She catches her breath as he unlaces the front of her red gown, pulls the gown and loose chemise below her breasts and bends to suck hard at her nipple, one hand grasping her buttock. Washes of desire flicker and shiver on her skin and she grips her fingers into his hair. ‘Wait,’ she says, and points to where a guard stands with his back to them on the opposite side of the battlements. She holds her gown up against her breasts and pulls him towards the tower room at one corner of the battlements. The guards do not venture in here. It is where she used to come and dream of him as a girl when he was a prisoner, where she composed the contents of the baskets she dropped into the hole for him, and where she thought about what speeches she might make to give him hope and perhaps grow to like her, as she liked him.

  Audebert looks around at the high stone room. There are streaks and dollops of bird shit here and there and feathers in the empty fire grate. ‘Palatial!’ he grins and then his face suddenly becomes serious and intent again. He unpins his cloak and lays it on the cleanest patch of ground, unbuckles his sword belt and wraps it around the scabbard neatly, leaning it against the wall. She lets her gown fall again, exposing her breasts. He drinks in the sight of her, kisses her cheek and eyelids, picks her up, one hand flat against her back and the other hand beneath her buttocks, swinging her legs to either side of his hips. Still kissing her, he sinks to his knees and lays her head back gently on the cloak. Adalmode’s legs are raised and parted and he kneels between them. She feels cool air as he pushes up the heavy layers of her skirts to expose her. She feels the palm of his hand run slowly over her stomach and then his mouth is on her skin. She grips his head with both her hands and draws short gasping breaths as his kisses rove over her. He sits back on his heels and looks in her face. She watches him hastily unlacing the thong of his breeches.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  Adalmode stood with Audebert and Guy at the door of the Abbey of Saint Martial. It was two weeks since Audebert’s arrival in Limoges, and they had not repeated their physical union although Adalmode felt the desire gnawing at her whenever he was in her vicinity, and whenever he was not in her vicinity too. ‘I give my consent that you take my sister, Adalmode of Limoges to wife,’ Guy said formally. ‘Do you consent to the marriage Lord Audebert?’

  ‘Yes, I consent, and most gladly,’ Audebert responded smiling warmly at Adalmode.

  ‘Do you consent Adalmode?’ Guy asked.

  ‘Yes, I consent.’ Overwhelmed, Adalmode wondered if life would ever feel mundane again.

  Audebert looped her arm through his and pushed open the Abbey door. Inside the static air was cool and smelt of incense. She took a deep breath. Thirteen years. Thirteen years to wait to be wed to him. She looked sidelong at Audebert, her husband, and he smiled too, without turning his face fully to her. Every time she looked at him she was surprised by the blueness of his eyes, the look of him that she could not put into words but simply knew as a bodily response, an emotional thump. They walked towards the altar where Adalmode’s brother Hilduin, who would soon be ordained as Bishop, waited to bless the marriage.

  The wedding feast went on for two days. Guy had given Adalmode a quarter of the Limoges city tolls and tithes as her very generous wedding gift. On the third day when the guests rose from their beds, jaded from drinking and eating, a messenger from Poitiers was waiting in the hall with a declaration of war against La Marche and Limoges, ostensibly because the marriage had not been sanctioned by the Duke and Duchess of Aquitaine, but no doubt it was the affront to the heir of Aquitaine’s pride that really provoked the challenge.

  ‘I ask their sanction for no act of mine,’ said Audebert, ‘and I was intending to declare war on them in any case, so now we are all happy.’ He smiled at Adalmode. No, she thought, no now we are not all happy. Not if I should have you so briefly after waiting so long and then see you ride away to war and danger, but she has always known this is who he is: not a lord to sit at home counting his money or discussing the progress of the crops. Bellac has always been a military household. She must take her happiness as she finds it. Perhaps it was inevitable since Audebert had spent half his early adulthood in a deep pit in the ground. Being enclosed and static at home could not hold much appeal for him.

  ‘Ride to Bellac,’ Audebert said to his brother Boson, ‘and take charge of the garrison there. Send on the rest of the men to me at Roccamolten and we shall s
ee if the Poitevins will enact their words.’

  Adalmode watched Guy knit his brows and his brown eyes stare off into nothing in the centre of the hall. ‘My wife kidnapped by Vikings and the Poitevins declaring war against me! This is not an auspicious beginning to my rule,’ he said and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, but my dearest sister is happy,’ he smiled in the general direction of her anxious face.

  The reply to Guy’s last negotiation for Aina over the amount of the ransom had been negative. ‘What else can I do? I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘The Abbey of Saint Martial has 1,000 pounds in silver,’ Adalmode told him.

  ‘But you have already asked them and they gave you only 30 pounds.’

  ‘Yes so you must take it from them.’

  Guy looked at her aghast. ‘But I can’t do that.’

  ‘Yes you can, and you must. Since Hildegaire has died and Hilduin has yet to get his feet under the table as the new Bishop you can do this. Do it Guy.’

  ‘I can help you, brother,’ Audebert said. ‘Before we ride to Gençay to engage the Poitevins, I and my men will accompany you to cow the Abbey Treasurer, and we will escort the last part of Lady Aina’s ransom back to Limoges.’

  19

  Kelda Ey

  991

  I watch the seasons wheel on the island as the clouds fly across the skies and the tides slap back and forth against the rocks. In May a purple blanket of bluebells smothers the ground in the woodlands and in June the island changes its garb to pink with Red Campion blooms. In the summer the green bracken is full of nesting birds and in our second summer here Thorgils took Aina to his bed and whilst I am glad for their happiness, my heart weighs heavy with fear at their recklessness. I had been wrong in my suspicions concerning Olafr. It had been Thorgils all along that Aina wanted.

  Aina and I join the slave women gleaning after the harvest, bending over and over to pick up stalks and kernels to fill our baskets. In Autumn the bracken rusts and dresses the island in copper hues; whiskery seals haul themselves out of the sea and birth white pups in the caves. In winter storm clouds gather low and grey or a rainbow leads the black edge of clouds loaded with rain. There might be a dusting of snow somedays but mostly harsh gales blow the breath from my body when I venture out, the wind whips my hair against my rime-cold face, and the sea batters the cliffs relentlessly. Thorgils makes skis for Aina and me, and shows Aina how to use them, but the snow is not really deep enough on the ground. No boats can sail to or from the island so that our world retracts small and cosy around the hearth. No visitors arrive with news of the outside world so we tell each other stories instead from our memory hoards.

  Aina and I add a third layer to our clothing: tunics decorated with bands of woven braid which we wear between our shifts and overdresses for added warmth. Ragnhild generously lets me look through her pile of clothes to find one for myself and Thorgils presents Aina with a luxurious tunic from his stock, hemmed with a woven band of silver metal weft. We have warm cloaks for when we must go outside. Thorgils wanted to give us each a cloak brooch from his hoard. Aina’s is a trefoil design, but I tell him I don’t need one and pin my silver serpent to my cloak. ‘Father’s,’ he says, tracing its complex curves with his finger and meeting my sad smile.

  ‘The pirates did not find it and Aina’s father, Ademar, discovered it but let me keep it when he bought me as a slave. He was a very kind man.’

  ‘I’m glad of it, Sigrid. I thought of your little tear-streaked face often with great sorrow in my heart as Olafr and I grew tall, not knowing what had become of you. I took care of Olafr because I could not take care of you. I felt I had failed you. Always underlying every expedition I undertook was the thought that Thor might see fit to let me find you. I knew the chances were so very slim, but here you are.’

  ‘This serpent helped me to survive my separation from you, and to survive my slavery. It was my secret badge of who I really was: the child of Jarl Thorolf, the sister of Thorgils and Olafr, a free Viken girl of noble blood, a pagan.’

  Tofa died last week in the cold winter weather that gave her so many aches and hardships and we mourn her, even though her nickname Tofa the Spiteful was well-earned. ‘It was her pains that made her spiteful,’ I tell Aina. Thorgils made a slab-lined grave for Tofa and we break her antler comb and shears and put them in the grave with her before he seals it up with a stone lid. Thorgils asks me if I will take charge of the household in Tofa’s stead but I shake my head and suggest Ragnhild.

  ‘Why not, Sigrid?’ Aina asks me and Thorgils is looking the question to me too.

  I look down and suppress a smile at Aina’s inevitable: ‘Here we go, Thorgils! It’s a long Sigrid think. You may want to call for bread and cheese to sustain us through the hours.’

  ‘Not hours, just a few minutes,’ I say, looking up. ‘I don’t know, Thorgils. Perhaps I feel that I might wish to make a household of my own somewhere soon and I don’t want to get tied down, enmeshed here.’

  ‘Is there a man in view?’ Thorgils asks me raising his eyebrow.

  ‘No. Just a need for freedom. The possibility that I can and might pick up and go if the whim takes me.’

  ‘Whim, Sigrid!’ Aina scoffs. ‘You never acted on a whim yet! We would not ever have you leave us,’ she says more seriously.

  ‘There’s no likelihood of that right now,’ I say and decide they have to be satisfied with that. Indeed I cannot explain it to myself. I just feel a need to be potentially free of all responsibilities, in case.

  A passing ship mostly of Danes comes with news that Olafr has won a great victory in England in allegiance with the Danish King Svein at a place named Maldon and that they will attack England again soon.

  Now the spring floods are over and Thorgils has made a few short voyages ‘to test the waters.’ I wake up with a thick head from too much bad wine that Aina urged on me last night. I drift back to sleep again and wake two hours later with the sun shining into my eyes, high in the sky. Cross with myself, I dress hurriedly and go down to the hall which seems unusually empty. No Thorgils. No Aina. No men, I suddenly realise.

  ‘Where are they Ragnhild? I’m sorry I had a headache and slept late.’

  ‘Thorgils has gone raiding up the coast. He said we needed to replenish our supplies of silver to trade with passing ships and more oak that he needed for the ship repairs.’

  I pick up a mug of water to clear the taste of old wine from my mouth. ‘Is Aina out?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ragnhild says in a quiet voice with her eyes down on the sewing in her lap.

  ‘Ragnhild?’ She doesn’t raise her head. ‘Ragnhild, where is she?’

  Finally she looks at me with an anxious expression. ‘She went with the ship. With Thorgils. I told her not to and that you would advise against it, but you know what she …’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, jumping to my feet, but then I sit down again with a thump. What can I do? ‘Oh Odinn preserve her,’ I say fervently and Ragnhild nods. ‘Ragnhild give me something to do, something difficult that needs concentration.’

  She hands me the weaving batten on the table in front of her. ‘The pattern now is very difficult.’ She gestures to the half-woven tapestry on the large upright loom behind her.

  They were gone for two days and I could not sleep or sit still at any task for long. I ran up to the beacon hill and shielded my eyes against the sun to look out for their return for many hours. I tried the watchtowers in case they might come from an unexpected direction. ‘Would he usually be gone this long on a raid?’ I ask Naerfi.

  ‘Sometimes they are back before nightfall, but I’ve known them to be gone for a week or more. It depends.’

  I look around me and realise that I am not the only one suffering during this absence. Ragnhild and Naerfi’s husbands are with Thorgils and several of the slave women are very attached to their masters. I am surrounded by anxiety and strangely this recognition calms me.

  It is four days since they went when I hear: ‘Sail!’ p
assing from mouth to mouth, from distant whisper to proximate shout. I am running to the landing bay to see them come. After ten minutes of straining my eyes I am sure it is Thorgils’ longboat. Five more minutes and I think I can see him on the deck. He would not let harm come to her I keep telling myself. A few minutes more and I can see everything as Thorgils’ ship makes its approach to the beach and there is Aina waving and laughing at me hanging off the stem, one arm cuddled around the mane of the fearsome dragon-head. I sit down on a large boulder behind me holding my hands to my cheeks, saying, ‘Thank you Odinn, thank you Thor, thank you Freyja.’

  In the hall, Aina, her grey eyes wide with excitement, recounts their adventures. Thorgils picks her up by her slender waist and swings her around in a circle in the air. Her hair is uncovered and loose and flies out behind her like the deep red silk tassel of a great bell rope. ‘My red maiden, my skald-maiden,’ he says, and putting her down dizzy, he kisses her so passionately that we all have to look to the ground and clear our throats to remind him that we are there.

  ‘Won’t the Bretar King seek reprisal,’ I ask Thorgils in the hall that night, ‘since you took his silver not to raid.’

  Thorgils smiles at me. ‘Sigrid the Deep-Minded. Yes. I have sent a messenger to him asking for a parlay and to establish a lasting truce. I’ve decided that’s my last raid on the mainland and that I will take advantage of the hill fort at Tenby that he has offered to me and of the land around and have some of my men establish homesteads, start farming here. It’s good soil, lashed with plenty of rain.’

  ‘This makes good sense, Thorgils.’