by Sandra Hill
“Do you remember Masada?” Satan asks me with well-honed cruelty.
How can I forget? That ancient rock fortress overlooking the Dead Sea, the scene of one of Israel’s greatest massacres. It is the place where I lost my beloved wife Sarah, and my twins, Mikah and Rachel.
“Would you like to see how your wife and children died?”
No! No, no, no, no, no, I cry silently. It is enough that I feel guilty over their deaths. That I mourned their loss every day of my human existence, which was not that long since I took my own life, but every day of my pitiful two-thousand-year-old Lucipire existence.
My eyes are forced shut and behind the lids I see Sarah, but she hardly resembles my wife with smooth, sun-kissed skin and dancing brown eyes. No longer is she the beautiful woman who strolled through the neat rows of our small Shomron vineyard, laughing up at me, teasing. No, this creature more resembles those pictures I have seen of Holocaust victims during World War II. Gaunt, skeletal, walking like an elderly crone, rather than her twenty-five years. I know then that I am seeing Sarah as she was during the year-long siege of Masada, before the final assault, before the fires set by Roman soldiers. Of which, for my sins, I had been one.
I arch my back on the rack, attempting escape. I scream, the first time in my captivity. A long wail of heartbreaking anguish.
“Or perhaps you would like to see how your children fared?”
When I do not respond, Satan says, “Everyone has a tipping point. Everyone.”
What I see then pushes me closer and closer to the point of madness. And I know, deep down, that he will force me to view this scene over and over, flails to my very soul.
It is too much!
Chapter 1
The Norselands, 1250 A.D.
There’s a little bit of witch in every woman . . .
Regina Dorasdottir loved being a witch, but that had not always been the case.
Witchiness was in her blood, her mother and grandmother before her having practiced the black arts. For years, she’d fought her gifts, especially when she was teased and bullied by the village children and even the youthlings up at Winterstorm castle, but then when she was fourteen, the ignorant village folks burned her mother, Dora Sigrunsdottir, whilst still alive and inside her forest hut, blaming her for a year-long famine. This, despite the fact, that her sweet mother had been a good witch, providing healing potions to the sick, birthing babies, giving, giving, giving.
Regina could not claim the same goodness. After witnessing her mother’s brutal death, a bitterness and rage grew in her like a festering boil. She had to embrace her magical gifts, or explode. After a time, she rebuilt her mother’s home in the forest . . . a hovel, actually, but she did not care. It was only temporary. Eventually, she came to excel and enjoy all that she could do, uncaring if anyone got hurt, sometimes deliberately inflicting pain on those for whom she carried a grudge. And later, over the next eleven years, she did not even discriminate in that way. Yes, she helped a great many people with her healing potions, but that became incidental. If people paid, they got her services.
She loved the power. In a time when women were rarely given authority, she had a shadowy influence over many people.
She loved making money. Forget about being paid in chickens, or barley, or mead, as many healers and midwives were. She accepted only coins, thank you very much, preferably gold, but silver would do, and occasionally copper.
She loved pretending to be an aged, skinny crone with a huge wart on her hairy chin, skin splotches painted on her skin, similar to liver spots, which village cotters referred to as devil’s spittle, and a not-so-lovely, ashy gray hair. Best for a woman living alone in a remote area to appear as loathsome as possible. In fact, she had seen only twenty-five winters, her hair was an unfortunate flame red, also considered a sign of the devil. A raggedy gunna hid an embarrassingly voluptuous figure. Those folks who’d known her as a child were long gone, or unable to recognize this scary creature of the woods. They were suspicious, of course, but accepted her explanation that Regina was gone and she was a member of the coven (with the same name, would you believe it?) who’d come to take her place. The fools shivered at the word “coven” and asked no more questions.
She did not worry overmuch about suffering the same fate as her mother. She was harder than her mother and more careful. Plus, she’d honed a talent with knife throwing over the years, and her knives were razor sharp. She could pierce a running rabbit at twenty paces and gut a randy Viking bent on rape. Never openly. Best not to raise suspicions to another level.
Regina had no friends or family. She was alone, and that was how she liked it.
She enjoyed making jest of others, without their knowing. Especially fun were her threats of ridiculously impossible curses tossed at lackwit Vikings, like “Do as I command, or I’ll make your cock the size of a thimble.” Of late, she took great delight in being creative with her spells. “Have you ever seen a candle melt into a limp wick, Bjorn?” Or “Svein, Svein, Svein! May the winds blow so hard your braies fall off, and your cock gets twisted into a triple knot.” Or “The gods are displeased at your misdeeds, Ivan, and they can turn your favorite body part black as night with running boils, stinksome as old lutefisk.”
Men were so obsessed with their manparts, many of them coming to her with pleas for a magic potion to make theirs bigger, or thicker, or less ruddy. And they would try anything! Horse dung mixed with goat urine. Standing on their heads and chanting. Dipping their wicks in wax. Never once did she have a man ask to make his smaller, not even Boris the Horse who was said to resemble his namesake.
Of course, women were just as bad. Always wanting love potions. Or ways to make their breasts bigger, or smaller, their buttocks less flabby, their hips wider. Half of them wanted concoctions to help them get pregnant, the other half wanted rid of the bairns already growing in their bellies.
None of that mattered in her longtime scheme of amassing enough wealth to buy an estate in the Saxon lands and become a grand lady. Well, mayhap not so grand, but at least respectable, in a class above the cotter class. She even had a particular property in mind, a small sheepstead with a barn and fields and a lovely stone manor house. But eleven long years of skimping and saving and still she didn’t have enough. She needed a bigger influx of wealth to finally fulfill her dreams, and it would come soon with the arrival of the young Jarl Efram of nearby Winterstorm.
Ah, there he was now, just in time, leading his horse into the clearing.
“Come, come, my jarl,” she said with an exaggerated cackle, motioning the fur-clad lording to follow her into her woodland hovel. Efram, new to the jarldom on the recent death of his father, was little more than a youthling at sixteen years. “You can tie your beast to yon tree, next to the boulder.”
She could see that he was hesitant to go near the red-coated boulder, probably thinking the stains were blood. They were, but not human blood. She butchered her chickens and squirrels for the stew pot there. She cackled again, this time to show she noticed his squeamishness. Embarrassed, he looped the reins around the post, wiping his gloved hands on his braies.
With a sniff of distaste, Efram stooped to enter the low door of her home. He might be young, but he was tall. The ceiling, from which hung numerous bunches of herbs, almost touched Efram’s blond hair, which he wore in a long, single braid. Her black cat Thor hissed and lunged for Efram’s pant leg, and the boyling jumped, causing dried rosemary and lavender and dill to shower his head and shoulders with aromatic dried particles.
She chuckled, rather cackled, again when he shook himself of the chaff.
He was not amused and tried to kick at Thor who was already bored and scooting away to his woven pallet by the hearth, where he stretched out and proceeded to lick his private parts. Men, even feline ones, had no manners.
Inside the thatched-roof cottage was not much better than its wattle-and-daub exterior. The hard-packed dirt floor was uncovered by rushes, but she kept it swept clean and bug free. N
ot that the spoiled bratling, accustomed to finer fare, would notice such details.
“Where is it?” Efram demanded. “Did you make the potion?”
“I did,” she said and sat down at the lone chair beside a small table that she used both for eating and preparing herbal remedies. That left only her bed if he chose to sit down, which he did not. Probably feared fleas or lice, little knowing he had more of such up at his keep than she did here. In fact, his servants were always coming to her for remedies to rid hair and beards and bedding of the varmints.
“Well, where is it? Give it to me! I came alone, as you insisted. I have to get back to the castle before my guests arrive,” he said impatiently.
Guests, as in his uncle and entourage, who considered Efram too young and inexperienced for such a large holding. An uncle who would find out just how far his nephew would go to maintain an iron grip on his inheritance . . . if Regina helped him, that was.
“Where is my payment?” Regina asked with equal impatience. “Fifty mancuses of gold.” Since one mancus was equal to a month’s wages for a skilled worker, she figured this amount, on top of her savings equal to about two hundred mancuses, should carry her over until her sheepstead started producing income.
“You’ll get your coin after I see if your potion works.”
Hah! She’d known Efram would pull something like this. “You’ll get no potion until I have my sack of gold. And don’t be thinking of coming back and stealing back my treasure. I have friends in these woods with swords sharper than any blade of yours.” Which was a lie, of course. She had no friends. “Besides, my cousin’s cousin who works at Winterstorm has orders to poison your own drink if you even try to betray me.”
“Why, you . . . you . . . ,” Efram sputtered, and his hairless cheeks blossomed with color. “How dare you insult me so?”
She shrugged. “’Tis just business, my jarl. Now, do you have the gold or not?”
Grudgingly, he parted his fur cloak and pulled out a leather sack tied to his belt. He tossed it on the table in front of her. “Do you want to count it?” he snarled.
“For a certainty,” she replied with exaggerated sweetness. And she did in fact count out the fifty lovely coins.
While she was counting, his eyes darted about her small house, and his lips curled with distaste. “What is that horrible smell?” he asked, glanced toward the boiling cauldron over the fire.
It was cabbage soup, which was indeed smelly, but delicious. “Oh, just a porridge of rat tails, lizard hearts, pig snouts, sour milk, and oats,” she told him. “Wouldst care for a taste?”
He gagged.
“Here is the potion then,” she said, taking a stoppered pottery vial the size of a fist from a nearby shelf. “Be very careful. One drop would kill a war horse,” let alone a full-grown man. ’Twas a mixture of deadly nightshade and water hemlock. “Because it is sweet, it will mix well, undetected, in any fermented beverage, like ale.”
He nodded and reached for it, but she held it away from his grasp. “If you intend it for more than one person . . . ,” and she knew that he did. Not just his uncle, but everyone in his party. “. . . then you must be especially careful. This vial in a tun of ale could be accidentally tasted by innocent parties, even women and children filling the horns of ale. Just one drop on the finger dipped on the tongue would be fatal.”
Efram waved a hand airily and grabbed for the vial.
And Regina knew that he cared not who died in the process of his evil plot. She also knew that her own life was in danger once this was over because she was the only person who could disclose his plans. Ah well, she would be long gone by then.
Before nightfall, she had packed all her belonging, including her hoard of coins, onto the back of Edgar, her donkey. She’d bathed in a forest pool, tucked her bush of wild red hair into a thick braid, and donned one of the used lady’s gowns she’d purchased in the market town of Kaupang. She would ride all night until she reached the harbor at Evenstead where she would sell Edgar. From there, she would take one of the merchant ships to the Saxon town of Jorvik.
She set her hovel afire before she left. Let the village folks think another witch had gone to her Satanic grave. She’d tried to leave the cat behind because he would draw attention, but the lackwit creature refused. Instead of rubbing himself up against her and purring with entreaty, Thor had pissed on her new boots and spit up three hair clumps to emphasize his disdain for that idea. Cats were like that betimes.
She’d traveled half the night when her plans hit a snag. Thor, who had wrapped himself around her neck, his head and tail resting on her bosom, hissed an alert. Mayhap a cat companion was not such a bad idea after all.
Standing directly in her path, an apparition appeared, a full-body glow of light against the blackness of the dense forest. It looked like an angel Regina had seen one time painted on the walls of a Christian church in Northumbria.
“Have you no shame, witch?” the angel roared.
Double, double, toil, and lots of trouble . . .
Michael was sick to his archangel ears of Vikings.
He’d never been fond of the vain, arrogant, brutal Vikings. But then, five years ago, God assigned him to put together a band of Viking vampire angels (vangels) to fight Satan’s evil Lucipires (demon vampires). His appreciation hadn’t increased with close proximity to the bothersome creatures. Especially those seven Sigurdsson brothers who’d been guilty of the Seven Deadly Sins in a most heinous way. ’Twas like trying to herd cats.
And for his sins, Michael had to admit, he was not overfond of cats. His pal, St. Francis of Assisi, patron saint of animals, would be disappointed in him. But ever since that Noah and the Ark debacle, Michael just couldn’t seem to abide felines. Truth to tell, two cats had entered the ark and seventy-five emerged when the floods receded. What did that say about cats?
And Vikings were no better.
Randy, crude beings, all of them!
Now, his boss (that would be God) expected him to recruit a witch to the vangel ranks. A witch! A cauldron-boiling, potion-brewing, spell-tossing, broom-riding (well, maybe no brooms), cackling crone! Bad enough he had to deal with male Vikings, but now Norsewomen, as well, and a witch, on top of it all! It was enough to sour a saint’s stomach.
Michael was in the dense forest of the frigid Norselands, freezing his holy skin under his white robes, more suited to a warm heavenly climate, when he saw his target approaching, astride a heavily-laden donkey. Not a cauldron in sight, and she wasn’t as cronely as he’d expected, but that was neither here nor there. On her shoulders was . . . (What else! It was that kind of day!) . . . a large, black, hissing cat.
Michael barely restrained himself from hissing back, but instead roared at the woman, “Have you no shame, witch? What wickedness thou dost brew!”
“Huh?” The cat bolted off for cover, the donkey balked, and the witch jerked on the reins and flew head over heels to land on the pine-needle-laden ground.
“Regina Dorasdottir! Many men, women, and children died today at thy hands!”
“My hands are clean. I didn’t poison anyone,” she proclaimed, standing and dusting off her bottom. At least she wasn’t denying that poison was involved. She knew exactly what he was talking about. The witch!
“Thou made the bane drink. Thou sold it for coin. It was used carelessly, not that careful murder is any less offensive. Many innocent people suffered painful deaths.”
Immediately, he flashed a cloud picture in front of her so that she could see all the bodies in the rushes of the Winterstorm great hall, many of them lying in pools of vomit, others with blood emerging from their mouths and noses and even ears. Men, women, children, even the castle dogs. All of them dead.
Regina stepped back in fear, not at the sight of the dead bodies, apparently, but because she was seeing a picture in the air of an event that had already happened. “How did you do that? Are you a wizard performing some magic sorcery?”
“No sorcery. That
is your business, witch, not mine. I am St. Michael the Archangel, and God is very angry with you.”
“God? Which god would that be? Odin, Thor? Balder?” She was taking careful steps backward as she spoke.
“There is only one God, lackwit!” He raised a hand, and a bolt of lightning shot from his fingers, hitting the woman in her heart. She clutched her chest and fell to her knees.
“Am I to be condemned for one . . . um, mistake?” She batted her long eyelashes at him in innocence. For a brief moment, he noticed that she was not unattractive, for a witch, that was. Her neatly braided red hair acted as a frame for a sharply sculpted Nordic face and green eyes, which would turn blue before this day was done, if he had his way.
But her appearance mattered not a whit, he reminded himself. Women were ever the devious ones, using their feminine wiles to persuade men to their designs. Hah! He was immune. “Mistake? Mistake? Woman, thou hast committed many sins. Thy transgressions are so innumerable I can scarce list them. Dozens of babes killed in the womb, the addictive poppy used to make slobbering slaves of some men, and women, too, death potions for the elderly, murder . . . and, yea, killing men who came courting—”
“What? Those were potential rapists!”
“Not all of them,” he contended. “Thou art also guilty of the sin of greed.” He glanced pointedly at the leather sack attached to the donkey’s saddle.
“Just compensation for services,” she countered.
He arched his brows at that and showed her a cloud picture of her withholding a medicinal remedy for a starving family’s baby with lung fever.
“Well, that is the exception,” she lied.
“Then, too, there was fornication,” Michael told her.
“One time. One stinking, unsatisfying time,” she argued.
“Where in the Holy Book does it say that coupling has to be satisfying?” he asked.
“What about all the good I’ve done? There are many people I’ve helped with healing herbs.”
“Not for a long time,” he told her, then sighed. “On the celestial scales of good and evil, canst hear the thunk of weight on the one side?”