by Sandra Hill
Still, he left.
* * *
Chapter Seven
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A moveable feast…
"Stop moving."
"I'm not moving."
"Something's moving."
Toste laughed. And that part of him where Esme's face was pressed moved some more. "Just whistle some more," he suggested.
"I only whistle when I'm nervous."
"You're not nervous now?"
"I'm furious, not nervous."
"Now, now, Esme. Just relax."
I am going to kill the lout. I swear I am. "That's it! I'm getting up."
Toste pressed his hands down on his lap, forcing her to remain between his legs under his nunly robe. "Not yet. Your father's guardsmen aren't out of sight yet. And this last bunch looked at us with a little more suspicion than the others."
"What's not to be suspicious about? Two giant, troll-like nuns, one of whom has leprosy, and a giggling little nun betwixt them who appears to have drunk too much of her own mead… sounds suspicious to me."
"Uh… would you mind not speaking quite in that direction? " Toste said in a suffocated voice. "I can feel your lips moving there."
"And I take offense, m'lady, at your description of me as a troll," Bolthor said, but she could hear the mirth in his voice.
"And I am not drunk," Sister Margaret said. "Not in the least." A loud hiccough belied her words.
They'd all been sipping the mead to keep them warm on this second day of their cold, uncomfortable journey… especially uncomfortable for Esme, who'd had to duck under Toste's robes every time a Blackthorne soldier approached. The fur blanket spread across all three of their laps in the seat of the wagon drew the attention of all who stopped them, and the guardsmen were quick to flip it up, fully expecting to find the errant daughter hiding there.
"If anyone should be offended, 'tis me," Toste said. "That last soldier—the one with the missing front tooth—was eyeing me like a tasty morsel. And me a nun, at that."
"You are not a nun," Esme pointed out from under his robe.
"Well, he didn't know that."
"We nuns get accosted all the time," Sister Margaret remarked. "Doesn't matter if we're young or old, comely or homely as a hog. Men seem to think we are wild for their bodies from being confined in a convent so long. They expect great things in the bedsport from nuns."
Everyone was too stunned to speak at first by Sister Margaret's forthrightness.
"Really?" Bolthor commented finally. He was probably composing a saga in his head about nuns and their wicked appeal.
"There's only one nun I've ever been attracted to," Toste confessed.
And Esme knew by his twitching member which one he referred to.
"But how about those Saxon soldiers back near Jorvik?" Bolthor said with a hoot of laughter. "I thought they would fall all over themselves trying to get away from a leper."
"And one of them said you were giving him the evil eye," Sister Margaret added gleefully. "Little did they know you look at everyone that way."
Esme wondered if Bolthor was offended by Sister Margaret mentioning his damaged eye, but, nay, he quickly replied, "Mayhap I should leave off my eye patch all the time. The evil eye could be a weapon as sharp as my battle-ax, Head Splitter."
"Methinks you are all enjoying this far too much," Esme grumbled.
"Hmmm. I should create a poem to celebrate this adventure," Bolthor said.
Everyone was too tired and cold to protest. Besides, nothing ever seemed to stop the skald once he started.
"This is the saga of 'Toste's Great Adventure.' "
"Great," Esme heard Toste say, but she wasn't sure if it was a question or an observation.
"Once lived a Viking named Toste,
His life was no longer carefree.
Alas, death took his beloved brother,
And no happiness in Toste could stir.
But then he met a nun,
Who was not really a nun.
She was comely of face,
And her body had grace.
Plus, she could whistle
In a way most shrill
But could provide a thrill
If she did it against a man's… uh, windmill,
Which was exactly where her face was planted
When hiding from her father as she fled.
On the other hand, she should not whistle,
Because then Toste's manpart would not stand still.
But, leastways, on this great journey
Everyone was full of glee.
And is that not the best thing about Vikings—
That they can laugh at themselves?
Well, one of the best things."
"Bolthor, if I hear you even once repeat that particular saga at Ravenshire, I will make you wish you were a real leper, living in a leper colony far, far away from my menacing presence," Toste said.
There was a short silence. Then a wounded voice inquired, "Dost not like my sagas, Toste?"
"I like your sagas in general," Toste lied. Esme didn't have to see his face to know it was a lie. "But I do not like that one in particular. It makes me out a pathetic, whining kind of man."
"So?" Bolthor said. Then, "Ouch! Why did you clout me on the head? You almost knocked Sister Margaret's head rail off."
Which prompted Sister Margaret to say, "I liked your saga, Bolthor. Do you think you could write a short one that I could use in the selling of my mead in the Jorvik markets?"
"Hmmm. Mayhap." Within seconds, Bolthor was saying:
"Margaret's Mead is a wonderful brew,
Sweet as honey, through and through."
Sister Margaret repeated the poem several times to commit it to memory and promised to have her agent in the Coppergate markets of Jorvik use it as a selling ploy. Bolthor practically sputtered with pride.
"Toste, I have to get up now," Esme said. "I'm getting a cramp in my back."
"Not just yet," he cautioned. "We've already entered Ravenshire lands and should be at the keep within the hour. We must be especially careful for a little longer. Keep in mind that Eirik, the lord of Ravenshire, is half Saxon, half Viking, while his wife, Eadyth, is full-blooded Saxon. Many of their guests are Saxons. We do not want word to get out of your whereabouts till we are ready to face your father again."
"St. Bridget's breath! I am weary to death of all this chaos. I yearn for peace and quiet. Sad, isn't it, that a woman of my age wants only a peaceful life? Is it possible this madness will finally be over soon?"
"Well, you will be out of danger for a while, till after the yule season is past, but peace is the last thing you will find at Ravenshire. And as for chaos—well, I suspect chaos reigns there."
"What mean you?" Esme asked.
"Have you never been in a Viking household over the yule season?"
"Nay," she answered hesitantly, though she could not imagine anything out of the ordinary in the well-ordered Ravenshire keep. Both its lord and lady were renowned for their hospitality and well-run affairs.
"Sweetling, you may never be the same," Toste promised, with a pat on her head which pressed her closer to his twitching manpart.
That is for sure.
Let the good times begin...
"Swive me silly, you luscious Viking, you. Awk!"
Four heads in the upper solar of Ravenshire turned to look at the caged bird in the corner. Then three of those heads turned toward Tykir Thorksson.
By the bones of St. Boniface! Will my brother ever grow up? Eirik Thorksson, the lord of Ravenshire, wondered. He couldn't help smiling, even as he shook his head ruefully. "Have you been teaching Abdul perverted sayings again?"
"What's perverted about swiving? And everyone knows we Vikings are luscious," Tykir answered with a grin.
God, I have missed my brother and his warped sense of humor. With all the bad news lately, a bit of mirth is more than welcome.
"Isn't that so, Alinor? You think I'm luscious, don't you?" Tykir
asked his wife, who had the good sense to ignore him. Tykir and Alinor had come from the Norselands to spend the yule season at Ravenshire this year, along with their four children, who were off somewhere being entertained by Eirik's seventeen-year-old twins, Sarah and Sigrud.
"Of course, Eirik is only half Viking; so, he is only half luscious," Tykir continued, ducking away when Eirik tried to swat him with an open palm.
"Show me yer legs, Al-i-nor. Awk, awk."
"Tykir!" Alinor exclaimed with a laugh.
"Kiss my arse and call it pretty. Awk, awk."
"Hey, I didn't teach the lousy bird that one," Tykir protested.
"Eirik did." It was Eadyth speaking now, Eirik's lady-wife. "And don't call my pet lousy. He has no lice. And remember, Tykir, you are the one who gave me Abdul as a bride-gift at my wedding."
"Who would have thought it would have lived this long?" Tykir said.
"Dumb lackwit Viking!" the bird said.
They all laughed then, but were soon cut short.
"M'lady… Eirik… you have got to come see this," Wilfrid, the seneschal of Ravenshire, urged breathlessly as he rushed into the room. It was late afternoon, and Eirik had thought his friend and comrade would be in the great hall enjoying a cup of mulled ale by now. "A cart just pulled into the courtyard."
Eirik did not immediately rise. He'd spent the entire day working on battle exercises with his men in the bitter cold, then helping to dig a dung cart out of a snowbank, followed by a bath, and, frankly, his forty-nine-year-old body couldn't take much more. He was very content indeed to sit before the hearth fire with his feet propped up and a cup of mead in his hands, Listening to his brother's nonsense. Eirik was getting too old to keep going at this rate, but he had no sons to take over for him, other than his adopted son John who had work enough on his own estate at Hawks' Lair. And none of his four daughters seemed about to bring any new male blood into the family.
"A cart?" Eadyth inquired indifferently. She did not rise, either. At forty and three, she was still a beautiful woman, even though her silver-blond hair was mostly silver these days. " 'Tis probably those new candle molds and pottery jugs I ordered from Jorvik." Eadyth was a successful beekeeper and merchant, renowned for her time-keeping wax candles, honey and mead. Not for the first time, or the hundredth, in the past eighteen years, Eirik told himself how fortunate he was to have her.
"The… the cart," Wilfrid stammered. "It's filled with barmy folks."
"Uh-oh! Big trouble coming!" Abdul squawked.
Eirik and Eadyth immediately looked at Tykir and Alinor. They were equally ensconced in comfortable chairs before the fire, awaiting the bell announcing the evening meal. Their two-year-old son Selik slept soundly on Tykir's lap. Tykir was forty-seven, and his bones probably ached as much as Eirik's after their grueling day of work, though he would never admit to such weakness.
"What? Why are you looking at us?" Tykir said with mock offense. "Every time something goes awry you think I had something to do with it."
"You usually do," Eirik responded.
"Shhh," Alinor cautioned. "Do not wake the child."
"Uh-oh! Big trouble coming!" Abdul repeated.
"Did you order more gifts to be delivered here?" Eirik narrowed his eyes menacingly at his brother. Tykir was ever up to some deviltry or overindulgence. "Do you not think you are overdoing the Viking gift-giving custom?"
Tykir told his brother to do something vulgar, the whole while grinning at him. "Didn't you like the leather boots with bells on them that I ordered for you from the Eastlands?"
"They are red, Tykir. Red. And I do not much relish jingling when I walk."
"Really? Alinor has a garment that jingles, and I like it a lot."
Alinor made a tsk-ing sound with her tongue.
"You could always wear the jingling boots and naught else. Eadyth would like that, I wager."
His wife, the traitorous wench, said, "Hmmmm," and winked at him.
"On the other hand, I did like the amber navel ornament you sent for Eadyth," Eirik said, waggling his eyebrows at Tykir. His brother was a far-famed merchant in the Baltic amber trade.
"Will you two never stop teasing each other?" Alinor shook her head ruefully at the two brothers.
It always amazed Eirik that Tykir had chosen Alinor for his wife. With her bright orange hair and rust-colored freckles dotting her entire body… well, she was not the beauty he would have expected his womanizing brother to pick. But Alinor had turned out to be the perfect foil to Tykir's personality. And Tykir considered her the most beauteous woman in the world, which was the important thing, of course.
"They're like two small boylings," Eadyth agreed.
"Milords, ladies, I must insist," Wilfrid interrupted with a pained expression. "The cart. It contains three nuns, and two of them are most unusual… big as oak trees they are, and one of them a leper."
"Uh-oh! Big trouble coming!" Abdul repeated.
"Would someone kill that bird?" Alinor said.
"Bowlegged harpy!" Abdul opined.
"A le-leper," Eadyth faltered, ignoring the interchange with the bird.
"But that's not all," Wilfrid went on. "Eirik, the two big ones told me to give you, personally, a message. 'Sister Tostina and Sister Bolthora have arrived.' That's what they said."
"Huh?" Eirik, Tykir, Eadyth and Alinor all exclaimed at once.
"Uh-oh! Big trouble coming!"
"I have a wonderful recipe for parrot stew," Alinor said sweetly.
"Bowlegged harpy!"
Then of a sudden an idea seemed to come to Alinor. She gasped and put a hand to her mouth. "Bolthora… could it be Bolthor?"
Eirik's heart went out to Alinor, and his brother, too, for that matter. They still had trouble accepting the death of their longtime friend, Bolthor the Skald.
"And Tostina… could it be Toste?" Eadyth asked, also with a gasp.
Eirik recalled how hard they'd all been hit by the news of the Battle of Stone Valley. So many of their Norse comrades had fallen that day, but most especially they'd grieved for Bolthor and the twins, Toste and Vagn.
"Bolthor, Toste and Vagn all died at Stone Valley," Eirik pointed out softly. "We have discussed that battle at length since Tykir arrived. We all miss our fallen friends. What a cruel jest someone plays on us." He reached over and squeezed his brother's forearm. There were tears in Tykir's light brown eyes.
"But what if it's not a jest?" Alinor said, tapping her chin thoughtfully.
"Tostina and Bolthora… that is too much of a coincidence," Tykir said, already handing his sleeping child to a flustered Wilfrid to hold.
Within seconds, all four of them were rushing out of the solar, down the staircase, across the great hall and out onto the courtyard steps. They came to a screeching halt at the shocking sight they beheld.
In the middle of the cart seat was Sister Margaret from St. Anne's Abbey. Nothing unusual about that. Sister Margaret and Eadyth had often conferred over the years about the best methods for making mead. In fact, a friendly rivalry of sorts existed between them over who made the best mead in all Northumbria.
But Sister Margaret was the only normal member of the frozen tableau they beheld. The first to jump down from the cart was the leper nun. God's teeth! What a big nun she was! And, yeech! The nun's face was covered with oozing sores.
Or were they sores?
Eirik had suffered a lifelong weakness in his eyes which made it difficult to see things up close. Mayhap they were not sores at all. In fact…
With a wide smile, the big nun looked at them directly, or as directly as she could with her one blind eye, then tore off her veil and wimple. It was Bolthor.
"Thank the gods!" exclaimed Tykir, who was already down the stone steps and hugging his old friend, who had jumped off the wagon and lifted Sister Margaret to the ground. Then Tykir lifted the giant and twirled him about with exhilaration.
"Put him down, you fool," Alinor chastised her husband. "I want to hug him, too." Tear
s were flowing freely down Alinor's freckled face as she reached up and touched Bolthor's leprous face adoringly. "I am soooo happy to see you, good friend."
"Likewise," Bolthor said and gave her a loud, smacking kiss on her cheek.
Eirik and Eadyth welcomed Bolthor with equal enthusiasm.
Then they all turned their eyes to the cart, where a grinning Sister Tostina beamed at them.
"Good Lord! You are the best-looking nun I have ever seen," Alinor said.
Sister Tostina winked at her, then whipped off his veil and wimple. It was Toste, of course.
"I hope you have no Saxon nobles about, other than yourself," Toste said to Eirik. "Otherwise, this two-day disguise of ours may be for naught."
Eirik shook his head. "None but us here… for now."
Tykir reached up to help Toste get down, but he waved his hand away. "First, I would like you to meet Sister Esme."
"Huh?" they all said. It was becoming a common refrain this day.
Toste lifted the bottom half of his robe with a flourish and out crawled a woman… a nun, actually, who had been kneeling between his thighs. A beautiful nun with head rail askew and face flushed with humiliation stood and moved to the right so she was not directly in front of Toste, who stood, as well.
"Oh, now you have gone too far, Toste," Alinor said.
"You have done some outrageous things in the past, but tupping a nun… in public?"
"This is as bad as the time he tried to seduce the caliph's daughter atop a camel," Tykir said, but it was obvious from the gleam in his eye he was not offended… either by the camel seduction or the nun tupping.
"What do you suppose she was doing under his robes?" Eirik asked Eadyth, and she smacked him on the arm.
"There is tupping, and then there is tupping," Tykir answered for her.
It was Tykir's turn to get smacked… by his own wife.
Sister Esme looked up at Toste. She looked at all of them standing in the courtyard with Bolthor. Then she looked at Toste again and said, "If you even blink at me in the future, let alone speak, I am going to cut off your manpart with a dull knife."