Sandra Hill - [Vikings I 01] (39 page)

Her body shook with sobs. She could not speak.

Thork pulled away and examined her face, alarmed at how haggard she looked. His eyes sparkled sadly as he tried to joke, “You look a sight, woman. Mayhap you have had no one to tweak your sweet arse whilst I was gone and that has turned you weepish.”

“Oh, Thork!” Ruby smiled weakly. “Come with me. Let me take you home.”

Several men, including Selik who now had a horrendous scar down the side of his face, helped Thork to the straw-filled wagon which would carry him to Sigtrygg’s
palace, there being no room for invalid care in Gyda’s home. Thork’s wounds would never withstand the trip to Dar’s home.

By the time they got to the palace, fever racked Thork’s body. In the days that followed, he alternated between delirious fever and weak consciousness. When he was lucid, he insisted on talking to Ruby, who stayed by his side.

“Thork, we’re going to have a baby,” she told him the first chance she could. “I know you didn’t want any more children, but—”

“Oh, Rube,” he said incredulously, twining her fingers in his good hand, “we made a baby together.”

“You’re not angry?”

“Nay, sweetling,” he said, a gentle smile tilting his lips upward. “’Twas inevitable that some of my seed slip in your womb. I visited so often.” He squeezed her hand to show he jested. “Truly, ’tis wondrous that you and I made a child together. The babe will be magnificent, I wager.”

Even those few words strained his strength, and he fell back on the bed, closing his eyes. But a slight smile relaxed his lips as he slept. Ruby hoped it was dreams of their child that pleased him so.

The next day he told her, “If I die, my brother Eric should relent. No, Ruby, you must listen. Eric would have no reason to pursue my sons if I am gone.”

The next time he awakened, he exclaimed feverishly, “I love you, sweetling. I did not realize how much till I left you. If I had it to do over, I would take your advice and cherish the moment. We had so little time together, Ruby. So little time. There should have been more.”

King Athelstan arrived on the third day, totally unannounced. He and his resplendently clad guard strode through the palace with Sigtrygg to Thork’s chamber. Luckily, it was one of Thork’s lucid periods.

Athelstan sat in a chair next to the bed, nodding first
at Ruby, then taking Thork’s fingerless hand in his. “My friend, I am so sorry. ’Tis my fault the boy was taken whilst in my care. Whether you live or die—and God willing, ’twill be the former—Eirik is welcome back in my court, and this I promise, I will guard him with my own life this time.”

“’Tis the boy’s decision.” Thork’s words trailed off, and he slipped back into his fever.

Eirik had been a remote, solitary boy before he left for Athelstan’s court. Now he stood vigil silently at his father’s bedside, a ten-year-old boy but no longer a child. God knows what he’d been through while held captive by Ivar.

“I will pray to St. Cuthbert for his intercession on Thork’s behalf,” Athelstan told Ruby sympathetically before going off with Eirik and Sigtrygg. He came back several times during the next two days to talk with Thork, but there was nothing he could do for Thork and he finally departed.

Despite Ruby’s prayers and the powerful healing herbs he was given, Thork grew weaker by the day. Dar and Aud were practically catatonic with grief. Tykir was kept away from his father’s chamber because of his outbursts of fear which upset Thork and everyone else. Eirik was stoic in hiding the turmoil which must have been rocking his soul. Ruby lived one day at a time, trying to survive, hoping for the best.

One week after Thork’s return to Jorvik, a great uproar took place outside the palace. Ruby was too disheartened to make the effort to go to a window and see what was happening. Soon the loud voices entered the palace, accompanied by a booming voice and much running.

“Where is my son?” someone bellowed imperiously.

Ruby looked up to see an enormous bear of a man filling the doorway, blocking out all of the people behind him.

Outraged, Ruby hissed, “Get out of here! Can’t you see we have a sick man here?”

The giant didn’t budge. “Who are you, wench?” he demanded with supreme arrogance.

“I’m Thork’s wife. Who the hell are you?”

“I am Thork’s father.” He glowered down at her as he scrutinized her through pale blue eyes—eyes that mirrored Thork’s.

Stunned, Ruby examined the old man more thoroughly. Dressed in a black velvet cloak, embroidered with gold thread and studded with precious jewels, he towered over her, about the same height as Thork but bulkier. His pure white hair hung exceedingly well-groomed all the way to his shoulder blades, held in place by a gold circlet around his forehead.

Ruby saw through the open doorway that a number of splendidly dressed noble Vikings filled the hallway, probably companions or family to this King Harald of Norway. Even Sigtrygg stood in the background in deference to the mighty ruler. But Ruby wasn’t impressed. This was the same father who’d neglected his son for years, who’d failed to protect him from his vicious brother, who’d never showed an ounce of affection.

Without being invited in, Harald walked regally to the bed and sat down in a chair. You would have thought it was a bloody throne. Placing a hand on Thork’s chest, he said in a surprisingly gentle voice, “Thork, ’tis your father come to see you.”

Thork opened his eyes slowly and blinked in astonishment. “Father! What brings you here? Have I died already and gone to hell?”

Harald smiled wanly. “Nay, alive you are, and if I can help it, you will remain so. I have brought my own healer with me. I came as soon as I heard.”

Thork arched his eyebrows disbelievingly at his father.

“Didst your brother Eric have aught to do with this?”
Harald’s mouth formed a thin line of displeasure and his eyes narrowed dangerously.

“Nay, not this time,” Thork answered with a short laugh at his father’s belated concern over Eric’s deadly games. “’Twas Ivar.”

“This I promise you, son, Ivar will be dead within the month, a blood-eagle on his back and your name carved in his chest.”

Thork tried to shake his head as his strength faded again. “’Tis no longer important—the killing. ’Tis all a waste.”

“No man harms my son and lives to boast of it,” the Norse king avowed with a steely voice.

“It all comes back to you, as always, does it not, Father?” Thork accused tiredly. “Why then didst you let my brother pursue me so?”

King Harald’s face grew hard and his lips trembled with indignation at his son’s harsh words. Finally he said, “I let him loose on you to make you strong, and it succeeded. You are the strongest of all my sons—the best of the litter.”

“The litter!” Thork choked on the exclamation. Ruby glared at Harald, trying to tell him silently that he was not helping his son. Thork muttered weakly, “’Twas all I ever was—one of your vast get, no more important than a dog.”

Harald inhaled sharply at Thork’s insult, then said softly, almost apologetically, “’Tis not true, Thork. I did care, and I promise you this, if you should die, Eric will never harm your sons.”

Thork grew agitated then and tried to sit up. “Do not think of taking either of my sons back with you. Stay out of their lives. I will not allow you to ruin their lives as you did mine.”

Harald stood, leaning angrily over his son, and appeared about to argue with him, then stopped suddenly. “So be it.
You have my word. I will also let it be known throughout the Viking world that any who harm the boys will answer to me and my armies.”

Thork’s eyes turned to Ruby as he sank back down to the bed. He held out his hand to her. Ruby sat down on the mattress next to him and caressed the back of his hand.

“The boys will be safe now, sweetling. I can rest now. Whatever else he does, my father honors his word.”

Unfortunately, King Harald’s personal healer was unable to help Thork. Most of the time now, he lay in delirious fever, his lips cracked and bleeding, his eyes closed. At dusk on the twentieth day, Ruby stood near the window, staring ahead sightlessly. She looked down at the dragon brooch she held in her hand, caressing the pin fondly. Absently she stuck it in the pocket of her jeans, which she’d taken to wearing again while King Harald was in residence, just to infuriate him.

Thork suddenly sat up in bed with a shout and opened his eyes wide, looking straight at Ruby. “I saw us, Rube. I saw it all,” he exclaimed. “There was a long tunnel and at the end nothing but beautiful brightness. Then I saw you…and me. At least it looked like me…but somehow different.”

Perspiration beaded on his furrowed forehead, and Ruby tried to get him to lie back. He refused, having somehow regained his strength.

“Thork, lie down. It was just a dream,” Ruby soothed, trying to push him gently back.

“Nay, listen to me, Rube. ’Tis important,” he rasped out, as if it hurt him to speak. He clutched her hand in an iron grasp. “The images I saw at the end of the passageway…you and that other me…together. ’Twas so precious. It made my heart swell with happiness. Do not lose it, Rube. Whatever you do, do…not…lose…”

He fell back then, heavily, his hand still clutching hers
tightly. Ruby didn’t have to touch his chest to know the truth.

Thork was dead.

Ruby screamed and threw herself over Thork, shaking him, trying desperately to get him to awaken. Then, as if rising outside her own body, Ruby saw Aud, Dar, Tykir and Eirik staring at her and Thork from the other side of the bed—pitifully—with tears streaming down all their faces.

Ruby heard a high-pitched, wailing scream somewhere. It got louder and louder, closer and closer, seemed to move inside her head, swirling, swirling. Then it exploded.

Utter, eternal silence billowed over her like a soft, comforting cloud.

“Click! Click! Click!”

Ruby opened her eyes slowly, reluctantly, and looked down. She blinked disbelievingly.

A cassette player lay in her lap, clicking away. The motivational tape had run its course. Ruby pressed the off-button with a dull robotlike movement.

Not sure if she was still dreaming, or finally awake, Ruby put a palm to her chest as if to calm her wildly thudding heart. Goosebumps swept her skin like slow-moving dominoes as awareness crept into her consciousness degree by infinitesimal degree.

She had returned to the twentieth century.

Or had she ever left?

Ruby could no longer separate the dream from reality. Sitting up straight, she put the tape player aside and held a hand to her forehead, trying desperately to understand what had happened to her.

Jack had left her, Ruby remembered with a groan of
despair. She’d come into his library and put one of his motivational tapes in the machine, hoping pathetically to come up with some answers to the mess she’d made of her life. The speaker on the tape had promised that anything in life was possible if a person willed it strongly enough, and Ruby had foolishly wished she were twenty years younger and could live her life over knowing what she did today.

Oh, Lord!

Had she really traveled back in time? No, it wasn’t possible.

Searching her brain for other alternatives, she wondered if she might be having a nervous breakdown. It was a definite possibility, but people having nervous breakdowns flipped out totally, didn’t they? Oh, well, if there was such a thing as “walking pneumonia,” maybe she was having a “walking nervous breakdown.”

Disoriented, Ruby frantically searched Jack’s study for clues. Everything remained the same, just as it always was. The clock on the shelf above the desk ticked away. Five o’clock.
Oh, my God!
Only two hours since Jack had left! How was that possible?

Suddenly, memory rolled over Ruby like a tidal wave, and she cried aloud with the pain of it.

“Thork! Oh, please, God, don’t let Thork be dead.” She frowned. What was she saying? Thork didn’t exist. Jack did.

Ruby raked the splayed fingers of both hands through her hair and held them there. Rocking back and forth, she wailed sorrowfully in desolation over the death of her Viking husband. An inner, nagging voice viewed her mourning as irrational, and yet, at the same time, Ruby could not stop herself.

Her head pounding with the beginnings of a killer migraine, she stood and walked woodenly to the downstairs bathroom for an aspirin. As she filled a cup with water, about to put the pill in her mouth, Ruby looked into the
mirror above the sink. The cup and aspirin fell from her shaking hands.

A tear-streaked, thirty-eight-year-old face stared back at her with its chic Sassoon hairstyle. It was an attractive face, but with the first stages of those hated tiny laugh lines flanking her eyes and mouth.

Thirty-eight! Hell!

Ruby looked down at her son’s Brass Balls T-shirt and her jeans. She hesitated, sensing what she’d find, then undid the waistband of her jeans and peeked below.

Yup! Stretch marks!

“Shit!” Ruby said aloud.

She could almost guarantee that if she pulled the jeans down farther she’d find the beginnings of cellulite on her thighs.
Well, just a little!
Ruby told herself with near-hysterical irrelevance. A slight grin tugged at the corners of her mouth. Criminey! She was having a nervous breakdown and making jokes with herself.

The hall phone rang, jarring Ruby’s senses. She picked it up on the second ring. Maybe it was Jack.

It wasn’t.

“Mom, can I go to Greg’s house after football practice? His mom said I could sleep over. We’re gonna rent videos.”

“I guess it would be all right, Eddie, as long as his parents will be there,” Ruby said, the normalcy of her voice striking her as odd. Actually, she was thankful to put off her painful discussion with her sons about their father’s leaving. “Make sure you behave yourself, and don’t forget to thank Mrs. Summers for having you.”

Ruby realized then, with a rueful giggle, that maternal instincts must kick in automatically. They didn’t require sanity at all.

“Oh, yeah, I’ll behave,” Eddie promised with sick teenage humor. “I promise not to puke all over their carpet during the beer party.”

“Eddie, that’s
not
funny.”

“Lighten up, Mom. It was just a joke.”

Ruby realized then that David should have been home from school. “Do you have any idea where your brother is?”

“Are you losin’ it, Mom? You told him this morning that Grandma was pickin’ him up after school and that he could spend the weekend with her.”

“Oh, that’s right. I remember now.”

“Mom, are you all right?” Eddie asked worriedly.

No, I am definitely not all right, Ruby thought, but she told her son, “Sure, hon, I just woke up from a nap and I’m a little groggy.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon then.”

“Bye-bye, hon.”

Ruby walked into the kitchen and made herself a cup of instant coffee. Sitting at the kitchen table, she drummed her fingers distractedly. Thoughts twirled at random in her head.

Okay, these were the facts. Something had happened to her today, Ruby was convinced of that. It didn’t matter that only two hours had passed. She could never have dreamt all those characters and events—Jorvik, Gyda, Olaf, all their daughters, including lovable Tyra, Dar and Aud, Eirik and Tykir, gossipy Ella. Ruby grinned at that last thought. Imagine dreaming of a Viking version of her cleaning lady! Not to mention all those other people—Sigtrygg, Byrnhil, Selik, King Athelstan, King Harald.

And Thork!
Most of all,
Thork!

Ruby’s heart ached for her Norse husband who was Jack but not really Jack. Her sweet, ferocious Viking who had suffered so and then died. They’d had such a short time together.

It was all so confusing.

Suddenly inspired, Ruby went back to Jack’s library where she pulled several encyclopedias off the shelf. With
each enlightening paragraph she read, Ruby’s heart beat faster and her head spun. Good Lord! York, England, had indeed been called Jorvik during the Viking period. A Norse king, Sigtrygg One-Eye, did marry a sister of the Saxon King Athelstan, and the vain Harald, high-king of Norway, did have many wives and children who fought bloodily among themselves for his crown.

“How could I have known all those things?” Ruby wondered aloud.

Reading more, she found that eventually Eric Bloodaxe, Thork’s half-brother, became the king of Jorvik, and, in fact, was the last of the Norse kings to reign in Northumbria. Young Haakon, Thork’s other half-brother, later called Haakon the Good, ruled Norway. Perhaps Athelstan’s scholarly court had influenced Haakon in the right direction.

The revealing information stunned Ruby. Unable to absorb any more for now, she put the books down.

“Mizzus Jordan, I’m leavin’ now.”

Ruby jumped in alarm at the voice and went out to the hall. “Rhoda, what are you doing here so late?”

“I was jus’ finishin’ up the ironin’. Do ya want me to come two days next week soz I kin start on the windows?”

Ruby nodded, then smiled, seeing the
National Enquirer
rolled up under Rhoda’s arm.

“Ya okay? Ya look awful funny.” Rhoda scrutinized her myopically through her bifocals.

Oh, yeah! I’m just bloody wonderful. Did you happen to see a longship in the backyard?
Ruby quipped silently, but kept her thoughts to herself. She didn’t need ditzy Rhoda involved in this nightmare. Calmly she answered, “I’m fine. Just tired.”

“’Member what I toldja ’bout that bug that’s goin’ ’round. Read about it in my papers. Came all the way from China. Only thing that kin cure it is garlic pills.”

Ruby paid her, with a grin, and shooed her out the door before Rhoda launched into retelling one of her tabloid stories. She’d probably explain Ruby’s whole time-travel experience as something involving aliens from outer space.

What now? Ruby wondered as her nerves unraveled one strand at a time. Perhaps a shower would help. After that, she would try to resolve the mess she’d made of her life, try to understand what was happening to her.

Standing in the bathroom, about to remove her clothes, Ruby happened to glance in the full-length mirror on the door and saw something sticking out of her jeans pocket. She gasped on recognizing it, then sank to the floor. All the tension she’d been holding inside exploded with loud, shuddering sobs that racked her body.

Ruby cried for Thork and his death. She cried for the short time they’d had together and the love they’d shared too briefly. She cried for the two “sons” she’d left behind and mourned the primitive life-style and brave, fierce people she had come to love and would miss dearly. And she wept for the mess she’d made of her life with Jack.

And all the time she clutched in her hand one of the priceless dragon brooches Thork had given her. She really had traveled back in time—whether in a dream or actuality, she didn’t know. It didn’t matter. All Ruby knew was that somehow she’d visited there. The experience had been real, not imagined. What she had to figure out now was why.

When the tears dried up and Ruby could cry no more, she stepped into the shower and let the hot spray soothe her. Afterward, like a puppet being led by someone else’s strings, Ruby rummaged through her closet until she found just the item she wanted—a black teddy Jack had given her years ago before she formed her own company. She always wore it on special occasions. After she dressed, she went down to the kitchen and made another cup of coffee.

It was only seven p.m. She felt caught in a time warp.

Ruby opened the freezer door and searched for the box of phyllo dough in the back, hoping it wasn’t freezer-burned after all this time. She took the paper-thin dough out, along with the other ingredients, and began to make a tray of baklava.

“You’re going over the edge, girl,” Ruby told herself later with a shrill laugh as she removed the tray from the oven. “Do you really think you can lure a husband back with a plate of pastry?”

Ruby stopped suddenly in the midst of cutting the diamond shapes. Was that what she wanted? To get Jack back?

Yes!

Ruby wrapped her arms around herself and closed her eyes on a warm rush of relief. Finally she was beginning to see a light in this jumble of questions. For some reason, God only knew what, she’d been handed this time-travel experience to learn something. Ruby had sensed in her “dream” that she’d been given an opportunity to understand her problems with Jack by being with Thork, his Viking-age equivalent.

Could it be that God, or whoever, had played this massive joke on her and was really offering her a second chance with her husband—if only she could learn a lesson from the past?

Ruby smiled widely and steeled herself for the ordeal ahead. Now that she knew her mission, Ruby hurriedly wrapped the plate of baklava in plastic, grabbed her purse and locked the house. Within minutes, she was on the highway that led to the lake house. During the one-hour trip, she pondered her strange time adventure and tried to fathom the lessons to be learned.

When the bright lights of a small shopping mall caught her attention, Ruby pulled over, having a sudden flash of inspiration. She made her few purchases and walked
out of the department store with a mischievous grin on her face.

If her scheme didn’t work, at least she’d give Jack a good laugh. Ruby grimaced at the thought.

A cloud of darkness blanketed the sky when Ruby pulled up to the modern A-frame she and Jack had purchased ten years ago on the lake. Jack had parked his BMW at the side.

She shivered when she got out of the car with her shopping bag and baklava. She hadn’t realized how chilly it was when she’d left the house without a coat. Or maybe it was nerves.

Ruby knocked lightly on the door, then walked in without waiting for Jack to answer. If he was entertaining “company,” then so be it.

Jack lay on the sofa before the fireplace with a glass of Scotch in one hand, still wearing his suit pants and white shirt. He’d removed the jacket and opened the first two buttons of the shirt, but other than that, he looked much the same as he had earlier that day. The television screen was dark, but soft music played on the stereo.

Jack stood when he heard the door shut and confronted her with a questioning tilt of his head. Sparks of a strong, indecipherable emotion flashed briefly in his pale blue eyes, a sharp contrast against the remnants of his summer tan. A tense muscle jerked in his cheek.

After all the turmoil she’d been through that day, Ruby yearned to throw herself into the comfort of Jack’s arms, but she knew they had too many issues to resolve first. Instead, she feasted her eyes on him, as if seeing him for the first time. She took in his wide shoulders which strained the fabric of his cotton shirt, tapering down to an athletically slim waist and hips, and a flat, well-conditioned stomach. He put both hands in the pockets of his pants with deliberate casualness, thus pulling the fabric taut across his
strong thighs and hard buttocks.

Ruby’s throat tightened and she forced her eyes back up to his face. He needed a haircut, she noticed irrelevantly. His dark blond hair hung to the edge of his collar. She tried to picture it even longer, braided on one side, and his ear lobe sporting a thunderbolt earring. She couldn’t help but smile at the image. Jack frowned, probably thinking she was amused at his expense.

Good Lord! Jack looked just like Thork when he glared like that. A little older, a few gray hairs, a little less muscle, but what a remarkable resemblance!

“What the hell are you doing here, Ruby?”

He gazed at her with burning concentration, but there was no warm welcome in his voice. Ruby’s heart sank. This was going to be much harder than she’d thought.

“Where is she?” she asked weakly, grasping at the first words that entered her head.

“Who?”

“Dolly Parton. I thought you would’ve found her by now.” Ruby’s voice wobbled with nervousness.