Sandra Hill - [Vikings I 04] (21 page)

They were ready to set sail now.

Tykir walked up to her and shoved a pile of five flat boxes into her hands. They were finely carved in some foreign style and gilded along the raised edges.

“For me?” She was puzzled by the contradiction of gifts and his icy demeanor.

“For you.”

“But…but why?”

“These, my lady witch, will mark the first stage of your payment to me of the huge debt you now owe me.”

“I…I don’t understand. You give me gifts so I can pay you?”

“Yea,” he said. The smile that stretched his lips never met his eyes, which regarded her coolly. “And your debt is huge.”

The fine hairs stood out at the back of her neck. “You are talking about punishment, not payment, are you not?”

“Yea, but you have a few days to ponder your future, my lady. I will not begin to collect till we are settled in at Dragonstead for the winter…
the whole bloody winter.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” she said, even though she was beginning to be just that.

“Then you are a bigger fool than I thought.” With those words, he walked off and signaled his men to begin rowing.

A short time later, Adam walked up and sat down beside Alinor. “Why are you frowning so?” Adam asked. “I would think you would be jubilant. You won.”

“I did no such thing. This wasn’t a contest. And no matter what Tykir says, it wasn’t my fault, either.”

Adam laughed. “He is a mite perturbed with you.”

“That’s an understatement. It’s why I was frowning. I don’t understand these gifts he gave me. Oh, he spouted some nonsense about their being my first installment in paying him back a huge debt. But I’ve examined them and…” She handed them to Adam, and he opened the largest one first. It was a silk-lined shallow box containing
dozens of feathers of all sizes, colors and textures. “Aren’t they magnificent?” she commented.

He nodded, deep in thought, and opened the next flat chest. This one contained ten flagons of various scented oils. “He has commented on the rose-scented hair cream that his sister-by-marriage, Lady Eadyth, gave to me, but I am deeply touched that he would grace me with these.”

Adam was beginning to grin enigmatically.

“Why are you smirking?”

“I am beginning to understand the method of payment Tykir plans to exact from you.” He opened the next box, which held the oddest objects, short lengths of velvet ropes…four of them. “Yea, I am beginning to understand.”

A very small box held a magnificent amber cabochon, about the size of a bird’s egg. “This is beautiful but has no backing to be used as a brooch, and no metal loop through which a neck chain could be run.”

“It’s a belly button stone,” Adam said with a chuckle.

“A what?”

“It’s a special gem, favored by many of the hour is in sultans’ harems. The woman wears naught but this stone in the navel.”

It took a moment for comprehension to dawn. When it did, she gasped. “He’s mad if he thinks I would…well, suffice it to say, he’s mad.” She turned the gem this way and that, trying to picture it in place. Finally, she put it away, making a tsk-ing sound of disapproval. “Is the man perverted?”

“Probably.” Adam winked at her and reached for the last box.

“Oh, that one’s a mistake,” she said, trying to pull it back. “Tykir must have meant it for Samirah.”

He opened it, and out spilled the most scandalous garment, made of near transparent red silk scarves, edged
with tiny jingling bells. “Nay, you are mistaken, Lady Alinor. He intends it for you. I am certain of that.”

She stared at him, aghast.

“Lady Alinor, I predict this is going to be the most interesting winter of your life.”

They arrived at Dragonstead two days later as snow began to fall in a steady blanketing of puffy flakes.

Alinor and all the other seafarers were exhausted, frozen to the bone and barely able to find their land legs as they disembarked from the ice-crusted longships. The trip had been harrowing, to say the least. Hard rowing through one fjord after another…some narrow, and so shallow the vessels risked being landlocked, and others as wide as a river.

The weather had varied from rain to bitter winds, but was always intensely cold. They did not even camp for the night; it was dark a large portion of the day anyhow. Instead, they stopped for breaks at six-hour intervals whereby cold food was served—including the horrid
gammelost
—and bodily functions could be relieved in nearby bushes. All the time they were attempting to outrun the onslaught of full winter, which was apparently a disaster
to be avoided when on the open waterways of the region known as the Land of the Midnight Sun.

What a harsh land, this northern section of Norway! Of course, she was seeing it for the first time under the worst of circumstances, but it was a mountainous, primitive terrain, more suited to wild beasts than men.

Alinor hadn’t spoken with Tykir since he’d handed her the “gifts.” He’d kept to the other longship most of the time, but she could see even from a distance that he was nigh crippled with pain. And Tykir wasn’t the only one suffering. Many of the seamen were afflicted with the usual wintertime ailment of sneezing and running noses and eyes. Of course, they blamed it all on her witchly presence. Few had been convinced by Tykir’s defense of her at Anlaf’s court.

She intended to make them all a good, rich chicken broth once they reached Dragonstead…a guaranteed cure for the winter chills. And she would force it down their stubborn throats if they resisted it as witch’s brew…yea, she would. She was sick to death of stubborn, superstitious men.

But now they’d come home for the winter. The timing was fortunate in that they’d arrived during one of the few hours of daylight. Many of the seamen were met by family members waiting for them on the wharves of Dragonstead. One by one, and in small groups, those men who did not reside in the main keep made for their homes in the nearby village.

Finally, the chaos of unloading the goods was completed, and Alinor stepped onto the wooden planks of the dock, getting her first good view of Dragonstead.

Then she gasped.

Dragonstead was situated in a bowl-shaped valley known as the Valley of the Dragons. Adam had told her
earlier that the name came from an old legend that millions of years ago this valley had served as a dragon’s nest. Now, there was a small lake forming the base of the bowl and dense, tree-lined mountains surrounding it. The lake was formed from melted snow and rain run-off from the mountains, which flowed into the fjord by which they’d entered. A small timber and stone “castle,” in the Frankish rather than the Norse style, sat perched on the lip of one side, overlooking the lake. Viking longhouses making up the Dragonstead village were scattered in clusters around the bowl.

It was a land ill-suited to farming, but goats and sheep would do well here. She smiled to herself at that last. “Tykir the Great” as a sheepherder? She thought not.

With fat snowflakes billowing down on the scene, Dragonstead, with its valley and lake backdrop, presented an exquisite picture. Magical, even. A land where fairies and elves and other woodland creatures might very well reside, if one believed in such fanciful notions.

She was seeing it through winter’s filter, of course. How much more beautiful would it be when spring burst on the valley with its greenery and wildflowers and native animals abirthing, like reindeer and beaver and great bears? Or summer, when ducks and other feathered fowl came to nest here?

Tykir came up to her then and took her by the forearm. “Come,” he said tersely. “Don’t stand about dawdling.”

She would have reacted to his rudeness, but she was too engrossed in the scene before her. “Your home is wonderful.”

“Huh?” His head came up alertly, and his eyes widened with surprise.

“If this was my home, I don’t think I would ever leave.”

She could tell her words pleased him, though he tried to hide his emotions from her. “Is this another trick of yours?”

“To what purpose?” she scoffed. “I give you a compliment so that I can gain…what?”

He shrugged. “To avoid your punishment.”

“Oh, that! I thought you were serious.”

“I am serious. You are going to be punished for your many crimes, in ways you cannot imagine.”

“Ha, ha, ha!”

“Did you open my gifts?” he asked.

“Yea, I did. That was some grand jest you played on me.”

“’Twas no jest.”

“Adam is laughing.”

A look of disgust passed over his face. “You showed Adam?”

“Yea. He says you are perverted.”

Tykir threw back his head and laughed. “That’s truly a case of the pot calling the kettle black. I will have a talk with that guttersnipe if he is calling me names. Perverted! Indeed!”

“Well, actually, I’m the one who called you perverted, and he just agreed.”

Tykir was shifting from foot to foot, gazing about his homestead with an expression that could only be described as unbridled love. Unbidden, a thought occurred to her.
What would it be like to be favored with such devotion from a man? Nay, not any man. What would it be like to be so loved by Tykir?
Alarmed, Alinor reined in her untenable mind-spinnings and turned her attention back to Tykir.

Without thinking, he stuck his tongue out and was letting snowflakes melt on his tongue.

“You are such a child,” she said, but her heart turned over at the innocent gesture. “I can just picture you as a mischievous boy, throwing snowballs with your friends. Chasing the girls with icicles in a game of catch-me-if-you-can.”

He cocked his head in surprise. “I had no friends as a child. We moved about too much, and had no real home, as such. Except later for a short while, mayhap, when I lived with my grandparents at Ravenshire. Nay, there was just me and my brother Eirik, and he was older, and much too somber in his ways for such trivial pursuits as snow-play.”

He seemed to make a conscious effort to pull himself out of his wistful musings then, and added with a deliberate twinkle in his eye, “But, yea, I recall now that I did give more than one girling hot pursuit with many a cold icicle. ’Til one day the goatherder’s daughter, Elfrida, upset with my harmless taunting, stuffed a handful of snow down the front of my braies. God’s bones! ’Twas an experience I would not want to repeat.”

She smiled at that image. “And did it teach you a lesson?”

He shrugged. “For a short while. But I got back at Elfrida, to be sure. I flipped up the back hem of her robe during a Michaelmas feast. Turns out she wore no undergarments. And everyone got to see her bare backside…as wide as a fat bishop’s, I might add.” He grinned at her, unabashedly.

“For shame!” she scolded, but only halfheartedly.

“Well, Wallace the Privy Builder proposed marriage to her the following sennight,” he informed her with a continuing grin. “Must be he had a taste for overlarge backsides. Perchance it had something to do with his trade.”

God above! The man is adorable.

Aaarrgh! Where did that thought come from? He is not adorable. Not, not, not!

“So, you like your first view of Dragonstead?” Tykir asked, changing the subject.

“Yea,” she said with much enthusiasm. “It must be so beautiful here in the summer.”

He shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I’m always gone by then.”

Her heart went out to the lout—way too many times this day, actually. She could see how much Dragonstead meant to him, and yet each spring he tore himself away to wander on his various travels. There was something significant to be learned here.

But Alinor had no time for that. She had just noticed something more important. Tykir’s face was flushed, and not from the cold.

“Are you sick?” she demanded, reaching up to place a hand on his forehead.

He was burning up with fever.

He tried to step back from her but swayed from side to side. The rigors of the trip, on top of his already sorry condition, were finally catching up with him.

“Bolthor!” she cried, and the giant came immediately to her side, taking in the situation at a glance. Just in time, he caught Tykir and picked up his lifeless form in his arms.

Tykir the Great was deathly ill.

It was a most auspicious beginning to Alinor’s winter stay at Dragonstead.

Three days later, Alinor sat at the kitchen table chopping a plump raw chicken, along with leeks and various dried herbs for yet another kettle of rich chicken broth. Later she would drop tiny dough balls into the soup pot, once
the dish had been bubbling for three or four hours, when the meat began to fall off the bones in shreds. The dough balls were a secret touch she’d learned from Leah, a Jewish merchant’s wife who’d passed through Graycote a year past. Leah had also suggested keeping the chicken feet, gizzard and heart in the brew for extra flavor, even though some cooks tossed them in the midden.

“Chicken
again?”
Bolthor asked, rolling his eyes heavenward. “’Tis past time to put a haunch of wild boar on the spit. Or a few rabbits. Men need red blood, lest their virility suffers.”

Men need red blood? For virility? Where did that bit of male non-wisdom come from?
“Chicken broth is good for the winter ailment,” Alinor said defensively. “I know some of the men…well, most of the men…are stallfed on my chicken soup, but—”

“You’ve been serving it three times a day since our arrival at Dragonstead,” he pointed out dryly.

Alinor knew many at Dragonstead were still leery of her as a possible witch, but fortunately, they’d allowed her to minister to their master’s illness. They watched her closely, though.

“I care not a fig for the finicky palates of you men if the liquid strengthens your sniffling systems, especially Tykir, whose fever broke only yestereve, praise be to God!

“Finicky appetites! You are killing our appetites,” Bolthor grumbled. “But, yea, ’tis good news that Tykir is finally on the mend.”

Bolthor had paused to speak with her as he was passing through the scullery with a huge armload of firewood. It took a massive amount of wood to heat the three hearths in the great hall, the cook fire in the kitchen and the fire-places in two of the upper bedchambers, from late autumn
till spring. Luckily, the woodmen had worked nonstop since last winter to set by a goodly supply.

As Bolthor left the kitchen, she heard him muttering something about a new saga, “Alinor the Witch and the Deadly Chicken Potion.”

“Pay no mind to Bolthor,” Girta the Round said. Alinor had forgotten Girta was behind her in the kitchen, rolling out circles of unleavened dough made of rye, barley and peas, to be baked on flat wheels with a central hole. Later the bread would be stored by threading on a pole near the hearth. “Men don’t know what’s good for them. Take Jostein the Smith, who has been smitten for years with Bodil the Ripe, our head dairymaid.”

Huh?
Alinor didn’t even know half the people Girta spoke of. Alinor’s gaze followed Girta’s flour-covered finger to the open door of the buttery, where the voluptuous Bodil was making the Viking soft-curded cheese known as
skyr.

“Jostein took her to bed, on more than one occasion, I might add, and never offered her the wedding vows,” Girta rambled on. “Now Bodil is about to wed with Rapp of the Big Wind, and Jostein is heartsick. Moons about the keep like a wounded cow, and for the life of me, I cannot fathom…”

As Girta gossiped on, Alinor smiled at the jolly, talkative woman, with her distinctive blond-braided crown. Girta supervised the affairs of Dragonstead with an iron hand, along with her husband, Red Gunn, the steward, who was as slim as Girta was round. Dragonstead was a small estate, but it ran with remarkable efficiency due to this couple’s combined efforts, both indoors and out, with the master in residence or not.

Alinor was impressed.

When Tykir was gone on his trading ventures, there
were at least two dozen house carls—freemen and women, not to mention a handful of children—living at Dragonstead, not including the village folks. When Tykir returned, that number often increased by a hundred or more. Not an overlarge populace, even for a small keep.

But Girta was still talking about the Dragonstead household whilst Alinor’s mind had been awandering. Alinor interrupted her. “Why do they call him Rapp of the Big Wind?”

“Oh! You might very well ask that,” Girta tutted. “Because he can break wind at will, and does so overmuch. Men think it is a great talent, foolish dolts that they are. In truth, Rapp can clear a room in a heartbeat, if you get my meaning.”

Alinor had to laugh, despite her revulsion.

“Poor Bodil! Methinks she should whack that Jostein on the head with a butter paddle. Mayhap it would knock some sense into his dull brain. ’Tis not too late…not ’til the vows are exchanged. What say you?”

“I have no idea,” Alinor said honestly. But then she brought up a subject that was bothering her more. “How soon do you think it will be afore Tykir is up and about?” she asked.

The barrel-bellied Girta shrugged and divided a new batch of dough into a series of balls, which she plopped onto a floured board. Before she answered Alinor’s question, she began to roll the dough into a number of wide circles, the top and bottom crusts for the first of a series of eel pies that would be baked and served for the evening meal, along with Alinor’s chicken broth. The men were going to be pleasantly surprised by the tasty menu addition.

“I would not expect too much too soon,” Girta said. “The warm bricks you’ve been applying to his thigh have
helped…not to mention the chicken broth you’ve been force-feeding him.” She chuckled at that last. Even in his delirium, Tykir had taken to making grunting sounds of “Yeech!” through gritted teeth when she fed him her chicken broth. She’d resorted to pinching his nose till his mouth opened for her spooning.