The Viking Takes a Knight (19 page)

“You can defend him?”

“Not defend him. Understand him.”

“He was insane. I am his son. The logical conclusion is that any child I breed might be insane, as well.”

Eirik shook his head. “The chances of that are minimal. Let me explain. Steven's mother had a brief relationship with my father, one night only. She went back to her husband, who never forgave her for her sin, even after she gave him a second son. He hated Steven, although he acknowledged him as his son to avoid scandal. Steven's father died when he was young, and he was put under the care of a sadistic sodomite who beat him and brutalized him repeatedly. Ofttimes Steven accepted this horrendous abuse to protect his younger brother Elwinus from similar punishments. I have heard of children and even adults who feel as if their minds split in two in order to survive abuse of that magnitude.”

“You are saying that my father was born as sane as the next man?”

“I believe so. You really need to go talk with your Uncle Elwinus, who is a cloistered monk at St. Paul's Monastery at Jarrow. He could tell you of those early years.”

John nodded, stunned by all he had been told. If this were true, it meant he could marry. He could have children. But he could not think on that now. “And you were the one to end his life?”

“Indirectly. I had a sword pressed horizontally
against your father's throat when he taunted me about our being brothers, pointing out the resemblance betwixt us, which I had not noticed afore then. You look like him, John. He was a handsome man.” Eirik coughed to clear his throat of some strong emotion. “In any case, he told me that his father never wanted him, and after his mother and then father died, he was left at a young age in the care of the most evil man in all Britain—Gerald, the Gravely castellan. His brother Elwinus was a mere babe. I always wondered what would have happened if my father had rescued him. As it was, I do not think my father knew of his paternity.” Eirik inhaled and exhaled, overcome with some strong emotion. “To this day, I recall your father's last moments. They are imbedded in my brain forever. We were at his castle at Gravely…”

 

Eirik pulled his sword from its scabbard and a dagger from his belt. When he flicked the drape aside, Gravely jumped out at him brandishing a battle-axe. His blue eyes were wide and crazed. Froth dribbled from the edges of his mouth.

“At last!” Steven screamed, and having the advantage of surprise, swung the axe over his head toward Eirik's face. Eirik swerved but not before the blade swiped a chunk of flesh out of his shoulder almost to the bone. With a curse, Eirik ignored
the pain and parried his next thrust, managing to wound Steven in the upper abdomen.

Despite the illness that had ravaged Steven's once fine body, he was still a strong warrior, capable of holding his own against Eirik's expert skill, at least in the beginning. Back and forth, they parried and thrust. Steven dropped the axe and picked up a sword with nary a blink. But then the ravages of his illness began to take their toll, and Gravely's endurance faltered. He grew careless and clumsy.

And Eirik lost the taste for the kill. Oh, he would destroy his evil enemy. He had to, if for no other reason than to stop his senseless assaults on any who crossed his path. But the man was clearly insane. His eyes were unnaturally wide and glazed with a berserk lust for blood. His mouth hung slack and trembling, like an aged man. Mayhap he had always been mad, but hid it under a calm exterior.

How can I feel pity for this man who has hurt me so?

Because you know he must have suffered greatly to have reached this sorry state
, he answered himself.

With a mighty thrust, Eirik shoved him against the wall and held his sword horizontally against Steven's throat. “'Tis over, Gravely,” he snarled. “Finally, your evil will end.”

Steven cackled madly. “Yea, but will you be able to live with my death,
brother
?”

A cold chill ran over Eirik. The room rang with an ominous silence. He should have known that, even facing death, Steven would have found a way to leave destruction in his wake.

“Eirik, do not listen to him,” his brother Tykir called out from behind him. “Just kill the bastard.”

Gravely laughed again, not even trying to break free any longer. “Have you never thought on the resemblance betwixt us, Eirik? Black hair. Blue eyes. Same height. You share my blood,
brother
. And you know it.”

“It cannot be so,” Eirik said, shaking his head in denial.

“Your father planted his seed in my mother the one time she was able to escape her husband, the notorious Earl of Gravely, the man most people thought was my true father. She returned to Gravely when she learned she was breeding.”

Eirik shook his head from side to side, denying Steven's claims. He still held the sword blade against his enemy's throat.

Steven just continued with his incredible story, “My ‘father' never wanted me, and after my mother and then he died, I was left at age ten in the care of the most evil man in all Britain—Gerald, the Gravely castellan. And my brother Elwinus barely out of swaddling cloths. Oh,
Lord,” he moaned, and his eyes rolled back in his head at some memory so painful even he could not bear to think on it.

Then, Steven seemed to calm himself. He looked Eirik levelly in the eyes, momentarily sane, and whispered brokenly, “Brother…” At the same time, he jerked his head forward, deliberately cutting his own throat. Blood spurted everywhere, but still a horrified Eirik held Steven upright by the upper arms.

And Eirik could not see for the tears that misted his eyes for his most hated enemy.

 

Eirik was unable to speak as his eyes filled with tears. Then he grabbed hold of John and hugged him tightly. “You must forgive your father. I have.”

When they broke the embrace, John tried to joke, “So, what do I call you now? Eirik, or Stepfather, or Uncle?”

“What would please me most,” Eirik said, “would be your calling me Father.”

 

Forgive, yes; forget, never…

“How can you forgive him?” John asked his mother as they walked the scorched rose fields.

“It happened so long ago. And, besides, without that happening, I would have never had you. My son, you are worth a thousandfold more pain.”

Which prompted a hug from him.

They strolled in silence then until he noticed something. Going down on his haunches, he dug with his bare hands around a mound. Green growth was coming up. He did the same over and over. It was amazing. More of the rosebushes would come back than he'd expected. It was a miracle to him that so many had survived.

“It's an omen,” his mother said, tears brimming in her eyes.

“Of what?” he scoffed gently.

“New beginnings.”

“You are referring to Ingrith?”

“That, too. With a little care, the roses might be better than before.”

“Better for the pain, is that what you are saying?”

“Mayhap.” She smiled at him and ran a caressing hand over his stubbly head. “Mayhap your hair will even come back in curly.”

“God forbid!”

By the time his mother and Eirik left the next day, John was feeling much more hopeful.

“Just make sure I am there for the wedding,” his mother said.

“I have to find the bride first,” he replied. And that proved to be more true than he realized at the time.

 

Then the other shoe dropped…

Ingrith had never been so miserable in all her
life, and not just because her father had invited yet more prospective husbands to Stoneheim for her to view.

“There you are,” her sister Drifa said, coming into the large sleep bower they shared. She was carrying a huge armload of roses, which caused Ingrith to burst into tears. Drifa, her only unmarried sister, had a passion for flowers, just as Ingrith had a passion for cooking…and a certain man. The tears just kept coming.

“Oh, Ingrith! What is it?”

“The roses,” she wailed. “They remind me of…oh, never mind.”

“Is this related to those rose cuttings you keep sending back to Britain?”

“Yea, 'tis. I owe a favor to someone who”—she shrugged—“likes roses.”

“If I were a warrior woman, like Tyra, I would go carve out the heart of the man who has hurt you so.”

“He has no heart.”

“And exactly who did you say he was?”

Ingrith blinked away her remaining tears and tried to smile at Drifa's lame attempt at discovering the name of the mysterious man who had sent her home to the Norselands in perpetual crying fits.

“Listen, sister, you can't hide up here forever. Father invited a half dozen men here for us to meet. You're not leaving me down there alone like chum over a longboat to lure the fishes.”

She smiled at the comparison…an apt description. “What are all the roses for?”

“I want to dry them and make potpourri sachets to sell at market. Here, smell them. Isn't the smell spectacular?”

Drifa shoved the bouquet under Ingrith's nose. The scent was overpowering. Nauseating, in fact. Ingrith shoved the flowers aside and ran for the chamber pot, where she proceeded to empty her stomach. Just as she had done every morning for the past two sennights.

Drifa was sitting on the side of the bed waiting after she rinsed out her mouth and dabbed her lips dry with a small linen cloth. “Well?”

Ingrith sat down next to her. “I am increasing.” So much for John's “spilling his seed outside the body.” And, really, he must have very virile seed because they'd made love the real way only a handful of times.

“You're breeding? Hell and Valhalla! That's wonderful!”

“It is?” She looked to Drifa to see if she was serious.

She was.

“It
is
wonderful, isn't it?” How had she not realized that before? She, who had thought never to bear a child, would be having her very own little one to love. And the baby would be part of the man she still loved, despite his faithless soul.

“There will be problems with you-know-who,” Drifa pointed out.

“Father,” Ingrith guessed.

“Your reputation, as well.”

“Where I will live is another consideration.”

“Perchance you can marry the father.” Another attempt by Drifa to discover John's identity.

Ingrith shook her head sadly. “He won't marry me. He told me so. Numerous times.”

“The lout! We should kill him like we did Vana's first husband. Mayhap if he knew about the baby—”

Ingrith shook her head more vigorously. “Nay, he can never know.” She could only imagine John's horror at her bringing a possibly insanity-tainted child into this world. For some reason, she had no fear of that happening. But if it did, she would love any problem out of the child.

“Is he married?”

“Nay. Leastways he wasn't last time I saw him, but he might be by now.”

“Then I do not see why—”

“I am not telling him, and that is final.”

“We have to make plans then.”

“We?”

“You do not think I will let you go through this alone? Tsk-tsk-tsk! How far along are you?”

“Only two months or so, I think.”

“And how long afore your pregnancy will show?”

“Pfff! I have no idea. Some women do not show
until the fifth month. With a Norse apron, much can be hidden.”

“Just to be sure, we should leave here no later than two months from now.”

“Leave here?”

“Ingrith! You cannot imagine that Father would allow you to bring an illegitimate child into the world. He would have you wed to the first two-legged being with a phallus afore you could blink.”

“We could go to Breanne's or Tyra's, but, nay, I do not want to return to Saxon lands, where he would find out.”

“So,
he
is a Saxon?”

She ignored the question as she pondered where they could go. “We need to go somewhere that no one knows me, at least until after the babe is born. Then I can come up with some tale of having met and married a man who died suddenly. That way Father will have to accept me and my child without forcing me into a marriage I do not want.”

“Whew! It is going to be difficult to accomplish all that. But we both have wealth enough of our own to establish residence…somewhere.”

“Like you said, we have two months to work out the details. Promise me, Drifa, promise me that you will tell no one of this. Not even Vana.”

Drifa lifted her chin with affront.

“Well, I best go down to the kitchen and see how the dinner preparations are going. Besides, I
have a craving for leftover boar with horseradish sauce. Or peaches.”

“First, we should present ourselves at the hall and see what dolts Father has to parade afore us this time, lest he send guardsmen to carry us down like he did last time.”

As they walked side by side down the corridor, Drifa remarked, “I saw one of the men in passing whilst I was gathering the roses. A Viking warrior from Iceland. He was quite attractive.”

“Oh?” That was a surprise. The older she and Drifa got and the more desperate her father became, the less likely the array of men paraded before them were to be prime examples of Norse manhood.

“He has one leg.”

Ah! Not such a surprise then.
“How does he walk?”

“With a wooden leg.”

“A peg-leg Viking?”

They both burst out laughing.

And that was a good thing. Ingrith had found that humor could cure many ills, or leastways make life more bearable.

H
ope blooms…

John arrived at the Monastery of St. Paul at Jarrow a sennight after talking with his mother and stepfather.

Although his uncle Elwinus was a cloistered monk, he'd been given permission to speak with John today. As it was, the silence rule only applied to part of the day, and even then they were permitted to use a form of sign language.

He was escorted from the priory outside to a back area of the enclave, where a tonsured monk was on his knees clipping…oh, Good Lord!…rosebushes.

Hearing his approach, Elwinus stood and dusted his hands on a cassock made of brown homespun material with a rope belt. A far cry from the wealth he could enjoy as one of the heirs to the Gravely estates.

“Uncle Elwinus?” he said.

“John!” There was shock on the man's face, and
not just because they had a similar lack of hair on their heads. “You look just like your father.”

That was not a compliment in John's mind.

“I understand you have many questions about your father. Come, let us sit over here, and Father Cyril will bring us cups of mead.”

He decided to jump in headfirst. “I have lived my life under the belief that my father was insane, and that I conceivably carried that trait in my blood.”

Elwinus shook his head. “Your father was an angel in his early years. Without him protecting me, God only knows whether I would have lost my mind, too. You see, I was there. I saw the things Steven suffered, and it was horrendous.”

“His father, you mean?”

“Our father was a bitter, sometimes vicious man who took out his unhappiness on Steven at times. I was his natural son, and he did not like me much, either. But it was after father died that the horror began. We were left in the care of the Gravely castellan, Gerald. Satan's disciple, for a certainty. Steven was only ten. I was much younger, but I saw…oh, my heavens, what I saw! Most people did not know this, but Steven's back was covered with whip scars. His arms had been broken more than once, and his ribs cracked repeatedly.”

“Why would someone want to punish a child so?”

“Because at first Steven resisted…That was before his mind split. That is the only way I can describe the change in him.”

“My stepfather said the same thing.”

Elwinus nodded. “There is more.” By the expression on the monk's face, John suspected the worst was to come.

John could not imagine anything worse.

“Gerald sodomized Steven. Repeatedly. And then he passed him around to friends of his with similar tastes.”

“What happened to Gerald?”

“Steven killed him when he was fifteen. Probably some of the other abusive men as well.”

“You condone the murders?”

“Of course not. But I understand why he did it. The damage done to him was irreparable by then. He could not go back to the innocent boy he had been five years before.”

“And so you think my fears are unfounded about never having children.”

“Oh, John, the best thing you could do is fill Gravely with lots of happy children to erase the past.”

The image of that possibility filled his head, but John had lived for so long under the misconceptions about his possibly inherited insanity that he found it hard to be hopeful. But it was seeping slowly into his consciousness.

Ingrith. He could go for Ingrith now. He could ask her to marry him.

He only hoped it wasn't too late.

 

A welcome wagon it was not…

Three sennights later, and John was still searching for Ingrith.

Even though the remaining orphans at Hawk's Lair had been sent back, Ingrith had not returned to the orphanage in Jorvik to help in its rebuilding, as he'd assumed. A logical assumption. Unfortunately, too much assuming and not enough logic.

While in Jorvik, he stopped to visit with Joanna, to see how she was progressing. Turns out she had a nicer home and merchant stall than before, and a new kiln had been installed. Even more amazing, Archbishop Dunstan had ordered Loncaster to pay for these repairs. He was not surprised to find Hamr there with her. For how long, he did not know, since Hamr had been informed that his outlaw status had been removed, but the Viking looked very self-satisfied. It was strange the twists and turns of fate, he thought.

“Mayhap she has decided to become a nun,” Hamr offered.

He offered a famous Anglo-Saxon word in return.

“Nay, I have not seen Lady Ingrith, not since the
Witan meeting at Winchester,” Joanna told him. “Mayhap she went to visit with one of her sisters. Two of them live in Northumbria, I believe.”

And so he'd wasted another two sennights going first to Larkspur in far northern Northumbria, where Ingrith's sister Breanne lived with her husband, Caedmon, and then to Hawkshire, where her sister Tyra, an Amazon of a woman—
a warrior, for the saints' sake!
—lived with her husband, Adam the Healer. Now John dabbled in the healing arts with his honey experiments, but Adam was a true man of medicine. Highly skilled and trained. But John had to say, regarding Ingrith's sisters…they had warped senses of humor, if you asked him, laughing when he told them he was searching for their wild sister.

“Wild?” Breanne remarked. “Ingrith is the most sensible, tame person I know. All she wants is to be left alone in peace in her kitchen to cook.”

He'd merely raised his eyebrows at that misconception.

But Caedmon revealed to him in an aside, “All of King Thorvald's princesses are wild, in my experience.”

“Good wild or bad wild?” he had been foolish enough to ask.

“How can you ask?”

Then there was Adam, who was unable to stop laughing at him. “I knew it, I knew that one day
you would be trapped in some woman's wily net.”

“Ingrith ne'er set out to trap me.”
More like I tried to trap her.
“Else, why would she have run from me?”

“Run from you?” Tyra rose to her full height, which was almost as tall as he and Adam. The woman had muscles where women were not supposed to have muscles. “I will lop off your private parts if you have shamed my sister.”

“I am the one who is shamed, running hither and yon after her like a besotted calf.”

That remark satisfied Tyra and caused Adam to burst out in another bout of laughter.

He even stopped at Ravenshire to report to his mother and Eirik on the visit he'd made to his Uncle Elwinus.

Finally, the consensus was that Ingrith must have gone home to the Norselands, which disturbed John more than he could say. Ingrith had told him on more than one occasion that she would not go back to Stoneheim, where her father was obsessed with offering her prospective husbands. She'd better not have accepted one of them.

“Go after her,” his mother advised when he was about to leave the following day.

“I'm trying, I'm trying,” he replied with a long sigh.

It took him another sennight to find a longship
going to the Norselands, and it was a decrepit ship he traveled on, too. Plus, he soon learned why many Vikings went berserk after sampling the ship's fare. Lutefisk and smelly
gammelost
.

By the time he got to Stoneheim, he was not in a good mood. And his mood got worse when he saw his two-man welcoming entourage. Ubbi and Rafn.

Ubbi kicked him in the shin. Whilst John contemplated picking up the little troll by the scruff of his neck, Rafn punched him in the gut, catching him off balance afore he could defend himself, knocking him to the ground. Then, Rafn helped him to his feet and said the oddest thing:

“It took you long enough to get here, Saxon.”

 

Beware of rogues with an agenda…

Ingrith was three and a half months pregnant, and still she and Drifa were the only ones who knew of her condition, thank the gods, largely due to voluminous Viking aprons and only a tiny bump low on her belly.

They had narrowed their prospective home-to-be to Norsemandy, where many Vikings were settled. Drifa had contacted a friend of a friend…a fellow flower expert, who had agreed to have them stay with her family at their vineyard until they located a home of their own. Everything was handled slowly and secretively.

So, while Ingrith knew she was not in the market for a husband, her father did not. The
well-intended old man continued to bring forth potential mates for both her and Drifa.

She was in the kitchen experimenting on a new dried elderberry relish while Drifa sat at a nearby table breaking off lavender and rosemary sprigs to freshen the rushes throughout the keep. Vana sauntered in with a mischievous grin and plopped down in a chair. Plopped being an apt description since she was more than eight months pregnant. Ingrith could not imagine being that big herself one day.

“What now?” Drifa asked.

“Father has expanded his husband search.”

“How so?” Ingrith asked, although she really could not care less.

“He's added a Saxon to the mix.”

“Really? I ne'er thought Father would accept aught but a Norseman,” Drifa said.

Lot of good that did Ingrith, since she did not have a particular Saxon offering for her. Nor would she want him to. Not now.

“Father asked that you make the dinner extra special tonight.”

“Hmpfh!” Ingrith snorted. “All my meals are special.”

After Vana waddled off, Drifa came up and gave her a hug. “It will only be two more sennights.”

“I feel bad making you give up so much for me.”

“Hah! Dost think I want to stay here alone with Father whilst you are gone? He would double his efforts to find me a husband. Besides, I yearn to see all the new flowers in Norsemandy. I have ne'er been there. Have you?”

She shook her head.

It was late before Ingrith entered the great hall that night, having spent extra time on the meal preparations and then bathing and dressing. She seemed to move in slower motion these days. So, dinner was already in progress when she arrived. She stopped here and there to talk with men and women she'd known for years as she made her way toward the dais, where her father, Rafn, and three strange men rose with respect. Except one of them was not strange.

It was John.

She faltered on the step and almost fell. What was he doing here? And why had no one informed her of the identity of the Saxon “suitor”?

But John wasn't a suitor for her hand. He must be here for some other reason. Oh, my gods! Could it be Henry?

She waited for the introductions. Geirfinn, a Danish warrior of noble birth, though a fifth son…in other words, landless. He was not so bad, although she did not like the perpetual smirk on his face, as if he were doing her and Drifa a great favor by his presence. The other was a short…
very short…a Viking from the Isle of Man, Atzer by name, widower with eight…EIGHT!…children under the age of fourteen. Then there was John.

“You know John of Hawk's Lair, Lord Gravely, do you not, daughter?” her father asked her.

She nodded, her eyes held by John's, which carried some message she was unable to decipher. He was thinner than before, and his hair had grown in somewhat, though still very short. But he looked good. Very good. Clean shaven and wearing a fine black wool tunic embroidered with red and silver thread over beaten hide
braies
and half-boots, all accented by a priceless gold-etched belt. On his finger was a heavy gold ring in the shape of a hawk.

Tears welled in her eyes—she could not help herself. He was a loathsome, faithless, selfish lout, but he was here, and she had missed him so much.

Drifa began passing the ornate bejeweled welcome cup around, accompanied by the usual grandiose toasts by her father, Rafn, and anyone else who wished to make a fool of themselves. It was a Viking custom called
sumbel
. Each recipient of the cup was expected to make a toast, or a boast, or sing a song, or recite a saga. By the time the meal was over, everyone would be half
drukkinn
, and they would have toasted everything from good friends to good crops to good ships to
luck in battle. Once one of her father's hersirs had even made a toast to good swiving.

But all this toasting gave Ingrith a moment to collect herself and not nigh swoon at the Saxon scoundrel's feet.

John stared at Ingrith, taking her in with a deep sigh. Whilst he had been living in agony these months since she'd left, she glowed with good health and apparent happiness. And she was entertaining prospective husbands. He would wring the neck of either of those louts if they dared to touch her.

But why was she weeping? Hopefully, not because she wished him gone.

John took both of her hands in his, despite propriety, and garnered frowning glowers from her father and the two other “suitors,” whom he intended to send on their way forthwith.

Ever since John had arrived, Rafn kept chuckling, and Ubbi had shadowed him like an irksome puppy. He'd been here at Stoneheim nigh on five hours, and no one would let him meet with Ingrith. Until now.

The keep was a maze of additions put up in a haphazard manner over the years, thanks to Ingrith's sister Breanne, who fancied herself a builder, of all things. He'd gotten himself lost twice when trying to find Ingrith on his own, and there seemed to be a conspiracy amongst servants to hide her whereabouts. Well, he had
her now, and he was not letting her go. He was done cooling his heels amongst these Norse dunderheads.

“Ingrith, you have no idea how much trouble I have gone to in order to find you.” The wrong thing to say, he realized immediately. “I mean, I have been searching for you for many sennights.”

“Why? Is it Henry? Oh, please, don't tell me he is harmed.”

He frowned. “Nay. Why would it be Henry? The boy is living with my mother and stepfather, happily, I might add. He has met the king, who accepts him in his own neglectful way.”