Sandra Hill - [Vikings I 03] (14 page)

Oh, Lord!
Eadyth despaired. This should be the perfect opportunity for her to confess her masquerade, but in view of Eirik’s present mood she feared his reaction. With the marriage not yet consummated, he could easily put her aside. Dare she take a chance with honesty? Nay, she decided to wait just a bit longer until she had cleared up the misunderstanding about Steven.

She needed to divert his attention. “Well, if you refuse to shave your mustache, at least close your eyes again so I can dig amongst the spiny hairs.”

Eirik grumbled something, but the words were unintelligible with her left hand clamped over his mouth. Actually, the bristly hairs felt sensuously sleek under her probing fingers, and Eadyth could not help but remember how his mustache had felt during that one erotic, mind-jarring kiss in this very chamber.

Eirik seemed to have remembered, as well, for when she stepped away, his voice was husky. “Are you done?”

“Yea, but turn around again. I need to apply something soothing to the wounds to prevent swelling.”

The servants had carried a tub full of steaming water into the room during her ministrations, as well as the salt and onions she had requested. She poured the entire crock full of salt into the bathwater, then turned to the table where her knife still lay. She sliced a large onion in half and began to rub it over Eirik’s back in a sweeping motion.

“Aaah! That feels
so
good.”

“I thought it would. Now, stand so I can do your legs.”

As she knelt and worked briskly, Eadyth felt the powerful muscles of Eirik’s legs stiffen suddenly.

“What is that ungodly smell?”

“Onion.”

With a curse, he reached down and pulled her to her feet. At first, he just stared incredulously at the white half-globe
in her hand, then to the onion-induced tears which had begun to stream down her face.

“God’s Bones! Do you truly dare to cover my body with smelly onion juice? ’Tis a jest you play whilst my body is in misery?”

“Nay, everyone knows that onion juice is the best thing to reduce the swelling of bee stings.”

“Well,
everyone
can go to bloody hell.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her along with him to the tub. He handed her a cloth and a bar of hard soap, ordering, “You will wash every drop of it off my skin or I will stuff onions down your throat ’til the juice comes out your ears.”

He sank into the hot water, then immediately shot up, standing upright. “Ouch! That burns like hellfire. What is in the water?”

“Salt.”

Stepping out of the tub, he grabbed her by the forearms and lifted her off the floor so that they eyed each other, nose to nose.

“You would rub salt in my wounds, as well? Truly, woman, you have passed the bounds of brashness and have now entered the arena of stupidity.”

He shook her so hard she could not think clearly, then dropped her abruptly to her feet on the floor. She stared dumbly at him, his handsome face twisted into an ugly mask of fury.

“How would you like it if I rubbed your body raw with sand, then put you in a tub of salt water?”

“You cannot be serious.”

“Oh, can I not?”

She backed away, stuttering in a rush of words, “You just do not understand…do not touch me…oh, now you got my gown wet…stop it…salt will stop the stings from swelling and prevent them from festering…truly, listen to me…oh, you loathsome lou…”

She could say no more because Eirik picked her up and dumped her, clothes and all, into the tub, then dunked her
head under the water. She came up sputtering, only to hear him say, “Whilst you are in there, wash that vile grease from your hair. It stinks.” Before she could answer, he pushed her head under again and held it there so long her nose began to burn.

When she finally emerged from the tub, livid, her hair hung limply under her soaking head-rail and her wool gown made a huge puddle on the rush-clad floor. “You…you…you…,” she stammered, unable to come up with the appropriate words to describe his odious self.

And Eirik just stood there in his naked magnificence, hands on hips, feet planted apart arrogantly, laughing his head off. When his fit of mirth finally passed, he said with dry amusement, “Well, I feel immensely better.”

“You toad.”

Still laughing, he threw her a linen cloth to dry herself and motioned her to the stool. Pulling on a pair of braies and a long-sleeved
shert
, he commented ominously, “
Now
we will discuss your treachery, and what to do about this ill-suited marriage we find ourselves in.”

Eirik walked over to the small table near his bed and pulled a piece of crumpled parchment from the drawer. He smoothed it out on the tabletop, then turned and handed it to his wife, never speaking a word. Instead, he walked to the opposite side of the room and leaned against the wall, waiting for her to finish reading the incriminating words. His skin itched like hell, but he refused to scratch or apply her onion juice or salt water. He would wait until later and send Wilfrid to the local herbal woman for an ointment.

“Well?” he asked finally when she had pondered the letter for an inordinate amount of time. “Have you naught to say for yourself?”

“Where did you get this?”

“Britta found it under your mattress.”

She lifted her eyes to him, horror covering her face. He shook his head in disbelief. She looked like a drowned rat with her greasy gray hair hanging in wet clumps under the
sodden head-rail, onion-induced tears streaming down her face.

“Do you realize what this means, Eirik?” she said anxiously. “Steven, or one of his men, has been in this keep.”

“Tell me something I do not already know,” he remarked sarcastically, “like where the hell you have been the past four days. And with whom.”

Eadyth waved his question aside as if it were of no importance. “At Hawks’ Lair. You know that already. But what I meant was that we must take better precautions if Steven can enter this keep so easily. He could have taken…oh, my God, he could have taken John.”

“Yea, he could have. Just as you planned.”

Eadyth’s brow furrowed in puzzlement. Blessed Lord, the traitorous bitch put on a good act. He could almost believe her innocence. “I never expected a maidenhead,
wife
, but neither did I expect to be cuckolded so soon after the vows were taken.”

“What do you mean?” she asked stiffly. “Are you saying that you believe the lies in this letter? Do you imply I have been…involved with the man who tries to take my son from me?”

“All facts point that way. And I have only your word that he seeks to do you harm,” he said, shrugging, as he walked up to her and removed the letter from her hands. “
Hold on, love, just a short while longer till we can be together finally…,
” he read in a mimicking voice, then, “
Your heart’s husband, Steven.
”

Eadyth stood abruptly, knocking the stool over. Angry pink spots dotted her cheeks as she snarled, “You think I am Steven’s whore?” When he did not answer, Eadyth muttered under her breath, then exclaimed in a shrill, indignant voice, “You bastard! The only true statement in this missive is Steven’s reference to you as the Beast of Ravenshire. Yea, you are a beast to think thus of me.”

Tears filled her eyes, but Eirik remained untouched. She
had played him false with his hated enemy, and that he could not abide.

“Knowing how evil Steven is, why can you not see this letter for the ploy it is? ’Twas planted to divide us in our intentions to hold his son from him. And he succeeded, thanks to your gullibility, you bloody fool.”

She turned and stumbled blindly toward the door, as fast as her legs could carry her, hampered by her sodden garment. For a moment, Eirik wondered if he had judged her unfairly, but then he remembered the other, the most important part of the letter.

“Are you breeding? With Steven’s child…again?”

She gasped and her back stiffened. Then she turned slowly and her violet eyes flashed icily, remarkably beautiful eyes for an old crone, he thought irrelevantly.

“Nay, I am not carrying a babe. Not unless you believe me capable of an immaculate conception.”

Eadyth’s sarcasm irritated him. She had no cause to be affronted.
He
was the injured party.

“I will not harbor another of Steven’s bastards,” he informed her. “One is enough.”

Her cheeks turned even redder, and he noticed her fists bunching at her sides. Then she reached toward the scabbard at her belt, forgetting that her small knife still lay on the far table. He was not so dim-sighted he could not see the speculation in her eyes as she measured the distance, wondering if she had time to get the blade and stab him.

“Do not even think it, or you will find yourself with a slit throat afore you can blink.”

Giving up on that alternative, she lifted her chin defiantly, staring him down in silence. If she only knew how ridiculous she looked with her scowling countenance and her wet garments making a puddle in the rushes, he mused.

“This marriage will not be consummated ’til you get your monthly courses and I know for certain you carry no bad seed.”

“And when you are proven wrong?” she sneered, disdain
giving a sharp edge to her voice.

“I will decide then whether I want to live with another false wife.”

“Another?”

Eirik immediately realized his mistake, but refused to answer her question.

She scrutinized him haughtily, then repeated her earlier statement. “I am not breeding.”

He just raised an eyebrow skeptically.

Her face turned crimson, but she met his eyes head on. “I am bleeding now.”

That disclosure caught Eirik by surprise. Could he possibly have been wrong? But years of Steven’s treachery had taught him to be ever suspicious. He could not stop himself from doggedly persisting, “How do I know you do not lie?”

Her lips curled scornfully. “What shall I do, my lord? Lift my robe and show you the bloody rag?”

Her contempt disarmed him. That and her demeanor of wounded pride.

“Yea, that would be a good start.”

She backed toward the door, eyes wide with fear at his suggestion. “You…you would not ask that of me,” she sputtered in a voice shaking with disbelief.

“Do not place a wager on it. Come here, Eadyth, and prove your innocence.”

She gasped and turned quickly, hand on the door, but he moved even quicker and placed his body at the exit, barring her way. She jumped away from him in fright, like a bedraggled cat, and moved back to the center of the room, looking right and left for a weapon, to no avail.

“Oh, nay, oh, please, do not do this. You have misjudged me. I can expl—”

Eirik cut off her near hysterical words when he lifted her by the waist and threw her back onto his bed with a loud whooshing sound. He followed close after her, as her arms flailed out, hitting and scratching his already irritated skin.

Ignoring her enormous, doelike eyes, he straddled her body
with his knees, holding her body in place, and locked both her hands over her head in one fist. Despite the fear she tried to hold in check, her chin lifted defiantly like a martyr’s.

Eirik hesitated. What if she was innocent?

“Tell me true, wife, have you ever, since we signed the betrothal agreement, deceived me?”

In the charged silence, Eadyth did not speak for a moment, averting her eyes guiltily. By the time she started to speak tentatively, “There is one small thing…,” it was too late, to his mind. Her hesitation spoke for itself.

Eirik snorted with disgust and pressed her tighter to the bed with his body.

“You beast, I will never forgive you for this. Worse, you will never forgive yourself when you discover the truth.”

“Nay, I will never forgive myself if I do not find out for certain if you have betrayed me.” Eirik, in a misty haze of utter fury, flipped her robe up to her waist, exposing long limbs.

And the bloody rag between her thighs.

Eirik looked up and saw the silent tears of humiliation seeping from her closed eyes. A nagging voice inside his head told him to release her, to be satisfied with the evidence he saw, but a berserk rage had overtaken his body. Blood roared in his ears as he passed the breaking point. He had been at the wrong end of Steven’s perfidy for too long to be satisfied with less than the ultimate proof. Even the bloody rag could be a carefully concocted ruse.

Roughly, he reached down and tore the soiled cloth from her body and threw it onto the rushes. Then, swiftly, before she could comprehend what he was about, Eirik used his legs to maneuver her thighs apart and thrust his middle finger into her body.

She screamed then, loud and keening. He did not know if it was from the humiliation, or the pain, for her passage was dry and tight for even his lone finger.

Realization swept over him, even before he pulled the fin
ger out and saw the bloody evidence. She did not carry Steven’s child.

Eadyth lay stiffly, trying hard to control the racking sobs which shook her thin body. Her pale eyes stared lifelessly at the ceiling.

Eirik jumped up in horror and walked to the wall near the window. Angrily, he pounded his fist against the stone wall until he drew blood.

He had never, never been so ashamed of himself in all his life.

“Eadyth, we have to talk.”

Eirik pulled a chair closer to the bed. For more than an hour, he had been pacing the bedchamber, watching his wife sleep restlessly, waiting for her to awaken.

After his gross assault on her person, Eadyth had refused to look at him or hear his words of apology. She had surprised him by hurling out a few surprisingly coarse curses that would make a Viking sailor blush, then curled herself into a pitiful ball. She had wept quietly for an ungodly length of time before falling into a fitful slumber.

He eyed the crumpled heap of clothing which hid Eadyth’s slight frame as she came slowly awake and moved awkwardly into a sitting position in the middle of his large bed. He didn’t know which Eadyth he misliked most—the shrewish, arrogant crone who had plagued him with complaints from the moment they first met, or the silent, humbled one who jabbed at his conscience now.

Hell’s flames
! He was sore tired from lack of sleep, and his skin itched unbearably from the bee stings. He needed to
settle this matter between them. Then, he would like nothing better than to be off to Jorvik where Asa could minister to his needs—both the bee stings and that
other
long-unmet one.

“Eadyth, did you hear me? We have to talk,” he snapped.

“We have absolutely naught to discuss,” she replied icily as she eased herself off the bed and stood on the opposite side of the room from him. She adjusted her infernal head-rail in her usual fashion so that it half-covered her face, but not before he noted her red nose, puffy eyelids and pink-blotched skin.

He hadn’t thought it possible she could look any worse than before. She did.

He rubbed his index finger thoughtfully across his mustache, wondering how he had got himself into this mess of a marriage, then stopped in midstroke as he noticed something alarming. Suspiciously, he held the fingertips of both hands to his jaw bones, then moved them slowly upward to his eyes and over his forehead in an exploring fashion.

He groaned aloud at what he discovered.

His face had swollen, and one eyelid had puffed almost completely shut. He muttered something foul under his breath and rose and walked over to the wash table under the framed polished metal on the wall.

He had to restrain himself from jumping back in horror at his reflection.

“Damn!” he exploded. “I saw a leper once who looked better than I do now.”

Eadyth laughed with a shrill cackle behind him. “There is some justice in the world then.”

Eirik slanted her a warning look. “Do not be so cocky. I have seen corpses looking livelier than you.”

She glared at him frostily with her violet eyes. Their beauty was surely wasted on such as her, he thought, not for the first time. Then she reached for the goblet near the bed, weighing it in her hands, glancing back at him as if contemplating him as a target.

Well, at least the old Eadyth was back again.

“Do not even think—”

A loud knocking at the door interrupted his words, and Eadyth put the goblet back on the table.

“M’lord, ’tis me, Bertha.” The pounding continued.

Eirik shot Eadyth a meaningful glance that told her without words that their talk was only postponed.

“What is it now?” he grumbled as he pulled the door open suddenly, causing Bertha to pitch forward slightly. He caught her massive bulk, then held her upper arms to steady her upright.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” Bertha exclaimed, craning her neck to look up at him. “You look like you been fighting with the devil.”

“Nay, just my wife.”

Eadyth gasped behind him.

Bertha tried unsuccessfully to peer past his large frame into the bedchamber.

“What do you want?”

“The mistress din’t tell me what to prepare fer dinner this eve, and it be way past noon.”

Bertha’s complaint did not fool Eirik. After all, she had been operating her kitchen quite efficiently without her mistress’s direction during Eadyth’s absence. Curiosity, pure and simple, motivated the old cook—that and a well-known love of gossip.

“Do whatever you bloody well want.”

“Well, ’tis no need to get on yer high horse with me. Jist ’cause you were lackwitted enuf to stick yer head in a basket of bees, ’tis no reason to take yer bad humors out on me.”

“I did not—”

“You don’t see me laughin’ me bloody head off, do you? Nay, m’lord. Do you see me sittin’ down in the kitchen with the scullery maids wonderin’ if yer staff got bit by them bloody bees and whether it be swollen twice its size and whether you be up here givin’ yer new wife twice the pleasure?”

Eirik choked back his laughter.

“Nay, I be up here jist tryin’ to do me duty,” she continued. “Even when I could be in the great hall listenin’ to yer men makin’ wagers on how many bee stings ye got on yer body. I got better things to do with me time. Yea, I do.”

Eirik snorted with disgust.
God’s Bones!
Now his wife had turned him into a laughingstock.

“…’cause I know there be no way you could have two hun’red stings on yer fine body,” Bertha babbled on recklessly, failing to notice the stiffening of his back or his frowning face, “even if Master Wilfrid sez he picked up two hun’red dead bees in the bailey.”

“Oh, nay, say ’tis not so, Bertha,” Eadyth exclaimed with alarm. “So many of my precious bees dead? I must go at once to check the damage and see the remaining bees secure in their new hives. I cannot believe I was lying here wallowing in self-pity when so much needed to be done.”

Eirik turned in surprise at Eadyth’s words, which gave Bertha the opportunity to step past him into the bedchamber. Her mouth dropped open in amazement, displaying a half-dozen missing teeth.

Bertha looked at Eadyth’s sodden clothing and tear-splotched face, then darted her beady eyes to Eirik, then back to Eadyth. Laughter rumbled from deep in her belly, erupted raucously, and continued until tears ran in rivulets down her bloated face.

“Oh, oh, I can barely credit the two of you. What a pair you make! Yer faces look like two bowls of day-old, lumpy porridge.”

“Kiss my arse,” a muffled voice said.

That stopped Bertha’s laughter abruptly. “Wha…what did ye say, m’lord?”

“Show me yer legs.”

The bloody bird displayed a real talent for bad timing and mimicking voices, Eirik thought.

“Well, I never thought to see the day, m’lord. Yer blessed grandmother mus’ be rollin’ in her grave to see you oglin’ an old woman like me. Not that I have any trouble gettin’ a
man into my bed even yet.” Bertha sucked in her bulging stomach and thrust out her buxom breasts proudly.

Eirik’s eyes widened in disbelief. The old hag actually thought he was attracted to her gross charms.

“Actually, now that I think on it, mayhap you have developed a taste fer older meat,” Bertha added slyly, darting a meaningful look at Eadyth.

“That will be enough,” Eadyth said stonily in her best lady-of-the-manor voice. “Leave my presence at once if you value your misbegotten skin. I will come down to the kitchen as soon as I check my bees.”

Somewhat chastened, but still chuckling, Bertha headed toward the door.

“And make sure there are no weevils in the manchet bread like there were afore I left for Hawks’ Lair. Nay, do not raise your chin at me, you lazy wench. I intend to check the flour closely, and every worm I find will be put on your loose tongue with my very own fingers.”

Bertha waddled away, muttering something about ungrateful mistresses.

“And make sure you do not gossip below stairs about what you have…seen here,” Eadyth added.

Bertha clucked her tongue with disgust. “As if anyone with eyes in their heads will not be able to see fer themselves fer days ter come what you two have been about.”

Eadyth prepared to follow Bertha through the door, but Eirik halted her progress with a raised arm and closed the door.

“We will talk now.”

Eadyth turned her nose up stubbornly. “I do not wish to speak with you—now or ever.”

“That should make for a wonderful marriage.”

“No one ever promised you a wonderful marriage.”

“You pledged honesty.”

“And I have given it.”

“I asked you afore I did…what I did…,” Eirik said, searching lamely for a polite word for his vulgar act. “I
clearly asked whether you had ever deceived me, and you hesitated—”

“And you consider my mere hesitation a justification for such a vile response?”

“Nay, I do not. I am merely trying to explain.”

Eadyth’s eyes flashed angrily as she challenged him, hands on hips, chin tilted upward. Suddenly, Eirik realized why she might have been considered a beauty in her youth. With that fiery nature, and just a little natural beauty, she must have been a woman worth her weight in gold. Nay, not gold,
silver
, Eirik reminded himself, recalling Wilfrid’s reference to the Silver Jewel of Northumbria.

“Stop that,” Eadyth demanded, stamping her small leather shoe petulantly in the rushes.

“What?”

“Looking at me…like that.”

“How?”

“Like I am one of your tarts.”

“Hardly.”

His wry observation did not sit well with her. “You make me so
damned
angry I could spit.”

“So? Relax some of that self-righteous self-control of yours and do it.”

“Do what?”

“Spit.”

“Argh! Talking with you is useless. Why do you not go off to Jorvik and plague one of your mistresses?”

Eirik felt his face heat at her too accurate reading of his plans. And he misliked the fact that she accepted other women in his life so easily. Not that it was not a woman’s role to be subservient to her husband, to turn her head at his sexual misdeeds. ’Twas the nature of men to seek many partners and had been through the ages. It just rankled that she practically pushed him into another woman’s arms.

She glared at him fiercely, waiting for his reply. Armed to the teeth, no doubt, with another caustic remark, he thought. Then an odd thing happened. Her lips began to twitch, and
she quickly covered them with both hands as if to hide something. Suspiciously, he leaned closer, thinking he heard a little twittering sound.

Then he knew.

The wench was laughing at him. She dared to laugh at her husband. She must have the brains of a flea to tempt his already overwrought temper thus.

“Oh, I cannot help myself,” she confessed. “You look so funny, standing there like a raging bull, but looking like a puffy mass of red-speckled dough.”

“So you think me amusing, do you?” Eirik said, advancing closer. “Have you any idea what your unwelcome bath and your blubbering have done to
your
appearance?”

Before she could protest, Eirik turned her toward the polished metal and forced her to look at herself.

“Oh, my.”

“Oh, my, indeed.”

“I guess Bertha was right. We look quite the pair.”

Eadyth suddenly seemed to realize that she had dropped her anger toward Eirik too easily by laughing with him companionably. Forcing a scowl onto her mirthful face, she snorted with self-disgust and started to walk toward the door. Eirik figured he had best make his apologies quickly before she turned shrewish again.

“Come,” he said, leading her to the chair and pushing her gently to sit. He pulled another chair closer so they sat facing each other, knee to knee. “I would have my say now.”

Eadyth made as if to rise, but he halted her by shaking his head. “Nay, you will sit and listen. ’Twill not be easy for me to tell you of the reasons for my berserk behavior, but you deserve the explanation. It all revolves around that bloody demon, Steven of Gravely.”

Eadyth’s head shot up with interest, and she sat back, steepling her fingers in front of her tightly pressed lips. Studying him warily, she finally said, “I am listening.”

Eadyth watched her husband as he shifted uncomfortably in the chair facing her. A soft white
shert
covered his taut
body down to the wrists, and faded brown braies hugged his thick thigh and calf muscles down to the ankles, but Eadyth knew from his swollen face and the reddening bite wounds evident in the open neckline that he suffered terribly with the urge to scratch.

Good
, she thought, remembering the vulgar thing he had done to her.

Until she had met Steven, she had been modest in her person, never allowing any man to touch her, not even for a chaste kiss. It had taken Steven months of seductive wooing to convince her of his love, and only then had she allowed that most intimate of all acts.

Since Steven’s betrayal, she had learned her lesson well and kept all men beyond touching distance of her body. It had not always been an easy task once word of her child leaked out, for she had been deemed tarnished goods. In defense, she had avoided the royal court and any public places where she might have been vulnerable to men’s advances, and she had made a concerted effort to downplay her attractiveness.

Mayhap that was why Eirik’s vulgar action devastated her so. Like all the other men, he placed no value on her dignity. And, for some reason, his condemnation of her as an adulteress hurt deeply. Blessed Lord, she could not remember the last time she had allowed herself the indulgence of a good sob. Probably not since Steven’s betrayal.

Eirik shifted noisily in his chair, breaking her reverie. “I first met Steven when I went to King Athelstan’s court as a boy for fostering.”

Despite her angry emotions, Eadyth could not curb her curiosity. “Was it not odd for a Viking child to foster at a Saxon court?”

“Nay, ’twas not unusual. My cousin Haakon, as pure a Viking as there ever was long afore he became high-king of all Norway, fostered there with me. Not to mention an assortment of scholars and refugees from royal courts around the world.

“And I told you afore I am only half Viking.” Eirik grinned in a ridiculous parody of a smile, considering the puffiness of his face. His lips tilted up only on one side. And, yea, Eadyth did remember all too well that earlier conversation when he had teased her, asking if she would like to see his Viking half. She curled her lips with distaste and made a clucking sound of disgust.