Victoria's Demon Lover (22 page)

     This made sense.  Victoria was
not eager to face the wrath of those Vikings.  Torgal had committed an offense
that had no defense.  The punishment was death.  The dishonor to Hamund and his
family could not be assuaged with coin.  Danica’s maidenhood had a price, but
her honor and the honor of her brothers did not.  Victoria knew this.

     She remembered her last
visitation.  He had broken himself out of his chains, and broken Sigrid’s
sons.  And broken himself.  She remembered his sad eyes and the twinges of pain
in them.  Victoria looked at Mr. Magnus.  “Do you know more?  Did he tell you
what I needed to do?”  Surely Danica would have found herself locked up as
well.

     Albert Magnus spread his hands
in defeat.  “This is your struggle Victoria.  I have handed you the sandwich,
you must eat it yourself.”

     She turned to him in surprise
for he had repeated Torgal’s words to her in the chilly woods.  She flashed
back to the longhouse, and found herself as Danica, locked in the attic room
where the summer tools and chests of linens were stored.  Victoria put her ear
down to the floorboards and listened to the angry voices below.

     Torgal had already been beaten
once.  He was in chains and locked securely by the neck and wrists to the outer
logs of the longhouse where the men sometimes secure the bull or tie their
horses.  Danica was furious.  So furious that her mind was not thinking.  Her
emotions swirled around inside her head and turned her from a human woman to a she-wolf. 
Victoria tired of trying to calm her and decided to use her own mind instead.

     She would not be able to free
Torgal until she freed herself.  That was step one.  She was not afraid of
heights.  The trapdoor was secured from below.  The shuttered opening in the
wall of the attic had been nailed shut.  She made Danica feel the underside of
the roof at the low end of the attic, pushing up on the rafters and feeling the
turf and thatch.  She made Danica move along the lowest edge until she found a
weak spot.  There.  Danica needed no more promoting.  She dug at the thatch and
the sods that made up the roof of the longhouse until she could stick an arm
through and up and out into the night air.  Victoria harnessed Danica’s
determination and strength.  This girl was as strong as an ox.  In no time the
hole was large enough to crawl through and Danica was on the roof, holding
tightly to the turf to keep from sliding to the ground.

     She hitched up her skirts
around her belted waist and used her bare toes to grip the grass and straw as
she crawled and scrambled over the rounded peak, avoiding the smoke hole, and
to the other side where she lay on her belly over the place where Torgal was
chained.

     His head drooped over his
chest.  Victoria knew he had been beaten very badly.  Danica knew as well.  Her
brothers had backhanded her a few times and her lip was still swollen.  It was
cold, and the mist would turn to rain.  Victoria wondered about hypothermia and
Danica worried about frostbite.  There was no easy way to get down from the
roof without a rope.  The mist made the grass on the roof slick.  Once she
started to slide, Danica would go to the ground, a fall of about twenty feet,
maybe fifteen if she tried to drop from the eaves.  If she landed on soft
ground she might not break her ankles, but it would hurt.  Victoria did the
figuring for her and suggested she slide around to the end of the house near
the middens.  If she was going to fall, she should fall in the trash mound.

     Danica scrambled like a monkey
and before Victoria had time to think about it further, hung for a few seconds
from the eaves, her strong hands in the turf as her feet and wet dress swung in
the air, then dropped to a hard fall that knocked the wind out of her for a few
painful moments.  An ankle hurt and Victoria felt it for moving bones.  Just a
sprain.  She was about to tell Danica to go slowly and find a crutch when she
found herself running with little hops and skips toward the man in chains.  No
crutches for this woman.

     “Torgal,” she breathed.  He
lifted his head to look at her and he was no longer beautiful.  Victoria wanted
to cry, but the sight of his puffed eye and split lip and bent nose threw Danica
into a rage instead of tears.  She dug at his manacle and followed the chain to
the ring set in the thick log.  Blood dripped onto his embroidered tunic from
his broken nose and his hair was no longer neatly braided, but hung limp and
twisted in snarls over his neck and chest.

     Victoria touched his cheek
gently with her ghost hand and felt bones move.  She ran her hands over his
ribs and he winced.  She touched his right side where his liver was. Danica
continued to dig at the ring and the chain.  She searched the ground for a thin
hard stick and poked at the lock.  Torgal was too weak and broken to protest
these fruitless ministrations and Victoria put her mind to work.

     He had escaped once.  But he
had been chained in another house.  Sigrid’s house.  And chained to boards
instead of a great log.  That must be where he was taken in the morning.  She
must free him tonight before the second fatal beating.  This is how she must
change history.  Danica was crying tears of frustration and anxiety, not
grief.  Her nimble fingers had miraculously unlocked one of the manacles and
she was fervently picking the other.  She knew there would be little time
before someone checked on her in the attic or came outside to punch Torgal
again for good measure.

     While Danica worked on the
lock, Victoria felt for Torgal.  Not the young man who sealed his fate with his
cock, but Torgal the demon who visited her in the night and seared her heart
and body with his love.  She saw him raise his head again and the one blue eye,
the one not swollen shut, looked at her and knew her.

   
Torgal
, she called to
him, knowing he heard her with his heart and not his ears,
tell me how to
help you.

     I am here to help you, my
love, to…
the blue eye blinked.  He tried to smile with his broken mouth…
help
yourself.
She heard this as clearly as if his mouth had uttered the words. 
This is not about me, Victoria, it is about you.

    
She felt Danica’s
victory as the manacle fell away in her hands.   She let it drop and tried to
lift Torgal under the arms.  The girl said, “Come, Brute.  On your feet.  Let’s
go.  We make for the woods and then the shore.  We leave.”

     Victoria was swept to the side
now that Danica had control.  The young woman half dragged Torgal into the shelter
of the pines.  She propped him against a tree to get her breath for a moment,
then grabbed his arm over her shoulder and tugged him after her.  Victoria felt
her swollen ankle and was amazed.  Danica had no thought for herself or her
injury.  In her mind was Torgal and nothing else.  Both of them left
unmistakable tracks in the leaves and the mud.  Victoria could see the futility
of this flight, though nothing she could think at this stubborn girl got
through her thick head.

     That is when she really
understood that she was Danica.  The traits of all three women were hers. 
Alana’s compassion, Maggie’s devotion, and Danica’s tenacity.  And what about
Victoria?  She sighed, trying to think what she might be bringing to the
table.   Nothing but self-pity and grief.  She was the weak link in this chain
of history.

     They reached a fork in the
footpath.  Danica swung to the right but was brought up short by Torgal who
weaved to the left.  “This way,” he said.

     “No, this way.”  Danica leaned
hard to the right, pulling his arm.

     They might have stood there
glaring at each other until
Gotterdammerung
but for the sound of
nickering to their left.  Danica’s eyes grew big and Torgal grunted a painful
laugh.  “This way,” he insisted.  I have horses for us.  Did
you
hide
horses in the woods, woman?  Are they to the
right
?”

     Danica immediately swung to
the left, half carrying her man and half dragging him.  Soon Victoria could see
the waving tails of two huge draft horses and a third piled high with leather
bags and wicker baskets.

     “You planned to come for me
tonight?” Danica had dropped his arm and was now examining the escape vehicles
in the dappled moonlight that came through the trees.  Torgal dropped to his
knees when she released him.  Victoria tried to get the girl to see that he was
in serious pain and needed to rest, but Danica could not be turned.  She put
her hands over the horses’ faces and noses, felt the saddles and fingered the
baggage.  “You were going to come for me,” she whispered. “You were.”

     Torgal nodded.  “But some
wench grabbed me by my cock and threw me down in the straw.”

     Danica laughed.  “You should
have told me the day before.”

     “Woman.  I had to make a scene
out of abducting you so everyone would save their honor.  I needed to stride
into the house, grab you and run for the woods with you screaming over my
shoulder.  I was going to plan it all out with you in the shed.  Instead…”  He
breathed in and out painfully.

     “Right.”  Danica tightened the
girths of both animals.  The folly of her actions was now painfully obvious. 
Victoria wanted to slap her for the thoughtlessness that killed her lover and
ruined her life, but she could not. 
I am suffering for her impetuous act.
She
looked at Torgal panting on the forest floor, one arm across his abdomen. 
And
he is.

    
Torgal looked up as
though he could hear her thoughts.  His blue eyes were yellow.

     “Oh God,” Victoria lay back on
her pillows.  She felt as drained as if she had climbed over the roof of a
longhouse and dragged a two hundred pound man through the chilly night woods on
a swollen ankle.

     Mr. Magnus smiled.  He sat in
her bedroom chair reading a book.  He didn’t look up but turned a page instead. 
“Now go rescue Jack, Victoria.  We can wait.”

     She swallowed.  Her last
glimpse of Jack was of him hanging from a gibbet.

     “Don’t go
there
,
Victoria.  I think there is a point before that where you might be more
effective.”  He lowered the book and looked at her over the rims of his reading
glasses. “You are the one with the smarts.”  Magnus turned a page and leaned
back, making himself more comfortable in her chair. His eyes twinkled. “That’s
what you bring to the table, Victoria.  You are the smart one.”

     She opened her eyes as
Maggie.  She was in the cottage putting away the breakfast.  Outside she heard
galloping hoof beats.  Instead of running to the door to see who it could be,
she deliberately walked across the floor, knelt by the bed and rolled under and
behind the chest that held a glittering sword.  She would stay there until more
hoof beats assured her that Brigayne and his men were gone.  Before, she had
killed her husband by walking to the door.  Now she would save him by hiding
under the bed.  So simple.

     Mr. Magnus closed the book and
smiled at her.  “Do you feel better?”

     Victoria sat up and felt her
head with one hand and her chest with the other.

     Mr. Magnus laughed.  “I meant
inside.”

     She laughed with him.  “I knew
what you meant, but I have no pain here either.”  She took a deep breath.  “And
my head feels clear.”  She looked around her bedroom.  “Where is Jasper?”

     Mr. Magnus set the book down
and came over to sit on her bed.  “He has gone back home.  You don’t need him
anymore.”

     “Are you going to go home?” 
Victoria felt a twinge of loneliness with this thought. Albert Magnus was the
only person on the planet she could talk to about these adventures.  If he left
her she would be alone with her thoughts and memories.  If he left there would
be no one to explain what had just happened to her.  If he left and took all
his books, there might never be an explanation.  And without Jasper she would
not be able to travel to Marcus or Jack or Torgal.  She frowned and reached for
his hand. “Don’t.  Not yet.  I am not ready to be alone, forever.”

     His eyes glowed yellow for a
brief moment before deepening to a chocolate brown.  She watched as the gray
hair darkened and the wrinkles disappeared.  He grew taller and younger and
filled out with muscle.  He was Jack, but with Marcus’s expressive eyes and
Torgal’s handsome face.

     He smiled as he cupped her
cheek. “No.  Not yet,” he agreed, and he leaned forward.  “You will never be
alone.  Forever.”