The Caged Viking

by Sandra Hill

  Several of the men groaned, but Kirsten asked, “How do you figure?”

  “Well, much as we all avoid talking about our own time-travel all those years ago, I can only conclude it was the hand of God guiding us toward some celestially ordained destiny.”

  “A miracle,” Ragnor concurred with a shrug. “Works for me. There is no scientific explanation.”

  “So, you’re saying God wants me to go back a thousand years to rescue a stranger?” Kirsten asked.

  She already knew the answer.

  Chapter 4

  The winds of war…

  Hauk’s future was in increasingly more peril as hourly updates came in on the impending arrival of the invaders…Sweyn’s longships at Jorvik and Duke Richard’s vessels which had presumably already begun to cross The Channel. You could nigh smell blood in the air.

  Meanwhile, the inhabitants of Winchester Castle were running around like chickens with their heads cut off as war plans were made and discarded, right and left. You’d think they would have set defenses in place long ago. For a certainty, they had to know that retaliation would be coming eventually. Instead, more than once Hauk heard the muttered prayer, “Oh, Lord, from the fury of the Northmen, please spare us.” As if prayers were a battle strategy!

  Hah! Prayers did naught to spare the Vikings who were massacred by them, even if they were to the Norse gods and not their One-God.

  In any case, the ravens of death would be flying over Winchester within days. Mayhap even hours. Then it would be over.

  In the midst of it all, he noticed eyes directed toward him, then darting away quickly. “What to do with the caged Viking?” they seemed to be asking with worry.

  About time they worried!

  In fact, just now, Lord Botswith, earl of Larchford, approached with the king. The two of them paused to stare at him and then proceeded to discuss him as if he were not even there.

  “Not high enough in rank to be used as a hostage in negotiations, I suppose,” the earl remarked.

  What makes him think Vikings would negotiate at this point? The halfbrain!

  “Pff. Not even a high jarl,” King Aethelred replied. “Just a karl, according to my wife.”

  “Karl?”

  “A jarl is comparable to our English earl, whilst a karl is just a wealthy landowner, or chieftain.”

  Just? I would like to give him “just”! And I am so a jarl. A lowly one, but a jarl just the same. It was ironical that he would now claim his jarlness, if only in his head, when he denied it otherwise, like whenever Egil called him “Lord.”

  “Should we just kill him and hide the body?” Lord Botswith asked.

  Nay, nay, nay! No killing me!

  He must have made a sound because both men jolted to attention and gave him a closer scrutiny, from their safe distance on the other side of the cage bars.

  “Dost think he understands English?”

  “Nay! All Viking are dumb, hardly more than animals,” the king said.

  Hauk would have leapt through the bars and strangled the fool monarch if he could. Dumb was Aethelred’s middle name, not his.

  “Not yet,” the king answered the earl’s question about killing him, but continued to ponder the thought as he pressed a forefinger to his lips pensively. “Word may have reached Sweyn and Duke Richard of a Viking noble being kept here in a cage for torture and humiliation. You know good and well that someone in my castle would reveal the truth at the mere pulling of a fingernail or the heat of a hot iron near an eyeball.”

  “With God’s support, the pagans may never reach Winchester,” Lord Bothwith opined.

  Don’t count on it.

  The king, in his usual pattern of procrastination, said, “We will decide the Viking’s fate at the Witan meeting on the morrow. Let the body of Saxon thanes share in that decision, as well as final battle plans. Personally, methinks ’tis best to risk the ire of the invaders by killing this one Viking, mayhap even hanging his head from the ramparts as a warning to the heathen attackers. Yes, I like the sound of that. But let the deed be enforced from a Witan order, not mine alone.”

  And so they pondered Hauk’s fate.

  And here I stand like a fox in a field of archers, just waiting for one overeager housecarl to take a shot. With only two lackwits to save my sorry hide! The lackwit Viking queen, who is about to pop out a royal whelp, and the lackwit woodcutter/hersir who dawdles like a youthling contemplating his first swive.

  When Egil came to him later that afternoon, Hauk repeated what he’d overheard. “It has to be tonight.”

  Egil nodded, for once, and said, “’Tis the same I’m hearing round and ’bout. Rumor is, one mucky lord has suggested they release you into the woods outside the castle and set up a chase with dozens of armed men on horseback and hounds to track you down.”

  “Like a bloody fox.” Hauk spat into the rushes.

  “That way they kin allus say ye died tryin’ to escape.”

  Hauk shook his head at the idiocy of the Saxons who wasted time on such games when their very lives were in peril.

  “Be ready after the castle settles down fer the night.”

  “Do you have the two horses ready for us to get away?”

  “Three.”

  “What?”

  “I have three horses for you, me, and…Bergliot.”

  “What? We can’t be slowed down by some silly maid.”

  “She comes,” Egil insisted.

  “Stop thinking with your cock, you old fool.”

  “She comes, and that is that.”

  Hauk rolled his eyes. Later he would deal with Egil’s fanciful notion.

  They discussed details for their escape then, until one of the passing housecarls looked their way with suspicion. With their plans set in place, Hauk was hopeful for the first time in months.

  But then, early that evening, an unwelcome visitor changed everything.

  It wasn’t Johnny Cash, but there were rings of fire…

  It was three months before Kirstin saw her family as a whole again, and this time it was at her Uncle Rolf’s Rosestead village in Maine.

  To mark the twentieth anniversary of the opening of the Viking re-enactment community, a week-long Norse Festival was being held. All of the extended family, which numbered more than fifty, stemming from the three Ericsson brothers who’d come from the Norselands to America…Geirolf, Jorund, and Magnus…were pitching in to help the resident staff of twenty-five handle the twenty thousand visitors who were expected from around the world.

  Thankfully, term break at UCLA afforded Kirstin a full week away from her duties. After that, she’d be doing research for the next two months for a paper she was writing on “Viking Women in a War Society,” having taken a hiatus on her teaching schedule until the fall.

  Maybe she’d even find material here among her Viking clan to add to her scholarly documentation. Madrene, for one, would have a thing or two to say about the popular misconception that Norse women stayed home docilely, “barefoot and pregnant,” while their men went off a-Viking. Madrene often likened herself to Lagertha, that warrior-ess or shield maiden who’d brought Ragnor to his knees in more ways than one, on the battlefield as well as the bed furs, in that TV series.

  In fact, Madrene was dressed to the part today in tights covered by a fitted corset made of leather and intrica.te, lightweight chainmail coming down to her thighs. Slouch boots and etched bronze bracers on her forearms completed the picture, along with a round wooden shield decorated with a chasing dragon design and an authentic short sword, which she carried in a sheath attached to a wide leather belt. Her blonde hair had been done up Lagertha style, too, with a dozen elaborately woven tight braids on the sides and on top of her head, leading to a high ponytail, which swished as she walked…in a swagger, of course.

  The eyes of her husband, Commander MacLean, who’d reluctantly dressed as a Viking warrior himself today, about bulged out every time she walked by. And he glared at any men who dared ogle her
in her form-fitting attire. He could be heard muttering something that sounded like “Holy Thor!” but was probably “Hoo-yah!”

  Kirstin was in period Viking dress, as well, though her gown, or gunna as it was called then, was more in keeping with some noble event in a Norse Jarl’s great hall, rather than a battlefield. An ankle-length, royal blue silk, it was heavily embroidered along the scooped neckline, wrists, and hem with a border outlined in metallic silver thread of a Valknut design using a repetitive pattern of three interlocking triangles, sometimes known as Odin’s Rune, against a lighter sapphire blue background. On her feet were flat ballet slippers; she’d chosen comfort over historical accuracy there. Her loose hair was pulled off her face into a single French braid that hung down her back to mid-shoulders, for comfort in the summer heat and humidity. Her only jewelry was the blue amber pendant around her neck, the birthday gift from her father, and a wrist watch which she could tuck into a side pocket of her gown before her talk, pockets being an anachronistic but handy addition she’d insisted on with her dressmaker.

  In the old days, hard as it was for most people to believe, especially her students, pockets didn’t exist; they hadn’t been invented yet. Instead, men and women alike carried small leather or cloth bags tied to their belts, sort of medieval versions of fanny packs.

  “Kirstin! Hey, wait up!”

  Kirstin turned to see her sister Dagny rushing toward her from the parking lot.

  “You made it,” Kirstin said with a sigh of relief.

  “Am I too late?”

  “No. Uncle Rolf changed the schedule. My workshop on Viking fashions doesn’t start for another hour.”

  “Good.” Dagny looked her over and then asked, “How come you get to look all fancy and pretty, and I get the dowdy housewife outfit?”

  “I’d hardly call that dowdy. Not with those amethyst brooches and all that gold.”

  Dagny was dressed in the more traditional Norse woman’s everyday attire. A full-length gunna, in this case a deep violet color, was covered with a long, open-sided white apron, the straps of which were attached over each shoulder with brooches of deep purple stones in gold settings. A heavy gold chain, holding various household-type keys and precious objects, like a thimble and needle case, hung in a wide loop over her chest from each of the brooches. Her honey-bright hair was braided into a coronet atop her head.

  “Did you come like that on the plane?” Kirstin laughed as she linked her arm with her sister’s and began to walk through the village fairground toward the great hall where her fashion seminar would be held.

  “No. I changed in the airport ladies’ room. Not that I didn’t get lots of strange looks after that at the car rental desk. But then, crazies abound in airports these days.”

  “Tell me about it! It’s like doing a gauntlet at some weird convention sometimes, especially in LA. Forget DragonCon or Comic-Con. Did you know there is a con called BlobFest for fans of that old Steve McQueen movie The Blob and BlizzCon for men who are over thirty and live in their parents’ basement. And get this, I heard last week about the World Toilet Summit and Expo for people who celebrate…well, pee-yew!”

  Dagny laughed. “I saw some kids today carrying a sign that read, ‘Welcome Home from Prison, Grandma’. Then, there was the old lady who looked like a homeless person carrying a five-hundred-dollar Gucci handbag. Not to mention a group of Stormtroopers. Pff! A medieval Viking maiden was almost normal.”

  “A maiden are you now?”

  Dagny elbowed her for teasing. “I assume everyone else in the family is geared up, ala Frederick’s of the Fjord.”

  “Of course.” She had talked a bunch of her family members into participating in her Viking fashion show. They would be dressed as authentically as possible. “What made you so late?”

  “Missed my first flight from Dulles. Some last minute forensic art needed on a terrorist case that just came in.”

  “You’ll have to tell me about it later,” Kirstin said as they entered the crowds that were walking and stopping before the dozens of booths that had been set up. Some of the jobs Dagny worked on at the FBI as a forensic artist were very interesting, fodder for many a family gab fest, certainly an exciting contrast to the solitary art work she did in her DC home studio.

  “Oh, my God! This is amazing,” Dagny remarked suddenly. “I haven’t been here for five years, and it’s grown so much.”

  “I know. Remember the first time we came…maybe fifteen years ago? There were only a few tents, with the highlight being Uncle Rolf’s ship-building exhibition. Now, there are fifty-some booths, and they have to turn people away. The neat thing is that lots of them are working booths. People get to see the products being made, not just on display for sale. Like soap, and cheese, and swords, and candles, including those amazing time-keeping ones. We had those back on the farm in the Norselands, remember? No need for clocks then! But that’s not all here at Rosestead. Now, they also feature weaving, mead brewing, jewelry, woodcarving, leatherwork…oh, everything!”

  Dagny grinned at Kirsten’s enthusiasm.

  Kirstin wasn’t offended. “I do go on, I know, but this isn’t just my history, and yours. It’s my field of expertise. Seriously, I’m already making plans in my head for a proposal to bring some of my UCLA students here next year, a kind of work-study program.”

  “Makes sense,” Dagny agreed.

  “Yep. And did I forget to mention…the History Channel and the Food Network have both sent crews here this year to film all the happenings. Talk about Uncle Rolf hitting the bigtime!”

  “Will they film your workshop, too?”

  “Maybe.” Kirstin smiled.

  “Do you think Travis Fimmel or Alexander Ludwig might show up?”

  “In your dreams.”

  They smiled at each other. Both of them had exchanged many a conversation about which was the hottest actor, the one playing Ragnor Lothbrok, or his son, Bjorn.

  “Speaking of dreams…how are you and your Viking Man getting along?” Dagny asked.

  “Haven’t had any dreams since I told you all about it back at Blue Dragon.”

  “Good. Guess that means that the guy escaped his cage all on his own. Didn’t need your help at all.”

  For some reason, Kirstin was a bit saddened by that. Not that she would want the dreams to continue, or the guy to suffer. But she felt as if she’d let him down or something. Which was silly, of course.

  “Anyhow, the TV crews will probably want to catch your kulning act this evening,” Kirstin told Dagny.

  Dagny groaned. “Not only do I get caught in this Housewives of the Norselands outfit, but throw in a few smelly animals. That’s all I need for my image. Calling the cows home with my singing. If some of the Fibbies back at the agency hear about this, I’ll be subjected to cow and bull jokes like you wouldn’t believe.”

  Kulning was an ancient Norse ritual employing a unique, high-pitched, almost haunting vocal technique for cattle herding. Rather like yodeling but much prettier, it echoed through the valleys and fjords. As if enchanted, the cows walked to the caller.

  “But you do it so well. Even back in the Norselands, on father’s farmstead, you kulned better than me or Madrene.”

  “You’re just saying that because neither of you wanted the job.”

  Kirstin laughed. “There is that, too.”

  “I’m starved. Any chance of grabbing a bite first?”

  “There’ll be a big feast tonight. Aunt Meredith has had a wild boar roasting in a pit since last night. But that’s for dinner. Oh, look. I see some gammelost over there. And manchet bread.”

  “Stinky cheese and bland, unleavened bread? I’ll wait.”

  Hours later, Kirstin was packing up the fabrics and display boards from her workshop in the great hall, a massive long house in the Norse style that could hold up to two hundred people, easily. Her seminar, held at one end of the hall, had gone exceptionally well. In fact, what should have been a one-hour talk before fifty attendees had r
un into almost two hours with the lively question-and-answer period afterward.

  Her family members, true to form, had added humor to the event. Her father, for example, wearing a belted, thigh-length, leather tunic over tight leather braies, and his gray-threaded, light brown hair adorned with war braids sparkling with colored crystals, told the crowd that he was once known as “The Very Virile Viking.”

  Then Madrene and Ian had come out together. With a twinkle in her blue eyes, Madrene proceeded to embarrass her husband, but had the audience howling with laughter, when she said that Ian had plans for her in that outfit later that night. Ian surprised his wife, though, when he told the crowd it was the other way around, that his wife was looking forward to being seduced by a fierce Viking warrior. Ian had winked mischievously after he spoke, in case anyone missed his meaning.

  And then, Kirstin’s brother Torolf had added to the hilarity by announcing that he was the new breed of Norseman, a Viking Navy SEAL. Like Scots Vikings of old, he didn’t mind telling them what he wore under his short tunic. Nothing. His wife Hilda shook her head at his antics.

  Afterward, most of her family and audience members had rushed off to the fields beyond the fairgrounds so they could witness Dagny’s kulning demonstration. Kirstin would have liked to go, too, but since her workshop had run over its time slot, she needed to get her stuff out of the way. Rosestead staff were scurrying about to set up the trestle tables and benches for the evening’s dinner and entertainment. And members of the public, those dressed in Viking attire and those all touristy in shorts and jeans and summer dresses, were coming in early to get the best seats.

  Once she was done, she stood for a moment and was momentarily taken aback when she stared about the massive room. Its construction was so authentic, exactly like some royal hall, even a Saxon one, would have looked like at the turn of the century, the tenth century, that was. Made of half logs, not stone, with a turf roof. There were no central raised hearths like there would have been in a Norse household, used for cooking as well as heat. There were hearths at either end of the hall, and a number of raised daises, or high tables, for the “nobles” or special guests, instead of the usual single one. Meals were prepared in a separate kitchen building.