The Caged Viking

by Sandra Hill

  “Someone get the bishop,” the king declared with an evil smile. “If he’s not available, any priest will do. My wife gives good advice. Perhaps the heathen invaders will think twice about attacking if they find out we’ve treated one of their own so well.”

  No wonder Aethelred is described by historians as dumber than dirt, so to speak. And Emma is just as bad. As if one marriage could make up for months of incarceration for one high-placed Viking or for the massacre of so many Norse people living in England! “No, no, no!” Kirstin shouted over all the chatter. She doubted whether the king would be dissuaded by her pointing out that his transgressions would far outweigh this one act. So, she tried a more logical approach. “We can’t have a wedding now. The banns have to be called in church for several weeks and other preparations need to be made for the ceremony. Plus, I have no wedding gown.”

  “I’m the king. I waive the need for banns,” the king declared, raising his right hand as if making a royal proclamation.

  “And your gown is perfect for a wedding,” Emma decided, smiling at Kirstin as if she should be happy at this turn of events.

  “Um, do you mind if I go give my groom the good news?” she asked, playing for time.

  “Is that wise?” the king asked. “Best you take a guardsman with you. If you get too close, he might bite off a body part, like he did a finger on that foolish lad who kept prodding him with a stick.”

  “I promise I won’t prod him with a stick,” she said, but thought, Eeew! “Besides, I would have to get close to him sometime if we’re going to be husband and wife, right?” She batted her eyelashes suggestively. “No, it’s best if I approach him alone at first.” And try to figure a way to get out of this mess.

  “Go at your own peril,” the king said, then yelled at her two guards, who still held onto her upper arms. “Go find that bloody priest.”

  The morons just blinked at their monarch in a “Who? Me?” fashion.

  “Now!” Aethelred screamed, spittle flying.

  The two men released her, each going off in a different direction.

  Emma was already ordering servants to clear a space in front of the dais for the wedding ceremony. “Britta, find some flowers. And you men, pull a table over here to set up an altar. Eadyth, go to the chapel and get an altar cloth. Whilst there, grab a chalice and communion wine. Rings must be exchanged; I can probably find those. Oh, so much to do!”

  “Forget the communion wine. Bring more ale,” yelled the king, whose crown was sitting lopsided on his head, whether from inebriation or all that yelling. Then, he plopped back down into his chair and glared at Kirstin.

  She took that glare as her cue to exit the royal presence.

  Making her way in the general direction of the cage, Kirstin plotted what she should do, concluding that getting Hauk out of the cage was a first priority, no matter how that was pulled off. Even if it was for a fake wedding. Once free of his jail, she and Hauk could figure out, together, how to escape the castle.

  And then Kirstin could go home. Mission accomplished.

  Easy peasy.

  On the other hand, maybe she didn’t need to consult Hauk about a solution. She would take the man back to the future with her. Deposit him at Blue Dragon where her father and the other Viking-Americans could help him assimilate. That was the solution, of course. She just needed to get him somewhere alone to start the process with her arm rings, which were the means of her time travel. She assumed. Or hoped.

  She was close enough to the cage now to see Hauk-the-Not-So-Handsome leaning against the bars at the back of the cage, arms folded over his chest, frowning at her.

  Maybe not so easy peasy.

  “Spare me, gods, ’tis the dog lady again,” he grumbled.

  “I beg your pardon. Did you call me a dog? You, who look like a hairy Big Foot creature, are saying I look like a dog? Maybe I won’t rescue you, after all.”

  He rolled his eyes. “I meant the dog symbol you wore on your shert last time you bothered me.”

  “Bothered? Bothered? I’d like to tell you about bother,” she sputtered. Then, taking deep breaths to calm herself, she explained, “That was Snoopy, who isn’t a real dog. Just a comic…oh, never mind. We don’t have much time, and I have to explain what’s happening.”

  He ignored what she’d said and homed in on an earlier remark. “As for rescue, please spare me your halfbrained scheme. I have my own halfbrained scheme with my own halfbrained rescuer, thank you very much.” He looked pointedly at the short man approaching who carried a sling full of kindling over his shoulder, which was odd in itself, it being so warm this evening and no fires having been lit in any of the hearths.

  “M’lord, ye will not believe what I just heard,” the kindling holder said, coming right up to the cage. Apparently this guy wasn’t concerned about losing a body part. “The king and queen are planning a wedding. For this very evening. The bishop has been called, and a space is being cleared in front of the high table.”

  “Egil! Why should I care if someone is being married? Unless…” He narrowed his eyes and stepped toward the front of the cage.

  Kirstin could swear she saw fleas bouncing off him as he got closer.

  “Unless,” Hauk continued, “it would somehow interfere with our plans for escape.”

  “Well…um…uh.” The little man hmmmed and hawed, shifting from one foot to the other.

  “Exactly who is being wed?” Hauk asked.

  “You.” Egil ducked his head as if fearing Hauk would reach through the bars and clout him a good one.

  “Me? Nice to know. And who is the happy bride-to-be?”

  Egil looked at Kirstin.

  And Hauk laughed. He actually laughed. “Is this your halfbrained scheme, dog lady? Will we consummate the marriage in my cage? Mayhap we can even have babies right here in this cozy little space.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “Silly? I swear, ne’er in my misbegotten life have I been called silly. Do you have a death wish?” He peered closer. “Why are you wearing my arm rings?”

  Even in this dim light, he could clearly see the chasing hawk design etched on each of them. An exact match for the rings on Hauk’s own upper arms, though his were, of course, wider and bigger.

  Kirstin crossed her arms over her chest and touched each of the silver rings on her upper arms. At once, she flinched at the mild shock, then shook her hands to clear the fingers of some invisible…something. “They’re not yours,” she declared. “They’re mine. My brother Storvald gave them to me for a birthday gift.”

  He looked skeptical, then waved a hand dismissively. “Go. Away. You are going to ruin our plans for tonight.”

  “Actually, m’lord, mayhap this is not such a…,” Egil started to say.

  “Stop calling me a lord,” Hauk grumbled.

  “You’re not a lord?” Kirstin asked.

  “Aaarrgh!” Hauk said and pulled at his own hair, causing more fleas to dance around his head or were they lice? Maybe both. “No, I am not a lord. Egil just says that to annoy me.”

  “Ye are sort of a lord,” Egil protested.

  “Would you both stop this nonsense? It matters not a whit if I am a lord or a leper.”

  “You wouldn’t say that if you were actually a leper,” Kirstin pointed out. “Leprosy eats away at the body till all your flesh is rotted away and—”

  “Aaarrgh! I know what leprosy is.” Hauk was pulling at his own filthy hair again.

  “As I was saying,” Egil went on. “Mayhap this is not such a bad idea. It would get you out of the cage far easier than me breaking out some of the bars without anyone noticing.”

  “We’ve already half-sawed those bars,” Hauk pointed out.

  “Still, we need to get out of the hall, through the corridors, pass through the scullery to the back bailey, and on to the woodland, without anyone noticing. If ye wed the wench, yer presence outside the cage would be expected, to some extent.”

  Hauk pondered the po
ssibilities. “Why would the king agree to this farce?”

  Egil looked at Hauk as if he should know.

  And he did. “Another source of entertainment for the idiots. Make a spectacle of the Viking. Pfff!”

  “Plus,” Kirstin added, “he’s convinced that Sweyn and Duke Richard will be so impressed with his generosity in allowing a wedding that they’ll overlook the indignity of the cage and your ill-treatment, maybe even be misled into thinking that the massacre wasn’t really a massacre.”

  He stared at her for a long moment before repeating his earlier assessment, “Idiots!”

  She wasn’t sure if he was referring to the king or her as the idiot. No matter! “Use their idiocy to your own advantage,” Kirstin advised.

  Hauk gazed at her with speculation. “Seriously? And what do you gain from this arrangement?”

  She shrugged. “Angel points.” She looked upward. “I figure God sent me here to save you. Once you’re saved, I can go home again.”

  “And your home is where?”

  “You won’t believe this, but it’s America.”

  “That country beyond Iceland? The far-off land discovered by Leif Eriksson?”

  “Yes!” She was glad he understood without lots of explanations.

  “Isn’t that a bit far for a rescue mission? I assume you have a longship nearby with at least thirty, preferably fifty, seamen aboard. And weapons aplenty because, sure as sin, Aethelred and his army will follow after me. I commend your foresight in preparing so for my rescue.”

  “No need to be sarcastic. A wise man accepts help graciously, no matter its source. Even in a dream.”

  “Graciousness is overrated, in my opinion.” He mumbled something then, under his breath, something about damn dreams, damn gods, and damn women who gave themselves angel airs. She could tell that he, like most Viking males, didn’t like the idea of being saved by a woman, or the idea that she was sent by God, or any of the gods, for that matter.

  But then, he said, “’Twould seem you are gaining yourself a husband, m’lady warrioress. May the gods help you.”

  “Amen,” she said, and she meant that as a prayer. “And, by the way, I’m no lady, either.”

  He just grinned. “Lucky me!”

  Chapter 6

  Now, that’s what I call a honeymoon…

  And so it was that Hauk prepared to be wed for the second time in his sorry life. He could only hope it did not end as badly as the first, for truthfully they were both forced marriages.

  The woman…Kirstin…was not to his tastes, personally, being tall and blonde, like many Norsewomen. Not that there was anything wrong with pale versions of the female sex, but a man got tired of the same diet in the bed furs day after day. On the other hand, how could he complain? He was light-haired himself. Still, he much preferred dark-haired females with a smaller, more curvaceous frame. And Kirstin was no longer a young woman, either, being closer to his own age of thirty and five, he would warrant.

  But female attributes were the least of his concerns. And who was he to be particular in his present position?

  He had to give Kirstin credit, though. She had a skillful tongue when it came to dealing with the bothersome Saxons who thought to manage this charade of a nuptial affair. If only said tongue would rest on occasion! Instead, it was blather, blather, blather. And she had no qualms about addressing the king or queen in familiar terms, even the occasional, oddly-worded “You who!” when the royal pair failed to respond quickly enough to her comments.

  The first obstacle arose when the king had demanded that, before opening the cage, Hauk be fully restrained with ropes holding his hands behind his back and ropes tied to both ankles so that he could scarce walk. Not to mention a leather collar and a chain held by a brute the size of a small mountain.

  “What? You can’t be serious,” Kirstin had exclaimed. “How will he bathe before the ceremony?”

  “What need is there for a bath?” the king had inquired.

  “Cleanliness?” she’d replied sweetly.

  “Aethelred!” his wife had berated the king. “You cannot expect a highborn lady to consummate her marriage with a man who reeks.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time,” the king had muttered. Then he’d turned to several of the housecarls who were standing about drinking and enjoying the spectacle. “Take him outside and clean him up. A couple buckets of water and some soap should do the job. And get rid of that fur thing. It looks like a squirrel tupping his cock.”

  “Aethelred!” Emma had chided her husband again.

  “What?”

  “Must you be so crude?”

  “More wine,” the king had ordered.

  “It’s fox, not squirrel,” Hauk had contributed. Not that anyone seemed to care.

  The bath itself would have been laughable if Hauk were in the mood for laughter. The guards had not so much poured buckets of water over him but threw them, not wanting to get too close. Even with his arm and ankle restraints, Hauk had been fairly confident he could break free from these dolts and make a run for the trees, especially since the chain just dangled from his neck whilst the giant went off to the garderobe to settle a case of roiling bowels.

  Hauk had considered the option of a rush to freedom, but only for a moment. He couldn’t abandon Egil in the castle, and, truth to tell, the dog lady, either. If Aethelred suspected her help with his escape, the lady might very well end up in the cage herself. Furthermore, with his luck of late, Hauk would probably be stuck with Egil’s girling, who was presumably tending the horses for their escape.

  When he’d been led back to the great hall, Kirstin looked at him with disgust and remarked, “You look worse than you did before. Instead of being just dirty and greasy, now your hair is hanging in wet clumps, and I doubt you’ll ever get the tangles out of your beard. Eew, don’t get so close. Your lice might hop over onto me.”

  “Does your tongue ever stop flapping?”

  “Nice talk for a bridegroom!”

  “And by the by, you never did answer my question afore. According to your plan, how far do we have to go to ensure our escape?”

  “Um.”

  Obviously, she had no plan. “Where exactly is your longship anchored?”

  “I didn’t come by boat.”

  He’d frowned with confusion. Knowing where America was located, roughly…beyond Iceland…he’d pictured the route from England to Iceland and beyond. Nothing but waterways came to mind. The English Channel, the North Sea, the Atlantic ocean. There was no direct path overland. “Dost care to explain?”

  “Air?” she’d said, more as a question than a statement.

  “You’re asking me how you got here?”

  “By sky then. Jeesh!”

  He’d rolled his eyes. ’Twas as he suspected. The wench was barmy.

  In an obvious attempt to change the subject, she’d called up to the king, who’d been talking to the newly arrived bishop, presumably yanked from his bed by the looks of the sleep shert peeking out from his wrinkled vestments and the mitre sitting lopsided on his bald head. “Could you not find any suitable clothing for my betrothed?”

  When the king hadn’t immediately answered, she’d yelled a little louder. “You-who, Aethelred!”

  The king’s eyes had gone wide when he realized that she addressed him thus.

  Did that stop the wench? Oh, nay! She’d just blathered on, “Lord Hauk is a man of noble status in the Norselands. He cannot be wed in a threadbare, dirty tunic. And barefooted, to boot.”

  “What boot?” Hauk had asked.

  Everyone nearby glanced down at his filthy feet and long toenails. A few of the women gagged and stepped back, as if the toenails might reach out and grab them. In his experience, females had an odd aversion to untended feet. Hah! They should meet Olev the Hermit whose toenails were so crusty and bone-like that he had to use a hand saw to cut them, which is why he had nine and a half toes. As for smelly feet, personally he was more sensitive to the scent of h
airy arses or unwashed ballocks, or that gods-awful gammelost, the stinky cheese some chieftains fed their warriors betimes before battle so they would go berserk.

  Back to his jabbering betrothed, who had obviously failed to realize that Aethelred’s housecarls had to release his hands and feet in order to get a shert and braies on him, risking bodily harm or his escape. Instead, they’d thrown an open-sided, knee-length garment over his head and tied it at the waist with a thin rope.

  “They are not about to release me,” he’d started to explain, “so you can adorn me to your standards.” He smiled to ease his criticism of her well-intended remarks.

  “Shhh!” she’d said.

  Truly, the wench went too far, shushing him. He’d been about to tell her so, but the king, by then recovered from his initial startlement, responded, “What difference does his clothing make? He will be naked within the hour. Unless…” He’d glanced to some of his drunken cohorts for support. “…unless Viking men have a way of consummating a marriage with their cocks covered. Which wouldn’t surprise me. It’s cold enough in the Norselands to freeze a bear’s ballocks, let alone a man’s staff, which on a Norseman probably resembles a skinny icicle. Ha, ha, ha!”

  Much laughter had followed. Even the bishop, who’d been handed a cup of ale, had appeared amused.

  “Actually, where I come from, condoms do cover the male penis during sex,” Kirstin had said, “and no one would argue that protected sex is not intercourse. Tell that to thousands of college guys who buy condoms by the dozens. Ha, ha.”

  Hauk had no idea what a condom was or exactly what she had implied, but even he had been shocked that a woman would discuss sex, or male parts, in mixed company. “Have you no shame, woman?”

  “Oh, please! Get over yourself!”

  He’d recalled of a sudden how Ivan the Ignorant always said that the best wench he’d ever met had no tongue. Could be there was wisdom in Ivan’s ignorance. He’d been confirmed in that conviction when she began you-who-ing again, this time to the queen, wanting to know if a bridal bower was being prepared. Little did she know that the cage and a pile of fresh straw was probably to be her wedding bed.