by Sandra Hill
Rashid shrugged. “An ass is an ass even if laden with gold.”
Hearing Rashid’s words of wisdom, Eadyth smiled, then took note of Breanne’s nervousness as her fingers kept going to her wart to make sure it was still in place. The kind lady said, “Do not fret over your disguises. Did I tell you how I fooled Lord Ravenshire into believing I was an old crone when we were first married? For months and months, by ashing my face, cackling, and using the transparent beekeeping net material, my husband never suspected. ’Tis my belief that men see what they anticipate seeing, not the real thing.”
“In other words, men are clueless?” Breanne said.
“Definitely,” Eadyth replied.
“I heard that,” Eirik said, coming up to them. He leaned down and kissed his wife on the cheek before telling them, “Time for you to go in.”
They all stood and Eirik turned away from his wife. “Oh, my God!” he said, taking one look, then almost jumping back in shock. It was the first he had seen them since his arrival when he had gone directly to the solar. Now, eyes wide with amazement, he burst out in laughter.
Breanne’s hair was braided and arranged on top of her head to expose more skin covered with the “contagious” spots. Caedmon had helped her apply her wart earlier in the kitchen, an exercise that involved lots of touching, very little of it near her nose.
Ingrith was in her fat costume and had even put wads of fleece inside her mouth to give herself puffy cheeks, which meant that she slurred when she talked, as if she was drukkin. Vana was all croned up with blackened teeth, bent posture, and a cane. And, of course, Sybil had her hunchback.
They all hurried toward the solar and what they hoped would not be their doom. Caedmon and Geoff stood outside in the hall, ready to escort them inside. The serious expressions on their faces would be enough to scare them witless, if they were not already at that point.
The women, along with Caedmon and Geoffrey, sat on benches facing the long table where Eirik had rejoined the other Witan members.
King Edgar’s beady eyes examined the women before he curled his upper lip with distaste. “Let us get on with it. I am hungry.”
Every person in the room knew what his appetite was for, even Dunstan, who whispered some admonishment in his ear. King Edgar just shrugged. He would do as he willed, then go build a church or two in penance.
Lord Orm, the magistrate, started the inquiry. “Where is Lady Havenshire?”
At first, no one spoke, but then Breanne realized her sisters were looking to her to be spokesman. “I do not know.”
“When did you see her last?”
Breanne glanced at her two sisters, each of whom shrugged.
“A sennight or two ago.”
She could tell that Lord Orm was getting impatient with her terse answers. Caedmon had advised her to volunteer nothing.
Dunstan slammed a hand on the table. “Where did you see her last? Why did she leave? Who traveled with her? Where was she going?”
She raised her chin bravely, trying her best not to be intimidated, but her voice came out wobbly when she started to speak, helped only when Caedmon surreptitiously squeezed her thigh. “Vana was grieving for her husband, who had disappeared, but she was being questioned in a threatening manner…as you are questioning us now.”
Every member of the Witan glared at her audacity, except Lord Ravenshire, who favored her with a wink and a small smile of encouragement.
“With no one to protect Vana, except for our two Norse guards, my sisters and I convinced Vana to come north with us to visit my betrothed’s estate.” She flashed Caedmon a simpering smile, and he reciprocated by lacing the fingers of one hand with hers. “After we were here a few days, Vana yearned to return to Stoneheim and my father’s care. Our Norse guards, Ivan and Ivar, accompanied her. Once her husband returns home to Havenshire, she will, of course, return.”
“Why did you and your sisters not go with her?”
“Because I wanted to spend some time with my betrothed, and my sisters agreed to stay until the wedding…or at least until the formal betrothal ceremony.” Breanne gulped over the lump in her dry throat. Lying drained a person, she found.
And King Edgar was still suspicious.
Breanne was repulsed by the Saxon king’s shifty eyes and loose lips, which bespoke a lecherous disposition. He was renowned for surveying every room he encountered for his next prey, sexual or otherwise. He was scare older than twenty-one, but his dissipated face made him look a decade older. Sybil had told them this morning of some of the punishments Edgar had levied in the past, sometimes on a whim: slitting the nose, cutting off hands or feet, plucking out eyes, leaving a body out in the elements exposed to the pecking of vultures. Thank Odin that she and her sisters and Sybil had had the foresight to make themselves unattractive. Now, if only they could convince him they were not guilty of murder.
“As for you, Caedmon, you have been a good soldier for me,” King Edgar was continuing, “but I am convinced that your princess knows more than she is telling. Which therefore follows that you know, too.”
Caedmon jumped to his feet and yelled, “You have no right to dishonor me.”
The king jumped to his feet, yelling back, “I have every right.” Pointing to two of his soldiers propped against a far wall. “Restrain him in the dungeon.”
Breanne stood, too, at Caedmon’s side. “If you put him in a dungeon, you will have to imprison me, too.”
“Shhh. Sit down, Breanne,” Caedmon told her, trying to shove her back down to the bench by pressing on her shoulder, to no avail. Then he hissed at her, “Your wart has fallen off.”
Turning her face away from the Witan, she reached into a placket of her gown, then attached another wart. “How do I look?”
“Ridiculous. Sit down.”
“If Breanne is going to the dungeon, then I am, too,” slurred Ingrith, who stood with difficulty, considering her bulk, and folded her arms over her hugely padded chest.
“Me, too,” said Drifa, with a cackle, exposing her blackened teeth.
“We have no dungeons at Heatherby,” Geoff said, standing at Caedmon’s other side. “Do we?” he asked Sybil.
“Nay. Just a cold-storage room that we use for the occasional villain.”
“That will do,” Edgar said.
“Enough!” Eirik said, stomping over to hover above King Edgar’s much smaller frame. “You cannot imprison your subjects for an imaginary murder just because you suspect they know something.”
“I can do whate’er I want,” the king said petulantly.
Everyone started yelling and talking at once, including Dunstan, who was trying to calm down the king.
Thus it was, in the midst of all the chaos, that at first no one heard the guardsmen at the door announce new arrivals in great numbers on the horizon, coming to Heatherby. Mayhap as many as a hundred heavily armed horsemen.
“Who is it?” the king demanded to know. “Friend or foe?”
The guardsman said, “They are too far away yet. But they do carry a black flag with what looks like blood dripping from a stone.”
“Uh-oh!” three Viking princesses said as one.
As everyone rushed to get out of the door and up to the ramparts, Caedmon turned slowly to look at her. He lifted one eyebrow in question. “What now?”
“Vikings.”
“Vikings?”
“Stoneheim Vikings. And if they carry the banner, my father is with them.”
“Is that good news or bad news?”
“Well, let me just say, my father has seen more than fifty winters, and he has not left the Norselands in twenty years.”
It was Caedmon then who said, “Uh-oh!”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Daddy knows best…
Caedmon walked up behind Breanne as she stood at the ramparts and kissed the back of her neck.
He sniffed deeply and said, “You smell of raspberries and roses.
At first, she leaned back into him and
allowed him to wrap his arms around her waist, but then she shrugged him off. “Behave, lest someone see us.”
He glanced around. Most everyone was at the other end of the ramparts, or down in the bailey preparing for the “visitors.”
Dunstan and the king had not been happy to learn that a “horde” of Norsemen were on their way, even when assured by Caedmon, Geoff, Eirik, and the princesses that they probably came in peace.
“Why are you so distressed?” he asked Breanne. “You should be happy that your father comes to your rescue.” Assuming that was why he was here.
“I suspect that my father is beyond furious and will ride in with sword and battle-axe raised.”
He had been thinking that all would be well now that her father and his hirdsmen had come to escort the princesses home. “You do not mean that he would kill Edgar and Dunstan.”
She shrugged. “There is no telling what an angry Viking will do. He has been known to lop off a head and then sit down to eat.”
“My head is beginning to ache.”
“I should forewarn you…”
Bloody hell! I do not like that look on her face.
“…if my father hears of our bargain, or even the false betrothal, he might be a tiny bit upset.”
Forget head lopping. Perchance my brain might just explode inside by head.
“Oh, look, there is Tyra. In full battle gear.” At first she giggled, then went more serious when she realized the significance of that apparel. “That is Adam and their little boy Edward riding farther back.”
Caedmon had never seen a woman in armor, weighed down with sword and axe, although Saxons grew up on tales of the warrior queen Boadicea, who had fought bravely against the Romans.
Just then, Breanne went stiff and gasped.
“What?”
“Oh my gods and goddesses! ’Tis Rafn.” She pointed to a Viking warrior who rode at the head of the hird, beside the king.
“Who the hell is Rafn?” he asked but Breanne was already running away.
He followed her across the ramparts, down the stairs, through the great hall, across the upper, then the lower bailey. Her sisters were following close behind them. The drawbridge had been lowered and on the other side of the moat the troops had come to a halt with the man Rafn dismounting.
“Rafn!” Breanne screamed and rushed into his open arms as he limped toward her. He was a tall man, even taller than Caedmon, though slim and almost gaunt. He supposed some women would find his dark good looks appealing. He did not. Breanne was laughing and kissing the Viking’s neck.
With muttered imprecations, he stepped forward and yanked Breanne out of the man’s arms. The warrior immediately reached for his short sword.
Caedmon did likewise.
“Caedmon! What are you doing? This is Rafn.”
“And who are you to touch one of the princesses?” Rafn shouted.
Caedmon was about to say he was her betrothed, but Breanne slapped a hand over his mouth. “Caedmon is a friend and kinsman-by-marriage. He offered us protection.” Then, she turned to Caedmon with a tsk-ing sound of disgust. “And this is Rafn, Vana’s long-ago betrothed, who was supposed to be dead.”
“Hmpfh!” He was not consoled.
“What happened?” she asked Rafn.
“I will tell you all later.” He smiled at her.
Caedmon did not like other men smiling at her. Not one bit. Even a man presumably linked to her sister. And wasn’t that a fine mess of another color! An alleged murderess and a come-from-the-dead Viking warrior.
Meanwhile the other sisters had caught up and were surrounding Rafn, giving him hugs and kisses.
There was a coughing noise behind them.
He and Breanne turned to face a glowering old man with long white hair and war braids twined with crystals framing his leathery face. “Vikings are meant to ride longships, not horses,” he complained as two men helped him dismount. When he stood before them, Caedmon could see that he was a big man, and very fit for his age. Breanne had told him that she and her sisters were all legitimate, though born of different deceased mothers. Thorvald, apparently, had married all his women, sometimes more than one at a time.
A teary-eyed Breanne rushed up to her father, who opened his arms to embrace her. Patting her on the back, he kept telling her, “Hush now. Everything will soon be aright.”
Swiping at her eyes, Breanne stepped back, and Caedmon immediately put his arms around her shoulders. For some reason, he wanted to be the one to reassure her.
“And who are you to be touching my daughter so?” the aged warrior inquired.
“Sir Caedmon, this is my father, His Royal Highness the King of Stoneheim, Thorvald. Father, this is Sir Caedmon of Larkspur. You must be kind to him. He has protected us all these sennights when we were alone and had nowhere else to go.”
“Is that so?” He eyed Caedmon suspiciously, but only for a moment. With a gruff laugh, he grabbed Caedmon and yanked him into a hug that about broke his ribs and cut off his breathing.
“I owe you much, Saxon. Do you want gold, lands…or, ha, ha, ha…one of my daughters?”
The three princesses all groaned.
“It is a jest our father plays everywhere we go,” Breanne explained. “He pretends he wants us all married off.”
“I do,” the king disagreed.
“He is just teasing,” Breanne contended.
The king rolled his eyes at Caedmon. Just then, he seemed to really look at his daughters, and he swore a blue Viking streak. “What has happened to my beautiful daughters?”
Breanne’s red spots were smudged from her father’s hug, but Ingrith was still fat, and Drifa still crone-like. Breanne told him quickly that there was a reason for the disguises, which she would explain later.
The king just nodded, looking over their shoulders as Archbishop Dunstan approached, using his crozier as a walking stick. He was flanked by two of his tonsured monks. Dunstan’s face was flushed from the exertion, or perchance he was angry. Probably both.
“King Thorvald!” Dunstan greeted the old man who was eyeing him warily. “I see you have arrived in time for the betrothal ceremony.”
Caedmon and Breanne looked at each other…and grimaced.
“What betrothal ceremony?” King Thorvald demanded to know, regarding the archbishop with as much distaste as the clergyman regarded him.
Dunstan glanced at Caedman and Breanne, an evil grin tugging at his thin lips, as if he had caught them finally in his wily trap. “Caedmon and Breanne, of course.”
The quicksand Caedmon had been sinking in for days just pulled him under. He could swear he heard the loud sucking noise. No way out of this mess! He was one dead Saxon duck.
The tic pulsing at the edge of King Thorvald’s mustache was the only clue he gave that he was ignorant of these happenings. “My darling Breanne and her beloved Caedmon? How could I forget?”
The sly king then smiled.
Beware a Viking’s wrath…
First things first.
Breanne, her sisters, her father, Rafn, Eirik, and Eadyth were in the solar. They drank cups of Eadyth’s fine mead, which she had brought with her from Ravenshire, and nibbled at manchet bread and hunks of cheese whilst catching up on all that had happened these past few sennights.
Geoff and Sybil were making arrangements to feed and house another hundred bodies in addition to those who had come with Dunstan and King Edgar. Adam and Rashid had taken little Adela for a walk to see some newborn lambs. The archbishop and his clergy were resting or praying somewhere in the keep. The ealdorman was off drinking ale to assuage his impatience over the way the Witan hearings were going, or not going. And Caedman, may the gods bless him, had taken the king and his cohorts out hunting with falcons. It was either that or let Edgar make merry with one or several of the Heatherby maids, willing or not. Besides that, he had been eyeing Breanne’s fading spots with suspicion.
“I do not blame you, daughters, for killing Havenshire,” T
horvald told them. “I only wish I had been there.”
“Not nearly as much as I do.” Rafn was feeling immense guilt over all that Vana had suffered, thinking him passed to the Other World. He had fallen in battle and had been presumed dead, but in fact he had been taken into slavery by a vicious outlaw band of Danes. His original wound, a deep sword cut to his thigh, had never been treated properly, and thus he limped slightly. “I but wish that Caedmon would tell me where Vana is hiding so that I can take her home with me.” And marry her was left unspoken, but inevitable.
“He honestly does not know, Rafn,” Breanne told him. “’Twas better that none of us knew. Be assured that she is safe under the care of Wulf. And Ivan and Ivar, as well.”
“We owe these people so much,” Rafn told Thorvald.
“Rest assured. We will reward them for their help.”
“I am not sure they will want or take a reward, Father, but this is a small estate, and they do not have the resources to feed all of you,” Ingrith pointed out, her mind ever on food. “There will be enough to last through the wedding feast on the morrow, but not much else.” The Norse troops were settled in tents in the fields beyond the castle, but they still needed food and drink.
“Rafn, send someone to the nearest market town for supplies.”
Rafn nodded.
“We will be going back to Larkspur right after the ceremony. Caedmon advised me that would be the best place for us to wait for Vana to return. She will have heard of our presence here in Northumbria.”
“I only wish it could be now. ’Tis hard to wait, doing nothing,” Rafn remarked.
“Father, Larkspur is not a grand estate, either,” Breanne said.
“We will worry about that when the time comes, daughter. Now, back to Oswald. Are you certain the body will not be found?”
“He is at the bottom of a privy…a very deep privy,” she remarked dryly.
Her father and Rafn gaped at her before breaking out in grins. Then Rafn asked, “How did you get him through the hole?”
Breanne and her sisters just rolled their eyes.
“Believe me, Rafn,” Tyra said, “I would have had no problem making a bonfire of him, beast that he was, but there was an easier solution.” She explained how they had disposed of the body and then pretended that Oswald had ridden out of the castle.
