by Speer, Flora
The Viking Passion
By
Flora Speer
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 1992, by Flora Speer
Cover Design Copyright 2012
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Prologue
The skalds, those poetic makers of Viking legends and sagas, tell the story of Ragnar Lodbrok, Ragnar Hairy-breeches, who in the middle years of the ninth century harried the northeastern coast of Britain until he was finally captured by King AElle of Northumbria. He was condemned to death and cast into a pit of vipers.
Though Ragnar would have much preferred to live, he was not afraid to die, and so as the venomous snakes writhed about his body he cheerfully sang his Viking death-song. He cried out only once during his ordeal. It was not a plea for mercy, but a threat.
“Ah,” he called to those watching him, “if only my little pigs knew how it fares with their old boar.”
His “little pigs,” his four sons, soon learned the manner of their father’s death. The legend says that Ragnar’s oldest son, Bjorn Ironside, when he heard the news, gripped the shaft of his spear so tightly that his fingerprints were permanently impressed upon it. Sigurd Snake-eye, the second son, was told of his father’s fate as he pared his nails with a knife. He kept on cutting until he reached bone. The third son, Hvitserk, sat at his chessboard when the news was brought to him. The skalds say he clenched the ivory pawn so hard it crumbled into dust in his fingers. The fourth son, Ivar the Boneless, said nothing. His expression did not change, but his face became red, and then blue, and then white.
It was Ivar who gathered a powerful army and, with two of his brothers, sailed to England seeking vengeance. In autumn of the Year of Our Lord 866, Ivar landed in East Anglia. He spent the winter consolidating his forces and acquiring horses and supplies from the cowed Saxons who lived there. In the spring of 867, Ivar marched north to lay siege to AElle’s capital at York. Thus began the Viking invasions that soon overpowered most of England.
In Ivar’s wake sailed Snorri Thorkellsson of Denmark, Snorri the Late-comer, who, having been abroad on a voyage of plunder and trade, arrived home to learn of these events from his father. There was some discussion as to what Snorri should do. Should he offer his services to Ivar, who was a distant cousin on his mother’s side?
“It is too late for that, Snorri, almost a year too late,” his father told him.
Old Thorkell gazed with affection upon the robust blond man before him. A valiant warrior, this oldest of his children, a son to make a father proud. Would that Snorri’s half-brother Erik had also remained strong and battle-worthy. More damage than the injury to Erik’s leg had been done by those soft Greeks, with their silken ways and strange learning. The old man sighed. Luck, that was it. Erik’s luck was bad. He forced his attention back to what his older son was saying.
Snorri was a clever man. He loved bloodshed and battle as much as any Viking, but he loved the gleam of gold and silver even more. His cunning mind had devised a scheme.
“There will still be loot to take,” Snorri said. “I will discover exactly where Ivar’s army landed, and then I will sail to settlements on the coast or along the rivers, where he and his men have not been. A rapid series of raids, with easy plunder. The young men of East Anglia will surely have marched north to join the Northumbrians opposing Ivar’s army. There will be only old men and boys left to fight us. There will be gold and silver in the churches and the thegn’s halls, and there will be female slaves for the taking.”
Snorri remembered well the lovely, rosy-gold maidens he had met on his last raid in England. They screamed and clawed and fought. Snorri grinned. He liked spirited women. And Saxon girls sold easily in the slave market of Hedeby.
“Would you like some soft, plump Anglian women, Father? A few new slaves to warm your bed?”
Father and son smiled at each other in com¬plete understanding.
With the resources of his wealthy father behind him, Snorri moved quickly. Thorkell had more than enough food and ale and extra weapons in the storerooms of Thorkellshavn to supply such an expedition.
Snorri paused in Denmark only long enough to reprovision his longship, the Sea Dragon, and rav¬ish half a dozen or so slave girls before collecting his eager men once more and setting off on his mission.
Part One
East Anglia
Mid June, A.D. 867
Chapter 1
“Hurry, Lenora, we don’t have much time.”
“I’m coming. There is so much to do, and it’s all in your honor, my dear.”
Lenora came running, her long, unbound chestnut curls bouncing. She embraced her friend with an enthusiasm that left poor Edwina breathless and clutching at the gatepost of the log stockade surrounding the tun.
“What a beautiful day,” Lenora exclaimed, taking in the midsummer green of the East Anglian landscape. “It’s perfect for a wedding.”
The rich, flat farmlands stretched away beyond the tiny Saxon settlement, bounded to the north and west by thick forest and on the south and east by a lazy, shimmering river that meandered slowly out to the North Sea. All the land as far as the girls could see belonged to Lenora‘s half-brother, Wilfred. Like his father before him, Wilfred was thegn to Edmund, King of East Anglia. His home, a large wooden hall with a thatched roof, stood within the stockade fence, as did the women’s quarters, a tiny wooden church, the barn, and the small cottages of those who worked Wilfred’s land. Although the farmers were free men, they had pledged their loyalty to him and dwelt within the safety of Wilfred’s tun.
The appearance of early morning drowsiness that surrounded the dwellings was deceptive, for inside the great hall buzzed with activity as preparations were made for the wedding later that day.
Lenora’s older half-sister Matilda was supervising the servants, an arrangement for which Lenora, never very domestic, was extremely grateful. Matilda had arrived two days earlier with her husband, Athelstan, and her children, and had at once set about cleaning the hall, directing the hanging of the fine tapestries that were saved for festive occasions, and cooking vast quantities of food for the wedding feast.
The wedding might be a small one, lacking the pomp a noble family would have enjoyed in less troubled times, and done a bit hastily during the short time when both Wilfred and Athelstan were free from their duties to King Edmund at his court at Rendlesham, but Matilda would see to it that her brother’s nuptials were properly celebrated.
Lenora, her spirits bubbling high, her dark gray eyes sparkling with excitement, hugged Edwina again.
“I’m so glad you are marrying Wilfred. You will manage this household much better than I do. And we will all live together. It will be wonderful!”
Edwina smoothed down her honey-blond braids, in disarray after her friend’s affectionate attacks.
“You will marry soon yourself,” she said in her quiet, cool voice. “Then you will have your own household to manage.”
“No. I think I shall never marry. I was not meant to be a matron with a ring of keys at my girdle.”
“You were never meant to be a nun, Lenora.” Edwina knew her beloved Wilfred’s young sister was too proud and, yes, too undisciplined, for the humble vocation of nun. Lenora must marry. It was inevitable,
although so far she had rejected the few suitors who had steeled themselves to ask for her hand, and her kind-hearted brother could not bring himself to press her to make an unwilling choice.
“I should have been a man,” Lenora said. “Then I could sail away to the land of the Franks as my father did. Or I could ride north to York and fight the Northmen.”
“The Northmen.” Edwina shivered, her thin shoulders hunching beneath her fine woolen gown. The heavy gold bracelet Wilfred had given her glittered as she wrapped her arms around herself. “I cannot bear to think of them. Father Egbert says they are wicked, heathen beasts. I hope they never come here.”
“They seized all the horses they wanted and now they have marched northward. They won’t bother us,” Lenora told her confidently. “We have better things to think of. Let’s go before Matilda tries to stop us.”
She caught Edwina’s hand and pulled her away from the tun. A short distance from the settlement, close to the encroaching forest, was a hill, an ancient mound of earth that, some said, had been raised on the flat Anglian plain by the people who had lived in this land before the Saxons came. No one knew its purpose. Most avoided it, fearing evil spirits, but Lenora loved to climb to the very top. From its modest height she could look down on her home and the fields surrounding it. The hill was her special place. There, she knew, she and Edwina would find what they sought.
“Wait. Edwina, Lenora, please wait.”
“Oh, no.” Lenora glanced back and sighed. There was nothing to do but wait until the fat little priest had caught up with them.
“Oh, dear,” he panted. “Oh, my dear young women, what are you doing?” Father Egbert’s shiny face and tonsured head gleamed, his dark robe flapping about his stubby legs as he hurried forward. “What are you thinking of? You dare not wander about unescorted. Your brother will be angry, Lenora.”
“Nonsense. He won’t know unless you tell him.”
Lenora regarded the priest with haughty distaste. His constant disapproval of her independent ways irritated her. She noticed that his feet, thrust into well-worn sandals, were very dirty. Lenora was not overly fastidious herself, but the sight of Father Egbert’s grubby toes only increased her dislike for the man.
“We are going to pick flowers for my bridal wreath,” Edwina explained. “We won’t be gone long.”
“Does Matilda know of this?” the priest inquired.
“There is no need to tell her. She is busy and we don’t want to disturb her,” Lenora told him coldly.
“It is dangerous to go out unattended,” Father Egbert insisted.
“We won’t be out of sight of the tun,” Lenora argued. “We will be perfectly safe. Come along, Edwina.” She took Edwina’s hand again and turned toward the hill, where midsummer flowers bloomed among the grasses, in soft white and yellow and blue.
“Oh, dear, oh, dear. If you insist on going, then I must accompany you.” Father Egbert puffed after them. “It is my duty. You need protection. We never know when the Northmen will appear.”
Lenora stifled her annoyance. She longed to tell Father Egbert there was nothing he could do to protect them in the event of danger, but she bit her tongue and said nothing.
She had wanted this last hour alone with Edwina before the marriage ceremony. By this time tomorrow, her dear friend, a wealthy orphan who had been first her father Cedric’s ward and then, after his death, her brother Wilfred’s ward, would be her sister-in-law. Edwina would be privy to those mysteries of the marriage bed about which, of late, Lenora was unable to stop thinking. She knew the bare facts of human mating. No one growing up as she had, running free about her father’s farmlands, could long remain innocent of such knowledge. It was the emotional content of such a relationship, the desire for one man above all others, that had so far eluded her. At sixteen, Lenora was intensely curious, but still unawakened.
She had planned to question Edwina, to obtain from her friend some information about her feelings toward Wilfred as their bridal night approached. There was no doubt in Lenora’s mind that Edwina cared deeply for Wilfred, and although she, Lenora, could not comprehend why her older brother should inspire such passion, she wanted to understand its causes.
Now Father Egbert had spoiled her plan. There could be no question of a discussion of earthly love with the priest listening to every word. Lenora wanted to shake him until his rosary beads rattled, and then give him a good, swift kick that would send him scurrying back to the church, where he belonged. She dismissed the priest from her mind as Edwina called out in delight.
“Look up here is a clump of beautiful buttercups. They are like gold. Help me, Lenora. We must hurry. After we gather them, we still have to weave the wreath.”
The two girls bent to their task, smooth honey-gold braids and burnished chestnut curls close together, as they whispered and talked.
Father Egbert watched them, thinking what a pretty picture they made. They were clothed in the brilliant colors all Saxons loved, Edwina’s slender form in a bright green wool kirtle, Lenora’s fuller figure in deep blue.
If only Lenora could absorb some of her friend’s more placid disposition. Father Egbert did not dislike Lenora, but he worried about her. She was different from other women he knew, adventurous and impulsive and full of pride. Before he had died four years ago her father had even taught her to read and write a little Latin. It was most unseemly. Father Egbert feared Lenora would never find a husband, for what man would want a wife more learned than himself? Cedric should have been wiser about his daughter’s future.
Cedric had been an unusual man. Like Lenora, the daughter of his middle age, Cedric was proud of the long line of Saxon nobles from whom he was descended, and like her, he, too, was adventurous. Braving the treacherous waters of the Narrow Seas, he had traveled to distant lands after the death of his first wife, returning with a strange, beautiful Frankish woman as his second wife. Father Egbert could not understand the violent passion with which Cedric had loved his dark-eyed Alienor, or his grief when she died in childbirth. Cedric had insisted on calling the baby Alienor for her mother, instead of a good Saxon name, although in time the more gentle sound of Lenora had replaced the outlandish foreign name.
The little girl had been cared for by her half-sister Matilda, now married to a neighboring land-holder, and by Wilfred, the other child of Cedric’s first marriage. Lenora and the gentle orphan Edwina, who was the same age, had grown up together, as close as sisters.
A loud burst of laughter from Lenora made the priest shake his head sadly. The girl was incorrigible. Her demeanor was definitely not that of a modest maiden. She sat on the grass, skirts crumpled up about her shapely calves, a pile of flowers in her lap, their bright colors contrasting with the blue of her gown. The priest looked away quickly.
Ashamed of his unkind thoughts toward an innocent young girl, however difficult she might be, Father Egbert grasped his rosary and began to tell his beads. He became so engrossed that he did not see the ship.
Chapter 2
It was the shouting that drew his attention. Father Egbert looked up from his rosary. He gasped, his eyes nearly starting out of his head in terror.
A ship lay at the river’s edge near the open entrance to the tun. How it had come so quickly and so silently he did not know, but there was no mistaking that graceful form. It was the stuff of nightmares to all decent men and women. Long and low and sleek, it rose at each end to a slender, tapered shape. A fierce, grinning beast, some heathen demon-god carved in wood, adorned the bow. A square sail lay furled across the yard at the base of the single mast.
Out of the ship poured tall, hard-muscled men. Their leader’s rounded metal helmet gleamed dully in the early morning sun. The others were bareheaded. Blond or red hair, light brown hair, bushy beards, a few clean-shaven faces, brightly painted wooden shields held against taut bodies, drawn broadswords ready for action, spears and sharp-edged battleaxes, all swam before Father Egbert’s appalled eyes. The Vikings had come.
“We must flee,” she said. “Run, Edwina. They haven’t seen us yet. We can get away. We can hide in the forest.”
“No.” Edwina did not hesitate. “I must go to Wilfred. Whatever happens, I will be at his side.”
Edwina headed for the stockade gate, through which they could see the Viking warriors rushing in a terrifying wave. Lenora clutched at her friend’s arm. Edwina, though fragile in appearance, was surprisingly strong. She dragged Lenora after her as she ran down the hill.
“You can’t go in there,” Lenora screamed at her. “Look.” She pointed with her free hand as flames ran up one side of the barn and caught the thatched roof. The shrieks and cries and the clatter of battle coming from within the enclosure were deafening, although the high fence blocked their view of what was happening.
“I don’t care,” Edwina cried hysterically. “Wilfred! Wilfred!”
“Help me,” Lenora called to the priest, as she struggled to stop Edwina.
Father Egbert caught Edwina’s other arm.
“You must run away,” he gasped, his voice trembling with fright. “Oh, what they will do to you, what those heathens do to Christian women. Oh, Edwina, I beseech you, run, run for your life.”
Together Lenora and the priest struggled to turn Edwina from her headlong flight toward the little village. It was already too late to escape detection. The sound of their voices had attracted the attention of one of the Vikings left at the river’s edge to guard the ship. He began to move toward them, a wicked-looking sword held in one large hand.
