by Alia Bess
“How,” she paused, thinking, “how can I stop?”
“You just stop believing you need to be punished for these imagined crimes.”
Victoria drained the gin and tonic and handed the glass back to Jasper. “I stop believing.”
“Yes.”
“Just like that?”
“Yes, Just like that.”
“Impossible.” She remembered Jack’s eyes when he saw her bloody skirts, and Torgal’s eyes as he slowly bled to death in the woods. And Marcus. Her guilt for his death was worse, for when she had been the little slave girl she had been the only gentleness in his life. He had nothing but his body and his weapons. She saw the miles and miles and miles he marched in his sandals thinking of her. Seven years he lived in poverty, saving his meager salary for the chance to buy her one day. Every time they made love, the episode was re-run in his mind for months until he returned to her again. When he was not on duty, his mind was with her. She was like a lifeline for him. A lifeline of tender beauty in a brutal world of death and war. Victoria’s lips twisted and hot tears ran down her face.
Jasper handed her a tissue. She blew her nose. The monkey demon said to Mr. Magnus, “She’s doing it again.”
“Victoria. You see how these thoughts affect your emotions? You flail yourself with them. Stop. Let’s pretend something different. Remember Marcus. Remember him. Now change the event so you save him instead of condemn him. Do it now.”
That was intriguing, and the thought that she might step in and save him made her take a deep breath and blow out the sad thoughts. “I can do that?” she asked.
Mr. Magnus nodded to Jasper, who took the tissue form her hand and she found herself in Rome. She looked down to see the beautiful collar of coral and lapis. She was perfumed and oiled and dressed in her veils and jangling ankle bracelets and a beaded belt.
She bent her head to see her long black hair fall over her little breasts. Footsteps in the corridor. She backed against the wall. The door opened and Marcus was there, backlit against the oil lamps in the hallway. He closed the door behind him and whispered, “Alana?”
She stepped into his arms. His kiss was gentle and he held her like she was a great treasure, like a songbird. He breathed a long sigh into her neck and caressed the curve of her back and over her buttocks. Alana responded with her own sigh. Victoria knew Marcus would lay Alana carefully on the cushions. He would stroke her with wispy feathery touches and whisper his love for her. When his cock could no longer be ignored he would slide it gently into her and nuzzle her neck as he carefully stroked inside. He was her most attentive lover. He worshipped her body with his own. And that would be how they were caught. Too much foreplay. Victoria knew this though Alana did not. She took Marcus’ hand and made Alana say, “We should go to a different room. This one is too dangerous.” She knew that they would be caught if they stayed. Alana would be dragged to the bathhouse and bent over a massage platform and raped by all of Cestius’ men until she died. Marcus would be in chains for thirty days and then sent to Gaul. He must obey her. She must make him stop.
He did not want to stop. His voice was honey persuasion. “We cannot. There are guards at each intersection. You remember Publius comes tonight to visit Cestius. That is how I was able to get away from the barracks.” He tried to press her to kneel on the cushions. “I volunteered to cover the evening watch. I go on at midnight. It has to be now.”
Victoria made Alana resist. “But they will search this room, looking for me. We cannot be here together when they do,” she said. It was true.
“You have to work tonight?” he sounded so disappointed.
Good idea. “Yes, he wants me to serve the wine.”
Marcus’ face darkened. “Serve the wine. That is euphemism for…”
“No,” she quickly amended. “Really. Just serve the wine. Antonia is for Publius tonight.”
“That pig,” Marcus spat. He did not like the senator. He grumbled as he ran his hands up and down her smooth arms and finally took her hands. “I go on at midnight. Remember.” He drew her in and kissed her so softly. His eyes were big and dark in the dimly lit room. She saw his love there. Changing this moment in time brought out a variety of possibilities now. She could close her eyes as he nibbled the edge of her jaw near her ear and see herself on his farm. He had bought her from Cestius when he retired. He had saved every piece of silver for seven years to be able to afford her. By then she was almost twenty five and Cestius has chosen a new favorite from the younger girls. Her price was high, but not so high that a determined soldier could not buy her. She saw herself milking a goat, picking olives. She felt him press himself inside her every night and telling her how precious she was to him. She heard him tell stories from the battlefield and saw herself gasp. He would laugh softly and draw her onto his lap and kiss her head. “Those days are over,” he would whisper in her ear. He would lay her down in the thick green grass of his pastures and love her with long slow strokes and tender kisses.
Victoria felt a great relief as he ducked out the door and she listened to his sandals as they slapped the stone to the edge of the corridor and down the marble stairs. She sighed with relief and she was alone when the servants opened the door and said, “Time to serve the wine, Alana.”
Chapter Eighteen
She went to Torgal next. She sat in a long house in the late autumn. The wedding preparations were noisy. She was sixteen and her name was Danica. She was nearly six feet tall and had the sturdy bones of a Norseman’s daughter. Her blonde hair was plaited and hung long past her hips. She was dressed in a fine embroidered frock, covered with an apron for this hard work. Guests from all over the country had come and were stacked like cordwood in the corners of the house. There was hardly a place to walk from one end to the other. The men spent a lot of time outdoors unless the weather was bad. Her mother had wanted her to be married in the spring, but her betrothed wanted to go a-viking in the spring. He wanted her good and pregnant by then.
Hamund. She hated him. She gritted her teeth thinking of him and clenched her fists whenever he walked by. Her mother adored the brute and never stopped talking about how handsome he was or how rich. Her mother wanted to be friends with his mother, who was an important elder in the village. Danica scrubbed a little too hard on the iron pot she was cleaning with sand. She should marry him, then, Danica seethed. Ever since her father had been killed last season there had been a concerted effort by everyone on her family to get her married off. Hamund had agreed as long as the south pasture and the stone barn there were included in the bride price. Those lands were bordered his own and would allow him to double the size of his herd.
Danica turned the pot and started on the other side. Torgal would be coming to the wedding. She clenched her fist. He would have to see her being given away to another man. She wondered how he could bear it. She could not. She had asked him to carry her away last week. She had met him at the well, and with her brothers and mother scowling from the doorway, she had asked him to take her. Begged him to take her.
He watered his horse with sad blue eyes and the droop of his broad shoulders told her his answer before his mouth did. She cried then, hoping her tears would convince him, but they did not. He took the reins of his mount, and with a friendly wave to her brothers, led him away into the forest.
She hated her mother. She hated her brothers. The pot was clean, now. Scrubbed so hard it had begun to shine on two places near the bottom. She scrubbed it some more as she glared at them. Five brothers. This wedding would not have happened were her father still alive. She had been his pride and joy. She spent winters on his knee and learned early how he like his bread buttered and how much spice to put in his mead. She did grieve for him. But now she hated him too for not giving her to Torgal before he died. Torgal had asked for her. Her father had said he would think about it.
“Now he is dead,” she said aloud and a distant cousin looked up from her embroidery. Danica amended the murderous look on her face and explained, politely, �
��Father. He is dead. What a shame he could not be here tomorrow.” Her cousin smiled in agreement and turned back to her sewing. Danica put the pot down and went outside. It was too hot in there with all those bodies and the cooking fires getting the roasted meats ready for her wedding feast.
Torgal would be outside with the other young men. One of the ale barrels had been put outside for them and they stood around the tap with their wooden mugs in their fine embroidered clothes and told lies about their prowess. Fighting and whoring. Their voiced quieted as she approached them. Polite eyes followed her movements. When she was close enough she greeted them each in order of their social standing, starting with the son of the chieftain. She tried not to rest her eyes on Torgal more than on the other men. He held his face stiffly impassive. Danica knew that meant she should say nothing unseemly and she did not. She thanked them for coming to her wedding. She put an edge on the last word and made sure Torgal was the last man she looked at before returned to the longhouse and its oppressive atmosphere within.
“I hate them all,” she grumbled later that night as she washed her arms and legs from a small tub of warm water. He will allow me to be married to that brute and not try for me at all. She put down the wet cloth and fought the screaming tears that were right on the edge. I will not cry, she promised. Even if it means I must snarl my vows in Hamund’s face.
She picked up the cloth again. She heard a clack at the shutter. She frowned and went to the window. She did not push it open but peered through the crack. There he was. Torgal. The sun set early this time of year. It was almost too dark to see him, but there was no mistaking the bright blond hair. Torgal was vain of his hair and tonight he had it brushed and braided and tied with bits of red wool. She smiled and her anger faded as it did whenever she set eyes on him. He was so beautiful. He was tall and well-muscled which was common for the young men of her village, but he had straight white teeth, which was a rarity.
She opened the shutter just a little so he could tell that she recognized him. He looked to the right and left before signaling for her to open wider. She pushed the shutters open and smiled down at him. He looked around again and tossed up a small stone, then fled.
She picked the stone from the floor and unwrapped the leaves that were tied around it. The runic letters said for her to meet him in the building behind the well where the winter fodder was stored. She quickly crumpled the leaves into dust and ground them into the wood floor with the ball of her foot. She put away her bathing things and put on her simple brown smock and tied it around her waist with a sash.
As soon as it was dark enough, she told her mother she was going to the outhouse and ran as fast as she could to the shed.
He grabbed her as she came around the posts that supported the slanted roof. He kissed her hard and she clutched at him with all her strength. Victoria felt the surge of emotion as a thrill in her throat and a seizing up in her belly. She entered Danica’s body at that point and took over control of her arms and legs. When Torgal pulled back to look at her, she looked into his eyes for Jack and Marcus. They were icy blue instead of brown. The jaw was stronger, the teeth straighter. But the arms that held her tightly felt familiar, like her favorite bathrobe on Sunday mornings. She lifted her mouth for him and the kiss sent shivers of pleasure down her neck and across her arms and into every part of her body. This was Marcus with his gentle touch and Jack with his strong arms and intense eyes. Torgal had a wildness that neither of her other lovers had cultivated. The other two lived comfortably among society in their own ways, but Torgal had a whiff of the wild man of the woods. His eyes flashed like wolf eyes and reminded Victoria of her demon.
He kissed her now and growled low in his throat. “Danica, you cannot marry that dolt.”
Her lips smiled beneath his lips and she agreed with a muffled, “yes” and kissed him harder. She pulled him closer against his body and felt his hard cock like a metal rod against her middle. One hand left his neck where she had been twining his long hair and slid down to grasp it. The kisses continued, but now he writhed with her hand on him and his mouth became hot as he panted. He pushed her away. “We cannot,” he gasped. “Woman, put your hand down.”
“No,” she flashed her eyes at him. “If you will not carry me away from this wedding, then you will carry me away on your cock. Now. Hamund will not have my maidenhead.”
A strong hand took hers from his rigid cock and lifted it up to cover her breasts. He pressed his hips harder into her and groaned.
She continued, “I will not submit to Hamund. I will tear at his back and kick at his balls if he tries to mount me. I will bite his cheek and rip his hair. He will not enter my body. Only you shall have me. Only you.” Danica gave small demonstrations of each of these defenses as she spoke them and on the words, ‘enter my body’ Torgal crushed her against him and kissed her hard. She opened her mouth and took his tongue and his cock hardened further. She bent her knees with her arms on his neck and brought him down into the mound of straw in the shelter. Victoria tried to stop her. She planted the images of the dire consequences of this rash act in her head. The fires of lust were upon this young virgin. The thoughts that they might be discovered and punished did nothing but fan those flames into an inferno of desire for this man. Victoria was overcome with Danica’s passion and felt pushed around helplessly inside her body.
When Torgal’s cock entered her and broke the thin membrane that proved Danica’s maidenhood Victoria felt a huge wave of pleasure and pain. She arched her back and cried out as Danica did, she met his thrusts with her own and the waves and waves of pleasure broke over her in unending crashes of warm contentment. Torgal’s caresses and murmurs of love carried her through the encounter with a blissful heat that seemed to steam the chilly autumn night.
This lovemaking was short and passionate. He finished quickly as he was young and the circumstances of their coupling did not lend itself to long slow strokes. Danica’s eyes glittered with triumph and Victoria felt her mind tell her that now Torgal must take her away. Now that he had her, she was his and he could not hand her over to her brothers to be given to their neighbor. She thought she had won.
But Victoria knew what this girl did not. She saw the men leave the longhouse. She saw them head toward the fodder-house. There were eight of them. Her brothers and Hamund and Hamund’s brothers.
Torgal and Danica were still joined together when they burst in. Victoria cursed. She was supposed to have prevented this. In the back of her head she heard her demon murmur that nothing could have prevented this. She resisted him but the scene unfolded nonetheless. The brothers put their hands on Torgal’s shoulders and pulled him off of Danica, his dripping cock testified against him before multiple witnesses. Danica was like a screeching cat, all claws and teeth. She came up out of the straw and flung herself at her brothers, her hair flying about her face and her brown dress crumpled and tripping her legs as she tried to scratch their eyes out. They caught her easily and pinned her arms behind her. Both lovers were marched to the longhouse and Victoria fled.
Back in her bed she turned stricken eyes on Mr. Magnus and Jasper. “I failed Torgal. He is taken again.”
Jasper grabbed at her arm, “You must go back, then.”
She reached for the glass of water on the table and Jasper handed it to her. “Go back,” he repeated.
“Can I stop her?” Victoria drank the water and remembered Danica’s fierce determination. There was no stopping that woman. She would have Torgal’s dick inside her no matter that Odin or Thor would come crashing from the heavens to stop her. She smiled a little. Danica’s fierce determination was something she wished she had in this life.
Mr. Magnus prompted her. “It is possible that it is not the act itself that must be stopped, but something else. The consequences, perhaps. It was not the coupling that killed him.”
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.
