THE VIKING AND THE COURTESAN

by Shehanne Moore

  She saw him through a haze of sunlight, hair, clothes, eyes, and her knees weakened? When his words were actually quite insulting? Maybe Gentle was a woman like Snotra? But her? In no way.

  “Gentle?” Snotra spat the word perilously close to his face. “And you would know this, would you? How would you know this? Have you slept with these shapeless trollops already? These . . . these trolls?”

  He shrugged and canted his jaw. “On a longship? Are you joking? Do you have any idea how tight for space they are? How precarious?”

  “Well, if you will have a carthorse aboard. Pillaged them then?”

  He lowered his eyelashes. Yes, looks-wise the man was like shoes. Desirable enough to die for, sun-kissed, neck-length hair, sun-bathed chiselled Nordic cheekbones, As for the faint smile nicking those same cheekbones . . . that was something she’d seen little enough for it to rivet her presently sagging spine. But, for all any fool might say he was playing with Snotra, was he? For a man called Sinner, he’d ice-floats in his eyes, as if he saw the world through a haze. It made her think of Cyril although he never did that, except maybe when he was drunk.

  “Pillaged? I think you’ll find the word is raped.”

  “I don’t care what the word is!” Snotra’s eyes flashed fire. She drew her chin higher, her shoulders too. If he’d any care, he’d have it for the way she breathed like a dragon through her nose. “Have you?”

  Another tiny smile. “I’m not going to answer that.”

  “I knew it! Oh, it is unbearable. Unbearable. That a man should do such a thing. Such a thing as rape and pillage and—”

  “Well of course Egil never. He was too young, and I wouldn’t know about Godfrig, although he, if you ask me, having one foot in the grave and all that—”

  “How dare you speak of—”

  Snotra’s clenched fists descended on his chest. Egil? Godfrig? What was this place exactly? The land of nymphomaniacs? How many men had this tartar had? Two? Ten? Twenty? Was that what this was really about?

  Not that it mattered what this was really about since Malice would sooner swallow an alligator, along with a crocodile than get in between this pair in the matter of a bed slave, the quite shocking matter really. Why, the termagant batted like a county cricket champion. As for him . . . maybe he was restrained in that he didn’t bat her back . . . her feet still barely touched the ground as he grabbed her wrists, then jerked her in the direction of the door, the veins in his forearms standing out like steel threads.

  “Well I do speak and perhaps if you’d chosen me the first time around as you promised, none of it would have been necessary. Also, may I will remind you, you are a guest in my house?”

  “What?” Snotra’s voice rose to a piercing shriek. Dear God, was this what all Viking women were like? Harpies? Grabbing hold of the door jamb? Digging their heels into the ground? Screeching at the top of their voices? Elbowing their beloveds? “Would you throw me out, Sinarr Gudrunsson? Leave me to perish on the highway with my venerable father? Is that what you intend?”

  “If you push me. Now, just get inside, will you? Go on.”

  Something clanged as he thrust her over the threshold into the darkened interior. In fact several things did. Despite craning her eyes, Malice couldn’t see what exactly— a pot, a broom handle and some plates maybe, as Sin Gudrunsson bolted the lower, horizontal half of the door shut, she still knew one thing. She would need to find a way of befriending this . . . what had Ari called Sin Gudrunsson again, Potlicker? Well, Snotra was Potkicker and Malice would need to find the way to win her around.

  Then, when the time was right, she must somehow convince Snotra to aid . . . not her escape, Malice would not want to cause trouble about that, but her legitimate passage back to England, where somehow she would get back to where she belonged. How difficult could it be?

  Very difficult. In fact difficult enough to make the yard and all its contents swim in a white sea about her, to make her shrink from the thought. It still didn’t mean she shouldn’t try. For days she had been too ill to force so much as a morsel of bread past her parched tonsils. She was probably lucky to be alive. So a little dizziness was to be expected, especially the way plates and cups were dinting off walls and floors.

  Even as the waves rose to meet Malice, Snotra grasped the top edge of the bottom half of the Dutch door. “Well, I’ve gone indoors, so what about you? What will you do?”

  “What do you think? Choose myself a bed slave. It’s been a long sixteen days.”

  Truth to tell, it was not how he imagined his homecoming, his first to Snotra since he’d taken in both her and the damned old goat, the contumacious swine, he’d never been good enough for.

  In fact, while he wracked his brains, he couldn’t think of a worse homecoming for a man of his not inconsiderable standing. Imagination was a fickle mistress though. It wasn’t exactly as if he’d had that standing for long. Eighteen months to be precise. Although he’d certainly worked long and hard for it, to see this house rise from the fire-pits that had been his mother, his sisters’ graves.

  Through the ordeal of waiting a man showed his true character. How often had that been flung at him? When his father died. When the lands and every blade of grass, every dried fish scale and scrap of sheep’s wool on them, went to the oldest son. As custom decreed. Sin didn’t dispute it. What he disputed was what had happened next, when Alvidor flung them out, when his uncle was the only one to take pity on them. He had heard these words. Often enough to know he’d sooner cut off his ears than hear the damned things again.

  He raised his head. Frigg’s wig, why did Snotra have to take this tack? Kicking pots he’d paid good money for about the floor, so now . . . he brushed the edge of the half door with his fist . . . now, he’d no damned option but to make his choice. What the hell else was he meant to do? Go in there after her? Over his burned bones.

  Putting aside the slaves he was starting to wish he’d never clapped eyes on, let alone brought back, Ari, Gilli, Ragmoose, had splattered the short distance from where the Raven bobbed at anchor. Have them thinking he was soft? His slaves and bondsmen? Oh yes, he was absolutely going to do that, wasn’t he?

  Sin let his gaze stray indoors, into the blackened interior where Snotra’s beige dress seemed the only light thing. It wasn’t that he wanted to hurt her but who would have thought she could behave in that damnable way. Like every other woman on the face of the earth, when it was her duty to do what he said. He tilted his jaw. By Odin he wasn’t marrying a damned shrew, was he?

  She and the damned old goat just needed to know their place. They had lived high on the hog’s belly for years, the old goat never once considering he’d no sons, gambling it all on what that milk-sop Egil, that damned daisy with less money than a dead spider, was going to provide.

  He was hardly doing anything terrible. Many of the men he knew had a bed slave. Ulric had three. Sin released the half door. No, he needed to strike while the iron wasn’t just hot, it was scorching, before he did something stupid, like giving in.

  What was more, he knew exactly who he was going to pick too.

  Chapter 6

  “Put me down. Right now I swear, or . . . Gentle! Gentle, help me! Help me! Ouch! Let me go.”

  As she slammed her fists against his shoulders, punctuating her shrieks with kicks, shock made her head spin. She begged Gentle, trotting along behind her, of all people? But God almighty, what else could she do here? At all costs, Snotra must see her looking the part.

  “How can I help you? Am I not just the poor sod what’s got to look out for her snottership?”

  And Malice wasn’t doing that too? Now, Sin Gudrunsson had marched back across the yard and yanked her up over his shoulder. Malice was going to have to look out for Snotra more than ever. How could he do this? She didn’t want to be a bed slave. There were all these oth
er women to choose from. Tova. And Mother Bede. Gentle even.

  “Gentle.” His voice rumbled so close to Malice’s spine, it stiffened. “I thought I told you to go indoors?”

  “But you also told me she’s got a handmaiden, Drottin. She won’t want me. Isn’t there something else I can do? Plough the fields? Build walls? Or cook . . .”

  “Gentle . . .”

  The huffed breath didn’t just say no. It said if she didn’t shut up she wouldn’t be anything. How was that? The man was made of ice. And it was hardening?

  “And take Mother Bede with you, till I decide what to do with her.”

  “But—”

  “Sir, I can plough.” Malice couldn’t. Only think what it would do to her hands. Only think what it would do to her back. Only think of that moment when he held her on the Raven more. What if she liked it? Being his bed slave? What if she didn’t want to go home? What if Snotra set about her with the meat mallet? A pertinent reason to boast of her non-existent abilities.

  “I can cook too. Sew. Look after pigs. I can do anything.”

  The ground careened as if Malice was on a carousel. One she was face down on. So now she was looking down at some steps. She lifted her chin and struck the stone of the door lintel. He paused.

  “On second thoughts, Gentle, send Mother Bede to me.”

  Mother Bede? If Malice wasn’t sprawled over his shoulder, trying to grab a breath of air into her flattened lungs, she’d have sunk to the ground with sweet, heart-stopping relief.

  He was going to take Mother Bede instead. Oh thank God. Mother Bede had already chopped a chunk of her lower lip off, so Snotra tearing her eyes out wasn’t exactly going to make a great deal of difference. Malice would be spared to somehow get home.

  At least she hoped she was going to be spared. Now . . . now that he swung around again and not content with swinging, sank his boot into the door at the foot of the stairs, which gave, the most hideous thought occurred. What if he intended having them both? In a cow, or pig pen too? This wasn’t the main building. This was set at the far end of the yard.

  The door hit the wall behind it. Immediately a cloud of steam choked her tonsils, stung her eyes. Her heart gave such an almighty thud she thought it would burst from her parted lips. She couldn’t breathe for coughing. As for the smell of sulphur pinching her nostrils—my God—was he taking her down to hell?

  Had she died in Cyril’s bedroom and this, this awful business, the raid and the Raven and all the other things, were a sort of preparatory journey? Like crossing the Styx in ancient times. Jorvik, where the others had gone, that was heaven, wasn’t it? But because of all the things she’d done, the bad things, like taking money to ruin marriages, and planning on getting hold of a foundling, she was bound for the flames. And she’d been stupid enough to think she’d somehow travelled through time?

  She didn’t care her fists pummelled his back, her knees struggled against the hard wall of his chest, that her head striking the wooden lintel sent stars streaking through her skull.

  “Oh God. Please let me go.”

  Her feet smacked off the ground with such force, her knee buckled. Her arms cart-wheeled as she struggled to keep her balance and stand upright on the earthen floor. Fortunately her shoes were gone. Otherwise the heels might have snapped.

  “Troll’s teeth. With pleasure. Are you always this damned difficult?”

  Difficult? Difficult? Her?

  “Especially when you stink?”

  Stink? Aunt Carter had got this all wrong. Hell was not fiery pits and brimstone at all. Hell was being allowed to live through a scarifying set of events to be told you stunk.

  Stink? So would anyone, lying on a pitching, bobbing deck, heaving their guts all over the boards for days. She clenched her fists. It was an awful lot better than clenching his throat. “And you don’t?”

  “Not as much as you, sweeting. Uh.”

  If any doubt remained that she wasn’t going to try to escape, the fact her body leapt forward, independently of her mind, dispelled it. Only he leapt first, blocking the door, so now he had hold of her wrists. So now, as she tried sinking her teeth into the back of knuckles, his wrists, his nicely browned forearms, she couldn’t.

  How awful was that? She had never sunk her teeth into anyone, not even Cyril on their wedding night, not over Aunt Crater’s teapot either—of course she had never got hold of him over that. Had she, she might have, for stealing all her money. Certainly she had never sunk her teeth into anyone in her adult life, until she’d found herself at that convent, then she seemed to have bitten everyone in sight.

  Her childhood had left certain things to be desired that way. Had she been called Patience, or Charitable, she might have been more decorous. But Malice?

  How dare he say she stank when he lived in a propped up dump, with poles sticking though the roof? Why, what had come tucking and strutting from inside while she’d stood there, watching Snotra knock lumps out his chest, but a hen, now she came to think of it? A hen, followed by a duck. The thought made her struggle harder.

  “Odin’s boots, this isn’t my day.” His foot hit the door, jamming it against whoever stood on the other side trying to push it open. Mother Bede? Or Gentle? He dragged Malice right up against him, holding her there so the breath left her body. Even ice-cool, the perusal cut through her like a hot iron.

  Sin? What rose to the surface of her blood showed her previous surmise about his name was wrong. Sin? With him? His lips were so tantalizingly close, her blood thrilled. Then there was the matter of his strength and the fact that, despite him being all these days on the Raven, he smelled of two things. The sea and warm male.

  She was finished if he lowered his mouth the way he’d lowered his eyelashes, what hammered through her left her weak as a limp rag. With someone on the other side of the door too. “Get over there. Go on.”

  Was she getting the chance to refuse? The shove wasn’t exactly gentle, while his voice sanded her cheeks like glass-paper.

  “Take off your clothes.”

  “What?” She shrunk back, clasping her arms across her breasts. “No.” Did it matter she probably looked like a desperate rag-bag in that second? Her jaw open? Her eyes narrowed?

  What mattered was his step towards her. “What do you mean, no? Take them off.”

  Her feet searched desperately for their next space on the earthen floor behind her. “I mean what I say. And you’re not going to make me either.” Another desperate step. In fact not just a step. A sort of collision with the coarse stone wall behind her which meant she was now trapped between it and him. He reached towards her.

  “Is that right?”

  My God. Her heart sank so far down her ribcage, she nearly followed it onto the floor. Her tunic . . . . Her tunic had his paws on it.

  “If you don’t take it off . . .” He narrowed his eyes with the kind of consummate ease that said he was not just used to threatening, he was used to getting his own way when he threatened too. “I will.”

  “Very well.”

  “Then do it.”

  Before him? She couldn’t.

  “Yes. Yes of course.”

  So? He wanted to do this slave business now? Well, it saved . . . suddenly she had no idea. Maybe her voice was strong, brave, definite, but her mind was a petrified forest of blank thoughts and empty tree branches, dark, gnarled places that made her hands shake, her fingers fumble and almost stopped her breath dead in her throat. She grasped the hem of the tunic.

  “Don’t Saxon women wash?”

  Wash?

  “No.” She shook her head. “We don’t.” What? Admit she wasn’t a Saxon woman, when just maybe a bath was all this was about and she’d been too terrified to consider it? She would sooner swallow a crocodile and the contents of the river that went with it.
“We like to smell.” Especially if it put him off, and it meant she could keep the tunic.

  “A thrilling entertainment for you, I’m sure. But not one you’ll be pursuing here. Not if you’re sharing my bed.”

  Oh God. Not for all the crocodiles in that same river. But she needed to pretend to be complicit, didn’t she? She clutched the tunic tighter. “Turn around.”

  “Oh that’s princely.” Whether from annoyance, the intention to prove to her who was master, or just simple interest in seeing her without her clothes, he showed no intention of obeying. In fact she might say he regarded her with more interest than previously. “So you can run away?”

  “So I can do what you said.”

  Why did he grimace as if such a thing was completely beyond her?

  “I tell you what, Troll’s Teeth—”

  “My name is Malice.”

  “Whatever it is, you turn around.”

  What? So he could look at her while she undressed? “Me, Drottin?” She used the term in the hope of appealing to his good nature.

  “Well, Malice, I don’t see anyone else it could be. Do you?”

  She didn’t but that didn’t mean she didn’t wish there was, or stop her fisting her tunic ties so tightly the wonder was they didn’t disintegrate. She would sooner swallow a . . . did they have crocodiles in wherever this was exactly? She’d no actual idea. Not about the crocodiles. Not about where she was. What she knew was he’d swung his blue-iced gaze not just to meet hers. He’d swung it so it was inches from her own. Good nature? Did he have any?

  “I’m hardly going to look.”

  Hardly going? She swallowed the lump of indignation burning her throat.