Sandra Hill - [Vikings II 03] Read online

  Sandra Hill

  The Very Virile Viking

  This book is dedicated to my mother, Veronica Cluston, who died just as I was finishing it. She was my greatest fan. I know she would have loved the idea of an overburdened Viking man with eleven children. Hopefully, she is cheering me on up in heaven. I will love you forever, Mom.

  And to my paternal grandfather, who was named…guess what? Yep, Magnus. He came to the United States from Canada, but his family originated from the Orkney Islands, which were certainly Viking havens at one time. Like my Viking Magnus, my grandfather was an earthy adventurer. I could tell you stories.

  My wish have I won: welcome be thou,

  with kiss I clasp thee now.

  The loved one’s sight is sweet to her

  who has lived in longing for him.

  …Now has happened what I hoped for long,

  that, hero, art come to my hall.

  Heartsick was I; to have thee I yearned,

  whilst thou did long for my love.

  Of a truth I know: we two shall live

  our life and lot together.

  —“Svipdagsmál,” from The Poetic Edda

  Contents

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  In days of old when men were…whatever…

  Chapter Two

  Whining in Wine Country…

  Chapter Three

  “You’ve got to be dreaming!”

  Chapter Four

  Angela tried to calm her erratic breathing…such an odd reaction…

  Chapter Five

  It was almost midnight, and Angela sat exhausted at her…

  Chapter Six

  They had been driving in the van for about five…

  Chapter Seven

  Angela overslept the next morning.

  Chapter Eight

  Angela swung back and forth slowly on the old swing…

  Chapter Nine

  Magnus could not believe his eyes.

  Chapter Ten

  Grandma Rose was sitting on the side porch off the…

  Chapter Eleven

  Angela was in the dark…in more ways than one.

  Chapter Twelve

  It was the middle of the night by the time…

  Chapter Thirteen

  A week had gone by and there had been no…

  Chapter Fourteen

  In the Viking culture, matters of great importance were settled…

  Chapter Fifteen

  By one A.M. Angela had dropped Grandma and the children…

  Chapter Sixteen

  Angela couldn’t sleep much that night, so she went down…

  Chapter Seventeen

  It was utter chaos at Jorund’s home in San Antonio,…

  Epilogue

  Magnus Ericsson and Angela Abruzzi were married on the lawn…

  Author’s Note

  Praise

  Other Books by Sandra Hill

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  Autumn, the Norselands, A.D. 999

  In days of old when men were…whatever…

  Magnus Ericsson was a simple man.

  He loved the smell of fresh-turned dirt after springtime plowing. He loved the feel of a soft woman under him in the bed furs…when engaged in another type of plowing. He loved the heft of a good sword in his fighting arm. He loved the low ride of a laden longship after a-viking in far distant lands. He loved the change of seasons on his well-ordered farmstead.

  What he did not relish was the large number of whining, loud, bothersome, needful children who called him “Faðir.” “Father, this…Father, that…” they blathered night and day, always wanting something from him. Ten in all! That was the size of his brood, despite the loss of a son and a daughter to normal childhood ills and mishaps. Holy Thor! The large number was embarrassing, not to mention unmanageable. He could not go to the garderobe without stepping on one or the other of them. Like rats, they were, or fleas.

  And, of a certainty, he was not pleased with their mothers. Over the years there had been four wives, six concubines, numerous passing fancies, and at least one barley-faced maid. That latter could only be attributed to a fit of mead-head madness on his part, he was quick to tell any who dared ask. Not all of them had shared his bed furs at the same time, praise be to Odin, though some lackwits claimed it to be so, just because he’d practiced the more danico during some halfbrained periods of his life. He’d learned by now that one woman at a time was more than enough for any man to manage. All of his women, one by one, had had the temerity to die on him, desert him, or, ignominiously, divorce him, as his most recent wife, Inga, had done last summer at the Althing. Claimed she was tired of playing slave to all his babes, she did. Norsemen from here to Birka were still laughing about that happenstance.

  He suspected as well that they were taking wagers on how many more whelps would land on the doorstep of his longhouse by year’s end.

  None, if he had his way.

  It had not been so bad when his father, Jarl Eric Tryggvason, and his mother, Lady Asgar, had still been alive and living on the adjoining royal estate. Or when his brothers had been nearby. His mother had seemed to have better luck in arranging help for him. But his mother and father had both died this year, within months of each other. The healers said it was due to lung sickness brought on by an especially fierce winter, but he believed that it was heartsickness over his missing brothers, Geirolf and Jorund, whose ships had presumably sunk in distant waters beyond Iceland. He and his sister, Katla, were the only family left, and Katla, happily married to a Norse princeling these many years, lived in far-off Norsemandy, which some called Normandy.

  There was much pressure on him to take over his father’s jarldom, especially from his uncle, the high king of the Norselands, Olaf Tryggvason. But that would mean giving up his own lands and the farming he cherished. Further, he would knowingly be immersing himself in the political pressures that faced all the minor kingdoms in the Norselands as they squabbled for power. He was a farmer, at heart, not a man ambitious for power.

  Besides, did he not have enough pressures within his own family?

  That is a pointless question.

  Where would his children fit into such a scenario?

  Wherever they could squeeze in.

  Would he have to take another wife?

  For a certainty.

  Did he want another wife?

  Bloody hell, no!

  But how long had it been since he’d lain with a woman?

  Far too long! I am afraid to look at a woman these days, for fear my seed will fly into her womb.

  Would the marriage bonds be worth the bother of another squawking woman following him about like a shadow? Or producing even more babies?

  Bonds…that is an accurate description.

  And would a woman of his choosing be willing to take on all his offspring?

  Probably not. Nay, I should not wed again.

  But the sex…

  Aaarrgh!

  The problem, as far as he could tell, always came back to the children and the burden of his virility. If he were free, he could make decisions based on his own wants, or needs, or the good of the people of Vestfold. But he had ten other individuals to consider.

  Magnus had seen seven and thirty winters. Sometimes, when he was in a daze from too much youthling noise, or when he was suffering from the ale ache, he wondered how he had begotten so many children. But, of course, he knew how.

  Magnus Ericsson was a lustsome man.

  And therein lay the Viking’s problem.

  Winter, the Norselands, A.D. 999

  Trouble comes in
small packages….

  “You have another child,” Magnus’s eldest son, Ragnor, said with disgust, trying to hand a girl barely out of swaddling clothes into his arms.

  Magnus promptly folded his arms over his chest in refusal.

  “Her name is Lida,” Ragnor persisted, and tried once again to hand over the child, who couldn’t be more than a year old.

  Magnus took one step backward and shook his head vehemently.

  “Goo!” Lida said, favoring him with a gummy grin. She shook her little head from side to side as well, no doubt thinking he was playing a game with her.

  He was not moved. Nor was he in the mood for games. “Take her away.” He stepped to the side and used a poker to stir the yule log in the center hearth of his great hall; the burning of the log was a Christian tradition his family had always followed. Though he was Norse by birth, he also practiced the Christian faith of his mother. God bless her soul. He hoped she was at rest with the saints she’d revered. Just as he hoped his father was revelling in Valhalla. Sometimes he wondered if heaven and Valhalla might be the same place, but it was a far-fetched opinion he kept to himself. Regardless, ’twas best to appease all the gods. Unfortunately he seemed to be personally blessed—or was it plagued?—by Freyja, the goddess of fertility.

  Meanwhile, the Viking comrades who sat about his great hall drinking ale and playing the board game hnefatafl snickered amongst themselves while they viewed his son trying to hand him another babe. Once again he and his potency would be the subject of jests. Well, he would not stand for it this time.

  “There is no proof,” he contended. “She is not mine.”

  “I beg to differ. She looks just like you.”

  “Goo!” Lida repeated. Blond spikes of hair stood up in disarray about her tiny head. Freckles speckled her rosy cheeks. She smelled like a privy.

  “Sarcasm ill suits you, boy,” Magnus snapped. His son knew full well that his father was considered an attractive man. Magnus prided himself on a well-honed body and his inherited good looks. Aside from his big ears, which he covered vainly with long hair, he was nigh perfect. Many a maid had told him so. And this whelp was anything but attractive or perfect. But then he noticed something. Oh, for the love of Frey! Are those excessively big ears on the mite?

  Ragnor snickered, noticing the direction of his father’s stare.

  “You are not so big at sixteen years that I cannot put you over my knee,” Magnus declared, sinking down to a bench. Of course, his sitting down gave three-year-old Kolbein the excuse to climb up onto his lap. Kolbein should be acting the little man at his age, like five-year-old Hamr did. Begged him constantly for his very own bow and arrows, the bothersome boy did. “You’ll shoot your eye out,” was Magnus’s response. Kolbein, on the other hand, had always been a need-some child, having lost his mother at birth. Even six-year-old Jogeir with his club foot asked for no special indulgence. Some said Magnus should have exposed Jogeir to the elements in the frozen north when he was born, as some Vikings fathers were wont to do. Life in the Norselands was harsh for whole persons. Those weak or handicapped from birth would face nigh insurmountable obstacles to survival. But he had not been able to do it, and Jogeir worked hard each day to prove he had made the right decision. Poor boy!

  “Ha!” Ragnor said, jarring him back to the present. Apparently Ragnor was still reacting to his father’s comment about being able to spank him. Ragnor’s one word said it all, though, for Ragnor might not yet have reached his father’s massive height, but he was fast approaching it. And both of them had muscles aplenty.

  “I could hold Ragnor down for you whilst you give him a well-deserved whomping.” It was his other sixteen-year-old son, Torolf, speaking now. Torolf loved to tease his older brother more than anything, though Ragnor was older by only one sennight. They were born to different mothers in different lands within days of each other. Magnus must have been particularly lustful that week nine months beforehand, but, in truth, he could barely recall the details of the women or the couplings. All he knew was that Ragnor had the black hair and pale blue eyes of his Frankish mother, while Torolf favored Magnus’s first wife, Sigrun, with pale blond hair and honey-colored eyes. That was when Magnus’s troubles had first begun. Sigrun had threatened to cut off his man part when she heard about Ragnor’s birth. Two years later she was gone—ran off with an Irish priest, she did—leaving Torolf behind. It had been the beginning of a trend in Magnus’s life.

  “I would like to see you try,” Ragnor told Torolf with his usual arrogance. He gave Torolf a punch in the shoulder with his free hand. Meanwhile a giggling Lida dangled from the crook of his other arm.

  “Anytime, brother. Anytime.” Torolf punched his brother back and grinned, just to annoy him. The two were like overgrown puppies. Soon they would be down in the rushes wrestling each other.

  “Goo,” Lida contributed.

  Magnus had a sudden inspiration. “I cannot take the child. She needs a wet nurse, and as you know, we cannot even keep maids here at the farmstead to care for the older children, let alone a wet nurse.”

  “Lida is weaned, smart little one that she is.” Ragnor fairly smirked at him.

  “Take her back whence she came,” Magnus demanded.

  “I cannot,” Ragnor said. “She came on that trading knorr from Hedeby. Sent by a craftswoman there by the name of Gyda the Goldsmith. She claims her daughter, Helga, gave birth to Lida a year ago. Helga died recently of the brothel disease.”

  Helga? Unfortunately that name sounded familiar to Magnus. He seemed to recall a comely maid in a red gunna serving mead in a Hedeby alehouse. Her face had been sprinkled with freckles.

  “The captain of the knorr says the fjords are already freezing over. And besides, he is not taking a smelly-arsed, squalling babe back with him. Those were his exact words.” Ragnor smirked again.

  With a sigh of resignation, Magnus opened his arms and welcomed the newest addition to his family. He could not swear that Lida was his. But that could be said of half his brood.

  “Goo,” Lida cooed, tugging at the war braids on either side of his face.

  “Goo to you, too, little one,” Magnus replied.

  Still wintertime, the Norselands, A.D. 1000

  “It is disgraceful, Faðir. Really, it is. All these children, and no one to care for them. Tsk-tsk! Mayhap you could hire another nursemaid or two. Or better yet, a whip master for the older ones.”

  It was Magnus’s eldest child, seventeen-year-old Madrene, who had started berating him from the moment he entered his keep. He was frozen to the bone after making his way, along with a half dozen workers, through chest-high snow from the stables. He had spent the past eight hours delivering one foal, two calves, and a litter of piglets. He and his helpers had pulled in enough feed to get the animals through tonight’s upcoming blizzard; then they’d mucked out the stalls…who knew when they’d be able to do it again! And who knew horses and cows could produce so much smelly waste! Ah, well, ’twas part of a farmer’s life and he did not mind all that much. Industrious little six-year-old Jogeir had come along with them. Even dragging his lame foot along, he was able to accomplish as much as many a laggard man he’d met in his time. Finally they’d made the trek home on the slippery ice path, carrying baskets of hen and duck eggs for Gunnhora, his head cook, who was preparing for Madrene’s wedding feast next week. It was ridiculous, really, having a wedding feast in the middle of winter, but once Madrene got an idea in her head, she was like a dog with a bone; she would not give it up for anything.

  “And furthermore…”

  Bloody hell! His daughter was still wagging her tongue. What he did not need was more complaints, especially from one of his own children.

  He decided to ignore Madrene, who was too full of herself by half now that she was to become a wife. Instead he walked up to one of the three blazing hearths in his hall and proceeded to remove his ice-crusted furs and undercloak. Madrene followed him, the pestsome wench. ’Twas a wonder she did
not start on him about the puddle he was making in the rushes. He shook his body like a shaggy dog, creating a shower of droplets, just to annoy her more, but all she did was make more of those clucking noises women fancied so much.

  Blah, blah, blah! Does her tongue ever get tired? “What is the problem now?” he asked, knowing full well she would not leave till she’d spouted everything on her mind.

  “Lida has soiled another nappy, and Kirsten and Dagny refuse to change her again.” Kirsten and Dagny were his fourteen-and twelve-year-old daughters, and, to tell the truth, he did not blame them at all. The girls did more than their fair share of household chores, especially since another nursemaid had quit on him last sennight, claiming to be overburdened by his wild and numerous progeny. And Lida did seem to have bowels that worked all too well. “Ask one of the kitchen thralls to help,” he advised. “Or how about the new chambermaid? What is her name? Arnora…that is it…Arnora. Came to us on that last trading ship, searching for work.”

  Actually he knew her name precisely. The voluptuous young woman had been swishing her hips afore him in invitation every time she passed by. And he was tempted—sorely tempted, considering how long it had been since he’d last lain between a woman’s thighs. Six months! Ever since Inga had divorced him. It was not yet spring, but his sap was running high. So far he had resisted temptation, but he was not sure how much longer he could remain chaste. If nothing else, he was going to be drooling sap before long.