Sandra Hill - [Vikings II 03] Read online

  Weren’t there any attractive women beyond child-bearing age? Mayhap he should look for one next time he went to Birka. He would have to mention it to Toki the Trader, who was wintering here in Vestfold till the fjords thawed. Toki knew everyone in the market towns.

  “Arnora! Hmpfh! That is another thing,” Madrene said, frowning with consternation.

  Gods! The girl is still chattering away, even when I am not listening.

  “Ragnor and Torolf were seen entering her sleeping chamber this morn, and they have not come out since.”

  Any temptation he had felt for the maid flew up to the rafters. His rising sap lowered like a lake before an unplugged dam. “Together?”

  She nodded.

  Magnus’s eyes widened at that news. And his first thought was, Double the chance of impregnating the lass. That was all he needed. More babes being bred in his family. From sixteen-year-old boys, yet! He had known they were no longer untried youthlings. In truth, they tried too hard. But this was a situation he would have to stop. Two to one? What could they be thinking? Well, actually, what they were doing did not involve thinking at all.

  Just then he noticed yet another son, Storvald, sitting by the hearth, whittling away at one of his fine woodcarvings—a rendition of a longship in intricate detail. He squinted in the firelight to make up for his poor vision. It was not a real handicap for the boy; he had trouble seeing only tiny details close up. But now Storvald, at thirteen years, was listening with great interest to their conversation. No doubt he thought it would be great fun to join Arnora in the bed furs, too…even at his young age—especially at his young age.

  “Do you want me to go get them?” Storvald asked, blinking his eyes with exaggerated innocence.

  “Nay, I do not want you to go get them,” Magnus said. “I will handle it myself.” And I am looking forward to it about as much as if I were about to pull the hairs out of my nose.

  And off he stormed, even as Madrene continued to call out her list of grievances. “And Kolbein ate three bowls of custard that Cook had put aside in the scullery, and now he is suffering belly cramps. Dagny got her first monthly flux and will not stop weeping. Kolbein saw the bloody rag and thinks she is dying. Hamr broke Asa’s broom, pretending it was a sword.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Nay, that is not all. Do you want to know what Njal and his friends are doing?”

  Nay. “Do I have a choice?” Njal was his nine-year-old son. A more mischievous boy had never been born.

  “Njal and his friends are breaking wind, deliberately, every time they pass the weaving room, and the girls there say they will not work in such a stinksome place.”

  Magnus sighed loudly and put a palm to his aching forehead. At least his groin was no longer aching.

  He could not wait till the wedding feast, when Madrene’s besotted young jarl would take her away from all this misery. At least then he would have one less child to worry over. At least then he would be a little less miserable himself.

  Wouldn’t he?

  Still wintertime (would it ever end?), the Norselands, A.D. 1000.

  “We think we have the answer to your problem, Magnus.”

  Resting his bleary head on the trestle table, Magnus was sitting on the dais above the central hearth when he heard someone addressing him from below. He’d had only one horn of ale to drink this eve, but he was overtired from a day of shoveling snow to make paths to the various outbuildings of his vast farmstead. Already the snow was eaves-high and still falling. And ice had to be knocked off the roofs lest the thatch come crashing down under the heavy weight. The skies were black day and night, except for about an hour each day, which was the pattern in the Norselands. Everyone was tense from the confinement, especially his energetic children. Will winter ever be over?

  He raised his head reluctantly to see his best friend and chieftain of his hird of fighting men, Harek the Huge, waiting expectantly for his answer. Harek—who was…well, huge—stood in the aisle that separated the dais from the open-sided hearth, taking up most of the space. Crowded on either side of Harek were Atli One-Ear, Kugge the Archer, and Sidroc of the Forked Beard. They were all grinning up at him.

  Uh-oh! “You say you have an answer to my problem, Harek. Which problem would that be? It cannot be Madrene. She is two weeks wed and gone with her bridegroom to her new home. Ragnor? Torolf? Kirsten? Storvald? Dagny? Njal? Jogeir? Hamr? Kolbein? Lida? Which one has caused the problem this time?”

  “Freyja’s tits! How do you remember them all?” Kugge wanted to know. Kugge was an expert marksman, but he was thickheaded as a woolly sheep.

  “How can I forget them?” They will not let me forget. Magnus arched an eyebrow at Kugge and took a sip of stale ale.

  “They—your children—are not the problem we refer to,” Harek said.

  Magnus noticed then that dozens of men about his hall were watching them expectantly…with much amusement. Norsemen ever did enjoy a good jest. But what—or who—was the subject of this particular jest? He came suddenly alert.

  “You have been very peevish of late,” Atli remarked, pulling at his disfigured ear, as if the lobe had not been lost to a Saxon sword.

  “Peevish?”

  “Yea, you nigh bite the head off of anyone and everyone for the least little reason,” Sidroc added, jutting out his forked beard, daring him to disagree. “And we know the reason.”

  “You do?”

  “Frustration,” Harek explained. “Your male humors must needs escape on occasion, or you will explode. Happened to Halfdan the Hermit, it did. He went barmy in the end for lack of a good swiving. Yea, you have been too long without a tupping.”

  All the men nodded their agreement.

  “You men push the bounds of friendship. My body humors are naught of your business.” Can anything in the world be more embarrassing than this? Methinks I should go live in a cave. But nay, I cannot do that. My children would follow me, and they would freeze in a cave. Aaarrgh!

  “But here is the best part…” said Ottar the Oarsman, a new entry to the company.

  “We heard you were looking for a more…uh…mature woman. One who could give you pleasure in the bed furs without popping out a babe every nine months,” Harek explained.

  “A mature woman who is still attractive,” Atli quickly added.

  “Well, reasonably attractive,” Kugge further added.

  “Leastways, not repulsive,” Sidroc further added.

  Oh…my…gods! Magnus glanced to the left…then glanced again. He could scarce believe the scene unfolding before him. A line of women—a dozen in all—were being led from a far corridor, all ages and sizes and types of attire. One thing they had in common, though: only one of them appeared to be under the age of forty.

  “Where…why…what…” he sputtered out. “I mean, oh, bloody damn hell! Tell me, Harek, where have all these women come from—in this weather—and why?”

  “They come from your father’s estate and other neighboring jarldoms—come to be your bedmate, they have. Well, candidates for your bedmate. You get to pick,” Harek explained pridefully, as if he had done Magnus a great favor. “Some of them have been here for several sennights, in secret. The more recent additions came aboard sleds.”

  Magnus’s jaw dropped with incredulity at the bizarre “candidates” who stood before him.

  “This is Bertha.” Harek drew the first woman forth. “She has had five children, but she is past the breeding age now.”

  “I would think so,” Magnus commented as Bertha smiled up at him. She was toothless and her face resembled a dried apple. “You cannot be serious,” he told Harek.

  Harek shrugged, as if it were of no matter. After all, he had eleven more “candidates” to offer. “How about this one? Leila comes from the Eastlands.”

  “East of where?” Magnus scoffed. The woman—probably a dockside harlot—a Norse dock, that is—had attempted to slant her eyes with kohl, but mostly she just looked like a sad raccoon.
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  “Well, surely you will like Eadgifu then. Comes from London, she does,” Atli offered, shoving a woman midway down the line to the forefront. “She is the youngest of this lot, but she is barren due to a childhood illness.”

  Eadgifu also weighed about as much as a warhorse, and that was no exaggeration. He misdoubted a man could even find her woman’s portal in all that flab. And if she flipped him over, he would be crushed in the coupling.

  Magnus just scowled as one by one his comrades paraded their candidates before him.

  Hervor used a cane because her one leg was swollen with some malady.

  “Is she crippled?” he asked in an indignant whisper to Harek.

  “Nay. ’Tis just the gout. Comes and goes,” Harek replied, waving a hand dismissively.

  “Her ankle is the size of a ham.”

  “Do you not think you are being a bit picky?”

  Magnus frowned his disapproval, but Harek just ignored him and motioned for more candidates. There was Olga, whose eyes were crossed. And Sybil, who stuttered so badly that spittle ran down her quivering chin.

  “Blanca has a special talent she employs with her tongue,” Atli told him with a wink and a chuckle.

  “That would be fine if one could overlook her mustache.”

  He thought he heard several of the men mutter, “Picky, picky” under their breath.

  Next was Gunnhilde, who looked more like a man than a woman, and not just because of her height; there was a bulge in front of her gown at an inappropriate spot.

  Valda was a comely lass, but clearly pregnant, though ’twas true she would not be growing his seed, leastways not for the next few months.

  Thea’s raven-black hair was so thin her white scalp showed through.

  “Do my eyes play me false, or is that woman nigh bald?” Magnus’s eyes bulged with incredulity.

  Kugge, who had led that woman forward, made a tsking sound at his words. “Thea merely has some head sores which caused her hair to fall out. It will soon come back,” he said. After a moment, he added, “I think.”

  The last straw, so to speak, was Dagmar, a dairymaid from the Danish lands. Even as she stood before him, she could not stop scratching herself—her head, her underarms, even her groin. The woman was clearly infested with lice.

  “Enough!” Magnus roared, rising to his full height and pointing a forefinger at Harek with the silent message that he should remove the candidates from his presence at once.

  “We were just trying to please you,” Harek said defensively. But Magnus saw the grin twitching his lips. In fact, looking about his hall, he saw that some of his men were laughing so hard they were bent over at the waist. He wouldn’t be surprised if a few of them wet their braies, so overcome with mirth were they.

  Magnus could not be angry at his friends…leastways, not for long. They were only teasing. The fact that it was a sore and serious subject for him was beside the point. Magnus and his misdeeds would no doubt be the subject of a skaldic saga at the next Althing. It would be titled something ridiculous, like “Magnus the Virile and His Wild Seed.”

  Magnus could not go on this way much longer.

  Something would have to be done.

  At last…springtime, the Norselands, A.D. 1000

  Magnus had made a decision, and it was a momentous one.

  “Hear me, one and all,” he shouted out to those in attendance at the springtime feast taking place outdoors on his farmstead, where large trestle tables had been set up and canvas tents erected. The fields had been plowed and planted. All the chores left over from winter were completed. Fallen timbers were cleared from streams. New baby animals were being born. It was a time of celebration after weeks of grueling hard work. Many of his men would go off a-viking now, or lend their sword arms to King Olaf in his never ending battles to hold the all-kingship of the Norselands. They would return at harvesttime, though.

  But not Magnus.

  It was a season of new beginnings for the farm.

  It would be a season of new beginnings for Magnus, too.

  “I, Magnus Ericsson, have decided to take a vow of celibacy,” he announced over the din of celebration.

  Slowly silence fell over the crowd, and he could hear murmurs as his words were repeated from group to group. Once his meaning sank in, laughter began to burst forth in waves. They thought he was jesting.

  He held up a hand for quiet. In his other hand he raised high his drinking horn. “Wish me well, my friends, for I am serious. And that is not all.”

  “Now, now, Magnus, are you still chafing under our little joke last winter?” Harek had come up to stand beside him.

  He shook his head and smiled at his good friend.

  “And that is not all,” he repeated. “I will be leaving the Norselands for a good long time. I am off to that new land beyond Iceland which was discovered a dozen or so years ago by my father’s cousin, Erik the Red. ’Tis Greenland I refer to, of course. Or mayhap I will venture even farther to that place which his son Leif is exploring. Vinland is supposed to be warmer, if naught else.”

  The laughter of the crowd had become shocked silence.

  “But why?” Harek was gazing at him with a frown of puzzlement on his forehead.

  Magnus wished he could explain the missive he’d received a sennight before. It had arrived on a trading ship that had come in contact with some sailors from that new land of Leif’s. In a linen-wrapped parcel was his brother Jorund’s sword. Tied to the sword were two small portraits—one of Jorund with some strange woman and two twin girls, and the other of Jorund and Geirolf with arms looped over each other’s shoulders, standing before a huge archway sign that read, Rosestead.

  The portraits, if they could be called that, were done on peculiar parchment paper unlike any he had ever seen before. And the attire worn by all of them was strange. But most important, Jorund and Geirolf looked happy. After much pondering, Magnus had decided that it was a message from the gods…or from his brothers.

  Geirolf’s dragonship had been lost in the oceans beyond Iceland almost three years past; he was presumed to have drowned in a shipwreck. Then Jorund’s dragonship had done the same two years ago when he’d gone to search for Geirolf.

  But were they really dead? Or were they alive in some new land? Magnus had to find out for himself. It was a mystery he must at least investigate.

  “It is something I must do,” was the only explanation he could give Harek. He put on a mirthful face then and added, “Besides, there is not enough good land in Norway for all my children. Ha, ha, ha!”

  People nodded and laughed, tentatively, at his half jest, half truth. Arable land had always been scarce in the Norselands. Thousands of Vikings were settling in other countries for that very reason.

  “Who will rule here…in your absence?” Atli called out to him.

  “Madrene and her husband, Karl, will rule in my place here at the farmstead. Ragnor will represent me at my father’s estate. The rest of my children—all nine of them—will come with me.” May the gods help me, he added to himself.

  He could see the disappointment in Jogeir’s face. The boy was a farmer at heart, like him, and he loved this land. But there would be new farms for Jogeir, of that he was convinced, or he would not go. Besides, they would come back someday.

  As his people began to assimilate his news and accept it—all Vikings loved a good adventure—Magnus sat down with a sigh and took a long draft from his horn of ale. He felt good about his decision. If nothing else, it was a time for new beginnings.

  Besides, it would be a lot easier to honor his vow of celibacy in the new land, where there were surely not very many women. And those who were there must be dog-ugly—Why else would they settle in the back of beyond?—though the one in Jorund’s portrait had been more than passable.

  For the first time in a year or more, Magnus was excited, and it had naught to do with the throb betwixt his legs.

  As sure as dragon piss, it was a good sign.


  Chapter Two

  Sonoma Valley, June 2003

  Whining in Wine Country…

  The sign read, Blue Dragon Vineyard.

  Angela Abruzzi made a smooth slide of her hand on the leather steering wheel of her BMW, turning it up the drive to the rambling Victorian house she had once called home. With a deep sigh, she slowed the Beamer to a crawl and tried to enjoy the familiar scenery, despite the knot in her stomach, which had been tightening since she’d left her apartment in L.A. this morning. The tension was not due to trepidation at coming home; that was always a joy. It was due to the formidable task she had to accomplish today.

  The stately, unique species of oak trees that lined the drive always brought a smile to her face. The trees, with their rare speckled bark, had been a whim of the original builder a hundred years ago…and too expensive and showy not to be kept up by all the owners since then. The low stone walls on either side of the road were dotted every ten feet or so with enormous, dragon-design terra-cotta planters spilling over with lush red geraniums that were painstakingly cared for by her seventy-five-year-old grandmother. Wildflowers in a myriad of pastel colors dotted the lawns leading up to the house and beyond, on either side of the stream that fed into a large pond. The pond acted as a reservoir for the much-needed irrigation system. Ancient willow trees surrounded the pond like Southern belles with wide lacy crinolines; they’d been her make-believe playhouses as a child. Behind the house as far as the eye could see, for two hundred acres or more, were row upon row of grapevines, bright green now in the June sun but soon to be filled with clusters of purple globes—the lifeblood of Blue Dragon. A large vegetable garden was also located in the back—far too big for the single inhabitant of the house.

  As she pulled up to the wide circle in front of the house with its wraparound porch, her grandmother, Rose Abruzzi, was already coming down the steps to greet her, a welcoming smile on her face. In many ways they resembled each other, especially the thick masses of curly hair spilling down over their shoulders, although Angela’s was coal black and Grandma’s was now pure white. And they both had coal-black eyes and a tiny black mole just above the upper lip on the right, something Grandma preferred to call a beauty mark.