“There’s another hall?” asked Gunnar in surprise.
“On the far side of the watchtower, near the kitchen. Have you not ventured around the castle?”
He shook his head. “Remember that I am gone during the days. And of an evening, I have no interest in venturing anywhere.” He glanced around to make certain no one was near. “At least, not anywhere that you are not.”
“You flatter, sir.”
“It is no flattery. You say we have some time without your father watching?”
“Yes. Though we must still be ware of the others. I want no one carrying tales to him. And to that end . . . ” She rose and did courtesy, and spoke just loudly enough for her voice to carry to the nearest servants. “Your pardon,
monsire
. I must attend my lady mother for a little. Enjoy your meal.”
She left him to eat his fill and contemplate this unexpected opportunity. As usual, the lady was a step ahead, able to see the next move in the game before he was even aware he was playing it.
By the time she returned, he’d worked his way through most of the capon, but still had no idea how he might take advantage of the moment. So he resorted to what he knew.
“And how is your lady mother?” he asked as she slid onto the bench opposite.
“She chafes at her confinement. She counted it out today and reckoned she has spent well over a full year of her life locked away because of childbearing.”
“With so many babes, she needs the rest.” He tore off a piece of bread and sopped up some of the juice on the trencher. “Come to think of it, the earl likely needs the rest, too.”
She clapped her hand over her mouth to catch an unladylike snort. “You are a devil!”
“I?” He chewed thoughtfully. “I would like to be more of a devil, but how can I be, when I am always under such close watch?”
“ ‘Tis true. My lord father’s admiration for you gives us little time to speak freely.”
“Far too little, although”—he sniffed his fingers—“ah, no, the scent has faded. But I smelled of your kerchief the whole night through. As you intended, I think.”
Her cheeks colored. “I am caught.”
“You are. But so am I, for now I’ve told you that I noted it. The traces of your perfume gave me much comfort last night.”
If she knew what kind of comfort, she’d slap him.
The boy came with the wine again, and they both fell silent, avoiding each other’s eyes while he poured. When the boy moved on out of earshot, though, Gunnar propped his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “So while we can speak, I may as well tell you, I have twice thought to kill Henry Percy.”
Her eyes widened. “Twice?”
“Once when you walked with him. The other during the dancing.”
Her brow wrinkled in puzzlement. “I did not dance with—ah, but Lucy did. You mistook her for me.”
He nodded. “I did. It is not often cousins look so much the same.”
“It comes from her father. He looks as much like mine as Lucy looks like me. All but here, of course.” She tapped the bridge of her nose. “You can always tell Lucy by her bump.”
“And your bobbing. I wager Maid Lucy does not bob when she is glad.”
“You would win. She hums—although she also hums when she is nervous.”
“She hums a lot, then,” muttered Gunnar.
Eleanor bit back a smile. “When she is truly happy, she sings and dances. I was reminded of that today.”
“Something to do with Percy?”
“Ah, so you have noted it, too.”
“It is difficult to miss.” He uncurled a finger just enough to point across the hall, where Lucy and Henry Percy stood apart, talking. Percy looked like he was about to devour the blushing Lucy whole.
“I arranged for them to have a moment alone today. She came back all aglow and with a bruised look to her lips.”
“Good. She needed to be kissed. How did you arrange this time?”
“I sent her to fetch some herbs from the kitchen garden, and asked Percy to go with her.”
“The kitchen garden?”
“It is by the rear wall. Very few go back there, and it offers much privacy. Anne always goes back there with Gilbert when he is here.”
He leaned back, contemplating her, until she shifted uncomfortably.
“Why do you look at me so?”
“I am wondering about a lady who would arrange for her maid to have a moment of privacy, but not arrange such a moment for herself. Why do you never go . . . herb picking?”
Her cheeks colored lightly, but she raised her chin. “Because you, sir, are never here by day, when the herbs want picking.”
“Sadly true. It is not by choice that I leave, my lady.” He leaned forward a bit more, so that his breath stirred a loose wisp of hair that lay by her jaw. “But they say some herbs are more potent when plucked in the dark of night.”
Her lips parted on that faint gasp he liked so much, and the color in her cheeks spread and deepened. Pleased at finally being able to discomfit her in the same way she did him nearly every day, Gunnar pushed to his feet, stepping between her and the nearest watchers to block their view before someone noticed her blush. “If we do not want stories carried to your lord father, we should find something to occupy us that does not turn you so pink.”
She pressed her hands to her cheeks. “You are not helping.”
“I thought I was.” He lowered his voice to a bare murmur. “It is better than telling you I want to kiss you into a swoon, is it not?”
“Hardly.” She looked up. “Do you?”
“Need you ask?” He chuckled as a slow smile spread across her face. “That’s better. Shall I call for a chessboard? A musician? I know. I’ll challenge Percy to wrestle me. That should keep you entertained for a moment or two.”
That made her laugh, Percy being half his size, and her embarrassment quickly faded. She pushed her bench back.
“The bishop travels with a most excellent storyteller in his party, and he has given him to us for tonight. Let us see what tales he has for us.”
As she rose, she filched a scrap of the capon’s crisp skin off his trencher and popped it into her mouth. She wiped her fingers on the napkin cloth this time, thank the gods, but a faint sheen of grease remained right in the center of her lower lip, as though she’d painted it there of a purpose so it could beg him to kiss it away.
By the gods. If he let her, she could turn his brain to custard on a whim. It would be a happy fate, if not so dangerous in her father’s hall. “As you wish, my lady.”
He followed her and her smudge of grease across the hall, where they joined a group that had gathered around a bearded old fellow who reminded Gunnar of one of the elder skalds back home, right down to the milky white stare of his blind eyes. Eleanor took a seat near the back, while Gunnar stepped around to a place where he could watch her without seeming to. The old fellow was just finishing a tale from their Bible, one about a drowning man swallowed by a whale and thrown up safely later. Clearly that one had been written by a man who’d never seen the inside of a whale. Gunnar had; he’d rather drown.
“Thus the story of Jonah teaches us that even at the darkest hour, so long as there is great faith, there is also great hope,” said the old man. “I heard two more join us. Tell me who, please? The lady first. I heard light steps.”
“It is Eleanor de Neville, Carolus. Do you remember me from York?”
“Only a little, my lady. My old mind grows too old and too crowded.” He scratched his chin, thinking. “There was a man, as well. A big one. Over here.” He waved his hand in the general direction.
“Gunnar of Lesbury, a guest of the earl. Do you only tell Bible stories, old man, or do you have other tales in that bald skull of yours?”
“Many others,
monsire
. Many, many others. Is there one you would like? Something from the olden times, perhaps.” The old man swung his head, so those blank, blind eyes seemed to look straight at Gunnar. “Like when the Danes pillaged all of England?”
A cold chill ran down Gunnar’s back and lifted the hairs on his arms.
How?
He shifted, setting his feet firmly, ready for a fight. “No. Not those.”
“You know far older tales than that, Carolus,” said Eleanor, all unaware. “You spent hours at York telling us of the ancients of Greece and Rome.”
“I do not recall what I told, my lady, but I have learned some new stories just this year past. Would you like to hear them?”
Yeses rippled around the circle, but the old man kept his blind eyes on Gunnar. “And what say you, Sir Gunnar?”
“I don’t know. Are they any good?”
Chuckling, the old fellow turned back to the others. “We shall see. Now, the first tale I’ll tell is of how the Greeks believed their gods came to be. They were false gods, of course, but the ancients can be forgiven because our Lord had not yet sent Paul to give the Greeks knowledge of the One True God . . .”
He went on to tell of what he called the Titans and their battles for control of all creation, and of gods both great and small birthed from their foreheads and ripped from their thighs. It all sounded very much to Gunnar’s ears like Ymir and Búri and how Vili, Ve, and Odin came to be, and slowly, as the familiar-but-not-familiar tale spun out, his wariness faded away. The old man was merely a skald, with the fey ways such men always had. Not so different from Ari, and for a while, Gunnar’s mind wandered to his old shipmate and wondered what part of England he was plowing these days. Once he had Eleanor for his own, he would send Jafri to hunt down Ari and Brand and enlist the skald’s visions to help him find his amulet.
And then he would put the amulet in Eleanor’s hands and get her to say she loved him, and he would be free. Free. The idea of a life that was a true life, and the death that would properly finish it, was as sweet as honey wine.
When he came back to the present, the storyteller had moved on, telling of the ways the gods of Olympus dealt with their mortal subjects, again not so different from the way the gods of Asgard behaved, though the Greeks seemed to enjoy more tupping—especially Zeus and the one called Eros, who exercised their right to take any woman who pleased them more even than Odin did. For a monk, old Carolus seemed especially fond of those stories, going from one to the next to the next.
“One day, Zeus spied the fairest maid of them all bathing in the sea,” the old man continued. “She was Europa, the youngest daughter of the King of Tyre, and the sight of her smooth skin and yellow hair inflamed Zeus till he could not contain himself. He wanted this maid beyond all others, but she was surrounded by her handmaidens. So Zeus drew on his powers and turned himself into a great bull . . .”
The chill went clear to Gunnar’s bones, slowing his heart, turning his arms and legs to lead.
Run,
screamed a voice in his head, but he couldn’t move. All around him, the others listened with rapt attention while Gunnar, frozen by the old man’s words, struggled for breath and silently prayed,
Odin, help me. He gives me away.
“And as the bull, Zeus wandered close to the fair Europa. Her handmaidens ran away in fear to hide in the woods, but Europa was taken by the beauty of the great beast and stayed behind, and the bull did her no harm, but instead let her stroke his head and breast. Enchanted by the animal’s gentleness and nobility, Europa wove a garland of flowers and laurel and approached the bull to twine it about his horns. From the woods, her handmaidens called for her to come away before she was crushed or gored, but the beast only knelt down to her and let her climb, smiling, onto its back.”
“It is the story from my comb!” Excited, Eleanor turned to the man next to her. “I have a silver comb with a lady on a bull. I never knew the story that went with it.”
Her voice, so different from the old man’s, shook Gunnar out of his stupor. He gulped down a huge breath, and the lead began to melt out of his limbs.
“Then it is good you hear it at last, my lady,” said Carolus. “It is an important tale, and you shall see why. When the beast had Europa on his back, he plunged into the waves and carried her away across the seas to a beautiful island called Crete, and there he revealed himself, seduced the maid, and had his way with her. When he was done with her and she was with child, he left to return to his throne on Mount Olympus, but as her reward for being the fairest and sweetest of all his lovers, Zeus gave her as wife to the king of Crete, and she became queen and the mother of all the West, which is why today we call the whole of the Holy Roman Empire by her name, Europe.”
“So, she was rewarded for her lack of chastity?” asked Lady Anne, tart as ever. She glared at Eleanor.
“A strange thing, I know,” said Carolus, “But the ancients were of a different mind about such things. I cannot help but wonder what any of you ladies would do if a bull turned to a man before you.”
“He wasn’t a man, though,” said Eleanor. “Not to Europa. To her, he was a god. She may have thought it an honor.”
She sounded so reasonable about it. Could it be that she might actually accept such a thing? Gunnar’s heart began to race.
Please, Odin, please.