The woman’s keen, grayish blue eyes took in Liv’s presence downstairs with a nod, and then she noted the changes already wrought in the kitchen. Her nose sniffed at the delicious aromas that wafted about, both the chicken soup and apple dumplings now in the oven.
“Come,” she said, motioning for Joy.
Joy looked behind her to see if she meant someone else, but no, she meant her, all right. She gave Ebba directions for taking the apple dumplings out when they were brown and told Liv to stay put ’til she got back. Then she followed the stately woman down a corridor she hadn’t seen before ’til they got to a locked door. Taking off one of the keys, the woman indicated that Joy should go in first.
Uh-oh! Don’t tell me they’re going to put me in a dungeon, after all.
But no, it wasn’t a dungeon. It was another storage room, this time with shelf after shelf piled with fabrics and garments and bedding, not to mention candles, fine cutlery, silver goblets, wine, soaps. Plus pungent spices; among those she could recognize were dill, ginger, cinnamon, mustard, nutmeg, cloves, coriander, and sage, along with salt and pepper.
“I am Arnora Ingersson, his father’s first wife, mother of Vidar, who should have inherited . . .” She stopped herself and bit her bottom lip to prevent herself from crying.
Joy put a hand on the woman’s arm, although it probably wasn’t welcome. “I have lost family, too. I know how it is.”
“You are helping Liv, I hear. And you have put the kitchen to rights, as I should have done these many months. ’Tis too much for me, I must admit. My grief is too great.”
“Maybe I could help you, too.”
Arnora smiled at her indulgently. “Mayhap. Know this, the house, and, yea, the kitchen, were not always in such a state. The attack changed all of us, even Kelda. You must bear with her.”
Now, that was going to take some patience.
“Here,” she said, beginning to pull garments off the shelves and handing them to her until they were piled up to her chin. “You have taken one step. I will take the next. The thralls and servants alike must bathe and change their garments. I daresay some have not done so in a year or more. My fault.”
“Where will they bathe?”
“You did not know? There is a bathing house on the far side of the bailey, a bow shot distance from the keep steps.”
Arnora was gathering leather boots, slippers, and belts and tossing them into an enormous burlap type bag. “Once they have changed, send all the dirty clothing to the wash-house. We will have the north’s biggest laundry day on the morrow.” She smiled sadly at Joy.
“You were here when the assault took place?”
Arnora closed her eyes for a moment. “Yea, I was. Hid in the treasure room over the garderobe, I did, along with a few others. I will ne’er forget the screams. If I were a man, I would have gone berserk, too.”
Like Brandr
was left unsaid.
“Man’s inhumanity to man . . . it never changes.”
“Well said!”
Joy barreled on, figuring she had nothing to lose by asking what she really wanted to know. “But I haven’t seen evidence of Brandr being insanely violent . . . going berserk. Oh, he’s grim a lot of the time, but that’s not quite the same.”
“You have been here a short time. Believe you me, it is there beneath the surface. And the least thing can set it off. A mention of the Sigurdssons. A vision he has when he is in the alehead. Punishment of a thrall for some betrayal of his loyalties. I saw him once almost flay the skin off a man because he dared question the continuing feud with the Sigurdssons.”
Flay? Like a whip?
Joy shivered with distaste, and, yes, apprehension. Hadn’t he accused her of disloyalty?
“Ah, well, that is the way of life. And soon Brandr will take a wife. Mayhap he will be better then.”
Joy gasped. “He’s engaged to someone?”
“Not yet, but he knows his duty. This keep needs a mistress. Bear’s Lair needs heirs . . . legitimate heirs.”
Joy’s face flamed.
“I would not have you hurt.”
“We don’t have that kind of relationship.”
Arnora just smiled. “There is no harm in being a concubine.”
“There is to me. Didn’t you mind your husband having those other wives and mistresses?”
“Sharing is a good thing. Besides, we were much like sisters sharing the same meal.”
“That remark doesn’t even pass the giggle test.”
Arnora blinked her surprise at Joy’s words, then laughed. “You have the right of it. We were as jealous as cats fighting over one randy mouse. Still, Igor was faithful to me for more than three years when we were first wed.”
“Men are as faithful as their options.”
“Mayhap. For a certainty, he forgot me for a time on first seeing Fiona, an Irish princess, or so she claimed. But then Fiona learned good and well how I felt when Igor took a third wife and two concubines.”
“Men!” Joy looked at Arnora with sympathy.
“Do not pity me. It is our way.”
“Bull! By accepting this practice, you women enable men to wave their genitals like flypaper.”
Arnora put a hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh. “Women have no power to change things.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. Women have way more power than they realize.” She went on to explain exactly what women could do.
After a very interested Arnora left the room with her, locking it behind them, Joy began to wonder if she’d said too much. That’s all she would need to get even deeper on Brandr’s bad side. A women’s sex strike!
But Joy had bigger problems than that.
The longer she was at Bear’s Lair, the more she was convinced this was no reenactment village. There were too many people playing roles that were downright authentic. Still, she couldn’t believe that she’d traveled back in time.
Another thing: Brandr was angry because she’d tried to communicate with her team. If by some chance they were able to find her, they would indeed come in, guns blazing. In other words, an enemy, just like he’d said. Which made her his enemy.
She was so confused.
Pleased to see clean clothing laid out for them, servants, thralls, and free men and women alike, including the soldiers, went to the bathhouse in shifts that evening before dinner. They didn’t want to put them on dirty bodies.
The meal was ready to be served shortly, and Joy was in the great hall, trying to scrub years of grease and dirt off the high table. It would take weeks to clean all the trestle tables, but she wanted to make a start. Unfortunately, she’d only managed to get about two feet done in the past hour, and she was bone tired.
Standing, she arched her aching back to get out the kinks. With a wide yawn, she looked to the right. Then looked again.
Brandr was standing there, hands on hips, his unhappy face on again.
What else was new?
“What in bloody hell are you doing?”
“That seems to be your favorite expression. By the way, that vein is standing out on your forehead again.”
“I asked you a question. What are you doing?”
“Trying to clean the table, but it’s going to take a looong time.” She drew his attention to the section she’d scraped down to the raw wood.
“A good and much-needed chore, but why are
you
doing it? I told you to cook, not become a menial servant. Next you will be down on your knees scrubbing the garderobe.”
“Actually—”
“Do not dare!”
“I did as much in the kitchen as I could, and I offered to help Arnora here. We were working side by side, but when she got a splinter under her fingernail, I told her to go supervise the clothing allocations.”
“Arnora was scrubbing tables?”
“Yes. Why not?”
He rubbed the back of his neck, wearily, as if she was hopeless.
She tossed the rasp and cleaning rag into the half-filled wooden bucket of dirty water. “Well, I’ll quit here for now. Time to serve the meal.”
“You are not going to serve the meal.”
“Why not?”
“Because you are falling over with exhaustion.”
“A thrall’s work is never done.”
“That is not the kind of thrall you are.”
“Oh? What kind am I?” She immediately regretted her loose tongue when she saw the evil grin on his face. “Never mind. By the way, I saved some of Kelda’s slop . . . I mean, stew . . . for you to eat, since you are such a defender of her good work. Everyone else will get my grandmother’s chicken soup.”
“I swear, your tongue has a mind of its own. Blather, blather, blather.”
“Yeah, well . . . yikes! What are you doing?”
He picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder, un-caring that the bucket was knocked over, saturating the rushes on the floor. Which was another thing to be done . . . sweeping up the dirty rushes. Really, what brainiac decided straw on the floor would be a good thing? But she digressed. With long strides, Brandr was moving down the hall toward the double outside doors where he grabbed a wall torch.
“This is getting to be a habit. I am not a sack of flour.”
“I know that well and good. A sack of flour knows when to shut its teeth.”
“That doesn’t make sense at all. A sack doesn’t . . . hey!” He’d placed his big hand on her rump with the fingers between her legs. “I don’t appreciate your pawing me.”
“I rather like it, myself.” They appeared to be passing some men who’d been talking but stopped as they approached. She could only see as far as the torch’s light and then only upside down.
“Greetings, Arnis. Good swordplay today.
“Erland, didst ask the smithy to fix that broken mace?
“Halldar, you are becoming quite the bowman.
“Oh, Tork, wouldst pour me a cup of mead . . . or two? I will join you shortly.”
“Uh, where are you going?” someone asked.
“Off to drown a wench.”
Steam heat, baby . . .
Finally, Brandr arrived at the bathing house.
The wench sighed with pleasure at the change in temperature, from outside freezing cold to deliciously warm.
He inserted the torch in a wall bracket, joining several others along with some fat candles in soapstone holders. Setting her on her feet, he took her by the shoulders when she swayed with a mixture of exhaustion and dizziness. “Leave us,” he ordered two nude men who were soaking in the small pool covered with a steamy haze. Without hesitation, they stood, dried off, dressed in clean garments, and left with their dirty clothes in hand.
Meanwhile, he undid the brooches that held her apron together, loosened the belt of her gunna, and lifted it over her head. She wore no undergarments.
“I can do it myself,” she said but was too tired to physically protest.
Kneeling, he took off her half boots and stared up at her magnificent body. He must have seen finer, but in this moment he could not recall a one. Her eyes were closed, so he gave himself the freedom to examine her in detail. From her tousled flame silk hair, which was curling in the humidity, to her beautiful breasts, firm and uptilted, and the red curls below which his fingers itched to explore.
Later, he told himself.
Picking her up by the waist, he dumped her in the pool. A mean thing to do, but he was in a mean, and, yea, frustrated mood.
She came up sputtering in the water, which was waist-deep on her. “Jackass!”
“I have been called worse.”
Finger combing her wet hair off her face, she sat on one of the steps, bringing the water level up to her breasts, which now floated on the top. A most enticing picture, if she only knew.
“Stay here,” he ordered, even as he was dumping water over hot rocks, creating more steam. “I will go get clean garments. Do not fall asleep, or you will drown.” She already had her neck on the lip of the round pool and her legs extended under the water.
“I don’t suppose you have any bubble bath?” she asked sleepily. “Of course you don’t. But how about a glass of wine? I love taking long bubble baths in my tub at home with a glass of wine.”
He was cursing under his breath as he stomped back to the keep. The wine he could provide, but did she know there were going to be two in her “tub” before long? He would even blow bubbles in the water if that would make her more amenable.
He grinned at that picture, then almost ran into Tork who held the door open for him.
“What is that noise I hear?” Tork asked, cupping a hand to his ear in an exaggerated pose.
Alerted by Tork’s teasing tone, Brandr declined to answer and shoved past him.
“Ah, ’tis the sound of a brave Viking knight being whipped by a woman’s fleece.”
Chapter 14