Page 44 of The Caged Viking

Maybe I should just try to get back home, and call this whole experience a strange detour in my destiny. Over and done with! A success since Hauk was out of the cage.

Maybe this is all just a dream, anyway.

But it doesn’t feel like a dream.

And he asked me to wait.

What to do, what to do?

She groaned.

First things first, she put on her flats and went out to the woods to relieve herself. Then she used some water that had been left in a bucket back at the tent to wash her face and hands. She finger-combed her hair, which was a mass of tangles, off her face into a low ponytail that she tied with a strip of leather that she’d found hanging from the tent flap. She slid the arm rings on, not wanting to risk having them inaccessible again, just in case.

As she nibbled at a hunk of manchet bread that had been left over from last night, she decided to explore what was left of the campsite. There were several dozen people working at campfires…women, older men, and some boys…mostly thralls, or slaves. Preparations were already being made to cook cauldrons of broths and stews to be served that evening, assuming the returning troops would have time to stop and eat and not be on the run from the Saxon army.

Most interesting to Kirstin was the huge tent which would serve as the “hospitium” to treat the inevitable wounded. Like the war council she’d sat in on, she wished she could imprint the scene around her with all its “historic” details. The folks setting up here were friendly enough, answering Kirstin’s questions, but everything was pretty much self-explainable. One table which held sharp knives and saws would be used for amputations. Another held salves, long strips of linen for bandages, splints for broken limbs and moss to stanch bleeding. More ominous was the hot fire being built up, next to which sat a number of flat-bladed tools for cauterizing wounds.

One man said he was the laeknir, or the healer, in charge; there were two others serving under him. Another man was the bonesetter. What they described in answer to her questions was a pretty well-organized operation for the time period when medical education was nonexistent. Despite the orderly arrangement, she couldn’t help but notice that the devices, the tabletops, and their hands were dirty. She shuddered to think what the mortality rate would be under these conditions.

Next to this large tent was a smaller one in which an aged crone of a woman, a sorceress, was setting up runic charms to ward off fever and putrid oozings. She also made offerings, for coin on behalf of a patient, to the statue of Eir, the god of healing. The crude wooden figurines of the god, who looked like a skinny Buddha with long Viking hair and a lazy eye, were strung on leather thongs to be worn around the neck as an amulet.

If any of her group came back with wounds, Kirstin was going to suggest they steer clear of the “hospitium,” keep everything clean, and hope for the best. Once again, Kirstin thought of Claire’s preparation for time-travel, and realized that antibiotics, or at the least a first-aid kit, would have been helpful. But then, unlike Claire in her second journey to the past, Kirstin hadn’t known ahead of time that she would be shot back in time.

Back at Hauk’s tent, Kirstin spent some time straightening the bed furs, where she found her mangled panties that Hauk had torn off. A lost cause until she found a needle and thread, she decided, then had to smile as she recalled something a college roommate of hers had said one time. Sonia, who was a free spirit if there ever was one, rarely wore underwear, claiming that the vagina had to breathe sometime, too. Well, Kirstin would be doing a lot of lower breathing today.

After everything was spiffy inside the tent, she went outside and starting a pot of water in the cauldron over a small fire she finally managed to get started with the help of Viggo, a boy of about eight who’d been standing around laughing at her twenty or so attempts to accomplish the simple task on her own. The scrawny bird was purchased from Viggo’s mother, Estrid, with a coin Kirstin had purloined from a small leather bag of various coins she’d found in Hauk’s chest. She had no idea if she’d overpaid or not. For all she knew, she might have paid what was comparable to a hundred dollars. Estrid had also tossed in a handful of wild roots and herbs…limp celery, carrots, onions, and what smelled like thyme. Most precious of all was a golf-ball-size block of salt.

Since she had no means of making noodles, not that she really knew how to make them from scratch, she decided to try some spaetzle, little dough balls, like her stepmother—Angela’s mother—used to make. “I don’t suppose you have any flour or an egg you could spare?” she asked Estrid.

“In fact, I do,” Estrid replied, her eyebrows arched in question.

When Kirstin explained, Estrid said, “Make enough for my pot, too.”

It was probably foolish of Kirstin to be preparing a meal, but she needed to be doing something, or she’d go mad wondering what was happening a mere five miles away. Besides, wasn’t chicken soup supposed to have some medicinal qualities? Why else would they give it to people when they were down with the flu or some kind of fever?

The flour she used for the spaetzle was oat and gritty, but the end result was rather good, if she did say so herself. Once she had the coals hot enough to maintain the broth at a simmer, Kirstin walked over to Estrid’s fire and said, “Mind if I join you?”

Estrid nodded toward a log that had been pulled close to her fire and handed Kirstin a wooden mug of mead. The honeyed ale would probably taste good if it were cold, but without refrigeration, it resembled a lukewarm, thin syrup with a kick. Kirstin liked beer, on occasion, and she knew good mead; her father brewed several batches a year at the vineyard, in addition to all the fine wines.

“Wow! That’s some cauldron you have there. You cooking for the entire camp?” Kirstin asked, motioning with her mug toward Estrid’s iron pot that must hold at least twenty-five gallons. Was she a thrall cooking for some clan?

Estrid, who was probably in her midforties, wore the typical Norse woman’s clothing…a long homespun gunna covered by a once-white, calf-length, open-sided apron attached at the shoulders with bronze brooches in a circular design. Her gray-threaded blonde hair was braided and wound into a coronet atop her head. She was of medium height, slightly plump. Not the usual camp follower. “Nay. Jist fer my family.”

Kirstin was a little embarrassed, to have made an assumption about her, in fact, about any of the women here. “Are they all here? Your family, I mean.”

Estrid shook her head as she stirred her pot. “Nay. Back home in Vestfold, my eldest son Jerrik takes care of our farmstead. My daughters Bodil and Girt are off to their own homes with their own families. Come to think on it, Girt is about to pop out another babe any day now, her fourth. Mayhap it’s already born. And Bodil is a fussy one, can’t stand the sight of blood. She’d be of no use near a battlefield. Nay, I am here with my husband and five of our sons, including Viggo over there, our late-in-life surprise.” She smiled toward Viggo, who was emerging from the woods, carrying an armload of kindling almost bigger than he was.

Kirstin thought for a moment, then exclaimed, “Eight children! And four of them are soldiers fighting alongside your husband? Holy cow!” Kirstin didn’t ask, but odds were that there were several others who had died in the womb or shortly after birth, given the life expectancy of fetuses and infants in this time period.

Estrid arched her brows, again, this time as if eight children were nothing out of the ordinary.

She tried to elaborate on her reaction by saying, “This is like a medieval version of Saving Private Ryan.”

“Who?”

“Never mind,” Kirstin said, not wanting to explain that all but one of the Ryan sons died in that Tom Hanks World War II movie.

“So, you’re with The Caged Viking, eh?” Estrid asked with a grin.