Page 92 of The Caged Viking

Angela backed away, finally, but didn’t release Kirstin totally. She held her shoulders with extended arms and said, “Oh, my dear, we have been so worried!” Kirstin had been fourteen years old when her father married this kind woman, whose family had owned Blue Dragon vineyard for generations. Her father had been a farmer back in his old country. He liked to say that love turned him from turnips to grapes. “Are you all right?”

Kirstin nodded, and her father pulled out a chair at the table for her to sit down. He sat on the chair closest to her and took one of her hands in both of his. Angela put a glass of water in front of Kirstin and sat on the chair on her other side. She poured iced tea for herself and her husband.

Kirstin drank greedily, not having realized how thirsty she was. God bless Angela for noticing. Angela also handed her a tissue.

“Tell us,” her father urged.

Kirstin started from the beginning in the great hall of Uncle Jorund’s Rosestead, leading to her entry in King Aethelred’s Saxon castle. She told them that the arm rings that Storvald had made for her seemed to be the trigger for her time travel.

Her father gazed at the arm rings with some trepidation that she might somehow be shot back again. He was probably right to think she should be cautious; so, she picked up a dish towel sitting on the table and used it as a buffer to remove the rings and place them on the table.

She continued the story about how Hauk got out of the cage, and started to describe their escape from the castle and how they met up with Sweyn Forkbeard.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, did you say you got married?” her father asked.

“Well, yes, but I’m not sure how valid it was…is. I mean there’s no law regulating trans-century marriages. Ha, ha, ha,” she tried to joke.

“Married?” Angela said, wide-eyed. “To a man in a cage?”

“He was no longer in a cage by then.”

“How did you get married…I mean, who married you? Was there a law speaker?” Vikings, especially those of upper classes, usually employed a law speaker at one of their Things to perform the ceremony.

“No, it was a priest. Actually, an archbishop,” she revealed.

Angela, who was a devout Catholic, looked impressed. Her father looked concerned.

“Does that mean that the marriage would be valid?” Kirstin asked.

“I would think so,” Angela offered, tentatively.

Her father shook his head with dismay, then said, “Hold on with your story. I think we need something stronger than iced tea to hear this tale.”

Soon, a decanted bottle of vintage Blue Dragon wine sat on the table and three wine glasses were filled to the brims.

As she continued telling them about her adventure, both Angela and her father intermittently asked questions. Her father wanted to know the details of the battle, what kind of weapons were used, and what size of longship Hauk had used when he kidnapped her. Angela was more interested in the ladies in the Saxon court, the food served, and wasn’t it romantic that her husband had “kidnapped” her?

That latter remark of Angela’s caused a grunt of disapproval from Kirstin’s father. What man wants his daughter to be kidnapped?

Even though it was only a cursory summary she gave of the events, Kirstin noticed that they’d gone through one full bottle of wine and half of another. She was beginning to feel the effects.

Her father’s brow furrowed with puzzlement, and Kirstin could tell he had a lot more questions. “Why did you say things were a mess when we were walking to the house? Why were you wailing like a cat with its tail caught in a trap?”

“Because I fell in love with Hauk.”

“I knew it, I knew it!” Angela sighed.

Her father, who was not a sentimentalist, made a sound of disgust. “And did he fall in love with you, too?”

She nodded, unable to speak over the sudden lump in her throat.

“You said your return was accidental,” Angela remarked. “Would you have tried to come back, deliberately, if given a chance?”

“I don’t know.”

“What a mess!” her father concluded.

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