Page 104 of The Blue Viking

“I hate you,” she seethed, throwing the words at him like stones.

“You can’t hate me. You told me that you loved me.”

All the women at the table exclaimed, “She did?” as if it were of great import.

Maire bared her teeth in a snarl. “I take it back.”

“You can’t take it back. Uh-uh. Especially not in two days. You love me, and that’s that.”

“You are the most infuriating, insensitive, lecherous, traitorous, half-brained, two-legged animal ever to walk the earth.”

“What’s your point?”

“Oooooh! I’ll show you my point, you clodpole.” She took a huge cup of uisge-beatha and tossed it into his stunned face.

Then she walked proudly from the now silent hall. Once she reached her bedchamber, though, she sank to her knees and cried fiercely for all she had lost that day.

All that evening, and all the next morning, Rurik pounded on Maire’s door, but she refused to respond. He could hear her crying, though, and that nigh broke his heart and brought tears to his own eyes.

“I can explain. Really,” he’d said at first.

Then, “Alinor and Eadyth and Rain have convinced me … I am a loathsome, lackwitted lout.”

Another time, “I want you to have the necklet, Maire. It was meant for you… I mean, I think that deep down I always intended it for you, not Theta.”

“About Theta …,” he’d tried to explain, “I never loved her, or anything like that. ’Twas just that all my friends had settled down happily and it seemed the right thing to do. I was already regretting my decision long afore I entered Scotland.”

“I’ve sent all the witches away,” he apprised her by midmorning. “At great risk to myself, I might add. Several of them cast worrisome spells on me, but I told them I had my own personal witch to remove the spells. That would be you … not Cailleach, who refuses to depart, by the by. She won’t stop laughing at me, or cackling. Why do you suppose that is? I think she gave me the evil eye. Either that, or her one eye has developed a twitch.”

“Jamie has taken to kicking my shins. And he put slugs in my morning ale. Best you come out and reprimand him, Maire. Actually, it was milk, not ale. Ugh! The dairy cow still won’t stop giving milk, and some of the cats look as if they are going to explode. Who ever heard of a Viking drinking milk? Bolthor has already created a saga about it.”

“I’m hungry. Cook won’t give me anything to break my fast,” he said at noon. “Aren’t you hungry, Maire? You will wither away to nothing, and then where will you be? I may have to resort to eating the leftover haggis. Ha, ha, ha.”

Over and over, he kept coming back to repeat his different pleas.

“I’m lonely. No one will speak to me, not even Stigand, or Bolthor, or Toste, or Vagn, or Jostein. Bolthor made up a new saga, in addition to the milk one. ’Tis called ‘Rurik the Dumb-Arse Viking.’ What think you of that?”

“Guess what? Someone has finally spoken to me. Stigand. And you would not believe it if you saw him. He is clean-shaven and his hair trimmed. I swear, he is actually handsome … not as handsome as me, of course, but more than passable. That is not the most unbelievable part. Stigand is in love. With Nessa. They are going to marry and settle here in the Highlands. Do you think you will be coming out by then?”

Another time, “Answer me, witchling, or I am going to order Bolthor to come play bagpipes outside your door.”

Then, “Lance misses you.”

“If you don’t come out soon, I’m going to go play with my chain mail… alone.”

“I’m bored. If you’re not coming out, I may have to go find a war to fight.”

“You’ll be sorry.”

Over and over, Rurik trekked up and down the stairwell and down the corridor to Maire’s door, to no avail. He was developing some really fine muscles in his calves and thighs from all that climbing … not that they weren’t already fine.

Old John remarked in passing him one time, “The cracked bell needs no mending.” When Rurik just frowned at him, he translated, “Some things cannot be fixed.”

Rurik refused to believe that, even when Nessa added her opinion, “All yer talkin’ shakes no barley.”

Finally, Alinor took pity on him and took him aside. She was the most meddlesome person, but she was a woman. She must know things … things that he, a lowly man, did not. Not that he would ever refer to himself as lowly in her presence. “I have the answer,” she announced without preamble. “Tell her that you love her.”

“That’s it? That’s your great advice? Pfff! Incidentally, I think you have grown more freckles whilst I’ve been gone from Dragonstead. Devil’s Spittle, that is what I always heard them called. Has Satan been spitting on you of late? Ouch! Why did you hit me?”