Page 18 of The Bewitched Viking

Tykir gave a two-word answer, coarse and explicit.

But he didn’t mean it.

Really.

“Tykir is really not a bad sort at all,” Eadyth insisted as she poured a pail of clean water over Alinor’s soap-lathered hair. The unruly strands hung down to her waist when unbound.

Eadyth had insisted that Alinor call her by her given name several hours past, when they’d left the company of the men back at the palace, excepting Bolthor, who stood guard downstairs. Tykir, his brother and the other men had spoken of a visit to the bathhouse at the palace, where they would steam off the dirt and grime of “battle.” And regale each other with overblown tales of conquest in the little skirmish they’d just ended.

“In fact, Tykir is one of the most charming men I’ve ever met. And that includes my husband, Eirik, who can be most…ah, persuasive, when he wants to be.” Eadyth flashed Alinor a secretive smile, as if Alinor would understand perfectly. Hah! No man had ever exerted himself to be charming to Alinor. Certainly not her three aged husbands, who’d believed they were doing her a favor by marrying her.

As to that other assertion…Alinor snorted her opinion of Tykir being proclaimed the most charming man in Eadyth’s acquaintance. Eadyth must live in a nunnery. “He is a troll,” Alinor contended as she parted the wet swaths of her hair to peer up at the woman with disbelief.

Undaunted, Eadyth countered, “Well, of course. All men are trolls betimes.”

Alinor couldn’t be concerned about Tykir or the Vikings or even her captivity right now. She was taking too much pleasure in her first bath in over a week. Sitting in a copper tub, she sighed at the joy of mere soap and water. They were in the second-floor bedchamber of Gyda, an elderly Viking widow who was a longtime friend of the Thorksson family. As Alinor bathed, Gyda sat in a straight-backed chair, working a hand loom and listening intently to Eadyth’s palace gossip.

“I can scarce believe that Eric Bloodaxe is king once again,” Gyda commented, her fingers weaving the various colored threads into an intricate Norse pattern. “He is like a pesky fly that keeps coming back, no matter how often swatted away. I have no love of the Saxons, of course,” she said, casting an apologetic glance at Alinor, “but he has been a thorn in the side of King Edred off and on for years now. I wish he would either leave or manage to stay in power here in Northumbria.”

“King Eric is uncle to my husband and Tykir, but a more ruthless man I have never met,” Eadyth explained to Alinor, who was lathering up her hair again.

“Even when they were babes, their father, Thork, could not acknowledge them for fear Eric would come after them,” Gyda added. “That is why they lived with me and my Olaf for many years of their youth, apart from their beloved father, who went off Jomsviking to protect them. Orphans, they were, for all purposes, even with living kin.”

Alinor paused her hair washing. “I don’t understand. How could the father’s abandonment protect the sons?”

“Ah! You do not know how Eric Bloodaxe got his name then,” Eadyth declared and glanced toward Gyda. Both women shook their heads in disgust. “King Harald Fairhair, one of the most powerful rulers in Norway, was the father of dozens of sons and daughters alike by his numerous wives and mistresses. He practiced the more danico. Eric was ruthless from an early age in his pursuit of his father’s crown. ’Tis a fact that many of his brothers died under his blade to feed that ambition. Thus the name Eric Bloodaxe.”

“And Tykir and Eirik’s father—Thork, methinks you called him—how did he fit into the picture?” Alinor asked.

“Thork never had any interest in a kingship, and he was illegitimate, besides. But though Eric’s blood was legitimate, he was hated by the Norse people for his cruelty,” Eadyth said. “There was the unfounded fear on Eric’s part that while Thork disdained a crown, his sons might not.”

“And so Thork pretended at first that he had no sons, abandoning the babes to the care of others. They were forbidden to call him father, and never did he give them a warm word or gesture of affection. Then later, when word got out that they were indeed his sons, he was forced to pretend an indifference.” Gyda clicked her tongue as her eyes clouded over with unpleasant memories. “And his overprotection was warranted. There was a time…I remember it well…when an evil Viking villain, Ivar the Terrible, chopped off Eirik’s little finger and sent it to Ravenshire in a parchment, all to lure Thork to his death. Which was the final result, in the end. Death. Both Thork’s and my husband’s, Olaf.”

Eadyth reached over and patted Gyda’s quaking shoulders.

“And how about their mothers?” Alinor was attempting to break the grimness that had overtaken their conversation.

“Thea, a Saxon thrall, was Eirik’s mother. She died in the birthing,” Gyda answered. “But Tykir…well, his mother Asbol was a Viking princess who abandoned the boy when he was still in swaddling clothes. Thork offered to marry her, ’tis said, but she sought a nobler marriage, and never once wanted to see her child over the years.”

All of the women exchanged appalled looks at that unnatural behavior for a mother.

“They were such lonely children,” Gyda continued, “raised here in Jorvik by me and Olaf, then at Ravenshire by Dar and Aud, their grandparents, till their death, but I think Tykir suffered most, being the youngest. I remember how the little boy would ask every woman he encountered, ‘Are you my mother?’ ’Twas heartwrenching, I tell you. He was left alone when he was only eight and Eirik ten when Eirik went off to foster in King Athelstan’s Saxon court. Eirik was only half-Viking, you recall, but Tykir was pure Viking to the core. I remember how he would proclaim, even when he was too small to lift a mighty sword, that someday he would be a Jomsviking, too…just so he could stand beside his father. Then, his father died later that year, when he was eight, and Eirik was off a-fostering. And finally, his stepmother, Ruby, disappeared in a mysterious fashion.”

“Gyda!” Eadyth exclaimed with sudden inspiration. “Dost think that is why Tykir has refused to settle in one place all these years? Why he never wed?”

“I am certain of it,” Gyda said with an emphatic nod. “The boy was rejected or abandoned by everyone he ever loved. So he protects himself from hurt by never caring deeply for anyone. Even his own brother, whom he visits only on rare occasions.”

“Oh, this is too much. You two are trying to turn my anger away from that troll by playing on my sympathies. The boy has seen thirty and five winters, and if he fails to care for anyone but himself, ’tis because he is a troll.”

Gyda and Eadyth smiled at the vehemence of her response.

“Do you think…?” Eadyth arched a brow at Gyda.

The old woman chortled gleefully. “Mayhap. Mayhap.”

And they both gazed at Alinor in the oddest way.

“Here,” Eadyth said then, handing Alinor a small soapstone container filled with a rose-scented cream. “Your hair is just like mine—”