Page 102 of A Tale of Two Vikings

Down the stairs and through the great hall of Ravenshire, Toste carried a brass tub on his head, with a bundle of various supplies slung over his shoulder. And he was whistling.

The whistling was his downfall.

He’d almost made it to the wide double doors that led down the steps and out to the bailey when Bolthor called out, “Is that you whistling, Toste?”

With a sigh of resignation, he turned, still with the tub on his head, and said, “Yea, ’tis me.”

Bolthor was sitting at one of the long trestle tables at the far end of the mostly empty hall, whittling a piece of wood. “Dost know you have a tub on your head?”

“Of course I know I have a tub on my head.”

“You need not snap at me. I did not cause you to have a tub on your head.”

“Why do you have a tub on your head,” Tykir inquired silkily, having coming up behind him. So surprised was Toste that he almost dropped the tub.

“Because I want to bathe.” Could I say anything more lackwitted than that?

“Why can’t you bathe in the spring house or up in your bedchamber?” It was Eirik speaking now. He’d come up on his other side. His three friends were surrounding him, all of them grinning.

“Because I like to bathe in private.” They ought to call me Toste the Lackwit.

“Ah, suddenly modest, are you?” Tykir remarked.

Or lackwitted.

“Well, that is understandable,” Eirik said. “I do not like to show off my body parts to one and all either, impressive as they are.”

“Pffff!” Toste said, whether in regard to Eirik’s observation or his own awkward situation, he was not sure. It was an all-encompassing “Pffff,” he supposed.

While he stood there with a tub on his head, Bolthor of course launched into one of his poems, sure to be a jest-arrow directed at him.

“Viking men are very clean,

wasting much time on daily hygiene.

Yea, Norsemen are rarely stinksome,

which is what makes them so winsome.

’Tis why Saxon women think them nice,

unlike their own men infested with lice.

But there are times wenches like a man dirty,

and it’s not in a tub with water squirty.”

“Is that it?” Toste asked Bolthor.

“For now. Methinks I will add some more verses later, when the ladies are nearby to appreciate my sentiments,” Bolthor explained. Eadyth and Alinor were off somewhere preparing for the huge yuletime celebration. Toste hoped to be gone by then.

“Come have a drink with us afore you cart your tub hither and yon,” Tykir invited.

If Toste declined, they would just tease him more. So he sat down, placing the tub and bundle on the rushes at his feet. They all waited till a housecarl poured them fresh mugs of Eadyth’s famous mead before speaking.

“So, how is Esme?” Tykir inquired with a waggle of his eyebrows.

“Just fine.”