Page 111 of The Reluctant Viking

“Do you stand behind maids now in cowardice?” Hrolf taunted Thork.

“Nay, I do not!” Thork stood, uncaring of his nudity. The three guards grabbed his arms and held his struggling body in place with his arms pinioned behind his back. Hrolf drew a long-handled knife.

Poppa pulled at Hrolf’s arm, trying to intercede. “They love each other. Do not do this thing. For my sake, if not for your new granddaughter’s, spare him.”

The muscles in Hrolf’s face were rigid with the self-control he could barely exert. Ruby knew he would just as well kill Thork, but in deference to Poppa he offered grudgingly, “Will you marry my granddaughter if we bring the priest now?”

Thork’s eyes turned bleak. “I cannot. Honor-bound am I to Elise.” He looked at Ruby sadly and implored, “Please understand. I would if I could.”

Poppa pleaded with Hrolf once again, “Do not let your temper rule. Wait till the bloodlust settles.”

Hrolf’s angry eyes impaled Thork, but he finally turned to Poppa. “For your sake, I will delay my rage.” He told his retainers, “Take him to the guardroom and secure him well until I decide his fate. And someone find that whoreson Selik and bring him to my chamber. The lusty rogue is probably plowing one of my daughters.”

Ruby wept and pleaded for Thork’s release after they took him away, but Hrolf shrugged her off coldly. “You shame me, wench. Heed me well, if there is a babe bred on you already, you will have a husband—be it Thork or a stableboy.”

Ruby had no idea what Hrolf said to Selik in his chamber, but the angry shouts could be heard throughout the keep. Selik left the castle soon after under armed guard, and no one would tell Ruby where he went. Hrolf refused to speak with Ruby and banished her to her rooms, under double guard. He suspected, rightly so, that she would try to release Thork. Ruby didn’t know if they tortured Thork, or if he was even alive. She feared that Hrolf looked at Thork as a means of finally avenging himself on King Harald.

Thankfully, Thork escaped two days later, slitting his captors’ throats and slipping off into the darkness on one of his ships, which Hrolf had commandeered and which still lay in the harbor. For days Hrolf and his retainers followed Thork in their own ships, but to no avail. They returned to the castle in a rage.

“The bastard returns to Northumbria, not to Jomsborg,” Hrolf announced that night. He looked Ruby coldly in the eye and said, “’Tis sure he goes to wed the Saxon wench Elise. Why else would he go back there?”

“Maybe he went back to get troops to return here to fight you,” Ruby offered defiantly, trying to keep her eyes wide open so the tears would not spill over and embarrass her.

“Thor’s toenails, girl! Are you so besotted you cannot see in front of your face? Jomsborg is closer than Northumbria. If Thork intended to fight me, he would have sought his Jomsviking comrades.”

Seeing how distraught Ruby was, Poppa interceded for her, “Leave off, Hrolf. Canst you not see how your words wound?”

“Thor’s blood! Would you have me lie to her? The man refused to marry her, ’Tis a fact. The sooner she accepts that, the better.”

Ruby bent her head and let the tears slide silently down her face.

Softening, Hrolf said gruffly, “If you do not carry the scoundrel’s babe, I will find a good husband for you.”

“I’m not pregnant,” Ruby snapped, shrugging off the comforting hand he’d put on her shoulder, “and I don’t want you to find me a husband.”

“Oh, I will find you a mate, of that you can be sure,” he warned on a harder note, displeased with her shrewish attitude, “and it will not be an easy task, with you not having a maidenhead.”

Ruby threw up her hands in disgust. “I haven’t had a maidenhead for twenty years.”

Hrolf’s eyes hardened at her vulgar, illogical words. “Best you clean your tongue afore I introduce you to any man, or I may cut it out for you.”

The two glared at each other, each refusing to back off. Finally Poppa asked the skald to tell them a good, long saga.

Despite the turmoil over Thork’s escape, the castle returned to normal activities. The slaughter of cattle, hogs and other game was held on Michaelmas Day at the end of September. Everyone in the castle and surrounding region was kept busy with the butchering, salting and dividing of the provender for winter. The women cleaned the intestines for sausage making, which caused Ruby to remember with a sad smile the condom controversy in Jorvik, but she was too depressed to even joke about it with Poppa.

As unhappy as she was, Ruby couldn’t be sorry that Thork had escaped Hrolf’s wrath. She would rather have him married to Elise than tortured or dead in Normandy, especially since she’d heard the servants talk furtively of the harsh treatment Hrolf doled out to his enemies. To Hrolf, Thork now deserved the worst punishment, not only for his treatment of Ruby, but for killing the guards on his escape.

Poppa and her women watched Ruby closely for several weeks, waiting for her monthly flow to come, which it did, of course, as Ruby knew it would, thanks to Thork’s persistent caution. She felt curiously saddened when the blood showed. A baby with Thork would have been like the one she and Jack had planned and never had.

Hrolf treated Ruby with cool politeness, feeling she’d betrayed him by her actions and lack of remorse. Ruby walked the halls of the great manor for the next month like a zombie. She ate, slept, helped Poppa with the household chores and went to chapel every day for Mass and prayer, but she never laughed, and she refused to sing or tell her stories. She knew Poppa worried about her, but she felt helpless, smothered by the dark mood that settled over her in a weighty cloud.

Was this how she would live out the rest of her life—a living limbo, never returning to the future and never finding love in the past? Ruby realized that she had somehow subconsciously come up with a reason for her time-travel. She’d rationalized to herself that if she could have brought love to Thork and enhanced his life, it would have made up for what she’d failed to do with Jack. It now looked as if she’d screwed up all over again.

“Aren’t you hungry?” Poppa asked gently, jarring Ruby’s thoughts back to the present and the food she pushed around her plate with a small knife.

“No.” Ruby tried not to be rude to Poppa. The dear lady tried so hard to ride the fence between her and Hrolf. She reminded her a lot of Aud.

Aud! She hadn’t thought of her and Dar in ages. Ruby wondered how Tykir was getting on in Aud’s household. And Eirik? Would Thork and Elise visit Eirik at Athelstan’s palace? On their honeymoon? Would they have a baby together, despite Thork’s intentions to the contrary? Were they making love at that very moment?