Chapter Eighteen
She went to Torgal next. She sat in a long house in the late autumn. The wedding preparations were noisy. She was sixteen and her name was Danica. She was nearly six feet tall and had the sturdy bones of a Norseman’s daughter. Her blonde hair was plaited and hung long past her hips. She was dressed in a fine embroidered frock, covered with an apron for this hard work. Guests from all over the country had come and were stacked like cordwood in the corners of the house. There was hardly a place to walk from one end to the other. The men spent a lot of time outdoors unless the weather was bad. Her mother had wanted her to be married in the spring, but her betrothed wanted to go a-viking in the spring. He wanted her good and pregnant by then.
Hamund. She hated him. She gritted her teeth thinking of him and clenched her fists whenever he walked by. Her mother adored the brute and never stopped talking about how handsome he was or how rich. Her mother wanted to be friends with his mother, who was an important elder in the village. Danica scrubbed a little too hard on the iron pot she was cleaning with sand. She should marry him, then, Danica seethed. Ever since her father had been killed last season there had been a concerted effort by everyone on her family to get her married off. Hamund had agreed as long as the south pasture and the stone barn there were included in the bride price. Those lands were bordered his own and would allow him to double the size of his herd.
Danica turned the pot and started on the other side. Torgal would be coming to the wedding. She clenched her fist. He would have to see her being given away to another man. She wondered how he could bear it. She could not. She had asked him to carry her away last week. She had met him at the well, and with her brothers and mother scowling from the doorway, she had asked him to take her. Begged him to take her.
He watered his horse with sad blue eyes and the droop of his broad shoulders told her his answer before his mouth did. She cried then, hoping her tears would convince him, but they did not. He took the reins of his mount, and with a friendly wave to her brothers, led him away into the forest.
She hated her mother. She hated her brothers. The pot was clean, now. Scrubbed so hard it had begun to shine on two places near the bottom. She scrubbed it some more as she glared at them. Five brothers. This wedding would not have happened were her father still alive. She had been his pride and joy. She spent winters on his knee and learned early how he like his bread buttered and how much spice to put in his mead. She did grieve for him. But now she hated him too for not giving her to Torgal before he died. Torgal had asked for her. Her father had said he would think about it.
“Now he is dead,” she said aloud and a distant cousin looked up from her embroidery. Danica amended the murderous look on her face and explained, politely, “Father. He is dead. What a shame he could not be here tomorrow.” Her cousin smiled in agreement and turned back to her sewing. Danica put the pot down and went outside. It was too hot in there with all those bodies and the cooking fires getting the roasted meats ready for her wedding feast.
Torgal would be outside with the other young men. One of the ale barrels had been put outside for them and they stood around the tap with their wooden mugs in their fine embroidered clothes and told lies about their prowess. Fighting and whoring. Their voiced quieted as she approached them. Polite eyes followed her movements. When she was close enough she greeted them each in order of their social standing, starting with the son of the chieftain. She tried not to rest her eyes on Torgal more than on the other men. He held his face stiffly impassive. Danica knew that meant she should say nothing unseemly and she did not. She thanked them for coming to her wedding. She put an edge on the last word and made sure Torgal was the last man she looked at before returned to the longhouse and its oppressive atmosphere within.
“I hate them all,” she grumbled later that night as she washed her arms and legs from a small tub of warm water. He will allow me to be married to that brute and not try for me at all. She put down the wet cloth and fought the screaming tears that were right on the edge. I will not cry, she promised. Even if it means I must snarl my vows in Hamund’s face.
She picked up the cloth again. She heard a clack at the shutter. She frowned and went to the window. She did not push it open but peered through the crack. There he was. Torgal. The sun set early this time of year. It was almost too dark to see him, but there was no mistaking the bright blond hair. Torgal was vain of his hair and tonight he had it brushed and braided and tied with bits of red wool. She smiled and her anger faded as it did whenever she set eyes on him. He was so beautiful. He was tall and well-muscled which was common for the young men of her village, but he had straight white teeth, which was a rarity.
She opened the shutter just a little so he could tell that she recognized him. He looked to the right and left before signaling for her to open wider. She pushed the shutters open and smiled down at him. He looked around again and tossed up a small stone, then fled.
She picked the stone from the floor and unwrapped the leaves that were tied around it. The runic letters said for her to meet him in the building behind the well where the winter fodder was stored. She quickly crumpled the leaves into dust and ground them into the wood floor with the ball of her foot. She put away her bathing things and put on her simple brown smock and tied it around her waist with a sash.
As soon as it was dark enough, she told her mother she was going to the outhouse and ran as fast as she could to the shed.
He grabbed her as she came around the posts that supported the slanted roof. He kissed her hard and she clutched at him with all her strength. Victoria felt the surge of emotion as a thrill in her throat and a seizing up in her belly. She entered Danica’s body at that point and took over control of her arms and legs. When Torgal pulled back to look at her, she looked into his eyes for Jack and Marcus. They were icy blue instead of brown. The jaw was stronger, the teeth straighter. But the arms that held her tightly felt familiar, like her favorite bathrobe on Sunday mornings. She lifted her mouth for him and the kiss sent shivers of pleasure down her neck and across her arms and into every part of her body. This was Marcus with his gentle touch and Jack with his strong arms and intense eyes. Torgal had a wildness that neither of her other lovers had cultivated. The other two lived comfortably among society in their own ways, but Torgal had a whiff of the wild man of the woods. His eyes flashed like wolf eyes and reminded Victoria of her demon.
He kissed her now and growled low in his throat. “Danica, you cannot marry that dolt.”
Her lips smiled beneath his lips and she agreed with a muffled, “yes” and kissed him harder. She pulled him closer against his body and felt his hard cock like a metal rod against her middle. One hand left his neck where she had been twining his long hair and slid down to grasp it. The kisses continued, but now he writhed with her hand on him and his mouth became hot as he panted. He pushed her away. “We cannot,” he gasped. “Woman, put your hand down.”
“No,” she flashed her eyes at him. “If you will not carry me away from this wedding, then you will carry me away on your cock. Now. Hamund will not have my maidenhead.”
A strong hand took hers from his rigid cock and lifted it up to cover her breasts. He pressed his hips harder into her and groaned.
She continued, “I will not submit to Hamund. I will tear at his back and kick at his balls if he tries to mount me. I will bite his cheek and rip his hair. He will not enter my body. Only you shall have me. Only you.” Danica gave small demonstrations of each of these defenses as she spoke them and on the words, ‘enter my body’ Torgal crushed her against him and kissed her hard. She opened her mouth and took his tongue and his cock hardened further. She bent her knees with her arms on his neck and brought him down into the mound of straw in the shelter. Victoria tried to stop her. She planted the images of the dire consequences of this rash act in her head. The fires of lust were upon this young virgin. The thoughts that they might be discovered and punished did nothing but fan those flames into an inferno of desire for this man. Victoria was overcome with Danica’s passion and felt pushed around helplessly inside her body.
When Torgal’s cock entered her and broke the thin membrane that proved Danica’s maidenhood Victoria felt a huge wave of pleasure and pain. She arched her back and cried out as Danica did, she met his thrusts with her own and the waves and waves of pleasure broke over her in unending crashes of warm contentment. Torgal’s caresses and murmurs of love carried her through the encounter with a blissful heat that seemed to steam the chilly autumn night.
This lovemaking was short and passionate. He finished quickly as he was young and the circumstances of their coupling did not lend itself to long slow strokes. Danica’s eyes glittered with triumph and Victoria felt her mind tell her that now Torgal must take her away. Now that he had her, she was his and he could not hand her over to her brothers to be given to their neighbor. She thought she had won.
But Victoria knew what this girl did not. She saw the men leave the longhouse. She saw them head toward the fodder-house. There were eight of them. Her brothers and Hamund and Hamund’s brothers.
Torgal and Danica were still joined together when they burst in. Victoria cursed. She was supposed to have prevented this. In the back of her head she heard her demon murmur that nothing could have prevented this. She resisted him but the scene unfolded nonetheless. The brothers put their hands on Torgal’s shoulders and pulled him off of Danica, his dripping cock testified against him before multiple witnesses. Danica was like a screeching cat, all claws and teeth. She came up out of the straw and flung herself at her brothers, her hair flying about her face and her brown dress crumpled and tripping her legs as she tried to scratch their eyes out. They caught her easily and pinned her arms behind her. Both lovers were marched to the longhouse and Victoria fled.
Back in her bed she turned stricken eyes on Mr. Magnus and Jasper. “I failed Torgal. He is taken again.”
Jasper grabbed at her arm, “You must go back, then.”
She reached for the glass of water on the table and Jasper handed it to her. “Go back,” he repeated.
“Can I stop her?” Victoria drank the water and remembered Danica’s fierce determination. There was no stopping that woman. She would have Torgal’s dick inside her no matter that Odin or Thor would come crashing from the heavens to stop her. She smiled a little. Danica’s fierce determination was something she wished she had in this life.
Mr. Magnus prompted her. “It is possible that it is not the act itself that must be stopped, but something else. The consequences, perhaps. It was not the coupling that killed him.”
This made sense. Victoria was not eager to face the wrath of those Vikings. Torgal had committed an offense that had no defense. The punishment was death. The dishonor to Hamund and his family could not be assuaged with coin. Danica’s maidenhood had a price, but her honor and the honor of her brothers did not. Victoria knew this.
She remembered her last visitation. He had broken himself out of his chains, and broken Sigrid’s sons. And broken himself. She remembered his sad eyes and the twinges of pain in them. Victoria looked at Mr. Magnus. “Do you know more? Did he tell you what I needed to do?” Surely Danica would have found herself locked up as well.
Albert Magnus spread his hands in defeat. “This is your struggle Victoria. I have handed you the sandwich, you must eat it yourself.”
She turned to him in surprise for he had repeated Torgal’s words to her in the chilly woods. She flashed back to the longhouse, and found herself as Danica, locked in the attic room where the summer tools and chests of linens were stored. Victoria put her ear down to the floorboards and listened to the angry voices below.
Torgal had already been beaten once. He was in chains and locked securely by the neck and wrists to the outer logs of the longhouse where the men sometimes secure the bull or tie their horses. Danica was furious. So furious that her mind was not thinking. Her emotions swirled around inside her head and turned her from a human woman to a she-wolf. Victoria tired of trying to calm her and decided to use her own mind instead.
She would not be able to free Torgal until she freed herself. That was step one. She was not afraid of heights. The trapdoor was secured from below. The shuttered opening in the wall of the attic had been nailed shut. She made Danica feel the underside of the roof at the low end of the attic, pushing up on the rafters and feeling the turf and thatch. She made Danica move along the lowest edge until she found a weak spot. There. Danica needed no more promoting. She dug at the thatch and the sods that made up the roof of the longhouse until she could stick an arm through and up and out into the night air. Victoria harnessed Danica’s determination and strength. This girl was as strong as an ox. In no time the hole was large enough to crawl through and Danica was on the roof, holding tightly to the turf to keep from sliding to the ground.
She hitched up her skirts around her belted waist and used her bare toes to grip the grass and straw as she crawled and scrambled over the rounded peak, avoiding the smoke hole, and to the other side where she lay on her belly over the place where Torgal was chained.
His head drooped over his chest. Victoria knew he had been beaten very badly. Danica knew as well. Her brothers had backhanded her a few times and her lip was still swollen. It was cold, and the mist would turn to rain. Victoria wondered about hypothermia and Danica worried about frostbite. There was no easy way to get down from the roof without a rope. The mist made the grass on the roof slick. Once she started to slide, Danica would go to the ground, a fall of about twenty feet, maybe fifteen if she tried to drop from the eaves. If she landed on soft ground she might not break her ankles, but it would hurt. Victoria did the figuring for her and suggested she slide around to the end of the house near the middens. If she was going to fall, she should fall in the trash mound.
Danica scrambled like a monkey and before Victoria had time to think about it further, hung for a few seconds from the eaves, her strong hands in the turf as her feet and wet dress swung in the air, then dropped to a hard fall that knocked the wind out of her for a few painful moments. An ankle hurt and Victoria felt it for moving bones. Just a sprain. She was about to tell Danica to go slowly and find a crutch when she found herself running with little hops and skips toward the man in chains. No crutches for this woman.
“Torgal,” she breathed. He lifted his head to look at her and he was no longer beautiful. Victoria wanted to cry, but the sight of his puffed eye and split lip and bent nose threw Danica into a rage instead of tears. She dug at his manacle and followed the chain to the ring set in the thick log. Blood dripped onto his embroidered tunic from his broken nose and his hair was no longer neatly braided, but hung limp and twisted in snarls over his neck and chest.
Victoria touched his cheek gently with her ghost hand and felt bones move. She ran her hands over his ribs and he winced. She touched his right side where his liver was. Danica continued to dig at the ring and the chain. She searched the ground for a thin hard stick and poked at the lock. Torgal was too weak and broken to protest these fruitless ministrations and Victoria put her mind to work.
He had escaped once. But he had been chained in another house. Sigrid’s house. And chained to boards instead of a great log. That must be where he was taken in the morning. She must free him tonight before the second fatal beating. This is how she must change history. Danica was crying tears of frustration and anxiety, not grief. Her nimble fingers had miraculously unlocked one of the manacles and she was fervently picking the other. She knew there would be little time before someone checked on her in the attic or came outside to punch Torgal again for good measure.
While Danica worked on the lock, Victoria felt for Torgal. Not the young man who sealed his fate with his cock, but Torgal the demon who visited her in the night and seared her heart and body with his love. She saw him raise his head again and the one blue eye, the one not swollen shut, looked at her and knew her.
Torgal, she called to him, knowing he heard her with his heart and not his ears, tell me how to help you.
I am here to help you, my love, to…the blue eye blinked. He tried to smile with his broken mouth…help yourself. She heard this as clearly as if his mouth had uttered the words. This is not about me, Victoria, it is about you.
She felt Danica’s victory as the manacle fell away in her hands. She let it drop and tried to lift Torgal under the arms. The girl said, “Come, Brute. On your feet. Let’s go. We make for the woods and then the shore. We leave.”
Victoria was swept to the side now that Danica had control. The young woman half dragged Torgal into the shelter of the pines. She propped him against a tree to get her breath for a moment, then grabbed his arm over her shoulder and tugged him after her. Victoria felt her swollen ankle and was amazed. Danica had no thought for herself or her injury. In her mind was Torgal and nothing else. Both of them left unmistakable tracks in the leaves and the mud. Victoria could see the futility of this flight, though nothing she could think at this stubborn girl got through her thick head.
That is when she really understood that she was Danica. The traits of all three women were hers. Alana’s compassion, Maggie’s devotion, and Danica’s tenacity. And what about Victoria? She sighed, trying to think what she might be bringing to the table. Nothing but self-pity and grief. She was the weak link in this chain of history.
They reached a fork in the footpath. Danica swung to the right but was brought up short by Torgal who weaved to the left. “This way,” he said.
“No, this way.” Danica leaned hard to the right, pulling his arm.
They might have stood there glaring at each other until Gotterdammerung but for the sound of nickering to their left. Danica’s eyes grew big and Torgal grunted a painful laugh. “This way,” he insisted. I have horses for us. Did you hide horses in the woods, woman? Are they to the right?”
Danica immediately swung to the left, half carrying her man and half dragging him. Soon Victoria could see the waving tails of two huge draft horses and a third piled high with leather bags and wicker baskets.
“You planned to come for me tonight?” Danica had dropped his arm and was now examining the escape vehicles in the dappled moonlight that came through the trees. Torgal dropped to his knees when she released him. Victoria tried to get the girl to see that he was in serious pain and needed to rest, but Danica could not be turned. She put her hands over the horses’ faces and noses, felt the saddles and fingered the baggage. “You were going to come for me,” she whispered. “You were.”
Torgal nodded. “But some wench grabbed me by my cock and threw me down in the straw.”
Danica laughed. “You should have told me the day before.”
“Woman. I had to make a scene out of abducting you so everyone would save their honor. I needed to stride into the house, grab you and run for the woods with you screaming over my shoulder. I was going to plan it all out with you in the shed. Instead…” He breathed in and out painfully.
“Right.” Danica tightened the girths of both animals. The folly of her actions was now painfully obvious. Victoria wanted to slap her for the thoughtlessness that killed her lover and ruined her life, but she could not. I am suffering for her impetuous act. She looked at Torgal panting on the forest floor, one arm across his abdomen. And he is.
Torgal looked up as though he could hear her thoughts. His blue eyes were yellow.