The Pirate Bride (7 page)

“Pretend we are accepting of our capture,” Jamie added.

Thork nodded. “And be careful what we drink or eat, lest we find ourselves in an herb sleep again whilst the women do what they will with our bodies.”

That remark prompted silence as the men pondered what the women might do with their bodies whilst asleep.

“Can a man have sex with a woman whilst asleep?” Brokk wanted to know.

“Have you ne’er had sex dreams where you awakened with damp braies?” Bolthor asked Brokk.

The boy blushed his answer.

“Oh, this is just wonderful!” Jostein said with disgust. “Not only must we worry about what we do whilst awake, but now we must worry about what we do when asleep.”

“Um, one thing . . .” Brokk hesitated, and his blush deepened. “Didst say there are ways to swive a wench and not plant your seed in her womb?”

Thork wondered if Brokk was an untried youthling, or had he breached a woman’s portal already? Twelve was not an unheard of age for a first tup. He had been twelve himself when first the dairy maid—

“Yea, Thork, do tell,” Finn urged with a wink.

Thork had to think a minute to recall what Finn referred to. Ah, the spilling of seed to prevent child begetting. He did in fact explain. Briefly. To his amazement, the other men listened as intently as Brokk. Did not all adult men know this? Did not even the Christian Bible mention Onan and the spilling of seed?

“I have heard of using pig’s intestines,” Jamie told them, “though my countrymen much prefer to use those for haggis.”

“Halved lemons are said to work.” This from Jostein, who’d probably never seen a lemon in his life.

“There are potions,” suggested Henry.

After all Thork’s talk, that’s all the men could think about. Sex.

This was proven true when Bolthor announced a new saga: “When Vikings Plow Fallow Fields.”

With a groan, Thork put his face on the table in front of him, and pounded his forehead three times. Then he pounded a fourth time, just for emphasis.

Bolthor cleared his throat and began, “This is the saga of Thork the Great . . .”

Chapter Six

The question was: Who could be more devious?  . . .

M
edana called for a council of the Thrudr leadership—eight in all, including herself—to discuss the course of action for releasing the “captives.”

There was Gudron, of course, mistress of military, who had many women serving under her, such as mistress of swordplay, mistress of archery, mistress of weapon sharpening, and mistress of weapon storage.

And Elida, mistress of threads, who had workers in charge of shearing sheep, spinning yarn, weaving cloth, making clothing and blankets.

Solveig, mistress of shipwrighting, and her workers handled anything related to shipbuilding and repair. Somehow, with her rudimentary skills passed on by her father, they’d managed to maintain the small longship Medana and her friends had left Stormgard in, renamed
Pirate Lady
, and now they were trying to build one themselves. A very slow process.

Lilli, mistress of indoor stewardship, and her staff handled everything indoors, from cooking to laundry to cleaning of halls and sleeping chamber.

Bergdis, mistress of buildings and woodworking, had at least a dozen women helping her build and maintain the longhouses and animal shelter, not to mention making furniture and wood eating supplies, bowls and spoons and such. It was a learned craft that had some laughingly ludicrous results in the beginning, like lopsided roofs and spoons that gave splinters to the tongue. They were all learning.

Liv, mistress of healing, came from a long line of healers, some might say witches. She somehow kept track in her head of all the recipes for curing various illnesses and she’d trained others on gathering proper herbs and roots to constantly replenish their stores.

And finally, Freyja, who had been with Medana from the beginning, at one time her nursemaid, now mistress of hunt and fish. Tales of Freyja’s early efforts to feed them would be the fodder of sagas told around winter hearths for years to come. If Medana ever had to eat hedgehog again in this lifetime it would be too soon. And fish. Always fish, before they’d learned to hunt and trap. Once a few years back, a whale had the misfortune to run aground on Small Island during a storm, and the women had food stores for a whole season.

Medana glanced around at her council members with fondness. The ties that bound them were long and sturdy.

She would have called an assembly for a full Thing, a governing assembly, but some of her guards needed to keep an eye on the sly men who, after two days here, were exploring too much of the island for her comfort and asking too many questions. The women had to work hard to distract the men’s attention from the spill pond during the times of low tide when its change of depth would be obvious. Luckily, the tidal move most important to them fell late at night now, but that would not always be the case. It was a constant worry.

The devious knaves pretended to accept their “visit” here as “guests” with resigned patience until the women could return them to Hedeby, at the women’s convenience. Hah! Medana had yet to meet a patient Norseman. They were up to something that boded ill for the women and their island.

Plus, the men were being nice. Something foul was definitely afoot.

If there was anything she’d learned, to her detriment, it was never to trust a Viking with a wicked smile.

And all eight of the Norsemen had wicked smiling down to an art. One, in particular.

“We need to let them go. It is only fair,” Medana said right off as they sat about a table at one end of the “great hall,” which was really not so great. Just the main room of their biggest longhouse.

The protests were unanimous:

“Nay!” Gudron growled at Medana. A growl from Gudron was naught to be dismissed easily, she being the size of a Viking warrior, with all the learned fighting skills.

“Not yet!” pleaded Lilli, a slight woman of more than thirty years who had told Medana on more than one occasion that she feared her childbearing years were waning. “My eggs will soon need a cane,” Lilli moaned.

“What are you . . . a laying hen now?” Medana asked with a laugh.

“Bok, bok!” Lilli responded, and she wasn’t smiling.

“Every hen needs a rooster once in a while,” Solveig chimed in, lining herself up on Lilli’s side.

“Lilli, you know better than most what irksome creatures roosters can be,” Medana said. “Strutting about as if they own the whole chicken coop. Pecking and crowing.”

“I can put up with a strut if it lands a babe in my womb,” Lilli asserted, her green-eyed stare one of defiance, or was it pleading?

Just then, a loud bellowing could be heard. Through the open double doors across the hall from them they could see that the bull, aptly named Swively, was preparing to swive one of their five cows.
Again
. Helga, no doubt. Odin’s eyeballs! Within a month, all their cows would be heavy with calves or walking bowlegged, or both.

But it wasn’t Swively and Helga that held the women’s interest so much as it was the man watching the bovine activity. It was Thork leaning against the split rail fence, one boot propped on a lower rung which caused his braies to tauten over his buttocks. And a very fine pair of buttocks, Medana had to admit.

Lilli summed up all the women’s thoughts when she said, “Cock-a-doodle-doo!”

Following a long bout of giggling and ribald remarks, Medana called the meeting back to order by reminding the women, “We need to get rid of the men. The longer they remain here, the greater our problems.”

“Another sennight at least, for Asgard’s sake!” requested Elida, whose well-oiled hands were wrapped in strips of linen today to soften the calluses from her recent archery attempts.
So she can handle the fine wool in the weaving shed . . . or handle something else?
Medana wondered. If it was the latter, she’d best try a different hand treatment. She smelled like fish oil.

“I’m having my monthly flow. They cannot leave yet!” This from Liv the Healer, who was, no doubt, responsible for Elida’s fishy smell.

“I need time to lose this belly flab. How will I attract a man with belly flab?” complained Bergdis, whose body was mostly hard-muscled from all that rowing, leastways on top. The bottom was a different matter altogether. Sitting on sea chests so long tended to give a woman’s bottom and belly a bit of a spread.

“Watching that bull tup Helga, over and over and over, is turning my womanparts to mush,” Solveig remarked.

“You jest!” Gudron exclaimed. “Didst see how fast Swively does his business. In, out, and he’s done. Just like a man! All over in the blink of an eye. The poor cows barely have a chance to peak themselves.” Gudron paused thoughtfully. “Cows do peak, do they not, Siobhan? You were raised on a farmstead. You should know.”

“They seem to welcome the attention, or mayhap they endure the rut knowing it will lead to a baby cow.” Lilli shrugged, as if it was of no matter. “Even so, my womanparts are throbbing, like a heartbeat.”

“Mine tingle.” Solveig pointed downward, as if they didn’t know which womanparts she referred to.

“I tingle
and
throb,” Elida said proudly, as if that were a circumstance to be desired. “So I need a man more than you do.”

Solveig fisted her hands, as if she wanted to throttle Elida. “I tingle
and
throb
and
weep woman-dew.”

“Hah!” Siobhan interjected. “I tingle
and
throb
and
weep woman-dew
and
have sex dreams that give me little sleep.”

“It has been two sennights since the beginning of my last cycle, and everyone knows that is a woman’s most fertile period, give or take a few days. Therefore, I should go first.” When everyone turned to Solveig to learn where she had gained such information, she explained, “In the brothels, harlots need to know the best ways
not
to conceive.”

Medana shook her head at the women’s foolish competitiveness. “The men’s presence here is creating disharmony amongst you women. We are friends, not rivals. This island has been a sanctuary of peace and safety for all of us, but it is fast becoming a beehive of bickering and unrequited yearnings.”

None of her women looked at all guilty. In fact, they cast surly scowls her way.

“We have not coupled with them yet,” Bergdis whined.

“Not at all?” That surprised Medana. The way her women—leastways some of them—were parading their charms afore the men, you’d think at least one of the walking penises would have succumbed to the temptation.

“None!” Solveig exclaimed with disgust. “Although they do engage in a bit of sexplay.”

“A bit?” Medana asked.

“Kissing, fondling, that kind of thing,” Elida answered for Solveig with a wave of dismissal, as if that was nothing.

“And the leader . . . is he, too, doing his little ‘bit’?” Medana could scarce believe she’d asked that question. She did not care what that loathsome lout Thork was doing. He was becoming a thorn in her backside with all his complaints. And constant harping on having known her before, or someone who closely resembled her. She feared he would leave the island and tell folks that Geira of Stormgard was alive and thriving. Her brothers, and the king’s guardsmen, would be after her quicker than a fox on the scent of a hare. Not for one moment did she believe that ten years would have lessened their fury.

Even worse were Thork’s rude surveys of her body followed by strange smiles. Like a bear licking its lips as it studied the hive of honey it was about to consume.

“Nay, and I really tried,” said Siobhan. “I even showed him my bosoms, and everyone says I have magnificent bosoms.”

They all stared at Siobhan’s bosoms, which were indeed magnificent. Big and firm and without any sag, despite her having seen more than thirty-five winters.

Medana was only a few years from thirty herself, but she was not worrying about having a child. Mayhap not all women had the maternal yearning. As for bosoms . . . Medana had to restrain herself from glancing downward at her own breasts, which were small, but plenty big enough in her opinion; an asset, really, when having to be bound on those occasions when she pretended to be a man. But mayhap their size would be considered lacking when it came to men and their lustsome preferences.

“The issue for us to decide is how to let them go with the least repercussions on us,” Medana said.

Forget repercussions. The women were still grumbling amongst themselves about how little attention they were getting.

“What is the sense of having captured the men if we cannot milk their seed from their bodies with our woman-channels?” asked Siobhan, who should know about milking, being in charge of the cows, among other things.

Still . . . milking? Now they see men as cows with udders? One-teated udders?

“The man with slanted eyes likes me, I think,” Lilli went on. If anyone could attract a man it would be the voluptuous Lilli, whose waist was enticingly small compared to her generous hips and chest. “But Henry—that is his name—he is restraining himself for some reason.”

“They are all restraining themselves,” Bergdis complained, “and I do not understand why.”

“Could it be because they do not favor being put to stud?” Medana asked with arched brows.

“Hah!” Olga the cook, mistress of the kitchen, a short, plump woman who enjoyed her own foods overmuch, had just waddled in with a trencher of hard cheeses, oatcakes, and wild grapes to break the noonday fast. One of the few boylings on the island, Samuel, followed after Olga, carrying two pitchers of ale. “Men stud themselves out all the time,” Olga continued. “My husband, may he rot in Muspell, certainly did it enough.”

Samuel’s eyes widened at the cook’s words. Medana did not like the women speaking so freely in front of the child, who was only eight and would learn soon enough what the women thought of men. Well, some women, and some men. She raised a cautioning hand to halt speaking and asked Samuel if he would mind helping with the new shipbuilding this afternoon.

“You can help me sand the wood planks,” offered Solveig.

Samuel’s eyes lit up. It was a job he relished, unlike his usual chores around the kitchen, helping Olga.

Once Samuel was gone, Gudron asked, “Is it true that Malik begat twenty-two children?” Malik had been Olga’s husband until his untimely death a few years back.

Olga nodded and showed her disdain by spitting into the rushes, a distasteful habit that Medana had tried to break her of, to no avail, thus far. “No sooner did the old goat die, in the process of swiving yet another maid, than his many worthless, illegitimate sons descended on our keep, pushing me out the door. Sad it was that none of my own sons lived past infancy.”

“Worthless men may be, but they do serve their purpose betimes,” Gudron said. “I, for one, like the old one.”

“Um, could we get back to the subject of—”

“The one with an eye patch? Gudron! His hair is threaded with white. Are you sure his staff can still rise?” Solveig inquired.

“You know what they say about snow on the roof but fire in the hearth,” Gudron replied with a rare giggle.