Joy peeked around his side. “Bite me!” she taunted, then stuck out her tongue at Tork.
Everyone, himself included, just gaped at her.
“Well, he deserved it.” Joy was at his side once again.
Osmund, the woodworker, joined their group. “Ebba?” Seeing her tears, he scowled at Tork. “What did ye do to me wife?”
“Oh, my gods!” Tork threw his hands out in disgust.
“Come,” Brandr said to Joy. “Let them resolve this themselves.”
“Where are you two going?” Tork demanded to know.
“To the kitchen. To eat.”
They soon discovered Tork following them. When Brandr turned to confront him, Tork said, “If I cannot fuck, I may as well eat. Unless you want to share your wench.”
Brandr held Joy back before she could fly at Tork, who was grinning at his success in goading her. Brandr picked her up from behind and walked them both into the kitchen, where he sat her on a bench. “Do not move!”
Tork, still grinning, was about to sit on the bench on the other side of the table when Brandr ordered, “You will help me gather some food.”
“Why can the wench not serve us?”
“Shut your teeth, Tork, afore she kills us both.”
“Fleece whipped, that is what you are,” Tork muttered under his breath as he accompanied Brandr down the steps to the cold cellar.
Brandr elbowed him. “Enough! Joy cannot hear your provocative remarks down here.”
He and Tork gathered up milk, cheeses, leftover venison, a heaping dish of something that resembled mashed-up turnips, which did not taste too bad, he decided after sticking in a finger and licking it off. And Joy’s grandmother’s soup, too.
“Where are those apple tarts I smelled earlier in the kitchen?”
“Apple dumplings,” Tork corrected. “They are gone. Mayhap you should order your wench to make double the number on the morrow.”
“Lot of good that would do me,” he murmured.
Tork smiled at him. “You and the thrall were gone a long time.”
“So?”
Tork waggled his eyebrows at him.
“You are such a boyling at times.”
“Are you saying I am immature?”
“You said it. Not me.”
When they got to the kitchen, they saw that Joy was still sitting on the bench, dozing, her chin down on her chest, little snoring sounds coming from her mouth.
“Wore her out, you did,” Tork congratulated him.
“Shhh. She will start talking if we wake her.”
“I heard that,” she said, sitting upright.
Brandr figured he had best cover his tracks if he wanted any more bedsport tonight. “I just meant that we should spare you, after all the good work you did today.”
“Nice try, Brandr. You’ve already told me a number of times that I talk too much.”
He cringed as he sat beside her on the bench, uncomfortable at having his words thrown back at him. “Here, dearling,” he said, placing a wooden dish in front of her.
“What is it?” She stared at the block of hard, congealed broth into which pieces of something resembling meat had been mixed.
“Hrútspungur.”
“ ’Tis a favorite of Brandr’s,” Tork inserted, then cast a shark smile at Joy. “Ram’s testicles.”
“It is
not
a favorite of mine . . . any more than gammelost is a favorite of yours,” he countered to Tork. Gammelost was a stinksome cheese that was said to drive some men berserk. He did not need to be any more berserk than he already was at times.
Joy surprised them both when she took a big bite of the loathsome dish and said, “Yum! Tastes like my great-aunt’s headcheese or souse. She married a Pennsylvania Dutchman. This batch needs more salt. If we run out, I know where I can get some more balls I can slice off and cook up into a tasty gelatin.”
She was looking at the two of them.
“Does she have something to say about everything?” Tork asked him.
Brandr nodded. “Talking is her second best talent.”
“Be careful, or you won’t be the recipient of my best talent anymore,” Joy cautioned him.
Mostly, they ate in silence as they shared the platter of cold meats and cheeses. He and Tork drank milk, which Joy disdained, choosing water instead.
He peeled and sliced a pear for them to share.
She hesitantly tasted some skyr, then put a dollop on her plate over several pear slices. “This tastes like cottage cheese,” she told him. “Are these pears from an orchard here?”
Brandr nodded. “From a tree my grandfather planted afore I was born.”
“Remember the time you hid in its upper branches for one whole day and night?” Tork reminded him, a mischievous gleam in his brown eyes.
“What did you do?” Joy asked him.
“I do not recall.”
“Hah!” Tork said. “He put worms in his aunt Siv’s sleeping pallet.”
“She always was a waspish one, if you ask me. She deserved more than worms.”
He and Tork grinned at each other.
“What happened when you came down from the tree?” Joy wanted to know.
“I could not sit for a sennight after my father was done with me. And he made me sleep in the cow byre.”
“By the seventh day, you smelled like Ulfar’s codpiece. Phew!” Tork remarked.
Joy plopped huge gobs of the grayish turnips on their plates, insisting, “Eat. Vegetables are good for you.” Then she asked, “How long have you two been friends?”
“Since birth, or soon after,” Tork told her. “My mother and his mother were distant cousins.”
“We grew up together, learned to swim and wield a sword together, fought battles side by side, even tupped our first maids together,” Brandr elaborated.
“Together?”
“Dost really want the details?” He smiled at her.
She seemed to ponder, then said, “No.”
“The only time we were apart was when Tork wed. Two years you were gone, is that not right?” he asked his friend.
“You’re married?” Joy appeared surprised. “Where’s your wife? And why are you screwing other women if you’re married?”
“I
was
married.”
She tilted her head in question.
“His wife divorced him,” Brandr told her.
“I didn’t know there was divorce in Viking society, or that a woman could be the one to initiate the divorce. Can I assume it was adultery?”
“Nay,” Tork said. “Well, Dagny did divorce me because I happened to stray. Just one time, mind you, but it was not my fault. The dairymaid kept flaunting herself at me. But adultery is not grounds for divorce in our society, leastways not by the male.”
“That figures,” Joy said.
Brandr chuckled. “Dagny accused him of fornicating with goats.”
Joy choked on the water she had been sipping. He clapped her on the back ’til her passages cleared.
“You screwed goats?”
Tork made a clucking sound of disgust. “Nay, I did not do
that
, but Dagny wanted to embarrass me, and she did.”
“So?”
“So I left.”
“And where is this Dagny now?”
“Enjoying herself at my estate in Vestfold.”
“You allowed her to keep your home? I mean, do you have more than one?”
“Only one. And, nay, I bloody hell did not give it to her. But she will not leave. So I left.”
“Forever?”
“Nay! She will give up eventually, take another husband, and go to his holdings. When she does, I will return. In the meantime, we play a game of who will give in first, and I assure you, it will not be me.”
“How long since you’ve seen her . . . or your home?”
“Five years.”
“I think I like your wife.” Joy grinned. “Did you love her?”
Tork’s face bloomed with red patches. Brandr had not known his friend could blush. How interesting!
“I thought I did, but I was young and lackwitted.”
“When did you see her last?” If anything, his wench was persistent.
“Five years past.”
“Did you have children?”
“Nay! Thank the gods! During the two years of our marriage, we were only together on the odd sennight or so.”
“Because?”
“Because, of course, I was off a-Viking, or trading, or fighting one war or another.”
“Or committing adultery. Men!” Joy turned and glared at Brandr.
“What did I do?” Brandr asked.
“You men are all the same. Dumb as dirt!”
“I have a philosophy about marriage,” Brandr said. “Seems to me marriage is like a besieged castle. Those outside are trying their best to get inside. And those inside wish they could escape. Battering rams in. Ladders out.”
“Oh, you!” Joy smacked him on the arm.
He got up to fill three mugs with the chicken soup heating over the low fire, and Tork said in a low voice to Joy, “Do not hurt him, or I will kill you.”
“Whaaat? Who?”
“Brandr.”
“I beg your pardon. How could I hurt him? I have no weapon.”
“There are weapons, and there are weapons. I saw him smile tonight, the first in a long, long time. You have brought him out of the darkness. If you do aught to hurl him back into that pit, I swear by Thor’s hammer Mjollnir, you will suffer.”
Brandr was both touched and amused by his friend’s words. “I can speak for myself, Tork. There is no need for you to defend me with a mere woman.”
“Mere woman?” Joy started to rise. “Maybe this mere woman will go up and sleep with Liv tonight.”
He shoved her back down. “Sit, and do not be so quick to take offense. I am the one who should be offended that you two speak of me as if I am not here, as if I am a weakling who cannot take care of himself.”
“That is not what I meant,” Tork mumbled.
“And, truth to tell, if I want to languish in darkness, it is my decision and mine alone.”
“That is all well and good, Brandr, but I know more about women than you do, and you should take heed of my advice. Fuck them and leave them, is what I always say.”
Joy made a scoffing sound. “I can see how well that’s working for you. No wonder your wife divorced you.”
“Joy loves me,” Brandr said before he could stop himself.
“I cannot believe you repeated that.” Joy slapped him on the arm, then slapped him again for good measure.
It did not hurt, but, really, he did not understand the woman. He had been defending her . . . in a way.
Tork eyed her suspiciously. “I am wary of women who spout love nonsense. They usually want something.”
“You are an idiot.”
“That is the selfsame thing I said to him this morn when he was bragging about his sword luck,” Brandr told her.
Joy looked from him to Tork and back again, as if they were both idiots. “You two are so different in appearance. I thought Vikings were all supposed to be blond.”
It was true; Tork was as light as he was dark. In stature, they were the same height and breadth, but his hair was black and his eyes dark blue, whereas Tork had pale hair and honey colored eyes.
“Norsemen are light
and
dark,” Brandr told her. “In fact, the Irish distinguish betwixt us as Finn-Gaill and Dubh-Gaill. White foreigners and black foreigners.”
“Whilst the Irish are just plain afraid of us,” Tork observed.
“That goes without saying.” A wide yawn escaped Brandr’s open mouth then. Tork and Joy did the same, following his lead. They had finished most of the food they’d brought forth, so he said to Joy, “Let us leave this for the kitchen maids to clean up in the morn. And, nay, I do not mean you, afore you get your hackles in a huff.”
They all rose.
Tork said, and he was serious, “What are we going to do now?”
Brandr was stunned into silence. Did his good friend really think he was going off with him to drink or chatter ’til the wee hours? That was taking friendship a bit too far, in his opinion.
It was Joy who broke the silence with a laugh.
He took that as a good sign.
Chapter 16
From the mouths of babes . . .
Joy felt as if she were floating on a cloud of happiness the next few weeks. She was like a teenager in the throes of a first love. But then, this was a first love for Joy, and there was nothing immature or transient about it.
She should have been worried about her situation here. Wherever here was. And why she was here. And how she was going to return home.