Joy straightened and put a hand to her aching back. “Why should I do that?”
“The master, he be in a berserk rage. Yelling and throwing things. He almos’ killed Dar Danglebeard when he said somethin’ ’bout how the master been spoilin’ his bed thrall, an’ it took five men ta pull ’im off, an’ Tork had ta knock ’im out with a blow ta the noggin with a wooden shovel. Then Liv heard about you and the babe, and she went screamin’ ta her bedchamber and willna come out. Now Kelda is havin’ a fit ’cause she doan know how ta make apple dumples.”
“Dumplings.”
“Dumplins, then. And Tork is tellin’ ever’one ‘The bitch is trouble. We oughta toss her in the fjord.’ ”
With that in mind, it was a bit alarming a short time later to see Tork staggering into the barn, drunk as a lord.
“Where is she? Where’s the bitch?”
“Shhh! You’re gonna wake up Mattie.” She rose from the straw where she’d been lying with the sleeping baby under a warm bed fur. It was getting darn cold in the barn now that nightfall had come, although it was hard to tell night from day this far north. That’s why she’d had to keep a torch burning all the time.
“You!” Tork stormed up to her, pushing her up against the stall door with his hands pressed to her throat.
Oh, my God!
she thought, choking.
He’s going to kill me.
“I warned you. I told you not to hurt Brandr. But did you listen? Nay, you are like all the other faithless women.”
She heard a rustling sound behind her and knew Mattie was about to waken from the noise. A reminder. If she died, the baby would probably be left to die, too. With adrenaline-triggered force, she shoved Tork away and kneed him in the crotch.
“Ouch, ouch, ouch!” Tork was holding his goodies, bouncing from foot to foot. And a lopsided bounce it was, too, since he was half-crocked.
“You should talk about faithless, you . . . you adulterer.”
Mattie decided to let out a howl of protest then.
They both turned to him.
One howl appeared to be enough. Now that he’d gotten their attention, he yawned and went back to sleep.
“Bloody hell! He looks just like Liv.” Tork appeared stone cold sober, which wasn’t possible, but he had suffered a shock.
“Of course he looks like Liv,” she said gently. “What did you think he would look like? Godzilla?”
“Which god?”
“Never mind.”
Forget about being gentle with the clod.
“Are you happy that you almost killed me?” She put her fingertips to her neck. There was no mirror available, but she would bet she had finger marks there already.
“You kicked me in my manparts,” he said indignantly.
“Kneed. I kneed you in your nuts. Don’t worry. You’ll live to commit adultery again.”
He growled and turned his fists into claws, probably contemplating another assault.
She backed up so she was on the other side of the half door.
“You have the mouth of a stinging wasp.”
“Compliments will get you nowhere.”
“Come back to the keep. Brandr needs you.”
“Can I bring the baby with me?’
“Are you demented?”
“I can’t leave the baby.”
“It’s colder than a polar bear’s tit here.”
“It’s not so bad under the furs. And the cows provide some heat.”
Tork stared at her as if she was crazy, then swaggered off, muttering, “I told him so. I told him she would be trouble, but did he listen to me? Nay! Nobody listens to me. And she is not even comely.”
“Why don’t you go screw a goat?” she called after him.
She thought she heard him chuckle.
No more visitors came until the next morning when Arnora showed up. There was a stern expression on her face, but she carried supplies, for which Joy had to be thankful. A flower-scented ointment, more clean nappies and baby gowns, a bone rattle, of all things, and an extra fur blanket.
“Girl, you are creating a stir.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Let me see him.”
Joy carefully picked up the sleeping baby, cradling him in the crook of her elbow, up against her chest. “Isn’t he beautiful?”
“ ’Tis true then. He resembles Liv.”
She nodded.
“I thought you cared for the girl.”
“I do.”
“Then how can you cause her such pain?”
“Liv is an adult. In time, hopefully, she’ll get over her trauma. She certainly has enough family and friends to help her through that stress. But Matthew has no one. Just me.”
Arnora bit her bottom lip. “I do not know where this will end.”
“I’m not asking for anything special. Just let me care for him here.”
“ ’Tis not that simple. Even though you are out here, your presence and what you are doing hangs over us all. A pall of sorrow.”
“I never intended to hurt anyone.”
Arnora sighed and was about to leave.
“One thing, Arnora . . . do you know at what age a baby takes solid food, like porridge? Matthew is so skinny.”
Arnora put a fingertip to her lips, probably counting mentally how old Matthew would be. “I will send some thin porridge. You can try and see if the baby will take it.”
Kelda came later, carrying a bowl of watery porridge with honey drizzled on top, with a wooden spoon, on Arnora’s orders, she was sure. “A fine mess ye have created up in the hall!”
“I never intended—”
Kelda waved a hand dismissively. “How do ya make them damn apple dumples? Ever’one is askin’ fer ’em, and I fergit how much flour ya said ta use.”
“Dumplings.”
“Huh?”
“Apple dumplings, not dumples.” She repeated the recipe to her.
Soon Kelda was storming off, too, but in her wake she called back, to Joy’s surprise, “I’ll send some stew and bread fer ya later.”
During the “night,” as Joy shivered under the bed fur, her nose feeling like an icicle, she felt someone slide under the fur on the other side of the baby. There was no light. She was saving the torches for those times when the baby was awake or she had work to do. “Who is it?” At first, she was hopeful that it might be Brandr, but she almost immediately dismissed that idea. He would have made more noise, and his weight would make more movement under the cover.
“ ’Tis me. Gran Olssen. I figger two bodies kin make more heat than one, though this ol’ body is mostly bones. No fat ta speak of. Besides, ye will need someone ta watch the wee one when yer muckin’ and milkin’.” She was right. Bergdis had taught her how to milk a cow, and it was hard working with the child next to her, demanding attention.
Still, she couldn’t accept help from the old lady. “Oh, Gran, you shouldn’t be here. Brandr will consider it a betrayal.”
“The boy is a fool. And he is surrounded by enough like fools. Yer not ta worry, girl. All things work out in the end.”
“Why don’t you resent the baby, like everyone else?”
“I have seen too much hatred and fighting over me years. Mayhap ’tis time ta make peace. Mayhap this child could be the first step.”
On those encouraging words, the old lady was soon snoring.
Unfortunately, two more weeks passed by with no change, except that the winter winds brought more snow and cold. She found herself crying whenever Gran was not around. Except for Gran, visitors stopped coming. She was lonely and hungry and cold all the time.
It was hopeless.
She needed a knight in shining armor, and there wasn’t a damn one in sight.
Chapter 17
His armor wasn’t shiny, but he could be a knight, dammit! . . .
It was late one night, three sennights after the wench from hell had chosen a barn and a babe over him. He was sitting alone before the hearth fire in the great hall. Ale no longer brought the stupor he needed for numbness. Everyone else was asleep or pretending to be in order to avoid his out-of-control temper.
So he was not in the mood for Gran Olssen, who hobbled up to him on her cane and sank down beside him on a bench. He was hurt and angry that the old lady, who had been at Bear’s Lair for more than half a century, had chosen to disobey his orders that no one was to help the wench or babe in the barn.
“The girl is ill.” That is all she said.
“What girl?” he asked after a long pause, although he already knew, and he did not care. Leastways, he did not want to care.
When he said nothing more, the old lady sighed and began to rise.
“How ill?”
“Very. She has been fighting a running nose and head pains and body aches fer two days. Now the fever has taken over.”
“Fevers come, and fevers go.”
“And some lead to death.”
Death? Nay, it cannot be!
“Ah, well, ’tis in the hands of the Norns of Fate now.”
The wily old witch! She knew he would not leave Joy’s fate to the gods. Not when he could help.
Standing, he stormed through the hall, grabbing a wall torch on the way. Tork glanced up with a question, from where he’d been dicing with Sven the Scowler. He began to rise, as if to come help Brandr with whatever was distressing him.
Brandr motioned him to stay and was soon out in the bitter cold. How was Joy standing it? Surely, the barn was not warm enough, even with the bed furs he’d seen Arnora and Gran Olssen dragging out. Why had he not thought of this afore?
Into the barn he went, letting the door slam behind him. In the pitch-black, he could not tell where she was, although he recalled that the babe had been in a far stall. Making his way there by light of his torch, he could only think,
It is so cold in here. How could I have left her here? What kind of man am I? I should have forced her to return with me.
At the last stall, he put the torch in a wall holder and went in. Joy was rolling about, uncovered, whilst the babe was wide awake, only its little face peeping out of the bed furs.
Kneeling, he put a hand to her burning forehead.
“Brandr? No, you can’t take the baby. You can’t.” Even in her delirium, she rolled over and took the baby in her arms, clutching him so hard the baby began to cry. Did she think he would hurt the babe? Well, of course she did. Had he not left the babe out here to survive or die on its own? He had known when he entrusted the baby to Bergdis that it would be neglected. It had been his halfhearted attempt at humanity. And, truth to tell, he had never asked after its welfare once in the past five months.
“You must come inside. You are sick, Joy.”
“No, no, no! I won’t leave my baby.”
Her
baby?
“You can’t make me.” Tears were rolling down her face. Her eyes were glazed with fever as they implored him.
“Shhh,” he said, picking her and the babe up and tucking a fur over them both. He kissed her damp forehead. Suddenly, he noticed that the babe had stopped crying, and blue eyes as crystal clear as Liv’s gazed up at him, trusting. In fact, it shook a bone rattle in its one fist, then whacked him a good one on the chin with a giggle. He supposed he deserved it. A vise tightened over his heart ’til he could scarce breathe. “I will not leave the child, Joy. I promise.”
Though, gods help him, he did not know what he would do. He just knew he could not let her die.
He loved her. Three sennights of his madness had convinced him that he could not live without her. Forget pride and hatred and stubbornness.
But was it too late?
The miracle of a mother’s love . . .
For two days, Brandr sat by Joy’s bedside as she struggled to live. The fever just would not break.
Every time she became remotely lucid, and there were only a few instances of that, she worried over the baby. And he would have to pick up the little mite from the cradle Osmund had hastily built and hold him in front of her face to prove he had not tossed him off a cliff or drowned him in a fjord, as she seemed to think he would, from her feverish ramblings.
And the damn baby kept smiling at him. Did Matthew not sense how Brandr hated him? And what kind of name was that for a Viking baby, anyway? Sounded like a Christian apostle.
Folki was the closest they had to a healer here at Bear’s Lair, and he would be damned if he would let the incompetent old man near her. Instead, he and Arnora had taken turns swabbing her down with cold cloths and caring for the baby. The baby who was crying once again.
Today was the worst. He just could not get the baby to sleep. If he was not crying, he was fussy, wanting to be picked up. Brandr had sent an exhausted Arnora off to sleep. With a sigh, he went over and checked the baby’s nappy. He was dry, for once. By Odin! The baby did piss a lot. So Brandr picked him up and held him up to his shoulder, walking around his bedchamber.