CHAPTER NINE

Brilliant sunlight pierced Malice’s consciousness—her unconsciousness rather. She jerked her head to the side, the dazzling vision of Lady Culbert’s ball vanishing. A dream. One that like everything in her life seemed destined to disappear just as it proved to get interesting. She’d been about to step onto the chequered floor, to dance with . . . that was gone too, but whoever it was, he’d had eyes to drown in. The sensation she was going to drown too had been warm, like sinking into a bath of heady, breath-stealing aromas. Hmm. Tangy, fragrant bergamot. Silky, aromatic, Chinese lily. Exotic musky anise.

She edged her tongue around lips, lips that must be hers since they were attached to her face, but that no longer felt as if they belonged to her. In fact nothing did.

“Hoi. Looks like we’re here.”

Except perhaps her ears. They belonged. Obviously. Her ribs too, dented ribs rather. She groaned

“Hoi. Ain’t you listening?” Gentle gave another nudge. ”I said—”

Here? They couldn’t be here. Had she’d been semi-conscious for eight days? She couldn’t have lain about the deck for that long, when she’d planned on sorting this, although she recalled nightmare visions of being so violently ill, so sick, so drenched with rain and sea water, she didn’t care where she lay. But sure enough, the rocking seemed to have stopped.

“I know what you said. Elbow me again and I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” Gentle’s even more rancid breath washed over her. God almighty, was her own like pig swill? “You’re not listening, Poshlugs.”

There it was again, that insulting nick-name which suggested she thought herself a cut above everyone.

Malice tried turning over. There must be an inch of space that was Gentle-free but every bone in her body felt as if it was broken, in ten places, so the furthest she could manage was an arm above her head to shield her eyes from the blinding sun.

“Don’t look then. But we’re here. See for yourself. And thanks to you we got to go the last bit in style too. I did anyway. That’s because he knows how well I look after you.”

She flicked her eyes open. The thing about Gentle was she never seemed to sleep. It didn’t matter when Malice had opened her eyes—not that she’d done much of that the last few days—she’d been aware of Gentle’s beady ones scuttling like beetles around the deck, of the mountainous heap sitting sentinel-like and silent. Looking after her though?

She jerked upright, instantly giving a shriek. Had she thought her body felt broken in ten places? She reckoned thirty shattered places in her spine alone. Twelve in her neck. Truth to tell, as she grasped the edge of the cart, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The dazzling, cloudless sky, these hideous squat buildings, pigs and chickens oinking and squawking, towering mountains on the other side of the river and a smell that was worse than the Thames at low tide.

She closed her eyes and shrank back down. At one point she’d asked Gentle what year it was, then pretended she’d meant day of the week, when Gentle laughed at her pottage-head. 898 AD were not words she’d wanted to hear. The funny thing? Before she’d been dreaming of that ball, she’d been dreaming of her mother and before that the awful row Aunt Carter had with Great Aunt Julia and Uncle Perry about Malice’s coming out.

“A gal needs a chance, even a gal like Malice,” they’d magnanimously insisted when Aunt Carter had meanly said, for reasons Malice had never understood, it would be over her dead body. If only someone would give her that chance now.

A cart? How the blazes had she even come to be in a cart? Who had put her here? And with a stinking piglet sticking its snout in her face too, licking her chin. She suppressed a groan. Although really when she appeared to be in Viking Scandinavia, how she came to be in a cart with a piglet in her face, was of no consequence. What was, was that she hadn’t managed to return to the convent. She hadn’t managed anything. She was trapped. Not that it mattered but what had she been thinking about getting in competition with anyone? Even this piglet?

“That’s Trotter. Drottin wanted me to look after it too. That’s ‘cause I’m good with pigs.”

“Fine. Is that because you are one?”

“I’m good with lots. Him and me have got quite matey.”

“Good,” Malice said. After all, did she really want to be a bed-slave? All she wanted was to sleep. Just keep her eyes closed and never, ever wake up. What was there to wake up for? Her life was over. Over. Oh God, let her die. Let her die now.

“In fact it was me what suggested the cart. Cos we were matey and you were out cold. And of course none of the men exactly wanted to be bitten.”

Why not remind her of that? Falling asleep and never waking up was taking quite a bit of doing with Gentle’s voice ringing in her ears.

“I dunno if I fancy his missus though.”

Malice almost didn’t dare look. It was bad enough the blankets were twisted round her legs and it would be horrible if she sprawled on the ground like a mermaid and stinking like a pig, but then again she might as well. She grasped the side of the cart, hauled herself up to stare across the yard at who must be Snotra. Didn’t fancy the look of? The simplest, softest beige gown may have reached all the way to the woman’s ankles, it may have had the plainest linen shift underneath, the color still accentuated the soft fire of her eyes, the most translucent shade of grey Malice had ever seen. Then there was the matter of her tall, willowy figure, a figure that didn’t need ornamentation of any kind to stand out. As for her hair glinting like fine, newly minted gold in the sunlight . . . not a strand was out of place. If only what was left of her own would sit like that.

Why on earth did he want a bed slave when he had this? Was it custom? Something whoever wrote the illustrated Viking and his biceps hadn’t known about? Or was he so damned randy it was to spare her? Wasn’t he called Sin after all? And actually, that moment on the Raven when he’d held her . . . the side of the cart gave way and the ground rushed up to meet her, before she could think what the actually was or not.

“Oh. Oh. Trust you to bring her over here. Very sorry, Drottin. She’s just a bit bedazzled by all this. You know the trouble she’s been.”

Trouble? Her? Malice swallowed the grimace as she pressed her palms into the earth. She swallowed the mouthful of dirt and grit too. Still, so long as her nose and her right cheekbone weren’t broken to add to her other miseries—a hammer thudding in her head, a throat drier than the Sahara, more pins and needles in her legs than in Agnes’ pin cushion, a gnawing in her stomach that said she’d swallowed a crocodile and now it was eating her—how much worse could this be? Well?

While it almost killed her, she accepted being ‘assisted’ to her feet by Gentle. Her bare feet. Dear God, Madam Faro’s shoes . . . Gone. Gone, while she was still alive. Yes. She had received her answer on how much worse this could be. It was the finish. Let her buckling knees give way and a thunderbolt strike her down now. It might as well. She would never ever care about, or be interested in, anything ever again. Least of all Snotra glaring at them.

“Sinarr . . . Sinarr . . .”

Sinner? His name was actually Sinner? Really?

“Sinarr . . . what . . . what is that creature? That one there.”

That creature? How awful to be that much of a lard mountain, people didn’t just think you were a behemoth, they imagined you were also a deaf one. “Good Gna . . . a . . . troll. No! No!”

“Snotra . . .”

How far did Malice’s heart go out, knowing how viciously people had whispered about her? Not at all. Why should it? All was fair here in love and war and as Gentle’s flattening of her on the deck had shown, this was war. Snotra? She just needed a little cultivating. That was all. And wasn’t Malice, as the owner of Strictly just the one to do it too?

“No! No! I won’t have it. A troll! Good Gna, a troll. Oh . . . Oh . . . Get rid of it. Get rid of it, now Sinarr. I cannot have it in my house. I cannot have it . . . Oh! Oh!”

A sign was a sign in any language. Maybe this one wasn’t quite as crude as all that. Maybe it wasn’t crude at all. More a sort of save me from that troll sign. Why on earth was Snotra making that sign at her though? Was Plumplugs right about her after all?

“Snotra . . . Snotra, we talked about this. Remember? We said?”

“No. No. No, Sinarr. We did not. We never said troll. And that is a troll.”

Malice breathed heavily through her nose. Granted she did look a little ragged and maybe she smelled a bit. But a troll? Her?

“A troll in my home that we are going to share. No! No! Let me go! Let me go to my home.”

“Your home? I thought it was mine?”

“My home surely if I am to be your wife? And bring up our babies? Balder, Haldor and Egor?”

Did they have these babies already, the way she spoke?

“I told you she was a madam.” At least the carthorse didn’t smirk. “Imagine what she’ll be like to whatever one of us he picks?”

Smirk? Why smirk when there was method in shovelling it on with a garden spade? In obliterating the opposition with fear? Well. Malice wasn’t afraid.

“It ain’t going to be me, I tell you that now.”

Right.

Of course she must concede that Snotra knew exactly what she was doing. That Snotra was merely stamping her foot on the matter of bed slaves. That Malice—very well, Gentle too—could resemble Helen of Troy, for that matter, a very unlikely matter for a carthorse but then carthorses had their beauties amongst them.

How could he fail so conspicuously to see through this though, standing there putting up with it? Well, he was a man of course. And men, certainly in her estimation, only thought with one thing. And that one thing certainly wasn’t their brain.

“Droplugg, Gunnhilda and—”

“Troll’s toes.”

Or did he see? For him the grit was quite anguished. But if he didn’t want to have a bed-slave why was he doing it?

And really, despite what she’d thought on the Raven, did she really want anything to do with it? She still had her face. It would be nice to keep it.

Snotra threw up her hands in exasperation. “Well, of course Sinarr, if you are going to insist on treating me with disrespect . . .”

“I am not treating you with disrespect.”

“Oh, but you are. If you were respectful, you would not bring in a troll. A malicious . . .”

“She’s not a troll.”

“You wouldn’t bring home any woman at all. No. You’d send her away. All of them away. That fat ragbag she’s got with her, that—”

“She’s a woman, just like you.”

Malice’s throat, already scarified as dry bone, dried further. Like her? No. She didn’t think so. She was nice for a start. “So’s Gentle.”

What a damned cheek.

“Gentle?” Snotra spat the word perilously close to his face. “And you would know this, would you? How would you know this? Have you slept with these shapeless trollops already? These . . . these trolls?”

He shrugged and canted his jaw. “On a longship? Are you joking? Do you have any idea how tight for space they are? How precarious?”

“Well, if you will have a carthorse aboard. Pillaged them then?”

He lowered his eyelashes. “Pillaged? I think you’ll find the word is raped.”

“I don’t care what the word is!” Snotra’s eyes flashed fire. She drew her chin higher, her shoulders too. “Have you?”

A smile that was downright dangerous nicked his cheekbones. “I’m not going to answer that.”

“I knew it! Oh, it is unbearable. Unbearable. That a man should do such a thing. Such a thing as rape and pillage and—”

“Well of course Egil never. He was too young, and I wouldn’t know about Godfrig, although he, if you ask me, having one foot in the grave and all that—”

“How dare you speak of—”

Snotra’s clenched fists descended on his chest. Egil? Godfrig? What was this place exactly? The land of nymphomaniacs? How many men had this tartar had? Two? Ten? Twenty? A termagant who batted like a county cricket champion? When Malice couldn’t get one. Not even an ugly one. As for him? Maybe he was restrained in that he didn’t bat Snotra back . . . the veins in his forearms stood out like steel threads as he jerked her towards the door.

“Well I do speak and perhaps if you’d chosen me the first time around as you promised, none of it would have been necessary. Also, may I will remind you, you are a guest in my house? Not the other way about.”

“What?” Snotra grabbed hold of the door jamb, her voice rising to a piercing shriek. “Would you throw me out, Sinarr Gudrunsson? Leave me to perish on the highway with my venerable father? Is that what you intend?”

“If you push me. Now, just get inside. Go on.”

Something clanged as he thrust her over the threshold into the darkened interior. In fact several things did. Despite craning her eyes, Malice couldn’t see what exactly— a pot, a broom handle and some plates maybe. As Sin Gudrunsson bolted the lower, horizontal half of the door shut, she still knew one thing. She would need to find a way of befriending this . . . what had Ari called Sin Gudrunsson again, Potlicker? Well, Snotra was Potkicker and Malice would need to find the way to win her around if there was going to be all this trouble about bed slaves. Assure her she wasn't even in the running.

Then, when the time was right, and she’d stood nobly aside from all that, she must somehow convince Snotra to aid . . . not her escape, that would cause trouble, but her legitimate passage back to England, where somehow she would get back to where she belonged. How difficult could it be?

Very difficult. In fact difficult enough to make the yard and all its contents swim in a white sea about her, to make her shrink from the thought. It still didn’t mean she shouldn’t try. For days she had been too ill to force so much as a morsel of bread past her parched tonsils. She was probably lucky to be alive. So a little dizziness was to be expected, especially the way plates and cups were dinting off walls and floors and two plates even landed in the yard, one nearly decapitating a chicken that strutted there.

As the waves rose to meet Malice, Snotra grasped the top edge of the bottom half of the Dutch door. “Well, I’ve gone indoors, so what about you? What will you do?”

“What do you think? Choose myself a bed slave. It’s been am especially long sixteen days.”