Sandra Hill (7 page)

“Really?”

So, the wench was impressed by his learning. And she looked down her nose at his woodworking skills.

“Attend me well, my stiff-necked lady. I cherish the calluses on my palms that mark my trade. I get more pride from building a good ship than translating a Latin text.”

Her face flushed at being caught in her condescension. “Oh, I never meant to imply—”

He raised a halting hand. “’Tis of no importance what you think of me. I am my own man.”

“How did we get on this conversation anyhow?”

“You were no doubt rebuking me for one thing or another, as all women do.”

“What was that noise?” Merry-Death said.

“I was speaking.”

“Not that, you dolt.” She peered at him over the
top of an unusual piece of silver-and-glass jewelry she wore on the bridge of her nose and latched over the tops of her ears. Women wore diadems, or circlets, over their foreheads in his world, to hold their head rails in place. The nose was a very strange place to put an ornament, in his opinion. Ah, well, women were always finding barmy means to adorn themselves. Next they would be putting rings in their noses.

His stomach let out a growl, and he realized that it must have been grumbling for some time. That was the noise she referred to. “I do not suppose you have food to offer a starving man, other than worms?”

She smiled at the brute and led him into her kitchen. Men! Mention food and even the fiercest of them tamed down. “No, we’re having French toast.”

“French toast!” Rolf jeered, at first. “Many a time have I journeyed to Frankland, and ne’er have I seen such.” But he scarfed down eight of the ten slices drowning in butter and syrup, drank one glass of orange juice and three cups of coffee, which he asserted must be the beverage of the gods.

Afterward, they went outside to examine the longboat.

“Do women in your country always wear men’s
braies
?” he asked. “Not that I am complaining.”

Meredith glanced up to see the rogue’s sparkling eyes riveted on the back end of her too-tight Levis—Jillie’s castoffs, which she’d put on this morning, along with a short-waisted, white angora sweater. “No, women don’t wear
braies
all the time. And we call them pants or slacks in this country, not
braies
. These particular kinds of pants are known as blue jeans. You’ll have to buy a few pairs for yourself, if you don’t already have them.”

He looked skeptical but said nothing more, as they’d arrived at the project site. Turning immediately serious, Rolf surveyed the two open-sided, roofed shelters in the clearing. One protected the vast amount of timber needed for the seventy-foot longship, which sat uncompleted under the other shelter.

Rolf first went to the wood shed, which housed already cut, wedge-shaped planks, as well as enormous trees. Gramps had told her one time that it would take eleven oak trees, at least sixteen feet tall, not to mention a fifty-or sixty-foot tree for the keel, to make just one longship of this size.

Rolf frowned and made tsking sounds of disgust as he knelt before some of the wood, rubbing it with his fingertips, testing its weight, even smelling it.

Meredith walked up to his side. “What’s wrong?”

“Who was the fool who left this wood to dry out? Every good shipbuilder knows green timber is best for the planking. Once seasoned, it becomes too brittle to work.” He stood and glared at her as if she was to blame for the gross incompetence.

“There was no fool, you fool. My grandfather died suddenly last October—” Her voice broke and she couldn’t immediately go on. Finally, she cleared her throat and continued. “There was no one to take over the project.”

He tried to put a comforting hand on her shoulder, but she shifted away. She didn’t want his pity. “All of Gramps’s notes were available, and his assistant, Mike Johnson, was here, but no one really had the expertise to supervise such a project. Ever since I got here in January, we’ve been trying to hire someone to take over my grandfather’s position, and this project.”

Rolf nodded. “’Tis a question of honor.”

Meredith’s eyes shot up at his perception. How did he know she’d felt that way? That leaving her grandfather’s dream incomplete was somehow a disgrace to his memory? That finishing the longship would be a gesture of love and respect? Fighting back the emotion that choked her, she asked, “Can we do anything to salvage the wood?”

“Some of it,” he said, “and the discarded pieces will not be wasted. They can be put to good use as rudders, blocks, clamps, and skids.”

“Look at those peculiar tree limbs,” she called out to him. Rolf was already on the other side, examining each of the trees and cut planks. Among all the straight trees and precisely cut wedge planks, there were some curved limbs, even forked jointures of tree limbs.

Rolf shook his head sadly. “Those are useless now. The curved timbers are needed for the ribs and knees of the ship, and the forks for tholes and keelsons, but they should have been stored underwater to keep the wood flexible.”

As they moved over to the longship, Rolf gave it equally professional scrutiny. Meredith was more and more impressed with his knowledge. Wherever he’d come from, the guy was the answer to her prayers…well, her prayers for a shipbuilder, anyway.

Yeah, right. Like I’m not noticing all that suntanned skin and the muscles bulging under those upper-arm bracelets. Like my heart doesn’t skip a beat when he smiles. Like I’m not gawking when he bends over and stretches the material of those black sweatpants
.

“What did you say?” Rolf said, straightening.

“Nothing,” she said, hating the blush that heated her face. The little grin that twitched at his lips told her he knew exactly where she’d been staring. “Let’s go back
inside and start on your English lesson. You’ll never be able to read Gramps’s notes or understand his blueprints unless you have a rudimentary ability to read English.”

“I told you, I
can
read English,” he protested.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah! We’re back to the Viking prince stuff again,” she grumbled as they walked back toward the house.

He swatted her on the behind and cautioned, “Best you curb your tongue, wench, or I will show you what else a Viking can do, besides build longships.”

She should have chastised him for taking such a liberty, but she saw the teasing glimmer in his eyes. He was an arrogant beast, really he was. Too bad he was so attractive, as well. “Not all women are impressed with virile Viking clods, you know.”

“Truly?” he asked with amazement. “Whene’er my brothers and I go a-viking, women always fall over themselves to get to us, no matter the country. Especially Saxon women. They claim we are much taller and more comely than their ugly English men.”

“Hah! The way I hear it, Vikings washed more often than Saxon men. That’s what attracted the women. You didn’t smell quite so bad.”

He grinned. “Well, there is that, too.”

Four hours later, Meredith sat back in her chair in the library and stretched.

They’d made incredible progress. Rolf was rapidly learning how to read English, thanks in part to her grandfather’s numerous English-Old Norse texts and software programs. Rolf must be very intelligent to grasp all the principles so easily, but Meredith sensed that it was more than that. She almost believed his
assertion that the talisman had magic powers. How else could he already have mastered the alphabet and rudimentary grammar? How else could he have managed to work the computer keyboard as he studied data?

His childlike enthusiasm for learning touched her. He didn’t balk at any of her instructions, even the boring, rote drawing of the alphabet.

“Why are you so eager to learn all of this so quickly?” she asked finally. “And don’t give me that nonsense about being dedicated to the god of wisdom.”

He glanced up with surprise from the third-grade reader he’d been studying—one that had been hers as a child. “So I can return home,” he answered simply and went back to his book.

Meredith’s heart stopped at his declaration, and she wondered how she could feel such desolation at the idea of losing a man she’d just met. He meant nothing to her, other than as a shipbuilder. He was a means to an end. Once that project was completed, it would be good riddance, right?

Wrong, wrong, wrong
.

She didn’t know how it had happened—perhaps she was pathetically lonely—but Rolf had burrowed his way into her life and possibly even her heart in one short day. And his absence would leave a gaping hole; she just knew it would. She would have to protect herself.

“That’s enough for today,” she declared, reaching over his shoulder and shutting the book. “How about some lunch?”

He nodded his agreement and stood, stretching his arms wide and arching his back to remove the kinks from sitting for so long. She refused to look, already embarking on a plan of self-protection.

A short time later, Rolf leaned against the kitchen counter while she opened a can of tomato soup and made grilled cheese sandwiches. She really needed to grocery shop this afternoon.

As she moved around the tiny kitchen, he watched her every move, as if memorizing them for future reference. Maybe he was an alien come to study earthly civilization. Hey, it was no more implausible than Rolf’s time-travel story.

His constant scrutiny made her unnaturally nervous. Probably because she kept remembering how he’d looked in her bed last night, how they’d almost made love.

“Tell me about that talisman,” she finally said, seeking something to distract her thoughts. “How do you figure a belt clasp has magic powers?”

“Huh? What magic clasp? Oh, nay, you misunderstand. ’Tis not the clasp that is the talisman. The clasp is just a protective covering.”

She turned the soup on low and put two more grilled cheese sandwiches in the frying pan, after removing two that were done. Then she gave him her full attention. “What do you mean?”

He removed the belt and demonstrated. In the back of the large, circular disc clasp was a secret lever that he sprang, releasing the back side and exposing an exquisite gold cross inside. About three inches at its widest point, the crucifix wasn’t a pendant, although it probably could have been used as such. The back of the cross was rough; obviously it had broken off from another piece.

“Oh, it’s beautiful! May I hold it?”

He nodded, handing it to her. As soon as he placed it in her palm, she felt its pulsing heat. She glanced up
at him quickly, and she saw that he understood what she was feeling.

“What is it?” she asked.

“A gilt frontispiece that my father tore off a Bible three years past whilst pillaging Lindisfarne—Holy Island—in Britain.”

Meredith put a hand to her forehead in confusion. “Wait a minute. The famous Viking attack on the Lindisfarne monastery took place about two hundred years before that, in the late eighth century.”

Rolf frowned at her interruption. “This was the second attack on Lindisfarne, and—”

“Aha! You said you weren’t into raping and pillaging.”

He made a tsking sound at being interrupted again. “I said that my family, personally, does not indulge in rape. I ne’er said we do not pillage. Pillaging is an honorable Viking endeavor. In truth, Saxons and Franks also are quite adept at pillaging and plundering. And I did not say my father attacked the Lindisfarne monastery. The good monks left the island a century ago. Nay, my father took the frontispiece from a villager whose family had stolen the holy book afore the priests left. So, you see, ’twas not really stealing since the item was stolen to begin with.”

“Go on, then,” she said with a sigh of resignation. The man had an answer for everything.

“Three years past, in 994, my father joined his brother Olaf—”

“The king of Norway?”

“Yea, Olaf Tryggvason, the king of Norway. If you keep interrupting me, wench, I will ne’er finish my saga.”

It was becoming a saga, all right.

“My father, a Norwegian jarl, along with King Olaf and Sven Forkbeard, the king of Denmark, banded together for a grand invasion of Britain. Ninety-four warships there were in the combined fleet—many of them ships I had built. ’Twas the most formidable Viking attack on Britain in more than a half century.”

“Who won?”

Rolf shrugged. “Many of the British nobles were prepared to accept Sven as ruler, but London was defended stubbornly just the same. And, as always, there was much bickering in the Danish and Norwegian ranks. ’Twas an unnatural alliance, you see, betwixt two Viking rulers who’d been trying for years to gobble each other up. In the end, Aethelred bought their allegiance with a danegeld of sixteen thousand pounds.”

Meredith was more confused than ever. “What does all this have to do with the talisman and the holy relic?”

“Sore angry was my father when he left Britain three years ago. Angry at his brother Olaf who stayed behind at the Saxon court, promising Christian conversion of all Norsemen. Angry at the weak-spined Aethelred who can be trusted only so far. Angry at the gods who failed to watch over the dead warriors. Mostly, he was angry at the Christian God since my mother had talked my father into baptism afore sailing.”

“So, in retaliation, he plundered a Christian monastery on the way home,” Meredith offered.

“That he did…except that he did not realize the monastery was no longer there.” He waved his hand in a careless gesture. “So, he raided some homes instead and found their hidden riches.”

Wealthy churches had been the targets of many Viking raids in the tenth century; Meredith knew that from her studies. That didn’t mean she believed Rolf’s story. “Go on,” she encouraged, nonetheless. “Why do you refer to this particular object as a talisman? What’s so special about it?”

“’Tis not the crucifix itself that is important, but the relic buried in its depths during the forging.”

“Relic?”

“Yea, three eyelashes from the lid of St. Cuthbert, a former monk at Lindisfarne, wrapped around a sliver of wood. The splinter comes from the staff of Moses. He was the holy man in the Christian Bible who rid the ancient lands of pestilence through the powers of his staff.”