Leofric let himself into the house through the door to Sigefrith’s study, intending to go up the tower stairs rather than the front stairs so as not to wake the children with his staggering.
On his way through, he stopped a moment to gaze at his son’s sword in drunken admiration. It was true his son had a long sword. A very, very long sword. A longer sword than any man in England, Leofric thought, beginning to titter. Son of a serpent! It took two hands to swing it! He laughed aloud and stumbled on into the lower room of the tower.
He nearly walked into his daughter-in-law in the gloom.
“Oh! Leofric!” she cried. “Good Lord! I thought it was Sigefrith bumping around in there.”
“Only your humble servant,” Leofric said with an unsteady bow. “Going up to my lonely bed. Sure you won’t join me?” he leered.
Hilda snorted. “Where is he?”
“Went for a walk, said he.”
“Is he as drunk as you?”
“If he had been, I would have got myself drunker. Shan’t be beaten by my own son in depravity.”
She snorted again.
“You must humor me, my dear,” Leofric said. “I can never get so good and drunk at home, you know.”
“Oh, I can imagine,” she muttered. “I know your wife. What about the King?”
“What about him?”
“You let him get drunk as a bard’s bitch and then go up to your daughter?”
“Sigefrith is not, never has been, a brute when he’s drunk. A perfect gentleman, my dear. He’s an annoying little bastard, but he’s no brute.”
“I like the way you still call him little when he’s bigger than you,” she smiled.
“Ah! But there are those who say I’m the bigger man, my dear.” He pinched her cheek.
Hilda swatted his hand away and laughed. “Who says?”
“They who were in a position to know it!”
“A horizontal position, you mean!” she laughed.
“Care to assume the position to verify?”
“I would if you would bring the King over for purpose of comparison!” she laughed. “Disgusting old sot!”
“Filthy bitch!” he laughed with her, and then he remembered that she really was something of a bitch. “I wouldn’t do such a thing to my daughter,” he said, sobering a little. “And now that I think about it a bit, I don’t want you doing such a thing to my son.”
“Not even with you?” she purred.
“Especially not with me. Son of a serpent!”
“Why not? Afraid I shall never tolerate Sigefrith again once I’ve had a real man?”
“Now listen here,” Leofric growled.
“What?” she asked sweetly.
Leofric did not know what to say, but her insolence was beginning to infuriate him. There were women who could make sauciness attractive, but he was beginning to think his daughter-in-law was not one of them.
“My son is as much a man as I am,” he said.
“Have you ever been in a position to verify? I haven’t.”
“Now listen here!”
“What?” she tittered.
“Come with me!” he barked.
“What?” she asked, losing some of her self-assurance in the face of his anger.
“Come with me!” He grabbed her arm and, before he himself quite knew what he was doing, began dragging her to the door of Haakon’s “secret place.”
“What?” she asked again, but she followed.
He took a rush as he went by and lit it on the candle.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“It’s a secret,” he muttered. Once he had the door closed behind them he pointed at a barrel and commanded, “Sit down.”
“What do you want in here?” she asked.
“I want you to sit! Don’t make me repeat myself again!”
She sat, and he lit the little lamp and blew out the burning rush. He watched the smoke curl up from his hand for a moment before speaking. Now that he had her here, he did not know what to say.
“I have been meaning to speak to you for some time,” he began. “My grandson has told me a few things about the way you treat his father, and—”
“Oh!” she laughed. “I like that! What a man he is! He gets his five-year-old son and his fifty-year-old father to fight his battles for him!”
He abruptly silenced her laughter with a slap that stung his own palm and nearly knocked her from her perch.
She gaped at him for a moment with her hand upon her cheek, and then her eyes narrowed and she hissed, “How dare you?”
“It is something Sigefrith should have done long ago!”
“It is as I said! He’s not man enough to fight his own battles!”
Leofric slapped her again, though less brutally. He had forgotten just how hard he could hit a woman. It had been so long, and it was so difficult to temper his strength when he was drunk.
“At least he has the sense to send a real man to do it for him,” she sneered.
She was still holding her cheek, so he smacked the other with the back of his hand.
“Go ahead and do it!” she panted. “Beat me black and blue like you do your own wife! Perhaps that will make a real man out of Sigefrith after all! Perhaps he’ll be man enough to slay the man who brutalized his wife! Or not!”
“Bitch!” he snarled.
He took her by the shoulders and shoved her against the wall. She fell from her barrel, but he grabbed her arms again before she had quite risen, and he slammed her back against the wall again. At last she looked reasonably frightened.
“Bitch!” he hissed. “Do you think I don’t know how to hurt a woman so it won’t show? You would wear bruises like a medal! I shan’t give you the satisfaction! Now listen here. You don’t know what a real man is. You—”
“That’s right!” she said, but he could hear the tremor in her voice. She was defiant, but she was afraid. “I don’t know, because I certainly didn’t marry one!”
“Listen here!”
He knew just how far to jerk a woman’s shoulders so that her head would snap back against the wall. Now she cried aloud in pain or surprise.
“That’s right,” he whispered. “No one can see the bruises on the back of your head. Now listen here. I didn’t say you don’t have a real man, I said you don’t know what one is. You already have a real man. What you’re thinking to make of him is a brute. And you don’t truly want a brute,” he said with a malevolent sweetness. “Do you, my darling?”
“I want a real man! Not that puling halfwit seven-year-old in a man’s body—owwww!” she wailed as he twisted her arm back behind her.
“I tell you,” he said softly, “you have a real man. A gentleman, my dear. I think you are only a little confused about what you truly want.”
“A real man,” she growled through her pain. She was remarkably strong, remarkably resistant, he thought, for a woman. But she was still a woman.
“You want a real man?” he chuckled grimly.
“Yes!” Her eyes were defiant despite her pain, and all the more so once he released the arm he had been twisting behind her back—until she realized that he had only let go of her arm so that he could use that hand to unbuckle his belt.
“What are you doing?” she shuddered.
“If you were my wife, I would beat you with it. But a belt leaves nasty marks.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Getting undressed.”
“You wouldn’t!” she quavered. Oh, she was frightened! She was only a woman after all. “Sigefrith!” she cried desperately.
“He can’t hear you,” Leofric murmured. “No one can hear you. This room is built directly into the wall. We are surrounded by stone.”
He reached under the hem of his tunic and fumbled at the waist of his leggings. She began to struggle, but he held her right arm with his hand, and her body was pressed against the wall by his. She was a big woman, but he was a big man, and he knew what he was doing.
“I shall kick and scratch and scream!” she threatened. Her teeth were chattering in her panic.
“But, my dear, that is just what I like! That is what your real men like!”
“Sigefrith!” she howled.
He reached down to grab a handful of her gown and yanked it up as far as he could. In fact this brought the hem no higher than her knees, but he already stood between her legs, and this was enough to terrify her. She thought he would do it. She screamed until he dropped her skirt and clapped his hand over her mouth.
“A real man doesn’t ask permission, my dear. A real man does as he likes. A real man does things to you that you probably can’t even imagine and certainly wouldn’t enjoy. A real man beats you everywhere your dress covers. A real man spits in your face and drowns your kitten and throws your fancy-work in the fire. A real man leaves you at home with a cold supper and takes his mistress out to parties. A real man probably does worse, but this real man has forgotten it.”
With his hand over her mouth and nose, her eyes were all he could see. They were blue; they were wide with fright, and they reminded him uncomfortably of his own wife’s. He couldn’t go on much longer.
“Now listen here! My son doesn’t treat you as he should because he knows what I did to his mother, and he is afraid of turning into me. Though God knows his mother was a saint beside the likes of you! But I’m already damned, and I’m watching you. You don’t have to love my son, but you shall treat him with the respect a wife owes her husband. And if you ever—ever—ever lift your hand or your voice against my grandchildren, I won’t mind damning myself utterly for their sake. I know how to kill a woman so it won’t show how she died!”
He held his hand over her mouth for a moment longer, and then he released her and took a step away.
Her blue eyes were no longer like anything he had ever seen on his wife. He had never seen such hatred in a woman before. He immediately resolved to return to the castle to sleep, even if it meant risking a meeting with Alred in the morning.
“I knew you wouldn’t do it,” she said with an ugly, trembling laugh. “I doubt you even could. You’re nothing but a pitiful old drunk who hasn’t been a real man in years.”
His left hand shot out and pinned her head against the wall by her neck. The right he sent fumbling around her skirts in pursuit of her own hand. “Give me your hand, Hilda,” he growled. “Give me your hand and I shall show you your wouldn’t and your couldn’t.”
She made a choking sound in her throat, and he knew she would suffocate if he held her thus much longer. But he found her hand and thrust it up underneath his tunic.
“Still think I couldn’t, my dear?” he said with an uglier laugh than her own. “There’s your real man for you. Still want him?”
He waited until her face had gone from red to purple, and then he released her.
“And don’t think it’s because I have any great desire for you. It is simply what real men like. I could and I would. Don’t make me say it again.”
Her face went from purple to red, and her blue eyes were wet with tears of pain and fright, but they were no longer defiant.
“A real man would despise you anyway,” he muttered, and he blew out the lamp and left her standing in the dark.
He is rather scary. But it is a sort of turning point in his character -- or rather, in my readers' perception of his character.
Chapters
Nownow, this may have been a bit over the edge, but I hope she had learned her lesson now!