Estrid redefines luxury

Estrid sighed and stretched luxuriously. The sheets on her bed at home were as fine as these, but there was something about sleeping at the castle…

Perhaps it was simply the air. She had opened the louvers in the windows, and the sweet air of the spring night came curling in and poured over her, making her shiver with cold and delight. She toyed with the idea of taking off her nightgown and letting it flow across her bare skin, but she decided that would be simply too unmistakable an invitation to Brede. She was already taking a risk by lying atop the sheets in her nightgown.

It seemed a shame that fresh air should be a luxury. The little room she shared with Brede had no windows and was three doors removed from the night air. If it smelled like anything, it smelled like smoke. Or him. Or them.

But the new hall would be finished this summer, and then they would build rooms above the old. They would have windows. They would have air. Hilda could stop mocking her then. She would have a finer house than Hilda, and it wouldn’t be long.

Until Hilda got Raegiming!

She didn’t want that weirdly exotic caliph’s den with its hellish windows and its army of ravens that garrisoned in the rafters, but she couldn’t stand the idea of Hilda having a castle of her own.

God grant that Leofric live forever! she thought, and then she laughed to think of what the old rake would say if he knew that she was lying here in her nightgown praying for his health. It would be even funnier if she were doing it naked, she thought, and again began to play with the ribbons of her gown.

Leofric was the only one who was not there tonight, excepting the Countess, who had just had her baby. Even that enigmatic squire of the Duke’s was there, although it had taken the arrival of his Scots cousins to draw him away from his elf wife and his elf baby.

She wondered what the men were discussing so late. It was like Brede to shuffle her off to bed when the conversation began to get interesting, but what intrigued her was that Matilda too had been sent away – fuming, Estrid had not failed to notice.

Sigefrith had planned since the start that they would all spend the night at the castle, so he had known that something would keep the men up late. Surely it had something to do with the Scots, or at least with some news that they brought.

She longed to sleep, but she was determined to stay up to question Brede. Sigefrith told Hilda everything, and she would not be informed by Hilda in the morning. How smug she could look! One simply wanted to strangle her. Sometimes she did pity Sigefrith.

Brede knocked softly at the door and entered without waiting for a reply, as he often did. It always gave her just enough time to stop what she was doing – in the event, unlacing her nightgown – but not enough time to remove the guilty look from her face. But it always made him smile, as it did now.

“Hallo, Puss, you’re still up?”

He looked exhausted. It must have been that the others were drinking wildly, and he had had to use his wits to keep up with their merriment. She didn’t want a boor for a husband, but sometimes she did think it would be better for him to simply drink with them.

“I was waiting for you,” she said.

“That’s sweet,” he said, but he sounded unconvinced. He began at once to undress, and as she watched him, it seemed to her that his hands shook.

“Were you drinking?”

“Perhaps I should have been,” he laughed awkwardly.

“What is it, Brede? What did they say?”

“Oh! Poor Pussycat,” he said, trying to laugh again. “Is that why you were waiting for me? I shall tell you in a moment.”

She folded her hands across her belly and waited. She liked to watch him take off his shirt. He didn’t squirm out of it as Eirik did, but pulled it off in one sweep of his arms. Eirik was more muscular, but he had none of Brede’s grace.

It was a shame that he became so clumsy when he paid attention to his movements – such as when he fought with a sword. He could fight well enough these days that she was not ashamed of him, but one would never be fooled into thinking that the sword was a part of his body. Indeed, he always wielded it as if he were surprised to find it in his hand. If only he could learn to swing his sword the way his swung his arms when he pulled off his shirt!

She liked it especially when he undressed with his back to her – then he was not Brede, but only a beautiful man. If he did not know she was watching him, he did not pay attention to his movements, and then he was as beautiful and as graceful as a cat – or a lion, she thought, with such a dark mane. Then he would turn back to her, and he would be her beautiful man.

“So, what is it?” she asked as he crawled onto the bed, heading directly for her and not for his pillow.

“Puss,” he said hoarsely, and he pulled up the hem of her nightgown as he crawled up alongside her.

“Oh, Brede,” she sighed as his lips reached her throat. “You said you would tell me.”

“Is that all you want from me?”

“What is all you want from me?” she asked.

“I already know what I know,” he chuckled. “All that remains to want is you.”

“But I don’t know,” she whined.

“I shall tell you later.” He had dragged her nightgown up as far as he could while she lay on it, but his hand had continued up underneath it. It did not exactly tickle, but it sent a gooseflesh shiver down her side.

“In a moment, you said,” she pointed out.

He only laughed in his throat and finished the work of unlacing her gown.

“Oh, Brede! What a bother you are!”

His head fell against her collarbone as if she had stabbed him dead.

“I think you will regret having said that, Puss,” he said after a moment. His voice was strange – husky still from his passion, but it sounded as if it came from far off.

Awed, she let him have his way.

Later, as he lay still, she said plaintively, “Don’t fall asleep.”

“I fear I shan’t sleep tonight,” he mumbled and rolled off of her.

“What is it?” she asked, frightened now.

“Poor Pussycat,” he murmured and pulled her head onto his shoulder. “I must go away.”

“What? Why?” She pulled away from him to look into his face.

Denmark, she was thinking, or home to her uncle, to see Sigi perhaps… had he had word from Sigi? Why did it sound as if his “go away” meant “never come back”?

“I must go away to fight. Do you know?” he asked with an incredulous little laugh. “The sort of fighting where, if you make a mistake, you die.”

“Brede!”

“And you know I always make a mistake sooner or later.”

“Brede!” She sat up.

“It’s harder for you than for me, you know,” he said piteously. “You must stay behind. Promise me one thing, Puss. Promise me, if you have a son, that you won’t name him Sigefrith – ”

“Oh, Brede!” she cried aloud in exasperation. “What a stupid baby you are! You won’t die! So,” she said matter-​​of-​​factly, “whom are you fighting, first?”

“The Normans. King Malcolm is going into Northumbria soon. Don’t tell anyone, Puss. Not even Hilda.”

“Oh, Hilda! I’m certain Sigefrith is telling Hilda all of Malcolm’s strategies right now.”

“That’s true…” he said dazedly. “I shall tell Sigefrith to take care of you…”

“Brede, Brede!” she sighed and hugged his head against her breast. “What a stupid man! Everybody fights, all of the good and noble men, as you are. Everyone – my father, my brother, my uncles, my grandfathers – and yours too. So, you see, most of them, most of the time, don’t get killed.”

“Your father did.”

“After many battles! And he was a hero, and already had a son and me. And, so, your father lived to get killed in a stupid drunken fight. He should rather die like my father. And my uncle is still alive, and Sigefrith is, and Alred and everyone. Even Leofric is still alive, and he had an arrow in his heart! You think every time you fight, it will be against someone like Sigefrith or Alred, but it isn’t so. It will be some big farm boy that someone put a sword in his hand and said, ‘Here, you go fight that stupid beautiful man over there.’ And, so, if you see a knight come that do fight like Alred, you say, ‘Here, you go fight that little short man over there.’”

He laughed, and his warm breath curled over her skin and down into her nightgown. “You’re braver than I,” he said.

“Do you want me to go fight for you? You say go, I go.”

He laughed again. “What a silly kitten it is, with its little claws!”

She dragged her nails lightly up his back to demonstrate. “When do you leave, first?”

“Early next month.”

“Is he going to war or going raiding?”

“Raiding, so he says. They’re Scots. But they will go as far as they can.”

“Raiding is good,” she said approvingly. “It is a bother to keep land once you win it, and if you do, you still have the trouble of farming it. Better to let others keep it and come take what you like from time to time. Like the difference between a wife and a mistress, isn’t it? my uncle says.”

“He says that because of the wife he has. It is difficult soil to work, I should think.”

She laughed. “You like your wife better?”

“It is a lot of bother with the ploughing and the sowing…”

“Oh!” she giggled. “You complain, when I shall have all the bother of the harvesting!”

“And perhaps I shall not be here then!” he cried, clutching her against him convulsively.

“No, Brede,” she sighed. “If it is only raiding, you will be home by then.”

“And if I don’t come home?”

“You shall come home, silly boy. You shall see. Fighting on land is only filth and misery. You will be happy for the battles when they come, to give you something to do.”

“You take it so easily.”

“It is not easy to take, but we Norsewomen are strong and brave, as you say.”

“You are half Dane,” he teased.

“And you are half Norse, and so, you are strong and brave as I, you shall see. You shall be a bold Norseman when you are away, and a silly beautiful Dane when you are here with me.”

He threw an arm over her and sighed against her neck. His breath flowed across her skin and made her shiver, though it was warm.

It was not easy to take! The words had come easily, but it was because they were nothing, only words – but as a girl she had always believed them. Did the other women believe them when they said them to their own men? Was she the only one who doubted? But she had to hope the hollow words would have the strength to bear him up if he needed to lean on them.

She twined her fingers in his dark mane to hold his head where it lay. Something so simple as his breath on her neck suddenly seemed a luxury.