The despair on his face almost broke her heart. She couldn’t help herself then. She took his hand in hers and promised, “We’ll make sure it’s not too late.”
Chapter 10
A Viking’s work is never done . . .
Cnut was so ashamed.
Who was that man he’d been? And he didn’t just mean the obesity. He had to have been an egocentric bastard, selfish to a monumental degree, to ignore the needs of his people! Hoggstead had been in his mother’s family for generations. They really were his people. But he’d let them starve.
No more! he vowed.
He ordered Finn to gather all the men into the great hall where he was about to address them. He stood at the head table while the rest of them, more than sixty in number, sat on benches or leaned against the timber walls.
At first, they seemed more concerned about the changes in his physical appearance than the plight of Hoggstead. Mostly they were burly, hardened warriors who’d as soon split an enemy’s head with a battle-axe as show any softer emotions, but they were Vikings, and Viking men valued their good looks.
“Why do you wear your hair so, jarl?” asked the bald-headed Igor, who’d been shaving his head since Cnut could remember. In fact, he claimed that women liked him to rub certain parts of their body with his shiny pate.
Cnut had noticed a lemon scent when he passed Igor earlier, further evidence that Cnut was still a vangel. But also evidence that Igor was guilty of some grievous sin, or was about to commit some evil. If there were any Lucipires about, the man would be demon fodder soon, sure as sin.
An expression of disgust had come over his steward’s face, when asked about Igor. “Rumor is that Igor and Red Ranulf have been raping some of the village women, sometimes in exchange for food, sometimes with threats that they will kill their husbands if they tell.”
Red Ranulf hadn’t been emitting a lemon scent when they’d met that morning, but then they’d been outside in the cold, and Ranulf had been heavily clothed. Cnut would have to keep an eye on both men.
“And you are clean-shaven, too. Was it lice, or fleas?” a young squire, Atli by name, called out. By the looks of him, he probably had more than a few of both crawling over his dirty body.
Vikings valued cleanliness. And he had a steam bathhouse for winter bathing. What was going on here in his keep during the short time he’d been gone? Why was no one bathing?
On questioning Finn, he learned there was a problem with the bathing house where hot springs provided warm bathing. A clog was preventing dirty water from escaping.
Atli’s friend, Tostig, jabbed Atli in the arm with an elbow. “Lackwit. Ye don’t ask the master a question like that.”
“Why not?”
“No lice or fleas,” Cnut answered. “I saw a Viking one time who styled his hair this way, and I liked it.” As simple as that. Of course it was on a television show, which they would not understand.
“What Viking?” someone demanded to know. It was the blacksmith Ogot.
“Um . . . Ragnar Lothbrok.”
“That peacock!” remarked the graybeard Vestar, who’d sold his sword for many a king in his time. “Ragnar would wear peacock feathers in his hair if he could find one of those pretty birds. I saw him one time with three gold loops in one ear. No doubt he walked with a tilt to one side.”
Everyone laughed.
“Do the women like it? That is the important question,” commented Thorkel Long-Limbs, who fashioned himself an expert in the sex arts, even worse than Cnut’s brother Ivak. Thorkel was one of his hersirs, whom he’d already asked to take over Jor Snaggle-Tooth’s job as chief hersir over all the Hoggstead housecarls.
“I have no idea,” Cnut said.
But no one believed him. They probably suspected him of withholding some secret to sexual attraction. Like that would have done him any good in the past one thousand, one hundred and sixty-six years of celibacy! Or near celibacy. Not that they knew that.
“Why are your two teeth so pointy? I don’t recall them being so pointy before. Oh!” Atli gasped. “Did your captors torture you by filing your teeth?”
Cnut pressed his lips together to hide the fangs, which were recessed, but still . . . yes, pointy. But then he thought, I never said anything about being captured. Did I? Well, let them think that, rather than try to explain.
“Why do your braies have metal over your man parts? I noticed when we went to the privy. Is it like armor?” still another man asked. “A codpiece?”
“A mighty thin codpiece, if you ask me,” Ranulf hooted. “Mayhap for a man with a needle cock. Ha, ha, ha.”
Zippers? How do I explain zippers? And is Ranulf implying . . . ? Hmm. Mayhap Finn is right about Ranulf and Igor.