Page 22 of The Last Viking

“Cute? Me? Do you treat me like a lackwit pup?” He shook his head. Cute? “Leastways, I intend to master the magic in this come-pewter box,” he snapped. “From birth, my father and mother encouraged learning about all things, in nature and in the world. ‘From knowledge comes strength,’ my father often said. ‘Even for fighting men, the brain is as powerful a weapon as the sword arm.’

“Your father sounds like a very wise man.” Her raised brow belied her compliment.

“You are loath to believe we heathen barbarians relish wisdom? Nay, do not deny what shows clearly on your dubious face. I told you afore that my mother is Christian, but my father follows the old ways. At birth, he dedicated each of his living sons to the Norse gods.”

“So?”

By all the saints! I’d like to wipe that smirk from her pursed lips. Mayhap a dunking in her moat would accomplish the deed. Nay, I must control my temper. For now. Until I master the secrets of all these magic boxes. “If you would bridle your wagging tongue, a man could perchance finish his tale,” he told her instead. Truly, the woman could use a lesson or two—or fifty—in being biddable. “As I was relating before your interruption, my brother Magnus’s birth-patron is Frey, the god of fertility and prosperity. Magnus has ten living children with his three wives, and he is the best farmer in all Norway.”

“Three wives!” Merry-Death commented, as if that were the most important of all the facts he’d imparted. “Three wives!”

He waved a hand airily. “Then there is my brother Jorund, whose patron is Thor, the god of war. Jorund is the fiercest warrior in all lands.”

He inhaled deeply at the sudden unhappy thought of possibly never seeing them again. Then he went on brusquely, “And my father dedicated me to Odin, the god of learning. Mayhap you have heard that the all-father sacrificed his one eye to drink wisdom from the well of Mimir?”

“A myth!” Merry-Death sneered. “Besides, you’re a shipbuilder, not a scholar. So much for your father dedicating you to wisdom!”

“Ah, but I was not always a shipbuilder. From the time I reached ten winters, I fostered in the Saxon court of King Edgar, my mother’s cousin. For five years, I suffered there in that snakepit of conniving noblemen, but I soaked up all that the monk teachers could provide in their monastery schools.”

“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?”