Chapter Seventeen

Be careful what you wish for …

Madrene was overwhelmed and scared. All these years she had yearned for her family, picturing life the way it used to be. But her family had changed. She had changed.

These strangers were polished, the rough edges of their Viking culture filed off. They still had Norse features, and bits of their language retained the old manner of speaking. Still, she hardly knew them.

Of course, she was happy to discover that her family members were alive and well, but she wished she were back in Sandy-egg-go. She missed Ian. She missed his cat. She missed the seals, which were not really seals.

He should have come with me.

Or I should have waited till he could come with me.

Her discomfort started as they were driving in a large white wheeled box to the vineyard owned by her father’s new wife. Well, not exactly new, since they’d been wed for eleven years, but new to her.

“Why are you so quiet, sweetling?” her father asked from the front passenger seat. She was sitting in the second seat, alone, and her uncles were in the third seat, where they could stretch out their long legs. Torolf had work to do with his seals, but would come to the vineyard next week.

“It has been quite an eventful week for me,” she explained. “Everything that has happened is just starting to sink in. I wish Ian were here. He is my anchor in this land. Without him I feel lost.

“Post-traumatic-stress disorder might hit you soon,” Ragnor said from the driver’s seat. “You should probably see a psychiatrist.”

Ragnor ever was the one to use big words and show off his intellect. Madrene did not understand what he said, not one bit. “A sigh-kite-tryst?” More words I do not understand.

“A shrink.” Ragnor laughed. “A head doctor.”

Surely he is not suggesting I have some healer shrink my head. Is he jesting with me? Probably. “My head feels fine.”

Ragnor laughed again. “Never mind.”

Madrene had noticed that people in this country said “never mind” whenever they didn’t want to explain something to her.

Uncle Rolf leaned forward over the seat and squeezed her shoulder. “Give it time, Madrene. We all went through this period of adjustment.”

That was another thing. Madrene could not accept the notion that she had traveled through time a thousand years to land here. But then, she supposed it was no more far-fetched than her earlier belief that she was in a fantasy land of magical things.

“My wife is a head doctor,” Uncle Jorund said. “Mayhap you would like to talk to her.”

“About my head?” Madrene turned in the seat to look at her uncle.

He tweaked her cheek like he used to do when she was a child. Odd how she recalled that now. And what a handsome man he was still! In truth, all three of the brothers were of superior good looks, including her father. Only a little gray threaded through their long, brown-and-blond hair. But they wore modern clothing—denim braies and tea-shirts—which made them seem strangers to her. In truth, she’d never seen her Uncle Jorund without a sword, or Uncle Rolf without his shipbuilding tools, or her father without a hay rake nearby.

“You seem different,” Ragnor said, looking at her in a small mirror attached to the glass front. “You were always nagging me before.”

“Hah! She nagged everyone who got within her hearing range. A shrew, that is what she was,” her father added, as if it were something to be proud of.

She shrugged. “I still am.”

“I don’t know about that. Looooove has made her soft.” Ragnor made a face at her in the mirror. Really, the rogue was thirty years old, only one year younger than she was, and he still acted the fool.

“You are driving too fast, Ragnor. Slow down. There is no hurry. Dost think the sky will fall down if we get there a few minutes later? And, by the by, you need your hair clipped. It is too long and unruly. I am glad you have regained your ‘enthusiasm,’ but, whew, that Svein Forkbeard had his face hairs in a twist over you not marrying his daughter Inga. Men will be men, you always said. But methinks you are just a dunderhead who cannot keep his dangly part in his braies .”

Everyone burst out laughing.

And Ragnor said, “Good ol’ Madrene. A shrew to the end.”

“And how does your husband feel about your shrewishness?” her father asked in a teasing fashion.

Before she could answer, Ragnor said, “Hah! They are a perfect match. Mac is as ill-tempered as she is. And nag? You would think he invented the word.”

Madrene leaned forward and smacked her brother on the side of the head, even though she agreed. She and Ian were a good match, but not because of the nagging.

There was no time for teasing or anything else then, because the white box was traveling up a narrow lane, lined on either side by a low stone wall and magnificent old oak trees. At intervals were large clay pots overflowing with red flowers. Wildflowers filled the lawns that stretched out to a stream which fed into a small lake. Behind the house as far as the eye could see, there were dozens of neat rows of grapevines.

Madrene decided to gather some of the wildflower seeds before she left. They would look nice in her kitchen garden at Norstead.

That thought caught her up short. Will I be going back to Norstead? Can I travel back? Do I want to go back? What about Ian? Honor says I must be avenged … my entire family must be avenged, in fact … but how will I manage all that? She sighed loudly and answered her own question. Like I always do. With bullheaded determination.

“Look, Madrene, look up ahead,” her father said excitedly.

There was a large keep with a porch that wrapped around all sides. In its courtyard stood many people, young and old. They were laughing and waving at her, as if they knew her well, and she did not recognize a one of them. She blinked her eyes rapidly several times. I will not weep.

Once they exited from the vehicle, her father guided her by the elbow toward the crowd, which now hushed. “This is my beloved daughter, Madrene, whom most of you know so well,” he announced.

Since when did I become beloved to my father? He always called me a pestsome wench because I nagged him so. Ah, well, I always called him a hopeless libertine, and I still loved him.

The crowd formed itself into a line and Magnus introduced her to the family, one at a time.

“This is my daughter Marie, who was born after I left the Norselands.” He put a hand on the shoulder of a black-haired girl of about thirteen who looked at her father with adoration and at Madrene with question.

Madrene felt a stab of jealousy that this stranger was held in such high regard by their father, which was mean-spirited, she knew. But there it was. She had no idea what to do, so she extended a hand to shake.

Marie stared at her hand, and Madrene realized it must have been an inappropriate thing to do.

Next, her father moved to a blond mophead of a girl with dancing blue eyes. She was probably a few years older than Marie. “You remember Lida, don’t you?”

Madrene’s eyes widened and she smiled. “The little smelly baby? She was not even one year old last time I saw her.” She ruffled the girl’s curls and moved on.

“I remember you,” a young man of about seventeen said.

She cocked her head.

“Kolbein.”

She gave him a kiss on the cheek. “You were such a needy mite, always following Father around like a shadow.”

“Kolbein is thinking about becoming a priest. Can you imagine that? A Viking priest?” her father asked.

Madrene studied Kolbein and saw the same quiet demeanor he’d had as a boy. Yea, she could see him in the religious life.

“This is Hamr.”

Madrene clapped her hands together and laughed. “Did you ever get the bow and arrow you always wanted?”

Hamr, as tall and burly as their father at … what? … nineteen? … gave her a fierce hug. “Oh, yeah. A long time ago.”

“But he is more interested in football and wenches now than archery,” her father joshed.

Madrene looked down the long line of people waiting to meet her and felt overwhelmed.

“Jogeir, dance for your sister,” her father said then to a handsome man of about twenty years.

“Father!” Jogeir protested, but came forward, lifted her in his arms and twirled her about.

When he set her back on the ground, Madrene recalled that Jogeir had been lame. She glanced down at his straight leg in question and understood her father’s odd request that Jogeir dance for her.

“He had an operation to fix his leg,” her father explained. “So fit is he now that he is a runner in the Olympics when he is not studying farming in college.”

Madrene smiled, not understanding half of what he said. The gist, though, was that Jogeir was no longer lame, he could run well, and he still wanted to be a farmer.

Njal, ever the mischievous one, came next. Wearing what she recognized as a Navy uniform, he winked before giving her a loud kiss on the mouth.

Storvald, at twenty-seven, worked as a craftsman at Uncle Rolf’s Viking village, Rosestead.

And next was Dagny, who stood staring at her with tear-filled eyes. Her father had said she was a talented painter. They hugged warmly, but Madrene did not know this young woman of twenty-five. Last time she’d seen her, Dagny had been twelve and Madrene seventeen.

The woman next to her, only one year older, had to be Kirsten. It was Madrene who hugged fiercely now. Kirsten and Madrene, even at a young age, had often been left to manage the large household when one nursemaid after another left in a huff. Kirsten told her that she was a teacher at a large university, which was a school for adults.

That comprised her immediate family, and Madrene’s head was swimming with all the new faces. None of her brothers and sisters had married yet, except for Ragnor.

Finally, her father introduced her to his wife, Angela, who took both her hands in hers and said with great sincerity, “Welcome home, honey. This is your home, as long as you want.”

Madrene glanced about. It was a pretty place, but it did not feel like home to her.

She also met Angela’s eighty-nine-year-old grandmother; Ragnor’s wife Alison, who was Ian’s sister—Madrene wanted to speak with her later; Uncle Rolf’s wife Meredith and their children Foster and Rose; Uncle Jorund’s wife Maggie amd their children Eric and the twins, Magnus and Mikkel, along with his stepchildren, another set of twins, Suzy and Beth, who were studying medicine.

After that, mayhem ruled … just like it had back at Norstead. Everyone talking at once. Laughter. Rough play among the boys. Shrieks from the girls. An occasional shout from one of the men. Loud music in the background. Pots and pans clattering. The only thing different was there were no babies crying, but that would come in time. Madrene realized in that instant that she had become accustomed to a peaceful, ordered life.

Can I live in such noisy chaos again?

I hope I don’t have to.

As if sensing her discomfort, Angela took Madrene by the elbow and said, “Let me show you to your room.” They went into the house, but before they went up the stairs to her sleeping chamber, Angela led her into a solar where a large portrait hung over the fireplace mantel. It depicted a stunning woman with long blond hair, dressed in regal Norse attire.

“That’s you,” Angela told her. “Dagny painted it from memory.”

“Me?” Madrene, who had never had a mirror till she came to this country, was shocked. A polished piece of brass sufficed back in the Norselands. Praise the gods! Does my bosom really look like that? No wonder men stare at me! She recognized the gown, but she did not know that woman in the portrait. Worse, she was beginning to suspect she did not know the woman she had become.

I am truly lost.

When great minds gather, make sure there’s enough beer …

It was late at night, and everyone was asleep at Blue Dragon except for the Ericsson and Magnusson men, who sat about the kitchen table making important plans. Beer … not wine … flowed in abundance.

Even Torolf had managed to fly in for the night, and would return to the base and his training expedition early the next day. Which brought to mind Ian, who was glaringly missing. If Torolf had come, Ian could have, too.

Ah, well, Magnus thought, he probably wanted Madrene to have private time with her family.

So the five of them were about to make an important decision: Magnus, Jorund, Rolf, Ragnor and Torolf.

“Madrene is going to be pissed that we didn’t include her,” Ragnor said after taking a swig from his long-neck bottle.

They all nodded their heads. Madrene could peel the rust off a broadsword with her sharp tongue when she went off on one of her tirades.

“Dad … all of you. … you should know something,” Torolf began. He had everyone’s attention. “Madrene told you that she was able to hold off invaders at Norstead for one year until Steinolf sailed his many longships up the fjord. And I know she told us, sketchily, how she went from one harem to another over the following two years.” He smiled to himself. “I know she even told us of her creative method for keeping those horny sultans from raping her. But what you don’t know is what happened to her before Steinolf sent her away.”

Magnus felt blood rush to his head. “The slimy codsucker! Did he rape Madrene?”

“No. No. It was almost worse than that,” Torolf said. “First, he killed all the warriors and cotters who resisted the invasion. It was a mass slaughter because he slithered in during the darkness of night and caught them unprepared. They had just fought off an invasion of pirates a sennight before and were not as alert as they should have been. Some were able to escape to the hills. Steinolf believed that, if Madrene would marry him, all her people would return and—”

“—he could slay them under a flag of surrender,” Jorund finished for him. At one time, Jorund had been a far-famed warrior. “I am familiar with Steinolf. He is a nithing … a man with no honor.”

Sensing that Torolf had not yet finished, Magnus prodded him, “Go on.”

“Madrene refused, knowing full well that the marriage would result not only in her death but in the death of all our people.”

“What did the bastard do?” Rolf asked icily, sensing what was to come.

Torolf took a deep breath and disclosed, “He had her whipped repeatedly over a period of three days. On the last day, they led her by a neck tether through the great hall, afore two hundred fighting men. Naked.”

Tears welled in Magnus’s eyes and he started to stand.

Torolf put up a halting hand. “Let me finish while I can. I know that we saw those scars on Madrene’s shoulders, but we did not see it all. Ian told me that she carries welts from neck to buttocks, dozens of them … scars that will never go away. That beast broke the skin and drew blood with each of his blows.”

Magnus did stand then, and pulled at his own hair. With a bellow of rage, he went berserk for a moment. They all understood a father’s fury at learning his daughter had been violated so. When he sat back down, his shoulders sank. “ ’Tis my fault. I never should have left the Norselands.”

“Nay. ’Tis my fault for leaving Norstead to search for Rolf,” Jorund said.

“Well, if anyone is to blame, ’tis me,” Rolf said. “I was the first to leave. I started this nightmare.”

They all argued at once then, getting louder and louder. Finally, Ragnor stood and shouted, “ No! ” When they quieted and turned to listen to him, he said, “I was the last. I did not need to go off to war with Svein. ’Twas I who left Madrene alone. I will ne’er forgive myself for that. But I know how to make amends. I will go back to Norstead and regain our family home. ’Tis the least I can do.”

“Dost think it is possible to go back?” Magnus asked.

“I do not know, but it seems to me there must be a way. Perhaps, going back to the present-day site of Norstead would be the way to begin.” Ragnor had always been the smartest in the family, and everyone heeded his words.

They all sat silently then, pondering what would be best.

“I am her father. I should be the one to avenge her,” Magnus said.

“I am the warrior in the family. I would be best able to avenge her,” Jorund said. No one mentioned that he had not been a fighting man for nigh on fifteen years. His body was still hard, but his skills must be rusty.

“I am absolutely the one to go,” Ragnor said, “because I was the last to leave her alone.”

“Mayhap we should all go,” Magnus offered, but no one seemed enthusiastic about that plan. Too many family members would be left alone here.

Torolf stood then. He had seen thirty and some winters, and he was in peak condition. The SEALs training had truly made him into a skillful soldier in the war on terror, not just in body but in honor, too.

To each of them in turn, Torolf said, “No. No. No. No.” Then he addressed Magnus. “Father, I am the only adult male in our family with no wife or children. I will go.”

Thus it was that a U.S. Navy SEAL made plans to go back in time. Some people said that SEALs were a little bit crazy. Torolf would for damn sure prove that to be true … or die trying.

Everyone needs to be needed …

Madrene felt useless.

There was nothing for her to do, especially since she’d been told in no uncertain terms that Torolf would be the one to go back to Norstead, that she was no longer needed to raise an army. “That beast Steinolf will be dead by year’s end, that I guarantee,” her father had told her with a patronizing pat on the back.

She was not all that upset about not going back to her own time. If she did not have Ian, it would be another story. Then, for a certainty, she would return to run the royal estate alongside Torolf.

For now, everyone told her to just relax. Well, she was relaxed up to her bloody eyebrows. She wanted … nay, needed … work to do.

But when she offered to help oversee the household, Angela and her grandmother told her kindly that they had a housekeeper to take care of that.

“How about cooking?” she asked.

Turned out the housekeeper cooked, too. And used vast quantities of garlic. Angela came from an Eye-tally-on family which cherished the garlic cloves in most of their food. And once again, the garlic turned her stomach. Several times, she’d had to rush, without causing attention, to the bathing chamber to throw up the contents of her stomach into the toy-let. She must have developed some kind of bodily reaction to garlic, she supposed, just like Hilda the Dour used to break out in a rash when she ate strawberries.

Her father, Kolbein, Hamr, Jogeir and Njal were out in the vineyards trimming back the vines. When she’d offered to help, they told her it was man’s work. That outrageous statement caused her to lash them with her tongue good and loud. It did her no good. In the end, they went off without her.

The uncles and their families had gone back to their respective homes, along with Storvald. Ragnor and Alison planned to drive back to Coronado this afternoon, where Alison was a doctor—the modern word for a healer—and Ragnor worked in Sandy-egg-go with computers, just like Geek. At one time Ragnor had planned to become a SEAL, too, but he’d decided he preferred working with his mind.

“Take me back with you,” she said to Ragnor.

It was the first time she’d even hinted of her unhappiness here with her family.

Ragnor, who was helping his wife pack a leather carrying bag, looked up at her with surprise.

“Of course you can come, Madrene,” Alison said, “but you know that Ian won’t be back until the weekend.”

“It matters not. At least I would have something to do. I could clean his house, even if he keeps it spotless. I could rearrange his socks and underbraies so that the vein pops out in his forehead when he sees they are not in their usual places. I could play with the cat.”

“Have you told Father or Angela that you need something to occupy you?”

“Yea, I have. They tell me to relax.”

They left without her, finally, when her father promised to go out on the morrow and buy her a loom to weave some fabrics. A loom! For the love of Frigg! I need a man, not a loom.

She went upstairs and sat on the bed, waiting for Ian’s nightly call. Then she got a whiff of the red sauce cooking down in the kitchen … the red sauce highly seasoned with garlic … and ran for the bathing chamber.

At least it gave her something to do.

I’ve got a secret …

When Ian called Maddie that night, she kept blubbering stuff about looms, and garlic, and bullheaded men, and a family that no longer needed her.

“Slow down, sweetie, and tell me what’s wrong.”

“All these years I dreamed about how it would be if my family were still with me. What I failed to recall is what my father’s households are like—full of disorder and noise and people and things I do not understand.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I want to go home.”

Ian’s heart stopped. He had to ask, but he didn’t want to. “What home?”

“Your home, of course. What did you think I meant, you lunkhead?”

Ian didn’t care that she called him a lunkhead. He leaned against the wall with a goofy grin on his face. “I miss you.”

“You’d better miss me. And you’d better not have run into your former betrothed again.”

“Maddie, I’m on an island.”

“Hah! You would be surprised what lengths some women will go to to get a man. I might just have to come there and whack her on the head with a rock if she keeps chasing after you. I know how to do that, you know. Whack someone with a rock, I mean.”

“I know that too well, babe. How about I come and pick you up on Saturday?”

She was silent for a moment, then said, “That is three days away. I cannot wait that long. Methinks I will demand that my father take me back tomorrow.”

“You would be all alone at the house.”

“Nay, I would not. Sam would be there.”

He smiled at that image. “Actually, it would be kinda nice coming home to you.”

“I can even greet you in that garment I never got to wear.”

“What garment is that?”

“When I was trying to think of ways to seduce you—”

“Yeah?”

“Cage bought me a red silk teddy from Victoria’s Secret. Would you like to see it?”

“Definitely.”

“I’m feeling fluttery right now. I have my hand on my belly and I swear it is actually fluttering.”

“Oh, Maddie, you are incredible.”

“Do you ever flutter?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“I did not know my bosom was so big.”

“Huh?”

“The picture on the wall here … ’tis the first time I have ever seen myself as others do. I had no idea I looked that big. Kirsten tells me there is a procedure that a doctor can do to make them smaller.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! You’re not too big, and don’t even think about breast-reduction surgery. It’s dangerous. And besides, most women would die to have a body like yours.”

“Really?”

“Yep. I’ll prove it when I see you on Saturday. Do you want me to bring you something? Candy? Flowers?”

“A vibrator.”

Ian practically swallowed his tongue. “Wh-what did you say?”

“I want a vibrator. Carrie on Sex and the City said a vibrator is a woman’s best friend.”

He shook his head and grinned. “Honey, do you even know what a vibrator is?”

“Nay, but you can show me. Can’t you?”

“Absolutely. Hey, I’ve gotta go. There’s a guy behind me who wants to use the phone. One last thing. There’s a secret I’ve been keeping from you. I need to tell you when I get back.”

“I have a secret, too. I have been afraid to tell you about it. It’s … it’s a big one.”

She probably wants to tell me that Luke sold the jewels for her. I already know that. “It can’t be any bigger than mine.”

“I would not wager on that.”