Carrie’s Christmas Viking Read online

  Carrie’s Christmas Viking

  A Sweet Romance Novella

  Lindsay Townsend

  Carrie’s Christmas Viking

  Copyright© 2020 Lindsay Townsend

  Cover Design Livia Reasoner

  Prairie Rose Publications

  www.prairierosepublications.com

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Bound, shackled, he waited. Unable to stir or speak, he had, over the countless seasons since his capture, learned to listen. He was a long way now from self-pity. The Norns had judged and found him wanting. He had betrayed a kinsman. Big brute of a fellow, mangled by battle scars. A Viking in all but name, who went crusading, instead. What was he called?

  “Magnus.” The captive mouthed, though he made no sound. Magnus his ugly cousin, with his pretty son, the little lad who he had tried to steal.

  Chained, he could not twitch, though now, eons later, the Viking acknowledged his stupidity. Magnus had a wife, a witch-wife, and she had stopped his foolish scheme stone dead, as if he had been struck by a crossbow bolt.

  What magic did she fashion? He did not know. Worse, he had never forgotten the dreams she had sent him, ever since he had been trapped by her enchantments.

  “Release me!” he had bellowed in his nightmare, trying and failing to struggle in his chains. He could speak then, but the red-haired witch shook her head and laid two fingers on his rigid jaw. His lips tingled, then froze.

  “I am a good witch,” she announced, hugging her skinny arms as if to stop herself from hitting him. “I am a follower of Christ and the holy mother, like Magnus my husband. You, Viking, came to our house, were welcomed as kindred, and sheltered in our hall.” She tapped her forearms, her amber eyes taking on a shadowed glint. “You ate our frumenty.”

  “Aye, and poor stuff it was, too,” he wanted to hurl back, for he had no shame then and the lie was sharp. His throat choked on the words, as if he was a mattress stuffed with feathers. He remained silent.

  “You hunted with Magnus.”

  A few rabbits, and a boar, no more.

  “You stood up in our hall and played a pipe for our son to sing along with. He clapped his tiny hands and danced with a will to your tunes. Did you think I never noticed your greedy glances towards him? He is my son!”

  Mine is dead. The thought stabbed him, followed by another, a worse piercing. Mine, and his mother, both.

  He would have sobbed, had he a mouth he could move.

  Relentless as winter, the red-haired witch watched him, her unflinching gaze scraping beneath his practised sneer to expose the raw truth beneath. He felt as empty as a monk’s scabbard, and as useless.

  “You would have stolen Robert to raise as your son,” the witch continued, the grip on her own arms tightening until her knuckles showed white. “It is only for that reason, that you would have kept and cared for him as your own, and not for any pity of your own dead family, that I do not tell my husband of your treachery.”

  Gods, not Magnus Crusader...The chains stopped his full body shudder, though his mouth dried and his very bones seemed to freeze to ice.

  “Had you desired my Robbie for any other reason, any darker reason, I would have killed you and left Magnus the remains to spit on.”

  He had no doubt that she would have done so.

  Now, she fixed him with a new glance, and he sensed the power in her, rising to her will.

  Her hair fell from its plait and unbound about her narrow shoulders, bright as a living flame and as terrible as she spoke the words of his doom. “Banished are you to me and mine, Viking. Tied are you in these chains, the fetters of envy, until another of my kin requires your aid.”

  The little witch strode closer, the air she sliced through seeming to darken, then sparkle, as she raised both hands and evoked the great mother, the mighty Christ, the faithful Thor, and cunning Loki.

  She uses my own gods against me!

  He could only hiss his displeasure, but she knew, of course, tipping him a bland, cool look that reminded him of his mother, whenever she had caught him stealing hot biscuits from the griddle. She rippled her fingers and he felt his face slacken, his limbs becoming heavy as his eyes drooped.

  “Sleep now, Sir Viking. Sleep until you are needed. Sleep in safety, if not in peace.”

  Unable to fight her magic, he closed his eyes, falling into dreams.

  He dreamed of towering trees and taller buildings, places of glass and prayer, of incense and vellum. Sleeping, he dreamed of fields full of ripening wheat, hard bursts of rain, and hunger so intense his stomach clenched.

  What are these things?

  “Years, and time passing.” The man who appeared in his mind, floating like a cathedral saint in a painted apse, laughed at his obvious confusion. “Splendour in Christendom, man, what did you expect? You angered my elf and she bewitched you. Now, you must wait to be rescued, but only if you are worthy, and even then, only if you are lucky.”

  Magnus? He mouthed.

  The floating figure came closer. He had shaggy black hair, the brightest eyes and a ruin of a face whose strong, stark looks had been annihilated by sword cuts.

  “Kinsman,” came the reply. “Be glad Elfrida caught you first. I would have done more than curse.”

  Come to gloat, Magnus? he thought, too proud to admit fear or fault.

  “Nay, Eric the Envious, blond bad cousin and worse guest. My anger and troubles are over. I come to you now as teacher.”

  I want no lessons from you.

  Magnus snapped the fingers of his hand—the one that was whole, unblemished, and not mangled by war—and the fog about them both vanished. “I realise you do not wish to learn, but you owe me, little Viking.”

  The insults made Eric—yes, that was and is my name—clench his fists. He longed to bite the taller man, to kick out, flail with his useless clumps of meat that were his hands. The chains slung around his shoulders and middle shifted and clanked, heavy and yellow as gold but far harder and impossible to break.

  “I owe you nothing.” His lips fashioned his answer but he could make no sound, not even a grunt of frustration.

  “Watch.” Magnus snapped his fingers again. “You should be bored enough by now to pay some heed.”

  Stung afresh, Eric shook his head at this accusation, marking at the same time that he was no longer surrounded by mist. He was, instead, standing within a tower.

  Where is this place?

  Magnus, misunderstanding, answered a different question. “This is a dream of my witch-wife, Elfrida, or rather a memory of hers. Heed it!”

  Eric’s senses swirled for an instant, then settled. He felt different, smaller, more fragile—but in the same instant, determined. Choosing not to fight the feelings, he allowed the scene to sweep over him in a wave of colour and light.

  Elfrida sped back inside the tower. When she had buried the last of Joseph’s evil toys, she had a flash of sight, or foresight. She saw a tall, thin figure, lying prone and still in the snow, with a spray of mistletoe hanging over his heart and a black cat settled by his feet, a creature she had never seen before, only sensed. She blinked and the vision changed, for the cat spat at her and slunk off between the trees into the forest. She tried to see where the place was but could not hold the picture—it was gone.

  “Then it is truly finished,” Magnus said when she climbed up to him and told him al
l. He was also lying prone, but on the bed she had made, looking very comfortable in the candlelight. “It is over, and we both may rest.”

  He opened his arms. “Come to bed, my Snow Bride.”

  The other called me that, too. Elfrida hesitated for an instant, but only an instant, for this was Magnus and she was in truth his bride, his bride of earth and soul, as well as snow. She knelt on the edge of the nest of blankets and sheets and hugged him as he cradled her.

  The night of Christmas Eve drew on, and she drew back so she could see his eyes and face. “There is one magic I hope we can make together,” she said. “A magic of healing.”

  “And of love.” With strong, warm fingers he traced the contours of her face and smiled at her. “A magic of life, on the eve of Christmas.”

  Eric blinked, realizing he was fully back in his own skull and bones. “I do not understand,” he wanted to say, even as he stood amazed at the closeness between the battered knight and his tiny witch wife. I never had that with Hilde. Of course, Hilde had only been a serving wench, good to warm his bed when he was home from travelling. Still, he was fond of her, in a fuzzy, slap-dash kind of way, and she had borne him a youngster, a dark, quiet, curly-haired child who he had truly loved, despite the boy’s sullenness. If my son Haakon Ericson had lived, I would not be in this mess.

  “You saw the man?” Magnus asked. Again, Eric did not understand the ex-crusader’s question or intensity, but he nodded.

  “His name is Joseph Denzil. He is an enemy of my family, a necromancer who stole brides to do some evil magic in the dark of the year. We fought him, my elfling and I, and bested him before the winter solstice, long ago. Elfrida thought he had died then, in the snows. Me, I am not so sure. Such malice rarely fades completely. Of late, my wife has come round to my way of thinking.”

  Why? Eric asked silently, by a tilt of his head and a waggle of his thick fair eyebrows.

  “She dreams of future troubles for our distant, future kin.”

  As the grizzled crusader answered, the tall, thin figure that Eric had seen in Elfrida’s memory walked out of a distant tomb of snow and closed in on them, moving as smooth and slippery as quicksilver. Warrior as he had been, Eric sensed the relentless avarice and energy of this slinking Joseph Denzil and wanted, very much, to see and to remember his face.

  He strained to witness the man, to learn his scraggy features below that ginger hair, trying to lean forward in his chains, when Magnus spoke again.

  “He is dangerous. Implacable. Devious. Arrogant, and a schemer. He will be your enemy as much as he will be to any of my kin. Why? I see your eyes demand. Because you will oppose him. Creatures like Denzil hate being thwarted.”

  The mist rose around them and Eric knew no more.

  Caroline Armstrong, known as Caz to her friends, Carrie to her granddad, but never Cal—not after Jack’s “Really, Cal?”, too often uttered in disbelief, or worse, derision—leaned against the stout, worn wood. Slowly, with chilled, numb fingers, she unlocked the door to her cottage. Her feet ached after a day serving teas and home-made mince pies at The Scone and Seagull, but she was still in one piece, so she counted that a triumph. These days, after she and Jack had broken up, she made certain to acknowledge any victory, however small.

  “Evening, Eric,” she called out to the tiny figure of the Viking that stood guardian in the deep window-sill of her single-roomed home. My house, gifted to me by granddad. Jack will not take it from me. He always called it too cramped, anyway.

  Their divorce, long and bitter, was ongoing, with Jack determined to wrest anything she valued from her, in a kind of brutal Solomon-style settlement. He had demanded half of her cottage as a right and said he would buy her out of the rest.

  Carrie, remembering granddad in the house where the old trawler man had brought her up after her mother had left them both, had refused Jack’s so-called generous offer. Recalling her happy times together with her grandfather, their Christmases spent in front of the great blazing fire at the cottage since she was six years old, Carrie had dug in her heels. Though I still don’t know why Jack wants any part of this place, he always said he hated it.

  “You have to put up with the bed in the sitting room, a camp bed if you have a guest, a tin bath if you want to wash, and no indoor plumbing,” her ex had grumbled, whenever she had tentatively suggested staying at Cliff Reach, if only for a weekend. Now, it was a bone of contention between them, one she was going to keep polishing.

  Besides, I slept on that camp bed for years while I lived here with Granddad. It was comfortable, and safe. Lately, probably because of the divorce, safety had become very important to her.

  Kicking off her boots and sliding in her stockinged feet across the quarry tiles to her tiny lean-to kitchen, Carrie filled a kettle and turned to inspect her lair.

  Her solicitor assured her the cottage was secure and Carrie was never so glad that she had recently changed the locks. Earlier, she had refused Jack’s demands, made soon after their marriage, to extend the property into the garden. Why did he want that, when he never wanted to come or stay? This solid box, perched like a lighthouse tower on a granite cliff top, wrapped and guarded her memories in cotton and stone. I can breathe here, she thought, as she made herself a tea, rubbing the muscles of her lower back as she stretched her calves.

  And now, for her favourite part of the day.

  Time to chat to Eric.

  “Hi, Eric,” she called out to the little statue in the deep windowsill. “Are you auburn or blond today?”

  She sipped the Earl Grey and slid across the tiles to sit in the window, glancing once into the darkening herb patch and outside privy before flicking a look at the distant sea, dark and shimmering as a starling’s wing in the winter twilight. Standing beside her, proud in his antique breastplate, furry leggings and sturdy boots, the tiny, bearded figure looked pensive, solemn and sad in spite of his helmet, topped by wings.

  “Blond today, I’m glad you agree,” she went on, speaking more loudly to smother the memory of Jack, on his single visit to the cottage, soon after her grandfather’s death, sniggering and exclaiming, “What the hell is that?”

  Following his accusing finger, Carrie, said quietly, “Eric was granddad’s.”

  “Eric?” Jack’s scorn could have melted an iceberg.

  “Granddad’s had him since he was a boy. Told me he loved playing pirates with him.”

  “Yes, very sweet, I’m sure, but Eric must go, Cal, absolutely. Ridiculous plastic trash, and what’s with those stupid wings? Vikings never had winged helmets.”

  “I know,” Carrie had said softly, and, more quietly still, “I’ll take care of it.”

  “You and Jack never got on,” Carrie added, relieved now that she had not thrown the figure away but hidden him instead, in the outside toilet where Jack refused to venture. Bathed and cleaned and returned to the cottage, her Viking made a fitting guardian in her home’s biggest window. “And you’re not plastic, Eric, you’re more than that.”

  Granddad had told her that he had a queer memory of Eric once being made of wood, but that was impossible and didn’t matter. The grandfather who had brought her up, snug and content in this retreat above the cliffs, had valued Eric.

  “A play-mate for him, a confidant for me,” Carrie admitted, draining the last of her tea. “Do you know what happened today? Mrs. Heston brought her lunch club to The Scone and Seagull for their Christmas party, and Alice and I were rushed off our feet until closing. Hectic and fun, it was, and Alice was delighted. I stayed late with her to bake more muffins and scones for tomorrow.”

  Carrie stretched and gently touched Eric’s bearded face. The material he was made of made him tan, though she thought of him as fair, blond or auburn because Jack was ginger. “You look so stern,” she murmured. “But then, I think you are a widower, and lonely, going to sea to escape a sad past.”

  Eric glowered, or perhaps it was the setting sun. Red and pink beams of light shone off the narrow gold n
ecklace Carrie had whimsically draped over the Viking, making him a heroic figure in chains.

  “Did you sail to America, Vinland? I’ve always wanted to see the fall in Vermont, and Yellowstone park in spring, but Jack wouldn’t go anywhere out of Europe and disapproved of my going with a girl-friend. He didn’t really stop me, just talked about the costs and how he would miss my cooking and that eating in the pub just wasn’t the same. In the end, I felt mean, so the trip never happened.”

  She sighed and drummed her fingers on the stone sill. “Jack disliked so many things. Maybe you would be the same, if you came to life? No shouting, for whatever reason, no loud laughter, no music—apart from rock bands—and certainly nothing classical, with fiddles like granddad used to play.”

  Jack had sold her grandfather’s violin, disposed of it one day without a word, without asking or telling her. She remembered scouring their flat, then this cottage, for the precious instrument, when Jack sulkily admitted he’d got rid of it.

  “Don’t know why you’re going on about it, Cal,” he said, when she asked, just the once, why he had done that. “You weren’t any good on the thing.

  “Got a decent price, too,” he’d gone on, his lean face glinting with pride as he galloped roughshod over her feelings.

  Why had I not seen how careless of others Jack was until then? Why did I mistake his intensity for passion?

  Carrie shook her head. Eric stared at her attentively, expectantly, and she found she could go on. “No tossing pebbles into streams, no giving to charity, no throwing coins in fountains. He could drink but he disapproved of my drinking, said he hated seeing little girls behind big pints.”

  Marvelling at how she had accepted such cocked-eyed views, Carrie added, “I suppose you would be quaffing ale or mead in a great hall somewhere, boasting of treasure and battle-loot, wielding your sword and axe.”

  She studied Eric’s empty hand, the one that once held sword or axe, a weapon that had gone missing through the years, and shook her head. “No, you’ve a shield, and that’s what you were, a protector of others.”