“She must also be guarded against those who might try to rescue her,” Thork cautioned. “Ivar may make a move. Then, too, some of our own villeins would have her head in a trice on the suspicion alone.”
“And what of Hrolf?” Ruby asked, realizing the dangerous predicament she was in, looking for a last out. “Will you risk his anger to satisfy a suspicion, without evidence?”
Thork had forgotten Ruby’s claim of kinship with the Norman Viking and Sigtrygg’s fear of reprisal. “Do you still make those ridiculous assertions?”
“Of course, I do. I never lie. Why don’t you take me to him for proof?”
Ruby’s cunning surprised Thork. Surely she knew her lies would be proven false on Norman soil. What game did she play now? ‘Twas probably just a ploy for time.
“You could always pay Hrolf wergild for her if he protested her death,” Olaf suggested.
“Wergild! A man’s worth, not a woman’s!” Thork snorted. “Never have I heard of paying for a woman’s loss!”
“And the torture?” Olaf prodded. “Shall I order her torture? If so, how far should we go? To the death?”
“Let us talk on this more,” Dar offered judiciously. He leaned back in his heavy chair, feet outstretched, fingers steepled thoughtfully in front of his face. “Olaf, take her to the tower room and make sure you post a guard at the door.”
After they left, Dar and Thork shared a glass of rare Frisian wine he kept for special guests. Thork rubbed his eyes wearily with the fingertips of both hands.
“What think you?” Dar asked as Thork stared solemnly into the finely wrought silver cup he held between his two palms.
“In truth, I know not what to make of the wench,” Thork answered, shaking his head. “She vexes me sorely with brazen statements and her tales of the future, but still I cannot be certain of her guilt. All signs implicate her, and yet something is amiss in this puzzle.”
“Perchance you just want to believe her.”
“Mayhap, but I swear on Thor’s hammer, as well as the Christian cross, Sigtrygg knew exactly what he was doing when he placed the waspish wench in my hands.”
“Yea, that he did,” Dar agreed, then burst out laughing. “Did you hear what she said about bosoms? And men’s brains?” He slapped his palm on his knee appreciatively and said, “God’s blood! I swear she would be a fair match for you if things were different.”
” ‘Tis easy for you to find amusement in my discomfort,” Thork grumbled. “Do you know, she asked if I would kill her?” Thork tilted his head back and drained his cup in one long swallow.
“And what said you to that?”
“I said I knew not, but, in truth, I misdoubt I could—unless I saw with my own eyes her raise the knife to my sons.”
* * *
For two days, Ruby brooded alone in her tower room—a damp, stark cubicle with a pallet and table, not even a chair. The two small slits of windows were too high for her to see out.
The only person she’d seen’ since her interrogation was the guard who handed her food, drinking water and a clean chamber pot each morning.
Aside from feeling dirty and frightened for her future, Ruby was bored. What she wouldn’t give for a good book!
When her guard, Vigi, opened her door that morning, Ruby sensed something different in his shifting eyes, but she knew from experience that he wouldn’t answer her questions.
She lay daydreaming on her pallet several hours later, smelling the crisp coolness of the air coming through the little windows. Autumn would be coming soon. Ruby wondered sadly if she would be home for Christmas.
Autumn was Ruby’s favorite time of the year. It reminded her of a special time in her life with Jack. She closed her eyes tightly to shut out the pain of those memories.
Twenty years! How had the time passed so quickly?
* * *
She and Jack had dated all through their senior year in high school, wildly in love. As much as she had loved him, though, Ruby had held off his heated advances, wanting to be sure, even hoping, perhaps unrealistically, that she could wait until marriage. When she told women friends about that today, they laughed at her unbelievingly, not understanding the different times and mores of twenty years ago when an eighteen-year-old virgin hadn’t been an aberration.