Chapter Text
ᛁᛊᚨᛒᛖᚢ
“How much longer until we reach the English shore?” Isabeau asked tiredly as her ship’s captain gave her a bowl of dried and salted meat.
“At least until late tomorrow.” The captain responded as he handed her a small corked jug of ale. “If the wind is against us and we have to rely fully on rowing, it would be another two nights instead of just the one.”
Isabeau sighed. “If that is the case, I will need my ladies brought from the other ship to change my clothing at some point,” she informed him as she looked up at the sky. “I wonder how bad the fighting in England has gotten now. The last letter I had from my sister was… not hopeful for the future of her husband or her crown.”
“I’ve heard the vikings are planning to retreat at least for the winter.” He sat across from her.
“We can hope for that, at the very least.” She said as she took a drink.
From the front of the ship, they heard a loud shouting and rushing of their men.
Isabeau stood up and hurried to the front of the ship, holding onto the ledge to peer into the distance of the waves.
Ahead of her was a terrifying sight- three ships. Viking ships. She knew they weren't there for peaceful negotiations, either. It was treasure, blood, or both that they’d be after.
Usually both.
She couldn’t take her eyes off the ships, though. Almost as though something about them was calling out to her from it.
“My lady!” The ship’s captain rushed over to her from the stern of the ship. “My lady, we need you to get away from the bow, please. These men approaching us are Norsemen, they won’t hesitate to sink our ship just because they see a widow on board!”
Isabeau turned and looked at the captain for a moment. She reached up and began twisting her wedding ring around with her right hand. It was worth almost as much as almost anything on the ship- including her own life. “If they board, offer them this in exchange for our lives and ability to continue through the Channel.” She handed the ring to the captain as she walked past him to the stern and sat down. She folded her hands in her lap and took a breath. It had eighteen since she had been made a very young widow and only six months since she had been forcefully separated from her son, almost immediately her half brother had decided that he couldn’t bother to make plans regarding her life now and that she should be sent to England to be managed by her older half sister. Being seventeen, she was still of a perfect age to marry and provide whatever husband Emma found for her with heirs and spares. At least, that was the intention. That was always the intention.
She heard the dull thud of wood on wood as a plank came from the vikings’ ship to their own. She lifted her head and saw her crew readying to fight. Readying to die is more like it, she thought to herself. The vikings came rushing onto the ship, and almost immediately the smell of blood hit the air. Her Norman soldiers were certainly attempting to put up a fight, but their opponents were as ruthless as the stories. They had never stood a chance.
“My lady, please. We have to try and swim to the next ship.” The captain rushed back to her. Behind him, the war cries of Normans and Norsemen could be heard as their one-sided skirmish waged.
It couldn’t be called a battle, and if the Normans hadn’t fought back it simply would have been a slaughter.
“What would the point of that be, exactly?” Isabeau asked incredulously as she grabbed his hand and took her ring back from him. Clearly the man had no plans to use it, and she had no plans to die at sea. “They have multiple ships and have already begun pillaging both of ours.”
She peered around him, almost all her men were dead at that point. Even if they didn’t kill everyone- they’d be at least stranded in the middle of the English Channel.
“My lady-” and a spear went through his neck, he slumped to the floor of the boat in front of her.
Isabeau lifted her skirts to avoid blood soaking them. This wasn’t the first time she had been present to watch vikings do what they did best. Her husband had dragged her from battlefield to battlefield the first year of their marriage, until she had discovered she was pregnant. He had sent her back to Luxembourg then, and she only saw him once more after that.
“Seems they had some odd cargo aboard.” One of the vikings approached her with his sword rested on the shoulder of his armour. “A widow, by the looks of it.”
“A widow who could help your cause.” Isabeau spoke up, the norsemen around her reacting in surprise.
“She can speak Norse?” One whispered to another in surprise.
“I speak nine languages, one of them being Norse.” Isabeau said loudly. She stood up and carefully stepped over the body of her ship’s former captain. She held out her wedding ring towards the leader of these pirate vikings. “This is worth more than everything on this ship, if you let me live I’ll give it to you. If you insist on killing me both I and it will go directly overboard.”
He walked towards her and bent forward to look at it, his eyebrows shooting up. “This ship is from Normandy, but this ring isn’t. These markings are from Luxembourg, I’d bet.” He lifted his head and looked at her. “What is your name?”
“My name is Isabeau, Dowager Countess of Luxembourg. My sister is Emma.” She folded her hands in front of her. “Queen of England.”
Directly telling them who she was was a risk- but a calculated one. Certainly they could just kill her, but if they were at all connected to King Sweyn they’d probably want her alive. Not only did Sweyn have a fairly positive relationship with her late father- but theoretically she could be used to leverage territory from her brother-in-law, King Aethelred of England, in exchange for handing her over to him and Emma.
“I should’ve known. You’re the youngest of the Norman litter. You've all got the same eyes.” The man in front of her thought for a moment. “You were right- you are someone who could be useful to me.” He turned towards his men as he grabbed her arm roughly and all but tore her ring out of her hand. “Get her onto our ship, unharmed! I’ve got some plans with this one!”
Isabeau lifted her skirts and followed the extremely tall viking who had come to escort her off of her ship onto the viking one. She was a prisoner, but that didn't mean she had to suffer through it without dignity. "I have a small chest of clothes and a few belongings I need brought with me," she turned to face their leader and pointed to where it sat on her ship.
He rolled his eyes but shouted back, "see the chest with carved grape vines? Bring it, too!" He paused as he began to turn away from her. "Thorfinn." He pointed to a young member of his crew sitting in the back of the boat, it looked as though he hadn't been part of their raid. "I'm assigning you to the young Dowager Countess here."
"Excuse me?" The viking, apparently named Thorfinn, looked up at his commander as he sprung to his feet angrily. "I'm not-"
"It won't interfere with our duel." He sighed and rolled his eyes again. "You're simply the only person on this ship besides me and Bjorn, and we can't because we have to lead the men , who I can trust not to touch her on top of not letting the other men touch her either."
Isabeau grimaced. She'd almost forgotten what vikings were like- how insane they could be even outside of their raiding activities. She sat down beside the other teenager as he settled himself back down and folded her hands in her lap carefully. One of them set her small trunk beside her roughly and walked back to his rowing post.
"Your trunk has a man's name inscribed on the back," their leader said as he looked over her and the trunk carefully from where he stood. "Not yours."
"Frederick. My son's name." Isabeau looked up at him. "Speaking of- may I know yours?"
"I'm Askeladd. As I said earlier, this is Thorfinn. My second in command is Bjorn. You'll learn the others' names if and when you need to." Askeladd leaned against the mast of the ship. "You said your name is Isabeau? I've heard of you. You’re an illegitimate daughter of the late Richard of Normandy. Three years ago you were married to Henry, Count of Luxembourg. Apparently that didn't go well for you."
“My marriage to my darling husband may have been short-lived, but I did give him an heir.” She responded, looking down at the small chest. Her mother-in-law had thrown her out once she had reached some updated deal with her oldest brother, who was also named Richard- calling her the daughter of a whore whom her son had bought to gain military support and proclaimed that she was beneath their family. One of the things that Isabeau had hoped upon travelling to England was that she’d have had her sister’s help in either getting her son to her or getting back to her son herself. A powerful new husband would help her with that task as well.
Askeladd’s eyes narrowed as he listened to her. She calls him her darling husband, but there isn’t an ounce of remorse or misery in her voice when she talks about him. It’s there when she mentions her son, though.
Isabeau let her eyes drift to her trunk as she ran her fingers along one of the designs. This certainly threw a wrench into her plans- but she could still use it.
“You have a son?” Thorfinn looked over at her.
“Hm?” Isabeau turned to look at him as she returned from her own thoughts. “Oh. Yes. I do. He’s a little over two years old now.” She looked out of the ocean in the direction of Normandy. “I haven’t seen him in… six months.” Her heart had been broken when she had been separated from her son- but she couldn’t let it drown her now like it had then. If she didn’t keep moving forward and stay strong, she’d never see him again. When she turned back to the young Viking, he had a strange look on his face. He was gazing up at the sky now, spinning his dagger in his hand.
Isabeau leaned back against the side of the boat and let out a long breath. Of all the people she had been in the custody of since her marriage, somehow the viking pirate who was clearly trying to decide who the best side to trade her to was the one she had felt safest with.
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Isabeau pulled her cloak closer around her shoulders as she walked through the Danish village. The customs were strange to her here- and none of them knew who she was yet. Her intention was to keep it that way for a while- Askeladd hadn’t asked her to come to meet his uncle, so she assumed he had similar plans to her in that regard.
She had sold a necklace she had kept hidden in the bottom of her trunk to one of Gorm's retainers in order to rent a room from him- he was a stingy, angry, selfish old man but she wasn’t willing to sleep on the ship the way Thorfinn insisted.
Some of the women had begun to whisper about the fact that she was a widow, and about her foreign clothes. One thing she had always refused to do was renounce her Norman heritage- any clothing she had had made as the Countess of Luxembourg had all been in the Norman style, and the same was to be said for her mourning clothing.
“You need to stop being so hard to find!” Thorfinn shouted as he stormed up behind her.
“Am I hard to find or do you just never leave that ship?” Isabeau responded as she kept walking. Dealing with Thorfinn reminded her of dealing with her brothers- if she let their tempers get to her, they’d just get worse. If she didn’t put energy into them, then they were much easier to deal with. “Did Askeladd tell you you had to keep a closer eye on me than you have been?”
“Askeladd doesn’t command me!” Thorfinn snapped as he trudged behind her, crossing his arms.
Isabeau came to a stop as she turned a corner on the village road and saw a mother helping her toddler to stand and walk in a straight line on the front step of her house. Her eyes grew distant for a moment before she shook her head and continued on her way. She stopped when she finally reached a stretch of fence with no one around and leaned back to sit against it. She buried her face in her hands and took a breath.
“What are you doing?” Thorfinn looked over at her, raising his eyebrow in judgement.
“I’m missing my son. What else would I be doing?” She responded as she wiped at her tears. “I haven’t been in a village with mothers and their children… ever before in my life.” She sighed, looking at the trees on the other side of the road from her.
Thorfinn watched her carefully. In a way, he saw his own mother reflected in her- kind, strong, and stern. In other ways, they couldn’t be more different. They certainly didn’t look very similar. Isabeau was the illegitimate daughter of a duke and the widow of a count who styled himself a prince. She’d never known a day of work in her life. Yet he could see the hardships she had endured written into her face. He’d never given any thought to his mother in Iceland, or his sister. She made him do that for the first time in eleven years.
She squared her shoulders back and took a breath. “Alright. Now back to what I was doing before,” she turned around and walked back towards the town.
“Hey!” Thorfinn walked after her quickly. “You’re such a pain in the ass!”
“Watch your language, Thorfinn.” Isabeau responded simply as she folded her hands. “I’m looking for yarn in black, so please keep an eye out for it when we’re in the market.”
He rolled his eyes. “Why should I do what you tell me?”
“Why shouldn’t you? You have to follow me around almost all of the time, so you may as well be of some use to me.” She paused at a stall selling fragrance oils. She looked at a few of them. These will be useful if I’m with these Norsemen at sea for a while, she thought. She handed the man a coin and picked up a small vile, slipping it into the pocket of her dress before continuing on.
“Why do you think about your son so much?” Thorfinn asked as she stopped at a stall that had skeins of yarn in varying colours.
“I’m his mother,” Isabeau responded simply. “I am always thinking of him. As a Christian, we’re always taught that a father’s love- God’s love- is the purest of all. I would compare it more to a mother’s love. I would give… anything in the world to get my son back and make him safe with me.”
Thorfinn looked at her with a strange expression again before turning away. “Sounds foolish,” he muttered as he leaned against a wooden post and folded his arms.
She was sorting through a few skeins of yarn carefully, she wanted a few so that they could last her a while of busy work whenever they left this village in the spring.
No sooner had Isabeau chosen three of them and paid, did Thorfinn grab her arm and begin dragging her down the street.
“Thorfinn!” She shouted at him furiously, stumbling as she tried to keep up with him. He was a few inches shorter than her, but his years of training resulted in him being faster and stronger. “Let go of me!” She shouted again, tripping over her skirts.
“I have somewhere to be.” He responded without looking back at her.
“Thorfinn!” Isabeau snapped in a deeper tone.
That made him stop.
She successfully pulled her arm from his grip and stood up, checking her pockets to ensure that what she had bought was still in them. “Where are you attempting to drag me?”
Thorfinn turned to face her and spoke through gritted teeth. “My duel. With Askeladd.”
“Ah. That.” She still didn’t actually know why this duel was so incredibly important to him, but she could at least respect it. “Lead the way, then.” She folded her hands in front of herself and followed as he began walking. She quickly had to lift her skirts as they walked, trying to at least mostly match his pace and not be left completely behind.
Ahead of them, she could see Askeladd speaking with Gorm and laughing. He clearly didn’t have much, if any, worry or concern about this duel.
Askeladd patted his uncle’s shoulder and walked towards the two of them.
“Thorfinn, go wait in the forming circle. I’ll be right there.” He instructed the teenager before turning to the young widow. “I’d stay as far away from Uncle Gorm as you can, if I were you. Your accent is unmistakably Norman and your hair and eyes aren’t a far leap to recognising you as a noblewoman. You’ll be nothing but a glowing pile of gold to him and he’ll try and force you to marry him.”
Isabeau’s eyes widened. She’d already had a husband far too old for her, in her opinion. She didn’t need or want another. “Thank you for telling me.” She said, turning to walk to the other side of the crowd. Nothing but a glowing pile of gold, huh? She thought as she pushed through the crowd. She’d seen duels before- but never a viking duel. I suppose that’s what I am to any and everyone. I should remember that.