Chapter 19 #3
His father, Danny, and Cage and Sly, who were leaning against the wall, all looked at him as if he was crazy. His mother, grandmother and grandfather all got into a tsk-ing match.
“Seriously, Zach,” Cage said to him. “Britta is gone. Accept that, buddy.”
He hesitated, then nodded. “This whole freakin’ intervention crap is ridiculous...and unnecessary. I’m already making plans to move on.”
“Uh-oh,” Sly said.
“I’m quitting the teams.” He put up a hand to halt the protests that erupted. “I’m selling the townhouse. And I’m going into hiding with Sammy.”
“Where?” his mother wanted to know.
“I can’t say.”
“What do you mean, you can’t say?” His grandmother’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. Then she turned and glowered at his grandfather. “Did you have something to do with this?”
His grandfather’s cheeks flushed, but he raised his chin. “Zach asked for my advice. This isn’t what I would recommend, but if it’s what he wants, I can point him to the right people for help.”
Pandemonium broke loose, everyone talking at once.
“Hear me out, people. I’m leaving. Until Arsallah is out of the picture...and I mean dead...I can’t give Sammy a normal life. And he deserves that. So, we’re going to disappear.”
“Will we see you sometimes? Can we call?” his mother asked.
He shook his head. “Cold turkey.”
“For how long?” His father’s voice was cold with disapproval.
“As long as it takes.”
“Years?” His mother looked as if she was going to cry.
“I hope not, but yes, maybe it will be a long time.”
“When are you leaving?” Danny’s face was expressionless, but he was clearly upset. He would talk to him later.
He couldn’t tell them that it would be in a mere three days. Otherwise, there would be a flurry of suspicious activity around his house. They wouldn’t be able to stay away.
So, he just shrugged.
Later, he told Sammy of his plans.
The boy was frightened, but more frightened of losing him than losing a familiar home. He became more enthused once Zach mentioned all the things they would be able to do together in the downtime till he found a new job...or they were able to return, whichever came first.
Before they went downstairs, though, Sammy tugged on his arm to stop him. “Does...does this mean Britta is dead?”
Zach closed his eyes briefly. “Yes. Yes, she is, Sammy.”
Sammy gulped, probably having already suspected the worst. “Now can I tell you what she said?”
Bracing himself, he said, “Sure.”
“She said, if she didn’t make it back, I should tell you,” he slipped his hand in Zach’s, “that she loves you.”
It was probably the worst moment of Zach’s life.
Who says medieval ladies didn’t have balls?...
Britta and Angelique got along like...well, sisters.
Turns out that their mutual father, whilst on a trip to Norsemandy some twenty-three years past, went into the Frankish countryside where he raped a number of women, including Angelique’s mother.
Like Britta, Angelique had trained to become a warrior, but unlike Britta, she had trained to be a nun as well.
While Britta had reason to want her father dead, Angelique had even more.
Not only had he planted his seed in her poor mother, and that was all she had been at the time, but he’d also planted a disease in her nether parts.
..a disease which led to her death at the age of fifteen.
Angelique’s life had been hard, to say the least, but Britta loved her already for her wonderful sense of humor despite her travails.
“So, you are like Boudicca?” Britta asked her as they sat on a stone wall surrounding the abbey courtyard. They were both panting and sweating, having just completed some sword play. “That’s not very nun-like, is it?”
Angelique grinned as she wiped her forehead with the sleeve of her gunna. “We are a different breed of nuns...nuns who enjoy the bedsport.”
Britta’s eyes went wide.
“Do not look so shocked? Are you a virgin?”
“Well, nay, but—”
Angelique wagged a forefinger at her. “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” She grinned as she spoke. “In truth, I am not really a nun. ’Tis a disguise which has worked well for me and my followers.”
Britta laughed and slapped the forefinger out of her face. “I was not judging, and you well know it. I was just surprised. But, believe you me, I know how to wipe that smirk from your face, sister.”
A short time later, Angelique’s jaw dropped night to her bosom. “Multiple orgasms? Clits? You jest with me?”
“’Tis no jest. The women of our time are being cheated.”
“Our time?”
“Let us save that story for later.”
“One last thing. Was it some special man who taught you these things?”
“Yea, but he is far, far away, and we will ne’er meet again.” Leastways, Britta did not think they would meet again. “Let us speak of our battle plan, instead of lost loves.”
“I like your idea of gore-illa warfare, though I ne’er heard that word afore. Nor ‘Look and See,’ ‘Growl and Prowl,’ ‘Escape and Evade,’ or ‘Double-backs.’”
“We must needs take the advantage out of our father’s hands. We will choose the site where the fight will take place. He left the area, but he will return.”
So it was that two sennights later, several aged nuns went begging alms to one of her father’s Northumbrian keeps; he had several here and in the Norselands, and still he wanted hers.
The aged nuns were performing their own lackwit version of “Look and See.” Whilst there, spying, they spoke of a nunnery in Northumbria where they had stayed overnight.
..a nunnery where two sisters, Britta the Big and Angelique of Frankland, were plotting the takeover of some castle or other owned by their father.
“Is that not odd?” Sister Clementina inquired through rheumy eyes. “Women fighters?”
“And they with only sling shots and broom sticks for weapons,” Sister Mary added, also blinking her rheumy eyes in innocence. “And they will be leaving the abbey grounds as they march to battle. Imagine!”
The men in the great hall guffawed and made coarse jests, even in the presence of the good nuns.
The two nuns reported back to the abbey that even before they had left the bailey, men-at-arms were being called forth. A small band because, as her father had remarked, “How many men does it take to topple a few lackbrained women?”
A sennight later, her father’s small hird of ten men on horseback, including himself and three sons, was on the move.
When they were several hides from the abbey, Britta and Angelique’s band surrounded the two forward outriders, and offered them the opportunity to surrender.
The men laughed and attacked. A mistake!
The women soon hid the severely wounded bodies and rushed away from the scene.
Escape and Evade. The nuns at St. Anne’s would be used for non-violent activities because they were reluctant to take anyone’s life, even a man as evil as her father—caring for the wounded, and preparing arrows and boiling oil, a contingency plan.
Closer to the abbey, they maneuvered and reined their horses in at the far end of a tight pass where there was a hillock on one side and a rocky cliff on the other.
Laughing, they taunted the hirdsmen, rode off, then did a double-back to the other side of the pass, thus blocking them in.
With the element of surprise, they managed to kill one brother, Trond, and three other men, which left her father, two brothers, and one hirdsman.
Looking down at Trond, all she could see was her brother laughing as he held up her skinned cat all those years ago.
No longer able to ambush, the eleven of them faced the three men, full on, swords and spears raised.
The men probably thought these piddly split-tails, as her father ofttimes referred to females, would be easy pickings.
But they had not counted on their expertise, as meager as it might have been, in comparison to the battle-hardened warriors.
Their downfall was overconfidence and surprise.
Her father actually had the nerve to smirk at the nerve of these women thinking they could best him. But then he recognized Britta, and his eyes narrowed with hatred. “So, daughter, you think to send your own father to Valhalla?”
“Not just me, but my sister Angelique, as well. Your other daughter.” She indicated with a jerk of her head Angelique at her side.
“And know this, you scurvy cur who does not merit the name father, you will not go to Valhalla. That is for noble warriors who die in battle. Today, you will burn in Muspell.”
It was an even fight, despite the odds of eleven to four. In the end, both Britta and Angelique put their swords through their father’s chest, coming at him from two sides.
Some of Angelique’s band were retching at the side, now that the fighting was over. It might very well be true that warfare was contrary to a woman’s nature.
“Do you have any regrets?” Britta asked Angelique as they both knelt before a small pond, washing the sword dew from their arms, as well as their blades.
Angelique shook her head vehemently. “He was a bastard. He needed to be put down like a rabid dog. Don’t tell me you’re feeling sorry after all he’s put you through.”
“Not sorry, exactly. Just sad. He was our father. They were our brothers. Blood kin. Why were they so...men?” She had told Angelique about their father’s pressure to wed, her one brother’s attempt at rape and another’s displaying her private parts to his friends.
“Some men...some women, too...are just born bad, to my way of thinking.” Angelique shrugged. “Methinks our killing them was a good thing. Leastwise, now other women, not just us, will be spared their cruelty.”
Britta nodded. “Best we get back to the abbey. There is much work to be done.”
The nuns and novices had already brought all the dead men back. Father Caedmon would be performing death rites for the men, a service Britta and Angelique declined to attend.