Sandra Hill - [Vikings I 02] (25 page)

The young cleric raised his brows in question.

“Brother Godwine is an accomplished healer in Frankland, but since he cannot read or write, I am his scribe, taking notes on our findings for a book Brother Godwine hopes to write. The Holy Father has requested it.”

Rain slanted a look of disgust at Selik for portraying her as an illiterate. He just stared back at her innocently.

“You have heard of Bald’s
Leechbook
, have you not?” Selik asked Father Bernard, blinking guilelessly.

“Yea, of course.”

“Well, Brother Godwine’s book will be vastly different. Whereas Bald’s book studies the body from head to toe, Brother Godwine’s book will go from inside out. And he intends to call it a medical manual.”

Father Bernard’s mouth dropped open, and a wave of fetid breath almost knocked her over.

“Is that not so, Brother God-friend—I mean, Brother Godwine?” Selik inquired of her.

Rain nodded reluctantly, and Selik knew he would hear more on the subject later.

Selik did annoy her with his continual teasing, and she would tell him about it when they returned to Gyda’s house. Unable to read or write, indeed! And writing a medical manual! But she sensed his wisdom in warning her to employ caution. She should not interfere in the culdees’ medical practices or let them know she was a woman—and certainly not a woman who came from the future.

“Can you show us around the hospitium until Father Theodric returns?” she asked, disguising her voice with huskiness.

Father Bernard scratched his underarm lazily and broke wind loudly, without a hint of embarrassment or apology. Of course he thought she was a man, and Rain supposed men—some men, anyhow—did vulgar things like that. She saw Selik watching her with a blasted smile on his lips, just waiting for her usual unbridled reaction. She tapped her foot
impatiently as the young priest bit his bottom lip uncertainly.

“Father Theodric would, no doubt, approve,” he said hesitantly.

Rain and Selik moved quickly ahead of him into the hospitium before Father Bernard changed his mind. Rain’s eyes devoured every detail of the large hall, which contained more than twenty pallets lined up on both sides of the drafty floor. Culdees in their long, flowing cassocks knelt at the sides of the patients, most often engaged in bloodletting. Rain had seen pictures in medical texts of the procedure involving leeches or bleeding cups placed on the patients, but still she was unprepared for the gruesome sight.

Each of the culdees had two pottery bowls—one for the ‘unfed’ bloodsucking worms and another for the bloated, blood-engorged parasites. The primitive healers applied the leeches to practically all the patients, regardless of the type of illness or injury, to treat everything from broken bones to stroke.

Rain felt Selik’s fingers dig into her upper arm in warning. She tried to shrug him off, but he pretended not to notice.

One by one, the accommodating Father Bernard walked with them by the pallets, explaining the condition of the patients, often introducing them to the culdees who worked tirelessly with the sick. Aside from the bloodletting, Rain could not really criticize the healers, who did the best they could with the primitive materials available to them. After all, the one patient suffering from a stomach tumor could only be kept calm and sedated without the healing effects of modern drugs and medical procedures.

Now the heart attack victim, on the other hand…she wondered if they ever used the digitalis plant.

Near the end of the line of pallets, however, Rain couldn’t keep her opinions to herself. She sank to
her knees next to a culdee who was removing blood-swollen leeches from the wheezing chest of a young girl, about twelve years old, who moaned deliriously from her weakened condition. The rancid smell emanating from the emaciated body was too familiar to Rain to ignore.

“Do you know what’s wrong with her?” she whispered to the elderly priest, whom Father Bernard introduced as Father Rupert from the Rhineland. He was wiping the blood off the girl’s sunken chest with a damp cloth.

The priest shook his tonsured head. “I have ne’er seen such a malady afore. No matter what I try—herbs, bleeding—naught works.”

“The stench, Father—is it always so strong? And are her stools white in color and containing large amounts of fat? Does she continue to lose weight even though you feed her large amounts of food?”

The old man’s bleary eyes widened in surprise. “Yea, have you seen other cases such as this?”

“Actually, yes. My niece was recently diagnosed with Celiac disease, and this looks remarkably similar.”

“See-lee-ack?”

“Yes, the body develops an allergy—an inability to digest any grains.”

“Truly? And what did you do for her?”

“Well, I wasn’t her doctor, but I’ve been told that she can now lead a normal life, as long as she
never
eats or drinks anything made from grains.”

He looked at her skeptically, no doubt leery of such a simple cure.

“Try it, Father. What would it hurt? For a few days, don’t let her eat any bread or drink any beverage made from grains, like ale. If it is Celiac, you will begin to see a change almost immediately.”

The old man tilted his head thoughtfully. “’Tis worth trying, I suppose.” He called out his orders to
a nearby servant that the patient’s diet be changed immediately, then turned back to Rain. “What did you say your name was?”

“Brother Godwine,” she answered, then looked up to see Selik watching her intently. His eyes glittered brightly with surprise and what almost seemed like pride in her diagnosis of the young girl.

“Will you be able to help her?” Selik asked as he helped her to her feet.

“I think so, but—” She stopped and addressed Father Bernard. “Could I come back another day and work with the patients? I think I could be of help, and of course, I could learn much from you and the other healers. For my medical manual.” She added the last with a rueful glance at Selik.

“’Tis Father Theodric’s decision, but he is always complaining about the lack of good healers.” Father Bernard looked at her oddly then. “Your voice is very high…and melodious.”

Rain cringed, realizing that she’d forgotten to lower her voice.

Then his eyes riveted on Selik’s hand, which still grasped her arm. As if suddenly understanding the relationship between them, Father Bernard licked his chapped lips, inquiring of Selik, “Wouldst thou be accompanying Brother Godwine if he is permitted to work in the hospitium?”

Selik shook his head slowly from side to side, a decidedly feral look hazing his gray eyes.

Father Bernard giggled nervously and darted a look of appreciative appraisal at Rain’s face and form. “Now that I think on it, ’tis certain Father Theodric will welcome your…services. We can always use another good…culdee, especially if I recommend you to the good father.”

Suddenly understanding, Rain’s mouth dropped open.
Oh, Good Lord! A gay priest in the Middle Ages. And he’s got his radar set on me
.

After that, Father Bernard gave them a quick tour through the garden herbarium, where medicinal plants were grown, and the primitive “apothecary” where another tonsured cleric worked with a pestle and pottery bowls mixing healing potions according to ancient receipts listed in a dusty ledger. Fascinated, Rain decided that she definitely wanted to return to the hospitium and learn all she could about this primitive medical facility.

“When you come back, be certain to identify yourself to the priest on duty. Father Ceowulf often takes my place. We cannot be too cautious. Saxon soldiers have been about all day, searching for some outlaw Viking.”

Rain’s blood went cold at Father Bernard’s words. Could it be Selik they were searching for? Were they nearby?

“Really?” she asked in a shaky voice. “Why would they bother with one Viking?”

Father Bernard shrugged. “’Tis what I thought as well. Have the soldiers naught better to do than scour the city for one heathen? But of course, I did not say such. King Athelstan has been good to the holy church. In fact, he founded this hospitium just last year. So if the king wants the pitiful Dane, far be it from me to protest. They can hang the outlaw from his toes and skin him alive, for all I care.”

Rain cringed, barely aware of thanking the unfeeling Father Bernard for his hospitality and declining his offer of lodging during their stay in Jorvik. As they headed toward the doorway, Rain noticed a commotion. A shrieking man pushed against the large priest whose frame barred his entrance. He begged for a healer to come help his wife, who’d been laboring for three days with the birth of their first child.

“Go home, Uhtred,” the priest ordered sternly. “I
have told you afore to get a midwife. We do God’s work here. ’Tis unseemly for a priest to place his hands on a woman’s parts in childbirth.”

“But Hilde is dying. The midwife will not come without the coins to pay her, and—”

“Begone!” the priest shouted, pulling the man’s grimy hands off his cassock sleeve with distaste. “Guard, come and remove this wretch from the holy church.”

“Damn you, damn you to bloody hell,” Uhtred cursed as he saw the church guards approaching.

“Wait,” Rain intervened. “I’ll come with you. Perhaps I can help.”

She heard Selik groan at her side.

The man turned eyes of such thanks to her that Rain knew she would help, no matter what Selik said. But surprisingly, he didn’t protest when she started to follow the distraught husband. The priest made a rude sound behind them and remarked, “Foreign priests! Always thinking they know more than anyone else!”

When they opened the front doors of the church, however, they were unable to move. Hundreds of people, many of them children, mobbed the minster steps, screaming and pushing for the loaves of dark bread being handed out by the clerics.

“’Tis alms day,” Selik explained. “The poor line up for their pittance of food, and the priests pat themselves on the back for their great beneficence.”

“You’re very cynical, Selik.”

“You are too softhearted,” he countered as they progressed slowly through the crowd, following Uhtred.

Rain stopped suddenly as she caught sight of a little boy and girl, about seven and four years old, who stood nearby. That they were brother and sister was obvious, even in the filth that covered them from bare feet to lice-infested heads. The little girl
stood with thumb firmly planted in her mouth, listening intently to everything her brother told her.

“Now, ye mus’ stand right here, Adela, whilst I try to get us sum bread. Do ye promise not to move?”

“Yea, Adam.” She nodded her head up and down, eyes wide with fright as she watched her brother make his way craftily to the front of the mob, pinching a buttock here, darting between legs there, finally pulling a small loaf out of the priest’s fingers just as he was about to hand it to an elderly woman in rags.

“Come back, ye bloody toad,” the woman screeched, to no avail. Many in the crowd turned to watch Adam’s progress, some trying to snatch his precious booty. But there was no way in the world that the imp would give up his hard-won food. He shoved it down the front of his dirty tunic and ran for his life toward his sister.

As Rain moved closer to the children, ignoring Selik’s angry protest as the crowd separated them and Uhtred cried out in dismay over their delay, Rain saw the boy break the loaf in half, and the two children gobbled down the meager loaf of moldy bread ravenously. Obviously, they hadn’t eaten for days.

Rain bent to her haunches before the pair and asked the little girl, “What’s your name, honey?”

Frightened blue eyes turned for help to her brother. “Adam,” she called, reaching for him with one hand, while the thumb of the other hand shot immediately into her mouth.

“Why do ye want to know?” the little boy demanded with narrowed eyes, putting his hands belligerently on his hips. Rain felt Selik’s presence behind her, but he didn’t speak.

“You two shouldn’t be out on the streets like this. Where are your parents?”

“Got none.”

“Did they…die?”

“Yea. What does it matter to such as you? Ye priests care only fer yer own comforts. Ye would not even come to bury me mother.”

Rain inhaled sharply. “When was that?”

The little boy shrugged dismissively with bravado, hitching up the loose waistband of his breeches. Rain thought she saw a brief flash of pain and fear in his eyes. “Last winter.”

A year!
“And who do you live with now?”

“Huh?”

“Rain, leave off. We have lingered here overlong,” Selik said, taking her arm. “Remember the woman in childbirth.”

“Oh, I forgot,” she said, shooting a look of apology at Uhtred. But first she turned back to the little boy. “Who did you say was taking care of you?”

He raised his head defiantly and snarled, “I take care of me sister and meself. We do not need any meddlin’ priest to interfere.”

“I just wanted to help—”

“Hah! Just like Aslam—”

“The slave trader?” Selik asked with surprise.

“Yea, the slave trader. Keeps tryin’ to ketch us, he does. But I be too fast fer the fat old codsucker. Says he knows of a sultan in a faraway land that wants ter have us fer his very own children, to give us a home and good food, but I know what he wants. Yea, I know.”

“What?” Rain asked, even as she heard Selik say a foul word behind her.

“He wants to bugger us both, he does, to stick his cock up our arses,” the filthy urchin declared with innocent, streetwise explicitness. “Jist like you bloody priests,” the little boy declared, spitting at her feet; then he grabbed his sister’s hand and disappeared into the crowd.

“Oh, Selik,” Rain cried out, when the children
were no longer in sight. “We should help them.”

“You are out of your bloody mind. I want no children of my own, and for certain I will not care for anyone else’s bothersome get. Get that through your thick head.”

“But, Selik, did you see that little girl’s eyes when she looked back at us over her shoulder? They were pleading for help.”

“You see and hear only what you want, wench. Did you hear the coarse-mouthed, filthy pup? He wants no help, and I daresay the tough little whelp could survive on a battlefield, let alone the streets of a market city.”