Sandra Hill - [Vikings I 02] (34 page)

After the meal, some of the children helped Blanche clean up. Others assisted Ubbi in dismantling the long trestle table. The one-piece wooden top was leaned against a far wall, and the benches arranged near the fireplace wall with straw-filled mattresses for sleeping. Other mattresses lay on the floor in front of the fire.

The children yawned sleepily with full stomachs and the heat of the blaze, but still they listened attentively to the bedtime stories Rain was telling them while she ran a comb through one after another of the little girls’ hair. Head lice had been a severe problem in the beginning, but better hygiene had already eradicated most of the pesky varmints. She intended to keep it that way with careful supervision.

“Once upon a time there was a little girl named Red Riding Hood,” Rain started, and as she related the cherished stories of her own childhood for her mesmerized audience, she had trouble keeping her eyes off Selik, who sat on a pile of bed furs with Adela nestled snugly on his lap like a contented cat. The darling little girl even rubbed her cheek against his wide chest every so often in a kittenish fashion.

Selik was peeling apples for the children His long fingers—his wonderfully slender, hands which could perform magic on her body—removed the skins in long, curly spirals and carefully cut the fruit into slices in a manner she must be crazy to find erotic. But she did. With a joyful chuckle, he offered pieces to each of the children, who opened their mouths for him like newborn birds. She imagined those same fingers peeling off her clothing, skimming her body, separating her secret folds.
When his tongue flicked out and licked the juices from his fingertips, she imagined…Oh, Lord.

“Finish the tale,” one of the children whined, and Rain realized with embarrassment that she’d stopped midway through her story. Selik smiled at her and held out an apple slice. She reached for it but he held it out of reach, forcing her to open her mouth for him. When he placed it in her mouth, his fingers lingered for a second on her lips, and her tongue licked the sweet nectar from his fingertips. Her eyes locked with his, and Rain saw the deep want in their silvery depths, matching her own.

This is your beloved
, the voice said.

Rain quivered inside with deep agreement.

She noticed the children staring at her in question. And Blanche rattling her pots jealously. Trying hard not to stammer, Rain continued with her story. “And then Red Riding Hood said, ‘Grandma, what big eyes you have….’”

While she continued with other bedtime stories she thought might interest them—
Robin Hood, Aladdin and His Magic Lamp, Peter Pan
—she saw Selik reach for a small block of wood and a paring knife. She even told her own version of
Little Orphan Annie
, thinking it would have particular significance to these homeless children.

She brightened suddenly on thinking of one particularly relevant tale,
Beauty and the Beast
. When she finished with, “And they lived happily ever after,” Selik raised an eyebrow and asked, “Hah! Now I know where you get your halfwit notions. Were you thinking to turn my beastly self into a prince with one of your kisses?”

Rain just smiled.

Then Selik related sagas of legendary Norse heroes—Ragnar Hairy-Breeches, Harald Fairhair, and others. As he talked, Selik’s fingers drew magic from the lifeless piece of oak with his sharp knife.
First the ears of the wolf emerged, then the eyes and muzzle, even the fine details of the animal’s fur.

The figure that emerged was a crude, quickly executed rendering, the edges rough and unfinished, but his artistic talent shone through. He handed the wood sculpture to Rain as if it were a priceless object of art, which it was to her.

“For remembrance,” he whispered.

Tears welled in her eyes at the reminder that he wouldn’t be with her much longer. And she choked back a plea for him to change his mind. Her time for resistance and fighting to mold Selik into something he was not had ended. Now she just wanted to cherish every minute of the remaining time they had together.

Selik stood and laid the sleeping Adela on a nearby cot, pulling a woolen cloak up tenderly to her tiny shoulders. Then he picked up three of the bed furs and held his hand out to Rain, leading her toward the ladder.

“Yer goin’ to sleep up in the loft?” Ubbi asked incredulously. “’Tis colder than a glacier up there.”

“Rain will keep me warm,” Selik answered huskily, pushing her ahead of him up the ladder.

And she vowed that she would.

Selik wanted this night to last forever. With bed furs piled under and over them, and a dozen candles illuminating their bed place, he paid slow, soul-searing homage to Rain’s body. Meticulously, his fingers explored every part of her form, memorizing, storing pleasures in his mind for future retrieval. With each whimper and mewling cry of pleasure he drew from her, his heart soared. Truly, a woman’s pleasure was man’s aphrodisiac.

No dark shadows of the past haunted Selik tonight. He thought only of
now
, and the memories he must make and cherish with Rain, his beloved Rain.

“Will I ever see you again?” she asked, her soft voice breaking as she bravely tried to stifle her sobs.

“Mayhap.”

“But, Selik, if you die, then I’ve failed. If I was sent back in time to save you, and I—and I can’t, then what was the point?”

He smiled gently and pulled her into the crook of his shoulder, caressing her gently. He fingered the edges of her hair, tenderly traced the line of her jaw, brushed her collarbone with a whispery caress. “I think your God accomplished all that He wanted—if ’twas He who sent you. Can you not see that you have healed me of my shame? You have melted my heart, taught me to love again. Even if we never meet again, I cannot regret that.”

“If that’s true, then why do you have to leave?”

“Steven,” he said flatly. “I could stop blaming the entire Saxon race for Astrid’s and Thorkel’s deaths, perchance even give up my vendetta, but not against Gravely. I love you, Rain, but honor demands I remove his demon presence from this earth.”

She resigned herself then and gave herself up to their mutual enjoyment.

When he knelt between her legs and lay upon her body, his thundering heart pounded against her breasts. She looked up at him in wonder, murmuring, “Our hearts seem to beat with the same rhythm.”

“Yea,” he answered softly, putting a hand over her breast, between their two hearts. “They seem to be repeating one word—love, love, love, love….”

He saw the unquenchable pain in Rain’s honey eyes flecked with rings of gold, but he soon turned it to molten desire. He felt the rigid tension of cold regret in her arms and legs, and he loosened them into clinging, writhing vines of mindless heat. When her lips opened to challenge his decisions once again, he silenced her with his consuming mouth.

When he imbedded himself in her sweet flesh, she cried out her ecstasy. He thrust in and out, slowly, slowly, until her body began to ripple with tiny convulsions of mind-shattering pleasure. “Oh…oh…oh…God…please!”

Selik held himself rigid inside her until her arousal peaked and shattered, then began the rhythm again. He controlled her, set the pace. Slow, fast, slow, fast.

“Tell me,” he demanded in a low, raw voice.

“I love you.”

“Again.”

“I love you.”

“Again.”

“I…a-a-ah…sweet Jesus…I love you!”

Still he held himself in almost painful control, filling her with his rock hardness, surely as far as her womb, refusing to let go of his own tightly coiled, mind-boiling need.

“Now, again,” he said with an exultant cry of masculine pride as she screamed his name, and he stroked her almost continually spasming woman-folds with long, long, agonizingly slow, intensely sensitized caresses of his manhood.

“Tell me again.”

“I love you, dammit. Please…oh, please…”

Selik laughed aloud, a low, masculine roar of pleasure, then arched his back and threw his head back, his veins feeling as if they were about to burst in his neck. Rain wrapped her legs around his waist, tossing her head from side to side, and he slammed into her. His sorely challenged self-control broke loose then, and he poured his man-seed into her with a roar of pleasure so intense that his soul was surely marked forever.

“I love you, dearling. Forever,” he cried out as she vibrated hotly around him in one last shattering expression of her continually peaking pleasure.

“I love you, too.” Then, in the aftershocks of her progressively smaller spasms, she choked out, “You’re killing me.”

He smiled against her neck, panting to regain his breath. “Yea, but what a way to die!”

They fell asleep in each other’s arms then, sated and intensely relaxed. When dawn light crept through the loft window, Selik sat up with distress.

“Wha-what?” Rain asked groggily, sitting up beside him.

“Ah, sweetling, I wanted to make love to you through the night, but I fell asleep.”

Rain laughed and wrapped her arms around his waist, her breasts rubbing enticingly against his chest hairs. “Oh, yeah! Big talk!”

He lowered her to the bed and growled against one hardened nipple, pressing his burgeoning manhood against her. “Big? You want big?” he said, laughing, and he gave it to her.

Hours sped by like minutes the rest of the day. Selik made all the boys come outside to the woods with him, where they pulled one dead tree after another to the barn clearing and cut them into logs. By early afternoon, they had stacked enough wood beside the barn to last for months.

Then he sat down with Rain and Ubbi at the table. While they ate bread and hard cheese, washed down with mead, he told Ubbi, “Go into Jorvik on the morrow. Gyda will tell you where I have coins stashed.”

“Rain, you are not to depend on the culdees and their tightfisted charity for your daily bread. Use my funds, and if you need more, go to Gyda.”

Rain nodded, unable to speak over the lump in her throat.

He handed her a piece of parchment, telling her, “I have deeded over the farmstead to you.”

Rain gasped. “No, I don’t want it,” she cried, shoving it back into his hands in a panic. Selik behaved like a man about to die, getting his affairs in order.

“Take it,” he said firmly, shoving it back in her hands. “The Saxon soldiers may return, and you will need proof of ownership. I have dated it back to last spring so they will not think I have been here.”

For hours, he kept adding details for Rain to remember—the name of a Viking man in Jorvik who might be willing to till the fields for them come spring, a reminder to get the money Ella owed her, a warning to be careful of the roaming Saxon soldiers, advice on how to handle the wily culdees at the minster. On and on he went, when all Rain wanted was to cling to his shoulders and beg him not to go.

Once, when he stood to replenish his goblet of mead, Adam walked up and kicked him in the shin. “What was that for, you bloody imp?” he snarled, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck and lifting him high in the air.

“Fer leavin’, ya damn heathen bloody cod,” he said on a sob, flailing out at him. “Yer jist like all the rest. Me father. Me mother. Nobody ever stays,” he blubbered, kicking wildly with his arms and legs.

Stunned, Selik just stared at the angry boy for a moment, then groaned, almost painfully, and drew Adam into his arms, hugging him tightly to his chest. At first, Adam fought him mightily with scratching hands and vulgar obscenities. Finally, he calmed down and buried his face in Selik’s neck.

Selik said nothing, just stared at Rain through his slate eyes, and walked with Adam to a far corner of the barn, where he sat down with him on his lap and talked soothingly for a long time.

Rain’s heart felt like fine crystal shattering into a million tiny pieces. She didn’t know if she could survive without this man—the other side of her soul, the beat in her heart…her forever love.

Dinner was a solemn, silent affair that night, even though Blanche went out of her way to make a spectacular farewell meal—golden crisp chicken, roasted venison, boiled vegetables, egg-and-honey custard, fresh fruit. Even the children sat still, uncommonly quiet, darting frightened eyes from one somber adult to the other, questioning, not understanding all the undercurrents.

Gorm and the soldiers rode up at nightfall, leading the saddled Fury behind them. Selik strode forward and spoke with them, and Rain cringed before the fierce warrior into which her lover had transformed himself. He wore leather braies under his calf-length flexible chain mail. A wool tunic of deep blue covered the armor, and a heavy fur mantle covered all. He attached his sword, Wrath, and his helmet and pike to his saddle, then turned back to Rain.

She walked up to him, daunted by this stranger in fighting garb, but there was not the usual berserkness in his eyes now, only a deep, abiding love. She hoped she hadn’t weakened him with her love.

“Come back to me, Selik.”

“If I can,” he promised in a soft voice, raising his gauntleted hand hesitantly. Then, as if unable to help himself, he caressed her lips with his cold fingertips. “If I can.”

“I’ll come after you if you don’t,” she cried out as he dropped his hand and swung up into his saddle. “Do you hear me? I’ll come after you.”

He smiled grimly, then raised the helmet to his head. He looked down at her and mouthed the words, “I love you. Forever.”

He turned his horse then, without another word, and Rain sank to the ground, her knees giving way. Only then did she weep out all her pain and misgivings over Selik’s departure.

“Keep him safe, God,” she prayed with racking sobs. “Do you hear me, dammit? You gave him to me. Don’t you dare take him away. Please, God, oh please, I beg You, keep him safe.”

Unfortunately, the voice in her head was deathly quiet.

A cloud hung over the small farmstead during the following weeks as the weather turned bitter and gray. All the inhabitants of the crowded barn worked somberly at their assigned tasks, as if sensing some impending doom. Uncommonly quiet, the children continued to chop and stack firewood, wash clothing, milk the cow, gather eggs, and clean the barn. Rain almost wished for their previous shrieks and childish mischief.

Even Adam had turned into a model child. Well, that was an exaggeration, she immediately amended. His filthy mouth spat out the usual vulgar words, but now he often apologized afterward. He played tyrant with the other children, taking naturally to a leadership role, but he tried hard to mellow his orders with compliments these days. It touched her heart deeply, and frightened her, to see the concern for Selik in his big brown eyes.

After two weeks of fretting and endless pacing, Rain decided to follow up on an earlier idea she’d had
concerning the smallpox that often plagued these medieval people. She didn’t want to do anything to change the course of medical history, but she saw no harm in vaccinating her small brood. She asked Ubbi for his help.

“Well, now I know ye are truly addlewitted,” Ubbi exclaimed, throwing down the small quern stone he was using to sharpen his knives and sword. He’d been in a bad mood since Selik left because his master had ordered him to stay and protect Rain and the orphans. And his arthritis had been acting up. Her request now didn’t help. “’Tis one thing fer God to send me a message to kidnap the master. But to go and collect the ooze from pox sores on cows? Nay, I will not do it.”

“Ubbi, honey—”

“Do not be honey-ing me,” he warned, folding his arms across his chest adamantly.

“I can go,” Adam volunteered.

“You will not,” Rain and Ubbi both exclaimed in horror.

“Well, if Ubbi fears the bloody cows—”

“Best ye go help yer sister empty that chamber pot she be swingin’ from side to side,” Ubbi sputtered out, “lest I be wipin’ up the soiled rushes with yer face. And stay away from the cows—
any cow
.” He turned back to Rain with a shake of his head. “Gawd!”

Did you call?

“Did ye hear that?” Ubbi cried out. “Did ye? Oh, now ye done it. Turned God on me, ye have!”

Rain smiled. Sometimes God came in handy.

When Ubbi returned at nightfall, grumbling that he had traveled through twenty hectares of farmland before he could find a stead with a diseased cow.

“Did you wear gloves? And make sure your mouth
was covered when you drained the sores? Was the cow already dead?”

“Yea, yea, yea,” Ubbi said wearily.

“Don’t sit down,” she ordered with a screech, “and don’t touch anything.”

Ubbi jumped from where he was about to plop wearily onto a bench before the fire. “Now what?”

“Take off all your clothes so that I can burn them. I don’t want to take any chances of contagion.”

He was too tired at that point to argue with her.

The next day, she vaccinated all the children, along with a horrified Ubbi and Blanche, who’d become downright hostile toward her since coming to the barn. Using a sharply pointed knife, Rain made a small scratch on each of their arms and inserted only a tiny amount of the pox substance—enough to fit on the head of a needle. Over the next few days, other than slight fevers and some nausea, everyone seemed to survive the ordeal without any lasting harm.

Satisfied with the results of that project, she decided to return to the hospitium. Besides, she needed to buy more supplies in the city—thick fabric and heavy thread to make additional mattress covers for the pallets, special seasonings that Blanche requested, more wooden trenchers and spoons, and yarn for knitting hose for the children. Gyda had promised to come out one day to instruct the girls in that fine craft, which Rain had never mastered.

Ubbi, sick of her constant queries about Selik and his fate, encouraged her. “Please go. Give us some rest from yer constant blatherin’ about the master. He kin take care of hisself, I tell ye.”

Adam insisted on coming along to protect her. She started to protest but decided it wouldn’t hurt him to see the hospitium. Maybe he could even be of help. But first she had to warn him not to give away her male disguise as a monk. He thought that
a grand jest on the minster priests, many of whom were less than generous with the city orphans.

Adam’s street urchin skills proved invaluable. He maneuvered her through all the shortcuts of the city, bargained mercilessly with the vendors, and showed her an out-of-the-way shop that specialized in imports from the East, including exotic spices.

Later, he sat on a high stool in Ella’s shop, waiting for the shop workers to bundle up the fabric and thread that Rain had ordered, munching on honey cakes and watered mead like the lord of the castle.

“Someone ought to knock the little bugger down a peg or two,” Ella grumbled as Adam chastised one of her workers for being too stingy in measuring the fabric lengths, but her voice held a tone of admiration as well. “Lord, if the pup lives to manhood, he should be somethin’ to see.”

Rain agreed, especially when they went to the hospitium. Adam followed her around, not like a puppy, but a colleague. He was like a dwarf physician as he soaked in all he saw around him with fascination, asked intelligent question after question, and seemed to glow with wonder.

Rain saw a doctor in the making. Too bad Adam would never have the chance to realize that dream in this primitive society.

Father Bernard was not so pleased with Adam’s presence. “Really, Brother Godwine, must ye bring all your companions onto the holy church grounds. First that brutish giant, Brother Ethelwolf. Now, this heathen gutter rat.”

“Who sez I be a heathen?” Adam snarled pugnaciously. “I say me prayers ev’ry night. And besides, I be part Saxon jist like you,
Bernie
. Was yer mother a whore, too?” He asked the last with the wide-eyed innocence of a well-fed cat.

Father Bernard sputtered and almost choked on his outraged tongue. “Why, you, little—” He grabbed
for Adam’s arm, intending to teach him a lesson.

“Did Brother Godwine tell ye he jist spread cow pox over the skin of us poor orphans?”

“What?” Father Bernard dropped Adam’s arm like a hot ember and rushed to the washbowl, where he began to scrub his hands over and over, muttering, “God is punishing me for my sins. Oh, I must go to confession at once.”

Rain had a feeling she wouldn’t be welcome at the hospitium for some time. She flashed a look of chagrin at Adam, not really angry. Truthfully, she was beginning to think she might be of more help opening her own clinic in the spring. And she had enough to do over the winter months worrying about her orphans. And Selik.

More than a month passed, and still Selik hadn’t returned. Rain carried on her “normal” life—caring for the children’s needs in the cavernous barn which had become more a home to her than her plush city apartment in the future, going into the hospitium on the occasions when the blustery winter weather permitted, and visiting with Ella and Gyda.

Rain tried to remain hopeful as Christmas approached, telling the children all the Yuletide stories she remembered from her youth.
A Christmas Carol. The Night Before Christmas. Frosty the Snow Man. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
. And to their delight, she talked a grumbling Ubbi into helping her bring a huge evergreen tree inside the barn, where they decorated it with pine cones and strings of holly berries.

On her last trip to Jorvik, she’d come across a merchant selling sugar—a very expensive commodity in this primitive society which relied on honey for its sweetening. Suddenly inspired, she poured out the precious coins and took the sugar home with her, hugging it to her chest, along with a small
crock of Gyda’s preserved cherries and another of molasses. If Selik came for Christmas, as she hoped, she would have a special present for him.

“Are ye barmy?” Ubbi asked later that day as she poured all her ingredients in a pot with water over the open fire. “Wastin’ all that sugar! On what?”

“Lifesavers,” Rain said, raising her chin defensively. “I’m going to make cherry Lifesavers for Selik for Christmas.”

Her first batch was a disaster. Not only did the shapes, which she poured on a greased piece of marble, resemble anything but circles, but they didn’t harden properly, and they tasted horrible.

She heard Adela whisper to Adam, “Tastes like chicken droppings,” before surreptitiously slipping hers into a chamber pot.

Rain and her mother had made lollipops once when she was a little girl. They’d turned out wonderfully, and she’d figured Lifesavers had to be somewhat the same. Her mother’s recipe had called for corn syrup, though. Maybe it was the molasses she’d substituted. Or perhaps she hadn’t used the correct amounts. And maybe an open fire wasn’t the best cooking method.

So she tried again. This time the candies hardened, but they tasted more like molasses than cherry, and they weren’t sweet enough.

Over and over she experimented, squandering much-needed money as she bought more and more sugar until Ubbi finally put his foot down. “Enough! If he doesn’t like these, I know a part of his body I kin stick ’em in. Besides, yer turnin’ the wee ones sick with all this tastin’.”

Rain smiled sheepishly. He was right, and she knew as well as he did that most times the children pretended to like her candies just to avoid hurting her feelings. Actually, the last batch wasn’t too terrible, and she wrapped several dozen of the
squiggly shapes in thick parchment, tied it with a bright ribbon, and put it under the tree.

By the time Christmas arrived and they all sat before the fire—the candle-lit tree a beautiful sight in the corner, a wonderful feast cooking on the fire—her hopes began to falter. Selik still hadn’t come for her.

Days went by, then weeks. The winter winds howled outside, and the Christmas tree, which she’d doggedly refused to dismantle, shed more and more of its needles, a stark reminder of her dying hopes.

Ubbi and the children shifted their eyes in pity when she passed, and Rain began to accept what they already knew. Selik was not coming back. Ever.

Two weeks after Christmas, when they arrived back at the farmstead after a trip to Jorvik to visit with Gyda, her worst fears came true. A wounded and distraught Gorm lay before the fire, being tended by Blanche and Ubbi. All the children cowered in the background, huddled together in fright.

“What happened?” she cried out, running to his side. She threw off her mantle and began to examine his injuries. None of them was serious, except for some cracked ribs, which she bound tightly with strips of linen, but bruises and cuts covered his entire body from head to foot.

“’Tis bad, m’lady,” he told her, turning grim eyes up to hers as she worked over him. “What happened…’tis very bad.”

Rain didn’t ask about Selik. She feared the answer.

“King Athelstan’s men were waiting near the Humber where the master’s longship was hidden.”

Rain inhaled sharply.
Please, God. Please!

“They killed three of our men outright. Two others they tortured to death.” Gorm swallowed repeat
edly as if to hold down a vomitous bile, and his eyes widened and glazed over with the gruesome images in his mind.

Rain clenched her fists tightly, tears streaming down her face—afraid to know Selik’s fate, but at the same time, needing to know.

“They left me fer dead, thinkin’ all the blood on my chest was mine, but ’twas Snorr’s. Oh, God, ’twas Snorr’s. I bin delirious with fever in a cotter’s hut these past sennights.”

His eyes held Rain’s then, almost in pity, and she braced herself for what would come next.

“They took the master captive. They did terrible things to him afore they took him off. Oh, holy Thor, they did. If only I could have killed him afore they left, I would have and gladly. For he is truly better off dead than in the hands of such villains.”

Rain honed in on only one thing. Selik was alive.
Thank You, God!

“Where did they take him?” she asked, her mind already cataloging all that she would need to do in preparation for her journey.

“Winchester. To King Athelstan.”

Rain nodded, having expected as much. “I need to get to Winchester. Perhaps I can convince King Athelstan to release Selik. He always said the king has great admiration for healers.”

“But he has even more hatred for Selik,” Ubbi noted regretfully. “Ye must know that.”

“Yes, but I’ve heard he’s a compassionate king, willing to listen to both sides.”

He shook his head doubtfully.

“Ubbi, you go into Jorvik and tell Gyda I need two horses so Gorm and I can go to Winchester.”

“Three horses,” Blanche interrupted. “I go, too.”

They all looked at her in surprise. “I know my way around Winchester. I lived nearby most of my years.”

Rain thought for a second, then agreed, “Three horses. Also, Ubbi, tell Gyda to send more of Selik’s money, and ask her if she or Ella can send someone out to help you with the children.”

“I will not be stayin’ this time,” Ubbi declared vehemently.

“You have to, Ubbi,” Rain pleaded. “Who else will take care of all the children?”

“I will,” Adam spoke up. “And do not be thinkin’ I cannot do it, either. If ye leave me with a bit of coin, I kin manage a few measly orphans.”

He probably could, but no way would she leave a seven-year-old boy to supervise a dozen children, some of them a lot older than he.

“Ubbi, you have to stay. Be realistic. Your arthritis is so bad these days, with the damp weather, that some mornings you can barely get out of bed. How could you ride a horse for that length of time?”

Reluctantly, he finally agreed. “I would hold ye back. I must think of what be best fer the master.”

She hugged him in thanks and went up to the loft to pack her few belongings. Fashioning a sort of fanny pack around her waist, she put in her amber necklace, the dragon brooch she hadn’t worn since her arrival, and the rest of the coins Selik had left with her. Over that, she wore two pair of Selik’s wool braies and two long tunics, a fur mantle, gloves, and the monk’s robe.