by Sandra Hill
His eyes, distant and formidable, locked with Rain’s. There was no emotional connection now. Rain realized, with foreboding, that his berserk mode had taken over.
“Take care,” Rain whispered in a soft, shaky voice.
Selik didn’t seem to hear her words as he stared blankly ahead, ignoring her, but then she noticed his Adam’s apple move jerkily several times as if he was trying, but unable to speak. He surprised her by nodding. Then, without speaking, he rode off.
Watching his departing back, Rain felt as if he were taking a part of her with him. It was incomprehensible to her how a man she had met so recently could have touched her so deeply. She was beginning to think she would never be able to return to the future if it meant leaving Selik behind.
The moment Selik disappeared from sight, Rain went searching for Tykir, determined to get some questions answered. How could she help Selik if she knew nothing about him?
She found Tykir in his bedchamber with Ubbi exercising his leg. The men had improvised a primitive form of physical therapy by tying a small sack of flour to Tykir’s ankle. Lying on the bed, he was raising his leg up and down in slow repetitions.
“Swimming would be a good exercise to strengthen your leg muscles, too, Tykir. And massage. In fact, I can work on the muscles for you when you’re done with the leg lifts.”
Tykir and Ubbi both looked toward her as she approached the bed, raising their eyebrows skeptically.
“Swimming this time of year? I think not, sister. Methinks the leg would just cramp up.”
“It might be just the thing for speeding up the healing process, actually. And you, too, Ubbi,” she said, directing her attention toward the little man. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about your arthritis. After you’re done with Tykir, I want to examine you. I think I might be able to help.”
Ubbi backed away from her. “Art-rye-tits?” Then he stood and threw his stooped shoulders back in challenge. “Examine me? Nay, ye will not be touchin’ me body. ’Tis unseemly fer a maid to even think such.”
“Oh, Ubbi, I’ve seen hundreds of naked men, and your body is no different, believe me.”
“Hundreds of naked men!” Ubbi and Tykir both exclaimed.
“Mistress, for shame! Ye should not missay the truth. A woman of virtue such as yerself has ne’er bedded with hundreds of men.”
Tykir just grinned as he released the flour weight from his ankle. The idea of such a promiscuous sister amused the fool.
“Don’t be silly, Ubbi. I meant that, as a doctor, I have examined many, many men in my hospital.”
“Hmmm. There is a hospitium in Jorvik. Is your ‘hospital’ the same?” Ubbi asked cautiously.
“There’s a medical facility in Jorvik?” Rain asked excitedly.
“Yea, at St. Peter’s minster. The culdees—priests—care fer the sick an’ dying in their own hospitium.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful When can we go to see it? Is it nearby?”
“’Tis a day’s ride from here, but you cannot leave until Selik returns,” Tykir explained, his long blond hair falling forward as he leaned on his wooden staff, trying to pull himself up off the bed. “Selik gave orders, and he would have my head, as well as yours, if I disobey.”
“No, don’t get up,” she told Tykir, pressing him back down. She began to massage his thigh through his leggings. At first, her intimate touch embarrassed him. Then he cursed her as she drew out each painful tendon. “Oh, sweet Mother of Thor! Do you save my life just to throw me back in the grave?”
“Don’t be such a baby.”
Later, he sighed with pleasure at her expert manipulation, his dark lashes closing briefly over big brown eyes so like her brother Dave’s. “Truly, you have magical fingers, my sister.”
Suddenly, Rain noticed Ubbi inching his way toward the open doorway. “Don’t you dare leave. I’m done with Tykir’s workout for today, and now it’s your turn.”
Ubbi rolled his eyes pleadingly toward Tykir, but her brother just laughed. “Let the witch work her wiles on you, Ubbi. Who knows? Mayhap her hands will perform wonders on your flesh as well.”
Tykir hobbled out of the room on his makeshift crutch, chuckling with amusement over Ubbi’s apparent discomfort at being left alone with Rain.
Rain had to cajole, threaten, and bribe Ubbi into removing his garments, but even then he would only strip down to his loincloth. She barely stifled a gasp of horror at the misshapen condition of his body.
“Ubbi, how long have you suffered from arthritis?” At his look of confusion, she reworded her question. “How old were you when you first felt a stiffening in your joints? Is it more painful sometimes than others?”
While she asked her questions, Rain checked out every inch of his body with probing fingers, from his bunched shoulders to his knobby feet, except, of course, for his genital area. She knew Ubbi would never allow her to examine him there.
Finally, she forced Ubbi to lie facedown on the bed, despite his protests and obvious humiliation. With alternately firm and gentle pressing and flexing of her fingers, she soon loosened his painfully gnarled muscles.
“Oh, mistress, I have not felt so good since I was a boy,” Ubbi said on a sigh, his voice overflowing with adoration.
Rain smiled, happy to help the sweet man. “Starting tomorrow, I’ll do the massages twice a day. It would be great if we could find some oil. Also, I’ll give you some exercises to do on your own. And we might even be able to gather some herbs to alleviate the pain. Oh, and I just thought of something else—hot mud packs all over your body.”
Ubbi groaned, but his rheumy eyes bespoke his heartfelt thanks. “Do you truly think you can make me better?”
“No, I can’t cure you, Ubbi,” Rain said, patting him gently on the shoulder. “There’s no way to correct an arthritic condition, but there are things that can help make a person more mobile and pain-free.”
“’Tis a miracle,” Ubbi declared, and Rain knew her status as an angel in Ubbi’s eyes had just gone up another notch. He practically skipped out of the room.
Suddenly, Rain realized that she’d forgotten the reason for coming up to Tykir’s bedchamber in the first place—to get answers to her questions about Selik. Searching for Tykir once again, she found him in the great hall, directing some of the captives in cleaning out the soiled rushes and scrubbing down the tables.
“Tykir, I meant to ask you something earlier. Where has Selik gone?”
“He did not tell you?”
“No. Is it a secret?”
“Nay,” he replied carefully under her intent scrutiny. “He travels back north to the Alban lands of King Constantine.”
“Scotland? But Ubbi told me he was unwelcome there.”
Tykir shrugged. “’Tis true, the Scots would just as well he go elsewhere, but he has been a good comrade. They cannot in good conscience turn him away from their doors.”
“Then why does he go there?”
“To protect me, and Ravenshire.”
“What!” That Selik might have a noble cause for doing anything had never occurred to Rain. What did that say about her? And her faith in the man she had been sent to save? Rain did not like herself much at the moment.
Tykir lowered his body to a nearby bench, rubbing his aching leg, and Rain dropped down beside him.
“Tell me,” she urged.
“When we returned yestermorn, I found a message from Eirik in a special hiding place we had as children. He warned me that King Athelstan plans a massive manhunt for Selik and that he will raze Ravenshire to the ground if he discovers Selik anywhere in the vicinity.”
Rain’s blood froze in her veins and her heart went out to her outlaw, who truly had no home—was, in fact, welcome nowhere. “Please go on,” she encouraged shakily.
“Selik figured that if he shows his face in the land of the Scots, so far from here, King Athelstan will direct his forces there. The Saxons will have no reason to invade Ravenshire. I am not big enough quarry for him to
send a troop of soldiers.”
“So he intends to wave his body like a bloody flag in front of his enemies to save you,” Rain said, appalled.
“To save us,” Tykir corrected, his face reddening at her implied insult. “If the Saxons found him here, ’tis not just the keep they would destroy but all who are in it. That includes me, you, Ubbi, everyone.”
“But we could have left with him,” Rain protested. “Why didn’t he give us a choice?”
Tykir shook his head sadly. “I wanted him to stay. I told him so. Do you think I care aught for a piece of crumbling stone and a parcel of land? But Selik is set in his ways.”
“And I considered him a beast, brutal and uncaring in all his violence!” Rain was beginning to think she had a lot to learn about right and wrong. Perhaps these primitive people could teach her, with all her advanced education, a few lessons she’d somehow missed in her modern life.
“He is brutal, my sister. Never think otherwise. The truth of his berserk behavior cannot be honey-coated, but he is a good man at heart.”
“Why is he like this, Tykir? Please tell me what happened to him to change him from the carefree youth my mother described to this tormented shell of a man?”
Tykir stiffened and his face closed over. “Nay, I will not discuss Selik’s past. ’Tis for him to disclose—or hold in his soul, if he so chooses.”
“But if I don’t stop him—if someone doesn’t help him soon, he will surely die.”
“Yea, he will. For a long time, Selik has traveled the fast road to Valhalla, uncaring of his own mortality, wishing only to take as many Saxons as he can with him.”
“How sad to have violence as a life goal!”
Tykir shrugged and stood, leaning on his staff. “Know this, to the Saxons Selik may be naught more than a berserker. A demon gone mad from the bloodbath that has washed over Northumbria as they try to wipe all Norsemen from their soil. But to many a Norseman, Selik is a brave knight on a quest for noble vengeance. You would do well to remember that.”
“But—”
Tykir raised a hand to halt her next words. “Nay, that is all I will say on the subject. Ask Selik when he returns.”
But would he return? Rain wondered worriedly as the days, then weeks, went by with no word from her primitive soulmate. More and more, as she and the captives and Selik’s remaining soldiers worked to clean up the crumbling keep—a losing battle with their meager resources—Rain relived in her mind their last night together. If he died—Oh, please, God, don’t let that happen!—Rain knew she would forever regret not having had that one night of love with him.
When a month had passed and there was still no sign of Selik, panic set in. Rain had starting biting her fingernails, a nervous habit she thought she’d long ago conquered. Fighting a queasy stomach, she lost her appetite and at least ten pounds. Tykir and Ubbi, even Blanche and Bertha, avoided her company because they were sick over her endless questions about Selik’s safety and return.
“Gawd! I think I will empty me stomach if I hear ye ask one more time when the bloody outlaw will return,” Bertha complained in a whining voice as she helped Blanche dress the carcass of a fresh-killed deer. Gorm, one of Blanche’s most ardent suitors, had brought the doe back from his daily hunt and laid it at Blanche’s feet in the courtyard as if it were a dozen roses. Woman-wise, the wily Blanche had acted duly impressed and batted her eyelashes at Gorm in unspoken promise.
When Rain had shot a disapproving look at Blanche, knowing she preferred to cast her net in Selik’s direction, the maid had shrugged, without guilt, and commented, “A woman must cover all her options. Best you think of that, too, my lady, in the event The Outlaw does not return.”
Rain studied Bertha then, much pleased with her improving skin color, thanks to the special diet she had prescribed. Thank heavens it was only a Vitamin K deficiency and not a tumor or liver disease that had caused her yellowish skin tone.
“Make sure you save some of the liver for yourself. You still need lots of iron.”
Bertha nodded, no longer protesting Rain’s every bit of medical advice since she witnessed the daily improvement in her health.
“Do you want me to help you cut that up?” she asked, gulping distastefully at the prospect of handling the bloody carcass. She was not a vegetarian, but as many times as she’d performed surgery on human bodies, she was oddly reluctant to touch raw animal flesh. Probably childhood associations with Bambi, she decided.
“Nay, go off and wear down the planks on the ramparts sum more, pinin’ fer yer lover to come back,” Bertha snapped with gentle sarcasm. Blanche just smiled at the brash servant.
“Selik is not my lover.”
“Not fer lack of tryin’, I wager. Nor fer lack of yer wantin’ the beddin’,” Bertha quipped sagely.
“You are so coarse!”
“Do not be takin’ that tone with me, m’lady,” the impertinent captive asserted. “I may be jist a lowly servant, but ’tis plain as the wart on a witch’s nose, yer like a mare in heat. And The Outlaw—well, he be the stallion circlin’ you, waitin’ fer the right moment to pounce.”
“Bertha!” both Rain and Blanche exclaimed.
Rain couldn’t help but laugh then at the image. “Is that really how I appear to people—a mare in heat? Good Lord!”
“Nay,” Bertha answered, more gently. “’Tis jist that I be more world-wise in the ways of men and wimmen and their lustful natures. I see the signs better than most, I warrant.”
Rain shook her head from side to side in disbelief that she was actually standing there listening to a short, dumpy woman with rotting teeth give her advice on love.
“Leastways, I cannot see why ye do not just flap yer wings and fly off to help yer lover if ye be so worried,” Bertha added, guffawing loudly at her own joke.
Blanche smiled mockingly, adding, “Oh, and could you ask God if he would send a milk cow and laying hens so I can make a pudding for dinner?”
Apparently, Ubbi was spreading his angel stories again, but no one else was buying them.
Rain left the kitchen in a huff, knowing her dubious culinary skills were unwanted. She did, indeed, head for the ramparts, where she scanned the horizon. “Oh, Selik where are you? Dear God, please send him back to me safely. I promise to try harder to help him.”
Her prayer was answered immediately with the thunder of distant hooves, followed by the blurry outline of riders on the horizon of a hill about one mile from the keep. Rain rolled her eyes heavenward, saying a silent thank-you as she practically flew down the wooden steps to the bailey.
Selik saw the wench standing on the ramparts, watching for him, then dart away when she recognized his standard. His heart lurched and expanded in his chest, causing him to inhale sharply to catch his breath. Bloody hell! He had spent the past four sennights steeling himself to the siren’s lure, trying to maintain his single-minded resolve to focus his life on one goal only—death to the Saxons, but, in particular, death to his most hated enemy, Steven of Gravely.
But all his efforts were for naught. Oh, he had killed more than enough Saxons to satisfy his bloodthirsty quest for revenge since he had left Ravenshire, but still Selik could not deny the rush of pleasure as he drew closer on seeing the welcome expression on Rain’s face. She awaited him eagerly on the bailey steps leading up to the great hall.
Selik flipped the noseguard down on his helmet to hide any softening in his features. He must sort out these dangerous emotions in private. Mayhap he should just turn Fury around and head back northward.
Did he truly think he could have a life with the wench? Nay, he admitted immediately. ’Twas impossible.
Was it what he wanted, though? Yea, Selik realized with alarm. He had allowed himself to yield to her attraction, and that led down a path he must not, could not, travel.
Selik saw Rain’s honey eyes search his saddle, then shift away guiltily. Searching for the behaettie, she was. Damn her revealing eyes! Despite his promise not to sca
lp again, the wench did not trust him. For some reason he could not fathom, the injustice of her gesture cut him deeply.
Selik truly hardened his heart then. There was naught here for him in Ravenshire. There was naught anywhere, for that matter, except destruction and death. His death, ultimately. ’Twas his fate. Well, he would rest the night at Ravenshire, then depart in the morn. He would take no one with him, not even Ubbi. ’Twas best that way.
With that resolve, Selik steered Fury past Rain and Tykir and Ubbi and the soldiers he had left behind. Selik alighted from his horse at the other side of the courtyard and led the panting animal toward the outbuilding that housed the horses. Steeling himself to the look of hurt that misted Rain’s golden eyes, he ignored her shy wave of welcome.
He had removed the saddle and was providing water and fresh hay for Fury when he heard Rain’s soft tread come up behind him.
“Selik, what’s wrong?”
“What is right?”
She made a low sound of exasperation. “You know what I mean—why are you avoiding me?”
Selik turned and looked at her then, forcing his face to remain impassive and unmoved by her pleading eyes and softly parted lips. “Avoid? Nay. Mayhap you no longer strike my fancy. I am not interested in you anymore.” God’s bones! Do I add lying to my sins now?
Rain whimpered, her open face clearly showing the pain of his insult, like a slap. “I’ve been worried about you.”
“My lady, I have survived these ten years past without the worrisome fretting of a bothersome female. Do not think I welcome your meddling concern now.”
Rain tilted her head questioningly. “And who was the woman who fretted over you then?”
Her question startled Selik, and for a moment he knew his face revealed his pain. “Go away, Rain,” he said in a tired voice. “Your concern is misplaced.”
“Tykir told me why you left, Selik, and I just want to say that I’m sorry I called you a beast before. I’m trying to understand you, I really am, but—”