by Sandra Hill
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 G
orm 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 repeatedly 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.
Three days later, just outside Winchester, Rain and Blanche and Gorm were apprehended trying to enter the walled city after nightfall. The Saxon soldiers came up out of nowhere, surprising them. When Gorm raised his pike to fight them off, one soldier killed him in one fell swoop of his sword. It happened so quickly that it took a moment for Rain to realize that Gorm lay on the ground with a sword stuck through his chest, his eyes staring up at them in deathly horror. Blanche sobbed loudly on the horse next to hers.
Rain made the mistake then of turning angrily on the vicious soldiers. “I demand to see King Athelstan immediately. We have come to plead the case of the captive, Selik.”
“The Outlaw!” they all exclaimed at once, and at just that mention of an association with Selik, the Saxon guards forced them from their horses, which they immediately confiscated, bound their arms behind their backs, and marched them with pikes jabbing into their backs to their leader.
“Master Herbert, these two came skulking about the castle gates seeking The Outlaw. Another be dead outside the walls,” one of the guards explained.
“We were not skulking,” Rain corrected, and the guard shoved her and Blanche into the barracks-style room where a mean-looking man sat leaning against the wall in a bored fashion drinking mead from a wooden goblet. He was better dressed than the other soldiers who sat about the trestle tables drinking and playing dice. Several women sat on the laps of some men, who fondled them openly.
“Shall we inform the king?” their guard asked Herbert, whom Rain assumed was the castellan, the head of the king’s troops at Winchester.
Suddenly alert, Herbert ignored the guard’s question as he insolently studied their dirty attire, their hands still tied behind their backs. They’d been riding for two days, rarely stopping, and personal hygiene hadn’t been a top priority. The haughty Herbert leaned back casually and took another long swig of his mead. He’d probably assessed and labeled them as of no importance, based on their appearance.
“Yes, tell the king. I need to talk to King Athelstan immediately,” Rain said with an urgency that turned her voice higher than usual.
Herbert’s brow shot upward and he stood abruptly, knocking over the bench, then walked toward her. She heard several soldiers snicker.
“A priest speaking on behalf of the heathen Dane? Now that is an oddity,” he said silkily as he walked toward Rain. She could barely stop herself from backing away. When he stood in front of Rain, his head coming only to her nose, his hand darted out and flipped back the cowl on her head, revealing her long blond braid. Reaching out, he tugged hard on the end of her hair, then used the small knife in his waist scabbard to cut the leather thong. Her hair billowed out around her in a wispy cloud of static.
Herbert gave a low whistle, and some of the soldiers inhaled sharply, then made vulgar remarks. “I think I could even bugger a monk if he had hair like that,” one young man exclaimed, then immediately ducked his head when his comrades began teasing him about his sexual preferences.
With a quick flash of his knife once again, Herbert slashed her monk’s robe from neck to hem and shoulder to wrist. As the drab brown fabric fell to the rush-covered floor, Herbert looked over her double layers of tunics and braies, which made her look heavy, then up and down what he must have considered a massive height for a woman. His upper lip curled with distaste.
Herbert eyed Blanche then, and she slanted her eyes at him seductively and jutted her breasts out in blatant invitation. With disgust, Rain saw Herbert’s mouth go slack and spittle pool at the edges.
She was beginning to think she’d better act quickly. For sure, she was not going to seduce this soldier into leading her to the king with her good looks. “Listen,” she interrupted his lascivious perusal of Blanche’s charms, “I’m a physician—a surgeon in my country. Your king will want to speak with me.”
Herbert said a vulgar word, and his fellow soldiers laughed snidely. “A woman physician? I think not. The only wits a woman has are betwixt her legs.” The soldiers guffawed in agreement.
Rain stiffened her should
ers angrily. “And the only intelligence you have is—”
Before Rain had a chance to finish, Herbert’s fist shot out and hit her chin. With a snap, her neck went back and she fell to the ground, her head striking the timber wall with a loud thud.
Rain didn’t awaken until the next morning, when she found herself lying on a hard dirt floor that smelled strongly of stale urine, dampness, and other horrid odors. Her arms had been untied and she sat up with a wince, putting a hand first to the goose egg on the back of her head and then to her aching chin. Moving her jaw from side to side, she decided the brute hadn’t broken it, but not for lack of trying.
Hearing a squeaking sound behind her, she sat up sharply, causing her jaw to throb even more painfully. Rats, she realized immediately. They had put her in a damp underground room, and there were rats in the vicinity.
Rain stood to get her bearings. The cell was no more than eight-by-eight feet and bare, except for a bench under the lone narrow window slit, a slop bucket in the corner, and, on the floor near the thick wooden door, a pottery jug of water and a trencher with a piece of moldy flat bread and a hunk of meat. A rat nibbled on the meat.
Rain’s survival instincts kicked in. She was alive. Selik was alive. That was all that was important now. She still had hope.
With determination, she braced herself and walked over to kick the rat away, picking up the bread. The squealing rodent could come back later for the grayish meat, but she might need the stale bread for sustenance. And the water, of course.
By late afternoon, Rain’s hopeful spirits flagged. The screams and moans coming from nearby cubicles told her of other prisoners being held in the underground dungeon. No one had come to her cell in the many hours she’d been there, and she faced the frightening prospect of sleeping in this rat-infested hole.
She stood on the bench for what must have been the hundredth time and peered out the small window, which was on a level with the outer bailey. She had screamed for help endless times to the soldiers and servants who passed by, but to no avail. This time she just leaned her aching chin on the window ledge and stared out hopelessly.