Sandra Hill - [Vikings I 02] (24 page)

“Praise the gods! You finally speak a truth.”

Rain furrowed her brow. “What truth?”

“You give me an arse burn.”

Her lips curling with disgust, Rain tried to control her temper because she really wanted to see the primitive medical facility. Very calmly, she explained. “Aspirin is a modern pill, a painkiller.”

“Hah! You name your pills as well as your perfume. See, Tyra, is she not an odd bird? And she criticizes us Norsemen for naming our swords.”

Rain was finding it harder and harder to stop herself from clouting him over the head. She clenched
her fists so tightly that her fingernails dug into the soft flesh of her palm.

Selik’s eyes glittered knowingly.

Tyra glanced back and forth between Rain and Selik as they exchanged insults, seeming confused. “Selik, methought she was a hostage. Why do you allow her to speak so? Should you not cut out her tongue?”

“’Tis an interesting thought.”

“I know you think to barter her for your freedom from King Athelstan, if e’er he captures you, God forbid, but mayhap you should rid yourself of the crone now. Save yourself the bother. Dost think a slave trader would buy her for one of the Eastern harems? ’Tis said they seek the oddity on occasion, and mayhap her size would not be such a disadvantage.”

Rain was beginning to dislike the Norse girl once again.

Selik tilted his head and seemed to seriously consider Tyra’s suggestion. “Yea, now that you call it to my attention, I could see her in naught more than a few wispy veils. Mayhap lying on silken pillows beside a marble pool awaiting her master’s whim. Perchance she could even—”

“Argh!” Rain growled through gritted teeth, finding it increasingly difficult to curb her tongue, especially when she knew Selik was just goading her. She put her hands to her ears to shut out his teasing words.

“So, Selik, do you return to the harbor to sell her?”

He looked Rain directly in the eye. “Tell me, wench, do you promise to mend your shrewish ways?”

Rain bit her tongue and nodded.

“Will you promise, if I take you to the hospitium, that you will speak only when I allow and obey my every command?”

Rain hesitated but finally agreed with another short nod.

“So be it. But first, come with me. I must bind your breasts.”

Rain stared after his departing back. He had grabbed a length of brown fabric from a bench and was already halfway up the stairs before the his words registered.

Bind my breasts?

When Rain caught up with Selik, he was standing in the middle of the bedchamber pulling the brown fabric over his head. Once the cloth had settled into place and he had tied a rope belt about his narrow waist, Rain realized that Selik had donned a monk’s robe, complete with hooded cowl.

“Shut your mouth, Rain. ’Tis uncomely to show me your throat—from the inside.”

Rain snapped her teeth shut. “What are you up to now?”

Selik turned slowly to demonstrate the full picture of his costume. “I bought this at the harbor this morn when I delivered the captives to the slave trader.” Rain winced at his casual mention of selling slaves. “I must needs be more careful in public. A large number of Saxon soldiers patrol the streets and even now may be watching Gyda’s house.”

“Oh, Selik. How I wish you would leave Britain and go to some land where you could start over and be free!”

His jaw jutting forward stubbornly, Selik declared sharply, “No coward am I to run from my enemies. And freedom ever eludes those who hide in foreign lands.”

Rain wanted to argue with him, but she could see by the steely glaze of his eyes that he wouldn’t be convinced. At least, not now. She decided to change the subject. “Will you really take me to the hospitium?”

“I promised, did I not?”

“Yes, but…” Rain gave up the argument and smiled with exaggerated sweetness, willing to do just about anything to visit the tenth century hospital. She saluted smartly.

“Anything you say, master.”
You big galoot!

Selik arched a brow and smiled wryly, his anger fading. “’Tis about time you recognized who is in authority here, wench. And, if you must know, I take you to the hospitium so you may find work to fill your days when I leave Jorvik. I suspect you would make Gyda’s life miserable confined to your chamber or helping her clean privies. Or as lady’s maid to Tyra.”

She started to tell him what she thought of her being lady’s maid to the spoiled Viking brat, but Selik put up a hand to halt her words before she had a chance to speak them. “Your prattling annoys me, and we linger overlong. Take off your
shert
so I can bind your breasts and put you in disguise.”

Rain made a sort of gurgling sound deep in her throat. “Why do I have to—”

“Nay, no more questions. ’Tis already late. You cannot go into the hospitium claiming to one and all that you are a woman doctor. Never would they grant you admittance.”

“Oh.”

Selik folded his arms across his chest, tapping his leather shoe impatiently as he waited for her to obey his orders.

Her face heated as she weighed her options—take off her blouse and let him bind her breasts so she could pretend to be a male, or stay imprisoned in Gyda’s home and miss seeing the hospitium. Deciding quickly, she began unbuttoning.

“What will you use for binding?”

Selik leaned down to a small wooden chest on the floor and rummaged around, finally pulling out a long, scarf-like strip of silk.

She turned her back on him and removed her blouse and bra, waiting. Her amber beads felt cool against her heated flesh.

“Hold out your arms.”

Selik took hold of both her hands and demonstrated how he wanted her to raise her arms to shoulder height. Feeling the air on her exposed breasts and the light touch of Selik’s fingers under her elbows, Rain almost let her knees buckle with the sudden rush of intense eroticism that rolled over her in waves. She closed her eyes briefly until she regained control of her emotions.

“Do not move,” Selik said huskily, then surprised her by stepping in front of her body.

She started to protest, but he seemed to be concentrating on his task, not her traitorous breasts, which had peaked at his first glance. In fact, he barely looked at her body as he deftly placed one end of the strip high up under her left arm, across and above the top of her breasts and around behind, never moving from his spot in front of her.

Twice, he repeated that motion, then proceeded to do the same in the area just below her breasts, which had developed an aching need to be touched. Each time he reached forward under her arms to stretch the cloth behind her, Rain felt his warm breath against her shoulder and choked back a groan of pleasure. Once, his knuckles brushed the underside of her right breast, and Rain felt the shock of the
slight caress ricochet all the way to her toes.

When he was ready to bind the breasts themselves, he moved behind her. “I will have to pull hard. It may hurt.”

Rain thought the need to be touched was much more hurtful than any pressure from a flimsy cloth could be. When he carefully drew the strip across the middle of her breasts, he asked, softly, “Is that too tight?”

The tickle of Selik’s breath against the nape of her neck was Rain’s first clue that he was standing so close, peering over her shoulder.

“It must be tighter still, I see. The nipples are still visible.”

Rain inhaled sharply. “Is this necessary?”

“Yea, ’tis,” he said, jerking the cloth tighter, creating a delicious, quick, abrasive caress across her sensitized breasts. Rain could barely stifle a moan. Then he wrapped the cloth around her several more times, pulling painfully tight. Finally, he tied the ends together and moved around to the front of her, surveying the results. He made a soft clucking sound of dismay. “’Twill have to do, but are your nipples always so large?”

No, you fool, only when you are staring at them and pulling a scrap of silk across them so seductively
.

She started to reply, then noticed the edges of his lips twitching with suppressed laughter as he lifted the amber beads in his hand, his knuckles grazing her chest. Apparently, he’d known all along how uncomfortable she was under his scrutiny and near-caresses. And he enjoyed it immensely. “Oh, you are a brute.” She reached for her blouse to put it back on, but Selik held her back.

“I have a priest’s robe and shoes for you as well.”

Somehow, Selik had found a smaller version of the same robe he wore. After she was fully clothed
and had skinned back and braided her hair beneath the hood, she looked first at him, then at herself. With a soft giggle, she commented, “We look like Mutt and Jeff.”

Selik tilted a brow in question, but Rain just shook her head, knowing it would be impossible to explain the comic strip characters to the Viking. Rain had a sudden, enticing image in her head of Selik lying on her king-sized bed on a lazy Sunday afternoon, coffee in one hand and the comics in the other.

A few moments later, they were making their way through the busy streets of Jorvik. Because of the short distance, they walked. Besides, Selik feared that two priests riding horseback through the city would attract too much attention.

“Must you jiggle your arse so much?” he cautioned once. “Remember, you are supposed to be a monk, not a dockside tart.”

“I do not jiggle.”

“Hah! And stop touching my sleeve when you want to call my attention to every blessed everyday event happening in the streets. People will think us sodomites.”

If he only knew how she restrained herself! Rain wanted to loop her arm with his and rest her head on his shoulder. All her new feelings for him bubbled inside her, threatening to overflow each time she accidentally brushed against him or saw some particularly interesting sight in the fascinating city.

“And I warn you, Rain, do not interfere with aught you see at the hospitium. I care not if they have better healing methods in your country. You are not to tell the culdees how to heal. At the least hint of unnatural talents, the priests could imprison you for practicing black arts.”

“Selik, I’m here to learn, but if I can help—”

“One other thing—many of the clergy have a con
tempt for womanhood. Even if you are the best healer in the world, they would spit in the face of any advice a female would give them. To them, women are the gates leading good men to hell.”

Rain couldn’t remain silent now. “The gates—oh, that’s so unfair! As if women have the power to lead men anywhere! And who’s responsible, in the priests’ eyes, for a woman’s downfall?”

Selik grinned. “No one, I presume, since women—the daughters of Eve—are born with the sin of seduction bred in them.”

Rain shoved Selik in the arm with disgust, uncaring if any passersby saw one priest touching another in an intimate fashion. He made her so mad.

“Do not take your ill humors out on me. I merely relate what the priests preach from their pulpits.”

“But you love it, don’t you?”

“Me?” Selik said with a widespread palm to his chest and exaggerated affront in his voice.

Rain turned away from him in disgust. Once again, she’d reacted to his baiting just as he’d planned. She decided to ignore him and take in all the amazing sights instead.

But soon Rain’s initial wonder over the bustling market city faded as she began to see the wanton destruction caused by the Saxon assaults and the resulting squalor. Part of the city walls had been battered down and homes burnt to the ground. Worse, a large number of people seemed to be homeless, begging for food or coins.

“Selik, why are there so many children on the streets?”

His jaw tensed at her question. “They are orphans, by-products of the Saxon carnage.”

“But why aren’t they being helped?”

“By whom?” he scoffed.

“Other people who’ve survived.”

“Many of them have trouble enough surviving themselves.”

“And the churches—”

“—are too busy feeding their bloated coffers. Bloody hell! There is enough gold in one of their fine chalices to feed the city for a week.”

“How about the government?”

“There is none now. The Norse king was exiled, as you know, and Athelstan has not yet appointed a new Saxon ruler.” He shrugged. “Even so, the government would not help such worthless curs.” He pointed to some nearby children huddled in an alley.

Rain cringed at his unfeeling words. “Because they’re
Viking
children?”

“Partly. But any
poor
children—those of the common folk—are of little value. Plenty more where they come from.”

“Oh, how cruel!” But really, Rain asked herself, were things any better in her time, when homelessness and child abuse had reached all-time high proportions, when children of third-world countries starved to death, and abortion far exceeded the million mark each year?

“’Tis life. For certain, ’tis one reason why I have vowed to bring no more children into this world.”

No more children?
Rain’s heart melted at Selik’s soft-spoken words.

I will never make love with Rain
, Selik vowed as he looked at the city and the pitiful orphans.
Now that I understand the dangers she spelled out to me so clearly, I will never take the gamble of breeding another babe. Especially not on her. Nay, I could not bear the pain of bringing another child into this cruel cesspit of a world. But a babe of my blood, and hers—oh, sweet Lord, the prospect nigh brings me to my knees
.

Selik felt racked with both intense pleasure and torment at the forbidden thought.

“Selik, what’s wrong? Why are you looking at me like that?”

He shook his head to clear the bedeviling thoughts.

“Naught is wrong. We are at the hospitium. Pull your cowl farther onto your face.”

Selik put a finger to his lips to motion her to silence as they entered the huge, arched double doors that led into the main section of the minster. With a jerk of his head, he indicated for her to follow him.

He went down the main aisle of the central chapel, genuflecting automatically before the crucifix as he had been taught when baptized years before. Rain followed suit, clearly puzzled by his Christian response. Then he veered off to the left, ignoring the monks and other church prelates engaged in prayer and religious duties. A large group of boys from the minster school, sons of area noblemen and merchants, nudged each other and whispered mischievously as they followed a pompously pious, tonsured priest who was lecturing them on church manners.

Finally, after traveling down a number of corridors and through several sets of doors, they arrived at the hospitium, a timber addition to the church structure. A spindly young priest, whose face was still covered with the bothersome pustules of youth, peered up at them from the table where he had been working, rolling strips of linen into bandages.

“Yea? I am Father Bernard. Can I be of help?”

“I am Brother Ethelwolf, and—”

“Ah, Ethelwolf—‘the noble wolf’—a fine name for such a large priest as you,” the young cleric said enthusiastically, obviously not long removed from his final vows into the Holy Orders.

Rain darted a look of surprise at him.

“And this is my companion, Brother Godwine.”

She choked and he slapped her heartily on the back.

“Truly, ’tis unfair.
Godwine
—‘friend of God’—’twas the name I chose for my consecration into the priesthood, but another at the abbey had picked it first.” The young priest pursed his lips and rambled on with a wistful smile that displayed an ungodly number of rotten teeth for one so young.

Friend of God, indeed! I could not have chosen a more appropriate name for my guardian angel
, Selik thought, casting a look of dry amusement at Rain’s cheeks, which already reddened with apparent consternation at his priest-name for her.

“Father Bernard, we come from the Friary of St. Christopher in the mountains of Frankland. You have heard of the famous hospitium there, have you not?”

Rain hissed with indignation at his outrageous lie, and he jabbed her with an elbow to remain silent.

“Nay,” Father Bernard said apologetically, “but I have been a priest for only a year, and I am training now to be a culdee. Perchance you would like to speak to the head of St. Peter’s Hospitium—Father Theodric. He is in the chapel just now, hearing confessions.”

“Yea, ’twould be good to meet the esteemed healer, but for now, may we examine your hospitium?” Selik asked. “We visit here in Jorvik, on a mission for our abbey, and would like to learn of all the latest healing methods in the hospitiums we encounter in our travels.”