“Go!” she gasped out, praying she wasn’t too late. “Stop Wulnoth from hurting the Celt, and mayhap you can get a name out of him so we can be rid of him.”
Turgeis had only waited for her permission. He ran now, and the rafters shook down dust motes in his wake, the servants amazed to see a man his size moving so fast. But Turgeis was also afraid too much time had passed, and when he arrived at the pit, he wasn’t pleased to be proved right.
Wulnoth didn’t hear him enter, too intent on what he was doing. Turgeis caught his upraised arm before it could descend again, and used it to hurl the man across the room, where he slammed into the wall.
“She did not tell you to kill him,” Turgeis growled.
There wasn’t a man alive, Wulnoth was sure, who wouldn’t be terrified of this Viking if that man earned his fury. “I had barely begun,” he protested, though he said no more. Turgeis imagined that was so, that Wulnoth would have continued for several hours if he had had his way. Turgeis ignored him for the moment to see what damage had been done, and was relieved to see it was not serious.
The prisoner had been twisted around so he faced the wall, his tunic cut from his body and now lying at his feet. More than two dozen vivid welts were raised across the man’s back and tender sides, where the lash had curled around him. A goodly number dripped blood. But at least Wulnoth had not deviated from what he had been told. Erika had said a lashing, and he had used the short, multi-stripped lash rather than his skin-mutilating whip. The cuts didn’t look deep enough to scar, as long as they didn’t fester, but the whole would cause considerable pain for a while.
Yet it was plain to see the man was unconscious. That, of course, wouldn’t have stopped Wulnoth. But it shouldn’t be so, not after so few strokes, and Turgeis could not credit that a man this size had so little tolerance for pain, when he knew what he himself was capable of withstanding.
Something was not right. He had thought so earlier, watching the prisoner wax repeatedly between seeming drunkenness that slowed his words and sharp clarity, between bemused confusion and perfect understanding wherein he had ready answers for each charge. And he had to be crazy to insult Erika as he had done, when his fate rested in her hands. That, or he had a death wish.
If Turgeis had thought those insults had been intentional, he would have challenged the man himself. But he didn’t think so. They seemed more a slip of the tongue, or a natural response to a woman. Either way, the prisoner hadn’t seemed surprised by the slips, hadn’t asked pardon for them, and hadn’t even realized he was giving offense.
Turgeis had also wondered why, with the kind of muscle that was capable of it, the man hadn’t yanked the hooked spike that his chains were attached to right out of the wall. Even if he had been biding his time for the best advantage, surely he would have prevented the lashing if he were able. Only Wulnoth had remained to administer it. The man calling himself Selig the Blessed could have easily escaped. Yet he hung there against the wall, unconscious, his back crisscrossed with blistering stripes that would make movement extremely painful now.
Turgeis suddenly cast a suspicious look at Wulnoth, who hadn’t moved from where he had been hurled. “Was he even awake when you began this?”
“I did not notice,” Wulnoth replied belligerently, beginning to resent the Viking’s interference, since nothing more had come of it.
Turgeis grunted, a sound Erika would have recognized clearly to mean “You lie.” And in fact, he doubted the prisoner had felt any of the lashing yet. He also suspected Wulnoth had not bothered to rouse him because he had known full well his lady would recant her decision, and he did not want to lose a moment of wielding that lash while he had the opportunity. Wulnoth might prefer his victims to experience their torture fully, but in this case, he would settle for the pain that would be felt afterward.
Turgeis proved now what a simple matter it was to yank that spike from the wall if you had the strength for it, which he certainly did. He caught the man before he fell, surprised, even though he had expected it, that he was so heavy, despite a marked leanness across his torso that made the muscles stand out even more.
Turgeis carefully lowered him to the floor, laying him on his stomach, positioning his head on a bent arm. Holding him, he had felt the heat of fever, and now, the lump on the back of his head.
Again the Viking’s eyes pinned Wulnoth, with enough accusation in them that the captain of the guard started backing toward the door. “You lied to her,” Turgeis said low. “He has the injury he claimed to have.”
Wulnoth still lied, though his lack of color proclaimed it loudly. “I felt naught.”
“What you will feel—!”
Turgeis didn’t finish, unaccustomed to being this angry and showing it. He had learned at a tender age to control all emotion. His size demanded it. His one lapse had nearly killed his own brother, which was never forgotten, and why his brother had plotted to be rid of him.
He turned his back on Wulnoth, adding only, “Come near him again and I will kill you.”
A simple statement. He was a simple man of few words. In fact, he had said more this eventide than he had in the past month. And he had no idea what to do now. Illness and injuries were beyond his ken. But he couldn’t send for the healer yet. She would be busy still with Thurston. Erika knew the ways of healing also, but she would not leave the boy now either, and besides, he wasn’t going to tell her of this if he could avoid it. Which still did not tell him what to do for Selig the Blessed now.
He thought to move him to a cleaner place, but he didn’t think the man would notice much of his surroundings when he woke—if he woke. So he went out to summon one of the guards to him.
“Find a servant to fetch a pallet, blankets, candles, water—and food. Lots of food. Bring them to the pit, then wait outside the young lord’s chamber. The moment the healer leaves him, bring her to me.” The guard knew Turgeis well, sat near him at table each day, and was amazed to hear so much out of him. And he was not done. “Lady Erika is to know naught of this, especially that I need the healer.”
Turgeis returned to the pit, in time to hear the prisoner’s groan and a hissed “Thor’s teeth cannot be this sharp.”
He moved to squat beside him. The man hadn’t stirred other than to utter those words. He had spoken in Turgeis’s native Norse, and it had been sweet indeed to hear. As unlikely as it seemed, he was afraid everything the man had claimed was true. Wulnoth, that miserable slime, had accused him simply because he was a stranger to them, when they should have given him the aid he had been seeking.
The man’s eyes were squeezed shut, his fists clenched. Another groan escaped him. Turgeis could only guess at the headache that lump was causing.
Turgeis spoke Norwegian himself for the first time in many years. “I would suggest you do not move.”
A half moan, half chuckle. “I do not think I care to try. What ails me, that my back is afire?”
He had no memory of the lashing? That was good, yet shame stirred in Turgeis that made him distinctly uncomfortable. He could have prevented it. Erika should not have ordered it, and wouldn’t have if she hadn’t lost her temper. He decided not to answer that question.
“Give me the name of someone who will aid you.”
It seemed to Selig that he had waited forever to hear those words. It was what he had been seeking. Aid. Word sent to his sister so she would come for him. And he had found a fellow Norseman, someone he could trust.
“My sister, Kristen, wed to Royce of Wyndhurst, near Winchester. He will—”
He had moved slightly, unaware that it would send the nerves screaming across his back. That he instinctively tensed against the pain only made it worse. Air hissed out of him. Coherent thought fled.
“Be easy,” Turgeis said. “The healer will attend you shortly.”
Selig didn’t hear, for it had come to him why he was in so much agony. “She…beat…me. She actually…”
He could not retain the thought. It floa
ted away with all the others, leaving nothing to explain what plagued him—until much later, when the laughter came, and with it, she.
Honey-gold hair topped with flame, lush lips that sneered at him, promising sweetness, but never for him. Just out of reach she stayed, while the tortures were inflicted, the fire and ice, the hammers and whips, the white-hot brand that sealed his wounds before more were opened, the poison they forced down his throat, which made him vomit again and again so that he would never get his strength back.
He knew he screamed repeatedly, he must have, though he heard not the sound of it, just her laughter, louder and louder, until it echoed through his mind and became the worst agony of all, for he felt shamed by it, humiliated beyond reason. Her laughter, her amusement at his expense, her contempt for his weakness. He could not escape them, or the pain. She was always there, watching, laughing, sometimes wielding the whip herself, which was a puny effort, but the worst blow to his lacerated pride.
Such treatment from a woman, a young one, no more than a score of years, too young to be so cruel. He had wanted her comfort so badly, it was yet another ache he had to deal with, but all she wanted was to torment him. And the laughter continued. He was going to die hearing it.
Turgeis stayed with Selig the Blessed until Elfwina arrived to tend him. He left him with the healer while he went to check on Erika. But she was still with Thurston, and was not likely to leave him that night.
Turgeis had already sent a man to Wessex, so he caught a few hours’ sleep while he had the chance. It was near dawn when he returned to the pit. Hearing the healer’s laughter as he entered led him to believe Selig’s condition must have improved, and he voiced his assumption.
“He is better?”
Elfwina didn’t even try to hide her humor, still chuckling to herself. “Nay, his fever is worse. ’Tis so high he is like to die from it.”
Turgeis stiffened. “Then why do you laugh?”
She was not intimidated by the scowl he was giving her. “Because it pleases me to see a Celt suffering so. ’Twas one like him killed my husband, you know.”
He didn’t know and didn’t care. “If you have not aided him due to malice—”
“Nay, be easy, Viking. I am bound to give him what aid I can, despite my dislike of him. Healing is my life, which gives me no choice. But I am pleased to say that all I have done for him is not like to help, and there is naught else to do.” She dared to laugh again, an unpleasant sound that grated. “Even the purging has not worked. His fever still rises, taking him deep into nightmares. I have been as gentle as I can with him, but he thinks he is being tortured. Through no fault of mine, he suffers dreams of the damned, and you wonder why I laugh? ’Tis out of my hands.”
“Begone, then, if you can do no more,” Turgeis growled. “Your humor is not meet.”
“So you say, but I beg to differ. I never thought I would have vengeance for my man, but here I am given it, and without lifting a hand in harm. That is justice, Viking.”
“He is not even a Celt, you fool.”
The old witch made a scoffing sound to that. “I have eyes. He can be no other thing.”
He didn’t tell her again to leave. He yanked her up and shoved her out the door. Behind him, Selig groaned, still deep in the agony of delirium.
It was dawn before Erika left her nephew’s chamber for her own. She hadn’t slept. She had sat by Thurston’s side all night, holding his little hand, aching each time he stirred and whimpered. Turgeis had straightened the bone, Elfwina had bound it tightly and left potions for the pain and swelling, but it would be many weeks before the pain became tolerable, and many months before they knew if his arm would mend properly. And she would worry each hour of that time, and pray she had done the right thing.
She had told Elfwina that she had seen bones straightened before, but in truth she had seen it done only once before, for her brother when he broke his leg. Ragnar had begged her to have Turgeis try to straighten the bone before it was splinted, something she had never heard of and neither had he, yet he was desperate, nigh full grown, with plans made for his life that he was not willing to give up because an accident had crippled him. One of their half brothers had had a like injury and would bear a limp and pain the rest of his life because of it. And he was not kindly treated, by his own father, by his other siblings, and certainly not by strangers.
Ragnar had been willing to try anything to avoid the same fate for himself. And it had worked, was such a logical thing to do really, if you took the time to think about it. Yet who was to say it would work every time, or work on an arm as well as a leg, or on a boy instead of a man? Erika knew something of herbs and she could sew skin together with a neat stitch, but she knew nothing about things that went wrong beneath the skin. So few healers did.
She was exhausted both physically and mentally from the strain of worrying. And for several hours she had sat there brooding not about Thurston, but about that prisoner in the pit, and his unreasonable attitude—and her unreasonable reaction to him.
She didn’t care what his excuse might be. She had none.
She was accustomed to arrogant men. Danish men—Vikings, as the rest of the world called them—were as arrogant as they come. She was accustomed to handsome men. Ragnar was one himself, and he had several others who followed him who could make a girl sigh sweetly. She was not used to being insulted, but was that enough reason to make a fool of herself? To cause another harm?
She wasn’t surprised to find Turgeis awaiting her outside Thurston’s chamber. She didn’t want to speak of the Celt, didn’t want to know if Wulnoth had done him much damage. Her guilt wouldn’t be able to bear it.
Yet she had to ask, “Will the man be all right?”
Turgeis had slept little himself. And he couldn’t give her the answer she wanted without lying. But he knew very well what the truth would do to her. The man had asked her to feel his head for herself. She couldn’t be expected to, but she would castigate herself because she had not. The whipping he could easily survive, but that other injury and the resulting fever? Elfwina, their only healer, hadn’t offered much hope, and he could not enlist her aid further, vindictive witch that she was.
So he lied. “He will be fine.”
Her tired smile justified his falsehood. If the Norwegian died, he would simply get rid of the body and tell her he had escaped, killing Wulnoth in the process. It would be a pleasure to make that a truth.
Chapter 9
KRISTEN WAS IN the stable, readying her white destrier, when the messenger was brought to her. The two men didn’t come near, with the huge animal unrestrained.
Hers was a horse Royce had found for her when she had laughed so hard at the palfrey he had first given her. But he had to agree she was too big for the small lady’s mount when he saw her on it, so he had brought home the white war-horse, still a young colt and not trained yet for war. Kristen had been able to train him herself, and he made a fine, if overly large, riding horse for her.
She didn’t want to be bothered with the messenger right now, not recognizing him, so knowing him not to be from Royce, and thereby of no interest to her. It was Royce she was bent on following, and having made up her mind to do so, against his express wishes, she didn’t want to be delayed by something that might demand her time.
Ivarr and Thorolf were both waiting for her at the gate, already mounted. They had returned just that morning, and having been told of the rumor that had reached Wyndhurst only yesterday, they were of the same mind as she. She simply could not sit at home and wait while her husband verified if her brother was dead or not.
That was the rumor that had come to them, and so damned long in the coming that the bishop and his party might have been set upon by thieves no more than a day’s ride northeast of Wyndhurst, and it was possible they were all dead.
Kristen would not believe it. It was merely a rumor, and not even a sure rumor. Might have been attacked didn’t mean they had been. And although there was u
sually some small truth to be ferreted out of every rumor, the worst of the rumor was rarely that truth. Selig’s party could have been attacked, aye, but they also could have beat off their attackers and gone on to East Anglia.
Royce had left immediately at her insistence, to discover what truth there was to find. But in return he demanded she remain behind.
It had been unreasonable of him to insist on that, just because of that mention of thieves in the area of the “alleged” attack. He knew how she felt about her brother. Once before she had thought him dead, had seen him fall in battle, yet he had survived. She would not think so again without seeing his body. Nor could she just sit here and wait for Royce to return and tell her, especially with the women of her hall all weeping, all mourning Selig already, and infuriating her with their lack of faith.
Less than a day’s ride on a swift horse, Royce had said. He would be back by this morn, he had said, if he had to ride through the night. But he wasn’t back yet, the morn was long gone, the sun was high overhead, and she was waiting no longer.
But one of the men had brought this messenger to her. She tried to ignore them. She even began walking her mount out of the stable, putting the large animal between her and them. Her man was persistent.
“He asks to speak to either you or Lord Royce, milady.”
She sighed, but didn’t stop when she said, “You told him Royce is not here?”
“Aye.”
“Well, neither am I.”
“’Tis about your brother.”
It was the messenger who had spoken this time. Kristen came immediately around the horse to confront him. “From where do you come?”
“Gronwood, south of Bedford.”
She slashed a hand dismissively at names she didn’t recognize. “Where is that?”
“In East Anglia.”
She laughed then, as the meaning of that sank in and relief washed over her. She had told herself that Selig was not dead, but still she had feared. “So he has reached King Guthrum?”