Sandra Hill - [Vikings I 02] (29 page)

Inching closer, the barefooted child, who could be no more than four years old, stared at him with wide, sky-blue eyes, her little thumb stuck in her mouth the entire time.

“Go away,” he growled, opening both eyes.

The child jerked with surprise at his gruff voice, but instead of running away with fright, she moved even closer. The only sign of her nervousness was that she began to suck rhythmically on her thumb. The girl climbed up onto the bed and sat near his waist, staring at him with a look that could only be called longing.

Selik closed his eyes for a moment, bracing himself against the onslaught of emotions that began to assail him. His skin broke out in a cold sweat, and his heart beat a doleful dirge as it always did in the proximity of young children and the reminder of all that he had lost. He could not allow himself to think of his dead babe and how Thorkel might have looked at the age of every bloody child who passed his way.

He felt a small hand, no bigger than his palm, press gently against his chest, and his eyes shot open with dismay. The bothersome twit still had her thumb stuck between her pouting lips, but she had laid her other hand on his chest.

“Have a caution, lackwit, I bite little whelps like you. Chomp them up and spit them out for bird feed.” He forced his voice to sound deep and ferocious.

Instead of backing away with fright, she giggled. She actually giggled.

Lord, my life is turning into a nightmare. I pride myself on my wordfame as a brave warrior, but I can no longer even scare a troublesome little mite
.

“Rain! Ubbi!” he shouted. “Get this verminous damned bloody child away from me!”

Silently, the child moved closer, placing her cheek high up on his chest, sucking loudly now. He rocked from side to side, trying to knock her off, but she just clutched his tunic tightly in one fist and held on for dear life. He thought he heard her laugh softly. No doubt she thought he played a game with her.

Finally, unable to dislodge the little leech, he peered down and saw her eyes fluttering sleepily. Once, before they closed completely, she whispered adoringly, “Da,” and snuggled closer.

Holy bloody hell! The girl thinks I am her father
.

The smell of her baby skin enveloped his senses, recalling better days and happier times in his life, and Selik felt tears well in his eyes. He blinked rapidly to stem their flow, cursing Rain once again for torturing him so. He lay as stiff as a board for more than an hour while the child slept soundly on his chest.

“Adela! Adela! Where are you?”

Selik’s eyes popped open. He must have fallen asleep.

Footsteps pounded on the ladder leading to the loft, followed by the grimy face of the boy he had met on the minster steps.

“What are ye doin’ with me sister, ye bloody weasel?”

“Adam…” the girl said, awakening slowly from her deep sleep. She sat up and gazed at her brother, reaching out her arms to him, then immediately plugging her mouth with the inevitable thumb when he picked her up.
Holy Thor!
The boy practically
staggered under the weight of his sister, who had wrapped her legs around his waist.

“If ye hurt me sister, ye stinkin’ outlaw, I swear—”

“Shut up,” Selik snapped, having had enough of children for one day. “Both of you get out of my sight and do not come back.”

“Adela, did he touch yer private places?” Adam asked her, and the little girl shook her head vehemently from side to side.

Touched her…?
“You had best get your filthy body out of here, you gutter rat,” Selik snapped. “And if you ever make such an accusation again, I swear I will—”

“What?” the little bugger challenged, putting Adela to the floor and strutting up close to the bed like an arrogant rooster. His brown hair—Selik assumed it was brown under all the filth—stood out in fifty different directions, being of many lengths due to a bad haircutting. Months’ worth of dirt and scabs covered his face and arms, and his tunic and braies were stiff with grease and God only knew what other substances. “What will ye do to me, trussed up so? Ye are not such a fearsome warrior now, are ye, me brave knight?”

Selik would have laughed if he was not so angry. “Move away, you bloody little mole.”

“Hah! Mayhap ye would like to try and make me, bein’ such a fierce soldier and all,” he taunted.

His face flaming with anger, Selik bucked against his ropes.
I will kill Rain for this. I swear I will
. “I will not always be restrained, lackwit, and when I am free, you had best be long gone, for I intend to blister your hide so you cannot sit for a sennight.”

Adela tugged on her brother’s sleeve, pointing to Selik. “Da,” she said, and Adam snorted with disgust. “That scurvy outlaw is not yer father, Adela. Our father was a fiercesome soldier, not a helpless—”

“Ubbi!” Selik shouted, pushed beyond his limits by the coarse-mouthed, filthy excuse for a boy.

His loyal—nay, disloyal—servant scurried up the ladder as quickly as his short legs would carry him. Immediately taking in the situation with the children, he apologized. “Beggin’ yer pardon, master, I had to do sum errands fer the mistress, and what a job it was, too, with a dozen young ones trailing after me, and—”

“A dozen?” Selik choked out. “You have a dozen orphans in my barn, on my property, against my wishes? Rain said there were only six.”

“Well, that was two days ago,” Ubbi admitted sheepishly. “More and more of the poor wee ones keep comin’ every day when they hear of our orphanage.”

Selik groaned, then ordered, “Get these two bothersome whelps out of here. Now! And make sure they do not return.”

“Yea, master, whate’er ye say,” Ubbi agreed solicitously, shooing the youngsters down the ladder. Then he turned back to Selik. “Were ye mayhap needin’ the bed pan?”

“Argh-h-h-h!”

“I wuz jist askin’,” Ubbi grumbled as he, too, went down the ladder.

Rain deliberately stayed away from Selik for the next two days, unable to cope with his continual demands that she release him, followed by his ghoulish recanting of all the fiendish things he intended to do to her once he was free. Conflicting emotions tore at her—guilt over having betrayed his wishes by kidnapping him and a continuing fear for his safety.

So now she just avoided him and let Ubbi take care of all his physical needs, including bathing and feeding. The children were ordered to stay below.

And the children! Oh, Lord! Their numbers just kept growing and growing. Rain knew she would have to start turning some of them away soon, having already depleted the supply of money Gyda and Ella had given her. She went into the hospitium every day to work, and the monks, in payment, reluctantly handed over cloth bags full of food for her orphans. But they did it in a most uncharitable manner, and many times, when Rain got home, she discovered that the meat was rancid and the bread moldy.

She was sitting in the doorway of the barn, watching the children play, when she spied Adam. Slowly, she stood up and approached the edge of the clearing where the children played a primitive form of Simon-Says. The filthy Adam had eluded her for days, refusing to bathe, and Rain had had enough of his vulgar mouth as well. Once she got hold of him, she intended to scrub him inside and out.

Adam was ordering the other children about in his usual fashion, even those older and bigger than he, when Rain snuck up behind him and grabbed the smelly wretch by the back of the tunic.

“Let me go, ye bloody witch,” he shrieked.

Rain shifted her hold and wrapped her arms around his chest in a pincerlike grip. Though he kicked and called her every crude name in his vulgar vocabulary, she would not release him.

“Ubbi, get me some soap and linen cloths and clean clothes for the dirty little snot.”

Approaching the horse trough, which had filled with rain the day before, she dropped Adam, then held him underwater for a moment to make sure his greasy hair got wet. He came sputtering up out of the water with more foul names for her than a seasoned sailor. Ubbi handed her a chunk of hard soap, and she told him to help her undress the slippery urchin and hold him still.

After a half hour that seemed like half a day, they finally released the sparkling-clean child from the frigid water. He shook his wet hair off his face, then put his hands on his slim hips and glared up at her, totally unselfconscious about his nudity.

Rain and Ubbi both stared at the little boy in amazement, turning to each other at the same time. “He’s beautiful,” Rain whispered in surprise.

“Ye are a cod-sucking, arse-licking, no-tit, ugly crone of a bitch,” Adam exclaimed, shoving Rain in the chest, “and I—”

“Saxon soldiers are comin’! Saxon soldiers are comin’!” one of the children cried out, rushing toward them from the road. “Bjorn saw ’em from atop the hill.”

Rain and Ubbi exchanged quick looks of dismay, but then immediately told the children to follow the plan they’d practiced over and over for just such an emergency. Adam quickly drew on his dry clothes and herded the children inside the barn like a drill sergeant, spitting out orders right and left. Thank goodness Selik’s men and horses were still in Jorvik. They would never have been able to hide them all.

Rain and Ubbi rushed upstairs.

“Selik,” Rain shouted as she and Ubbi began to pull bales of hay over near the bed to cover it. “Saxon soldiers are coming,” she said breathlessly. “We have to cover you up while they’re here.”

“Release me,” he demanded.

When she just continued to pile the hay over the bed, he bared his teeth and snarled, “Release me, damn you. At least give me the dignity of defending myself if they uncover me.”

Rain hesitated only a moment and nodded toward Ubbi, who pulled a knife from the scabbard on his belt and cut Selik free.

“Please lie down and let us cover you, though, Selik,” Rain pleaded. “Please.”

He shot a look of contempt her way but, surprisingly, complied, telling Ubbi, “Take no chances of antagonizing the bastards. Especially I do not want you taking extra measures to protect me. Do you understand me, Ubbi? I do not care if you get a bloody message from the Pope.”

Ubbi nodded.

“Go back downstairs, Adela,” Selik said gently with an odd catch in his voice. He was looking behind Rain.

Rain turned to see the little girl staring at Selik with wide, frightened eyes, her thumb stuck in her mouth as usual.

“Get her out of here,” Selik ordered Rain, but the child whimpered and rushed past her, arms outstretched toward Selik.

“Bloody hell!” Selik cursed, then lifted Adela up. She wrapped her arms tightly around his neck, refusing to let go, even when he told her it would be safer to go downstairs with Rain and Ubbi.

The clatter of horses’ hooves resounded from the nearby road, almost approaching the yard below, and Selik repeated, “Bloody hell!” Resigned, he lay down on the cot with Adela across his chest, her face burrowed in his neck. Rain and Ubbi quickly raked the rest of the hay over the cot, being careful to lay it loosely over their faces.

When the soldiers stormed into the barn a short time later, all the children were seated at a long trestle table eating bowls of porridge and brown bread. That rascal Adam had done an excellent job getting the youngsters to obey his commands.

The ferocious-looking soldiers, in battle raiment with drawn swords, came to an abrupt halt at the doorway of the barn. Apparently, they hadn’t expected such a domestic scene.

The commander, a grizzled, red-haired man, stepped forward. “Where is he?”

“Who?” Rain asked politely.

“Selik. The Outlaw. Who else?” he snapped, coming closer. “This is his property, is it not?”

Rain shrugged. “I know no one by that name. The barn was abandoned, and all these homeless orphans had no place to go, so…”

“They are naught but the worthless get of the heathen Danes.” He spat on the newly swept floor at Rain’s feet, and she bit her bottom lip to stop herself from giving the slob a piece of her mind. “Who are you?” he asked menacingly, stepping closer and grabbing the front of her tunic with a jerk so that she tripped and fell against his barrel chest.

Rain shoved hard against him, pulling out of his grasp. “I’m Rain Jordan, and you have no right to barge into our home like this.”

The soldier backhanded her across the face so hard her lip split and her nose started to bleed. Stunned, Rain put a hand to her bruised mouth. No one had ever struck her in her entire life. But she tried to get her temper under control when she saw the children staring up at her with fear. And that silly Adam looked as if he might stab the soldier with his little knife. Luckily, Ubbi saw Adam at the same time and forced him to sit back down.

“Search!” the leader ordered the soldiers, and with wanton disregard for their meager property, they began overturning the chests and barrels in the barn. Flour spilled onto the dirt floor. A pile of clothing was ripped to shreds by one soldier’s sword. Two pair of the children’s leather shoes were thrown into the hearth fire. While some of the men went outside to search the woods, one young soldier climbed the ladder to the loft.

Rain forced her eyes downward, afraid to look at Ubbi in case her fear would show in her eyes.
Please, God, I beg you. Please don’t let the soldiers harm Selik. Please
.

She heard a clattering sound and looked up. The young soldier stepped down off the ladder, scratching his underarms indolently. “Naught up in the loft but a pile of moldy hay.”

“Could we use it for our horses?” the leader asked, and prickles of fear turned Rain’s skin icy.

“Nay. Smells like it has been here fer years. ’Twould no doubt give the horses stomach cramps.” The young soldier yawned widely with boredom, and Rain knew the lazy youth didn’t want to have to rake out the loft for his fellow soldiers.

The commander came up to Rain again and grabbed her by both forearms, lifting her to her tiptoes. She barely restrained herself from spitting in his face, but her contempt must have shown on her face because the burly man squeezed hard. Rain felt as if her arms might break, and she couldn’t stop tears from filling her eyes at the intense pain.