Jofroi sent scullery maids scurrying to comply and hastened to the servants’ quarters to find valets to fetch the tub.
With Gyda at her side, Ylva summoned Petroc, seneschal of the castle. “We must prepare to receive the wounded. Set up pallets along the walls in the Great Hall. We’ll establish a healing area to treat the injured.” As he disappeared into the vast hall, Ylva spoke to Norhild, Eydis, and Dagny. “Fetch blankets, needles and thread. plenty of linen for bandages. Wine, ale, mead, and cups. Sharp knives, soap… and buckets of water from the well.” With a brief but respectful curtsey, the three servants dashed off to obey.
Ingulf the steward dispatched grooms to gather wood and stoke the fire. He supervised kitchen servants in removing tables and benches from the Great Hall, to accommodate the temporary bedding for the wounded. They rearranged the furniture along the walls of the foyer, for meals to be served outside the hall.
“Maeve and I are going to run down to my cottage and gather herbs, ointments, and potions. I’ll ask Gillie and a few of the women in the village to come to the castle and help as healers. And I’ll have Mathilde—the blacksmith’s daughter—keep an eye on Kól. We’ll be back as quickly as we can.” Úlvhild and Maeve each kissed Gyda and Ylva on the cheek. The two priestesses wove through the bustling throng in the crowded foyer and exited the front castle doors.
Ylva and Gyda raced to the riverbank, where knights and stable hands removed bloodied, battered bodies from the docked dragon ships, transportingwounded warriors to the castle. Injured knights, supported under the shoulders, struggled to walk with assistance up the hill. At the sight of Gunni, Viggo, and two knights lugging a blood-soaked, senseless Skårde on a wooden litter, her heart dropped, her breathing stopped, and she froze, transfixed to the spot.
His eyes were fused shut, his pallid skin sunken and ashen. Skårde’s normally thick and glorious blond hair was slick with sweat and plastered to his head. When her worried gaze reached the atrocious injury on his right leg, Ylva nearly swooned at the repulsive sight.
Jagged black streaks radiated from a horrific red gash, visibly exposed under the slashed chausses and thick padding covering his muscular thigh. A noxious yellow discharge oozed from the mottled, dark purple flesh. Even from the distance where she now stood a few feet away, the revolting odor of death poured from the rotting wound.
Grabbing Gyda’s trembling hand, Ylva addressed Gunni, Viggo, and the two knights who bore Skårde’s litter. “Bring him up to my antechamber.” Preceding the four men into the castle, she and Gyda cleared the way across the foyer and led them upstairs. They entered her bedroom and crossed the antechamber which connected her room to Skårde’s. Servants were heating the bathwater over the hearth, and the wooden tub was close to the crackling fire.
Gunni and the men laid the heavy wooden litter on the floor.
“Strip off his armor. I’ll need your help getting him in and out of the tub.” As the servants filled the tub, Ylva carefully unfastened the latches along the inner leg of Skårde’s chain mail leggings, removing the chausses and the padding underneath. When she was finished, Gunni and Viggo removed his hauberk tunic and linen gambeson.
Once Skårde was naked, the four men helped him into the tub and Ylva thoroughly washed his hair and body with water from the sacred spring and herbal soap she’d made with calendula, chamomile, and comfrey.
When the warriors lifted her clean husband from the tub, Ylva quickly dried him and instructed the men to carry Skårde into the adjoining room. “Please, lay him on the bed.” She directed the servants to remove the tub, dismissing them to return to aid thewounded in the Great Hall. She hoped Úlvhild and Maeve had returned from the village with herbs, ointments, and additional women to help tend the wounded.
Gyda, standing beside Skårde’s bed, whispered a prayer and bent to kiss her grandson’s head. Tears brimmed in her large, expressive eyes as she looked up and held Ylva’s gaze. “You’re aguérisseuse celtique.A Celtic healer who also wields Nordicgaldrmagic. And you have theLjósálfargift ofnen glir.” She grasped Ylva’s hands and squeezed them tight. “I will leave you alone now. And keep others away as well. So that you can pour everything you have—your love, your skills, your magic—into healing him. I’ll post guards at the door, so you can send word if you need anything. A servant will deliver your meals and leave them on the table in your room. Remember to take care of yourself and eat when you can. May the blessings of all the gods guide you.” She wrapped Ylva in her frail arms, rocking her back and forth and kissing her long hair. Gyda smiled gratefully at the four warriors standing near the foot of the bed. “Thank you for bringing Skårde safely home. Please, come with me down to the Great Hall. There are many others who need us.”
Gunni ducked his chin. “May the gods bless you. Please heal him, Lady Ylva.”
Viggo, Mahi, and Knút bowed before Ylva, murmuring their Nordic blessings. With Gunni, they each lifted a corner of the wooden litter and, heads humbly lowered, followed Gyda out the chamber door.
Chapter 25
Nen Glir
Ylva gazed down at her naked, wounded husband. His glorious skin—normally golden, glistening, and glowing with health and youthful vigor—was now ashen, shrunken, shriveled, and grey. The hideous wound on his stricken leg not only emitted a foul, fetid odor and revolting secretions. It pulsed with a malevolent power that progressively increased as it sapped Skårde’s strength.
A parasitic, malignant evil.
I will use my trinity of healing magic. The sacred number three.
Ylva began with her Druid powers.
She had learned healing herbs from her mother Lova near the sacred spring of Mont Garrot, in the Breton village of Saint-Suliac. To invoke and honor the Celtic Goddess Divona, whose divine power she would now wield to heal Skårde, Ylva selected three sacred herbs. Fragrant wildflowers she had picked in the grassy meadow nearChâteaufort.
Vervain, for purification and protection. Meadowsweet, to fight his fever and the fire in his wound. And lavender, to cleanse the air and create a sacred atmosphere for healing.
From the shelf in her antechamber where she kept her herbs and salves, Ylva retrieved three silver bowls—a sacred metal associated with the moon and the color of Skårde’s heraldry. On the bedside table where she had recreated the shrine, she laid the three vessels, each engraved with sacredCeltic triskele symbols, at the base of the sculpted statue’s feet. Whispering incantations in the ancient Breton dialect of the Celtic Druids, Ylva placed the crushed wildflowers into each silver bowl and lit the sacred herbs, one by one. Amidst the sweet citrus of vervain, the honey almond of meadowsweet, and the delicate floral fragrance of lavender, Ylva invoked the healing essence of the herbs as she summoned the Celtic goddess of Sacred Springs.
Next, she would use her Nordicgaldrmagic.
The three gems she had enchanted last night—before her prayerful vigil in the moonlight—now sat near the incense burner on a side table. Chanting avardlokkurincantation in the Norse dialect that Úlvhild had taught her, Ylva placed the imbued stones on the floor around Skårde’s bed in a protective triangle of sacred healing.
The crystal quartz she laid at his head, to channel the divine energy of the goddess through his weakened body. The turquoise, symbol of the curative waters of the sacred springs and Ylva’s rune ofLaguz, she placed at his right foot, to wash the wickedness from his wounded leg. And the emerald, symbol of the healing herbs of the sacred forest and the invincible strength of the dragon—the Dragon of Denmark, Normandy, andChâteaufort—she placed at Skårde’s left foot. Singing her invocation, she summoned thegaldrmagic within the trinity of sacred stones to cleanse the sickness from his stricken body.
And finally, for the very first time, she would now wield her third form of magic.
The gift that Luna had bestowed at Ylva’s wedding.
The Light Elven song of water.
