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 floated 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, butnever 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 returnedto 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.”
“Soyousay, 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.Shehad 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 wasnotused to being insulted, but was that enough reason to make a fool of herself? To cause another harm?
