The Viking's Captive (16 page)

And Adam found great immediate satisfaction in being able to quiet an old man’s cough by prescribing horehound boiled in water and sweetened with honey. Or soothe a screaming baby’s irritated bottom with his special ointment. Or stitch a knife gash. Or advise Arnora, a twenty-five-year-old mother of eight, how to avoid any more pregnancies, thanks to some information from his stepmother, Rain, who claimed to know of methods used by women far in the future.

He told Rashid they would have to gather many more puffballs after a warm rain next summer, to replenish their stock. The edible fungus was wonderful to help bloody wounds clot because of the millions of tiny spores it contained. Lichen was also good for stanching wounds, but they had plenty of that.

Quite a few people who came to him that morning suffered from severe louse bites … always a problem when bathing and cleanliness were ignored. He advised them to apply a salve of cammoc, crowfoot, radish, and wormwood pounded into a dust, then kneaded with oil. Fleas posed a similar problem. To prevent infestations, he told a group of women to take gorse seeds, wet them down, then sprinkle them about their longhouses to kill the fleas. This was something Ingrith already practiced about her castle, which was so clean no flea or louse would dare intrude.

There were many ailments of the eye since Norse homes were so smoky. Adam suggested that the eyes
be anointed with the juice from a roasted buck liver, and that afterwards the liver be eaten. Apparently, there was some ingredient in the meat that was beneficial to the eyes.

He prescribed pennyroyal for Torgeir’s flatulence and suggested he cut ale out of his diet for a while. Torgeir said he would rather have wind in his bowels.

On a more serious note, one man, a sheepherder named Kolbein, came to him because of pains in his chest. Adam told him that he could not cure his heart disease, but he suggested he keep dogbane or milkweed about. A mild dose of the dried root mixed with water could act as a stimulant when heart failure threatened. And he cautioned the man to avoid heavy exertion or stress.

Rashid had been at his side the entire time, with his medical tools and herbs and ointments at the ready. He was an invaluable assistant, and Adam told him so now.

“Does that mean you are no longer angry with me over the harem?”

“That depends. If you are even remotely thinking of establishing a harem for me, then, yea, I am still angry. If you are doing it for yourself, then, nay, I do not care. Except to say, may Allah be watching over your demented soul.”

They both laughed together as they walked arm in arm toward an outer door. It was a beautiful sunny day for October, and they intended to take advantage of the uncommon warmth to take a walk about the grounds. Tykir and Alinor joined them along the way.

“Would you look at this place?” Adam said. “I have never seen so many flowers and decorative bushes in all my life. I just never expected anything like this.”

“You should see it in the springtime,” Alinor remarked. “Flowers blooming everywhere. All the colors of the rainbow. Why, it is downright pretty here then.”

“Precisely,” Rafn commented with a grunt of disgust. He was carrying an armload of spears toward the exercise fields in the distance. “Have you ever heard of a Viking fortress being pretty? ‘Tis humiliating. We are a laughingstock to many of our fellow Norsemen.”

Alinor went off to consult with Drifa about some of her plants, and the rest of them followed Rafn.

“Why are those men running around in a circle?” Adam asked. There were groups of men throughout the field, working on various exercises: spear throwing, swordplay, archery, knife throwing. But around the periphery of the oval field, several dozen men were merely running at a slow trot.

“I know the answer to that one,” Rashid announced before Tykir had a chance to answer. “‘Twould seem that Ingrith’s rich foods do not sit well on the Viking stomach. Tyra claims some of her men are getting fat. She apparently noticed a pot belly on Bolli today. He had six currant custards yestereve. Tyra was very upset and said if they want to eat like hogs, they are going to have to run like horses.”

Adam and Tykir exchanged quick glances of amusement.

“Well, she does have a point,” Tykir said. “I must admit to having seen very few obese Vikings in my time. And those that were, most often were not fighting men.”

“Leave it to Tyra, though, to come up with this solution,” Adam said with dry humor. “Mayhap she will set a new custom.”

The three of them laughed, shaking their heads at the spectacle of burly, muscle-bound Norsemen huffing and puffing as they completed another round of the field, sweat pouring off their faces and beards like … well, hogs.

That was when Adam noticed Tyra in the thick of the action. She was engaged in swordplay with a man half a head taller than she and carrying slightly more body bulk. The Viking broadsword was not intended for thrusting and parrying; it was too heavy for that. Instead, opponents wielded it in a hacking fashion, the intent being to slice the skin deeply or actually lop off a body part if there was enough force behind the swing.

Tyra was performing admirably. Oh, she staggered at times. Even fell on her arse one time, but so did her fighting partner another time. Sweat poured off her face in rivulets, causing her hair, which hung in a single braid down her back, to cling wetly to her scalp with tendrils about her face. She appeared exhausted from the hard physical labor, but that did not stop her.

“What a soldier!” Tykir remarked, staring at Tyra.

“What a woman!” Adam added without thinking.

Tykir just grinned at him.

It was a reasonable observation, to Adam’s mind. Today she wore a sleeveless, knee-length leather tunic, with a wide belt at the waist. Her legs were bare except for cross-gartered half-boots, as were her arms except for etched silver upper-arm rings. All that bare skin exposed on arms and legs, which, incidentally, were exceedingly long and well shaped, spelled
woman
to Adam, not soldier. But he decided not to explain to Tykir, who was watching him too closely and grinning.

Just then, Alrek ran by, chased by Tykir’s son Thork. Their squeals of laughter were a joyous childish sound. It had to be the first time in years that Alrek had behaved like the youthling he was.

I wonder where the rest of Alrek’s brood is.

His answer came far too soon.

Tunni and Kristin came rushing toward him, pushing
a wooden wheelbarrow. Inside the wheelbarrow was a screeching Besji.

“Can you help us?” Tunni was addressing him, unfortunately, not Tykir or Rashid.

“How?”

“Change Besji’s nappy,” Kristin pleaded. “She made a smelly.”

“Can’t you find some woman in the keep to help you?”

Kristin shook her head vehemently from side to side, even as her thumb was planted firmly in her tiny mouth. Speaking around the thumb, she told him, “Alrek sez to come to you if we be in trouble.”

Tunni was nodding his head just as vehemently as Kristin had shaken hers. “And a stinksome nappy counts as big trouble, don’tcha think?”

“Absolutely,” Tykir answered. “It is right up there with other big troubles … like being kidnapped by a woman.”

“Trouble rides a fast camel,” Rashid agreed, “but betimes it rides on the back of a small child.”

“Where’s Alrek?” Adam shouted as loud as his lungs would allow. His unexpected bellow caused several running Vikings to stumble and Tyra to drop her sword.

“Holy Thor!” Tykir exclaimed, staring at something behind Adam.

“For the love of Allah, the boy attracts disaster like rotten meat attracts maggots,” Rashid remarked.

Adam peered around to see what his two companions were gaping at and saw a dazed Alrek lying on the ground. It appeared that he’d been knocked over by a fast-trotting Norseman. And Tyra! When she’d dropped her sword in surprise, her opponent had apparently sliced her forearm accidentally.

For the first time in Adam’s life, the sight of blood almost caused him to lose consciousness … because it was Tyra’s blood.

Let me check out your tush, baby…

“Leave off, Saxon,” Tyra complained for at least the twelfth time. “It is just a tiny gash, I tell you.”

“Hah! Your
tiny gash
will take ten stitches, and I intend to sew such a fine line that you will scarce be able to see the scar in your fair skin. Dost think I would let Bjorn, your blacksmith-berserker, tend to you again? Not bloody likely!”

They were in the small solar that had been assigned for his medical work. Adam had been forced to drag Tyra there for treatment, against her will.

“You have no right!”

“I have every right. You are the woman who will be sharing my bed furs—”

“Mayhap,” she corrected.

“Probably,” he countered. “And I did not bargain for a scarred-up naked body in my bed.”

“You are insufferable.”

“Yea, I am. ‘Tis one of my better qualities, don’t you think?”

“Aaarrgh!”

“I assume that means yes.”

“Stitch the bloody wound and get it over with. Alrek is probably out there shooting arrows again, or attempting to sharpen your sword. Better yet, I heard him asking the beekeeper if he could help collect honeycombs today. Do you know how to treat bee stings?”

Now, that
was
reason to make haste.

“I like your attire today,” he commented as he washed the gash carefully with soap and water.

“Save your soppy words for someone who cares.”

“Lord, I love a sharp-tongued woman. Makes one wonder what else she can do with it.”

He poured a small amount of that Scottish brew
uisgebeatha
on the cut to further the cleaning and to dull the sensations in the skin before he inserted his needle.

“For the love of Valhalla! Why are you wasting good brew? Do you intend to lick it up … like the dog you are?”

“There is a thought,” he said with a laugh. “Would you like me to?”

“Nay!”

She sat in one chair at the table and he at the other. He forced her to lay her arm flat as he began sewing … tiny, tiny stitches that really would be almost invisible. In order to distract her from what he was doing, he asked, “So what does a woman warrior wear under a tunic such as this?”

He thought she might say “Nothing” as he had about his Arab robes, but, nay, the woman was always a surprise to him.

“A codpiece.”

He had to laugh at her quick wit. “Can I see it?”

“When the sun shines in Niflheim.”

“Would that be comparable to ‘When hell freezes over’?”

“Precisely.

When he was done stitching her wound, he acted quickly. Grabbing her by the waist, he tossed her onto the table face down and flipped up her tunic. She was screaming like a banshee and trying to rise, but he had one hand firmly on her neck and the rest of his body weight pressed over her bottom. Leaning back, he noted that she was not wearing a codpiece, but she did have on
some kind of loin cloth. He ripped it off so that he could examine her arrow wound.

“What are you doing?”

“Checking to see what kind of butchery Bjorn performed on your buttock. See, you should have let me do the work. The wound is healing nicely, but you will have a scar there for life. Not to worry, though. It rather resembles a star. Attractive, really. Methinks I should rub some healing ointment on it, though.”

She made a gurgling sound of dismay, then yelled, “Do not dare put your fingers on my arse.”

He laughed and let go of her, jumping back at the same time, knowing she would punch him in the face, or kick him in some unmentionable spot, if she got a chance.

Quickly she stood and adjusted her clothing, the whole time glaring at him. “I could kill you for that.”

“I was just doing my job. You must not think of me as a man when I am acting in my capacity as healer.”

“Hah! I do not know of any healer who gets aroused when looking at a woman’s arms, or legs, or backside.”

“How do you know I was … am … aroused?”

“Your eye color lightens, your nose flares, and your lips part.”

What could a man say to that? All he could think of was, “Oh.”

Tyra clomped over to the door and swung it open so hard it crashed against the wall. Just before she left, though, Adam decided he would get the last word in.

“One thing, Tyra,” he called out to her back. “You have a very nice arse.”

His life couldn’t get any worse. Could it? …

That morning, Alrek had decided to iron Adam’s best tunic. Now there was a hole over the heart.

Kristin had made up his bed, but the linens were so twisted that when he tried to arise, he fell to the floor. Now he had a goose egg on his forehead.

Tunni brought a pitcher of water all the way from the scullery and spilled most of it along the way. The chambermaid was chasing him right now.

Besji almost fell down the hole in the garderobe. Adam caught her just in time.

“Can’t you put these children to work?” he begged Breanne, who was working alongside some cotters that afternoon. “After all, what trouble could they get in while helping you apply wattle and daub to those huts?”

At the end of the day, Breanne showed up in the great hall where he was about to share an ale with Tykir and Rafn. She was madder than a bull in mating season. Without ceremony, she dumped the children in his lap. “You try cleaning them up. And take note of this, Saxon, that was the last favor you ask of me.”

And she stormed off. Thorvald’s daughters were wonderful at storming off, he was beginning to notice.

He and Rafn and Tykir looked at the children more closely. They were covered from head to toe with mud and straw … even little Besji. At least there weren’t any injuries that he could see. He had taken to counting small blessings these days.

Tykir was, of course, laughing uproariously … even when he caught sight of a white, devilish grin under the thick layer of daub on one of the stragglers and noticed his own son, Thork. Adam doubted that Alinor would be so amused.

To cap off the moment, Bolthor walked up, took in the whole scene with his one good eye, and announced, “Adam, you give me the best ideas for new sagas. I think I will title this one ‘How Adam the Rooster Gained a Brood.’”