Page 57 of The Outlaw Viking

But still Rain’s words hummed in his head. I love you. I love you. I love you…

Still in the stable, Rain stared, stunned, at the doorway through which Selik had departed, his softly muttered words echoing like cymbals in her brain. She doubted that he even knew he had spoken aloud.

His wife’s body ravaged and mutilated. His infant son’s skull carried on a Saxon pike.

All the pieces of the puzzle that constituted Selik’s torment came together with bloodcurdling understanding in Rain’s numbed brain. No wonder he had turned vicious, hellbent on revenge.

And she, who had always prided herself on her sensitivity as a doctor and a human being, had dared to judge him and find him wanting. How self-righteous of her! For a blinding moment, she questioned who was the beast in the scenario, and the answer was not Selik.

Ubbi walked into the primitive stable then, leading one of the soldier’s horses. He immediately started to turn away when he saw the look on her face.

“Don’t you dare leave,” she ordered, coming up and backing the little man against the wall of the building with a finger pressed against his chest. Nervously, Ubbi dropped the reins and the horse ambled back outside.

“M’lady, I have chores—”

“I know, Ubbi. I know about Selik.”

“Wha…what do ye mean?”

“I know about his wife and his baby. Now you are going to tell me the rest of the details.”

“The master told ye how Astrid died, and the babe…oh, Lord…he spoke of Thorkel, too?”

Rain nodded grimly.

“Oh, mistress, what did ye do to provoke him into revealing so much?” Ubbi sank down to the dirt floor and put his face in his knobby hands. When he finally looked back to her, his cloudy eyes had an additional misting of tears. He shook his head wearily. “’Tis not good news. Nay, it can only mean trouble if he be talkin’ ’bout the horrors in his past.”

Rain sank down next to Ubbi and took one of his deformed hands in her own. “Tell me.”

Ubbi swallowed visibly, “’Twas more than ten years past. Selik was no longer a Jomsviking knight, and he had been married to Astrid for two years. Ah, a sweet maid she was. Pretty as larkspur in the spring. And young—having seen no more than eighteen winters.”

Rain felt macabre jealousy shoot through her veins over the dead woman and her link with Selik.

“The two were inseparable. Always touchin’ each other. Wantin’ ter go off and be alone. Even when she was big with child, and then after the babe was born. You see, Selik never had a home or family ter speak of. So he cherished Astrid and their child all the more. But Selik finally had ter go on a tradin’ voyage to Hedeby. He left Astrid and Thorkel in the fine home he built fer them in Jorvik, thinkin’ them safe, but—”

“The Saxons came,” Rain finished for him.

Ubbi nodded, his kind face turning ugly with anger over the memories that seemed to hold him in thrall.

“Were you with Selik?” Rain asked softly as she caressed his tensely fisted hand.

“Yea.” The one horror-filled word said it all. He swallowed with great difficulty several times, then went on. “The house was burned to the ground, but we found Astrid’s body off beyond the orchard. Nekkid, she was, and her legs wuz covered with blood from the top of her thighs to her ankles. Blood and the seed of all the men who had raped her.”

Rain jammed a fist against her mouth to stifle her sobs.

“I will ne’er forget, to the day I die, the sight of me master drawing Astrid into his arms, brushing the blood-soaked strands from her face, crooning her name over and over. For a certainty, ’tis the last time I saw him give in to tears.”

Ubbi’s face darkened with a fierce anger as he seemed to remember something else. “When he laid Astrid’s body back down, then I saw—” Ubbi’s words trailed off as he tried to get his emotions under control. Finally, he added, “And the head of the Saxon band—Steven, Earl of Gravely—had carved his initials, one on each breast, S and G.”

Rain didn’t want to hear any more. She couldn’t comprehend a human being who would deliberately torture another person in such a manner. Then some of the other things Ubbi had said began to sink in. “Steven of Gravely? Wasn’t he the brother of Elwinus, the nobleman Selik killed at Brunanburh?”

Ubbi nodded. “And so the vendetta betwixt the two goes on and on.”

“How did it all start in the first place?”

“Steven of Gravely needs no excuse to practice his misdeeds. He truly is an evil man. But he blames Selik for the death of his father, the old lord.”

“And did Selik kill his father?”