Chapter 4 #2
Better. Yes, perhaps it was better, in a way. Still, she could not help but feel the guilt crushing her.
“Well, we have to leave,” Mildred decreed, looking suddenly very worried. “That damned Icelander knows everyone, he’s bound to have friends all over the place who will lead him to me. If Judith can’t walk, Walstan will just have to carry her.”
“No! This man is not to touch her ever again.”
A snort. “I doubt he will want to leave her alone now that he has had a taste of her. But all that can wait. First, we have to get out of here. I have a cart ready for us outside. Walstan! Get in here!” she called out.
“No. I’ll walk.” Judith’s voice was barely audible but there was no mistaking her intent. She would do what it took to ensure the man did not put a finger on her.
“Very well.”
Mildred did not hesitate in freeing them from the bonds holding them captive. There was no need to worry that they would try to flee. She knew that Judith was too weak to go anywhere and that Ylva would never leave without her.
The two women slowly made their way to the main room, supporting one another—just in time to see the door of the house burst open, sending splinters everywhere.
Under Ylva’s stupefied gaze, Ulf, with his grandfather and two men she assumed were his uncles, Sven and Torsten, stormed inside. Steinar was supposed to be dead, of course, so he wasn’t there.
Mildred recoiled while Walstan grabbed hold of his dagger.
By her side, Judith whimpered and fell into a heap. “Not again!” she managed to gasp, despite the state of her mouth. Not knowing the Norsemen, she had misread the situation and thought the intruders were ruffians about to assault them, not an unreasonable assumption given their attitude.
“No, not again,” Ylva assured her, holding her in her arms. “The Norsemen are here to rescue us.” They would not come to any harm with the men who had just irrupted so boldly into the house. Quite the contrary. They might finally be freed.
For good.
“Who are you?” Mildred had regained some composure and tried to behave as if she had no idea what this was about, as if she had done nothing wrong. “This is my house, you have no right to be here. Leave immediately.”
Instead of answering, Ulf took one look in the corner, where she and Judith were huddled and his whole demeanor changed. He became another man, an avenging angel, or an irate warrior.
“You will both pay for what you did,” he said in a menacing voice.
Mildred dropped all pretense. She ran behind her friend. “Walstan! Get them!”
The fool didn’t hesitate. Ignoring the fact that he was on his own and there were four formidable Norsemen against him, he lunged at the one nearer to him, the one who was an exact replica of his Icelandic father.
The fight didn’t last long. Soon, Walstan lay dead on the floor and Mildred was on her knees, with her hands bound behind her back.
Foul words were spewing from her mouth. Unable to bear it a moment longer, Wolf silenced her with a piece of rag he’d found on the table.
She glared at them, eyes bulging in powerless fury.
Ylva could not help a feeling of triumph from surging inside her. Finally, the woman had been stopped.
“It’s only because you’re a woman that you are not lying dead by his side,” Ulf spat, nodding at the corpse by the table. It was obvious he was fighting the urge to run her through with the blade in his hand and Ylva could not blame him. She felt the same urge herself.
Sheathing his dagger, he took a quick look inside the other room, where he saw the chains that had kept Ylva and Judith tied to the wall.
He walked over to the two women. Judith was still crumpled against Ylva, with her face hidden in the crook of her neck.
She had not wanted to watch any of the confrontation.
“Is she—” Ulf started, looking stricken. He would have seen the state she was in and, unlike Mildred, he cared.
“She will be all right, I think, if she can see a healer.”
Wolf, who had joined them in turn, nodded. “We have two good healers in the village. We’ll take her there.”
“There is a cart waiting outside, we can use that,” Ylva told the men, affording a grim smile. The cart that should have taken them to their final prison would now take them to safety. “But I think she’s too weak to walk to it.”
Ulf nodded. “Will she allow me to carry her?”
“Yes. I have told her she has nothing to fear from you.”
He made no move toward Judith. Instead, he asked. “What about you? You’re hurt as well.”
Ylva placed a tentative hand on her temple. It felt tender and swollen, indicating it might also be bruised. “’Tis nothing.”
And it really was nothing of importance.
Now that she knew they were at last free of Mildred and her acolyte, she felt better than she had in years, ever since the day of her capture.
Because even when they had escaped the first time, she had worried they would be found again and had never fully allowed herself to drop her guard.
She had been right to worry, because they had been found.
But now, at last, their troubles were over.
“What about Mildred?” she asked, refusing to look at the woman.
“We’ll take her with us. You and Judith will decide what happens to her. You have earned that right, I should think,” Wolf declared. “Sven, Torsten, carry the man to the cart. We’ll take him to Elstan on the way. He can dispose of his corpse the Saxon way.”
The blond man lifted Walstan by the shoulders, while the one with brown hair took hold of the man’s feet. While they brought him outside, Wolf led Mildred to the cart with an arm in the crook of her elbow.
The two women were left alone with Ulf, who had straightened back up. Ylva swallowed, because in that moment, he appeared much larger than in her memory. Probably because he was bristling with fury. Fury aimed not at her, but for her and Judith.
He had followed her last night, instead of going to the cooper’s, she realized. It was the only way he could know where to find her. How had she not guessed he would do that? Because she was not used to other people looking after her, that was why. Such acts of kindness were unknown to her.
“What are you doing here?” she couldn’t help but ask.
A corner of his lips lifted. “Rescuing you, apparently.”
Most definitely.
“Why?”
“Because you needed it.” So simple, once again. These Norsemen… They just did what needed to be done, with no questions asked, and no expectations of rewards. It was such a change from what she had known all these years that she felt her eyes starting to burn. “What happened to Judith?”
“Last night, Walstan… He assaulted her. He said he had always wanted her and Mildred told him he could— I wanted to stop him…b-but I couldn’t—”
“It’s all right.”
Ulf clenched his teeth. Ylva didn’t have to tell him more.
He could all too easily guess what the man had done.
This was exactly why he had come. Because he’d known Mildred would not send the two women on their way with her thanks for doing her dirty work.
But he had not imagined something as dire as keeping them tied up and allowing her thug to rape them.
“And you?”
There was a large bruise over her left temple, but unlike her friend, she hadn’t bled and she appeared able to stand.
“Nothing happened to me. Walstan hit me when I tried to stop him from—you know.”
Yes, he did know. Ulf had done the same once, tried to stop a man from raping the woman who was to become his second mother. He, too, had been hurt in the process. He knew all about the desperation she would have felt, the powerlessness, the guilt.
“Come,” he said gently. “The sooner we leave this place, the better.”
“Judith, Ulf is going to carry you to the cart now,” Ylva told her friend. “You have nothing to fear. He will not hurt you. He and his family are going to take us to their village, where I will be able to look after you properly. It’s all over.”
Tears were flowing down her cheeks, tears Ulf wanted to wipe away.
Instead, he lifted the Saxon into his arms. She was far too light for her frame, just like Ylva.
The remnants of their years of captivity, no doubt.
Mildred would likely have starved her little slaves.
What these two women had endured for years didn’t bear thinking about.
“It’s over now,” her told Judith in turn. “It’s all over.”
Fortunately, they had arrived in time to catch Mildred and Walstan. Another moment and the cart would have been gone, taking with it all chance of finding out what had happened to Ylva and Judith.
Outside, everyone was waiting. His grandfather was checking that the horses had been properly harnessed and Torsten had already taken his place in the driver’s seat.
By a stroke of luck, because there were now eight people to transport instead of the original four, the cart was pulled by two sturdy bay geldings.
Ulf swore when he saw that nothing had been put at the back of the cart to help make the women comfortable. No balls of wool, no blanket, no straw even. He could not deposit an injured woman on the hard planks of wood. The journey would be excruciating, every jolt would be felt in her damaged body.
“I will hold her in my lap, with her back against my front,” Ylva declared. She had evidently reached the same conclusion as he had. “It’s the best way.”
It was. But who was going to give her comfort? Who was going to stop her from being tossed from side to side?
“Sven,” he called out while Ylva climbed onto the cart. “You and I are going to sit in the back, propping Ylva up while she holds Judith in her arms.”
His uncle nodded. “Worry not. Between you and me, she won’t budge an inch.”
No. Indeed.
And so it was done. Ylva settled herself against the side of the cart and Ulf placed Judith in her arms. Then the two men took their position either side of her.
By necessity, they sat very close to her, so as to keep her still and absorb the impacts in her stead.
Wedged in, she should be quite comfortable, or least as comfortable as could be.
“Not too tight?” he asked, feeling self-conscious. She seemed so small between him and his burly uncle.
“No. It’s perfect. Thank you.”
No one had even spared a glance at Mildred or given her comfort a single thought. Tied as she was, she would not be able to use her arms to adjust her balance and stop herself from being tossed about. Tough. Ulf was certain no one was sorry for her.
Lying at their feet was Walstan, whose face had been covered by a piece of linen Torsten had found in the house.
They would have liked to spare Judith the sight of the man but they had to bring him to the reeve.
Her eyes were closed anyway, and she looked as if she might have fallen into an exhausted sleep, nestled in her friend’s arms.
“Drive on!” he called out to his uncle. “And keep the horses slow.”
A moment later, the cart rolled on.