Chapter 21
“Is Ulf here?”
Ylva looked around the hut, surprised not to see him. His mother had just told her he had gone to see Wolf with Steinar and she was impatient to tell him what she had understood.
That night, after a wonderful evening getting reacquainted with her brother, she’d had a dream.
She was running on the beach after three laughing, blond-haired children while Ulf watched from the side, a fiery-haired baby in his arms and a smile on his face.
It could mean only one thing. The six of them would one day be a family.
For this to happen, she and Ulf had to agree to stay together.
They would not only raise the child she was carrying together, they would also marry.
Love would come, she was sure of it, because, in truth, she was already halfway to being in love with the handsome, protective Norseman.
How could she not be after all he had done for her? With her?
“Is Ulf here?” she repeated when Merewen didn’t answer. She was looking at her, a stricken expression on her face.
“No. He’s been arrested,” she said eventually.
Her heart had suddenly exploded, Ylva was sure of it. There was no other way to explain the crippling pain ripping through her chest.
“Arrested?” she breathed. Why? How? When?
Why?
“The reeve’s men… Just now, they— They wanted my husband, but he wasn’t there so they took Ulf instead.” The poor woman was wringing her hands in her anguish. “Steinar had just left to warn Wolf, I was alone and I could do nothing to stop them. I’m so sorry.”
The reeve? But… “I thought the reeve and Wolf were friends?” The man had helped save her the previous year. Why had he suddenly turned against the Icelander?
“It’s a different one, elected a few months ago.”
Of course, now she remembered Oslac telling her as much the night before. But what did the man want with the Icelander, or Ulf for that matter? Ylva could not think, she could barely breathe. This was a nightmare.
Just then Steinar came back, looking as stern as usual. “All clear?” he asked, looking around the hut.
“No. Well, yes, but…the men took your son instead of Wolf. I’m sorry, I couldn’t do anything to stop them.”
Ylva could only watch as the same pain exploded in Steinar’s eyes as it had in her chest a moment ago. She had a vision of how he must have looked when he’d seen a young Ulf at the hands of that madman, Godfrid. Her heart went out to him.
“Faeir!” he called out, running to the forest, presumably in search of Wolf, who’d been told to hide.
It was not long before the two men burst through the door, eyes ablaze with fury.
“Little one, tell me all.”
Looking paler than Ylva had ever seen anyone, Merewen explained what had happened.
Instead of going back empty-handed when they couldn’t find the man they had been sent to seize, wary of the reeve’s reaction when he saw they had not carried out his orders, the guards had taken Ulf, as a kind of hostage, and possibly to appease their hurt masculine pride.
“I thought that lying and pretending you weren’t here was the best thing to do but if I had known they would—”
“You did nothing wrong,” Wolf and Steinar said at the same time.
The Icelander drew his wife into his arms and let out what Ylva imagined to be a frightful series of curses. “This has been brewing for a while. Elstan did warn me that his successor was holding a grudge against Norse people and would create problems for us. It seems he was right.”
“Ulf put up a fight, as you imagine, but there were three of them, all burly and angry at his resistance. One of them was badly hurt before the other two managed to tie him up,” Merewen said on a sob.
“And now I fear for his life. The men said they would make him pay for the wounds he inflicted on their friend once the reeve was finished with him. I tried to run to Magnus, Haakon, anyone, but they stopped me.”
I fear for his life.
After this terrible declaration, Ylva barely heard the rest of the conversation.
At Wolf’s entrance she had fallen into the stool behind her, because her legs could barely support her.
Her mind was now whirring. Ulf had been arrested, and he was in danger.
This was bad, very bad, but there had to be a way out of this. They only had to find it.
She refused to think that he could be killed or even hurt now.
The three people in front of her, having exhausted their shock and frustration, had fallen silent. Ylva stood up slowly. She might well have found a solution to get Ulf out of the guards’ clutches. A mad, daring solution.
“I think there is one way to get him out of this alive,” she said, looking at the door. If she saw Steinar’s scowl, or Merewen’s anguish she would crumble. Incredibly, given the situation, she felt a small smile lift the corners of her lips. “I’m going to have to kill him.”
Everyone stared at her for a long, stupefied moment.
Then Ulf’s father took a step forward, all menacing intent. “Did I hear you say—”
“Listen,” she said, interrupting Steinar before he could lash out at her.
All mirth had vanished from her face. Why was she amused?
This was deadly serious. “If Ulf dies before the reeve sentences him to death for a crime he hasn’t committed or the guards take their revenge out on him, then no one will be able to hurt him, will they? ”
“No, but—”
“What is your plan, Ylva?”
This time it was Wolf who interrupted his son. His blue eyes had lit up with interest. He’d understood she had not spoken in jest, despite her unfortunate words, and had an idea worth exploring.
“I will demand access to him,” she started.
“On what grounds? If he’s been thrown into a cell, they will hardly let you see him just because you asked,” Steinar snarled.
He had started to pace around the room like, well, like a wolf in a cage.
Ylva forced herself to breathe and remember that his anger was not aimed at her but at the situation.
“I will tell them that this child is his.”
She blushed as she said the words because, of course, that was nothing but the truth, even if the people in the hut didn’t know it yet. Or… had Ulf told them before he was taken?
“You mean the babe isn’t really his?”
Steinar—her future father-in-law if she had her way, God help her—sounded on the verge of an outburst, as if he’d already made his mind up that the baby was Ulf’s and didn’t like being told that was not the case.
Why, oh, why had she wanted to keep the paternity of the child a secret?
Couldn’t she have guessed it would only lead to problems?
She lifted her chin to answer as steadily as she could. “Ulf is the father. We were waiting to tell you all but—”
“Ignore my boorish son,” Wolf cut in gently. “It is clear as day who the father of this child is.”
How he could be so sure, Ylva wasn’t certain, but that was a question for another day. For now, she had to expose her plan, mad as it was.
“Since the reeve and his guards hate Norsemen, it is all down to me, and Oslac.” Even before asking, she was sure her brother would agree to help.
“I will go to the guards, accompanied by my seemingly irate brother to exert my revenge on Ulf for seducing me and abandoning me despite his promise to marry me. During the confrontation I will pretend to stab him in anger. Then we will convince the guards to let us take the corpse away to appease my family, who, I will claim, wanted my honor avenged. We might need to bribe them, but we’ll make sure they agree. ”
This was a rough idea at the moment. They would need to refine it together, but she felt it could work, now that she had a brother and a family she could rely on.
Merewen and Wolf looked at one another, faces alight with hope, and Steinar stopped his furious pacing at last.
“Yes. It could work,” he said slowly. “The guards are already disposed to think the worse of us Norsemen, they will not doubt for a moment that Ulf acted so dishonorably. They will also relish witnessing his humiliation at the hands of a woman.”
Exactly. Despicable, prejudiced cowards were always ready to believe the worst of the people they hated, and the fact that she was a woman, in their mind, would only make the moment more enjoyable.
“Will you be brave enough to do that?” Wolf asked. “It will be risky, there is no denying it and there is no guarantee you will get away with it.”
“I know. But Oslac will be with me. And there is no other choice.”
He nodded, as if not doubting her courage for a moment. She wished she were as confident. But, as she’d said, there was no other way. She could not let Ulf get hurt or die, not when he was innocent of any wrongdoing, not when she was going to give birth to his child, not ever.
“Thank you.” Wolf placed a hand over her shoulder. “Let’s go find your brother.”
A spider was crawling up on the wall just in front of him. Through his uninjured eye, Ulf watched it glide across the uneven stones on spindly, elegant legs, light as a feather. As it reached the ceiling, it disappeared into a crack.
If only it were that easy to leave, if only he, too, could escape this dank, slimy cell. But, of course, he could no more have slipped through the cracks than he could have squeezed under the door or vanished into thin air.
He remembered his father telling him he had been arrested once for the supposed murder of his first wife, and beaten up during his detention, just because he was a Norseman.
Now it was his turn to be detained for no reason and used for the guards’ amusement.
The irony of it didn’t lessen the pain raking through his body.
At least, unlike his father, he had not been chained to the wall, or even had his hands tied up.
Small consolation, because the real suffering was not physical.
Questions swirled in his head, causing it to ache further.
Would he ever see Ylva again? He hadn’t even had the chance to explain to her what was happening.
Would she think he had fled in the night and leave the village with her brother when she could not find him?
Would she be waiting for him if, by some miracle he managed to get out of this?
Yes, of course, she would be, what was he thinking?
His grandmother, who knew she was carrying his child, would have rushed out to her as soon as she could and explained the situation.
Would he ever meet his baby, watch him or her grow? His family would provide for the child and Ylva if anything happened to him, that much he knew but still, he could not help but wish he’d be the one doing it.
Was he going to die of a fever in this hellhole, be beaten to death by the two guards eager to avenge the wounds inflicted on their friend, be killed for spite, just so that the reeve could get over the disappointment of not being handed the famous Icelander?
Anything seemed possible.
To his relief, when the guards had brought him to his house in town, the reeve had not been there. Another guard had told them that the man had been called on some urgent business after a riot broke out at the market in a village by the coast.
It was a reprieve but how long would it last?
Was it even a reprieve if he suffered at the hands of the guards in the meantime? Would he be able to stand to face them if they came again today? It was not worth agonizing over the possibility. He would know soon enough.
The spider appeared again, and scuttled across the ceiling.
“Get out of here, you fool,” Ulf grumbled in Norse. “Go live your life outside this pit. Go to your lady spider.”
As if he’d heard him, the animal stopped and hurried back the way he’d come.
Oddly comforted, Ulf curled up in a ball and tried to get some sleep.