The worst part was that she had loved Toste, in her own childish way. And he had crushed her. Like a gnat beneath his feet. Or a raisin. Oh, she could kill her well-intentioned father for that coarse description.
As for Toste and his teasing hint that he might marry her… well, mayhap it was time to make the miscreant pay for his crime. But wait. Were those bloodstained linen strips wrapped about his bare chest? And was that bruising about his face and shoulders? Had he been injured and left untended? Even worse, had her father done the man injury in his attempts to make the man take her to wife? Can I be any more humiliated?
“What happened to you?” she asked suddenly, stepping up to the pallet and sitting on the edge. Even before he answered, she pulled a small knife from her girdle and began slicing off the soiled bandages.
“I was injured in the battle at Stone Valley. A sword wound, front to back, just beneath my ribs. Other injuries as well, but the Saxon sword caused the most damage. The back of my head hurt mightily for a few days, but your father’s healer could find no mark on my skull.”
Now that she looked closer, she noted his pale complexion and the brackets of pain about his mouth. “When was the last time Efrim changed these dressings?” she asked her father. Efrim was the village healer… barely competent, though he tried his best.
Her father shrugged. “Three days ago. Mayhap four. He said that if the fever broke… which it did yestermorn… Toste’s chances of survival were good.”
The wounded man seemed amused by the interplay between Helga and her father and only said, “I am not Toste.”
“For shame, Father! You know good and well that the man should have been bathed and his wounds cleansed daily.” And to Toste she said, “I knew Toste, and you are Toste.”
Despite his rope ties, the man was able to lean his head forward and sniff at his armpits. “Phew!” he said. “Why didst you not tell me how malodorous I am, Gorm?” The fool! Then he added, to her, “I thought you had not seen Toste for twenty and more years.”
“I have seen him… you… from a distance since then. At the marriage ceremony of King Haakon’s youngest daughter two years past, for example.” Even filthy and bruised, Toste Ivarsson was a handsome man, with long, dark blond hair and perfectly formed facial features, including an enticing cleft in his chin. Besotted women flocked after him like bees to honey.
“I was there—” he started to say.
She interrupted. “I know. I saw you.” And your buzzing bees.
“—but I did not see you,” he finished.
“You were too busy ogling all the beautiful women at court that day… the non-homely ones.” Shut your teeth, Helga. You are beginning to sound like a jealous milkmaid.
He winced at her comment and at her rough handling of the linen strips stuck to his chest wound which she was beginning to peel away. She thought about untying him first, but decided it would be best to keep him restrained till she’d gotten all the stuck bandages off. In truth, sometimes it was less painful to just rip the linen strips off a wound than prolong the pain by a slower process. So that was just what she did. With a jerk of her hand, she pulled hard, and the bloody cloths came away with a good amount of scab and skin, causing new bleeding.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Holy Valhalla! Bloody damn hell!” Vagn roared, arching upward against his ropes. “Are you trying to kill me? Just because I teased you a bit?” He dropped back to the cot and closed his eyes, breathing heavily with pain.
“I did it for your own good,” she said and used the linen sheet to dab at some of the oozing blood.
“That’s what women always say after they do something feckless,” he muttered. His eyes remained closed. The only indication of his pain now was his white-knuckled fists at his sides.
She was about to protest his calling her feckless, but decided to allow him this indulgence, in light of the pain he must be suffering at her hands. “Send for warm water, soap and fresh linen strips,” she ordered her father, as if he were a mere servant. The old man turned, about to comply without question.