Page 2 of The Viking’s Captive

“I just want to help—”

“Hah! Just like Aslam—”

“The slave trader?” Selik asked with surprise.

“Yea, the slave trader. Keeps tryin’ to ketch us, he does. But I be too fast fer the fat old codsucker. Says he knows of a sultan in a faraway land that wants ter have us fer his very own children, to give us a home and good food, but I know what he wants. Yea, I know.”

“What?” Rain exclaimed, even as Selik said a foul word behind her.

“He wants to bugger us both, he does, to stick his cock up our arses,” he declared with a streetwise explicitness that he hoped would shock the lady into going away. He spat at her feet, grabbed Adela’s hand, and disappeared into the crowd.

“I only wanted to help you,” she called after them.

Those words rang in Adam’s ears, false as they must be, and he slowed his pace. For some reason he could not explain, he decided to follow the blond giants hurrying to keep pace with Uhtred, whose wife was apparently unable to pop out their latest babe with her usual ease.

At one point, when he drew close to them in the crowded sector of Coppergate where all the tradesmen had their stalls, he overheard Rain complain to Selik, “We should have stayed and helped them.”

“You’re out of your bloody mind. I want no children of my own, and for certain I will not care for anyone else’s bothersome brood. Get that through your thick head.”

“But, Selik, did you see that little girl’s eyes when she looked back at us over her shoulder? They were pleading for help.”

“You see and hear only what you want, wench. Did you hear the coarse-mouthed, filthy pup? He wants no help, and I daresay the tough little whelp could survive on a battlefield, let alone the streets of a market city.”

It took Adam a few moments to realize that the “coarse-mouthed, filthy pup” Selik referred to was him. He growled and would have pounced forward and taken a bite out of the man’s leg, but Adela held him back. She did, indeed, have a pleading look in her blue eyes.

“Please, please,” Uhtred was begging, pulling on Rain’s sleeve. “My wife is dying, and you stand here prattling about worthless street children.”

Rain turned on Uhtred with anger. “And what makes you think your unborn child is worth more than those two precious children?”

Precious? Who? Us?In that instant, Adam’s heart felt as if it were growing and growing. He could love this woman, he decided … like a mother. Then he shook his head fiercely to rid his brain of the witless notion.

A dream was born …

Hours later, Adam stood peering through a wide crack in Uhtred’s miserable hut. Adela was asleep in the lap of Selik, who sat under a nearby tree, his long legs stretched forward and crossed at the ankles. How that had come about, Adam wasn’t quite sure, but he did know that there was no way he was leaving Uhtred’s home, despite Selik’s harsh reprimands that birthing was no sight for a little boyling. If Selik called him a “little boyling” one more time, Adam vowed he would give him a famous Anglo-Saxon gesture. But he’d best be ready to run when he did, with Adela in hand and not cuddled in the Viking’s lap.

The thing that enthralled Adam was what Rain was doing inside the hut. She was a healer, apparently. Not just a midwife, as some old crones were, but an actual trained physician. Amazed, he watched as she turned the babe inside the woman’s womb with her hands shoved inside, made a small cut in the place between her woman-folds, then helped to ease the babe out when it was ready.

Adam was only seven years old. He was not given to religious turns, having given up already on the God his mother had prayed to … or was it God who had given up on him and Adela? But somehow, Adam came to an insight way beyond his years. It was his destiny to protect Adela, of course, but he had another destiny, too. He was going to become a doctor. Yes, he was.

He swaggered over to Selik with as much confidence as he could display and announced, “Guess me and Adela will be going home with you tonight.” It wasn’t as if anyone had invited them, but sometimes Adam had found it was best to take the first step.

Selik looked as if he’d swallowed a frog. Actually, his scowling face turned a shade of green.

But he didn’t say no, which Adam took for a good sign.

It appeared he and Adela would have a home of sorts … for a while.

NORTHUMBRIA, A.D. 960 (TWENTY-THREE YEARS LATER)

And then his dreams crashed to an end…

Adela was dead.

Adam the Healer dropped to his knees and beat his breast. Muttering to himself rather than to anyone who might hear in the crowded hospitium at Rainstead, he berated himself, “Two life missions I have had—only two; to protect Adela and to be a healer. I have failed at both.”

For the first time in Adam’s thirty years, he cried. In fact, he wailed his grief to the high heavens and pulled at his hair. “I should join my beloved sister in death. The pain is more than I can bear.”

“Nay, master, do not speak such sacrilege. Only Allah, or your Christian God, should make such destiny-decisions,” his assistant Rashid cautioned softly, putting a comforting hand on Adam’s shoulder.