Sandra Hill - [Vikings II 04] (7 page)

About to open a door at the end of the corridor, Alison glanced back over her shoulder, noticed the direction of his stare, and blushed bright red, once again. He rather liked the idea that he could make her blush. Then she backed into the chamber.

But that was all right. He’d seen enough to know she more than merited his renewed enthusiasm.

He followed her into the room, which was much like the other rooms he’d seen along the way. So much white! White walls and ceilings. White patterned floor. White parchmentlike paper on a high bed-table. With all the glass windows letting in the sunlight, it was almost blindingly bright. This was unlike any hospitium he’d ever seen afore, certainly unlike the one attached to the minster in Jorvik, where he’d once been treated by the good monk-healers after a gruesome battle. But then, everything he’d seen here thus far was unlike anything in his experience.

She waved to the right and said, “Go into the bathroom and give me a urine specimen.”

“What?” He looked into the chamber, which had a white porcelain bowl attached to the wall and a larger porcelain chairlike thing sitting on the floor, which had water floating inside.

“Here.” She handed him a clear cup, which looked like glass but was not. “Relieve yourself into the toilet”—she pointed to the porcelain chair—“but give me some in the cup.”

Toy-let. The porcelain chair is a toy-let
, he told himself so that he would remember the word. Then, “Give you what in the cup?”

“Urine.”

You’re in … you’re in
, he repeated in his head, but it made no sense. He could tell Alison was getting exasperated at having to explain everything to him. “I’m in
what
?”
Oh, this is too much!
he thought as understanding dawned on him like a cloudburst. He did know what urine was. “You want me to piss in a cup?”

“Of course.”

“Are you going to drink it?”

“Don’t be an ass. Just do it.” She shoved him into the bathing room and slammed the door after him.

He did, in fact, piss in the cup and cover it with a lid. Some healers used animal urine in their healing arts. He supposed that was what Alison wanted with his piss, though he was not certain of that fact. Did she gather piss from everyone? If so, she must have a goodly amount.
Yech!

He finished pissing in the toy-let, which was quite an experience … especially when he found that if he pushed a certain lever, the water and urine washed away, down a hole in the bottom. Just to be sure, he pushed the lever five more times, till he was unable to coax any more piss from his organ.

Then he examined the porcelain bowl attached to the wall. He discovered that hot and cold water came from the silver pipes and rushed down a drain in the bowl. The Romans had such marvels, he had heard, but never had he witnessed them himself.

Glancing upward, he saw a mirror on the wall … one that was much clearer than any polished brass he’d seen in the past. To his horror, he got a really good look at himself. His hair was so short, he was nigh bald. He had oozing cuts and bruises on his face and on his shoulders and chest … mostly from the battle that morn with the Saxons.

Had it really only been less than a day since he had fallen overboard with that Saxon warrior? Had Forkbeard truly escaped? Were all his men dead?

He shook his head from side to side, not understanding any of what was happening to him.

Next he touched a silver box on the wall that held soft, parchmentlike towels. Another container held
liquid soap which squirted out when touched in a certain place. He knew it was liquid soap because he’d been fiddling around with some of the levers and ended up with splashes of water and splotches of the slick stuff all over the place. When he’d tried to wipe it up, it bubbled slightly, like soap. He decided to wash some of the stink off himself.

After he’d washed and soaped and rinsed and washed and soaped and rinsed and dried himself off with the parchment towels, which he carefully folded and laid on top of the toy-let, since he was unable to shove them back up into the silver box, he pissed and flushed two more times.

“Ensign Magnusson,
what
are you doing in there?” Alison opened the door a crack to peer inside.

“Bathing and pissing,” he answered, walking past her. Some women did not know enough to give a man privacy. She was just like Madrene in that regard. “What did you think I was doing? Pleasuring myself? I do not do that.”
Much.

“Do you have any idea how close you are to landing in the brig?”

“Mayhap I would know
if
I knew what a brig was.” In truth, Ragnor was getting as exasperated as the good dock-whore over his inability to understand all the new words in this land.

“Lie down on the table,” she ordered, pointing to the high bed-table with the parchment cover.

“Why? It hardly seems big enough for coupling. We could just as easily do it against the wall, or on the floor.” Now that he had his enthusiasm back, he was not too particular.

She made a whooshy sound of disgust and pointed again. “I’m going to ignore that remark …
this time
.
Keep it up, though, and you will most definitely find yourself in hot water.”

He started to ask what she meant by hot water—
was it a method of torture?
—but decided he didn’t really care. “Shall I take off my garment first?” he asked. “I washed my manparts and buttocks in the bathing room to remove all the sand, but I had to put the dirty small clothes back on.”

Her jaw dropped open before she shut her mouth abruptly. “No, you don’t have to remove your shorts. I can pull them down myself.”

I like the sound of that.

She put a necklace of black cords with a silver pendant around her neck, then inserted two of the ends into her ears and pressed the pendant against his chest. It was cold, but he soon got accustomed to it. If this was foresport in this land, he found it mighty strange. “What are you doing?”

“Listening to your heart.”

“What is it telling you?”

“That you have a strong heartbeat. A little rapid, but that’s to be expected, I suppose.”

“Well, yea, I would say so … with you leaning over me, nigh touching me with your breasts.”

She jerked back.

“Nay, sweetling, do not draw away. I like your touching me with your breasts.” He reached up to draw her back down, closer, but she swatted his hands away. Touchy she was, like a nervous virgin, which he did not imagine she was at her advanced age.

She pretended indifference to him, but he was not fooled. Her breasts grew full and peaked at his words. Even though she now wore a white coat over her
shert
, he could tell that about her. There were
many things he did not understand about this land, but the interplay betwixt a man and a woman … ah, that he clearly understood. He was not a Viking for nothing.

Grabbing another device, she wrapped a black band around his upper arm, below his own gold arm band, and inflated it somehow so that the binding became extremely tight. Then she watched an arrow on a circular piece of metal as it moved amongst some numbers.

“Now what are you checking?”

“Your blood pressure.”

“My blood is hot for you, I can tell you that without some special device.”

“Tsk-tsk-tsk! I’m not measuring the heat of your blood, just how fast your heart is pumping it.”

“Hah! I would warrant it is racing like a hunted reindeer.” He looked pointedly at her breast region again.

“You would be right. It
is
high … but not alarmingly so.”

She unwrapped the band from his arm and began examining his head. “Where is your head wound? And the swelling … there is no swelling.” She gazed at him with confusion and a bit of alarm.

He shrugged.

“You had a concussion,” she said, still frowning. “There is no evidence of that on your head now.”

“I am quick to heal,” he offered as an explanation.

“Plus, you’ve got lots more wounds and bruises on you today. Did you get all these during training exercises this morning?”

“Undoubtedly. Your brother is merciless in the torture. But, nay, truthfully, most of them came from
the battle. Those Saxons can be brutal. Not that I did not inflict as many wounds myself, many of them mortal ones.”

She did not appear impressed.

Quietly and with obvious puzzlement, she cleansed some of the cuts with a stinging ointment and closed several others with small metal clamps she called butterflies. By then, she’d arrived at his waist, and his enthusiasm reared its head, making a tent of his small clothes. He wondered if she would have the nerve to actually examine him there. He would bet she would be impressed.

She did. Uncover him. With a sigh of surrender, she pulled the stretchy waistband down to his thighs, exposing his nether region.

But she was not impressed. Or not so he could tell.

The skin surrounding his standing cock and ballocks had been rubbed raw from the sand during his incessant run this morn, but it was naught to be concerned about. When she touched one particularly abraded area, his cock jerked, then lengthened.

He smiled.

“Stop it. Stop it right now.”

“Stop what?”

“You know what.”

“How can I stop
that
? You have brought back my enthusiasm, praise the gods! ’Tis your fault, not mine.”

“Yeah, well, how would your
enthusiasm
feel about a bucket of ice-cold water?”

He pretended to ponder her question as if she were serious … which she could not be.
Could she?
Then he answered, “In all honesty, I think it would douse my enthusiasm, good and true. But why do such a thing?”

She handed him the same jar of ointment she’d applied to his cuts and told him to smear them on his raw skin.

“I would not know how,” he lied. “You do it for me.”

“Figure it out,” she asserted firmly.

“Do you fear your own arousal if you touch me?” he asked.

“Get a life,” she said.

He wasn’t sure what that meant, but he was fairly certain it was not a compliment.

After he’d ministered to his own abrasions, she flicked the waistband of his small clothes up with a sharp snap and ordered, “Roll over so I can check your back.”

He did as she asked, being careful to adjust his thickened manpart so he would not hurt himself. While she ran her cool fingertips over his back and buttocks and legs, treating the cuts there, he asked, “How long have you been a whore?”

“I beg your pardon.” She said that in such a shrewish manner, he was reminded once again of Madrene. Shrewishness must be an inherent trait of most women, which some managed to bank down, while others let it run rampant.

“I was told that you are a dock-whore,” he explained.

“Oh,” she said, clucking her tongue at what she must consider his deliberate misunderstanding of her words. “It’s ‘dock-tore,’ as you well know.”

“Oh,” it was his turn to say. Dock-whore meant healer in some countries, he recalled now. He supposed, with chagrin, that lewd-tenant didn’t mean anything lascivious, either.

“Sit up,” she demanded then, turning away from him to write something on a parchment pad.

“Sit up? Does that mean we are not going to couple?”

“Unbelievable!” she muttered under her breath. Then louder, “You could say that. Not now. In fact, never.”

“Ah, milady, you should never say never. Not to a Viking.”

“Listen,” she said, turning and leaning back against the wall, arms folded over her chest. “You are in perfect health. I don’t understand how, but you are.”

“I could have told you that. So why don’t you just hop up here and—”

She put up a halting hand. “However, I am very concerned about your mental health. Maybe you are putting on an act. If you are, it is sick. If not, you are in deep need of some counseling.”

“From whom?”

“A psychiatrist.”

“What is a sigh-kite-tryst?”

“Brain doctor.”

“Why in bloody hell would I need a brain doctor?”

“To see if you are suffering some aftereffects from your brain concussion.”

“I have no idea what you just said.”

“Here’s the bottom line, Ensign Magnusson. I am inclined to ring you out of SEALs training and send you home.”

“You could do that? Take me home to the Norselands?”

“That’s not what I meant. I wouldn’t personally escort you anywhere. But I do have the authority to ship you out.”

“Dost that mean you would force me to leave here?”

“For your own good.”

“Would I still be a captive?”

“You are not a captive. You are here voluntarily.”

“I am?”

“This is a ridiculous conversation.”

Ragnor thought about the ramifications of what she’d just said.
I am not a captive? Then what am I? Does that mean all those men I thought were fellow captives are here voluntarily? Do I want to stay here with them … or wander elsewhere in this land? Or out to sea? Alone. Nay, best to stay with the enemy I know. Not that I know much about this enemy.
He glanced up at Alison, beginning to conclude that this woman was of the enemy camp. Yea, he would like to know his enemy better.

“Nay!” he said firmly. “I will not leave.”

“It is not your decision to make.”

“Yea, ’tis. I will not leave. You cannot make me.”

“Be reasonable.”

“
You
be reasonable.”

She sighed. “Okay, here’s the deal. The only way I am going to sign you off medically is if you agree to start seeing Dr. Feingold on a regular basis.”

He sighed, too. “Another dock-whore … I mean healer. The brain dock-whore, I presume?”

She nodded.

He snorted with disgust but said, “I will try one meeting, but that is all I will promise for now.”

“Fine. I’ll set up an appointment.”

“What do I get for being so accommodating?”

“What’d you have in mind?” He could tell that she immediately regretted her question.

He grinned. “Many things are on my mind. But a kiss would suffice for now.”

“I better not have heard what I think I heard,” a booming male voice said behind him. Ragnor turned to see the evil captor, Chieftain MacLean, glaring at him.