Page 56 of Ulf's Destiny
“Dear God. You spent all this time in the man’s house.” Oslac swallowed then let out a sigh. “Then at least you were never sold as a slave.”
He looked so relieved to hear it that Ylva didn’t have the heart to tell him that her captivity had been just as cruel. Besides, she was still reeling from what she had been told.
Her brother had been taken, and she hadn’t known? All this time, she had imagined he was free but she had been wrong. She hadn’t seen anything because of the bag over her head, and naively, she had thought that the brother she loved and saw as a grown man had managed to escape. It had been the one thing keeping her sane, that knowledge that at least he had been spared the terrible fate of a slave. To find out now that it had not been the case was terrible.
“And then what happened?” Ulf asked when she crumpled on her seat.
“I, along with three others, was sold the next day to a couple of Danish merchants on their way back home.”
“Such men are slave owners’ favorite customers,” Ulf confirmed. “No complaints, no chance to change their mind, I imagine.”
Yes, Ylva knew that from the day they had handed Mildred over to Lars Gormsson.
“I arrived in the middle of a very harsh winter. The boy who had been sold to the same man as me had died during the sea voyage and I myself almost succumbed to the cold and the pain of not knowing what had happened to you. Only one thing prevented me from sinking into despair. The merchant had a young daughter who was a year older than me, and despite our respective situations, Frigg and I became friends. As we grew up, we fell in love. Against all odds, when I became a man, her father freed me and agreed to let us marry. We were happy for a few years but she died last winter.” Oslac’s face closed up. “A stupiddeath. I came back home one day to find her dead in the middle of the hut. The healer suspected she had choked on a piece of bread while she was alone. Such a stupid, stupid death.”
Ylva could not resist. She reached out for his hand across the table. “I’m so sorry.”
This part of the story was true, she knew it in her guts. Poor Frigg had died unexpectedly, leaving her husband heartbroken. There was no mistaking the grief in his eyes, in his voice. But all the rest had the ring of truth as well. She was getting increasingly convinced that this man was indeed her brother and that she could trust him.
“I was a free man by then, and I had no reason to stay in Denmark without her, so I decided to come back and try to find out what had happened to you, the only family I have left.”
Another silence. The only family he had left, indeed.
Suddenly Ylva remembered something from their childhood. Could it be what they needed to prove he was who he said he was?
“I once poured boiling water on your leg while preparing a cauldron of water for laundry,” she started slowly. “Do you remember?”
Doing what Ulf had done earlier, she had deliberately led him into a trap. Would he know that it was actually his arm she had scalded and that she never did laundry? Or would he do what any impostor would do and say yes? She held her breath. It would be too terrible to find out now that he’d been lying all along.
Oslac shook his head as a smile bloomed on his lips. “You were making soup. Our mother would never have allowed you to do anything so dangerous as boil water for laundry. And it wasn’t my leg. It was my arm. The left one. Look.”
With those words, he lifted the cuff of his tunic to expose an ugly scar on his forearm, just where it should be. There was nodoubting it anymore. This man, with his faithful recollections, his auburn hair and his scar, was her brother.
“Oh, Oslac!”
She stood up, overturning her stool in her haste, and made to go to him. Before she could take more than two steps, however, he had engulfed her into his arms.
Ulf tensed but when the Saxon glanced over to him as if to check for his permission to take Ylva in his arms, he relaxed. An impostor would have relished in his victory and smirked, but Oslac appeared genuinely moved to hold his sister at last. This, along with the emotion with which he’d told his story, his refusal to cower in front of his father, and the scar Ylva had remembered inflecting on him, convinced him the man really was her brother.
So he stayed where he was and nodded.
“Sister. I’m so happy,” Oslac said when they drew away. “To see you safe and free, and with child as well… It is too much joy. Will I get to meet the father?”
Ulf tensed again. What would she answer? Only the day before, she had claimed not to be ready to tell everyone what the situation was.
“You’ve already met him,” she murmured. “Ulf, here, is the father of my child.”
Something opened in his chest. It meant the world to see her finally able to accept who he was and tell the people who mattered to her. Earlier, moved by anger, she had told him he didn’t have any right over her, but she at least acknowledged that he had half the rights over this baby.
Which, ironically, made his position a thousand times more awkward, because just like that, the roles were reversed.
Ulf found himself being scrutinized by an older brother wanting to ensure that his sister would be treated as she deserved. If he had not already been convinced that the man was telling the truth, this concern for her would have done it.
“Of course,” Oslac finally said. “I should have guessed who he was from the way he reacted when I appeared. He wanted to ensure I was not out to take advantage of you, and rightly so. Well, are you now convinced I am her brother, Ulf?” he asked without flinching.
“Yes.”
A simple nod, as if he had not doubted for a moment that he would be believed, then he turned to Ylva again. “I’m so happy for you. Odd to think we both found love with a Dane.”
