To Burn (27 page)

"The buildings," Hensa continued, "are in sound condition. A rare thing, these days, to find anything still intact that is of Roman construction."

And whose fault was that? But she said nothing; the pressure on her knee increased before his hand slid up to her thigh. His hand was a warm weight that held what was left of her world in place; his touch soothed her.

"All of the rooms have damage," Wulfred countered, "some more than others. The walls are useless, the location indefensible—a poor strategic choice. The place smells of Rome."

Perhaps because the place was Roman? Her anger shot upward in silence and she literally bit her lip to keep it that way. Wulfred had a reason for his disparaging words, she was certain, but...

It was when she turned away from Hensa, turned away to try to control her anger, that she looked out over her "guests" and understood. They looked with greedy eyes upon all they saw; fingering the plates, rubbing the goblets, breaking off into groups of two and three to explore the rooms of her home. And the way they looked at her people, as if they were standing gold. The Saxons were famous for their love of slavery and the profit to be made by it. Hensa was talking about her home as if he were ready to carve it up for his pleasure. Was Wulfred just going to let this dirty barbarian snatch it away from him?

"You are a gracious and efficient hostess, wife," he said quietly in Latin, his eyes studying her and apparently reading her outrage. "You have added honor to my name."

Praise? From the Saxon oaf? And even stranger, she felt herself flushing with pleasure at his words, as if his approval meant something to her. Oddly, her anger all but disappeared beneath his approval.

Melania frowned in panicked confusion. This was weakness, weakness as her father had explained it. The need for approval was the evidence of weakness; the need for comfort and loving words of kindness, the measure of a damaging loss of control. Romans did not lose control. Romans were ruled by logic, not emotion. Melania was Roman. Wulfred was Saxon. His approval should mean nothing.

"He caught me unawares," she mumbled, troubled by her own response. "I fell back on my training without thinking. Don't get used to it."

Wulfred smiled briefly and picked up his goblet to cover his own loss of control. "I won't."

But Hensa had noticed.

"Speaking Latin, Wulfred? And smiling as you do so? That shocks me more than your sitting in one poor spot all the summer long."

Now her land was poor? The man would say anything to make his point. Or to cause trouble. No wonder Wulfred was so cautious.

"It is a skill I needed to revive," Wulfred said simply.

"Yes, because you found a place populated by Romans, but I do not understand why any were left alive after the first encounter. And I would never have gambled that you would take a Roman wife. She
is
your wife?"

Wulfred set down his goblet as he answered. "Yes. And I have witnesses."

"Your men would lie for you."

"But hers would not. Ask them."

Hensa chuckled and drank again. "No need. I know you would not lie to me."

Wulfred said nothing, but his hand tightened on her leg. She put her hand over his and squeezed his fingers. It was
not
to comfort him. She could just barely make out what the two men were saying; the Saxon tongue came at her so fast, too fast. But she knew that Hensa was challenging Wulfred in some way and that it concerned her. She stopped eating and tried to concentrate more on their garbled and uncivilized tongue.

"Why did you marry her?" he asked.

"Did I not already answer that?" Wulfred said.

"But there are spirited Saxon women, women who understand our customs, women who speak our language." Hensa leaned forward to look intently at Wulfred and bring Melania into his line of vision. "There are many women. She is a Roman above all else."

"She is a woman first."

"Spoken like a man who has been long from home." Hensa laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh. "Look at her. She smells of Rome. Her Roman pride radiates from her like a fire. You, of all men, to have mated with a Roman ..."

Why "of all men"? Was it her imagination, or was Hensa slowing his speech so that she could keep up with the conversation and the insults?

"She becomes less of Rome with each passing day."

Even Wulfred insulted her? And with such a lie? It had to be a lie.
Lord God, let it be a lie.

"But still of Rome," Hensa argued. "Always of Rome."

"She will bear Saxon sons."

Hensa paused in his attack, if for nothing else to eat and drink. Wulfred did not relax. Melania sensed his tension and trusted it. Clearly the subject was not ended.

The third course was served. Wulfred ate and drank sparingly. Melania matched him. For once he did not make an issue of her portions.

"Did you ever think that you would one day choose to marry a Roman?" Hensa said suddenly. Melania could feel the tension in Wulfred escalate. There was something more, something coming that Wulfred could feel and she could not. She reached out a tentative hand and placed it lightly on his shoulder; the muscles bunched beneath her fingers and then stilled. "Would you ever have thought that you, a slave of Rome, would marry a Roman landowner? And by choice?" Hensa laughed loud, his men joining him. Wulfred's men did not. "The gods play with us, do they not, Wulfred? The gods play and laugh."

A slave. Wulfred had been a slave. Of Rome.

Her hand did not move. She could feel his breathing quicken, could feel the quivering heat and tension of his muscles; she could feel his rage. And she understood it. So much explained by just that one bit of information.

"How long was it, Wulfred?" Hensa prodded. "How many years were you enslaved by the mighty, crumbling Roman Empire?"

"Long enough," Wulfred answered tersely.

Perverse and destructive man, would he never stop? He obviously thought to cause friction or an open argument; he would get no such cooperation from her. Never would she give a Saxon warlord what he wanted; never would she attack Wulfred for another's spiteful pleasure. Never had that been the way between them. He poked at Wulfred with the spear of bad memories; he prodded her in slowly communicating that she had married a Roman slave. She did not care; she cared only that Hensa be denied his perverse pleasure. He had caused trouble enough; since he was little more than a beast, food would distract him.

"Theras! Bring Hensa a joint of pork and a cup of beer; he has traveled far today and is hungry."

If she could just keep him busy putting food in his mouth, he might leave the topic of Wulfred's Roman slavery in the past, where Wulfred obviously wanted it. But there were a few things she wanted to know, and a few more that she had to say on the subject of Wulfred's slavery.

"You could have told me!" she whispered in angry Latin while Hensa guzzled his beer.

"Why?" Wulfred mumbled, pausing in the drinking of his own beer. "So that you would know why I hate all things Roman?"

She was Roman. It was all he called her. Every insult he threw had the hatred of Rome at its core. It was not shame at his slave state that Wulfred had hidden from her; it was his motive.

"It was for revenge, wasn't it?" she asked in a hiss, crushing a crust of bread into a moist ball. "It was all revenge."

He paused and put his cup down. Looking at her out of the corners of his eyes, he said softly, "It was."

Of course it was. She had known it. He had made no secret of it. And she had made no secret of her hatred; she was ready to take whatever revenge she could on him, too. He had killed her father, made her a slave, destroyed her way of life. She hated him with every drop of her blood. She hated him with every breath she took. She hated him with every glance and every word and every touch.... Such passion was hatred, could only be hatred; she could not allow it to be anything else.

"I can't sit here for one moment more and watch that beast fill his face. Tell him what you will. I'm leaving." She rose and walked out, walked out on all the Saxons, every single one. It was the happiest exit she had ever made.

Her bedchamber was her only refuge, and she walked straight to it. And then she walked all around it. She couldn't be still. She couldn't sit and she couldn't sleep. She couldn't stop thinking.

It was difficult to fault him, although there were many slaves in the world and few reacted so violently to that state. Of course, she had. Didn't she hate him and want to take revenge because he had robbed her of everything, most especially her freedom? But they weren't the same: he was Saxon; she was Roman. There could be nothing that they shared. He was an animal, as all Saxons were; she was a product of the highest culture the world had known. Saxons were savage, lawless, while Rome was the seat of reasoned justice and impartial philosophy. She had known this all her life. She had been told this all her life.

So many of his statements made sense now. He had told her that he wanted her hatred and that he understood it. A hate to match his own. Melania snorted softly in bitter amusement; they were well matched in that.

He had known better than anyone how death would have released her and, knowing, had withheld it. How long had he yearned for death? How long had he remained captive to Rome's will?

Wulfred slipped into the room as the sun dropped below the treeline. The wind was still, unnaturally still, and the air charged and thick. The air in her chamber was charged and thick as well. Melania whirled on him, her eyes angry and her posture rigid with suppressed energy.

"Were you ever going to tell me?" she demanded.

"No."

He didn't even have the grace to look apologetic.
Oaf.

"Why did your fellow murderer want me to know? He certainly made a point of it."

Wulfred walked across the room and stood by the window, looking out at the sunset.

"So you would know that I hate Rome," he finally said when she was on the point of pushing him out the window, "and..."

"Me," she supplied in a furious undertone. It was so difficult to give in to a truly magnificent rage conducted in whispers. "The imbecile did not know that I already understood that perfectly."

Wulfred said nothing. He stared out the window as if he had never seen a sunset before. Wouldn't he tell her anything unless she pried it out of him?

"Are you going to tell me about it now?"

"What more do you need to know?" he said with some bitterness. "I was a slave of your glorious Rome. I am a slave no longer."

"Was it... was it very bad?" She felt a fool for asking, but she could think of no other way to get him to talk of it.

Wulfred chuckled and turned away from the window to look at her. He was in shadow, a silhouette against the fading light. "Is being a slave ever good? Tell me, slave of a Saxon warrior?"

She ignored his question and asked another: "How long?"

"Too long."

"Can't you give me a simple answer?" she flared. "I only want to know... to understand what—"

"A year," he said abruptly. "A year that stretched out to touch your Christian hell."

"A year," she repeated. It wasn't such a long time, yet she had been a "slave" to him for only a season, and that had seemed more than long enough. "It could have been worse..." Slaves were usually slaves for life; a year was hardly—

"As a galley slave," he said, his voice vibrating in intensity.

A galley slave. Merciful God, a galley slave.
Melania felt her stomach tighten and cramp, and she wrapped her arms around herself. They rarely lasted a year, and often died still in shackles. Worked to death. It was the worst thing that could happen to a man; it was a slow and agonizing death sentence.

"How...?" she whispered.

"How did they catch me or how did I escape?" Wulfred asked with an empty laugh.

"Catch you...?" she stammered in open-mouthed stupefaction.

"Little Melania, who knows so much of Rome," he said softly, and turned again to the window, turning away from the sight of her. "I was... I am a Saxon. An animal, by Roman measure. When the legions defeated us, as we defended our own land, they offered us the famous Roman peace. We were to trade self-rule for Roman rule, and pay the Roman tax. I did not want peace with Rome. I fought. I lost. I was enslaved, chained at foot and hand and throat. An animal, to be worked. Dragged from my land, from my home, from my people, to work and starve and die on a Roman boat."

He said it tersely, in a choked recital that was bare of detail, but it rocked her with its very spareness. He sought neither pity nor understanding. Why, then, did both rise up in her to flood her eyes? Melania watched him. His back was broad, his arms long, and every inch of him was bound by muscle. It took time and much labor to build such muscle on a man. He was no animal.

"But you did not die," she whispered into the silence.

"No," he answered. "But they thought I had. I should have," he said softly into the night air. "Whipped if slow, whipped if weak, whipped if asleep when ordered to be awake, whipped if awake when ordered—" He turned to face her. "And never fed enough. Starved as punishment. Given watered wine and beer as a reward for living another hour."

Melania had closed the space between them without realizing it. She wanted to touch him, to comfort him, to reassure them both that he had survived. He was alive. He was free.

But she could not touch him. She was Roman. The enemy.

"I collapsed. It was at night. We had just come through a storm, rowing for our very lives to keep the boat from swamping. They lashed me. It did nothing; it was like a dream. And then they unlocked the chains that had kept me bound to that wooden seat for a year and threw me over. Garbage. Like garbage."

"They threw you... into the sea? But how...?"

Wulfred smiled—he actually smiled—and said, "I am Saxon. Water is my ally, not my foe. I will not die by water."

He turned again to the window. The sun was gone completely. Stars struggled against the heavy clouds and lost; even the trees were swallowed in the totality of the darkness.