To Burn (4 page)

For just a moment he thought he saw her quiver, saw the shadow of fear cross her face, but then it was gone, subdued. For the moment.

"I do not believe in fate," she argued, wrenching free of his hands and his touch.

"So be it. But you can believe in what I tell you: you are mine to use. When death comes, it will be when I decide it, not you."

"I place my life in God's hands, not yours, pagan."

"And I have taken it out. Your life is mine and your death—"

"Only God has the power of life and death over me."

Wulfred smiled and said almost gently, "Then I am your god, Roman."

"No," Melania answered proudly, her calm restored, "you are my enemy."

Wulfred took her measure before saying with almost grim eagerness, "So be it."

Chapter 5

"She cannot go with us. Women do not go to battle," Cuthred said in his typical single-minded fashion.

"No," Balduff agreed, "but battles don't last all day, and women do have their uses in the off hours. If Wulfred wants her—"

"Wulfred has never wanted a woman before," Cynric said.

"Not wanted a woman?" Balduff laughed. "Of course he has."

"I did not say that he hadn't had a woman, oaf, but that he has never... well, he hasn't ever seemed to care for any particular woman," Cynric argued, uncomfortable with the topic.

"If this is the way he shows his caring, then—" Cenred began with a sarcastic smile.

"Shut up," Ceolmund said, cutting Cenred off. They all stared at him for a moment in surprised silence. Ceolmund rarely spoke, and only when he felt it was important. That he would speak now was peculiar since they only discussed the Roman woman.

"She certainly is a virulent little thing," Balduff said after an awkward pause. "She's not what I expected of a Roman woman."

"Not what you expect of any woman," Cenred said.

"She fought well enough, considering the limitations of her arsenal," Cynric said.

"Teeth count," Cuthred pronounced in impartial martial judgment.

"Yes," Cenred said, "but who would have thought that she would react as she did? I was prepared to see her on her knees and crying for mercy, not snarling for a quick death as she sprang to the attack."

"It was also not what Wulfred expected, but he will have his satisfaction in his own way," Cynric said.

"He wants her with us?" Cuthred said almost piteously.

"I want her with us," Wulfred confirmed, stepping from the shadows of the courtyard to join the circle of his men. "We will stay. You are right, Cuthred. To bring a woman to battle is foolish. But now the battle is here, with this woman. I will have my way with her. I will get satisfaction from her, and then we will go."

They nodded in acceptance if not full understanding, but they were his comitatus and they would follow him in all things. Wulfred could not put into words the pleasure he would get in tormenting her and breaking her spirit. It was a perverse pleasure, but nonetheless real.

"Cynric," he directed, "since we stay, direct the slaves to clean the place. We will not live in this destruction."

"Yes, Wulfred," he responded.

"And Cynric," Wulfred said, and waited for Cynric to face him fully before he continued, "the Roman snake will work. She is no longer free, but slave."

Yes, it gave him a great deal of pleasure.

Except that she did not cooperate.

The fool woman went about the cleaning and organizing of her former household with vigor and resolve. Worse, the slaves all did her bidding, as if she were still mistress of this place. Worse still, when he stormed into the midst of them and declared that she was not to direct their activities, the work faltered without her. He wanted to let it be so, just to thwart her desire to rule and command, but he truly did not want to live in chaos for however long it took to break her, so he reluctantly and ungraciously ordered them to proceed as they would. The Roman once again directed the slaves, and the work progressed well under her command.

But the worst of all was that none of it seemed to bother her. In fact, she hadn't seemed even to notice his involvement. Being a slave didn't appear to have affected her at all.

Impossible woman.

Wulfred left the villa, a series of rooms facing inward on a walled courtyard, and wandered into the surrounding fields to get some welcome distance from the Roman.

The day was well on, a hot summer day of white haze and little wind. The villa was settled in a small valley surrounded by gentle hills covered with both field and forest. Rocky outcroppings pushed up through the earth like abandoned monuments, dotting the green landscape with splotches of gray. It was a landscape not unlike his own land—except that there were no Roman villas among the Saxons. Wulfred scanned the area as he left the immediate vicinity of the villa.

The east slope was trellised with grapevine supports, but few vines grew, and those that did were thin and yellow of leaf. The barley fields to the north were small, and he could see that there had once been cultivation to the south, abandoned now. Wulfred climbed to the top of the soft slope of the north hill, above the barley fields, which was covered in honeysuckle blowing in the early summer breeze. From here he could look down upon the villa, nestled as it was against the slope of the western hill, snug in a protected little valley.

Protected from the blasts of weather, but not from man. It was an indefensible spot, as he knew well. The very positioning of the house demonstrated the arrogance of Rome. But there was an air of dilapidation to the whole scene that he could take no credit for; no, that belonged to Rome completely. The arrogant Romans; how far they had fallen in this distant place.

A pair of larks erupted from the woods behind him and sprinted across the air, dipping low and then curving to rise up again. They were the only movement in the still summer sky shining above him, and he spared a moment to enjoy their flight. Birds were always free.

They swooped low, and his eyes followed them as they disappeared into the wood bordering the overgrown fields to the south. As he did so, the Roman, with her train of slaves behind her, paraded across a corner of the courtyard below. Watching her, Wulfred felt his stomach tighten and his brows close in a scowl.

Yes, the Romans had fallen far in their place in the world, but one Roman still had far to fall.

* * *

"Finn," Melania directed, "you'll need to use a basket of fine weave to get the bigger pieces of debris out of the cistern, and I'll have Dorcas bring you a sheet of linen for the rest. Drag it across the top and work your way down. That should clean off the worst of it, but we'll still probably be drinking ash water for the better part of two months."

Melania didn't stop talking as she moved briskly around the courtyard, ignoring the Saxon pigs who watched her every move with open dislike. "Do the best you can, Finn, though it will be a difficult task. I'm certain that only a Saxon would be so stupid as to foul drinking water. Still, we must do our best to clean up after their oafish practices. Of course, it may be that they do not understand that sweet water is necessary for good health, since they consume salt water as a rule, I've heard. And when they can't get that, blood must do. I'm certain that depraved taste must explain their penchant for wanton killing; they but feed themselves. We, however, must have clean, clear water."

Finn had long since bent his head to his task, flustered and frightened by Melania's prickly speech. He did not know that the Saxons could not understand her barbs. Nonetheless, they had no trouble understanding her meaning. It was written in her every expression and mannerism.

Just as easily read was Cynric's fury. His anger fed Melania's spite enormously. The rage to die had dimmed with the day, but not the desire. She wanted it just to spite the monster. If she could goad the Saxon who watched her to kill her, she would have a double victory: the monster would lose her and he would not have had the pleasure of the dispatch. A small corner of her mind declared such logic irrational, but she was past caring. She hated the monster, the oaf, that much. She would do anything to thwart him. Anything.

As if drawn by her hatred, he appeared, striding across her courtyard as if he had built the place himself.
Arrogant oaf.
But the one who watched her was red with fury, and that pleased her hugely.

"I cannot understand a word of what she says, but I know she insults me with every breath! She is beaten. She does the work of a slave. Can you not kill her now so that we can be gone from here?"

Wulfred clasped Cynric on the arm in support. He knew well what rage the Roman woman could fire in a man; he battled it himself.

"She is a snake without teeth," he said calmly.

Cynric all but shuddered. "But venom enough."

"And no way of harming you with it," Wulfred said. "Let her rant. It is all she has. She cannot touch you. She cannot touch me, and I can understand her speech," he said, smiling.

"Do I insult you if I say I pity you, Wulfred?" Cynric smiled in answer, calming himself at Wulfred's words.

"Never," Wulfred said, clapping him on the back.

Now it was Melania who could not understand a word of what was being said, but she was not a dim-witted oaf who did not understand when she was being belittled. The fury that had begun the moment her father had shoved her into the hypocaust vent roared higher at this latest affront.

"Look at me, Saxon monster," she commanded, her hands fisted until her knuckles turned white, "and tell me that you do not find me a worthy adversary." By the telltale widening of his blue eyes she knew she had judged correctly the direction of his remarks. "Certainly I, a woman of Rome, am more than a match for the cowards of your land who call themselves warriors. Here, in the civilized world, when a man makes a vow and willfully breaks it, he is below contempt. And you, Saxon, are a vow-breaker. You and your kind came to Britannia for pay, to protect us from the Picts, and have turned on those you swore to protect. What kind of man turns on his vow the way the wind turns in the leaves? You have no loyalty and no honor, Saxon pig, to break a vow freely made. You are a wolf who runs with the pack, an unreasoning animal who thinks only of his stomach and how to feed his appetite. Come, Saxon, tell me I am wrong. Prove to me that you and all your kind did not break your vow to protect the people of Britannia."

Her body, slight as it was, could hardly contain her fury, and her words about honor and cowardice were designed to drive a man to kill. She was a woman who demanded death as a child demanded a trinket. He saw all this clearly. He even understood that it was in the interest of her own honor that she sought to ignite him to bloodlust. Wulfred found it easy to turn aside from the knives in her words because he not only had understanding of her motives but truth on his side.

"You are wrong, Roman," he said calmly, even cheerfully, "and this is why. A vow given to an enemy is not considered binding by Saxon law. And Rome has ever been an enemy of mine."

For once Melania was dumbfounded. And speechless. Her silence didn't last long.

"The horrible thing, Saxon, is that I cannot find it in me to doubt the truth of what you say. Only a Saxon would construct the world so and call it legal. Tell me then, is your vow not to kill me also false, since I am your enemy?" Melania waited eagerly; she wanted so desperately to catch him in a lie.

Wulfred smiled complacently and said, "You are not so worthy a thing as an enemy, Roman snake. You are merely a slave."

This time he saw her coming; also he was beginning to understand her style. She sprang at him with fists and feet flying, pounding against him with all the fury of her defeat. He had taken worse bruising in his tumbles as a boy, and caught her against him in a bear hug, unhurt. Still she fought and twisted, and he tightened his grip and lifted her from the ground so that her feet dangled. He squeezed her until he could feel her ribs and the slowing pace of her breathing. He was pressing the life from her lungs and would continue to do so until she either stopped fighting him or fainted for lack of air; he did not care which.

She stopped fighting, but the eyes that stared unblinkingly into his were filled with frustrated hate.
Imbecile.
Did she not understand that he was fed by her hatred? When he met that stare and loosened his hold to allow her to draw breath, convinced that he had subdued her aggression, she spat in his face.

Wulfred immediately released his hold on her and she fell in a tumble at his feet in the dirt.

Looking down and wiping the spittle from his face, he said in a snarl, "Do not seek to provoke me."

Melania stood and faced him, her neck arched back so that she could meet him eye-to-eye, straightening her yellow stola as she did so. "Why should I not? Have you not given me your vow that I will live? Am I to assume that you will be troubled by a little spittle on your face when your body has gone unwashed for a decade? Are you admitting that I have hurt you?"