To Burn (5 page)

She was full of venom, this little Roman snake, and as dirty as one who lived its life with its belly on the ground. She ranted at him about a little dirt? She could not see her position, as he could. She was a slave, covered in dirt, disheveled and beaten.

"Slaves do not attack their masters," was all he said.

"That is obvious" —Melania smiled falsely— "but I am not your slave."

"You are."

"But I cannot be. Have we just not agreed that slaves do not attack their owners? And yet I have just attacked you. Without reprisal. Shouldn't you kill me, if I were your slave, for such an affront?"

"By killing you, I prove my mastery of you. Is that your logic?"

"Yes, Saxon dog, you have understood my reasoning very well. Perhaps there are other sophistications which you may be taught—given ample time and sufficient reward. I have been successful in training animals in the past—"

Wulfred would hear no more of her vicious tongue; with the flat of his hand he knocked her down into the dirt again. She sat looking up at him, quiet for the moment. But not afraid.

"I have determined," he began slowly, "not to kill you until a time of my choosing. That is all. If you push me to anger, I will be angry." He bent from the waist and brought his face close to hers, so close that the breath of his next words moved her dark hair. "But I will not kill. There is much that can be done to you without the release of death, Roman snake."

Melania ignored his attempt at physical intimidation and rose as gracefully as she could from the dirt. She would face him as an equal, not as a subjugated slave, which she was not now nor ever would be.

"You can do no worse than what you have already done. You have destroyed life as I knew it and murdered my father by treachery. You have done your worst and have refused me the solace of death out of malicious spite."

Wulfred's eyes flamed with blue fire as he spat out, "You expect benevolence from me, Roman?"

"Not benevolence, not even mercy; from you and your kind there is only destruction and ruin and despair."

Wulfred towered over her slight form, held so rigidly erect and so painfully proud. Her very posture was an affront to him. Grabbing her by the upper arm, he dragged her up against him and said hoarsely, "It is good you understand. For you and your kind there will be no mercy shown. I will drive you to despair and then destroy you. Your spirit will be ruined within you, and when death has become an empty dream, then it shall find you."

Melania endured his vow in stoic and superior silence and then yanked her arm free of his grasp. She understood that this was a battle without quarter; none asked and none given. She also knew that he would not be leaving her home anytime soon; no, it would take a very long time to destroy her.

Chin up and gaze level, Melania answered him with all the superiority of Rome at her back. "So be it."

Chapter 6

"You know, Wulfred, if you want to squeeze the breath and fighting spirit out of a woman, there are more enjoyable ways to do it." Balduff laughed.

They were relaxing in the main room of the villa, the triclinium. Wulfred had no idea where the little Roman was, and he did not care at the moment. He needed time to get control of his anger, an anger that she had carefully stoked, and which was so hot that he had been within a hairbreadth of killing her. He would not kill her. Not yet. Not when she so adamantly wanted it.

"Leave it to you, Balduff." Cenred chuckled.

"What? Because I can see the pleasure in a woman?"

"We can all see the pleasure in a woman," Cynric said, "but not this woman."

"Why not this woman?" Balduff argued. "She is young enough, and shapely."

"She is dark and tiny. It would be like mating with a mole." Cynric shuddered.

"Especially since she always seems to end up in the dirt," Cenred said with a smile.

"So take her in the dirt, since she seems to prefer it," Balduff said casually. "She is a woman. Her breasts are intact and her limbs are soft. What else is there?"

"How can you tell she has breasts, covered as she is in that yellow sack?" Cenred asked.

"Because I have a knowing and experienced eye, boy; I can always find a woman's breasts. Even in the dirt."

"But they were small," Cynric said. "Everything about her is small, like a malnourished child."

"Her anger was not small," Cuthred said. "She has a warrior's spirit, I think."

"Ox dung," Cynric pronounced. "She has no valor. She is a child throwing a temper tantrum."

"How old do you think she is?" Cenred said.

"Old enough." Balduff grinned.

"Of course, you would think so, but her hips were hardly wider than a boy's." Cenred's brow furrowed in puzzlement. "Are you certain she's a woman, Wulfred?"

"You're pathetic, boy," Balduff roared. "Of course she's a woman!"

"Wulfred?"

Wulfred turned to his men. "She is a woman. Even without hips and breasts, she has a woman's spite."

"Are you saying that she has no breasts, Wulfred?" Cenred pressed, more to annoy Balduff than anything.

"She has breasts: small, round, and firm, and the swelling of hip needed for breeding. She is a woman," Wulfred restated.

"A woman," Balduff repeated, "and shapely."

"Well, you did have your hands all over her," Cenred said lightly.

Yes, he had. Wulfred had not thought of the little Roman in physical terms before this. She was small, true, and young, but she had hips and breasts and long, thick hair. Had he ever asked for more in a woman? But she was a Roman, first and foremost; her being a woman was secondary. It was like Balduff to suggest mating with her to subdue her, but he could never do it. Not with her. It would be like joining with a serpent.

"She is alone, overrun, her father dead," Ceolmund the Silent said. "I pity her."

Now,
that
caught him unready. Pity her? Who pitied a hissing snake?

* * *

Theras and most of the people of the villa had retreated to the kitchen. It was familiar, warm, close, and away from the Saxons. Melania was with them. She did no work, as they did, but she was with them. None faulted her, slave though now she was; she hadn't been trained for kitchen labor. Those skills would come, in time, if they had to. Like the others, Theras was hoping that life might still go on as before—after the Saxons left.

But would they leave? After Melania's last bout with the Saxon warlord, Theras was beginning to wonder. Couldn't she see that mollifying the giant's anger was the better way? Slaves, the defeated and powerless, did not fight back and expect their lot to get better.

He looked over at her, sitting quietly, dry-eyed and remote in a corner of the golden-hued room on a small folding stool; perhaps she was thinking of a way to soothe the giant's animosity into a softer emotion, one that would serve her better. The Saxon was a striking man, big and fair-featured. Melania was shapely and a classic beauty. Surely she could win some favor from him with a smile and a soft reply. Defying him was a fool's route. She had no power as a slave, she had only her rage, and that would do nothing to placate Wulfred. Melania was an intelligent woman; she would see the error of her tactics.

Perhaps. With his help.

Theras crossed the room to stand beside her. Looking down on the top of her head as she sat upon the stool, he could see dust on her scalp. Never had he seen her so dirty, or so deeply in thought. If he could only nudge those thoughts toward pacification...

"If he won't kill me, I shall kill myself."

Theras sighed in momentary defeat. Melania was intelligent. She was also strong-willed and passionate.

"Kill yourself?" he repeated.

"Yes." She looked up at him, her eyes glittering and hot. "Kill myself. That will show the beast that I will have my own way and he cannot stop me."

"You plan to defeat him by killing yourself?" Theras said slowly. "What victory is that?"

"I don't want to die, Theras; you know I don't. But I can't let him have this power over me. You know he plans to kill me anyway. That he hasn't done it already is only because he wants to make me suffer first and take all control away from me. Then when he kills me, in what awful manner I can't conceive, I will have lost both my life and my power of choice, and he will have won it all! Can't you see that?" Her tone was desperate, strident, and, worst of all, strong.

"Killing yourself is no answer," Theras argued. "He is angry; appease him. Perhaps eventually he will lose this desire to punish you, and then you will be both alive and free. Dead, you give him what he says he wants."

"He doesn't want me dead, Theras. He wants me alive until he decides to kill me. There is a difference."

"There is no difference once you are dead."

"The difference is that I can die happily the one way and in complete and miserable defeat the other. The only way to win is to take my own life."

Theras paused to consider his strategy. On the surface, there was logic to her argument. But there was more to life than what lay on the surface. Melania was set like a boulder in the earth; only something celestial could move her.

"Have you considered what the Lord of hosts has to say about taking your own life? To be murdered as an innocent victim leaves you blameless. To commit suicide goes against God's law."

Melania slumped down on her stool. She had worked it out so perfectly, but she hadn't considered that. She was a Christian. She couldn't commit suicide. She was called to suffer whatever the world threw at her; unfortunately, she wasn't skilled at suffering.

"But in this situation—"

"Does not God know all situations in advance? Are you the lone exception because you have been made a slave by a people abhorrent to you?" Theras said gently.

He had been bought to teach the children of this house and stayed on as companion when they had outgrown the need for a tutor. He had been given his freedom by Melania's father many years past, as had all who lived here. The Saxon had named him a slave and he had acknowledged the term, but it was the Saxon who had again made him one. Yesterday he had been free.

He understood the workings of Melania's mind, a mind never still, never at rest, though she was seventeen and should have settled down by now. Certainly he and her father had struggled through the years to teach her moderation and restraint, with limited success. Melania had not yet achieved the calm control that her father had so highly valued; she had been a volatile child and she had matured into a passionately tempestuous woman. Melanius had not despaired, however. She was a Roman child who had received a sound Roman education in a firmly Roman home. Melania would, given time and training, achieve the dignity of her race. Her father had determined that it would be so. But her father was dead and Melania was now a slave. Though her place in the world had changed, Melania more urgently than ever before needed the discipline and order of a civilized mind.

"You know that Jesus spoke specifically of a slave's obedience to his master, Melania. Are you exempt?"

"Oh, Theras," she whispered, her raised eyes dark and her lashes spiked with tears, "I want to be."

Theras said nothing, knowing he had made his point for the moment, praying that she would accept it.

Melania slumped upon her corner stool, her hands clasped around an upraised knee, her black hair a veil that swept forward to shield her from the others in the room. She sat alone in the noisy midst of them, a heaviness upon her that was not upon the rest of them because the blond giant had singled her out as a target for his roaring hatred. They had the comfort of hazy anonymity. Melania did not.

Small and dark, Flavius approached her furtively, his every movement portraying jumpy anxiety. Flavius, his great-grandfather armor-bearer to Melania's grandfather in the days of the legion, was a boy of eleven and newly orphaned by the Saxon horde. He crouched in front of Melania clearly expecting to be slaughtered at any moment—an idle fear, for the Saxons had killed no children nor any women; in fact, they had battled only those who raised arms against them in their attack. A small mercy, but a welcome one. Theras had heard of much worse happening at Saxon hands, and he suspected that Wulfred, for all his consuming hatred, was responsible for the mercy. Melania, he was certain, would not agree.

"Will you fight him, Melania?" Flavius asked, his voice high and thin.

Melania pulled herself out of her reverie and brushed her hand against Flavius's dark hair, her smile gentle. "Am I not Roman, little one?"

Flavius rested his head upon her knees and wrapped his arms around her legs; he looked as if he were clinging to her for his very life. "Yes, but he is big."

"Rome is bigger," she said without hesitation.

Flavius chewed his lip and brushed his dirty face against the wool of her stola before mumbling, "He is nearer."

Melania sighed and ran her fingers through his hair as she leaned against the wall of the kitchen. They were a pair, these two, both dark of hair and slender of form, though Flavius was but a gangling boy who had not yet begun to reach adult size. Melania was full-grown and fully formed, slight as she was. They looked like what they were: children of Rome.