Claudia Dain (47 page)

Chapter 3

"Why choose death?" he asked with Saxon bluntness, in bad Latin, and with an appalling lack of courtesy.

Melania was enjoying the coolness of the tile against her skin and the soft quality of the air in her throat. He had, in brutal barbari fashion, ruined her plans for a pristine death; for that alone she would have gladly killed him. That he would kill her before she could even try was a certainty. Besides, her head was swimming and she was having trouble getting enough air. In such a weakened state, she was not quite a match for him, stupid barbari though he was.

She was free of the scalding confines of the hypocaust, against her will; she might as well savor the relative comfort of her new position before he killed her. Her last moments were precious ones to her; did he have to ruin them with talk?

"I do not choose to die, you oaf; the attack on my home and the murder of myself was your idea, not mine. I only chose to die alone, and since you have taken even that from me, at least kill me without the noise of your appalling Latin beating against my head."

Wulfred stared in mild bemusement at the woman at his feet. The heat had obviously not robbed her of breath. For a beaten foe, and a mere woman at that, she was certainly combative. And talkative. Perhaps she truly was deranged; it would explain much and made more sense to him than attributing her with valor.

"I pulled you away death, away fire," he stated.

"A fire you started, monster. I am not an imbecile. Am I supposed to believe that you have no wish to harm me when it was you who destroyed my home?" Melania raised her head from the floor and glared up at the Saxon monster who dared to challenge her. "Should I take the hand of a murderer because it is held out to me?" Smiling spitefully and raising herself still further, Melania continued, "I would rather have faced my death without having to face a barbarian at the same time, and I would also have wished not to see my blood spill on your hands, for you, with your marginal intelligence, will think that you have won, but you have not! Better for the fire to have taken me than you, but it is still not your victory, for I will not die unavenged."

"You also not die silently."

"No, I will not," she said, inching into a crouched position. "You think, in whatever haphazard fashion you may, that Rome and its citizens cannot stand against you, but I know that you shall never stand long against the power of Rome. However, after seeing what you, in your savage ignorance, have destroyed here today, I would willingly choose death. Kill me quickly, barbarian, for I cannot bear to live in a world in which you have won the day and ravaged my home."

He had understood only some of her diatribe, but it was enough. More than enough. She had dug deep into old and seeping wounds with her runaway tongue.

Rome not beaten today? It was a lie. Rome died a little more each day from defeats such as this.

She would prefer death to seeing him in command of her little Roman world? Looking at her crouched at his feet and ready to spring, he found he could believe it. She had inflamed him with every word, pressing to the limit his ill-used and much-hated Latin vocabulary trying to understand her. She was pushing him toward her own death with such proud and punishing words.

Wulfred smiled grimly in sudden and perfect understanding. She had said it, stupidly revealing her motive: she wanted death because she could not bear to have her rotting Roman world shaken by uncivilized barbarian hands. If death was her preference, then death she would not have.

The girl would live.

"You have flushed her," Cenred said, entering the library. "She is a little thing."

Wulfred did not glance at him, but kept staring at the Roman on the floor. "Snakes are little."

Cenred laughed, studying the little Roman woman who had kept them all waiting. She was very small, even for a woman. And she was very dirty.

Melania, though she could understand but a few words of their garbled language, sensed that they were not behaving in the way of men about to kill. Should they not be more enraged, more bloodthirsty? But then, they were Saxon; they probably killed as easily and thoughtlessly as they wet the ground with their water.

She studied them as they talked. All the world knew that the Saxon barbari were big, but she had discounted much of it as myth. She still wasn't ready to discard her notion that tales of their prowess were exaggerated, but now she found it hard to dispute the truth of their monumental size. They were, without exception, at least three hands higher than any man she had ever seen. They were monstrous giants. A man had to be terribly awkward at such a size. Certainly she could see that they were well muscled, standing half-naked as they were and wearing their uncultured garb of leather covering each leg. It was so... so... primitive. They were each light of hair and covered in it; hair hung down their backs and swirled across their chests.

Repulsive. Surely such backward oafs would kill her without a thought, killing being their only skill. Still, studying the biggest one, the one who had dragged her from her pristine tomb, she could well believe that he would choose not to kill her out of sheer perversity. Every choice he made seemed to have her misery at its heart.

"Wife, sister, or daughter?" Cenred asked, astounded by her flagrant animosity and apparent lack of fear. "She seems too bold to be an unwed daughter or unclaimed sister."

"She is too bold for a wife," Wulfred said.

"A widow?"

"She has the bile, but not the age."

"There's not much left that a woman can be."

"She can be a slave," Wulfred said coldly.

Melania's eyes did not waver from the one who had grabbed her from the flames; she found him the easier to read of the two, and she did not like the way he was looking at her with his unnaturally blue eyes, eyes of such intense blue that they seemed to burn. Why was he waiting? He must have meant to kill her; every action proclaimed it. She would rather die now than later; waiting made the whole thing more difficult to bear.

How like a barbarian to delay so stupidly. He was little more than an unthinking animal; and as an animal he would react.

With a quick lunge, she buried her teeth in the muscle just above his knee. The feel of his hairy leg in her mouth was disgusting, but the taste of his blood was very satisfying. He would kill her now, blind with pain and rage; she had only to hold on and wait.

His blood filling her mouth, Melania felt a rough tug on her hair. Yanking viciously, he attempted to pull her off. She held on, biting harder. She would release him when she was dead and not sooner.

She knew he was in pain and the knowledge fed her; he could not last. He could not hold back the primitive emotions running through his blood; he would have no desire to. Her neck was about to break and he was ripping the hair out of her scalp, but he would give first. And he would give her what she wanted.

Eyes full of challenge glittered with unrepentant hatred into his, defying him, daring him.

Cenred clubbed her from behind and she slithered down Wulfred's streaming leg to huddle in an inert mass on the tile floor.

Wulfred watched her dispassionately.

"Snake."

Excerpt from

The Willing Wife

Book Three

Medieval Knight Series

by

Claudia Dain

© 2002, 2011 by Claudia Welch

Chapter 1

England, 1155

Lammas

"I want neither lands nor wife," Rowland grumbled.

"A sorry state, since you now have both," William said.

"Talk to the king, William; you have his ear," Rowland said.

"I may have his ear, but I want to keep my head. I will not argue his choice of gifts."

"This is no gift," Rowland said, looking off into the distance.

"It could be," William said softly, his eyes on his friend's dark profile.

It was just before Lammas, the beginning of the autumn season, and the woods were still cloaked in green. That would change soon enough. Even now, the wind had lost its summer softness; the season had turned. As Rowland's life had turned.

William looked around him at the lands Henry had gifted him at the beginning of the year. Greneforde was his home and his destiny, the prize he had striven for in battle upon battle. With the land had come a wife, as was so often the way of things in this world. As Rowland now knew for himself. The difference between them was that William had been hungry for his gift of land and legacy; Rowland was hungry only for battle. It was a rare irony that his battle skills had earned him his present misery.

Rowland spoke true: he wanted no wife. Yet he had one, and there was no escaping a gift when King Henry II was the giver. Nay, Rowland must claim the woman as wife.

"They say she is fair, her hair red as fire," William offered, knowing it would make no difference.

Rowland did not answer. He looked off into the distance of the wood bordering the plain that surrounded Greneforde. The leaves were green on the trees, but the scrub at the edges of the field was tinged with the faint yellow of autumn and fluttering in protest against a wind gone suddenly sharp.