To Burn

by Claudia Dain

  "It is unfortunate that we did not stop in another valley."

  Balduff looked askance at Ceolmund, considering his comrade's whispered words.

  "Does your heart grow soft for her, this small Roman slave?"

  Ceolmund shook his shaggy head, the ends of his dark blond hair brushing against the crease of his elbow, and said softly, "I am concerned for Wulfred. This vengeance against a girl barely into womanhood will not sit well with him in years to come."

  Balduff lifted his cup for a long swallow before answering. "I admit to not being overly fond of it now. It is no secret that I like women and, no matter what is argued, she is more valorous than most."

  "She is determined," Ceolmund said.

  "She is desperate, according to Wulfred," Balduff responded. "Time will prove what she is."

  They sat in silence, the two of them, ignoring the ribald conversation of their brothers in arms as they drank cup after cup of good Roman wine. In time, Wulfred rose from the floor and left them, his step steady. He had consumed but one cup, as was his practice. Balduff watched him go and, without turning to Ceolmund, who sat quietly at his side, murmured, "Whatever she is, she is set against Wulfred." Sighing deeply, he added, "It is a hopeless defiance; she has no chance of besting him."

  Ceolmund could not disagree.

  * * *

  "I shall outsmart him," Melania said almost lethargically three days later. "I wish I could take more pride in it, but it is too easily done."

  "In what way will you outsmart him, Melania?" Theras asked over the productive din of meal preparation.

  The Saxons ate lightly after dark, a point on which to be grateful. Still, the warmly lit kitchen hummed with purposeful activity and Theras closed the distance to Melania so as to hear her better. Though he dared not expect that he would be cheered by her words; she had that stubborn gleam again. Even Finn, not known for his intelligence, had learned that when Melania carried herself just so and when her smile was as cold as three-day ash, it boded ill. Theras wondered if Wulfred understood as much about her yet.

  "He is such an oaf," she went on, "a league behind me in tactics and incapable of reason. He shall be so easy to best; when I lie dead he will but begin to understand how I have outmaneuvered him." Sighing and brushing her loose hair back behind her ears, she finished, "Stupid barbari."

  "What do you plan, Melania?" Theras asked again, suspicious at her refusal to answer directly.

  "Plan?" she answered with innocence. "Why, certainly not to work until I drop. Does he not have me set at the very tasks I have always done and always loved? And in my own home?" Shaking her head, she said with a little smile, "Ridiculous and pathetic barbari."

  "You must not take your own life, Melania," Theras urged.

  "Suicide?" Her eyes glittered as she thought of swords and cliffs. "Never. But he will not win in this game of wills against me. I will best him. And he will know it."

  "There are other ways to win," Theras said slowly, eyeing her carefully as he continued, "less aggressive ways." When she did not flare in fury, he continued. "He is a powerful man..."

  "Yes, I am sure his life of killing has led him to believe that."

  "...and not unattractive..."

  "He is as attractive as a boar in the mud, except the boar has finer teeth."

  "...and he does not seem... that is, I think he could be attracted to you..."

  "Attracted to me?" She sprang to her feet, knocking the stool over. "I would that you had continued in comparing him to a muddy boar and the wandering murderer that you know he is. Attracted to me!" she spat out, her hair flying like a black war banner behind her as she paced in front of him. "He is attracted only to the idea of making me suffer, and I would sooner die than give him the pleasure, so speak to me no more of his being attracted to me. My stomach is heaving at the thought. If I so much as believed what you... Why, I would carve his eyes out of his head and feed them to the ravens, and then I would cut off his hands and stick them on the wall in eternal farewell to his hellish comrades, and then I would—"

  "Melania!" Theras interrupted her tirade, which was growing hotter with every breath she took. "Your course is most unwise. You are a slave now. You cannot fight him and you cannot win, not this way."

  At that, she stopped both her wild pacing and her diatribe against the Saxon. Facing Theras, Melania said with icy control, "I am not a slave. I will never see myself as a slave. And I will fight. And win."

  Theras watched her leave the kitchen and walk away across the courtyard. "But Wulfred sees you as a slave," he said. "His slave."

  She heard him, but it didn't matter. She was no one's slave.

  Stalking away from Theras's unpleasant speculations had felt wonderful, but she suddenly realized that she did not have a destination. For the first time in days she had nothing to do. Melania slowed her pace and considered her options.

  The triclinium was occupied by the oaf and his band of bloodthirsty arsonists, and she had spent too much time already in the little room where she had slept away her head start at beating the Saxon. The kitchen, where she had found herself more and more since the coming of the salivating horde, was not a wise choice, given her recent decision and the steps she'd taken to implement it. She had not been to the baths and the exercise room that comprised one arm of the villa since the Saxons' arrival. It was a likely destination since they would certainly have no inclination to visit the baths.

  The caldarium was at the rear of the wing, closest to the furnace. Next to it was the tepidarium and then the frigidarium, each open to the other by a narrow doorway, and at the farthest end was the exercise room. It was a fairly elaborate affair for a country villa, but her family had always prided itself on staying fit.

  Of course, it did not have the shine and finish it had once had. None of the villa or the surrounding grounds did. Once this had been a country home, used when life in nearby Durolipons had become hectic and noisy; her family had come here for solitude, and from the villa had come much of the food and wine that had fed her ancestors when they dwelled in the town. But that had been many years ago. Her father had been a boy when they had left the town for good, coming to live at the villa.

  No one had planned for it to be a permanent move. No one had planned on the Saxons and their never-ending raids. No one had thought that the legions would leave. Nothing was as it should have been. Still, she thought, shaking off her gloom, the legions would be back and she would still be in possession of the villa. Her home.

  The shade of the portico was welcome after the heat of the courtyard, It was a hot summer, hot and dry. Unnaturally hot. The notion bordered on pagan superstition, but she was almost certain that it would rain if only the Saxons would leave. Everything would be right again, safe, if only he would leave.

  Starting at the back, in the caldarium, Melania cataloged the destruction; the decay she was already familiar with, Missing benches, broken tile, dirt: all new since the Saxons' arrival. New, but not unexpected. Moving through the connecting rooms, making her way carefully over the broken tiles, Melania finally arrived in the exercise room. It was not unoccupied.

  In the dim light she could just make out Dorcas and one of the filthy Saxons copulating on the floor.

  It took her a full three breaths, shaky and deep, to find the words, but find them she did.

  "Dorcas," she said clearly and almost calmly. "Get up. Dress yourself. And take your dirty hands off her legs, Saxon pig. Get up, Dorcas; push his hands away if he will not do the decent thing. The decent thing? There is not a Saxon alive who knows what is decent, so certainly none have the ability to actually do it, unless the only decent thing they do is die, and I would have them do it decently by the thousands! Get off her, you imbecile!"

  "You have intruded upon our privacy," Cenred said with a placating smile. A smile? He could smile? As if their fornication were no concern of hers, except that she had intruded upon it? Breathing became more difficult; she couldn't seem to get enough a
ir. There were red spots shifting in front of her eyes.

  "Shut up, monster! Just... shut up and go away! Privacy... did you say privacy? You expect privacy in the exercise room? In my home?"

  "Is that what this room is for?" Cenred said easily, with Dorcas lying tense and frigid beneath him. "Well, I am

  getting—"

  "Don't say it," Melania threatened. "Disgusting! That's what you are, what you all are. Get out before I lose the contents of my stomach... and I don't require privacy to do it."

  It was when she began to gag that Cenred took her seriously and, quickly adjusting his scanty clothing, left the room, leaving Dorcas to Melania.

  Melania scrutinized Dorcas carefully as she adjusted her clothing. Dark of hair and eye, Dorcas had been born within the villa walls. Melania had known her since birth, but had she really known her at all?

  "Have you always behaved like a whore?"

  Dorcas finished pulling her tunic down to cover herself and kept her dark head bowed. Still, Melania could see her jerk at the question.

  "I had little choice in this," she answered with quiet dignity, raising her brown eyes to face Melania. "I have chosen to make the best of the situation. Cenred is kind... and... it could have been worse," she finished with a catch in her voice.

  "It could have been worse? You spread yourself for a Saxon, practically in public, and it could have been worse? What of your commitment to God? What of the fact that they came here to murder and steal and burn? Perhaps it could have been worse for you," Melania said with stiff dignity, "but it could hardly have been worse for me."

  "Oh, yes, it could be worse for you," Dorcas answered, her own ire rising. "You are a slave now, as much as you deny that truth. Why do you think that you have been spared? Do you not know that they take their pleasure where they find it, even to the burning of this place? Didn't you wonder that they didn't touch you?"

  "Touch me?" Melania asked in numbing horror. It had never occurred to her. Those... animals, touching her? She could as easily imagine Optio, her father's mount, suddenly reciting Greek poetry.

  "Yes. It is because of him, of Wulfred. He is in charge of his men and he is in charge of you. They will not touch you because of him. They dare not."

  "He is not in charge of me!"

  Dorcas responded with a cynical raising of her brows and said nothing.

  There was no need, Melania realized. He controlled her home, her servants, her labor. Her life. But it was only for a season of her life—a season as unnatural and miserable as this hot, dry summer. Like all seasons, it would pass. It had to pass. There could not be year upon year of this domination, this contest of minds and wills that fired them both; this could not continue past the summer season. She did not think she could endure more than a season of him in her life. He hounded her through the day, and she was certain that he watched her at night while she slept. He had taken her home and made it into his camp. He had taken every familiar and cherished thing in her life and put his Saxon mark upon it; she wondered sometimes if he had not somehow put his mark upon her.

  "I... did not understand," Melania said, her thoughts whirling. "I didn't know." Looking into the dark eyes of Dorcas, Melania came as close as she could to an apology. Melania was not accustomed to being in the wrong; she had little skill in the art of apology and even less desire to learn. "Do what you must to survive, Dorcas. I will find no fault in it. And I will pray that God will also find you guiltless. It is the Saxons who are guilty."

  Before Dorcas could voice a reply, Melania was gone, hunting for the Saxon the way fire hunts for air. She did not care to listen to her tumbled thoughts; she preferred to act.

  Fortunately he was so very easy to find; the smell alone would have led her. He was where she had known he would be, lounging with his gang of murderers in her triclinium, that seducer of the powerless with him. Oaf. He would answer to this charge of debauchery and licentiousness; he would have a chance to defend himself. She would be civilized.

  "I have just been informed that your men have been taking... liberties with the women of my home, women to whom I have a responsibility. It has also been pointed out to me that I have been spared these atrocities because of you and the control you have foolishly convinced yourself you have over my life." Her anger growing with every breath she took, like a living flame that was fed by the charged air between them, Melania said, "Is it true, if you can find it in your deceitful Saxon heart to acknowledge truth, that it is because of you and your interference that I alone have remained unmolested?"

  Her charge was clearly stated. He was being given the chance to defend himself publicly. She astounded herself with her superior sense of justice, but it should not be surprising: she was Roman.

  Wulfred had not moved during her fiery speech, but remained kneeling at the table, negligently sipping his beer. He had not looked at her, firing her anger at his insolence even higher, and when he finally spoke, it was to his men. But he said it in Latin.

  "She sounds insulted."

  Her anger stuck in her throat and she choked on it, speechless.

  "You have managed it," praised Cynric, watching her struggle for words.

  "I had almost given up," said Cenred.

  "You monster!" she screamed, her hands arching into talons.

  Balduff smiled and toasted her, saying, "Never underestimate a woman."

  "For a moment," Cuthred said conversationally to the table at large, "I thought—"

  "Shut your foul, Saxon mouths!" she commanded them.

  To their own surprise, they fell silent. The Roman looked closer to killing than they had yet seen her.

  Of them all, only Wulfred was unmoved, his blue eyes lazily on her face, his hands relaxed on his bulging thighs. Didn't the oaf have the sophistication to know that meals were taken in a reclining position? Didn't he even have the grace to look embarrassed? Blue eyes raked her body insolently and she stiffened as if he had touched her. As if he would dare.

  "Is it true?" she asked, breathing hard through her mouth, her eyes bright and hot in the whiteness of her face. "Have I alone been left untouched by you barbari?"

  The monster had the gall to grin. He ran his hands down the length of his thighs and then slowly back up to his hips. His hands were long-fingered and covered with a sprinkling of blond hairs that gleamed gold in the firelight.

  Why was she staring at his hands?

  "Only you can confirm the truth of that, if you can find it in your deceitful Roman heart..."

  "No one has touched me!" she shouted in ringing proclamation, forcing herself to look away from his hands, which were now resting on his narrow hips. "Is it because of you?"

  "Perhaps it is because of you," he answered simply and irritatingly.

  Because of her? Because she was clearly superior to them and they knew it? Because she had them cowed, in awe of her? It was not impossible; in fact, it was more than likely—

  The disgusting oaf interrupted her speculations.

  "There is little about you to commend you, Roman. You stink."

  It was easy to subdue the prick to her pride when he was smiling up at her so spitefully. Never would she allow him to win in a contest of insults, not when he gave her so many weapons.

  "No more than you, Saxon," she said, smiling coldly back. "My smell is of good, honest work while you smell of deceit. I prefer my own smell."

  "In that it seems you are alone."

  His eyes, so blue, so intense, stared into hers, and within the very heart of his eyes she saw that he was laughing at her. Laughing at her when he had ruined her world with his filth and left her alone to clean it up. She turned to leave, ignoring his men, who were laughing at her expense. Oh, he was having a fine time.

  "Alone is my preference," she said over her shoulder.

  "It is my preference which should occupy you," he called to her retreating back. Retreating... she would not retreat. And she would not be mocked by such as he.

  "Which it does not," she
said, turning to face him across the triclinium's width. "Will you kill me, you who claim mastery over me? Shall it be death by knife or club or ax? Or will it not be death at all because you fear the retribution of Roman justice? Roman justice, the truest this world can give, protecting the weak against the monstrous and keeping the murderer from the innocent."

  "Keeping me from you?" he interrupted with a scowl. "I will not speak with you of Roman justice," he said in a snarl, the smile completely wiped from his face. She couldn't have been happier.

  "I can understand why, barbarian, when you—"

  "No," he interrupted harshly. "You cannot. Leave, Roman; obey your stated will if none other will serve. Leave. Now."

  She backed up a few steps at the intensity in his voice and the look in his bright blue eyes and then forced herself to walk away from him casually, as if it had been her decision to leave the triclinium. He had actually looked angry. In all she had done, in all the words they had thrown like daggers at each other, in all the moments when she had physically attacked him, he had never looked angry. But he was angry now. And the worst of it was that his anger didn't give her one moment of pleasure.

  Chapter 9

  "He is fascinated by you," Dorcas said to Melania as she paced in the courtyard.

  "Who?"

  "Wulfred." At Melania's blank look, Dorcas added in superfluous explanation, "The great Saxon oaf."

  "Is that his name?" she casually asked.

  She knew his name, and it was more than she wanted to know. It was more important that he know her name, which she was sure he did, even though he had never called her by it. Roman was what he called her, as if it were an insult. Stupid oaf. But he must know her name so that when she bested him he would have her name to howl to the sky in defeat until the day he gave the civilized world a gift by dying. A day that could not come soon enough to suit her—as long as she died first.

  "Did you hear...?" Dorcas finally asked.

  "Yes, he is fascinated by me, as well a worm should be in awe of a hawk. It does not surprise me. It does repulse me."