To Burn (19 page)

"We
are
talking of marriage? And you suggest that I do not speak of women?" Balduff shook his silver-blond head and sipped his wine. "You are in a sad state, Cynric. Worse than even I would have thought. Time you put down that shiny sword and raised up one of a different hue before you forget what it's for."

"By all the gods!
Can you not for
once
stop thinking with your best and dearest companion and begin to think of what this marriage will mean for Wulfred!" Cynric shouted, his fists balled and ready to swing at the head of his most irritating comrade.

"His best companion?" Cenred smiled. "Why, Cynric, that was actually very funny."

"He's very upset," Cuthred offered in explanation.

"Aren't we all?" Balduff huffed indignantly. "But at least I can still see the good that will come of this marriage—"

"What good when he can have her at any time?" Cynric interrupted, shouting.

"He doesn't seem to want her; not like that," Cuthred said slowly.

"Well, he'll have to take her or it will be no marriage," Balduff said with authority, taking a long swallow of wine for emphasis.

"He'll take her. He wants this marriage," Ceolmund said quietly, his eyes not on his comrades but on the flickering light cast by the lamps mounted on the walls of the triclinium. As was becoming the norm, his thoughtfully spoken words caused a hush to fall.

"What a strange thing to say..." Cenred began.

"Strange how?" Balduff roared amiably. "It was his idea, wasn't it? Certainly not hers!"

"No. Certainly not hers," Wulfred echoed as he entered the room.

"Did she fight you long over your decision, Wulfred?" Cenred chuckled, looking Wulfred over for teeth marks.

Wulfred smiled abstractedly and held up his arms for inspection. They were clean of wounds. "No, she resisted the urge to follow her natural bloodletting inclinations."

"When will you marry her?" Cuthred asked, eager to leave this place of no battles.

"When I choose," Wulfred answered bluntly, telling them something of the latest torture he had devised for Melania. The waiting in blind ignorance would eat away at her like poison.

"That will not please her," Cenred said with a smile.

"That's the idea." Wulfred smiled in return, his earlier misgivings about Melania's calm reaction waning.

"Then you had better be very careful in your bed, Wulfred," Balduff advised, "or she will not think herself tortured at all."

"No" —Cenred grinned— "she may even torture you with her demands for satisfaction." Stroking his chin, Cenred asked slyly, "What was the name of the woman who screamed your name as if in torment of the worst sort...?"

"Bekia," came the single reply from five throats, Wulfred's the loudest of them all.

"Melania is hardly the same type of woman as Bekia," Cynric said.

"Hardly," said Balduff in mock solemnity. "Melania is far more passionate."

The laughter continued unchecked, and Wulfred pointed to his knee and the teeth marks Melania had left at her first passionate attack.

"Take care you do nothing to inspire her to score your back or you will have a most contented wife and defeat your purpose in marrying her."

"You do not want her to
like
her new position in life, lying flat on her back."

"Never leave her with a smile on her face."

"Never leave her with a scream in her throat."

"Never leave her with your back exposed," said Ceolmund into the raucous mix.

The mood dampened immediately. True, Ceolmund had never been boisterous, but when had he turned so sour? Balduff wiped the tears from his eyes and drank deeply of his cup. Cynric did not hesitate to launch again into his favorite theme: the deathly mistake it would be to marry the Roman snake.

"The torture you devise for her will be your own," he reiterated hopelessly, tirelessly. "You will be bound to a Roman for life."

"For her life, certainly," Cenred interjected.

"It will not be torture to have her under my complete control and miserable for the rest of her days. It will be a pleasure," Wulfred answered before drinking deeply of his beer.

"You look forward to this marriage with pleasure," Ceolmund paraphrased. "You do not find that strange?"

Wulfred drank again, enjoying the yeasty tang of the beer. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he answered easily, "No."

Before Ceolmund could respond to that, Balduff joked, "Then why wait to have her, and I know you have waited, because none of us has heard her screams of rage. Or of pleasure."

Wulfred paused before answering, staring into the golden swirl of his drink. They had been together for years, these men of his. They knew of his rage against Rome and they knew why. They had fought and killed and plundered together. They had wenched together. They all had known of Bekia, and the laughter her memory aroused had been shared and good.

But Melania was different. Melania was effortlessly and eternally different. He did not want her name so casually on their tongues. He did not want to talk like this about her, not with anyone. And the thought, which seemed so traitorous, disturbed him. Troubled, Wulfred said nothing.

"Her appeal is as recent as her first bath and her first combing," Balduff said, "though I could see the beauty of her beneath the rags."

"Could you?" Wulfred said, reentering the conversation. "I see her no differently. Clean or dirty, smiling or snarling, she is the same woman."

"Roman," Ceolmund supplied into the momentary silence.

"Yes," said Wulfred with a slight jerk of his head and a flexing of his hand around the mug. "Roman."

But he had not been thinking of that. She was beautiful in her dark, Roman way, and passionate in her intensity. He had not thought a woman of Rome would have so much passion; he had not thought any Roman could have her courage. She, with her reckless hatred and her unflinching aggression, was the sort of woman Saxons admired. She was ferocious, tenacious, and fearless; at least she appeared so. If she struggled against fear and overcame it with angry defiance, he could but admire her for her determination.

Wulfred drank again from his cup. These thoughts were wrong; she was Roman and nothing else mattered. He had waited too long for his vengeance against Rome to be distracted from it now by a beautiful woman with a warrior's heart.

"Since you feel that way," Cenred said, "she would be easier faced as a slave than as a wife in the marriage bed. Maybe you should force yourself to sample her before the bond is made, to see if you can face a lifetime of her. Or perhaps someone could do the service for you."

Wulfred said nothing at first, but his eyes grew flat and his mouth tightened. Cenred clamped his mouth shut and moved away, caught off guard by the censure in Wulfred's eyes.

"You will watch your words and your actions concerning Melania, Cenred. She is not your woman. She is mine. Remember that when next you see her."

Into the sudden and heavy silence Cynric intoned, "Your sons will have a Roman mother."

"And a Saxon father," was Wulfred's quick reply.

"You go far in your vengeance," Cuthred said.

Wulfred slammed his beer down onto the low Roman table. The contents spewed up and slapped down on the smooth surface of the table, sounding like heavy rain—or the crackle of a fire newly lit.

"I can never go far enough."

They said little after that. What was there to say? Melania would be crushed under the wheels of Wulfred's revenge. It was why they had stayed as long as they had.

Theras, watching and listening from the shadows of the columns that fronted the triclinium, studied Wulfred. Little had been revealed that he had not already understood, yet...

There was in Wulfred's manner toward Melania... something... something that told him that Melania was not as repugnant to Wulfred as the Saxon liked to think. After a long, hot summer, Theras had some understanding of Wulfred, and he would almost swear that Wulfred was coming to value Melania for her fighting spirit alone. Of course, there was much more to her than that.

Theras was becoming more certain with each passing day that Wulfred knew it.

* * *

"Will you really marry her?"

Wulfred looked down at the group of boys clustered around his legs and smiled. They were practicing their swordplay with hewn tree limbs and fallen sticks—little boys of Rome working so diligently to become good Saxon warriors. A good revenge, if he chose to see it that way. Strangely, he could not. Whether Roman or Briton or Saxon or Frisian, these boys would become men, and men must fight. To fight and win was to survive. Looking down at them, their faces dirty and their eyes bright, he hoped that each one would survive and win.

"Will you?" Flavius asked again. He was the one who spoke for them all. Wulfred knew it was because of the bond that had been forged between them that day in the courtyard.

"Yes."

"Melania said she would marry you?" Petras asked.

"Yes." Wulfred smiled.

"Did she say it like she meant it?" Aquilas asked.

Wulfred crossed his arms and looked down upon the troop. "Does not Melania always say what she means?"

"Well, yes," Flavius said, frowning in concentration.

"Then...?"

"Do you always do what you say?" he asked, chewing his lip. "I mean, I remember... we all know... we all heard you say that you..."

Wulfred stopped smiling. They had all heard him say that he would kill her. He had said it. He had shouted it. He had even dreamed it. But not recently.

"I will marry her," Wulfred repeated.

"Why?"

The question was asked with as much innocence as could be summoned from a boy who had seen his world plundered and torched.

The man who had held the torch had no answer to give.

* * *

"Do you think she'll go through with it?"

"Will he?" Dorcas whispered against her lover's neck.

Cenred smiled and answered, "Yes. Wulfred has stated it, and he is not one to deviate from his purpose."

Dorcas leaned back against the circle of his arms. "And what is his purpose? To kill her in the marriage bed?"

Cenred lost his smile and released his hold on Dorcas. "His purposes are his own. I would caution you not to stand in his way."

Dorcas took a step away from this Saxon who had so easily charmed her. And bedded her. Perhaps it had all been a little too easy for Cenred.

"Because I would find myself with a seax in my back, Cenred? Is that what Wulfred plans as Melania's husband?"

"His plans are his own," he repeated, turning from her to face the ancient avenue of vines.

Dorcas adjusted the fall of her stola as she studied the back of Cenred's blond head. The Saxons were fanatical in their devotion to Wulfred; trying to pry into the motives of their leader was like peering into a rainstorm—all was obscured. But she did know one thing, something that was certainly no secret: Wulfred hated Romans, Melania in particular. Therefore it was certain that this marriage was not in Melania's best interests.

"As are Melania's," she said with some bite.

Cenred turned to face her, his smile pleasant while his eyes were clouded. "But she will marry him."

"Her plans are her own," she said with acidic sweetness.

Cenred's smile froze for a moment, and then he forced a laugh. "She has no choice, Dorcas. She will marry him; Wulfred has decided it."

"There are always choices, Cenred, and you know Melania."

It was not a statement that inspired easy confidence.

"Yes, "he said, pulling at his chin. "She is very... proud, very difficult."

"Don't you mean to say that she is very Roman?"

Cenred smiled warmly and reached out to take Dorcas into his arms. Dorcas took only half a step back before he was embracing her. She had not tried to elude him with any diligence; certainly Wulfred would not have subdued Melania as easily.

And Melania had received a proposal of marriage.

"Very Roman," Cenred agreed, trailing a finger down her spine. "Very proud, very arrogant, and very stubborn."

"You could be describing Wulfred," she said, still thinking of Melania, soon to be married.

"Wulfred?" Cenred chuckled. "No, he is a great Saxon warrior—"

"And very proud, very arrogant, and very stubborn. I could also add vindictive."

"With reason."

"There is always a reason, but only vindictive people feed it."

Cenred dropped his mouth to the top of her head and said under his breath, "You do not know the reason."

"Then tell me," she whispered against his chest.

"It is just," he said as he kissed her brow.

"Is it kind? Will he treat his wife kindly?"

Cenred pulled Dorcas back by the arms and stared into her eyes. "Why do you ask what will happen to her? She is nothing like you...."

"Why do you say so? I am as Roman as she!" Dorcas flared. Melania was beautiful, intelligent, eloquent. What was she?

Cenred kissed her softly on the lips, saying, "Because she is teeth and claws, rattle and fangs. You are soft and warm and..."

"And?"

"Mine."

But only for now. She was not to be married. Melania was. Wrapping her arms around Cenred and returning his kiss, Dorcas considered that it was, perhaps, time to show Cenred her claws.

* * *

"I'm quite sure he means to go through with it, if only to harass me," Melania answered, fiddling with the shoulder folds of her stola.

Flavius ran his hand over the stick Wulfred had given him, smoothing the bumps with the friction of his movements. "And you will? You will marry him?"

Melania looked down at Flavius, covered in dust from his battle play and with at least ten bruises on his shins. A forthright boy who had, strangely, come to no harm from the Saxon horde. The memory of Wulfred rushing to the boy's defense rose with the familiarity of the sun in her mind. How many times had she relived that moment? Wulfred had touched a vulnerability in her heart with his act that all the scoldings of her father had failed to harden.

And therein lay her failure. To be soft, sentimental, was to be weak. She could not be weak and be Roman.