His sister was smiling and it was a smile that chilled him to his bones. By Thor, he should have taken her with him back to his mother. “Where is she, Ingunn?”
She shrugged. “Why, she insisted on performing the tasks of a slave. I did not touch her. I did not force her or threaten her, ask anyone.”
“Where is she?”
Again Ingunn shrugged. “She is with four other slaves at the marsh, digging up bog ore. You know how much we use, burning it with the charcoal in the ovens. Rollo whined for more, since he is making more farm implements for you. You know how hot his ovens must be to melt the iron.”
He could only stare at her. Digging up chunks of bog ore! By Odin, it was a terrible job, dirty, back-breaking work that required great strength and endurance, and she, a woman, was doing it? His mother was right. Ingunn would never ease in her jealous hatred.
He turned and left the longhouse without another word. He strode from the palisade toward the clump of pine trees that bordered the marsh that lay a good hundred yards to the east of the farmstead.
Zarabeth wanted to die. She didn’t want to cry or make a single sound. She just wanted to fall down and die. Her back burned so badly that she was beyond tears, beyond anything she had ever known. Her muscles were knotted and cramped. It didn’t ease; it simply got worse and worse. Yet she dug with the hoe in the filthy black swamp until the blade hit the hard clumps, then she bent down to dig with her hands when she had uncovered the isolated lumps of bog ore. It had taken her several hours to be taught how to find the ore, and now that she knew, she had found a rhythm. But it was hard to keep going. So very hard. She had been a fool to let Ingunn taunt her into this. She had been a fool to allow herself to flaunt her pride. Pride! She had nothing but pain, and an iron collar about her neck that told all she was nothing to anyone.Pride!
A fool, naught but a fool, yet she kept digging, bending over and uncovering the bog ore from the slime, then pulling it loose, and finally lifting it out. She paused a moment, her breath hitching in pain that nearly bowed her to her knees, and in that instant she knew he was there, watching her.
She was filthy, her gown rent and wet and smelling of the bog ore and the filthy marsh water. Her bare feet and legs were black with filth.
Her hair had come loose from its braid. She breathed heavily and stood very still. She would not perform for him whilst he watched. She simply wouldn’t do it. Was he here to taunt her? To order her to go faster? Was he here to tell her he would sell her? That he found her less than useless? He had taken her three times and hadn’t found anything in her to his liking. Why should he keep her?
Magnus nodded to the other serfs, men all of them, bowed but stronger than most from years of back-breaking work. He reached her and raised her dirty face in the palms of his cupped hands. He looked down at her for a long moment.
Finally he said, “Drop the hoe.”
She let it slip from her raw hands.
“Are you really so stupid as to be here?”
She stared up at him, mute.
He frowned. “Do you not understand me?”
“You want me to be here. You want to sell me because there is nothing more you want from me.”
“We will speak of your strange fancies later. Come, now you will bathe and then I will tie you to my bed. You will remain there until I say that you may arise.”
“I cannot,” she said slowly, pulling away from him. She tried to straighten, but the pain ground through her back and she remained before him like a bent old woman. “I am naught but a slave, your slave. You cannot allow me to be shiftless and lazy.”
“You’re quite wrong. I can do anything I please with you. I suggest that you believe me and no other.” He lifted her in his arms, felt her shudder from the pain in her back, but since there was nothing he could do about it, he merely tried to shift her so that she was cupped against his chest, his arm around her waist. “Hold on to me.”
Ingunn said not a word when Magnus came into the longhouse calling for clean cloths. She said not a word when he later carried in Zarabeth, clean from the bathhouse and wrapped in those cloths, and disappeared with her into his chamber. She felt rage and impotence and knew that there was nothing she could do to stop this except to kill the woman.
She gave Cyra an assessing look and knew that she too would willingly stick a knife in the woman’s ribs. What to do?
Then she knew. She trembled with her decision, yet knew that she would do it. She would not remain here. She would not remain to see this woman take her place. She smiled.
17
“Hold still. Do not flinch from me.”
But it was difficult not to draw away, not to try to pull inside herself to avoid his hands on her. He was gentle, she knew, but it didn’t matter. The pain was great and she felt weaker in spirit than she could ever remember.
Magnus rubbed in the cream his mother had sent, turning her back a sickly white. He had bathed her himself, from her filthy matted hair to her blackened feet.
She had suffered it without complaint. He gently combed her hair, pulling it away from her head and fanning it out to dry more quickly. He rose and looked down at her. He had pulled the blanket over her hips. He said to the back of her head, “Your pride is ridiculous, Zarabeth, if it leads you to commit such stupidity. I grow weary of rescuing you from the consequences of your arrogance.”
“Then don’t,” she said.
He grinned down at her. Her voice was nasty and angry. It pleased him greatly. “But who else would rescue you?”
