Chapter 4
MERRIK SAID NOTHING more. He bathed her legs and back quickly, matter-of-factly.
She was very thin, pale and bony, and that helped.
She was older than he’d first believed, but she was still pathetic, beyond pathetic, and he refused to let himself see anything save a bloody back and what should have been a boy.
He was careful that the wet, soapy cloth covered his hand well when it washed her hips and between her legs.
She was sick, she was dependent on him. She was a slave, nothing more.
He even washed her hair, three times, rinsed it twice, and spread his fingers through it to pull through the knots and tangles. It took him a very long time. She was very dirty and he wasn’t done yet.
“I got most of you clean, but you will need another bath tomorrow,” he said, and slowly turned her over onto her back. “Now I’ll wash the front of you.” He wished he hadn’t turned her over.
Her eyes were closed, her face white with fatigue and probably pain as well.
He could see her ribs, sharp and ugly, her flat belly with her pelvic bones sticking up.
But he also saw very nice breasts that surely didn’t belong on such a thin body.
He got hold of himself and set himself to work.
Her eyes were closed and remained closed even when he finished washing her face and moved on.
When the cloth went over her breasts, she didn’t move, but he saw her hands clench at her sides.
He closed his own eyes when he bathed her belly and her woman’s flesh.
He worked as quickly as he could for he feared the onset of the fever again.
The air was getting cooler as the night grew later and later.
“The skalds will write great songs about me,” he said to her even as he eased his hand between her legs to wash her. “I am a man with a Christian monk’s control and a warrior’s honor, surely a combination that brings on a pain as great as the one in your back.”
She opened her eyes and stared up at him.
“What are you? Why are you pretending to be gentle with me and Taby? What is it you want? Will you give me to your men or to a friend to gain you something? Thrasco was going to give me to the prince of Kiev’s sister, who likes young boys. What will you do?”
“You must get well again to find that out,” he said as he rinsed her as quickly as he could, then covered her even more quickly, drawing the thick soft wool to her chin. He said instead, “Does it hurt you too much to lie on your back?”
“Aye, it does.”
He helped her to turn onto her stomach. He patted her back with more hot water, then laid clean linen cloths over it. He pulled the wool cover to her neck. Her hair was thick, curly, short, and very ragged.
“What color is your hair?”
“Red.”
He sat on his haunches and frowned down at the back of her head.
Her voice was arrogant again, just that one simple word and yet it sounded like a royal announcement from a royal mouth.
He said, “The light is dim and I could not tell, and before it was so dirty, it could have been green. So it is red. I do not like that color, and our women at home don’t have it. ”
“Do you think I care, Viking?”
He smiled more widely at the back of her head, adding, “It is too strong a color for a woman, it is perhaps indecent, not quite civilized. No, it is a color I do not like. How do you know I am a Viking?”
“You are from Norway. Are you so witless you remember not what you say? Also, you have blond hair and blue eyes. You are larger than the men I’ve seen in other lands.
All Vikings are big. All Vikings look alike.
There is nothing about you that sets you apart from any other man of your country. You are common.”
He laughed. “And where you come from, do all women have red hair, red hair so dark it looks nearly black in the dim night?”
“Nay.”
“I did not think so. All the women from your land don’t have skin as dead white as a new snowfall in Vestfold either, do they?”
“Nay, but more than a few do, if one looks closely, which the Vikings don’t, since all they do is raid and kill and steal whatever they can carry, including people.”
He ignored that, saying, “Ah, you are even different from those in your own land. I thought as much. Red hair and white flesh, surely the Christian devil’s curse on a female, one that bespeaks a god’s punishment.”
“It wasn’t a god or a devil who cursed me,” she said, and he heard the pain in her voice and the utter weariness, and something else, rage, banked but still there, so deep it would remain with her the rest of her life, hard and strong.
He frowned again at the back of her head, only this time there was no mockery in his voice as he said, “Do you wish for more bread?”
“Nay, but Taby is always hungry, always more hungry than I. He would want more bread.”
“Cleve is seeing to the boy, both he and Oleg—the man whose hand you bit—are tending to him. They will feed him until he can’t move. There is enough food for both of you. Neither of you will starve.”
“You will then sell him?”
“I can’t believe Taby would bring me much silver,” Merrik said, his voice thoughtful even as he felt anger at her for her deep distrust. By all the gods, hadn’t he saved her? “He is only a small child, of little account. Aye, I should probably sell him.”
“I will buy us from you. Cleve too.”
“Are you hiding your silver somewhere I haven’t looked? Surely not, for I was thorough in my bathing of you.”
She was quiet as a stone.
“Yourself as well?”
“Aye, all three of us.”
He laughed, marveling at her. “You are flat on your belly, my girl, with naught to cover you but the clothing I and my men give you. The food in that skinny stomach of yours is from me. Everything is from me, including your clean hair and your clean hide. You wouldn’t have Taby if it weren’t for me.
Mayhap you should caution yourself to guard your tongue before you speak. I think it would serve you better.”
She was silent for a very long time. Merrik rose and stretched and tossed away the dirty bathwater and threw her rags into the forest. He doubted even the animals would scavenge those smelly rags.
He then came back to her and stretched out on his back beside her.
He snuffed out the candle, throwing the tent into blackness.
“You are right,” she said, nothing more, then she turned her face away from him, and soon she was asleep.
Merrik didn’t sleep until the sun was beginning to rise. Right about what, exactly? That she should guard her tongue around him? He thought it a good idea, but doubted that she could maintain such a guard for very long.
Oleg shouted, “Merrik, Eller smells something!”
Eller’s nose was all Merrik needed. Within moments, all the men were carrying their supplies to the longboat.
Merrik had jerked trousers to the girl’s waist and a tunic over her head and was carrying her over his shoulder.
Within another minute, they were pushing the longboat into the current and hoisting themselves over the sides.
In the next instant, at least fifty men rushed onto the narrow beach, yelling and shouting at them, waving spears and rocks.
One spear came arcing through the air and landed solidly in the wooden bench, not a hairsbreadth from Old Firren, but he didn’t move nor did his hand recoil from the rudder.
“Eh?” he said only, and spit over the side, toward the shore.
“We could have killed most of them and taken the rest,” Oleg said, his voice wistful.
“They don’t look like a likely lot for slaves,” Merrik said. “We would have to kill most of them and the others look too savage.”
Oleg shaded his eyes with his hand from the bright sun overhead. “Aye, you’re probably right.”
It was then that Taby eased up beside him and looked at him with his child’s clear eyes. Merrik watched the shifting expressions on Oleg’s face, then saw him sigh and lift the child onto his lap. He said not another word, merely bent to the oar.
Soon they could no longer hear the shouting from shore or see the small men in their ancient animal skins jumping about, hurling curses at them in a strange tongue.
Merrik looked down at the girl. She was soundly asleep again, not that she’d ever really awakened earlier when he’d dressed her and grabbed her up over his shoulder and run to the longboat with her.
Her flesh was very white and he feared the sun would roast her.
He leaned over her, trying to protect her. It was something, but not enough.
It was Cleve who silently handed him a hat of sorts fashioned out of a shirt covering a wooden plate.
Merrik had bread waiting in his hand when she awoke. She was asleep one instant, and the next, she was staring up at him, making no movement, no sound.
“How do you feel?”
“Clean.”
He grinned at her. “You should. Do you remember my bathing you last night?”
She merely nodded. Somehow, though, he knew that in a very short time, she would have something to say about it, something sharp. No, she would not guard her tongue. He tore off a piece of bread and stuck it in her mouth when she opened it.
“I’m glad you’re alive,” he said, watching her chew the bread. There was an expression of sheer bliss on her face. Her eyes were closed.
He was sorry the flatbread was stale, though to look at her he’d never know it.
He fed her until she said at last, “Nay, I wish no more. It is remarkable, but I don’t.” She sighed. “I’ve been hungry for longer than I can remember. To be full-bellied is a wonderful thing. Thank you.”
“You are welcome,” he said. “Would you like to sleep some more?”
“Nay.”
“Perhaps you will want to close your eyes anyway, for I want to look at your back and bathe you again if it’s necessary.”