Though he’d been in battle and seen men separated from limbs, and he’d seen the gruesome work of a battle healer, Leofric felt ill watching what Elfleda and her girl did.
A sharp, hot blade sliced away flesh that reeked and oozed. Scores of corrupted gashes over her back, her arms, her bottom, her legs, her feet. Then a thin rod, heated in the fire and glowing red hot, was laid over each sliced wound. The smell and sizzle of cooked flesh filled the air.
The woman whimpered and shuddered with each slice, each burn, mumbling desperately in her own language. Tears slid over her nose and wet the linens she lay on, and Leofric felt despair. He wanted to know words that could console her. He wanted to make her well in her heart as much as her body.
When Elfleda was done with her back, they turned her over and did it all over again to clean the wounds on her belly, her breasts, her thighs. The woman let loose a thin scream when the sealing rod closed a wide gash over her belly.
Leofric slid from the bed and knelt at the side. As he moved, her hand tightened around his fingers.
“I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.” He repeated words he’d said hundreds of times in these hours. “I won’t let you hurt more after this. I’ll protect you. I’m sorry. Forgive me. Forgive us. Oh Lord, forgive us.”
He understood that he was praying, and he bent his head to his hands, still wrapped around hers, and prayed in earnest.
~oOo~
For days, even after Elfleda’s cleansing of the wounds, the woman lay in fever and delirium. Her pain remained acute—worse immediately after the cleansing than before it, as the healer had warned—and her times of swooning were a boon to her and to them all.
He sat with her most of each day, leaving only to dine with his father and brother and to wash and tend to his own needs. After a few days, he slept in his own bed, when Elfleda shoved him from the room and said he was like to make himself as ill as their charge.
Leaving her was difficult. Though she hadn’t gained her senses, she had times of near wakefulness, and she always sought him out. Her eyes didn’t focus, but they turned toward him, and when he leaned close or held her, she relaxed. She wanted his hands on her—holding her, stroking her hair—as if his touch itself eased her pain.
There were signs that she was healing. She gained enough sense at times throughout each day that she could take water, and some thin gruel, and after a few days managing a full cup of water, her breathing settled and deepened. There was still a strange, rough edge to each breath, but more air came in and went out, and that helped her calm.
Each day, Elfleda changed her many bandages, and the seepage dwindled and disappeared. When the dressings stayed clean, her skin began to cool. She was healing.
One morning, nearly two weeks after he’d carried her up from the Black Walls, Leofric went into her room and saw her sitting up in bed. Still dressed in nothing but bandages, but with her pale hair brushed, and holding a cup on her own, she turned and looked right at him, blue eyes clear and steady.
Her face had healed well. Most of the bruising had faded, and the cuts were reduced to thin red lines. Her beauty shone through the new scars. Her body would take longer, but on this day, he saw that she would be truly well. She would be strong again.
He smiled. “Hello! You look well!” She couldn’t understand him, of course, but the words had come out without much thought, so glad was he to see her improving. And she’d understand his tone, he hoped, and his smile.
A smile she didn’t return. He would have been glad to see what her smile might look like, but she only stared steadily at him, and Leofric knew that the need she’d had for him in her delirium was over.
He was no longer her savior. Now he was her enemy again.
She set the cup on the tray, and Elfleda’s girl picked it up and carried it from the room, curtseying as she went by. He and the woman were alone.
Perhaps it was not yet too late. He went to the bed and sat on the side, as he’d done so many times during these weeks. When he reached for her hand, she pulled it away.
But there was something in those blue eyes that said she remembered how she’d needed him and how he’d been there. How he’d lent her his strength.
With the hand she’d rejected, he patted his chest. “I am Leofric.” Then he pointed to her and formed his face into an expression that was a question. “Your name?”
She stared.
Again, he patted his chest. “Lee-off-ric. Leofric.”
He knew she wasn’t stupid, and he knew she wasn’t deaf. She understood the question he was asking. No language barrier was so tall that names couldn’t be exchanged.
She was stubborn. Willful. And mistrustful.
There was a small bowl of fruit on the table; the girl, who was always flustered around him, must have forgotten it in her haste to leave the room. He reached for an apple.
“Apple.” He held it out to her, but she didn’t take it. “Apple.”
From his belt, he pulled a small blade, and she reacted strongly, going stiff and shoving herself across the bed, away from him.
“I won’t hurt you.” He sliced a piece of the apple off and ate it, then sliced another and held it out to her, balanced on the blade.
She stared at that blade for a long time. He held it out for just as long. At last, she reached out and snatched the piece of apple.
As she ate it, he saw the delight in her eyes, the savoring of something good and sweet. Her face remained impassive, but her eyes danced.
She let loose a long string of her own words. He didn’t understand at all. Her voice was hoarse and choppy, from abuse and lack of use, but the language was lovely.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know your words.” He shrugged. “I would have you teach me, and I will teach you.”
She eyed the apple, and he sliced off another piece for her. As he held it out, he repeated, “I will teach you. Apple.”
She ate the apple slice and lay down, tucking herself under the cover and rolling to put her back to him.
He leaned over and laid his hand on her head, seeing her eyes close as he touched her. She didn’t flinch away.
Resisting the urge to kiss her cheek, he said, “Rest. I will visit you later in the day. I’m glad you’re gaining strength.”
She didn’t understand his words, but it didn’t matter. He hoped she’d understand his tone.
~oOo~
Whether she understood his tone or not, she was like stone to him. She would not tell him her name, and after that single burst of words on the first day her mind had been clear, she hadn’t spoken again at all. She allowed Elfleda and the servants to tend her, but she did so silently.
She ate and drank. She healed. She grew strong. But after a few days, Leofric left her alone with the servants, only checking in once or twice in each day. He wasn’t doing what his father expected. He wasn’t winning her trust or teaching her their tongue. Each day at the evening meal, his father and brother asked after his project, and each day he reported that she was still convalescing but that soon he would be able to work with her in earnest.
His father had returned to something more than a shadow of his true self and had resumed his work. There was not yet happiness in the private residence, but the pall had lifted. Leofric thought the woman had at least some part in the lighter air. No longer was a horror going on under their feet, and without that, and the vengeance that had caused it, their memories of Dreda and the queen could flourish. There was room in them for their light.
But the woman continued to resist him, and soon enough, he would have to tell his father that she was of no use.
When she was fully healed, he told himself, when she had no need of extra care, then he would be firm with her. He would make her cooperate with him. He would find some way to communicate to her that her only other choice was death.
But he didn’t want to force her. He wanted her to remember that he had saved her. He hadn’t thought he wanted her gratitude, but now he supposed he d
id. She had neither thankfulness nor patience for him, and it hurt.
One day, when the woman had been in his care nearly a month, Leofric returned to the castle from the stables, having gone to look in on a newly acquired stallion. He went back to the servant’s quarters, intending to make the first of his twice-daily efforts to warm the woman to him again.
Elfleda met him in the corridor, her hands on her hips. An armed guard stood at attention, as always, just outside the door.
“There is a problem.” He didn’t need to ask—the healer’s posture was pure frustration.
“Yes, Your Grace. I removed the bandages. She is healing well. All the wounds are closed and healed over.”
“And how is that a problem?”
“She will not dress! The bandages no longer cover her, and she stands there as Eve in her sin, and she will not dress! I tried to make her, and she tore the dress from my hands and ripped it in twain! She truly is a savage, Your Grace, to stand so bare without shame.”
“I will see what I can do.”
“No!” As surprised at herself as he was, Elfleda bowed her head. “Your pardon, Your Grace. But she is bare. Completely. And knows no shame for it.”
“I’ve seen her bare body, Elfleda. You were with me when I took her from the Black Walls. I held her in the bath. I sat with her while you cleansed her wounds.”
“But…Your Grace…”
Pulling all his patience to the fore, Leofric sighed heavily. “What is it?”
“She is healed. She is stronger. No longer is she an invalid.”
He thought he finally understood, and he grew angry. “You think I would take her? After all this?”
“No, Your Grace. Please…I think she would…entice you.”
The healer honestly thought the woman would seduce him? She would barely look at him now. Though he was even angrier, feeling defensive for the woman and for himself, he forced himself to laugh. “A scarred savage? Elfleda, you wound me to think my tastes run so low.”
Again, her head bowed. “Forgive me, Your Grace.”
“Yes, of course. Is there something you want her to wear? I will make an attempt to persuade her.”
~oOo~
He carried a simple, plain-spun servant’s dress, folded into a tidy square, into the woman’s room, with a pair of plain leather slippers on top.
She was sitting on the bed, as bare as Elfleda had warned. One leg was folded, and her sex was exposed. Except for the glossy tresses on her head, she was nearly hairless everywhere. Between her thighs was only the scantest bit of silky down.
He imagined it was silky. He had imagined it often. But he’d been careful never to touch it.
As he lingered at the door he’d just closed, holding the clothes like an offering, she stood.
Her body was terribly scarred, from head to toe, but most especially from her shoulders to her knees. The elaborate drawing on her thigh was broken by scars. He knew the very worst of it was her back. She was covered with the red welts of fresh healing.
And she was still skinny. Her shoulders stood at sharp angles. Each rib carved itself into her flesh. He might well have been able to hang from her hip bones the dress he held.
But she stood tall, perfectly straight, and the fierce fire in her eyes was likely to burn him.
Her breasts…even scarred, they were lovely. Softly round, with nipples of the faintest pink.
She did indeed entice him.
He walked to her, and she stood still, except to lift her chin in defiance as he neared her.
“You must dress. Elfleda assures me these will suit you.” He hefted the light bundle in his hands, and she knocked it away, the blow enough to send the dress to the floor, several feet away. The little shoes clattered off even farther.
She spoke a string of words. Even in her clear contempt, he heard music in her language.
Leaving the dress in its new wad on the floor, Leofric smiled and attempted persuasion in a light tone. “I wish I understood. I wish I knew your name. Your name.”
As he had many times now, he patted his chest. “Leofric.” He pointed at her chest and lifted his eyes in question.
She pulled a face of pure disgust and dropped back to the bed, sitting again in that decidedly unladylike, decidedly alluring pose.
A bolt of sensation went through him as he imagined getting onto the bed with her and putting his hands there, the place she seemed to be offering him.
But he knew she wasn’t offering him anything. She was merely sitting and, if it were possible, unaware of the affect she might have to sit in that way.
Elfleda had been absolutely right to caution him against coming in here, because he wanted her. He wanted her badly.
And she wouldn’t even give him her name.
For something to do besides leer at her, he gathered up the dress and brought it back.
“You must dress. You’re well enough to be out of bed, and you cannot”—feeling foolish, he waved his hand over her nude body and shook his head, then held the dress out to her and nodded.
She stared at the dress. Then she took it. She shook it out, laying the fabric over the bed. She stood up.
Had he managed to convince her?
She picked up the dress and held it up to her body. Leofric nodded, smiling, hoping to encourage her.
Turning to face him directly, she smiled—and he’d been right. It was beautiful. She’d lost two teeth in her ordeal in the Black Walls, but none in front. Those were straight and pearly.
Then she grabbed the dress by the neckline and yanked, rending it down the middle. As she discarded the ruined dress, she let loose another string of musical words, these fiery and furious, and she slammed her hands on his chest.
She did it again, and said something else. She dropped her hands and slapped his hips, his thighs. More words he didn’t understand.
He didn’t think she was trying to hurt him. She was telling him something. She slapped his thighs again, the leather of his breeches making a sharp sound against her palms.
Then she slapped her own thighs. His thighs again, then her thighs. Her chest, then his chest.
She wanted clothes like his. Breeches. A tunic.
His father would be outraged. Her only chance for survival was to become a part of this world, and in this world, women did not wear breeches. They did not wield weapons and fight in wars. Women were demure and subdued. They knew their place. She could never leave this room in men’s clothing. It would mean the end of this project and her immediate death.
Without a way to explain all that, he said what he could. “No.” He shook his head.
She very obviously understood that. She shoved at him again, this time meaning to hurt him, and he took a few surprised steps backward to keep his balance.
Then she ran for the door. Completely bare.
She wouldn’t get far; there was a guard immediately outside the door, but Leofric didn’t want him seeing her unclothed. That imperative—to keep her from any eyes beyond this room—superseded all others, and he leapt for her, catching her around the waist.
He’d moved too quickly, with too much force, and they fell to the floor.
She was under him, fighting at once, in a feral frenzy, though he’d knocked her breathless.
But she was only a few weeks removed from more than a month of steady torture and starvation, and her strength had not returned enough for a fight. Leofric grabbed the hands that sought to punch and scratch, and he held her down.
On the floor. Her bare body beneath him, writhing. He couldn’t help what his body did with that.
He saw it when she felt his sex harden in his breeches, against her, so near the place he wanted to be. Her eyes narrowed. They went dark. And then they dimmed. She went limp. In that moment, he could have taken her if he’d wished. She would not have fought him.
But in her darkened eyes, he saw not surrender but betrayal.
She’d had some trust left for him after all, and he’d killed
it.
He pushed himself to his knees and then his feet. When he was standing, she rolled and stood. Without looking at him or speaking another of her words, she went to the bed and got on it, pulling the fur over herself.
“Forgive me,” he said before he left the room.
In the corridor, he found Elfleda waiting. “Let her be bare. She cannot leave the room, but inside it, let her be bare.”
He walked off before the healer could respond.
Soul's Fire (The Northwomen Sagas Book 3) Page 13
