by Claudia Dain
Melania waited for the way to become cloudy and confused, but it did not. The path of honor was clear. She had learned much in her summer of the Saxons.
"He did not turn from his own honor, Marcus, which is what you are asking of me."
"How is this of honor? This is of love, our love, Melania."
It was true that the bond they shared was of love, a love so sure and strong that she did not doubt it, not even now. But she had a bond with Wulfred, too, and that bond had been forged daily on the anvil of honor with the hammer of truth. That bond had come to mean much to her somewhere during the passage of days spent in heated battle with him.
"What you ask of me," she whispered, gazing into his dark eyes, "he would not ask of me. Wulfred would not ask me to betray my own honor on any point."
Marcus opened his mouth to argue, and she knew what he would say. He would speak again of love, but she had the answer to that as well.
"Marcus" —she smiled tremulously— "he would not ask me to betray you."
It was the truth. He could read it in her eyes, and it put an end to their battle. They stood apart, in all ways separated, truly, for the first time. Only their love for each other remained, and it had been sorely bruised in this contest. But it was without condemnation that he looked at her, and she felt her eyes fill with tears at the loss she read on his face.
"You will be safe?" he asked, his voice hoarse with unshed tears.
She thought of Wulfred, his strength and defense of her against even his friends.
"I will be safe; give no thought to that. But you must travel west, as far west as there is to go. Go to a place where there are no Saxons. Go to a place of peace."
"I don't think there is any peace left on this earth, Melania. There is war everywhere."
"Not for you," she said with the force of prophecy. "You will find your place. And you will find peace. But it is not here."
"No," he murmured, kissing her forehead, "it is not here."
The dawn brightened into a misty morning. The birds were active and the ground moist; it was a good day for riding. And he had so very far to go.
"I will never forget you, Marcus," she cried softly. "I will love you always. Know that. Know that," she repeated desperately. She had so little to give him. "I love you," she whispered on a sob.
Marcus squeezed her once more and then picked up the bundle and walked away, leading Optio. Walked away from Melania. Walked away from the life he had known and the life he should have had, and walked toward the unknown and unfamiliar.
Melania watched him until he was lost in the mist. He did not look back. She thought him wise not to do so. Turning, the mist cool against her wet cheeks, she looked up into the twisted branches of an old apple tree. It would produce no more. There was no more life in its branches; the energy had been leached out of it through season upon season. Feeling like an old woman, Melania walked with a heavy step back down to the villa.
Chapter 24
She didn't hurry. Each step carried them farther apart, and she found herself dreading each step. She would never see Marcus again; life was too uncertain and the distances too far in the hazardous world the Saxons had invented for them. She had just said good-bye to someone she had loved longer than memory, and she would never see him again.
Her heart struggled to beat.
Her eyes wept without permission.
Her mind told her with each breath that she had done the right thing. Made the right choice.
But her heart wept tears of blood, regardless.
As slowly as she moved, the villa appeared before her anyway. Home. She lived in a home full of strangers. Except for Wulfred. Wulfred she trusted in the way she trusted that a boat would float and that wood would burn.
He waited for her in the courtyard, looking somewhat grim. In fact, he wore much the same expression as when she had first seen him, peering down at her lying on the floor of the library, gasping for cool air. He could not be irritated because she had arisen and left their chamber before he did; he had done the same to her the day before. And she had not been pleased. Still, she had certainly not looked as solemn and forbidding as he did now.
"You return," he said, glaring down at her.
"Of course."
He nodded, taking her by the arm and leading her to the protection of the portico. It had begun to mist and the droplets hung heavily in the air before descending to quietly wet the ground.
"Did you doubt it?" she asked.
"Should I?" he said swiftly, leading her to the antechamber of the library.
The antechamber, where the Chi-Rho symbol of Christ had been painstakingly pieced into the tile floor in the time of her grandfather, was used as her place of worship. It was a closet in which to withdraw and seek the will of God. She prayed there daily, needing the solace of knowing that God was still at work in the world more with each day the Saxons stayed. What reason would Wulfred have to drag her there now? Did he want to pray with her? It hardly seemed likely.
Theras stood in the small room. Waiting? Dorcas and Ceolmund were suddenly at her back. Melania turned to give Dorcas a searching glance, was met with an emotion-filled stare that she could not decipher, and turned again to Theras, her eyes full of questions.
"Shall we join in prayer together?" she said to no one and everyone. "I would enjoy the companionship, but didn't think you especially pious, Wulfred. Have you developed an interest in the one true God since residing among the civilized saved?"
Wulfred hardly spared her a glance, the oaf, but said to Theras, "Is anything else required?"
"Just her freely given vow before witnesses."
"Then all rests on you, Melania," Wulfred said, turning to give her his attention.
"I'm not surprised, but what, exactly, do you need from me?"
"Your vow," he said, his blue eyes piercing and strangely hot. "Your freely given pledge to be my wife."
She could only stare in shock. And horror.
"I have asked Theras," he continued, ignoring her insulting response, "about the marriage ritual for Romans. He told me that you are a follower of Jesus the Christ. I am prepared to partake of any ceremony that would please you."
How carefully he said the words. How carefully had he chosen them? He knew, he had to know, that a ceremony that invoked the presence and the power of the Christ would bind her to him securely. Of course he knew. He was no fool. His rituals might not bind her; hers would.
Still, his motives could have been more generous than she'd suspected initially. He could just want her to have a ceremony that would have meaning for her, since he had all but tricked her into a Saxon marriage. Why prevaricate? He had most definitely tricked her into marriage. It was thoughtful of him to arrange for a marriage ceremony that would conform to her own beliefs.
Thoughtful? How stupidly sentimental she was becoming; he was plainly no fool. It would be best to look away from those unnatural and melting eyes while she thought this through.
If she spoke her vow, in Christus, then she would be bound by her own word to be a true wife to him.
He knew that.
Melania looked at Theras for some hint of his feelings on this turn of events. Theras's face was carefully blank. As it should be. This was her decision, and she would be the one who had to live with it.
Marcus would not share in this; he would be unaffected. She need not consider him. Even now he moved relentlessly west, away from her.
Marcus was gone. Permanently.
Had she not already decided where her future lay?
Melania looked again at Wulfred. He had said nothing to rush her or sway her. He had not attempted to bully her, though little good it would have done him. He understood that her answer would be her own and that she would hold to it. He understood much about her.
He understood much.
He accepted much.
She had told Marcus truly when she had said that Wulfred had never scolded her for her temper or her passion or her r
ages of feeling. It was the first time in her life any man had treated her so. Her father, for all that she loved him, had not been so tolerant of her volatility, and she had felt a buried sense of failure that she could not be more "Roman" in her deportment. She felt no such failure with Wulfred. In Wulfred's eyes, she could not possibly be more Roman than she was.
He stood formidable and silent and huge. He was a man who could force her to anything, or so he claimed, but he was not forcing her to do this. There was a freedom in her relationship with him that she had experienced with no one else, not even with Marcus.
Marcus had tried to bully her. Marcus, more often, had tried to gently manipulate her. Marcus had even lost his temper with her. Not so Wulfred. Wulfred, the savage barbarian, never lost control.
With him she could be exactly who she was. What greater freedom was there?
Facing him, the Chi-Rho beneath her feet, she took one large golden hand in hers.
"I will be bound to you as wife and I will serve you truly until my death. Or until I am cast off."
Wulfred did not smile; had he been so certain of her decision? Oaf. He took her hand in his, mimicking her, and said, "A Roman may abandon a wife when he tires of her, but a Saxon takes a wife for life. I will not cast you off, Melania." The planes of his face were hard in the subtle light of the room but his eyes burned hot. She knew the look of him and was not afraid. "I will protect you from harm and provide for your needs."
He looked at Theras, silently asking if there was more to this ceremony of Christ.
Theras asked, "Will you, Melania, respect your husband?"
Melania looked up into Wulfred's hard warrior's face, her hand in his. He was an ox of a man: big and powerful and flatly magnificent. And, though she would lick fire before admitting it to him, he was wondrously handsome. She had never seen anyone like him in all her life; even the Saxons who now roamed her home could not challenge him.
But she was not such a fool to bind herself to a face. No, against all she had ever been told, this Saxon had a mind. A keen and observant mind that was capable of intelligent deduction and cool reasoning. He also had remarkable control of his temper. He was not the unthinking brute she had believed him to be, though there was no reason to tell him of her change of attitude. He was arrogant enough already.
"I do respect him," she said, "and I will."
For once, she thought she saw surprise on his face, but he wiped it clean so soon that she was not certain.
"Will you, Wulfred," Theras continued, "love your wife?"
Wulfred looked down at Melania, studying her, his face still while his eyes were full of turmoil. They had never spoken of love. It was hatred and a desire for revenge that they shared, not love. It had never been love. He was a man who spoke what was in his heart and was steadfast in his vows; if he loved her, he would have spoken of it. Now he was called to speak a vow of love to her, and she did not know what he would say. Her own heart trembled as she watched his eyes, afraid of what he would say. Afraid of what he could not, in honesty, say.
"Yes," he said, his voice a low rumble, "I will love her."
"Then you are one, in the eyes of the Christ and the Father and the Spirit," Theras pronounced solemnly. "May God bless you in your oneness."
Melania felt Wulfred's words roll through her as her mind tried to cling to his words. It was hopeless. She knew only stunned shock; her mind could not grasp the meaning behind his words. He had vowed to love her. Was it possible? Could all the turbulence and the anger they had shared have led them to love? She looked up at him, her eyes wide and measuring, trying to read him as she read the scrolls in her father's library. But he was not to be read.
For the first time that day, Wulfred smiled fully, his teeth white and gleaming. She pushed away the hot brand his words had touched upon her heart and smiled at him in answer. Later she would ponder his vow of love.
"You should smile, Saxon," she said, letting her hand rest in his, "for you have joined your life to mine today."
"I joined my life to yours by Saxon ritual, little snake," he answered, his smile looking suddenly sharp. "I smile because, by your own will and by your own vow, you have joined your life to mine." He released her hand and gripped her hard by her shoulders, casting off his smile in the doing. "Now," he said. "Who had his arms around you in the orchard this dawn?"
Chapter 25
He could see the confusion in her eyes and gloated in it. So she believed in the mewlings of her little ceremony and believed that he wanted to please her. Arrogant Roman. He had tricked her for a second time into giving her vow. Stupidly arrogant, ridiculously proud woman. Roman woman. How could he have forgotten that she was Roman and therefore deceitful? Hensa was right: he had been a fool to bind himself by Saxon law to a Roman. She was the enemy, as she always had been.
"You use trickery and deceit, again, to win your way, Saxon," she blazed, her eyes points of fiery light. "Is this the way of honor?"
"This from the woman who stuck a finger down her throat to lose a meal and rob her body of strength?" he struck back, releasing her from his hold. If he touched her again, he would kill her for her deceit. And for the arms she had let embrace her. Roman arms. "Do not speak to me of deceit, Roman, unless you wish to instruct me."
Yes, she had deceived him. It galled him to admit it even to himself. She was soft and hot in his arms, and he had believed her passion to be for him alone; until he had seen her in the arms of a Roman warrior, for a man of such bearing could be nothing else. She had seduced him with her heat so that she could return to the arms of her Roman lover. And he had even begun to admire her, she with her rigid pride and unshakable honor. What honor in a woman who runs to a lover? What pride in selling her body to the enemy so that she could protect the cowardly Roman who hid behind her curves?
No pride and no honor. She was a Roman and she was... hideous. He looked down at her, ignoring the black fall of her hair and the vivid sparkle of her golden eyes and the delicate and proud line of her jaw... Yes, he could ignore it all. But he had not been able to ignore her this morning. This morning he had felt her eyes scouring him even in his sleep and he had awakened with his manhood as hard as a fist. Thinking she went to empty her bladder, he had waited. When the wait grew tedious, he had become suspicious. With suspicion he had summoned Cuthred and Cenred and the three of them had tracked her.
Wulfred swallowed the bile that rose in his throat at thinking of how he had worried over her. He had thought her waylaid by Hensa's men. He had thought her defenseless and in need of a protector, and he had flayed himself with more vigor than any Roman had for leaving her alone and unprotected in a house full of Saxons seeking an enemy to best.
And when his heart had begun to tear itself from his breast in anguish over her, he had seen her clutching the Roman to her bosom with all the fervor of a lover. Had seen her hold him to her in tearful parting. Had seen her give him Optio and watch with love-inspired tears as he walked away from her. Then he had known what it was she had done to him. All the love that was in her, she had given to the Roman warrior. Of course, she had deceived him; she was a Roman and they knew only the path to their own ends. But she had also tricked him into believing that there was something more than hatred between them—something of laughter and respect and trust.
Trust. With a Roman. He had been the worst sort of fool. He had been the imbecile she named him. But no longer.
"Then let us speak of pride, Saxon fool," she taunted.
"Let us," he countered. "What pride in sneaking off from a husband's bed—"
"It is my bed!"
"To meet another man. Is this the value you place on a vow? But I forget; you are Roman."
"You may have forgotten it, but I have not. I will not!"
"Certainly you will also not forget the man, the Roman, whom you held against you so passionately. And, speaking from experience, I am certain he will not have forgotten you. Cuthred and Cenred are pursuing him. When they bring him to me, you
will have the privilege of watching him die. That is also something I pray to my gods you will not forget."
"You rant in your blundering Saxon way and I hear but one thing," she choked out, her rage a living heat. "You trusted me and found your trust betrayed. Why, Saxon?" she smiled with sharp cruelty. "I have never told you I feel anything for you other than blind hatred. Did you expect devotion? Loyalty?"
"Passion?" He smirked.
"Hatred is a passion. And I am very passionate where you are concerned."
How she turned everything, every moment between them, into a twisted distortion of what he had believed. She truly was a most adept deceiver.
"You have just sworn, by your own god, to respect me. Have you no passion for your faith?"
"I do," she said. "And I did not lie in my vow. I do respect you, for your strength and your leadership. My vows are genuine, unlike yours."
Never had he seen her so angry, and he had seen her angry often. He understood enough of her, or thought he had, to see that she used her anger as a shield. Anger was her response to fear, to danger, to sadness, to embarrassment... to love? No, she did not love. Not him. Did she fear? If she did, it was fear for her lover that had her blazing so hot and so high.
The small antechamber was now crowded with people, his people, and they crowded around his little Roman wife with glowing animosity. They but awaited his word to kill her. They would continue to wait. He would not kill her until he had the man she loved killed before her eyes. That man would die, because Wulfred would not share the smallest part of Melania with anyone; she was his. She had been his from the beginning.
Cuthred and Cenred elbowed their way into the room until they stood by his side. They were covered in sweat and bits of grass and broken leaves; they had chased their man far. Why did they come in alone?
"Wulfred"—Cenred breathed hard—"he escaped us. Your pardon."
"How is this possible?" Wulfred said furiously.
