She rose slowly, to stand before him. “Give me your hand, your right hand.” It was heavy with the chain but she thrust it toward him. He unfastened the chain from her wrist and let it drop to the ground.
She was wearing a gown of soft gray wool, a white linen tunic over it, belted. He frowned, sudden anger roiling in his belly. “Who has aided you?”
“If I tell you, will you chain them to the floor and beat them?”
“I haven’t beat you,” he said, watching her massage her wrist.
“Now you will because I have given you the idea.”
“Who?”
She saw the pulse quicken in his throat. He was angry, and becoming angrier by the moment. He was the lord here and yet someone had aided her, his prisoner.
“Hafter helped me.” Oh aye, Hafter, his man, let him chew on that one.
Rorik didn’t chew long. “Ha! Hafter help you? Even if he would ever be so unwise, nay, so stupid, he wasn’t this time. He was with me all day. Stop your damned lies. It was doubtless one of the women. Who?”
She turned from him and walked toward the doorway. He grabbed her arm and jerked her around to face him. She raised her other hand to strike him, and he grabbed her wrist. He saw then the scrapes and cuts and eased his hold on her hands. He saw the red marks still sharp and angry on her wrist from the rough links of the chain.
“Are you hungry?”
“Since you have starved me since you dragged me here, I am ravenous. I nearly gnawed at the chain. Will you offer me food or pig swill again?”
He frowned. “I don’t know. Sit you down on the bed, and I will bring you what there is. If I don’t deign to eat it, then you won’t have to either.”
He returned shortly carrying a wooden plate. On the plate was a pile of mashed peas with some sort of red berries crushed in, a reeking pile of cabbage boiled with small chunks of what seemed to be bark from a pine tree. In the center of the plate lay a large herring, headless, not boned, and burned blacker than a Christian’s sins.
She looked at the plate. “Is there naught else? Is all the food like this?”
“Aye,” he said, and looked grim.
Mirana didn’t know what was going on here. Also, it threw her off balance to see another side of this man. He’d been only vicious to her, but now he looked ready to howl or weep at the sight of the inedible slop on the plate. Mirana thought of the wonderful bread, the delectable roasted herring she’d been fed earlier, the big plate of beans seasoned to perfection. But now this. She said nothing. It made no sense.
“I would rather starve,” she said deliberately, and glowed at the thought of her full belly. “Take this miserable swill and grind it under your heel, or act an enraged child again and throw it onto the ground like you did this morning with the porridge.”
Instead, Rorik dumped the plate onto her lap, stepped back, rubbed his hands together, and said with a good deal of mockery, “If it was Hafter who aided you—which of course seems very likely for I see him wearing gowns all the time—why then, he now owns one less gown.” He gave her a long thoughtful look. “Though I must say that this particular shade of gray with the white tunic doesn’t match his eyes. Why then, he will surely be displeased for this gown is ruined now. I will tell him what you have said and watch his face turn purple with fury.”
He strode from the sleeping chamber. She stared after him. She realized a few moments later that he’d been so angry, he’d forgotten and left her unchained. She stood, wiping gobs of food from the skirt of her gown.
The gown had belonged to Utta’s mother. Now it would need to be washed, vigorously, and hopefully be saved. She walked into the great hall, a folded blanket over her arm, and was again aware that conversation flagged. She could feel the men staring after her, distrust in their eyes, uncertainty, since she was free. She felt only curiosity from the women. Perhaps something more than just curiosity from them. Whatever they were thinking of her, she didn’t feel the chill she felt from the men.
She looked neither to the right nor to the left. She walked to the front doors. They were pushed wide open. Not a word, not a shout, not a yell from Rorik. She wondered why he hadn’t at least ordered her to stop.
She went to the bathing hut. There were buckets of water in the outer room. She stripped off the gown and the tunic and washed both garments. She wrapped herself in the blanket, spread the gown and tunic over the benches to dry, and left the hut. She turned toward the palisade wall, just to see what was there, how thick the walls were, what the gates were like, what . . .
She came face-to-face with Rorik. He held three good-sized silver bass by hooks on a line. Kerzog was standing at his side, his tongue lolling.
She stared at the fish.
He looked at her face, then down at the blanket wrapped around her. “What are you doing out here?”
“I had to wash the gown you ruined with the swill. What are you doing with the fish?”
He looked undecided, then shrugged. “Come with me.”
She followed him, her blanket held firmly to her neck. He squatted down near the wall at the eastern corner of the palisade, and built a small fire from the pile of twigs and small branches stacked there. Kerzog fell onto his haunches close to the fire and watched his mast
er, his big head cocked to one side, as if in question.