She jerked, but didn’t make a sound, not even another curse. She didn’t struggle anymore. She looked over her shoulder at him, and her eyes were deep and calm, as green as the moss grass in the salt marsh. “You are naught but an animal. I will kill you if I have the chance. I should have killed you at Clontarf when I had you caged. Aye, I just pricked your pretty throat to give you a taste of pain and the sticky feeling of your own blood, but I should have sunk my knife deep.”
“You didn’t, so it doesn’t matter what you spout out now. I am your lord. Say it.”
He gave her several moments, wishing to Thor, to Frey, to Odin All-Father, that her stupid pride would bend. But she remained silent. He saw her tense for the next blow, but she didn’t try to escape him again. He swung the belt. It stung her back harder this time, he knew it, he felt her shudder, heard her sharp intake of breath.
“Say it.”
She remained silent as a tomb. He stopped after the fourth swing of the belt. He’d given her only a small jolt of pain, nay, not really pain, just the warning of it. She’d given him more pain when she’d stuck her damned knife in his throat, and she had the gall to call it naught but a prick.
What he had forced on her was the knowledge of her helplessness against him. That humiliation wouldn’t leave her for a very long time. He turned her about and looked silently at her pale face.
He released her, hooked his foot behind her leg, and sent her sprawling to the ground. Again, there was little or no pain, but another dose of humiliation, which for her was a more powerful lesson. Slowly, he fastened his belt around his waist. “Get up,” he said. “Go bathe. Your smell offends me.”
The men were nodding in approval. She got to her feet, felt the pulling in her back, but walked away, not speaking, not looking at him or the men. She heard Kerzog wuff to Rorik, as if in agreement with what he’d done, she thought, anger flooding through her, momentarily blocking out the pain in her back.
She heard one of the men say with great satisfaction, “Aye, no more from her. Well done, my lord. She is only a woman and she is our enemy. She deserved a lesson. She will know better next time. Let her tell of her beating to the other women. If they were wondering whether to obey you, they won’t wonder now. Aye, they’ll now do as you bid them to do.”
Rorik didn’t say anything. He wondered what she had wanted to speak to him about.
To her surprise, Mirana heard another man say, “Nay, Askhold, she’s a small girl and proud. Her pride does honor to her parentage. Despite her brother’s dishonor, she has honesty. She’s a true Viking woman. She shouldn’t be abused, Rorik, she should be protected.”
Mirana resolved to discover the man’s name. Unfortunately she couldn’t turn around to see him.
She heard Rorik curse.
What she was, she thought, wincing with each step from the stinging in her back, was stupid. He’d been right. Her pride had kept her silent. Her pride had seemed her only choice until he’d struck her back with his belt. All she’d had to do was bend, just a small yielding, but she hadn’t. So simple really, just say my lord to him, nothing more, just a simple my lord, for it meant naught, she could even have said it with revulsion in her voice and he would have known she didn’t mean it. But she had to be stubborn.
What had Einar done for the man to call him dishonorable?
9
ASTA RUBBED THE white medicinal cream into her back, made from the oily tender root. The belt hadn’t broken the skin, had only sliced through the tunic and gown in two places, and the material could easily be mended. There were only welts on her back, Utta said, as she watched Asta rub the cream into Mirana’s flesh.
Mirana would have choked before she’d have told anyone, but Utta had come into the sleeping chamber when she was naked, holding the gown in her hand, examining the damage.
But the girl had said only, “I will fetch the healing cream from Old Alna. It will take the stinging away.” She paused in the doorway and added, “I will tell her I have a bee sting and it pains me.”
Mirana had smiled at her, wondering at her wisdom, at her youth, remembering herself at twelve years old, a lanky, proud girl, ready for any mischief, ready to fight any boy. She’d not had a dollop of wisdom. She smiled at her now. “Thank you, Utta. Do you have thread and a needle so that I may mend this lovely gown?”
But Asta had come with Utta, Asta, the woman married to Gurd the blacksmith, the man who had insulted his wife before all the assembled company this morning. To Mirana’s surprise, Asta was smiling at her, soon laughing as she told her of the old shoe the goat had chewed and chewed until the women had stirred it into a stew for the men. Before she’d left the chamber, she said, “Don’t worry. Both Utta and I frequently suffer from bee stings. You try to rest now, Mirana. I thank you for what you tried to do, as do all the other women. We believe that Rorik spoke so quickly because he dreaded doing it and just wanted it over and done with. But you tried, and we do thank you.”
Mirana just shook her head. “I did naught of anything. I’m not sure, though, if that is why Rorik made his speech so very early, even before he tasted the wonderful porridge. It doesn’t make sense to me, but perhaps you are right.”
Both Utta and Asta just sighed and left her alone. Asta said from the doorway, “I will tell you later what the women are thinking. Amma is very angry, but I know she must be calm for us to determine what is best to do now.”
Mirana was sitting on the side of the bed, wearing the gown again, now mending the tunic, when Rorik walked in. He stopped and looked at her.
“Utta told me she’d rubbed cream into your back.”
“Aye,” Mirana said, her eyes on her mending.
“She said there were only red welts.”
“That is what she said.”
“She said I wasn’t to tell anyone else. She said that would shame you.”
Mirana said nothing. So he didn’t know Asta had been here as well. She wondered why they hadn’t told him. To protect her, she supposed, but didn’t understand how it could. Then it struck her. They’d had Utta speak to him. Surely if there was guilt to be felt, he would be made to feel it from an eleven-year-old girl. She wanted to smile, but she didn’t, for he said in the next moment, “I didn’t hurt you. I was careful.”