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A fool, naught but a fool, yet she kept digging, bending over and uncovering the bog ore from the slime, then pulling it loose, and finally lifting it out. She paused a moment, her breath hitching in pain that nearly bowed her to her knees, and in that instant she knew he was there, watching her.
She was filthy, her gown rent and wet and smelling of the bog ore and the filthy marsh water. Her bare feet and legs were black with filth.
Her hair had come loose from its braid. She breathed heavily and stood very still. She would not perform for him whilst he watched. She simply wouldn’t do it. Was he here to taunt her? To order her to go faster? Was he here to tell her he would sell her? That he found her less than useless? He had taken her three times and hadn’t found anything in her to his liking. Why should he keep her?
Magnus nodded to the other serfs, men all of them, bowed but stronger than most from years of back-breaking work. He reached her and raised her dirty face in the palms of his cupped hands. He looked down at her for a long moment.
Finally he said, “Drop the hoe.”
She let it slip from her raw hands.
“Are you really so stupid as to be here?”
She stared up at him, mute.
He frowned. “Do you not understand me?”
“You want me to be here. You want to sell me because there is nothing more you want from me.”
“We will speak of your strange fancies later. Come, now you will bathe and then I will tie you to my bed. You will remain there until I say that you may arise.”
“I cannot,” she said slowly, pulling away from him. She tried to straighten, but the pain ground through her back and she remained before him like a bent old woman. “I am naught but a slave, your slave. You cannot allow me to be shiftless and lazy.”
“You’re quite wrong. I can do anything I please with you. I suggest that you believe me and no other.” He lifted her in his arms, felt her shudder from the pain in her back, but since there was nothing he could do about it, he merely tried to shift her so that she was cupped against his chest, his arm around her waist. “Hold on to me.”
Ingunn said not a word when Magnus came into the longhouse calling for clean cloths. She said not a word when he later carried in Zarabeth, clean from the bathhouse and wrapped in those cloths, and disappeared with her into his chamber. She felt rage and impotence and knew that there was nothing she could do to stop this except to kill the woman.
She gave Cyra an assessing look and knew that she too would willingly stick a knife in the woman’s ribs. What to do?
Then she knew. She trembled with her decision, yet knew that she would do it. She would not remain here. She would not remain to see this woman take her place. She smiled.
17
“Hold still. Do not flinch from me.”
But it was difficult not to draw away, not to try to pull inside herself to avoid his hands on her. He was gentle, she knew, but it didn’t matter. The pain was great and she felt weaker in spirit than she could ever remember.
Magnus rubbed in the cream his mother had sent, turning her back a sickly white. He had bathed her himself, from her filthy matted hair to her blackened feet.
She had suffered it without complaint. He gently combed her hair, pulling it away from her head and fanning it out to dry more quickly. He rose and looked down at her. He had pulled the blanket over her hips. He said to the back of her head, “Your pride is ridiculous, Zarabeth, if it leads you to commit such stupidity. I grow weary of rescuing you from the consequences of your arrogance.”
“Then don’t,” she said.
He grinned down at her. Her voice was nasty and angry. It pleased him greatly. “But who else would rescue you?”
She ignored that, coming up on her elbows, twisting to see him. Color came into her cheeks, and his smile widened as she said, “I am not arrogant. ’Tis you who flaunt yourself before me and all your people, shouting at them that you are the master and will allow no other to gainsay you!”
“I do not have to flaunt. All know I am the master, and soon you will accept it as well.”
She tried to strike him, but he merely grasped her wrists in one of his hands and pressed her back onto her stomach. “Don’t be a fool. Lie still. If you will, you may continue your screaming, but content yourself for the time being with your words.”
“I hate you.”
“Nay, you don’t hate me. When your back has healed, I will take you down under me and come inside you again. You liked that, Zarabeth, the way I moved over you, the way I touched you and filled you.”
“Be quiet, Magnus!”
He gently caressed her cheek with his fingertip. “I have never before wanted a woman as much as I have wanted you. And I still want you, all the time I want you. Do you believe I shall ever tire of you?”
