Lord of Raven's Peak - Catherine Coulter [17]
“You must get well again to find that out,” he said as he rinsed her as quickly as he could, then covered her even more quickly, drawing the thick soft wool to her chin. He said instead, “Does it hurt you too much to lie on your back?”
“Aye, it does.”
He helped her to turn onto her stomach. He patted her back with more hot water, then laid clean linen cloths over it. He pulled the wool cover to her neck. Her hair was thick, curly, short, and very ragged.
“What color is your hair?”
“Red.”
He sat on his haunches and frowned down at the back of her head. Her voice was arrogant again, just that one simple word and yet it sounded like a royal announcement from a royal mouth. He said, “The light is dim and I could not tell, and before it was so dirty, it could have been green. So it is red. I do not like that color, and our women at home don’t have it.”
“Do you think I care, Viking?”
He smiled more widely at the back of her head, adding, “It is too strong a color for a woman, it is perhaps indecent, not quite civilized. No, it is a color I do not like. How do you know I am a Viking?”
“You are from Norway. Are you so witless you remember not what you say? Also, you have blond hair and blue eyes. You are larger than the men I’ve seen in other lands. All Vikings are big. All Vikings look alike. There is nothing about you that sets you apart from any other man of your country. You are common.”
He laughed. “And where you come from, do all women have red hair, red hair so dark it looks nearly black in the dim night?”
“Nay.”
“I did not think so. All the women from your land don’t have skin as dead white as a new snowfall in Vestfold either, do they?”
“Nay, but more than a few do, if one looks closely, which the Vikings don’t, since all they do is raid and kill and steal whatever they can carry, including people.”
He ignored that, saying, “Ah, you are even different from those in your own land. I thought as much. Red hair and white flesh, surely the Christian devil’s curse on a female, one that bespeaks a god’s punishment.”
“It wasn’t a god or a devil who cursed me,” she said, and he heard the pain in her voice and the utter weariness, and something else, rage, banked but still there, so deep it would remain with her the rest of her life, hard and strong.
He frowned again at the back of her head, only this time there was no mockery in his voice as he said, “Do you wish for more bread?”
“Nay, but Taby is always hungry, always more hungry than I. He would want more bread.”
“Cleve is seeing to the boy, both he and Oleg—the man whose hand you bit—are tending to him. They will feed him until he can’t move. There is enough food for both of you. Neither of you will starve.”
“You will then sell him?”
“I can’t believe Taby would bring me much silver,” Merrik said, his voice thoughtful even as he felt anger at her for her deep distrust. By all the gods, hadn’t he saved her? “He is only a small child, of little account. Aye, I should probably sell him.”
“I will buy us from you. Cleve too.”
“Are you hiding your silver somewhere I haven’t looked? Surely not, for I was thorough in my bathing of you.”
She was quiet as a stone.
“Yourself as well?”
“Aye, all three of us.”
He laughed, marveling at her. “You are flat on your belly, my girl, with naught to cover you but the clothing I and my men give you. The food in that skinny stomach of yours is from me. Everything is from me, including your clean hair and your clean hide. You wouldn’t have Taby if it weren’t for me. Mayhap you should caution yourself to guard your tongue before you speak. I think it would serve you better.”
She was silent for a very long time. Merrik rose and stretched and tossed away the dirty bathwater and threw her rags into the forest. He doubted even the animals would scavenge those