Lord of Raven's Peak - Catherine Coulter [83]
Erik had torn it from her gown.
15
“AYE, POOR SLAVE, you killed him and now you’ll die. I shall try not to smile when the last breath leaves your miserable body. I will go away by myself and laugh and know pleasure that you are gone forever. I won’t fear your ghost, for they will bury you so deep that even your evil will die.”
Laren stared up at Letta’s face, barely discernible in the dim light of Merrik’s sleeping chamber. She’d been sound asleep, deep in a frightening darkness that held her unmoving and terrified. And now Letta’s voice, low and vicious and filled with glee. Still it was better than that nothingness, those obscure shadows that would have sucked away her life.
“Aye, now you’ll pay, you miserable whore, you’ll pay. You’re only a slave. Erik had a right to take you. And you killed him and now Merrik will kill you, it’s his duty as Erik’s brother.”
“I didn’t kill Erik.”
“Liar. No one else was seen on the path. Just you and Erik. No one else. You’re naught but a slave. No one believes your denials. Even now the men are discussing what to do with you, and let me tell you, whore, Merrik holds himself silent. He isn’t taking your side.”
“I didn’t kill Erik,” she said again, listening to the hollow ring of her own voice, knowing that no one would believe her, no one at all.
“Aye, you’ve slept for a very long time. Sarla thought it would be best for you, the stupid cow. She didn’t want the men killing you if you had dared to come to Erik’s burial, ah, and they would have, they would have. She wanted you left alone, silent and asleep, to protect you, but it won’t matter, because you’ll be dead, as dead as Erik whom you killed.”
“Is Sarla all right?”
Letta smiled then. “Aye, she is fine. She has lost a man who occasionally punished her for her insolence, but much more than that, she has lost Malverne, though she doesn’t realize it yet. Now it belongs to Merrik, no one else, least of all that stupid cow, who is as barren as a fifty-year-old grandmother. There are only Erik’s bastards, none of them legitimate because Erik was a young man and thus thought himself immortal and didn’t even make Kenna legitimate. It was a pity, but not for me, not for Merrik, who now owns everything, as far as the eye can see.
“Aye, Malverne is Merrik’s now. When we wed, I will be mistress here and both you and Sarla will be gone, I will see to it.”
“Merrik would never make Sarla leave Malverne.”
“He will want to make me happy. I will be his wife and thus he will do what I wish him to.”
“What are you doing in here, Letta?”
It was Merrik silhouetted in the opening, his hand shoving aside the bearskin covering.
“I was just seeing if she was awake now, my lord,” Letta said in a softly sweet voice. “Sarla sent me to rouse her. It is odd that Erik’s widow would think so highly of the slave who murdered her husband.”
Letta straightened, then walked slowly to Merrik. She stood in front of him, gazing up at him, and touched her fingertips to his forearm. “I am so very sorry, Merrik. First your parents and now this slave killed your brother. I do understand, my lord, for I lost my older sister only two years ago when I was already grown. ’Tis a miserable thing.”
“Go to your father, Letta.”
She smiled up at him, patted his arm again, and left.
Merrik strode to the box bed and stared down at her. “At least there are no new bruises or burns or lash marks on you this time.”
She merely shook her head. He hadn’t seen her breast, thank the gods for that. Erik had hurt her in his frenzy, bruising her badly.
“It is over,” he said. “My brother is surely gone from us now.” He pictured his brother carried down from the steep path, he himself looking down at his bloodied head as he carried his shoulders, saw the women cleaning him and garbing him in his finery. His body wasn’t brought into the longhouse, for all feared that a ghost would come and do them ill. Thus he was carried to the burial grounds and placed gently, feet first, into the deep hole dug beside his father’s grave. His sword, his axe, and his favorite