Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [100]
November passed. The cloth progressed, and the girl and her father lived alone.
The change in her life came in the first half of December. It took place rather suddenly.
Her father had been very kind to her of late. He knew that she was sometimes afraid of him if he drank too much, and so he had hardly touched any mead since autumn. In the last two days he had been especially warm with her, often giving her friendly hugs and a gentle kiss.
One evening, however, he did drink mead. She saw the faint flush around his neck; she looked at him a little nervously, but decided that he had not drunk enough to make him depressed. Indeed, she felt a little surge of happiness to see the smile of well-being on his face. She noticed his hands, resting on the table. For some reason she noticed the thick fair hairs on the back of them and this, too, filled her with a feeling of affection.
And then she did something very foolish.
She had been heating some red dye for the thread: it was almost boiling, and she decided to carry it across the room.
Her father had been sitting very quietly at the table now, for several minutes, without speaking. She did not particularly look at him, though she was aware of his strong back, and the bald top of his head as she brushed past him with the pot of dye.
Perhaps it was glancing at the top of his head that made her lose concentration. But suddenly her foot caught against the leg of the little bench he was sitting on. She started to fall, desperately righted herself and, by a miracle, only slopped a quarter of the boiling contents of the pot on to the table.
‘The devil take me!’
He had leaped back, upsetting the bench on the floor.
She stared at him, horrified, then at the dye on the table.
‘Your hands?’
‘You want to scald me alive?’ He clasped one hand in the other with a grimace of pain.
She dropped the pot on to the stove.
‘Let me see. Let me bandage it.’
‘You careless idiot,’ he roared. But he did not let her come near.
She was terrified, yet also anguished.
‘Let me help you. I’m sorry.’
He took a deep breath, gritted his teeth. And then it happened.
‘You will be,’ he suddenly said, very quietly.
She felt the inside of her stomach go cold.
She knew that tone. It came from her childhood, and it meant: ‘Wait until this evening.’
She trembled. In an instant, it seemed to her, the relationship of the last few months had vanished. She was a little girl again. And as a little girl, she knew what was to follow. Her knees began to shake. ‘You should look where you are going with scalding water,’ he said coldly. She was so upset she had hurt him that, in a way, she would almost prefer it if he would punish her. It was two years since he had last done so, before Kiy had been taken away. Yet it was strangely humiliating to be addressed like a child again.
‘Go to the bench.’
She lay face down on the bench. She heard him undoing his belt. Then she felt him pull up her linen shift. She braced herself.
But nothing happened.
She closed her eyes, waiting. And then, to her surprise, she felt his hands upon her. Then she felt his breath upon her ear.
‘I won’t punish you this time, my little wife,’ he said softly. ‘But there is something else you can do for me.’ Now she felt his hands moving over the back of her legs. She frowned. What was he doing? ‘Hush now,’ he breathed. ‘I won’t hurt you.’
She began to blush, furiously. She did not know what to do. Even now, she could not quite understand what was happening.
She felt his hands advance. Suddenly she felt naked as she had never done before. She wanted to cry out, to run; yet a hot sense of shame held her strangely helpless. Where was she to run to? What could she say to their neighbours?
At this terrible moment, this man, her father, in this stifling hot room, was trying to do something strange to her. And now she realized exactly what it was.
His touch terrified her. Her body suddenly arched, rigid, and she heard him gasp.
‘Ah, that’s it, my little