Enchantress Mine (51 page)

“Scotland,” he said tersely.

“Josselin will kill you,” she said again, “and I will help him! How dare you steal me away? You are a beast of the worst sort, Eric Longsword!”

“Be quiet, Mairin Aldwinsdotter!” he told her, and yanked upon her lead for emphasis.

She choked as the collar momentarily tightened. “My head is getting wet,” she said, refusing to be cowed by him. “Let me at least pull my hood up, or would you have me catch a chill and die?”

“Very well.” He grudgingly adjusted the angle of the dog collar and its lead. Then he allowed her to pull up the fur-lined hood of her cloak. “Now be silent,” he ordered, “or I will gag you.”

The day was gloomy. A light snow was beginning to fall. Steadily they plodded onward through the gray, and Eric Longsword seemed to know exactly where he was going. Mairin tried to identify any kind of landmark. She considered tearing small bits of the cloth hem from the inside of her cloak so she might leave a trail for Josselin to follow, but the snow would soon cover it. The silence unnerved her.

“How did you get me to your horse?” she asked him.

“I slit the back of the tent,” he said quietly. “I had my mount waiting there.”

“Josselin will follow us,” she said angrily.

“First he must determine in which direction I have taken you. Only then can he follow, and the snow will have covered our trail long since. If he decides we have gone north, where north? You have seen the last of Josselin de Combourg, Mairin. Now you belong to me.”

He is mad, she thought. I must escape him, but how? Up ahead she could see the huddled figures of several other horsemen, and she prayed they would be King William’s men. The king’s men would help her. The waiting men, however, were Scots.

“Ye took yer time in getting here,” grumbled the obvious leader. Then he smiled, showing a mouthful of rotting, blackened teeth. “I see ye brought us a wench. Yer a thoughtful fellow, Eric Longsword.”

“The woman is mine, Fergus. She’s my wife taken from me by the Normans several years ago. I’ve just retrieved her, that’s all.”

“He’s a liar! I’m—arrgh,” she choked as he fiercely jerked her lead, and the collar tightened once more.

Fergus’ eyes narrowed. “What’s this? The wench doesn’t seem particularly willing for someone ye claim is yer wife, Eric Longsword.”

“Her silly head has been turned by Norman luxuries, and she was loath to leave King William’s court,” Eric replied. “Nonetheless, she is mine. She will soon remember her place, even if I have to beat her black and blue to jog her faulty memory. Let’s ride, Fergus! We’re still too close to York for safety’s sake.”

“Aye,” the Scot agreed. “I’ll not feel safe until we’re cozy within the Cheviots.”

They rode for the rest of the day, and with each hour they rode, the storm grew worse. Finally spotting a farm, they approached it and found an abandoned stone cottage which was fairly large and incorporated its stables. The roof on the building was sound, however, and there was fuel for the fireplace stacked neatly, though from the looks of it, the farmhouse had not been lived in for several years. Cracking the ice on the well they drew up several buckets of water, and saw the horses stabled amid the moldy hay.

To her surprise, Mairin discovered three women riding with the Scots. They looked at her with hostile eyes, but one of them was brave enough to finger her heavy wool cloak admiringly. Supper consisted of dried beef strips, oatcakes, and water. Mairin ate automatically. She knew she must keep up her strength if she was to escape. Wrapped in her warm cloak she huddled by the fire chewing slowly upon the tough beef. The Scots left her to herself, even the women now, and after a while flasks came out, and were passed about. Outside they could hear the howl of the rising storm, and small puffs of snow slipped through the cracks in the stone cottage to puddle upon the floor in the new warmth of the room.

Two of the men slipped off with two of the women. The men returned after a while, their places taken by two others. Whatever was in the flasks seemed to be loosening the tongues of the taciturn Scots.

“So yer wife has spent the last few years spreading her legs for the Normans,” said one of the men. “I don’t know why ye want her back. I’d have left the whore where she was.”

Eric took a long swig from his own flask. “She’s not to blame. They came to Aelfleah, our home, while I was away. Don’t think, however, that I don’t mean to punish her nonetheless. I intend giving her a good beating tonight followed by a thorough fucking. She always liked my fucking. She’ll jog her hips which will jog her memory, and then all will be well between us again.”

They didn’t see her get up from her place, but suddenly Mairin was amongst them. “You whoreson!” she shrieked. “You are not my husband and I’ll kill you before I’ll allow you to lay a hand upon me!”

Eric Longsword’s hand made contact with the side of Mairin’s head before her words had died in the air. He followed the first blow with a second one, and the Scots grinned at one another. The man surely knew how to handle his woman.

“Will ye be needing any help?” said Fergus hopefully.

“Nay,” came the reply, and taking the hanging lead up, Eric dragged the surprised Mairin from the cottage’s main room through the door into the stables. “I’ll attend my wife now lest her screaming disturb your rest,” he said to his companions. They grunted approval of his actions.

Pulling his reluctant victim along, he slammed the stable door behind him. From someplace within his tunic another length of leather was brought. “Put your arms about that roof post,” he snarled, wrapping the leather about her wrists when she complied. She had not dared to refuse him, for she had already learned that each defiance of his will caused him to jerk upon her collar, which choked her. He didn’t know his own strength, and she feared he would break her neck. The collar about her throat reminded her of that time so long ago when Blanche had sold her to a slave dealer, and he, too, had collared her like an animal. Then, however, she had Dagda to protect her. How she wished him here now.

Eric Longsword unfastened her heavy woolen cloak and tossed it aside. Carefully he lifted her tunic and pushed it up over her shoulders and head. Loosening her skirts, he let them fall to the ground. He might have ripped her camise, but, thoughtfully, he pushed it up over her head too with the back of her tunic top. She could hear his breath coming in slow rasps as he gazed at her naked back, legs, and buttocks. She stiffened when he smoothed his rough hand down the expanse of her skin and cupped her buttock.

“It is very important,” he said in a calm and logical voice, “that you understand I am your lord. I will not be spoken to again as you spoke to me earlier. Now, Mairin Aldwinesdotter, I want you to say to me, ‘Eric Longsword is my lord, and my husband.’ ”

“You are totally mad!” she burst out furiously. “How can you do this, Eric Longsword? You claim to love me, yet you would steal me from my rightful husband, and my child.”

“You have a child?”

“A little girl, Maude. She is almost eleven months old.”

“I will give you sons,” he said matter-of-factly.

“No!”

“Yes!” he said. Then he unfastened the leather lead from her collar. “You are too bold for a woman, Mairin Aldwinesdotter. You do not know your place. A woman should not speak unless she is spoken to, and then she should speak but briefly and with modesty. My father, may God assoil his soul, taught me this. Women, he said, must be taken care of and cherished, for they have not the native intelligence of a man. God, my father told me, created women for several reasons. For man’s pleasure, to bear and nurture new life, and to care for a man’s home, all his needs, and those of his children. It is all a woman is good for, but you do not seem to understand that, for all that is said about your intelligence.

“When we returned to England, you shamed me before my friends and fellow guardsmen by your coldness to my suit. Still I pursued you and offered you marriage. Your brother, Brand, mocked me, Mairin Aldwinesdotter, and said your father would not squander such a rare and valuable daughter on the heir to but five hides of land. He said your family could get the heir to five hundred hides of land for you.

“I returned home, and then our Earl Tostig was overthrown in a plot that we all knew to be instigated by his brother, Earl Harold. My parents were slain in their own hall, and I but barely escaped with my life to join Earl Tostig. Our lands were taken from us. I did not wish to live away from my country, and so when I learned that Harold Hardraade planned an invasion I joined with him.”

For a moment he ceased his speech, and once again he ran his big hands down the length of her naked back and buttocks. Mairin sank her teeth into her lower lip to keep from screaming aloud as he fondled her flesh slowly.

“I knew your father and brother would be with Earl Edwin and his men,” Eric finally continued. “I knew Earl Edwin would come to the aid of his puling brother, Earl Morkar. I sought for your kin upon the battlefield, Mairin Aldwinesdotter. I saw your father, and I tell you he was more than worthy of his name. He was a great warrior, and even I, younger and swifter, could not have beaten him. So I thrust my sword into his back, and he fell to the ground mortally wounded. It was then your brash brother appeared, and fool as he was, was more concerned for his father than what was going on about him. He knelt at your father’s side, and I was able to fell him in a single blow, but before I might finish your father off, that giant servant of yours appeared in the mist. I was forced to flee, for I could not have hoped to overcome him. Also, if my helmet had come off in a fray, I would have been recognized.

“I came to claim you with Eadric, but again you shamed me and mocked my suit. You avowed a marriage with some accurst Norman! With your father and brother gone, I had intended having both you and Aelfleah. You should have been mine with them dead! You should have been mine, but now you are, for I have taken you from the Norman. Let him have Aelfleah. It is all the Normans want. Land! He will quickly make a new life.”

“I am another man’s wife,” said Mairin desperately. She was numb with the knowledge that Eric Longsword had been the murderer of her father and brother. For the first time in her life she wished she were a man so she might take up a sword and kill him! She had disliked him before. He had made her uncomfortable, but now she hated him with a deep and burning hatred. She didn’t know how she was going to escape him, but she would, and then she would avenge the death of Aldwine Athelsbeorn and Brand.

“You are my wife,” he told her. “You should have been all along. I am only righting that wrong. We need no holy man mumbling words over us.”

“You
really
are mad,” said Mairin quietly.

“You need to be taught proper obedience,” was his cold reply. He flicked the leather strap by her ear, and instinctively Mairin winced. Eric smiled. “I’m going to beat you,” he told her, “and when I am through I intend fucking you. The sooner you learn that I am your master, the sooner we may begin to find happiness.”

“You killed my father and my brother,” she shrieked, frustrated, at him. “I hate you! I will always hate you!” And I hate that damned calm voice of yours too, she thought.

He aimed the thin length of leather at her back, and was quite satisfied when she cried out. He followed the first blow with several others until her smooth skin was crisscrossed with pale red weals. Still he was not satisfied. After her first soft cry, more of distress than pain, she had clamped her lips shut and refused to make any sound. Angrily he looked about the barn. Nearby was a bale of hay. Kicking it with his foot he found it was solid, and untying her hands so he might free her from the post, he forced her facedown upon the bale, his fingers tightly grasping the dog collar to keep her under control despite her struggles. Then he retied her hands, looping the leather about her slim wrists, cruelly yanking her arms forward over her head.

Content that his prey was again helpless, he doubled the leather strap, and without ceremony brought it down across her naked buttocks. Mairin yelped and squirmed in an effort to escape him, but with a grin of satisfaction he clamped a hand on the back of her neck and began to rain a series of hard blows upon her posterior.

She had never been beaten in her entire life, for Aldwine and Eada had been gentle parents. She knew that being whipped, and sometimes severely, was commonplace behavior amongst parents and children, husbands and wives, but even Josselin had treated her with kindness. She wanted to defy Eric Longsword, but she could not under these conditions. As her stomach was weak for strong wine, so her body could not bear the brutal punishment that he was now administering to her. She could not prevent herself from screaming, from begging him to cease his torture.

“Please,” she shrieked, “in the name of the Blessed Mother! Stop! Stop!”

“Not until you admit that I am your lord! That you belong to me, and to no other man!” he ground out through gritted teeth.

“I cannot, I cannot,” she sobbed, the tears pouring down her face.

“You can, and you will!” he shouted at her, and redoubled his efforts, laying blow after blow upon her already red bottom.

She felt as if she were on fire, and made a desperate effort to struggle away from him. She had to escape the pain he was inflicting upon her. Then it came to her that whatever she might say to him would not change the truth, whatever he might wish to believe. She was Josselin’s wife no matter what Eric Longsword thought, and as that thought penetrated her brain, so did her intense desire to survive this experience, to escape him and return to her family.

“You are my lord, Eric!” she screamed at him. “You are my lord!”

“Wh-what?” For a moment he seemed confused. “What do you say, Mairin Aldwinesdotter?”

“I yield to you,” she said. “You are my lord.” Her backside was aching, and she was shaking inside. Let him believe me, dear God, she silently prayed.