Barbarian’s Concubine

I was handed off to palace servants to be bathed, a horror from which I thought I might never recover. It was a bad enough shock to have the hands of strangers strip off my filthy clothes and touch my body with as little hesitation as if they were wiping their own asses, but the process took far longer and removed more of my skin than I thought within the bounds of hospitality. The Frankish women took cleanliness seriously, and grunted and sighed over my tattoos, frustrated that the spiral markings were impervious to their soap and scrubbing.

Such a short time ago, I had hungered for touch. At the moment, I would give anything for it to stop.

A woman lathered my hairless armpit, muttering. At my raised brows, she pulled her own arm out of the wide neck of her gown and lifted her arm to show me her thick bush of brown hair. I couldn’t help my grimace, at which she scowled, then at a comment from another woman she burst into laughter. She jabbered merrily as she went back to work on me, her hands not shy about cleaning every nook of my person for a second time. I wondered if this was how babies felt, helpless in the hands of their mothers, given no chance for modesty.

The Frankish women might laugh at my hairless body, but I was proud I’d at least maintained that basic grooming during the two months of flight. Many evenings as we sat by the fire, I’d soothed myself by plucking each hair on my legs with my tweezers. Plucking my armpits required more sunlight, and my loins the help of Terix (who made raunchy jokes the whole while), but it was a task that let me feel I was still human, and not turning into a hairy wolf-child of the forest.

Like these women were.

The women toweled me dry, wrapped me in a sheet, and led me out of the stone-floored bathing room. Terix was waiting outside the door, still in his travel-stained clothes. Bone lay in the shade of the garden, gnawing a pig’s knuckle. The “palace” was at its core a small Roman villa of stone and brick, complete with a pleasant little courtyard garden, but the Franks had added on two two-story wings built of timber, wattle, and daub, with covered galleries running their length to reach the separate rooms. They’d also built a great hall of massive, hewn logs, apparently in the style of their tribe. The result was a sprawling monstrosity of a palace, more functional than pleasing, but I was glad enough that the Roman bathing room remained, even if it was infested by soap-wielding Furies.

“That took you long enough. You must have been even dirtier than you smelled,” Terix said by way of greeting. He’d been sent to eat while I got cleaned up.

“This is the day your dream finally comes true,” I said.

“How’s that?”

“I know you’ve fantasized about lying naked in the bath while a half dozen women run their soapy hands all over your body . . . and I do mean all over.”

Terix looked at the hearty woman still squeezing water from the ends of my hair, and pursed his mouth as if considering whether that was a good or a bad thing. Two of the other women grabbed him by the elbows and started to haul him into the bathing room. His eyes went wide and he tossed an alarmed look over his shoulder to me. “You are joking, aren’t you?”

“Give in to the pleasure, Terix. They’ll have their way with you whether you like it or not.”

“Nimia!”

But I had my own Fury to contend with. Bone got up to follow as the woman led me from the Roman portion of the palace into one of the Frankish wings. She brought me to an upstairs suite of rooms, surprisingly bright and pleasant. The daub walls were washed in warm peach, and the floor was made of smooth, oiled oak. Several small windows let in light, their shutters fastened open, and the peaked roof overhead was newly thatched with sweet-smelling reeds. There was more furniture, all of wood, than I was used to seeing in a Roman home, and the cushions and rugs scattered upon it had bright, intricate designs that bespoke an exuberant love of embellishment.

The woman went to an inner doorway and said something to whoever was in there, then left me and Bone; I was glad that no one seemed to care that the dog stayed with me.

The pretty young blonde I’d seen at the pit appeared in the interior doorway. “There you are,” she said in accented but fluent Latin, looking at me with what I could only think was a cautious antagonism—the way you might look at a horse that had just bitten you. “I was beginning to think they’d drowned you.”

“My lady?” From her expression, I thought she’d been hoping that to be the case.

She came to me with her hands outstretched, though her eyes were hostile. I did what I had seen my betters do, and laid my hands in hers—keeping my elbows tight against my sides to hold the sheet up—and she leaned forward and kissed both my cheeks. “I’m Audofleda, Chlodowig’s sister.” She looked at me expectantly, as if this was supposed to mean something to me.

I shifted uneasily. “Your pardon, my lady. Who’s Chlodowig?”

She cocked her head at me in puzzlement, then her brow cleared. “Oh, that’s right, you must know him as Clovis. That’s what the Romans call him.”

“Audofl-fl-” I started, but to my chagrin could not remember how her name ended.

“-Fleda. Audofleda.” She smiled tightly. “I rather wish the Romans would give me a more melodious name, too, but I’m afraid I’m stuck with this one.”

“Excuse me. Thank you. And ‘Audofleda’ seems a perfectly lovely name.”

She snorted. “Nonsense. But you are Nimia, and Chlodo—Clovis, I mean—has told me I must look after you.” Her eyes went to Bone, who was sitting beside me and watching her with his big brown eyes. “Clovis didn’t mention the dog.”

“Bone Cruncher. Say hello, Bone.”

He woofed.

Audofleda jumped.

“Don’t worry, he likes women.”

“I’m very glad to hear it.” She eyed the dog askance, then gestured me to follow her to the other room.

It was a bedchamber, and a chest was open and several gowns were spread about the room, being fussed over by a serving woman. I spotted my leather bag, lying open on a chair, the gowns I’d packed when I fled the villa nowhere to be seen. I hadn’t worn them while we traveled, for fear of spoiling them.

Audofleda noticed my gaze. “Your clothes are being cleaned. They look a little too . . . Roman for here, so I’m to let you wear something of mine.” She didn’t sound happy about it.

“Surely there’s a simple worker’s tunic somewhere? Your clothes are much too fine for me.”

She gave me a funny look. “I can’t let you wear a servant’s clothing. Clovis would skin me. He said to treat you gently and kindly, and with all generosity.”

“He did?” The thought was rain to my parched heart. “What else did he say?”

Her lips tightened and a small scowl lowered her brow. She turned her attention to her gowns, muttering in Frankish to the serving woman, and tossing the gowns aside one by one. I had no reason to expect her to be open and friendly toward me—I was a stranger, after all—but I feared Clovis might have said something that made me distasteful to her.

“Please tell me what else Clovis said. Is it that I was a slave, is that it?”

Audofleda spun round, a rust-colored gown in her hand. “You were a slave?”

So that wasn’t it. “In Soissons, I still am.”

She plopped down on the edge of her bed, the dress forgotten in her lap. “You ran away. Did your owner beat you? Or did you kill him?” Her eyes were wide.

“No! And no, Sygarius never beat me. He—” I stopped, my cheeks flushing. I didn’t know this girl; I didn’t know how innocent she was, or what her judgments might be. I couldn’t tell her that I was Sygarius’s prized virgin sex toy, and that I’d fled because her brother had deflowered me.

“Sygarius!”

I nodded. The serving woman watched us, obviously curious, and obviously unable to understand the Latin.

“You belong to Sygarius of Soissons. No wonder, then, that Clovis is so eager to have you under his protection, despite . . .” Audofleda bit her lower lip and stood, holding up the rust dress. “You can wear this. It will be too big, but we can tack up the hem, and a girdle will fix the rest.” She handed me a natural-colored, thin garment that I assumed was to be worn underneath.

I took the undergown in one hand, and released the sheet with the other. As I pulled it away, I heard sucked-in breaths from both Audofleda and the servant.

“They’re the tattoos of my people, the Phanne,” I said.

“They’re—Do they mean—Why—” She stumbled over her words, as if thinking twice about everything her curiosity begged her to ask. “The marks don’t wash off?” she finally said.

I shook my head. “Though it didn’t stop the women in the bath from trying.” I pulled the undergown over my head, my arms finding the wide openings in the sides, then I put on the rust gown. It was made of loosely woven linen, and was wrinkled from its time in the chest. It felt good to be wearing clean, soft clothing again, even though it was much too large; no matter, I was used to wearing other people’s ill-fitting cast-offs. The gown had wide sleeves that ended at my elbows, and the edges all bore a hand’s width of swirling, leafy embroidery in mustard, green, and brown.

Audofleda found a girdle of linked copper disks, and the servant helped me to put it on, wrapping it around my waist, crossing in back, then coming forward again to fasten it in a V beneath my navel, the long ends hanging down almost to my knees.

“Why did you flee Sygarius?” Audofleda asked quietly, as the servant fussed with the hem of the gown. “That must have been very dangerous.”

“It was more dangerous to stay.”

“Why?”

I shook my head, not wanting to explain.

The servant fetched a needle and thread, and sat at my feet to temporarily shorten the dress for me. Audofleda sat on the chest at the end of her bed. “Why come to Clovis?”

“I had nowhere else to go. I thought he might feel . . . a sense of obligation toward me.”

Audofleda said something harsh under her breath in Frankish, and turned her face away, staring out the window with narrowed eyes.

“My lady,” I said, my voice pleading. “What did Clovis say about me? I can see it is something that distresses you. Please, tell me. If it’s true, then it will be nothing I don’t already know.”

She turned back to me, glaring, with tears sheening in her eyes. “You think Clovis might feel a ‘sense of obligation’ toward you, for cursing my father?” she said. “For bringing death upon our king, throwing our tribe into chaos, and leaving Chlodowig to try to pick up the pieces? Yes, we all feel a sense of obligation toward you!”

“I did not curse Childeric! Is that what he told you?”

“More or less.”

“What’s the ‘less’ part of it?” I asked, frantic to correct this monstrous impression. “What did he say?”

Audofleda set her jaw. “It’s what everyone was saying, when Chlodowig and my father came home. The story had run through the ranks of how, at a banquet at Sygarius’s villa, a sorceress went into a trance and told everyone that my father would die. When I asked Chlod—Clovis—about it, he said it was true. And now, on the day of my father’s burial, you appear—Clovis told me you were the sorceress. You’ve come to see that your curse was fulfilled!”

I felt dizzy with the depth of the misunderstanding. She had the facts almost correct, but her interpretation! It was so far from the truth, I felt as if I had been ambushed, and I was too surprised to defend myself properly. “I have no power to curse anyone, Audofleda. I do not cast spells. I have no power other than to sometimes, and imperfectly, catch a small glimpse of the future. That is all! I had nothing to do with Childeric’s death.”

“Then why are you here, today of all days?”

“Chance. Bad luck. Lots and lots of bad luck.”

Had that been all, though? I felt a whisper against my skin, the swirling of time and the paths leading into the future. I thought of our ill fortune with Jax, and trying to reach Britannia. Perhaps I’d been meant to come here all along. To Clovis. And if that was meant to be, perhaps the timing had been chosen by forces beyond my understanding, as well.

Audofleda snorted in disbelief. “Bad luck. For a sorceress?”

“I’m not a sorceress. I’m just a girl. I don’t even know how your father died—I didn’t foresee what I thought to be death; I only foresaw a white horse, a bowl, a forest . . . Did Childeric fall in battle?”

Audofleda gestured for the servant—who’d been distracted and was gaping at us—to go back to work on the hem, eager no doubt to be done with it and rid of me. “No. He wasn’t allowed that honor.”

I waited.

Audofleda sighed. “He died in his sleep. He was hale and hearty at dinner, but at dawn my mother woke beside a corpse. Everyone said his face was twisted in pain and horror, as if he’d been dragged away by Hel herself.”

Who was Hel? Not the time to ask, I supposed.

Pain and horror, though . . . Poison? “It was a natural death, no question of anything else?”

She shook her head. “My mother was beside him all through the night.”

A poison taken earlier could have taken time to have effect. Or Childeric’s queen could have been part of the murder, if it happened during the night. Smothered with a pillow, perhaps?

But what queen would kill her king and risk losing all her power? And if the queen was the ash-haired woman I’d seen—I assumed she was—then she did not look physically strong enough to overcome a burly, battle-hardened warrior like Childeric, no matter how snoringly drunk. She would have had to have help.

If so, who? Who possibly had anything to gain from Childeric’s death?

I don’t know why I was even thinking about it. He’d died in his bed, and if the Franks were content with that, I should be, too.

A lie. Of course I knew why I was thinking about it, and why it mattered to me. Because of my prediction, everyone had been expecting him to die. Someone may have taken advantage of that.

I hoped to the gods that that person had not been Clovis.