Barbarian’s Concubine

Audofleda brought me to another part of the palace, to Clovis’s rooms, where she left me with a tray of food and a flask of wine. I asked her to take Bone to Terix, which she reluctantly agreed to do. Left unsaid was my reason: I didn’t think Bone would react well to what Clovis and I might do when we were alone together.

Not that I was planning on that. Or even wanted it with the coldhearted bastard. But. The possibility was there. I didn’t trust myself not to be persuaded to forgive everything he’d done. My heart wanted to believe he was sorry, even while my wits told me he had no regrets.

Clovis’s rooms were much like Audofleda’s, only with less embroidery and more weaponry. His tastes ran to animal furs and battle axes, although I did discover a small casket of jeweled fibulae, gold chains, and gem-inlaid buckles, so he was not without vanity . . . or was he? The jewels might be more to show his rank than to display a personal preference. His clothing—I couldn’t resist a quick paw through it—was finely woven, richly dyed, and ornamented, but I suspected that someone else had chosen it for him. It didn’t feel like him. Left to his own devices, I suspected he would wear plain leather and wool: clothes he wouldn’t have to waste thought or care on.

After eating as much as my nervous stomach could take, I poured a goblet of wine and sat on a fur-covered bench by an open window, to wait. It was late in the day now, and the sun was on the other side of the palace, leaving the large courtyard below in purple shadow. I could see one side of the great hall from my seat, and hear the noise of revelry within: the wooden walls acted as a sounding box, vibrating with voices, and expanding the noise until it filled the twilight. I was glad not to be inside, where the emotional impact of such a cacophony would be overwhelming.

Being left alone, however, gave me too much time to think.

Did Clovis want me?

Had he ever wanted me, really?

Was he glad I was here?

Would he try to use me for his own ends, again?

Was there a future for us?

Would he ever consider wedding me?

I pressed my palm to my brow at that last question. Of course he wouldn’t consider wedding me. He was a prince, perhaps to be a king. He would marry to form an alliance, the more powerful the better. I would be a dreamy-headed idiot to think otherwise.

Unless . . .

Unless my ability to see the future grew so strong that my value to Clovis became even greater than that of an alliance with another tribe. Then might he seek to wed me, to secure my allegiance?

I pressed a second palm to my face, and shook my head. Nimia, Nimia, you silly, desperate girl. You’d sell your usefulness to him, and expect him to buy it with his love, as if love were a coin a person could draw from his purse and spend where he pleased. But love didn’t work that way, I didn’t think; at least, not the type of love that I wanted. I wanted it to sweep over him; to ruin his sleep; to make him insane with wanting me.

I would take nothing less.

Liar.

I took a gulp of wine and tried not to think. It was getting me nowhere, except close to losing my self-respect.

Time slipped by and the skies darkened. I regretted sending Bone away, and berated myself for assuming I’d be romping in the sheets with Clovis by now. Eventually I lay down across Clovis’s bed, with its wood head and footboards carved in interlocking animal designs. I sank into the soft feather mattress and dozed, swathed in self-loathing.

The sounds of a door opening and footsteps stirred me from my semi-slumber and I turned my head toward the door and opened my eyes. Lamplight spilled in the doorway from the other room, and then Clovis was there, silhouetted against the light, his lean, square-shouldered form unmistakable. I pushed myself up on one arm, and stared, waiting, afraid to make a fool of myself with anything I might say.

“You’re too thin,” he said. “And I liked your hair better when it reached your arse. I dreamt about that hair.”

“I should have saved it, after Terix cut it off with a knife. I could have woven it into a rope for you to go hang yourself with.”

Another head appeared over Clovis’s shoulder. “She’s an angry little kitten, isn’t she?” a woman said.

I sucked in a breath, embarrassed to have my ill-tempered words heard by another.

“She has some right to be,” Clovis said.

“Then you shall have to take her clawing without complaint, and seek to win back her favor. You should know better than to treat a lady poorly: you can have no greater enemy, nor greater ally, than an intelligent woman. Isn’t that true, my dear?” the woman said to me, moving Clovis aside and coming into the bedchamber. She carried a lamp, which she set on a table.

She was the ash-haired woman, regal and stone-faced, though she tried to soften her expression with a smile. I did not mistake the evaluating look she gave me, her gaze running from my hair to my feet, then back to my face, taking in what evidence of my character was visible there. This was a queen, and one who knew her power. I felt myself quail before her, though I tried to hold myself erect. She would pounce upon weakness, I sensed.

“I have been in no position to judge the truth of that,” I said. “Certainly I’ve never known of a man who believed it.”

“Or perhaps you’ve known only Roman men, who have always struck me as a particularly shortsighted breed; though I had assumed more perception to reside in Sygarius’s head.”

“I do not think it was my intelligence that interested him.”

She laughed.

“Mother, this is Nimia,” Clovis said in belated introduction. “Nimia, my mother, Basina, the queen of the Franks.”

I found my wits and scrambled off the bed, curtseying low with my head bowed almost to the floor.

“You do that most prettily,” Basina said. “I would that you could teach Audofleda such grace of movement. Rise, Nimia.”

I did, and found that I came only to her chin in height. Fine lines etched her face, and her waist had thickened with age, but these physical signs of the passing years, which in another might have signaled decline, only emphasized her steely strength. I found myself wishing that someday I might radiate as much confidence as did she, and have the power to face the world unflinching.

“We shall talk later. I wanted to meet this sorceress of Clovis’s before leaving him to you. Be gentle with your claws, Nimia.” She smiled. “But not too gentle.”

She left us, and left me wondering what she’d seen—or not seen—in me, that she had no fears of leaving her son with a supposed sorceress; and one with a grudge against her son, at that.

I must look a weak thing to her.

As I was.

I looked at Clovis. He looked back. He looked as uncertain as I, too, felt. Were his feelings for me as confused as mine for him?

That would assume he’d had feelings for me to begin with.

“You’re not going to cry again, are you?” he asked. “I’d rather you punched me, or came at me with a knife. You could even set your dog on me. Just don’t start sobbing again.”

“Is that an admission that you’d deserve whatever I did to you?”

He came closer, and looked down at me. He seemed to have grown taller, larger, in the few months we’d been apart. Or perhaps it was something in his stance that said he was not quite as young today as he had been then. “It was only a small shift of blame for your deflowering, from myself to my father. The deflowering itself was more your doing than mine, so I don’t know that you have so much to be angry with me for.”

“Oh, but I do. I was able to feign virginity for Sygarius. He wouldn’t have known otherwise, except for that poisonous note you left for him.”

I watched his face as the information sank in. Surprise, a flicker of curiosity, and then a wary consideration, as if he’d never thought that I might be capable of such a trick. “What did Sygarius do to punish you?”

“We didn’t give him the chance to do anything. Terix helped me to escape before he got the note.”

He reached out and touched my cheek. I shied, then held still, letting him stroke his fingertips along my jaw. They left a trail of tingling sensation. “I’m glad you escaped harm. And glad that you came to me. I’ll protect you from him; that’s why you came, isn’t it?”

I nodded. If that was the only reason he could imagine, I wouldn’t tell him otherwise. It was not for me to lay out the idiocy of my own heart, which had—if I were honest—been secretly delighted that I was forced to come to him.

“You couldn’t have come at a better time. I need you, Nimia.”

My heart leaped. I put my hand over his, on my cheek. He put his other arm around my waist and drew me close, until my hips were pressed against him. My body began to melt. He slid his hand from my cheek into my hair, his fingers cupping the back of my head. He lowered his mouth and brushed his lips against mine, a gentle, teasing caress that had me gripping the front of his tunic and rising up on my toes, seeking more.

“I need your visions,” he said against my mouth.

I pushed back, my palms flat on his chest. The hurt struck deep and fast. “That’s what you need me for?”

“No one else can do what you can do. Why else would I need you?”

The flush in my cheeks, and my lowered eyes, told him some of what I’d been thinking.

“I can fuck anyone, Nimia. Never mistake that for being special.”

I hadn’t. But for a brief moment I’d believed he cared about me; that I was someone with whom he could share the secrets of his heart. That he sought sanctuary from his troubles in me.

Were all females as quick to believe in fantasies as I, and as slow to learn the truth even when it repeatedly struck one on the face?

I squirmed in his arms, wanting out of his comforting hold. I fought against myself as much as against him. His grip tightened. “Let me go.”

“No.”

“I can’t help you. I have no control over my visions.”

“You must.”

I shook my head, still straining against him. Still wanting him to hold tight.

“Nimia, if you care about me at all . . .”

I looked up at him.

“You hold my life in your hands,” he said. “I will be king, or I will be bones in the mud, next to my father. There is no middle road for me. Whether I choose it or not, I must be king if I am to live.”

“I do not cast spells or lay curses. My visions will change nothing of what will happen. The Fates control that, not I.”

“How can you know?”

I blinked, surprised by the question. I couldn’t know, not really. “I feel that to be true.”

“But you don’t know it. Have you ever tried to change what will come to pass?”

I shook my head. It had never occurred to me. I felt too much as if I was grasping at wisps of magic as it was, trying only to glimpse the future.

“No matter. The visions are enough. Look how you foretold my father’s death, and it came to pass. I didn’t wholly believe you, but your vision allowed me to set plans in motion, and line up allies, before he died. I would be in dire straits had I not done so.” He put his mouth close to my ear and whispered, “Thank you, for that. Your vision made all the difference.” He touched my earlobe with the tip of his tongue, and then trailed his lips down the side of my neck, coming to rest at the tender place where neck joined shoulder. I felt his tongue swirling against my skin, pressing hard enough to send a liquid river of sensation down to my loins, where it pooled.

I struggled to think. “Clovis . . .”

He put a hand to my breast, cupping it, his thumb playing over my nipple through the fabric. His arm around my waist pressed me against him, and I felt the hard, thick ridge of his arousal. He tilted his hips, gently thrusting against me, and my thighs lost all strength. They wanted to open for him.

“Will you help me, Nimia?” he said against my neck. “Will you seek a vision, in hopes that I might live?”

“You’re halfway to giving me one now,” I said, clinging to him.

He chuckled, the vibration of his amusement pulsing through my chest.

“I’m not joking,” I said, as he pushed the neckline of the gown down over my shoulder, trapping one arm and baring one of my breasts. He dragged his tongue along my collarbone, then down over the mound of my breast. He closed the hot wet heat of his mouth over my nipple, and my knees bent, unable to hold me. I dug my hands into his silky hair. “The visions come sometimes when I dance, or play music. But most of all, it’s when this is happening, when I feel this pleasure. When I lose all sense of myself and my body comes alive, that’s when the visions come.”

His lips stilled on my breast, and then he straightened, and met my eyes. I read disbelief in them. “All I have to do is fuck you? Then you must have had a vision the first time we did this. What was it?”

I bit my lip and shook my head. “No vision.”

“Why not?”

“It hurt.”

He stiffened, his cheeks coloring with the first sign of embarrassment I’d ever seen in him. “You mean I was a bad lover.”

I put my hand on his shoulder, soothing him. “It was my first time. It couldn’t have gone otherwise.”

He looked away, unwilling to take this salve to his pride. “Did you have one when Sygarius took you?”

“They drugged me; I wasn’t myself.”

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“Both,” I admitted, getting angry. Was he jealous? “Everything was jumbled; I couldn’t see clearly. The images came and went too quickly.”

“So you enjoyed what he did to you. Even though you were his slave and had no choice, you enjoyed it.”

Clovis had no right to judge anything I had done with Sygarius. Screw his tender male pride: I had my pride, too. “Yes, I enjoyed it. Sygarius made certain it was an experience like nothing I’d ever have again. He wanted me unable to imagine any rod but his inside me; for me to see his mentula and become wet with desire. For him, I’d happily go down on all fours and—”

He pressed his hand over my mouth. “Stop it! I don’t want to picture you with him.”

I stared at him until he removed his hand, and then I threw his earlier words back at him. “Don’t ever mistake my having fucked him for being special.”

We glared at each other.

“Clovis, how did your father die?”

“In bed.”

“But of what?”

“Everyone believes that you laid a curse upon him.”

I shook my head, impatient. “We both know that isn’t true.”

“It could have been. Whether you knew it or not, you might have had the power.”

“No.” I couldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t believe it. “Surely I would know if I were influencing events. I wouldn’t feel so passive, when I have my visions. I need to know: how did he die?”

“Why? Why do you need to know?” He lowered his hands to my buttocks and massaged them, pulling them up and apart and then down again, the motion tugging at my secret folds, and letting me feel the parting of my gates, as if they were being held open for him. “I don’t want to argue with you, Nimia. Or talk about my father’s death. There are better ways to spend the time.” His mouth went back to work on my shoulder, my breast. “Whether you have a vision or not, I want you on your back, naked, your thighs parted, your sex swollen and waiting. I want to feel you tight around me as I sink inside you.”

My ability to think floated away. His fingertips were so close to my entrance, my folds, my stamen. I wanted to feel them against me. In me. “I need to know about your father’s death because . . . because . . .” He pulled up the hem of my borrowed gown and I felt his callused palm against the back of one thigh, his strong fingers reaching inward to caress the soft pad of flesh inside the top of my thigh.

“Because?”

Gods, my thoughts were scattered in the wind. I forced them back, and forced words to my tongue. This was too important. “I fear someone may have killed him, because of my vision. That they saw my vision as an opportunity.”

“That would bother you?” he murmured over my nipple.

“Of course! I don’t want to feel responsible for his death. And I do, I’m not sure why, but I do.”

“If the Fates are in control as you say, then he would have died one way or the other.”

Were the Fates in total control? If so, then all our lives were already written, and as time passed we discovered ourselves piece by piece, as if listening to an old story for the first time. Each choice we made was only an illusion, our decision already known if we could but see the whole tale. Why then the striving, and the struggles? To what end? What would be, would be.

I couldn’t accept that. My thirst for life and for freedom had buoyed me as we fled from Sygarius. I had felt a hundred times that it was my choice whether I collapsed and gave myself up, or whether I put my foot once more forward, and continued to fight for a life of my own.

Clovis scooped me up in his arms and carried me back to his bed, and laid me down upon the woolen coverlet. He started to undress me, undoing all the work of Audofleda and her maid. I put my hands over his on the copper girdle, stopping him from unfastening it.

If I couldn’t accept that the Fates had already determined all, then that meant my visions did have the power to influence events, the same as I could change this present moment by succumbing to Clovis, or holding him at arm’s length.

“Tell me how Childeric died.”

The golden lamplight painted his features, casting shadows and polishing cheekbones, and catching like strands of sunlight in his short beard and long hair. His eyes, however, were as cold and pale a blue as a winter sky. I felt again the rushing of knowing what I’d felt the first time I saw him: this man was part of my destiny. As he gazed at me without expression, his thoughts unreadable, I felt a chill run over my skin. If not for that inexplicable knowing, I would have feared what harm he might do me. I would never have given myself to him, nor sought him out.

Gods help me if that knowing was wrong, and I in truth knew nothing of what would be between us. From the way he was looking at me at that moment, I should have thought love an impossibility for him, and even affection an unlikely emotion.

“You did curse my father,” he said, “the moment you told your vision. We all heard; we all knew what it meant. Whether your vision was real or false, whether Sygarius had told you to tell such a tale or not, my father’s fate was sealed, and he knew it. No true Frank would let such an opportunity go by: a sorceress, proclaiming Childeric’s kingship at an end! Everyone would believe it was meant to be. Even he began to believe it. The only question was when, and by whose hand. The knowledge haunted him. Weakened him. He became fearful, timid. His men began to think that it would be better if he were taken out and a stronger man put in his place.”

“You know who killed him.”

“You know who killed him.”

I shook my head, a feeling of dread rising up within me. Dread, because I feared he was right.

“It’s why you’ve been so persistent in asking: you already know the truth.”

“I don’t.” I clung to denial, not wanting to believe it.

He lay his full length against my side, one leg over mine, holding me in place while his fingertips traced over the links of the girdle: across my waist, over my hip bone, down to the valley of my sex, where he pressed the metal against my sex, hard, almost hurting me before releasing the links and resuming his casual stroking of my belly. “Our tribe of Franks, the Salians, are only one among several, each with their own leader. There is no king of kings among the Franks, uniting our tribes, though we need one if we’re to take Gaul. My father had long ceded any attempt to be that king of kings. Our brother tribes are both our rivals and our allies, and as Childeric weakened, they grew bolder. There were rumors that Danoweg, of the River Franks, wanted to bring the Salians under his banner. He wanted to be our king. With Childeric as weak as he was, there were plenty who would have abandoned us to fight under a stronger man; a man who might go on to lead all the Franks. I couldn’t allow that to happen. I couldn’t let him take the destiny that is meant to be mine.”

“But Childeric was your father,” I said. Clovis’s winter eyes showed no emotion, and a chill filled my gut. He’d murdered the man who gave him life. “Your family. Your mother’s husband, your sister’s father. There is no bond stronger than that of family.”

“The Salians are my family. I had to cut off the diseased limb before it killed us all.”

Clovis pulled up the hem of my gown, his hand sliding up my bare thigh. He shifted his body so that he was half on top of me, his leg wedging my thighs apart. I lay still, too stunned by what he’d revealed, and too frightened of what he was, to move.

“Does your mother know?” I managed to ask, my voice hoarse.

He chuckled. “She held his arms down while I smothered him. My mother despises weakness.” His thumb stroked the soft flesh of my inner thigh, then brushed over the crest of my folds, sending a shiver of sensation through my sex even as I cringed inside. The hand that stroked me had murdered the one man whom he should have defended unto death.

“If I had known what would come of it,” I said, “I would have done all in my power to speak not a word.”

He came fully over me, both his legs between mine, the gown now pushed up to my waist, baring my body. He rested his elbows to either side of my arms, caging me under him. He still wore his short leather breeches beneath his tunic, and I felt the slickness of the tanned leather as he pressed the hard ridge of his staff against my tender sex. “You have no need to apologize, Nimia. I hadn’t meant to take the kingship from him so early, true, and I would rather have had a few more years to build both my name and alliances. I know I’m young to rule; too young, in many eyes. Fortune had her own plans, though, and it was either take the opportunity your prophecy gave me, or lose everything. I’m not upset with you for forcing my hand.”

“I wasn’t apologizing for that.” I thought of Childeric as I had seen him, a bluff, hearty man who had leered at me with healthy lust, drunk deeply of his wine, and laughed with his men. Regret and a great sadness welled up within me. If not for me, he would still be leading his soldiers, a confident, comfortable man who’d found his contentment in life and worked with Sygarius to keep Soissons safe from the Visigoths. Tears spilled out the corners of my eyes and dripped down my temples. “I’m sorry that my words destroyed your father. I’m sorry for the tragedy my prophecy wrought. I should never speak another.”

“The gods gave you such a gift to use it,” Clovis said, and nuzzled my neck. “They want you to use it for me.”

I shook my head, and pulled my arms up from my sides and pressed my hands to his chest, trying to push him away. “No.”

“Why else should we be together, now? It was fated. I need your visions, Nimia. I need one tonight.”

“I won’t do it. I won’t sentence another man to death.”

He pressed his hand down over my sex, his long fingers sliding the length of my folds until one tip pressed at my outer gates. He swirled it there, gathering moisture. “You’ll give me a prophecy.”

“No. Stop it, Clovis. Get off me. Don’t touch me.” I struggled under him.

“Shh,” he soothed, even as he used his weight and his strength to keep me pinned. “Shh. I’m not going to hurt you; you know that would be of no use to me. It will be pleasure I give you, until you see what I need to know.”

“It’s wrong. I won’t do it.”

His finger dipped within me. I squirmed under him, trying to get away from his unwanted touch, but he held me down and his finger slid deeper, deeper, and then curled upward, thrumming a hidden spot in my passage that I hadn’t known to exist, and sending shimmers of sensation out through my sex. I sucked in a breath.

Clovis licked my neck, and then whispered in my ear, “Whatever gave you the idea that you had a choice?”