Taken in revenge!

Aric the Ruthless is consumed by his need for vengeance. And so he takes his enemy’s widowed daughter, Lady Fearn, as his slave... His fiery captive may fight him at first, but he knows he will soon tempt her into his bed!

Fearn’s marriage brought her only fear and pain, but powerful Viking Aric is nothing like her cruel husband. And as her captor’s seduction awakens her to new sensations, dare she hope this ferocious warrior could become the husband she deserves?

‘This,’ he said softly, ‘will be good. Here we have peace and privacy, and time for you to discover things you could not have imagined.’

‘You are arrogant!’ she whispered.

‘Sure of myself, yes, and sure of you too. I doubt you’ve ever been told that you’re the loveliest woman in all England. But I’ve seen how men’s eyes follow you.’

‘Lust. That’s all.’

‘Let go of your anger. This is more than simple lust. I want you because you’re a match for me. Courageous, fierce, passionate, impetuous. You have the body of a goddess, made for loving, and I can give you pleasure if only you’ll allow it. Let me show you.’

Author Note

Whilst I am interested in most periods of British history, I find the overlapping of the early Celtic, Viking and Anglo-Saxon eras particularly fascinating. It is not the violence, battles and bloodshed that intrigue me most, but the position of women in those societies. They were obliged to balance their own desires and needs against those of husbands, fathers, the decrees of society, the King and religion. The constraints must have been enormous and yet we know there were women who managed to make things work in their favour.

This is why I like to make my heroines women who rise above the difficulties in which they find themselves, become stronger as a result, and find love in the most unlikely circumstances. After all, to most British women there can be few more unlikely circumstances than being caught up in a series of conflicts as world-changing as those between the tenth-century Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings of Denmark.

My story may be a work of fiction, but I believe there must have been situations not unlike this one which did not claim the attention of the chroniclers. I like to think that in this small way I am redressing the balance.

Captive of the Viking

Juliet Landon

www.millsandboon.co.uk

JULIET LANDON has a keen interest in art and history—both of which she used to teach. She particularly enjoys researching the early medieval, Tudor and Regency periods, and the problems encountered by women in a man’s world. Born in North Yorkshire, she now lives in a Hampshire village close to her family. Her first books, which were on embroidery and design, were published under her own name of Jan Messent.

Books by Juliet Landon

Mills & Boon Historical Romance

At the Tudor Court

Betrayed, Betrothed and Bedded

Taming the Tempestuous Tudor

Stand-Alone Novels

The Widow’s Bargain

The Bought Bride

His Duty, Her Destiny

The Warlord’s Mistress

A Scandalous Mistress

Dishonour and Desire

The Rake’s Unconventional Mistress

Marrying the Mistress

Slave Princess

Mistress Masquerade

Captive of the Viking

Collaboration with the National Trust

Scandalous Innocent

Visit the Author Profile page

at millsandboon.co.uk for more titles.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Author Note

Title Page

About the Author

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Epilogue

Author Afterword

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

The year 993—Jorvik, now known as York

Even at that early hour of the day, a dense pall of smoke lay over the thatched rooftops of Jorvik like a grey blanket filtering upwards into the haze of dawn. The furnace was already roaring from the blacksmith’s workshop, from the glassmakers and potters, the bakers and the moneyer, whose task was no less exacting than the swordsmith’s. The Lady Fearn and her young maid, Haesel, kept to the path on the outer edge of the city and soon came to the river from where, for safety, the merchants’ ships had been moored upriver well away from the main wharves and the warehouses. They rocked gently on the brown water as the ferryman pulled his boat into the bank just as the two women reached it.

‘Morning, lady,’ he called. ‘You not taking the bridge, then?’

The bridge over the River Ouse was close by the wharves, now deserted in readiness for a fleet of Viking longships that had been reported entering the Humber Estuary two days ago. The merchant ships would be an obvious target. Fearn chose not to answer him. ‘Can you take us across, Gaut?’ she said. ‘We’re bound for Clementhorpe.’

Last evening, she and Haesel had put the last few stitches into a pile of linen smocks for the invalids at the little nunnery where frail and elderly townsfolk were nursed through their illnesses by twelve devoted Benedictine nuns. As the foster daughter of Earl Thored of Northumbria, Fearn did not intend an imminent Viking raid to prevent her acts of charity.

* * *

The nunnery at Clementhorpe was little more than a cluster of thatched huts, animal sheds, a larger infirmary and a church with a shingled roof situated on the very edge of Jorvik. The dense woodland sheltered pigs beyond the plots where two cows and their calves grazed, where an orchard, herb garden and neat rows of vegetables were tended by soft-spoken women in serviceable long kirtles of undyed wool. Their noble birth counted for very little here, all of them being known as ‘sister’ except Mother Bridget, the founder of the nunnery.

‘Welcome, my dears,’ she said, taking the bundles from them. ‘This is so kind of you. I hope, my lady, the Earl doesn’t mind your coming here so often.’ Her voice held an Irish lilt that set all her words to music.

Fearn smiled at her concern. Earl Thored had been baptised as a Christian, but found it difficult to shake off the advantages offered by his former paganism, believing that to call on the services of several well-tried-and-tested gods was of great help in times of emergency. The priest had done what he could to explain the meaning of sin, but so far without an unqualified success. ‘He doesn’t mind at all, Mother,’ Fearn said, following the nun into the warm interior of one of the larger houses. A fire glowed in a central hearth and two nuns stood over by one wall, working at a large upright loom taut with white woollen threads, their hands working in unison, lifting, beating, passing the shuttle. ‘He has other things on his mind,’ she added. ‘Messengers are reporting to him day and night since the Danes were sighted.’

‘He’s sure they’re Danes, then? Not Norse?’ She indicated cushioned stools and went to a bench from where she poured buttermilk into three earthenware beakers. Handing one to Fearn, she could not help but look directly at Fearn’s beautiful features: the thick black curls escaping from the white veil and gold circlet, at the black eyelashes and brows that framed her most unusual feature, her eyes, one of which was a deep mossy green, the other as blue as a bluebell. She would have been uncommonly lovely even without this strangeness, but with it, her beauty was like a magnet that held the gaze of anyone who looked on her.

Mother Bridget had hoped she would come this morning, having spent the night in prayer for her safety. One look at the woman would put her in mortal danger, for the Vikings, Danes and Norse, were renowned for their unbridled ferocity towards women. Fearn and Haesel would stand no chance against them.

‘Sure to be Danish,’ Fearn said after a sip of the cool liquid. ‘Swein Forkbeard’s men. Coming for another pay-off. He’ll not damage Jorvik again when more than half the city is made up of his own people, will he? I doubt they’ll be doing much raiding this time, Mother.’

The Reverend Mother put her beaker to one side, only her years of discipline preventing her from showing her fear. She had, after all, lived close to fear for most of her life. ‘Fearn,’ she said, as emphatically as her musical voice would allow. ‘Listen to me.’

‘I always do, Mother.’

‘Yes, but this is especially important, my dear. Whatever these men are coming for, we women are in some danger and you more than any of us. You must know what I mean. It’s taken our little community years to recover after the last time, but I refuse to run away, for then what would happen to those we care for? But if you’re right about them coming only for payment to cease their raiding, then I still believe the safest place for you and Haesel would be out there in the woods, hiding until they’ve gone. Once you show your faces in the Earl’s hall, they will want you as well as money. Stay here out of the way, I beg you.’

It was difficult for Fearn not to be moved by Mother Bridget’s concern. Such fear for her welfare was rarely shown these days, particularly not by Fearn’s husband, Barda, one of her foster father’s chosen warriors. A boastful, swaggering bully of a man, he had adopted the new Christian religion only in order to marry her, not for any other reason. Yet Fearn used his name now in the hope of persuading her blessed hostess of a better protection, knowing how he would put up a fight to protect anything that was his. Even his horse. ‘I am grateful to you, Mother. Truly I am. But I will not hide like a fugitive when there are so many of the Earl’s men to protect me. And Barda. He would not allow them to take me. Whatever else he is capable of, he would prefer not to lose me. Please stop worrying.’

Even as she said his name, all three women’s minds turned to what else he was capable of. Violence towards his wife, for one thing. Mother Bridget had seen the weals on Fearn’s body when she’d come here for treatment. Love was not something Fearn had ever felt for a man and Barda did not know the meaning of the word.

A reluctant sigh left Mother Bridget’s wrinkled lips along with a shake of her head. ‘Well,’ she said, softly, ‘I didn’t really expect you to agree, my dear. Is there nothing I could say that might persuade you?’

‘I could leave Haesel with you, being so young.’

‘Thank you, but, no!’ Haesel said, suffering two surprised stares. ‘I’m sorry, mistress, but I shall not leave you. The Reverend Mother must know that.’

‘Of course I do, child. Lady Fearn knows it, too. Let’s just hope her possessive husband is as loyal as you are. Does he know you’ve come here? Last time, you were in some trouble, I remember.’

Fearn smiled, ruefully. ‘The Earl sent him off with two others to find out what they could. They’ll be following the river up towards the coast. They may even have returned by now with some news.’

‘In which case, love, you had better drink up and head back to the hall. And think again about what I’ve said. You’ll get no better advice.’ Especially, she thought, from that obnoxious pair, Fearn’s mother-in-law and her foster mother, neither of whom had displayed any motherly traits towards Fearn, whose entry into their lives was a constant source of jealousy. ‘I’ll come with you as far as the river,’ she said, taking their empty beakers.

* * *

The River Ouse flowed deep and wide past the end of the nunnery’s orchard on its way to the Humber Estuary and the North Sea. Usually so clamorous with men’s shouts, dogs barking, the clang of hammers and children’s squealing, the river path opposite the workshops seemed eerily quiet as if the city were holding its breath. Haesel had stopped on the track and was facing in the wrong direction, towards the sun, now well risen but hazy, her body rigid with apprehension. ‘What is it?’ Fearn called. ‘You see something?’

‘Smell,’ Haesel said without turning round. ‘Can you smell it?’

Fearn and Mother Bridget lifted their heads to sniff. ‘Smoke,’ they whispered. ‘That’s not Jorvik smoke.’ Their eyes strained into the distance where lay several small villages along the banks of the river where plumes of white and dark grey smoke rose almost vertically into the sky pierced by sharp spears of flame. ‘It’s them!’ Fearn said. ‘Oh, may God have mercy on us. They are raiding. They’ll be here in no time at all. We must run. Warn Earl Thored. Quick! Run! Mother Bridget...go back! Go!’

The elderly nun balked, fearful not for herself but for the two lovely women who now seemed closer than ever to her worst predictions. ‘Fearn, please come back with me...don’t go...be one of us...hide in the woods...it’s safer...’ The two, old and young, clung together, parted and clung again.

‘No, Mother. They’ll not ravage the city again. Now, go quickly. I’ll send a message when they’ve gone. Hurry!’ she called, already running with Haesel towards the ferry. ‘May God protect you.’

But Mother Bridget did not run and, as Fearn looked back to see, she was standing on the path with both hands holding her head. The masts of the boats would soon be seen rounding the bend of the river—that was certain.

Expecting Gaut to be manning the ferry, as before, they were horrified to see that he had deserted it, though fortunately the boat was on their side of the river. They took an oar each, fumbling and rattling them in the rowlocks to bring them into some kind of unison which, in more normal circumstances, would have made them double up with helpless laughter. But not this time, for the current was strong enough to push the boat further down the bank than the jetty, making it impossible for them to clamber out without wading up to their knees in muddy water. Their walk along the path up to that corner of the city known as Earlsbrough, where the great Hall of the Earls was situated, was by no means as dignified as their exit had been one hour earlier. And to make matters worse, their arrival through a small opening in the enclosure was seen and intercepted by her two most critical relatives, horrified to see the two muddy young women with wet gowns clinging to their legs. Catla, her mother-in-law, and Hilda, her foster mother, wife of Earl Thored.

Having been advised more than once by the priest that a little subservience in her manner towards these two would not come amiss, on occasion, Fearn decided that now was not the time, with a Viking raid imminent. ‘Yes...yes, I know,’ she said to Catla, ‘but never mind the mess. Where is Earl Thored? There are raiders coming up the river and they’re not far away. Is he in the hall?’

‘If you mean the Danes,’ Catla said, icily, ‘your foster father has already been informed, so there was no need for you to act the heroine and be the first to tell him so. The situation is well under control.’ Her lined face registered a cold dislike of her daughter-in-law.

‘He knows?’ Fearn said. ‘Then Barda has returned?’

‘No, he has not, yet. But when he does, he’d better not see you looking like that, had he? Now I suggest you go inside and get that maid of yours to earn her keep and tend you, instead of playing silly water games. I have a mind to have her whipped.’

‘You’ll do no such thing, Catla. She probably saved me from drowning.’

With looks of deep disapproval, Catla and Hilda turned away, but not before making sure that Fearn heard Catla’s parting shot. ‘Pity,’ she muttered.

Fearn had never been under any illusions about the woman’s hostility towards her, but this undisguised malice stung, especially when women were expected to support and comfort each other in times of crisis. All the same, she could hardly subdue a leap of guilty relief at the news of Barda’s continued absence. The longer he took to do his scouting, the easier she would feel, but she refused to imagine what might be the reason, for that was a dangerous path to tread.

Waiting until the two older women were out of sight, Fearn went directly to the great hall where Earl Thored would give her the latest news. Her skirts still clung to her legs and her bootees squelched on the wooden floor as she approached, though her efforts not to attract attention to herself were rarely successful. For one thing, few women were allowed to take part in any discussion unless they had a role to play and, for another thing, so many of the Earl’s men desired her that it was asking too much of them not to be affected by her presence, dripping wet or not.

The great hall was by far the largest hall in Jorvik, even larger than the wooden church of St. Peter nearby. Massive wooden pillars held up the roof beams carved with grotesque faces and interlace patterns, the walls almost entirely covered with colourful embroidered hangings, with weapons, shields and polished helmets, decorative but functional, too. Earl Thored half-sat on the edge of a trestle table surrounded by some of his personal thegns, men of property, influence and loyalty, well dressed and well-armed. Their deep voices overlapped, but Thored’s was the one they listened to, authoritative and compelling. ‘I tell you,’ he was saying as Fearn approached, ‘they’ll not raid Jorvik this time. It’s wealth they’re after, not our land or property.’

‘But, my lord,’ one of the men protested, ‘they’re burning already. Why would they do that to the villages and not here?’

‘To show us what we’ll get if we don’t pay them off,’ Thored said as if he’d already made that point. ‘Scaring tactics. They’ll be looking for provisions, too. But I shall not bargain with them like a common merchant on the wharf. They must come up here if they want payment. They can carry it down to the ships themselves. Is Arlen the Moneyer here?’

‘Here, my lord,’ said Arlen from the back of the group.

‘Good. Start filling sacks with coin, then have it brought here.’

‘How many...how much?’

‘In Thor’s name, man!’ Thored shouted. ‘How do I know? Just prepare for the worst. These devils won’t go away without fleecing us for every last penny—that much I do know. Get that young lad of yours to help. He’ll have to learn the new way of fighting, though I’m ashamed to see them off in this fashion. I’d rather do it with a sword in my hand, but we don’t have their numbers and that son-in-law of mine hasn’t yet made up his mind how to deal with the problem.’ There were murmurs of agreement and dissatisfaction, too, but no open criticism of King Ethelred’s wavering policies, apart from that of his father-in-law. Then Thored caught sight of Fearn standing beside one of the oak pillars. ‘Ah, Lady Fearn, you’ll be wanting to hear news of your man. I’m as puzzled as you are. It doesn’t usually take three men two days to glean some news of the enemy. Well, we don’t need them now when we can see for ourselves where they are and what they’re doing. He’ll be back. Don’t worry.’

‘Thank you, my lord. I shall stay well out of sight until then,’ she said, turning to go.

‘No, I want you here. You can add some colour to the discussions, eh? Ye gods, woman! Where have you been?’ he bellowed, catching sight of her lower half as the group parted.

‘The ferry, my lord. Gaut was not there to row us. My maid and I—’ She got no further with her explanation before her voice was drowned by politely sympathetic laughter tinged with a masculine superiority in matters of river craft.

Pushing a fist beneath his moustache to stifle his laughter, Thored’s blue eyes creased into the weathered wrinkles of his skin. ‘Then you’d better go and change into something more worthy of a noblewoman, my lady. The Danes will not have anything as good to show us, I’ll swear. Go by the kitchens and tell them to prepare mead, beor and ale for us and our guests. The least we can do is to drink them legless.’ Unconsciously, his large hand stole upwards to grasp the solid-silver Thor’s-hammer pendant that hung from a leather thong around his neck. ‘Now, I need three of you to go down to the wharf and wait, then escort their leaders up here. And where’s the harpist? And the scribe? Let’s show the ruffians some culture while we’re about it.’

* * *

Passing the kitchen building, Fearn relayed the Earl’s orders, knowing that on her next entry into the hall, an army of servants would have attended to every detail, relying on his word that the Danes would be there to bargain, not to wreck. Inside the confines of her own thatched dwelling, she found that Haesel had anticipated her needs, laying out an indigo-dyed woollen kirtle to be worn over a fine linen shift that showed at the neckline, wrists and hem. Fearn had worked gold thread embroidery along all the edges that glittered discreetly as she moved, picking up the deeper solid gold and amethyst of the circular pin that held the neckline together. Her circlet of patterned gold and garnets was one of several she owned, but when she asked Haesel to pass her jewel casket, she discovered that it had been packed, along with extra clothes and shoes in a lined leather bag, the kind used for travelling. ‘What’s this about?’ she asked her maid.

Haesel sat down on the fur-covered bed and looked pensively at her mistress, obviously finding it difficult to give a convincing explanation.

‘Haesel? Have you been seeing things again?’ Fearn said. ‘Tell me.’

‘It’s not easy to know what I see and what I think I see, lady. I don’t know what it means, but we were travelling, and there was a strong wind...blowing...you needed your cloak, but you were wearing the one you made for your husband. So I packed...well...everything I thought you’d need...and...’

‘Wait a moment! You say I’m wearing Barda’s new cloak? But he’s taken it with him.’

‘Yes, lady. That’s what I don’t understand. Unless he allows you to wear it.’

Fearn looked at her maid in silence. As a mere sixteen-year-old, she had served Fearn for the last four years when her family’s house caught fire. Her father had been a potter on Coppergate, but the kiln had exploded and Haesel had been the only one to survive, albeit with severe burns to one arm and the side of her throat. Her mass of fair curls had now grown back and the sweet prettiness of her features more than compensated for the wrinkled red skin that she usually managed to hide under the white veil swathed around her neck. Fearn had soon discovered that Haesel possessed a strange talent for seeing into the future, though it was often rather difficult to make out how the information related to events, as it did now when Barda’s cloak was not in Fearn’s possession. By now, however, Fearn had learnt to take the predictions seriously, although they were both enigmatic and quite rare. ‘So what have you packed, and where shall we be going?’ she said.

‘Your jewels, clothes, shoes, your recipe book of cures. I couldn’t get your harp in. I know nothing about where we’ll be going, lady. Just the wind blowing.’

‘Then we shall just have to see what happens. Was my husband there?’

Haesel shook her head. ‘No, lady. He was not with you.’ It happened occasionally that she withheld information she thought either too unreliable or not in her mistress’s best interests to know in advance. There had been many men there in her sighting, but Barda had not been amongst them.

* * *

The Dane known as Aric the Ruthless had hardly expected that the four longships in his command would be able to slip into Jorvik unseen, even so early in the morning with the sun obscured by clouds of smoke rising up from the riverside villages. His men had needed to take provisions on board after rowing against the current all the way from the river estuary, and since it took too long to ask politely for foodstuffs, they had taken it without asking. Coming to the last navigable bend of the Ouse, Aric noticed that the trading wharves and jetties were devoid of merchant ships and the stacks of produce that usually littered the area. The only sign of life was a small group of armed men waiting, grim-faced, to meet them. So, the Earl of Northumbria had come with his elite corps to conduct him, personally, to the place known as Earlsbrough.

Their greeting was civil, though hardly warm. One warrior drew his sword from his scabbard, catching the light on its menacing blade. But as Aric stepped off the gangplank, he called to him to put it away. ‘We have come here to talk,’ he called. ‘Which of you is the Earl?’

‘The Earl of Northumbria awaits you in his hall,’ the leader said. ‘He prefers not to trade with you for Jorvik’s safety here on the wharf like a merchant. Be pleased to come with us.’

‘What, and be surrounded by Englishmen?’ Aric said.

‘Bring as many men as you wish, Jarl.’

* * *

The walk took a little time, though they soon discovered that their Danish words so much resembled the Anglo-Danish spoken in Jorvik that there were very few misunderstandings. Adjusting the beaver-skin cloak on his broad shoulders, Aric walked with his hosts and a group of his own chosen men through the deserted dirty streets of Jorvik to the mournful cry of seagulls and the yapping of dogs chasing an escaped pig. The air was tense with uncertainty, for the rank odour of smoke still clung to the invaders’ clothes. None of them were under any illusions that the show of politeness would last, for at the nod of a head or the click of a finger, they could all slaughter one another without a qualm.

Earl Thored stood waiting outside the stout wooden doors of the great hall, unmistakable to Jarl Aric by his imposing figure, tall, broad-shouldered, with a shock of thick white hair echoed in the luxurious drooping moustache, an exceptionally handsome man of some fifty years, and experienced. He greeted Aric with a brief nod, noting the Dane’s appreciative look at the fine carvings on the doors and crossed gables. ‘Not so different in Denmark, I don’t suppose,’ he said, leading them into the hall.

‘The same in most respects, my Lord Thored. Our requirements are the same as yours.’

‘Our requirements, Jarl, are for peace above anything.’

‘Then we have that in common,’ said Aric, determined not to be wrong-footed by the older statesman. ‘I see no reason why we cannot agree on that. Eventually.’

Thored’s look held an element of scepticism for the Dane who had just led a series of raiding parties along the East Anglian coast. The ‘eventually’ was something that would demand hard bargaining, with no guarantee that the Danes would not return for more next year, as soon as the days lengthened. But his look was also laced with an unwilling admiration, not only for this man’s youth compared with his own, but for his undeniable good looks, which Thored was sure would have the women enthralled. More used to looking down upon his men, Thored found that their heads were level and that the Dane’s keen grey eyes had already swept the hall in one observant stare, as if to assess the wealth contained there.

In the yellowish light from lamps and candles, Aric’s hair shone sleek and pale, pulled tightly back from his face and gathered at the back into a short plait. A narrow gold band was set over his forehead, his sun-bleached brows and short neat beard emphasising the square jaw and determined set of his mouth, which Thored took as an indication that he would be no pushover. A chill crept along Thored’s arms and neck. Thirty years ago, he, too, had had this man’s arrogant stance, legs like tree trunks encased in leather breeches and a slender waist belted low down on slim hips. He, too, had made women blush like girls.

Aric’s thoughts on Earl Thored ran along similar lines with admiration for his elegant deep red tunic and the massive gold buckle at his belt, a sign of authority. Negotiations with this old fox, he thought, would have to proceed with care, for although the Danes’ demands would have to be met, one way or another, he had heard that Earl Thored was a man with more than one strategy up his sleeve. Other things he had heard about the Earl were less complimentary, things which would have to be addressed today while there was a chance. His king, Swein Forkbeard, had given him the task of taking four of the ninety-four longships up the coast to Jorvik to treat with Earl Thored on his behalf. Swein was also aware of Aric’s other mission which, although secondary to the business of Danegeld, was of great importance to his family’s honour. Aric himself might have only twenty-seven winters under his belt, but he was one of King Swein’s most trusted jarls, a military leader of numerous missions across the North Sea. He would make sure his name was remembered as a man who got what he came for.

Tipping his head towards his hovering wife, Thored beckoned her forward to begin her duties, showing the guests to their seats in order of precedence with no more to go on than their clothing and the number and size of gold armbands, pendants and cloak pins. Standing further back down the hall, Fearn held a flagon of red wine, waiting for the signal to begin pouring it. But her attention was instantly kindled as the Danish leader moved into the direct light of a lamp hanging from a low beam, casting its glow over the smooth back of his flaxen hair with its stubby plait resting on the beaver fur of his cloak. Clutching the flagon close to her body, she strained her eyes to search for the darker streak on the fur she knew so well, then for the band of red and green tablet-weaving in a zigzag pattern that bordered the hem. As he turned in her direction, she saw how the bands continued up the two front edges, and she knew without a shadow of doubt that he was wearing the beaver-fur cloak she had gifted to her husband only weeks ago on his feast day. Casually, he threw one side of the cloak over his shoulder to reveal the brown woollen lining that she had spun from the native sheep and woven on her loom after weeks of work. Barda had worn it, to her dismay, to go on this latest scouting expedition for the Earl only because the nights could still be cold this early in the year and because the beaver fur was brown, easily hidden in the woodland, waterproof and hard-wearing. Fearn knew that neither Catla nor Hilda would notice, but the revelation buffeted her like an icy blast of the north wind, rippling the surface of the wine in the flagon. Her body shook and she was unable to tear her eyes away from the evidence that must surely mean Barda had been taken or killed, for no man would willingly give his cloak to the enemy.

Yet even as she stared, frozen with shock, the powerful Dane stared back at her as if she were the only woman in the hall. The distance was too great for details; only the compelling force of his dynamism released in her direction from two unpitying eyes seemed instinctively to understand the reason for her wide-eyed expression of outrage that he was daring to wear the garment she had made for another man.

Screams, accusations and frenzied shows of anguish would have been most women’s reaction, at that point, forcing some kind of explanation ahead of the Earl’s diplomacy. Yet it was not the Dane’s arrogant stare that kept Fearn silent, but the certain knowledge that it would not serve Earl Thored’s purpose to embarrass either their Danish guests or him, and certainly not to have Barda’s mother screaming and wailing and, naturally, Hilda, too, at such a critical moment in the proceedings. She must keep her secret knowledge quiet. She must. Against all her impulses to challenge the man, she must wait until the right moment. Or perhaps not at all. Perhaps the knowledge would emerge in some other way, when the Danes had gone.

Aware of a discomfort against her ribs, she realised she was pressing the flagon tightly against herself, almost to the breaking point, and that of all the emotions chasing through her numbed mind just then, incredulity and relief were the only ones she recognised. The Dane was still staring at her while Earl Thored told him who she was. Trembling, Fearn turned away, thankful that it would not be her to pour his mead, but Hilda.

* * *

The rest of that momentous discussion passed like a strange dream in which the information she held struggled in her grasp, waiting for the moment of release that did not come as she moved like a shadow through the hall. Usually, she was aware of men’s eyes upon her but, this time, she was aware of only one man’s, though she tried to evade them. But by the time she was obliged to respond to his request for wine instead of mead, he had shed the cloak to reveal a fine tunic of honey-coloured wool, which she knew would have been dyed with onion skins, its braided edging round the neck and sleeves glistening with gold thread, the delicate circular pin at his neck surely of Irish origin. For the first time, she came close enough for him to see into her eyes when, in spite of herself, she saw how his own narrowed eyes widened fractionally as if responding to a trick of the light. She saw the tiny crease between his brows come and go as he spoke in the mixture of English and Danish everyone in Jorvik understood. ‘Lady Fearn,’ he said, holding out his drinking horn to her, ‘I understand you are the daughter of the previous Earl.’

Earl Thored, seated opposite, interrupted. ‘The exiled previous Earl.’

Aric continued, ignoring the correction. ‘Do you miss him still?’

The rich red liquid wobbled as it poured, though Fearn tried to keep her voice from doing the same. There was hardly a day when she did not think of her parents. ‘I miss all those who are taken from me suddenly,’ she replied, purposely filling the horn up to the brim so that it would spill when he moved it away. Movement and speech were suspended as the drinking horn was held motionless, as two pairs of eyes locked in combat, hers challenging him to an admission of murder, his countering her challenge with his own brand of indifference. By this time, several men had noticed what was happening, laying silent wagers on the outcome. Aric the Ruthless would not be beaten by a woman, especially not by Thored’s foster daughter, though Fearn’s only aim was for him to tremble and spill the blood-red wine on the table as a sign of his guilt. He would surely understand her message.

Slowly, and without a tremor, the drinking horn was taken smoothly to Aric’s lips and tipped, not a drop escaping, its curved point encased in a silver cone pointing upwards. A ripple of applause accompanied the laughter, but with a look of contempt, Fearn turned away, sure that the Earl would have something to say about her behaviour towards his guest at a serious meeting. But for her, the meeting was an ordeal from which she was not allowed to excuse herself, even though she was now sure of the reason for her husband’s disappearance. This she was obliged to keep to herself for the time being, though Catla had expressed concern. ‘I don’t know where he is,’ Fearn told her, truthfully. She, too, would have liked to know whether he lay dead in the woodland or tied up in one of the longships.

Distancing herself from Catla and Hilda, Fearn went over to sit with Arlen the Moneyer and his wife Kamma. Obeying instructions, Arlen had filled sacks with coins and some hack silver—chopped-up disused pieces to be melted down for newer coinage—helped in the task by his young son, Kean, a good-looking lad of some ten years. He smiled as she sat beside him, clearly honoured by her presence.

‘Do you understand what’s happening, Kean?’ she whispered.

‘Oh, yes, my lady. The Danes are demanding a great deal of my lord Earl.’

‘You think there’ll be enough there?’ she said, nodding towards the sacks.

‘Hope so. Those sacks are heavy.’

The bargaining seemed to go on for ever, going through all the motions of trading peace for wealth, as if in their minds it had not already been settled down to the last silver penny. Roars of outrage, thumping on the tables, accusing fingers and sometimes the quieter voices of compromise and concession rose and fell as, for two or more hours, Thored faced down the enemy and tried to fob them off with less, even as he knew the price of peace was rising. To some extent, it was a performance that only prolonged the moment when agreement, if one could call it that, was reached in time to give the Danes a period of daylight to carry away the heavy sacks of treasure and depart.

Setting her heart against the arrogant Dane and his absurd demand for ten thousand pounds’ worth of silver, Fearn had no option but to watch the Danish warriors enter, wearing swords and shining round helmets with nose guards half-hiding their satisfied smiles, pick up the heavy sacks between them and carry them out across to the gates of the enclosure. No words accompanied this disgraceful looting, only a heavy silence, glowering faces and the almost unnoticed gathering of armed Danes around their leader.

The Danish demands appeared to have been met, but Aric’s demands were not yet over. Turning, he pointed towards Kean, the young Moneyer’s son, beckoning him to his side. Thinking that the Dane had some words of wisdom for him, Kean went to him willingly, not flinching as the man’s hand rested on his shoulder. Thored’s hand went to his sword hilt while, next to Fearn, Arlen and Kamma leapt to their feet with yelps of protest.

‘No!’ Thored bellowed. ‘Oh, no, not the lad!’

Kamma’s hands flew to her mouth to stifle the wail, though it leaked through her fingers. ‘Tell me,’ said Aric to Kamma, ‘how old the lad is.’

She ran towards him, her face contorted with fright. ‘He is ten years, my lord. He’s too young to be taken as a slave...please...he’s our only child.’

‘Your child, is he?’ Aric said. ‘Did you bear him? You? Yourself?’

Earl Thored knew where this was leading. Angrily, he kicked over the table before him with one mighty shove of his foot, sending drinking horns and beakers flying and bouncing across the floor. He strode over the edge of it towards Kean who now looked anxiously from one adult to another, wondering what this was all about. But as Thored moved towards Aric, the helmeted Danes closed in around their leader and the boy in a semi-circular defence. ‘So this is why you wanted them here,’ Thored growled. ‘So that you could insult the parents and steal their child. And is this how you repay my hospitality, Dane? Is this the price of peace, after all?’

‘We have bargained for peace, Earl,’ Aric said, with an icy calm, ‘but this is not a part of that and I believe you know it. Cast your mind back twelve years to that time when several young Danish couples sailed into Jorvik asking to settle here. You had been Earl five years then. Remember?’

Impatiently, Thored shrugged. ‘Vaguely,’ he said.

‘Not so vaguely, I think, my lord Earl. You will recall one of the young couples, newly joined, very comely they were. Especially the woman.’

There was a muffled cry of distress from Hilda to whom this situation was all too familiar. Thored took no notice of her. ‘So?’ he said. ‘What are you implying, Jarl? Let’s hear it. You’re probably quite mistaken.’

‘No, I think not. There are enough Danes here in Jorvik to tell their relatives in Denmark what happens here, especially to young husbands who stand in the way of their Earl’s needs.’

‘Relatives? Which relatives, exactly?’

‘Me. Brother to the young woman who sought a life here with her goldsmith husband of one year. Prey to your lust, Thored.’

Lady Hilda’s sobbing could now be heard by everyone in the hall, yet Thored would not glance in her direction. ‘Your...sister?’ he whispered, frowning in disbelief. ‘You lie. She never mentioned...’

‘She wouldn’t, would she? I was a mere lad of fifteen then, not a king’s jarl. But I was not too young to swear revenge on the man who arranged my brother-in-law’s death and then took my sister for himself and fathered a child on her. Yes, this lad here. My nephew. Your son!’

Furiously, Kean shook himself free of Aric’s hand, whirling round to face him. ‘No!’ he yelled, pointing at his parents. ‘No! There is my mother and there is my father. I have never known any others, I swear it.’

‘Well said, lad,’ Aric said. ‘But the truth is, like it or not, that your mother was my sister Tove and your father is a man as weak as water when it comes to women. I took an oath on Odin’s name to return you to your own family and my chance has come, as I knew it would.’

Hilda, with her head on Catla’s shoulder, was racked with sobbing and of no help at all to her husband, whose unfaithfulness was nothing new to her. She had borne him no live children and had now stopped trying, though the pain of Thored’s easily found comfort was like a wound that was not allowed to heal. He had foisted the five-year-old Fearn on her, not as an act of kindness, but because it suited him for her banished parents to know that he had their child’s life in his hands. The appearance of the young Danish woman called Tove in their household had lasted only a year. Fearn remembered Tove as a beautiful young woman whose child had been born a year after her husband’s violent death in a street fight and had always understood that both Tove and her child had died, although she could recall no burial rites from that time. Now, it appeared that young Kean was Thored’s own son and Tove’s.

Kamma, the woman Kean had been calling mother for ten years, fell in a heap at Aric’s feet, begging to keep her son. ‘Lord...my lord...do not do this. We are innocent of any crime. We have cared for him...loved him...please,’ she wailed.

‘Yes, lady. I know that, too. Your husband was made a moneyer to the Earl for his compliance. Not a bad reward for your silence. But the facts are there for all to see. Look at his colouring, for one thing. Can you doubt he is of my family?’

It was hard not to see the similarity, Kean’s flaxen hair against the foster parents’ darkness, his ice-blue eyes like Thored’s. ‘His home is here, lord,’ said Arlen, catching Thored’s nod of permission to speak. ‘We have nothing if you take him from us. He is our only son. He will be a moneyer, too.’

Thored found his voice again after the shaming revelation that he had taken the life of the husband who stood in his way. ‘Revenge,’ he said, loudly. ‘A blood feud, no less. You intend to tear up the lad’s roots and ruin the lives of these two good people, for what? For your gratification? And will he fill the void your sister made, when she left your family of her own free will? She gave herself to me willingly. I did not force her.’

‘You took the life of her husband, Earl,’ Aric yelled at him. ‘Deny it!’

‘I do deny it. Tove’s man was killed in a street fight. I took her in and cared for her, and—’

‘And made her pregnant and killed her in the process.’

‘It happens like that, sometimes. The mother is forfeit. Or the babe.’

‘As you well know, Thored,’ said Aric, making clear his meaning while the Earl’s wife howled in anguish. It had happened like that to her too many times and the losses were still as raw as they had been at the time. ‘But this child lived, didn’t he?’ Aric continued. ‘And he was a son. The only son you’ve ever had. A bastard, but a son, nevertheless. My sister’s son. My nephew. And my family demands his return in exchange for my sister’s life.’

‘Your sister had already left Denmark, Jarl,’ Thored bellowed. ‘And the lad belongs here in England with his foster parents and all that he’s known since birth. It makes no sense to uproot him from that. He’ll be a fine moneyer, like Arlen here. Accept your losses. You’ve taken enough from us already this day. Tell your family the lad is happy here. Well cared for. Will be wealthy, too. Tell them that and let their revenge lie with the gods. Let them deal with it.’

Within the tight cage of her ribs, Fearn’s heart beat like a war drum at the sight of these two men facing each other like bulls stopping just short of physical violence, Thored red-faced, angry and discredited by his own lechery, Aric standing proud and fearless on the moral high ground. She could not see Thored ever yielding to the Dane over this, Kean being to him more valuable than she had understood, though now she saw how Hilda must have suffered as much as she herself did at her husband’s constant unfaithfulness. To pagans, this was an accepted part of a husband’s behaviour, but not to Christians. Thored wanted it both ways: the lax morals of the old religion with the respectability of the new.

Beside her, the boy’s foster father was trembling with emotion, unable to interfere in this terrible dilemma, sick at heart at the threat of losing Kean, the lad he loved like a natural son. For ten years, he and Kamma had kept their secret, having every reason to be grateful to Earl Thored for supplying them with a child they could not produce themselves and for the reward that attended the lucrative position of Moneyer, coin-maker to the King. Fearn felt the man’s longing to speak breaking through his reluctance to join in the argument without permission. Finally, he could contain himself no longer. Stepping forward, he spoke the first and most obvious words on his mind with little regard for their implications. ‘Better still,’ he said, looking from the Dane to Earl Thored and back again, ‘take an alternative. Is there not someone of more years you could choose, who would be of more use to you?’ Flinching under the Earl’s furious glare, Arlen stepped back again, too late to undo the damage.

Aric’s approval overlapped Thored’s blustering protest. ‘He speaks well, your Moneyer,’ Aric said. Taking everyone by surprise, he swung round to point a finger, like a spear, at Fearn. ‘There! That one! The woman. Your foster daughter for their foster son. How will that do, Earl? I’d call that a fair enough bargain, eh? I’ll take her for one year, then return her to you and take the boy. He’ll have another winter under his belt by that time and she might well have something interesting under her belt. Now that’s what I call an alternative. See, Thored? I’ve backed down for you.’

The collective gasp of shock was audible to everyone in the hall. Even Thored was taken aback by the insulting audacity of the Dane’s suggestion. Fearn was the first to find her tongue, released by the outrageous innuendo. ‘Then back down further, Dane,’ she shouted, taking a step forward until only the upturned table was between them. ‘This business is between you and Earl Thored. Count me out of it and don’t play word games with my virtue, for I’ll have none of it.’

Facing each other like alley cats, glaring eyes locked together, they made the air between them vibrate with open hostility, causing the company to catch its breath at the ferocity of Fearn’s defiance. Any woman would have had the same feelings of shock, but few would dare to say so in such terms, especially to an enemy in the hall of one’s guardian. Aric’s eyes narrowed in admiration. ‘You have no say in the matter, woman. Neither you nor your foster parents are in a position to argue.’

Indeed, the Lady Hilda had stopped moaning and was far from arguing against the Dane’s latest demand. But Fearn would not be silenced so easily. ‘Wrong, Dane. Both the Earl and myself are in a position to argue. I’ve listened to your pathetic story of your sister, but now you should admit to the killing of the Earl’s brave warrior, my husband, the man whose cloak you’ve had the audacity to wear around your shoulders. Here, in the hall of his lord. You deny that, if you can.’

‘What?’ Earl Thored roared. ‘Barda’s cloak? Are you sure, Fearn?’

‘It’s the one I gave him on his last feast day, my lord. Of course I’m sure.’

Aric stood motionless, neither denying nor admitting the murder, though his eyes did not leave Fearn’s face, not even when Earl Thored addressed him directly. ‘Well, Dane? Does my foster daughter speak the truth? Where did you find that cloak?’

Speaking to Fearn rather than Thored, Aric replied. ‘It was handed to me by my men,’ he said. ‘Searching the woodland along the river’s edge, they found the Earl’s three men. There was a skirmish. The wolves will have found them by now.’ His last words were drowned by a scream from Catla, who would have flown at Aric if the wall of the table-top had not prevented it. Tempers flared as both men and the four women hurled abuse at the Danish group who stood firm and resolute against the insults, being prevented from drawing their swords by their leader’s forbidding hand. Cries of ‘Murderers!’ mingled with hoots of derision until Thored’s thundering voice reminded them that the Danish leader and his men were still guests in his hall, though no one was impressed by that. The Danes still had the advantage and, even now, were in a position to demand more Danegeld.

Catla’s howls were immediately taken up by others, mingling cries of ‘My son...my own beloved son...’ with calls for the wrath of the gods to come down on their cowardly heads and for Barda to be found and buried with honour.

‘Cease your howling!’ Thored yelled at them. ‘What’s done is done. Those men died protecting their city. They knew the risks. We are proud of them. But this puts a different light on things, Dane,’ he said, turning to Aric. ‘You came here on a peace-seeking mission and killed three of my best men. You cannot now claim my son Kean and you certainly cannot take my foster daughter from me, now you have made a widow of her. Besides which, she is already hostage against her parents’ good behaviour. It would be best for you to go now and take what you’ve got.’

Having accepted the possibility that she was already widowed, it still came as a thunderbolt to strike Fearn with the reality of her situation, knowing intuitively that she would never be allowed this short-lived freedom from a husband. She had disliked Barda more with each passing day, his disloyalty to her, his crass insensitivity and his disturbing contempt for the new religion he had flippantly agreed to adopt at Thored’s insistence, in order to marry her. Now she was sure that Thored would not allow her to keep her freedom. In spite of a Christian woman’s entitlement to choose her own husband, Thored would insist on his choice of another of his personal warriors in order to direct her life, as he had directed the lives of the Dane’s sister and her husband, his young son and the couple who had reared him. That revelation had come as a shock to her, although she had suspected for some time that that could have been one of the reasons behind Hilda’s deep unhappiness.

Possible escapes from the impending danger whirled through her mind as the leaders’ arguments continued, as Thored tried every loophole to get out of his predicament. The escape that appealed to her most had already begun to take shape in her mind while her future was discussed as if she were so much merchandise, all her attempts to assert herself ignored and talked over. Kean was, apparently, far too valuable to lose because he was a boy, Thored’s natural son, and useful, whereas Fearn’s role was as peace-weaver between two factions, the traditional function she had thought would never apply to her.

‘I came for my nephew,’ Aric said, yet again. ‘My family demands it.’

‘And my family demands that he stays here in Jorvik, with his own kin.’

‘Then I’ll take the woman. Since it was her man we killed, it is her duty to weave peace between us and she can best do that in Denmark.’

‘I’ll be damned if I will, Dane,’ Fearn said, making heads turn in her direction at last. ‘You had no need to kill my brave man for he was no threat to you. It is you who have played Earl Thored false in this and he who has done the same to you.’

‘Brave man?’ Aric scoffed, turning on her with a coldness that made her quail. ‘It always surprises me to hear a newly made widow sing the praises of her lost husband when she knows them to be lies. You are no exception, it seems.’

‘Say what you mean, Dane, but don’t dare malign my man when he’s not here to give you the thrashing you deserve. He was a brave warrior. Ask any of his brothers.’

‘Very touching,’ said Aric. ‘So perhaps you and his brothers should know how my men came across him and his two companions. Not being overly brave, you’ll agree.’

Fearn felt the thud of her heart betraying her loyalty. ‘What?’ she whispered.

‘Do you really want to know how they were raping a woman in the woodland where she was hiding? Yes, one of the villagers. An English woman. One of your own.’

‘You lie!’ Thored roared.

‘No, Earl. I do not lie. Your man had thrown his cloak and sword aside. Two men held the woman while he...’

‘No...no! My Barda would not...’ It was Catla who screamed while Fearn covered her mouth with both hands, feeling the familiar churning of her stomach.

‘I speak the truth,’ Aric shouted above the din. ‘Why would I lie? My men dragged them off her and killed your three brave men. Go and find them for yourselves. Give them the honours they deserve, what’s left of them, but don’t whine to me, woman—’ he glared at Fearn ‘—about what you’ve lost. What makes a healthy man act like an animal when he does not have the bloodlust upon him, with a wife like you at home?’ His voice dropped so that she saw rather than heard his words. ‘Perhaps I should find out.’

But Fearn’s mind had been fed more information than it could deal with in one day and now she stared at the Dane’s pitiless expression over her hands while an icy coldness stole like a frost along her arms.

Chapter Two

The hubbub died down, broken only by Catla’s loud lamenting that her son had not only been killed but slandered, too, quite unjustly. He would never...never do anything so base. Fearn knew that he would. Earl Thored was bound to say it was a lie. ‘The Lady Fearn’s destiny is in my hands now,’ he insisted, ‘and I say that she shall remarry. Sitric...here...come, man...you shall have her.’ Eagerly, a young man stepped forward, but was stopped by Fearn’s strident protest.

‘He shall not, my lord. I am newly widowed and I demand a year of mourning. You know full well that I may now choose my own destiny. I shall go to live with the nuns at Clementhorpe. I have decided.’

‘Then you can undecide, woman. You’re coming with me,’ Aric said, flatly.

But they had bargained without Catla and Hilda, her resentful foster mother, who saw a way of paying back all those years of humiliation at Thored’s hands and for having to bring up a child whose strange beauty had threatened her own self-confidence for so many years. Catla’s wailing seemed to give Hilda courage, for now she found a voice. ‘Take her, Dane. Yes, take her away...far away. She does not belong here. Never has.’

Catla joined in before anyone could stop her. ‘Take her, for she will ever remind me of the son I have lost this day. She is widowed and of no use to anyone, not even to you, Dane, so if you think to bear sons on her, forget it. She bore no grandson for me and I doubt she’ll do any better for you. Those witch’s eyes turn men’s heads. Take her.’ She strode over to Fearn and, with a disgusting contortion of her face, spat at her.

Being quite unprepared for this, Fearn had not dodged the spittle that ran down her chin, but now her endurance came to an end in an explosion of blazing anger and, without a thought of anything other than this appalling insult, she aimed an open blow at Catla’s tear-stained face with all the force of a young woman’s deep unhappiness behind it. The power of it sent a painful shock down her arm, but Catla went down like a skittle, tangling her legs in her voluminous kirtle. Hands reached down to help her. Fearn’s only impulse was to escape while so much of the attention was being diverted away from her.

Backing away from the crowd, she caught the brief warning from Arlen’s lips that told her to look behind. Swinging round and drawing her knife from its sheath at the same time, she levelled it at Aric’s throat, her crouching stance practised over years of child’s play that sometimes resulted in unintentional wounds. This time, her expression of steely intent told Aric that he had better take this seriously. Nevertheless, Fearn was not in training, she was emotionally upset, her right arm was still tingling from the stunning blow to Catla’s head and her reflexes were nowhere near as sharp as her opponent’s, nor her strength as great. All it took was one quick lunge from her to send the shining knife flying through the air and to have her hands caught in both of his so tightly that she gasped with the pain of it. His arms were like two iron bands round her body as he pulled her in with her back against him, but just too late to prevent her from taking a savage bite at his hand, sinking her teeth in to touch the bone at the base of his thumb.

Wrenching away, he grunted with pain, but did not relax his grip. ‘A nunnery?’ he growled into her veil. ‘Whoever gave you that idea? Now, let’s see if I can change your mind.’

‘My lord... Lord Thored!’ Fearn yelled. ‘You cannot allow this. Help me!’

But it was clear to all who watched the undignified tussle that Earl Thored was not going to intervene, that the hand on Kean’s shoulder indicated his choice. He would not set his men to fight the Danes in his own hall over a foster daughter who, he hoped, would be returned to him in one year. Though it grieved him to lose the young woman he was so fond of, it was a chance he had to take. Thrusting his son behind him, he watched dispassionately as his wife and the bruised Catla stumbled from the hall before approaching Fearn, who was still trying to escape from Aric’s arm across her waist. ‘Lady Fearn!’ he barked. ‘You must stop this unseemly behaviour and remember who you are. Stand still and listen to me.’

‘Unseemly?’ she cried. ‘Stand still? With this ruffian’s hands upon me? My lord, you need to remind him who I am, not me.’ A heavy pall of dread hung over her as she compared this manhandling to that of Barda when he was drunk on mead, when blows would follow as a matter of course. She had always found it hard to believe that her foster father was entirely unaware of Barda’s violence, yet not once had he intervened in what was, after all, a domestic matter. Now, he was standing passively by yet again, telling her to remember who she was, which indeed was the only thing that had supported her through those terrifying incidents. She was an earl’s daughter and he was telling her to use dignity as her weapon.

Over her head, Aric spoke. ‘I do not need reminding, lady,’ he said. ‘I know who you are and I know your value, too. I think you may be worth the effort.’ As he spoke the insolent words, his arms loosened their grip across her body. Stung by his arrogance, Fearn twisted round like a coiled spring, her eyes blazing, warning him of her lightning-fast move. Meant to wreak the same damage as to Catla, her hand was caught before it made contact and, along with the other, was held wide apart by the wrists, helplessly out of range. With Barda as the victor, she would have received an immediate blow to her head, so now her instinct was to flinch with eyes tightly closed. But her reflex action was wasted, for although Aric recognised the fear as her eyes opened, he merely lowered her arms and stepped back, as if to tell her that he understood about the husband she had loyally called brave.

Trembling, and very close to tears of anger and helplessness, Fearn straightened the gold circlet over her brow and pulled the veil back into place, rubbing her wrists against the pressure of his hands, giving herself time to blink away the first signs of weakness. Her voice was hoarse with suppressed emotion as she looked bravely into Aric’s eyes of cold steel. ‘I am worth more effort than you will ever be able to find, Dane. I see now that my foster father means to sacrifice me to your whim, for that is all it is. A whim. You came here for your nephew and you take me instead. A poor bargain, in my opinion. You could mould young Kean to your ways, but you will never do the same with me. You will regret your choice and you will be glad to bring me back here in a year, if not sooner. I’ll make sure of that.’

His eyes smiled back at her as he accepted the challenge, though his mouth retained its uncompromising grimness. ‘We’ll see,’ he said. ‘I don’t have time to argue the point.’

‘Lady Fearn,’ said Earl Thored, lowering his voice. ‘I hope you will find it in your heart not to hold this against me. As you see, the choice is not easy.’

‘Forgive you, you mean?’ Fearn said. ‘No, my lord, I shall not. Nor shall I ever forgive you for banishing my parents and keeping me here, for you seem intent on parting me from everything I know. A pity it is that our beloved Archbishop Oswold died last year and that so far you have not bothered to appoint another in his place, or I might have sought better advice on forgiveness than our lily-livered priest can offer these days. But when I return, I shall not enter this hall again, but go to those who appreciate my worth, and I shall claim my late husband’s estate and use it for their good.’

By the time she had finished this rebuke, Earl Thored’s eyes were lowered to the floor, his head gently shaking from side to side as if there were things he might have said to account for his seemingly weak decisions. ‘Is there anything...?’ he began.

Purposely misunderstanding him, Fearn cut him off. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I shall need my maid, Haesel. That’s all I ask. Could someone go for her?’

‘I’ll go,’ said Kamma. ‘I know where she’ll be.’

‘And a horse for the lady to ride down to the river,’ Aric said. ‘I’ll not have her walk all that way like a slave.’ As one of the Earl’s men left the hall to attend to the request, Aric took the cloak of beaver fur from one of his men and held it for Fearn to wear.

She put up a hand, frowning in disgust. ‘No, I’ll not have it near me with the stink of blood upon it. Take it. Burn it.’

‘Lady,’ said Aric, reasonably, ‘if it had the stink of blood on it, I would not have worn it either. But it was not near him. It stinks only of a Danish jarl who would protect you from the winds of the northern sea. Wear it. It would be a pity to die of cold before we reach home.’ He held it out again at shoulder height. ‘Turn round. Come on.’

As she obeyed him, she saw Haesel enter the hall with Kamma and remembered what the maid had foreseen, earlier that day. Cold, strong winds. And she, Fearn, wearing the cloak she had made for her husband, feeling the warm comfort of the wool lining, the weight of the pelt and two large hands beneath her chin, turning her, pinning his Irish ring pin to hold it in place. She caught the recognition in Haesel’s eyes of their mutual conspiracy and saw that she carried the leather bag packed ready for the journey that neither of them had planned. Haesel wore her plain cloak of thick felted wool of the kind that the English exported to those who could afford them. In Kamma’s arms was another bag containing Fearn’s harp. ‘You cannot go without this, lady,’ she whispered, handing it to her.

At any other time, Fearn would have knelt to ask Earl Thored’s blessing on her travels and for a token in the form of a ring or an armband. But now, when he beckoned her to come before him, she refused. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I do not want your blessing. You have betrayed me.’

Aric appeared to condone her intransigence with a nod and a slow blink. Blessings were irrelevant and he had got what he came for. Well, almost, for young Kean still remained, standing beside Arlen. ‘Be ready for me in one year, young man,’ he said. ‘Do you have a message for your Danish family?’

Arlen nudged the boy’s shoulder and Kean’s reedy voice piped up. ‘Give them my respects, lord. And please take care of the lady. She has ever been kind to me and courteous.’

‘Then you have seen a better side of her than I, Kean, but I will do my best. Who knows what a year will do?’ The tip of his head towards his men was all the signal they needed to stay close as they walked to the large doorway, passing Earl Thored with no more than a nod to remind him that he would not have seen the last of them. Fearn treated herself to one last look round the great hall lined with hangings on which she had worked, glowing colours she had helped to dye, threads of gold she had helped to make and couch down with fine stitches of silk bought from the merchants. Aric motioned her to walk before him into the bright light of the late afternoon where horses awaited them, provided with pillion pads for her and Haesel. She would not be allowed to ride on her own.

Kamma, torn between relief that Kean would be hers for at least another year and guilt that, as a result, the Lady Fearn had lost what little freedom had been hers, accompanied the women outside. Recognising Haesel’s bewilderment, she whispered words of comfort to her, reminding her to look out for her lady’s welfare, above all else. She would have spoken similar words to Fearn, too, but such was the lady’s calm dignity that she felt words might have been unnecessary, though she could not have guessed that the show of self-possession was taking every ounce of Fearn’s concentration.

Without appearing to look, Fearn saw him giving orders to his men, well in control of the volatile situation in which at any moment they might be ambushed and slaughtered, his longships set on fire. He had emerged from this debacle, Fearn thought, if not with honour then at least with success and certainly without the disgrace brought down upon Thored’s head. He was taking away with him the Danegeld he’d come for and her, too, to show the mighty Earl of Northumbria how his strength should not be underestimated. She was now sure that, despite his insults, his only motive for taking her was revenge, for it was not in her gift to appease his relatives, but Kean’s, Thored’s son. Her fears now concerned the Dane’s intentions towards her, for pillaging Vikings were not best known for their honourable treatment of captive women and she need not expect any special concessions for being an earl’s daughter. She had not been mollified by his concern for her warmth in an open longship: he needed her alive, not dead. As for riding instead of walking, any attack before they reached the boats would be easier to repulse from a horse.

Her ribs still ached from the steely strength of his arms as he’d countered her struggles with ease. He had been fearless in his dealings with Thored, too. But as a pagan, would he treat her as Barda had done, with little respect for her person, her wishes, or her beliefs? Had she, in the space of one day, been released from one man’s tyranny only to fall into another man’s? The questions found no reassuring answer as she watched him accept his helmet from one of his men, a terrifying iron construction similar to those the Earl’s men wore, fitting low over the face with spaces for the eyes and a long guard over the nose. On top of Aric’s helmet stood a huge rampant silver boar, the age-old symbol of man’s courage and virility. His eyes appeared to challenge her through the shaped openings, taking on the aspect of a warlord demanding obedience. The hair on her scalp prickled as she lifted her chin in defiance with a show of confidence she was very far from feeling.

He came towards her and took hold of the fur-lined sheath at her belt, slipping her knife into it and adjusting its leather-bound hilt. She felt the warmth of his knuckles through the woollen kirtle. ‘Don’t ever draw it on me or my men again,’ he warned, ‘or you’ll be eating your meals without it.’

‘You have given your word,’ she said, ‘to return me to Jorvik after one year. Go back on your word, Dane, and I shall do whatever I can to kill you.’

He stepped even closer so that she could see in detail the gold embroidery on the band round the neck of his tunic. ‘I have said I will come back here to reclaim my nephew. If I tire of you before then, I shall send you back sooner, on your own, without my protection. Yes, woman, I can do that. The subject is now closed. I have more important matters to think of.’

His words washed over her like a cold deluge, giving her nothing to cling to and everything to beware of. Had it not been for the unexpected appearance of Mother Bridget standing just beyond the Danish warriors, she might have lost her self-control in a flood of tears. The two of them fell into an embrace that muffled their cries and stilled each other’s trembling. ‘I have never left Jorvik before,’ Fearn said into the nun’s homely gown. ‘Is it a long way to Denmark? I do not know any of these people, Mother.’

‘Yes, you do,’ Mother Bridget said, holding Fearn by the shoulders. ‘Jorvik is full of them. They’re not so different from us. This will be an adventure, my dear. We shall pray for you night and day. Make yourself useful to whoever you live with. You have many skills, remember. Now, come along, the Dane awaits you.’ With a tender kiss to both cheeks, the gentle nun gave Fearn a smile and a push towards the horse and rider. Fearn knew what she must do. Hitching up her skirt, she grasped Aric’s wrist and placed her foot on top of his as it rested in the stirrup, felt his strong pull and was hoisted up on to the pillion pad behind him, landing with a thump on the horse’s back. Aric spoke to her over his shoulder. ‘Put your arm round my waist,’ he commanded.

Though it was the last thing she wanted to do, she obeyed, knowing that she was in danger of falling off without him to hold on to. But now she was close against his broad back, feeling his warmth, breathing in his male scent, moving as he moved and clinging to him as she had never wanted to cling to any man, particularly not this one. She grasped his silver belt buckle, her other hand clasping the harp in its bag, making it impossible to wave to the two kindly women whose concerns meant so much to her. Taking a last look at the great hall as they passed through the gates, she saw that Earl Thored had appeared just inside the doorway, his face crumpled as if to avoid the low glare of the sun. Except that the sun was setting the sky aflame behind them like a portent of more burning villages in the future.

Several times on the ride through Jorvik’s empty streets, Fearn looked behind her towards Haesel, but could see only one arm of her holding the rider’s waist. She recalled Haesel’s foretelling and now knew it to mean that there was no way of escaping her destiny, even if they had known it would be decided by Danish Vikings.

There were, however, some details Haesel had not been shown—for instance, the sheer size and scale of the four Viking longships tied up against the wharf at Jorvik. Neither she nor Fearn had seen anything like them, the merchants’ vessels being about half their length and ugly by comparison. These long, sleek craft were like predatory sea monsters with fierce dragons’ heads carved on prow and stern, and with more men on one ship than they had ever thought possible. No wonder, Fearn thought, that the Earl did not want to engage the Danes in battle when his own trained warriors would be so outnumbered.

A small crowd of Jorvik men, many of them of Danish ancestry, had gathered to watch the ships being loaded with sacks of silver, to see how quickly the men took their oars and settled into their respective positions once the mighty oars were in place. Some of the crowd were brave enough to shout their disapproval of Fearn’s presence there, but Aric made sure she was given no chance to exchange words with them by lifting her down off the horse, making his ownership quite obvious by keeping her close to him and demanding the promise of good behaviour he had not yet been given. ‘It’s up to you, lady,’ he said. ‘Either I have your word, or I have you trussed up like a chicken. It’s not a comfortable way to travel.’

‘If you mean, shall I throw myself overboard or try to seduce your men, you have my word I shall do neither. But don’t expect me to look as if I’m enjoying this, Dane,’ she said, haughtily. ‘I have no liking for your company.’

‘It was not for your company I’ve taken you from the Earl,’ he replied. ‘Your likes and dislikes don’t concern me. Come. This one is my ship. Walk on up the plank. We need to get moving.’

Looking back on this, as she did many times, it was more like a dream than reality to step down into the wide belly of this monster and to feel the instant rocking motion as men moved about, many of whom would take over the oars as the first rowers tired. The deck thudded and vibrated beneath their feet as she and Haesel were hustled past them to a slightly raised platform in the vee-shaped prow where they would be out of the way. A kind of shelter had been erected for them from a heavy double-thickness wool smeared with tar and foul-smelling fat to resist the water, stretched across the space. Open at the front, this gave them a view of the rowers’ backs, though the men were denied the luxury afforded to the two passengers of a pile of furs to sit on. So far, they could not grumble about the comfort, but the strong winds of Haesel’s vision were not very far from their minds as they sat cross-legged and subdued, aware of the utter helplessness of their predicament. Fearn placed her arms around her maid, who was visibly shaking and close to tears. It was a new experience for her, too, as were the stares of men who had not seen their wives for two years. ‘Where are they taking us?’ she whispered, clinging like a limpet.

‘To Denmark, eventually,’ said Fearn, ‘but first they’ll have to row down the river to reach the sea. Don’t ask me how far, how long. I have no idea. They’ll want to keep us alive, though, or we’re no use to them.’

‘What use?’ whispered Haesel.

Fearn merely sighed. They wriggled into the furs and watched the wharf move away, taking the crowd of Jorvik men off into the distance along with the thatched rooftops, the outline of St. Peter’s church and the few territorial dogs that yapped at the longships with dipping oars like the legs of a centipede. They felt the powerful rhythmic lurch as the oarsmen pulled in unison and heard through the oak timbers the rush of water. They noticed the change of smell as they moved through the smoky fug of the city, then the appearance of alder and willow along the banks, the affronted squawk of ducks protecting their new downy progeny.

The oar master shouted a command and immediately the oars were suspended over the water as the acrid smell of smouldering thatch and mud walls reached their nostrils, just before the devastation came into view. A blackened ruined village sent clouds of grey ash into the evening sky, slowly passing them by, peopled only by a few miserable owners who rooted about for possessions or burnt remains of food. In a moment, Fearn was at the side of the ship leaning out to see if there was anyone she recognised, shading her eyes against the glare of the water, but unable to offer them the slightest comfort.

‘Sit down!’ The unmistakable sound of Aric’s deep voice was not to be argued with.

She turned to him, her face reflecting her anguish. ‘I know those people,’ she said. ‘You’ve destroyed their houses and taken their food. How will they live?’

‘That’s their problem,’ he said, callously. ‘My problem was to feed my men. I solved it. So will they—one way or another. Now sit down. We shall be stopping as soon as the light goes, then we’ll eat and move on again at dawn.’

She would like to have told him to keep his food, stolen property, but realised that she had not eaten since morning. Much as she rebelled at the thought of eating the villagers’ food, she hoped they would forgive her for it, for Haesel’s sight had not suggested that they, too, were in danger of starving. She also knew that there was some truth in Aric’s uncaring words that, one way or another, they would find something to eat from the hedgerows or in Jorvik itself, where kindly people would help them to rebuild.

Watching him walk through his men to the other end of the ship, she could not help another comparison of the Jarl to the wretch who had been her husband, who had shamefully betrayed her foster father’s trust by abusing a woman who was fleeing from the very danger he was meant to be assessing. By association, she felt tainted by his baseness. People would point to her as the wife of a rapist who, to all women, was the lowest of the low. Perhaps it was as well, she thought, that she would be out of sight for a year, especially of the Lady Hilda and Catla who would never believe the worst of her son. But what would that year be like in the company of this man who appeared to get whatever he wanted?

* * *

The same question, by coincidence, was occupying the mind of the man himself as he joined his two most trusted companions. Oskar, a year older than Aric and as experienced in warfare, was from Lindholm where his young wife and infant son waited for his return. As he smiled at the wound on Aric’s thumb, his comment was typically unsympathetic. ‘Fought you, did she? Lovely set of tooth-marks, though. Quite a trophy.’

Aric looked at it, huffing with annoyance that he was the only man to have been injured and then by a woman. ‘Still bleeding like a stuck pig,’ he muttered. ‘I must have lost my wits, Oskar. I was supposed to have brought the lad away. I can imagine what they’ll have to say when I get home with that one in tow.’

Oskar’s grin widened. ‘Probably send you back to get him. Come over here. I’ll bind it up for you before we stop for the night. We don’t want your blood on the bread.’ No ship ever set off on this kind of expedition without being prepared for wounds of some sort, so now linen strips were torn and wrapped round the honey-smeared wound over which had been laid a pad of moss, while Aric was treated to the banter of Oskar and the other companion, Hrolf, who was curious to know what he proposed to do with the captive woman and her maid. ‘We could have used the lad,’ he said, reasonably, ‘and you know how some of the men feel about having women on board.’

‘I don’t know what I’m going to do with them yet,’ Aric said, irritably, ‘but I don’t need your suggestions, either. We have to join forces with Swein in Lundenburh before we set off for home, so we’ll see what he has to say.’

‘And if he forbids it, we throw them overboard, yes?’ said Hrolf.

‘Fool,’ said Aric. ‘Let’s concentrate on finding somewhere to stop.’

Oskar winked at Hrolf. ‘So where will the next bite-marks appear, I wonder?’

In other circumstances, Aric would have welcomed the suggestions of his companions about how they might deal with a problem. But not this time. He had acted on some powerful impulse when he had adopted the Moneyer’s proposition of an alternative to taking his nephew. The woman had filled his mind since his first sight of her that day, not only for her stunning beauty but her courage, too, for she had suspected her husband’s death well before it had been spoken of. It had taken some guts for her to challenge him so cleverly while filling his drinking horn, hoping he would spill it like a pool of blood on the table, then to keep the knowledge to herself until the right moment. Without a doubt she was certainly a cut above the other two whose shrieking had filled the hall, but from whose line did she derive her strange eye colour? And how much of her fierceness was the by-product of being abandoned by her parents and brought up by women who wanted none of her? She had naturally expected the Earl to put up a fight to keep her with him and so had he, but Thored had seen greater value in the boy, caring little for her distress. He, Aric, had acknowledged Kean’s plea to look after her, but in truth he did not know how he would do this when revenge was his motivation for the life of the sister he had lost to the Earl. And as chance would have it, it was the Lady Fearn’s husband who had been killed that day, albeit in quite different circumstances. So now he would keep her in thrall to him for the year of her mourning. A just revenge for the death of his sister.

Now, he himself must strive not to be spellbound by her looks, as he was in danger of being, unless he armed himself against her. Still, she would not be in a hurry to let a man near her after her experience of marriage, for it was obvious that she had been in fear of the man she had lost. The recent memory of holding her close to him, struggling and screaming, was both sweet and bitter, for if he thought to damage her by this thraldom, he must recognise that she was already suffering from the Earl’s handling of her life, so far.

* * *

On a wide stretch of the river, the four longships were anchored and lashed together side by side so that the men could come and go across them, share the food and ale, and keep a lookout for danger. The marshland on both sides made this unlikely. The morning raids on the villages had provided them with a plentiful supply of bread and sides of cured bacon, cheeses, eggs eaten raw, honey and apples, oatcakes and a churn half-filled with newly made butter. Since they had eaten very little for the last two days but dried fish and stale bread, the meal lasted well into the night, most of the ale being taken, so the men laughingly told them, from the houses of the priests.

Privacy was not easy to come by for the two passengers, but nor had it ever been, even at home. So when food was brought to them as night fell and lanterns were lit, Haesel hung an extra piece of oiled wool across the opening to give at least the appearance of seclusion while they drank buttermilk with their food and listened to the noisy eating of the Vikings whose table manners, it had to be said, were little different from those of the Jorvik men. Later, as they lay between the furs, neither of them feared much for their safety while Jarl Aric and his two companions were just beyond the makeshift curtain, but Fearn thought it more than a little odd that their captor had spoken no word to her, not even to ask after her welfare. Perhaps, as he’d said, her likes did not concern him.

Escape being out of the question with so many bodies around and icy water on all sides, they listened to the rush of the river on the other side of the oak hull and felt the gentle movement of the ships as they bent and creaked together. Before Fearn’s eyes closed, she watched the glow of lanterns through gaps in the wool curtain and the movement of men adjusting ropes and stowing baggage beneath the slatted deck. Then, as an owl hooted to its mate across the river, she whispered a prayer of thanks for her safety and for a night of freedom from harassment. For how long this freedom would last she did not dare to speculate, for she believed she might have gained it at a very high price.

Naturally, an element of guilt crept into her prayers, for wives did not usually express relief at their husbands’ deaths. She tried to alleviate the dark thoughts by searching her mind for Barda’s merits, but found nothing to recommend him. Earl Thored had insisted on their marriage and, in the end, her objections had been overruled. Now the situation had worsened, if that were possible, since the arrogant Dane had referred, not too obliquely, to her probable fate. After which, she would no doubt be obliged to redirect her life yet again.

As she had searched her mind, so she did with the Dane and found, to her interest, that his concern for her comfort had, in one day, exceeded Barda’s of two whole years. He had returned her knife to her and the beaver cloak, ordered a horse for her to ride and furs for her to sit on. She fell asleep while thinking of the gold embroidery around the neck of his tunic, wondering whose hands had worked it.

* * *

She woke as Haesel parted the curtain, holding a wooden bucket of river water in which to wash. From the deck came sounds of shouts and yelps, then the lurch of the ship as men leapt over the side or hauled themselves back in, slopping the water in the bucket. Haesel’s cheeks were pink with embarrassment. ‘They’re jumping into the river,’ she said, ‘naked as the day they were born. There’s wet everywhere.’

‘Swimming, you mean?’

‘Washing. It must be freezing.’

The water in the bucket certainly was, but Fearn managed well enough to wash and tidy herself, combing her hair with her antler comb, one of the many and varied contents of the leather bag that Haesel had packed in advance. The Moneyer’s wife had also added things, like Fearn’s golden crucifix given to her by the priest when she was baptised. He had taught her to read and write in Latin, too. She found her sewing tools, as well as the tablet-weaving she’d been working on, carefully rolled to keep it from tangling. Her wax-tablet book and stylus was also in there, a detail that Fearn found touching. Now she would be able to make notes.

With her hair plaited and braided with green wool, she broke her fast on cold porridge with buttermilk and honey. The kindly quartermaster had sent two pears for them, so rather than ask where they’d come from, Fearn ate hers with gratitude before venturing out to see what was happening. Standing with his glistening bare back to her was Aric, his wet pigtail dripping between his shoulderblades, his dark linen loincloth sticking to him like a second skin over slender hips, with droplets of sparkling water dripping into a pool around his bare feet. His calves and thighs were as taut and hard as polished oak.

He turned as she emerged and stood upright, waiting as she usually did for a person to decide which eye to speak to. His mouth opened and closed, and then, to give himself time, he hitched up the wet cloth and tightened it. ‘Ah, Lady Fearn,’ he said, holding out his bandaged hand. ‘Perhaps you could rebind this for me?’

She looked at it with distaste. ‘I suppose so,’ she said, calmly, ‘since it was of my doing. Do we have dry linen?’

Holding his hand in the air, he called to the far end of the ship, ‘Oskar! Bandage!’

Her eyes wandered over the shipload of half-naked men slithering about in various stages of undress, laughing and tousled, some of them combing wet hair and beards. Yet her gaze was held, rather against her wishes, by the man before her whose sun-bronzed skin rippled over bulging muscle and sinew, over powerful shoulders and a chest like those men singled out for their wrestling skills for Jorvik’s entertainment. He saw where her eyes went before they locked with his. ‘Well?’ he said, quietly.

She blinked. ‘Hold your hand out,’ she retorted. ‘I need to take this one off.’

Bantering shouts diverted his attention as she began to unwind the soggy linen. ‘Are you coming in to bathe with us, lady?’ they called. ‘We’ve warmed the water for you.’

Aric grinned. ‘Enough!’ he called. ‘We man the oars at a count of two hundred.’

‘Hah!’ said Oskar, holding out the linen strips. ‘Which of them can count to two hundred?’

Fearn took them from him, flicking a haughty eyebrow. ‘Twenty counts of ten?’ she murmured. ‘Yes, it’s healing. I don’t need the moss, just the honey. Hold still. It won’t hurt.’

The two men exchanged grins, appreciating their beautiful captive’s attempt to patronise them in retaliation for her plight, taking the advantage the bandaging offered to watch her hands skilfully tending the row of punctures on his skin. They noted her graceful figure braced against the rocking of the ship and took time to admire the smooth honeyed complexion and the long sweep of black eyelashes on her cheeks. They had time to see the swell of her perfect breasts beneath the linen and wool, and the neat waist tied with a narrow leather girdle. A leather purse hung from this beside the knife in its fur-lined sheath and a rope of beads hung from her neck at the centre of which was a large chunk of cloudy amber, nestling into the valley of her breasts. Just for a moment, the two men would both like to have been that piece of amber.

‘There,’ she said. ‘Try not to wet it. It will heal faster if it’s kept dry.’

Aric turned his hand over and over, then nodded his thanks. But Fearn had already turned away to help Haesel fold the skins and furs, pretending not to have seen. She did not hear Oskar’s flippant question asking if Aric thought she might bite him some time, but Aric was not as amused as his friend had expected. ‘It was not done in play,’ he said, pressing the wound. ‘Far from it. If she’d done this to her lout of a husband, he’d have knocked her down.’

‘Well, so do many men when their women step out of line,’ Oskar said.

‘Do you?’

‘Hit Ailsa? No. Never had to.’

‘No man has to, Oskar. There are better ways than that to deal with women.’ There was a tone in Aric’s voice that his friend had not heard before, that made him wonder if Aric was telling the whole truth when yesterday he’d said that he didn’t yet know what he was going to do with her. Was revenge his only motive? Oskar thought not.

Chapter Three

The Earl had been right when he’d said how the Vikings’ ships moved fast, for now there was a sense of urgency as the rowers took turns to man the oars, thirty-two at a time, speeding through the water with the current to help them. Time and again they passed burnt-out villages, still smouldering, some no more than heaps of charred wood and ash, earning no more than a brief comment from the men who watched impassively. Fearn and Haesel felt the despair and anger of the villagers who saw the ships pass by, who dared not call out for fear they would stop again. At any other time, in happier circumstances, the two women would have enjoyed the sight of swans and their cygnets, the wide stretches of flat countryside in its new greens, the great expanse of sky, the green-brown water rushing past the oars. Now, they sat close together in silence, always aware of the men’s bare backs straining with the effort, their grunts of exertion, the hostile situation of being stolen by Danish Vikings who were under no obligation to be on their best behaviour. The women were no strangers to the crude expressions men used, their oaths and unrestrained humour, but as the Earl’s foster daughter, lack of respect had never been an issue. Here, as comments flew backwards and forwards between the Danes, usually followed by a laugh of sorts, Fearn suspected that their vernacular phrases alluded to women and particularly to them. The fact that this stopped when Aric the Ruthless passed by seemed to confirm her suspicions and, although it should not have concerned her too much, it did nothing to alleviate her sense of total helplessness.

Apart from access to ale whenever they wanted it, there was no stopping for food until the sun almost touched the horizon. Then, as the river widened considerably between sand dunes and scrubby woodland, they came to an island where oars were lifted out of the water and men leapt over the sides to haul the ships halfway up on to the sand. Assuming that the deck would remain at the same angle as it was before, Fearn and Haesel were quite unprepared for it to tip to one side, tumbling them out in a sudden lurch on to their fronts, half in and half out on to tufts of coarse grass and clumps of prickly sea holly. Unhurt, but by no means as amused as the men, Fearn controlled the temptation to make a fuss. Gathering herself together, she reached out for her golden circlet lying in the sand just beyond her reach, but not before it was snatched up by one laughing young man who set it upon his own brow, challenging Fearn to retrieve it.

Remembering Aric’s threat to deprive her of her knife if she should draw it on one of his men, she deliberately rested her hand on its hilt. ‘Give that back,’ she said. Without it, her veil had slipped down around her neck, revealing the shining black hair and the thick plait hanging over her breast, and she saw that the young man was making the most of her threat by responding to the men’s jeers, hoping she would be goaded into action. He came closer, grinning, yet he was obviously unsettled by seeing for the first time that her eyes were not of the same colour.

Fearn saw his eyes shift, as men’s often did, then she deliberately let her gaze flicker over his shoulder as if she had seen Aric approach. In that moment, as the man’s attention was distracted, she darted forward to snatch her circlet off his head, whipping out her knife as she did so to warn him not to retaliate.

Hearing the hoots of derision and seeing the crowd of men shirking their duties, Aric barged his way through them to seize the offender by his hair, pull him backwards, and to kick into the back of his knee. The man landed with a thud, but just as quickly sprang to his feet, none the worse and bearing no grudge.

Aric snarled at him. ‘Fool!’ he said, pointing to Fearn. ‘Don’t underestimate our passenger.’ Holding his bandaged hand under the man’s nose, he waited for the realisation to dawn in his eyes, before the man nodded. ‘Get to work, all of you, or it’ll be dark before we eat,’ Aric barked.

Fearn and Haesel dusted the sand and sea holly off their gowns, righting their veils and, in Fearn’s case, sheathing her knife. She held a protective hand over it, half-expecting confiscation. ‘Self-defence,’ she said.

‘Stay by the ship,’ he said. ‘Bring your rugs and furs out here. We shall be making camp on the island.’

‘My maid and I need to go...’ She pointed to the low gorse bushes and stunted trees making a dense thicket behind them. ‘In there. We need privacy.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Make a shelter and do what you have to do here.’

‘With those louts gawping at us?’

‘Get on with it, woman. There are ships between you and them. I’ll have your food sent as soon as it’s ready.’

With little option but to do as they’d been told, they made the best of the situation, erecting a makeshift hide between the prow of the ship and a young willow that gave them some shelter from the salt-tasting sea breeze. They need not have been concerned about the men’s interest, for now all hands were needed to light fires and to prepare food, cooked on spits and in pots with enough noise to make whispering unnecessary. ‘Haesel,’ Fearn said, ‘I’m going to creep up alongside the ship and take a look at where we are. I believe the other channel between the island and the shore is much narrower than this side. It’ll be shallower, too.’

‘You should wait, lady,’ Haesel said. ‘If you mean for us to escape, we should wait until we’ve been fed. Then they’ll settle down and darkness will hide us.’

‘You’re right. Look, here comes our food, at last.’

The young man who approached using an upturned shield as a tray carried a lantern, bread, baked fish, a stew of chicken and barley, a jug of wine and an apple each. As he was the same man who had teased Fearn, his manner had now changed to something between respectful and apologetic. This woman had actually managed to injure his leader. Asking if there was anything else the lady required while avoiding her eyes with his, he made a hesitant bow and left, while Fearn and Haesel tried hard to contain their laughter at the sudden change in his attitude. That unexpected lightness of heart and the possibility of an escape into the night gave them an appetite for everything set before them, even the wine. The custom of Danes to drink milk with fish was, unsurprisingly, not being observed, and although Haesel had never tasted more than a mouthful of wine and Fearn only rarely, the last of the jug’s contents was used to soak up the last crusts of bread.

Haesel yawned, loudly. ‘Should be getting...er...packing ready,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Packing. Put your knife away...no...wipe it first! Are we going soon?’

‘Yes, s’pose so.’ Fearn stood up, wobbled and took a step forward, then sat down again rather heavily. ‘Yes, course we are. What can we carry?’ She caught Haesel’s yawn as she spoke.

Not too successfully, Haesel was trying to clear away all signs of the meal, paying no attention to the young man when he returned to remove the few vessels from her hands and silently depart. Rolling up a woollen rug, she tossed it over to Fearn who, instead of catching it, keeled over sideways to lay her head upon it, her eyes already closed. The wine had done more to Haesel than send her to sleep, for in the next moment, she was stumbling over to the water’s edge to rid her stomach of its contents. Then, staggering back to the untidy pile of furs, she collapsed on the edge, groaned, and lost consciousness. Unused to wine, it had gone straight to their heads.

As the tide of the estuary receded, it was the gentle rushing lap of water that reminded Fearn where she was in that bleary state of half-sleep when the blackness of night hid everything from them. Vaguely, she wondered how it was that warm furs now covered her, wondering, too, about the something else she had been going to do and why could she now feel Barda’s length at her back? Barda?

Feeling the shock throughout her body, she swivelled and tried to leap away at the same time, but was pushed back down by a man’s arm, bare, warm and as hard as steel. Still disoriented, her head reeled as a large hand was clamped over her mouth, holding her down to prevent her scream for help, while her own hands tried to make sense of what was happening and failed to recognise the body they knew.

It was the deep commanding voice of Aric that broke through the panic, soft and reassuring, and close enough for her to feel his breath as the sounds touched her skin. ‘Shh...hush, lady. Steady. There’s no danger. You’re quite safe. Quiet, now. I’m taking my hand away, so don’t scream. I’m here to keep you safe, that’s all.’

She let the words find a niche in her memory as his hand slid away, its wrist held tightly by her fingers that found the linen bandage. ‘Where’s Haesel?’ she whispered, hoarse with fright.

‘Fast asleep behind me. You go back to sleep now.’

There was a part of her that craved sleep, accepting that her body was indeed safer than it had been from Barda’s selfish demands. Yet somehow she had let the enemy get this close when to keep him at a distance, in every respect, had been her one intention from the start. Reasoning deserted her in the dark warmth of his nearness, in the kind of safety she had known only when Haesel had shared her bed, in the comfort she had felt as a young child with an adult nearby. She felt sleep overwhelm her again while breathing in the outdoor scent of his body, feeling his breath on her shoulder and the surprising softness of his short jawline beard. Almost asleep, she turned towards the haven of safety and was scooped up, gently, to lay with her head on the crook of his arm, her mouth against the bare skin of his chest that rose and fell like the rocking of the ship.

* * *

In the starlit darkness and with the sounds of lapping water to remind him of the tides, Aric smiled at his success. But in this game, one could not afford too much self-congratulation, experience having taught him that it would take more than this to bring this rare bird to his hand, nor would he be able to rely on wine again to foil whatever plan she was hatching. If she remembered anything of this episode, she would be doubly on her guard, no doubt hating him more than ever for his ploy. This had been her last chance to make a run for it with the open sea just round the bend and Northumbria left behind. To meet up with King Swein and the rest of the Danish fleet, it would take them quite some time to reach Lundenburh, sailing south, then west along the great River Thames. It was a long time for her to be caged up with a crowd of woman-starved warriors. She would have to become accustomed to his methods of safety and he would have to be on his guard against her methods of resisting them, as she surely would. Having just found a release from a husband’s brutish thraldom, she would not take kindly to his, however different.

* * *

She awakened slowly to the sounds of activity around the ships and to a painful thudding in her head quite unlike anything Barda had been responsible for. Frowning, she squinted at Haesel’s pale unsmiling face and knew that she, too, was feeling the effects of last night’s indulgence while folding blankets and furs with nothing like her usual deftness.

The maid saw that Fearn was awake. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘They need us to take the shelter down. They’ll be moving the ships into the water soon. Please, lady. Move!’ With no time or energy for discussion on whatever it was that nagged her memory of the night’s strangeness, Fearn forced herself into action. To catch the tide was all important to the men and, even as she clambered into place loaded with furs and rugs, there were men aboard pulling on ropes to raise the mast which, until then, had been lying along the deck.

Nestling like two birds into the curve of the prow, the women listened to the men’s roar as they pushed in unison, felt the lurch and dip, the lift as the ship righted itself, kept steady by a few of the oarsmen, then the hasty scramble of men on to the deck. With his leather-clad feet on their platform, Aric yelled and waved his arms at the helmsman, whose task was to steer them safely between sandbanks and mudflats while men unfurled the sail from the yardarm, waiting for orders to hoist it to the top of the mast. Beyond the stern of their longship, Fearn could see the three others following on and, by the way the sandy dunes flattened and disappeared altogether, she knew they would soon be on the open sea that lifted the ship with a rhythmic swoosh. Aric made as if to leave the prow, but then dropped to his heels until his eyes were level with Fearn’s. Above them, the striped sail cracked as the wind filled it. ‘The gods are with us,’ he said. ‘We have a fair wind, but we shall be staying within sight of land, and make better progress if we keep going and sleep on board.’

‘I’m relieved to hear it,’ Fearn said, looking steadily into his eyes to find some change there after her disturbing thoughts of the last hour. ‘I believe cold food and buttermilk suits us better than wine. We both prefer to eat and sleep as we did before. We feel safer that way.’ The problem was, she could remember very little of what had happened last night except that something had and that she had been kept safe, whatever she might be implying.

His eyes gave nothing away, nor did the straight line of his mouth. ‘Having got this far with you, your safety is of concern to me. Are you telling me that you did not feel safe last night, after what happened on the sand?’