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