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.
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