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.
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