Captive Of The Viking

Chapter Three (#ulink_b19b26c1-f708-5d91-a6ea-c74791460e34)

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?’