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 imp
ortant 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?’
‘No, but...’
‘Good. None of my men wishes you any harm. Neither you nor the maid. But they’ve been away from home now for over a year, wintering in Lundenburh, and they would see little wrong in taking advantage of women’s presence amongst them unless I and my two companions reminded them who you belong to.’
‘Belong to? You? Then you can remind them, Dane, that I belong to no one.’
‘Yes, I could do that, if that’s what you wish. Shall I tell them now and give them something to look forward to at the end of their day’s work? There’ll be some competition, of course.’
It was Haesel who brought her mistress to her senses. ‘Lady!’ she said, grasping Fearn’s arm in a vice. ‘Think what you’re saying, for pity’s sake.’ She shook the arm, aware that the after-effects of the wine were still causing some problems. ‘Tell the Jarl that you need his protection, however it comes. And so do I. Think, lady.’ Her voice was breathless with fear.
Aric knew what else Haesel was trying to say. ‘You are still a maid?’ he asked her.
Looking at Fearn, Haesel nodded. ‘Yes. And last night...’
‘You felt safe?’ Aric said. ‘With...?’
‘Yes.’ Her eyes left Fearn’s with the admission that her memory of what happened was the clearer of the two. The younger of Aric’s two companions had whispered to her that he was known as Hrolf and that she was perfectly safe with him. Which indeed she had been. There had been no sign of either men as Haesel awoke, though she guessed who had guarded the lady.
‘Haesel? You slept with—?’ said Fearn, angrily.
‘I was kept safe, lady. As you were,’ Haesel interrupted.
Fearn’s face paled with the shock of realisation that the hazy memories of last night were as she had suspected. Haesel, too. Her young maid. Glaring at Aric, she winced at the pain in her head as words flew at him like arrows. ‘You play a wily game, Dane. My maid does not understand...’
‘Your maid understands more than you think, lady. She is...how old?’
Haesel answered. ‘Sixteen, my lord, to my lady’s three-and-twenty.’
There was a distinct huff of annoyance from Fearn as the information she had been pleased to withhold was now given freely and for no good reason. At the same time, she could tell that Haesel’s reading of the situation was quite different from her own, for she had heard a certain note of pride in the maid’s voice in stating her age. Clearly, she was not as averse to his method of being kept ‘safe’ at night as she herself was. She could not look at Aric as she spoke, though her voice was gruff with fear at the way matters were unfolding beyond her control. ‘I would ask you to remember,’ she said, ‘that my freedom from the demands of a husband lasted only a few hours, most of those without me knowing it. And for two years I longed for that freedom, for reasons you will...already...know.’ The words almost disappeared beneath the slap of water on the bows, as Aric leaned forward to hear them. ‘Naturally, my maid is curious, but I am not,’ she said.
But the Dane had no time for that kind of conversation. Pushing at his knees, he stood up, uncompromising in his parting shot. ‘Such is the nature of thraldom, lady, even for one year. You should thank your god you were not taken by a savage.’
She watched him make his way through the bustle of men, giving directions on what to put where, but leaving the sailing of the ship to his shipmaster. She had said she lacked curiosity, but knew it to be less than the truth, for she was in fact curious to know how he had come to her last night and exactly what had taken place. That curiosity fuelled her imagination, for she had seen him half-naked and had already felt the strength in his body, though she knew he had not abused her in any way, as Barda certainly would have done. Even so, she had now lost her hard-earned freedom, his severe words making it clear beyond any doubt that she was to be his slave of one year or forfeit his protection, such as it was. Travelling like this with so many lustful men was too dangerous for her to indulge in a surfeit of pride, but the thought of the price she would eventually have to pay filled her with nothing but dread and revulsion.
The offshore wind took them out of the Humber Estuary and into the wide expanse of the open sea with the sails bellying and the ropes straining while men swung the ship round time and again to tack down the eastern coast.
* * *
It was some time before Aric himself brought bread, butter and cheese to the two women, with a pitcher of ale, which was when Fearn noticed that his hand was no longer bandaged. Proudly, he showed it to her, both sides of his thumb completely healed and showing only the faintest marks where yesterday the wounds had been red and sore.
‘I don’t know what you did, lady,’ Aric said, leaning on the bulwarks, ‘but I’ve never healed as fast as this before. Do you have healing powers?’
‘Skills, not powers,’ she said. ‘I was taught well by my Benedictine friends.’
‘You treated Earl Thored’s men?’
‘Many times.’
Aric looked along the ship, his eyes searching for a man to whom he beckoned. ‘Einar!’ he called. ‘Come!’
The man took some time coming through the crowded deck stacked with chests and sacks, with men and caged hens, slowed down by a clumsy bandage round one foot on which he limped, his face wrinkled with pain. A red-faced hoary old warrior with long flowing hair and a plaited beard hiding all but two red cheeks and two bright blue eyes, he eventually accepted the arm of a comrade for the last few steps, collapsing with a grunt on to a chest.
‘Put your foot up here,’ Fearn commanded without waiting for an introduction. Quickly, she began to unwind the smelly bandage, stiff with blood. ‘How long has it been like this, Einar?’ she said.
Clasping his leg with both hands, he puffed with pain as the linen came away. ‘Two...three days, lady. Gathering laver from the rocks. Stood on something sharp. It’s underneath. I cannot see.’
The wound on the soft pad of his foot gaped open and raw with grains of sand covering the deepest part. ‘My lord,’ she said to Aric, ‘I need a bucket of seawater to wash thi
s in. Then some clean linen strips and some of that laver he was gathering. Or has it all been eaten?’
‘There’s some left, lady,’ Einar said. ‘You want me to eat some more of it?’
Laver was a favourite food for sailors who plucked its floppy pinkish fronds from the rocks all around the coast. Other kinds of seaweed were sought, too, to be boiled, then rolled in oatmeal and fried with bacon. Without a fire, men chewed it raw. Having washed the foot clean of sand and blood, Fearn was able to see into the wound. Delving into her leather purse that hung from her girdle, she brought out her bronze tweezers, at which Einar made no protest. A crowd of men craned their necks, three deep, to witness the proceedings as Fearn probed the wound and, after three attempts to grasp the hard edge of the splinter, she carefully drew out a sizeable shard of white cockleshell that had been lurking in there for the best part of three days. Holding it out to the patient, she smiled at him. ‘There’s your problem,’ she said, placing it on his hand. ‘Now, where’s the laver?’
The last of the laver had been boiled to a pulp the night before, while there were fires but, as Fearn told her patient—who happened to be the cook—the pulp was perfect for a poultice. Covering the wound with a thick layer of the glutinous substance, she bound the foot rather more expertly than before with strict instructions that it must not touch the floor for a day and a night.
‘Shall you not be saying a charm over it?’ Einar wanted to know.
‘Not a charm,’ she replied, ‘but I will remember you in my prayers, if you wish?’
‘Yes,’ Einar said. ‘My thanks, lady. If I can do anything for you...?’
‘I like shellfish,’ she said, ‘but next time, mind where you put your great feet.’
She won a friend, that day, and a crowd of admirers hugely impressed by her expertise. On a more personal level, the little act of mercy gave her a sense of purpose and worth, and a certainty that the men on this ship, at least, would be unlikely to threaten her safety, or Haesel’s, as long as she could cure their ailments.
Captive of the Viking Page 6
