But Fur Hat was determined to get rid of the ill luck that was Haesel and, striding across the deck, he picked her up like a toy and would have thrown her directly into the path of the sailing ship had not the nearest oarsman seen what he was about to do and, leaping over his oar, threw himself bodily at Fur Hat, knocking Haesel over in the process. ‘You not paid us, you filthy pig!’ he yelled, landing on top of him. ‘We work for nothing! Now you get something!’ His fists pummelled but would have made little difference to the man had it not been for the others who left their oars to help, glad of the chance, at last, to wreak some revenge.
It was Haesel who, clambering out of their way, saw the expressions on the faces of Hrolf, Aric and Loki as their skilful crew manoeuvred the new ship alongside, leaping like goats over the sides and on to the deck. She thought this was how they must look when they went raiding and pitied the poor souls who got in the way of their fury. But if Aric had it in mind to throw the battered Russian overboard, he was beaten to it by Fur Hat’s own crew who, unpaid, underfed and overworked, took him by the arms and legs and, with a roar of triumph, heaved him over the side with a splash that rocked the ship. Grabbing their oars, they maliciously prodded him until he disappeared from sight to the sound of their hooting cheers. The unconscious Boris was the next to go, but this noisy scene was hardly registered by Fearn who lay on the other side of the deck, overtaken by her sickness and by more waves of pain that made her cry out like a child.
Lifting her carefully into his arms, Aric assumed she had been injured. ‘Sweetheart...where are you hurt?’ he said. ‘Haesel? Tell me where she’s been hit.’
‘I think she may be losing it, my lord. The child. I’m so sorry. She didn’t want you to know.’ She saw Aric’s face contorted with astonishment and grief, and her heart melted for him. There were, she thought, many things that both of them ought to have been told before now. ‘Her mother will know what to do,’ she said. ‘We must take her there.’
Grim-faced, and with hands to help him, he carried her to his own ship, cradling her on his lap as preparations were made to leave the cargo vessel, to retrieve Fearn’s baggage from the tent and to send the jubilant crew on its way, with thanks and a bag of silver. Floating away on a journey of its own, the beaver cloak spread itself wide upon the waters of the fjord and was soon lost to sight. Aric’s eyes rarely left Fearn’s pale face, soft with concern, bewilderment, guilt and overwhelming love. How had he allowed it to come to this? Remembering Clodagh’s words, he knew now that she had meant them for him. None of us can afford to reject love when it is offered. And he had rejected it, every single day since he’d known of it, hardening his heart against a force stronger than any other, even revenge. ‘Fearn, my own love, my darling woman,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t leave me. I love you. I want you. For ever. Beloved, stay with me.’
Through the haze of pain, Fearn heard the voice she adored, with the words she had never thought to hear. He loved her...his darling woman...he wanted her, for ever. Was it really true? Or was she dreaming? She felt the comforting strength of his arms holding her safe against the painful lurch and bump of the ship as the following wind billowed in the sail. Vaguely, she recalled that this was why the crew had been rowing, because the west wind was against them. And now it sped them back home, which she should never have left. ‘Forgive me,’ she murmured. ‘I should not have left you. I would have given you more time, if I’d had it. But...ah!’ Her eyes squeezed shut against the powerful ache.
‘Don’t try to talk, my love. We’ll be there soon.’
He was right. The new ship flew like a bird. Lindholm was already in sight.
* * *
In the curtained, sweet-smelling chamber reserved for birthing mothers, Aric stayed beside her all that day throughout Clodagh’s assistance to hold back the threat to her pregnancy that had begun before Fearn realised it and, although it was not usual, he was allowed to stay and hold the warm herbal infusions to her lips and administer a soothing draught, remaining with her well into the evening. Fearn had scarcely been aware of the crowd that had gathered on the quay to see them arrive, for the news of the two women’s disappearance had been received with an alarm and a concern far deeper than either of them had been prepared for. The women, even Aunt Astrid, had wept openly as Aric had carried Fearn to Clodagh’s place, giving the badly bruised Haesel messages for her, along with cries of praise for the maid herself and not the slightest recoil from the sight of her exposed neck. Haesel, however, kept her other secret to herself, being quite certain now that what she had seen in her sighting had been Aric’s new ship with its full sail against the sky, bearing her loved one, bringing safety and her future.
* * *
Towards evening, candles were lit in the little chamber where Fearn’s recovery was well under way, inevitably with tears that she was unable to stop, racking her with sobs for all that had happened, the misunderstandings, the pain and longings, for wasted time, for the despair. Were they to go back to that? Had she really heard him say, for the first time, that he loved her?
Kneeling beside the bed, he eased her into his embrace. ‘You were not dreaming,’ he said. ‘Don’t weep, my darling. What’s done is done, but I owe you an explanation, even so. What happened today has made me see more clearly and it shames me to say that I should have told you long before this how much I adore you. It would have saved you so much unhappiness, which you have done nothing to deserve, my dearest love. Your unhappiness breaks my heart. How can I ever make it up to you?’ His voice broke with emotion as he asked her the question she could not answer when he had never allowed her to know him well enough, except in bed.
Keeping hold of his hands, keeping contact, Fearn sat back against the pillows. ‘I don’t think,’ she whispered, her voice husky with spent tears, ‘that you need to make it up to me, Aric. My love for you grew so slowly. I was not prepared for it, either. I could not stop it, though I knew it would only give me pain.’
‘And I tried so hard to hold my love away. It was not part of my plan. Ever.’
‘You held it away? Why? I thought you were not capable of love.’
He bowed his head, resting his forehead on her hands, spilling his windswept hair over them before raising his face to hers, clearly affected by her image of him. ‘Just the opposite, beloved. I resisted love and rejected yours because, for me, that meant pain. I didn’t want it to happen again that the one I love would be taken from me, so I rejected love, knowing that I must take you home. Yes, I know what you will say, that the reason for my revenge was no longer in place after Thored’s death and Kean’s coming, but you were so determined to leave, asking me to take you before the year was up. And I could not let you go sooner, my darling. Not one day before I had to. I wanted my full year of you while denying my love to ease the pain that would come. It had nothing to do with revenge, by that time.’
‘I pestered you to return me,’ she said, feeling again the ache of emptiness, ‘because I could not live with a man who did not want my love. That was what you said to me, remember? That broke my heart, Aric.’ Tears ran down her cheeks at the memory of that day and the bitterness she had used to combat it. ‘When a woman loves, it’s useless for her to pretend that she doesn’t. Few people are deceived by that pretence and I don’t suppose you were either, were you? But you told me I’d have to learn to deal with it, that it was not love you wanted.’
Aric shook his head at the cruelty of it. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘That day was no less remarkable for me than it was for you, my darling. I knew even then that you were my heart’s desire. Everything a man could hope for. But I had given my word to take you back and I thought that if I denied love, the pain of parting would be less.’
‘What is this pain you suffered? Are you talking about your family?’
He nodded. ‘My mother. My sisters. My father. I should not have allowed it to affect me so, but it did. I could
n’t bear the thought of it happening again.’
‘Can you tell me about it? Your mother left you?’
His fingers caressed her hands as he brought back the powerful painful memories. ‘She refused to stay with my father any longer. She had a right to divorce him for violence. She had only to say the words. I was away learning to be a Viking warrior at the time. She left me no farewell. I never saw her again.’
‘She went to Iceland?’
‘That’s what Astrid told me. I suppose there was another man. I’ve had no word. I was supposed to be hardened to loss. After all, that’s the kind of loss I was taught to inflict on the victims of our raids. But it hurts. I loved my mother.’
‘And your sisters?’
‘Both wanted to leave my father, but he needed them to look after the house. He did his best to prevent them from leaving. So Tove, who was a few years older than me, found a man who wanted to leave Lindholm altogether and set up in Jorvik. There were bad words between us. She’d be leaving Wenda alone with Father and me away every summer. She went off. No loving farewell. My lovely sister. You know what happened to her in Jorvik. I vowed to revenge her death.’
‘Did you never think she might have loved Thored? As my mother did?’
‘I was about fifteen. I didn’t know how or why people love as they do.’
‘So Wenda was left at home. But she’s happy now, dearest.’
‘Poor Wenda. She believed that, if she got pregnant, Father would have to let her marry and leave. But he threatened to turn her out instead, wouldn’t give her a dowry and told her to go and live with the father of her child. But he was a bastard. Didn’t want her and certainly didn’t want a girl child with a deformity. I was no use to her because I was not there when she needed me and when I returned, they’d decided to expose it. And I did nothing to help her. I failed her when she needed me most. It was partly to get Kean for her that I asked permission to go up to Jorvik. I felt that having her sister’s child might ease her pain.’
‘What more could you have done?’
‘Confronted my father, or found somewhere for Wenda and the child to stay together. I should have asserted myself, but I was no help at all to her. If it had not been for Olof, I think she might have taken her own life. And now I’ve seen little Meld for myself and the guilt of it hits me all over again. We might have lost her for ever and Wenda, too.’
‘So your father was left alone, after all.’
‘He drank himself to death. As a child, I adored him and looked up to him. But he changed and I hated what he did to our family. I shall make sure that such things never happen to ours.’ He saw the lift of her eyebrows and realised what he’d said. ‘Am I going too fast for you, my wonderful woman? Did I tell you that I want you to stay and be my wife? I shall never let you go, Fearn. You’re far too precious. I missed so many opportunities to tell my mother and sisters how I loved them, but I was a warrior and warriors are trained to be hard. I nearly made the same mistake with you, didn’t I? But I love you, Lady Fearn of Jorvik, and I have used you badly. Forgive me and I will do anything to win your hand.’
Placing a hand over his hair, she stroked it in place as tears of happiness followed the despair of lives torn apart by circumstances. ‘Anything?’ she said. ‘Does that include having a family of our own?’
‘As many as you wish, dear heart.’
‘But...what if...what if one is...?’
‘I know what you’re going to say. Is that a reason why you fled? Because you thought I might not want a physically deformed child?’
‘You told me it was the custom. And although you’ve seen Meld, that’s not like having one of your own, is it?’
‘Christians don’t do that. And I shall become one, because I want to be like those I know. It was Clodagh, your mother, who showed me a better way of living.’
‘Oh, my darling, we’ve wasted so much time.’ Taking his head in her hands, she laid her own upon it to nuzzle into his hair, breathing in the sea scent of a sailor. She would not ask him to stop adventuring in his fast new ship, for that would have been like asking a fish not to swim. The sea was in his blood. She would have to accept periods when he would be away from her, as other women did.
‘Will you stay with me, Fearn? Will you be my beloved wife, the mother of my children? I promise to be kind, and loving, and faithful, and all those things my father was not. Will you, Fearn?’
‘If only I had known,’ she whispered. ‘If only you had opened up your heart to me, showed me those terrible scars you’ve carried and the heartache. I could have helped to heal them before this. You have suffered, my love.’
‘And I made you suffer, because you were mine for only one year.’
‘I shall never leave you,’ she said, touching his bearded cheek. ‘Never.’
Turning his face, he placed a kiss upon her palm. ‘My beautiful English wife,’ he said.
* * *
Aric had stayed by Fearn’s bedside all that night, ministering to her just as her mother would have done, had she been allowed. The next day, while Aric went home to change, the small chamber was seldom empty of visitors bringing little delicacies for her to nibble and gossip to make her smile. The visit of Eve and Ivar made her weep a little, however, when they told her of Aric’s plans to free them from their slavery, though they had both decided not to leave their service. Deena, the deaf weaving lady, was also promised freedom, the news of which had been conveyed by mime rather than words, which Aric had been obliged to perform himself, so Freya and Astrid told her, laughing.
* * *
In two more days, Fearn was carried home in Aric’s arms to sit outside in the sun while Haesel, directed by Freya, Astrid and Eve, dressed her hair in the Danish style with coils and plaits behind her head and a long ponytail hanging down behind. Astrid gave her two bronze egg-shaped brooches with which to hold up her Danish-style pinafore dress, worn over a pleated linen shift, and the transformation from English to Danish was so effective that Aric could hardly speak the words of pride that filled his heart. ‘My...my beautiful Anglo-Danish woman,’ he said at last. ‘Marry me?’ The applause and laughter almost drowned out her acceptance.
* * *
Neither of them saw any reason to delay the simple marriage ceremony that was to set a seal upon their love and, because in the weeks that followed, Aric and Hrolf had been baptised into the new faith, the four lovers took their vows on the same day in the small church packed with relatives and friends, and many more outside, both Christian and pagan. While a second marriage for Fearn was in itself a remarkable event, to have both parents there beside her was something she could never have dreamed of.
The feasting on this occasion was different in every way from anything they could remember, held out of doors on the newly mown hayfield next to the longhouse to which the whole of Lindholm was invited. An ox, two pigs and several hundred assorted birds were roasted and tables were piled high with warm loaves of bread, biscuits and honey cakes, fruit from the hedgerows and last year’s nuts and apples, plums and pears, cheeses, baked fish, ale and beer, mead and fruit drinks. It was the first feast that Fearn had ever really enjoyed, for here she was loved by everyone not only for her healing skills, but for her kindness, too. Here, she was not ogled by lusting warriors, but admired and respected by friends. The good-natured rowdy celebrations went on well into the summer’s night when bonfires were lit, danced round to the wail of reed pipes and drums. Haesel and Hrolf’s exit from the event went unnoticed, but when Aric and Fearn made a bid for freedom, they were spotted and serenaded to the door of the longhouse, carried on the shoulders of Loki, Einar, Oskar and Olof.
Alone at last in their dimly lit chamber, Aric removed the wreath of wild white flowers from Fearn’s brow. ‘Do you remember when I came to you here?’ he said, pulling her gently into his arms. ‘Late at night. You were
asleep. Or pretending.’
‘I was not pretending,’ she protested. ‘You woke me. I did not want you.’
‘Your body told me otherwise, lady. After...’
She placed a finger over his lips. ‘No, don’t remind me of that first time. The memory of it still pains me. Let’s go forward now, not backwards. We’ve both done and said things we regret, but now we can love each other without all those stifling reservations.’
‘You’re right, sweetheart. We’ve allowed other people and events to shape our lives until now, haven’t we?’
‘No. I didn’t allow it. As a woman, I had no choice.’
‘Are you arguing? Already?’
‘Yes,’ she said, knowing where this was leading.
‘After promising to obey me?’
‘I didn’t promise. I said I might.’
The twinkle in Aric’s candlelit grey eyes was at odds with his dramatic sigh of despair. ‘Ah, I knew there was something that priest ought to have explained to you. Now I’m stuck with a wife who has a mind of her own. How did that happen?’
Laying her arms across his shoulders, she pressed herself against him in a manner she had not used before, abandoned and overtly seductive, wriggling her hips beneath his questing hands and lowering her black-lashed eyelids to show him the merest glint of the jewels that were green and blue, holding him spellbound with their message. ‘Like this,’ she whispered. ‘It happened without either of us knowing it. It just happened, beloved.’
His answer was to begin a slow undressing of the bride while she hindered him, showering him with her kisses. When it became impossible for him to continue, their laughter broke them apart as Fearn was lifted and dumped unceremoniously upon the bed, already halfway through divesting her new husband of his best embroidered tunic. The resulting tangle both hampered and excited them, having slept apart since declaring their love for each other, and this had been on both their minds, wondering in what way it would be different, once their secrets were revealed. But now, although they had spoken of their love, they were at last able to use those words in a new context; words that had been missing before and carefully withheld, now freed in a poem of praise and adoration, of desire, pleasure and fulfilment. There was joy, too, in the new carefree element that came with laughter, as if their cares and constraints had never affected their previous loving or caused a certain desperation, at times.
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