terrible dilemma, sick at heart at the threat of losing Kean, the lad he loved like a natural son. For ten years, he and Kamma had kept their secret, having every reason to be grateful to Earl Thored for supplying them with a child they could not produce themselves and for the reward that attended the lucrative position of Moneyer, coin-maker to the King. Fearn felt the man’s longing to speak breaking through his reluctance to join in the argument without permission. Finally, he could contain himself no longer. Stepping forward, he spoke the first and most obvious words on his mind with little regard for their implications. ‘Better still,’ he said, looking from the Dane to Earl Thored and back again, ‘take an alternative. Is there not someone of more years you could choose, who would be of more use to you?’ Flinching under the Earl’s furious glare, Arlen stepped back again, too late to undo the damage.
Aric’s approval overlapped Thored’s blustering protest. ‘He speaks well, your Moneyer,’ Aric said. Taking everyone by surprise, he swung round to point a finger, like a spear, at Fearn. ‘There! That one! The woman. Your foster daughter for their foster son. How will that do, Earl? I’d call that a fair enough bargain, eh? I’ll take her for one year, then return her to you and take the boy. He’ll have another winter under his belt by that time and she might well have something interesting under her belt. Now that’s what I call an alternative. See, Thored? I’ve backed down for you.’
The collective gasp of shock was audible to everyone in the hall. Even Thored was taken aback by the insulting audacity of the Dane’s suggestion. Fearn was the first to find her tongue, released by the outrageous innuendo. ‘Then back down further, Dane,’ she shouted, taking a step forward until only the upturned table was between them. ‘This business is between you and Earl Thored. Count me out of it and don’t play word games with my virtue, for I’ll have none of it.’
Facing each other like alley cats, glaring eyes locked together, they made the air between them vibrate with open hostility, causing the company to catch its breath at the ferocity of Fearn’s defiance. Any woman would have had the same feelings of shock, but few would dare to say so in such terms, especially to an enemy in the hall of one’s guardian. Aric’s eyes narrowed in admiration. ‘You have no say in the matter, woman. Neither you nor your foster parents are in a position to argue.’
Indeed, the Lady Hilda had stopped moaning and was far from arguing against the Dane’s latest demand. But Fearn would not be silenced so easily. ‘Wrong, Dane. Both the Earl and myself are in a position to argue. I’ve listened to your pathetic story of your sister, but now you should admit to the killing of the Earl’s brave warrior, my husband, the man whose cloak you’ve had the audacity to wear around your shoulders. Here, in the hall of his lord. You deny that, if you can.’
‘What?’ Earl Thored roared. ‘Barda’s cloak? Are you sure, Fearn?’
‘It’s the one I gave him on his last feast day, my lord. Of course I’m sure.’
Aric stood motionless, neither denying nor admitting the murder, though his eyes did not leave Fearn’s face, not even when Earl Thored addressed him directly. ‘Well, Dane? Does my foster daughter speak the truth? Where did you find that cloak?’
Speaking to Fearn rather than Thored, Aric replied. ‘It was handed to me by my men,’ he said. ‘Searching the woodland along the river’s edge, they found the Earl’s three men. There was a skirmish. The wolves will have found them by now.’ His last words were drowned by a scream from Catla, who would have flown at Aric if the wall of the table-top had not prevented it. Tempers flared as both men and the four women hurled abuse at the Danish group who stood firm and resolute against the insults, being prevented from drawing their swords by their leader’s forbidding hand. Cries of ‘Murderers!’ mingled with hoots of derision until Thored’s thundering voice reminded them that the Danish leader and his men were still guests in his hall, though no one was impressed by that. The Danes still had the advantage and, even now, were in a position to demand more Danegeld.
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,
