* * *
‘Astrid Borgsen,’ the large lady said, hoping to make an impression. Without waiting for an invitation, she swept past Haesel into the hall where Fearn was sitting on the low platform, attempting to unravel her tablet-weaving threads from the jumble that had come about during the journey, perhaps irretrievably. Holding one of the tablets away between her teeth, Fearn glanced up past all the pleats and folds, the fur trims, brooches, chains and double chins to find two fierce blue eyes under a pair of heavy white eyebrows drawn together in a frown. ‘Astrid Borgsen,’ the lady repeated, clearly used to some positive reaction at the sound of her name.
Removing the tablet carefully from her mouth, Fearn knew without being told that this was Aric’s formidable aunt and had already decided on the exact degree of respect she would dispense, when the time came. It was not as if she was unused to this kind of thing. ‘And I,’ she said, politely, ‘am Lady Fearn of Jorvik. Please do come in, Astrid Borgsen.’
Since the lady was already well inside, she could hardly miss the reprimand, pursing her lips and bending as much as she was able to scrutinise Fearn’s lovely face and to see for herself the curiosity about which her brother had been so scathing, as if it had been a fault similar to a calf born with five legs. Her own eyes widened under Fearn’s bold stare. ‘May the gods have mercy!’ she boomed, standing up straight. ‘Uther was right. They are!’
With a sigh, Fearn laid the jumble of threads aside and stood up to face her visitor. ‘Not one in the middle of my forehead, I fear. Now that would have been something, wouldn’t it? May I offer you some mead?’
Not used to being answered so readily by a younger woman, Astrid blinked back her surprise. ‘Yes, you may. I am Aric’s aunt, you know.’
‘Yes, I do know. But you are not my aunt, are you? And I am not a permanent fixture here, so I shall not mind if you address me as Fearn, plain and simple. And this is my woman, Haesel. She is not a slave and I do not treat her as one. Shall you bring our guest some mead, Haesel, love?’
‘Well!’ said Astrid, watching Haesel depart. ‘You seem to be settling in. Haven’t been in here since Aric’s father departed this life. It’s cleaner.’
‘Ivar and Eve are very efficient,’ Fearn said, placing a cushion stuffed with goosedown on the platform for Astrid to sit on. ‘Please, will you sit a while?’
With a breathless grunt, the white-haired aunt lowered herself down, grumbling that she’d never be able to get up again. ‘There now,’ she said, smoothing the pleated linen kirtle over her knees, ‘tell me something about yourself.’
Fearn sat on the opposite side of the glowing embers, noticing how Astrid’s chubby fingers flashed with gold rings, with garnets, obsidian and cornelian. She was unhealthily overweight, making her lungs wheeze noisily. There were no thanks for Haesel as Astrid took the beaker of mead from her, yet the honeyed liquid was downed in one long gulp as if it was water. Fearn preferred to direct the conversation herself. ‘I can’t tell you anything you won’t already have heard from your brother and your nephew,’ she said, sweetly, accepting her beaker of well water with a smile. ‘So why not tell me the real purpose of your visit, Astrid? Did you perhaps wish to tell me about your plans for your niece Freya and her cousin Aric? Oh, it’s no surprise to me. Did you think it would be?’
Astrid’s eyes narrowed. ‘So he’s told you, then?’
‘That he’s expected to take Freya as his wife? Of course. Why would he not?’
‘Because, I suppose... I assumed he...you...might be planning...’ The thought fizzled out completely as Fearn leaned back, laughing quietly.
‘Planning?’ she said. ‘I’m not planning anything, Astrid, and I don’t believe Aric is, either. I’m here for a year and then you’ll get your young Kean back. Revenge over. All honour restored. That’s the last you’ll see of me. Freya is a delightful young lady. Is she as keen on this partnership as you and your brother are?’
‘Freya is an obedient girl. She will do as she’s told.’
‘Freya is a woman, Astrid. Had you overlooked that?’
Impatient with the word-juggling, Astrid looked away before coming back to Fearn with a hard stare. ‘What are you suggesting? That she may go against all our wishes?’
‘I’m suggesting that she may actually have a mind of her own, as women do.’
‘I was not allowed a mind of my own when I was her age,’ Astrid said, sullenly.
‘Ah, so is that why you’ve remained unmarried all these years?’ Fearn knew the question to be impertinent, put to one of Astrid’s generation by a much younger woman, but before she could regret it, she saw how Astrid sank down into her bulk and how the heavy folds of skin above her eyes drooped like shutters to keep the pain inside.
‘My parents,’ she whispered, ‘expected me to...’ Again, the sentence faded.
‘To marry a man of their choice?’ Fearn said. ‘Not your choice?’
Astrid nodded. ‘I refused. Said I’d rather stay single all my life. I would like to have had children, so I mother Freya as if she were my own.’
‘And now you’re going to insist on your choice for her? As your parents did?’
‘No. Not if she doesn’t want it. Of course, I cannot speak for Aric, or Uther.’
‘Then all you can do is to wait and see what happens, isn’t it? Time has its own way of resolving this kind of problem.’
‘And what about you, lady? Are you waiting to see what happens, too?’
‘I have no choice. I am not free, as you know. I am simply the means by which the Jarl Aric is taking his revenge on Earl Thored. Not an ideal situation for any woman to be in.’
‘Especially not you. You are widowed, I believe. Are you still mourning?’
‘Not at all, Astrid. But that doesn’t mean I’m ready for another relationship.’
‘Then refuse to let him take advantage of you, Fearn. As I did with men when I was your age and lovely to look on.’
Between women, so much could be read into a silence, in the direction of the eyes, a sigh, the movement of a thumb, even. So Astrid knew without being told that, for all her claims of detachment from this affair of family honour, Fearn’s heart had already begun to thaw towards the man who had dared to abduct her from beneath her father’s nose. An English earl, no less. Not a mere nobody. And knowing her nephew as she did, Astrid could not believe that he would tire of her in one year, promise or no promise, for she was the most beautiful creature she had ever seen and intelligent, too. She had heard about little Kol’s recovery. So had half the village.
‘I’m putting on a feast tomorrow,’ she told Fearn, ‘for Aric’s safe return. You’ll come, won’t you? As Aric’s partner?’
Fearn smiled at the sharp blue eyes. ‘Thank you, Astrid. I’ll come as his newest trophy.’ Their leave-taking was quite different from their introduction, concluding in a warm hug at the wicker gate to Aric’s large compound.
‘I think,’ Astrid told her, ‘you and I will get on well together.’
Re-joining Haesel in the hall, Fearn delved deep into the chest given to her by Queen Aelfgyfu containing so many treasures that replaced those she’d left behind in Jorvik. Her wax writing-tablet and stylus had been included, for safety, with a few sheets of writing parchment intended to encourage Fearn to write to her. Goose feathers for quills were easy enough to come by and oak galls for ink could be found if one knew where to look. ‘Haesel,’ she said, ‘if you love me, sort out that tablet-weaving for me?’
Haesel’s smile was angelic. ‘I do,’ she said, ‘for not treating me as a slave. And to show it, I shall untangle that lot. Where are you going, lady?’
‘To find some oak apples. There’ll be plenty in the woodland.’
‘Without your veil?’
‘Without my veil,’ Fearn said, picking up a wicker basket.
* * *
The tangled mass had begun to take shape at last as Aric appeared, took a look round, and enquired where her mistress might be. ‘Gone to pick oak apples in the wood,’ she said. ‘For ink.’
‘Oak apples?’ he said, frowning. ‘Do you mean acorns?’
‘No,’ Haesel said, not daring to take her eyes off the blue and red threads. ‘They’re growths. Round things like crab apples, only dark. Wasps make them.’ When she finally looked up, Aric had gone. ‘Oh,’ she said.
* * *
Going over, word for word, what she and Astrid had said about choices and the right to refuse, the thoughts Fearn had previously held about not wanting another relationship, especially after her disastrous marriage, now began to waver. Would she spend the rest of her life like Astrid, who both regretted and defended her choice to remain single? Would she continue to crave a family, as she did, to hold a downy-headed infant in her arms and know that it would never be hers? And what if, like Wenda, she gave birth to a deformed child and a girl? The poor woman had still not recovered from the trauma. What right had any man to use a woman so and then to abdicate all responsibility, as Wenda’s man had done? And yet, even as she asked herself the question, she knew the answer to be fashioned by the body, not the mind. Longing for physical comfort, and perhaps an escape from her father’s home, Wenda would have given herself with little thought as to the consequences while her mind was overruled by desire. And because he had been a man of little worth, it was she who had paid the price, not him. Could she imagine Aric the Ruthless taking the same course of action, or herself remaining childless for ever, when her body had begun to yearn for fulfilment night and day? Should she go to him and offer herself, after all her denials? Would she find out at last what making love was all about, before it was too late? Before bitterness set in? Before Astrid’s kind of self-indulgence spoilt that loveliness she had spoken of?
No, how could she entertain such an idea? The man was arrogant and too sure of her. He had probably had several women already since their arrival; the blossom in his hair attested to that. Astrid’s advice to refuse him would pay him back for all the indignities she had suffered for the sake of men’s revenge. Reaching the woodland, she soon found a plentiful supply of oak trees amongst the ash, elm and beech, many of them with oak galls, commonly known as apples, fixed to their branches, rough round growths that came off in her hand with only a little persuasion. Dropping these into her basket, she stepped over a carpet of bluebells that spread deeper into the forest, reminding her of home and the way spring moved so reassuringly into the first days of summer, as it was doing here. She and Haesel had been concerned about the differences between the two countries, but now she saw only the similarities, even in the language.
When the loud chink-chink of a blackbird and the quick flutter of startled sparrows made her aware of another presence besides her own, she turned to look behind her and saw, silhouetted against the distant edge of the woodland, a man’s shape, instantly recognisable. Aric. Come to look for her, taking advantage of her aloneness and the privacy offered by the woodland. Just as Freya and Loki had done.
Stealthily, with her heart beating a pulse into her throat, she stepped back to place herself behind the nearest wide tree trunk, knowing it would easily hide her. But the forest floor was littered with dry twigs and, with a loud crack that echoed into the canopy of new leaves, she revealed her position, her dull-green kirtle blending with the leafy bushes, but the white shift showing at her neck making her as visible as her veil would have done. She saw him begin to move towards her, then she turned to run, her basket of oak-apples clutched in her arms, leaping like a deer over the bluebells and wood anemones, swerving round low bushes and ducking under branches, yelping with anger as her hair was snagged, time after time.
His footsteps pounded and cracked behind her, his long legs covering twice the ground, she hampered by her long skirt that constantly slipped from her hand as she pushed at clinging branches. A clumsy squawking pheasant flapped from beneath her feet, tripping her up and launching her, face down, into the soft leaf mould. From the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Aric leaping over a bush like a stag in full flight almost within touching distance and, as she clambered to her feet, she tripped again on the hem of her kirtle. The basket flew ahead of her, scattering the contents and bouncing them away just as Fearn fell heavily on to her side, knocking out the words she had been ready to scream. ‘No...no! Leave me alone! I don’t want...’ she gasped.
But it was too late for protests when his weight was already holding her firmly to the forest floor, his hands easily catching hers before they could reach his face, like bands of steel around her wrists. His pale hair had been loosened by the clawing branches and now it hung in fine wisps through which he laughed down at her, as if this chase and capture had been planned for their enjoyment. He was not even out of breath, she noticed. ‘Let me go, Dane,’ she panted. ‘I did not come here for this.’
‘No, my beauty,’ he said, ‘I know you did not. But you agreed once not to run from me again. Didn’t you?’
‘You surely didn’t expect me to agree to that. You know how I feel about this. It’s too soon. I need more time. In my country, widows are allowed a decent interval...’
‘I know all about that, too,’ he whispered, touching her chin with his lips, ‘but that’s for grieving widows, and you are not a grieving widow. Yes, you are angry about all that’s happened, with your father, with me, and with yourself for wanting me, in spite of your denials. Oh, yes,’ he went on, ignoring the quick turn of her head away from him, ‘I’ve seen you looking at me, imagining, curious.’
‘I have not! Arrogant brute!’
‘Wondering what it will be like. And you may well have come here to gather stuff for your ink-making, but that was not the only reason, was it?’
Slowly, she turned her head to look at him, to see if he had read her mind accurately. As a wife, intimacies had only ever taken place in the so-called privacy of their chamber where disturbances were not unknown and where, through the wickerwork partition, the rowdy yells and raucous laughter of men, the squealing of women and the yapping of hounds almost drowned out the noisy rutting of her insensitive husband.
Aric waited for her to deny it. When she did not, he released her hands while nudging at her chin again with tender lips. ‘This,’ he said, softly, ‘will be good. Here we have peace and privacy and time for you to discover things you could not have imagined.’
‘You are arrogant!’ she whispered.
‘Sure of myself, yes, and sure of you, too. I doubt you’ve ever been told that you’re the loveliest woman in all England, have you? I’ve seen a few, but nothing to compare, so far. Nor in Denmark. I’ve seen how men’s eyes follow you, my beauty.’
‘Lust. That’s all. They do it—’
‘After all women? No, they don’t. And there’s nothing wrong with lust. It’s not so different from your curiosity. But sometimes it means more than that.’
‘And you’re going to tell me that this is one of those times, I suppose.’
‘Hush, woman. Let go of your anger, or it will make a shrew of you, and a year is a long time for a man and a shrew to live together. This is more than simple lust. I want you because you’re a match for me. Courageous, fierce, passionate, impetuous. You have the body of a goddess, made for loving, and I can give you pleasure, if only you’ll allow it. Let me show you.’
His hand and voice quietened her, luring her thoughts away from her rough capture towards the warm invasion taking place along her thigh, stealing upwards, lingering slowly, timed to the kiss that gentled her mouth. Forbidding any more insincere protests, Aric moved his lips over hers, his hand finding a way beneath her kirtle and linen chemise, sliding tenderly over smooth undulations of skin, coming at last to the luscious cu
rve of her breast.
Trembling, she caught at his hand through the fabric, remembering a distant nightmare, then letting it go along with the exquisitely gentle touch that brushed over her nipple, sending waves of delicious pleasure into her thighs of a kind she had never experienced before, melting her body. She took his head between her hands to hold it where she could look into his eyes, at the same time feeling the softness of his hair hanging in wisps over her face, teasing her eyelids and cheeks.
His eyes darkened, now serious, roaming over her skin as if to take his fill of her loveliness, but also to see how well he had banished the distress they had both feared. He saw the growing desire there, lurking beneath the heavy lids and the thick sweep of black lashes, and her lips, not scolding, were parted and waiting for more of his kisses with the added sensation of his soft beard on her skin. So different from her wifely episodes when every move was intended for her husband’s enjoyment, rushed, brutal, and always devoid of any kind of comfort, Aric’s loving was leisured and tender, his caresses, though hampered by clothing, were designed to show Fearn what she had missed. Exploring the sensitive skin of her inner thighs with languorous sweeps of his hand, he was tuned to receive all those signals that would indicate her readiness for him, her long sighs and moans mingling with the fragile sounds of the forest around them, the hesitant touch of her hands on his face and neck, inhibited by never having explored a man before. At the art of making love, Fearn was still a complete novice in the hands of a master, a detail now pushed to the back of her mind in the face of so many exciting discoveries.
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