LITMIR.BIZ

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in the hall, yet Thored would not glance in her direction. ‘Your...sister?’ he whispered, frowning in disbelief. ‘You lie. She never mentioned...’

      ‘She wouldn’t, would she? I was a mere lad of fifteen then, not a king’s jarl. But I was not too young to swear revenge on the man who arranged my brother-in-law’s death and then took my sister for himself and fathered a child on her. Yes, this lad here. My nephew. Your son!’

      Furiously, Kean shook himself free of Aric’s hand, whirling round to face him. ‘No!’ he yelled, pointing at his parents. ‘No! There is my mother and there is my father. I have never known any others, I swear it.’

      ‘Well said, lad,’ Aric said. ‘But the truth is, like it or not, that your mother was my sister Tove and your father is a man as weak as water when it comes to women. I took an oath on Odin’s name to return you to your own family and my chance has come, as I knew it would.’

      Hilda, with her head on Catla’s shoulder, was racked with sobbing and of no help at all to her husband, whose unfaithfulness was nothing new to her. She had borne him no live children and had now stopped trying, though the pain of Thored’s easily found comfort was like a wound that was not allowed to heal. He had foisted the five-year-old Fearn on her, not as an act of kindness, but because it suited him for her banished parents to know that he had their child’s life in his hands. The appearance of the young Danish woman called Tove in their household had lasted only a year. Fearn remembered Tove as a beautiful young woman whose child had been born a year after her husband’s violent death in a street fight and had always understood that both Tove and her child had died, although she could recall no burial rites from that time. Now, it appeared that young Kean was Thored’s own son and Tove’s.

      Kamma, the woman Kean had been calling mother for ten years, fell in a heap at Aric’s feet, begging to keep her son. ‘Lord...my lord...do not do this. We are innocent of any crime. We have cared for him...loved him...please,’ she wailed.

      ‘Yes, lady. I know that, too. Your husband was made a moneyer to the Earl for his compliance. Not a bad reward for your silence. But the facts are there for all to see. Look at his colouring, for one thing. Can you doubt he is of my family?’

      It was hard not to see the similarity, Kean’s flaxen hair against the foster parents’ darkness, his ice-blue eyes like Thored’s. ‘His home is here, lord,’ said Arlen, catching Thored’s nod of permission to speak. ‘We have nothing if you take him from us. He is our only son. He will be a moneyer, too.’

      Thored found his voice again after the shaming revelation that he had taken the life of the husband who stood in his way. ‘Revenge,’ he said, loudly. ‘A blood feud, no less. You intend to tear up the lad’s roots and ruin the lives of these two good people, for what? For your gratification? And will he fill the void your sister made, when she left your family of her own free will? She gave herself to me willingly. I did not force her.’

      ‘You took the life of her husband, Earl,’ Aric yelled at him. ‘Deny it!’

      ‘I do deny it. Tove’s man was killed in a street fight. I took her in and cared for her, and—’

      ‘And made her pregnant and killed her in the process.’

      ‘It happens like that, sometimes. The mother is forfeit. Or the babe.’

      ‘As you well know, Thored,’ said Aric, making clear his meaning while the Earl’s wife howled in anguish. It had happened like that to her too many times and the losses were still as raw as they had been at the time. ‘But this child lived, didn’t he?’ Aric continued. ‘And he was a son. The only son you’ve ever had. A bastard, but a son, nevertheless. My sister’s son. My nephew. And my family demands his return in exchange for my sister’s life.’

      ‘Your sister had already left Denmark, Jarl,’ Thored bellowed. ‘And the lad belongs here in England with his foster parents and all that he’s known since birth. It makes no sense to uproot him from that. He’ll be a fine moneyer, like Arlen here. Accept your losses. You’ve taken enough from us already this day. Tell your family the lad is happy here. Well cared for. Will be wealthy, too. Tell them that and let their revenge lie with the gods. Let them deal with it.’

      Within the tight cage of her ribs, Fearn’s heart beat like a war drum at the sight of these two men facing each other like bulls stopping just short of physical violence, Thored red-faced, angry and discredited by his own lechery, Aric standing proud and fearless on the moral high ground. She could not see Thored ever yielding to the Dane over this, Kean being to him more valuable than she had understood, though now she saw how Hilda must have suffered as much as she herself did at her husband’s constant unfaithfulness. To pagans, this was an accepted part of a husband’s behaviour, but not to Christians. Thored wanted it both ways: the lax morals of the old religion with the respectability of the new.

      Beside her, the boy’s foster father was trembling with emotion, unable to interfere in this 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

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