‘You admit it, then?’ Eudo asked.
‘Why shouldn’t I?’ Haakon countered. ‘Yes, I killed him. I watched the mead-hall burn and I heard the screams of those inside. I remember how he stumbled out with the smoke billowing around him. I remember how easy it was for me to ram my sword home. I remember how he died with barely a whimper.’
‘You don’t deserve to live,’ Eudo said. The wind had dropped and in the stillness I heard the hiss of steel against his scabbard’s wool lining as he drew his sword.
‘Eudo,’ I said warningly. The Dane had clearly come to parley with us for a purpose, and I wanted to know what that was, not to scare him off.
Wace laid a hand upon our friend’s shoulder. ‘Put your sword away.’
Eudo hesitated, but eventually he must have realised that it was a useless gesture, for he slid the blade back whence it had come.
‘Even if you did kill me, it wouldn’t bring your lord back to you,’ Haakon said. He turned to Magnus. ‘Nor your brothers.’
‘That doesn’t mean we wouldn’t enjoy watching you squirm while your lifeblood dripped away,’ Harold’s son retorted.
The Dane smiled. ‘The young pup has a loud bark, I see. It’s a shame that he lacks the bite to match it.’
‘Enough of this,’ I said, growing impatient. ‘Have you come with anything worthwhile to say?’
‘There is one thing.’
‘Then spit it out.’
A smirk was upon his face. ‘Vengeance isn’t the only reason that brought you here, is it?’
So he knew. Knew why I had come here, what it was that had brought me on this journey in the first place.
‘Where is she?’ I demanded.
Haakon didn’t answer, not in any words. Instead he merely raised a hand in what I took for a signal to his six companions waiting by the bridge. Still mounted, they advanced now. Suspecting a trick, I laid my hand upon my sword-hilt, and out of the corners of my eyes I saw the others doing the same. If the Dane was at all concerned, however, he didn’t let it show.
I fixed my gaze on the six figures as they approached, realising as they did so that only five of them were men. For in the middle of them rode a woman, and not just any woman either. Long before she was close enough for me to make out her features, I knew who she was.
As if it could have been anyone else.
Oswynn.
Twenty-five
‘OSWYNN,’ I SAID, under my breath at first, and then more loudly, so that she could hear: ‘Oswynn!’
Her hands were tied in front of her and her mount was being led by one of the riders flanking her. She wore a cloak that might have been otter fur over a fine-spun woollen dress, but all that expensive garb did not disguise the bruises on her face, which was thinner and paler than I recalled. Her head was bowed as if in submission, and when she did look up her eyes were hollow. All the fire she’d once possessed seemed to have been extinguished. The summer when we met had been her sixteenth, and three more summers had come and gone since then, but she looked much older than her years might have suggested. And yet she was still as beautiful as ever. Her hair, black as the night when the moon is new and cloud veils the stars, which I had liked her to wear unbound, was braided like that of a married woman.
‘I presume she’s the one you came for,’ I heard Haakon say, but I was not paying him attention, not really, for I couldn’t tear my eyes from her.
I willed her to say something, even just my name, but she did not utter any sound at all, nor so much as smile, which I ascribed to fear of what they might do to her if she did, rather than because she didn’t recognise me. She did, I was sure of it, just as I was sure that even in those hollow eyes I spied a glimmer of something like relief or hope. I tried not to imagine what the Dane had done with her in the years we had been apart, but it was impossible. The way she held herself told me all that I needed, or wanted, to know.
‘Striking, isn’t she?’ Haakon went. ‘Prettier than any Danish girl, for sure, and I’ve known my share of them. I can well understand why you would want to come all this way to steal her from me.’
‘You’re the one who stole her,’ I said. ‘She’s my woman, not yours.’
‘Is that so? Where were you that night to lay claim to her?’ He gave a flick of a hand, beckoning her forward. Reluctantly, she came sidling up alongside him. ‘She belongs to me,’ he said, reaching over and untying the bonds around her wrists. A gasp of surprise or protest escaped her lips as he seized her forearm and held up her left hand. ‘Here is the proof.’