'We thought you were dead.' Her voice was a dry croak and her swaying resulted in another pace forward. 'Aubert brought us the news about the massacre in Durham.'

'I did not go to Durham.' He spoke the words absently, a matter of rote without any thought behind them. Ailith saw the narrow glitter in his eyes, the rapid rise and fall of his chest. The ice encasing her heart melted away beneath the fierceness of his stare and her knees turned to water.

Rolf caught her, his arm hard about her waist. 'Jesu,' he groaned softly as she came into his embrace. And then, a moment later, 'Jesu forgive me,' as he bent his head and took his first taste of her lips.

Ailith lay across Rolf, her head upon his naked chest, her fingers toying with the downy stripe of auburn hair running from the base of his breastbone to the bush at his groin. The latter was indeed red as she had once wondered. The feel of him upon and within her had been one of completion, of a dull ache banished by the fierceness of their loving. Her body now held a gentle, diffusing warmth. Her smoothing fingertips encountered tiny droplets of sweat, the faintly raised line of an old scar, the hollow of his navel.

'I wish this was a dream,' she said softly. The words had been spoken more than half to herself, she had thought him drifting into sleep, but he stirred beneath her hand and his muscles tensed.

'Why should you wish that?' he asked.

Ailith was silent for a while. Then she said pensively, 'There is no retreat from what we have done… from what we are doing. If this were no more than a sinful dream, I could keep it to myself, it would not matter.'

'Is what we have done sinful? Look at me, Ailith.' He grasped a handful of her hair, making her turn to his will. 'It would have been a sin to deny our love.'

'You have a wife.' Ailith had the misgiving that the word 'love' came too easily to his tongue, that to his way of thinking, it was just a more courtly word for 'lust'. And she had no right to throw it in his face, for her appetite was as great as his, if not greater, for she wanted more.

'My wife is in Normandy. Our marriage bed is cold and she does not have the spark to set it ablaze. I have wanted you for a long time, Ailith. You may have anything of me just for the asking — a wife's rights if you will, although there can be no sanction from the church. If anyone looks at you with the slightest degree of contempt, I will have the hide off him, I swear it.'

'And he will hate you all the more and it will not change his opinion.' Ailith tossed her head.

'And his opinion matters so much to you.'

Ailith sighed, wondering how she could explain her feelings to him when plainly he did not see her dilemma. 'Yes, it matters, because in their eyes I see the reflection of my opinion of myself. I do not want to be just another casual tumble in the straw, a mare serviced along your way. I need your respect too, Rolf.'

He raised himself up on one elbow and trapped her stare with his own. 'Have you not had proof of that over and again?' he reproached her. 'Have I not yielded to your wishes at every turn – a room with a bolt on the door and a village woman to sleep across the threshold? I fully admit they are of small use now, but at the time they were freely granted. You have my respect, you have all of me.' His voice softened and he stroked her naked shoulder where it gleamed through the strands of hair. 'Now give me all of you, Ailith. I swear on my soul that you will never have cause for grief.'

She looked upon him and was lost by the tenderness and desire that shone in his eyes, by the warm curve of his mouth and the tiny, coppery glints of beard stubble. There could be no withdrawal from this situation. They had to go on together. She would make sure that he never so much as looked at another woman again. In place of his cold marriage bed, he would have this one with her, and she would brand him beyond bone to the spirit itself.

Slowly she sat up. Tossing back her hair, thrusting out her breasts which were still firm despite the suckling of a child, she straddled his thighs. His response was gratifying and instantaneous, but she had no intention of granting him release just yet. She teased him, rubbing against his trembling shaft, pulling away, circling her hips, always just out of reach, until he groaned with frustration and arched his body.

The Valkyrie image filled her mind. It had first been created for her by Goldwin, but she had long since made it her own. Now, here with Rolf, she was all-powerful and she would pluck him from his writhing mortal state and show him the home of the gods.

And so she sheathed his straining flesh and heard with triumph his long moan of pleasure, relief, and renewed tension. She undulated slowly, keeping his frantic body at fever pitch while her own pleasure swelled and tightened. She rose and fell more swiftly. His hand was on her breast and then between her thighs. He grasped her buttocks with the other one, holding her hard, and thrust up powerfully into her body. A battlefield cry tore from his throat as he filled her, and Ailith caught her breath, her head thrown back, all her consciousness centred in the exquisite pulsations radiating from her loins.

Rolf's vision was filled with the sight of Ailith glorying in her climax, her strong, beautiful body arched with pleasure and a pink flush mantling her face and throat and breasts. He had never seen anything so magnificent, had never felt such intensities of emotion and physical sensation. This was how it should be.

Ailith's head came forward. Panting, gleaming with sweat, she gave him back stare for stare. Her hips still swayed gently and there was an exultant smile on her lips.

'By Christ and by Odin I love you.' His avowal was whispered with tenderness and awe. 'It is forever, Ailith, forever.' And he thought that he meant it.

She leaned over him, her full breasts grazing his chest, the tips of her hair tickling his skin. 'Forever,' she repeated, and sealed the bargain, her mouth on his, their bodies still one flesh.

CHAPTER 27

His wanderlust temporarily sated and sobered by his experience in the north, Rolf was content to dwell at Ulverton, to oversee the breeding of his destriers and the new sumpter ponies, to watch the farmlands turn beneath the plough and the fishing boats bring home their catch. And to be with Ailith.

They played like children in the snow, they stayed abed whilst the weather howled around them, and made long, slow love. When the season warmed into true spring, she rode beside him to look at the stud herd, and he accompanied her into the village. At first, because of her earlier determination to be chaste, she was embarrassed to go abroad among the people, but they treated the change of circumstance up at the castle with tolerant amusement and knowing looks which said that they had known all along how it would eventually be, and they were not displeased.

The uprising in the north had been summarily quelled, and King William celebrated Easter in Winchester, where Rolf repaired briefly to present him with his tribute of a dozen warhorses and payment in silver in lieu of his personal presence on military duty in the King's service. He was only away from Ailith for a week, but it seemed like a year and he hastened home to her side and did not stir from it again until the land was covered in bursting, soft greenery on the borders of April and May.

The world could not be shut out forever, even if his oath to Ailith had been made for all time. As the season progressed, a niggling voice ate at Rolf's contentment, telling him that whatever his indifference toward his wife, he still had a duty towards her and his daughter. And for all Tancred's competence, the herds at Brize-sur-Risle still required his attention.

It was May eve and the green fertility of the land was being celebrated with enthusiasm. The village blacksmith, hidden within the fluttering skirts of a hobbyhorse costume, flirted with the maidens and became blatant with the married women. Mead and ale were consumed with true, Saxon capacity, and the three pigs slaughtered especially for the occasion vanished as rapidly as the bread and broth accompaniments.

Ailith joined the festivities with a childlike enthusiasm. Seeing her standing among the village women, eating slivers of roast pork with her fingers, and laughing at the antics of the blacksmith, Rolf contrasted her behaviour with Arlette's prim coolness, and was filled with a warm glow of pleasure, followed quickly by a feeling of depression.

Raising her head, Ailith caught him in the act of scrutiny. Their eyes locked. She left the crowd and hurried over to him, her freckled face aglow. The spring evening was as mild and warm as new milk and she wore only her shift and her best undergown, of blue wool. Her hair was decently covered by a light wimple, held in place by a chaplet of white May blossom. He rested his fingertips gently on the garland.

'In Normandy, at Brize, a chaplet like this would signify your willingness,' he murmured.

Ailith stooped to wipe her greasy fingers on the grass and looked up at Rolf through her lashes. 'My willingness to what?' she asked saucily.

Rolf drew her to her feet and then against him. 'To honour the May with the gift of your body to any man who asks.'

'Then it is a blessing we are not in Normandy, for if so, you would have to wait your turn behind the blacksmith.' She giggled and then hiccuped and put her hand to her mouth. 'I mustn't drink any more mead, it's too strong.'

Her mention of the blacksmith, a lusty, dark-eyed fellow, sent a pang of jealousy through Rolf, so unaccustomed, that it thoroughly unsettled him. The thought of leaving her for the duty of Normandy grew even less palatable. She was looking at him with an air of provocative mischief that sent an unbearable ache through his groin. He needed to possess her, here and now.

She seemed somewhat surprised at his sudden urgency, but followed him willingly into the shadows, where he spread his cloak and pulled her down onto it.

'I cannot wait,' he groaned, tugging at her gown and shift. 'I will burst!'

She laughed, the sound low and throaty with power, almost a purr. 'My, you have taken the May fever badly,' she said, but altered her position to smoothly accommodate his desperation. Her hands upon him were cool, her thighs too, as she clung to his flanks and returned each hard surge of his body. It was a primitive lovemaking, befitting the rites of the May Eve. There was no finesse, only the raw power of the mating instinct. The plough in the furrow, the sowing of the corn, the begetting of new life.

In the aftermath, as their heartbeats slowed and their breath grew quiet, Rolf traced the contours of her strong, honest face with his fingertips and thought her beautiful, and yet the releasing of physical tension had given no ease to his mind.

'Ailith, I have to leave for a while,' he said, gently following the outline of her lips with his forefinger. 'There is a horse fair in Paris that I must attend, and other matters at Brize-sur-Risle that I cannot leave to Tancred.'

Her half-smile faded and her eyes opened to search his face. 'Other matters? Your wife and child, I suppose?'

'Don't look at me like that.' He shifted uncomfortably. 'I owe them my duty, you know that. And I have to make decisions about the horses — I'm not going for the sole purpose of seeing Arlette and Gisele. Christ knows, I would rather be with you.'

Ailith sat up and smoothed her rumpled garments. 'I know you must go to them,' she said with dignity, 'and that you must find horses to breed, to buy and to sell. It would be foolish of me to cling and weep, to beg you not to go. I only wish that you had had the wisdom to tell me on another occasion. First you take me in the grass like a stag in rut, then you announce that you are going to your wife. Or were you afraid that I would deny you once you had spoken?'

'Yes, I was.' He threw his arms around her, and although she averted her head, she did not shrug him off. 'All I could think of a moment ago was that I did not want to leave or lose you, but that I might do both. You looked so beautiful and I wanted you so much.'

Her manner softened and with a light sigh, she turned in his arms and laid her head on his chest to hear the steady thud, thud of his heart. 'When must you go?'

'As soon as I can find a galley to take me across the narrow sea.' He grimaced as if his mouth was full of sour wine. 'The sooner there, the sooner home to you.'