Chapter 2
By the light from the fire in the hearth, Emma sat bent over her embroidery, lost in her thoughts. A loud pounding on the front door made her start. She thrust the needle into the linen and stood.
Magnus clambered up from where he’d been lounging next to the hearth and trotted to the door, reaching it before her.
She was glad for his presence. An unwelcome visitor would think twice before forcing entry.
But this time the hound’s prodigious tail wagged furiously, telling her the visitor was most welcome indeed.
She unlatched the door to see Maerleswein, her tall, proud father, standing there grinning, his golden hair loose about his shoulders, his mustache and beard neatly trimmed.
“Daughter!”
She had not seen him for nearly a year. “Father, you look well.” She reached out to embrace him. “It has been too long.”
Before she could say more, he gave her a quick hug, planted a kiss on her forehead and strode over the threshold, crushing the rushes under his large feet.
Behind him was a man she recognized from many past meetings, Cospatric, the handsome Earl of Bamburgh.
Unlike most Danish and English men, he was clean-shaven and his dark brown hair extended only to the base of his neck.
“My lady,” Cospatric bowed, his brown eyes twinkling. Straightening, he took her hand and brought it to his lips. “You are beautiful as ever and a most welcome sight.”
“And you, my lord, are too kind. Do come in.” He walked past her and she closed the door. Emma smiled to herself. The charming nobleman who had once been the Earl of Northumbria had always been wont to flatter her.
Magnus followed the two men into the room.
It was large enough to provide seating for several people around the fire burning in the central hearth where smoke ascended to a hole in the roof.
Firelight illuminated the tapestries gracing the whitewashed walls, tapestries that had been in her family for generations.
Artur, her manservant, and his wife Sigga, hurried in from the kitchen door at the far end of the room on the other side of the table where the family dined. “Welcome, my lord,” said Artur, taking the cloaks of the two men and hanging them on pegs near the door.
“Greetings, to you, Artur, Sigga,” replied her father. “As you see, I come with a guest, Earl Cospatric. You might recall him from the last time I was in York.”
“Aye, I do,” said Artur. “My lord.” He bowed to Cospatric. At Artur’s side, Sigga curtsied.
Magnus sniffed Cospatric as he would anyone coming with her father.
“May I bring you something to drink?” asked Sigga, looking at her father.
“Aye, ’tis cold with more snow coming,” observed Maerleswein, reaching his hands to the hearth fire.
“Best warm the mead, Sigga,” instructed Emma.
“Yea, mistress.” Sigga dipped her head and retreated toward the kitchen along with her husband. They had been with Emma a long time and knew her preference to make guests feel welcome as soon as they entered.
“I see that great beast I gave you has grown,” remarked her father. “His chest deepens.”
As if knowing he was the topic of discussion, Magnus rose from where he had been sitting, nuzzled her father’s hand and wagged his considerable tail. Her father patted the coarse fur of the hound’s head without having to stoop, for the dog was that tall.
“He remembers you from when he was only a whelp,” she said.
With an answering chuckle, her father scratched Magnus behind the ears. “Wise hound. Does he yet hunt?”
“Oh, indeed,” she confirmed, smiling at Cospatric who watched, amused. “But the hares he brings to my door often arrive a bit mangled.”
Her father laughed, a deep belly laugh, his voice resonating through the house.
Ottar bounded into the room from the kitchen.
While not her natural son, Ottar and his sister, Finna, nine-year-old twins, might have been for all the love she gave them.
Orphaned three years ago at the same time she had miscarried her own child upon hearing the news of her husband’s death, she’d taken them in.
They had brought each other comfort during that painful time and now they were a family.
“Godfather!” shouted Ottar hugging Maerleswein about his hips.
“Aye, ’tis me,” he teased, wrapping his powerful arms around the boy’s shoulders and mussing his hair. “Is that your sister I see?”
Peeking into the room from the doorway to the kitchen, Finna gave Emma’s father a shy smile. She was a beautiful child and, like her brother, her brown hair was streaked with sunlight, but whereas her brother had dark gray eyes, hers were a soft brown.
“Greetings to you, Godfather,” she said, coming slowly forward. When she got close, Maerleswein snaked his arm out to draw her to him to hug her in turn.
“And this,” explained her father, gesturing to Cospatric, “is my friend the Earl of Bamburgh.”
Ottar bowed and Finna did a small curtsy as Emma had taught her.
“I remember you, sir,” Finna shyly admitted.
Cospatric looked pleased.
The twins returned their attention to Emma’s father, whom they adored.
Once the Sheriff of Lincolnshire, a man of wealth with eight manors, he had been stripped of his title and his lands once he joined the rebellion.
The cursed Norman invader had given those to one of his loyal followers.
But her father still had his noble Danish blood and much of his wealth.
And he still had the love of the people of York.
“Come sit.” Emma gestured to the benches near the hearth fire. “’Tis certain you are tired.”
The men sat on one of the benches and Magnus settled himself on the floor at her father’s feet.
Finna and Ottar, detecting an adult conversation about to commence, retreated to the kitchen where Sigga was preparing their meal. The smell of the spices Sigga added to the mead, cinnamon and cloves, wafted from the kitchen.
Emma sat on the bench opposite the men and directed her question to her father. “Not that I am not pleased to see you and Earl Cospatric, but why have you left Scotland? Is it safe with the Conqueror’s knights still garrisoned in York?”
“Then you have not heard,” said her father.
“Heard what?”
“The news from the North,” Cospatric finished.
Emma looked at them, puzzled.
Sigga returned with tankards of heated mead and Emma accepted the one offered her. “Drink your mead,” said Emma, “but tell me what has happened.”
She waited until her father and Cospatric had downed some of the honeyed wine, then with eager anticipation, asked, “Well?”
Holding his tankard between his two large hands, her father leaned forward. “Durham has been retaken by the Northumbrians.” He sat back, grinning. “William’s latest earl, Comines, was slain along with his hundreds of raiding mercenaries. Good riddance, I say.”
Emma looked from her father to Cospatric whose countenance had suddenly grown serious. “What can it mean for us?” she asked.
Cospatric shifted his gaze to her father.
A confident smile crossed her father’s face. She had not seen him so pleased since before the Norman Bastard had come to England. “A chance to regain the North, Emma.”
“Can it be true?” she asked, afraid to hope.
Cospatric nodded, apparently sharing her father’s favorable outlook.
It was her most fervent desire, and that of the people of York, to see the city freed of the Norman yoke, but it seemed only a dream when the Norman Bastard had thousands of knights at his disposal.
While York had thousands of people living within its city walls, they were unarmed and mostly merchants, craftsmen and shopkeepers, along with the people they served, the freemen, farmers and villeins—not warriors.
“Yea, for we do not come alone, Emma. Earl Cospatric brings with him the Northumbrians from the House of Bamburgh.”
“And the sons of Karli of the Danes of York,” added the earl.
“But the sons of Karli are your enemies,” Emma protested.
“Ah, they were,” said the dark-haired Cospatric with a slow smile spreading on his face.
“The enemies of our enemy have become our friends,” her father explained.
“Ah, I see.” She was surprised that after so many years of feuding, the great families of the North had banded together. Mayhap her father was right and there was hope. “But will that be enough with so many French knights and soldiers at the Norman king’s disposal?”
“We have sent word to King Swein of Denmark, asking for his aid.”
“The Danes…” Her voice trailed off as she pondered the possibility of the powerful warriors and their dragon ships sailing to York. “Will he come?”
“I cannot imagine he will not,” said her father. “He could hardly give up what was once the capital of the Danelaw to a French bastard, now could he?”
Cospatric took a deep breath and let it out. “The question is when he might come, not if, Emma. Your father and I are prepared to go to Denmark to plead our cause to King Swein if we must.”
She turned to her father. “What will it mean for the people of York if you are successful? They have experienced so much loss already.”
“Freedom from the yoke of the Normans, I trust,” her father boldly stated.
Emma observed the two men were pleased with the plans they were making.
She only hoped their confidence was not misplaced.
She, too, hated the Normans and their garrison of knights, but like any woman, she worried about the death the battles would bring, worried about Finna and Ottar and the children of York.
* * *
It should have taken Geoff and his knights two days to reach York but, much to his dismay, the winter storms slowed their pace.
Freezing rain sliced through their clothing as their horses slogged through the deep mud.
Nights on the cold ground were often sleepless.
At the end of the third day, they arrived at the castle, cold, tired and covered with mud.
Followed by his men, Geoff rode his horse toward the bridge that led over the moat to the timbered castle at the junction of the Rivers Ouse and Foss.