Slowly Godive bent over him, abandoning her thorn. He felt her cheek against his naked chest, her hands sliding along his sides. As he pulled her up next to him, her loose shift slid from one bare shoulder. Shef found himself staring at a naked breast, its nipple girlish pink. The only woman he had seen before like this was the slut Truda—heavy, sallow, coarse-fleshed. His roughened hands began to stroke Godive’s skin with disbelieving tenderness. If he had thought of this happening—and he had, often, lying by himself in fisherman’s hut or deserted forge—it was years in the future, after they had found a place, after he had deserved her and made a home where they could be safe. Now, in the wood, in the clearing, in the sunlight, without blessing of priest or consent from parents …

“You are a better man than Ivar or Sigvarth or any other man I have ever met,” sobbed Godive, her face still buried in his shoulder. “I knew you would come for me. I only feared they would kill you for it.”

He pulled at her shift, her legs squirming beneath him as she turned onto her back.

“We should both be dead by now. It is so good to be alive, with you—”

“There is no blood between us, we have different fathers, different mothers—”

In the sunlight he entered her. Eyes watched from a bush; breath drew in, in envy.

An hour later, Shef lay on the soft grass, in the sunshine where the rays of the now-hot sun came through the upper branches of the oak trees. He was torpid, completely relaxed. He was not asleep. Or he was, but at some dim level he remained awake, conscious that Godive had slipped away. He had been thinking of the future, of where they could go: into the marshes, he thought, remembering his night spent with the king’s thane Edrich. He was still conscious of the sun on his skin, of the soft turf beneath his body, but they seemed further away. This had happened before—in the Viking camp. His mind was rising from the forest clearing, traveling out beyond the body, beyond the heart’s confines … .

A voice spoke to him—rough, gravelly laden with authority.

“Of mighty men,” it said, “the maid you have taken.”