Love Found on Lindisfarne
By J.L. Merrow
It was a hot summer’s day on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne. The lanes were dusty underfoot, the languid breeze heavy with the scent of the North Sea, and a Viking had just offered to buy my daughter.
His drooping moustache quivered as he spoke to her, his hands on his thighs and his head bent down to her level. “How old are you? Thirteen? Fourteen? That’s prime marriageable age, that is.”
Kelis giggled, her honey-coloured cheeks tinged with pink. “I’m twelve. And you’re old enough to be my dad.”
Actually, with his bald head and grizzled beard, not to mention the beer gut—mead gut?—he looked old enough to be my dad. Bearing in mind this was a bloke with a broadsword, I decided not to mention it.
The Viking, who’d introduced himself without a t
