The Harrowing
Also By
Also by James Aitcheson
The Conquest Series
Sworn Sword
The Splintered Kingdom
Knights of the Hawk
Title
Copyright
First published in Great Britain in 2016 by
Heron Books, an imprint of
Quercus Publishing Ltd
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
An Hachette UK company
Copyright © 2016 James Aitcheson
The moral right of James Aitcheson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
HB ISBN 978 1 78429 730 5
TPB ISBN 978 1 78429 731 2
EBOOK ISBN 978 1 78429 732 9
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Typeset by CC Book Production
You can find this and many other great boks at:
www.quercusbooks.co.uk
Dedication
For Liesbeth
List of Place Names
In The Harrowing, as in my previous novels, I’ve chosen to refer to the various locations mentioned in the novel by their contemporary names, as recorded in charters, chronicles and in Domesday Book (1086). My main sources have been A Dictionary of British Place-Names, edited by A. D. Mills (OUP: Oxford, 2003) and The Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names, edited by Victor Watts (CUP: Cambridge, 2004). Locations in this list marked by an asterisk (*) are fictional.
Ascebi
Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire
Bebbanburh
Bamburgh, Northumberland
Cantwaraburg
Canterbury, Kent
Catrice
Catterick, North Yorkshire
Deorbi
Derby
Dunholm
Durham
Dyflin
Dublin, Republic of Ireland
Eoferwic
York
Fuleford
Fulford, North Yorkshire
Griseby
Girsby, North Yorkshire
Hæstinges
Hastings, East Sussex
Hagustaldesham
Hexham, Northumberland
Heldeby*
near Rosedale Abbey, North Yorkshire
Heldernesse
Holderness, East Riding of Yorkshire
Humbre
Humber Estuary
Ledecestre
Leicester
Licedfeld
Lichfield, Staffordshire
Lincolne
Lincoln
Lincolnescir
Lincolnshire
Lindisfarena
Lindisfarne, Northumberland
Lucteburne
Loughborough, Leicestershire
Lundene
London
Mann
Isle of Man
Miklagard
Istanbul, Turkey
Orkaneya
Orkney
Rypum
Ripon, North Yorkshire
Skardaborg
Scarborough, North Yorkshire
Snotingeham
Nottingham
Stanford Brycg
Stamford Bridge, East Riding of Yorkshire
Stedehamm*
near Bardon Hill, Leicestershire
Sumorsæte
Somerset
Suthperetune
South Petherton, Somerset
Suthreyjar
Hebrides
Swalwe
River Swale
Tine
River Tyne
Wærwic
Warwick
Yrland
Ireland
Ysland
Iceland
Map
Contents
Introduction
First Day
Second Day
Third Day
Fourth Day
Fifth Day
Sixth Day
Seventh Day
Eighth Day
Acknowledgements
Introduction
The horsemen start down the slope towards her. All four of them, kicking up thick swirls of snow dust that the wind takes and scatters. Their spear points shining coldly in the light.
She sheds her gloves, curls her numb fingers around the hilt of her knife. Not the one he gave her. Her own. The one she brought with her all the way from home. The one she practised with, which he showed her how to use. Smaller, more easily concealed. She pulls it from its sheath and draws it inside her sleeve where they won’t see it. Not, she hopes, until it’s too late. If she is to die, then she might as well try to kill one or more of them first.
Stay strong, she tells herself.
She fixes her gaze upon the horsemen. Tries to, anyway. Everything is blurred. White stars creeping in at the corners of her sight. She blinks to try to get rid of them, but they won’t go away.
Closer the riders come, and closer still. Her lungs are burning. Her cheeks are burning.
Attack, don’t defend, she remembers. Be quick. Strike first. Kill quickly.
She grips the knife hilt as tightly as she can as they loom larger. It won’t be long now.
First Day
Not much further, Tova pleads. She doesn’t know how much longer she can go on. She can hardly place one foot before the other any more, but she doesn’t want to be left behind and find herself alone on these hills, with night’s shadow falling all around her. She presses on up the path, leading Winter, clenching her teeth as she struggles against the wind. It grasps at her clothes as
if determined to tear them from her, fierce but clumsy, like the fingers of an unwanted admirer.
Her lady, Merewyn, strides on in front, leading her own palfrey, fifty paces ahead. Almost at the crest already.
She’ll kill us, Tova thinks. She’ll kill us both. She’s brought this upon us, and now we’ll probably die out here, in this wilderness. Either they’ll catch us or else the cold will do for us. Because of what she’s done.
Of course Tova didn’t have to come. If she’d been strong enough, she could have refused, could have stayed behind, where it’s safe and warm, where there’s no one pursuing her. That’s what she tells herself. But she knows it’s not true. How could she have forgiven herself if she’d abandoned her lady in her hour of need, after everything Merewyn has done for her?
That’s why she’s here. That’s why she came. And whatever happens now, she knows there’s no turning back.
The wind whips once, twice, then dies away. A moment’s respite. And that’s when she hears it. Blasting out across the hillside, each time louder than the last: a sound she recognises. A sound that makes her stomach lurch and her skin turn to ice.
The sound of the horn. She turns, ready to cry out—
But there’s no one. Only a goat with an injured foreleg, bleating forlornly as it negotiates a rocky outcrop and limps on down the hill. Her tiredness is catching up with her, and now her ears are playing tricks. She takes a deep breath, trying to still her nerves and her pounding heart. She glances down the path, back along the valley. Fields and hedges glisten white with frost that the day’s small warmth has failed to melt. Between them winds the swollen stream: tumbling, frothing, bright with the dying sun’s fire.
She shivers, and not just from the cold. If she stays in one place too long, her feet will freeze and won’t want to move again. Her dress is wet at the hem, and she wishes she’d had time to gather some thicker clothes, ones better suited to the road, rather than these thin things. Gloves, too. Her hands are dry and beginning to crack at the knuckles. Her fingers might as well belong to someone else, for all that she can feel them. Sharp as steel, the wind pierces fur and wool and linen, biting into flesh: ice-burning, wounding deep. In all her fifteen years she can’t remember a winter as bitter as this.
Keep going, she tells herself.
She pulls her borrowed cloak closer around her shoulders and belts it more tightly to try to stop it flapping. Someone back home will be missing it, she thinks, and for a moment she feels sorry for him. It must be a man, she decides, not just because of its size but also because of the hole in one armpit, which any woman would have made sure to mend. Was it Skalpi’s once? Probably not; Merewyn would surely have seen to it if it were. It’s heavy and the sleeves are too long, but it’s all she has and better than nothing. In the darkness and in their rush to leave, she couldn’t find her own anywhere, and this was the best her lady was able to lay hands on. Theft, to add to everything else.
This will end up being my burial shroud, she thinks.
At last she manages to drag herself and Winter, her faithful mare, to the top of the hill. Merewyn is waiting. Her fine woollen cloak, with its ermine trim and paired silver brooches, is wrapped tightly around her shoulders. Her fair hair has come loose from its braid and flies in the wind; her cheeks are flushed pink, and her face is drawn in a stern look.
‘Keep up,’ she tells Tova. ‘We can’t stop. If they find us . . .’
She doesn’t finish. She doesn’t have to.
And the fact that Tova’s here, helping Merewyn: will that make her just as guilty in their eyes? Maybe they’ll show her mercy. As for her lady, though, she’s less sure. Not after what she’s done.
Tova knows, even without being told. She has seen the spots of blood on Merewyn’s sleeve, at the wrist where she’s tried to conceal them underneath her bracelet. Small and dark, they could be easily mistaken for spatters of dirt, like those now decorating her skirt after a day’s hard riding across the moors.
But they aren’t dirt. They were there at the beginning.
She remembers hearing Cene’s barking, although it seemed somehow distant. She remembers Merewyn’s hand on her shoulder, jolting her from her dreams.
They needed to go, she said. Straight away.
Tova didn’t understand, not at first, but then in the lantern light and through blurry eyes she saw those crimson spots. And straight away she knew.
The desperation in her lady’s hushed voice. The whiteness of her face. The quickness with which her eyes darted about the room, as if she expected to be discovered at any moment. How Tova’s own heart wouldn’t stop thumping as she tugged on clothes and at the same time shoved what she needed into her pack. She didn’t hesitate, didn’t question. Instead she kept her fears bound up as tightly as she could while she concentrated on doing what she needed to do, as quickly and as quietly as possible. And so under cover of night she and her lady slipped away from the hall, from the manor. From Heldeby. From home. By the time the first sliver of sun crept above the eastern hills, they were already long gone.
It was only a few hours ago, and yet it feels like an age. She has no idea how many miles they’ve travelled, but she doesn’t think it’s very far. Which is why Tova thinks that sooner or later, Ælfric will find them. Him and Ketil and whatever band of men they’ve managed to gather. They’ll have dogs with them to sniff out the trail; they’ll have swift horses beneath them—
‘Come on,’ Merewyn says. ‘Just a little farther, before dark.’
‘Wait,’ Tova says.
‘We can’t stop. You know we can’t. If we’re to have any hope of losing them, we have to keep going.’
‘Going where? Do you even know where we are?’
Tova doesn’t know this land, and she’s beginning to doubt that her lady does too. They’ve been keeping off the main tracks and droveways, staying well away from any manor or vill, since two young women travelling on a harsh winter’s day like this and in such uncertain times as these, are highly conspicuous and easily remembered. What they don’t want is to meet anyone who can say later that, yes, they did indeed spy a lady and her maid upon the road, and strange it seemed for them to be out by themselves, and that they came through not an hour ago, and they were riding in that direction, and that if you go after them quickly you should catch them before the day is out.
She has been trusting Merewyn. Trusting that she knows what she is doing and knows her way. But now Tova sees her hesitation. And she realises the truth.
They’re lost.
Lost and chilled to the bone and starving too. Tova is no stranger to hunger: she remembers that year after the dry summer when the barley wilted in the fields, when they had to boil roots they’d dug up in the woods so that they could make what grain they had stretch through the cold months. But it’s not just a question of food. They have no tent, nor kindling for a fire, nor so much as a winter blanket between them on which to bed down. Already it’s growing late; the river mist is starting to settle over the meadows below. The first stars are appearing. Clear skies. A frosty night to come.
‘The old road is this way,’ Merewyn says, but she’s only repeating what she has already said several times, and the words have grown stale. ‘If we can find it, we can reach my brother’s manor. We’ll be safe there, I promise. He’ll take us in, he’ll protect us.’
‘And what if they’ve sent word ahead? Don’t you think that if Ælfric has any sense, he’ll guess that’s where we might go? What if they’re already waiting for us when we arrive? How is Eadmer going to protect us then?’
Merewyn is silent for a while as if contemplating, but there’s nothing to contemplate. Tova knows she’s right.
Her lady asks, ‘What would you have us do, then?’
Tova glances towards the west, where the tiniest gleam of sun is still visible. It won’t be for much longer.
‘We nee
d shelter. Some place where there’s fodder and food and a fire, where we can rest until we work out what to do next. We can’t keep travelling through the night. We don’t know the paths. What if one of the horses loses its footing and goes lame? What if one of us falls and breaks an ankle?’
Merewyn bites her lip. It’s fear above all else that has kept them going all day without food or water, with hardly any pause. That same fear is what drives her still. But for the first time since this morning Tova sees doubt in her eyes: a sign that reason is at last beginning to win through.
‘I thought I saw a hall about a mile back, maybe a bit more than that,’ Tova says. ‘We could ask the people there if they could spare—’
Merewyn presses her hands against her forehead as though an ache has been building for some time and won’t go away.
‘It’s all right,’ Tova says. She puts her arm around Merewyn as she turns and buries her head in Tova’s shoulder.
‘I never meant to do it,’ Merewyn says, sobbing. ‘You know that, don’t you?’
‘I know.’
But she doesn’t know. Still all these hours later Merewyn hasn’t told her the whole story of what happened, and Tova doesn’t feel it’s her place to ask. So she’s guessing, filling in the details as best she can, piecing the story together from what she already knows.
‘This is all my fault,’ says Merewyn.
‘Don’t say that.’
To the west, the sun has at last vanished below the hills. If they’re going to find somewhere to spend the night, they need to do so quickly. Tova doesn’t want to be stumbling across these hills in the moonlight.
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