The priest, too, doesn’t seem the same man, somehow, as the one she was speaking with last night. Until now he has hardly said a word all morning, but his silence seems more contemplative than brooding. Certainly he doesn’t have the same hunched look about him; he walks taller, sits straighter in the saddle. In the light of day he no longer looks as world-weary, or as old. Relieved of the load that was weighing him down, now that he’s shared his burden. Maybe that’s what it is.
Beorn returns not long afterwards. He followed the path for another half-mile, he says, and found the river, but it’s broken its banks, swollen by the recent rains, so they’ll have to go upstream in search of a better crossing place.
‘How much further, do you think?’ Tova asks him.
‘It could be as little as another hour, or we might not find one until tomorrow. We won’t know until we get there, so let’s not stand here talking.’
*
‘What about you?’ Tova asks Oslac a little later, while they wait for the priest, who’s busy relieving himself behind a thorn hedge. ‘You aren’t from these parts, are you?’
He smiles. ‘My voice gives me away, doesn’t it?’ he asks. ‘No, you’re right. I’m not. I grew up in a place far from here. A long way to the south, in Wessex. The shire of Sumorsæte, not that you’re likely to have heard of it.’
Tova shakes her head. She probably has at some time, and has simply forgotten. There are so many shires that make up England; she could never remember all of them, especially since their names mean nothing to her. Sumorsæte might as well lie in another kingdom entirely, for all that she knows about it.
‘I have,’ Merewyn says. ‘That’s where King Ælfred took refuge from the heathens. When they were overrunning the land. Years ago, I mean. My tutor, Leofa, once taught me about how he fled to the marshes where they couldn’t come at him, then sent out secret messages to his allies, urging them to rally to his banner when he marched again.’
Oslac says, ‘So I’ve heard.’
‘Where in Sumorsæte?’ Beorn asks abruptly.
‘A place called Suthperetune. I don’t suppose you know of it.’
‘Why did you leave?’ Tova asks. She isn’t interested in hearing about kings from far away and long ago; she wants to know about him. ‘What brings you here?’
‘Our home, the manor where I grew up, was burned one night,’ Oslac says with a sigh. ‘My father was killed. He taught me most of the songs I carry in my head. It had been just the two of us. My sister was dead, as I told you. My mother too. After he was gone, well, there was nothing left for me there. I decided instead to make of myself what I could, on my own. And that’s what I’ve been doing these past couple of years: wandering the kingdom, only I’ve had to keep travelling ahead of the foreigners as they’ve moved ever northwards, seizing the land. They have their own storytellers, you see. Their own verses. They don’t want to hear mine. So that’s why you find me here, north of the Humbre.’
‘And people really pay to hear you sing, do they?’ Beorn asks. ‘They pay good silver?’
The poet shrugs. ‘Sometimes. But just as often I’ll settle for a hot meal, a jug of ale and a bed of straw in the hall of whoever is lord. I’ll stay a day or two, and then I’ll move on to the next place, wherever there’s a feast taking place.’
But now there are no halls, Tova thinks. No halls. No lords. No feasts. And what use are stories then?
*
The wind’s changing. It gusts in her face; she keeps her hood up and her head down to try to keep the worst of the rain off, but it’s not enough. Icy darts prick her cheeks.
North and west they ride, following the course of the river valley. Deserted strip-fields stretch out under a wide sky. It’s too open, too exposed. To the rain and the wind. To the eyes of the enemy.
They move cautiously, keeping to the cover of woodland wherever they can. To the north, to the south, to the west, to the east, smoke rises in thin coils. More hall burnings. Some of the larger fires still glowing. Every so often Beorn pauses to glance over his shoulder, scanning the distant hills. When he goes on ahead, he doesn’t venture as far. It’s the first time he has betrayed any sign of disquiet. The fact that he’s worried makes Tova worried too.
This isn’t the way he would have chosen, she knows. It’s taking them closer to the old road, the one that the Romans built in years gone by. And closer to the old road means closer to the Normans.
They’ll be watching it, he says. Watching for folk fleeing towards Dunholm, into St Cuthbert’s land, seeking sanctuary. Folk like them.
They have no other choice, though. And so they carry on, mile by mile, as the skies ahead of them grow heavier.
*
They lead their horses one at a time. Branches overhang the path, crossing over one another. Oak and hornbeam. Beech and birch. It’s not long after midday but it feels closer to dusk. A strange half-light falls over everything.
A half-light upon a half-world, slipping into a shadow from which it might never emerge.
‘Wait,’ Beorn says. He stops in his tracks, his arm raised.
‘What is it?’ asks Merewyn, who’s behind him. ‘What have you seen?’
Tova cranes her neck to see what’s happening. It’s not the first time they’ve halted this afternoon, and it probably won’t be the last either.
‘Why are we stopping?’ Oslac calls. He’s bringing up the rear, keeping a lookout behind.
Tova leaves Winter momentarily and ducks under the low branches as she makes her way forward to join Merewyn. And she sees what they’re looking at.
Horse dung.
‘We aren’t the only ones going this way,’ says Beorn as he crouches down and takes a pinch of it, rubbing it between his fingers.
Tova feels a prickling all over her body. They could be close. They might be watching them right now. She searches amid the trees, past the tangle of brambles, the hollow lichen-matted trunks and the thick holly bushes that the birds have picked clean of berries.
Beorn sniffs at his fingertips. ‘A few hours old, I’d say. Not warm, but not cold either.’
A few hours ago. She breathes more easily as the prickling feeling subsides. She was worried it was more recent.
‘Maybe we should turn back,’ Oslac suggests. ‘Maybe coming this way wasn’t such a good idea.’
Absently he fingers what looks like a gold chain hanging around his neck. Some keepsake or charm? He catches her looking at him and immediately tucks it back out of sight, under the collar of his tunic. He fixes her with a warning glare, his cheeks blossoming red, then turns abruptly away as if embarrassed.
Beorn is already marching back to his horse. ‘We go on,’ he calls over his shoulder. ‘But keep your eyes and your ears open.’
*
She can tell when Winter is tired. Her head is low; she won’t go when told to, and when she moves she won’t obey commands, but picks and chooses which ones she thinks sensible and which ones not. She isn’t used to long journeys, or to being made to carry such heavy packs.
Three days it’s been now since they fled Heldeby. Almost, anyway. Once this day is out, it will be. No wonder Tova can hardly feel her feet any more.
Because Winter isn’t the only one who’s struggling. Not for the first time she finds herself trailing behind as they climb through the woods. The rain keeps falling and her nose is running and it won’t stop, no matter how many times she wipes it. She hears her lady calling to her, urging her on. She knows she has to keep up. But she can only see so many burned-out halls, so many animal carcasses with limbs missing and eyes picked out, so many broken corpses lying cold and ashen in the fields. If she’d had any idea it would be like this, she’d never have come.
She has to stop for a moment. Her head is spinning; she can’t feel her feet.
Through the trees to the north she spies the river
, or thinks she does. Its banks are shrouded by tall spindly trees. No sign yet of a bridge. Beorn would say, wouldn’t he, if he thought they were near?
She turns to look back the way they’ve come, towards the crossroads at the bottom of the vale, where the droveway and their own muddy track met. So many miles behind them already. So many still to go. It doesn’t matter in which direction she turns, it’s all the same. Hills upon hills, as far as her eyes can make out. Dense copses of birch and elm. Empty fields, recently ploughed. Green meadows where the grass grows long. Everything so still, caught in winter’s grip.
Black specks flutter up to the east, from one of the far thickets close to the droveway. Dozens, scores, hundreds. Spiralling up, swooping, diving. Too far away to hear their chatter above the wind. A quarter of a mile? Less than that?
She knows she ought to be riding on, trying to catch up with the others. But she doesn’t. Instead, leaving Winter, she ventures off the track, tramping through the undergrowth, brambles catching at her cloak and her dress, towards the edge of the trees, trying to get a better look.
Something must have scared them, she thinks. Those crows, or jackdaws or rooks or whatever they are, they wouldn’t just take flight for no reason. She wouldn’t, if she were them. It’s too cold. Better to stay still and conserve warmth. Stay close. Huddle together.
She fixes her gaze on the distant thicket and the birds circling high above. Just for a moment, she tells herself. Then she’ll go.
The moment passes. Still nothing. A deer bounds across the hillside. Nothing else moves. No other sign of life. She hears her lady calling from further up the track, sounding alarmed.
She should go, she knows. She’s about to call back to say she’s all right when she sees them. A cluster of figures on foot. Three of them. No, four, bursting out from the cover of the trees. Shields slung across their backs, brightly daubed in red and green and yellow. Pelting across the open ground, across the harrowed earth. Scrambling over a hedge, over ridge and furrow. Falling and then picking themselves up. Running along the valley, across the open pasture. Running as if their lives depended on it.
Running from what?
‘Girl,’ Beorn calls from behind her. ‘Are you listening to me? Come on. You shouldn’t be wandering on your own.’
She glances over her shoulder, sees him fighting the bracken as he comes towards her.
‘Look,’ she says, beckoning him closer. ‘Look!’
Pursuing them, charging from out of the thicket, comes a band of mounted men. Three at first, then another two behind them, and another two, then three more. Ten in all. Pennons flying. Their shouts carry faintly across the ploughed fields. The blast of a war horn. And this time she isn’t hearing things.
It’s them.
Galloping after the four men on foot, skirting field edges, rounding hedges. Closing on them. Closing fast. Hooves pounding the dirt. Helmets glinting, spear points gleaming wickedly in the grey afternoon light.
The Normans.
Beorn asks, ‘What is it, girl?’
He stands beside her, following the line of her outstretched finger. And he sees.
‘Get down,’ he says.
She doesn’t move. She can’t. She’s forgotten how.
His hand on her arm. Clutching so tight that it hurts. Before she knows what’s happening he’s pulling her down. Hard. To the ground. She lands on her elbow and wants to let out a yelp but he clamps his hand across her mouth.
‘Quiet,’ he says. ‘Stay still.’
He crouches low behind the brambles and peers over. Tova joins him, rubbing her arm where she fell.
‘Will they have seen us?’
‘I don’t know. Let’s not take any chances.’
They can’t have done, Tova thinks. Surely they can’t. They’re too intent on their prey.
The men on foot are no longer together, but strung out. Each man for himself. They fling aside their spears, their shields, their packs, cloaks, everything, so that they can flee all the faster. But where? She can hear them calling to one another, the panic in their voices, faint though they are. Those ahead shouting to the stragglers. The enemy not far behind. Only a couple of hundred paces away now. Getting closer and closer to the crossroads.
One of the Englishmen trips, falls face first on to the earth, struggles to get up. Looks over his shoulder as he does so, sees the horde bearing down upon him. And yells out something that Tova can’t make out.
‘Don’t watch,’ Beorn says.
But she does. She can’t help it.
A lance head strikes the man’s shoulder, spinning him around. Another glances off his side and he staggers back. A sword across the back of his neck. He falls, disappearing amid the long grass.
‘No,’ she says under her breath. ‘No, no, no.’
‘What did I tell you, girl?’
She wants to stop, she really does, but she can’t tear her eyes away.
The rest of the Normans, they’re fanning out, riding after the Englishman’s three companions. The first is cut down from behind. The second hears them coming, turns and draws his sword. Too late. A spear finds the middle of his chest and he goes down.
The third hears their screams and glances over his shoulder. He knows what’s about to happen. He stops; he turns to face them, sinking to his knees. He lifts his eyes to the heavens and moves his hand rapidly across his chest. Crossing himself, Tova realises.
No sooner has he finished than they’re on him. One blow is all it takes.
A flash of steel. A shower of blood. His face a crimson mess.
‘Oh God,’ Tova says. She wants to be sick. She feels it welling up inside, burning her throat.
A whoop of joy. Laughter. A cry goes up in their barbarous tongue. She looks up, sees one of them holding something aloft. It doesn’t take her long to work out what it is. Severed, dripping, smeared red.
A head.
Holding it by its long hair, the Norman whirls it about him and, letting out a roar, tosses it far into the field, where it rolls and settles in a furrow.
‘Stay down,’ Beorn hisses. ‘Stay down and keep quiet.’
She feels dizzy. It’s going to come. She knows it.
He pulls her back down behind the bramble bush. ‘It’s all right. Look at me. You’re all right. Deep breaths now.’
She realises she’s been holding her breath. She takes a gulp of the cold air. The queasiness subsides.
More whooping, more laughter, but steadily receding. Heading back the way they came, she thinks. Along the droveway, towards the east.
‘That could have been us,’ she says when at last she can speak again. ‘If they’d spotted us, if they’d come this way . . .’
‘I know.’
‘They were right there!’
‘I know.’
Her heart hammering, not quite daring to believe how close they came, she closes her eyes. The laughter and the shouting grow ever quieter. Then, after a while, nothing but the wind. The creaking of branches.
The long quiet.
*
‘I want you to teach me,’ Tova says to Beorn that evening when the two of them are out gathering wood.
They’ve made their camp at the bottom of a narrow dell, far enough away from the track that their fire shouldn’t be seen and their voices are unlikely to be heard. The cold has settled in the shadow of the hill, but the light hasn’t gone yet.
‘Teach you what?’
‘How to fight.’
He laughs. ‘You?’
‘Why not?’
She’s been thinking about it ever since this afternoon. Every time there’s danger, she feels so helpless. Hiding, fleeing: it’s all they seem to do, and she’s tired of it.
Beorn looks askance at her, then bends down to pick up a fallen branch, which he snaps in two across his
thigh.
‘Think about it,’ she says. ‘What if the enemy come and you’re not here?’
‘Then you run.’
‘What if we can’t run? What if they have horses, or if they just have longer legs than us? We won’t have any choice then, will we?’
‘Don’t try to face a man on horseback. Not until you’ve had years of practice.’
‘You don’t believe women should fight, do you?’
‘I believe that, if you draw a weapon in anger, then you have to be ready to die.’
‘I know that. I’m not stupid.’
He stops, turns to her, looks her up and down. She holds her head high, folds her arms, meets his stare. He has to know that she means what she says.
‘All right,’ he says, with a smile so slight and fleeting that she isn’t sure if she imagined it. ‘I’ll teach you.’
*
When they return to camp they set down the firewood they’ve gathered. Straight away Beorn marks out a wide circle with stones and some of the larger branches.
Oslac asks, ‘What’s that for?’
Beorn tells him he’ll see soon enough. He lays down his bow and his axe outside the ring, and a leather scabbard hanging at his side that looks like it belongs to a seax or a short sword.
‘Priest,’ he says. ‘I need to borrow your knife.’
Guthred looks puzzled. ‘My knife?’
‘Only for a short while. I’ll give it back, you have my word.’
The priest hesitates but draws it and hands it to the warrior, who marches into the middle of the circle. He beckons Tova towards him. Nervous but at the same time excited, she steps forward.
‘What’s going on?’ her lady asks. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m showing her how she can defend herself,’ Beorn says. ‘I’ll show you too, if you want.’
She doesn’t, Tova thinks. Not after what happened the other night. No doubt Merewyn would be happy if she never had to see another blade in her life.
‘Well?’ Beorn asks her, when she doesn’t answer.
Merewyn looks suddenly very pale, but no one else seems to notice, so maybe it’s just Tova’s imagination.
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