The Harrowing

by James Aitcheson

  Not that I felt in the beginning that it was ever my hall to hang things in, or that I had much share in Heldeby, apart from the land he gave me as my morning gift. For weeks I felt like a stranger. At first I was greeted with wonder, their lord’s new wife, but in time that faded and what remained were barbed tongues and cold eyes. For what no one told me until I arrived, one of many things, was that he had two sons from his first marriage: Orm, who wasn’t much older than Eadmer and whose face from his brow to his neck was a welter of red blotches, which he had a habit of picking at, a habit that only made them worse; and Ketil, who had seen only ten winters and was a sickly thing, always too thin, and who never ate as much as he should. Skalpi was devoted to them and lavished on them gifts of horses and hawks and bows and arrows, but for all that they were forever scowling, or at least they always were in my presence. They both resented me for taking their mother’s place, which I could well understand, but they also resented their father for reasons I couldn’t work out at first.

  What happened to his first wife? At first I thought she’d died, because that’s what my mother had told me and because no one at Heldeby would utter a single word about her, even when I asked them directly. I thought they were just being respectful, and so it wasn’t until later, when Tova and I became friends, that I learned Skalpi had discovered her in bed with another man, a former love from years earlier who’d disguised himself as a travelling monk so that he could meet her and gain access to her chamber without arousing suspicion.

  Skalpi had killed him on the spot and cast her out, never to return, with nothing more than the clothes she was wearing. It was said she had gone into a nunnery somewhere, although no one knew for sure and most preferred to keep their thoughts to themselves, in case word ever got back to Skalpi and he cast them out too.

  Why he chose to marry again, I don’t know. Not because he needed another heir. Companionship, maybe, although he had plenty of that from the slave girls who often warmed his bed. The only other reason I can think of is pride. He’d been wronged, and felt ashamed. Taking another wife was the only way he could think of to rid himself of that shame, I suppose, and to escape the humiliation he had endured. By pretending in a way that it had never happened. By refusing to ever speak of his first wife, either in private or in company. By walking from the table without a word and taking his food in his chamber whenever his sons spoke of her during the evening meal, whether they did it in passing or deliberately, to provoke him.

  He cared for them deeply, which is why he didn’t send them away with their mother after her betrayal. Ties of blood are the hardest to sever. But they didn’t thank him for it, and probably that was why he was so desperate to win their affection, though they rarely showed any sign of returning it. They were a strange pair. They kept to themselves most of the time, and didn’t speak much except with each other. The younger one, Ketil, I didn’t mind, but Orm I never liked from the moment I first met him. The way he looked at me, the mixture of loathing and desire that I saw in his eyes, made my skin turn to ice. He had a sullen manner and a sharp tongue when he cared to use it, and I took pains to avoid him. It wasn’t that I was scared of him, not exactly; what could he do to me? But all the same I never liked being in the same place as him if I could help it.

  I didn’t have many friends in those early days, but it was bearable, I suppose. Skalpi kept hoping that I would come to love him in time. Whenever he came back from the markets at Eoferwic or Skardaborg he would bring me a fine cloak or a new dress trimmed with silk that came all the way from Miklagard, or silver rings and necklaces of amber and jet, all in an effort to win me over. He never pressed me and was always patient. Outwardly he seemed a man in control of his feelings, lacking in passion, but inside the scars must have run deep; he remained heart-stricken, and was doing his best to heal that hurt. After a while, whenever he had to go away he’d leave me in charge not just of the household, but also of collecting rents and even of hearing pleas in the manor court, the same things that at home my mother often took care of on Eadmer’s behalf. Orm didn’t like that because he felt those responsibilities should be his, and at sixteen he was certainly old enough. Skalpi didn’t trust him, though, whereas he trusted me, because I was lettered and had a kind way with people. Not like Orm, who could hardly open his mouth without causing offence. So that gave him yet another reason to hate me. As if he didn’t have enough already.

  As far as I could tell, Orm had one true ally at Heldeby apart from his brother, and that was the smirking man who had danced with me that night after the marriage feast. His name was Ælfric and he was Skalpi’s reeve, a weasel-faced creature for whom nothing was ever enough. He was forever arguing that we could squeeze higher rents out of the cottars who lived on our lands, or that we could get better prices on the fleeces if we sold them across the sea rather than at the markets nearby, or that the slaves, the few that we owned, should be made to work harder for their keep, and when he didn’t get his way he would hold it as a slight against his person and spend the rest of that day lashing out at whoever happened to cross his path. He had a quick temper and was no man’s friend.

  Skalpi himself was no great supporter of his but instead tolerated him, and only kept him on because in spite of everything else he was a good overseer. Ælfric took a liking to Orm, though, I think because they were similar in character. He would spar with him in the training yard and ruffle his hair when he did well, and they would go on hunts together, and drink and joke long into the night, often laughing so loudly that they would wake me in my chamber, which was next to the hall. The reeve wasn’t married and had no sons of his own, and so he saw Orm almost as a fosterling: someone whom he could teach and whom he could fashion as he chose.

  They were each intimidating enough by themselves, but together they were worse. They took confidence from one another, inflicting cruel words that neither one alone would dare deliver. I quickly noticed how the house servants and the stable hands and the kitchen girls all took care to avoid them, especially when they were together.

  That’s how I met Tova.

  *

  Hearing Merewyn speak, Tova feels a pricking in her eyes. Her cheeks burn and she bows her head before her lady notices.

  To hear these things from someone else’s lips, as they saw it, is strange. Uncomfortable. It’s like looking down a well and seeing oneself reflected in the flat water below. All the details are there, but they’re dimmer and more distant and harder to recognise.

  *

  This was around the same time as the business with the silver. I’d been counting out some coins from Skalpi’s money kist, the one he kept locked in the floor space underneath his chamber, so that I could buy a few lengths of linen at market, when I noticed that we were a few shillings short. I checked again to see how much there was supposed to be, and tried to think if there was anything I’d paid for lately that I might have forgotten to note down. But the numbers were the same, and I couldn’t think of anything, which meant that somebody must have taken it, and recently too, because nothing had been missing three days before, which was when we’d last had the kist out, to give the geld we owed to the shire reeve.

  Of course I went to Skalpi. At once he ordered all the cottars and the slaves out of their houses so that they could be searched, and Ælfric went in with Orm and Penda the smith, to protests from the men and weeping from the women. Knives were drawn and mattresses were slashed open and the straw emptied out; thatch was torn in clumps from the roofs; cooking pots were overturned and the heaps of dung that stood outside every toft were raked over as the men looked for the telltale glint.

  Eventually we found it, in the slave quarters close to the kitchen, hidden beneath the bed of one of the women, whose name I think was Gundrada, who had a daughter. She pleaded ignorance, saying that she didn’t know how it had got there, but then one of the male slaves remembered that not a few days before she had been complaining about how hard
they were being made to work, and he said that maybe she thought she deserved it and that was why she had taken it. Anyway, Gundrada—

  *

  ‘Gunnhild,’ Tova murmurs under her breath.

  ‘What?’ asks Merewyn.

  ‘It was Gunnhild,’ she says. She remembers only too well. ‘Not Gundrada.’

  ‘Is it important?’

  ‘It was her name, that’s all.’

  *

  Gunnhild, then. She said that he was lying, and no, she hadn’t taken the silver, and if she had she would never have hidden it in so obvious a place. But that only made people think that if nothing else she must have considered stealing it, which made her guilty in mind if not in deed.

  What did I think? That she was guilty, of course, although I pleaded with Skalpi not to be too harsh. But it was his decision and his alone, and eventually he made up his mind. An example needed to be made, he announced, so that no one else would ever think about doing the same thing again. And so he sent her away, and not just her but her daughter too, who must have been around the same age as Tova. What happened to them? Well, they were slaves so they were sold on, of course, to a merchant who would take them across the sea. To Dyflin, I think, where he said he could get a good price for them.

  Anyway, it was around that time, as I was saying, that I met Tova for the first time. I already knew who she was, in the same way that everyone knew everyone on the manor: the slight girl with the wavy hair who during the day worked in the dairy and sometimes in the evenings attended table, where she’d stand behind Skalpi with his cup in one hand and in the other a jug of ale or wine or water depending on his mood. I knew her name but not much more than that.

  Not until the day when I overheard what sounded like a cry coming from the kitchen. It was cut short and quickly followed by what sounded like Orm’s voice, although I couldn’t make out what was being said. A chill rose through me and I quickened my pace, then something made me stop. I’d noticed how Orm and Ælfric had been treating the slaves lately – waiting for one to spill a pail or break a pot, or for the harvest team out reaping the barley to overlook one corner of a field, when they’d set upon them with insults and cuffs around the back of the head and sometimes worse – but I’d never had the courage to face up to them both at the same time.

  For once, though, I didn’t hear the reeve’s voice. If ever there was a time to stand up to Orm, I thought, this was it. It was the middle of the afternoon and everyone else was at their tasks: the smith at his forge, the cowherd moving his animals to new pasture, the swineherd out foraging with the pigs in the woods, the others cleaning the pens and helping to lay new thatch on one of the barns. Skalpi was away, as he often was, visiting one of his other manors. And so it had to be me.

  What I found when I threw open the door was Orm, with the sleeves of his tunic rolled to his elbows and his hand raised, standing over Tova, who was on the floor in front of him, her back against the wall, her head turned, her eyes closed and face screwed up tight in anticipation. He struck her, hard across the cheek, and was lifting his arm to strike her again when I shouted out.

  At once he turned. And saw me. He stopped mid-movement.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

  He should have apologised or made himself scarce. But he didn’t. Instead he stood where he was and scowled at me, as if I was the one in the wrong. He was tall for his age, taller than me at any rate, broad-shouldered and thickset as well, with arms like a smith’s from all the time he spent in the training yard. Even though the reeve wasn’t with him, and I was in my own house with a dozen people within earshot if I shouted out, I was still more than a little afraid of him, but I tried not to let it show.

  ‘She broke a pitcher,’ he said flatly.

  ‘Get away from her now,’ I told him.

  He asked, ‘What’s she to you?’

  Trying not to let my voice tremble, I said that I needed her to run an errand for me. He replied that I could have her, but first she needed to be punished for her clumsiness.

  ‘You don’t get to decide that,’ I told him. ‘Only your father does, and he won’t be pleased when I tell him you struck one of his cup-bearers.’

  He glared at me with those small eyes of his. The surprise on his face was gone and in its place was that loathing look I’d grown used to.

  ‘He won’t care,’ he said. ‘She’s nothing to him. Just a slave. A worthless, stinking slave who deserves to be beaten.’

  ‘Maybe so,’ I said, ‘but she’s your father’s slave, and if you hurt her so that she can’t work he won’t thank you. He’ll still have to feed and clothe and shelter her regardless.’

  ‘You don’t tell me what to do,’ he said as he advanced on me. ‘This is my home, not yours. I’ll do what I like.’

  I backed away towards what I thought was the door, but instead I found the wall. He pressed close, his breath warm upon my face. At first I thought he might be drunk, even though it was still early in the day. But I didn’t smell any ale on him, and that only scared me more. I didn’t know what he had in mind, except that I didn’t like it. I tried to twist away but he thrust out an arm to stop me. There was nowhere I could go.

  ‘When your father returns, he’ll hear about this,’ I said, but even to my ears it sounded like a feeble threat.

  He raised his hand towards my face and I flinched, thinking that he was about to hit me too. Instead he brushed my cheek with the tips of his dirt-stained fingers, running them softly, almost in wonderment, down the side of my neck towards my collarbone, his broken nails lightly scratching my skin. At any moment, I thought, he was going to pull me towards him and plant his lips upon mine. I could hardly breathe; I wanted to be sick.

  ‘It’s your word against mine,’ he said. ‘Which one of us do you think he’s going to believe?’

  Outside I heard Ælfric shouting, for what reason or at whom I didn’t know, but it was probably one of the other slaves, as it always was. Orm glanced towards the door. He must have come to his senses then, realising that someone else could walk in at any moment, and that if they did it would look bad for him. Because he didn’t wait for an answer. Instead he drew his hand away and without a backward glance stalked out of the kitchen. But I could still feel his fingers lingering, sliding across my cheek, as I heard him greeting the reeve.

  Their voices grew further and further away, leaving me and Tova alone.

  I remember you were rubbing your face as you got to your feet, and I asked if you were all right. You told me you were, but I noticed that you didn’t look at me as you said it, and I put my arms around you and told you I’d see to it that Orm stayed away in future. I wasn’t sure how I’d do that, but I swore it anyway, and an oath is an oath.

  Of course nothing was done. I told Skalpi what I’d seen when he came back from his travels, although I left out the part about the threats Orm had made towards me. Why? Because I felt embarrassed, I suppose, and dirty too, for letting him touch me. And because I wasn’t sure there was anything to tell. He hadn’t done anything except to frighten me, but then he had always frightened me. He hadn’t hurt me, and in any case he was right: it was only my word against his.

  Anyway, Skalpi listened. He was patient and didn’t interrupt, but he let me say what I would, and all the time there was a solemn expression on his face that I found hard to read. He believed I spoke the truth, I think. He even called for Tova so that he could hear for himself what she had to say and see the marks on her face. I pleaded with him to do something about his son, and said that if he didn’t act to curb his unruliness things would only grow worse. In the end, though, feeling won out over reason. As much as he hoped to please me, and as much as he saw I was affected by what had happened, he craved his son’s love and couldn’t bring himself to punish him. He warned Orm that next time there would be consequences, but they both knew it wasn’t true.

 
; Thankfully Ælfric stopped having much to do with Orm after that. Maybe Skalpi spoke to him and told him what he’d heard, or maybe the reeve realised on his own that things had gone too far. At any rate, from then on he and Orm were rarely seen together. They would no longer sit drinking by hearth-light late into the night. While occasionally they still took to the training yard to practise spear work and sword craft, there was never quite the same warmth between them.

  For a while, then, things got better. Tova said that although Orm would still spit in her direction and hurl curses at her from across the yard if there was no one around to hear, he didn’t come near her any more. The slaves weren’t forced to work quite as hard either, for which they were grateful. Not that the work was easy, but at least it was tolerable. I understood that Skalpi had instructed that, rather than being threatened with punishment if they didn’t produce enough butter or cheese, they should be promised rewards for doing well. A cup each of the better ale to drink with their morning and evening meals, and a further cup of beans and another of grain on top of what they were already owed by custom and by right.

  Still, those were difficult times. Many were the nights that Skalpi retired early to his chamber, sometimes in the middle of our evening meal, after barely touching his plate or his cup. He would stand from the table and leave without a word, and later I would find him lying on his bed in the darkness, without even a single candle lit. Without taking off his tunic or his shoes. Without sleeping. Without any of the girls I knew he sometimes shared his bed with. Just lying there, by himself, in silence.

  The first time I thought he must be ill. He let me hold his hand when I knelt by his bedside, but he wouldn’t tell me what was ailing him. His skin wasn’t clammy, his brow wasn’t running with sweat, he didn’t have a fever, he wasn’t coughing or sneezing or finding it hard to breathe, but in spite of all that he looked in some sort of pain. I feared he might be dying and wondered whether I should call the wise woman or the priest, but when I asked him he said they could do nothing for him. I asked him whether I could bring him anything, whether I could recite for him some of the poetry that he liked, which I’d learned at the hearth in my father’s hall, and whether that might help. He said he wanted only to be alone and that I needn’t worry about him. But I did worry, especially when the same thing happened a few nights later, and a third time the night after that. I might not have loved him the way he had hoped, but over time I’d grown to care for him. The last thing I wanted was for him to die, because where would that leave me then?