That was the least joyful Christmas I can remember. No one was in the mood for feasting or celebrating, although there was a lot of drinking, most of it done by Orm, during the day as well as in the evening. He would lash out unexpectedly, usually for a petty reason: if his food reached the table cold or if the girl holding his cup happened to spill some because she was trembling so much. He would argue loudly and at length with Ælfric about matters to do with the running of the manor, thinking he knew better and saying he didn’t know why his father had put up with him for so long. Maybe their broken friendship was the reason he was so angry. He refused both confession and communion, which upset Thorvald. And so he slighted the two men who might otherwise have been his most useful allies. I noticed too that Ketil, who had always been his most loyal friend, spent less and less time with him. They had often enjoyed playing tæfl together, but now when he lost Orm would shove the board from the table and send the pieces flying across the chamber.
Maybe he felt abandoned, and that’s why he began seeking solace and companionship elsewhere. The slave girls quickened their step whenever he was near, and fathers took care to keep their daughters within sight. I took to eating my meals in my bower so that I didn’t have to suffer his gaze from across the dining table. Some days he would hardly touch his food. His hunger was of a different sort, I knew – one that was less easily sated.
At night I struggled to sleep unless I knew he’d already taken to his bed or had drunk himself insensible on the floor of the hall. I’d lie awake for hours at a time, listening until everything was still and I felt safe enough to close my eyes. He’d never dare come into my chamber, I tried telling myself, but I didn’t really believe it, and so after a while I moved myself and all my possessions into my own house on the other side of the estate. It was more confined and simpler, built of daubed wattle rather than oak, but it was further from Orm, and that was all that mattered. Some nights I’d ask Tova to stay with me and either sleep in the room below or else on a mattress on the floor of my chamber, but that was as much for the sake of her company, so that I didn’t have to be alone with my sorrow and my fears.
Skalpi was gone. The rebellion had failed and there was no telling what would happen now. Foreigners were overrunning the kingdom and everything was passing into shadow and ruin. I felt under siege, with enemies everywhere I turned, not just outside but now also within my own home, so that it no longer felt like a place of safety but somewhere I needed to escape, if only I knew how.
Desperation changes you. You stop seeing things clearly and instead do things you’d never otherwise imagine, because there is no other choice. Before, I’d heard it said that in times of hunger poor folk would sometimes gather together all their shoes, put them into a great cauldron and boil the leather into a broth because there was nothing else to eat and that was the best they could manage. As a child I’d squirmed when my father said things like that, which were supposed to teach me how lucky I was to be the daughter of a thegn and to have warm clothes, a timber hall to sleep in and as much meat and ale as I needed, but I’d never entirely believed such stories because I never understood.
I understand now.
*
‘What I still don’t understand is why you couldn’t have gone away,’ Oslac says. ‘If things were as bad as you suggest.’
‘I know,’ Merewyn says. ‘And I did think about it. Mainly it was pride. Heldeby was my home as well, and I didn’t see why I should be forced to leave. But it was also hope. A part of me still thought that, any day, Skalpi would come back and all would be well again.’
‘So what happened after that?’
Merewyn breathes deeply. ‘Three nights ago he came to my house. Orm, I mean. It was late or early, I’m not sure. I was anxious and my head was so full of worry that I hadn’t been able to settle. I’d struggled to sleep and kept on waking, each time in a fright. I heard footsteps in the room beneath my chamber—’
‘Was there no lock on the door?’ Beorn asks.
‘There was. I was sure I’d locked it before going to bed, but maybe he had smashed it. Maybe that was what woke me, although I don’t remember hearing a sound.’
‘Or else maybe you forgot,’ Oslac says.
‘No,’ says Merewyn firmly. ‘I remembered, I’m sure of it. Especially because I didn’t know if was just Orm I ought to be frightened of.’
‘What do you mean?’
*
Earlier that evening, just as the light was fading, Ælfric had returned from riding the bounds looking pale, which was unnerving in itself because he usually wasn’t one to let his fears show. He’d spied smoke, he said, rising some way beyond the woods to the south, in the direction of one of our neighbours’ halls, and it wasn’t the thin kind you might expect to see from a hearth fire or forge, but thick black coils that made a blotch upon the horizon. We wondered what could have happened, but there was an obvious explanation. Everyone was probably thinking the same thing, but no one wanted to say it plainly.
Thorvald suggested we leave immediately and seek refuge up on the moors, just in case. Ælfric agreed, and Ketil tried to persuade his brother that they spoke sense. Orm, though, said there could be any number of reasons for the smoke that had nothing to do with brigands or the enemy, and that since we didn’t know for sure there was any danger, we shouldn’t worry. Instead, he announced, he would lead a riding party at first light to find out what had happened.
But we did worry. That night Ælfric arranged sentries to sound the horn if anything happened, and agreed to take one of the watches himself, but said we should try to keep this news a secret from everyone else. He didn’t want to cause panic. Orm ridiculed him for being frightened of a little smoke; the reeve answered that he would rather be fearful and live than die because he had been drunk and foolish. They argued loudly, and were still going at each other long after dark. I was in the chapel, praying alone by candlelight, across the yard from the hall, and even from there I could hear them hours after most people had gone to their beds. Eventually they came out from the hall, still shouting at one another.
‘Lady Merewyn was right,’ Ælfric said, and it was hearing my name that caught my attention. ‘You don’t care about anyone but yourself.’
Orm protested that wasn’t true, but the reeve spoke over him: ‘If your father could hear you now—’
Orm said, ‘I don’t care what Skalpi would think. And anyway he’s dead.’
‘The folk of Heldeby have put their faith in you,’ Ælfric said. ‘You’re their lord. They’re looking to you for protection. If you betray their trust and they die because of your recklessness, then may you perish in Hell.’
Orm shot back that he wasn’t stupid, that he was no longer a child and that he didn’t deserve to be spoken to in such a way, especially not by his own reeve. Besides, he said, he knew what he was doing.
‘I doubt that very much,’ Ælfric said.
After that things went quiet. I assumed the reeve had gone to take up his watch, and I thought maybe Orm had gone back to the hall to slump on a bench there, as he usually did.
I peered out of the chapel door. When I was sure he wasn’t about I went back to my house and to bed. I was halfway between dreaming and waking when I heard movement below. At first I thought it must be dawn and that Tova had come to lay the fire, and then I was confused since usually I had to come down to let her in. But I heard footsteps on the stairs and suddenly none of that mattered. They were heavy footsteps, but slow. Not constant either, but unsteady. I knew then it wasn’t Tova. It was him.
There were only two chambers on the up-floor: the first led to the second, and that was where I had my bower. I could hear him crossing the room from the stairs, barefoot by the sound of it, and could hear my own heart thumping as I fumbled for the knife under my pillow, the one my father had left me, with the hilt inlaid with silver crosses—
*
‘For protection,’ Merewyn says. ‘I always told Tova she should do the same, just in case, although in my heart of hearts I never really thought he’d go that far. I just wanted to be ready for him, and to have some way of fending him off. I never planned—’
‘But I thought you said Tova was there with you.’
‘Not that night,’ Tova says. ‘I wasn’t there every night.’
‘That’s why I had the knife,’ Merewyn explains.
Oslac says, ‘He knew you were alone, then.’
‘Maybe. I don’t know. He was drunk, worse than usual. He was so far gone in his cups that he didn’t care. I didn’t know what he might do, and I don’t think he did either. I was frightened like never before, like I never knew I could be.’
‘What did you do?’ asks the priest, but from the look on his face Tova guesses he already has some idea.
*
What did I do? Well, as I was saying, I could hear the groans of the boards, the shuffling of his feet as he crossed the floor. I lay there, as still as anything, clutching the knife in my hand, hardly daring to breathe as I watched the door and listened. At one point he seemed to pause, and everything was so silent that I thought maybe he’d gone away, but then I heard the footsteps again, closer this time, and a fumbling at the latch.
I lay stiff as a board, my whole body gripped by fear. If I screamed, who would hear me? The door swung open, and he ducked beneath the lintel into the room. It was so dark I could barely make him out.
‘Don’t come any closer,’ I told him before he could take another step.
‘I didn’t mean to wake you,’ he mumbled. His words were slow and uneven. It looked like he had something in his hand. A flagon, probably.
‘Get out,’ I said.
He didn’t seem to hear me, or if he did he chose to ignore me. I sat up, one hand drawing the blankets up around me because the night was cold. He came closer, and beneath the covers my fingers curled more tightly around the knife’s hilt, but he stopped at the foot of the bed, sitting down with a sigh, facing away from me. I heard the splash of something that I took to be ale, or more likely mead; he favoured stronger drinks when he could lay his hands on them. There was a sourness on him that even from the other end of the bed I could smell, like he’d been sick over himself.
‘They hate me,’ he said quietly but with an edge to his voice. There was a twinge in my gut as I was reminded of Skalpi. He’d said much the same, if not those exact words, that time all those months ago.
I didn’t know if he wanted me to answer and decided it was better to stay quiet and wait to see what he did next. If I just let him say what he wanted, I thought, then maybe he would leave.
‘They hate me,’ Orm repeated, in case I hadn’t heard or because he’d forgotten having already said it. ‘All of them. Even Ketil, worm that he is. He used to be my friend, but now they’ve poisoned him against me. He’ll hardly speak a word to my face. They think I don’t know the things they say about me. They think they’re so clever and that I’m stupid. They think I don’t see what’s really happening. But I do. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Of course,’ I said, trying not to let my voice tremble. Better just to agree, even if I didn’t entirely understand what it was I was supposed to be agreeing with.
‘Whatever I do, it’s never enough for them. They want me to be like Skalpi. Well, I’m not him, and I never will be. And he’s not coming back.’
You don’t know that, I wanted to say, and was going to tell him that if Skalpi had been captured there was a chance King Wilelm might sell him back to us. But I decided against contradicting him, and it was a good thing I did, because if I hadn’t then I might never have heard him say what he did, and then we might not be here now.
‘It’s because of me that he’s dead,’ he said. ‘It’s all my fault.’
And then something else happened that I wasn’t expecting: he started sobbing.
‘No, it isn’t,’ I said, and even then I remember asking myself why I was trying to comfort him, but I was scared and didn’t know what else to do. ‘It’s not your fault. How could it be?’
The tears kept coming. ‘It was me,’ he said. ‘There was never any Norman scouting party.’
He broke off, and it was then that I realised what he was saying. I couldn’t feel my limbs any more, could barely breathe. The room was swirling and the darkness was rising all around me.
‘What did you do?’ I asked, almost choking on the words, but I had to get them out. It couldn’t be true, surely? But what else could he mean?
He killed him, I thought. His own father. My husband.
And now he was here, in my chamber, and I knew that I had to get away from him. I wanted to get up and run, out the door and down the stairs and into the yard, and lose myself in the night, but fear held me. Even drunk he was probably still faster on his feet than me, and besides I had to pass him in order to reach the door.
‘He never loved you,’ he said as if he hadn’t heard me. The tears were gone and his voice was hard. ‘Not like I love you. He never cared for you as a man should.’ His weight shifted on the end of the bed as he turned towards me. ‘But I can.’
‘You don’t love me,’ I said as my blood ran cold. ‘You don’t.’
Just hearing him say that made me feel I’d done something I shouldn’t, something shameful.
‘He never deserved you,’ he said, and told me that I ought to have married him instead of Skalpi. That he knew how to treat a woman properly, and that if I were his wife, he would make sure to plough me every night, over and over and over, until we were both of us hurting and I was crying for him to stop.
He edged closer, and I tried to draw away. The flagon slipped from his fingers and thudded upon the floorboards, and he was grasping at the blankets covering me, trying to pull them away.
I scrambled out of the bed, so that I stood barefoot in just my undergown, with the blade still in my hand. He followed me, but the mead had made him slow, and I was able to duck out of the way of his hands.
‘What did you do, Orm?’ I asked again. ‘Tell me!’
My path to the door was clear now, but I was no longer thinking about running. I wanted to hear him say it. I wanted him to confess what I knew he’d done. And so I stood my ground, the knife before me pointing in his direction. But still he kept coming. Maybe he didn’t see the glint of steel, or maybe he didn’t care. I swung wildly, but he caught my wrist and seized it in his hand. Before I knew what was happening he’d thrust his other hand against my collarbone and I was pinned back against the wall. I tried to break free, but his grip was firm and all those months spent in the training yard had made him strong. His breath was like fire upon my face, and as well as the sour reek of vomit I could smell the mead on him, and I was panicking because I’d lost my one chance of escape and now there was nowhere to go.
‘You killed him, didn’t you?’ I asked, almost in tears myself. I was thinking of Skalpi, who had always been kind, who had always been generous, who had done nothing to deserve his fate. ‘Say it. Say you killed him.’
He squeezed my wrist hard; I cried out and dropped the knife, and then he threw me to the floor beside the bed. I fell awkwardly on something hard and round that knocked the breath from my chest. Orm’s empty flagon, I realised. I fumbled for the handle as he stepped towards me and leaned down to grab at my hair. At that moment I swung the vessel towards his head. It struck him underneath the chin; he stumbled sideways and fell over his feet, landing in a heap by the kist where I kept my clothes. He was swearing and swearing and swearing, and clutching at his jaw, and I leaped to retrieve the blade lying on the floor.
I didn’t stop to think whether what I was doing was right. I was burning inside, and there was only one thought run
ning through my mind.
Orm saw me coming towards him and, still in a daze, tried to get to his feet. His teeth were clenched and there was blood running from his mouth and from cuts on his cheek. The whites of his eyes gleamed in the darkness as I flung myself at him, and I saw that he was frightened.
He thrust out an arm to try to fend me off. I was probably screaming, but if I was and what I was saying, I don’t remember. What I do remember is letting the hate and rage pour out – all those feelings that for so long I’d kept buried inside.
Something warm gushed over my hand, as all at once the fight went out of him. I drove the blade deeper and deeper and deeper, until it met something hard and would go no further. I ripped it free, and he let out a wordless gasp as he tumbled to the floor. Before he could so much as think about getting up again I was on him, plunging the steel into his thigh and his gut and his groin and his neck and his chest and his face, each wound a punishment for the hurt he had done to me, to Tova, to his father and to others.
Over and over and over I did it, again and again until he was no longer moving, and still I kept going until the hilt slipped from my fingers and the blade clattered away across the floorboards and I sank to my knees and sobbed into my sticky hands, into my undergown’s soaked sleeve, with my hair in my face and blood in my hair. Blood everywhere, pooling underneath his body, running over my fingers, spattered all across my skirt. He lay in front of me, crumpled and empty-eyed.
It makes me sick even to think about it. About what I did.
He was just a boy. He was younger than me. And I snuffed out his life, stole it from him. I killed him. With my own hand I did it. And do you know what the worst part is? I enjoyed it. I enjoyed watching him die. I thought it was justice.
But now? Now I don’t know. Every time I pause to think about it, the less sure I am. Was it the right thing? I tell myself I had no choice, but maybe there was some other way. Some way that I didn’t have to . . .
The Harrowing Page 23