The Harrowing

by James Aitcheson

  ‘You fought off five Normans before—’

  ‘And nearly died doing so.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Girl, you expect too much of me.’

  ‘So tell us, then,’ Merewyn says. ‘What would you do?’

  ‘Hand over the book and hope they’re satisfied with that, without any bloodshed.’

  ‘No,’ says Guthred. ‘If they want it, they’ll have to kill me first.’

  Beorn sighs in despair. ‘Don’t be a fool. If it’s a choice between living and dying—’

  ‘It’s more than that. It’s a choice between eternal life and eternal death. I’ve tried my hardest to explain. I don’t expect you to understand.’

  ‘I understand one thing, priest: I’m not about to risk my life for the sake of a few parchments, no matter how ancient or how precious or how holy they are.’

  ‘You might as well give me up at the same time as the book, then. Because I won’t be parted from it.’

  If they did those things to the monk, though – a man they didn’t even know – imagine what they might do to Guthred, who has already crossed them.

  ‘They wouldn’t kill you, would they?’ Merewyn asks. ‘You said that wasn’t their way.’

  Guthred shakes his head. ‘I don’t know anything any more.’

  *

  They manage to find a hall to spend the night in, one that’s still standing, which the Normans haven’t taken the torch to. But someone has clearly been there already; the place has been ransacked. The great doors are open; inside, the benches along each wall have been overturned, floorboards ripped up to reveal hiding places below. Wall hangings lie torn and trampled in heaps upon the floor, which is littered with old rushes. There is a musty smell everywhere – of damp and rot and mouse piss.

  Something small scurries away into the darkness as they enter. Above, the thatch rustles.

  ‘Something happened here,’ says Merewyn. ‘There must have been some kind of struggle.’

  Oslac says, ‘I don’t see any bodies.’

  No bodies, or pools of blood where bodies might have lain. No other signs of fighting, either. No scorch marks where flames might have licked at timbers. But whoever was here clearly got what they came for. Sturdy iron-bound chests lie open. Empty. Kists with their locks and their lids smashed in. A single tiny silver penny all that’s left of whatever treasure they once held. On one side of the coin a bearded face with a crown and sceptre. On the other some writing that Tova doesn’t understand: three letter shapes, one of them like a cross that’s been turned slantwise.

  ‘It’s a coin of King Harold,’ says the priest, when she gives it to him to look at. He squints at it, turning it over in grubby fingers. ‘The one who was killed by the foreigners in the battle at Hæstinges.’

  ‘What does the writing say?’

  ‘Pax. It’s Latin.’

  ‘What does it mean?’

  He looks at her with such defeat in his eyes, such gloom and despondency, that he seems suddenly twenty years older.

  ‘What?’ she asks.

  His voice, when he speaks, is bitter. He says, ‘It means “peace”.’

  *

  They hack pieces from one of the benches to use as firewood, and from it build a good fire in the hearth. It’s a relief not to have to sleep under thin hides or on the hard ground, and with a roof that doesn’t leak over their heads. The rushes might be old but they’re soft. Tonight, at least, they will be warm and comfortable.

  Enjoy it while you can, Tova tells herself. You might not get the chance again for a while.

  *

  ‘How many men have you killed?’ Tova asks Beorn some time later that evening, as they’re sitting around the hearth.

  Beorn stops running a whetstone up his knife edge, and stares at her. ‘What?’

  At once Oslac stops plucking his harp. Guthred looks up from the book; he’s taken it out so that he might draw comfort from its words. Merewyn stops chewing mid-mouthful.

  Everyone’s looking at Tova.

  She could apologise, say it isn’t important, that it isn’t any of her business and she doesn’t mean to pry.

  But it is important.

  ‘How many?’ she asks again.

  ‘More than I’d care to admit.’

  ‘Twenty? Thirty?’

  He looks away in what she takes either for embarrassment or shame.

  ‘More than that?’

  ‘You ask too many questions,’ he mutters as he begins sharpening his blade once more. The steel sings softly with every stroke.

  She tries another approach. ‘You said you fought in the rebellion.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Tell us about it. All we heard were rumours, little bits from the ones who came back, but those who did speak about it didn’t want to say much.’

  ‘I don’t blame them.’

  It’s like trying to draw water from a stone. He won’t give them anything.

  ‘Who are you, really?’ she asks.

  He says nothing but simply carries on running the whetstone up the knife, over and over and over.

  ‘Beorn?’

  He sets down his knife beside him. ‘What makes you so interested suddenly?’

  ‘You don’t think we deserve to know? You expect us to follow you, to do exactly as you say, but we hardly know anything about you. How do you expect us to trust you?’

  ‘I’ve kept us all alive this far, haven’t I? Isn’t that enough? You’d never manage on your own. Not against what’s out there.’

  ‘Why do you even care? Why are you helping us?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I?’

  ‘You’re keeping things from us. I know you are.’

  ‘So what if I am?’

  He stares at her, daring her to challenge him. She meets his stare. She’s not afraid of him any more. She won’t be intimidated. She won’t be cowed into silence.

  And she’s beginning to understand, or thinks she is, anyway. For despite his talk, his blunt manner, his harsh words, he feels as scared and as helpless as they do. He won’t admit it, of course. He can’t. That’s not who he is.

  Inside, she thinks, he’s as uncertain and as lost as the rest of us.

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Girl, I’m warning you.’

  She’s trying his patience, she knows. But that’s what she wants. Sooner or later he must break. And she will get the answers she’s after. The answers they’re all after.

  ‘How many?’

  ‘That’s enough!’

  His words ring in her ears. He rises. The hearth is behind him and his face is in darkness. His teeth bared, he looms over her. A shadow against the light.

  ‘You really want to know my story? Do you?’

  Tova tries to speak but can’t find the words. They’ve become lost somewhere between her mind and her tongue. Her heart is thumping so hard she fears it might burst out of her chest.

  The others are all on their feet, although no one wants to be the first to approach him.

  Oslac says, ‘Beorn—’

  ‘Sit down,’ the warrior barks at him. ‘Sit. All of you.’

  One by one they do so: Guthred at once, timidly; Merewyn more hesitantly. The poet is the last of all. The distrust in his eyes is plain to see.

  ‘Since we’re all unburdening ourselves of our secrets, purging our guilty consciences, confessing our sins, I might as well do the same, mightn’t I? Fine. You want to know about the war? You want to know about the things I’ve seen, the things I’ve done? I’ll tell you, although I promise you this: you won’t like it.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter if we don’t like it,’ Merewyn says, and Tova is glad of her support, belated though it is. ‘We have a right to know.’

  ‘Very well,’ Beorn say
s. ‘I don’t know how much you’ve already been told about the rebellion, or what you think you know. No doubt some of those who returned from the war told you stories about what happened and what they did. Whatever they said, though, you can guarantee that half of it will have been lies.’

  ‘Lies?’ Merewyn asks, frowning. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because often the truth is too much to admit. Think. Did you notice how those who went away so full of cheer and boasts came back quiet and withdrawn, shadows of themselves? Were there times when you asked them about the things they’d seen when they refused to answer no matter how much you pressed them? Did their tempers darken in an instant, like that? Did they strike out at their wives and their children?’

  Tova remembers. She remembers how Ceolred was never the same after his injuries, but grew irritable and kept largely to himself. And she remembers seeing the bruises on the arm of Lufu, the goatherd’s wife, when they were both fetching water one morning, though she quickly covered them and pleaded with Tova never to speak of them to anyone.

  ‘I thought as much,’ Beorn says. ‘Take it from someone who has stood more often than he has cared to count in the front rank of the shield wall, waiting for death to claim him. When it comes to war, there are things of which you’ll never get a man to speak, even if you count yourself among his closest friends. Silence is the only shield he has. His only way of protecting you. His only way of protecting himself.’

  At last he sits with them. ‘War is not glorious. It doesn’t matter what the poets say. There is nothing noble in killing. There is no honour. We tell ourselves there is to make it easier to bear, but there isn’t.’

  He glares at Oslac, who holds his tongue, which Tova thinks is probably wise.

  ‘We fool ourselves, over and over and over,’ Beorn goes on. ‘We’re all guilty of it, everyone who lifts a sword in anger. And I’m as guilty as the rest. The rebellion probably seemed to you some foolish dream we were all chasing. But it never felt that way. I thought it was the campaign that would drive the foreigners from this kingdom once and for all. I believed that in my heart. I believed it was fate, I truly did, and that eventually we would prevail – that all we needed was time.’

  He shakes his head as he picks at a splinter on one of the floorboards. ‘For a while I did, anyway. I was wrong.’

  Beorn

  This is how it happened. The great rising against the Normans. I saw it all. I was there right from the very beginning. I was there when we slaughtered the foreigners in their hundreds in the streets of Dunholm that winter’s night, a year ago now. I was there when, not a month later, we stormed Eoferwic’s gates, and when not long afterwards we were driven from the city by King Wilelm, and forced to retreat back into the hills, with our hopes, like our banners, in tatters.

  Just like your husband’s son when he heard the news, we all thought that was our last chance. We had failed to grasp it, and now it was gone. The ætheling himself thought it; for days afterwards he wouldn’t talk to anyone but would lie in bed for hours on end in the hall where he was staying. It was Earl Gospatric who rallied everyone, who settled the feuds and made men see that the struggle wasn’t over, but that if we were patient the country would rise with us.

  We fought for Eadgar, but Gospatric was the one behind it all, helped by others from the great Northumbrian families. You have to understand that the ætheling was – still is – not much more than a boy. Only a couple of years older than you, girl. Like all young high-born men he was eager and impatient and could be ill tempered, especially when he didn’t get his way, which was often. That said, he was no fool; we would hardly have followed him if he was. He could hold a sword too, although you wouldn’t call him a warrior. The closest he’d ever come to battle were sparring matches in the training yard. We needed him, for kingly blood flowed in his veins, but likewise he needed men who’d give him wise counsel and who could lead in his name.

  Gospatric was one of those. The fiercest of them. The best of them. The most determined. Strong-willed yet patient. He must be nearly fifty now, a little older than your husband, I’d say. Not as old as you, priest. Already bald except for a crown of long white hair, he had a gut like he had a whole pig stuffed under his tunic. His fighting days ended long ago, but he knew how to inspire respect. He knew how to wage a war. And he never stopped believing. Even as we licked our wounds in the weeks after our defeat, he was sending out messengers across the kingdom, into every shire: men like the staller Ascytel who you say came to Heldeby. He wanted to get word to Englishmen everywhere: to everyone who was suffering under the foreigners, to all the scattered bands hiding in the woods and the marshes, to all those living in exile in the lands of the Scots and the Welsh and the Irish. He urged them to come together and make a common stand.

  We didn’t know who would come, if anyone. We all knew there was little chance of rousing the thegns in the south – those who had already given their oath to Wilelm so they might keep their lands. Too faint-hearted to fight, they were more worried about themselves and about what they would lose if they took up arms against their new lord and king. As for the rest, there was no telling whether they had the stomach for a long war, rather than the raids and ambushes and hall burnings they’d grown accustomed to. And how many common folk would leave their homes and their women and children and elders to join us? For we needed experienced warriors, but we also needed spears by the thousands if we were to stand a chance against the foreigners.

  We had no idea, and as the weeks passed our hopes waned. A few heeded the call and sought us out, but not many. Not enough.

  *

  ‘But they did come, in the end, didn’t they?’ Merewyn asks. ‘Men like Skalpi.’

  Beorn nods. ‘Men like Skalpi. Yes, they did. Over the summer months a strange thing happened. Maybe news of our victories at Dunholm and Eoferwic, short-lived though they were, inspired a willingness to fight that hadn’t been there before. Maybe, like your husband, folk realised that if ever they could make a difference, it was now. Whatever the reason, just as men were whispering in Eadgar’s ear that the cause was lost and he should start thinking about exile or else seeking a reconciliation with the king, suddenly that was when they started arriving. Just a slow trickle, it was at first – a handful here and there. But soon the trickle became a stream, and the stream in turn became a flood.’

  *

  From across the north came thegns and ceorls, hearth troops and fyrdmen, with their spears and swords, axes and shields. With them came swineherds, field labourers, millers and stable hands, bearing hay forks and hoes and whatever other weapons they could lay their hands on. Fresh-faced striplings with barely a wisp of hair upon their chins and time-worn warriors like your husband.

  In all my years I’ve never seen anything like it. It was something to behold. That was when we – when I – really began to believe again. And the more that came to join us, the stronger that belief grew.

  How many? Hundreds, thousands. Too many to count. More than I’d ever seen gathered together in a single place, all under the ancient purple and yellow banner of Northumbria, the adopted standard of our last great hope, the last in a line that stretched back half a thousand years. To most of us, Eadgar was the rightful king, deprived of his crown first by silver-tongued Harold and then by the outlander, bastard-born Wilelm. Eadgar was the man we would set upon the throne to rule justly over us and bring an end to the years of tyranny.

  *

  ‘But it didn’t happen,’ Oslac puts in, stifling a yawn. ‘We know that.’

  ‘Oh, am I boring you?’

  ‘I’d just rather you got on with it.’

  ‘And I will, if you’ll stop interrupting me. You wanted to hear my tale, didn’t you? Well, this is it, and I’ll tell it how I choose. No doubt you’d tell it a different way if you’d been there, but you weren’t. You know nothing.’

  ‘Enough,’ says Merewyn in that s
harp tone of hers. ‘Both of you. Oslac, let him say what he has to.’

  ‘Yes, and listen well,’ Beorn adds. ‘Who knows? You might just learn something. Something you can use in one of your poems sometime. If we survive this.’

  *

  What is there to say, really?

  Not long after we started south, we had word that the Danes had reached these shores and were raiding along the coast. As soon as we knew where they’d landed, Eadgar sent them envoys, hoping that some sort of settlement could be reached so that we and the Danes could direct our attacks against the enemy rather than each other. Those were nervous times. As it turned out, though, we needn’t have worried. The Danes were only too eager to accept the offer of an alliance, and it wasn’t long before we were welcoming them as brothers. Their leader, Jarl Osbjorn, met the ætheling, and there was much feasting and celebration and sharing of ale. We all sensed that this was the beginning of something great.

  Not long afterwards we took Eoferwic, cutting down the enemy until the streets were slick with their blood and you could hardly move without tripping over the bodies of the fallen. Some survived and retreated inside their stronghold, where we couldn’t get at them, but they were few. For those of us who had been there during that first rising, it felt like redemption after all our struggles. It would be different this time, we promised ourselves. We wouldn’t be overcome so easily. We had numbers on our side now: more than ten thousand men, someone said, now that the Danes had joined us. We would take the fight to the enemy and, this time, we would win.

  What we didn’t know was that fate was against us. There would be no great battle, no clash of shield walls, no sword song, none of that.

  The enemy didn’t defeat us. They didn’t need to.

  We defeated ourselves.

  Whether they or we burned the city, I don’t think anyone really knows. Some say it was the Normans, trapped inside their castle, who hurled flaming brands on to the roofs of nearby houses, and shot arrows wrapped in cloth soaked in pitch that they set alight. Why they would have done that, I can’t think. Others say it was an accident, that some drunken fools had built a great pyre on which they planned to burn an effigy of King Wilelm, but the flames grew beyond their control. It doesn’t really matter. Before long half the city was ablaze. Houses, workshops, churches going up like so much tinder. The minster a writhing tower of flame. As soon as we realised what was happening, we gathered what we could and fled. The Normans did the same, abandoning their stronghold, choking as they ran through the streets and out the gates. We were waiting for them. They hardly put up a fight. Some of them had been in such a hurry to get out they had no weapons, no shields. They fell to their knees, pleading for mercy. We killed them anyway.