The Harrowing

by James Aitcheson

  Tova swallows. ‘What happened to them?’

  ‘We did to them what we did to all our enemies. We knew who they were. We knew where they lived. And we showed them no mercy because we knew they would show us none.’

  ‘You killed them?’

  ‘What else were we supposed to do? They’d betrayed us. They didn’t deserve to live. Listen to me, girl, before you say anything. What we were doing in those weeks, that’s war. We didn’t enjoy it. Of course we didn’t, so don’t for a moment imagine otherwise. No one enjoys it. Not unless their hearts are made of stone or they have given up on all that is good in the world. There is no glory in it, no honour, and it sickens you to the gut when you recall later what you’ve done. Every night I lie awake, thinking about the things I’ve seen, thinking about the blood that stains my soul, not wanting to close my eyes because I know that if I do, I’ll see the faces of all the men I’ve sent to their graves. Everyone whose bellies I’ve run through with spear and sword, whose throats I’ve slit, whose limbs I’ve broken and whose skulls I’ve beaten in. That’s when you start to wonder if it’s all worth it, whether it was the right thing to do. But you don’t question it at the time. You do it because you have to and because you know that if you don’t, they’ll do the same to the people you care about.’

  His eyes glisten in the firelight, but if he’s expecting sympathy, he’s going to be disappointed. She can’t do it. She can’t bring herself to feel sorry for him.

  Does it matter whether or not his intentions were noble? Does it matter that he took no joy in it? He killed his fellow Englishmen. How is he any different from the Normans?

  He says, ‘As much as I despised every one of the men I killed, I hate myself more. For who I am. For everything I’ve done. Those marks cannot be rubbed out.’

  ‘But they can, if you only give yourself to God,’ Guthred puts in. ‘Confess and do penance before it’s too late, and there’ll be a place for you in his kingdom.’

  ‘Your god cares nothing for me. He cares nothing for any of us.’

  Tova’s breath catches in her chest. To hear him say such words openly, and to the priest’s face . . .

  Guthred’s cheeks flush red. ‘I understand your pain. I know you speak from anger. Without God’s light and grace, there can be no resurrection on the Day of Judgement. You must know this. He’s willing to accept you, if you’ll only accept him. Otherwise there’s only death.’

  ‘Day after day, I see nothing but death everywhere around me. I’ve lived with it for so long now, I feel its stench clinging to my skin.’

  ‘That’s not what I mean.’

  ‘I know what you mean. I’ve heard it all before, many times. And I’m telling you I’d rather spend an eternity in your god’s hell than a moment in his heaven.’

  The priest does well to remain patient, Tova thinks. Then again he probably heard similar things from the mouths of Wulfnoth and the other reavers.

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘The foreigners worship the same god as you, don’t they? So does he forgive their sins as well and allow them into his kingdom?’

  ‘If they’re true of heart and faithful to the Cross,’ he says. ‘If they repent before the Lord and atone for their wrongdoings, then yes, they’ll find their place alongside him.’

  ‘There’s your answer then. I want no part of any heaven where I have to live among their kind.’

  ‘I wish I had the answers you’re hoping for. I wish I could tell you what you want to hear. But I don’t. I can’t. But you must find your faith, as I did. We toil and suffer and die upon this earth, and none of us can pretend to understand his purpose—’

  ‘Because there isn’t any. There is no life beyond this one, no promised kingdom, no heavenly design. There’s only what we make for ourselves. After that, nothing.’

  ‘You can’t believe that.’

  ‘Why not? You renounced your faith too, for a time. You told us so.’

  ‘Yes, and then I saw the error of my ways.’

  Beorn gives a snort. Desperately Guthred glances around the circle, perhaps hoping that one of them will say something that will help convince the warrior, will help him see more clearly and guide him towards the light.

  Tova looks away before the priest’s eyes can meet hers, feeling not a little guilty. She has had her own doubts, it’s true, and there have been times in the past couple of days when she’s wondered if Guthred is right about this being the end of days, and if the coming of the Normans truly is God’s punishment for their sins. But at the same time she’s determined not to end up like Beorn. If she surrenders her faith then what does she have left? At the moment it’s the only thing keeping her going.

  ‘Maybe you should carry on with your story,’ Merewyn suggests.

  For a long while Beorn doesn’t speak, or do anything except sit there, his gaze turned towards the ground.

  Sheer will is all that’s kept him going, Tova realises. The fire hasn’t gone out of him, not yet, but it has been dampened. He doesn’t want to spend for ever fighting. For all that he talks about reaching Hagustaldesham and continuing the war against the foreigners, she senses there’s a small part of him that would be happy enough to die. At least then it would be all be over.

  *

  So. I’ve told you about the rebellion. I’ve told you about our raids upon the enemy, how we ravaged their lands as we tried to take the war to their gates. But we knew we were fighting a losing battle. For all the damage we inflicted and all the Frenchmen we slew, it was never enough. We could never stay for long in any one place; we had to keep moving to avoid capture. All the while they were growing stronger as the other risings around the country were gradually put down, as they threw up great mounds of earth upon which they set the strongholds they call castles, and surrounded them with ramparts and ditches and timber palisades to defend against people like us.

  The days grew darker, the nights colder. Our spirits were failing. Each evening we would pitch our tents and bed down on cold earth, and each dawn we would wake up, our limbs and joints as stiff as the frost that covered the land. After those early weeks, when we lived off what we could plunder, the Normans guarded their convoys more closely. We came to rely on provisions brought to us in our woodland hiding places by folk in the surrounding countryside who were friendly to us. They took huge risks on our behalf, slipping away from their manors in the dead of night to bring what they could from their own winter stores, even when they didn’t have enough to feed themselves and their families.

  Such kindness, though, could never keep so many hungry men fed for long. And that wasn’t the only reason we were despondent. Our tunics and cloaks were ragged and dirty and full of holes, and we were each nursing some injury – bruised ribs, a broken nose, a missing finger or something more serious. We had all lost friends, good men who had given their lives for us. For all the care we took in planning our raids, we could never be sure when we set out which of us would be coming back.

  The one thing that kept us determined, kept us fighting through those difficult weeks, was what the Normans were doing to the people under their rule. How in places they were treating the English folk who worked their land as little more than slaves. How they were seizing their treasured possessions, their hard-won harvests, as if it all belonged to them by right. How they didn’t care whether that meant that those who had toiled so hard all year would starve. Any who dared challenge them, they hanged as examples.

  From all across the kingdom we heard such tales. But there was one baron in particular whose name we kept on hearing and whose appetite for blood never seemed to lessen. Malger fitz Odo, he was called. Malger of Stedehamm—

  *

  ‘Did you say Stedehamm?’ Guthred asks, interrupting.

  ‘That’s right. What about it?’

  ‘Nothing really. It was just one of the places we used to
visit when Master Æthelbald took us out with him into the shire, that’s all. It was only a couple of days’ ride from Licedfeld, as I remember. It wasn’t much then. A few cottages. Not even a church. He had to say Mass in the open, on top of the moot hill, in the rain—’

  ‘Do you want to tell the story, priest, or are you going to let me?’

  *

  This Malger was the cruellest of them all. Whenever a Frenchman was found dead on the roads that ran through his lands, he would round up all the men who lived nearby and demand that they produce the murderer within a week. If they failed, he would pick five of them and take their thumbs, or their ears, or sometimes their noses as punishment. He would seize the womenfolk who lived on his manors and take them to his bed, even though he had a wife of his own back across the sea. If they tried to resist he would threaten them and their brothers and husbands and fathers with violence.

  Even his countrymen thought he went too far, we heard.

  Geburs and ceorls alike had been put to work building a new great hall, twice the size of the old one, sawing and jointing timbers, digging ditches and post holes, throwing up earthworks and hauling flagstones to set around the hearth and at the door. Anyone he and his steward decided wasn’t working hard enough was stripped to the waist and flogged in the yard in full view of the rest, until his back was raw and streaked with scarlet, his flesh torn to ribbons.

  When I heard all this, there was no question in my mind what we had to do. Nor in Cynehelm’s. Nor in most of the others’ too. We thought that if we could rid England of such a man, then we would have achieved something worthwhile, however small. A couple, though, said it was folly to pit ourselves against him. We were only fourteen in number by then. Several had left; others had died, including three of Cynehelm’s own hearth warriors, men I’d known for many seasons, alongside whom I’d bent my back to the waves on many a voyage across the whale road. Their deaths came especially hard. Yes, others had joined us since, but they were mostly pups newly weaned from their mothers’ teats, who for all their keenness barely knew one end of a spear from the other.

  All the reasons the doubters gave were good ones. I wasn’t so blinded by hatred that I couldn’t see that. But for me they changed nothing, and I told them so plainly.

  In the end the fairest thing, Cynehelm decided, was to put it to a vote. Even on our voyages he had always sought his crew’s opinion when he could. When you’re out at sea, far from shore, at the mercy of the winds, being battered by rain and hail, there’s nothing worse than knowing your oarsmen are cursing you behind your back.

  Anyway, we voted. Of the fourteen, twelve wanted to go after Malger, either out of anger or because they wanted revenge or simply because they didn’t know any better. And so it was settled. For the two who had voted against, that was it. Cynehelm insisted that they should be allowed to depart with honour and without reproach, since they’d been staunch friends who had served well. Even so, it was hard to see them go, not just because they’d been there since the beginning, but also because they were two of our best warriors.

  Æscmund I loved like a brother and trusted more than any other man in the world. He had served Cynehelm for nearly ten years. And there was his cousin Uhtferth, whose hide I’d saved more than once and who had saved mine in turn, whose good humour we could always rely on to lift our spirits in our darkest moments. Everything we’d seen and everything we’d done, though, had doused his fire. There was no laughter left in him, nor hunger to keep on fighting. They were good men, but they were spent, and so we had no choice but to say farewell. They begged me to join them, said it was pointless to keep fighting and that I should come with them.

  *

  ‘They asked you to abandon your lord?’ Merewyn asks.

  ‘They tried to sway him as well. They said we’d done everything we could but that it was time to give up the struggle. That this was a fight we could never win.’

  ‘And what did he say to that?’

  ‘His mind was set. So was mine. When they saw this, they shook their heads and turned away so that we wouldn’t see their tears, but they didn’t change their minds, and I didn’t expect them to. They wished us well, and then with heavy hearts we parted ways. Where they went and what became of them, I don’t know. It was only once they’d gone that I began to feel nervous. We were only twelve men then, a sorry knot of bedraggled warriors with little in common except the wish to bloody our blades. Maybe I should have stopped then to think about whether what we were doing was wise.’

  ‘Would your lord have listened, if he was as single-minded as you say he was?’

  ‘Yes,’ Beorn says abruptly. ‘Yes, he would have listened. To me, he would have, if to no one else. I’d always been closest to him. He trusted me like no other. He respected my judgement. And besides, I was the only one left.’

  Tova asks, ‘What do you mean, the only one?’

  He gives her a strange look as he hesitates. ‘Of Cynehelm’s men. We were five to begin with and now there was just me, keeping company with men and boys who until a few weeks ago had been complete strangers.’

  ‘So why didn’t you say anything?’ asks Oslac. ‘If your lord trusted you and respected your counsel, why did you hold your tongue?’

  ‘Because even then I still wanted what everyone else wanted. I suppose pride was part of it as well. If I’d changed my mind I would have looked a fool. And what else was I going to do? Where else was I going to go? So you see I didn’t have much choice. Anyway, it was only a moment’s misgiving, nothing more than that. As a warrior you always have doubts, but if you let them grow too powerful they turn into fears, and those fears cripple you, so you quickly learn how to push them away. You learn or you die.’

  He pauses to swallow, as if the words are sticking in his throat and he is having trouble getting them out. There is silence. No one, Tova supposes, wants to be the one to ask what happened next. She isn’t sure she really wants to know, but she has the feeling they’re about to find out.

  *

  For three days we watched the great hall that Malger had ordered built. It stood on a mound within a loop of the river, surrounded by ditches and ramparts and a timber palisade. It was nearing midwinter; the frost lay heavily across the land and the ground was hard. Many of the streams were frozen, and there was a biting wind that stung our cheeks. We rubbed our hands and huddled deeper inside our cloaks, and all the while we kept imagining ourselves inside by a blazing hearth, feasting, swilling ale, playing games, telling riddles and sharing tales of things we had done and seen and others that we had heard, with our loved ones gathered around us, with beautiful women perched on our knees and children’s shouts filling the air as they scurried around our feet.

  Our loved ones, our children, who were all dead because of what Malger and others like him had done. The days grew colder and so did our hearts.

  By day and by night we scouted around Stedehamm. Cynehelm divided us into pairs so we could take turns keeping watch and so there was always someone observing the comings and goings at the hall. Meanwhile the rest guarded our camp deep in the woods or else went out foraging for supplies or seeking information from the folk in neighbouring villages. I was paired with a man called Wihtred. I say he was a man, and he claimed to have sixteen summers behind him, but I think he was lying. Tall, he was, though, and as strong as a boar, with a boar’s temper too, always eager for a fight. I suppose Cynehelm was thinking he might learn a thing or two from me. Not that you can teach much to those who don’t want to listen.

  Wihtred and I counted the guards on the gates, and we saw how often and at what times they changed watch. From that we reckoned he could have no more than ten hearth troops living on this particular manor, fewer than we’d expected, although still more than we wanted to face in a fight, especially given how inexperienced many of our own band were.

  All the while we hoped for a glimpse of Malger himsel
f so that we might know for ourselves the face of the man we’d sworn to kill. Wihtred and I thought we spied him that first morning, overseeing the repair of one of the fish weirs that the recent floodwaters had damaged. We were far away, though, so we couldn’t be sure if it was him or his steward. It wasn’t until the second afternoon that someone was able to say for sure that they had seen him, when he and his men grabbed one of the stable boys and dragged him outside the gates, where they beat and kicked him, for what offence no one could work out.

  When they heard the boy’s cries, the village folk stopped what they were doing, abandoned their tools and rushed to see what was happening. They were too afraid to do anything, though, and when Malger had finished and he saw them all looking on, he shouted and waved his arms at them until they went back to work, warning them against trying to help the boy, who was left lying in the dirt. Then a man and a woman who might have been his father and mother came with a flask of something for him to drink and a blanket to wrap around his shoulders and helped him to his feet.

  That was what Leofstan and Thurgils said, anyway; they were the ones who saw what had happened. When we heard this, we decided we wouldn’t wait for the right opportunity to come; we had to make something happen.

  That same night Cynehelm sent two of the youngsters, Sebbe and Gamal, to get as close as they could to the hall and see if they could find any weaknesses in its defences. It was raining, a steady drizzle that would mask the sound of their footsteps and also with any luck dull their scent so the guard hounds wouldn’t wake and give them away. They wore dark cloaks and smeared their faces with dirt so they could slip unnoticed through the shadows. They got so close to the gates that they could hear the sentries murmuring to one another, they told us later. They crept all the way around the ramparts, returning to camp shivering and soaked to the skin, with their hair dripping and plastered to their skulls, with little to show for their trouble, and yet despite that they were grinning from ear to ear at the adventure of it all, having been under the very noses of the enemy.