The Harrowing

by James Aitcheson

  ‘I’m sure,’ he replies.

  When at last they come to the bottom of the slope and find the river too deep and fast-flowing to ford, with no sign of the bridge he said they’d find, however, his mood changes. A cloud comes across his face as he looks first upstream and then down.

  He doesn’t shout. He doesn’t curse.

  Instead he squats down on his haunches and presses his clenched fists to his brow. His eyes are closed tight. He looks in pain.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Merewyn asks.

  He says, ‘I’m trying to think.’

  ‘We could go back the way we came,’ Guthred suggests. ‘We probably took the wrong path, that’s all.’

  ‘No, we didn’t. We took the right path. I remember the bridge. It was here.’

  Even if it was, it isn’t any more. Maybe it fell down and washed away. Maybe it was destroyed by the Normans. Or maybe . . .

  She doesn’t want to say what she’s thinking, but she has to. ‘We’re lost, aren’t we?’

  He rises, gazing down the valley towards the east. ‘Follow me,’ he says.

  *

  They’ve been this way before.

  For the last hour she’s thought that each hill, each ridge, each clump of trees and outcrop of rock had a familiar look about it. Now she’s sure of it. They’ve doubled back on themselves. They might as well have followed Guthred’s suggestion.

  How many hours have they wasted? It’s long past noon already; they can’t have much of the day left.

  At every fork in the track Beorn halts. He gazes up at the sky, but the sun remains hidden. He looks to see which way the trees are bent, and on which side of their trunks the lichen is growing. He seems so hesitant suddenly, for no reason that she can work out. So uncertain of himself.

  Was Oslac right to go his own way? Tova can’t help but wonder. She hopes he’s all right, wherever he is.

  ‘If we can find the old road again, then we’ll know where we are, won’t we?’ Merewyn asks the next time they stop. ‘I don’t see why we can’t just follow that north.’

  ‘I’ve told you why,’ Beorn says. ‘King Wilelm and his army are using that road.’

  ‘Then what do we do? We can’t keep going round in circles.’

  ‘Do you think I don’t know that?’

  He whirls about and advances upon her. Anger flashes across his face. His eyes are wide and bloodshot. Merewyn takes a step back, then another. Tova clasps her lady’s hand. Her skin is cold. Tova holds her breath as he comes towards them, teeth bared.

  He stops. He realises what he’s doing and stops mid-movement. He blinks once, twice. At once all the fury appears to drain out of him. He breathes deeply. His eyes are moist and red around the rims. Has he always looked so exhausted, and she has just never noticed before?

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says quietly as he turns away.

  How much sleep has he had? Not enough, obviously. But it isn’t just that. His weariness, she senses, runs deeper than that.

  She glances at Merewyn. Her lady’s face is pale, and she’s still shaking.

  *

  It’s getting colder. Tova can feel it in her fingers, even inside her gloves. The rain is turning to sleet. Softly but steadily it falls, with no sign of relenting. The skies are dark and growing darker.

  Beorn keeps saying there’ll be worse to come. In that, at least, she believes him.

  She’s catching something, she’s sure of it. There’s a roughness at the back of her throat, which she would scratch if only she knew how to reach it. Instead all she can do is swallow, much good that does. For a few moments she has some relief, but then she feels it again, still there, still dry, still tickling.

  Stay strong, she tells herself. It can’t be much further. Five days they’ve been travelling now. Five days since they left Heldeby. They must be close, surely.

  *

  The cart lies on its side in the middle of the droveway, between high earthen banks. The grey skies are barely visible through the criss-cross of overhanging tree limbs. On the ground in front of it the unmoving forms of two oxen, still yoked, their tongues lolling out of their mouths.

  Beorn tells them to wait while he approaches, axe in hand. He looks all around. If someone wanted to ambush them, this would be the place to do it. He lifts the oilskin sheet that lies in a heap on the ground to see if there’s anything underneath it, then rounds the cart slowly, making two full circuits.

  He beckons them forward. ‘There’s nothing. It’s empty.’

  There’s no sign of its owners either. Not until they venture another hundred paces along the rutted track and they see the body lying in the dirt. His face is buried in the mud; his white-grey hair is a bloody, tangled mess where a blade of some sort has felled him.

  She ought to be sickened, she knows. But she isn’t. In the last few days she must have seen almost every way there is of killing a man. Now there’s nothing more that can shock her. She crouches down beside the old man. Tentatively she reaches for his hand, which is dry and wrinkled. Stiff. He’s older than Guthred, she reckons. Maybe even as old as Thorvald.

  ‘Cold,’ she says under her breath. She lets the man’s fingers fall from her grasp with a shudder.

  Beorn glances about again, quickly. Is it just her imagination or has everything suddenly gone still?

  ‘No,’ says Guthred from a short way further up the track. ‘Oh no. Oh Lord.’

  He’s kneeling down by the side of what looks like another body. He’s sobbing as he throws his arms around its neck and presses his cheek against the figure’s chest.

  ‘No, no, no, no,’ he says through his tears.

  They gather around him but he doesn’t look up. His face is buried in the boy’s bloodstained cloak and tunic. A boy, not a man. Twelve years old perhaps, no more than that. His face and neck are covered in red blotches and tiny yellow pustules. He lies on his back, eyes open but unseeing.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Hedda,’ says Guthred. ‘For everything. I failed you. Please, God, forgive me.’

  That name. Hedda. Wasn’t one of his students called Hedda? It can’t be, surely. What is he doing here, this far from Rypum?

  ‘Look,’ says Beorn. ‘There are more of them.’

  He’s found the others: Hedda’s fellow students. She recognises them at once, for they’re just as Guthred described them. They managed to get a little further before they too were struck down. As soon as they can prise the distraught priest away from Hedda’s limp body, they lead him first to the chubby-faced and fat-­­fingered Wiglaf, and then to Plegmund: taller, dark-haired, with thick eyebrows that meet in the middle.

  On seeing them the priest’s legs give way. Fresh floods of tears break forth, until eventually he has no more to give. He can barely stand, barely even raise his head.

  In all there are eight bodies: the three students, the old man, whom Guthred says was Father Osbert, and four others – Dean Deorwald and three more of the Rypum canons. Guthred says there used to be ten of them, or there were when he last lived there. Something must have happened to the others. God only knows what.

  ‘They were trying to get north, like us,’ the priest says, sniffing. His eyes are puffy and he looks ready to collapse at any moment. He takes deep breaths. ‘That’s all they were doing. Trying to escape the Normans, to take the minster’s treasures somewhere they’d be safe. For that he killed them. He killed all of them.’

  *

  She is afraid. Truly afraid, like never before.

  She has spent these last few days glancing over her shoulder, jumping at the slightest noise, tensing whenever birds flock up from a distant thicket, worrying whether that glint of light could be a spear point. But that was a different sort of fear, a constant, simmering, back-of-her-mind fear. In all that time she never felt as she feels now: that death could come at any moment, with
out warning.

  Their enemies are close. She knows it. Beorn knows it. They all know it. No one says it, but they do.

  How much more of this she can endure, she isn’t sure. They can’t keep running for ever. They can’t live like this, on whatever scraps of food they can scavenge, in clothes that aren’t even their own, sleeping on the hard ground, in tents or amid the hay in half-ruined laithes. They’ve been lucky so far, but for how much longer?

  ‘I can’t do this,’ she says to Merewyn the next time they’re alone. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘We have to.’

  ‘What’s the point? We’re going to die, aren’t we? Maybe it won’t be today or tomorrow, but it’s going to happen.’

  ‘We’re not going to die. Everything will be all right.’

  Tova feels like she could burst. ‘You keep saying that! You keep saying it like you know it, but you don’t. You don’t know it at all.’

  ‘But we’re so close now. Another day or two and we’ll be there, you’ll see.’

  Hagustaldesham, she thinks bitterly. It seems as far away now as it ever did. And even if we do manage to get there, what will we find? There’ll be no friends and kin to give us comfort. No hall and hearth fire and music and revels. Only sorrow.

  ‘What about afterwards?’ she asks her lady. ‘When the Normans have finally gone, what will we do then?’

  ‘We’ll work that out when the time comes. But we can’t abandon hope yet, not—’

  ‘What hope? What’s left for us? There isn’t going to be a home for us to go back to, because they’ll have destroyed everything. Everyone’s dead. Everyone.’

  It all comes spilling out, everything she’s been keeping inside these past three days. The anger, the pain, the hunger, the tiredness, the fear. The torture and the guilt, her constant companions. Guilt, for daring to live when so many do not.

  She doesn’t remember when she last spoke so bluntly, so boldly, in her lady’s presence. Maybe never. At home Merewyn wouldn’t have stood for such an outburst. But they aren’t at home. They aren’t mistress and servant any more. None of who they used to be matters any more. All that ended when the Normans came.

  ‘Let them find us,’ Tova says. ‘Let them do what they will. At least then we won’t have to run any more. We won’t have to live like outcasts in our own land.’

  ‘Don’t say such things. It’ll be all right. I know it will.’

  Stop it, she thinks. Just stop it. I can’t bear to hear those words any more.

  *

  One foot after another, somehow she forces herself to keep moving. It’s all she can do as she tries to ignore the voice in the back of her mind. The voice of reason. The voice of doubt.

  Run, walk or crawl, she tells herself. It doesn’t matter how. Just keep going. She keeps on murmuring it to herself, quietly so that no one but her can hear, trying to keep that other voice at bay.

  That other voice, which whispers to her, soothingly, even sweetly, repeating the same few words again and again and again.

  Let it be over.

  *

  The wind is rising, howling down the dale. They struggle against it for a while but make little headway. Days of rain have made the slopes treacherous; sooner or later, one of them will slip and hurt themselves. And there is snow in the air too – a few flakes, nothing more, but enough to worry Tova.

  Beorn wants to press on, to cross this ridge before dark; Merewyn is desperate to turn back. Eventually he hears her pleas and they descend through thickly wooded slopes into the lee of the hill. Close to the old road, which is what they wanted to avoid, but they have no choice.

  ‘There’s a ford an hour upstream from where the road crosses the river, if I remember rightly,’ Beorn says. ‘We’ll make for that. If we’re lucky we can cross before nightfall.’

  ‘You’re sure this time, are you?’ Merewyn asks.

  He doesn’t answer.

  The snowflakes continue to dance and swirl. Few enough that Tova can count them one by one as they fall, but with every hour that passes, the clouds grow blacker, lower, heavy with the promise of more to come.

  *

  Upon the horizon to the east, a fire blazes. It licks the sky, sending up great plumes of grey-white smoke. A warning beacon, perhaps, or more likely another hall burning. Three, four miles away. From somewhere unseen in the distance comes the tolling of a church bell. On and on it rings, by turns clear and then muffled, faint and then strident, as the wind gusts and dies away.

  They hurry, pick their way down into a steep griff, down tracks that are slippery with leaves and often seem at first to lead nowhere. It’s quiet. They could be the only four people in the world. The only four living creatures anywhere.

  It’s almost dark when Tova hears water trickling, tumbling, rushing. They’re close.

  A little after that, between the trees, she spies the shadowy remains of an old mill. It must have been abandoned years ago. The roof has rotted away and so too have parts of the walls, although the timber posts are still standing. The leats and millpond have filled up, clogged with leaves and reeds. Brambles and ferns grow thickly all about.

  The path leads down towards the river. And there, in front of them, is the ford.

  ‘I told you we’d find it,’ Beorn says.

  Not a moment too soon, either. Night is closing around them. White specks dance and twirl around her. They settle on the ground and disappear in an eyeblink.

  Don’t let it snow yet, Tova thinks. Not until we’re somewhere warm and sheltered. Somewhere with a roof. Then it can snow all it likes.

  This river isn’t nearly as wide as the one they crossed yesterday morning. It doesn’t look as deep either. But the waters, thick and murky with mud, look every bit as cold. This time she decides not to take off her shoes; some of the stones look sharp.

  Guthred goes first this time. Merewyn is behind him and Tova next. Beorn last of all. She picks her way carefully down the crumbling bank towards the water’s edge, tugging sharply at Winter’s reins, making encouraging noises as she coaxes her on. The mare doesn’t want to enter the river, and Tova doesn’t blame her. She’s tired, like the rest of them. But they can’t rest yet. Just a little further.

  A rustling in the reeds on the other side; a bird chirps indignantly. Something long and sleek slides into the water and vanishes beneath the surface. An otter, maybe.

  The current swirls around her ankles. She splashes through the river with Winter in tow, doing her best to ignore the icy water as it floods inside her shoes and seizes her toes. Instead she imagines the fire that they’ll soon have burning, and how good it will be to warm her feet beside it. And her hands, and her face. If she thinks hard enough she can almost feel the heat upon her cheeks. Small comforts.

  She’s so lost in her thoughts that she almost collides with Merewyn, who’s stopped in front of her, in the middle of the river. Her lady cries out. Behind her, Beorn is shouting something she can’t make out.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asks, just as she looks up and sees the figures standing in the middle of the path on the opposite bank. Two of them, blades glinting coldly in the twilight.

  ‘Quickly,’ Beorn is yelling. ‘Back the way we came! Now!’

  Tova doesn’t question him, but does exactly as he says. She whirls to follow him, ready to scramble back up the bank, only to see their path blocked by another two figures, both with weapons drawn.

  Their enemies have found them.

  ‘Well, well,’ comes a voice from the near bank. A man’s voice. Older. Thick with scorn and with spite. ‘What a happy turn of events this is. Look, it’s our old friend Guthred.’

  And she knows. She doesn’t have to see his gap-toothed smile, his scarred face, his thick eyebrows, those large ears. Like serving dishes, the priest said.

  It’s him. The murderer, the priest slayer, t
he killer of children, who has raided and thieved and cheated and preyed upon the weak, who has tortured monks without compunction.

  ‘Wulfnoth?’ Guthred says.

  ‘Did you think you could run from us? Did you think you could steal from us and we would just let you get away?’

  ‘You can’t have it,’ Guthred shouts back. ‘I won’t let you.’

  Laughter. Not just from Wulfnoth but from the others too, on both sides of the river. Among them a woman’s voice. Gytha, she thinks. Who else did Guthred say was left by the end? She tries to remember but can’t gather her thoughts properly. One of the two brothers, she thinks, and the deaf one as well. Halfdan. Was that his name? Or was that Sihtric? She isn’t sure.

  Beorn asks, ‘How did you find us?’

  ‘Providence,’ Wulfnoth says. He sounds pleased with himself. Tova can’t see, but she can imagine the grin on his face. ‘Or fate, or destiny; whatever you want to call it. God willed it, and so it happened. He delivered you to us.’

  ‘He’d never help you,’ the priest shouts. ‘You’re Hell fiends, all of you.’

  ‘Oh Guthred, you pious fool. You never were one for jokes, were you? No, of course it wasn’t God’s doing. We’ve been watching you. Watching and following, waiting to see what you and your new friends would do. And now here we are. And here you are. What happened to the other one who was with you?’

  ‘You can have the gold and silver,’ says Beorn flatly, ignoring his question. ‘The book too. Everything. We don’t need it. It’s yours.’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ Guthred blurts. ‘It doesn’t belong—’

  ‘Shut up.’ Beorn turns to Wulfnoth. ‘You can have it, if you’ll leave us in peace to go on our way. No one needs to get hurt.’

  He extends his hand towards the priest, gesturing for him to give the treasure over, but Guthred shakes his head. ‘You’ll have to pry it from my dead fingers,’ he calls to Wulfnoth.

  ‘Priest,’ Beorn says warningly. ‘Do you really want to get yourself killed for the sake of a book?’