Her limbs are stiff and protest as she tries to move, but she wills herself to get up, bracing herself as she sheds her portion of the hanging. She gets to her feet slowly. This is what it must be like to be old, she thinks.
‘What are you doing?’ Merewyn mumbles sleepily.
‘Trying to keep the fire going, that’s all.’
From the corner where the wood is stacked she retrieves some of the smaller twigs, which she lays on top of the glowing embers, and more that she’ll keep for later, along with a few larger pieces. She doesn’t want to build it up too much or too quickly, or they’ll burn through everything they have before the night is done.
Her lady’s eyelids are drooping again, but she jolts awake as Tova slips back under the covers next to her.
‘It’s all right,’ Tova says. ‘You should sleep. I’ll be here. I’ll stay awake.’
‘No,’ her lady says. ‘It’s your turn.’
‘You need it more than I do.’
Merewyn sighs. ‘I’m so tired.’ Her voice is muffled as she buries her face in Tova’s shoulder.
‘Me too. I hardly remember when I last slept. Properly slept, I mean. In a bed, not curled in a cold corner of some damp hovel, miles from anywhere, with one eye open all the time.’
How she longs to lie down and surrender herself, to let sleep enfold her. Every inch of her body that isn’t numb with cold is numb from all this journeying, all this running, all this fighting, all this fleeing from one place to the next and then the next. Her arms and shoulders are aching and her neck is barely strong enough to keep her head up. Each time she closes her eyes for even an instant, she feels her lids tugging down, down, down, like they’re made of lead. Each time it’s a struggle to lift them again.
No.
She mustn’t succumb.
Tomorrow. All she has to do is stay awake through this night, until tomorrow. Beorn will come back, and there’ll be others with him. They’ll bring food and blankets and warm clothes, and all will be well. They’ll leave here and they’ll find a safe place where they can weather the storm until the Normans have turned back south, as eventually they must. If they keep on burning, keep on slaughtering, it won’t be long before there’s nothing left. Nothing more to raze to the ground. No one else to kill or drive from their homes.
And then what? Yes, they could go back and try to rebuild, like she told Beorn. But if everything they used to know is gone, lost for ever to the enemy and to the flames, is there any point?
A land of ash and bone. That’s all there’ll be. No halls or houses. No clothes save for the ones they’re wearing. No pigs or goats or cattle. Not a horse between them. No silver or gold. Nothing.
‘So we’ll leave,’ she murmurs. ‘We won’t go back.’
Merewyn stirs. ‘What’s that?’ she says sleepily.
Tova hesitates. She swallows, not quite willing to believe what she’s about to suggest.
Don’t fight the waves, she thinks. Ride them. Wasn’t that what he said? To survive, sometimes you have to change.
‘Let’s not go back to Heldeby,’ she says. ‘Let’s keep on going north towards the lands of the Scots. We can take the book – what’s left of it anyway – to the monks at Lindisfarena. And then, after that, we could leave England altogether. Find a ship, go across the sea. To Yrland, maybe, or the land of the Danes. Some place where we can make new lives for ourselves.’
She has heard of folk fleeing all the way to Miklagard, where the eastern emperor rules, to seek sanctuary there, but they needn’t go that far. It could be anywhere, as long as the Normans can’t come at them. That’s all that matters.
To leave England altogether . . .
The thought terrifies her even as it thrills her. They couldn’t, could they? Tova has only ever seen the sea once; she has no idea what it would be like to take to the water, or how they’d even go about finding a shipmaster who could take them, or how long it would take them to reach these places. A week? A month? Longer?
‘What do you think?’ she asks. ‘Merewyn?’
Tova glances down at her. Her lady’s eyes are closed, her mouth a little open, her breathing light and steady.
She’ll ask her again when she wakes. There’ll be plenty of time to make those decisions later. First they have to make it through this night.
Trying not to move too suddenly, she lays Merewyn down on the bracken and the leaves where she’ll be more comfortable. Her lady hardly stirs. She must be utterly spent. Tova lies down next to her, curled tight and hugging her arms close to her chest, making sure as she does that the covers are wrapped close around them both. Their feet are pointed towards the fire. The flames dance and flicker, swell and subside, like there’s a spirit inside each one that guides it and gives it radiance and causes it to flare up, to play and leap, to glow hot and then cool, cool and then hot again. A moving, breathing thing, as delicate and as changeable as any other creature.
She watches them, twisting and intertwining in their many colours, safe in the knowledge that as long as she does so, they will not go out.
Seventh Day
Cold. It binds her and clutches at her chest. She can hardly breathe: the air, when she can catch it, is thin and sharp and takes her by surprise, each time like being stabbed from the inside. She shifts, searching for warmth, but there’s none to be found. Her neck is stiff and her mouth and throat are dry. She coughs, once, twice; blinks, trying to shove away sleep’s grasping embrace, but her lids are heavy and to move them at all takes all her strength.
She eyes the door, with the light spilling in from underneath, bright and harsh and painful to look at for long. It must be morning. There’s an ache in her head, as if a shard of ice has become lodged in her skull and is driving ever deeper, making it difficult even to think.
She never imagined she could be this cold.
Where is she? Trying to remember is like wading through pitch. She recalls the fight, but dimly, like it was a long time ago, and she isn’t sure that she has all the events in the right order. She remembers fleeing, and the snow beginning to fall. Beorn going to find help, and the two of them staying behind. He told them to wait for him, to stay inside where it was warm, to make sure they kept the fire going—
The fire.
Her heart racing, she tries to raise herself, but she has become tangled in their makeshift blankets and she has to fight her way out from underneath. But even before she does, she knows.
‘No,’ she says, her breath misting. She throws back the cloth and sits up. ‘No, no, no.’
It’s gone out.
Not a flicker, nor a wisp of smoke. Only ash, white as snow and just as lifeless. She scrambles on unfeeling hands and clumsy knees towards it, searching for any spark amid the embers, however small, from which she can coax it back into being. She tries blowing upon the remnants, gently at first and then harder, hoping to make something happen, but nothing will.
How long is it since it burned out? When did she fall asleep? Hours ago, it must have been, for it wasn’t long after dark when she and her lady were talking—
Merewyn.
She turns and sees her huddled beneath the covers, her cheeks milky pale in the wan light. Unmoving.
Oh God, please no, Tova thinks. Oh God, oh God, oh God.
She rushes to her lady’s side, places her hand on her arm, shaking her gently and saying her name, over and over and over and each time more urgently.
Beorn trusted her to take care of them both. He trusted her to not let the fire die. She promised him she would. She promised herself.
The one thing she had to do was not fall asleep.
‘Wake up.’ She feels the tears welling. ‘Please, wake up. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.’
But Merewyn doesn’t stir or even seem to hear her at all. Her face is tranquil, like those of the angels painted on the walls of the church at hom
e, ascending to the eternal kingdom. Like the faces of the saints that she saw in Guthred’s book.
Please, let her live.
She fumbles beneath the covers for her lady’s hand and clasps it in her own. It hasn’t gone stiff as she had feared, but it’s cool to the touch. Merewyn is no longer shivering, Tova sees, and she knows that’s a bad sign, because that’s what happened to her mother near the end. First she grew still, and then she stopped breathing, and then—
No. She can’t give up hope. Not now. Not yet.
She leans forward, pressing her ear close to Merewyn’s lips, desperate for some sign that she is still breathing. Nothing. With every heartbeat she feels what hope she had melting away. Despair clutches at Tova’s stomach. Her heart is thumping so loudly that she’s worried she won’t be able to hear her lady’s breath when it comes.
But then there it is: the feeblest brush of warm air against her cheek. It wouldn’t make a candle flicker, but it’s enough. She’s alive, if only barely.
Tova could cry with relief, but she holds it back. She can’t waste even one moment. She has to keep Merewyn warm, but how? Should she try to get the fire going again? How long will that take?
Beorn would know what to do. She wishes he were here.
But he isn’t, she chides herself. No amount of wishing is going to make him appear. If she’s to help her lady, she must do it on her own.
Think.
She lies down next to Merewyn, pressing herself close, hugging her lady like she might a little child, while at the same time murmuring reassuring words in her ear, hoping that Merewyn might still be able to hear her. She can’t remember ever seeing her look so fragile, so young and so small. Behind those pale eyelids and that serene expression, is she as afraid as Tova?
She keeps talking to her, talking about the past, about Heldeby before the war, before Orm, while Skalpi was still alive. The happy times they shared, when they were less like lady and servant and more like sisters. All the while hoping that Merewyn will hear her and come back to her.
She asks, ‘You remember, don’t you, that day last spring when we rode together to the market at Skardaborg?’
It was the first time Tova had ever seen the sea. How she marvelled at the way it fragmented the light into a thousand tiny suns, and at the ships with their striped sails skipping across its surface. Men clambering ashore to drag the hulls up over the sand. Nets filled with writhing, silvery fish. Wicker cages into which were crammed strange many-legged creatures that Merewyn called crabs. More people than Tova had ever seen in one place before, dressed in bright clothes, speaking in many tongues. Blue-eyed fair-haired folk who’d sailed from the northern lands, the lands of Skalpi’s ancestors, barking orders to their crewmen on the wharves, calling out prices and holding up their wares for all to see.
And then there were the stalls, with their canopies to shield them from the weather. While Merewyn bought cinnamon and pepper from the spicer, Tova went exploring, thrilled and nervous at the same time, picking her way through the thronged streets, past the fleshmongers and wine merchants. Past the carvers with their tables stacked with wooden bowls and spoons, some plain and others painted with intricate patterns. Past the pedlars with their scraps of cloth laid out on the ground and on them trinkets and charms, bracelets and necklaces of pewter and amber, pendants of jet and cheaper wooden amulets inscribed with runes. A thin-faced merchant with rolls of fine linen and dyed wool, and ribbons that he said came all the way from the eastern empire: lengths of silk as long as her arm, in green as dark as holly, and other colours as well – black and red and white – but it was the green that Tova thought most beautiful. They shone and shimmered in the light like butterfly wings.
‘I wanted one of those ribbons so badly,’ Tova says. ‘I wanted one like I’d never wanted anything before. I suppose I was thinking I could wear it in my hair on special days. For Christmas, maybe, or whenever we had a feast.’
The trader, though, wanted five pennies for each one, and that wasn’t just all the money Tova had with her, it was all the money she had in the world. She tried to bargain with him, but he said with a sneer that if she couldn’t afford his prices then she should take her grubby fingers away and waste someone else’s time. Tova replied indignantly that her fingers weren’t grubby, but he wasn’t listening. He came out from behind his stall and tried to shoo her away like a calf that had strayed into the wrong field, but Merewyn came and told the man curtly that the ribbon was meant for her. She’d sent her maidservant to buy it on her behalf, she said, but having seen how he treated his customers, she’d changed her mind.
She bade him good day and turned to leave. At once the merchant, red-faced, called after her, stumbling over his words, saying he hadn’t known, that he’d been rash and presumptuous, and that if the lady would reconsider he would ask only four pennies for the ribbon. Merewyn offered three and the trader hesitated, but she made to walk away again, and the man gave in. He watched avidly as she counted out the coins from the pouch she kept inside her sleeve.
‘You turned to me and asked me which one I thought was best,’ Tova says. ‘I was so surprised I didn’t know what to say, but I pointed to the green one. You picked it up, and he said that was a wise choice, but then you handed it to me and said it was a gift and I should look after it. I was so grateful I think I just nodded. He was furious, do you remember? He thought we’d set out to trick him, and made a fuss, or tried to, but the other traders just turned their backs.
‘And I looked after it, just like you said,’ she whispers. ‘That night, when you came and said we had to leave, I couldn’t go without it.’
She rolls up her sleeve, where the ribbon is tied around her wrist, dirty now but still intact, as if to show Merewyn, but her lady does not wake. Tova holds her tighter so that she doesn’t slip away. There has to be something more she can do, but what?
And it’s because she doesn’t know what else to do that she carries on talking and whispering those words of encouragement, for her own comfort as much as for her lady’s.
‘We’re going to be all right,’ she says. ‘Soon we’ll be safe.’
She speaks the words again and again, trying to keep her thoughts from dwelling on the cold seeping ever deeper into her flesh, on the dampness in the air and in her clothes, the hunger that clutches at her stomach and causes it to twist and wrench. There’s a small voice inside her saying she should save her breath, but then there’s another reminding her that if she does that there will only be silence. Nothing but the wind whistling through the branches outside, and that’s what she can’t bear. Because then she’ll be forced to admit that she is truly alone.
Just her, out here on her own, at the end of the world.
‘Wake up,’ she murmurs again. Her eyes are squeezed shut. She hopes that when she opens them all this will turn out to have been a dream, some horrible, horrible dream.
‘Wake up, wake up,’ she urges, no longer sure if she’s talking to her lady or to herself.
‘Tova?’
She blinks away the moisture from her eyes. ‘Merewyn?’
Hope. She feels it flooding back, like the streams after the snow has melted, rushing together, their strength renewed after the long stillness.
‘Tova,’ her lady says again. More than a whisper but less than a murmur, the sounds drawn out and tentative, as if she’s not quite sure of their shape. Like an old person might speak. Her eyes are closed still, her brow furrowed slightly.
‘I’m here.’ Tova rests her hand gently on her lady’s forehead. Her fingers feel deadened, devoid of blood and warmth, but Merewyn’s skin is no warmer.
‘So cold,’ Merewyn says, slurring her words, and gives a small tremble, a tremble that becomes a shudder. Tova takes this for a good sign. Better to be shivering than still.
‘It’s all right,’ Tova says, nestling as close as she can. ‘We’ll keep each ot
her warm.’
She knows she mustn’t let her drift back into sleep. She can’t risk losing her again.
But she also needs to get the fire lit, and if she’s going to keep it fed then they’ll need more wood too. What they have left should last them through the day, but probably not the night as well. They’ll need to be prepared.
Before she can start to get settled where she is, she slides out from beside Merewyn. She’ll have to be quick; she doesn’t want to leave her lady for too long. She stumbles on frozen feet across to the door, fumbling at the handle and readying herself for the chill blast that is to come. And it does. It slaps her across the face, and again, stinging her cheeks and her eyes and the exposed skin at her neck. She winces as she steps out.
Into a world so bright that to begin with she can’t look at it. She lifts her hand to her eyes to guard against the glare. Snow everywhere: across the fields and the distant hills and upon the branches of the trees in the thicket down in the hollow; wind-blown against the church wall, so deep that the water butt standing next to it is almost buried. It lies a foot deep on the thatch and on the ground. The clouds hang low and heavy with the promise of more to come. She closes the door behind her and crunches and squeaks her way across it, her shoes sinking in.
It’s hopeless, she thinks. She’ll never find anything dry under all this.
Folding her arms across her chest and with her hands tucked into her armpits, she sets off down the slope towards the thicket, as quickly as she can manage, which isn’t very quick at all. It’s hard to walk; her legs are tired and tiring further with every stride.
Keep the fire burning.
Don’t give in.
The wind is like an invisible hand that seizes her body and squeezes it tight, wringing the breath from her chest. Each gust flings up flurries of snow that billow and tumble and assault her. She ducks her head and stumbles on.
Halfway down the slope her foot strikes something hard buried beneath the white. She cries out as she falls, only to find her mouth full of snow as she meets the ground, and she is tumbling forwards, sideways, the sky and the snow a blur of white and grey, and she doesn’t know which way is up. Eventually she comes to a stop. She spits out what’s in her mouth and swears, loudly, violently, like she would never do in Merewyn’s presence.
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