‘Thank you, though,’ she adds and smiles tiredly from atop the gelding loaned to her by one of Lyfing’s men. ‘For everything.’
In the distance, just beyond the hills, rise thin, grey, intertwining curls. Hagustaldesham. No one speaks of it; the men avert their eyes and concentrate on the way ahead.
They stop by a stream to let the horses drink. Tova overhears the men discussing in low voices what they should do and where they should go in the days to come, and whether it’s safe yet to send scouts back south, to see what’s left of their homes. But the feeling seems to be that it’s pointless until the thaw at least, and until they can be sure there aren’t any bands of Normans still prowling.
‘How long will that be?’ Tova asks Lyfing.
He doesn’t answer.
*
The camp is only half a day’s ride away through the snow, he tells them, but the sun is already low, touching the treetops to the west, gilding the fields with its light, when she spots the fires burning bright down by the riverbank.
Around the fires are dozens of tents and crude shelters. Paddocks for the horses. Pens for sheep and cattle and pigs. Everywhere piles of broken timber for firewood and stacks of barrels. Paths and tracks where the snow has been cleared for carts. Most folk are huddled by the fires, trying to keep warm, but some are hauling sacks and carrying pails, while others chop wood, skin haunches of meat and lead oxen and horses to drink at the water’s edge.
There must be a hundred people, at least. Maybe twice that. More than ever lived at Heldeby, anyway. The last time Tova saw so many in one place was at Skardaborg. Some so old and frail and unsteady on their feet it seems a wonder they’ve made it this far. And not just men but women too, she notices as they grow closer. And children: running, shouting, chasing one another around the campfires, cupping snow in their mittened hands and hurling it at one another, shrieking and squealing in protest and delight, the sound of their voices and their laughter something Tova thought she might never hear again.
She wonders if they understand. If they have any idea, really, what’s been happening.
Lyfing calls out as they descend towards the camp. He gestures to one of his companions and again the horn is sounded. Three sharp blasts. Women rise from tending the fires; men put down their tools and turn to see what’s happening.
Shouldering his way through the gathering crowd of warriors and wives comes a young man. A boy, really – he can’t be any older than herself, Tova thinks. Tall, gangling and fair. Wide eyes stare out from underneath a tangled mass of hair. His tunic is stained, his face smeared with grime. One of his sleeves is rolled up to the elbow, and the end of his arm is bound and tied with cloth.
He sees them. He sees Merewyn. He lets out a cry and pelts towards them, up the slope, twice slipping in the mud and the snow and ending up on his front, but he manages to pick himself up despite his missing hand.
Tova is at Merewyn’s side, lending her hand in support as, shakily but as hurriedly as she can, she dismounts.
Eadmer is there already, waiting for her, his face streaming with tears, rubbing his eyes as if he can’t quite believe what they’re telling him, and Merewyn is weeping too as she flings her arms around him.
They stand without saying a word, brother and sister holding one another, as the sun disappears behind the hills.
*
Tova wanted to see Beorn before they buried him, so that she might have the chance to say farewell properly. But she’s too late.
Lyfing says he can show her the place where he lies, if she’d like. She tells him she’d like that very much. He takes her to a spot perhaps a hundred paces from the edge of the camp, on a slight rise where the snow has been cleared, in the shelter of a birch copse.
A carved wooden cross, no taller than her hand is wide, is the only thing to mark the spot – one of dozens that stand there.
‘He’d have hated that,’ she tells Lyfing as she kneels down and takes a handful of the damp earth.
‘He didn’t believe?’
‘No, he believed. But in something else, that’s all.’
For a while Lyfing is silent. Pensive. He doesn’t kneel down beside her, but stays standing out of respect.
‘We can take it away, I suppose,’ he says. ‘Though the priests won’t like the thought of a heathen being buried in consecrated ground.’
‘Then we don’t tell them.’
Lyfing nods. ‘We can do that. If it’s what he would have wanted.’
She thinks it is. Of course in ages past, she remembers from the songs, the heathens wouldn’t have laid him in the earth like this. They’d have built a pyre and let the flames take his body, and the roaring blaze would have drowned out the mourners’ weeping even as the smoke billowed and stung men’s eyes. Afterwards they’d have heaped earth over the ashes to make a grave mound, raising it until it stood taller than a person, and filling it with silver ingots and arm rings of twisted gold so that in the next life he could reward his followers as richly as they deserved. Twelve mail-clad warriors would have ridden three times around it, beating their shields and shouting praise for his deeds and challenging any man to deny them, raising such a noise that the gods themselves would be compelled to take notice.
But she knows he’d have hated that too.
To be remembered is all he would have wanted. Not for his deeds to be recounted in song or recorded in ink by monks in their books, but simply for someone to know his story, to know who he was. Who he really was. Someone to know what he’d done, and to go on and live happy and well so that all his striving didn’t turn out to have been for nothing.
That’s what he would have wanted. And so that’s what she’ll do.
*
Most of the people in the camp are survivors from nearby villages and manors, it seems. A few have fled from further south to seek refuge at Hagustaldesham, but none have come from as far afield as Merewyn and herself. When they hear how far they’ve travelled, they besiege her with questions. How did the two of them manage to survive, out there on their own, with the Normans everywhere? How did they find their way? Did they ever come face-to-face with the enemy? Was there ever a time when they gave up hope?
‘No,’ she says. ‘We never did. Because the truth is we were never alone.’
And they sit in silence and listen, never taking their eyes off her. They hand her a bowl of thick, steaming broth, and she sips it and tells them everything, from beginning to end, or as much of it as she can remember. She leaves out certain parts: some of the things she isn’t proud of, as well as those she knows Merewyn would rather she didn’t reveal. She talks about Beorn and how he saved them from the Normans, and about Guthred and Oslac as well, though only as fellow travellers whom they happened to meet and who guided and helped them and who fell along the way. Of their misdeeds and secret shames, she says nothing. These people don’t need to know those things, and, besides, what does any of it matter now? Ashes on the wind. That’s all it is.
After she’s finished, the grown-ups disappear off to their own fires and their tents, leaving just the children, a dozen of them, clustered around her. Maybe their fathers and mothers are elsewhere, or maybe they have no families to return to. They’ve noticed the scabbard belted to her waist, the one containing Beorn’s seax. One of them, a girl of ten, maybe eleven, with a round face and cheeks flushed pink and brightly painted wooden beads on a cord around her neck, asks nervously why she carries a weapon like that. Did she steal it? Who from?
‘I didn’t steal it,’ Tova says. ‘It was a gift.’
She draws it from its sheath and shows it to them, turning it over slowly so that it gleams in the firelight. They marvel at the coils and whorls and waves in the steel. Like smoke, says one boy. Like dragon’s breath, says another.
The pink-cheeked girl asks, ‘Did you fight the Normans? Did you kill any of them?’
<
br /> ‘Don’t be stupid,’ one of the older boys sneers. ‘Girls can’t fight.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because they can’t. Everyone knows.’
She turns to Tova and asks, ‘Girls can fight, can’t they?’
‘Listen,’ Tova says. ‘There’s nothing glorious about fighting, about war. It isn’t anything like you think. It isn’t like in the poems. It’s what you do when you don’t have any other choice. That’s all. You do it because you know that if you don’t, people you care about will get hurt.’
The same boy asks, ‘What about the warrior, the one named Beorn? The one you said killed five Normans all by himself. I want to hear more about him.’
Yes, the others clamour all at once. Tell us more about the warrior.
‘But there’s nothing more to say.’
They all groan at once. The disappointment on their faces. Go on, they plead with her. Tell us about him.
Tova sighs, exasperated. Have they been paying any attention at all?
‘No,’ she says firmly. ‘I’m not going to tell you about him. But if you’re quiet, I’ll tell you another story.’
*
Once, she says, not so long ago, not so very far from here, there was a green land, a peaceable land, where the barley grew tall and strong, and the wide meadows were bright with knapweed and cowslips and forget-me-nots.
Then, you could wander the woods in search of blackberries without worrying about reavers lurking amid the hazel and the hawthorn. Afterwards you could go down to the beck and sit under the alders and dip your toes in the clear water while you watched for trout and grayling. If you were lucky, you might catch a flash of blue as a kingfisher darted between the weir and the reeds.
And people travelled the roads without fear, and lords and reeves never asked for more than was their due, and rumours of far-off wars were no more than that. Folk toiled and some prospered while others struggled, but that was the way of the world, and we always tried to help one another whenever we could. Yes, sometimes there was hardship and sometimes there was hunger, but rarely was there famine. And, yes, there could be discord and strife, but hardly ever did it spill over into bloodshed. Pleas were heard in the proper manner; justice was dealt, and usually it was regarded as fair, and never were the punishments harsher than they needed to be.
In those days there were great halls of oak, and sometimes in those halls, on special days, there’d be feasts, and everybody would come together, the whole village: thirty, forty, fifty people. We’d gorge ourselves on as many sweetmeats and honeyed pastries as we could, until we were sure our stomachs would burst, but it didn’t matter how much we ate because there’d always be plenty for everyone, whether you were the lord’s wife or a humble dairy slave. On the hearth fire a hog, newly slaughtered, would be roasting. You could hear the hiss of fat as it dripped into the flames.
And there’d be people playing harps and flutes and drums, and streamers of white and green and yellow nailed to the roof beams, and the lintel above the great doors would be hung with boughs of yew and holly. And after we’d all had our fill, the revels would spill out into the yard. Under the light of the stars, folk would link arms, folk who often didn’t see eye to eye the rest of the year round, but they’d dance with one another all the same and fall about with laughter when they got the steps wrong, and even hoary old Thorvald the priest would join in, blushing as the women pulled him into the circle. Long-held grudges would be set aside and new ties of friendship would be forged, while down by the willows a slight girl with a ribbon of green silk in her hair would share her first shy, drunken kiss.
And the mead and the ale would carry on flowing, and still more platters would be brought out to the table, heaped with freshly baked treats too hot to hold in one’s hand. And the hall would be filled with the songs of old, and the hearth fire would blaze brightly all through that long night.
There was joy in this land once, she says. There was joy and there was light.
And there will be again.
Acknowledgements
Every novel is a journey into the unknown, a pilgrimage towards a destination only vaguely envisioned and along a route never before travelled. I’d like to take the opportunity to express my gratitude to all those who have joined me on the road to offer their guidance and spur me on towards my goal.
Above all, thanks to my editors at Heron Books, Jon Watt and Stefanie Bierwerth, for their faith in my writing and for guiding The Harrowing on its path to publication. I’m particularly grateful to Jon for having glimpsed the potential in this hugely ambitious project at what then was still a relatively early point in its development, for all his insights and considered suggestions along the way, and for his dedication in helping to hone this novel and to make it the very best work of fiction that it can possibly be. Thanks also to my copy-editor, Hugh Davis, and to Kathryn Taussig and everyone on the team at Quercus, whose hard work has been instrumental in bringing this book to publication and making it a success.
I’m immensely grateful to fellow writers Beverly Stark, Liz Pile, Lyndall Henning, Kayt Lackie, Joanne Sefton and Jonathan Carr, who were all kind enough to give feedback on sections of the novel at various stages of its composition. I’m indebted to them for the time and energy they’ve devoted to reading and discussing my work over the past few years, and I consider it a tremendous privilege to be a part of such a talented and enthusiastic writing community.
My interest in the Middle Ages, and the Norman Conquest in particular, was first nurtured by my dissertation supervisor and director of studies, Professor Elisabeth van Houts, while I was reading History at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. The Harrowing is the product of more than a decade’s accumulated research into Anglo-Saxon and early Norman England, but those supervisions were crucial in broadening my appreciation for this fascinating period of British history, and without that early inspiration and encouragement, I would not be where I am today. This book is dedicated to her.
Last but by no means least, I’d like to offer my thanks as ever to my family and friends for their unfailing support throughout the writing process. Without them, this novel would not have been possible.
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