by Ken Follett
Brindle dozed beside him, but every now and again the dog would whimper and tremble in her sleep. Edgar wondered whether dogs had bad dreams.
Edgar sometimes had nightmares: he was on a sinking ship, or an oak tree was falling and he could not get out of the way, or he was fleeing from a forest fire. When he woke up from such dreams he experienced a feeling of relief so powerful that he wanted to weep. Now he kept thinking that the Viking attack might be a nightmare from which he would wake at any moment to find Sunni still alive. But he did not wake.
At last he heard voices speaking plain Anglo-Saxon. Still he hesitated. The speakers sounded troubled but not panicked; grief-stricken rather than in fear of their lives. That must surely mean the Vikings had gone, he reasoned.
How many of his friends had they taken with them to sell as slaves? How many corpses of his neighbors had they left behind? Did he still have a family?
Brindle made a hopeful noise in her throat and tried to stand up. She could not rise in the confined space, but clearly she felt it was now safe to move.
Edgar lifted the manger. Brindle immediately stepped out. Edgar rolled from under it, holding the Viking ax, and lowered the trough back to the floor. He got to his feet, limbs aching from prolonged confinement. He hooked the ax to his belt.
Then he looked out of the dairy door.
The town had gone.
For a moment he was just bewildered. How could Combe have disappeared? But he knew how, of course. Almost every house had burned to nothing. A few were still smoldering. Here and there masonry structures remained standing, and he took awhile to identify them. The monastery had two stone buildings, the church and a two-story edifice with a refectory on the ground floor and a dormitory upstairs. There were two other stone churches. It took him longer to identify the home of Wyn the jeweler, who needed stonework to protect him from thieves.
Cyneric’s cows had survived, clustering fearfully in the middle of their fenced pasture: cows were valuable, but, Edgar reasoned, too bulky and cantankerous to take on board ship—like all thieves, the Vikings would prefer cash or small, high-priced items such as jewelry.
Townspeople stood in the ruins, dazed, hardly speaking, uttering monosyllables of grief and horror and bewilderment.
The same vessels were anchored in the bay, but the Viking ships had gone.
At last he allowed himself to look at the bodies in the dairy. The Viking was barely recognizable as a human being. Edgar felt strange, thinking that he had done that. It was hardly believable.
Sunni looked surprisingly peaceful. There was no visible sign of the head injury that had killed her. Her eyes were half open, and Edgar closed them again. He knelt down and again felt for a heartbeat, knowing it was foolish. Her body was already cool.
What should he do? Perhaps he could help her soul get to heaven. The monastery was still standing. He should take her to the monks’ church.
He took her in his arms. Lifting her was more difficult than he expected. She was slender, and he was strong, but her inert body unbalanced him and, as he struggled to stand, he had to crush her to his chest harder than he would have wished. Holding her in such a rough embrace, knowing she felt no pain, harshly accentuated her lifelessness and made him cry again.
He walked through the house, past the body of Cyneric, and out the door.
Brindle followed him.
It seemed to be midafternoon, though it was hard to tell: there were ashes in the air, along with the smoke from embers, and a disgusting odor of burned human flesh. The survivors looked around them perplexedly, as if they could not take in what had happened. More were making their way back from the woods, some driving livestock.
Edgar walked toward the monastery. Sunni’s weight began to hurt his arms, but perversely he welcomed the pain. However, her eyes would not remain closed, and somehow this distressed him. He wanted her to look as if she were asleep.
No one paid him much attention: they all had their own individual tragedies. He reached the church and made his way inside.
He was not the only person to have this idea. There were bodies lying all along the nave, with people kneeling or standing beside them. Prior Ulfric approached Edgar, looking distraught, and said peremptorily: “Dead or alive?”
“It’s Sungifu, she’s dead,” Edgar replied.
“Dead people at the east end,” said Ulfric, too frantically busy to be gentle. “Wounded in the nave.”
“Will you pray for her soul, please?”
“She’ll be treated like all the rest.”
“I gave the alarm,” Edgar protested. “I may have saved your life. Please pray for her.”
Ulfric hurried away without answering.
Edgar saw that Brother Maerwynn was attending to a wounded man, bandaging a leg while the man whimpered in pain. When Maerwynn finally stood up, Edgar said to him: “Will you pray for Sunni’s soul, please?”
“Yes, of course,” said Maerwynn, and he made the sign of the cross on Sunni’s forehead.
“Thank you.”
“For now, put her down at the east end of the church.”
Edgar walked along the nave and past the altar. At the far end of the church twenty or thirty bodies were laid in neat rows, with grieving relatives staring at them. Edgar lay Sunni down gently. He straightened her legs and crossed her arms on her chest, then tidied her hair with his fingers. He wished he were a priest so that he could take care of her soul himself.
He stayed kneeling for a long time, looking at her motionless face, struggling to understand that she would never again look back at him with a smile.
Eventually thoughts of the living intruded. Were his parents alive? Had his brothers been taken into slavery? Only a few hours ago he had been on the point of leaving them permanently. Now he needed them. Without them, he would be alone in the world.
He stayed with Sunni a minute longer, then left the church, followed by Brindle.
Outside, he wondered where to start. He decided to go to his home. The house would be gone, of course, but perhaps he might find the family there, or some clue as to what had happened to them.
The quickest way was along the beach. As he walked toward the sea he hoped he would find his boat on the shore. He had left it some distance from the nearest houses, so there was a good chance it had not burned.
Before he reached the sea he met his mother walking into town from the woods. At the sight of her strong, resolute features and her purposeful stride he felt so weak with relief that he almost fell down. She was carrying a bronze cooking pot, perhaps all she had rescued from the house. Her face was drawn with grief but her mouth was set in a line of grim determination.
When she saw Edgar her expression changed to joy. She threw her arms around him and pressed her face into his chest, sobbing: “My boy, oh, my Eddie, thank God.”
He hugged her with his eyes closed, more grateful for her than he had ever been.
After a moment he looked over her shoulder and saw Erman, dark like Ma but mulish rather than determined, and Eadbald, who was fair and freckled, but not their father. “Where’s Pa?” he said.
Erman answered: “He told us to run. He stayed behind to save the boatyard.”
Edgar wanted to say: And you left him? But this was no time for recriminations—and, in any case, Edgar too had left.
Ma released him. “We’re going back to the house,” she said. “What’s left of it.”
They headed for the shore. Ma strode quickly, impatient to know the truth, good or bad.
Erman said accusingly: “You got away fast, little brother—why didn’t you wake us?”
“I did wake you,” Edgar said. “I rang the monastery bell.”
“You did not.”
It was like Erman to try to start a squabble at a time like this. Edgar looked away and said nothing. He did not care what Erman tho
ught.
When they reached the beach, Edgar saw that his boat was gone. The Vikings had taken it, of course. They would recognize a good vessel. And it would have been easy to transport: they could simply have tied it to the stern of one of their ships and towed it.
It was a grave loss, but he felt no pain: it was trivial by comparison with the death of Sunni.
Walking along the shore they came across the mother of a boy of Edgar’s age lying dead, and he wondered if she had been killed trying to stop the Vikings taking her son into slavery.
There was another corpse a few yards away, and more farther along. Edgar checked every face: they were all friends and neighbors, but Pa was not among them, and he began cautiously to hope that his father might have survived.
They reached their home. All that was left was the fireplace, with the iron tripod still standing over it.
To one side of the ruin was the body of Pa. Ma gave a cry of horror and grief, and fell to her knees. Edgar knelt beside her and put his arm around her shaking shoulders.
Pa’s right arm had been severed near the shoulder, presumably by the blade of an ax, and he seemed to have bled to death. Edgar thought of the strength and skill that had been in that arm, and he wept angry tears at the waste and loss.
He heard Eadbald say: “Look at the yard.”
Edgar stood up and wiped his eyes. At first he was not sure what he was seeing, and he rubbed his eyes again.
The yard had burned. The vessel under construction and the stock of timber had been reduced to piles of ash, along with the tar and rope. All that remained was the whetstone they had used to sharpen their tools. In among the cinders, Edgar made out charred bones too small to be human, and he guessed that poor old Grendel had burned to death at the end of his chain.
All the family’s wealth had been in that yard.
Not only had they lost the yard, Edgar realized; they had lost their livelihood. Even if a customer had been willing to order a boat from three apprentices, they had no wood with which to build it, no tools to shape the timber, and no money to buy any of what they needed.
Ma probably had a few silver pennies in her purse, but the family had never had much to spare, and Pa had always used any surplus to buy timber. Good wood was better than silver, he had liked to say, because it was harder to steal.
“We’ve got nothing left, and no way to make a living,” Edgar said. “What on earth are we going to do?”
CHAPTER 2
Saturday, June 19, 997
ishop Wynstan of Shiring reined in his horse at the top of a rise and looked down over Combe. There was not much left of the town: the summer sun shone on a gray wilderness. “It’s worse than I expected,” he said. There were some ships and boats undamaged in the harbor, the only hopeful sign.
His brother Wigelm came alongside and said: “Every Viking should be roasted alive.” He was a thane, a member of the landholding elite. Five years younger than Wynstan at thirty, he was quick to anger.
But this time Wynstan agreed with him. “Over a slow fire,” he said.
Their elder half brother heard them. As was the custom, the brothers had names that sounded alike, and the oldest was Wilfwulf, forty, usually called Wilf. He was ealdorman of Shiring, ruler of a part of the west of England that included Combe. He said: “You’ve never seen a town after a Viking raid. This is how it looks.”
They rode on into the devastated town, followed by a small entourage of armed men. They made an imposing sight, Wynstan knew: three tall men in costly clothes riding fine horses. Wilf had a blue knee-length tunic and leather boots; Wigelm a similar outfit but in red. Wynstan had a plain black ankle-length robe, as appropriate to a priest, but the fabric was finely woven. He also wore a large silver cross on a leather thong around his neck. Each brother had a luxuriant fair mustache but no beard, in the style fashionable among wealthy Englishmen. Wilf and Wigelm had thick fair hair; Wynstan had the top of his head shaved in a tonsure, like all priests. They looked wealthy and important, which they were.
The townspeople were moving disconsolately among the ruins, sifting and digging and making pathetic piles of their recovered possessions: twisted pieces of iron kitchenware, bone combs blackened by fire, cracked cooking pots and ruined tools. Chickens pecked and pigs snuffled, searching for anything edible. There was an unpleasant smell of dead fires, and Wynstan found himself taking shallow breaths.
As the brothers approached, the townspeople looked up at them, faces brightening with hope. Many knew them by sight, and those who had never seen them could tell by their appearance that they were powerful men. Some called out greetings, others cheered and clapped. They all left what they were doing and followed. Surely, the people’s expressions said, such mighty beings would be able to save them somehow?
The brothers reined in at a patch of open ground between the church and the monastery. Boys competed to hold their horses as they dismounted. Prior Ulfric appeared to greet them. There were black smuts in his white hair. “My lords, the town stands in desperate need of your help,” he said. “The people—”
“Wait!” said Wynstan, in a voice that carried to the crowd all around. His brothers were unsurprised: Wynstan had forewarned them of his intention.
The townspeople fell silent.
Wynstan took the cross from around his neck and held it high over his head, then turned and walked with slow ceremonial steps toward the church.
His brothers came after him, and everyone else followed.
He entered the church and slow-marched up the aisle, noticing the rows of wounded lying on the floor but not turning his head. Those who were able bowed or knelt as he passed, still holding the cross high. He could see more bodies at the far end of the church, but those were dead.
When he reached the altar, he prostrated himself, lying completely still, facedown on the earth floor, his right arm extended toward the altar, holding the cross upright.
He stayed there for a long moment, while the people watched in silence. Then he rose to his knees. He spread his arms in a beseeching gesture and said loudly: “What have we done?”
There was a sound from the crowd like a collective sigh.
“Wherein did we sin?” he declaimed. “Why do we deserve this? Can we be forgiven?”
He went on in the same vein. It was half prayer, half sermon. He needed to explain to the people how what had happened to them was God’s will. The Viking raid had to be seen as punishment for sin.
However, there was practical work to do, and this was only the preliminary ceremony, so he was brief. “As we begin the task of rebuilding our town,” he said in conclusion, “we pledge to redouble our efforts to be devout, humble, God-fearing Christians, in the name of Jesus our Lord. Amen.”
The congregation said: “Amen.”
He stood up and turned, showing his tearstained face to the crowd. He hung the cross around his neck again. “And now, in the sight of God, I call upon my brother, Ealdorman Wilwulf, to hold court.”
Wynstan and Wilf walked side by side down the nave, followed by Wigelm and Ulfric. They went outside and the townspeople followed.
Wilf looked around. “I’ll hold court right here.”
“Very good, my lord,” said Ulfric. He snapped his fingers at a monk. “Bring the great chair.” He turned again to Wilf. “Shall you want ink and parchment, ealdorman?”
Wilf could read but not write. Wynstan could read and write, like most senior clergy. Wigelm was illiterate.
Wilf said: “I doubt we’ll need to write anything down.”
Wynstan was distracted by a tall woman of about thirty wearing a torn red dress. She was attractive, despite the ash smeared on her cheek. She spoke in a low voice, but he could hear the desperation in her tone. “You must help me, my lord bishop, I beg you,” she said.
Wynstan said: “Don’t talk to me, you stupid bitch.”
“But the Vikings took all my girls as well as my money!”
They were all slaves now, Wynstan thought. “I’ll discuss it with you later,” he muttered. Then he raised his voice for the benefit of people nearby. “Get out of my sight, you filthy fornicator!”
She backed away immediately.
Two monks brought a big oak chair and set it in the middle of the open space. Wilf sat down, Wigelm stood on his left, Wynstan on his right.
While the townspeople gathered around, the brothers held a worried conversation in low tones. All three drew income from Combe. It was the second most important town in the ealdormanry, after the city of Shiring. Every house paid rent to Wigelm, who shared the proceeds with Wilf. The people also paid tithes to the churches, which shared them with Bishop Wynstan. Wilf collected customs duties on imports and exports passing through the harbor. Wynstan took an income from the monastery. Wigelm sold the timber in the forest. As of two days ago, all those streams of wealth had dried up.
Wynstan said grimly: “It will be a long time before anyone here can pay anything.” He would have to reduce his spending. Shiring was not a rich diocese. Now, he thought, if I were archbishop of Canterbury I would never need to worry: all the wealth of the Church in the south of England would be under my control. But as mere bishop of Shiring he was limited. He wondered what he could cut out. He hated to renounce a pleasure.
Wigelm was scornful. “All these people have money. You find it when you slice their bellies open.”