We buried her.
A few miles from Jarnborg there was a tiny timber building, not much bigger than a cattle-shed, that passed for a chapel amongst the island folk. We laid her in the earth in its grounds, beneath the winter-green boughs of a hollow yew. The priest, a wrinkled greybeard with a lame leg who walked with the aid of a crutch, recited the necessary liturgy. He had no Latin learning and so spoke in his own tongue, but even if he had, the words would have meant nothing to me, so lost was I in thought, in regret, in sorrow.
Afterwards, when the earth had been placed over her body and everyone else had left, I alone lingered, kneeling by her graveside for how long I cannot say, only that it seemed like an eternity. Clouds scurried from the sea up the length of the fjord, thick and brooding. They billowed and tumbled and blotted out the sun, which grew ever lower in the west. A drizzle came and went; the wind rose and settled and rose once more, tugging at my cloak and buffeting my cheeks, brushing clear the tears that I did not care to wipe away. I thought of her, and remembered the times we had shared, short though they were, and the many happinesses of those times. I prayed for her soul, and prayed also that when the day of reckoning arrived we would be united again in the heavenly kingdom, small comfort though that was to me in those lonely hours, as I thought of all the years stretching ahead that I would have to spend without her. Everything that had seemed so certain in the wake of Haakon’s death, in the wake of our victory, was thrown into confusion. The future that I had hoped for, that I had dreamt of, was not to be.
‘She was a good friend,’ came a voice, startling me. I turned in the direction it had come from, and had to raise a hand to shield my eyes from the setting sun, which was just above the figure’s shoulder.
My eyes adjusted, and I saw it was Eanfl?d. She brushed her dark hair from where it had fallen in front of her face. I wondered if she had anything more to add, but when she said nothing, I looked away, embarrassed that anyone should see me so affected, and angry too that she had intruded upon me.
Eanfl?d did not come closer, though, nor did she kneel down next to me by Oswynn’s grave, as I’d half expected she might, and I took that as a gesture of respect.
‘She had a child. A girl. Did you know that?’
‘No,’ I said, surprised. Oswynn had not spoken to me of any child, although in our haste to escape Jarnborg we hadn’t had the opportunity to exchange stories. ‘The child was Haakon’s?’
‘He certainly thought so,’ Eanfl?d said. ‘He named her Alfhild, and doted on her whenever he returned to Jarnborg. She was born in the autumn after Oswynn came here, on the feast day of All Saints.’
It took me a moment to understand the import of what she was saying. The feast of All Saints took place on the first day of November, while the ambush at Dunholm had happened nine months earlier, in late January.
‘What did Oswynn think?’
Eanfl?d shrugged. ‘She never liked to say what she believed, or if she did, not to me. As for the rest of us, we always did say amongst ourselves that the girl had more of her mother than of Haakon in her looks, but who knows? Oswynn certainly didn’t, no matter what she might have hoped.’
‘What about the girl?’ I asked, sensing the slightest glimmer of hope. If there was something that remained of Oswynn, even if she were not a child of my blood—
‘She died,’ the Englishwoman said. ‘She was a sickly thing from the day she entered the world, although God granted her the strength to see through her first year and more. But then the winter came, and the snows, and she caught a fever, and there was nothing that could be done for her.’
No sooner had that candle been lit, than it was pinched out. ‘And after that?’ I asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Did she ever bear Haakon a child after Alfhild?’
Eanfl?d shook her head. ‘Nor did any of us, lord.’
‘None of you?’
‘Not one,’ she confirmed. ‘God alone knows why. Although that never stopped him from trying.’
I nodded, not knowing what to say. To tell the truth I wasn’t sure quite what to make of this new knowledge, or even whether there was anything to make.