IN DESPERATION I stumbled through the charred wreckage of my manor, calling: ‘Leofrun!’
But there was no sign of her, nor indeed of anyone left alive. Corpses lay by the banks of the river where, to judge by the blood-stained grass, it looked as if a few of the villagers had made a stand. Men and women alike had met their ends here, their bodies stripped of their clothes and shoes and anything else of worth, left in the open, under the rain and the scorching sun, to rot and become food for the carrion beasts. Many of their faces were so crumpled and bloodied that I no longer recognised them, although had Leofrun’s been among them I felt sure I would have known.
Kites and crows picked at them, pecking at eye sockets, digging their beaks into pallid skin, tearing away glistening red strings of flesh, and I ran at them, screaming wordlessly to try to make them go away. With a flap of wings and a chorus of calls the Devil-birds rose up into the air, only to descend upon another corpse a short way off, and no matter how much I chased and waved my arms at them I could not make them leave. The stench of decay hung everywhere, like a deathly mist that had settled over the valley. Flies swarmed and crawled everywhere.
Among those corpses that were recognisable were the grey-haired swineherd Garwulf, whose fingers had played so nimbly on the strings of the crwth at every feast, and the girl Hild whom young Lyfing had died trying to protect. Where before her hair had hung as far as her waist, now it had been cut to her shoulders and in places much shorter, savagely and raggedly, as if someone had taken a knife to it, and what was left was matted with blood that ran from a deep gash across the back of her neck.
Neither of them had deserved to meet their ends in this way. None of this was supposed to have happened.
Fire had been taken to the wheatfields, blackening the earth and burning all of what would have been the harvest, while the pastures were strewn all about with the stricken carcasses of cattle, sheep and goats. Whoever had done this had not been interested in taking anything back with them, only in delivering death and letting the fullers of their blades run with the blood of my people. This had been no mere raid. This had been a massacre.
I came to the ruins of what had once been the priest’s house. ‘Father Erchembald,’ I called. ‘?dda!’
There was no answer. The priest’s herb-garden had been trampled, the small vegetables ripped from the earth. The roof had been torn off the house before they burnt it, for clumps of straw lay scattered about. Often men hid purses of silver and other objects of value within the layers of thatch, and no doubt that was what the raiders had been searching for. Not that they would have found much. Unlike some priests I had known, Father Erchembald hadn’t been much given to hoarding. Whatever fortune came his way he was always careful to share, and in the same way it seemed he had shared the fate of his entire flock.
The church had suffered as badly as every other building in Earnford. All that remained were the stones that made up the lower courses; everything else, from the wall-hangings that kept out the draughts in winter to the embroidered altar-cloth, had either been taken or had suffered at the torch. There was no sign of the gilded cross and candlesticks, or the silver pyx, engraved and inlaid with images of wild beasts, that the priest used to contain the consecrated body of our Lord, all of which usually rested upon the altar.
These were not men who had done this but godless fiends, the children of Satan himself, risen from the burning, sulphurous wastes of hell to wreak their hateful destruction upon this land.