And so I ran. I didn’t wait for Tatel’s killers to turn on me; I just fled. I remember scrambling on my palms and knees up the side of the ditch, through the grass and the thistles, in the direction of the road. I remember hearing a voice and thinking it was Malger’s although I’m not sure why, and he was bellowing something. The air was whistling as arrows spat down around me, out of the fog to my right and to my left, burying themselves in the turf. One came right over my head, and I thought I felt it graze my scalp, but I kept going, and then one struck my shoulder, and it was like I’d been slapped hard on the back. I’d reached the top by then and I almost fell, but somehow I stayed on my feet and kept hold of my axe, and it was just as well, because that’s where the horsemen were, waiting to cut off our escape.
They saw me and wheeled about, then charged at me with their long spears. I ducked under the blade of the first, threw myself out of the way of the second, rolling across the hard earth, and then as the third came past I raised my axe, hooking the under-edge of my blade around his leg and wrenching hard so that he fell from the saddle. His steed ran on a little way up the track, and I chased after it, not stopping to finish the Frenchman off. My chest was burning and I was running like I’ve never run before, willing it to slow, to come to a halt.
Eventually it pulled up. I caught up with it and swung myself into the saddle, and then I was galloping down the track. I kept my head down as another one, two, three arrows whistled past.
I’ve never been the fastest of riders, but I rode then like I was fleeing the world’s end. They came after me, of course; I could hear them behind me, and how they didn’t catch me I’ll never know, but I knew that if they did it would be the end, and so I didn’t look back but just kept going through the swirling fog, following the track along the high ridge, away from the foreigners, hoping that eventually I’d lose them. Away from Stedehamm, away from all that death and all that pain.
At what point I realised they were no longer behind me, that they’d given up the chase, I don’t know. It didn’t matter. For hour after hour I rode, hardly slowing, not once pausing to rest. The further I could get away, the better.
The fog passed and the wind rose and the rain came, and I welcomed the hard, bitter drops as they stung my cheeks. They rinsed the blood, the grime and the sweat from my face and my clothes, but they did not rinse away the memories. I drove the animal on, through the rain and the mud, on ill-trodden paths far from anywhere, until eventually his foot lodged in a rut or struck a stone or a root. I don’t know what it was, but he stumbled and fell. I was pitched over his neck and thrown into a hollow by the side of the track, and that was where I lay, bruised and bleeding and hurting, in the cold dirt and with the rainwater pooling around me, for hour after hour, weeping and weeping and weeping. How long I lay there I don’t know. By the time I finally found the strength to get up, it was nearly night. My horse lay still and silent; I suppose it was exhaustion that did for him.
I could have given up in the same way. I could have lain there and waited for the night to come, for hunger and cold and sorrow to sap what was left of my strength. For death to take me. But that would have been the coward’s way. And so I wandered. I had no home to go back to, and so I walked from place to place, sleeping in ditches and in hedges, just like before, only this time I did so alone. At first I tried to make snares to catch small animals to eat, but I didn’t really know what I was doing and so turned to stealing what I needed from the villages I came to. A chicken here, some cheese or ale there, a winter blanket or two to keep myself warm at night. Stealing, because I was too ashamed to beg.
Whenever I spied any Frenchmen travelling on the road, alone or in small groups that I thought I could overcome, which wasn’t often, I’d lie in wait to surprise them and then slaughter them. Whether they were warriors or not, it didn’t matter. I killed them anyway, and after I killed them I’d take their provisions, and whatever else they had that was useful. A whetstone, a cloak. Shoes to replace mine, which had worn through. Arrows, a pack, a tent, a new horse: all these things I took. I would smash in their faces with my axe and slice open their bellies so that their guts spilled out, and I would leave them in the middle of the path where they would be easily seen, so that they might serve as a warning.
I didn’t enjoy doing it, but it was justice.
It was from one of the Normans, a young man, a messenger on his way to Lundene, that I heard about the army that the king was gathering to lay waste the north. It was from him that I learned about the rumours of the rebels coming together at Hagustaldesham. As soon as I heard this I knew that was where I needed to be. I thanked him for his help and then buried my blade in his neck. After taking his precious parchments and tossing them to the winds, I left his body to the carrion birds.
And set out on the road north.
*
‘And that was that.’ He sits hunched over like a man twice his age, his voice small and weak. The tears, which were streaming down his face not long ago, have ceased. ‘A few days afterwards, I happened to find you. The rest you know.’
Tova feels numb. All she can think about is that girl, that poor girl.