‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Merewyn says, resting a hand on his arm. ‘None of it was.’
‘Yes, it was. If we hadn’t got it into our heads to carry out that foolish plan, they’d all be alive now. And if I hadn’t opened my mouth, if I hadn’t told the girls who we were and what we intended, Eawen would never have come to us that night. She wouldn’t have become involved. She needn’t have died.’
‘You didn’t know,’ Guthred says. ‘How could you have done?’
‘She was just a child,’ Tova thinks, and is surprised to find herself murmuring the thought out loud.
Beorn nods. ‘No older than you, certainly. But she had been consorting with us. That was enough to seal her fate.’
Merewyn asks, ‘What about her sister?’
‘Ymme? Probably they killed her too, when they returned to the manor later that morning.’
‘Killed her as well?’ Tova doesn’t believe it, or maybe she just doesn’t want to believe it, which she realises is a different thing.
‘Why, though?’ the priest asks. ‘If she gave her sister up to them. If she was the one who betrayed you.’
‘I can’t say for sure that’s what happened, because I don’t know. But it wouldn’t surprise me. Obviously she didn’t know quite as much as Eawen. She knew we were there, though, hiding on Malger’s lands, and she knew what we’d come to do. She’d deliberately hidden that knowledge from them. She’d pledged us her silence. Once they found that out—’
‘She might yet live,’ Guthred says.
‘In the days afterwards I heard many stories from Stedehamm. How many were true and how many were exaggerated, I don’t know. But they were all bad. Men killed in reprisal, their daughters and wives given to Malger’s guests for their pleasure when they arrived for the Christmas feast. We brought that upon those folk. We did that.’
‘You can’t blame yourself for the crimes of others,’ says Merewyn.
Beorn doesn’t seem to be listening. ‘She didn’t even know what she was doing. She didn’t know any better. She trusted us, and we took advantage of her trust. Of her innocence. They didn’t betray us. We betrayed them.’
Tova’s beginning to understand, or thinks she is, anyway. ‘Is that why you saved us? Because of them?’
‘I’d been riding north for I don’t know how long. Five days, maybe six, maybe longer. All I know is that it was slow going. I travelled by night and hid during the day so that I could rest, except when I knew the Normans were near, in which case I kept moving. I had a reason to live again, you see. Then late one afternoon I caught sight of the two of you riding down from the high moors, and I wondered what you were doing all by yourselves, and so I watched you, to see where you were heading. I didn’t show myself because I didn’t want you to be afraid, and because I remembered what happened the last time I’d tried to do a good thing. When I heard those Normans coming, I hid and hoped you’d do the same. As soon as they found you, though, I knew I had to do something.’
He looks straight at Tova. ‘I heard Eawen’s voice calling to me, and I knew I couldn’t let the same thing happen again. I couldn’t.’
She doesn’t know what to think. On the one hand she knows she should be grateful, and she is, because he risked his life to save theirs. But on the other she resents the idea that the only reason they’re here now is because others before them had died. Because he needed a way to assuage his wounded soul.
And wounded it is. His scars run deeper than the skin. His world is gone. What dreams he had are all but shattered; his hopes stamped out.
The desire to keep fighting is the only thing still keeping him going. It’s all he has left. Without it he is nothing.
*
The hearth fire has died. The hall grows cooler as the shadows deepen. Guthred is snoring. Merewyn is also asleep, close beside her. Tova is on the verge of sleep herself when she hears Beorn and Oslac murmuring to one another. She lies as still as she can, her eyes open. She can’t see them, but they’re near.
‘Let me understand this,’ the poet says. ‘The only reason you have it in your mind to go to Hagustaldesham is because of a rumour you heard.’
‘What of it?’
‘So you don’t really know that’s where the rebels are gathering, if they’re gathering at all.’
‘I heard it from one of the king’s men, and he must have heard it from somewhere. From their scouts and their spies, probably.’
‘How can you be sure he was telling the truth?’
Beorn says, ‘I had my foot on his chest, my axe in one hand and my knife in the other. He knew if he didn’t speak I was going to kill him.’
‘You were going to kill him anyway. He could have told you anything and it wouldn’t have made the slightest difference.’
‘I saw the fear in his eyes. He wasn’t lying. I’d have known if he was. Believe me, I can always tell.’
‘The rebellion is finished. The war is lost.’
‘Not yet,’ says Beorn. ‘Not yet.’
Fifth Day