‘If you want, I can look at it for you.’
‘No,’ she says sharply, scowling. One of her favourite expressions. Tova has often thought that if she does it too much, her face will become stuck that way. ‘I don’t need your help. I told you. I’ll be fine.’
He shrugs, then sits down on the floor, snatches up one of the apples that he has brought and sinks his teeth into it, more like an animal than a man.
Tova clears her throat. Straight away Beorn looks up.
‘Why are the Normans doing this?’ she asks. ‘For three years they’ve left us alone. Why are they coming now?’
‘Because they’re Hell creatures, bent on spreading suffering wherever they go,’ he says, spitting the words as if he cannot stand the taste of them. ‘They know no kindness or pity. All they know is how to kill. They want to scour us from the face of this earth once and for all, to make sure we can never again take up arms against them. So that we’ll never again threaten King Wilelm’s grip upon his kingdom.’
‘But the rebellion was defeated. He crushed it.’
She remembers all too well when the men came back after the war. Weary, hobbling. Broken inside as well as out. Their dreams shattered. Missing friends and brothers. The hope gone from their eyes. Everyone knew then that their best chance was gone.
‘The rebellion isn’t defeated. Not as long as there are some of us still willing to fight. The war isn’t over, and don’t listen to anyone who tells you that it is.’
‘But so many have died at their hands already,’ Merewyn says. ‘Eadgar has fled back to Scotland, hasn’t he? What more does King Wilelm want from us?’
Beorn sighs. ‘What do I have to say before you understand? He doesn’t want anything that you or I or anyone can give him. He doesn’t want our surrender, our silver or our homes. He doesn’t want to bargain with us. He isn’t coming to take possession of this land. He’s coming to lay it waste.’
His eyes bore into her, as if daring her to say that he speaks false. But Tova’s throat is dry. It’s like something out of one of her darkest fear-dreams.
He’s wrong. He has to be. He must be confused in his head or else simply mad. Has he really seen all these things happening?
He can’t be right, she tells herself. He can’t be. It isn’t possible.
And yet what if he is?
He turns away from them and goes back to his apple. Who is he? Where has he come from? Men like him don’t often travel alone, do they? If he’s a warrior, then where’s the rest of his band? Did they die in the rebellion?
The way he moves, the way he fights: they mark him out as still a young man, although he has to be older than Merewyn, who has only twenty winters behind her. How much older, she’s not sure. The scars that decorate his cheeks, his weather-worn appearance, his curt manner, the haunted look in his eyes: these are things that she has usually seen only in men Skalpi’s age. Men who have known loss, who have known hardship, who have known all the ills that the world has to throw at them and are tired of it all. And there’s an aloofness to him that she can’t account for. Hearing him speak and watching him sitting hunched over as he is now, lost in his own thoughts, she sees someone who has travelled and who has loved, who has lived but who at the same time has also died a little inside himself.
His eyes are open again. Open and fixed upon her. ‘What?’
She asks, ‘How long have you been on your own?’
He frowns. She imagines he is asking himself what sort of a question that is.
‘Longer than I would have liked,’ he says.
‘Were there others? Like you, I mean. Fighting men.’
He nods.
‘What happened to them?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Were they killed by the Normans, the ones we met tonight? Were you lying in wait for them?’
‘Tova,’ Merewyn says warningly.
But he was. Of course he was. It makes sense now. Otherwise, was it mere coincidence that he was there just when they needed him?
He snatches up one of the ale flasks and gets to his feet. ‘I said I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Where are you going now?’ Merewyn asks.
‘To keep watch.’ He slings his bow and arrow bag over his shoulder, slides the haft of his axe inside his belt loop and makes for the door. ‘Eat what you can, then get some sleep. It’s late and we have many miles ahead of us. I don’t want to spend any longer here than we have to.’
He wrenches open the door and ventures outside. Frigid air sweeps in once more, disturbing the rushes and causing the lantern flame briefly to flicker.
And then he’s gone, and they’re alone again.
*