Silvery hair, thinning on top. Ears protruding from the side of his head. Those ridiculous ears, Guthred said. They don’t look so ridiculous now.
Behind Wulfnoth is possibly the tallest man Tova has ever seen. Taller even than the Norman giant Beorn slew that night when they met him. This one, though, is beanpole-thin. In his hand is a sword, the blade of which is long and narrow to match his build. She tries to remember what the priest said was his name. Cuffa? Was that it?
They step down towards the water’s edge. At once Beorn’s axe is in his hand. He drops his pack, lets it slide from his shoulders. It falls into the river.
‘Don’t come any closer,’ he says. ‘You have the book, the silver. Everything. You don’t need him as well.’
‘You’re defending him? That worthless turd, that stinking piece of goat filth? Hasn’t he told you who he is? Hasn’t he told you what he’s done?’
Merewyn shouts, ‘He’s told us enough. He’s told us about all of you.’
‘And you believed him?’ asks Gytha. Now out of the shadows, she spits noisily on the ground at her feet. Dressed in tunic and trews, and with her hair cut so short she might easily be mistaken for a man, were it not for the shape of her face and the pitch of her voice.
Tova stares at her, half in wonderment and half in shock. When Guthred first mentioned Gytha, she couldn’t help but be intrigued. Now that she sees her with her own eyes, the feeling she has is closer to revulsion.
‘Whatever he told you, he was lying,’ Gytha goes on. She spits the words rather than speaks them. ‘His head is so full of shit he doesn’t even know what he’s saying. You can’t believe anything that comes out of his mouth. He’ll tell you one thing and then deny it a moment later. He’s nothing but a worm. A mawk, that’s what he is, a spineless, slimy, dirty, squirming—’
‘That’s enough, Gytha,’ Wulfnoth says. ‘And you can put your axe away, you there. The big fellow. Our business is with Guthred, not with you. If he gives himself up, then we’ll leave you alone. On that you have my word.’
‘Your word?’ Merewyn echoes. She sounds like she is about to laugh or cry, or maybe both at the same time.
Tova sees Gytha make a signal to the mute one with rapid flicks of her hands, tapping first the side of her head and then her chest. He nods, following her as she advances, still keeping to the riverbank but nearly at the water’s edge now. He isn’t as tall as the other men, but he has a blacksmith’s arms and a neck like a tree trunk.
Both Guthred and Merewyn edge away from them towards the middle of the stream. Winter shifts restlessly; Tova holds tightly to the reins. The animal knows that something isn’t right and she’s impatient to get going again.
Please, Tova prays. Don’t let there be bloodshed. There has to be some other way to settle things. A way that doesn’t need weapons.
‘What’s it going to be, Guthred?’ Wulfnoth calls. ‘Are you going to come willingly to your fate and save these good people, these new friends of yours, from any trouble? Or are we going to have to drag you?’
The priest stares back at him with empty eyes, his mouth agape.
‘If you want him,’ Beorn says, ‘then come and take him. But you’ll have to kill me first.’
No, no, no, no, thinks Tova. This isn’t the way. It can’t be. Don’t you see? Wulfnoth and his band will stop at nothing. They don’t care what they have to do to get what they want. That’s the kind of people they are.
That’s what she wants to say, but the breath catches in her chest and her tongue, like the rest of her, is frozen.
Wulfnoth exchanges a glance with the tall man next to him, then says loudly, ‘Put down your weapon and hand Guthred over to us. I won’t ask again.’
This time the edge in his voice is unmistakable.
This is it, Tova thinks. This is how it ends. This is how we die. At the hands not of the Normans but of wretched oath breakers and desperate outcasts. The dregs of mankind, the basest of all God’s creatures.
‘Beorn,’ says Guthred in a small voice. ‘Don’t do this. It’s all right. I know what I have to do.’
‘Stay exactly where you are,’ the warrior says. ‘Don’t move.’
Tova isn’t sure whether he’s talking to the priest, to her and Merewyn or to Wulfnoth, but she does as he says anyway, staying as close as she can to her lady. Here in the midstream the current runs quickly. Her dress is soaked to the knee; it clings to her ankles and her shins. She can’t feel her feet any more. Winter is growing ever more agitated; she struggles against the reins and tosses her head.
Wulfnoth takes another step forward, and Cuffa too. Into the shallows, where the water laps against the bank.
‘I’m warning you,’ Beorn says. ‘Any closer and—’