Seeing Merewyn’s face, Tova remembers where she is. All the courage she’d built up, all the hatred that was coursing through her only moments ago, drains away faster than she can blink.
She takes her lady’s hand, and they are running together through the shallows, away from the tumult, away from the noise, away from the screams, away from the killing. Scrambling on hands and knees up the bank, through the mud and the leaves and the darkness, into the trees. Fighting the undergrowth, the brambles and the ferns, the low-hanging branches. Stumbling, falling, rising, stumbling again. On, on, on. Her face and hands are scratched and her dress is full of holes where it has caught, and her cloak is torn, but none of that matters.
‘Keep going,’ Merewyn says, over and over. ‘Just keep running.’
Guthred and Beorn, Tova thinks. Oslac as well. We’ve left them all behind.
They plunge onward, the two of them, over fallen trunks, through muddy hollows, down into ditches and up the other sides, deeper and deeper and deeper into the woods, further and further from the river.
Eventually they collapse, breathless, the two of them huddled together, alone, behind the trunk of a broad-bellied oak. How long have they been running? Tova gasps for air. Her chest is aching. Her arms and legs are bruised. She’s sweating all over. Shivering.
If she holds her breath and keeps still she can make out shouting somewhere behind them. The sound of steel on steel rings out faintly, and she’s reminded, for no good reason she can work out, of the sound of the handbell with which Skalpi, when he was alive, used to summon everyone at Heldeby into the hall for the Christmas feast.
They say nothing at all, but sit in silence, backs pressed against the knotted bark, keeping as close as they can, trying not to move for fear that any sound might give them away. Tova can feel Merewyn shuddering; carefully she prises her lady’s sodden cloak from her shoulders, before taking off her own to wrap around her. Merewyn’s cheek is stone cold. Her hands too. Tova holds her close, trying to keep her warm. Sooner or later they’re going to have to move and find some place where she can dry off, before she catches a chill.
For now, though, they have to wait. She shuts her eyes tight and listens to the sound of her heart. Still racing. Thump, thump, thump, thump. Like the hammer at the smith’s anvil. There’s more shouting, but it’s far away now. The breeze stirs the undergrowth. When it dies down again there’s no sound of anyone.
‘I think they’ve gone,’ Tova whispers after a while longer.
Merewyn doesn’t say anything, just nods.
All the same they don’t move. Not yet. Not until they can be sure. What if the Normans come this way, or Wulfnoth?
No sooner has the thought crossed her mind than she hears a rustling in the undergrowth, close by, in the direction of the river. She tenses, holding her breath. She glances at her lady and they shrink back behind the tree. Is that them?
Stay still, she thinks. As long as they don’t make a sound, there’s no reason whoever it is should find them.
A voice calls out: ‘Tova! Merewyn! Guthred!’
It’s Oslac.
Should they shout back? What if the enemy are out there as well? What if they hear?
He calls again. There is a muffled sound like something suddenly hitting the ground. He curses loudly, then moments later calls again, only his voice is fainter this time. He’s moving away, Tova thinks.
‘We’re here,’ she calls as she gets to her feet, rubbing her arms against the chill of the night. ‘Oslac!’
‘Tova?’
‘Over here!’
‘Where?’
At last he finds them, emerging from the trees, covered in thorns and bits of leaves, with twigs sticking out of his hair.
‘Oh, thank God,’ he says when he sees them. ‘You’re all right. You’re all right.’
Tova throws her arms around him, surprising him, and herself. This was the man who, after all, deserted them only a few hours ago. She breaks away, feeling suddenly awkward. But he’s back with them now, and he still has the priest’s scrip.
‘Is Guthred with you?’ Merewyn asks.
‘I thought he was with you. He’s not here?’
‘No. We don’t know what happened to him.’
Oh, no, Tova thinks. She has a terrible feeling in her gut. ‘Do you think . . . ?’
‘I don’t know,’ Oslac says.
‘What about Beorn?’
‘The last I saw, he was still fighting, but they had him surrounded. Then they started after me, three of them. I had no choice but to run. I didn’t see any more than that. I think the Normans went back the other way; I didn’t hear them after that.’
Not Beorn as well. He can’t be dead. He can’t be.
‘He’ll be all right,’ Merewyn says, still shivering. She looks a sorry sight. ‘He’ll have managed, somehow. Won’t he? He’ll have got away. He must have.’
Oslac nods. ‘I hope so.’