And that’s how it started.
Afterwards, it didn’t even cross my mind to go home. I wanted to get as far away from there as I could, and to forget everything that had happened. That was my life for the next year: I’d travel from place to place, playing my harp and singing for a penny here, a warm bed or a hot meal and a flagon of mead there. I left Sumors?te and made my way to Lundene, and from there north into Mercia. Most of the time I travelled alone, although sometimes I would meet a monk or a pedlar or someone driving their livestock to market, and I would walk with them and listen to what they had to say.
As much as I wanted to, though, I couldn’t forget. Everywhere I went, I heard news of cattle thefts or church raids or burnings or roadside killings. Almost every alewife and dairymaid I spoke to had a story to tell of husbands and brothers and cousins who had gone away to join the wild men, whose numbers seemed to be swelling as the months passed.
No one, Norman or English, felt safe. And the less safe the foreigners felt, the less trusting they became of the common folk who worked on their lands. They levied ever higher rents, forcing them to work harder and for less reward. They meted out harsh penalties for the smallest crimes, whether it was stealing a cheese from a storehouse, or gathering more than your allowance of kindling from the woods. Any of the wild men they did manage to catch they disembowelled and strung up for all to see. They didn’t do such things because they were wicked or callous, though. They weren’t like that. Most of them, anyway. That’s what I came to realise.
No, it’s true. Do you think, deep down, they’re any different to us, really? They’re not fiends sent by the Devil to plague us. They’re not God’s instruments, harbingers of the end of days. They’re people, just like us.
*
‘I don’t have to listen to this,’ Beorn mutters.
‘Why not?’ Oslac says. ‘It’s true. Don’t you see? Every Frenchman ambushed on the road or murdered in his bed only gave them another reason to fear us. To be suspicious of us. To hate us. To punish us. All that bloodshed, and what did it achieve? Nothing, except to spread suffering and resentment. Why do you think this is happening right now? Why do you think their armies are ravaging the country? It’s revenge. If the rebellions hadn’t happened, if Eadgar had never raised his standard—’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘King Wilelm wouldn’t have marched all this way to lay waste this land, if you and everyone like you hadn’t carried on the war even though your cause was long lost. If you’d only stopped for a moment to see the hurt it was bringing—’
‘You’re wrong. We saw how the Normans were treating folk; that was why we fought in the first place. Were we supposed to just let that happen? Were we supposed to give up and let them take this kingdom without a struggle?’
‘They’re never going to be driven from this land. Things aren’t going to go back to the way they were before. Anyone who doesn’t realise that is deluding himself.’
Beorn makes a noise of disgust as he turns away.
‘As I saw it,’ Oslac continues, ‘there was only one way to avoid further misery, and that was to make our peace with the enemy. That’s why I did it. That’s why I went to them again, like I’d done that first time, except now it wasn’t about vengeance. It was about doing the right thing. I gave them information I’d learned on my travels and in return they gave me silver. I told them where the wild men were gathering, how many of them there were and how well they were armed. Sometimes I’d seek out the rebels myself, and join one of the small bands that hid in the fens or the forests or the moors. I’d live with them for a week or two or sometimes longer, gain their confidence until I discovered where they planned to attack next, and then one night I’d slip away and report what I knew, so that when the time came for them to carry out their plans they found the Normans waiting for them.’
‘You betrayed them?’ Tova asks.
‘Because I knew that things would only grow worse if I didn’t.’
*
And they did grow worse, anyway.
Time after time over the next year I went to the Normans to pass on what I’d managed to glean about the wild men and their movements. It was now two years since the invasion, and for a while it seemed that things were getting better: that the will to keep fighting was waning, that at last men were beginning to accept that things could not go back to being the way they were.