‘Enough,’ Beorn says and kicks Oslac again. ‘Tell yourself such things if you have to, if they help you feel better about what you’ve done. But don’t poison their minds with this filth.’
‘It hurts to see yourself as others see you, doesn’t it?’
‘You’re nothing but a craven. You hide behind your lies because you can’t accept the truth.’
‘You’re the one who won’t accept the truth. You refuse to see that everything you’ve fought for has been for nothing.’
‘It hasn’t been for nothing. And it’s not over. Not until every Englishman thinks like you. Not while there are still people like me willing to defend what’s ours and to make a stand for what’s right.’
‘There is no one else. Don’t you understand? They’re dead. All of them.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘There aren’t any others. You’re the only one left still fighting. No one else. The rest of the rebels are all dead. Hagustaldesham is no more. They burned it, killed everyone, destroyed everything.’
Tova feels as though all the air has been knocked out of her. She can’t breathe. Her stomach lurches. The darkness is about to swallow her.
No.
Beorn crouches beside Oslac, seizing him by the collar. ‘What?’
Oslac spits in Beorn’s face. At once the warrior’s blade is back in his hand, at the poet’s throat again.
‘Speak, you worthless turd, or I’ll cut you apart, piece by little piece.’
But this time Oslac doesn’t flinch. No fear shows in his eyes as he stares back at the warrior.
‘The Normans have already been there,’ he says. ‘King Wilelm himself went and he crushed the rebels, the few hundred of them that were left, the ones who hadn’t already fled. There was a battle, but it didn’t last long. There’s nothing left now. They slew everyone they could find, destroyed the rebel camp, sacked the town and then razed it to the ground.’
‘Who told you this?’
‘Who do you think?’
But if Hagustaldesham is no more, Tova thinks, if the rebels have been destroyed, where else can they go? What are they supposed to do now?
She asks weakly, ‘When did this happen?’
‘Two days ago. So they said – the ones I was with. Some of them were there. They told me how they fell upon the town, surrounded the rebels and cut them down. Like pigs to the slaughter, they told me. Pigs in mail shirts, running and crashing about, squealing in panic—’
‘What about Gospatric?’ Beorn asks, cutting him off. ‘What happened to him?’
‘Gospatric? He surrendered to the king more than a week ago. Not in person. By way of messengers. He fled as soon as he heard the king was on his way to Hagustaldesham – slunk away in the dead of night, back to his stronghold in the distant north, leaving the rest to face the Normans by themselves.’
‘He’d never do that. He’d rather die than bend his knee to the foreigners.’
‘He saw what was about to happen. He did the sensible thing. The only thing.’
More than a week ago, Tova thinks. Before they ever left Heldeby. Before all of this.
‘Did you know?’ she asks. ‘When we first met you, did you know then that Gospatric had already surrendered?’
Of course he did. Even then, on that very first night when they were all together, the five of them gathered in that barn, he was arguing against going to Hagustaldesham. She remembers.
‘You did, didn’t you?’
Oslac doesn’t reply, but he doesn’t have to. His silence says everything.
He knew. He’d already heard, or guessed, that the Normans were marching north to finish off the remnants of the rebellion. All the time he was travelling with them, he knew it was a lost cause. He knew they’d never reach Hagustaldesham before the enemy. He knew that Beorn was only leading them into ever greater danger.
He could have warned them, but he didn’t. He chose not to. Right from the very beginning he was deceiving them.
‘Why didn’t you tell us?’ she asks, but she knows the answer. He was interested only in Beorn. In Cynehelm. He never really cared about the rest of them.
‘You realise, don’t you,’ says Merewyn quietly, huddled in her two borrowed cloaks, ‘that if you’d just told us the truth from the start, then Guthred would still be alive?’
‘I never meant him to die,’ Oslac insists.
‘But he did die,’ Beorn says as he yanks the other man’s collar, pulling him forward and forcing him on to his hands and knees.
The poet is whimpering like a wounded hound.
‘He did die,’ Beorn says again. ‘As did all those others you sold to the Normans. All for a few miserable pieces of silver. How many Englishmen went to their deaths because of the things you did? Do you grieve for them too?’
‘I did what I had to do.’
Beorn stands behind Oslac. He glances questioningly towards Merewyn. She nods slowly but deliberately.
His eyes meet Tova’s. Her throat is dry and she swallows. She knows she has to decide. She doesn’t want to. But she has to. All of them, together. That was what they agreed.
And she will be complicit. She will become like them.