‘Mostly she’s just been sleeping. I tried to get her to sit up, the last time she woke, but she was too tired. She keeps coughing and sneezing. I don’t know what more to do for her.’
For a long while they listen to the sound of her breathing. In, out. In, out.
‘Was Oslac telling the truth about Hagustaldesham, do you think?’ Tova asks him eventually. ‘When he said that the Normans had been and—’
‘No. It was just another of his lies. He only said it to spite me, and to try to confuse us.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Because.’
‘Because what?’
‘Just because.’
‘What about Earl Gospatric? He seemed sure about him.’
Beorn takes a clutch of sticks and arranges them on the fire. ‘Gospatric,’ he mutters, shaking his head. ‘He deserved better allies than us.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Without him the rebellion would never have happened. It would have failed before it had even started. He raised our spirits. He made us believe. When the rest of us let despair get the better of us, he berated us all for our weak stomachs. He told us we should be ashamed to call ourselves Englishmen.’
‘Not you, surely?’ Tova asks. ‘I thought you said you were one of his strongest supporters.’
Beorn cups his hands and blows through them, coaxing the flames higher. ‘I told you before that the rebellion was finished by a rumour. That when Eadgar heard the Normans were only a few hours away and coming for him, he panicked and took flight. But that isn’t the whole story.’
He carries on building the fire up with pieces of dead bracken. Tova senses there’s more to come, but she knows better than to rush him, and so she sits patiently until she can feel a flicker of heat upon her cheeks. When at last it’s burning steadily, he sits down next to her.
She hasn’t been this close to him before. So close she can smell the sweat upon his skin, sharp and warm, mixed with blood and grime – weeks of it. How did she never notice before? Then she supposes that after so many days without washing, she must reek too.
To think that he used to be a thegn, like Skalpi, with land and a hall and a ship and a wife, fine clothes and food and mead. And now here he is.
‘Soon after word came,’ he explains in a low voice so as not to wake Merewyn, ‘we were called to the ?theling’s tent to offer him our counsel. All his leading nobles were there: Earl Gospatric, his cousin Waltheof, Siward, M?rleswein. Many others whose names I don’t remember. And then there was me. Compared with them, I was no one: a thegn of low birth who’d earned his rank not by blood right but through hard toil. Maybe my reputation went before me. I don’t know. Certainly I’d never gone bragging about the number of foemen I’d killed. I wasn’t interested in anyone’s praise. But I did have their respect.’
‘You never mentioned that you were known to Eadgar.’
‘That’s because I wasn’t. Not really.’
‘But you were a part of his council of war.’
‘It was Gospatric who wanted me there, as an example to the rest, I think. I’d stood in the front rank of the shield wall and rallied our spearmen and withstood the enemy’s swords. Most of the others hadn’t, at least not without their hearth warriors to protect them. Yes, they’d fought, but I alone had the scars to prove it. Now, will you let me speak and stop interrupting me, girl?’
‘I told you to stop calling me that.’
‘When the news came,’ he says, going on as if he hasn’t heard, ‘Gospatric was all for standing our ground and meeting the enemy in battle. He said this was the moment we’d been waiting for. The moment of fate. Shouting him down were his cousin Waltheof and others, who tried to persuade Eadgar that we should flee, saying that if the enemy captured him they’d have his head. The ?theling’s face was ashen. The boy feared for his life, and who could blame him? He was only seventeen years old. He knew little of war. Eventually he turned to me. It was the first time he’d ever spoken to me directly. Eadgar looked straight at me and asked me whether or not, if it came to a battle with King Wilelm and his army, I believed that we could win.’
‘And what did you tell him?’
‘Until I opened my mouth I thought I knew exactly what I’d say. That Gospatric was right. That we should go out and fight, and if our fate was to fall in the fray then at least we would have gone to our deaths with pride. But then I met Eadgar’s gaze and saw how frightened and desperate the boy was. And something changed.’
‘What?’
‘As I stood there with all those people looking at me, I realised that I didn’t want to risk my life for them any longer. I couldn’t do it. I didn’t believe any more. In the war and our cause, yes. Not in that bickering band of nobles. Even less in the boy they wanted to make their king. I didn’t want to fight for them, and I didn’t want to die for them. It was as simple as that: I didn’t want to die.’
His voice is almost a whisper. His head is bowed; his hair hangs like a curtain across his face.