Forgive me, Ase, Gunnhild, both of you, she pleads silently. Wherever you are, forgive me.
‘You let us think it was her,’ Merewyn says. ‘You knew it was wrong and yet you said nothing.’
‘I was frightened!’
Merewyn shakes her head as if she cannot quite bring herself to believe it. ‘I begged Skalpi to be merciful, begged him not to be too hard on her. God be thanked he listened to me, but he didn’t have to. If he’d wanted he could have had Gunnhild hanged. Would you have kept silent then, knowing she was paying with her life for something you’d done?’
‘I–I don’t know,’ Tova says. She really doesn’t. She thinks she would, but she isn’t sure.
‘Why are you telling me this now, anyway?’
‘Because . . .’ says Tova, but the rest of the words stick in her throat and she can’t get them out. She can’t make herself say it.
Remember what Beorn promised, she thinks. He hasn’t let you down yet and he won’t let you down now. She must believe it. She must.
‘Because it might be the last chance I get,’ she says. ‘If I didn’t tell you now, it might be too late. And I didn’t want to die without telling someone.’
‘Don’t talk like that,’ Merewyn snaps, but Tova notices the tremor in her voice as she says it.
‘There’s another reason. Before he went, Beorn said these things to me. He told me to keep the fire burning and that I should never give up hope, no matter what happened. He kept saying it, and then he told me I was a good person. That’s what he believed. But it isn’t true. It isn’t true at all. I’m a thief and a liar, just like Guthred. I’m no better than anyone else.’
It’s a long time before Merewyn says anything. ‘What you did, you did out of desperation. There’s no shame in that.’
‘But Gunnhild, she was like a mother to me. And Ase, she was my best friend.’
‘Did they hate it as much as you did?’
Tova nods.
‘Maybe, then, it was a good thing you did for them.’
‘How could it be a good thing?’
‘Well, they could have ended up somewhere better than Heldeby. Somewhere without an ?lfric always watching them. Somewhere with fresh straw and blankets to sleep on, and clothes that weren’t falling apart. Somewhere safe from the Normans. From all this. Who knows? They might even have earned their freedom by now.’
She’s trying to make Tova feel better, but it’s not working. ‘You don’t know that.’
‘It’s possible, though, isn’t it?’
‘I suppose.’
‘We can’t change the things we’ve done. We can’t make them right, not completely. But you’ll get the chance to see Ase and Gunnhild again. Perhaps not in this life, that’s all. In the next. You’ll be able to tell them then. You’ll be able to say sorry for everything. And they’ll understand.’
‘Do you really believe that?’
Merewyn hesitates before, in a small voice, she says, ‘I have to. The thought that this world is all there is . . . Well, there has to be something more, hasn’t there? A place where there’s no pain, no hunger, no bloodshed. A place without evil.’
Tova has seen and heard enough evil, enough pain, in this past week to last her the rest of her life, even if she were to live to Thorvald’s age. No matter what happens after this is over, she thinks, it’ll seem like paradise.
Her lady is shivering again as she leans towards Tova. ‘I hope Beorn comes back soon.’
‘So do I,’ Tova says, but she cannot keep the doubt from her mind. It throbs away inside her. Like a headache she can’t ignore.
What if the flurries turn heavier and he loses his way in the storm and cannot find his way? What if, in the gloom, he falls down a ravine that he doesn’t see until it’s too late? What if he can’t find help and keeps on wandering, more and more desperate, until the freezing night or hunger or his injured leg brings him down? What if he runs into another band of Normans? How well will he be able to fight? How well will he be able to run?
What if he’s already dead?
They would never know.
They could be sitting here, waiting for days, and not have any idea. At some point they’d have to accept he wasn’t coming back, but when? How long can they make the firewood last? How long before the snow relents?
She asks, ‘What if he doesn’t?’
Merewyn’s reply, when it comes, is drowsy. ‘Doesn’t what?’
‘Come back.’
‘He said he would, didn’t he? And so he will. He hasn’t broken a promise to us yet. He won’t now.’
‘But if he doesn’t?’
The question hangs between them, unanswered.