‘No,’ she says. ‘We never did. Because the truth is we were never alone.’
And they sit in silence and listen, never taking their eyes off her. They hand her a bowl of thick, steaming broth, and she sips it and tells them everything, from beginning to end, or as much of it as she can remember. She leaves out certain parts: some of the things she isn’t proud of, as well as those she knows Merewyn would rather she didn’t reveal. She talks about Beorn and how he saved them from the Normans, and about Guthred and Oslac as well, though only as fellow travellers whom they happened to meet and who guided and helped them and who fell along the way. Of their misdeeds and secret shames, she says nothing. These people don’t need to know those things, and, besides, what does any of it matter now? Ashes on the wind. That’s all it is.
After she’s finished, the grown-ups disappear off to their own fires and their tents, leaving just the children, a dozen of them, clustered around her. Maybe their fathers and mothers are elsewhere, or maybe they have no families to return to. They’ve noticed the scabbard belted to her waist, the one containing Beorn’s seax. One of them, a girl of ten, maybe eleven, with a round face and cheeks flushed pink and brightly painted wooden beads on a cord around her neck, asks nervously why she carries a weapon like that. Did she steal it? Who from?
‘I didn’t steal it,’ Tova says. ‘It was a gift.’
She draws it from its sheath and shows it to them, turning it over slowly so that it gleams in the firelight. They marvel at the coils and whorls and waves in the steel. Like smoke, says one boy. Like dragon’s breath, says another.
The pink-cheeked girl asks, ‘Did you fight the Normans? Did you kill any of them?’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ one of the older boys sneers. ‘Girls can’t fight.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because they can’t. Everyone knows.’
She turns to Tova and asks, ‘Girls can fight, can’t they?’
‘Listen,’ Tova says. ‘There’s nothing glorious about fighting, about war. It isn’t anything like you think. It isn’t like in the poems. It’s what you do when you don’t have any other choice. That’s all. You do it because you know that if you don’t, people you care about will get hurt.’
The same boy asks, ‘What about the warrior, the one named Beorn? The one you said killed five Normans all by himself. I want to hear more about him.’
Yes, the others clamour all at once. Tell us more about the warrior.
‘But there’s nothing more to say.’
They all groan at once. The disappointment on their faces. Go on, they plead with her. Tell us about him.
Tova sighs, exasperated. Have they been paying any attention at all?
‘No,’ she says firmly. ‘I’m not going to tell you about him. But if you’re quiet, I’ll tell you another story.’
*
Once, she says, not so long ago, not so very far from here, there was a green land, a peaceable land, where the barley grew tall and strong, and the wide meadows were bright with knapweed and cowslips and forget-me-nots.
Then, you could wander the woods in search of blackberries without worrying about reavers lurking amid the hazel and the hawthorn. Afterwards you could go down to the beck and sit under the alders and dip your toes in the clear water while you watched for trout and grayling. If you were lucky, you might catch a flash of blue as a kingfisher darted between the weir and the reeds.
And people travelled the roads without fear, and lords and reeves never asked for more than was their due, and rumours of far-off wars were no more than that. Folk toiled and some prospered while others struggled, but that was the way of the world, and we always tried to help one another whenever we could. Yes, sometimes there was hardship and sometimes there was hunger, but rarely was there famine. And, yes, there could be discord and strife, but hardly ever did it spill over into bloodshed. Pleas were heard in the proper manner; justice was dealt, and usually it was regarded as fair, and never were the punishments harsher than they needed to be.