Of home and kin, of mead cup and cheer.
O wretched fate that has brought him here.
That passed away. This also may.
Dark the night and cold the embers
In hardest winter that folk remember.
To hunger, sickness and frost no end;
They brought the death of many a good friend.
That passed away. This also may.
Eormenhild in years gone by
When ’twas foretold her man would die,
In vain entreated him to stay.
To fight he went—
‘That’s enough,’ Merewyn snaps in that sharp tone that Tova has heard many times. She raises her head and sits up abruptly. ‘I didn’t think it was possible to feel worse than I already did.’
Silence. Oslac’s fingers pause over the strings.
‘I didn’t know anyone was listening,’ he says. ‘I didn’t mean to offend.’
‘Well, we were and you did.’
‘It’s meant to be a song of hope, not sadness. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Hope?’
‘Even the deepest grief, the worst hardships, they all pass in time. No matter how terrible things seem, things always heal. What matters is that we stay strong and don’t give in to despair.’
Beorn snorts. ‘And what would you know of such things, whelp? You look barely weaned from your mother’s teat. What hardships have you known?’
‘I’ve seen my share. You think that just because I’m young that means I haven’t known difficult times? I know what it means to lose loved ones. But I also know that there will come a time when all suffering will end, and we’ll be reunited with them. That’s right, isn’t it, Father?’
Guthred glances up abruptly from the stew pot. ‘What?’
Oslac points at the gold cross at the old man’s breast. ‘You’re a priest, aren’t you?’
‘This?’ Guthred asks and looks away as if embarrassed. ‘Yes, well, I used to be. Now, I don’t know what I am, to tell the truth. I lost my way. Now I suppose I’m trying to find it again, in the hope that I might return to God’s favour.’
‘Why?’ Tova asks. ‘What happened?’
‘Oh, it’s not important. You wouldn’t be interested, anyway.’
‘I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t.’
Merewyn says, ‘When we found you, you were praying. You were begging God’s forgiveness.’
‘I was,’ says Guthred, taking a deep breath. ‘I’ve been doing a lot of that lately. Trying to make up for lost time, I suppose. Before it’s too late, you understand. I turned my back on him; I only hope that after all this time he hasn’t turned his back on me and that he’ll still listen to my prayers.’
‘Why wouldn’t he?’ Tova asks. ‘And what do you mean, before it’s too late?’
‘Too late for salvation. Don’t you see, child? All this suffering is God’s way of punishing us for our wickedness.’
From the shadows of the barn, Beorn gives a curt laugh.
‘You don’t believe me?’ Guthred asks. ‘After everything you must have seen, you don’t think this is God’s vengeance upon our people?’
The warrior steps forward. ‘And why doesn’t he punish the Normans? Don’t tell me you think they’re the instruments of God’s will, come to cleanse this land of our sins.’
‘Why else would he allow these things to happen? We have sinned, every single one of us. We refused to heed the warnings—’
‘What warnings?’
‘You remember, don’t you, the hairy star that appeared in the night sky four years ago? That was a sign. A sign from God.’
Tova remembers. ‘That’s what Thorvald said,’ she says eagerly. ‘Our priest. He said it was a sign too. We didn’t listen, though. We didn’t believe it. No one did.’
Thorvald claimed to have seen the same star the last time it had appeared in the sky, some seventy years and more before, when he had been but a boy. Then, he said, it had portended the coming of the heathens from across the sea to wreak fire and slaughter and ruin upon England.
It had happened then and so, he said, it would happen again.
‘No one believed it,’ Guthred says. ‘To tell the truth, I didn’t believe it either. Like other folk, I thought at the time it was foolish superstition. It was only later, much later, that I saw it for what it was. It was God’s last warning that we should change our ways. We didn’t heed it. Now we pay the price.’
Beorn spits upon the ground. ‘I don’t have to listen to this. Signs from God? Don’t be foolish. Yes, we’ve all done bad things in our time, every one of us. Things we’re not proud of, that we’d undo if we could. Things we’d rather forget. But that has nothing to do with what’s happening here. This isn’t God’s judgement upon us. This is war, nothing more than that. You just don’t know it because you’ve never witnessed it before.’
‘I wish I could believe that were true,’ Guthred says sadly.