*
After the last couple of nights Tova hoped sleep would come easily. It must be hours since the priest finished his tale; the others are all soundly slumbering but still she can’t settle. She lies under her blankets, eyes tight shut, but it’s no use. All that talk of sin and repentance, she can’t shake it from her head.
Will God forgive her for the things she has done in her life? Will he forgive Merewyn for hers?
And what if Guthred is right? What if everything that’s happening is God’s punishment for the evils of this land and its people? If that’s his will, what’s the point in trying to flee? How long will it be before fate catches up with them?
Her mind is too filled with thoughts. She needs to clear it if she’s to get any rest tonight. Often when she found it hard to sleep in those months after her mother died, Gunnhild would take her out to show her the stars and point out to her the different patterns that they made – of beasts and heroes from long ago that she’d only heard of in songs – and she would tell Tova stories about each of them, some that she’d learned herself as a child and others that she made up especially that night.
That’s what she needs, she decides. She shrugs off the blankets and rises, bracing herself for the cold. Then, taking care to tread lightly so as not to wake the others, she makes for the door, opens it and steps out.
She’s not alone. Guthred sits in front of the fire, or what’s left of it, blowing gently on the ashes in an effort to coax some life back into them. The last person she wanted to talk to. She wants comfort, not to be swallowed up in his self-pity.
He looks up as she approaches, the soft glow of the low flames lighting up one side of his face while making a shadow of the other.
‘You couldn’t sleep either, I suppose,’ he says and attempts a smile, but it’s a sad smile.
‘I didn’t realise anyone else was still awake.’
‘Come, child.’ He places his hand on the ground next to him. ‘I’d appreciate the company.’
She hesitates, but she doesn’t want to offend him and so she sits, though keeping her distance. She knows in her heart that Merewyn was speaking good sense when she said earlier they all have to trust one another, but she isn’t sure that she can. Not yet.
He pokes at the ashes with a piece of twig, then tosses it on top of the pile and watches closely, eyes glazed, as it catches fire. It’s not conversation that he’s after. Maybe, like her, he just doesn’t want to feel alone.
‘Do you really believe what you said earlier?’ she asks. ‘About this being God’s vengeance upon us?’
‘Yes, I do. That and more.’
‘More?’
‘The signs are clear enough. To me they are, anyway, if to no one else.’
‘What signs?’
He clears his throat. ‘“And I looked, and there before me was a white horse. And its rider held a bow, and a crown was given to him. And he rode out as a conqueror, bent on annihilation.”’
Tova shakes her head. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘It’s coming to pass, child, just as it has been written. The world is hastening towards its end, and very soon it may be no more. I fear that we’re living through the last days.’
She feels the hairs on her arms stand on end as a chill creeps across her skin. ‘The end of the world?’
She almost can’t get the words out. This is exactly why she didn’t want to speak to him. He is too full of woe, of darkness and gloom. He is supposed to be a beacon of light, a bearer of good tidings, telling of God’s grace and promising a better life to come. Instead he is everything but.
‘I remember one of the texts we had to learn as students,’ he says. ‘It was a sermon Bishop Leofgar had heard preached by his superior, the archbishop of Eoferwic, some time around the year I was born, I think, when this land was being overrun by the heathens. He had a copy of the sermon sent to him. We were made to recite it from memory. Even now I can recall it word for word; that’s how deeply it’s etched in my mind. The archbishop wrote of the failings of the English people; he castigated them for the many injustices that prevailed across the kingdom, for allowing laws to be flouted without regard and evils to go unpunished, for the bad faith that existed between kinsmen, for the feuding and betrayals, for the kinslaying and breaking of oaths, for the ill treatment of the Church and of God’s servants. He warned that things would only worsen in time, and that it wouldn’t be long before the coming of the Antichrist.’