The poet looks askance at her, as if she might be joking but he isn’t sure. ‘Five men? By himself?’
There’s something about those eyes she doesn’t like, she decides. Those grey, changeable eyes. How they can darken like thunderclouds just like that: one moment patient, respectful, friendly; the next guarded and accusing.
She nods. ‘By himself.’
Oslac turns to Merewyn. ‘Is this true?’
So he won’t believe her, but he’ll believe Merewyn? She might be young but she’s not stupid. She knows what she saw. She was there, wasn’t she?
Merewyn says, ‘It’s true. All five of them. One after another. It all happened so quickly. There was no stopping him. There was just anger, raw hatred. It all came out, all at once, and at the end of it they were all dead. You wouldn’t believe it unless you saw it.’
That isn’t quite how Tova remembers it. She doesn’t recall hatred; what comes to mind is the calmness with which, one by one, he sent them to their deaths.
‘We were looking for somewhere to spend the night when they came upon us,’ Merewyn goes on. ‘That’s when he appeared. If he hadn’t— Well, I don’t want to even think about it.’
‘He appeared, just like that? Where did he come from?’
‘He hasn’t said. He’s hardly told us anything besides his name.’
‘Peace, Oslac,’ Guthred says. ‘Why all these questions? If you want to know, surely he’ll tell you himself. Ask him when he comes back, if it’s so important.’
He won’t, though, Tova thinks. That’s why he’s asking the two of them instead. He doesn’t want to talk to Beorn. He fears him.
Oslac promptly shuts up and they pass the rest of their meal in silence. He’s in a dark mood today, for no good reason that she can work out. Is he still angry after what Beorn said to him earlier?
The priest, too, doesn’t seem the same man, somehow, as the one she was speaking with last night. Until now he has hardly said a word all morning, but his silence seems more contemplative than brooding. Certainly he doesn’t have the same hunched look about him; he walks taller, sits straighter in the saddle. In the light of day he no longer looks as world-weary, or as old. Relieved of the load that was weighing him down, now that he’s shared his burden. Maybe that’s what it is.
Beorn returns not long afterwards. He followed the path for another half-mile, he says, and found the river, but it’s broken its banks, swollen by the recent rains, so they’ll have to go upstream in search of a better crossing place.
‘How much further, do you think?’ Tova asks him.
‘It could be as little as another hour, or we might not find one until tomorrow. We won’t know until we get there, so let’s not stand here talking.’
*
‘What about you?’ Tova asks Oslac a little later, while they wait for the priest, who’s busy relieving himself behind a thorn hedge. ‘You aren’t from these parts, are you?’
He smiles. ‘My voice gives me away, doesn’t it?’ he asks. ‘No, you’re right. I’m not. I grew up in a place far from here. A long way to the south, in Wessex. The shire of Sumors?te, not that you’re likely to have heard of it.’
Tova shakes her head. She probably has at some time, and has simply forgotten. There are so many shires that make up England; she could never remember all of them, especially since their names mean nothing to her. Sumors?te might as well lie in another kingdom entirely, for all that she knows about it.
‘I have,’ Merewyn says. ‘That’s where King ?lfred took refuge from the heathens. When they were overrunning the land. Years ago, I mean. My tutor, Leofa, once taught me about how he fled to the marshes where they couldn’t come at him, then sent out secret messages to his allies, urging them to rally to his banner when he marched again.’
Oslac says, ‘So I’ve heard.’
‘Where in Sumors?te?’ Beorn asks abruptly.
‘A place called Suthperetune. I don’t suppose you know of it.’
‘Why did you leave?’ Tova asks. She isn’t interested in hearing about kings from far away and long ago; she wants to know about him. ‘What brings you here?’
‘Our home, the manor where I grew up, was burned one night,’ Oslac says with a sigh. ‘My father was killed. He taught me most of the songs I carry in my head. It had been just the two of us. My sister was dead, as I told you. My mother too. After he was gone, well, there was nothing left for me there. I decided instead to make of myself what I could, on my own. And that’s what I’ve been doing these past couple of years: wandering the kingdom, only I’ve had to keep travelling ahead of the foreigners as they’ve moved ever northwards, seizing the land. They have their own storytellers, you see. Their own verses. They don’t want to hear mine. So that’s why you find me here, north of the Humbre.’