She wants to stop, she really does, but she can’t tear her eyes away.
The rest of the Normans, they’re fanning out, riding after the Englishman’s three companions. The first is cut down from behind. The second hears them coming, turns and draws his sword. Too late. A spear finds the middle of his chest and he goes down.
The third hears their screams and glances over his shoulder. He knows what’s about to happen. He stops; he turns to face them, sinking to his knees. He lifts his eyes to the heavens and moves his hand rapidly across his chest. Crossing himself, Tova realises.
No sooner has he finished than they’re on him. One blow is all it takes.
A flash of steel. A shower of blood. His face a crimson mess.
‘Oh God,’ Tova says. She wants to be sick. She feels it welling up inside, burning her throat.
A whoop of joy. Laughter. A cry goes up in their barbarous tongue. She looks up, sees one of them holding something aloft. It doesn’t take her long to work out what it is. Severed, dripping, smeared red.
A head.
Holding it by its long hair, the Norman whirls it about him and, letting out a roar, tosses it far into the field, where it rolls and settles in a furrow.
‘Stay down,’ Beorn hisses. ‘Stay down and keep quiet.’
She feels dizzy. It’s going to come. She knows it.
He pulls her back down behind the bramble bush. ‘It’s all right. Look at me. You’re all right. Deep breaths now.’
She realises she’s been holding her breath. She takes a gulp of the cold air. The queasiness subsides.
More whooping, more laughter, but steadily receding. Heading back the way they came, she thinks. Along the droveway, towards the east.
‘That could have been us,’ she says when at last she can speak again. ‘If they’d spotted us, if they’d come this way . . .’
‘I know.’
‘They were right there!’
‘I know.’
Her heart hammering, not quite daring to believe how close they came, she closes her eyes. The laughter and the shouting grow ever quieter. Then, after a while, nothing but the wind. The creaking of branches.
The long quiet.
*
‘I want you to teach me,’ Tova says to Beorn that evening when the two of them are out gathering wood.
They’ve made their camp at the bottom of a narrow dell, far enough away from the track that their fire shouldn’t be seen and their voices are unlikely to be heard. The cold has settled in the shadow of the hill, but the light hasn’t gone yet.
‘Teach you what?’
‘How to fight.’
He laughs. ‘You?’
‘Why not?’
She’s been thinking about it ever since this afternoon. Every time there’s danger, she feels so helpless. Hiding, fleeing: it’s all they seem to do, and she’s tired of it.
Beorn looks askance at her, then bends down to pick up a fallen branch, which he snaps in two across his thigh.
‘Think about it,’ she says. ‘What if the enemy come and you’re not here?’
‘Then you run.’
‘What if we can’t run? What if they have horses, or if they just have longer legs than us? We won’t have any choice then, will we?’
‘Don’t try to face a man on horseback. Not until you’ve had years of practice.’
‘You don’t believe women should fight, do you?’
‘I believe that, if you draw a weapon in anger, then you have to be ready to die.’
‘I know that. I’m not stupid.’
He stops, turns to her, looks her up and down. She holds her head high, folds her arms, meets his stare. He has to know that she means what she says.
‘All right,’ he says, with a smile so slight and fleeting that she isn’t sure if she imagined it. ‘I’ll teach you.’
*
When they return to camp they set down the firewood they’ve gathered. Straight away Beorn marks out a wide circle with stones and some of the larger branches.
Oslac asks, ‘What’s that for?’
Beorn tells him he’ll see soon enough. He lays down his bow and his axe outside the ring, and a leather scabbard hanging at his side that looks like it belongs to a seax or a short sword.
‘Priest,’ he says. ‘I need to borrow your knife.’
Guthred looks puzzled. ‘My knife?’
‘Only for a short while. I’ll give it back, you have my word.’
The priest hesitates but draws it and hands it to the warrior, who marches into the middle of the circle. He beckons Tova towards him. Nervous but at the same time excited, she steps forward.
‘What’s going on?’ her lady asks. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m showing her how she can defend herself,’ Beorn says. ‘I’ll show you too, if you want.’
She doesn’t, Tova thinks. Not after what happened the other night. No doubt Merewyn would be happy if she never had to see another blade in her life.
‘Well?’ Beorn asks her, when she doesn’t answer.
Merewyn looks suddenly very pale, but no one else seems to notice, so maybe it’s just Tova’s imagination.
‘It’s your choice,’ Beorn tells her. ‘It makes no difference to me.’