‘They were alone,’ Beorn says. ‘Up on the moors. No one to protect them. The enemy had found them and so I did what I had to do.’
‘Five of them, all by yourself?’
He doesn’t seem to hear, or else he doesn’t want to answer. Most men would relish the chance to brag about something like that. Orm certainly would, Tova thinks, had he ever managed such a feat. They’d never have heard the end of it.
Oslac flicks his gaze between Tova and Merewyn. ‘Why were you alone, anyway? What happened to everyone else where you came from? Was there no one else left after the Normans came?’
‘We were on pilgrimage,’ Tova says quickly, glancing at her lady. She’s been quietly rehearsing their story, ready for when it’s needed. ‘We were on our way to Dunholm. To see St Cuthbert’s relics. We didn’t know the Normans were marching. We didn’t know anything until they came upon us that evening. Until Beorn told us what was happening.’
Careful, she thinks. Don’t talk too much or too quickly, or they’ll be suspicious.
‘On pilgrimage alone?’ Oslac asks. ‘Wandering the moors in the middle of winter? Hadn’t you heard how dangerous it was?’
‘We’d heard rumours. But that was all. Nothing certain. We were lucky, I suppose. God was with us.’
She looks again towards Merewyn, whose eyes are cast down towards her lap as she wrings her hands.
Say something, Tova thinks desperately. I can’t be the one doing all the talking. If you don’t speak, they’re going to suspect something’s wrong. And then they’ll want to know.
Too late.
It’s the priest who notices first. ‘What’s going on? Why do you keep looking at her like that?’
Tova opens her mouth, then closes it again when she realises she doesn’t know how to answer.
‘What is it?’ Oslac asks. Those eyes again, hard like granite. ‘What aren’t you telling us?’
‘Nothing,’ Tova says, feigning indignation as best she can. ‘It’s just as I said. There’s nothing more to it.’
‘It’s all right, Tova,’ Merewyn says. ‘They might as well know.’
Oslac frowns. ‘Know what?’
She takes a deep breath and then says, ‘I too have a story to tell. Something I’m ashamed of. Something that, if I keep to myself any longer, will only eat away at me from the inside, as it has been for days already.’
She mustn’t, thinks Tova. She can’t. She won’t. Will she?
The look on the priest’s face is somewhere between puzzlement and concern. ‘Why? What did you do?’
She’s trembling, Tova sees. Actually trembling. Suddenly Merewyn seems much younger than her twenty years, like she was when she first came to Heldeby. No longer as innocent but still as vulnerable.
‘We’re not pilgrims,’ her lady says. ‘When Beorn found us that evening, we were fleeing. Not from the Normans, though. From something else. Like you, Father, I’ve sinned, and I’m sorry.’
‘Whatever it is,’ Guthred assures her, ‘you can tell us.’
Don’t do it, Tova implores her silently.
But the others are waiting. Expecting. She can hardly refuse.
Oslac mutters, ‘It must be something terrible.’
‘Hold your tongue or I’ll make sure you never speak again,’ Beorn says sharply.
‘I’ll tell you,’ Merewyn says. ‘On one condition. Don’t judge me. Not, at least, until I’ve finished. That’s all I ask. Can you promise me that?’
She’s going to do it. She’s going to tell them. When they hear what she’s done, God preserve us.
‘So,’ Merewyn says, with a deep sigh. ‘How much do you want to know?’
‘Everything,’ says Oslac. ‘You might as well. I don’t suppose we’re going any further tonight.’
‘Everything?’ she echoes. ‘I don’t know how to start. Or where.’
‘How about at the beginning?’ Guthred suggests gently. ‘That’s often a good place.’
Merewyn
From the beginning, then.
The best place to start, I suppose, is when I first came to Heldeby. That’s where we’re from, Tova and myself, not that you’re likely to have ever heard of it. Until that summer I hadn’t either. A modest manor on the northern slopes of a wide valley on the other side of the high moors, where the hills meet the river plain. A mile or so upstream from the fording place where the three streams come together. Nowhere especially rich, although it was prosperous enough as long as I lived there. It was home, odd though that seems when I think about it now, given that until about a year and a half ago I’d never even set eyes on it. But it’s true. Like a sapling torn from the earth where it sprouted, at first you yearn for what you know, what you can never go back to, but then you’re planted in new soil, given new skies under which to spread your limbs, and before you realise it you’ve taken root again and new shoots are beginning to emerge.
That’s how it was with me. I didn’t know then how it was all going to end.