I don’t blame him, I really don’t. I don’t blame my mother either, before you start thinking otherwise. Not any longer, anyway. It hurt at the time, but I forgive her now. As I said, she only wanted what she thought was right and proper.
And I could have refused. It would have been easy. They couldn’t make me do anything against my will. But I didn’t want to make things harder than they already were or to be yet another burden on Eadmer, who had more important concerns than having to intervene in the squabble between myself and our mother, which only grew more bitter the longer it went on. I was tired too. I didn’t want to be arguing over my fate each and every day, and I didn’t want to keep on living there if it meant having to suffer her voice in my ear.
And the truth was I could have done worse than Skalpi. He was the man my mother found for me, a thegn and the son of a thegn. A warrior too, who’d led men in the two great battles at Fuleford and Stanford Brycg, when the other Harold came to these shores a few years ago, but of course you know all about that.
I was lucky, she kept telling me, because there weren’t many who wanted to marry a woman of nineteen whose best years were already behind her. The lord of Heldeby, he was a little older than me, or so I gathered, and had been married before. He wasn’t rich, although he did better than most. Better than us, at any rate. The bride price he’d offered was more than double what any other man had promised. From that alone I realised, even before I’d met him, that he could give me a life better than I’d find with anyone else. That was why my mother chose him over the others, and that was why, much to her surprise and her delight, after months of arguing and shouting and cursing, I gave in and agreed to marry him.
*
‘Wait,’ says Beorn. ‘Your husband’s name was Skalpi?’
‘That’s right,’ Merewyn replies. ‘Why?’
‘Skalpi Guthfrithsson?’
Her frown softens into surprise. ‘How did you—?’
‘It isn’t a common name, is it?’
‘You knew him?’
‘Knew him? Not exactly, although our paths did cross a handful of times when we were marching under Eadgar’s banner. Not a bad swordsman, I thought, the one time I saw him fight. Good with a spear and seax too. Quicker on his feet than you’d expect for someone his size, and his age. Always had a solemn look about him, I remember. He kept himself to himself.’
That sounds like Skalpi, thinks Tova.
‘Do you know what happened to him?’ Merewyn asks, her eyes wide.
‘As I said, I only met him a few times, and only in passing. The last time I saw him was at Eoferwic during the battle. After that, I don’t know.’
‘Oh.’
No sooner does hope begin to kindle in Merewyn’s eyes than it’s pinched out.
Oslac says to her, ‘I thought you were about to tell us that you’d poisoned your husband, or something like that.’
‘Skalpi? You thought I killed him?’
He shrugs. ‘It was a guess, that’s all.’
‘Well, you’re wrong.’
‘What, then?’
‘Let her speak, Oslac,’ says the priest. ‘That way you might find out.’ He gestures for Merewyn to continue.
*
Where was I? Oh, yes.
You’re all probably thinking that it was a bad match. That a marriage should never be made in haste or to please others. But I suppose I was relieved more than anything. Relieved to be leaving my mother’s house at last. I’d grown up there, and it was a place of happy memories, but there was sadness as well because I knew those times had now passed and wouldn’t be returning. As it was, I didn’t really understand what I’d committed myself to until it was too late.
A date was settled upon. We exchanged betrothal gifts with the messengers who came on Skalpi’s behalf. The bride price was paid. A contract was drawn up in which we declared what property we each would bring to the marriage and what rights we held over that property.