And so, on a bright July morning – the feast of St Swithun it was – he came to our manor with his retinue. I was standing in the yard, watching the track that led down from the wolds, while around me preparations were being made for the feast. A long table had been carried out from the hall, and benches and stools set around it and two great carved wooden chairs like thrones placed in the middle, and there were ale cups and wooden bowls and clay pitchers and ewers filled with water, and a canopy was being erected over everything so that we’d be protected from the sun. Close by, stones had been laid to make a hearth, with a spit suspended over it. Elsewhere, a wide ring had been marked out with wooden stakes where later there would be games. Streamers of cloth in red and green and ivory-white were nailed to fence posts; from all the cottages and barns and workshops hung bright banners and bunches of foxgloves and poppies and forget-me-nots and other field flowers. Skylarks warbled somewhere in the blue above and a gentle breeze played across the meadows where the sheep grazed, making waves in the tall grass.
I spied the first of them coming, a column of mounted figures with a cloud of dust rising at their rear, and a banner unfurled and fluttering in the breeze. I leaped up and cried out, and that was when my mother called me inside. It wasn’t right, she said, that a man should see his bride before the ceremony, for it would only bring misfortune. And so while Eadmer and Thurkil the reeve and Father Leofa, my tutor whom I’d invited to give holy blessing to our union, rode out to greet Skalpi and his retinue, my mother went with me to my chambers to help me get ready. As she combed out my hair and fretted over the tangles I kept being distracted by the sounds of conversation in the yard outside. I was trying to guess which of the voices belonged to my husband-to-be, but they were too far away for me to make much out, and my mother kept fussing and eventually I gave up as they moved away.
I couldn’t stop pacing, I was so restless. My mother was explaining what I should do at each part of the proceedings, as if she hadn’t told me a dozen times already. She kept giving me instructions as to how I should carry myself as I entered the hall – how I shouldn’t look up but should instead concentrate on my feet and make sure that I took only small, careful steps, because that way I wouldn’t trip over the hem of my dress, and because men expected their brides to appear timid, not bold. She kept on asking if I was listening to her at all, and I said half-truthfully that I was. Those are just the things I remember; there was more but I was too nervous to take it all in.
It felt like hours later when Eadmer came knocking on the door of my chamber, saying that everything was ready, and that it was time. I made my way across the yard to the long mead hall, where the ceremony was to take place. It was only then, standing before its great oak doors, waiting for them to open, dressed in my finest gown of yellow wool, which my mother had ordered sewn for me especially for the day, with my hair uncovered and falling loose over my shoulders, and a crown of buttercups resting upon my head, with Eadmer and my mother beside me, that I realised this was truly happening. All the worries I’d been trying to quell over the last few days and weeks burst out from the place inside where I’d kept them bound up.
What if I didn’t like him? What if he didn’t like me, or if he thought me too plump or too slender? What if he preferred a woman who was dark-haired rather than fair? What if I couldn’t please him in the ways he was used to, in the ways his first wife had done? I didn’t know much about that sort of thing; I knew only what everyone knew, and of course my mother had told me what to expect, but being told isn’t the same as doing it yourself.
And then I thought just how little I knew about him, apart from his name. I had no idea what he looked like, or whether he was fierce or kind, cultured or boorish.
Whether it was because of all those thoughts running through my head all at once or because of the heat of the morning, I’m not sure, and probably it was both, but suddenly it felt as though my throat was narrowing, for I couldn’t breathe, and my cheeks were burning and my eyes too, and my head felt light, and my heart was beating like this, this, this, this, and my knees were weak and I couldn’t feel my feet.
Eadmer thumped his fist upon the oak, and a moment later there was a creak and the doors began to part, like the jaws of some monstrous creature opening up to swallow me. This was it, I thought.
Inside it was so dark, or at least it seemed that way because the day was so bright. All was silent. Men and women and children were gathered on either side of the hall, awaiting my entrance, forming a path from the doorway to the dais at the far end, where, surrounded by candles, stood my husband-to-be.
Skalpi Guthfrithsson.
And I took one look at him and burst into tears.
*
‘Why?’ asks Guthred.
‘Because she was happy, you fool,’ says Oslac.
Merewyn shakes her head.
‘He was ugly, then?’ the poet asks. ‘Missing half his face? Did he have a battle scar?’
‘It wasn’t anything like that. It’s just that no one had told me. I suppose it’s my own fault. I never thought to ask. I simply assumed. Remember this was the first time I’d ever met him.’
‘I don’t understand that,’ Beorn says. ‘How can you decide to marry someone without even knowing what he looks like?’
‘I didn’t think it was unusual,’ Merewyn replies. ‘No one did. Maybe it’s different where you come from.’