‘But then how could you know that you wanted to marry him? And how could he know that he wanted to marry you?’
‘For all the reasons I’ve just told you. I never for a moment thought when I was growing up that my marriage, whenever it happened, would have anything to do with love. As far as I and Eadmer and our mother were concerned, this was a contract between Skalpi and our family, nothing more than that. This was about land and wealth and rank. If friendship or love blossomed, then so much the better, but also I knew that it would be wrong to hold out too much hope.’
‘And did you love him?’ the priest asks.
She reddens. ‘I don’t know. Maybe. I think so. Not straight away, though. Only later, when I came to know him better. Even then it was a different love to the kind I hoped for.’
Guthred frowns. ‘How do you mean?’
‘Maybe if you all stop asking her these questions and give her a chance to speak, she’ll be able to tell you,’ Tova snaps.
They all turn to look at her, as surprised as she is by her forcefulness. She feels her cheeks growing hot and hopes that it doesn’t show.
‘Besides,’ Tova says, more softly now that she has their attention, ‘if you carry on, you’ll only spoil the story. Do you want that?’
No one says anything. Maybe she’s stunned them all into silence. After a moment, Merewyn takes a deep breath and begins again.
*
I don’t know what I was expecting. Should I have tried to find out more about him beforehand? Should I have paid more attention to the things they were telling me and the things they weren’t? Probably. The truth is that, for all that my mother and I had argued, I still trusted her to do her best for me. Maybe that’s what she thought she was doing.
At the time, though, it didn’t seem that way. At the time, I felt tricked. Betrayed. Because the man standing before me looked older than my father.
His hair, which was tied back with a leather thong, was grey and turning white, as were his beard and his moustache. His face was creased and cracked like old parchment, and his skin looked as dry. I’d known he was older than me, but not by how much. In time I’d find the courage to ask him, and he would say he didn’t know exactly, but he reckoned he must have seen at least forty-five winters and possibly more.
He remembered growing up in the days of King Cnut, when just as now England had been ruled by an invader from across the sea, only this one had come not from France but from Denmark, and so Skalpi’s family, being in a way distant kinsfolk of his, had prospered. He told me how as a boy he had dreamed of one day joining the royal war band and taking up arms, and he remembered the struggles after Cnut’s death as the king’s two sons squabbled over who should succeed him. These were things of which I’d heard stories from my father and uncles and their friends, but to me they were so distant they might as well have come from one of those ancient poems that they were always so fond of reciting.
That was later, though. Then I knew only that I was giving myself to a man twice my age and more. Yes, I could have changed my mind. I could have fled across the yard and back to my chamber, or taken horse and ridden far away where no one could find me. All these things crossed my mind. But, if I did that, I’d bring shame not just upon Skalpi and his kin, but also upon myself and my own family. Upon my mother and upon Eadmer, and I knew they would never forgive me. Word would spread of the woman who had broken her betrothal promise, who had broken her oath, and what man would ever want me after that? I would grow old without ever finding a husband, without ever knowing love, and I would die childless and alone.
So you see I was trapped. I had no choice.