‘He took Eoferwic,’ Skalpi explained, ‘a week ago. The townsmen didn’t even put up a struggle. They knew things would only go badly for them if they tried.’
I didn’t know what to say. I could hardly believe it. All through that summer we’d been hearing how the foreigners were advancing through the midland shires, overrunning the country, crushing without mercy any who dared to stand in their path. Everywhere they went they built those strongholds they call castles to terrify the people and cow them into surrendering. Every week it seemed another town fell to their swords. W?rwic. Ledecestre. Deorbi. Snotingeham. Lincolne.
‘But we’re safe here,’ I said, ‘aren’t we?’
That was what people had always said, ever since the Normans first crossed the sea. They had no interest in us or our lands north of the Humbre. Two years had come and gone since the foreigners had first set foot on these shores. So far we had remained untouched by the wars that had afflicted the rest of England. No Frenchman dared set foot in these parts nor held a single scrap of land, because they’d heard that the Northumbrians were a fierce people, a proud people, and they didn’t dare anger us. They had enough trouble in the south as it was; they didn’t want to spread themselves too thinly across the kingdom and so make it easier for their foes to attack them. And besides, it was said, King Wilelm knew we would never suffer a foreign lord. Not like the folk of Wessex, whose necks were easily bowed. He feared us and respected us in equal measure, and was content to leave us be as long as we paid the dues that we owed him.
‘I don’t know,’ Skalpi murmured. ‘I don’t know.’
And suddenly I saw those boasts for what they were. Lies we’d told ourselves, although for a long time they’d seemed true enough. The quiet times we’d enjoyed, which we should have known wouldn’t last, were gone. For Eoferwic had fallen. Eoferwic, the great city, only a couple of days’ ride from Heldeby.
At any moment they might arrive, I thought. If I ran down the stairs and out into the yard, already I might spy the dust cloud rising in the distance, kicked up by their horses’ hooves as they pounded the road. They would come along the track, across the bridge, in their byrnies of mail and their helmets shining bright, bearing steel in one hand and a sealed writ from King Wilelm in the other. And they would bring with them a priest or a monk from the minster, one who spoke both tongues: an Englishman who would tell us, stuttering because he was nervous, that the king had granted our land to these foreigners and that they were now the rightful lords. That this manor, these barley fields and pastures, orchards, fish weirs and grain stores, this hall, the mill, the sheepfolds and the pigpens and the cowsheds – all of it now belonged to them.
And Skalpi would protest. He would spit and curse, and when none of that made any difference he would fly into a rage, and Orm and Ketil too, and perhaps blood would be spilt and there would be screaming, and there would be children wailing, and the cottars and geburs and slaves would cower in their houses because they wouldn’t know what was happening, and there would be nothing anyone could do. And they would cast us out. If we were lucky they might give us until dusk to gather our belongings, one pack-full, maybe, and then we would be made to leave, and if still we refused then they would cut us down where we stood.
That was what I was thinking. I could see it so clearly. We’d all heard the stories coming out of the south, which had reached us on the tongues of exiles and pedlars and travelling priests. Always it was the same.
When eventually I could speak, I asked, ‘What do we do?’
He didn’t answer. But then what was I expecting him to say? What could he say? He knew just as well as I did how helpless we were if the Normans did come. There was nothing we could do. Only wait and hope.
Outside a nightingale trilled gently, but I didn’t feel her joy. If only I had wings, I thought, then I would be able to fly away. That was the first time I’d ever felt truly afraid. You know what I mean: the sort of terror that clutches at your heart and steals the breath from your chest and seizes your limbs so that you can hardly move. The same that I feel now, sitting here with you, not knowing what’s going to happen or if we’re even going to survive this night. Knowing that they’re out there somewhere, and that at any moment they could find us . . .