But I didn’t see. ‘You can’t.’
‘I have to,’ he replied and turned away. He’d made up his mind, he said, given his word to Ascytel to give on his behalf to Eadgar himself.
I clutched at his arm and tried to persuade him to send someone else in his place. He didn’t have to go himself. I tried to hold back my tears. I didn’t want him to dismiss my pleas as those of a desperate and foolish woman. He listened patiently, as he always did. Although I didn’t love him as he had hoped I would, I’d grown fond of him. And I was worried for him. He had the resolve and he was afraid of nothing. That he was strong enough in that sense, I had no doubt. And it was true that he didn’t toil for breath or walk with a limp or talk about his creaking bones, as did many men his age. He wasn’t in ill health, but he wasn’t battle-fit, and surely he knew that.
I asked him when was the last time he’d drawn his sword from its scabbard, or even when he’d last lifted it from the kist beneath his bed.
He didn’t answer. He had none to give.
I couldn’t help thinking that if Eadgar’s first rebellion had failed, why should it be different this time? How many more would die?
And I confess I was worried for myself as well, although I would never tell him so. Why not? Because it would sound as though I had no confidence in him, and also because I feared it would sound selfish. And it was selfish, I suppose. For I was asking myself, if he didn’t survive, what would happen to me? As his wife I commanded some respect, modest though it was, and had protection in law. As his widow I’d have hardly any of that. I’d either have to take another husband, go back to my brother’s house or else go into the cloister, and the thought of any of those things made me despair. For while life at Heldeby was not always easy, the truth was that I’d grown comfortable there. Like the sapling, I was at last beginning to flourish, and I didn’t want things to change.
But I said none of this. He sat upon a stool on the dais while I paced around and around.
‘I am a warrior,’ Skalpi said eventually. He spoke quietly, but his words filled the hall. ‘My father was a warrior, and his father too. Both of them strove hard to defend these lands of ours. And I must do the same.’
I didn’t try to argue with him. Not when he said that. I’d done all I could and knew if I said anything more it was likely only to strengthen his determination. He was like that.
The next few days swept by in a haze. For so long things had been quiet; from where we were, in the hill country on the edge of the high moors, the wars against the Normans had seemed a world away. But suddenly everything had changed.
Preparations began that very evening. Skalpi called a muster at the ancient stone that stood in the meadow not far from the crossroads, to which he invited every man and boy over the age of eleven, which included Orm but not Ketil. As the sun grew low, two dozen came, of whom he sent away four because they were too young, another because he could only walk with the aid of a crutch and was nearly sixty besides, and lastly Wulfrun, the smith’s wife, because she was a woman, though she protested she was as strong as any man, and proved it too by clouting around the ear one of the younger men who laughed.
That left eighteen, whom Skalpi watched over the coming days as ?lfric sparred with them in the training yard, using poles and wicker shields in place of the real things. He watched as they were formed into groups and made to practise the shield wall, and he watched as they were each handed a spear and, one by one, took it in turns to run at a scarecrow and impale it. He watched as they hurled javelins at targets in the fallow field beside the coppice, and gave advice to each man on how to hold the shaft and how to plant his feet, and where his head should be as he aimed and then loosed it. At all of this there were some who were better than others, and equally there were some who clearly had no skill and would not survive long. He dismissed these, saying the last thing anyone in battle wanted was someone on his flank he couldn’t trust to hold his own, because when the lines clash each man relies on his friends to help keep him alive. If the shield wall breaks through ineptitude or cowardice, then everyone dies. He had seen it happen, time after time. So he would take only the best.