*
No, Skalpi wasn’t with them. There were just four, and he wasn’t one of them. When I asked where he was, they looked at each other blankly until one spoke up. Ceolred the miller’s son, it was, although at first I didn’t recognise him because his face was blotched yellow with so many bruises and his nose was out of shape. He couldn’t have been much older than seventeen years, but he was hobbling like a greybeard, leaning on his spear haft for support.
Ceolred said they didn’t know where their lord was or what had happened to him. When the Danes abandoned them and the rebellion collapsed, he said, all fell into chaos. He told me that one afternoon the four of them had returned to camp having spent the day collecting armfuls of firewood to find everything in disarray, men running everywhere, saddling their horses if they had them, abandoning tents and cooking pots, making for the hills. Eadgar and his huscarls had fled back into the north, and word was that the Normans were only an hour away, that King Wilelm was riding at the head of a mounted army thousands strong.
They didn’t even have time to strike camp, Ceolred said. They just snatched up what they could, and then, like everyone else, they ran. They thought if they could make their way back home they’d perhaps find Skalpi here.
Others returned over the next few days, alone or in pairs, all with tear-filled stories of the things they’d seen and friends who had died at Norman hands, and there was much grieving. The brothers Ubba and Uffa, both gaunt-faced, bruised and hungry. H?sta the smith and Saba the goatherd.
Last of all to come was Orm. He arrived on foot and he arrived alone, his cheeks scratched and cut in a hundred places, his lip scarred, his eyes dark and hooded, clutching at his side where his tunic was matted with blood. He still had his sword, but his shield rim was cracked and the leather facing flapped where it had come loose. He didn’t say what had happened to his horse, and he knew nothing about his father, except that they’d become separated when they ran into a Norman scouting party on the road home. He had searched for Skalpi but couldn’t find him, and he had feared the worst. When ?lfric and I told him that his father hadn’t returned, he stared at us for the longest time, his eyes hollow. None of us wanted to believe he was dead, but as the days and the weeks passed, the harder it became to deny. I kept waiting, waking every dawn hoping that would be the day when he came back.
But he never did. Each morning the frosts lay heavier across the land. That’s when we first learned about the raiding armies that King Wilelm was sending into Lincolnescir and Heldernesse to root out the remaining rebels. Even then we never thought the enemy would have any reason to come to Heldeby, and indeed as the weeks went by we heard less and less about the Normans and so assumed they must have gone back to their strongholds for the winter, which was fast approaching.
The leaves had long since fallen and the days were growing ever shorter, which meant ?lfric and I were supposed to be discussing how many hogs we should slaughter and how many cattle we’d be able to keep fed and so how many we should sell at market, and what price we might expect to get for them. But I couldn’t face it; my mind was filled with worry about my brother, and about whether or not my husband still lived, and so I spent more and more time alone in my bower. Tova would bring me food from time to time, and if she wasn’t busy with other things she would come and sit with me for a while, and we would spin yarn together, sometimes talking and sometimes not.
After a few days Thorvald came to me. At first he seemed reluctant to speak and kept on fingering the cross that hung around his neck, as he often did when he was nervous. Once he saw I was growing impatient, though, he came out with it. He said he had been discussing matters with ?lfric, and they had agreed that if I wasn’t well enough or willing to fulfil my duties as lady then perhaps it would be better for me to allow Orm to take on those burdens, as Skalpi’s heir.
I replied indignantly that this was no time to be talking about heirs, since we didn’t even know yet whether or not Skalpi was dead, and that until I saw his body I refused to believe anyone who claimed that he was. I’d convinced myself that he must have fallen into the hands of the enemy, which was why we’d heard nothing from him. All I could do was pray that they had spared him, although in truth I had no idea how likely that was.
Thorvald wrung his hands and tried to soothe me, but I would not be soothed. I shouted him down and ordered him to go away, which he did, meekly in the end. That evening, though, he came to see me again, and this time he brought with him Orm and ?lfric.