‘Everyone is concerned for you,’ the reeve said. ‘As much as we all miss Skalpi, we can’t go on hoping against hope for ever. Sooner or later we have to accept the truth. He won’t be coming back.’
When I heard this, I broke down, sobbing, sitting on the edge of the bed with my hair in my face, while ?lfric explained solemnly that I would keep the portion of land that had been set aside on my marriage as my morning gift, but Orm would become lord of Heldeby, as was his right. I saw the priest nodding sagely, and through my tears I caught Orm smirking. It was the merest glimmer of a smile and swiftly concealed, vanishing almost as soon as it appeared, and I knew he hadn’t meant me to see it. But see it I did, and it was all I needed.
I rose and hurled myself at him, fists flailing, screaming all the most hateful things I could think of, every insult, every curse. Words he probably thought I didn’t know. Words I’d hardly ever spoken before. I seized his collar and shook him, or tried to, and for the first time said what I really thought of him and that he wasn’t fit to be his father’s heir. He tried to fend me off, but I was quicker and I slapped his face. At first he just looked stunned, but then he made as if to strike me back.
?lfric seized my arm and held it firm, and though I struggled I couldn’t break his grip. ‘Enough,’ he bellowed at Orm, whose hand was raised. ‘She’s your father’s wife.’
He spat on the floor at my feet. ‘His widow, you mean.’
‘Maybe so,’ ?lfric said, ‘but she still deserves your respect.’
‘Why? You see how she hates me. She doesn’t respect me.’
‘Because you’re a vile creature,’ I said, and suddenly all those thoughts I’d never dared voice all came tumbling out. He was an evil child who cared for nothing and no one but himself. Skalpi had been ashamed of him, ashamed of what he had grown into.
‘Don’t talk to me about him,’ Orm warned me.
But the weir had burst. The reeve and priest tried to calm me, tried to shout me down, but they couldn’t stop the torrent. And so I went on. How Skalpi used to confess to me his despair, because all Orm seemed to dream about was war and violence and killing and glory. Because he refused to understand that a good lord had responsibilities and couldn’t simply do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. Because Skalpi thought he had failed him and failed as a father. How sometimes he doubted whether Orm was even his own son, or whether ?lfswith’s falseness had led to him raising a cuckoo in his nest.
Orm’s eyes grew narrower, his cheeks redder, and I thought he might again try to take his hand to me. Instead he just turned and went without saying anything, and I think that was the first time I ever saw him lost for words.
I took ever greater care to avoid him after that, although it wasn’t easy. Whenever I saw him he greeted me with a stare that made my skin prickle. I thought about going back to my brother’s house for a while, or perhaps for good. When a pedlar arrived a few days before Yule selling wax candles and herbs and spices, I asked him if he might take a letter to Eadmer. He agreed, but whether it ever got through, I don’t know. From what he told us, in the wake of the rebellion’s collapse all order had broken down, and the roads were growing ever more dangerous. Everyone lived in fear that the Normans would come and take possession of this land, but most agreed that wouldn’t happen until the spring if it happened at all, and there was a good chance that it wouldn’t, if King Wilelm was merciful.