‘I was frightened of what you might think. I wanted you to see that I didn’t have any choice.’
‘You were frightened of what I might think?’
‘I didn’t want you to think badly of me. That’s why I lied. It was wrong, I know. I ought to have told you everything from the start, but I was ashamed. Can you forgive me?’
For what? For trying to hide the truth from her? Or for the things that she did?
‘It’s all right,’ Tova says, to reassure herself as much as Merewyn. The words sound as if someone else is speaking them. ‘I forgive you.’
*
But it isn’t all right.
Hours later the thought of it continues to eat away at her. She can’t settle. She can’t sleep. She turns over and over, coiled tightly inside her blankets, trying to rid her mind of the pictures that keep forming, unbidden.
It isn’t that she feels sorry for Orm. She had as much reason to hate him as Merewyn. It might have been the right thing to do. It might have been only what he deserved. God will judge, she supposes, when the end comes.
Why, then, does she feel so uneasy? Because she never thought her lady capable of such trickery? Or because she isn’t, after all, the person that Tova thought she was?
She can imagine how it would have happened. It would have happened something like this.
He enters, flagon in hand, just like her lady described, except that Merewyn is expecting him, waiting by the top of the stairs, listening for the sound of the door and for the creak of the floorboards under his feet. The smell of drink on his breath as she greets and kisses him. Shyly she leads him in the darkness across her chamber towards her bed. The smile of surprise and puzzlement and triumph as he follows, his mind so dulled by ale that he doesn’t question why as they shed their clothes. She tells him she didn’t mean the things she said about him before, that she has been foolish, that she wants to show him how sorry she is. He knows that, doesn’t he?
He says that he does. But he will say anything.
Afterwards, she tells him that she’d wanted him for such a long time, but that as long as Skalpi was alive, as long as there was a chance that he might yet come back, she couldn’t afford to let her real feelings show.
He never loved you, he murmurs, his words slurred. He lies beside her upon the bed, face buried in the sheets, the sweat on his skin glistening in the candlelight. He never loved you like I love you, he goes on. He never deserved you. He never cared for you as a man should.
She tells him she knows. She says that she understands now. She asks him baldly, Skalpi isn’t coming back, is he?
No, he says. No, he isn’t.
That’s what she’s been waiting to hear. Her trembling hand reaches up past her head. Slowly, quietly, so that she doesn’t disturb him. Sliding underneath the pillow until she can feel the hilt. Her fingers curl around it.
Trying to keep her voice as even and as gentle as possible, she asks, What do you mean? How do you know?
But she already knows. She made up her mind long ago. And she’s ready. She draws the blade out and sits up.
It was me, he says. There was never any scouting party. It was me. It’s my fault that he’s dead.
She waits until he’s asleep, insensible with drink, snoring softly. And she takes the knife in both hands. And she kneels over him. And she summons all her strength, all her anger. And she plunges it down into his back, through the back of his ribs. And again. And again. Driving it home until it is buried all the way up to the hilt.
And he lies as still as stone.
To take a man’s life in desperation, out of fear for one’s own safety, that’s one thing. To take that same life coldly, out of hatred, that is something else entirely.
Merewyn was always so good, so pure. Someone to be looked up to. Virtuous and honest. Strong in her own quiet way. Incapable of malice or of harm.
So she used to think, anyway.
Now she isn’t so sure.
Fourth Day
They rise early, in the chill grey half-light that comes before dawn. There’s a ford a mile upriver from their camp, says Beorn, who’s been up for some hours already, riding on and back to check whether the way ahead is safe. No sign of the enemy. As long as they keep moving, they’ll be all right.