Merewyn is already there with a leather bottle in her hand, kneeling beside him. ‘We need to sit him up.’ She gestures to Oslac, who is closest. ‘Help me.’
Together they manage to drag him over to a tree and rest his back against it. That’s when Tova sees just how badly he’s injured. For it isn’t just his face. His other hand, his right hand, is missing, severed below the wrist, while the front of his robe is dark and moist where his flesh has been pierced. Whoever did this to him must have hearts of stone.
‘A knife or a seax,’ Beorn says after he’s had a chance to look carefully at the wound. ‘Too narrow to be a sword. But deep. Gut-deep. Recent too.’
‘How recent?’ Oslac asks.
‘A few hours. He’s lucky not to be dead already.’
‘We can help him, though, can’t we?’ says Tova.
Beorn doesn’t answer.
‘He’ll live, won’t he?’
He gives her a look that suggests she shouldn’t be asking such a foolish question. But it doesn’t seem foolish to her.
‘Won’t he?’
‘If we could find him a leech doctor or a wise woman,’ he says in a low voice, ‘they could give him something for the pain, maybe, but nothing more than that.’
‘Could we?’
‘Could we what?’
‘Give him something for the pain. Something besides ale.’
‘I don’t know what, girl. Do you?’
The man groans. Beads of sweat roll off his forehead. His lips quiver, but there’s barely any sound behind them.
‘I think he’s trying to speak,’ Merewyn says.
Beorn crouches in front of him and gazes into the monk’s unseeing eye sockets. ‘What’s your name?’
He swallows. ‘Godstan.’
‘Did the Normans do this to you, Godstan?’
The young man makes a mewling sound in his throat as, almost imperceptibly, he shakes his head.
‘Who, then?’
‘Four. There were f-four of them.’
His words are so faint Tova can barely hear him. She watches his trembling lips.
‘English folk?’ she asks.
Godstan nods. ‘English. Three men and a w-woman. They took everything. My knapsack. My horse. They spat on me. C-called me pious filth. Then . . . then they . . .’
But he doesn’t finish. He is crying now, or would be if he had eyes to cry with. He wheezes as he breathes, and clutches at his stomach with his one remaining hand. Why would anyone attack a monk? Why would anyone ever do such things to another man?
‘What else do you remember?’ Beorn asks.
The monk shakes his head. His teeth are gritted against the pain. The last thing he needs, Tova thinks, is to be besieged with all these questions.
‘Wulfnoth,’ he says.
Tova stares at him for a few moments, unsure whether she’s heard him properly. She turns to the priest, who has gone suddenly pale.
‘What did you say?’ Beorn asks Godstan.
‘That’s what they called him. Their leader. W-Wulfnoth.’
It can’t be the same one, surely. There must be scores of men in the world by that name.
But how many make it their business to prey upon men of the Church? To attack and steal and maim? To leave a man for dead?
His eyes. They put out his eyes.
‘He’s coming after you, isn’t he?’ she says to Guthred. ‘He’s coming after the book.’
Guthred’s eyes are glazed, unseeing, his mouth half-open. Stiff with fright.
‘It has to be a coincidence,’ says Merewyn. ‘Surely it can’t be him. It has to be another Wulfnoth. It must be.’
‘What’s h-h-happening?’ says Godstan weakly. He turns his head at the sound of each voice. She imagines that his eyes, if he still had them, would be wide, desperate. He must realise that his time is short. ‘P-please, tell me.’
‘We can’t stay here,’ Beorn says, ignoring him. ‘They could still be close by. We need to keep moving.’
‘Which way?’ Merewyn asks. ‘Back towards the old road?’
‘We could ask him which way he thinks they went,’ Oslac says.
‘Of course, because he’ll have seen them leave, won’t he?’ Beorn retorts. ‘Do you even think about some of the things that come out of your mouth?’
‘I was only making a suggestion.’
The monk’s lips are moving. He’s trying to say something, but Tova can’t hear what it is for all their arguing.
‘Quiet,’ she says as she kneels back down beside him. ‘We’re listening.’
‘Don’t l-leave me,’ Godstan says. ‘Don’t let me die alone.’
Tova glances desperately at Beorn. ‘We have to do something. We have to help him.’
‘We can’t take him with us, if that’s what you’re thinking. You know we can’t. He’ll only slow us down.’
Merewyn places a hand on her shoulder. ‘I don’t think there’s anything we can do.’
Very gently Tova slides her fingers into the young man’s palm, trying to reassure him. She wishes now that she hadn’t jumped when she first saw his face. More, she wishes she hadn’t shrieked.
‘There must be something,’ she says.