‘Tell us about it. All we heard were rumours, little bits from the ones who came back, but those who did speak about it didn’t want to say much.’
‘I don’t blame them.’
It’s like trying to draw water from a stone. He won’t give them anything.
‘Who are you, really?’ she asks.
He says nothing but simply carries on running the whetstone up the knife, over and over and over.
‘Beorn?’
He sets down his knife beside him. ‘What makes you so interested suddenly?’
‘You don’t think we deserve to know? You expect us to follow you, to do exactly as you say, but we hardly know anything about you. How do you expect us to trust you?’
‘I’ve kept us all alive this far, haven’t I? Isn’t that enough? You’d never manage on your own. Not against what’s out there.’
‘Why do you even care? Why are you helping us?’
‘Why shouldn’t I?’
‘You’re keeping things from us. I know you are.’
‘So what if I am?’
He stares at her, daring her to challenge him. She meets his stare. She’s not afraid of him any more. She won’t be intimidated. She won’t be cowed into silence.
And she’s beginning to understand, or thinks she is, anyway. For despite his talk, his blunt manner, his harsh words, he feels as scared and as helpless as they do. He won’t admit it, of course. He can’t. That’s not who he is.
Inside, she thinks, he’s as uncertain and as lost as the rest of us.
‘How many?’
‘Girl, I’m warning you.’
She’s trying his patience, she knows. But that’s what she wants. Sooner or later he must break. And she will get the answers she’s after. The answers they’re all after.
‘How many?’
‘That’s enough!’
His words ring in her ears. He rises. The hearth is behind him and his face is in darkness. His teeth bared, he looms over her. A shadow against the light.
‘You really want to know my story? Do you?’
Tova tries to speak but can’t find the words. They’ve become lost somewhere between her mind and her tongue. Her heart is thumping so hard she fears it might burst out of her chest.
The others are all on their feet, although no one wants to be the first to approach him.
Oslac says, ‘Beorn—’
‘Sit down,’ the warrior barks at him. ‘Sit. All of you.’
One by one they do so: Guthred at once, timidly; Merewyn more hesitantly. The poet is the last of all. The distrust in his eyes is plain to see.
‘Since we’re all unburdening ourselves of our secrets, purging our guilty consciences, confessing our sins, I might as well do the same, mightn’t I? Fine. You want to know about the war? You want to know about the things I’ve seen, the things I’ve done? I’ll tell you, although I promise you this: you won’t like it.’
‘It doesn’t matter if we don’t like it,’ Merewyn says, and Tova is glad of her support, belated though it is. ‘We have a right to know.’
‘Very well,’ Beorn says. ‘I don’t know how much you’ve already been told about the rebellion, or what you think you know. No doubt some of those who returned from the war told you stories about what happened and what they did. Whatever they said, though, you can guarantee that half of it will have been lies.’
‘Lies?’ Merewyn asks, frowning. ‘Why?’
‘Because often the truth is too much to admit. Think. Did you notice how those who went away so full of cheer and boasts came back quiet and withdrawn, shadows of themselves? Were there times when you asked them about the things they’d seen when they refused to answer no matter how much you pressed them? Did their tempers darken in an instant, like that? Did they strike out at their wives and their children?’
Tova remembers. She remembers how Ceolred was never the same after his injuries, but grew irritable and kept largely to himself. And she remembers seeing the bruises on the arm of Lufu, the goatherd’s wife, when they were both fetching water one morning, though she quickly covered them and pleaded with Tova never to speak of them to anyone.
‘I thought as much,’ Beorn says. ‘Take it from someone who has stood more often than he has cared to count in the front rank of the shield wall, waiting for death to claim him. When it comes to war, there are things of which you’ll never get a man to speak, even if you count yourself among his closest friends. Silence is the only shield he has. His only way of protecting you. His only way of protecting himself.’
At last he sits with them. ‘War is not glorious. It doesn’t matter what the poets say. There is nothing noble in killing. There is no honour. We tell ourselves there is to make it easier to bear, but there isn’t.’