The Harrowing

by James Aitcheson

  ‘You expect me to wear this?’ She flings it at Beorn, who is checking over the panniers, tightening knots and straps. It falls to the ground long before it reaches him.

  ‘If you’d prefer to keep those mud-stained things you’re wearing, that’s your choice,’ he says, without looking up.

  ‘Are these the best you could find? These rags, these penitents’ sacks?’

  He snatches up the garment from where it lies and thrusts it at her, but she won’t take it.

  ‘Listen to me,’ he says darkly. ‘This land is being torn asunder, is overrun with men who would kill us the moment they see us, and you’re complaining because the clothes I’ve done my best to find for you aren’t fine enough for your high-born tastes?’

  ‘You will not insult me in this way,’ she snaps back at him. ‘You will not treat us like we’re your servants.’

  He steps closer, so that their faces are almost touching. But still Merewyn won’t take it from him, nor will she budge.

  ‘Do you think I care who you are? I’ve said I’ll do my best to protect you, to keep you both from harm, and that’s what I mean to do. If you’re determined to catch your death from cold, that’s your choice.’

  Merewyn eyes him for a moment longer, then snatches the dress from him and stalks past Tova without a word, back inside.

  When at last she does emerge again, she’s wearing the clothes Beorn found: all except for the wolfskin cloak, which she has passed over in favour of her own, the one she brought from home with the ermine trim, even though it’s thinner and not really suited for winter’s travelling.

  Beorn doesn’t argue. They haven’t gone anywhere yet but Tova hopes he isn’t tiring of them already.

  *

  For an hour and more they ride without exchanging a word. The day is strangely quiet, or maybe it’s always like this in the hour after dawn on a winter’s morning, and it’s just that Tova is always too busy fetching water and lighting the fires in the kitchen and the chamber to notice. It’s colder even than yesterday, and the hovel is hardly out of sight when she’s feeling glad of her new cloak. Her breath makes clouds before her face and leaves a trail behind her as she rides. Beorn leads the way. He alone has any idea where they’re supposed to be going. Fog hangs like a shroud over everything. Over the waterlogged ings. Over the slopes and the woods. So thickly that in places Tova can barely see more than fifty paces ahead.

  On narrow, crumbling tracks and rutted droveways he leads them, past fields recently ploughed, around dense thickets. She thinks they’re travelling west, or possibly north, but since the sun is hidden it’s hard to tell. She can tell he’s impatient. He’s always a short way ahead, stopping every so often to check that they’re keeping up. They can’t go much faster; the frost has made the earth hard and a thin layer of ice clings to exposed stones, so they have to tread cautiously.

  All the while Beorn keeps his bow in hand. The arrow bag at his side hangs open. A feathered shaft waits to be drawn. Is he nervous? If so, he doesn’t look it.

  Tova is, though. At the slightest sound she glances about, expecting someone to come charging out of the swirling murk and strike them down. But no one does, and every moment that passes when they don’t feels like a gift.

  *

  They descend into a wide valley where the air is cold, the ground hard with frost. The mist hangs thickly, even though by now it must be mid-morning. They edge their way down the steeply winding track. They’re halfway to the bottom when, a short way off the path, she glimpses a dark heap upon the frosty ground. Unmoving.

  Her heart stops.

  ‘Look,’ she says, pointing. The other two stop and turn at once. She wonders that they haven’t already noticed, but maybe they’re distracted or else their eyes aren’t quite as good as hers.

  She doesn’t need to ask what it is. Even as they leave the path and ride towards it, she knows. And it isn’t long before she makes out a head, a pair of legs, a hand splayed out in front of her as if reaching for help that didn’t come, nor ever will. It’s a woman, not much older than herself, lying sprawled on her front with her head to one side. Sixteen, maybe seventeen winters; no more than that, Tova thinks. Frost clings to her lips. Her blue eyes are wide, and her mouth hangs agape, as if death caught her suddenly. The back of her skull is decorated with a deep gash, dark and crusted. Her hair, copper-brown and fine like Tova’s own, has come loose from her braid and is matted against her cheek.

  Tova sits, frozen to the saddle, her hand clamped to her mouth as she tries to resist the urge to spew. Beorn squats down by the woman’s side. Gently he touches the back of his hand to her cheek, as if she might just be sleeping and he doesn’t want to wake her.

  ‘Cold,’ he says after a moment. ‘Dead several hours already. Since yesterday, I’d say.’

  Nor is she the only one. Behind Tova, Merewyn gives a stifled cry; she’s spotted another, and another still close by, and a second pair not ten paces beyond them. Two young men with wounds to their chests that suggest they at least had the chance to see their killers before the light passed from their eyes. A woman Merewyn’s age, and next to her a fair, round-cheeked boy who can barely have been beyond crawling and was probably her son. They lie contorted, their limbs at angles that make no sense. The woman’s jaw is smashed, her face a mask of blood. The child’s neck is twisted, his chest crushed.

  ‘Trampled to death,’ Beorn says as he gazes, unblinking, down upon their broken bodies. ‘They rode them down from behind.’

  ‘They do that?’ Tova asks. ‘They use their horses as weapons?’

  ‘Believe me,’ Beorn says. ‘Whatever tales you’ve heard about their cruelties, the truth is much worse.’

  She doesn’t need to see it to believe. She can imagine it all too clearly. Here, mailed men upon their snorting beasts, kicking up dirt as they gallop; there, folk fleeing the naked swords of the foreigners. The very earth trembling; the pounding of hooves at their backs, relentless, with every heartbeat growing louder and closer, closer and louder. Screaming, willing their feet faster. Then nothing.

  At least it would have been quick.

  Bile churns in her stomach. Even though she’s trying not to get too close, death’s odour fills her nose. Like the slaughter yard back home in the weeks before winter, when the pigs and cattle they can’t afford to feed through the cold months have to be killed so that their meat can be salted. And yet not like that at all.

  That’s not all that she can smell, either. There’s something else. It clings to her throat and to the back of her mouth, sharp and bitter and dry.

  Smoke.

  With the mist all around she can’t see where it’s coming from, but there’s no mistaking it. And if there’s smoke, there must be something burning. She’d like to believe it’s a hearth fire, but she knows that’s only wishful thinking. She glances at the others; they’ve smelt it too.

  Beorn climbs back into the saddle. ‘Stay close to me,’ he warns, hefting his bow and nocking a feathered shaft to the string.

  ‘We shouldn’t be here,’ Merewyn says. ‘We should go back the way we came.’

  ‘Quiet,’ he says while he looks about, watching the mist for signs of movement. ‘They should be long gone by now, but in case they aren’t, let’s not take any chances.’

  They ride on, the scent of smoke growing ever stronger. Through the swirling, all-enshrouding gloom rise the sharp lines of a hall. Or what used to be a hall. Only one corner still stands. Of the rest, nothing but two rows of stunted, blackened timbers, collapsed roof beams and ash. Beyond, the remains of several other houses and outbuildings, laithes and pens. From one, a smell like that of roasted pork, but which Tova knows isn’t. Feeble wisps rise where the wreckage still smoulders.

  And there are the rest of them: too many to count, even if Tova wanted to, which she doesn’t, but at the same time she can’t tear her eyes awa
y. Men and women alike, some with spears and hayforks and hoes in hand or close to, their features blackened by fire, disfigured by the sword, missing eyes and noses and hands and feet, with wounds to their faces and their backs and their chests. Pink tendrils spill out from gashes in their bellies; carrion birds flock about them, picking at the shining kets. Eyes black as jet stare back accusingly, suspicious of the newcomers who have arrived uninvited to their feast. Strings of flesh trail from their beaks.

  That’s the last thing she needed to see. Her stomach lurches again, and this time she knows she can’t keep it down. She lets the reins slip from her grasp as she bends over, and then it comes, sharp-burning, rushing up her throat, spewing from her mouth in a long stream that dribbles down her chin. Again it comes, and again, and again. Each heave worse than the first. She wipes a sleeve across her mouth and spits once, twice, three times, trying to get rid of the taste, but it won’t go.

  A hand on her back. She looks up to see Merewyn.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Tova says, although she’s not sure why. She never imagined this, even after what Beorn told them. She didn’t believe him, but then how could she? It sounded like something from one of those poems that Skalpi sometimes asked Ælfswith to sing. Those songs of ruin, the ones that tell of long-gone times, of fallen wonders, of tarnished glories, of warriors bereft of kin and companionship, whom fate has abandoned. Tales of loss, of guilt without redemption. Tales of darkness. She doesn’t remember much of the words but she remembers how they made her feel, those few times when she was invited to sit by the hearth with the rest of household and listen. Alone and afraid. Shorn of hope.

  That’s exactly how she feels now.

  It’s true, she thinks. What Beorn said. Everything he told them. It’s all true.

  No pigs snorting and squealing as they run wild in the fields and the hedges and the woods. No horses or heifers or sheep grazing in the fields. No chickens left scratching in the dirt. They’re alone, the three of them. And the Normans are out there somewhere, in their dozens, their scores, their hundreds, their thousands. Their raiding-armies scouring this land, crushing every living thing.

  ‘Better to have it out than in,’ Beorn says. ‘Are you all right?’

  The way he speaks, it’s like he knows it’s something he ought to ask, rather than having any genuine concern for her well-being, but Tova nods anyway. A numbness spreads through her as she stares at the smouldering wreckage. Her world, everything she knew, is crumbling around her, and she feels herself crumbling with it.

  He asks, ‘Do you believe me now?’

  *

  They pick their way carefully through the scorched ruins, their eyes and ears open for some sign of life, but there’s none.

  ‘We should bury them,’ Tova says. ‘We can’t just leave them as fodder for the beasts. We should lay them to rest properly.’

  ‘We don’t have time,’ Beorn says. ‘Do you have any idea how long it’d take to dig graves for them all? We’d be here for days.’

  She shakes her head. ‘They deserve better than this.’

  He turns to face her, and suddenly it’s a different Beorn she sees. His shoulders hang low. His eyes are watery. Those eyes, which she thought were empty, which she thought betrayed no feeling.

  ‘Of course they deserve better,’ he says. ‘But we can’t undo what has already been done, can we? We can’t give them back the life that’s been taken from them. Whether we lay them in the ground or leave them in the open, it doesn’t make any difference. It’s all the same in the end, isn’t it?’

  *

  They make their way slowly by drovers’ tracks and winding woodland paths. Beorn reckons the men who came this way are long gone, but he’d prefer not to take the risk.

  They skirt the bounds of half a dozen more manors to which the torch has been put. Even from several miles away they spy the fires. Smoke rises in great plumes, twisting and coiling, blacker and thicker than before, a sign that the enemy have been here recently. Nothing moves, save for the birds circling overhead and those gathered down in the fields: angry clusters of black feathers, squabbling and shrieking at one another over the flesh of some unlucky person or animal. They never come close enough for Tova to see which. She’d rather not know.

  And still no survivors.

  She keeps praying they’ll come across some. Even just one person who has somehow managed to escape, or who might perhaps have been spared. She has heard that sometimes raiding bands will let one person escape. Just one, so that he or she will go and tell others elsewhere of what has happened. All day long she guards that small hope, in the same way she might cup her hands around a candle flame to keep it from blowing out. But as the hours pass and still there is no sign of anyone, the harder it is to keep that hope aglow. The flame grows ever colder, ever dimmer, while the darkness enveloping her only deepens.

  She trails behind the other two, following in their hoofprints, her head bowed, hardly daring to look up in case she should happen to catch a glimpse of another smoke-spire or yet more bodies. Beorn calls to her, urging her on, but his voice seems far away and she hardly hears him.

  *

  A flicker of movement amid distant ruins. Too small to be a person, she thinks, although it was gone before she could say exactly what it was. An animal of some kind. Maybe just a deer.

  She halts anyway and squints, trying to make it out through the fog, hoping it will show itself again. But she knows that the longer she waits, the further ahead Merewyn and Beorn will be. She doesn’t want to be left behind, on her own.

  She’s just about to give up when she spots it padding out from behind a smoking heap of timbers, its head low, sniffing the ground. Bigger than Cene, Skalpi’s running-hound back at home, his favourite and hers too. This one is longer-legged and thinner in the waist. Its coat black all over. Searching forlornly for some trace of its lost master.

  It stops. Turns its head. Sees her.

  For a moment it just stands there. Its eyes meet hers – as stunned to see another living being as she is, probably. Unsure whether what its eyes are telling it is true. Bewildered, wondering where everyone has gone. Why there is no one to feed it and take it out running.

  Then it’s hurtling across the furrowed field, barking and barking and barking some more, in relief and in joy. As she would if she were it.

  She gets down from the saddle. It bounds towards her, jumping up at her, tongue lolling out of its mouth. She kneels down and lets it lick her face, laughing as it jumps up at her and she’s nearly toppled over. Laughing at the rough feel of its tongue and the warm stickiness it leaves on her cheek. Its tail wags vigorously as she fusses over it.

  As playful as Cene. She wishes they hadn’t left him behind.

  She digs in her saddlebag for some treat she can offer, and finds a parcel of cloth containing thick slices of dried bacon. She unfolds it and tosses a slice on to the ground. It’s gone at once, swallowed in a single gulp.

  ‘Girl,’ Beorn calls. ‘Leave that thing alone. We don’t have any time to waste. Don’t be giving it any more of our food, either. We don’t have much as it is.’

  She crouches down and hugs the animal to her while it licks eagerly at her greasy, salty fingers, and sniffs at the roll of cloth in which the rest of the meat is wrapped. It looks up at Beorn then wriggles free and turns to her, gazing plaintively with wide eyes, letting out a little whine at the same time.

  She asks, ‘Can’t we bring it with us?’

  ‘You know we can’t.’

  ‘It could keep watch at night, guard our camp, warn us of any—’

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘I’m not having that thing trailing us, getting under our feet, growling and barking and giving us away to our enemies.’

  She looks hopefully up at her lady, who keeps her distance, gazing at the hound with a mixture of pity and disdain.

  ‘He’s ri
ght, Tova,’ Merewyn says. ‘I’m sorry.’

  So is she. She hugs it closer for a while longer, rubbing its neck and murmuring soothing noises, before at last she’s able to tear herself away. It runs around her feet and leaps up at her.

  ‘Sit,’ she says, and she keeps on saying it until it obeys, while she replaces what’s left of the bacon in her saddlebag. She climbs back into the saddle. At once it’s up, coming after her, its tail still wagging.

  ‘Stay,’ she tells it, and once more to be sure: ‘Stay.’

  It gives a whimper but does as she says. As they ride away it barks once, twice, three times in protest. But she doesn’t look back, and it doesn’t follow.

  *

  The day is growing old, the shadows lengthening. They lead their horses down into a hollow where ash and beech and hazel and birch grow close and tangled, where the musky scents of damp leaf-mulch and decaying tree flesh fill the air. This path is ill travelled; they go in single file. In places it’s so overgrown that Beorn has to lay about with his axe to clear a path.

  Above, a branch creaks in the wind. Somewhere amid the low holly bushes a twig snaps. Is there someone there?

  ‘I don’t like this, Beorn,’ Tova says. ‘Are you sure we’re going the right way?’

  ‘We’ll be through these woods soon enough. Just keep up.’

  A rustle of leaves, a light drumming upon the earth, a flash of mottled brown. For a moment her breath catches in her chest. But it’s only a deer, bounding through the trees.

  Stop it, she tells herself. Or else it won’t be the Normans that kill you. You’ll end up worrying yourself to death.