It was done.
Twenty-nine
With Haakon dead, the rest of his retainers fled. Jarnborg was ablaze, sending up great plumes of smoke into the sky. A bitter wind gusted from the west, carrying those plumes across the water along with the cries of the injured and the dying. Sword-blades and spear-hafts clattered against iron shield-rims as our men raised the battle-thunder in triumph.
‘Sige!’ I heard some of Magnus’s men roar. ‘God us sige forgeaf!’
God has given us victory. Indeed it seemed little short of a miracle. After so long dreaming and hoping and praying, Haakon had fallen. The field of battle belonged to us.
I was still kneeling beside the Dane’s limp body, hardly daring to believe that it was true, that he was dead and that our struggle was at an end, when Magnus called my name. He hobbled towards me, wincing with every step, his horse having bolted. Luckily he’d managed to free himself from the stirrups before it did, and apart from the injury to his foot I was glad to see he was unharmed.
‘I only wish I could have killed him myself,’ he said as he stood beside me. Together we stared down at the Dane: at his face, strangely serene in death; at his unmoving chest.
I nodded but said nothing. Had it been the other way around and his been the hand that slew Haakon, no doubt I would have felt equally cheated. But I also knew that only one of us could have delivered the killing blow, and I was glad it had been me.
He must have guessed my thoughts. ‘You did the right thing, Tancred,’ he said, and clapped a hand on my shoulder as if to assure me that he did not bear any resentment. ‘If it had been your horse that had fallen, I wouldn’t have turned back to help you. So I don’t blame you. You did what had to be done, for both of us.’
His tone was not grudging, but sincere. He smiled, and it was a smile of relief as much as anything else. Relief at having survived this day. Relief that justice, at long last, had been done.
We ventured back towards the rest of our host. Some of the enemy still lived, but not many. Magnus’s huscarls remembered only too well how Haakon had betrayed their lord, and held anyone who had thrown in their lot with him in the lowest contempt, while the men that Wace and Eudo and Aubert had brought with them had been told of the Dane’s part in the massacre of near two thousand Normans at Dunholm, and were not inclined to show forgiveness. And so the slaughter still went on as our men set about pursuing the enemy, cutting them down from behind and decorating the backs of their skulls with bright gashes. A handful had fled on to the sands, perhaps hoping to reach their ships drawn up further along the shore and make an escape by water. When they realised how few they were in number, though, they abandoned their weapons and whatever armour they possessed, deciding instead to try to swim across the bay to safety. They waded out from the shore, crashing through the waves, but they didn’t get far before our men were upon them, staining the foaming sea-froth pink with Danish blood.
‘No mercy!’ I heard a familiar voice shout from across the field, and saw Eudo on a horse that he must have seized from one of Haakon’s hearth-troops. In one hand he held a bloodied spear, while his banner was in the other. Gradually those around him took up the cry, until a dozen Normans were chanting as if with a single voice: ‘No mercy!’
Wace was with him, albeit on foot, and Tor and the Gascon and Serlo too, all charging behind the tusked boar, filling the air with their battle-joy, delighting in the glory of the kill.
With those roars and chants ringing out, Magnus and I trudged across a meadow trampled flat by the passage of hundreds of feet. Men cheered as they recognised us, and yet I hardly heard them, for my mind was elsewhere. I glanced about, searching for Godric, Ælfhelm and Oswynn. Until I knew she was safe, I would not celebrate. But amidst everyone running back and forth, amidst all the panicked horses, I couldn’t spot them, and the longer I kept searching, the more my concern grew. I could feel it stirring in my breast, clutching at my heart, and I tried to bury it, not wanting to let even the possibility enter my thoughts. She was safe, I told myself. She had to be.
To left and right, English and French were throwing their arms around one another, slapping each other on the back, punching their comrades on the shoulders, lifting fists to the sky, sharing in the delight of a hard-earned victory, celebrating together as allies and brothers in arms. I had seen some strange sights in my years, but never any as strange as this.
‘Lord!’
Over the laughter and the singing and the whoops of joy, I made out Eithne’s voice. She stood amidst a crowd of men, perhaps a hundred paces away, close to a jagged outcrop of dark rock, waving both her arms, trying to attract my attention, and at once I felt my worries easing, my heart lifting.
But only for an instant.
‘Lord!’ she cried again, as she beckoned me over, and this time there was no mistaking her tone, which was insistent rather than jubilant. With her, crowded close, were Godric and Ælfhelm, who was nursing a wound to his shoulder, his fellow huscarls Dweorg and Sceota, and Pons too. Of Oswynn, however, there was no sign.
And I knew.
My skin turned to ice. My heart all but stopped, and the breath caught in my chest. No longer were all those men shouting and rejoicing; or perhaps they were, but I did not hear them. Around me the whole world seemed to slow.
‘Lord!’ Eithne was shouting still, her voice desperate, as I pelted towards her as fast as my legs could carry me, nearly tripping over the corpses in my way but somehow managing to stay upright.
‘Where is she?’ I roared as I grew nearer. ‘What happened?’
She stared, terrified, at me, but though her mouth opened, no words came out. Instead, after a moment’s hesitation, she and the others simply stepped to one side, making way and allowing me to see for myself.
Oswynn, my Oswynn, lay on the ground, her head of pitch-black hair resting upon a bundle of folded cloaks, her eyes closed, her chest rising and falling. Her breath misted in front of her face, but there was so little of it, and it came only in stutters.
‘No,’ I said, barely able to manage even a whisper, so numb, so devoid of strength, so helpless did I feel. ‘No.’
Eanflæd, the English girl, knelt beside her, pressing a bloodied cloth against Oswynn’s lower torso, whilst at the same time stroking her brow. Her eyes were red and her cheeks wet with tears. No sooner had she noticed me approaching than she rose to her feet and made way.
‘She wanted to kill them all,’ I was dimly aware of Ælfhelm saying. ‘We tried to stop her, Tancred, but there was a fury in her, a fury such as I’ve never seen in a woman. We tried, but before we could even-’
He kept speaking, but whatever he said, I didn’t hear. My mind was running with a thousand thoughts and I was deaf to his explanations, blind to everything except for my woman as I fell to my knees by her side and took her cold hand in mine, squeezing it as I tried to coax her back to me. Her eyelids fluttered, and a drawn-out moan escaped her lips. Beneath the rag Eanflæd had been using to staunch the flow, Oswynn’s shift was torn where a spear or a seax had dealt its blow, and the linen around it was crimson-dark and sodden. I pressed the cloth firmly against the gash, refusing to admit to myself what my eyes and my heart were telling me, which was that it was no use, that the blood was burbling forth too freely to be stemmed. She was gut-stricken, wounded deep, beyond the ability of the best physician or leech-doctor in Christendom to help, and experience had taught me that no one who suffered such an injury ever lived long. With every trace of mist that escaped her lips, it seemed that a little more life went out of her. Breath by breath, she was slipping away. From the world. From me.
This couldn’t be happening. Not after everything we had done; after the many leagues we had travelled across field and marsh, river and storm-tossed sea; after the countless foes I’d laid low in order to find her and bring her back. Did all of that count for nothing?
‘Oswynn,’ I said desperately. This had to be some dream, some nihtegesa, I thought, except that I couldn
’t find a way to wake from it.
At the sound of her name she stirred. Her eyes opened, just by a little, but enough to see me kneeling over her.
‘Tancred,’ she said, and she was weeping, her voice weak, little more than a whisper. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry-’
‘No,’ I said, and suddenly I was weeping as well. To hear her say such a thing was more than I could bear. She had no reason to apologise. If anyone was to blame, it was I, not her. ‘I should never have left you. I shouldn’t. It’s my fault.’
I wasn’t only thinking of that moment earlier this morning when I’d entrusted her protection to Godric and Ælfhelm. I was also thinking back to that night at Dunholm. If only I’d been there to defend her, none of this would have happened.
‘You came, though,’ she whispered, managing something like a smile, although there was such pain in it.
‘Of course,’ I said, but I wasn’t sure if she heard me. Her face was pale, her skin cold to the touch, her chest barely moving, her breathing light, and growing lighter. She closed her eyes and I gripped her hand more tightly, trying to hold on to her. To prevent from happening what I could not prevent; to stave off fate. To keep her with me a little longer.
‘Oswynn,’ I pleaded, as if that would help, as if it would change anything. ‘Don’t go.’
The smile had faded from her expression; her fingers grew limp in my grasp. Her eyelids trembled, and her mouth opened by the tiniest sliver. She was trying to say something, but whatever it was I couldn’t tell, for at the same time from somewhere close at hand a sudden cheer rose up, drowning out the sound of her voice. Doing my best to stifle my sobs, I leant closer, until my ear brushed against her lips.
‘-for me,’ she managed to say, and I thought I must have missed something, or else misheard, so quiet was she. But then she spoke again, and this time I did hear her. ‘You came for me.’
‘Yes,’ I said, unable to hold the tears back any longer. She gave a long, slow sigh, and through watery eyes I gazed down at her, waiting for her to say more, to say anything at all.
Her mouth was still. Her eyes were closed.
‘Oswynn!’ I said, but no matter how loudly and how many times I repeated her name, she could not hear me. Grief overtook me then, and I let it pour out, spilling down my cheeks as I hugged her close and sobbed into her hair and into her cheeks and her neck. Over and over I begged her to wake, to come back to me. But she would not wake, nor would she come back. Her soul had fled her body, fled this world for whatever place it is that souls are supposed to go.
The sun shone in a bright, clear sky, but a chill had descended upon me, a chill that seized my whole body and wrenched at my heart, and I could not stop trembling. I clung to Oswynn, the one woman in all the world that I had ever truly loved, and I did not want to let her go, or move, or even walk this earth any longer. All I wanted was to die, so that I could be with her.
For she was gone, and my world had grown dark.
We buried her.
A few miles from Jarnborg there was a tiny timber building, not much bigger than a cattle-shed, that passed for a chapel amongst the island folk. We laid her in the earth in its grounds, beneath the winter-green boughs of a hollow yew. The priest, a wrinkled greybeard with a lame leg who walked with the aid of a crutch, recited the necessary liturgy. He had no Latin learning and so spoke in his own tongue, but even if he had, the words would have meant nothing to me, so lost was I in thought, in regret, in sorrow.
Afterwards, when the earth had been placed over her body and everyone else had left, I alone lingered, kneeling by her graveside for how long I cannot say, only that it seemed like an eternity. Clouds scurried from the sea up the length of the fjord, thick and brooding. They billowed and tumbled and blotted out the sun, which grew ever lower in the west. A drizzle came and went; the wind rose and settled and rose once more, tugging at my cloak and buffeting my cheeks, brushing clear the tears that I did not care to wipe away. I thought of her, and remembered the times we had shared, short though they were, and the many happinesses of those times. I prayed for her soul, and prayed also that when the day of reckoning arrived we would be united again in the heavenly kingdom, small comfort though that was to me in those lonely hours, as I thought of all the years stretching ahead that I would have to spend without her. Everything that had seemed so certain in the wake of Haakon’s death, in the wake of our victory, was thrown into confusion. The future that I had hoped for, that I had dreamt of, was not to be.
‘She was a good friend,’ came a voice, startling me. I turned in the direction it had come from, and had to raise a hand to shield my eyes from the setting sun, which was just above the figure’s shoulder.
My eyes adjusted, and I saw it was Eanflæd. She brushed her dark hair from where it had fallen in front of her face. I wondered if she had anything more to add, but when she said nothing, I looked away, embarrassed that anyone should see me so affected, and angry too that she had intruded upon me.
Eanflæd did not come closer, though, nor did she kneel down next to me by Oswynn’s grave, as I’d half expected she might, and I took that as a gesture of respect.
‘She had a child. A girl. Did you know that?’
‘No,’ I said, surprised. Oswynn had not spoken to me of any child, although in our haste to escape Jarnborg we hadn’t had the opportunity to exchange stories. ‘The child was Haakon’s?’
‘He certainly thought so,’ Eanflæd said. ‘He named her Alfhild, and doted on her whenever he returned to Jarnborg. She was born in the autumn after Oswynn came here, on the feast day of All Saints.’
It took me a moment to understand the import of what she was saying. The feast of All Saints took place on the first day of November, while the ambush at Dunholm had happened nine months earlier, in late January.
‘What did Oswynn think?’
Eanflæd shrugged. ‘She never liked to say what she believed, or if she did, not to me. As for the rest of us, we always did say amongst ourselves that the girl had more of her mother than of Haakon in her looks, but who knows? Oswynn certainly didn’t, no matter what she might have hoped.’
‘What about the girl?’ I asked, sensing the slightest glimmer of hope. If there was something that remained of Oswynn, even if she were not a child of my blood-
‘She died,’ the Englishwoman said. ‘She was a sickly thing from the day she entered the world, although God granted her the strength to see through her first year and more. But then the winter came, and the snows, and she caught a fever, and there was nothing that could be done for her.’
No sooner had that candle been lit, than it was pinched out. ‘And after that?’ I asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Did she ever bear Haakon a child after Alfhild?’
Eanflæd shook her head. ‘Nor did any of us, lord.’
‘None of you?’
‘Not one,’ she confirmed. ‘God alone knows why. Although that never stopped him from trying.’
I nodded, not knowing what to say. To tell the truth I wasn’t sure quite what to make of this new knowledge, or even whether there was anything to make.
‘She never stopped believing that you would come for her,’ Eanflæd said, and now at last she did come to kneel beside me, gazing down at the broken earth beneath which Oswynn lay. ‘Especially after she saw you at Beferlic. She often confided in me, and I in her. She told me you would come sooner or later, and I never had the heart to say otherwise. Every time we were allowed to venture beyond the fortress’s walls she was always looking to seaward. I knew she was hoping to spy a ship headed for the island, a ship of warriors who would kill Haakon and free her. She held on to that hope; it was what kept her alive through the dark nights, and there were many of those. It made her strong, and we in turn took our strength from her.’
Eanflæd stopped, for she was sobbing. Her hands covered her face and her whole body shook. I placed an arm around her shoulder in reassurance.
‘She was right
,’ she said, between sniffs, as she wiped her sleeve across her nose. ‘In the end, she was right, and it shames me that I never believed in the same way she did.’
‘She always was strong,’ I replied, not knowing what else to say.
Someday, I resolved, I would come back here; I would make the pilgrimage north and find this island again. It didn’t matter that there was no shrine, no altar, no great minster church to mark the site where she lay in the ground. To me, if to no one else, this humble place would always be sacred: here, beneath the eternal yew, the tree of ages, where the leaves never fell or lost their shade, where life was ever-present. Wherever my travels took me in future, to whatever far-flung parts of Christendom, always I would hold this place in my mind, in the same way that my memories of Oswynn would never fade, but instead would remain as vivid in the years to come as they did now. That was the solemn oath I swore to myself, and it was a pledge that I knew I would have no trouble keeping.
As long as I lived, I would not forget her.
‘Where will you go?’ asked Eudo the next day. We stood on the sands beneath the still-smoking ruins of Jarnborg, listening to the waves lapping on the shore and gazing out over the bay, across the choppy waters sparkling beneath the light of the sun, towards the distant peaks thickly robed with cloud. We had done what we came here to do; now the time had come for us to part ways, and to venture where we must.
‘Not back to England,’ I said. ‘That much I know. There’s nothing left for me there.’
‘You can still try to make amends,’ Wace pointed out. ‘Robert might yet decide to accept you back into his service, if you come with us and seek his forgiveness.’
On that, at least, I had made up my mind, and I think they both realised it, even if they didn’t want to admit it.
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