him.
After a moment, she rested her head on his shoulder and whispered, ‘Tell me.’
At first, Hereward thought he couldn’t give voice to the stew of emotions that had bubbled inside him since he had fled London. But as she traced her fingers across his chest, he realized he wanted to unburden himself, and Acha was perhaps the only person he could tell.
He cast his mind back to the warm night when he had witnessed the murder in the shadow of the new abbey. He recounted the details free of emotion, but when he reached the point where he parted company with Redwald, his voice trembled and he had to pause to steady himself.
‘Redwald told me to hide at Aedilred’s house while he went to raise the alarm. I stayed there for a while, drinking ale, but a terrible melancholy came over me and I felt driven to visit Tidhild,’ he continued, feeling the cold in the room for the first time. ‘We had been together since the winter snows had melted, and… we had grown close.’ He paused, recalling those days when it felt as though his life was finally turning towards peace. ‘I had lain with women before, but Tidhild knew my heart.’
‘Would you have married her?’ Acha ventured.
‘That question means nothing now.’
‘I am sorry. I did not wish to stir up bitter memories.’
‘I have hardened myself to it. I left Aedilred’s and crept through the night like a thief. Tidhild’s father was away and I knew she would be alone, but I felt something was wrong before I reached the door to her house. Some say we see the darkness ahead of us in our minds. That we all carry around with us the portents of the terrible things that will be.’ He brought his arm round her back, finding comfort in the softness of her skin. ‘I found Tidhild dead, her blood still warm. She had been stabbed with a knife many times.’
Acha leaned up on her elbow and searched his face. ‘Did you slay her?’
‘No!’ Hereward exclaimed, his body snapping upright.
‘I have seen the way you lose yourself to the bloodlust. You had been drinking ale-’
‘I would never harm a woman.’ The warrior lay back and closed his eyes. ‘It was not the first time I had seen such a sight.’
Though he didn’t want to revisit that time, another part of him demanded that he set free the memories. ‘My mother. Murdered too.’ He hesitated, a cold weight growing in his chest. ‘By my father. He did not mean to do it, but his rage consumed him. He beat her with his fists until she was gone. When I looked at Tidhild, I saw my mother… I saw me, there, both times…’
‘You were not responsible.’
‘I was. It was clear the murderer went to Tidhild searching for me. Someone who wanted me silenced before I could reveal what I had learned that night. Tidhild was killed, perhaps as a warning to me, perhaps because she was there, and no reason beyond that. But her death lies upon me. I can never leave it behind.’
The sound of raven wings filled his head, and he thought he saw shadows flying across the wall of the room.
‘I ran to my father. He is one of the king’s thegns and had Edward’s ear on Mercian matters for many years.’
‘A thegn? After he murdered your mother?’ Acha’s furrowed brow revealed her incredulity.
‘I was a child. Despite the horrors I witnessed, I kept my mother’s murder a secret, out of duty to my kin. But there was little love between my father and me after that time. He despised me, because I reminded him of the crime he had committed. Because I reminded him of his weakness. And though I tried to earn his respect…’ His words died in his throat. Shaking his head, he steadied himself. ‘I went to my father and told him about Tidhild. I was afraid his life was at risk as well. But he was sure I had slain her, and was lying to save myself. He thought me like him.’ Hereward hammered a fist on the bed. Acha folded her smaller hand over it. ‘My father betrayed me. He ran to the king and raised the alarm. He accused me of murder.’
He fell silent for a moment and then said in a cold voice, ‘And all who knew me at court thought me capable of Tidhild’s murder, for they knew my rage, and my savagery. They knew my love of blood. No one would believe my account of the stranger’s slaying. They would think it more lies to cover my tracks. And if I was arrested it would only be a matter of time before my life was taken by whoever ordered the killing of Edward Aetheling, the king’s chosen heir. I had no choice but to run. And as I collected my sword, my axe and my shield, my brother, my loyal brother Redwald, told me that my own father had asked that I be declared outlaw.’ He felt the cold in his heart spread throughout his body.
‘Does Tostig know that you are outlaw?’
Hereward shook his head. ‘Not yet. I hoped the earl would persuade the king of the plot before the truth came out. There is still hope. Word has been sent to London. If the throne can be made safe, then this hardship will have been worthwhile.’
‘You are a puzzling man.’ Acha leaned back and surveyed her lover. ‘You fight without any sign of honour, yet you act only honourably in your sacrifices to protect the throne. You kill men as if they were nothing, yet risk your own life to save a woman. You show yourself to the world like the rocks along the coast, yet this night you have revealed only tenderness.’
Keen to lock the past behind him, Hereward rolled her on to her back and kissed her deeply. But shadows still moved across his mind. He thought of his mother, and Tidhild, and his father’s blind fury, and he feared what the future held.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
‘No one will hear your cries, monk. If death is what you want, it can be arranged quickly and silently.’ With a black-toothed grin, Harald Redteeth shook his axe a finger’s width from Alric’s defiant face. The younger man slumped on the cold stone steps of the church tower where he had fallen.
‘Archbishop Ealdred would never condone my murder within the minster,’ he spat.
The Viking surveyed his prisoner’s pale face and saw the fear behind the bravado. ‘You think that old churchman cares one whit about you? His thoughts are on greater matters — power and glory, and who will soon be sitting on England’s throne and whether that new king will have need of an even newer archbishop. Now walk, or die.’
Alric resisted for only a moment, and then dragged himself to his feet and continued up the tower steps. The monk still had some fire in him, Redteeth thought, but it would do him little good. He would have to endure the agony of one of the church’s ordeals — water or iron — but the outcome was not in doubt. Death was the only sentence for his crime. Harald plucked at his freshly dyed red beard in brooding rumination. The Mercian was the one he really wanted. It was Hereward who had left the Viking to a shameful death with a noose round his neck. And it would have come about if the men pursuing the English warrior had not followed the tracks through the woods from Gedley and chanced upon his hanging form. Unconsciously, his hand went to the pink welt where the rope had bitten into his neck. If it had been left to him, Hereward would already be dead, butchered and fed to the pigs. But his revenge would come soon enough, and all the more keen for being savoured.
As he hummed a lilting tune, the mercenary felt the last feathery fingers of the toadstools pluck at his thoughts. He glanced back at his second in command climbing the steps a few paces behind him. Ivar’s skin was as grey as the stone of the tower walls, his blue beard bedraggled.
‘Why do you haunt me still?’ Harald asked.
‘Valhalla is denied me, for I died trapped and screaming in fire, not in glorious battle,’ the shade responded in a tone like cracking ice. ‘I must walk the shores of the vast black sea for ever. No rest for me, Harald Redteeth, not until blood has been spilled.’
‘And no rest for me until you have been set free,’ the mercenary replied, understanding his responsibility. ‘Not until blood has been spilled.’
Ahead, the monk flashed a puzzled glance back.
The two men emerged on to the flat roof of the tower in the bright of a Christmas sunrise. Eoferwic tumbled away from the minster into the white river plain, a black smudge misted with smoke from the homefires.
Alric shielded his eyes against the sun as he looked out over the landscape, his chest heaving in sadness at
