Edgar sometimes had nightmares: he was on a sinking ship, or an oak tree was falling and he could not get out of the way, or he was fleeing from a forest fire. When he woke up from such dreams he experienced a feeling of relief so powerful that he wanted to weep. Now he kept thinking that the Viking attack might be a nightmare from which he would wake at any moment to find Sunni still alive. But he did not wake.
At last he heard voices speaking plain Anglo-Saxon. Still he hesitated. The speakers sounded troubled but not panicked; grief-stricken rather than in fear of their lives. That must surely mean the Vikings had gone, he reasoned.
How many of his friends had they taken with them to sell as slaves? How many corpses of his neighbors had they left behind? Did he still have a family?
Brindle made a hopeful noise in her throat and tried to stand up. She could not rise in the confined space, but clearly she felt it was now safe to move.
Edgar lifted the manger. Brindle immediately stepped out. Edgar rolled from under it, holding the Viking ax, and lowered the trough back to the floor. He got to his feet, limbs aching from prolonged confinement. He hooked the ax to his belt.
Then he looked out of the dairy door.
The town had gone.
For a moment he was just bewildered. How could Combe have disappeared? But he knew how, of course. Almost every house had burned to nothing. A few were still smoldering. Here and theremasonry structures remained standing, and he took awhile to identify them. The monastery had two stone buildings, the church and a two-story edifice with a refectory on the ground floor and a dormitory upstairs. There were two other stone churches. It took him longer to identify the home of Wyn the jeweler, who needed stonework to protect him from thieves.
Cyneric’s cows had survived, clustering fearfully in the middle of their fenced pasture: cows were valuable, but, Edgar reasoned, too bulky and cantankerous to take on board ship—like all thieves, the Vikings would prefer cash or small, high-priced items such as jewelry.
Townspeople stood in the ruins, dazed, hardly speaking, uttering monosyllables of grief and horror and bewilderment.
The same vessels were anchored in the bay, but the Viking ships had gone.
At last he allowed himself to look at the bodies in the dairy. The Viking was barely recognizable as a human being. Edgar felt strange, thinking that he had done that. It was hardly believable.
Sunni looked surprisingly peaceful. There was no visible sign of the head injury that had killed her. Her eyes were half open, and Edgar closed them again. He knelt down and again felt for a heartbeat, knowing it was foolish. Her body was already cool.
What should he do? Perhaps he could help her soul get to heaven. The monastery was still standing. He should take her to the monks’ church.
He took her in his arms. Lifting her was more difficult than he expected. She was slender, and he was strong, but her inert body unbalanced him and, as he struggled to stand, he had to crush her to his chest harder than he would have wished. Holding her in such arough embrace, knowing she felt no pain, harshly accentuated her lifelessness and made him cry again.
He walked through the house, past the body of Cyneric, and out the door.
Brindle followed him.
It seemed to be midafternoon, though it was hard to tell: there were ashes in the air, along with the smoke from embers, and a disgusting odor of burned human flesh. The survivors looked around them perplexedly, as if they could not take in what had happened. More were making their way back from the woods, some driving livestock.
Edgar walked toward the monastery. Sunni’s weight began to hurt his arms, but perversely he welcomed the pain. However, her eyes would not remain closed, and somehow this distressed him. He wanted her to look as if she were asleep.
No one paid him much attention: they all had their own individual tragedies. He reached the church and made his way inside.
He was not the only person to have this idea. There were bodies lying all along the nave, with people kneeling or standing beside them. Prior Ulfric approached Edgar, looking distraught, and said peremptorily: “Dead or alive?”
“It’s Sungifu, she’s dead,” Edgar replied.
“Dead people at the east end,” said Ulfric, too frantically busy to be gentle. “Wounded in the nave.”
“Will you pray for her soul, please?”
“She’ll be treated like all the rest.”
“I gave the alarm,” Edgar protested. “I may have saved your life. Please pray for her.”
Ulfric hurried away without answering.
Edgar saw that Brother Maerwynn was attending to a woundedman, bandaging a leg while the man whimpered in pain. When Maerwynn finally stood up, Edgar said to him: “Will you pray for Sunni’s soul, please?”
“Yes, of course,” said Maerwynn, and he made the sign of the cross on Sunni’s forehead.
“Thank you.”
