“For now, put her down at the east end of the church.”
Edgar walked along the nave and past the altar. At the far end of the church twenty or thirty bodies were laid in neat rows, with grieving relatives staring at them. Edgar lay Sunni down gently. He straightened her legs and crossed her arms on her chest, then tidied her hair with his fingers. He wished he were a priest so that he could take care of her soul himself.
He stayed kneeling for a long time, looking at her motionless face, struggling to understand that she would never again look back at him with a smile.
Eventually thoughts of the living intruded. Were his parents alive? Had his brothers been taken into slavery? Only a few hours ago he had been on the point of leaving them permanently. Now he needed them. Without them, he would be alone in the world.
He stayed with Sunni a minute longer, then left the church, followed by Brindle.
Outside, he wondered where to start. He decided to go to his home. The house would be gone, of course, but perhaps he might find the family there, or some clue as to what had happened to them.
The quickest way was along the beach. As he walked toward the sea he hoped he would find his boat on the shore. He had left it some distance from the nearest houses, so there was a good chance it had not burned.
Before he reached the sea he met his mother walking into town from the woods. At the sight of her strong, resolute features and her purposeful stride he felt so weak with relief that he almost fell down. She was carrying a bronze cooking pot, perhaps all she had rescued from the house. Her face was drawn with grief but her mouth was set in a line of grim determination.
When she saw Edgar her expression changed to joy. She threw her arms around him and pressed her face into his chest, sobbing: “My boy, oh, my Eddie, thank God.”
He hugged her with his eyes closed, more grateful for her than he had ever been.
After a moment he looked over her shoulder and saw Erman, dark like Ma but mulish rather than determined, and Eadbald, who was fair and freckled, but not their father. “Where’s Pa?” he said.
Erman answered: “He told us to run. He stayed behind to save the boatyard.”
Edgar wanted to say:And you left him?But this was no time for recriminations—and, in any case, Edgar too had left.
Ma released him. “We’re going back to the house,” she said. “What’s left of it.”
They headed for the shore. Ma strode quickly, impatient to know the truth, good or bad.
Erman said accusingly: “You got away fast, little brother—why didn’t you wake us?”
“I did wake you,” Edgar said. “I rang the monastery bell.”
“You did not.”
It was like Erman to try to start a squabble at a time like this. Edgar looked away and said nothing. He did not care what Erman thought.
When they reached the beach, Edgar saw that his boat was gone. The Vikings had taken it, of course. They would recognize a good vessel. And it would have been easy to transport: they could simply have tied it to the stern of one of their ships and towed it.
It was a grave loss, but he felt no pain: it was trivial by comparison with the death of Sunni.
Walking along the shore they came across the mother of a boy of Edgar’s age lying dead, and he wondered if she had been killed trying to stop the Vikings taking her son into slavery.
There was another corpse a few yards away, and more farther along. Edgar checked every face: they were all friends and neighbors, but Pa was not among them, and he began cautiously to hope that his father might have survived.
They reached their home. All that was left was the fireplace, with the iron tripod still standing over it.
To one side of the ruin was the body of Pa. Ma gave a cry of horror and grief, and fell to her knees. Edgar knelt beside her and put his arm around her shaking shoulders.
Pa’s right arm had been severed near the shoulder, presumably by the blade of an ax, and he seemed to have bled to death. Edgar thought of the strength and skill that had been in that arm, and he wept angry tears at the waste and loss.
He heard Eadbald say: “Look at the yard.”
Edgar stood up and wiped his eyes. At first he was not sure what he was seeing, and he rubbed his eyes again.
The yard had burned. The vessel under construction and the stock of timber had been reduced to piles of ash, along with the tar and rope. All that remained was the whetstone they had used to sharpen their tools. In among the cinders, Edgar made out charredbones too small to be human, and he guessed that poor old Grendel had burned to death at the end of his chain.
All the family’s wealth had been in that yard.
