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 wounded man, 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.”

“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 charred bones 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.

Not only had they lost the yard, Edgar realized; they had lost their livelihood. Even if a customer had been willing to order a boat from three apprentices, they had no wood with which to build it, no tools to shape the timber, and no money to buy any of what they needed.

Ma probably had a few silver pennies in her purse, but the family had never had much to spare, and Pa had always used any surplus to buy timber. Good wood was better than silver, he had liked to say, because it was harder to steal.

“We’ve got nothing left, and no way to make a living,” Edgar said. “What on earth are we going to do?”

CHAPTER 2

    Saturday, June 19, 997

ishop Wynstan of Shiring reined in his horse at the top of a rise and looked down over Combe. There was not much left of the town: the summer sun shone on a gray wilderness. “It’s worse than I expected,” he said. There were some ships and boats undamaged in the harbor, the only hopeful sign.

His brother Wigelm came alongside and said: “Every Viking should be roasted alive.” He was a thane, a member of the landholding elite. Five years younger than Wynstan at thirty, he was quick to anger.

But this time Wynstan agreed with him. “Over a slow fire,” he said.

Their elder half brother heard them. As was the custom, the brothers had names that sounded alike, and the oldest was Wilfwulf, forty, usually called Wilf. He was ealdorman of Shiring, ruler of a part of the west of England that included Combe. He said: “You’ve never seen a town after a Viking raid. This is how it looks.”

They rode on into the devastated town, followed by a small entourage of armed men. They made an imposing sight, Wynstan knew: three tall men in costly clothes riding fine horses. Wilf had a blue knee-length tunic and leather boots; Wigelm a similar outfit but in red. Wynstan had a plain black ankle-length robe, as appropriate to a priest, but the fabric was finely woven. He also wore a large silver cross on a leather thong around his neck. Each brother had a luxuriant fair mustache but no beard, in the style fashionable among wealthy Englishmen. Wilf and Wigelm had thick fair hair; Wynstan had the top of his head shaved in a tonsure, like all priests. They looked wealthy and important, which they were.