The Short Knife by Elen Caldecott

Author:Elen Caldecott [Caldecott, Elen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Andersen Press Ltd
Published: 2019-07-04T00:00:00+00:00

33

Summer solstice, AD455,

early morning.

I look at the baby in my arms. He’s sleeping now. The trauma of his birth is already being forgotten. His hair is drying to honey. He clenches and unclenches his fists as though testing the thickness of the air. I pull his swaddling closer about him. My sister is pale and quiet as sleep pulls her under too. The pain is like the tide running out of the estuary leaving new land behind. I settle him beside her. They should both rest together.

‘You too,’ Sara says. She shuffles around the floor, clicking her teeth and gathering the bloody rags into her basket.

‘Me too what?’ I ask, not too loud.

‘You need to rest. The sun is rising. The longest day.’

I hadn’t noticed until that moment, but the birds in the woods beyond have been calling to welcome the day. It’s soft and golden and for one moment; I think of the baby Iesu and his mother and my heart bursts again.

‘Come. Rest,’ Sara says.

She pushes me past the sack curtain and tugs it back into place behind us both as though it were fine bower-linen.

We are no longer alone in the hut. Some of the Welsh have slipped back, unheard and unannounced. Like Sara they look tired as Job. Elin and Anwen, usually heads together, telling fat stories, are silent. They hold hands, both sorry things.

I don’t speak to them. There’s nothing to say. They won’t care about the baby. He’s nothing to them.

The weight of my tiredness hits me and I let myself drop sack-heavy onto one of the stump stools. The heat from the fire is very welcome. Sara sits too.

‘You said,’ she begins quietly, ‘you said you want better for him.’

I nod.

‘What did you mean?’

I hold my hands out, warming them on the low flames. ‘I don’t know, not for certain. But I know I want him to be free to choose. I had Saxon words forced on me, they still feel too sharp in my mouth.’

Sara nods, listening.

So, I carry on, ‘I am the words I speak. Saxon Mai is mouse-meek and scurrying. British Mai dreamed of fighting for her people. It’s the words that make us, the stories we tell ourselves.’

‘You want him to choose what he will be? Does anyone get to do that?’ Sara asks.

‘Tonight, I chose to stay, to be here. I might have chosen otherwise.’

‘I know. I’m grateful.’ She rests her hand on my shoulder.

‘I want that for him. For him to decide who he is. We don’t get that, do we?’ I nod towards Elin and Anwen. ‘We came back here, even when we might have run.’

‘The dreams of witches get you nowhere,’ Sara says.

‘Wanting better isn’t dreaming,’ I say too loudly. Elin lifts her head and stares, empty-eyed. Whatever horror she’s seeing, it isn’t me she’s looking at.

We’ve all seen horror tonight. The woods are still full of it. Saxon men with iron in their hands. Men I can’t trust. The smoke still rises in the village.

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