Bracelet of Bones (5 page)

Oleif sniffed. “I’m getting Peter, then.”

“Who?” Solveig asked.

“Peter. The young priest. He’ll know what’s best.”

“No,” Solveig protested.

Bera shuffled over to the door and took Solveig’s arm. She looked her full in the face with her misty, knowing eyes. “We’ve seen worse than you,” she said. “Much worse. Last week that little girl . . . all bloated, she was. Yes, we’ve lived so long, we’ve seen almost everything. Sit down again, now. You’re so cold still. And soaked. What did you say your name is?”

Behind Solveig and the old woman, there was a snort.

Old Oleif had fallen asleep.

At once Bera took Solveig by the arm and shepherded her out of the shack.

“First you,” the old woman said quietly, “and now him. He’s always doing that.”

Solveig gazed at Bera. I can trust you, she thought. I think I can.

“Come on,” said Bera, smiling. “While we can. He’s not as heartless as he makes out.” And she led Solveig away from their shack.

“I’m strong as the sun,” Solveig told the old woman.

Bera shook her head. “Don’t talk in riddles, girl,” she said.

“I’m Halfdan’s daughter.”

“Halfdan,” said the old woman encouragingly. “Halfdan . . .”

Then Solveig told Bera about her father and Harald Sigurdsson and Stiklestad and Asta and Kalf and Blubba, and everything, almost everything.

“Maybe the gods are with you,” the old woman said. “Maybe they’ve put a mouthful of wind in your sails.”

“I haven’t got sails,” Solveig replied. “Only a rag of a thing.”

Bera waved a leathery hand. “Enough to bring you here. Maybe I can help you.”

“Where are we going?”

“Down to the market.”

Solveig shook her head.

“Step by step,” the old woman told her. “Sometimes forward, sometimes sideways, even backward. That’s the way you make a journey.” Bera took Solveig’s hand. “I’ve lived here all my life, and I know who’s coming, who’s leaving, where they’re going. I’m taking you to our friends.”

“Who?”

“Turpin and Orm and his wife, Ylva. Swedish fur traders.”

“Swedes?” exclaimed Solveig.

“They can’t help that,” replied the old woman. “None of us can choose our parents.”

“I thought the trappers lived away north,” said Solveig.

“They do. They bring their furs down to Trondheim, and the traders take them on.”

“Where to?”

“They can speak for themselves,” the old woman said.

“Miklagard,” Solveig told the traders.

Sitting on their mound of skins and fur, Turpin and Orm and Ylva pursed their lips.

“Miklagard,” Solveig said again, hoping she sounded more confident than she felt.

“Some man, is it?” Orm inquired.

“Her father,” Bera explained.

“That’s what they all say,” retorted Orm.

Ylva gave Solveig a look, half fond, half pitying. “You’ve no idea,” she said.

“Is that where you’re going?” Solveig asked her. “Miklagard?”

The three fur traders gurgled.

“Miklagard,” Solveig repeated. “It’s after Garthar.”

“We know where it is, all right,” Orm said. “No, we’re going to Sigtuna.”

“Sigtuna,” said Ylva. “Over the mountains.”

That’s the way Harald went, thought Solveig. The way my father’s gone. It must be.

“And across Sweden,” said Orm.

“It’s where Baltic traders sail from,” Ylva explained. “A port on the lake of Malar. Fourteen days from here.”

“Will you take me with you?” Solveig asked eagerly.

Turpin swung his bear head from side to side and growled to himself.

Orm and Ylva said nothing.

“An extra mouth,” said Turpin. “You wouldn’t last, anyhow.”

Solveig clicked her tongue. “I’m tougher than I look,” she told him. “I can carry my share.”

Orm slowly stroked the squirrel furs he was sitting on and considered Solveig—half girl, half woman, her wide-apart eyes, one violet, one gray, how tall she was, the way she planted her feet so firmly on the ground, her determination.

“And I’m rising fifteen,” Solveig added, pulling back her shoulders.

“Have you got some skill?” Orm asked her.

“Carving,” Solveig said at once.

“Carving what?”

“Fishhooks. Pins. Runes.”

Orm looked at his brother and Turpin looked at him. They were men of few words and often understood each other without using any words at all.

“On this condition—” said Turpin. “Whenever we stop, you’re to carve until sundown and give us whatever you’ve carved when we reach Sigtuna.”

“Oh, yes!” said Solveig eagerly. “Yes, I will.”

“Our packhorses carry our furs,” Ylva explained. “We walk.”

“What’s this one?” asked Solveig, pointing to a shiny brown fur.

“Sable. Sable marten,” said Orm, and then he pointed straight at Solveig and grinned. “And what about you? What’s your name?”

Solveig shook her head. “Halfdan’s daughter,” she said.

Orm frowned. “When we reach Sigtuna,” he said, “you’ll have to find a boat sailing to Ladoga.”

“No,” said Solveig. “Miklagard.”

“Baltic traders sail only as far as Ladoga,” Orm told her. “And if you ever get that far, you’ll have to pick up traders heading south for Kiev.”

“Step by step,” said Ylva.

Turpin growled softly and stood up on his throne of furs—sable and squirrel and pine marten, reindeer and black bear. “All right,” he announced. “Tomorrow morning. At first light.”

Solveig’s face brightened. “I’ll be as strong as the sun,” she assured him.

Solveig meant it. She meant it with her head and heart. She just hoped she could be as strong as her word.

5

S
olveig led the way along the narrow path between shoulders of blue-gray rock. Then, at the top of the pass, she turned to face Turpin. In the wind, her felt cloak flapped. The sun at her back made a halo of her golden hair.

Turpin sheltered his eyes with his hairy right hand and appraised her.

“What?” she asked, and she tilted her head a little to the right.

Turpin growled softly. “You remind me,” he said. Then he walked past her.

Sun and wind and scudding gray-brown clouds, stinging April showers, and one snowfall: days passed.

Did you see this? Solveig wondered. Father, did you see all these huge boulders, hundreds and thousands of them, strewn all over the slopes, looking like an enormous flock of sheep? Did you wash your face in this freezing, frothing milky river?

The way hill paths were windswept but forest paths springy with pine needles; the way mountain air was so clear
that single sounds—a clinking bell at the neck of a goat standing on a far ridge, a mountain man splitting logs with an ax and maul—sailed right across a valley; and how the earth was beginning once more to open her eyes: masses of tiny white flowers with yellow pupils, these and the dew tracks of wolves and weasels and snowshoe hares, the spraints of roe deer and that underwater hush when snow is falling, the feel of new moss, spongy and shocking green, the taste of the morning so clean it could have been the day on which the world was created; yes, Solveig saw and heard and felt it all.

At dusk, when the traders had stopped for the night, twice in ramshackle old barns and once in a shallow cave but otherwise in the open, by bright moonlight and firelight Solveig carved a strip of maple.

“What are you carving?” Ylva asked her.

Solveig didn’t reply.

“It looks like a handle for a hammer.”

“Or a long spoon,” suggested Orm.

Solveig edged closer to the fire, and the aspen logs snapped and popped.

“In this half-light,” said Solveig, “one thing turns into another. I can see all sorts of things.”

Orm looked at Ylva. He slowly shook his head and put his right forefinger to his temple.

“Even when I do know what I’m carving,” Solveig added, “it’s better not to tell.”

“What are you talking about?” Ylva asked.

“Making,” said Solveig. “It’s better not to talk about it until I’ve finished it.”

Ylva frowned. “Why?”

“I can’t explain it,” Solveig replied. “But what I’m making needs all my strength, all my head and heart, my body too, every ounce. Talking instead of doing leeches me. Words weaken me.”

After the four of them had eaten and drunk a few mouthfuls of ale, Solveig stretched out, and before long Turpin began to tell her about . . .

“. . . summer. This journey when it’s high summer. There’s still snow up on the glaciers, but all these meadows, they’re eye-bright with the spires of lupins, creamy, pink, purple . . . and we roast yellow mushrooms and pick red berries . . .”

Turpin’s voice sounded to Solveig like the buzzing of summer bees.

“And trout . . . we tickle them and take them and grill them . . .”

“Listen to you!” said Ylva.

“Ah!” growled Turpin. “I was forgetting. Yes, the mosquitoes . . .”

But Solveig had already fallen asleep.

Turpin got up and shook out a fur—in the darkness it was difficult to see quite what, but it smelled of black bear—and laid it gently over Solveig.

“She reminds me,” he said.

For a while the three of them sat in silence around the fire.

Turpin rubbed his arms and then stretched and groaned. “My Tola!” he said. “Tola! What father can bear the loss of his daughter? Part of him is lost with her; as long as he lives he goes on searching for her.”

The fire sighed. It whistled.

“Not that Solveig will reach Miklagard,” Turpin observed. “That’s not a likely story. Still, she’s following her father, and I mean to help her. When we reach Sigtuna, we can take her to the skipper—Red Ottar.”

Ylva drew in her breath between her teeth.

“He’ll like her,” said Turpin.

“And enslave her,” Ylva replied. “He’ll demand favors.”

“Over my dead body,” Turpin said. “Solveig will carve for him. He’s got a slave girl already. No, I know Red Ottar. He’ll take her aboard and give her passage to Ladoga.”

“My friend,” said Turpin. “I’ve brought you a treasure.”

“Pff!”

Threads of Red Ottar’s saliva glistened in his red-gold beard; some sprayed his companions.

“Hear that, Slothi? Turpin’s brought us a treasure.”

Slothi uncoiled himself and smiled a twisted smile.

“A treasure,” the skipper repeated, treasuring the very word. “Since when, Turpin, have you done anything but fleece me with your stinking fleeces?”

Two of the men laughed, and a gat-toothed woman clapped her hands.

Solveig looked at them. Red Ottar and the pretty young woman with glistening dark brown hair, sitting at his feet; two middle-aged women; a girl and a boy, both much the same age as Blubba; and four other men, one with a black tooth, but one much younger, tall and dark-haired, who gazed intently at her with smiling eyes.

“Nothing for nothing,” Red Ottar said. “Go on, then, Turpin. What treasure?”

Turpin simply turned his head toward Solveig and opened the palm of his right hand.

And the Baltic traders, they all looked at her. Ten pairs of eyes, unblinking.

“Nothing for nothing,” Red Ottar said thoughtfully. “What do you want of me?”

“She can carve,” Turpin told him. He shrugged off his shoulder bag, loosened the leather tie, and opened it. “Just look at these. These pins, this platter with runes around it.”

Red Ottar sniffed. Then he put his right forefinger to one nostril and shot snot out of the other.

“She’s come with us from Trondheim.”

Red Ottar took a step toward Solveig and stood right in front of her.

“On the run, are you?”

Solveig shook her head.

“Too many beatings?”

Solveig flinched, but she gazed straight into Red Ottar’s eyes and didn’t blink.

“Or worse,” said Red Ottar. “Put your carving knife into someone, did you?”

“No,” said Solveig, much louder than she meant to.

“She’s looking for passage,” Turpin said. “Safe passage. She’ll pay with her carvings.”

“Hear that, Bruni?” Red Ottar said. “An assistant for you.”

Red Ottar looked up at Solveig. She was almost a head taller than he was.

“Why?” he barked. “Why, then?”

“I’m following my father,” Solveig replied. She opened her eyes wide.

The skipper grimaced and shook his head. “Alone?”

Solveig nodded.

“And where in the world is he?”

“Miklagard.” Solveig paused. “I think he is.”

“Miklagard,” Red Ottar repeated. “I see . . . Hear that, everyone? Miklagard.”

“A shining city for a shining girl,” said the handsome young man.

“Never at a loss for words, are you, Vigot?” said Red Ottar.

Vigot gave Solveig a crafty smile. “Not on your own, surely?”

Red Ottar slapped his thighs, and then he threw back his head and laughed in Solveig’s face. All the traders scoffed and jeered.

Red Ottar jabbed his forefinger into Solveig’s neck. “This . . . this girl . . . what did you say your name is?”

“I didn’t,” Solveig replied.

“Go on, then,” said Red Ottar.

Solveig never took her eyes off Red Ottar, not for one moment. “Nothing for nothing,” she replied, doing her best to keep her voice clear and steady.

Hearing this, several of the traders began to laugh.

And the skipper, Red Ottar, he laughed at himself.

“Your father . . .” he said.

“Halfdan,” Solveig replied.

“Never trust a Dane,” Red Ottar said. “Not even half a Dane.”

“Halfdan?” repeated an older man with very bright blue eyes. He frowned.

“Well, Torsten?” Red Ottar asked him.

“Yes,” said the man. “Yes. On my last passage to Ladoga . . . Halfdan.”

Solveig could feel cold waves rippling up her spine, spreading across the broad of her back, stiffening her neck.

“Last September,” the man added. “Big man. Clumsy. He had a limp.”

Solveig realized her breath had grown jerky. She felt her eyeballs burning.

Then the gat-toothed woman took a step forward and waved a scaly red hand in Solveig’s face. “I say no,” she announced.

“Nobody asked you,” Red Ottar replied. “That’s the trouble with you, Bergdis. You talk too much.”

“I say no,” Bergdis repeated with a gleam in her eye.

“To business,” said Red Ottar. “The girl’s following her father, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But loyalty and high hopes, they only get you so far.”

“Without them,” said Solveig, “you get nowhere.”

“Well?” he inquired.

“Solveig,” she said, her voice strong and bright.

Red Ottar smiled through his mustache and red-gold beard. “And trust,” he said. “That’s another stepping-stone. Loyalty and high hopes and trust, they’ll get you a long way, but not half as far as Miklagard.” Then the skipper gave
Turpin a crafty look. “So,” he said, “how come she matters so much to you?”

Turpin lowered his eyes.

“What’s she to you?” Red Ottar persisted.

“She reminds me,” Turpin said, and he gave a very deep sigh. “And she’s to me what she must be to every man aboard.” Turpin gave the handsome young man a long, meaningful look. “I want your word and hand on it.”

“We’re going to Kiev,” Red Ottar said briskly.

“Kiev!” exclaimed Turpin.

“There’s always a first time. More risk, but more money.”

“Kiev,” Turpin explained to Solveig. “That’s south, far south. Beyond Ladoga. Beyond Novgorod.”

“I know,” Solveig said. “Yaroslav’s the king there.”

Red Ottar raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“My father told me. It’s more than halfway to Miklagard.”

“I’ll throw in extra skins, my friend,” offered Turpin.

“You will, my friend,” replied Red Ottar in a dry voice. “You will! And we’ll throw her overboard if she doesn’t pull her weight.” He looked around his crew of traders. “Yes . . .” he said slowly. “No . . . I see some of you want her aboard and some do not. Some for the right reasons, some for the wrong ones.” The skipper turned back to Turpin. “All right!” he said. “We’ll decide tonight. Come back first thing.”