Raven (27 page)

TWO DAYS LATER WE MADE SURE WE WERE EVEN CLOSER TO THE
fighters than we had been the first time. The dark-haired fighter that Floki had put his money on was known as Theo the Greek. We watched him kill the blauman who had butchered the Frank who’d fought with two short axes, and I lost the two solidi I had made earlier. There were two more warriors who had, it seemed, made names for themselves in the arena: Berstuk the Wend and the man they called The African. Berstuk had won five fights, The African four. Both were fearsome-looking warriors who bore the scars of countless fights and both were natural killers. Big, powerful, fast, skilled, they had everything a great warrior needs and over the next two weeks, in between trading and provisioning the ships, we watched them kill again and again.

‘There’s a stink to it all, Sigurd,’ Olaf said one night, passing a wineskin to the jarl and dragging the back of his hand across his lips. We lay amongst pelts on the wharf where half of us had put up rough shelters to give everyone more room. No one had stopped us, because the pope did not want any trouble, and so we did what we liked. ‘Why is it that the Greek, the Vindr, and the African never fight each other?’ Olaf went on.
Further down the wharf a group of men were arguing. Someone nearer belched loudly. We were drinking ourselves stupid and arguing about which of the fighters we had seen was the best.

‘They are worth too much to Red-Cloak alive, Uncle,’ Sigurd said. ‘They bring in the crowds and so long as his best warriors keep fighting, there will always be men who think they can beat them.’

A fight had now broken out on the wooden wharves and we half watched a maelstrom of punches and kicks. Then blades were drawn and that must have persuaded some of them that the disagreement was not worth dying for, because the knot of men split, both sides backing off amidst insults and curses. Ships of all shapes and sizes were arriving daily, their crews spilling off the river into Rome and most of them armed to the teeth. There was no sign of the harbour master Gratiosus nowadays and not even Gregor knew where he was, which was good for us because it meant he was not around to squeeze us for more berthing money. ‘He’s likely pulled those scales of his out in front of the wrong crew and they’ve fed his Roman guts to the river rats,’ Bram had suggested and we thought that was probably the truth of it.

‘But Red-Cloak must be losing money in wagers,’ Bjarni said, coming up for air from a pretty whore’s tits. ‘Who would wager their silver
against
those three? It seems to me that we have not seen anyone half good enough to beat them.’

I sluiced my insides with a great splash of wine and shuddered because it was sour. ‘Red-Cloak is weaving their fame,’ I said, ‘that’s what it is about.’ Eyes turned to me then because I talked of fame and fame is what a Norseman craves even more than silver. ‘Gregor told us that in the olden times, even when Rome was the most powerful kingdom in the world, its emperors still feared their people.’

‘That’s because there were so many of them, like fleas on a damn dog,’ Bram said.
Or maggots in a carcass
, I thought.

‘To win favour and keep the peace the emperors would hold fights between slaves.’ Someone barked a laugh at that. ‘Not just any slaves,’ I said. ‘These men were trained by the best fighters in the world until they were ready for the arena.’ I looked at Sigurd. ‘Can you imagine that place choked to the sky with blood-hungry Romans?’

Sigurd shook his head. ‘The noise must have been like thunder.’

‘So this Red-Cloak thinks he’s an emperor,’ Bjarni said, picking his teeth with a sliver of wood.

‘He’s a crafty son of a goat, that’s what he is,’ Olaf said, ‘because he is getting rich while other men are getting dead.’ There were chuckles at that because it was well said. Yet even through the false light of flames and the moon-glow off the foam-flecked river, I could see the men’s eyes as they talked of meaningless things and of home and women and friends gone to the grave. They drank sour wine and weak ale and ate pork ribs cooked in garlic oil. But their eyes shone like golden solidi. And I wished I had not talked of fame-hoards, for that was like putting a fleshy bone beneath a hound’s nose at night and expecting the meat to still be on it in the morning.

Some days later Sigurd told us to fill our ships’ bellies with food because we were leaving Rome. If what Egfrith had learnt from his brother Christ slaves was true and Emperor Karolus really was on his way to support Pope Leo and put the lords of Rome back in their places, it would be better for us if we were not there. We had crammed our eyes with the countless impossible wonders of the ancient city. We had eaten foods that tasted so good you didn’t want to finish eating them, and other things that tasted so bad they turned your face inside out. We had made some money, too, selling furs, amber, bone and some of the weapons we had taken from the blaumen, though we had lost most of it again in the arena. It was time for our prows to taste the salty ocean once more, for we had not set
our hearts on Rome but on Miklagard, the Great City. And so we were leaving. Little did we know that that was not what the Spinners had woven for us.

‘Tell them, Raven. They’ll lap this up!’ Penda, Gytha, Baldred and Wiglaf had returned from the market at the foot of the Esquiline Hill where Gregor had told us we could buy the best smoked cheese in all of Rome. Each of the Wessexmen had come lugging a greased linen sackful, the sweet, woody fug of that delicious treasure billowing in their wake. But it was not the cheese that had them slobbering.

I felt my brows bend like drawn bows. ‘I think we should say nothing about it, Penda,’ I said, thinking back over the story I had just heard. Gap-toothed Ingolf passed and I slapped the fragrant slab of smoked beef ribs on his shoulder. The men were thrumming as they always did when we prepared to leave a place and take to the sea road again.

‘I’d tell them myself if it were not for my honest Christian tongue,’ Penda gabbed, grinning at Gytha and the others. He rolled it over his bottom lip. ‘Just can’t find its way round those filthy, heathen words of yours,’ he said.

‘I’m not telling them,’ I said, pointing at him. ‘Besides, we’re leaving in the morning. It’s too late.’

‘Tell them.’

‘No.’

‘Tell them.’

My eyes rolled in their sockets.

‘At least tell Sigurd,’ Baldred put in, several black teeth showing within his even blacker beard. The Wessexmen were glistening with sweat because the afternoon was warm and they had walked far.

‘Heya Raven, what are the little Englishmen bleating about?’ Svein said, stopping nearby to get a better purchase on a barrel of ale he was hefting across the rain-slick quayside towards
Serpent
. Rain had blown in from the north-east and it was that same wind, which seemed to come every morning and last till
midday, that we would catch in our sails next day to push us back down the Tiberis to the sea.

I knew I should keep my lips riveted together. I knew I should swallow the words that were rising in my throat like bubbles in good ale. But there is a part of me that loves chaos, that revels in the clatter of the runes across the deck, in that moment when nothing is certain and anything is possible. All warriors, I think, hear the echo of sword against shield in the beat of their own hearts and are savagely drawn towards it. That is why I told Svein and Bram and anyone else within earshot what Penda had told me: that the word jumping like a flea across Rome was that Red-Cloak had issued a challenge. Three warriors had beaten every man brave enough to fight them. Theo the Greek, Berstuk the Wend, and the man they called The African were, so Red-Cloak said, the greatest fighters to wield a blade since the days of the gladiators. Now these three would fight together as sword-brothers, in the greatest spectacle the Amphitheatrum Flavium had seen for four hundred years. Were there any three men in all of Rome to match those three in courage and skill? African, Moor, Northman, Frank, Wend, it mattered not, so long as they dared.

‘And supposing there are three half-witted men foolish enough to accept this challenge,’ Egfrith piped up, ‘and suppose by some miracle they defeat those three killers. What would they get for it?’

‘One thousand, two hundred and fifty libra,’ I said, ‘which is—’

‘Which is five men’s weight in silver,’ Sigurd said, glancing at Olaf, who tugged his beard at the thought. Men whistled and murmured and tried to imagine that much silver.

‘What’s the bone in the broth?’ Olaf asked, suspicion slitting his eyes.

‘That whoever fights those three will probably die, Uncle,’ I said. ‘And that they have to pay Red-Cloak five hundred libra for the pleasure.’

‘Then they just make sure they win, hey!’ Svein said with a shrug of his massive shoulders.

‘And whatever happens Red-Cloak will make enough silver in wagers to become an emperor after all,’ Sigurd said. ‘Uncle, get everyone together at sundown. Here, by
Serpent
. Tell Asgot to bring the runes.’ Olaf nodded and marched up the wharf. ‘Raven, go and find Red-Cloak. Tell him that Óðin’s Wolves who are moored in the embrace of the river’s coil accept the challenge and will pay six hundred libra tomorrow if he turns down any others.’

‘Lord?’ My head was swimming, my ears trying to grip on to the words coming out of my jarl’s mouth.

Sigurd eyeballed me fiercely. ‘Raven, do you think men like us can ignore such a challenge? Did we come to Rome just to see the ruins of men long dead? You knew, Raven.’ His brows lifted. ‘Even before the words tumbled out of your mouth, you knew that it would be this way.’ He was right. I had known. Yet I also knew that part of me loved chaos. And so I nodded to my jarl as Norsemen, Danes and Englishmen simmered like water above coals and forgot all about setting sail. And I went to find Red-Cloak.

Father Egfrith went with me because he could speak Latin, which might be useful for all we knew, having no idea where Red-Cloak was from. At first the monk had refused, saying that he wanted nothing to do with our bloodthirsty schemes and would rather spend his last days in Rome visiting shrines and churches and the grave of a saint called Paul. Sigurd threatened to leave him behind if he did not help us and I believe Egfrith half liked the sound of that threat, for in his gloom he believed he had failed as far as converting us into kneeling White Christ followers went. But Egfrith was also as inquisitive as a crow. As much as any man he thirsted to see Miklagard, or Constantinople as he called it, maybe even more so now that he had seen Rome. And so he wandered the city with me and we asked a hundred people if they knew
where we might find the rich, dark-skinned man who held the purse strings in the arena. The ones who understood us eyed us suspiciously and refused to speak of the arena, perhaps thinking we were in the pay of Pope Leo or the emperor and were trying to trick them into confessing they had attended the fights.

‘They’re not so tight-lipped when the blood starts flying,’ I moaned as we turned our backs on another man who claimed he did not even know where the Amphitheatrum Flavium was. ‘You should hear it, Egfrith, the noise of so many people. It’s a wonder your ears don’t burst.’

‘It is barbarous,’ he said. ‘It hurts God’s ears, I am sure of that.’

I thought that might be true and said so. ‘But I think our gods would pull up a bench, fill their mead horns and watch until the last blood sprayed the dirt,’ I said.

‘You
would
think that. Because you are a vile heathen, Raven, and your soul is damned.’ The crowds were thinning out as merchants packed away their goods and folk began to make their way home. There was still an edge of menace to the night because the soldiers that would normally patrol the streets were instead guarding the Lateran and Pope Leo. ‘What are we doing here anyway?’ Egfrith asked, stopping suddenly and sweeping an arm through the air. We were in the Forum, between the Palatine Hill and the Capitoline Hill and our ears rang with the clamour of countless hammers and chisels striking stone. Men were building towers from ruins, great strongholds from which they could watch over the city and, perhaps, their enemies. Workers, as white as bloodless corpses from all the stone dust, yelled to each other and argued. Others clambered up and down the wooden frames that surrounded the half-built towers like ribcages around beating hearts. Boys played amongst the ancient rubble. Dogs fought over scraps of dropped food. Whores waited patiently for newly paid men to finish for the day, and the whole place stank of sweat and
shit from the oxen that were everywhere dragging sleds stacked with shaped stones.

‘I thought you would like it here,’ I replied, wincing. ‘Look at all the White Christ houses.’ Around the edge of the Forum were many Roman temples that had been turned into churches. ‘Besides, it seems to me that if you are a rich man in Rome this is where you build your stronghold. Near to the river but not so near that you drown when it floods, and far enough from the pope that you can do what you like. And you build it high, by the looks, so you can piss on other men’s heads.’

Egfrith had to admit the sense in coming to the Forum, though in the end it was Red-Cloak who found us. Or rather his men did. We had come across a fat man selling honey-coated figs, which I had learnt should be eaten sparingly if you did not want to spend the whole day squatting over a bucket, and that man spoke enough English to understand that I was going to cut off his balls and throw them to the dogs if he did not tell us what we wanted to know. Egfrith had scolded me in front of the man, pissing on my threat somewhat, but I was tired and my feet were aching and I had not realized it would be so hard to find a man whose face was known to thousands who had seen him in the arena. Only when a small, rat-faced boy returned with five armed men did my memory pluck from somewhere the sight of that boy running off the moment I had grabbed the fig-seller by his fleshy neck.

The fat man ranted to the soldiers, who had surrounded Egfrith and me though they had not yet levelled their spears at us, pointing at me as though I were a two-headed mountain troll. ‘You would have thought I
had
cut his balls off,’ I said, sickened by the fat man’s whining and his terror-filled eyes, for I sometimes forgot about my own blood-filled eye and the effect it had on others.