Raven: Sons of Thunder (23 page)

‘Return? What are you talking about? And what is wrong with your eye?’

I smiled. ‘You are going to take us to Aix-la-Chapelle, Winigis,’ I said, ‘and in return my lord gives you all that is in my hand.’

The man’s pockmarked face was flushing red now, his cheeks beginning to flame with frustration. The other fishermen were selling well.

‘I don’t want whatever it is your lord is offering!’ he snapped, glancing around now for help, perhaps looking for Radulf the reeve.

Then with my free hand I shoved a basket of fish off the trestle, spilling the glittering catch into the mud where some of the creatures flapped, perhaps thinking they were saved. Then I emptied the ratskin hat on to the planks. The hack silver, rings and brooches glimmered dully in the dawn light and Winigis the fisherman stood open-mouthed, his eyes wide as coins. ‘Oh, I think you do,’ I said, feeling the grin spread across my face.

FOR THE REST OF THE DAY WE WANDERED THE CITY, HAVING
arranged to meet Winigis on the northern bank where his people’s shit slid into the Sicauna. He had recoiled at our choice of meeting place, but the sight of all that silver weighed down his tongue so that he simply nodded, asking no more questions, and we left him picking fish from the mud.

We discovered that the island’s eastern side was largely given over to the White Christ and Egfrith tried to convince us to visit the churches and monasteries there, but I would not and so he had to explore them alone. I still had the silver, so Penda would not leave my side. He had to come with me to the shoemaker’s stall where I bought a pair of boots that came halfway up my shin and had soles of thick hide. In return I had to go with him back to the tavern to find a whore. Beaknose rustled up seven to choose from and Penda took a long time choosing, in the end settling for a big-boned, pale-skinned girl. I suspected he chose her because she had red hair like the girl from Wessex who filled his dreams. I settled for a skin of wine because the monk was not there to sour its taste with his talk of Christ’s blood, and by the time it was half
empty it could have been Christ’s, Óðin’s or my own blood for all I cared.

‘Why don’t you take one?’ Beaknose had asked me, nodding at a sallow-skinned whore as he slammed a dish of steaming potage on the table before me. He seemed offended. ‘Don’t tell me you have a taste for boys. You do not look like a Greek,’ he offered, scratching his pockmarked neck, ‘but it can be arranged.’

‘Raven has a skinny girl waiting for him,’ Penda said, his voice muffled by the redhead’s heavy breasts. ‘She’s pretty as the sun and a good girl, too. Not like these scraps of rancid mutton.’ The redhead continued to coo over him, which I took to mean she understood no English.

‘But this skinny girl is not here now,’ Beaknose said, handing two cups of ale to a rough-looking pair of Franks armed with swords and long knives. ‘There is no harm in poking a fire for warmth when you’re away from your own hearth.’

‘Poking fires is dangerous,’ I said, blowing on a spoonful of potage and wondering what animal had gone into it, for the meat was an unusual ashen colour, though the dish smelled delicious. Beaknose shrugged and went about his business, leaving me to eat, drink, admire my new boots, and ignore Penda’s fumblings in the straw behind me.

That night a waxing crescent moon silvered the Sicauna and the thatch roofs of Paris. The smoke seeping from those roofs glowed yellow and the deserted muddy streets and walkways which were not cast in shadow glistened. I was half asleep by the time Egfrith blew into the tavern, but that did not stop him gabbling on about the church of Geneviève and its most prized relic, an ancient bit of wood said to be a piece of the true Cross on which the White Christ died. Then he had gone to some monastery and prayed with the brothers there and done who knows what else, because I had pulled my cloak over my head
to save my ears, though I could still hear his muffled chatter long into the night.

At dawn we found a woman selling freshly baked barley and wheat bread and we bought every loaf she had, filling three large sacks, a fourth being full of cured meat from Beaknose. Then I took off my new boots, tied them together and hung them round my neck before we made our way out of the north-west gate and across the mud where we found Winigis waiting. He wore a long kirtle of coarse wool and instead of a cloak a waxed skin fell to below his arse. In one hand he clutched his waxed leather hat and in the other a small oiled wool sack containing whatever else he had thought to bring for the journey. There the four of us waited, Penda reminiscing about his whore, Egfrith squeaking on about the churches of Paris, Winigis asking questions to which he got no answers, and I watching the misty river for sign of
Serpent
and
Fjord-Elk
.

We did not have to wait long.
Serpent
slid out of the mist as she had done when I had first seen her from the rocks of Abbotsend. Then she had put an iced knot of fear in my belly and frozen my limbs with terror, but now her swan-breasted hull was like a refreshing drink for my eyes, despite the Christ cross at her prow, and the rhythmic dip of her oars was a thrilling, soul-stirring sound. Olaf waved in greeting and Knut turned the ship to the shore, the oars quickening so that they looked like an eagle’s beating wings as she came.

‘Never thought I’d be happy to see such a thing,’ Penda said, his left hand resting on the pommel of the sword at his hip.

‘You are with them?’ Winigis asked me, fear etched in his pock-scarred face. He glanced at Egfrith who half grimaced.

‘She’s called
Serpent
. And the other ship is called
Fjord-Elk
,’ I said proudly, feeling my lips spread in a smile as Sigurd’s second ship broke out of the vaporous murk.

‘
Serpent
?’ Winigis glanced back towards the city wall. ‘It is not a very Christian name.’ He licked his lips and his fingers worried at the hat he was clutching.

‘Neither is
Fjord-Elk
,’ I added, staring at
Serpent
as she slewed up on to the muddy shore, carving through the sludge as Olaf held on to the cross at her prow. ‘And that’s because those men are black-hearted heathens, Winigis,’ I said as two ropes were thrown over the sheer strake for Egfrith and Winigis to clamber up. ‘Well, most of them anyway.’ The Frank took a step backwards, his eyes full of horror. I threw him the ratskin hat full of silver and he caught it wide-eyed and clutched it to his chest without even untying the thong to look inside it. ‘Now get aboard, Winigis,’ I said, and he looked to Father Egfrith who nodded and trudged forward. The Frank put on his hat, stuffed the silver into his oiled sack and followed Egfrith as Bjorn, Bjarni, Osk, Hedin and three of the Wessexmen jumped off to help Penda and me shove the dragon ship back into the river.

‘So, lad, who is he?’ Olaf asked, looking unimpressed by the frightened Frank standing at the mast step as I took my oar from the oar trees and fed it through the port beside my journey chest. Cynethryth smiled at me, her green eyes fresh as new grass in that place of mud and brown water. My chest tightened like a clenched fist.

‘He’s a fisherman, Uncle,’ I said, falling into time with the other rowers so that our oar blades clove the Sicauna with the precision of a flock of birds in flight, ‘and he is going to take us to Aix-la-Chapelle to see the emperor.’

‘Is he now?’ Olaf muttered under his breath as Sigurd began to question the Frank, his cloak wrapped tightly round his shoulders and clasped in one hand at his neck, despite the mild early autumn morning. ‘And his reward is all of that silver Sigurd gave you? Every last shiny bit?’ His eyebrows arched as he scratched his bushy beard.

‘Apart from what we used to buy bread and meat, yes, Uncle,’ I said, still looking at Cynethryth. ‘All of it.’

‘Then I suppose you found those handsome new boots, eh?’ he said, and I smiled at Cynethryth and imagined what I would do with her if we ever got the chance to be alone together.

‘Just sitting there unloved and footless,’ I said, trying not to smile. ‘Some of us are born lucky, Uncle.’

We rowed upriver watching the fortress island of Paris slide by our steerboard side. Along the shore on our port side men were felling trees, carving into the forest as teams of oxen dragged the trunks away, and Father Egfrith chirruped that that was just the beginning. In a few years that clearing would be crowded with dwellings and the sky above yellow with hearth smoke and church bells would join in song with those from new churches on the land south of the island. For Paris was a bastion of the true faith, he said, which would bloom like a rose as more of God’s children flocked to the light, and soon the Christian west would meet the Christian east so that only at the fringes of the world would the darkness linger. ‘At the fringes of the world and in your black hearts,’ he said, instinctively touching the scar on his tonsured head etched by Glum’s sword, ‘though I will do my best to turn you away from Satan’s path, so help me God.’

Most of the Norsemen could not understand him and tolerated his prattling, having grown accustomed to it. Even old Asgot the godi seemed less inclined to slit the monk’s throat these days, though there were still those of us who half expected Egfrith to wake up dead one morning. But Asgot was still busy looking to Sigurd’s recovery with offerings and poultices and potions and spells, for the day after we set off with Winigis Sigurd fell very sick. It was late in the afternoon on a dark, narrow stretch of the river shaded by dense forest of oak, chestnut and beech when Sigurd stumbled against
Serpent
’s mast and Bjarni said he saw the jarl’s eyes roll back in his head
before he crumpled to the mast step, his legs kicking and his mouth frothing like shaken mead.

‘Keep rowing, you whoresons!’ Olaf barked. ‘I’ll gut any man I see with an oar dripping!’ For the river was narrow and so the current was strong against us. But I knew the real truth behind Olaf’s anger. He did not want us to see Sigurd in that way. And he was afraid, too. So we rowed, and Olaf, Egfrith and Cynethryth made a shelter of skins on the stern fighting platform in which they laid our jarl like a dead warrior in his earthen barrow.

Even Egfrith prayed for him, pleading with his god to save him, for the jarl was the root through which the rest of the Norsemen’s souls could be redeemed, and by saving the root Christ could save the tree. Asgot said we must moor and gather certain herbs and remedies. That night we made fast and men scoured the forest with torches for the things the godi needed. We did not care that we might bring danger upon ourselves.

By dawn we had found all but the waybroad, but Asgot sneered that without the waybroad Sigurd would die, so we went out again though we did not come across the plant. Exhausted and fearing the worst we watched the godi prepare his remedy. He took a handful of hammerwort, a handful of maythe, and two handfuls of wergulu and the roots of the water dock, though only those plants which men had found floating in pools and bogs. With these plants he put one eggshell full of clean honey and some clean butter and worked up a mixture which he then melted. When it set he melted it again and once more after that. He chanted an ancient spell over the blend before disappearing into the tent and I admit I did not know whether Sigurd was to drink the concoction or whether it was to be spread upon his wounds, though I hoped for his sake it was the latter.

‘I think you should prepare yourself, Raven,’ Cynethryth
said in a low voice that night as we settled down to sleep on thick furs amongst
Serpent
’s oak ribs.

‘Prepare for what?’ I asked, though I knew well enough what she meant. She stroked my face and smiled sadly and I looked out across the moon-glossed river. Bats tumbled and flickered above the reeds at the shadowy bank. Somewhere a vixen screamed, a distant sound above the low but infinite gush of the river. ‘He will recover, Cynethryth,’ I said after some time. ‘Look at Black Floki.’ The black-haired warrior was leaning by the fresh-water barrel forward of the hold, running his long knife against a whetstone. ‘He looks well enough, doesn’t he?’

‘I don’t understand,’ Cynethryth said, taking the thongs from her golden plaits, which remained stiff, the hair too stubborn to unweave itself. ‘What has Black Floki to do with it?’ she asked, grimacing as she teased and tugged at the braids.

‘When the Norns come for Sigurd they will also take Floki,’ I said. ‘It is their fate to cross Bifröst, the shimmering bridge, and walk through the gates of Asgard together. It may be mine too.’

‘You cannot truly believe that?’ There was no mockery in her voice, just sadness. ‘You cannot believe that everything is already fixed. That we have no say in these things. That we are on a path we have no choice but to follow?’