Scramasax (27 page)

Solveig frowned. ‘Edith said she might call her that. Is it English?'

Edwin shook his head. ‘I thought it was Viking.'

‘No,' said Solveig. ‘Not that I've ever heard.'

‘After all,' reasoned Edwin, ‘her father was a Viking.'

The two of them met each other's eyes, and smiled.

‘And Sineus?' asked Solveig. ‘His foot?'

‘Poor man,' Edwin replied. ‘He lost it. His whole leg. So he's still stranded where you last saw him, on Saint
Gregorios. I'll be sailing east and north again as soon as I can, so I can help him back to Kiev.'

‘You've come with a message for Empress Zoe,' suggested Solveig.

‘Have I?'

‘And one for Harald.'

When Edwin didn't reply, Solveig recalled how Edith had laughed and told her that trying to get him to say something when he didn't want to was like squeezing a stone for water.

‘You told me before,' Solveig reminded him, ‘it would be a strange messenger who travelled so far and for so long with only one song in his mouth.'

‘Is that what I said?' enquired Edwin with a polite smile.

‘Harald, then,' said Solveig firmly.

‘I can scarcely give Harald a message, can I,' Edwin replied sharply, ‘if I can't even speak to him?'

‘Can you help?' asked Solveig for a second time. ‘Can you?'

‘It seems I have no choice,' Edwin replied in a dry voice, as if assisting the Varangians were something he had no particular wish to do, ‘if I'm to speak to Harald myself.'

‘You know someone,' Solveig prompted him.

But Edwin was in no hurry to answer, and for a while they walked on through the streets of Miklagard without saying anything further.

‘Yes,' said Edwin thoughtfully. ‘Yes.' And then, in a much more definite voice: ‘You're about to meet her.'

Edwin halted. He chafed his tongue against the back of his buckteeth. ‘A woman,' he announced. ‘A noblewoman.'

‘Who?' asked Solveig.

‘A child of the crossing-place,' Edwin said rather
grandly. ‘Her mother was a great lady here in Miklagard, and she was given in marriage to a great Varangian.' He took Solveig's left arm. ‘Five years ago,' he went on, ‘this lady became ill. Very ill, and near to death. No doctor knew what was wrong with her, though many pretended to, and no amount of money given to the priests in their chantries was able to save her. She turned yellow, she turned grey. On her deathbed, this lady prayed to mighty Olaf, the king, the saint who brought the word of Christ to Norway …'

‘I know,' said Solveig. ‘He died when the wolf swallowed the sun.'

Edwin nodded.

‘My father and Harald fought beside him,' Solveig told him. ‘At Stiklestad.'

Edwin nodded again. ‘This lady, she called out to Olaf to pray to Jesus to save her life – she called out without knowing that the king lay already dead on the battlefield. There and then, this lady began to recover! Her servants had given up all hope, and they began to hope.'

Solveig twisted her golden plait, she tugged a little at it.

Edwin smiled, and the two of them fell into step once again. ‘This lady,' he assured Solveig, ‘owes Saint Olaf her life, and she has vowed to repay him for healing her.'

‘But …'

Palms uppermost, Edwin balanced his hands as if they were a pair of scales.

‘Norwegian …' he said, ‘Byzantine. Byzantine … Norwegian. Believe me, Solveig, there's no one here worth knowing whom she doesn't know.'

Edwin guided her into a gloomy, narrow lane, very much like the one where Leo, Maria's father, lay slowly dying.

‘Down this one, I think,' Edwin said. ‘Then left at the bottom. Yes, this noblewoman, she's vowed to repay Saint Olaf. I've spoken to her already, and tonight she'll try to rescue Harald.'

Solveig drew in her breath. She grabbed Edwin's right arm.

‘Rescue Harald,' he repeated. ‘No matter what the cost.'

W
hether first dark is more dense than the later watches of the night, Solveig was unsure, but that is how it seemed to her. Just as we dive at first into deep sleep, she thought, before we sleep in the shallows among our coloured dreams.

Wrapped in thick shawls to conceal their faces and figures and to ward off the cold, the noblewoman and Solveig picked their way down one narrow lane after another. The bulky Englishman walked just in front of them, carrying a small lantern and wearing the becoming bonnet he had stuffed into his pocket after his audience with the Empress and Emperor. Now and then he rubbed his ears to keep them warm.

‘What shall I call you?' asked Solveig.

The lady didn't reply.

‘I don't know your name, and I don't know where we're going,' Solveig said.

‘Knowing what we don't need to know can become a burden,' the lady told her. ‘It can be dangerous.'

So Solveig didn't know the lady's name, and she wasn't to know, either, that they weren't alone. Four clusters of the lady's servants were already converging on the Black Tower from different quarters of the city, three of them carrying ladders, and the fourth a great length of thick, knotted rope.

‘Ugh!' exclaimed Edwin. He slipped, recovered his footing, and turned round to face the two women.

‘What?' asked Solveig.

‘Mind your step. Someone's dinner.'

Now and then the three of them passed a person hurrying in the opposite direction – someone just as careful not to be recognised as they were themselves.

‘Goat-feet,' murmured Edwin. ‘Horned men. Harlots. Grave-robbers. This is no place to be, not for you, lady of ladies …'

‘Lady Nameless!' exclaimed Solveig.

‘Lady Nameless!' repeated Edwin with a little smile. ‘Not for you and not for this Norwegian girl, strong as the sun.'

‘Not for you either,' Lady Nameless told him. ‘You strange … inscrutable Englishman.'

Solveig didn't know what that word meant, but there was no time to ask because at that moment she heard ghastly shrieking ahead of them, scything through the darkness.

Solveig gasped and the three of them halted. They said not a word.

The shrieking stopped. The silence felt even more intense than before. Killing, thought Solveig. Blood. More blood. She screwed up her eyes.

Lady Nameless slipped a hand out of her woollen shawl and grasped for Solveig's right arm. ‘And some things,' she whispered, ‘some we do better not to know. But look now, Solveig. Right ahead.'

Solveig looked.

It was growing out of the night, even darker than the darkness imprisoning it.

‘The Black Tower,' murmured Lady Nameless.

Black, thought Solveig. She stared up at the bulk – the
grim fist and force of it. Pitch. Jet. Crows and ravens. It's like the lower half of Hel's body: corpse-black.

Solveig stared so intently that the tower seemed to rear up and begin to topple over her. She felt quite dizzy.

Who gave the signal Solveig wasn't sure, but when it happened, it happened very, very quickly.

The servants carrying the ladders and rope converged on the tower. They met outside the massive oak door. And there, by the light of Edwin's lantern, Solveig could plainly see the bodies of two wardens lumped against it. Their throats had been cut.

Quickly the men bound ladder to ladder, and then they hoisted them, creaking and wobbling, and propped them against the outside of the tower.

Two of Lady Nameless's servants started to climb, hauling a knotted rope behind them.

But high up, the man at the top lost his hold on the rope, and it took some time and cursing for him to haul it back up again. Then a rung snapped, and he trod on the left hand of the second servant.

The man yelped, and the tied ladder shook and swayed.

When he finally reached the top of the Black Tower, the first servant began to feed the rope over the coping and down, down into the dungeon.

Then two servants started to thump the door with their oak staffs in case it was possible that Harald had slept through the terrible shrieking. All around them, it seemed to Solveig, the night awoke and complained.

Dogs yapped and howled; gulls and pigeons squawked; in their graves the dead stirred and moaned.

Three more men started to climb the long ladder now. Holding the rope, they stood head to toe, head to toe below those at the top, taking the strain.

‘What are they doing?' asked Solveig in a hoarse voice.

Lady Nameless didn't reply, but within two minutes, two minutes or three, Harald Sigurdsson had swarmed up the knotted rope inside the Black Tower. He grabbed hold of the coping, swung himself over and planted his feet on the ladder's top rung.

Solveig and Edwin and the lady stepped forward to the bottom of the ladder. They met Harald as he came back to earth.

By the light of Edwin's lantern, Harald Sigurdsson glared at the Englishman. Then at Solveig. Then at the lady without a name.

‘Hou-arrch!' he growled, and he spat at their feet.

Aloof and glowering and bedraggled, he looked like some very badly ruffled giant bird – a stork, perhaps, or one of those flamingos Solveig had seen sitting on their rag-bag nests at the entrance to the waterway leading to Miklagard.

Several times Harald stamped. He shook himself.

‘I was dreaming,' he said in a curt voice, as if for all the world he were rebuking them for having interrupted his dream by rescuing him. ‘Then I heard voices and that rope chafing … Daydreaming, dungeon-dreaming!

‘I was little, very little, and my mother was saying to King Olaf, “Stand beside my Harald. Watch over my son.” And King Olaf replied, “I will. For as long as I live and after I'm dead.” The same words I heard him say in my dream in Sicily.'

‘Oh!' cried Solveig.

‘And then,' Harald told them, ‘I was down in that foul dungeon again, but King Olaf was there too. He was standing beside me, and telling me, “I will save you. Harald, I will rescue you.”'

At once the lady without a name subsided on to her knees in the filthy street.

‘A miracle!' she exclaimed. ‘A second miracle!
Deo gratias!
Sancto Olavo, gratias!
'

‘Harald …' Edwin began.

The Viking leader raised Lady Nameless to her feet.

‘A message.'

‘Later.'

‘Now,' said Edwin, very firmly.

Harald grunted.

‘King Yaroslav.'

Edwin put his lantern between Solveig's hands, and he and Harald turned away into the dark.

‘You heard what Harald said?' the noblewoman asked Solveig. ‘His dream.'

‘Yes,' whispered Solveig. ‘And Edwin told me you vowed to repay King Olaf …'

‘Saint Olaf,' the lady corrected her.

‘. . . repay Saint Olaf, because he heard you.'

‘And healed me,' the lady said. ‘He guided the Englishman Edwin to me, and he heard my prayer.'

‘And Harald,' marvelled Solveig, ‘down in this dungeon, he knew Saint Olaf was watching over him. He was dreaming he would be rescued.'

‘He had faith,' Lady Nameless said. ‘As on my deathbed I had faith. Faith makes the impossible possible.'

Then the lady softly summoned all her servants. She praised them and promised them rewards; she reminded them of the utmost need to keep their night's work secret. Then she dismissed them.

Solveig, meanwhile, stood quietly in the dark, thinking about what she had just witnessed – the dream, the vision, the marvel, the miracle, call it what you will.

At length, Harald Sigurdsson and Edwin reappeared out of the darkness.

‘Lady …' the Viking began. ‘Lady Nameless.' He gazed at her and, even in the flickering lantern light, Solveig
could see the light in his eyes, blue as blue stars. ‘Because of you,' he declared. And he slowly spread his arms.

‘Because of Saint Olaf,' the noblewoman replied.

‘I'll have prayers said for him and prayers said for you,' Harald promised her. ‘Here in Miklagard. In Garthar. In Norway.'

The lady gracefully inclined her head.

‘You'll never be safe,' Harald said, ‘if it becomes known who rescued me. But I tell you, lady, that even without a name –' Harald paused, pushed out his lower lip and nodded several times – ‘even without a name, you'll be far better known than many men and women well known in the northern lands.'

Then Harald turned to Solveig. She was still holding the horn lantern and he laid his big hands over hers.

‘Not sun-strong,' he said, ‘not quite. But bright, and constant, and crucial. Where would we be without your light?'

Solveig supposed he was talking about her and not the lantern, and she wasn't quite sure whether he was praising or mocking her.

‘This is what must happen,' Harald told her. His voice was very quiet, and very determined. ‘I'll go straight from here to the Golden Horn. Down to the Varangian quay. I'll board my boat. It's already laden – yes, it's crammed with all my silver, all my gold, all my weapons and silks, everything from Sicily. We'll set sail at first light.'