Scramasax (29 page)

Harald stayed her flailing hands, but not before she had striped his forehead and left cheek and drawn scarlet blood.

Harald roared. He put his hands round Solveig's throat and she thought he was going to strangle her.

But no, the Viking grabbed her by the shoulders and roared. He simply threw Solveig away; he hurled her so that she slammed into the gunwales and then collapsed on to the deck, unconscious.

With that, Harald turned his back on Solveig, he strode past poor Maria without even glancing at her, and stalked up to the bows.

*

‘Solva,' murmured a voice.

The sound of it reminded her of something. Many things. Bees happy and humming in the lavender bushes. What else? No, she couldn't remember.

‘My Solva.'

She felt warm and comfortable. Cradled almost.

‘Solva.'

When Solveig opened her eyes, the daylight was too bright. Her eyelids flickered; she began to drift again.

When she opened her eyes for a second time, she realised she must be lying on the deck with her head in her father's lap. The world swirled around her, and she kept screwing up her eyes. But when at last she stood up, feeling very shaky, she knew at once where the boat was: the mouth of the Bosphorus, with its shadowy rib of land to the south, its hills climbing away to the north.

Solveig kept taking deep breaths and trying to clear the mist from her head as Nico steered through the swarm of little fishing boats with their brightly coloured sails, mint-green, heron-blue, flamingo-pink.

‘Why are we heading for the shore?' she asked her father.

Halfdan didn't answer her.

‘What's happened?'

Nico drove the boat up on to the shallow sandy beach, and at once Harald ordered a couple of men to shove out the gangplank. Then he swung himself over the gunwale and bounced down on to the foreshore.

‘Bring her down!' Harald called out. ‘Solveig too!'

Four guards lifted Maria bodily over the gunwales. Cautiously she shuffled down the gangplank. They followed her.

‘Solveig too, I said,' Harald shouted.

Not until Solveig and Maria were standing side by
side on the chilly strand did their eyes meet, and each saw in the other her own stark fear.

Harald Sigurdsson scowled at the pair of them.

Stony-eyed, Solveig returned his gaze; Maria lowered her cinnamon eyes.

‘Look at me,' Harald told her.

Maria slowly raised her eyes.

Then Harald backed the girls up against the bows of the boat so that everyone aboard could hear what he was saying.

‘Maria!' he declared. His voice was clear and loud. ‘I'm setting you free.'

Maria licked her lips. Her eyes were bolting. Then her legs buckled under her. She lurched and fell forward on to her hands, and Solveig helped her back on to her knees.

‘Free!' repeated Harald. ‘And you can thank Solveig for your freedom.'

Harald stepped right up to the two girls and spoke more quietly, so that only they could hear what he was saying.

‘Solveig has told me of her grief, her winter-sorrow when she was separated from her father, and how she crossed half of middle-earth to find him. Maria, I will not separate you from yours.'

The tears glistening in Maria's eyes began to flow, and for a moment Solveig thought she was about to clutch Harald's fingers and beg. But if so, she thought better of it. She stood up. Noiselessly, she wept.

‘I want no grief aboard my ship,' declared Harald. ‘I want high hopes, a peaceful voyage back to Kiev, a new beginning.'

Harald glanced up at the gallery of guards ranged along the gunwale.

‘Free!' he called out for a third time. ‘And you can tell
your … poisonous aunt that she has no power over me. None whatsoever.'

Hearing this, many of the guards began to jeer.

‘None!' repeated Harald. ‘She couldn't save her own niece. And she couldn't have stopped me even if I'd wanted to marry you.'

Every nerve in Solveig's body trembled for Maria; every bone ached.

He's so used to cruelty, she thought, I don't think he even knows how cruel he is. He can't open his mouth without cruel words coming out.

Harald Sigurdsson turned to the four guards standing on the foreshore.

‘I'm detailing you men to escort Princess Maria back to Miklagard,' he told them. ‘Guard her life with your lives. She's to come to no harm: not one eyelash, not one hair.'

The four guards looked at their boots.

‘Horses?' asked one man.

Harald pursed his lips. ‘Sea horses,' he replied, ‘if you know how to catch and ride one. Or else you can walk it. Thirty miles. You'll be there in two days.'

‘Not with her,' said another guard.

‘Not one eyelash,' Harald warned them. ‘Not one hair. If I hear otherwise, you'll pay with your lives.'

With that, Harald stared at Maria. All he had been to her, pilgrim-guard and companion, friend, teacher, yes, and lover, perhaps lover, he no longer was – or else no longer allowed himself to be. Stern and proud and unyielding, he stared down at her, and then strode up the gangplank on to the boat.

Wild-eyed, Maria turned to Solveig, and Solveig drew her close.

‘Help me!' Maria whispered like a little child. ‘Come with me.'

Solveig screwed up her eyes and for a while she held Maria in her arms. ‘I can't. You know I can't. If only I could.'

‘S … s … s …' Maria stuttered-and-sobbed, but she couldn't articulate the words.

Still keeping her hands on Maria's shoulders, Solveig took a step back.

‘Maria, oh Maria! Your life will be … will be more … your life will be less troubled without this man. Please believe me. One day you'll believe me. Harald would never honour you, he'd never love you as you need and deserve.'

Around them on the chilly beach, the sand shimmered like wild silk. Silver-gold sheets swept along the strand.

Njord, god of winds, opened his mouth and bellowed. The veil of sand sidled, it swayed and lifted, it gagged the two girls. Grit grazed their sweet faces.

H
arald Sigurdsson steered clear of Solveig. He didn't send her to cook in the galley alongside the other women. He avoided catching her eye. He appeared to take no notice of her.

Halfdan understood how Solveig's sense of betrayal and her fury had completely numbed her, and he watched over her. When he asked her how well she had slept or whether she'd had sufficient to eat, he didn't press her when she gave only a brief, bleak reply. And sometimes he simply sat beside her in companionable silence.

On the second afternoon, though, Solveig asked her father about his gut.

‘Twice the man I was with that tapeworm inside me!' Halfdan exclaimed. ‘I'm alive, girl! And you, you're alive, when so many of our friends … The Norns have smiled on me, and they're smiling on you.'

Awkward and fond, Halfdan shifted nearer to his daughter so that they were sitting shoulder to shoulder. She's healing, he thought. Thinking of me. She's starting to feel again.

‘Alive,' repeated Halfdan in a thoughtful voice, ‘and she's beautiful too.' He sounded as if he were talking to himself. ‘The gods have given her beauty, and it's time she … groomed herself as young women like to do.'

Solveig nudged her father's shoulder. Then she clasped the right side of her head – the side where her fair hair was short and still bushy. ‘How can I?' she demanded.

But Solveig, too, sensed she was healing. She was glad of it, but now and then she felt utterly desolate because she knew time was also taking away the sharp edge of her feelings for Maria … and for Tamas.

Time gives, she thought. But time takes away.

One morning, Solveig began to tell her father more about her meeting with Abu Touati.

‘He said it's true that anyone who travels finds out much more about herself,' she remembered, ‘but that nothing can compare with the pleasure of returning home.'

Halfdan took a deep breath. ‘And that's what you think?'

Solveig slowly nodded.

‘That's where we're going, Solva. I'm taking you back to the fjord, back to our farm.'

‘Is that what you want?'

Halfdan shrugged. ‘First things first,' he replied. ‘You don't belong here with this army of men.'

‘No,' agreed Solveig.

‘And I've been thinking,' Halfdan continued, ‘on the way home, we'll be able to see that carver you've told me about.'

‘Oleg!' exclaimed Solveig, at once fingering the violet-and-grey stone hanging round her neck. ‘Oh! Wait until you see his workshop.'

A bulky figure cast his shadow over Solveig and her father, and they both looked up.

‘Ah!' said Halfdan. ‘Edwin.'

‘May I?' asked the Englishman, and without waiting for an invitation he flopped down beside them.

‘We were talking about home,' Halfdan informed him. ‘Going home. Solveig was telling me about the carver in Ladoga.'

‘I'll be able to see him again,' enthused Solveig. ‘The first time I met Oleg was in his workshop. Then we met in the market. And when we said farewell, he told me, “Those who meet twice meet three times.”'

‘Very true,' Edwin agreed.

‘Edith thought he looked like an elf. Oh!' Solveig clapped her right hand over her mouth.

‘What?' asked Edwin.

‘Edith!' cried Solveig. ‘Will I see her? And her baby?'

‘Kata,' Edwin reminded her.

‘In Kiev?'

Edwin permitted himself a flicker of a smile. ‘Maybe,' he said. ‘Who can tell?'

Solveig turned round and looked at him, and the Englishman smiled so broadly she could see all his jackrabbit teeth.

‘Time conceals,' he observed. ‘Time reveals.'

‘All these time sayings,' said Solveig.

‘All things have their season,' Halfdan intoned.

‘Ah!' exclaimed Edwin. ‘Christian words! I'm glad to hear them.'

Halfdan grunted.

‘A time for slaying and a time for healing,' Edwin continued. ‘A time for weeping and a time for laughing; a time for grieving and a time for dancing. A time for loving and a time for hating.'

Sometimes, thought Solveig, I do both at the same time. I hate Harald for his trickery and cruelty, especially for the way he treated Maria, and yet I think part of me does still love him.

‘And a time to arrive!' Edwin added. ‘Nico says we'll reach Saint Gregorios the day after tomorrow.'

‘Already?' cried Solveig. ‘And Sineus will be there?'

‘Unless he's hopped away,' Edwin replied.

Solveig lowered her eyes and half smiled. She could see his foot pinioned by a Pecheneg arrow.

‘I could help you to get him back to Kiev,' she offered. ‘I'll help to look after him.'

‘Sineus's left foot turned green.' Edwin told Halfdan. ‘The monk-doctor on Saint Gregorios had to saw his leg off at the knee.'

Once Nico had safely steered their ship across the Black Sea to the many mouths of the great river, the Danube, the spirits of everyone aboard rose, and many of the guards began to sing. Songs raucous, boasting, bold, brutal, witty, rude, songs tender, full of hope and longing …

Just like they are, thought Solveig. All those things and more, mixed up. Fighting men, they're mongrels!

Then the south-west wind ballooned their maroon sail. The Viking ship swept round the coast, and north into the wide estuary of the River Dnieper.

When Solveig sighted the island of Saint Gregorios late on the next afternoon, one memory after another swarmed through her mind.

Bergdis and her grisly bracelet of bones … her ghastly filleting knife … Edith about to die … Red Ottar's funeral pyre … the chanting, the acrid smoke …

Solveig realised her hot heart was fluttering. She felt breathless.

On Saint Gregorios, the approaching Viking ship had not gone unnoticed.

The gilded vane on her prow gleamed in the blue hour, and on two sticks a man swung himself down to the scruffy quay. A young woman with pink cheeks accompanied him. Her glistening dark hair was flapping over her face, and she was carrying something.

The woman began to wave, and the man leaned on one stick and pointed the other to Asgard.

Solveig peered through the gathering gloom. ‘Sineus,' she said. ‘It is!'

Then the boat closed with the quay, and there was a rumpus aboard as some of the oarsmen hauled down the sail, while others guided the boat towards the jetty.

‘It can't be!' cried Solveig. ‘Oh, it is! It is! It's Edith, and her baby.'

Solveig raised both arms. She reached out across the water.

Then, still half enveloped in the folds and waves of the great sail, she turned round to Edwin, demanding, ‘Why didn't you tell me?'

But like a go-between, a man of secrets, an occasional magician, the substantial Englishman had disappeared.