Scramasax (3 page)

Halfdan smiled. ‘First,' he said, ‘we must go back to our quarters. Harald will be off duty at noon.'

‘Harald!' exclaimed Solveig. And then she stood up in
the dugout. ‘Harald!' she bawled. Like a battle-cry.

‘What are we going to do with you?' her father asked her. ‘A young woman? A young Viking woman, here alone in Miklagard. Solva, my Solva! The question is whether you can stay here at all.'

S
olveig could hear him braying.

She quickened her step down the long, candlelit corridor, and it was all that limping Halfdan could do to keep up with her.

When they reached the massive oak door, Solveig glanced over her shoulder. Halfdan drew his sabre. He rapped three times with his pommel, then swung the door open and stepped in. Solveig followed him.

The hall was spacious and airy, lit half by daylight flooding down from a cupola, half by its own inner lights: thousands of little pieces of glittering and shining gold mosaic covering the walls.

On the far side, Solveig saw three men, and the one wearing an ivory gown with a gold torque around his neck was a head taller than either of his companions.

‘Harald!' she cried.

In her delight Solveig strode towards Harald Sigurdsson, arms outstretched, and only when she stood before him did she remember who he was and the respect due to him. She stopped and inclined her head.

‘Look at me,' Harald boomed.

Solveig looked. She saw Harald's pale blue eyes, full of light and laughter. She saw his ropes of tousled straw-coloured hair, his long sideburns, and his bushy, thrusting moustache, gold and red-gold, and the way his
left eyebrow was higher than the right.

Harald Sigurdsson stooped a little and took Solveig's hands between his own.

‘Sister!' he declared. ‘Almost-sister!'

And what he saw was not only the young woman stubborn enough to find her way from Trondheim to Miklagard but the ten-year-old girl with whom he had overwintered more than five years before.

‘I recognised you,' Solveig told him.

‘I should think so.'

Solveig shook her head. ‘I mean, when I saw you yesterday. I was searching for my father, and the guards directed me—'

‘My guards,' Harald corrected her.

‘. . . your guards directed me up to the gallery.'

‘Yes, and that fool of a baggy-trousered Bulgar challenged you. But yesterday you were bowed down by your sack. You were ragged and filthy and, frankly, stinking. Now, though …'

‘Yes?' Solveig dared him, with a roguish smile.

But instead of replying, Harald took Solveig's and everyone else's breath away. He grasped her just above her hips, squeezed the bottom of her narrow rib-cage, and swept her off her feet. He held her at arm's length and whirled her round and round, round and round until her shift spread out behind her and she was flying.

When Harald set her down, Solveig reeled away, gasping. She put her hands to her eyes.

‘Remember?' Harald demanded.

Solveig peeked at him through her splayed fingers. ‘Oh! I'm seeing two of you. You did that on the last night before you left.'

‘Very good,' said Harald.

‘You were still wearing that strap,' Halfdan reminded him, ‘to hold in your guts.'

‘You swung me round until I was giddy, and do you know what you said?'

‘What?'

‘“Your father,”' Solveig told Harald, ‘“your hamstrung father, he's still worth double any other man.”'

Harald Sigurdsson winked at Halfdan. ‘I must have been ale-drunk,' he said.

‘What I remember you saying,' Halfdan added, ‘is that you might sail south to Miklagard, and join the Varangian guard. “But be sure of one thing, Halfdan,” you told me, “I'll send for you. Yes, when the time's right, I'll send for you.”'

‘“And I will come,”' Harald Sigurdsson told Halfdan. ‘That's what you replied.'

Halfdan nodded. He clamped his teeth together and avoided Solveig's eye.

‘Well, now,' said Harald. He gazed thoughtfully at Solveig. ‘I know a charm to blunt my enemy's blade. I know how to catch an arrow in flight between my hands.'

‘But,' said Solveig helpfully.

‘Exactly. What are we to do with you?' Harald Sigurdsson turned to his companions. ‘Well, Snorri?'

Snorri was a quite small, stocky man. And he often kept people waiting for a reply. ‘I know of no poem or story,' he said at length, ‘not a single line about an army with a woman in it.'

‘What about the Amazons?' Solveig demanded.

‘Who?' asked her father.

‘The Amazons. Mihran told me about them.'

‘That's different,' said Snorri, and he shook his head and screwed up his face. ‘A whole army of single-breasted women.'

‘Yuch!' exclaimed another guard, whose name was Skarp. ‘Unnatural!'

‘Not a word about an army of men with a woman in it,' Snorri repeated.

‘You can't trust them,' Skarp said. ‘Always flying into a rage. Their hearts get in the way of their heads.'

Solveig said nothing. She just waited, but Halfdan could tell she was anxious because she kept twisting her left heel, as she'd always done since she was a little girl.

‘Anyhow,' Skarp added, ‘this one, she's more like a willow branch than a woman.'

Harald sniffed loudly. ‘So, Solveig, you've heard what my polite companions have to say. The truth is, it would have been very much better if you hadn't come to Miklagard.'

Solveig looked Harald straight in the eye. But she felt as if her limbs were turning into cold stone.

‘I'm sure your father has told you that. Better for us. Better for you.'

‘No,' she replied in a quiet, flat voice.

‘Understand me,' Harald went on. ‘You have the heart of a bear. You've made a long and dangerous journey and no one can do that without purpose of mind and stamina, as well as good fortune. I well know it. But now you're here, what are we to do with you?'

‘Sidles of snakes!' hissed Skarp. ‘Twists of elvers!'

Harald frowned. ‘Dear God!' he exclaimed. ‘You do have a poor opinion of women.'

‘And of men,' Snorri added. ‘The only person good enough for Skarp is Skarp.'

‘This is the problem,' Harald told Solveig. ‘How are you to stay here in Miklagard safely? I know what you're thinking. But my guards have work to do, here and in the field. And anyhow –' he winked at Solveig – ‘I mustn't expose my handsome young guards to you, must I?'

Solveig lowered her eyes.

‘Well, Halfdan?' demanded Harald.

‘I can become a guard,' said Solveig in a quiet voice. ‘I can.'

Snorri and Skarp both guffawed.

‘That you cannot,' said Harald in an icy voice.

‘I can learn.'

‘You cannot become a guard,' Harald told her. ‘A woman is a woman. A man is a man.'

‘Except for the eunuchs,' Skarp added.

‘True enough,' Snorri agreed. ‘They're women-men.'

Harald sighed. ‘As I see it,' he said, ‘these are your choices: you can marry a Byzantine lord—'

‘Never,' said Halfdan gruffly.

‘No,' said Harald slowly. ‘Or you can become one of the boy-man's concubines.'

‘What's that?' asked Solveig.

‘Mistresses.'

‘Out of the question!' exclaimed Halfdan angrily. ‘As you well know, Harald.'

‘Your third choice,' continued Harald in a calculating voice, ‘is to become a novice.'

‘A what?'

‘A novice in a monastery. A young nun.'

‘No! I can't. I'm not a Christian.'

‘No,' said Harald. ‘Not a guard. Not a wife. Not a concubine. Not a novice. And so I say again: what are we to do with you, here and now? And when we go away?'

‘Away?' cried Solveig.

Now it was plain to all of them how anxious Solveig was. She tossed her long fair hair and stamped her right foot like a colt, and then she almost moaned.

‘Away,' Harald repeated very deliberately.

‘Where?'

‘Sicily.'

‘What's that?'

‘An island. An island rife with Arabs and enemies of the Empress.'

Solveig rounded on her father. ‘You're not going?' she exclaimed. ‘Are you going too?'

Halfdan stared at her, and he looked quite stricken.

‘You are! How long for?'

Halfdan shook his head.

‘A year,' replied Harald. ‘I don't know. Maybe longer. Until we've cleaned the place up.'

‘When?' demanded Solveig. ‘When are you going?'

Solveig cried out. In her desperation, she reached up above her head and smacked her hands.

The hall heard her. It echoed her. Her cry and her hand-clap. Then, without warning, a piece of the high cornice – a lump of plaster as big as a human head – fell from the ceiling. It smashed on to the marble floor beside them. A thousand shards and splinters skidded across the shining tiles.

For a moment no one said anything.

Harald sucked his cheeks and glared at the cornice accusingly.

‘It's an omen,' Snorri said. ‘A sign of some kind.'

Solveig turned to her father. ‘You're not,' she said, and her voice broke. ‘You're not leaving me again.' Several times she swallowed. And then, in a low voice, ‘I summoned all my strength to find you. For month after month I've crossed the mountains and sailed the seas and followed the rivers to find you. To be with you.'

For a while no one said a word.

Harald Sigurdsson sat down in the massive dark chair, the only chair in the room. Snorri and Skarp made their way to the centre of the hall, now and then glancing suspiciously at the ceiling, the cornices, and her father slowly padded along the length of the room.

‘So, fair one!' Harald called across to Solveig. ‘Come over here.'

As Solveig walked up to him, she saw that even when he was sitting down Harald was almost as tall as his companions.

‘What's the real reason?' Harald asked her. ‘Why have you made this journey to Miklagard?'

‘I asked myself that many times on my way here.'

‘What was your answer?'

‘When my father left home, he took away my grounding. I didn't belong any more. Not to my stepmother, my stepbrothers, not even to the fjord and the mountains. My home was no longer my home.'

‘Go on,' said Harald.

‘Then I began to imagine my father's journey, and the more I imagined it, the more I wanted to follow him. I grew curious. Out-eager!'

‘That's how we Norwegians are,' declared Harald. ‘Out-eager.'

‘We want to find out,' Solveig agreed.

‘Not like your two brothers, then,' remarked Harald. ‘Two lumps, if I remember them rightly.'

‘Blubba's all right,' said Solveig.

‘It's better to live, isn't it?' Harald demanded. He opened his arms wide and looked round at Snorri and Skarp. ‘Better to live than lie at home, stiff as a corpse. Well, Solveig, your answers are good ones. Very good. You're your father's daughter.' Harald turned to Halfdan and nodded.

‘I know,' said Halfdan, and he sighed.

‘Don't be so rueful, man. Problems need answers. And there's no problem that doesn't have an answer.'

‘If you let me come with you,' Solveig said, ‘you'll be glad of it.'

Harald Sigurdsson shook his head. ‘What are we
going to do with you? Here and now, today?'

‘Tomorrow,' Snorri declared, ‘today is yesterday.'

‘What kind of consolation is that?' Harald barked.

‘Piss!' exclaimed Skarp. ‘The piss of giantesses.'

‘No,' said Snorri, unperturbed, ‘that's what comes out of your mouth, Skarp.'

‘Get things wrong today and we wreck tomorrow,' Harald continued. ‘I know that. Well, I do have one idea.'

Solveig looked at Harald with a mixture of trepidation and longing.

‘Our beloved Empress,' Harald explained, ‘has a sister. Theodora. These two women hate each other.'

‘Why?' asked Solveig.

Harald held up his right hand. ‘I'll do the talking. All you need to know for now is that Empress Zoe has exiled Theodora to a nunnery …'

‘I don't want to be a nun,' Solveig said fiercely.

‘. . . a nunnery,' Harald continued, ‘but she allows Maria, Theodora's daughter, to live here in the palace.'

Halfdan gave his friend a thoughtful look and narrowed his eyes.

‘Maria,' said Harald with a half-smile. He paused, and pushed himself against the back of the oak chair. ‘She's as sallow-skinned as you're fair. As plump as you are willowy. Your eyes are grey and violet, hers are cinnamon.' Harald gave a rather mirthless laugh, remembering something.

‘How old is she?' asked Solveig.

‘One year older than you. Sixteen.'