Scramasax (30 page)

Solveig held Edith in her arms, Edith held Solveig, and the little baby was cradled tight between them.

The two young women sobbed and laughed for joy, they laughed and sobbed again.

‘Let me see!' gulped Solveig. ‘Let me see. Oh, Kata! Kata! You have Red Ottar's eyes.'

The Vikings rowed towards the roaring cataracts. Between soaring granite cliffs, they dragged their ship through Strok, where the Pecheneg arrow had pierced Red Ottar's windpipe. Slowly they worked their way past the Boiler, past White Wave. Assisted by the same hairy wild men who had helped Red Ottar and his crew only six months before, they portaged their boat on pine rollers around the lashing cataract known as Ever-Fierce, Ever-Raucous, Impassable.

As the oarsmen bent their backs and drove the ship
upstream towards Kiev, Solveig sat beside the mast and, with her baby cocooned and cradled in a wooden box, Edith sat beside her.

‘I wanted Kata, once in her life, to come to the place where her father … rose,' the young Englishwoman explained.

Then Solveig remembered the solemn words Edith had uttered, standing beside Red Ottar's funeral pyre on Saint Gregorios and placing her hands over her womb: ‘Now and in days to come, you're with me, quick and dead.' She recalled the words each of the crew had chanted after singing Red Ottar's praises: ‘He rises to you, he rises, and we must remember him.'

After a while, Halfdan joined the two young women. He and Edith watched as Solveig began to incise runes on the blade of bone – eagle-stripped, frost-bleached, the shoulder blade she had found on the battlefield at Stiklestad.

‘What are you cutting?' asked Edith.

‘Life-runes,' said Solveig, without looking up.

‘Sing-and-say you,' Halfdan repeated. ‘Rough and smooth, I'll sing-and-say you. Was that it?'

Solveig nodded.

In her makeshift cradle, Kata began to wail, and her mother lifted her out and rocked her.

‘Life and new life,' said Halfdan, looking at them rather fondly.

‘Soon she'll be needing the ring you carved for her,' Edith told Solveig. Then she got to her feet and padded along the deck towards the stern.

‘She's carrying the word,' Solveig murmured, and she smiled a lingering smile.

The leader of the Vikings was standing on his own in the bows, staring upstream. And Land-Ravager, mounted and unfurled, was yapping and snapping beside him.

Copper and saffron crocus. Little crimson dots and crosses.

Solveig recalled Empress Zoe's words: ‘Prayers are sewn into it, spells are stitched into it. For as long as it flies before you, you'll come to no harm in battle.'

Oh, Harald, she thought. Harald. Harald Sigurdsson. So icy. So fiery. So proud. Yes, so grand.

Halfdan reached out and put a hand on Solveig's wrist.

‘One day, Solva, one day we'll be fishing.'

‘Early spring,' said Solveig, ‘when the sun's growing stronger.'

‘And the days are growing longer,' added Halfdan. ‘Up the fjord.' He squeezed Solveig's left hand, and she dipped her head until her golden hair was brushing his chest.

‘Just you and me,' her father said in a gruff voice.

Like our brooch, thought Solveig. Harald's gift. A skiff with an oblong sail. Two people sitting in it. That man in the bows – man or god. And the smaller one in the stern. Arms outstretched.

‘It's safe, you know,' she said, and she patted her grubby canvas bag.

Halfdan nodded. ‘That gold brooch – it's sailed as far as we have.'

Solveig looked up at her father. ‘I've worked something out,' she said.

Her father waited.

‘What he would have wanted.'

Halfdan frowned.

‘Tamas gave his life for me …' Solveig gazed at her father. ‘I must always live to the utmost. Each waking day. Less than that, and I dishonour him.'

Halfdan grunted. ‘Not so easy.'

‘I know,' said Solveig.

‘This is what we'll do,' Halfdan told her. ‘We'll lash your blade of bone to the mast. There! Above Land-Ravager.'

Solveig pursed her lips.

‘A bone-banner. It casts no spells. It makes no promises. No, it's a wing – a wing of memory – and it's an undertaking to live to the utmost. It is life's song itself.'

‘Father!' cried Solveig, and she leaned right into him.

‘Yes, Solva,' her father resumed, ‘one day we'll be fishing and the codfish will be rising. And I'll say to you, “Your journey, your great journey, it must seem like a dream.”'

‘Life of life,' breathed Solveig. Eager. Unblinking.

‘Like a dream. Like a story.'

Solveig smiled. ‘It is a story,' she said.

So says the author of the collection of Viking proverbs known as
Hávamál
, or ‘Words of the High One', and so say I!

The writing of a novel is always a matter of teamwork, and I'm lucky and grateful to be surrounded by a force field, if that's the term, of friends and peers who have supported me with their interest, and the sheer warmth of their response to
Bracelet of Bones
: Kate Agnew, Marilyn Brocklehurst, Gabrielle Cliff-Hodges, Paul Dowswell, Judith Elliott, Geoffrey Findlay, Catherine Fisher, Cherry Gilchrist, Sandra Glover, Tricia Henry, the 28 History Girls, Judith Jesch, Roy Mitchell, Ian Mortimer, the Munday family, Philip Pullman, Philip Reeve, Robert Rickett, the Ring family, Rachel Rivett, Lawrence Sail, Francesca Simon, Ray Speakman, Mary Steele, Morag Styles, Fiona Waters, Sian Williams.

But of course some people have given more specific help. Hemesh Alles has drawn the splendid map, and this is the sixth time we have worked together. Richard Barber has lent me precious books on Byzantium, and Helen Barber presented me with the superb cloth-bound publisher's dummies in which I have been writing these Viking Sagas, by hand as always, with my old Waterman pen. Gary Breeze brought here to Chalk Hill his exquisite model of
a Viking trading boat; Lynda Edwardes-Evans and I discussed Solveig's character and she introduced me to the fiction of Paul Watkins; Will Wareing's enthusiasm has sustained me, and he alerted me to Tim Severin's Viking adventures. And at Quercus, I've been fully supported by Roisin Heycock, Sarah Lilly, Niamh Mulvey, Alice Hill, Margot Weale, Margaret Histed and my exceedingly sharp-eyed copy editor, Talya Baker.

This leaves me with my utterly crucial ‘home team'. As before, Twiggy Bigwood – the only person in the world fully able to read my handwriting – has typed and retyped many versions of this novel, offered judicious editorial advice and regularly researched matters and issues such as horse-whispering, boat construction and Viking insults. My wife, Linda, meanwhile, has once again engaged with successive drafts at every level – character, interaction, situation, tension, language – and has been unfailing in her belief and support.

In much the same way as my novel
Gatty's Tale
was ignited by Gatty's blithe assumption that Jerusalem was just up the road, and that she could walk there instead of going to Ludlow Fair, the driving force of
Scramasax
is Solveig's expectation that she can easily fit into the hard-bitten, masculine world of a Viking army.

What was it actually like, I asked myself, to live the life of a young woman aboard ship, under canvas, laying siege to Saracen hill towns? This question, of course, soon precipitated many more. What excites Solveig? And must she simply accept what appals her? Is she wrong to ask difficult questions? Is her father the man she thought he was? Why do people fight? What is it to be a leader, and what is power?
Can you love and hate at the same time? ‘Is there no room in our ranks for pity,' Solveig asks herself, ‘or for grief? Is a man less of a man if he allows himself such feelings?'

How, then, is Solveig to remember all those who have died – Vikings, Byzantines and Saracens alike? And how is she to honour the one who died for her?

Chalk Hill, Burnham Market
May 2012