Scramasax (4 page)

‘Can she speak Norwegian?'

‘As a matter of fact, she can,' Harald said. ‘As much as she needs to.'

‘Harald taught her,' Snorri told Solveig.

‘And that's not all he taught her,' added Skarp.

‘What about her father?' Solveig asked. ‘Where's he?'

Harald rubbed his beard. ‘A nobleman,' he said. ‘A dying man.'

‘Solveig,' her father warned her, ‘Miklagard's full of shadows, whispers, rumours, things better not known.'

‘Maria lives in spacious quarters,' Harald continued. ‘She has her own courtyard with several rooms around it, and a fleet of servants. Now, I think I may be able to prevail on the Empress—'

‘Prevail on the Empress!' jeered Skarp. ‘All Empress Zoe wants is to prevail on Harald Sigurdsson. Isn't that right, Harald?'

‘Why do I put up with you?' Harald snapped.

‘And take him to bed with her,' the guard added.

‘Skarp!' said Harald very sharply.

‘Each of us needs someone to tell us the truth,' Skarp retorted.

Harald turned back to Solveig and her father. ‘You're only the daughter of one of my guards,' he said, ‘but the Empress might be prepared to allow you a room next to Maria's quarters.'

‘You could persuade her of anything, you could,' said Skarp. ‘Though if she ever saw you with Maria, your hungry eyes …'

Harald Sigurdsson stood up.

‘. . . she'd have you blinded.'

Harald took a swipe at Skarp with his open hand and Skarp wasn't quick enough to avoid it. It stung his left cheek.

‘What do you say, Halfdan?' Harald asked.

‘Solveig would be safe inside this palace,' her father replied. ‘And she'd have company.'

‘Maria would welcome that too,' Harald agreed. ‘She's a prisoner. This court, it's full of
cans
and
can'ts
and manners and modes and bowing and scraping.'

‘Mmm!' agreed Snorri. He looked at Solveig and his
eyes glimmered. ‘It's blazing gold, and hellish black. You'll see.'

‘Yes,' said Harald thoughtfully. ‘The Empress will want to … appraise you. Before she decides.'

Solveig shivered. ‘If you let me come with you,' she repeated, ‘you'll be glad of it. I'll make myself useful.'

Harald Sigurdsson ignored her. ‘I have an audience with the Empress late this afternoon, and I'll discuss this with her then. Yes, she'll want to see you. A young woman who has travelled here, from Norway, alone.'

‘And unscathed,' said Halfdan. ‘King Yaroslav gave Solveig an audience.'

‘He did?' exclaimed Harald. ‘I want to hear about that.'

Solveig shook her head. ‘I belong on a farm,' she said, ‘or a boat. I don't belong here.'

‘Nothing lasts for ever,' her father told her.

‘In the fields …'

‘Solveig!' Harald warned her in a stern voice.

All at once, Solveig could see herself sitting in the little dairy, milking their two cows. She could hear her stepbrothers chopping wood outside. She could even smell the thick, pasty, comfortable odour of new dung.

Solveig pressed her left hand against her palpitating heart and gave a single, dry sob.

‘W
hat is it?' exclaimed Solveig.

She trailed her pink fingers along the flat marble rim. She stared at the steeple of water rising from the brimming basin, four feet, five feet, almost as tall as she was, rising and falling back, plashing and bubbling.

‘A fountain,' Snorri told her.

Solveig's face shone. ‘I've never seen one before. Not indoors. Does a spring rise right under this hall, then?'

Snorri closed his eyes, as if he'd never met anyone who knew so little. ‘Of course not. The builder used machines. A contraption.'

‘How?'

‘At great expense, I'd say. Our Empress has more wealth than she knows what to do with.'

‘It looks like a water-tree,' Solveig said, ‘and it sounds like a water-harp.'

‘I'm the wordsmith,' said Snorri. ‘Near our farm …'

‘Where?'

‘In Iceland.'

‘You come from Iceland?'

‘I just said so. Near our farm, there's a boiling fountain as high as the dome of Hagia Sophia. Well, half as high. A geyser, we call it.'

‘Geyser. Is that made with machines and contraptions too?'

Snorri gave a scornful laugh. ‘It's a wonder that was made when the nine worlds were made. Like the bluestone mountains that divide us from the world of the giants. Like the flaming rainbow bridge between middle-earth and the world of the gods.'

‘I wish I could see it,' Solveig said.

‘Maybe you will, girl.' Snorri dug into a pocket and pulled out a coin. ‘Here! Throw this into the water and make that wish.'

‘What? Throw away a coin?'

‘Much that happens begins with a wish,' Snorri told her, ‘and this is a wishing fountain. If you throw a coin into it, it will help your wish to come true.'

Solveig tossed the coin into the dancing water, then she dipped in her hands, and for a moment they looked as though they had been severed at the wrists and were floating free. Solveig wriggled her fingers.

‘It's strange,' she said, ‘when you know things are not as they look.'

‘Like everything in this Christian … this godforsaken court,' Snorri replied. ‘Ugh!' The guard sucked his cheeks, and then spat into the fountain.

As if to prove the truth of Snorri's words, the heavy door between them and an inner hall was thrown open so violently that it thudded against the marble wall.

Three men burst into the room, dragging a fourth behind them. This wretch was bound in chains, but that didn't stop him from kicking his captors, headbutting them and howling.

Solveig backed away from the coping of the fountain.

Then the poor man snarled. He thrust his neck forward and seized the thumb of one of his captors between his teeth.

‘Vermin!' yelled one of the guards.

And that was all Solveig and Snorri saw before the
three men manhandled the wretch through the other door.

Solveig looked wildly at Snorri. ‘Who were they?'

‘How should I know?'

‘What had he done?' she demanded, and her breath was jerky.

Snorri shook his head. ‘The names of this palace are Rumour and Fear and Suspicion. You don't have to do anything to be punished. It's enough for someone to point a finger.'

‘But that's wrong,' Solveig protested. ‘It's rough justice.'

‘It's not justice at all,' Snorri said.

‘What will they do to him?'

Snorri gave her a stony look.

‘I've seen worse than you know.'

‘If they don't behead him, they'll dig a hole and put him in it, right up to his neck, and then they'll stone him. If they don't stone him, they'll strangle him.'

Solveig lifted her hands to her pretty neck.

‘Or else they'll blind him, or else … the shears.'

‘What?'

‘They'll cut out his tongue.'

Solveig screwed up her face.

Snorri nodded. ‘The Empress and the Emperor, they hold court and they're the judges.'

‘I've heard terrible things about her,' confided Solveig in a low voice. ‘Edwin told me. The Englishman.'

‘You, Solveig,' said Snorri with a reassuring smile, ‘you're Harald Sigurdsson's almost-sister. Your father is a Varangian guard. You have nothing to fear.'

And yet I am afraid, thought Solveig. I never felt like this in the seven cataracts. No, not when I came between Edith and the Angel of Death. Not on my whole journey.

A young boy appeared at the door. He was wearing crocus yellow, baggy silk trousers.

He gave a little squeak, like someone learning to play a reed-pipe, and beckoned them. Then he turned on his heel, and Solveig and Snorri followed him through three connected halls.

‘When the Empress receives us,' Snorri instructed Solveig, ‘keep a careful eye on me. Do what I do.'

I did meet King Yaroslav, Solveig told herself. I did. I should be all right.

‘Flattery,' Snorri said. ‘That's what they want. They gorge themselves on it.' He pulled up his hood.

‘What are you doing?'

‘What does it look like? Come on, pull yours up too. No man and no woman is allowed to be bareheaded before the Empress and the Emperor.'

The pageboy led the two Vikings into an enormous golden hall, full of echoes, whispers, little knots of people.

Solveig looked all around her, and up at the high arched roof, and back over her shoulders. Then, right ahead of her, she saw something astonishing.

An almost bald elderly woman and a young man were sitting side by side in two high-backed seats on a stone dais. And as Solveig approached them, their seats very slowly began to ascend. On stout marble columns they rose until they were twice as high as the steepling fountain, well above Solveig's head.

Snorri got down on to his knees, and folded into himself.

Solveig did likewise.

Then Snorri pressed his forehead against the cold marble floor, and Solveig copied him.

‘Long lives to our Empress and our Emperor,' Snorri called out. ‘May God multiply your years.'

‘Long lives to our Empress and our Emperor,' repeated Solveig. ‘May God multiply your years.'

But the Empress is an old woman, she thought. How old did Edwin say she was? Fifty-four! She's got one foot in the grave. So what kind of prayer is that? She doesn't want to live for hundreds of years.

‘Stand up!' said Snorri under his breath. ‘Do as I do.'

Solveig scrambled to her feet. She stood with her head bowed.

‘Girl,' intoned the Empress, ‘you may look at me.'

Solveig looked. Empress Zoe was swaddled and swathed in purple silk, up to her neck and down to her heels, and Solveig found it impossible to tell how tall she was, and whether she was fleshy or frail. But she could see her face was rather grey and unpleasantly wrinkled. Her eyes, though: they were dark, dangerous, not to be deceived.

Black, thought Solveig. Black yet burning.

She was aware of the boy-man sitting beside Empress Zoe, and she wanted to look at him too. But it was as if the Empress had Solveig under a spell, and she could do nothing but return her gaze.

‘Girl,' she said loftily, and in Norwegian, ‘Solveig. That's your name.'

Solveig was taken aback by how mild her voice was. Not at all like the Angel of Death, she thought.

‘Well, is it or isn't it?' asked Empress Zoe.

‘Oh!' said Solveig. ‘Empress, Holy Mother—'

‘What did you call me?'

‘Holy Mother!'

Empress Zoe gave a chilly little laugh. ‘Holy Mother!' she repeated. Then she looked down her nose at Solveig. ‘Whatever I am, I'm not the Virgin Mary,' she said. ‘Holy Mother!'

‘Forgive her, Empress,' interrupted Snorri.

Empress Zoe raised her right hand a little, and Solveig saw at once that her fingers were clenched and misshapen.

‘Before I see you again,' she told Solveig, ‘have Harald Sigurdsson instruct you on how to address me.'

Solveig swallowed loudly.

‘For now, call me Princess … Princess of Peace.'

‘Princess of Peace,' repeated Solveig.

Kneeling beside her, Snorri didn't make a sound. But Solveig could tell it was all he could do to stop himself from snorting.

‘Solveig,' resumed the Empress, ‘Sun-Strong. You're lucky to be alive.'

Solveig bowed her head.

‘Look at me, girl! Where you come from, many a baby girl is left out on the ice. Until her blood curdles and freezes. Until the wolves get her. Isn't that right?'

Solveig nodded. ‘Princess,' she whispered.

‘Of Peace,' the Empress corrected her, slowly and precisely. ‘Yes. Savages, that's what you Vikings are. Savages! We're Christians here. We don't murder little girls.' The Empress paused. ‘And after your mother died …'

Solveig drew in her breath sharply.

‘. . . after she died, didn't your grandmother counsel your father to leave you out on the ice? Didn't she, Solveig? Didn't she say that if he kept you, the day would come when you failed him?'

Solveig began to tremble. She tucked her head on to her chest.

‘How do I know such things?' the Empress asked. ‘That's what you're thinking.' She leaned forward a little. ‘My business is to know. The business of my guards is to tell me. Everything.'

Solveig sniffed.

‘And those who don't … That man! You saw him?'

‘Yes,' whispered Solveig.

‘He didn't tell me,' the Empress said, and now her voice was much more clipped. ‘He chose to bite on his tongue. So I decided he had no further need of it.'

Solveig shuddered. Her voice. How can I have thought it was mild or gentle? It's bitter. Ferocious.