‘Your excellency, I’m not sure that I can tell you very much,’ I answered.
He looked at me quizzically. ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ he said, ‘I only want to learn about your customs. Nothing that would be considered as spying.’
‘It’s not that, your excellency. I have only lived among the Rus for a few months. I am not one of them.’
He looked disappointed. ‘You are a freed slave?’
‘No, I joined them of my own wish. I wanted to travel.’ ‘For profit?’
‘To fulfil a vow I made to a friend before his death. They are on their way to the great city, to Miklagard.’
‘How remarkable.’ He made a note with his stylus on the page in front of him and I saw that he wrote from right to left. Also he used a version of the curving script which had haunted me since I had seen it on Aelfgifu’s necklace coins.
‘Excuse me, your excellency,’ I asked. “What is it that you write?’
‘Just a few notes,’ he said. ‘Never worry. There’s nothing magical in making marks on paper. It does not steal away the knowledge.’
He thought me illiterate like most members of the felag.
‘No, your excellency. I was wondering just how your script conveys the spoken word. You write in the opposite direction from us, yet you begin at the top of the page just as we do. If there is more than one page of writing, which page is the first? I mean, do you turn the pages from left to right, or in the other direction? Or is there perhaps another system?’
He looked astonished. ‘You mean to say that you can read and write!’
‘Yes, your excellency, I have been taught the Roman script and the Greek. I know also the rune letters.’
He laid down his stylus with an expression of delight. ‘And I thought that I had found only two gems for my master. Now I discover that I have a treasure of my own.’ He paused, ‘And just for your information, yes, I do write letters from right to left, but numbers in the opposite direction.’
The Serklander summoned me several times to his tent to question me, and he detained me for many hours so I could supply the information he required. That might have been one reason why he did not hurry the negotiations over the sale of the twins, and this meant, in turn, that our felag stayed camped on the river bank for longer than was wise. The Varangians had not troubled to dig latrines, and our original neat encampment grew dirty and foul. As I have noticed in my travels, pestilence soon appears in such conditions, and this time the first victim was Ivarr himself.
His guts turned to water. One day he was healthy, the next he was staggering in his walk and vomiting incessantly. There were small white flecks in his bile and in the liquid that began to pour from his bowels. He retreated to his tent and, despite his bull-like strength, collapsed. His concubines hurried to minister to him, but there was little they could do. Ivarr shrivelled. His cheeks fell in, his skin took on a dull grey pallor and his eyes sank back in their sockets. It was like watching the contents of a full wine skin drain away. Occasionally he groaned and writhed with cramp and his skin was cold to the touch. His breath came in short, shallow gasps and by the third day ceased altogether. I knew that it was the vengeance of the village sieidde he had denied, but the felag thought otherwise. They blamed the Serkander or his servants for poisoning Ivarr and they may have had a point. When I reported the signs of Ivarr’s illness to ibn Hauk, he immediately asked me to leave his presence and the Black Hoods struck camp that same evening. Before sunset the Serklander and his people were embarking on their boats and heading downstream, taking the twins with them. The felag took their hasty departure as evidence of their guilt.
Sudden death was commonplace for the felag. Their first response to Ivarr’s death was to calculate how much extra profit would accrue to each member of the felag now that he was gone. Then, from respect to his memory or perhaps because it gave an excuse for much drinking, they resolved to celebrate his funeral rites. What followed is scarred into my memory.
They found themselves a gand volva — a black witch — in the nearby village. Who she was or from whom she had learned her seidr I do not know. But her knowledge was partly of things that I had learned from Thrand and Rassa, and partly of other elements more evil and malign. She was a woman perhaps in her sixtieth year, emaciated but still active and possessed of a sinewy strength. When she arrived at our camp I looked for her noiade emblems — such as a sacred staff, a girdle of dried fungi, gloves of fur worn inside out or a string of amulets. But I saw nothing that might signify her calling, except a single large pendant, a polished green and white stone dangling from her belt. But there was no doubting who she was. I felt the presence radiate from her as powerfully as I could smell a rotting carcass and the sensation made me queasy.
She ordered the materials for a scaffold. It was to be built on the shore, and as she drew the outline of the structure in the sand with the point of a stick my fears were calmed. It was to be a wooden platform similar to one Rassa had shown me when he took me through the northern forests. The height of a man, the scaffold was where a noiade often chose to keep vigil when seeking to enter the saivo world, sitting above the earth in the cold air until the spirit chose to leave the body. When the kholops had brought timber for the structure, the volva called for Ivarr’s favourite knife. She used it to cut runes on the main cross timber and as I watched her I shivered. I had seen those runes only once before: on the log which had been the cause of Grettir’s death, the log that turned the axe to wound him. They were curse runes. Of course the volva sensed my dismay. She turned to look straight at me and the venom in her glance was like a blow to the head. She knew that I possessed the second sight and she dared me to intervene. I was helpless and afraid. Her power, I knew, was far greater than mine.
Ivarr’s funeral began an hour before dusk. By then the members of the felag were already well and truly drunk. They had supervised the kholops as they dragged the leakiest of our boats from the river bank up to the scaffold and placed firewood under and around the hull. The crone had then taken charge. She ordered Ivarr’s tent to be taken down, then reassembled amidships on the boat. In it the kholops placed his carpets, rugs and cushions. Finally Ivarr’s corpse, dressed in a gown of brocade, was carried aboard and laid upon the cushions. When all had been arranged to her satisfaction, the volva went to fetch Ivarr’s favourite concubine. She was a plump, obedient girl with long, black braids which she wore coiled round her head. I guessed that she was the mother of at least one of Ivarr’s boys, for she wore a heavy neck ring of gold, a sign of her master’s favour. I liked her because she had shown kindness when she supervised the preparation of the twins for sale. Now I feared that she would fall into the hands of owners as vicious as Vermundr or Froygeir. When the volva arrived to collect her, she was standing on the patch of bare earth where Ivarr’s tent had stood and looking bereft. I saw the volva whisper something in her ear and take her by the wrist.
Walking as if in a dream, the girl was led towards the scaffold. From her wavering steps it seemed to me that she had been drugged or was intoxicated. Certainly every member of the felag was tipsy and I confess I was far from sober myself. Overwhelmed with dread, I had taken several cups of mead to repel the sense of doom.
‘You should go with her. You were just as much his favourite,’ Vermundr jeered, his drunken breath in my face as we watched the concubine approach the scaffold. Two hefty Varangians took her by the waist and lifted her to the platform. Three times they raised and lowered the girl in some sort of ceremony, and I saw her lips move as she mumbled an incantation or maybe a plea for help. On the third occasion the volva handed her a living cockerel. For a moment, the girl hesitated and I heard the volva scream urgently at her. What language was used I do not know, but the girl put the head of the cockerel in her mouth and bit it off, then flung its corpse, still fluttering, so that it landed upon the funeral ship. I saw the spray of chicken blood scatter through the air.
The girl was lifted from the scaffold one more time and, weaving and stumbling, brought to her master’s ship. She slipped and fell as she tried to climb the stacked firewood and the volva had to help her. Four members of the felag, including Vermundr, followed her and so did the volva. The light was fading, which made it difficult to see the details, but the girl lost her balance and toppled into the open door of the tent. Perhaps the volva had deliberately tripped her. She slumped on the cushions and one of the four Varangians began to fumble drunkenly at his trousers. Then he advanced on the girl and raped her. The volva stood to one side, looking on dispassionately. Each of the Varangians took the girl, then stood up and, turning towards us where we were clustered around the campfire, shouted, ‘That I have done in honour of Ivarr.’ Afterwards he descended from the boat and allowed the next man to take his turn.
When all four men were back on the ground, the volva reached down, seized the girl by the hair and dragged her further into the tent. By that stage the concubine was completely limp. The flickering light of the campfire illuminated the final death rite. I saw the volva make a noose with the cord to which the blue and green stone was attached, and slip it over her victim’s head. Next she placed one foot on the girl’s face, and leaning back, pulled tight the noose with a powerful jerk. Lastly she took Ivarr’s knife from her belt, and repeatedly stabbed down on the human sacrifice.
Only then did the volva descend and, selecting a brand from the camp fire, thrust it into the kindling heaped around the boat. The wood was dry from the summer heat and immediately caught fire. The breeze fanned the flames and within moments the funeral pyre was burning fiercely. As the blaze sucked in more air, I threw up my arm to protect my face from the heat. Flames roared and crackled, sending columns of blazing sparks into the air. In the heart of the conflagration, great holes suddenly appeared in the fabric of the tent sheltering Ivarr’s corpse. The holes spread their burning edges, eating away the cloth so rapidly that for an instant the frame of the tent stood alone as if to defy the inferno. Then the tent poles collapsed inwards across the bodies of Ivarr and his murdered concubine.
That night I drank myself into oblivion. The heat radiating from the blaze had brought on a powerful thirst, but I drank to forget what I had just seen. All around me the Varangians caroused and celebrated. They drank until they threw up, wiped their beards and then went back to drink. Two of them came to blows over an imagined insult. They groped for their swords and daggers and made futile stabs and slashes at one another until too weak to continue the dispute. Others guzzled mead and ale until they fell senseless on the ground. Those who could still stand, staggered off to the tent where our slave girls slept, and molested them drunkenly. The volva was nowhere to be seen. She had vanished, gone back to her village, no doubt. Nauseous with too much drink, I crept away to a quiet corner behind some cargo bales and fell asleep.
I awoke with a racking headache, a queasy stomach and a foul taste in my mouth. It was well past daybreak and the sun was already high above the horizon. It promised to be another scorching day. Holding onto the cargo bale for support, I pulled myself to my feet and looked across to where Ivarr’s funeral pyre had stood. There was nothing but a heap of charred wood and ash. Only the volva’s scaffold remained. Beside it a chicken feather stirred in the breeze on the scorched ground.
A few kholops were moving about the camp in an aimless way, lacking orders. Their masters, those I could see, lay snoring on the ground, motionless after their debauch.
Gingerly I made my way slowly across the camp, then down the river bank to the water’s edge. I felt denied and in desperate need of a wash even if the river water looked far from clean. It was a dark brown, almost black. I pulled off my soiled shirt and wrapped it around my waist as a loincloth, and removed my loose Varangian trousers. Slowly and carefully I waded out into the river until the tepid water reached the middle of my thighs. I stopped there for a moment, letting the sun warm my back, feeling the mud ooze up between my toes. I was in a back eddy. The water was barely moving. Cautiously I leaned forward, fearing that a sudden movement would bring on an attack of nausea. Gradually I brought my face closer to the dark water, and got ready to splash water in my face. Just before I plunged my cupped hands into the river, I paused and looked at my reflection. The sun was at such an angle that I saw my head and shoulders as a vague outline. Suddenly I was assailed by a violent swaying sickness. My head spun. A chill washed over me, and I was about to faint. I thought it was the result of my debauchery, but then realised that I had seen the very same reflection before. It was the image I had seen when I peered into the well of prophecy that Edgar the royal huntsman had shown me in the forest at Northampton. Even as I came to that understanding, I saw the flash of something bright in the mirror of the river. For a heartbeat I mistook it for the silver flicker of a fish, then I recognised the reflection of a knife blade and the upraised arm that held it as I fell to one side and the assassin struck.