She trembled. What was happening to her? It was as if the strangeness she had always had was now more present in her mind than her everyday self, as if she had been fundamentally wrong in her understanding of herself. She had been a count’s daughter, a girl in a meadow, a child to be married for the benefit of her family, a wild thing under the stars. Now it seemed that the things inside her, the musical senses, her sensitivity to attitudes and moods, had grown to be giants, shadowing all that she had formerly been. How had she controlled the mules? Witchcraft? Was it possible to be a witch and not know it?
She looked up at the bridge that ran from the city to the opposite shore. They were giving it a wide berth, making sure they were out of range of bowmen. Even now its tower was being repaired and fortified, and men swarmed over it. She wanted to cry out or to plunge into the water and swim for it, but she knew the Vikings would spear her before she got ten strokes from the boat.
The city was still smouldering and she watched the smoke rising up against the moon like a fracture in the sky. Something dropped from the tower onto the bridge – the figure of a man. She looked around her. No one else on the boat had noticed it, and it seemed no one on the tower had seen it either. She had only glimpsed an instant of movement but she knew what it was. She felt something emanating from the figure like a chill across the water – a carnivorous presence, something sharp-minded and aggressive, with glittering little eyes. She could not put it into words, but the presence manifested itself in her mind like the sound of the sky cracking. It was a raven’s cry
The merchant came and sat next to her and said softly in Latin, ‘I am sorry for my disrespect. It is for your safety.’
She felt the tears in her eyes again.
‘Don’t worry; it will be all right,’ he said.
She gave him a questioning look.
He smiled and nodded to the Norsemen, some of whom – unbelievably – had gone to sleep virtually as soon as the boat had pushed off. ‘All these bastards will have their heads on your brother’s gates one day, you’ll see.’ He put his hand on her back. ‘Rest assured, I will help you. Your interests are my first concern.’
Aelis, who could hear emotions like music and see them like colours, looked at him and mouthed the word: ‘Liar.’
8 A Meeting
The monk said nothing, though he was sure that the Norseman was about to break his ribs. He was being carried over the shoulder of what he could tell was a huge man who was running hard. The Viking’s shoulder hammered into the confessor, driving the air from him, but the monk would not give in to complaint. The confessor sensed when they were outside the city – the temperature dropped when they were through the gate, the heat of the burning buildings shielded by the walls.
‘Coming through, coming through!’ shouted the man.
Jehan could hear other footsteps behind him, the warriors who had been in the church, he guessed. The man carrying him had been called Fatty by the others, but he didn’t seem slow or to have any difficulty sustaining a good pace, despite his burden, although he panted heavily and cursed as he ran.
‘How are we going to get him over this rampart?’
Jehan knew the bridge had been blockaded at both ends to deny the raiders access. The Franks shouted insults at them as they ran through their ranks but no one lifted a weapon against them. They honoured Eudes’ command.
‘Shove him over. Heave him up.’
The rampart was not a wall, just a collection of broken carts, rubbish and rubble.
The confessor felt himself hurled up into the air, to land with a thump. It was agonising but he had no time to recover. Rough hands were on him again and he was swung up further, coming down hard on the rubble again with a bigger crash. He cried out, his twisted and useless joints forced into movement by the repeated battering.
‘Throw him down. I’ll catch him.’
‘No!’ The word escaped Jehan’s lips, but he was falling to land with a fearful jolt in someone’s arms. He thought he would pass out with the pain but his will kept him conscious.
‘Safe!’ said a voice.
‘Thank Thor for that!’
The confessor felt himself simply dropped to the ground. He tried not to groan but couldn’t restrain himself.
‘Shut up, you. You’re lucky I didn’t chuck you over at one go.’
‘Where to now?’
‘Drag this god or whatever he is up to Sigfrid and see what reward he offers for him. He’s a giver of rings, that king, and I don’t think we’ll be disappointed.’
‘Best wait for the others, though, so we all get something.’
‘Come on, let’s get into the main camp. That work’s given me a thirst.’
Jehan gagged with the pain and cursed his body for its weakness. He was ready for whatever fate the Norsemen planned for him but he was behaving like a quivering child.
He was picked up again, this time between two of them, grabbing an arm each. He could almost hear his joints squealing as they lifted him, but he was master of himself again and made no complaint. He sensed that he was carried up a hill, and gradually he came into noise – rough singing, the crackling of fires, the braying of animals, conversation and shouts.
He was dumped on the ground once more. He heard the Norsemen making a fire, collecting pots, pissing and laughing. One of the berserkers said he was going in search of a ‘proper’ healer to tend his arm. Again, Jehan thanked God for his trials. Other men, more able men, had the illusion of taking a hand in their fate. He could have run, if his legs would have carried him, fought, if his arms had held a weapon. The outcome would have been the same – whatever God willed. In his condition there was no lying to himself or misreading his place in the cosmos. He was a cork bobbing on the tides of God’s mind, as all men were. God had just granted him the affliction that let him see it more clearly.
Then there were voices nearby.
‘Ofaeti, why are you so fat?’
‘Because every time I fuck your wife she gives me a hazelnut.’
‘That’s as good as a password!’
‘It’s good to see you alive, my friend!’
There was laughter, backslapping and questions about what had happened to who; who had died and who lived.
‘We walked in there with twelve of us and came out with twelve. We should tell the rest of this army to go home; we can take this city ourselves, I reckon.’
‘Did you get the girl?’
‘Oh yes, I just didn’t mention it.’
‘That’s a no, then.’
‘It’s a no.’
‘But we did get this kind merchant and his stack of wine. Merchant, introduce yourself.’
‘Leshii, servant of your kinsman Helgi the Prophet, friend to King Sigfrid and to all who serve him.’
‘Very nice, where’s the wine?’
‘Boy, a couple of bottles for our friends,’ said Leshii with a note of forced jollity in his voice. ‘I will take the advice of these fine warriors and allow you to see where I keep them but know that, should any go missing I will give you the best justice – the Viking kind!’
‘Just two? Seems a bit skinny. Boy, get more.’ That was a Norseman.
‘He doesn’t understand your tongue, friend.’ The exotic voice again. An easterner, Jehan thought.
‘Then translate.’
‘Lady, the bag on the rear mule contains the best wine for these fellows. Take out a skin of that, would you?’
Had Jehan heard right? ‘Lady’? The merchant hadn’t said domina, which even non-Latin speakers would recognise. He’d said era, which was mildly less respectful but probably wouldn’t be known to the Norsemen. So there was a woman there, a disguised woman.
The merchant spoke in Norse: ‘Serve the wine, boy; don’t stand there staring at the monk. Haven’t you ever seen a god before? You’ll be seeing another soon enough if you don’t hurry up.’ More laughter. Then the exotic voice in Latin: ‘Take heart, lady. This is the easiest way to make them see what w
e want them to see.’
‘The lad’s crying again!’
‘The monk’s a cripple, boy, like you can see on any roadside. By Thor’s bulging bollocks they don’t breed ’em very tough in Miklagard, do they? Maybe we should try our luck there. If they don’t like deformity we could just show ’em Ofaeti’s bollocks and they’d open the gates to us. That’s more like it, get another. Let’s drink this lot dry and think about seeing the king later. We deserve a little reward after our labours, don’t we, lads?’
It couldn’t be her, could it?
‘Give me that.’ It was a cold, hard Norse voice, close by.
Under his breath, more felt than spoken, he said the word: ‘Domina.’
The confessor felt fingers brush his face, a gesture of tenderness. He had the strangest sensation, the only way he could have described it was to say that it felt like her, but he had never touched her, nor any woman that he could remember. Still, the touch seemed to carry her signature, the note of her, like a distinctive perfume, almost. The pain and the indignities had not daunted him. This did. No one had touched him but to lift or bathe him since he had been seven years old. A chill went through him, a delicious cold tingle from his forehead to his knees. He had warned people about the pleasures of the flesh since he had been old enough to speak in church but to him such pleasures had been only dry things, spectres raised from the Bible by the readings of his brother monks. He had despised them without knowing them. One touch, though, and he had understood. Who had done that? Was it her? For the first time in years he hated his blindness. He needed to see, to know.
The men settled down to drinking and the confessor felt the cold of night deepen.
He calmed himself by focusing on preparing to face Sigfrid. He would not beg or bargain for his life, he was determined. The monk knew that the longer he stayed in the camp, the more likely the Emperor Charles was to come and rescue him. A living saint could not be allowed in the hands of heathens. Jehan made himself forget the strange feelings that the touch had raised in him and tried to reason. What would he do if he was Sigfrid? The Viking was no fool and he must see that holding the monk was dangerous for him. Would he ransom him? Jehan doubted it. Why bother? The city would fall soon enough and then he’d have whatever was in it for free. No, while he lived, the confessor realised he was only a unifying force for Sigfrid’s enemies. The Viking king would kill him, he felt sure.
He turned his mind to prayer but could only think of the touch that had set his skin singing. Jehan was in some ways a humorous man, and it did strike him as ironic that he had discovered the sin of carnal pleasure just in time for it to admit him to hell. He made himself pray: ‘Heart of Jesus, once in agony, receive my sinner’s soul.’ In the morning, thought Jehan, he would see Christ’s face and, he hoped, be taken into his peace. He knew his fate among the Normans was God’s way of chastising him for his pride. It was Lucifer’s sin, and Jehan’s old weakness, to think yourself better than others. He had let them call him a saint, a living saint. Well saints suffered and died, so God had granted that he would do the same. The Norsemen had crushed three churchmen at Reims with great stones. He put it from his mind. He was going on a journey. The conveyance did not matter.
There was the sound of shouting and the men all around him got to their feet.
‘Who are you?’
‘King’s man Arnulf. Sigfrid wants to see you straight away. You have something of his.’
‘That will be me,’ said the eastern voice.
‘The Christian holy man, the flesh eater, he wants him.’
Perhaps, thought Jehan, he would be seeing the face of Jesus sooner than he had anticipated.
9 Alone
Confessor Jehan had been taken. In the rush of her flight and the fear of her capture Aelis had forgotten he had been at her side when the Norsemen attacked. And her brother, what of him? Eudes was a peerless warrior, a prodigy at arms according to his tutors. It had never even occurred to her that he could be hurt, let alone killed. But the Norsemen had walked away with the confessor. Eudes would never have allowed that while he had breath in his body. She went cold. Did her brother still live?
She had touched the confessor on impulse, to reassure him, or rather just to let him know he was not alone. She could imagine what he would say to that. ‘I am never alone; I am with God.’ And yet it had felt right to reach out to him.
Now her mind began to clear and she was terrified. Inside the church she had been unable to bring home to the confessor just how real her dreams had been. And then the wolf had appeared, a wolfman rather, who had given his life for her. The simmering sense of danger she had in her dreams of the wolf now spilled over into her waking life. What of that thing that had come from within her to speak to the mules – what was that? She tried to force her attention back to the present. The immediate danger from the Norsemen should be her concern, she thought, not the threat of devils.
The Norsemen were all very drunk and stumbled to find their weapons. She couldn’t tell what they were saying but they seemed worried. She kept away from the imp, fearing him. The others had become louder and more friendly with the drink; he had become withdrawn, more sullen, sitting at the side of the fire with a weak smile of contempt for his guffawing companions.
They all went down a slight slope to the biggest house in the area. It was a mean dwelling, as all those outside the city walls were, timber-framed with unfinished mud for its walls. It had been decorated in a hideous pastiche of the Roman style, its steep pitched roof timbered but daubed in painted checks to try to give the impression of tiles, leaving it more unpleasant-looking than if it had been built as a simple peasant’s dwelling in unadorned wood. Scraps of vellum hung at the windows. Aelis guessed the Norsemen had cut them through when they moved in, unused to anything to keep the draught out. It was a small thing, a very small thing, but it seemed to bring home their barbarity to her. How could the Franks lose to such a rabble? Because, as her brother said, the emperor was fat and lazy and preferred to fritter away his people’s fortune in bribes to the Normans rather than face them in the field as a man. Eudes himself had shown they could be beaten, and more cheaply than they could be bought, but Charles insisted on paying them to go away. Her brother had maintained that payments in gold guaranteed the Norsemen would come back. Payments in steel meant they would not.
They arrived at the house and she stopped the mules. Warriors were all around, some standing in full armour, some sitting down playing at dice, eating or sleeping. Then she remembered one of the packs contained her hair. What would the king make of that if he saw it? The Norseman called Fastarr put up his hand and addressed the warriors. She couldn’t understand what he said but Leshii, seeing her fear, whispered a translation.
‘This is the king, boys. Remember, for once, that I’m the one you elected speaker so let me do the talking. It’s me he struck the deal with and me he’ll want to hear from. I don’t want one word out of any of you, is that understood?’
‘What if he questions us directly about what went on?’
‘Say you just followed me. Any more questions, just say you don’t know and that I had a better view of it than you.’
‘What if he asks me about my cock?’ said Ofaeti, scratching himself. Leshii translated, seeming to find any mention of sex or the seats of corruption of the body vastly amusing.
‘Well, I could definitely get a better view of that than you. You can’t have seen it these fifteen years, you fat bastard.’
There was laughter but Fastarr quietened it.
‘Seriously, no jokes. Don’t speak unless you’re spoken to. Let’s get in and out of here as quick as we can. Get the monk.’
Aelis stood and watched as Confessor Jehan was dragged inside and Leshii busied himself with the mules. The Norseman had forgotten about him, too worried by the king’s summons and he wasn’t about to remind them. She felt cold and in her mind heard that voice again, the crack of a raven’s call.
She looked
down the slope towards the river, towards the formidable but battered tower on the bridge. She’d be shot by her own people before she even got within shouting range if she tried to swim for it. The only way was north, into Neustria, much of which was under Norman control. She would have to bide her time to escape; besides, it was her Christian duty to do her best to protect the saint.
She was too much in demand, she thought. Wolfmen, ravens, the Danes, all seemed to want her. For the moment it was safer to be a mute idiot boy.
She touched the leading mule’s ears and it nuzzled into her. At least, she thought, she had won an ally there.
10 Bargains and Threats
Jehan smelled roast meat and a fire scented with pine needles. Fresh reeds had been scattered on the floor. There was a hum of conversation in the house which stopped as he was brought in.
‘Lord Sigfrid,’ said Fastarr, ‘we have captured this man, one of their gods, and we bring him before you to await your pleasure.’
‘Did you get the girl?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Why not?’
‘She escaped us in the darkness of the south bank.’
‘So why are you not there? It will soon be light.’
‘We had lost her, sir, and this man is such a valuable commodity we thought you would want him straight away.’
‘Or did you get bored, want to return to your drink and your women, and thought you might throw me a scrap to keep me sweet?’
No one said anything and Jehan heard the king snort. There was a noise like metal on wood. A cup or a bowl on a table? A sword?