Fenrir (9 page)

The mules pressed on, the warriors swatting away the children, calling to friends. They approached the river and Fastarr talked to a man on the bank. He gestured them towards a small beached longship. It was lying at an angle and the man put a plank up to its side.

The Viking turned from his negotiation and spoke directly to her but she didn’t understand what he said.

‘Come on,’ said Leshii. ‘Get the mules on the boat.’

Aelis wanted to speak, to tell the merchant that would be impossible. She loved horses and had grown up around enough mules to know they only worked for people they trusted. Mules were more intelligent than horses and needed to be coaxed rather than bullied. The animals were not going to walk up a plank onto a precarious boat for her.

She felt an intense shame building within her, an anger and a deep resentment. Her legs hurt and she had bruises down her back where she had been prodded. That feeling she had had since she was a girl returned, the ability to sense people’s emotions, to hear their character almost as a musical note, to see it as a colour. When she was a small girl and given to sentimental descriptions she had told her nurse that she could hear the ‘strings of the heart-harp’. The sickly sweet description made her blush now that she was a grown woman. But it really did feel like that, and the feeling was intensifying. The Norsemen were a mixture: toughness, cruelty, generosity, bravery, humour; she experienced their minds as a thin band of sound, bright colours, a feeling both hard and cold. The merchant was more complex. When she thought of him she had a taste in her mouth sweet like honeyed almonds, but underneath was something else bitter and astringent: cloves and smoke, vinegar and tar.

One of the Vikings was screamng at her in Norse, gesturing to the mules and then to the boat. It was the little one again, the nasty imp with his pinched face and thin, strong limbs. Aelis understood nothing of what he said, but his presence was dull and heavy, baleful and narrow. He kicked her and her legs went from under her. She hit the ground hard, driving the wind from herself and banging her head. He was screaming at her, gesturing for her to get up with one hand and prodding her with the butt of his spear with the other. His voice was shrill and high like a pipe blown by a child, almost hysterical.

Fastarr grabbed him by the shoulder and spoke to Leshii: ‘I am sorry for my kinsman, merchant; he has been unlucky in battle these two years.’ His voice was softer, like a flute, she thought. What was happening to her? Her senses were jumbled by the fall but something else was taking over and the world was not as it had been. All her sensitivities seemed amplified, people and personalities understandable to her in new and confusing ways. It was as if the uncommon stress had unlocked something in her.

‘Wounded?’ Again Leshii spoke in Norse. She heard the word as two thudding syllables, like the beat of a drum and, though its exact meaning was obscure to her, she understood well enough what was meant. It was as if all the feelings and emotions of those around her were an open book. She understood what the Norsemen were saying but in a way that went beyond the comprehension of a straightforward translation.

‘No kills,’ said Fastarr. ‘A case of bad luck, not cowardice as his enemies maintain.’

‘What use is a slave that will not work?’ It was the shrill pipe again.

‘About the same as a warrior who does not kill,’ said Fastarr. ‘Now let the boy put the mules on the boat, Saerda, and try picking your next fight with a Frankish man-at-arms, not a mute idiot.’

Though the words were not quite clear to Aelis, she understood that the Viking with the hammer shield was defending her and that he was mocking the thin little one, who he felt obliged to have in his company out of some debt of duty. Aelis realised that Saerda – she recognised the word as a name – was in as much danger as she was from his fellows and, more than that, he knew it.

She stood up and the night seemed to teem about her, the thoughts and emotions of the people in the camp buzzing like insects over a swamp. An image came to her. She saw herself on a tall mountaintop overlooking a vast valley. Something was living inside her – it seemed to glow and pulse. It was one of many things, a note, a vibration, that she carried in her bones. She could not name it but she envisaged it as a shape, like a shallow Roman one thousand, M, shining in the darkness of her mind. It had a living lustre to it, deep like the flow of light on a bay mare’s back. She smelled horse too, and the shape seemed to steam and stamp and sweat. It was like a living thing, something that expressed itself through her and that she, in living, expressed. She tried to give the shape a name in her mind but the only word that came to her was ‘horse’. The shape, she knew, was associated with horses – more than that, it was linked in a fundamental way to the creatures.

‘Get the mules on the boat.’ It was Leshii who spoke. She looked at the animal nearest her. As she moved towards it, it turned away, but she persisted and put her hands up to its head. She envisaged that glowing, rippling shape floating before her and the sound of its breathing emanating from her. She could feel the mule’s fear and mistrust, but the shape gave her a calmness that seemed to pass to the animal. The mule became quiet and nuzzled into her hand. Then she led it up the plank into the boat.

When all the animals were on board, the warriors climbed in, along with Leshii, and they pushed off for the far shore. The Vikings all sat down but there was no space for her, so she leaned her backside on the rail. She had never felt so strange in her life. It was as if her mind was no longer her own but had things growing in it, living there, shapes like the horse symbol that danced and spun at the very edge of her sight. She had sensed them before, she thought, when ill with scarlatina as a child. It was as if extraordinary fear and uncertainty called them forth, that the raw panic she felt under the eyes of the berserks had shut down her conscious mind and allowed them to appear.

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.’

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?’