by Non Bramley
The objects were slices of log, no doubt stolen from the wood pile of some aggrieved parent. The children stepped, holding their hands out to keep balance from one makeshift stepping stone to another. The littler ones cried and complained that it was too far. There was a terrible, innocent cruelty to it.
One little lass had obviously had enough, she walked up the beach towards me, her damp hair swinging like a pendulum. It’s hard to walk in sand and she huffed, her cheeks pink and hot. She was talking to herself, weaving a little story.
‘Hello, are you Pia?’ I said.
The child stopped, wrinkled her brow and nodded.
‘Do you speak my language, child?’
‘Yes, small thing.’ She held her fingers up, pinched the air.
‘You must be a very clever lady. How old are you? Forty, fifty?’
Pia laughed and took a ball from her pocket, just a hard little sphere of rags wrapped with twine. She threw it to me. I threw it back. She missed it and it rolled away. She dropped to her knees to pick it up and raced back, little legs slipping in the sand.
‘I’m seven. You’re fifty,’ she said, laughing.
I grinned back and nodded. We played. We made a castle with pink seashells pressed into the walls and I got sand in my ears when I was inspired to dig a tunnel from one side of the battlements to the other. She was a delight, clever as a robin and full of joy.
—Children are gift, Jude.
—They’re a pain in the arse too, but I know what you mean, I think. They’re little fizzing balls of sentience, fireworking across time.
‘Did you know Petur, sweetheart?’
She hesitated for a moment, deciding where to place the seaweed flag that would crown our castle. ‘Dead now.’
‘Do you know what happened to him?’
‘He was greedy,’ she said, and shrugged, but it was obvious that I’d ruined the game and she wandered off to join the other children.
I followed her and was met by Magnus who crouched down and spoke to his sister.
‘We wondered where she was.’
‘I’m sorry – that was thoughtless of me. You look after your sister well.’
Interesting lad this, always ready to put other people in the wrong. Pia and I had been in plain sight the whole time, but gaining an apology from an adult, from a Reeve no less, could only improve his standing within this little fiefdom.
‘She’s my responsibility,’ he said, with little grace.
‘I can see that. I bet you look out for all the young people here. What do you think happened to Petur?’
‘The elves killed him.’
‘Why?’
‘He went to their land, stole their food and was punished for his greed. You don’t go to their place. We all know that. It was a stupid thing to do. He was a stupid boy. Wouldn’t be told.’
Had there been some rivalry here, between Petur who would have grown to be tall and strong, and this boy king in waiting?
‘Have you seen the elves, lad?’ That was a mistake, he bridled at being described as nothing more than a lad.
‘We’ve all seen them, lady,’ said a small, russet-haired boy of twelve or thirteen, looking warily at Magnus.
‘Be quiet, Bjorn,’ said Magnus.
‘We have though, haven’t we?’ he said.
Magnus nodded. ‘They look like us, only better, more beautiful, stronger.’
‘You’ve been to the island?’
‘No,’ he said, as if I were a dullard. ‘We’ve walked over the sands at low tide, got close but not too close. I’ve seen a man and woman.’
‘Two people, you saw two people?’
‘No, one person – sometimes a man, sometimes a woman.’
‘A different person each time?’
‘No,’ he looked annoyed. ‘You don’t understand. One person who is a man when they like or a woman when they like. A man-woman, a changeling.’
That decided it.
I would need to pay a visit to Piskelli. Quietly.
I found Olaf sitting in the shade by the quayside. Some kind soul had dragged out a chair for him, and he was almost asleep, lids drooping. Discarded mussel shells lay around his feet. He woke at the dull sound of my steps, heavy on the flat stones that paved much of the quayside.
‘How many masons must it have taken to make this place?’ I said, looking down at the harbour walls, now slimy with weed. The tide was out, beaching the fishing boats. A brisk breeze lifted my hair. The air was filled with sound, like the striking of tiny hammers on a hundred little anvils. ‘And what is that sound?’
‘It’s ships’ ropes tapping against the mast. I’m so used to it I don’t hear it anymore.’ He picked up a small knife, found a mussel from within the pile around his feet and shelled it, scraping the meat into a wooden bowl.
‘Dinner?’ I asked.
‘Bait to catch dinner.’
‘Need a hand?’
‘I do. I’m very behind and shall get a scolding.’ He smiled. ‘You were talking to the children?’
‘I was. Nothing’s a secret here, eh?’
‘It’s a small place and you’re a stranger. No one can work out if you’re friend or foe.’
‘I’m going to Piskelli, Olaf.’
He nodded and sighed. ‘Thank you. I’m sorry I called you a fool. I’ve much to confess when I return to my Bróðirs and Systurs at Tingale. If anyone’s a fool, it’s me. To be frank, Reeve, I feel like I may have sinned so greatly I could weep.’ He dropped his knife.
‘How have you sinned, Brother?’
‘So many years ago now. When I was a child, back in Snæfellsnes, I had a bróðir, a brother, Tomas. He was a year younger and a clever lad, much brighter than me. It was Christmas Eve, I’d just turned nine years old, and my móðir and faðir were to take us all to Midnight Mass. It was dangerous – we knew that – but our village was so small and it was just a few steps to the church. We had fire to keep away the wild beasts. Tomas had a headache, wanted to stay safe at home, so we went without him and he bolted the doors on us as he should. When we returned I was the first one at the door. It was open wide, and I saw a tall woman, dressed in green and so beautiful. She had Tomas in her arms. He was deep asleep. I called to my faðir as she slipped out with my brother. I told him the lady had taken Tomas, but faðir found him safe in his bed. Only it wasn’t Tomas. This boy was mute, wrinkled like an old man. He was a changeling. Tomas had been taken by the Huldufólk. The changeling died in a few days. He looked a hundred years old. I swear it’s true.’
‘You never saw your true brother again?’
‘I did. I was sixteen but he still looked like a little boy. He was with the lady, stood in the market place, dressed in furs and silks. I called out to him but only she turned to look at me. I’ll never forget that look, I was nothing, an ant. I put my hand on my knife and they vanished, like mist. I never saw him again. You must understand me now, Reeve. You must be clever and careful. The elves are real and they are cruel. They take what they want, kill what they want and we are nothing. Nothing. They killed Petur for a few stolen berries. I’ve searched my conscience, but I didn’t call you here to further the cause of a church. At least I don’t think I did. I can’t tell anymore. The one thing I know is that I’m frightened.’ He pointed at Piskelli where it shimmered in the heat. ‘That place is home to creatures who are outside of God’s love, and we are too weak to burn them out. You must do it. Please! Call me a fool if you wish but send them back to their own world. Burn them out, Reeve.’
The sounds of the quayside came back to us – the hammering of ropes on masts and the calling of fishermen and gulls. So familiar, so human.
It was then I smelt the smoke.
I wondered if it was just my senses playing tricks. No.
‘Something’s burning,’ I said, not concerned as yet, but looking around for the source.
‘It’s just the smokehouse. They must be curing herrings,’ Olaf said.
The stench got stro
nger. ‘That’s no smokehouse. Something’s afire,’ I said, standing. A black plume of smoke stained the blue sky to the west. ‘Isn’t that where Gudrun’s house stands?’ I said, starting to run before he gave me an answer I already knew.
The little house was burning with a flame so hot it was invisible, so hot it was impossible to get near. Townsfolk scrambled up the hill behind me, screaming and wailing. Someone threw water but it hissed into steam before it even hit the stones that were blackening and cracking with heat. I looked around, and dragged Olaf to the spring, pulling his habit over his head and soaking it. I put it on, tugging the hood far over my face and kicked the door of the burning house, once, twice before the timbers split. Heat pushed me back like a hand. The roof was afire, the beams just amber cords of pulsing red light. Fire dripped. It was like looking into the sun. In the corner Gudrun, her back aflame, screamed and curled herself tighter around the small, prone form of her daughter. Gudrun was burning alive to save her child.
I took off the sodden habit and felt the heat start to crisp my skin, I threw it over the burning woman and picked her up, throwing her over a shoulder, then I scooped up the child. She was limp and boneless. When I staggered out and fell into the cool grass Gudrun’s hair was aflame and my legs were burning. Someone threw water over me, and I patted out the last flames with blistered hands.
Angry bees filled the air.
Gudrun was dead.
Chapter Six
There is no more painful death than burning, a death reserved for heretics and witches in the old times. Even if you survive the flames and linger on in agony your cooked flesh will rot on your bones. Looking at the cracked and blackened corpse of a once handsome woman I was glad that she wouldn’t feel that pain. Her son felt it for her. He sat all night in vigil with Gudrun’s corpse while I dug the grave and his ruined home smoked in the darkness.
I planted my spade in the green turf and heaved, flinching a little at the ripping of roots. I know what harm sounds like. The soil was black and friable, welcoming. All the little creatures that glinted in the moonlight would take Gudrun down to the warm heart of this earth. She would dissolve and spread, her bones crumbling to sand, her flesh feeding pale roots. In time she would be carried back up into the light, spreading through green leaves, swelling in the apple. Her bees would taste her again. Nothing is lost, just changed, to something rich and strange, something wider, something more cognisantly alive.
We live in Eden. We never left.
Magnus was shuddering with grief as we placed his mother in the ground, clinging to his aunt Briet who swayed and keened, her face swollen through the shedding of many tears, a deep hood covering her hair in mourning.
We buried Gudrun in the orchard, close to her beloved bees. A bead necklace, amber brooch and bone spoon, carved by her husband as a wedding gift, went into the ground with her. There was no cross to mark her grave, just a curiously shaped stone, curved like an upturned ship’s hull.
Through all of this Pia slept a death-like sleep. No one knew if she would ever wake again. She lay in a little bed, watched over by Freyja, an old woman with a halo of thin white hair who had known Gudrun since before Sigurd’s Town had even existed.
Now she had inherited her children.
The day after we put her mother in the ground I visited Pia, weary after a sleepless night, kept awake by my own burns. Asif was still abed; I’d kept him awake too. Freyja welcomed me in and insisted on salving my blistered legs. It helped a little.
‘Try to keep the skin dry, and clean. If you see any pus, come straight to me. It’s not too bad. Could have been a lot worse.’
‘What is this stuff?’ I asked her as she smeared a brown paste over my blisters.
‘Propolis. The bees make it.’
‘From Gudrun’s hives?’
She nodded. ‘It’s a godsend in a fishing village.’
‘Why?’
‘You ever shaken a fisherman’s hand? They’re a mass of scars.’
I nodded. ‘It’s soothing. Thank you.’
‘That’s the last of it,’ she said, peering into the little earthenware jar that held the salve. ‘I thought I had more.’
‘How’s the child?’
‘She won’t wake. To be frank, Reeve, I don’t think she’ll live long. Too much smoke. She’d not burned though; her mother saved her from that. If I can get water down her she might prove me wrong. She was covered in her own vomit and piss when they brought her here. She needs water but I can only dribble in a few drops. I hope she lives but …’ She shrugged and sighed.
‘She’s in my prayers. You all are.’
‘My thanks. Come and see the child.’
She led me up a cramped stairway. Pia lay on her side, bolstered by pillows.
‘It makes it easier for her heart to beat. Lie her on her back and it’ll kill her quick,’ Freyja said, laying a blue-veined hand on the child’s pallid cheek.
Pia was hardly breathing and what breath there was rattled in her little chest. Her hair was singed down to the scalp and her soul tethered to her body by the most fragile thread.
Wake, little robin, wake, I thought as I crouched down. If she opened her eyes again it would be as a newly bereaved orphan.
She still smelt faintly of smoke. Who would want to hurt this child? I felt sick with a sorrowful anger. Fury usually filled me with purpose but this rage sapped at my strength.
I knew in my bones that the fire had been set on purpose.
I needed proof.
That afternoon, I walked with Olaf up to the stinking remains of the house. The roof had fallen in, the thick clods of earth that covered it smothering the flames below.
‘Do you believe me now?’ Olaf said. ‘I speak of burning out the Huldufólk just as this house is set aflame. You could have saved her, and the child, if you’d have gone to the island and done as you were asked. Why are you waiting?’
‘Because I need to understand what caused this fire,’ I said, thoughtfully.
The corner where Gudrun and Pia had sheltered was almost untouched; the roof falling seconds after I pulled them from the flames. Grey ash floated upwards at every step. Everything was smeared with a sticky black resin that had dripped from the beams. In the corner was a blackened log that had shrunk in the ferocious heat, a knot falling to the floor and leaving a hole clean through the timber as I picked it up and tapped it. I dropped it amongst shards of glass and the remnants of Pia’s rag ball, now burnt and unravelled, the curling twine reminding me of Gudrun’s scorched hair.
‘This was not an accident,’ I said under my breath, but Olaf caught the words.
‘I know that!’
‘But do vengeful elves start fires? See if you can find anything, a broken jar with traces of oil or pitch. I’m going outside.’
As I walked back through the charred doorway I quietly slipped into my pocket a thick, broken chain that had been looped around and through the door latch to seal it tight – the reason it had taken me two blows to break down the door. The chain was a little blackened but shone as soon as I rubbed the sticky ash from it. The links were an interesting design – a series of loops, each twisted to form a figure of eight. I dropped it into my scrip, away from prying eyes. It was best if only the killer and I knew the truth … the better to recognise each other.
Gudrun’s door had been secretly chained shut from outside. I was right, this was no accident; it was murder.
One of the hives in the orchard had been disturbed, the lid flung aside and a comb-filled frame lying broken in the grass.
‘Gudrun must have been working on this hive when she saw the fire,’ Olaf said as he joined me.
‘The comb’s been trodden on, mashed into the grass. Why would she do that? Could she have trodden on it in her haste?’ I said. ‘Look around for her knife, and a feather.’
We found the knife ten paces or so from the hive.
Olaf picked it up.
‘It’s not in the right place if she was ru
nning to the house. I suppose she could have thrown it.’ I said.
I went back to the broken hive and replaced the lid. I was stung for my labours. ‘Let’s say Gudrun was working on this hive, taking the frame to harvest the honey. She’d unlock her workshop, come to this hive, take the frame, replace the lid and go back to chop up the comb.’
‘She wouldn’t have been taking that frame for honey. It’s not even half-full.’
‘She’d leave it till it was full?’
‘Yes. You take a full frame, cut out the comb, clean it and replace it. If you take too much honey the bees starve; if you don’t take enough they fill all the frames, which makes the queen decide the hive’s too crowded. Then they swarm, with a new queen.’
‘So what else could she have been doing here?’
‘Cleaning out old wax, removing dead bees, scraping away old bee glue.’
‘Bee glue?’
‘The official term is propolis. It’s something bees make to fill up little gaps in the hive walls, so wasps and other predators can’t get in to eat the brood. It’s very good for soothing cuts and grazes, bee stings too. The infirmarian at Tingale swears by it.’
‘So she might just have been cleaning the hive, heard Pia scream or seen the smoke, stood on the comb in the grass and run to the door. Could she have pushed past the hive? It’s been shifted a few inches – look.’
Olaf crouched low. Ignoring the angry insects that flew around his tonsured head, he ran his finger over the strip of bare earth at the hive’s base. ‘So it has. That took some strength.’
I pushed the hive back into place. Olaf was right – it was surprisingly heavy.
‘Full of pounds upon pounds of wax and honey. Heavy isn’t it? We’d better move away. This hive isn’t a happy one. They’d have attacked us by now if they weren’t cold and confused by a night without a roof. She’s probably lost most of the bees from this hive.’
‘She’s dead, Brother. I doubt she cares.’
Olaf nodded sadly. ‘I forgot for a moment.’
