Ahead the earthworks abruptly met another high grassy ridge, with a gate through it.
Remembering the Jorvik bar, and that other trouble, Corban stopped a moment, feeling like a rabbit. He had the money Ulf had given him tied into the corner of his cloak; he slung the red and blue wool around him and hitched his belt up. With long strides he set forward again, thinking what Ulf had said, to hail King Bluetooth.
No one stopped him. He walked right in through the gate past a crew of guardsmen, a line of wagons stopped and waiting, and into the city beyond.
The din and the smell struck him at once. He walked out of the gate onto a wooden path that led between solid rows of buildings, made of woven wattle thickly dauted with mud, their chimneys spouting smoke up into the broad brown canopy above. Every few yards another walkway crossed the wooden path Corban followed, and these walks were full of people.
A big man in a hat made of fur bellowed something in a language he had never heard before, and all around him people burst out laughing. Corban smelled garbage and shit and the rotten seaweed stink of the beach. Swinging wide he passed two women screaming at each other nose to nose, their long yellow braids bristling. The crowds of people pressed thick around him until he thought it hard to breathe. He walked on, gawking around him. At a wide place in the wooden path, a man in a red jacket was leading a big black bear on a leash; as Corban passed by the bear stood on its hind legs and waved its arms and lifted its feet up one at a time, like a dance. The watching crowd shrieked with delight, and the bear gaped its jaws, its tongue lolling.
Corban went by a market with cabbages and onions piled up like mountains, with rows of ducks hanging by their yellow feet. In the great buildings teetering up on either side people screamed and laughed. Music spilled from a window high over his head. He could not stop walking. The city was enormous; he had been inside the gate for half the day, it seemed, and had not seen the same place twice.
He came suddenly out from between buildings and stood before the water, a bay or inlet or broad river, maybe, lined with wharfs and ships. All along the wharfs there were goods piled, like the cargo Ulf had brought here: fleeces and cloth, stacks of leather, kegs and chests and bags, some being taken out to the ships, and some going into wagons lined up beside the wharfs.
He walked on and on, along the rattling wooden path, past mountains of goods. At a long wooden wharf lines of slaves were unloading a ship, throwing sacks of cargo from one set of hands to the next, until they landed in a growing heap on the side of the path; one of the sacks had split a little, letting a trickle of yellow grain run down. Next to it stood a girl in a long blue gown, with a sleek black bird on her shoulder, which screeched at him.
Slowly, he began to hear something else, under the roar and crash of the city. He strained his ears to make it out, and his steps quickened. He thought he heard a voice, a single voice, singing. He thought it was his sister’s voice.
A surge of excitement went through him. He turned his head this way and that, trying to hear it better. His feet carried him rapidly along, into a sidestreet, down another path, the song steadily louder and louder. His heart began to gallop. He broke into a trot. Her voice thrilled in his ears. Mav, he thought. Mav. He was blind now to the city, deaf to its sounds, caught on that thread of song. It led him up from the harbor, down a narrow path, to a high gate in a wall not of withies but of posts driven into the mud, and from behind that fence skirled out the wild music of his sister’s voice.
He screamed, “Mav!” He backed up and ran at the wall and leapt, caught the top in his hands, and hauled himself upward. His heart was beating so hard he thought it would break out of his chest and soar along ahead of him. “Mav,” he cried again, and dropped down into a courtyard, where people turned to gawk at him, dropping the work from their hands to stare. He plunged across the yard to the hall, whose double doors stood open.
Tears were sliding down his face. He rushed into the hall, into the sudden dimness, and turned, toward the closed doors of the cupboard against the wall; he knew people were gathering around him, watching and murmuring, but he hardly noticed them; in the great whirling chaos around him only her voice mattered, and he pulled open the doors of the cupboard, and through the opening she flung herself forward, into his arms.
CHAPTER TWELVE
She was thin, light as smoke, her face hollow, her eyes huge, brimming over. She would not let go of him, her arms wrapped around him, pressing herself against him as if he could absorb her, take her in to hide away. Her arms like sticks, her wrists so thin he thought he could have bitten off her hand.
In the middle of her, round and growing, the baby gave off a great heat, like a fire in a cauldron.
He held her; she cried and cried, and he held her and rocked her and said her name and stroked her hair, stunned and grateful. Presently he became aware of the woman standing beside them, watching him.
He lifted his gaze to her. In the dim light he had trouble seeing her clearly; he could not make out if she were old or young, fair or plain. Her face seemed to float upon her like a mask.
She said, “Welcome, Corban.”
“You know me,” he said, stupidly.
“She has been singing to me of you for months, now.” Her eyes never left him. She sat down on a stool facing him. “I know you very well, I think.”
A ripple of fear passed down his spine. He clung now to his sister as much as she clung to him. He said, “What is wrong with her?”
“Her mind is broken,” the woman said. She seemed older than he had thought, a moment ago. She said, “Was she not strange, before?”
“Strange. She was deep-minded.” He held her; suddenly it overcame him again, that he had found her at last, and he shut his eyes and laid his cheek against her hair and felt her body all against him; her weight, her touch, there again, that had been torn away. He yielded himself up, whole again.
The woman’s voice brought him back. “She knows much. I imagine she has always known more than she let on to you bumpkins around her. But now her mind is broken, and what she knows runs in and out like the tides of the sea.”
She reached out her hand to touch Mav’s cheek. Mav recoiled from her, flinched down against Corban’s shoulder, and turned her huge dark eyes on her. The woman chuckled.
“She knows, you see. She knows too much.” She stood up, gathering her skirts around her, slithering cloth that glinted although there was no light. “We shall talk, you and I, Corban.”
“No,” Mav said. “You can’t have him.” She began to weep.
“Oh, well, then, you too,” the woman said, smiling, and went away toward the far end of the hall. Corban stood up, with Mav in his arms, and followed her.
“I tried to help her,” the woman said. She sat down on a stool covered in painted leather. They sat at the far end of the hall, out of the sunlight; she had a place of her own there, beside the cupboard of her bed. Although there were no walls the space seemed cut off from the rest of the hall. She touched her fingers to the wicks of lamps around them and they lit, but there seemed no real light from them, only a faint glow that slicked over the surfaces around them. The woman now seemed very young, and very beautiful, no older than Mav herself.
The floor was covered in a cloth of fantastic design. Corban sat down on it, his sister in his lap. “Who are you?” he said.
“I am the Lady of Hedeby. You need know nothing else.”
“There is a King,” Mav said. Her voice was hoarse. The words came from her in fits and jerks and horrible grimaces. She curled her arm around Corban’s neck.
“There is always a King,” said the Lady. She took a round bracelet from her arm, and tossed it onto the floor between them.
Corban leaned forward to see it. Lying on the multicolored cloth the golden ring grew larger, round, shining in the dim directionless light, and within its circle he saw water leaping, and the rough dark shape of lands.
“This is the ring of the world,” the Lady said. “In th
e middle is the Sea, over which we sail from place to place, and all the world’s places lie around it. Hedeby is here. Here is Jorvik.” She pointed; he thought he saw, for only an instant, the whole city tiny and distinct under her hand, with its miniature church, and even Eric’s hall, small as an ant on the embankment. “Here Iceland. Here—” her hand moved northeast, and he saw under it a coastline of countless islands and inlets “—is Norway.”
He wished for an instant she would hold her hand over the western edge, so that he could see what was there. In her ring, nothing lay past Iceland but the sea. He lifted his gaze to her face. “Why are you showing me this?”
The Lady lifted her face. For an instant she was wizened and old, and then suddenly beautiful again. She said, “Do you think I will let you walk out of here with her in your arms, and get nothing in return?”
“I will give you anything. I have money.”
“I have more money than you will ever know exists. What I want from you is a task.”
Mav said, “No.”
Corban gave her a long look. She was shockingly thin. Her face was pale as the moon. Only the fat rounding belly of her seemed hale. She laid her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes.
He faced the Lady again. “I will do anything.”
The woman before him nodded her head, smiling, as if she had always known this would happen. His throat closed up; he was afraid, he had no power, his sister had the power of them—and his sister was dying in his arms.
He had found her too late. He had not saved her. His heart cracked with pity and dread. She was a wraith already; she could not speak to him, except in wild bursts of sounds, with twitching of her hands and eyes begging him to understand her. Her belly full of the child of a Viking, one of them who had murdered their family.
The Lady said, “You see the world ring, here. Now, heed me, I must make you aware of some things. You have come before Bloodaxe, and know of him somewhat.”
Mav shivered in his arms. She seemed asleep. He said, “Yes.”
“Bloodaxe was once King of Norway. He was the favorite son of his father, Harald of the Horrible Hair, who brought all the little kings of Norway under his sway, whether they willed it or no. This was some years ago. Of all his sons, and he had many, Harald loved Bloodaxe best—who knows why—and so made him king after him, but unknown to him, he had a better son, a love child, whom he had sent to England to be fostered there. That was Hakon Aethelstansfostri. And when Harald died and Eric Bloodaxe became King of Norway, Hakon came and drove him out, and now he rules there.”
Corban thought of the fat greedy king in Jorvik. “He seems no fit lord. Probably he deserved it.”
“Well,” the Lady said, and her eyes flashed. “However you see him, I want you to go to him, and convince him he should be King of Norway again, and induce him to make some progress toward that end.”
“I,” Corban said, startled. “How can I do that?”
The Lady smiled at him. Her eyes gleamed. They reminded him suddenly of the purple jewels on the breast of King Eric Bloodaxe’s wife. “You will go as my man, to buy and sell for me. That will give you a place there, at court. I will give you cargo, and money. I have a house in Jorvik, which you can use.” She leaned forward suddenly and scooped up the bracelet, which shrank back to the size of her arm as she put it on.
“I can’t do it,” he said. “I don’t know how.”
“You crossed the trackless sea to find your sister,” she said. “I doubt you knew how to do that when you started out. To save your sister now, you will find a way to obey me.” She nodded. He could barely see her in the darkness. One by one, the little lamps were going out. She said, “I will keep her here. Through her I will know everything you do. When you come back, and have done as I wish, I shall let you take her away.”
Mav whimpered in her sleep. He tipped his head against her hair. Holding her, touching her, he could not bear to think he must leave her.
He said, “I will do it.”
“Very good,” said the Lady. “Come, now, you must be hungry, and maybe she will eat, too, with you here.”
He was ordinary, she thought, just another man, like any other—well set up, surely, broad-shouldered and strong, with his thick curly dark hair and bony, open face—even handsome, but he was ordinary. And yet there was some quality about him she could not place. He seemed clear as water, clear as nothing, which was how he had escaped Gunnhild.
He would not escape Gunnhild again. When he came back to Jorvik, Gunnhild would suspect him at once.
The cloak had some small virtue, too, which had protected him. The Lady wondered where that came from. Like him, it seemed common, a little garden spell, simple as a mother’s love, perhaps, or a good deed.
She watched them sitting together, in the sunlight of the courtyard. Mav would not let him put her down, but sat always in his lap, her arm around his neck, and he broke bits of bread from a loaf and daubed them with honey and fed them to her. She was not singing now. What she knew was closed up and folded over and around her brother, this innocent, this simple, ordinary man.
The Lady shook off a sudden unease. There seemed nothing of him she could take hold of, no ambition, no pride, no lust, only that sweet strange clarity.
She would make something of him that she could manage. She watched him feeding his sister a morsel of the bread. The girl laughed, and for an instant she was well again, her eyes shining in the skeletal pallor of her face. The Lady found herself tensed, poised, like a hawk ready to stoop.
His coming had changed how she saw this. Through the sister, she had taken the man. When he obeyed her, she would have power over him, whatever use he might be to her. When he did as she bade him, when he became what she would make of him. Then through him she would take Mav, who had resisted her so inexplicably, and who was so much the greater prize. The Lady stroked her chin, delighted.
The Lady gave him a red coat that reached down to his knees, very fancy, with gold stitching in fanciful designs, and fur at the neck and on the cuffs. She talked to him of buying and selling, gave him keys, tally sticks, a rack of beads she called an abacus.
“See if you can make anything of this. It came from the east, far away to the east, I have no interest in it, but there are those who find it useful.”
She gave him a purse full of money, saying, “I doubt you will need more than this.” She talked of a ship.
He said, “I have a ship.”
She blinked at him. He saw he had surprised her, somehow. He said, “But to use it I will have to send back—to the west end of the road, to Hollandstadt.”
“Do so,” she said. “Hollandstadt, of course, you came through there. Then you will need wagons, to haul the cargo. I will give you iron. Eric always needs iron. And some other things.”
At that she took him around behind the hall, to a room set off from the rest, with a great door and a lock. She opened the lock with a touch and they went in, and she made a light between her hands and hung it up on a rafter.
“First you must present yourself to Eric. Do that in the daylight. Then,” she said, “find a man named Arinbjorn.”
He started, “I have met—” and stopped, and she turned to face him, frowning, surprised again.
“When I saw Eric,” he said, trying to explain. “He was there. Maybe Mav didn’t know.”
“No,” she said, thoughtfully. “All that mattered then was Gunnhild.”
“Who is she?”
The Lady took down a box from a shelf, and set it under the light. “She is a princess of the Danes, of a very old and noble house, very powerful. When she was young they saw the power in her, and sent her to the Finns, to learn sorcery—the Finns know sorcery in their cradles that the rest of us have long misplaced, if we had it at all.” She turned the lid of the box up and the light shattered and danced on a litter of jewels. “Then she married Bloodaxe, whom she rules.”
He shivered; he remembered Gunnhild, watching him. He thought of this
woman here, and his sister—he wondered if there were a web of such women, all around the world, a female caul of knowledge over all the doings of men. He looked up, and found the Lady watching him, smiling.
She said, “Give these to Gunnhild. It will blunt her anger with you. She has a great fondness for baubles.” She lifted a dozen chips of colored light and flowed them into his cupped hands. He felt them cool and fiery on his palms, like a thousand icy stabs.
“How can I deal with her?” he said.
“You will find a way. She is quick, and shrewd, but she is young still, and very vain.”
He was afraid; it trembled on his tongue to tell her he had no power, but she was watching him again, amused, and he said nothing. He felt as if everything he said she had heard in her mind the moment before he said it. He turned his head, looking toward the hall, where Mav lay sleeping.
She said, “Send to your ship at Hollandstadt. I will find a wagon for the iron, and your other goods.”
He sat with his sister, taking comfort from her. Sometimes it was enough to have found her. Mav slept. She seemed easier, now; she no longer flew into a terror if she woke and he was not there. While she was asleep he put on his new coat to go out into the city.
The coat was heavy and warm. He took it off, stowed it with the other things the Lady had given him, and swung his old cloak around him again. Then he went out onto the wooden pathways of Hedeby.
Almost at once he was lost. He walked along the booming walkway between two rows of houses whose pitched roofs leaned down almost over his head. On the peak of one roof sat a row of buzzards, stretching out their white-tipped wings to soak up the warmth of the sun. The next lane was a shambles, full of bellowing cattle, and the stink of hot blood. The crowds of people made him shy. In his ears their voices sounded, speaking languages he had never heard. But the vast throng slowly began to make him feel easier. If they were all strange he was no more strange; no one would notice him here no matter what he did.
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