The Soul Thief

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The Soul Thief Page 22

by Cecelia Holland


  “In the city,” Arre said. She had sat down by the fire, Gifu beside her.

  “Is this all?” Benna sank down by them, the second piece of bread in her hand. She glanced at her father. “Have you tried to give him some of this?”

  “I tried to feed him some milk, just before Grod came,” Arre said.

  Benna chewed the bread. Her father had lain sleeping now for days and days, and would not wake; they struggled to feed him but the milk dribbled out of his mouth. She swallowed a sudden lump in her throat. She caught Arre watching her, in the dim red fireglow, and their eyes met. Benna could not speak; but she thought, He is dying, and as she thought it, Arre nodded at her. Arre reached out and put her arm around Benna and hugged her.

  “You do all you can,” she said. Then her head went up. “Oh. Corban brought us things. Here.”

  “What?” Gifu said. She sat by the fire with her arms around her updrawn knees. “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “I forgot,” Arre said. She was rummaging in the overflowing pockets of her apron, bringing out onion tops and nutshells and rags, and finally, a heap of bright little objects which she laid down on the ground.

  Gifu whooped, and snatched up a string of beads, which glittered in the firelight. “Oh, I want this!”

  Grod sat on the other side of the fire. He said, “He didn’t bring me anything. He was my friend first.”

  Benna picked up a wooden comb, with stars and moons carved along the handle. “This is very pretty. I’ve never seen anything like it before.” She watched Arre take up the other toy, a little round disk.

  “Oh,” Arre said, at once. “I think this is for you, Benna.” She held it out.

  “What is it?” Benna took it in her hand. Suddenly, there in her hand, was the fire, reflected in the shiny metal. She tapped it with her fingernail: it was not metal, but something else. Arre took hold of her hand, and turned it, and into the disk came a face, wide dark eyes, a small, round chin.

  “Didn’t you tell me he asked you for a picture of you? And that you said you didn’t know what you look like?”

  Benna started. She realized that the face in the disk was her own face, and quickly hid the whole thing away under her skirts. Arre had taken the comb. She sat running it through her hair, using her fingers to work out the tangles, her deep, bold profile lined with the red firelight. Her hair glinted. Gifu hung the beads around her neck, and lifted the strand up to the light to admire it.

  “Well,” Benna said, loudly. “I’m glad he’s back. Did he find his sister?”

  “I think so,” Grod said, “but she isn’t with him. I’m going back to his house now.” He got his feet under him. “You all can come, if you want. He said so.”

  Benna said, “We have to stay with Papa.”

  Grod said, “We can take him. He said I was to bring you.”

  She shook her head; she knew they could not. She knew her father would not leave this hut again. A familiar heavy weariness began to collect in her chest, as if she were breathing stone instead of air, turning breath by breath into stone. “Tell Corban thank you. Tell him—” She bit her lip. She was still afraid to think of him. “Tell him thank you.”

  Grod said, “I will bring you more bread tomorrow.” He went out the door.

  “I’m going hunting again tomorrow,” Gifu said. She crept into the back of the hut, where her sleeping rags were. “I’ll get something tomorrow, I know I will.” She lay down, pulling the rags over her, and was asleep.

  Arre had smoothed her hair with the comb until it was long and flowing, curling at the ends, glossy and fine. She said, “Now that Corban is back—”

  Benna said, roughly, “He won’t come here again, surely, if he’s a prince now. He didn’t like it much here before.” Her head turned toward her father, lying like a lump in the dark by the goat pen. “Will you help me?”

  Silently Arre crawled with her over to the old man; they managed to turn him. His arms were gathered close to his body so tight they could not straighten them. He had shit himself and they pulled up his shirt and cleaned him. There were bruises and sores all over him, and Benna got some water and washed him. To touch him this way, when he was helpless and did not know, seemed evil to her. He was the father, and should rule over them, but instead they handled him like a great baby. Arre stroked his face.

  “Good night, Papa.”

  They got his clothes back on, as much as they could. He breathed harshly a few times, sucking the air in and out with a sudden vigor, and then subsided into barely breathing at all. His hands were cold. Benna got her blanket, and threw it over him, and lay down beside him to try to warm him. Arre lay on the other side of him.

  Benna could not sleep, for all her stony weariness. She said, after a moment, “How did he look?”

  “Corban?” Arre said. “He had on a very nice coat.” She paused, and then went on. “There was something strange about him, though. He seemed smaller.”

  Benna bit her lips. Beside her lay her father, dying; she ought to think of nothing but him. She crossed herself, and said some prayers. Presently she could hear Arre snoring gently on his far side, and she got up quietly and went to the back of the hut, where her potter’s wheel was, and her things for drawing.

  She had stopped drawing, shortly after he left. There seemed no point in it, with all else so overwhelming around her, her father dying, and the King’s men coming every few days to take more of what they had. Her hands longed for the brush and ink, and she still saved shards; but what use were her poor counterfeits—no use at all. She made herself not do it. She would never do it again. But now she found the shard on which she had drawn Corban.

  She held the curved piece of pottery in her hands, and looked at his face, and wondered what he would think of her now, when she was ordinary. Looking at the drawing, she remembered him better: the merry glint in his eye, and the way he smiled, even the little music of his voice.

  She went back to lie down again by her father and slept. In the morning when they woke up their father was dead.

  Arre realized it first, touching him, and said, quietly, “He’s gone.” None of them said anything. They had all known this would happen. Benna laid her hands on his cheeks, and touched his forehead; he was cold and stiff. Inside her was only a kind of dull ache, as if he had been dead for years. Gifu said nothing at all, but went off to the city to fetch the priest down.

  Arre and Benna sat by the banked fire, empty, tearless. Benna took a stick and poked at the coals. The ash crumbled, giving up thin feathery flames that died at once. Arre said nothing, her face gaunt. The fire struck deep russet lights from her hair. There was nothing to eat. Benna poured some water from the jug into a cup; she saw something bright on the ground, and picked it up.

  It was the shining disk that Corban had brought for her from Hedeby. Her back tensed, alarmed. But the bright surface drew her. She took the disk in her two hands and held it so that it showed her face to her. She stared into that stranger’s face, as if she might see there what she must do, and who she really was.

  She thought: I am ugly. Yet she was not; she was good enough to look at. A sort of calm settled over her. As she studied her own face, the old habits rose in her. She saw how to draw herself, the line of her jaw and her nose, and the desire to do it overcame her. She went back to her corner, and found a piece of pot and her brushes. Nearly all the ink had dried up but she put a little water in one pot and stirred it, and got color on the brush.

  “What are you doing?” Arre said.

  Benna did not answer. She went back to the fire, and sat, the shard in her hand, and drew.

  Now that she had the brush in hand she did not draw herself. She drew her father, as he had been when he was strong and hale, master of their house in the city, the finest potter in Jorvik. He flowed out of the tip of her brush onto the shard: his broad smile, the shape of his chin, the line of his eyebrows, and as she worked the hot tears began to run down her cheeks. Arre leaned on her shoulder and
watched, and cried also. At last she finished the drawing, and laid it down, and turning to her sister put her arms around her, and the two of them leaned on each other and wept until their eyes were dry.

  The miller said, “I can only make flour if I have corn, and corn is very scarce. I tell you, there is no bread now in Jorvik, and there will be none tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that. No bread at any price.”

  “I will sell you corn. Not today, but soon.”

  “In the meanwhile there is no corn, and therefore no flour, and therefore no bread.” The miller tossed his hands up, the meaty slabs of his palms grimed with old flour. “And who will bring it here to sell, when the King takes so much? Where will you get corn?”

  “I will pay your tax to the King, also. I can get corn in Hedeby.”

  “You will lose much in travel. It molds, carried in ships. There are rats. And it won’t come soon. And at such a ruinous cost when it does come that no one can pay.” The miller pulled up his apron over his belly. “I could make us both rich, if you could find me corn today. But I think not even the King has corn, there is nothing growing in the ground for miles around Jorvik.”

  Corban threw his hands up. This matter of trading was past him, he could not do it. He had a purse full of money and he could not buy anything. “I will send to Hedeby. In the meanwhile, if you find anything—”

  “I have no money.”

  They were standing in the middle of Corban’s hall. Ulf lounged by the fire, his legs stretched out, drinking ale, while his crew packed up the fleeces Corban had just bought to take back to Hedeby. Even the fleeces had cost far more than Corban had expected, and they had come all the way from Scotland. Now here was this miller, wanting money, without even having anything to sell. Corban dug into the purse, and took out a handful of pennies and gave them into the man’s hand.

  “Tell me when you find some corn. And pay the King from that.”

  The miller bowed to him and left. Ulf came up to him. “I will sail tomorrow.”

  “Yes. Tell the Lady to send corn, all she can; another shipload too, if she can. You have those tally sticks for the fleeces?”

  “I do.”

  “Tell her also to send more gifts for Eric and Gunnhild.”

  “I will.”

  Corban weighed the purse in his hand, and then thrust it into his belt. In all of Jorvik there was nothing to eat. For all the weight of the purse in his hand, he could not buy a single loaf of bread. His mind swung lightly above some black knowledge. There was a knock on the door.

  “See who that is.” He went back toward the hearth, for a cup of the ale, which was the best he had ever tasted.

  “Corban!”

  He wheeled. Grod came strutting in, with Arre just behind him, and the tall thin boy Euan, who followed Arre around.

  “Look who I have brought here,” Grod said. He went straight toward the hearth, and the jug, whose virtue he had immedately discovered when they came on it in the cupboard by the hearth. Arre came up to Corban, and her face bloomed with her smile.

  “Thank you,” she said. “You see?” She turned her head this way and that, so that he could admire the comb, which gathered her hair at the back. “Thank you. I like it very much.”

  “I’m glad you do,” he said, pleased; he glanced quickly past her, toward the door, but she had only brought Euan. Tall and gangling, his cap pulled down hard over his forehead, he lurked behind her, meeting no one’s eyes. Grod had told Corban about him: his mother was an apothecary, and he was not supposed to see Arre at all.

  Corban looked back at Arre, standing in front of him. “Grod says that your father died.”

  That wiped the smile away. She lowered her eyes. “It was a good thing,” she said, under her breath. “He is with God, now. But a sad thing, too.”

  “Come sit down.”

  She followed him toward the hearth, where Grod filled the cup with ale and passed it to her. She sat down on the bench before the fire and smoothed her apron over her knees. Corban’s pack was open on the floor, there, with the tally sticks half falling out, and he reached down to move it out of the way of her feet. She looked around her, eyes bright. “This is a very fine house, Corban. Grod says you are a prince now.”

  “No,” he said. “It all belongs to one I serve, it is not me or mine. But it is a fine house.”

  She drank some of the ale and gave the cup to Euan, who sat on the bench, looking elsewhere. “Gifu loves the beads, too,” she said. “She has gone off hunting again, or she would come and thank you herself.”

  “Grod told me that she hunts.” He wanted to ask about Benna. It startled him how they had sorted out the gifts exactly as he had intended, without any word from him. He said, “Does she use a sling?”

  “I don’t know. I think she throws rocks.” Arre tossed her hair back; unruly, it was spilling from the comb in reddish-brown curls around her cheeks. Beside her, Euan drank from the cup, and put it down, empty. Grod took it at once and filled it again.

  “Benna sends you this,” Arre said. She dug into her overflowing apron pocket and brought out a piece of a pot.

  Corban took it from her and held it into the light. There on the curved surface, arising somehow out of a few black lines of ink, was Benna’s face, as if she stood before him.

  He thought, This is a good power. He said, pleased, “May I keep this?”

  “Of course.” Arre tucked her hands into her lap. “She keeps the looking glass on a string around her neck. She likes it very much, I think. Thank you also for the bread.”

  “I will send more, if I can find any.” He wanted them to come here, but he guessed the whole city would disapprove of that. He should leave them as they were. With their garden and Gifu’s hunting, they might eat better than he would. Behind Arre, Euan suddenly reached down by her feet into the pack, and took the abacus out. Corban turned back to Arre. There was another knock on the door. Grod went importantly over to answer it.

  “Is—Have you buried your father?”

  Arre nodded her head. Her smile drooped. She took the cup from Grod and drank, and passed it on to Euan. “I don’t know how we will live, Corban. It is very bad.”

  He said, “I will help you,” although he did not know how. He laid the shard down on his knee and looked at it again. Grod came bustling back.

  “Someone for you,” he said to Corban. “He says he will see you alone.”

  “Hunh.” Corban rose, and went off toward the door.

  Just inside stood Arinbjorn the merchant, the King’s farmann, in his elegant long blue coat. Corban stopped short a moment, surprised, and then went over and bowed to him. “My lord. I am very glad to see you.”

  “Yes—good it is to see this house lived in again.” The dansker lord glanced past him, toward the hearth, and turned a little away, so that his back was to the rest of the room. He smiled. He had the sleek, mild look of a man who did nothing for himself, who had only to nod to have what he wanted. He said, “I must talk to you privately.”

  Corban led him toward the far end of the hall, where an open smoke hole in the roof let in some light. Ulf’s men were carrying out the last of the fleeces; the captain waved to Corban, and followed his crew out the door. In the edge of the light coming in through the hole in the roof, Arinbjorn turned, and asked, “You serve the Lady of Hedeby?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “And you are sending off a ship to her today?”

  “Yes—you saw my captain, just now.”

  “I need—” Arinbjorn cleared his throat, glanced past him, and then turned his eyes to him again. “I need a favor of you.”

  “Ask it,” Corban said. “You saved me once, I remember.”

  “I think now I had less to do with that than it seemed at the time. I have something that must leave Jorvik. Will you give it to your captain?”

  “Certainly,” Corban said.

  “The King must not know.”

  “Ah.”

  Arinbjorn sai
d, “If you are loathe to run the risk—”

  Corban thought this might be a test; Arinbjorn seemed to him to live in the King’s ear. Maybe they were trying him, to see if they could trust him. But Arinbjorn seemed real enough, and sweating now over something. And if he did Arinbjorn favors, he could get favors back.

  He said, “You are sending something to my Lady?”

  “A letter. She will pass it on. I have had dealings with her before; she will know what to do with it.”

  Corban nodded. “I will do it then.”

  “Thank you.” Arinbjorn slapped his arm. “I shall deliver it to your ship, very soon.”

  Over by the hearth, there went up a gust of laughter. Corban glanced that way, and swung back to Arinbjorn.

  “Will you have a drink with me? We can sit back here, if you don’t want them to see you.”

  “Certainly.” Arinbjorn sauntered deeper into the hall, past the shaft of dusty light. Corban beckoned Grod for the jug and followed.

  “I need to ask you about something,” Corban said, carefully.

  Arinbjorn smiled at him, his eyes narrow. He set his hands on his belt. “You want to know about Eric.”

  Grod came up to them, with a cup and the jug of ale, and lingered nearby, until Corban shot a hard look at him, and then was gone up the hall. Corban faced the dansker lord again.

  “Yes: Eric. What has happened here? When I left in the spring it was a better place.”

  Arinbjorn shrugged one shoulder, his face bland. “Just after Easter, last spring, Eric raised his taxes. Everybody complained, so he raised them again.”

  “He’s mad,” Corban said, thinking of the baker and the miller, Benna and the goats. “Nobody has anything to eat.”

  “Eric doesn’t care about that,” Arinbjorn said. “As long as he has what he wants, everybody else can go hang. But pretty soon he isn’t going to have what he wants; he’s eaten it all up, here, people can only give so much, and he’s going to have to move on soon. That’s what the real problem is. He’s got to move, to do something, but he’s putting it off. He’s lazy, Eric. Now he’s even sending Sweyn Eelmouth off alone to do what he used to lead the way at.” He broke off, his eyes keen on Corban. “What does the Lady want with him? I doubt she’s only sent you here to buy fleeces.”

 

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