Blood Ties

by C. C. Humphreys

  ‘It’s as sharp as my scimitars. Sharper! It’s a fine weapon!’

  ‘Toledo steel,’ Jean said softly, ‘the finest there is.’

  He looked again to Beck. And she spoke. ‘You will not use it. Not in this cause. Not against your own son.’

  Haakon blustered, ‘I did not mean that, Beck, of course. It’s for the German, Von Solingen. Gianni will see reason, he’ll …’

  She had waited for an answer. Haakon’s words she ignored. When Jean stayed silent, she went on. ‘You fulfilled your vow. I helped you do it, though you and I, the Fugger and Haakon so nearly died in its doing. Januc did die. It’s over. Leave it be.’

  Jean still would not speak, just stared back at his wife, so Anne did.

  ‘Mother, I saw Gianni, here,’ she touched the side of her head, ‘in the courtyard of the Comet. The Fugger is right … he is about evil. I do not know the extent of it. But evil it is and we have to try to stop it.’

  Beck laughed, a sound of bitterness. ‘You want to stop evil, daughter? Then do not go to France to seek it out. It begins at our front door and it runs from there through all the world.’

  Beck raised herself from the bed, her feet reached the floor and somehow she was standing. Not even Anne moved to help her as she shuffled to the table’s end and looked down at her husband.

  ‘What do you care about the destiny of queens and countries? They have destroyed your home, broken your body, killed your friends. What do you care which faith rules? You are the most godless man I know.’ He shuddered then, made to look away, but she leaned down, holding him. ‘You drove your son away. Now he is about his own quest, one he believes in as much as you ever did in yours. It is the same story spun in the beginning of the world – fathers age and sons grow bold. Leave. It. Be.’

  She sank then, finally, the last of her strength used. Haakon put a stool under her; Anne came to hold her arm. Five heads faced Jean from the end of the table, questions on every face.

  His finger had stayed pressed against Toledo steel. Looking down now he noticed that the blade was as true as its promise, for blood flowed there, dripping onto the table. In it he saw his answer.

  She was right. He had shed enough in this cause, could shed no more. And in his heart of hearts, he knew this truth – even if he had still been strong, he had no courage left to shed blood with.

  ‘My wife is right. I have done enough. My duty now is here. To her. And to Anne …’ He faltered on the name. ‘My daughter, Anne.’

  No one spoke again, and in the silence his weariness returned five-fold. Rising he shuffled past them to the bed and turned his face to the wall, away from their demands, away from the concern and the disappointment in their eyes.

  EIGHT

  RUNE CAST

  It was the middle of the afternoon before Haakon returned from organizing his journey and Anne was able to take his arm and lead him outside the door. The Norseman was distracted – he needed horses and horses were at a premium in a town preparing for war. His eyes were focused over her head, musing on theft, so he did not hear her clearly when she whispered her request.

  ‘Runes?’ She shooshed him and he went on more quietly. ‘Child, I have taught you all I know. You have the meanings as well, probably even better than I, for age is robbing me of memory.’

  ‘But I do not have the sight. Without that, they are like letters in a language that is dead to me. I cannot read them. You have to teach me.’

  Haakon sighed, as the bell of the monastery struck three above them. ‘It cannot be … taught. It is a path that you must walk alone.’

  ‘And I will. But someone must lead me to where the path begins. My desire is not enough. Someone led you.’

  It was true. For a moment Haakon saw his mother again, taking the frightened yet curious boy to the forest, giving him his murdered father’s legacy, twenty-four disks carved from a narwhal’s tusk. Leaving him there alone for three days and three nights.

  He sighed again. ‘Anne, this takes time, which we haven’t got. It also takes a forest or some other still place and none are near.’

  ‘Then we must make time.’ She almost hit the big man in her frustration. ‘Haakon, I cannot see what it is that threatens us. I just know it is a terrible thing and my brother is at its dark heart. And I can see this also: if my father does not try to prevent it, he will waste and die here, where his sword sleeps.’

  Haakon was silent, these words taking away any he might have.

  Seeing his face soften, she added, ‘And I know a still place, close by. Will you help me place my foot upon the path?’

  Despite his need, he could see that hers was as great. His too, for he loved Jean Rombaud beyond all men.

  ‘I will.’

  It was not a forest. Any trees near Montalcino had long since been chopped down to feed the furnaces of war. But Anne led Haakon out of the north gate, where the land was gouged with a series of little streams running through the vales they had carved, steep-sided, barren of any path save those made by rabbit or fox. A scrambling route took them beyond the sight of the walls, through thick bushes sharp with thorn, down to a stretch of running water that they could only walk down by straddling the flow. Gradually the stream widened, forcing them onto a narrow path along one bank. Eventually they came to a small pool, sheltered by seven silver birch.

  Lowering himself upon a stone, Haakon gasped, ‘How did you ever find this place?’

  ‘Father brought Gianni and me to Montalcino when he came to sell his wine. We escaped his watchfulness, ran outside the city, came here. Will it serve?’

  Haakon looked around, listening to the wind moving through the young leaves. ‘It may. The birch is a tree of great power, none is better for our purpose.’ Seeing her smile, he cautioned, ‘But this is a difficult art we attempt, Anne. Do not hope for too much.’

  She came to him, offered her hand. ‘Shall we begin?’

  Haakon allowed her to help lift him. Pulling a knife from his belt, he went to a tree, ran his fingers down one of the black patches that lay under the scaly, pale bark.

  ‘This one is older, in her prime. She may not mind sparing us a small part of herself.’ He beckoned. ‘Here. I will lift you up. Cut that branch off, close to the trunk.’ He placed his cupped hands so she could stand in them, and when she was balanced against the tree, he added, ‘And ask the spirit of the tree permission before you take one of her little fingers.’

  Closing her eyes, Anne uttered a short prayer, stating her need. Her forefinger and thumb, circled, could meet around the branch and the sharp blade sawed through in less than a minute. She descended, handed knife and her prize back to Haakon. He turned the pale wand, twice the length of one of his arms, over and over in his hands.

  ‘It is even for most of its length, see? You could carve a set of runes from it, if you had the time.’ He looked up into the sky, sniffed. ‘We don’t. We have time for just one.’ He handed her the branch. ‘Hold it and seek the rune of your need.’

  She began to look around her, at tree and water. He reached forward. ‘No. Not out there. Seek in here.’ And he pressed the branch’s cut end into her forehead.

  She closed her eyes, the peeling bark edge digging into her skin, and she began to think of all the runes, of all the stories connected with them, hearing Haakon’s voice back in the courtyard of the Comet, as he spoke of saga and legend, of heroes and giants, endless winters of ice and night, brilliant, brief summers. Some stories she had loved and their symbols crowded forward, offering themselves, yet she knew memory would not serve her; this was new land, not to be read by old signs. Breathing deeper, she settled within herself and a shape came to her. She opened her eyes. Haakon crouched before her.

  ‘You have one?’

  ‘Yes, but it is strange – I cannot remember its name.’

  Haakon frowned. ‘Then draw it for me. Here in the mud beside the stream. Use the wand.’

  It took but a moment, a slash down straight, then a diagonal fro
m its top to the right.

  ‘Do you remember it now?’

  She stared at the mud glyph. The slashes were beginning to fill with water. ‘It’s water, isn’t it?’

  He nodded. ‘Lagu, in old Norse. All fluids, not just water. That which pours out of a woman at birth. The sea, rain falling. Beer.’ He smiled. ‘It’s good for intuition and for love. For following your heart.’

  She felt strangely empty. ‘But what does that tell me? I cannot see into my heart. I sometimes feel there’s nothing there to see. I watch Erik and Maria, you with your Michaela, may her soul rest in peace. Even Mother and Father … before. I have never had that in my heart for any man. Maybe that’s why I cannot see with it, cannot read these omens that frighten me. Because I cannot open myself up here.’ She struck herself in the chest with the butt end of the wand.

  Haakon sucked at his lower lip. After a moment, he said, ‘You’re wrong. I have seen you love. In the way you heal, the way you touch. Perhaps you need to clear what’s ahead. Perhaps it is this dread that is blocking it.’ When she did not respond, he took the end of the stick, pulled it away from her chest. ‘Come, shall we try to see if we can find your path?’

  Her voice was small. ‘How?’

  He pulled her by the stick to the rock he had sat on.

  ‘Here. Use the knife again, cut a disk about the thickness of my thumb.’

  She did so. The scent of sap filled her. He took the stick, leaned it against the tree.

  ‘Now, you are going to cut Lagu into this disk. Just two strokes, like you did in the mud, but before you do, clear your mind. Put me, this place, the world of woe, put them beyond you. There are no omens to frighten you here, no past or future. There is only this moment. Time that is and time that is becoming. Water flowing, life proceeding from that flow. Speak the words that speak to that.’ He took her hand, laid the blade upon her palm.

  At first, it seemed that Haakon’s words grew louder, echoed around her distorted, the reverse of what he’d asked for, mocking any effort to be calm. Coldness seized her, hands became so clammy she nearly lost her grip on the knife. Her need, all her desires, her terrors crowded into the air around her like carrion birds descending on a corpse. She saw a leering Gianni, a weeping Beck, Jean Rombaud turning his face to the wall. Then she saw another man, a grotesque, a gargoyle, features eaten away as if by burning pitch. She wanted to run from them all, to use the knife to cut her way past them. But then she heard the sound of water again and knew that the only escape lay in diving deep.

  It wasn’t water, it was blood, blood that was to come. Haakon had said that Lagu was all liquid and she held onto that, clutched the knife by the blade to use its point and it was as sharp as all Haakon’s weapons were, cutting the thumb that balanced it to the bone. Blood dripped then upon the wood, that was the sound she’d heard and she bent to it, made two slashes in the young, reddened disk, one vertical, one diagonal and as she made them she intoned, ‘Life flows. Fall into its flood.’

  It took a thought, no more.

  She was before a hut. In the centre of its door the rune, Lagu, was inverted, vulnerable as a wounded creature with legs thrust into the air. All that could be good in it was stagnant, full of ill omen.

  But I know that.

  With her thought, the rune began to shimmer, dissolve, vanish. As it went, she noticed tendrils of smoke rising from the sod roof of the hut toward a black sky. Someone was inside. She rapped on the door, once, twice and again.

  A voice that seemed familiar spoke a word she’d heard before, at the Comet, only the day before. ‘Come,’ it said, and she pressed against the door which gave grudgingly, dragging across the rough earthen floor of the entrance. As soon as she was inside the door, it vanished in a soundless instant, along with all walls, all structure, swallowed by gloom. The dark was like a weight pressing her and she raised her hands to ward off its threat. She was lost in it, floating, for the ground was not solid, the roof immeasurable, the walls a distant hope of solidity. She screamed then, though no sound came, or if it did it was sucked into darkness, feeding it, making it grow denser.

  There was a choice – to surrender to this darkness and let it take her where it willed, or to move forward in whatever direction that might be. She only knew that her hands were before her face and with an effort she stepped after them. Instantly, if faintly, a light shone far away, a flicker in a fog. She had a direction now and she moved towards it.

  The light came from the flames of a fire. They licked at the side of a great cauldron suspended over them. When she was close she saw a hand reach over the cauldron, releasing something into it. The mist cleared completely then, the air filling with a sweet savour, like incense but lighter, floral. Anne saw that a woman crouched there, feeding the pot.

  ‘Welcome,’ she said, and stood. She was as tall as Anne, though as light as Anne was dark, golden hair falling in thick waves upon her shoulders, upon the richest of gowns the green of apples, studded with cornflowers, like a meadow in summer. Her eyes changed colour in the light, now a deep green, now an ethereal blue, couching and reflecting back the flames.

  The voice was calm, light. ‘What is it that you seek?’

  Anne felt what was in her hand, held it out. It was the birch disk, the symbol on it etched in blood.

  ‘Lagu.’ The woman reached forward. ‘Life-Bringer, rune of rain, oaths, hope.’ She touched the disk and Anne saw that it was now reversed, as it had been on the door. ‘Lagu, rune of treachery and despair.’

  ‘Which is it for me?’

  ‘What will you give me to see?’ The voice had changed to a lower note, not as dulcet in tone. Around the now grey eyes, little lines had appeared.

  Anne thought, I have nothing to give, then realized her pouch was still at her side. Reaching into it, she felt Gianni’s cross. Next to it was a wooden shape.

  She pulled out Guiseppe Toldo’s falcon. ‘This.’

  The woman nodded, though the hair that once had swung on her shoulders now hung limp around a pallid face. She said, ‘Throw it in.’

  Shuddering, Anne did as she was bid. The falcon tumbled from her fingers, head first as if it stooped to the depths below, seeking prey …

  A shrill note, piercing. A feathered blur shot across the sky clutching an awful prize, not caught according to its nature, hit on the wing, but stolen from a grave, plucked rotten from the earth as if by any carrion vulture. The bird flew high, seeking a perch to feast, but even at that great distance Anne could see, with eyes as keen as any falcon’s, what it held there in bloodied talons. She could even make out the tiny sixth finger …

  And where the bird passed, where the grave-flesh fell, the land blistered. A cloud blotted out the sun, and iron-tasting rain stung her face. Sickly calves wandered orphaned next to a choked and bloated river that had flooded the fields, mud churned across to the village where a church bell struck a single note again and again, while rag-clad people scurried from building to burnt building. One fire raged in the centre of the village, a pyre, a cross in its middle, something struggling to escape. The falcon swooped over it, cried again, stooping for yet more easy prey, a blur of feathers falling onto her from the sky, talons reaching for her eyes …

  Anne swayed before a cauldron, in a dream within a dream, where a toothless crone in shredded finery fed a fire with foul-smelling dung. Anne gasped, almost pitching into the pot, ‘Is this the choice of worlds that will be?’

  The crone chuckled. ‘What business do I have with your visions? There are many worlds, many paths leading to them. Nothing is written till the pen meets the parchment. Nothing set in motion till the rune is carved and thrown.’

  Anne looked down to the disk of birch in her right hand. Suddenly she saw, in the red-lined slashes, in the straight and the diagonal, the flow of water there, feeding the world. She turned it and saw that water pool, grow stagnant, because she’d failed to keep it upright. And as that thought came, the room around her began to dissolve, to shrink, the roof
pressing down, the cauldron turning to a pot, the flames beneath mere flickers with no heat. The crone was poking at its contents with a stick, looking up suddenly as if she only just realized that Anne was there.

  ‘Go,’ she croaked, ‘find your own. There’s not enough here for two.’

  Anne turned, pushed through darkness …

  She opened her eyes, closed them against the rain, breathing in the scent of flowing water, hearing a breeze riffle through the branches of seven silver birches. She opened them again, to a night sky and Haakon’s wide face above her.

  ‘You have returned. I was concerned that you might not.’

  He helped her sit up, fetched water from the stream. She drank carefully, savouring its sweetness, while he squatted patiently by. Then she told him what she had seen. He listened, silent. When she began to tell him what it meant to her, he raised a huge hand.

  ‘I do not need to hear. Words cannot tell this, for speaking them will change what you have felt, as the telling always does. I only need to know what you will do with what you have seen.’

  ‘I have to speak to my father. I have to change his mind.’

  Haakon nodded. ‘Then let us return and begin. I think you have as grave a task ahead as the one you have faced here. For Beck will not like your vision.’

  It was a city heady with freedom. Spring sunshine dappled every cobbled street, red-tiled roof, and church basilica with a brightness that matched the citizens’ hopes. The exiles from Siena had been met by their cousins of Montalcino with the best of food and wine, with new clothes, an abundance of weaponry, shelter, a chance to heal, to rest, to not wake each night with the terror that the Florentines had breached the walls and were storming through their streets bent on rapine and revenge. Soldiers greeted old comrades with a firm handshake and the kiss of brotherhood. Children mingled and played on the streets. In the loggias, under the porticoes, the men and women gathered to talk of freedom, of the proclamation of defiance sent to their recent conquerors, of the reinforcements sailing from France and the volunteers marching from all over to join the crusade against the usurpers. The Republic of Siena was still free, and rallying to its banners.