‘Fils à putain!’ the man growled. I turned to face him and he frowned when he saw my red eye. Then he took one look at Penda and turned back round, continuing the conversation with his friends as though nothing had happened.
‘I like it here, monk,’ I said, amazed by the loud murmur of so many men all talking at once. It was a sound like the sea breaking and plunging amongst rocks. But Egfrith was already fighting his way back to the tavern owner, empty jack in hand.
‘I think he likes it here too, Raven,’ Penda said with a smirk. A few moments later the monk was back with a wine skin, looking serious. Cradling the skin as though it were his precious Christ child, he filled our jacks with the red liquid. When I tasted the stuff I wondered if I had in fact been killed on the beach by the reeve’s men and was even now in Óðin’s hall Valhöll drinking the Spear-Shaker’s own drop. It was thin like water but had a strong, fruit taste which warmed my stomach, clouded my head, and put a stupid smile on my face. Before I knew it we were on our second skinful.
‘Now I know why you churchmen are always celebrating the sacrament, Father,’ Penda said. ‘Cut off my hair and give me a skirt if it means drinking this all day. This, Raven, is the blood of Christ. Isn’t that right, Father?’
I swallowed gingerly and stared at my wine, then stared at Egfrith, who nodded solemnly. ‘The Lord Jesus on the night when He was betrayed took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” So it was written by Paul the Apostle,’ Egfrith said, ‘and so it is a great blessing to receive the Eucharist.’ He frowned at me. ‘You don’t know this, Raven? There is a church in Abbotsend?’
‘There was,’ I said, ‘but Wulfweard told me to stay away and that was fine by me.’
He shrugged and gulped another mouthful as though there really was a fire in his belly that needed dousing, but I had been put off and was now holding my jack at arm’s length. ‘No need to worry your twisted, black, heathen soul about it, Raven,’ Egfrith said, filling his jack again. ‘This wine has not been blessed. Not unless the tavern owner is one of the Lord’s ministers, which is about as likely as you being born of a virgin. Which means that this is still just wine. Not a drop of Christ’s blood in it.’ He sniffed, saluting me with his jack before swilling some more.
But it was too late for me. I tipped the rest of mine into Penda’s jack, the Wessexman smacking his lips together eagerly, and turned to shove my way to the serving table to fetch more ale. The White Christ must have been a giant with more blood in his veins than there is water in the oceans, I thought, if all his followers drank the stuff as vigorously as Father Egfrith.
Just before sunset there was a commotion when a Frankish official burst into the tavern with armed men at his back and began questioning the locals.
‘Someone has killed Radulf the reeve,’ Beaknose said, filling my jack again when I asked him what the excitement was about. He still seemed happy with the trade we had done and I wondered how much ale and wine a simple silver ring would buy. ‘A fisherman found him and Bernart and Arthmael half buried in mud beyond the north wall. God knows what they were doing out there. Shame. Bernart was one of my best customers,’ he said with a sad shake of his head.
‘And some of that pork,’ I said, pointing above his head. He fetched a joint down, whipped a knife from his belt and began deftly carving slices of the meat and putting them on a platter. ‘Why would anyone kill the reeve?’ I asked, my mouth watering at the sight of the meat. Beaknose shrugged.
‘He was a nosy bastard,’ he said simply, producing a great lump of cheese which he added to the platter, ‘but a decent man all the same. Used to drink here most nights. All three of them.’ He shrugged again, handing me the platter proudly. ‘Still, no one likes paying taxes,’ he said.
We pretended to be dead drunk when the official and his soldiers got as far as us. Or maybe we were dead drunk. Either way, the man realized he would get more sense from a cuckoo, and seeing that Egfrith was a monk he moved on into the press. As it turned out, another ingot of silver about half the size of my thumb bought us each a space on the floor at the rear of the tavern, fresh straw, as much ale as we could drink until sunrise, and the name of an English-speaking fisherman who might tell us what we needed to know. That name was Winigis and Beaknose said we could find the man at cock’s crow by the jetty on the island’s south-west side, where boats from across the river could moor free of the clinging mud of the banks.
Egfrith woke us at dawn. My head felt like an anvil being pounded by Völund’s hammer and my mouth tasted like a dead dog’s balls as I splashed fresh water over my face from the bucket Beaknose had left by my head the night before. Then, after a long, cool drink of ale I felt alive enough to follow Egfrith and Penda out of that stinking tavern and into the Paris dawn. In the east the sky was blood red. In the west it was still black as pitch. All across the city cocks were crowing excitedly, the sound frantic, desperate almost, as though the birds had never before seen the sun and were now fulfilling their life’s duty with wilful pride. And yet tomorrow’s dawn would break to the same strange song. ‘If all I had to do was fuck and crow, I’d be good at both, too,’ Penda said, holding the back of his head gingerly.
We walked through the streets thankful to find them all but empty, though the first traders were already setting up their stalls and carefully laying out their wares.
‘I’ll admit I have felt better,’ Penda said as we lined up behind a hazel screen and pissed into a trench by the inner embankment which tunnelled beneath the mound and out of the city.
‘You’ve looked better too,’ I said, ‘though not much.’ A shiver ripped through me as the hot liquid left my body. Even Egfrith seemed jaded this morning, though he claimed that was down to the last skin of wine’s having been bad. ‘Or perhaps it was the cheese,’ he suggested seriously.
‘You’re no Baldr the beautiful, either, lad,’ Penda said, his neck bones cracking as he rolled his head. ‘Whose idea was it anyway, to drink Paris drier than a nun’s cunny like that?’
‘Don’t look at me,’ I said, ‘speak to the man with no shoes,’ which reminded me to visit the shoemaker after our meeting with Winigis.
Egfrith let out a long squeaking fart that any Norseman would have been ashamed of. ‘O Lord,’ he chirruped, dropping the skirt of his habit to cover his little white legs once more.
‘That was a prayer He could have done without, Egfrith,’ Penda chuckled, pinching his nose.
We found Winigis the fisherman selling his morning catch of pike, perch, chubb and carp. The jetty was busy with boats coming and going and other fishermen were competing for trade with their own loud, repetitive cries. Nearby, apprentices knelt mending their masters’ nets or stood in moored skiffs bailing rain and seawater from the vessels.
When Winigis saw us trudging along the bank towards him he smiled broadly and spread his hands over his catch, which flapped in baskets on a crude trestle of three long planks on two old tree stumps set in the mud. He spoke too but we could not understand him and so Egfrith raised a hand in a gesture that told him to save his patter for other customers.
‘We have been told that you speak English,’ the monk said as Penda picked up a fat chubb and examined it. The man frowned.
‘A little,’ he said, pinching two fingers.
‘Praise the Almighty,’ Egfrith replied, throwing his arms heavenward dramatically. ‘Then we have found the man we need.’
‘Aix-la-Chapelle,’ I said, checking that we were not being overheard. ‘You know it?’ Gulls shrieked above. The water, which moments earlier had looked black and cold, was now a distorted image of the brightening sky, its surface touched by gold, orange and red. A chill came off the moving water, making me huff into my cupped hands.
‘I have been there. Once,’
Winigis said guardedly. ‘You have not come for my fish?’ he asked, taking the chubb from Penda, who sniffed his hands and rubbed them on his breeks.
‘No, we don’t want your fish, Winigis. We want to go to Aix-la-Chapelle.’
‘We have business with the emperor,’ Egfrith said proudly.
Winigis shrugged. ‘I do not see what that has to do with me. I am a fisherman. And you are obstructing my trade, so kindly move along,’ he said, his eyes lingering on mine. Two women had come to judge Winigis’s catch against that of the stall to the right, but Penda turned to them and gave them a smile that made them blanch and walk away. Winigis was beginning to get agitated. He took off his hat in frustration and, glancing at each of us in turn, decided to appeal to Egfrith. ‘Please leave me alone,’ he said. ‘I am a simple man.’
‘You have an apprentice? Or a thrall perhaps?’ I asked. He nodded, turning a palm to Egfrith as if to say so what? ‘Then your boat will be safe until you return,’ I said.
‘Return? What are you talking about? And what is wrong with your eye?’
I smiled. ‘You are going to take us to Aix-la-Chapelle, Winigis,’ I said, ‘and in return my lord gives you all that is in my hand.’
The man’s pockmarked face was flushing red now, his cheeks beginning to flame with frustration. The other fishermen were selling well.
‘I don’t want whatever it is your lord is offering!’ he snapped, glancing around now for help, perhaps looking for Radulf the reeve.
Then with my free hand I shoved a basket of fish off the trestle, spilling the glittering catch into the mud where some of the creatures flapped, perhaps thinking they were saved. Then I emptied the ratskin hat on to the planks. The hack silver, rings and brooches glimmered dully in the dawn light and Winigis the fisherman stood open-mouthed, his eyes wide as coins. ‘Oh, I think you do,’ I said, feeling the grin spread across my face.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
FOR THE REST OF THE DAY WE WANDERED THE CITY, HAVING arranged to meet Winigis on the northern bank where his people’s shit slid into the Sicauna. He had recoiled at our choice of meeting place, but the sight of all that silver weighed down his tongue so that he simply nodded, asking no more questions, and we left him picking fish from the mud.
We discovered that the island’s eastern side was largely given over to the White Christ and Egfrith tried to convince us to visit the churches and monasteries there, but I would not and so he had to explore them alone. I still had the silver, so Penda would not leave my side. He had to come with me to the shoemaker’s stall where I bought a pair of boots that came halfway up my shin and had soles of thick hide. In return I had to go with him back to the tavern to find a whore. Beaknose rustled up seven to choose from and Penda took a long time choosing, in the end settling for a big-boned, pale-skinned girl. I suspected he chose her because she had red hair like the girl from Wessex who filled his dreams. I settled for a skin of wine because the monk was not there to sour its taste with his talk of Christ’s blood, and by the time it was half empty it could have been Christ’s, Óðin’s or my own blood for all I cared.
‘Why don’t you take one?’ Beaknose had asked me, nodding at a sallow-skinned whore as he slammed a dish of steaming potage on the table before me. He seemed offended. ‘Don’t tell me you have a taste for boys. You do not look like a Greek,’ he offered, scratching his pockmarked neck, ‘but it can be arranged.’
‘Raven has a skinny girl waiting for him,’ Penda said, his voice muffled by the redhead’s heavy breasts. ‘She’s pretty as the sun and a good girl, too. Not like these scraps of rancid mutton.’ The redhead continued to coo over him, which I took to mean she understood no English.
‘But this skinny girl is not here now,’ Beaknose said, handing two cups of ale to a rough-looking pair of Franks armed with swords and long knives. ‘There is no harm in poking a fire for warmth when you’re away from your own hearth.’
‘Poking fires is dangerous,’ I said, blowing on a spoonful of potage and wondering what animal had gone into it, for the meat was an unusual ashen colour, though the dish smelled delicious. Beaknose shrugged and went about his business, leaving me to eat, drink, admire my new boots, and ignore Penda’s fumblings in the straw behind me.
That night a waxing crescent moon silvered the Sicauna and the thatch roofs of Paris. The smoke seeping from those roofs glowed yellow and the deserted muddy streets and walkways which were not cast in shadow glistened. I was half asleep by the time Egfrith blew into the tavern, but that did not stop him gabbling on about the church of Geneviève and its most prized relic, an ancient bit of wood said to be a piece of the true Cross on which the White Christ died. Then he had gone to some monastery and prayed with the brothers there and done who knows what else, because I had pulled my cloak over my head to save my ears, though I could still hear his muffled chatter long into the night.
At dawn we found a woman selling freshly baked barley and wheat bread and we bought every loaf she had, filling three large sacks, a fourth being full of cured meat from Beaknose. Then I took off my new boots, tied them together and hung them round my neck before we made our way out of the north-west gate and across the mud where we found Winigis waiting. He wore a long kirtle of coarse wool and instead of a cloak a waxed skin fell to below his arse. In one hand he clutched his waxed leather hat and in the other a small oiled wool sack containing whatever else he had thought to bring for the journey. There the four of us waited, Penda reminiscing about his whore, Egfrith squeaking on about the churches of Paris, Winigis asking questions to which he got no answers, and I watching the misty river for sign of Serpent and Fjord-Elk.
We did not have to wait long. Serpent slid out of the mist as she had done when I had first seen her from the rocks of Abbotsend. Then she had put an iced knot of fear in my belly and frozen my limbs with terror, but now her swan-breasted hull was like a refreshing drink for my eyes, despite the Christ cross at her prow, and the rhythmic dip of her oars was a thrilling, soul-stirring sound. Olaf waved in greeting and Knut turned the ship to the shore, the oars quickening so that they looked like an eagle’s beating wings as she came.
‘Never thought I’d be happy to see such a thing,’ Penda said, his left hand resting on the pommel of the sword at his hip.
‘You are with them?’ Winigis asked me, fear etched in his pock-scarred face. He glanced at Egfrith who half grimaced.
‘She’s called Serpent. And the other ship is called Fjord-Elk,’ I said proudly, feeling my lips spread in a smile as Sigurd’s second ship broke out of the vaporous murk.
‘Serpent?’ Winigis glanced back towards the city wall. ‘It is not a very Christian name.’ He licked his lips and his fingers worried at the hat he was clutching.
‘Neither is Fjord-Elk,’ I added, staring at Serpent as she slewed up on to the muddy shore, carving through the sludge as Olaf held on to the cross at her prow. ‘And that’s because those men are black-hearted heathens, Winigis,’ I said as two ropes were thrown over the sheer strake for Egfrith and Winigis to clamber up. ‘Well, most of them anyway.’ The Frank took a step backwards, his eyes full of horror. I threw him the ratskin hat full of silver and he caught it wide-eyed and clutched it to his chest without even untying the thong to look inside it. ‘Now get aboard, Winigis,’ I said, and he looked to Father Egfrith who nodded and trudged forward. The Frank put on his hat, stuffed the silver into his oiled sack and followed Egfrith as Bjorn, Bjarni, Osk, Hedin and three of the Wessexmen jumped off to help Penda and me shove the dragon ship back into the river.
‘So, lad, who is he?’ Olaf asked, looking unimpressed by the frightened Frank standing at the mast step as I took my oar from the oar trees and fed it through the port beside my journey chest. Cynethryth smiled at me, her green eyes fresh as new grass in that place of mud and brown water. My chest tightened like a clenched fist.
‘He’s a fisherman, Uncle,’ I said, falling into time with the other rowers so that our oar blades clove the Sicauna with the pr
ecision of a flock of birds in flight, ‘and he is going to take us to Aix-la-Chapelle to see the emperor.’
‘Is he now?’ Olaf muttered under his breath as Sigurd began to question the Frank, his cloak wrapped tightly round his shoulders and clasped in one hand at his neck, despite the mild early autumn morning. ‘And his reward is all of that silver Sigurd gave you? Every last shiny bit?’ His eyebrows arched as he scratched his bushy beard.
‘Apart from what we used to buy bread and meat, yes, Uncle,’ I said, still looking at Cynethryth. ‘All of it.’
‘Then I suppose you found those handsome new boots, eh?’ he said, and I smiled at Cynethryth and imagined what I would do with her if we ever got the chance to be alone together.
‘Just sitting there unloved and footless,’ I said, trying not to smile. ‘Some of us are born lucky, Uncle.’
We rowed upriver watching the fortress island of Paris slide by our steerboard side. Along the shore on our port side men were felling trees, carving into the forest as teams of oxen dragged the trunks away, and Father Egfrith chirruped that that was just the beginning. In a few years that clearing would be crowded with dwellings and the sky above yellow with hearth smoke and church bells would join in song with those from new churches on the land south of the island. For Paris was a bastion of the true faith, he said, which would bloom like a rose as more of God’s children flocked to the light, and soon the Christian west would meet the Christian east so that only at the fringes of the world would the darkness linger. ‘At the fringes of the world and in your black hearts,’ he said, instinctively touching the scar on his tonsured head etched by Glum’s sword, ‘though I will do my best to turn you away from Satan’s path, so help me God.’
Most of the Norsemen could not understand him and tolerated his prattling, having grown accustomed to it. Even old Asgot the godi seemed less inclined to slit the monk’s throat these days, though there were still those of us who half expected Egfrith to wake up dead one morning. But Asgot was still busy looking to Sigurd’s recovery with offerings and poultices and potions and spells, for the day after we set off with Winigis Sigurd fell very sick. It was late in the afternoon on a dark, narrow stretch of the river shaded by dense forest of oak, chestnut and beech when Sigurd stumbled against Serpent’s mast and Bjarni said he saw the jarl’s eyes roll back in his head before he crumpled to the mast step, his legs kicking and his mouth frothing like shaken mead.
Raven: Sons of Thunder Page 16
