CHAPTER TWENTY
WHEN WE ARRIVED AT THE RIVER WHARF THERE WAS NO SIGN OF Serpent or Fjord-Elk, but we did find Hastein and Yrsa Pig-nose waiting for us. They were sitting on the jetty playing tafl by the light of a crackling, flame-filled brazier. Nearby a man was lying on his belly with a line in the water fishing for crabs whilst his hound lay beside him, its head on its paws. Other than these two the Norsemen were alone.
‘We have moved further upriver,’ Hastein said, pointing into the darkness beyond the shore houses and the black mass of oak and ash behind them.
‘There’s a town not three bow-shots from the water,’ Yrsa added, grinning as he collected and pocketed the tafl shells whilst Hastein tightly rolled their furs. It seemed that the lure of trade and food and women and mischief had proved too strong for the Fellowship to ignore, despite our earlier caution.
‘Then what are we waiting for?’ Penda asked when I explained in English. ‘They’ll all be getting their ends wet by now. I don’t want to be left with some sow who’s so ugly she makes onions cry.’
‘Penda!’ Cynethryth snapped. ‘You are a bad man.’
‘I try, my lady,’ he replied.
‘Are we going to be rich, Raven?’ Yrsa asked, happily digging snot from a nostril with his little finger and smiling.
‘You are already rich, Yrsa,’ I said, to which he nodded proudly, ‘but yes, if the emperor doesn’t kill us all we’ll be richer yet.’
My heart leapt as it always did when I saw Serpent. She was tethered bow and stern to a high jetty with Fjord-Elk lashed to her steerboard side. I could see men aboard both ships and others on shore huddled under skin shelters round fires, though there was nothing of the raucousness I had expected. Instead the men were subdued, and I soon learnt it was because they were apprehensive and eager to discover how we had fared with the emperor of the Franks.
‘This Karolus is no fool,’ I said to Sigurd, regretting the words immediately, for of course Karolus was no fool. The man ruled an empire. ‘Without the monk we wouldn’t have got anywhere near him,’ I admitted reluctantly.
Sigurd looked at Egfrith with a slight nod. ‘So he will come?’ he asked. The jarl leant against a rolled fur, flamelight and shadow playing across his gaunt face. Beside him Olaf was snoring; the sound, according to Black Floki, was like that of a reindeer at the rut. We had already told the jarl everything that had happened, but even he seemed sceptical that Karolus would actually come to us to judge what we had to sell.
‘He is going to Paris, so he told us,’ I said, ‘and will meet us on his way.’
‘Paris?’ Sigurd said, as though surprised that an emperor should want to go to that stinking hole.
‘To build defences against the Danes,’ I said, smiling, though it was the smile of a helmsman feigning indifference in the face of a storm.
‘You must keep your men on a tight leash, Sigurd,’ Egfrith said, wincing. Behind us Svein and Bram were wrestling and some of the Norsemen were growling encouragement to one or the other. ‘One way or another, once the emperor lays eyes on the gospel book he will have it,’ the monk said. ‘If all goes as I pray it will, I believe he will buy it and pay handsomely too. But if he discovers you are Norse . . .’ he extended an ink-stained finger, ‘then he will feel duty-bound to take the book from you.’
‘Enough talk,’ Sigurd said, giving a great yawn which seemed to offend the monk. ‘Wake me if this emperor comes,’ he said, pushing back his rolled fur and laying his head on it. ‘But if you ruin a good dream I’ll cut off your balls.’ I went to the shelter Cynethryth had made. It was all very well for Sigurd to posture in that way – it was expected from a jarl after all – but he had not seen with his own eyes the stone world this king of the Franks was building. He had not met Karolus.
Two days later we woke at dawn to the barked warnings of our sentries. The emperor had come. We hurriedly put on our mail and helmets and gathered our war gear – not because we wanted to fight but rather because we wanted to make a good show of ourselves before these Franks. Warriors suffer from legendary pride and will do whatever they can to impress friends and foe alike. And we did look impressive. We were more than thirty, and all wore the finest brynjas and hefted spears, axes and swords. But if we thought we were impressive, that was before we clapped eyes on the Franks. They were awe-inspiring. We formed a shieldwall two men deep with Serpent and Fjord-Elk at our backs and men with bows at our flanks. Like that we waited and watched an army emerge out of the low dawn sun. Two shining columns of soldiers, each man wearing identical armour made of small iron plates like fish scales, poured across the landscape before us, their banners whipping in the wind.
‘Frigg’s tits! Somebody fetch my banner!’ Sigurd roared, blinking at the incredible sight.
‘It’s all right, lad, don’t twist your neck off,’ Penda beside me said with a smirk, sensing my concern. ‘She’s at the rear with Egfrith.’
‘What have we got ourselves into now?’ Olaf said, thumping his helmet firmly down so that all you could see of his face was beard. ‘There must be five hundred men there and every one of the pretty whoresons has a nice long spear to lean on.’ A war horn blared and, with the clink of armour and the stamp of boots, the two columns melted and re-formed so that we now faced a shieldwall three men deep, longer than any of us had ever seen. Then that wall split neatly and a group of mounted men emerged, trotting their horses towards us.
‘There he is,’ Penda said, ‘and doesn’t he look just about the handsomest emperor you’ve ever seen.’ Laughter came from the Wessexmen, which was good to hear from men in the front row of a shieldwall. Sigurd had done them a great honour by placing them there and they knew it. But they would also be the first to die and they knew that too.
Karolus raised a hand and his ranks held still as the stone horseman I had seen outside his palace. The hot breath of hundreds plumed in the morning air.
‘He’s not dressed for war,’ Penda said, ‘which is a good sign if you ask me.’ The emperor wore a tunic fringed with silk and a fine red cloak fastened with a golden buckle, and apart from a gold-hilted sword in a jewel-encrusted scabbard he was unarmed.
‘I suspect he has enough men to fight for him, Penda,’ I said, gripping my spear with white fingers.
‘Lord Ealdred!’ Karolus yelled. Some of us turned but I could not see the ealdorman. We waited. The frantic brrrrrruk of a fleeing moorhen cut the silence and a black cloud of rooks spiralled up from a stand of elm, kaaing noisily.
‘Here, lord,’ Ealdred answered eventually, passing through the wall. Egfrith and Sigurd were with him, and though Sigurd should have perhaps stayed out of sight the restraint would have been too much for him. He stood behind Ealdred looking like Týr the god of battle, his hand resting on his father’s sword.
‘Go on, Raven,’ Olaf said. ‘Sigurd might need your tongue to dig him out when the Franks hear the Norse in him.’ So I loped over to them, my brynja rattling conspicuously, and bowed my head to Karolus, though his eyes were fixed on Sigurd. Alcuin sat hunched on a palfrey on his lord’s right, eyeing the shield-wall behind me.
‘I have never seen such a show of arms, lord,’ Ealdred said. ‘Your army is magnificent.’
Karolus smiled, patting his black stallion’s neck. Even his horse looked like a prince amongst horses. ‘This is a mere breath of breeze compared to the storm I can summon when needs must. With a word I can bring ten thousand Christian warriors to any part of my empire. These days, thanks to God and to this sword,’ he said, touching the gold pommel at his hip, ‘I have few enemies who have the stomach or the spears to stand and fight me, though they are quick to attack the helpless. They kill and then run. Like a fox.’
On his right, Alcuin nodded tiredly. ‘Deep bogs of evil spread where the springs of righteousness should give rise to streams of holiness,’ he announced, staring at me with his old, worn eyes. I suddenly realized I was not wearing the linen strip over my blood-eye. ‘There are signs that our world is i
n its last days.’
‘Which makes more pressing the need for us to vanquish the enemies of Christ,’ Karolus said.
‘Or convert them, lord,’ Father Egfrith amended with a raised finger and an almost imperceptible sideways glance at Sigurd.
I suddenly felt sick, for my mind had unravelled the knot that had hidden Egfrith’s reason for helping to sell the book. I had long known the little weasel had it in his mind to convert Sigurd, but now I feared my jarl might have agreed in return for Egfrith’s help.
‘The book,’ Karolus demanded. ‘I will see it for myself.’
‘You have enough silver, king of the Franks?’ Sigurd challenged in his thick accent, his eyes wolflike below his helmet’s rim. ‘Or have you spent it all on blue cloaks and fish scale armour for men who would make better farmers?’
My guts twisted. The emperor glared at Sigurd. Egfrith’s face paled white as death and I thought we would all die in a great rush of Frankish steel. But then Karolus smiled, the lines round his eyes carved from a hundred thousand such smiles.
‘And who are you?’ he asked Sigurd, who stepped in front of Ealdred.
‘I am Sigurd, son of Harald,’ he said. ‘Some call me Sigurd the Lucky.’
‘You are a Dane?’ Karolus’s smile twisted into a grimace.
‘I am no Dane,’ Sigurd said.
‘Do you serve Ealdorman Ealdred?’ the emperor asked, nodding at Ealdred.
Sigurd spat and wiped his lips with the back of his hand.
‘No, I did not think so,’ Karolus said. ‘And they are your men, aren’t they? And your ships moored there?’
‘They are mine,’ Sigurd said.
‘You are heathens then?’ Karolus challenged. That question rode the back of threat.
‘This monk has it in his mind to wade me into a river and push my head under the water,’ Sigurd said, gesturing to Egfrith. ‘It seems to become a Christian you need to be half drowned.’
‘And you have agreed to be baptized?’ Karolus said, suspicion making slits of his big eyes.
‘I have not decided yet,’ Sigurd replied. ‘Perhaps.’
‘The book, my lord emperor,’ Egfrith spluttered, offering the gospel book to Karolus, who flicked a hand directing the monk to give it instead to Alcuin. The old man began immediately to pore over the thing, his face as creased as oak bark as the emperor’s eyes bored into Sigurd’s.
‘It is genuine, my lord,’ Alcuin said eventually, shaking his head so that I could not say whether he was simply amazed to have such a thing in his hands or horrified that the treasure had until now been in ours. ‘This book is impossibly important,’ he murmured, at which Karolus shot him a sour look. Alcuin might have been a deep thinker in some ways, but he was a poor trader to drive up the price like that. Sensing rather than seeing the emperor’s glare, the old man raised a hand acknowledging his carelessness, though to me he seemed much too interested in the gospel book to care.
‘Then I will have the book, Sigurd,’ Karolus said and with those words the worm Ealdred saw to the saving of his slippery skin.
‘My lord emperor, save me from these men!’ he blurted, wriggling past Sigurd and falling to his knees before Karolus. ‘I am a Christian lord and these heathens have kept me prisoner these last weeks. My daughter too.’
‘Bastard,’ I heard Penda snarl.
There was a tinge of distaste in the way Karolus looked at Ealdred, but as the burning light of Christendom he could not ignore such a plea.
‘You have my protection, Lord Ealdred,’ he said, gesturing for the Englishman to get to his feet. ‘Where is your daughter?’
Ealdred turned and pointed to the shieldwall and the Norsemen glared at him with promises of death. ‘She is back there, sire. Amongst the heathens. She is called Cynethryth.’
Karolus nodded. ‘Come forward, Cynethryth!’ he bellowed and there it was, the voice of an emperor. There was the clump and clatter of shields and the rattling of mail as Sigurd’s shield-wall parted to allow Cynethryth through.
‘Lord Karolus, this worm is mine,’ Sigurd snarled, but even Sigurd looked small before this great host of Franks.
The emperor gestured for Alcuin to give the book back to Father Egfrith and the monk nodded respectfully as he stepped back with that Christian treasure in his hand. ‘You will have your silver, Norseman,’ Karolus said casually with a flick of the wrist. ‘Come here, girl.’
Cynethryth came over to us and inclined her head to the emperor, her golden hair plaited so that she could not have looked more Norse, though Bram would have rumbled that her hips were too narrow.
‘You are safe now, daughter,’ Karolus said, and even though he was old his eyes lit up at her beauty. ‘Your captivity is over and you are free.’
Cynethryth’s eyes flicked to me. ‘My lord,’ she said in a sure voice, ‘I am no prisoner and chose to sail with these men. They may be heathens, sire, but they are honourable men.’ Then she pointed to Ealdred. ‘He is the one with no faith and if I were you I would not trust him any more than I would trust a fox.’
At that Ealdred snarled and stepped forward, backhanding Cynethryth viciously so that she staggered backwards, her eyes huge and full of shocked fury. Then she screamed and from her belt drew her eating knife and flew at Ealdred, fast as a hawk, and plunged the blade into his eye. Now Ealdred screamed.
I leapt, pulling Cynethryth back, which was not easy for she was frenzied. My mind was reeling at what had just happened as Karolus roared orders that built a wall of warriors with raised shields between them and us. Ealdred writhed on the ground, his hands slipping on the blood-covered hilt so that he was unable to draw Cynethryth’s knife from his eye.
‘The girl is bewitched!’ the emperor said, his eyes wide, though not as wide as Alcuin’s beside him. The old man looked about to fall from his palfrey. ‘You she-devil! These godless men have defiled your soul.’ Then his expression changed from one of shock to inquisitiveness and he asked something of Alcuin, though it was in the Frankish tongue and so we could not know what it was. ‘But we will break that spell,’ the emperor said then, ‘with the Lord’s help. Step away from her, boy, or you will both die where you stand.’
I held Cynethryth tightly.
‘Do as he says, Raven,’ Sigurd said.
‘But lord . . .’
‘Now, Raven,’ Sigurd demanded, and so I released Cynethryth who simply stood there watching Ealdred who was flapping like a fish, his screams replaced by a strange gurgling sound. Except for Egfrith who was kneeling by him praying, no one moved to help the ealdorman, perhaps because it was obvious that there was no saving him now.
‘You will come with me, Cynethryth,’ Karolus said, ‘and, God willing, you will be . . .’ he paused, ‘healed,’ he finished and his stallion screeched and tossed its head as though in warning.
‘Cynethryth stays with us,’ I said, swallowing hard and feeling a tremor in the arm holding my spear.
Karolus looked down his long nose at me and his eyes seemed to catch fire.
‘You,’ he accused me, ‘are the thing that has twisted this poor girl’s soul. Satan has marked you as one of his own.’ He gestured at my blood-eye. ‘I knew it the first time I saw you. But the dark one holds no sway here, boy, and you will hold your fetid tongue if you want to keep it.’
‘I am afraid of no man,’ I said, raising my bearded chin. In truth I was so afraid I could have pissed down my own leg in front of them all. I glanced at Sigurd, who I could have sworn had the faintest of smiles playing on his lips, for there was a part of Sigurd that loved chaos.
‘There is no need to let high spirits lead us into foolishness,’ Alcuin said, calming his palfrey with a flick of the reins. ‘We have more important matters to attend to.’ He looked down at Ealdred and made the sign of the cross for the ealdorman was quite clearly dead, the small knife, which must have pierced his brain, still jutting from his right eye.
Karolus sucked a breath deep into his large stomach and closed his
eyes and when he opened them the fire was gone. ‘As always, my dear Albinus, you are the rein on my temper.’ He smiled at Alcuin, then looked back to Sigurd. ‘I will have three barrels of silver brought to you before the full moon.’
‘Five barrels,’ Sigurd said, scratching his chin, apparently unaware that we were in no position to negotiate.
The emperor frowned. ‘For five barrels I could build another palace,’ he said, shaking his fair, greying head.
‘Five barrels and I’ll let this Christ monk wash me in your river,’ Sigurd said loud enough for all to hear, and I turned to see Black Floki pull a face that could sour milk. He understands some English then, I thought. Olaf too was all beard and grimace, and the Wessexmen glowered because their erstwhile lord had not spoken for them. But Karolus must have thought he now had a deal worth making, for he simply nodded to Alcuin.
‘You will have your silver, Sigurd the Lucky,’ the emperor said, pulling his horse around. ‘Bring the girl,’ he commanded two of his men, who nodded, each taking one of Cynethryth’s arms. Then he and Alcuin walked their mounts back to the great, shining army. ‘And may Christ grant you the strength to see your purpose through, Father Egfrith!’ he called. And Cynethryth did not look back at me as they led her away.
Ealdred was dead at last, which was no bad thing. His death had been coming a long time, though none would have guessed it would come at the hands of his daughter. Still, I felt sick. I felt sick because Sigurd had agreed to be baptized as a Christian, but most of all I felt sick because Cynethryth was gone. Though, other than Penda who cared for Cynethryth because he had loved her brother, none of the others seemed anything other than cheerful. We had met with the great Christian emperor and survived. Even more surprisingly, the man was going to give us more silver than we had ever dreamt of, and Norsemen dream in silver. The way they saw it, things could not have been better and most of them did not even seem to mind that Sigurd would be baptized.
Raven: Sons of Thunder Page 21
