"And then what happened?"
"I have no idea. Unferth was an itinerant bard by profession, and I lost track of him in his wanderings. By birth he was a Jute, but he never returned to his native Jutland. I can only presume..."
Flosshilde ran out of the room.
"What's she up to now?" muttered Alberich. "Why can't people sit still?"
"Anyway," continued Mother Earth, "given the quite remarkable fecundity of the Volsung race, I have little doubt that the family is still extant, and I have spent a great deal of time and effort in trying to trace the survivors of the line. Who could possibly make a better Ring-Bearer than the descendant of Siegfried the Dragon-Slayer? But to date my inquiries have been fruitless."
"So you think there's a Volsung or two wandering about out there just waiting for a chance to snap up the Ring?" said Alberich. "That's all we need."
"On the contrary," said Mother Earth, "I still regard the Volsung option as being the best possible solution. The Fisher episode is surely nothing but a strange and unplanned complication which will undoubtedly resolve itself in time. As soon as the missing Volsung is traced and apprised of his destiny, we can all get back to normal."
"That's not exactly fair on our young friend Malcolm Fisher," said Alberich. "He deserves more consideration than that. I presume that your Volsung would get hold of the Ring in the same way that his ancestor Siegfried obtained it from Fafner."
"That ought not to be necessary," said Mother Earth hurriedly. "No, he has had his part to play as caretaker of the Ring, and to date I must grant you he has played it very creditably. Only this present difficulty has marred an unexpectedly satisfactory period in the Ring's history. Recent events, however, have highlighted the underlying weakness in his emotional composition which makes it obvious that he is not to be trusted with the Ring on a long-term basis. Unfortunately, as we have recently been made to realise, there is very little that any of us can actually do, when the chips are, so to speak, down, to influence matters. Thanks to Wotan, and of course to my daughter here, all may yet be lost."
At this moment, Flosshilde came back into the room, carrying a volume of an encyclopedia.
"Say what you like about old Misery-guts there," she said, "she's made a good job of that library. Here we are."
She laid the book down on the table. "The Jutes," she said, "were part of the Anglo-Saxon alliance that colonised Britain after the Romans went home."
"I seem to remember hearing something about it at the time," said Alberich, "now that you mention it. Go on."
"If your Unferth was a Jute, perhaps he came over to Britain with the rest of them. Have you tried looking here?"
Mother Earth raised an eyebrow. "I must confess that this is a line of inquiry that has not previously occurred to me. These islands have always been so unremarkable, heroically and theologically speaking, that I never for one moment imagined that the Volsung line might be found here. It is of course possible."
Flosshilde seemed excited about something. "Where would the records be?" she asked. "This is worth following up."
"The main archive is at Mimir's Well," replied Mother Earth. "I think it would be in order to check this new lead."
"So what are we waiting for?"
"My dear young woman," said Mother Earth, "you don't expect me to abandon this highly delicate situation at this crucial juncture simply to go chasing through the files. It can certainly wait until Mr. Fisher returns from his holiday and this present difficulty has been satisfactorily resolved."
"Why are you so interested in tracking down this Volsung, anyway?" said Alberich suspiciously. "I thought you were on Fisher's side."
"Don't you see?" said Flosshilde. "If we find the person who ought to have the Ring, Malcolm won't be able to give it to her, because it won't be his to give away to anyone. He's got wonderful principles, he'll see at once that he has to give it to this Volsung person, and then everything will be all right."
Alberich shook his head. "You overestimate him," he said. "Besides, what guarantee do we have that this Volsung will be any more suitable than Malcolm Fisher?"
"I can reassure you on that point," said Mother Earth. "I am, after all, the ancestress of the Volsung race. Admittedly, Wotan is their male ancestor, but that cannot be helped now."
"You mean this Volsung would be her cousin?" Flosshilde asked, pointing rather rudely at Ortlinde.
"In strict form, yes."
"Even so," said Flosshilde, "it's worth a try."
"The Volsung race," continued Mother Earth, "was specifically designed from the outset to be Ring-Bearers. They have built into their software all the heroic qualities required to carry out that office in a satisfactory manner. Even after centuries of dilution, the fundamental ingredients ought still to be present. I have no doubts at all in my mind that if a Volsung or Volsungs can be found, our problems will be at an end. But first, it is essential that Mr. Fisher's ridiculous idea of giving the Ring to my daughter..."
"Now there I agree with you," said Flosshilde. "Here, you. Haven't you got anything to say?"
"No," mumbled Ortlinde.
For a moment, Flosshilde felt very sorry for the Valkyrie. Although she would have liked everything to have been Ortlinde's fault, it palpably wasn't, and the girl herself was probably having a rather horrid time. But Flosshilde hardened her heart.
"Why don't you do something useful for a change?" she said. "You nip across to Mimir's Well and look up the records, if you're so good with libraries."
Ortlinde shrugged her shoulders and started to get to her feet.
"Stay where you are," commanded her mother. "I'm not letting you out of my sight until this has been cleared up."
Ortlinde sat down again.
"Well, someone's got to go," said Flosshilde.
"You go, then," said Albench. "You're only getting under our feet here, anyway."
Flosshilde made a face at him. Mother Earth raised her hand for order.
"I shall telephone the Elder Norn," she said. "She is a most competent woman, and I'm sure Mr. Fisher will not begrudge us the cost of the call."
To telephone Valhalla from the Taunton area one has to go through the operator, and the process can take a long time. While Mother Earth was thus engaged, Alberich took Flosshilde on one side.
"You're up to something," he said.
"No, I'm not."
"Yes, you are. You're going to try and nobble this Volsung, aren't you? You failed to nobble Malcolm Fisher, so you want a chance at someone a bit more vulnerable, or at least with better taste."
The Rhinedaughter shook her head sadly. "My nobbling days are over," she said. "I've been nobbled myself."
"Go on!" said Alberich incredulously. "I thought it was all an act."
"I wish it was," sighed Flosshilde. "But it isn't."
"But what on earth do you see in him?"
"I don't know," said Flosshilde. "I suppose he's just different. He's sweet. I really have no idea. But I want to get him out of all this before they do something horrid to him."
Alberich smiled. "This is unusual for you, Flosshilde," he said. "I always thought you were the hardest of the three. Woglinde dries her face with emery paper and Wellgunde cleans her teeth with metal polish, but you were always the really tough cookie. And now look at you."
"All good things must come to an end," said Flosshilde, "and I don't suppose he'll ever be interested in me even if he does get rid of her. Which is funny, really," she said bitterly. "After all, he's nothing special and I am, Heaven knows. But there you are."
"There you are indeed," said Alberich. "Good luck, anyway."
Mother Earth put down the receiver.
"Would you believe," she said, "the Elder Norn is away on her honeymoon. Apparently, she has married a rock-troll she met only recently at a Company meeting. But the Middle Nom has agreed to do the necessary work in the archives, so we can expect results shortly."
"Well, that's something, anyway," said Flosshilde, sitti
ng down and putting her feet up. "Now what shall we do?"
At that moment the door opened and Malcolm walked in. His hair was wet, although it had not been raining in Somerset.
"They told me you were all in here," he said.
* * *
"If you've got nothing better to do," said the Valkyrie Grimgerde, "you could fix that dripping tap in the kitchen."
"I'm busy," Wotan said angrily, but the Valkyrie had gone. He leaned back in his chair and poured himself another large schnapps. Despite the schnapps he was profoundly worried; it had been a long time since he had heard anything from Somerset, and surely his daughter should have succeeded in her mission by now. She was not, he was fully prepared to admit, an outstandingly intelligent girl, but intelligence was not really required, only beauty and a certain soppiness. Both of these qualities she had in abundance.
"Must you sit in here?" asked the Valkyrie Siegrune. "I want to hoover this room."
"Go and hoover somewhere else!" thundered the God of Battles. The Valkyrie swept out without a word, leaving Wotan to his thoughts and his schnapps. He bore the human no ill-will, he decided. His handling of the world, he was forced to admit, had been largely adequate. But this state of affairs could not be allowed to continue indefinitely, and if Operation Ortlinde failed, he could not see what else he could reasonably do.
"If that child messes this up," he growled into his glass, "I'll turn her into a bullfrog." He closed his eye, and tried to get some sleep.
When he woke up, he saw that he was surrounded on all sides by daughters. Even allowing for his blurred senses, there seemed to be an awful lot of them. To be precise, eight...
"So you're back at last, are you?" he said. "Well, where is it?"
All the Valkyries were silent, staring sullenly at their shoes, which were identical. When you have eight daughters, you can save a lot by buying in bulk.
"Where is it?" Wotan repeated. "Come on, give it here."
"I haven't got it," Ortlinde said softly. "He doesn't want me."
"You stupid... what do you mean?"
He had spilt schnapps all over the covers of the chair, but none of his daughters said a word. This could only mean that Ortlinde had failed him, and they were all feeling terribly guilty.
"He wouldn't give it to me," said Ortlinde sadly. "He said that he loved me, but he couldn't give it to me. I knew it would happen, sooner or later. So I came home."
"But why not?" screamed Wotan. "You had the sucker in the palm of your hand and you let him get away."
"I know," said the girl. "I've let you down again. I'm sorry."
"Get out of my sight!" Wotan shouted. The girl bowed her head and wandered wretchedly away to clean the bathroom.
After a short battle with his temper, Wotan managed to control himself, and surveyed his seven other daughters with his one good eye.
"Right, then," he said briskly, "who's going to be next?"
There was a long silence. Nobody moved.
"Very well, then," Wotan said. "Grimgerde, go and do something useful for the first time in your life."
Grimgerde shook her head. "There's no point," she said "He knows all about us."
"He's been talking to Mother," said Waltraute.
"He'd recognise me as soon as I walked through the door," Grimgerde continued. "It wouldn't work. I'm sorry."
For a moment, Wotan was stunned. Then, with a roar like thunder, he leapt to his feet and ran out of the room. All the lights had gone out all over the house.
"We've let him down again," said Grimgerde sadly.
"If only we could talk to him," said Waltraute.
"Where's the point?" said Rossweise. "We wouldn't be able to communicate with him."
The went to fetch the Hoover.
14.
zzz
MALCOLM DID NOT know where the others were, nor did he care much. He only knew that Ortlinde had gone. She had packed her suitcase, said goodbye, and walked down the drive, and for all Malcolm knew he would never see her again. Of course, he could not accept this; it seemed incredible that it could all be over, and at the back of his mind he felt sure that it was only a meaningless interruption to an inevitable happy ending. The girl loved him. He loved her. Surely that ought to be enough to be going on with. But she had gone away, and the part of his mind that still dealt with reality told him that it was for ever.
The room in which he had chosen to sit had not been used for many years; there were dust sheets over several pieces of furniture, and he tried to imagine what they looked like under their protective covers. There was half a tune he had heard in New York drumming away in his head; it was not a tune with any emotional or nostalgic significance, but it was there, like a fly trapped behind a windscreen, and he sat and listened to its endless repetitions for a while. In front of him were ten or fifteen sheets of paper on which he had started to write many drafts of the letter that would set everything straight. But the right words somehow eluded him, like a cat that refuses to come in when called. He could concentrate on nothing, and his eyes focused of their own accord on the walls and corners of the room.
"There you are," said a girl's voice behind him. "I've been looking for you everywhere."
He knew even before he looked round that it was only Flosshilde. He said nothing. He did not resent her intrusion; nothing could matter less. He imagined that she would say something or other and then go away again.
Flosshilde sat in the window-seat and put her feet up on a chair. "You don't mind me being here, do you?" she said.
"No," he replied.
"I wanted to get away from the others. They were being awfully stuffy about something."
Malcolm said nothing. He did not believe in the existence of anything outside this room, except of course for Ortlinde, and he wasn't allowed to think about her any more.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Flosshilde asked.
"No," said Malcolm.
"1 didn't think you would. She was rather beautiful, wasn't she?"
"She isn't dead, you know," said Malcolm irritably. "She still is rather beautiful for all I know."
"What made you change your mind?"
"I had to do something. That seemed better than the other thing. I don't know. I did what I thought was for the best."
"I think you were right, if that's any help. No, of course it isn't, I'm sorry. I'll be quiet now."
"You can talk if you like," Malcolm said. "It wasn't bothering me."
"Can you play pontoon?"
"No."
"I'll teach you if you like."
"No, thanks."
"I know a game where you take a piece of writing—anything will do—and each letter has a number—A is one, B is two and so on—and you play odds against evens. Each sentence is a new game, and the side that wins gets five points for each sentence. Odds usually win, for some reason. That's what I do when I'm feeling unhappy. It takes your mind off things."
Malcolm wasn't listening, and Flosshilde felt like a castaway on a desert island who sees a ship sailing by without taking any notice of his signals. Perhaps it would be better, she thought, if she went away. But she stayed where she was.
"Shall I tell you the story about the time when the Giants stole Donner's hammer and he had to dress up in drag to get it back?"
"If you like."
She told the story, doing all the voices and putting in some new bits she hadn't thought of before. It was a very funny story, but Malcolm simply sat and looked out of the window. Flosshilde wanted to cry, or at the very least hit him, but she simply sat there too.
"I want your advice," she said.
"I don't think it would be worth much."
"Never mind. One of my sisters is dotty about a man, and he's dotty about a girl, and she doesn't fancy him at all. What should she do?"
"Are you being funny?" Malcolm asked bitterly.
"No, really. What do you think she should do about it?"
"Grow up and get on with something useful
."
"I see. Aren't you sorry for her?"
"I suppose so. But I'm not really in the mood just now." He turned away and looked at the wall.
"I'm sorry," said Flosshilde. "I'll shut up now."
She studied her fingernails, which were the best in the world. King Arthur had often complimented her on her fingernails.
"Would you like me to go and talk to her?" Flosshilde said after a long silence.
"Who?"
"Ortlinde, silly. Perhaps there's something I could say..."
"I thought you couldn't stand her. Why is that, by the way?"
"Oh, I don't know," lied Flosshilde. "We quarrelled about something a long time ago."
"Tell me about her. You probably know her a lot better than I do."
"Not really," Flosshilde said. "I've known her on and off for years, of course, but only very generally. I find it pretty hard to tell those sisters apart, to be honest."
"Are they all like her? Her sisters, I mean."
"Very. Ortlinde's probably the nicest-looking, now that Brunnhilde's... And Grimgerde's quite pretty too, in a rather horrid sort of way. Big round eyes, like a cow."
"I'm not really interested in her sisters. She said that the rest of them were all much nicer than she was, but I don't believe her. What did you quarrel about?"
"I honestly can't remember. It can't have been anything important. Is there anything at all I can do?"
"No," said Malcolm. "Perhaps you'd better go. I'm not in a very good mood, I'm afraid."
Flosshilde took her feet daintily off the chair and walked out of the room. Once she had closed the door safely behind her, she shut her eyes and closed her hands tightly. It didn't help at all, and if she screamed somebody would hear her. She went downstairs.
From the landing, she could hear an excited buzz of voices in the drawing-room: Alberich and Erda and someone else, whose voice was vaguely familiar. The newcomer turned out to be the Middle Norn, a round, fairhaired woman in a smart brown tweed suit. She had brought a huge briefcase with her, and the floor was covered with photocopies of ancient parchments. Erda and the Norn were down on their knees going over them with magnifying-glasses, while Alberich was at the desk taking notes.
Expecting Someone Taller Tom Holt Page 18
