Raven

by Giles Kristian

  ‘If you’re coming you’re going to need this,’ I said, thrusting a spear into his hand. Penda, Bjarni and Wiglaf were the other three and they seemed more amused than concerned that the monk was with us. All around us fur-clad men were grabbing spears and long knives, eager to be on their way. Even Sigurd was grinning with excitement like a boy as he braided his golden hair at the nape of his neck, revealing his scarred face. Black Floki was beside him, sharpening the blade he no doubt believed would soon be finishing a speared boar.

  ‘If more than one is killed,’ Sigurd called, ‘then the silver goes to the men whose animal is larger.’

  ‘You might as well give the silver to me now and be done with it, Sigurd,’ Bram said whilst emptying his bladder. ‘These young pups couldn’t catch a three-legged stool if they were sitting on it.’

  ‘Keep the fire high, Uncle,’ Beiner said to Olaf, who had said he was too old to be chasing through a bog after his food. ‘My boar is going to need a long time cooking.’

  And then, clutching spears and hope, we set off into the marsh, each group going their own way.

  We tramped northwards through the sucking fen, sending startled coots screeching up from the reeds. Penda and I had decided that the further we went the better our chances would be and we were prepared to put in the legwork. We had wanted to go west but Bram’s lot had headed off that way before us and so we were left with north. Now and then a great egret took to the sky, flapping its white wings indignantly. Any other time we would have hurled a spear at it, but not this day for we would need every spear we had if we came across a big boar and to throw one after a bird risked losing it in the marsh.

  ‘This is enjoyable,’ Egfrith chirped, thrusting his spear at shrubs he was passing. He had hitched up his habit and his bare feet and legs were covered in watery mud. It was still bitterly cold but I had come to learn that the monk was a hardy little weasel and to my annoyance he seemed to cope well with all kinds of hardship. ‘I shall be ready, Raven, you can rely on me.’

  ‘If you keep flapping your tongue, monk, we will never set eyes on anything other than birds.’ I could see why Ealdred had ordered the monk up a tree out of the way.

  ‘You’re quite right,’ he said, pursing his lips in determination. ‘I shall be as quiet as a mouse. I shall be as patient as Job. I shall …’

  ‘Egfrith!’ I snapped. He nodded, putting a finger to his mouth, and I caught Penda sharing a grin with Wiglaf.

  ‘Now what?’ Wiglaf said a while later, palming his thinning hair back across his white scalp. He rested his spear across his thickset shoulders, so that his forearms hung over the shaft. ‘I don’t mind a swim,’ he said. ‘It’s the bollock-shrivelling I’m not fond of.’

  ‘Aye, it’ll be cold all right,’ Penda said.

  None of us had ventured this far north before and now we eyed the fen in front of us. But it was not a fen. It was a lake, shallow by the looks but still a lake.

  ‘We’ll go round,’ I said with a shrug. ‘It can’t be far.’ It looked far. Bjarni pointed, having seen something in the flinty sky. Two golden eagles were attacking a white-tailed sea eagle, taking turns to swoop in and rake the other bird with their talons. Asgot would see some meaning in that, I thought.

  ‘Or we could go through it,’ Penda suggested, nodding at the breeze-rippled grey water. A flock of black marsh hens slid across the small furrows, upending now and then.

  ‘I am a strong swimmer,’ Egfrith said proudly. My face told him what I thought about that idea.

  ‘There’s a causeway,’ Penda said, pointing to our right where, a good spear’s throw away, an old timber stuck up from the water. Then my eyes saw more of them and I realized I had not spotted them earlier because they had blended in with the reed beds far behind them on the horizon. Some of the piles were no more than knee-high, but it had definitely been a causeway once.

  Folk had used it, but long ago: the walkway looked to have been submerged for years. It was rotten, as soft as mud, so that you felt your feet breaking through. But whoever had built it had run it along a natural ridge of higher ground, or else piled the earth into a spine to raise it above the flood, and we were able to reach the other side of the lake staying dry for the most part.

  We then crossed a number of pools and sandbars where thousands of terns filled the world with their short, sharp calls. After that the ground became firmer, marshland giving way to meadows of marram grass and heather, and after midday we came to scrub woodland, which in turn yielded to fruit trees and pine.

  ‘This would have made a better camp,’ Wiglaf said, sniffing the air that was thick with the pungent tang of foxes.

  ‘Too far from the ships,’ I said, remembering the back-breaking portage we had done in Frankia, sliding Serpent and Fjord-Elk over rollers that had not rolled. ‘But I’ll wager there’s boar here.’

  ‘There’s more than boar here,’ Egfrith said, pointing with his spear through a copse of bare apple trees. A field of winter barley stirred in the breeze like a green sea.

  ‘See there,’ Bjarni said excitedly, for beyond the barley was a palisade above which we could see a clutter of thatched roofs.

  ‘They are Christians!’ Egfrith added, making the sign of the cross, for though the dwellings seemed scattered, the largest roof was aligned east–west which told Egfrith that it was likely to be a church.

  ‘So we’re not in the blaumen’s land any more?’ I said.

  ‘I think we’re back in Emperor Karolus’s land,’ Egfrith said.

  ‘Frankia?’ Penda puffed out his cheeks.

  ‘South Frankia, yes,’ Egfrith said. ‘But I should not worry, Penda. The emperor’s lands stretch far and wide. I’m sure we are quite safe.’ Egfrith was already walking towards the place. Bjarni was following him.

  ‘Wait, Bjarni,’ I said. ‘If they are Christians maybe we should turn around and go back.’

  Without breaking stride Bjarni flung a hand through the air, swatting my warning away. ‘Penda and Wiglaf are Christians,’ he said, ‘and we have our own White Christ slave. What could go wrong? Come on, Raven. Or are you a little girl?’

  I set off behind him.

  ‘We’re going in there?’ Wiglaf called after us. I glanced round and saw Penda shrug and set off behind me.

  ‘Of course we’re going in there, Wiglaf,’ Penda said. ‘With any luck they’ll sell us a bloody great boar.’

  When we came to the place we realized it was much smaller than we had thought. You could have walked round it in the time it takes to boil a pot of water. Other than the palisade, which was low and poorly made, there were no defences. The main gate stood open and Father Egfrith called out to announce us. No one replied and so we walked in, spears ready in case it should be a trap. But other than three tired old hounds, two white ponies that stood eating the old thatch from some low eaves, and several hens pecking at the mud, the place looked deserted. Thyme and other herbs grew in neat rows and I peered into a barrel in which eels rolled over one another tying endless knots. Sweet smoke leaked from a small hut in which Bjarni found meat hanging. In another small dark place we found butter and cheese and a bucket full of salt. But there was not a man or woman to be seen.

  ‘You have scared them all off, Penda,’ I teased, for Penda had a face that could frighten a war dog, not least because of the terrible long scar that ran from his temple to his chin.

  ‘What kind of men would just let us walk in like that?’ he asked, biting into a fist-sized lump of cheese.

  ‘There are no men here,’ Egfrith told him. ‘This place is a convent.’

  Penda glanced around, nodding because suddenly like the rest of us he understood. The place had felt strange: sparse yet orderly. Industrious yet lacking in the buildings you would expect to find, such as the forge and the butcher’s stall. We did not know where the Christ women were but we thought they must have been watching us from somewhere. I remembered Abbess Berta and shuddered.

  ‘I would like to pray while
we are here, Father,’ Wiglaf half asked Egfrith.

  The monk seemed unsure for a moment, rubbing his newly shaved baldpate. ‘I suppose the good sisters won’t mind that, Wiglaf,’ he said. ‘But we should not linger. We are interrupting their spiritual dedication and it does not do to keep the faithful from the Lord.’ He turned. ‘What about you, Penda, will you join us in prayer?’

  The Wessexman glanced at me then turned back to Egfrith and shrugged. ‘Seems a good place to seek the Lord’s blessings,’ he said. ‘A man can’t be too careful what with living amongst the heathens.’

  ‘Quite right, Penda,’ Egfrith said, pointing a finger at the sky, then he led the way to the church. I grimaced and followed.

  It was a simple timber-framed place with chambers running either side of the nave and an apsidal chancel at the east end. On a rough-hewn table in that chancel sat an embroidered cloth and on that cloth stood a large wooden Christ cross. Next to it several tallow candles flickered sootily, burning into the heavy darkness. The faint scent of unfamiliar sweat still hung in the fug and being in that place I felt far removed from the world outside. It made you not want to speak. So I spoke.

  ‘Perhaps this is how it feels between dying and waking in the afterlife,’ I suggested to Bjarni in Norse. He shrugged gloomily because it was obvious that the people who lived there were poor and owned nothing worth taking. Which was just as well, I thought, for I did not know how Penda and Wiglaf would react if Bjarni were to loot the place.

  ‘That Christ cross would not have dragged Tufi down to the crabs,’ Bjarni said, gesturing towards the table in the chancel and touching his sword’s hilt to ward off the ill luck that had drowned the Dane.

  ‘He should have left that thing where it was,’ I said, watching two mice scurrying through the dry floor rushes. One of the creatures vanished but the other scampered over the bare planks where there were no rushes.

  ‘It is time we left,’ Father Egfrith said, his eyes flicking from me to the floor then back to the Wessexmen.

  Wiglaf scratched his round chin. ‘I still have some more prayers to get out, Father,’ he said.

  ‘We have intruded long enough, Wiglaf,’ Egfrith snapped. ‘We will leave now so that the sisters may return to their prayer. The poor souls must be terrified out there in the woods waiting for us to be gone.’

  Wiglaf turned to Penda, who simply shrugged, if anything looking relieved, and so we left the church, blinking against the daylight.

  ‘We could take the goats,’ Bjarni suggested. ‘And some cheese.’ We had found three of the animals tethered on the far side of the church and beside one there was a pail half full of milk which we shared round, though Egfrith would not drink because he said the milk would be tainted by the sin of theft. At which Penda admitted that theft was a taste a man could get used to. But the monk was agitated now and wanted to be away.

  ‘Anyway, a goat is not a boar, Bjarni,’ I said, dragging the back of my hand across my mouth. The milk was thick and still warm. ‘Bram will be the first to point that out when we return.’

  ‘That won’t stop him drinking two men’s share of milk,’ Bjarni said, eyebrows arched knowingly.

  ‘Are you suggesting stealing the sisters’ animals?’ Egfrith said. The cunning little weasel had learnt more Norse than I had realized. ‘I will not hear of it! We must go now, Raven, before the Lord sees fit to punish us. Oh, He will,’ he warned us all, ‘do not doubt it.’

  Penda put a hand on the monk’s shoulder. ‘Father, are you still trying to coax this red-eyed son of a troll into the light?’ His eyes flicked to me. ‘You may as well try to talk the sea into not being wet.’

  Egfrith narrowed his eyes at me. ‘Gutta cavat lapidem non vi sed saepe cadendo. A water drop hollows a stone not by force, but by falling often,’ he said. ‘I am a patient man, as you well know. I have not given up hope for young Raven.’

  ‘Then you still have wood shavings for brains, monk,’ I said, turning to leave the convent.

  ‘What about the goats?’ Bjarni called after me.

  ‘Do you want to carry them through the marsh?’ I asked.

  And so we left with nothing.

  We had come far and so we spent only a short time searching for signs of boar – of which there were none – because we did not want to be caught out in the fen when night fell. As it was it would be hard enough to find our way back, but in darkness it would be near impossible. There was also the part of us that feared whatever strange spirits might wander abroad in the murky, pitch-thick darkness of the bog, though no one talked about that. And so we resigned ourselves to losing Sigurd’s contest. At least we returned with news.

  At first Sigurd and the others listened keenly, their eyes glinting like fish scales at the mention of a god-house on the north of the island. But those eyes dulled soon enough when Bjarni told them the place was poorer than even the meanest farmstead in their homeland. ‘My uncle had a turned foot,’ he said, ‘so he never went on a raid his whole life.’

  ‘Old Tjorvi walked like a one-legged duck,’ Olaf put in, smiling fondly. Those who had known Tjorvi – and some who hadn’t – laughed at that.

  ‘Aye,’ Bjarni went on, ‘he was piss-poor but even he had more loot worth taking. Which was why that whoreson Hogni Ketillson paid him a visit one summer. Hogni and his boys carried off two chests full. And what could my uncle do about it?’

  ‘They say poor Tjorvi limped after them,’ Svein the Red said, hitching across the soft ground before the fire pit and grinning like a fiend. The men roared. ‘Until his good foot struck a stone and turned the same way as the lame one!’

  Olaf leant on Sigurd to steady himself. ‘Old Tjorvi has been walking in circles ever since!’

  ‘At least he never gets lost,’ another man added, fuelling the laughter.

  ‘So you did no killing?’ Sigurd asked, serious as the laughter faded.

  ‘We saw no one, lord,’ I said. ‘The Christ brides were hiding in the trees. We took nothing either.’ I added that because I knew why Sigurd was asking. He did not want word of raiders spreading as far as some lord of warriors who might feel strongly enough to come looking for us.

  ‘It was a good thing not taking the goats,’ Bjarni hissed in my ear, rubbing his palms together for warmth. I nodded. And then all our talk was forgotten because Bram was back with Knut, Bothvar, Hastein and Baldred, and hanging by its legs from a sturdy branch, dripping blood, was the largest boar I have ever seen.

  We ate like kings that night. Black Floki’s party returned with a boar too, which had charged Ingolf, so that he had leapt into a thicket which had half flayed him. Still, beneath all the bloody scratches he was grinning now because while the beast was going for him, Floki and the others had speared it. It was a large male but all agreed that Bram’s was bigger and so it was Bram’s party that won the silver. It turned out that the Danes were good shots with their bows for Rolf’s men came back with four hares, and all said it was a feast to make us forget for a while the stinging cold of that damp, desolate place.

  With our stomachs full we built up the fires and men began to settle down for the night, leading blauvifs to their shelters or turning in alone. The wind was building from the north again and Amina was waiting for me and I knew she was naked under the furs. I was on my knees, half inside the shelter and half out, when something tugged at my cloak.

  ‘Fuck off, Egfrith,’ I growled, not wanting thoughts of him to sour my thoughts of what was waiting for me amongst those furs.

  ‘It is important,’ he hissed.

  ‘Amina, stay awake until I get back,’ I said, knowing that she did not understand a word and cursing Egfrith for pulling me back into the cold when I should have been warming up between a beautiful woman’s legs. ‘What do you want, monk?’

  Behind Egfrith the flames stretched themselves into the cold night, their peaks breaking off and vanishing with a flurry of bright sparks. Some of those sparks died in a heartbeat but others surged high into the
darkness. The monk’s face was shadow-shrouded but his bald head glistened and the whites of his eyes glinted, wide with alarm.

  ‘I overheard some of the men talking,’ he said. I must have looked surprised. ‘It is not a difficult tongue to grasp. I am a man of learning,’ he said. ‘Halfdan and Gunnar and some of the Danes plan to go north tomorrow.’

  ‘And?’ I said.

  ‘They want to see the convent for themselves, Raven. You know what that means,’ he hissed.

  I shrugged. ‘What has that to do with me?’ I asked. ‘Or you for that matter?’

  ‘It will not do for men to go there again,’ he said, and from any other man I would have felt the edge of a threat in that voice. ‘Let the good Lord’s servants be about their work unhindered. Tell Halfdan and the others to stay here.’

  ‘And why would I do that, monk? I am not their jarl.’ My mind summoned Amina lying there just a few feet away. So warm. ‘Besides, the Christ brides were not even there. They saw us coming well enough.’ Next time we will have to try harder at stealth, I thought to myself. ‘They’ll be hiding far off in the woods again before Halfdan and the Danes get within a bow-shot.’

  The whites of his eyes vanished for a long moment.

  ‘That’s just it, Raven,’ he hissed. ‘They weren’t hiding in the trees.’ My mind sifted through what we had seen earlier that day, searching for the tracks that the monk, it seemed, had already followed. ‘I cannot say more,’ he rasped.

  ‘You’ll spit out what’s in your mouth or the next thing you’ll hear will be me snoring in there,’ I said, thumbing back to my lean-to. Though snoring was not what I had in mind.

  ‘God help me, I cannot say.’

  I turned my back on him but before I could walk away a hand grasped my shoulder. I turned back to Egfrith. The fire crackled and spat noisily.

  ‘In the church,’ he said, his voice barely more than the whisper of leather shoes on stone.