Thunder God

by Paul Watkins

  At the gates of the Varangian compound, I found Cabal waiting for me. At first, I thought he was there only to say goodbye, but then I saw that he had brought his sword and shield and the leather pack in which he carried a wooden spoon and bowl.

  ‘I have decided to come with you,’ he said. ‘It is too late for my people, but perhaps it is not too late for yours. I am tired of serving my enemies and the time has come to show them the error of their ways.’

  I was glad to have his company.

  We painted our red shields white, as a sign that we had given up our days of soldiering for the Emperor. Then we slung our swords across our backs, picked up our spears and started walking.

  It was said among the Varangian that you never truly knew until you left if leaving was the thing that would break you. And here I was, on the other side of the gates, quietly surprised to find myself unbroken still.

  Bearing the white shields of the ghosts we had become, Cabal and I began our journey north.

  Two months later, we had come as far as Novgorod on the banks of lake Ilmen in northern Russia, buying passage on boats or in carts from one village to the next. And when there was no one to take us, we wore out our shoes on rutted paths which twisted through the dark pine forests.

  It was the beginning of a late summer day when we reached the outskirts of the town. We sat down to rest at the end of a wooden pier, looking down into the green-brown muddy water. We’d been told that a trading boat would dock here soon on its way to Hedeby in the Baltic. If we could catch a ride on this ship, it would take weeks off the journey. Otherwise we would have to travel by land up through Finland and across Sweden. That could take many months and would mean spending the winter in some cold and unfamiliar place.

  We waited for three days. Each morning, passing traders told us that this would be the day. They said the man to look for was named Godfred and to watch for the yellow cross painted on his sail. Meanwhile, a seemingly endless procession of ox-drawn wagons had passed by on their way north, any one of which might have offered us a ride.

  I wanted to be moving. My patience was worn thin.

  Cabal seemed more resigned, as if he knew better than the traders when Godfred would actually appear. He was in no hurry to see where this journey would take him in the end. We had spoken about the possibility that he might travel on to his own country after visiting my own, but he had not yet made up his mind. The journey itself, rather than its destination, seemed to be the purpose of his life.

  Not wanting to miss Godfred’s boat, we took turns wandering into Novgorod, to get food or a drink of the local sludgy brew called ‘samahonka’. In the streets, I heard seven languages, three of which I could not name. It was never quiet in that city and never safe either. I preferred being out by the river, even though it smelled of rotting vegetation and its banks were thick with layers of black mud. We slept among the reeds beside a bullrush fire, which kept the mosquitoes away.

  The smell of that fouled river water clung to my hair and my clothes. It woke me from my sleep with images of drowned men standing over me, dead men who did not know where they were or that they were dead, whispering their ghost words in my face, begging me for answers.

  By the fourth day, I was beginning to wonder if Godfred’s boat would ever appear. We sat on the dock, the sun bearing down upon our shoulder blades. The white paint on our shields forced our eyes shut with the glare. I took the last apple from my pack and rubbed it against the thigh of my trousers before taking a bite and offering it to Cabal. The air was still and swarming with insects. Among the bugs which visited me on their rounds were fat brown horseflies as large as the last joint of my thumb. The moment I gave up trying to shoo them away, one bit me on my calf.

  The pain made me drop my apple, which rolled off the end of the pier and splashed into the river. I swore, got down on my knees and peered through the boards. My apple floated in the greasy water.

  ‘We could go in and get it,’ said Cabal.

  I could tell from his voice he was hungry. I sat back on my haunches and sighed, trying to imagine what it would be like to wade out through the stinking mud to fetch the apple and what it would taste like after being in that filthy water.

  At that moment, a voice called to us.

  I looked up and saw a boat slide into view around the river bend. It was the trader, Godfred, with the yellow cross painted on his sail. On deck was an elderly man with an unkempt beard and flabby arms that jutted from a heavy blue cloak. He had dark rings under his eyes and his skin was olive in complexion. ‘May I join you in worshipping our Holy Father?’ he shouted.

  ‘Our what?’

  ‘Our Holy Father,’ he repeated, smiling.

  ‘He thinks you were praying like a Christian,’ whispered Cabal.

  ‘Have you been baptised yet, my brother?’ asked the flabby man.

  ‘No,’ I replied, ‘I have not.’ I climbed to my feet. I was about to explain his mistake, when I heard him speak again.

  ‘Can I offer you a place on my boat?’

  His crew, which consisted of one pale-faced, spotty boy in an undyed linen tunic, was already throwing ropes over the pilings to tie up at the dock.

  As soon as the ropes were fast, the man climbed onto the sun-bleached planks of the pier. He wore poorly-made sandals which revealed overgrown toenails. He walked straight over to us and rested one hand against each of our chests, in a form of greeting I had never seen before. ‘I am Godfred. I see from your white shields that you are men of peace. You have had enough of the old ways. That is why you must accept the Lord into your life, so you can set out on the road of Christ!’ He shouted the last word of each sentence as if we were deaf. ‘Bound for the Hedeby, by any chance?’ he asked.

  I nodded.

  ‘Then you can ride with us.’

  From Hedeby, it would only be a matter of days to Altvik. I decided he could think whatever he wanted about me kneeling on the dock. ‘How much will it cost?’ I asked.

  He brushed away the thought of money with a sweep of his hand. ‘Being future disciples of the Lord, you have already paid your way.’

  As soon as the old man’s back was turned, the servant rolled his eyes and grinned at us to show what he thought of his master. He led a small shaggy pony off the boat and harnessed it to a cart which he had also brought ashore. Many crucifixes were fixed to the sides of the cart. Some were carved from wood, others from bone, and still others were braided from reeds. They were nailed on haphazardly, some even hanging from the wheel hubs.

  Cabal and I helped unload their cargo of fox pelts, iron buckles and wooden bowls, which had been carved from Russian birch and smoke-hardened so that the soot came away on our hands when we touched them.

  While we stayed behind with the servant, Godfred rode the cart into Novgorod, where he had a regular space in an open air market called the Kubiak.

  The servant lounged on a coil of rope, gnawing on a lump of dried meat and squinting at me suspiciously. He said his name was Yarl. ‘Who tipped you boys off about old Godfred? You do not look like any Christians I have ever seen.’ He nodded at Cabal. ‘Especially you.’

  I told him about the horsefly and the apple.

  He sat up and laughed. ‘He will try to baptise you, you know. Right here in this filthy water. That is his pastime. Baptising people. He owns a book in which he writes all the names of people he has dunked in the name of his God.’

  ‘He will not be dunking me,’ I said.

  ‘Nor me,’ added Cabal. ‘Maybe we should find a different boat.’

  Yarl shrugged his bony shoulders. ‘Why be in such a rush? You will not find a better ship to travel on. You might think him a bit of a fool, and he does have some strange ideas. But he is a good businessman and not the worst boss in the world.’ Yarl wrestled with the piece of the dried meat, teeth clamped and head twisting until he tore loose a mouthful. He spoke as he chewed. ‘So let him baptise you. There are others like him, you see. They run into each other now
and then and compare notes. It is as if they are in competition, and when they die, the one who has converted the most pagans will get the house with the better view up in heaven. At least, I guess that is how it works.’ Yarl was chewing while he talked. Now, having gnawed all the taste out of the lump in his mouth, he spat it over the side. The chewed clump of meat splashed in the water. Rainbows of oil spread around it. He kept talking. ‘Let him think what he wants. Let him write your names in his little book so he can show it to his friends. You need not use your real names. You would not be the first who has travelled with us for the price of a bath with your clothes on. That is what you must do, you know. You have to go out into the water with your clothes on and then he shoves you under and pulls you up again and does a lot of praying. And if you could do him the favour of looking as if you have enjoyed the experience, he would be all the more grateful.’

  I looked at the water slithering past and imagined how it would be – walking down through the reeds, feet sinking in the riverbank slime, grimacing as I allowed my face to be lowered towards the dingy water.

  Cabal was thinking the same thing. ‘I cannot do it,’ he said.

  ‘I wonder if you will still say that after six more months on the road.’

  ‘We will let you know,’ I said. I got up off the deck, feeling my knee joints complain.

  Yarl motioned me to sit. ‘Godfred has offered you the ride. He has set his mind on making you a Christian. He thinks it is a sign.’

  ‘What kind of sign?’ asked Cabal.

  ‘He is always interpreting things, you see. Nothing is ever simply what it is. Everything he sees is some miracle or wonder. His God is always talking to him, or he is always talking to himself, depending on how you want to look at it.’ Yarl held his hand up at the sky, to block the sun from his face. ‘You might think it is madness that he should conjure up that story about your turning to Christianity after a life of soldiering in the name of some heathen god, but that is the way he sees it. He catches sight of you praying, or doing what he thinks is praying, and his mind just runs away with itself. He is quite harmless, and you will not go hungry. You will just have to listen to him going on about his church. You can just pretend you are listening. That is what I do. I am good at looking interested.’ He set his jaw, narrowed his eyes and nodded slowly to demonstrate this talent.

  ‘So you are not Christian, either,’ I said.

  ‘The only thing his God has done for me is to give me something to swear at. I am no Christian. I am just a boy who has a decent job and wants to keep it.’

  ‘How long have you been with him?’ asked Cabal.

  Yarl breathed in deeply and let his breath trail out. ‘Most of my life. We have travelled all over. Once, because of some bright idea of his, we went so far out into the ocean that I thought we would never come back.’

  ‘But here you are,’ said Cabal.

  Yarl nodded. ‘And perhaps I have his God to thank for that, but I think it was our bearing dial that saved us.’

  ‘What is a bearing dial?’ I asked.

  ‘Godfred bought it off an Arab trader years ago. It can tell you which way your are headed if you know how to use it.’

  Most sailors could only navigate on East/West lines, watching the movements of the sun or moon. Navigating North and South was always left to guesswork.

  ‘I would like to see this bearing dial,’ said Cabal.

  Yarl nodded. ‘So would many, but Godfred would pound my head flat with that big book of his if I brought it from its hiding place. He does not like people to know he has it. Godfred would prefer we all believed that God was his only tool for navigation.’

  We let the matter drop.

  Cabal and I eased ourselves back down onto the ropes and accepted the gnarled fist of dried meat which Yarl held out for us to taste.

  ‘What were you looking for out there in the middle of the ocean?’ I asked.

  ‘Godfred had it in his head that if we just kept sailing, we would eventually reach another country and that there were sure to be people there. And then he could convert them all at the same time. He was dead set on it. I thought he was going to get us both killed.’

  Cabal stopped gnawing at the meat long enough to ask, ‘What did you find?’

  ‘In two weeks of sailing all we found was more ocean.’

  ‘But there is land out there,’ I told him. ‘The Faeroes. Iceland. Greenland.’

  ‘We were well south of that.’ He shook his head. ‘I tell you I thought we were dead.’

  ‘What made him change his mind about turning back?’

  Yarl shrugged and looked uncomfortable. ‘If you want to know the truth, I poisoned his food.’ Then he added quickly, ‘Just a little, mind. Just enough to make him think about saving the life he has now, instead of worrying about the next one, which is what he does most of the time. I had enough worry for the both of us, anyway, what with thinking we were going to sail off the end of the world. The funny thing is,’ he continued, ‘that once we started back, we found something floating in the water that made me think there might be people out there after all.’ He went into the hold and returned with something wrapped in a piece of blanket. It was about half the length of his arm. When he unrolled the blanket, a heavy piece of wood, studded with old barnacles and drilled by worms, fell out onto the deck. It had been a long time in the water.

  I could not see what was so special about the log, but then Yarl rolled it over with his foot and I found myself looking at the carved shape of a man, his knees drawn up and hands folded across his chest. The face was long, with deep-set eyes, a powerful, jutting nose and an unsmiling mouth. I picked it up. The hollow barnacles dug into the pads of my fingertips. ‘This could have come from anywhere,’ I said but did not manage to convince myself. There was a sullen anger in the crouching figure, as if it had been pitched into the sea on purpose, to take away some wretchedness from the people who had made it.

  Cabal pushed it away with his foot.

  ‘You see?’ Yarl picked up the end of the blanket and tossed it over the wooden face. ‘There is something wrong with it.’ He bundled up the statue and carried it back to its place in the hold. When he reappeared, he was wiping his hands on his clothes. ‘I don’t even like to touch the thing.’

  ‘If it troubles you so much, why not just burn it?’ asked Cabal.

  ‘Godfred will not let me. He does not like it any more than I do. He is afraid to keep it and afraid to throw it away. He worries that it will do something bad to him, and for once I agree with the old man.’

  At that moment, we all paused to watch a dead sheep bobbing downstream, legs stiff and belly bloated.

  ‘Baptised once too often,’ said Cabal.

  When Godfred returned from Novgorod that evening, his cart was empty. He carried money in two large leather purses around his neck, which made his chest bulge as if he had breasts. He immediately began lecturing us about the True Faith and how it would Welcome us and how he would be Pleased to act as our Spiritual Guide. Godfred set his arm around Cabal, or tried to since he could not reach the whole way around Cabal’s back. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘Let me baptise you now.’

  ‘No,’ said Cabal, with a voice of limited patience. ‘I am no Christian.’

  I bent down to pick up my gear. ‘We had best be going.’ The idea of reaching Hedeby in such a short space of time evaporated. In its place came thoughts of long days spent walking the mud-tracked forests of the north.

  For a moment, Godfred seemed lost in thought. Then he smiled cheerfully. ‘Come anyway,’ he said . ‘A Norseman and a Celt together. It would be my greatest triumph. At least allow me to try and convince you. If I cannot, what harm is done?’

  That much we could live with, so we brought our gear on board.

  It wasn’t long before we reached the Baltic, making good progress towards Hedeby. The ship was faster than it looked.

  Yarl turned out to be a good crewman. He tended to Godfred’s fragile stomach, taking
great care with his meals and bundling him in extra clothes when the old man did not dress himself warmly enough. To these attentions Godfred seemed mostly ignorant, convinced that he was sheltered by a greater power than his spotty-faced servant boy. Yarl cheerfully endured the man’s ingratitude, as he was clearly fond of his master.

  In spite of myself, I grew fond of him, too.

  Godfred spent most of his energy on Cabal, whom he led up and down the deck, holding his arm like an old woman being led across a patch of stony ground. With his free hand, Godfred swatted the air as he made his case for Christianity.

  Cabal tilted his head over and listened intently.

  I wondered if Godfred might actually convert him, but then Cabal winked at me and I knew he was just wearing down the old man.

  The only time of day in which I dreaded Godfred’s company was the evening meal. He preached to us across the table, in a spray of holiness and breadcrumbs. Godfred was determined to convert us before we reached Hedeby. ‘How can you not doubt your gods?’ he asked. ‘They are so crude, so changeable.’

  ‘They are more like we who pray to them, perhaps,’ said Cabal.

  ‘Exactly!’ he bounced his fleshy fist off the table. ‘Why not have one perfect, faultless god? Why live in the shadow of doubt?’

  I sat back and puffed my cheeks. ‘I do not doubt my faith in them.’

  ‘And what do you intend to do when you reach home? Do you think you can personally hold back the force of an entire religion?’

  ‘I am not trying to hold back a new religion. I am only trying to do my duty to an older one.’

  ‘But what good can one man do?’

  ‘Jesus was only one person,’ said Cabal, and left the table, rather than lose his temper with the old man.

  Godfred wagged a stubby finger in my face. ‘So you see yourself as prophets?’