by Paul Watkins
Nobody objected. They were too busy staring at the size of him.
My eyes drifted from Cabal to the beach, where I spotted a tall woman running out across the sand towards me. I knew immediately that it was Kari, from the black hair and bright blue eyes. Her skin was freckled and pale, and her high cheekbones, which had been the rounded cheeks of a child the last time I saw them, cut sharper angles now.
I tried to say her name but the breath caught in my throat.
Then Olaf was standing in front of me, tugging at the bolt of cloth in my hands. ‘Let go!’ he grumbled. ‘What is the matter with you?’
I dropped the cloth and climbed over the table.
‘Mind the merchandise!’ shouted Olaf.
As I put my arms around her I knew I had prepared for anything but this. I had thought about it a thousand times, but I had not prepared for it. I had prepared for Olaf being the same person who could not see beyond the tasks he had set himself, whether it was hunting for the creatures of the underworld or selling pots of honey to old ladies. I had prepared for the stares of those who had, in their minds, already buried me long ago. For the deaths of my parents and the fact that the town had never recovered from the raid, I had prepared.
But to embrace Kari, and have her be my own flesh and blood and at the same time a total stranger, and what the sight of her would do to my mind and to my heart, I had not come close to understanding in the years I had been gone. Even now, I could not grasp it. The enormity of this could settle only slowly in my bones. Until then, there was nothing to do but get on with the uncountable small details of returning to life in this town.
We held each other for a long time. The bustle of the market swirled around us.
When she stood back, still holding onto my arms, the tears were running down her face. ‘You have heard about our parents,’ she said.
I nodded, blinking the tears from my own eyes. These were the first tears I had shed in as long as I could recall.
‘Are you going to help at all?’ Olaf shouted after Cabal, who had gone to buy himself some more to eat.
The women rummaged carelessly through bolts of wool that Olaf had stacked in neat piles on one table. They weighed the cloth in their hands, brought it close to their faces to smell the wool, then rubbed it between their fingers, even plucking a few strands to put in their mouths.
‘Stop doing that!’ shouted Olaf.
The women ignored him.
‘You are working for Olaf?’ asked Kari.
‘For now.’
She laughed and wiped her eyes. ‘Well, you are braver than most.’
‘Will somebody help me get rid of these empty crates!’ Olaf shouted.
Kari turned and pointed to a house about half way up the hill. ‘That is where I live. Come and find me when you are done. We have waited this long. One morning longer will not matter.’
Reluctantly, I returned to the tables. The tears kept coming to my eyes.
Olaf thumped an empty crate down in front of me. ‘Could you kindly tell your enormous friend that I am not paying him to talk to people who are not even customers. We have work to do!’
I could not find it in myself to be angry at his impatience. Olaf had not been patient as a child, and he was no different now. I reached across and patted him on the shoulder. ‘It is good to see you have not changed. Now what do you want done with this crate?’
‘Take them over to Ingolf and tell him to bring me a slice of lamb, which I do not expect to pay for since he is using my wood for his fire.’
I carried the splintery crates over to the fire.
Cabal was still talking to Ingolf. When he caught sight of me, he frowned. ‘You did not introduce me to your sister.’
‘I forgot. I am sorry.’ I set the crates down on the sand.
‘She is very beautiful,’ he said, with a mouthful of food. ‘Are you sure she is your sister?’
Ingolf wiped his greasy palms on his apron, leaving two burnished marks in the leather, like a pair of inverted horns that curved down the sides of his belly. He picked up the crates I had brought and threw them on the fire. ‘I expect none of this is coming free,’ he said.
‘No,’ I replied, and delivered Olaf’s message.
‘Well, that is no surprise,’ he grumbled, and spat into the crackling flames.
*
The rest of the morning passed in a blur.
By midday, most of the dealing had been done. In twos and threes, the crowd made their way back up the beach. Some compared with each other the trinkets they had bought and the prices they had paid. Others strutted home with their goods tucked into woven-reed baskets, as if afraid they might be robbed by jealous neighbors. The only ones left were those who could not make up their minds what to buy. They slinked around the tables, tortured by their indecision as we packed our things away.
One of these was Ingolf. When nothing remained of the lamb, he tossed the bones into the fire and came over to inspect Olaf’s tables. Ingolf pulled at his rubbery chin and ran his fingers frustratedly through his thinning hair, fussing over what to get, although in the end he bought nothing and eventually went home.
As Olaf and I packed up the things which had not sold, he told me some more about Ingolf and Tola. She made up for Ingolf’s lack of business sense with a tightfistedness that was unnerving even to Olaf, whose own fists seemed tight enough. Under Tola’s eye, no one could leave the alehouse without paying. There was no credit, even if you had been going there for years and only lived across the street. It was Tola who decided when the place should close each night, otherwise it might never have closed and Ingolf most likely would have slept on top of the bar, alongside his satisfied customers.
According to Olaf, the fact that Tola was not liked had less to do with her strictness than the way she treated her son. ‘She makes sarcastic comments about him being timid, overweight and weak. She says these things in public, right in front of him. When arm-wrestling competitions start up at the alehouse, she asks him in a loud voice why he is not taking part. So, of course Ingolf joins in, and when he loses she makes fun of him. He hates her for never letting him grow up as much as he hates himself for never having the courage to move out on his own. Of course, he cannot bring himself to say any of that, but he is not as feeble as he seems. He uses that helplessness of his just as well as she uses her sharp tongue.’
Olaf went on to explain the way Ingolf had of getting back at his mother for her pestering, which was to buy useless objects from Olaf. These included gaudy arm rings, heavy bead necklaces, soapstone carvings of polar bears, anything in fact, that would annoy his frugal-minded mother. Ingolf’s greatest triumph so far was a small bronze statue of a man with cat-like eyes and earrings, sitting cross legged and holding out one arm, from which the hand had broken off. Olaf had bought it in Birka from a trader who had found it someplace in the Caucasus. Neither of them had any idea who the statue was supposed to be, which made it completely useless. Of course, Olaf persuaded Ingolf to buy the thing as a present for Tola.
As word of this ridiculous purchase spread through the town, the only way for Tola to save face was to pretend she liked the statue. So she put it on display behind the counter at the alehouse, and Olaf never passed up the opportunity to tell Tola what a nice little sculpture it was.
*
Once Cabal and I had packed away the tables, Olaf pressed a few coins into our hands.
Both Cabal and I dropped them in our pockets without looking.
‘You are not going to see how much I paid you?’
‘We trust you,’ said Cabal. It was easier than explaining that this was a habit from our days in Miklagard, when it would have been considered an insult to examine any money we were paid.
He raised his eyebrows. Then he handed us each another coin. ‘I am not used to being trusted,’ he said.
‘Do you need us for work tomorrow?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘Soon,’ he said, ‘but not that soon.’ With a q
uick nod, he set off up the hill towards his home, the bloated money bag clinking against his chest.
*
I brought Cabal to Kari’s house. We knocked on the door and stood back.
‘Should I comb my hair?’ asked Cabal.
I looked at the tangle which hung down over his eyes. ‘Too late now.’
Cabal raked his fingers through his hair and then got one of his fingers stuck in a knot. He was still trying to untangle it when Kari opened the door.
She stared at Cabal, whose hand was pinned to the side of his head like someone trying to remember something important.
With a grunt, Cabal wrenched his fingers loose, tearing out a small tuft of hair. ‘I am your brother’s friend,’ he said, his voice too loud for the small space that separated him from Kari.
‘Then you had better both come in,’ said Kari, and stood aside to let us pass.
The house smelled sweet and dry inside. The ceiling beams were hung with bundles of drying plants. It looked like an upside down forest, flecked with the faded pinks and blues and yellows of meadow flowers. All along the walls were earthenware pots filled with crumbled herbs. Around them, the floor had been neatly swept, the sandy ground ridged by the twigs of her broom. Kindling lay stacked on the hearth. A pot filled with dried stockfish simmered above the smouldering fire, ready for dinner. On a table beside it, deep-green fronds of dill weed used for seasoning were heaped in a bowl.
An oil lamp illuminated a table by the fireplace, where Kari had been sitting before we arrived. Warm and watery light rippled across the walls.
For the rest of the day, Cabal and I sat around the table, telling of our years in the Varangian. To most of our descriptions, Kari only smiled and laughed, as if unsure whether to believe them.
Often I got up and walked about, forming with my outstretched fingers the great dome of the Hagia Sofia, or the smooth walls of the Emperor’s palace, or the humped back of a camel.
‘You remind me of your father,’ she said, ‘the way you talk with your hands.’
The person she brought to mind for me was not my mother or my father but myself. I saw my own face in the line of her brow, in her nose and in her lips. I had never cared about such things when I was young but now they seemed pricelessly important. To see this echo of my features made me realise that no matter how long I had been away from this place, and how little remained of my family, I did belong here after all.
When I told Kari of the promise I had made to Tostig, she only replied, ‘This town has been without a priest for a long time.’ She listened more than she spoke that day, having fewer stories to relate. But even in the little that she told – of rivalries and money made and lost, of unlikely marriages which endured beyond all expectations, of children born and grown and moved away – I saw she understood even the subtlest ebb and flow of life inside this town. When I heard her talk, I would have traded all the unforgettable things that I had lived and seen for even half the quiet memories that she possessed.
By the afternoon, I had so exhausted myself that I fell asleep in front of the fire. When I woke, Cabal was pointing to the herbs and Kari was naming them, and telling him the use for each one.
I drifted in and out of sleep, waking now and then to see Kari and Cabal still talking.
A bowl of milk simmered by the fireplace.
More sleep.
Now Cabal was tapping his finger on the surface of the table to make a point, leaning towards her and speaking in an urgent whisper. Whatever he was saying, he had her full attention.
Then the warmth of the fire lulled me back into my dreams.
When my eyes opened again, Cabal was telling Kari about throwing the fish bones in the air at the market place in Miklagard. He flicked his wrist with the precise movement of sending the fish up to the waiting gulls.
Kari sat back and laughed, showing her strong, white teeth.
Cabal had lost his nervousness. The wide, innocent look on his face revealed the gentleness that had made him my friend all these years.
When they noticed I was awake, their conversation died away. Cabal walked over and handed me the milk, thumb hooked over the edge of the bowl. When I took the bowl, he wiped his hand on his trousers, which were so dirty that they had a black shine like old iron.
Soon it was time to go. The day was over. Kari offered to let us stay at her house, but we politely refused, as there was not enough room.
At the door, she embraced me and then, to Cabal’s surprise, she hugged him too.
Hesitantly, he patted her back.
Cabal and I returned to the tumbledown remains of my parents’ house. We lit a big fire and lay down beside it, but could not fall asleep. We talked long into the night, speaking of things we had not dared to tell Kari. Some were of the impossible cruelties we had both seen and done. Others were so tangled in the details of life among the Varangian as to make them indecipherable to anyone who was not there. With these stories, we reminded each other of the hard times we had shared, in the hopes that they all lay behind us now.
*
At sunrise the next morning, I was awakened by the sound of someone pounding on the door.
I had managed to clear off the old sleeping benches and spent the night lying on a ragged sheepskin which I had picked up in Starya Ladoga. The pelt had not been properly tanned and clumps of wool had started to come loose. It looked as if snow had fallen on me in the night.
Cabal still preferred the floor, where he was closer to the fire. Now, in his bare feet, he stepped across the cold flagstones and swung the door wide. He had forgotten that the door was not attached to its hinges and it fell back on top of him. He heaved it to the side and light poured in like water.
Guthrun stood in the doorway. Age had woven spiderwebs across his face. His pale grey eyes seemed out of place framed by such weatherbeaten skin. He looked at Cabal and muttered with astonishment. ‘I was … I was looking …’
‘He is here,’ said Cabal.
I sat up from my bed. Flecks of sheepskin drifted to the ground. ‘Guthrun,’ I said.
‘I knew you were not dead,’ he replied, his voice so rough and deep it seemed to come from somewhere in his belly. He walked over to me, set his hands on my shoulders and squeezed the blood out of my arms. ‘I knew you would come back.’
‘I heard you might have use for an apprentice,’ I told him.
He let go of my shoulders and stepped back. ‘The truth is,’ he said, ‘I no longer need one.’
I felt my heart sink. In talking with Olaf, I had allowed my hopes to build too high. ‘No. After all this time. Of course not. But surely there is some way I can make myself useful.’
‘What I need,’ he said, ‘is for you to take over from me. Now. Today.’
My disappointment spun back upon itself with such a violent turn that for a moment, I lost my sense of balance. At the same time, as Guthrun’s words sank in, I felt the loosening of muscles clenched so long I had mistaken them for bone.
He tapped a finger against my chest. ‘You are still wearing the hammer that Tostig gave you.’
A picture of Halfdan’s corpse splashed across my eyes. Blood had sealed a layer of dust against the dead man’s face so that it appeared to be only the cast of a face, hollow and crumbling. I remembered how it felt to clasp the black hammer in my hand and the way the old cord came apart when I tugged at it, slithering from around his neck like a baby snake.
‘I am on my way up to the temple now,’ said Guthrun. ‘Today we mark –’
‘The Turning of the Sun,’ I told him.
‘I may have less to teach you than I thought,’ he said.
Leaving Cabal to finish his sleep, Guthrun and I made our way up through the village and out across the field. The Grimsvoss rose above us in a wall of fractured rock and ice, and we narrowed our eyes at the glaring whiteness of the distant snowfields. At last, we came to the end of the fields, where the earth gave way to cracked stones cast down like crumbled sleep from the
eyes of the mountains. Patches of dirty snow clung to hollows where the sun could not reach. Old ice hugged the mountainside, rippled hard like muscle and glimmering a deep mysterious blue, as if light were radiating from somewhere far beneath its skin. Above us, the frozen ground seemed to bulge out like the stomach of a sleeping giant, and wisps of powdered snow whirled across the blinding white. Above the jagged peaks, the sky was vivid blue, like salt thrown in a fire.
We stopped outside the temple. Wind moaned around the empty doorframe.
‘I have not kept up with repairs,’ he said quietly. ‘After Tostig left, I tried to carry on as he had done, but Olaf spoke out against me. He said he should have been chosen to serve as Tostig’s apprentice, and that since both you and Tostig were gone, and I was left to run the temple, he should be chosen in your place.’
‘Why did you refuse?’
‘For two reasons. Firstly because it was not in my power to question Tostig’s choice, and, secondly, because I knew you would come back some day. I was sure of it. And you see I was right. I told Olaf, and the rest of the town as well, that the only way I would hand over the temple to him was if you came back and refused to run it yourself. That, you can be sure, is the only reason he offered you a ride back on his boat. He may have thrown all his energy into being a merchant, but what he most cares about is the one thing he has ever been denied, and that is to be a priest.’
‘He has said nothing to me about it.’
‘But he will. He is just waiting for the right moment to approach you. One thing I will say for Olaf, he never gives up. For years now, he has been ridiculing me, saying I have neither the strength nor the faith nor the favour of the gods that a priest requires. I tried to ignore him, but others did not. They stopped coming. One day, I found myself alone up here. Never in all my days with Tostig had we performed the rites by ourselves. After that, I no longer had the energy to maintain the place, and nobody else seemed to care what happened to it.’
