Thunder God

by Paul Watkins

  ‘I always find them,’ bragged Olaf. ‘They recognise my ship and light fires when they see me off the coast.’

  ‘I always wondered how someone like you came by a ship like that,’ said Boe.

  Olaf launched into a long-winded explanation about how he had won the Drakkar gambling up in Nidarnes.

  I did not believe that story. It seemed to me that Olaf valued what he owned too much to risk it on any game of chance.

  ‘It will be coming up for sale soon,’ said Olaf. ‘You might be interested in a purchase.’

  ‘So that is why you brought me here. Is there something wrong with the ship? Is that why you are selling it?’

  ‘No, but I will not be travelling as much after I have taken over as priest at the temple here.’

  I saw Cabal blink at me from the shadows.

  I shrugged and shook my head.

  Boe’s look of sly suspicion was now replaced by one of curiosity. ‘I did not know you had the makings of a priest.’

  ‘Being made a priest,’ said Olaf, leaning forward across the table, ‘is like being given the key to a lock. You either have the key, or you do not. And when I have that key, as I soon will, this town will finally show me the respect I deserve.’

  Ingolf was mopping the tables with a cloth rag, then wringing a stream of grey water into a bucket. He looked across at me and smiled.

  But Olaf still hadn’t noticed me and Cabal in the corner. ‘My foster-father was a priest.’ he continued. ‘He was going to make me his apprentice, but things went wrong at the last moment …’

  ‘What things?’ asked Boe.

  ‘Just things!’ barked Olaf. ‘Do you have to keep interrupting?’

  Boe sighed and shook his head. ‘I have to catch the tide,’ he said, resting his knuckles on the table and raising himself to his feet.

  ‘You had a good audience tonight,’ said Ingolf, after Boe had disappeared into the night.

  ‘It is not my fault he was the only one here,’ muttered Olaf, ‘and did you stop to wonder if that might have something to do with your latest batch of ale?’

  ‘Ah, but he was not the only one here.’ Ingolf nodded towards where I sat in the shadows, my face lit only by the pale embers of the fire.

  Olaf peered into the dark. Then, seeing Cabal and me, he let his breath escape in a slow embarrassed hiss.

  Ingolf laughed. ‘What do you have to say now?’

  Olaf scratched some sweat off his forehead with his thumbnail. ‘It was just talk.’ Then he coughed up a laugh. ‘Was that not obvious? I had to give him a reason for selling my boat. He needs to think he is taking advantage of me or he will never part with his money.’ His eyes shone in the dark, like two coins resting in the sockets of his skull.

  Cabal and I walked back up the hill in silence. Only when we were lying in our beds, Cabal by the fire as usual and me on my bench, half buried under sheepskins, did either of us speak.

  ‘It was not just talk,’ said Cabal, ‘and that is not the only thing which was obvious.’

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  ‘Was Olaf right when he said that being made a priest is like being given a key that opens a door and reveals everything?’

  I had never tried to explain what he was asking. Now I answered slowly and carefully. ‘Simply being declared a priest will bring him nothing. Nor will the black stone hammer, nor even the rock beneath the temple, grant him the knowledge he is seeking. It is not like a key. It is like trying to learn a language in which the words for things keep changing. You pass through veil after veil of complexity, until at last you realise that it is not a language of words. Only then do things become clear.’

  Cabal sighed. ‘Then he will never find what he is looking for. All that he has found is a way to blame you for his not becoming a priest, and he will find a way to blame you for his failure if he ever does become one. You had better change his thinking, before you have to scrape that white paint off your shield.’

  *

  The next morning, I told Cabal I was going to see Kari. I wanted to talk to her about Olaf.

  Cabal remained in bed, saying he would stop by later.

  When Kari came to the door, she held a bowl of pea-pods tucked in the crook of her arm. She split each pod by drawing her thumb down the centre, which sent the pale green balls bouncing softly into the wooden bowl.

  ‘Is Cabal not with you?’ she asked.

  ‘He is coming soon,’ I replied. ‘He has not been sleeping well.’ Then I raised my eyebrows and she swatted me.

  Inside, I navigated past the hanging bundles of plants and sat down at the table. Kari poured some milk into an iron pot. Still with her back to me, she asked, ‘Has Cabal spoken to you?’

  ‘He has.’

  ‘There is no telling how things will go,’ she said. ‘The longer you live alone, the harder it is to imagine not being alone. You learn to live without the uncertainty that comes from two people trying to make a life together.’

  ‘Kari,’ I said. ‘I know.’

  She turned, smiling with relief. ‘Yes, you do.’ She brought the milk to the table. From a basket woven of straw, she took a piece of honeycomb and placed it in the milk. The honeycomb bobbed in the steaming milk, sweetening the steam that rose from its ivory surface. ‘It is strange,’ she said. ‘For the first time, I know how Olaf felt when we all walked across the fields together. How much he wanted to be sure. It is the same for me now. I wish I could be sure but, of course, it is beyond my grasp to know.’

  ‘Olaf is still grasping,’ I said, and told her about what I had heard in the alehouse the night before. ‘He is going be disappointed if he thinks that is how things will go.’

  Kari sighed. ‘He has been repeating the same story for so long that he has made a mockery of himself in this town. You saw it with those women on the beach and how they treated him. His success as a merchant has brought him wealth but not respect. No one takes him seriously any more.’

  ‘But he takes himself seriously.’

  She slid the bowl across to me. ‘That he does.’

  We passed the warm bowl back and forth, sipping at the sweetened milk. ‘Olaf,’ she began with a sigh, ‘has always felt that Tostig betrayed him. Seeing you again, he has allowed false hopes to grow inside that he might set things straight once and for all. It will take time for him to set those hopes aside.’ She set the bowl gently before me and wiped a drip of milk from her chin. ‘Do not forget that he was once your closest friend and what drove you apart was not the fault of either one of you. You will be friends again, if you can only remember what brought you together in the first place.’

  *

  When I returned to the house, I found Cabal sitting in a chair, holding a knife, surrounded by clumps of his own hair. What remained on his head was a strange and rumpled mass, which no amount of combing would undo. He had also trimmed his beard, with little more success.

  ‘How does it look?’ he asked, hopefully. Then, when I did not reply at once, he said, ‘Oh, no.’

  It was only then that I noticed he was wearing a new set of clothes. He had on a shirt of undyed linen, a vest of densely-woven dark-blue cloth with black horn buttons, and a pair of brown wool trousers, which were tight around his bulging calves.

  ‘You could almost pass for a Norseman,’ I said.

  He gestured at his old garments, which lay in a heap in the corner. ‘It was time for a change,’ he said. Cabal’s old gear had once been very fine, made for him in Miklagard by a Magyar named Berezanos. The old man had a long white beard, which he forked and tied behind his neck when he was taking measurements. Rolls of silk hung like veils inside his shop, filling the room with soft greens and reds and blues.

  Like the clothing of all Varangians, Cabal’s had been a mix of the old Norse style and the more colourful, baggier clothing of the Byzantines and Rus. At Cabal’s request, Berezanos had fitted his tunic with extra pockets and quilted padding across the shoulders to take the rub of the sword slung on h
is back. But it was all in ruins now, stitching gone and padding bursting from its seams, which had made him look like a torn pillow.

  ‘You could do with some new clothes yourself,’ he said.

  I glanced at the wreckage of my shoes. One of my toes was sticking out. The leather of my sweat-burnished vest had suffered in the salty breeze and the bone buttons were dried and cracked. ‘Never mind the way I look,’ I told him. ‘Give me that knife.’

  I took the blade from Cabal’s hand and, carefully, I cut his hair to an even length. Although I had no more experience than he did, at least I could see what I was doing. My thoughts returned to a time when Kari had cut my own hair, right where Cabal and I were now. I remembered how carefully she worked, and the way I had closed my eyes when she brought her face so close to mine, eyes hard with concentration, that I could not focus on her. There was a moment when she picked up a piece of my hair and set it in my hand, and for a long time I studied the coppery threads. Afterwards, we had gathered the cut hair and burned it, as if sprinkling dried strands of fire on the flames.

  ‘Next time,’ I said, ‘let Kari do this for you.’

  He grunted in agreement.

  When I had done all I could do, I set down the knife. ‘It is ready,’ I said.

  Slowly, Cabal rose to his feet.

  ‘Now go,’ I told him, ‘and make a good impression on my sister.’

  ‘I plan to,’ said Cabal and, squaring his shoulders, he strode out of the house.

  Two days later, Olaf and I set sail on the mid-summer trading run.

  Cabal stayed behind. He did not need to offer an excuse. It was no secret that Cabal and Olaf did not get along. Cabal preferred to spend his days with Kari now, although he continued to live with me in my parents’ house. Word had already begun to spread that he was settling here. People were flattered that he had fallen in love with the place and with the woman who they thought would never fall in love herself. Like the Varangian, they believed he was lucky, possessing powers beyond those of ordinary people. His knowledge of plants, the news of which had also spread, seemed only to confirm that he and Kari were well-matched.

  The mid-summer run was Olaf’s biggest journey of the year, and every business in town depended on its success. The ship had been provisioned with water and food, then loaded with Altvik’s carded wool, dried fish and sheepskins.

  As we headed out towards the mouth of the bay, I manned the steerboard while Olaf trimmed the sail. The ocean beyond glittered like a field of broken glass.

  Looking back, I saw Guthrun up on the roof of his house. He would take care of the temple while I was gone. When Guthrun waved goodbye, I drew my rune-carved sword and held it above my head. Its bright blade flashed in the sun.

  The pink flecks of raised hands, like cat tongues, dotted the beach as people waved goodbye.

  It was then that I saw Kari and Cabal, standing on the wall behind her house, watching us leave the bay. Kari’s long hair streamed in the wind.

  ‘They wasted no time,’ said Olaf.

  ‘They have none to waste,’ I replied. ‘We are not children any more.’

  Soon the rooftops of the town had vanished beneath the waves. All we could see was the buttercupped green of the grazing fields, dotted with white puffs of sheep. Above, snow on the Grimsvoss gleamed so purely in the sun that it was painful to my sight, branding the outline of the peaks onto the blindness of my closing eyes.

  Olaf and I headed north as far as the Lofoten Islands, where there was a trader named Grim with whom Olaf liked to deal. Grim’s family had been there for many years, each generation handing down that strange name to another boy. There had been eight or nine Grims in all, and Olaf had known three of them. According to Olaf, the one who lived there now was the last of the line. ‘When you see him, you will know why,’ he told me.

  The island where Grim lived looked like the blade of a broken knife, rising sheer and jagged from the waves. At a distance, it seemed uninhabited, but Olaf steered us through a narrow fjord, which opened out onto a gently sloping field. There, a farmhouse nestled in the shadow of the cliffs. Neatly-made stone walls spread out around it, the lush grass dotted with sheep.

  We sailed in to a small harbour. By the time we had dropped anchor, rowed ashore and dragged our boat clear of the tideline, we were covered in sweat.

  Then a small man appeared from a tangled grove of trees where the grass gave way to sand and rock. He set out across the beach towards us. Behind him galloped two huge hounds, the likes of which I had never seen before. Their pale brown fur was short and tightly curled, with legs that seemed borrowed from ponies.

  ‘Whenever a ship comes in,’ Olaf muttered from the corner of his mouth, ‘Grim hides in those bushes until he knows it is safe to come out. He is a wealthy man, fabulously rich, but he trusts no one and prefers the company of dogs to men.’

  As Grim approached, he seemed to be growing smaller. It was only when he stood in front of me that I realised how tiny he was. I wondered if this could even be the right person, since he did not appear to be a wealthy man. But, from the look on Olaf’s face, painfully eager to please, I knew this must be him. Grim wore a cape made from old sail cloth, which was tied with a piece of string around his shoulders. The rest of his clothing, including his shoes, consisted of poorly-tanned seal fur. A combination of smoke, dirt and the wind-dug wrinkles on his face made his skin look like the bark of an old apple tree. Several teeth were missing. Those that remained were long in his drawn-back gums. He wore his hair short, with two small braids that stuck out to the sides, so that he resembled a goat with its horns upside down. He had not cut his hair but instead had burned it to the length he desired. The ends were brittle and crumbly.

  With great solemnity Olaf introduced me to Grim.

  He jerked his head forward in a little bow.

  I was so much taller than this man that I felt I ought to get down on one knee and speak to him as if he were a child.

  The hounds sniffed at us and growled.

  ‘They’ll eat you if I tell them to,’ he told me.

  He led us up to his house. The place was set into a hummock in the earth, built to stand the winds and winter storms. The door was made of driftwood held between two iron cross bars set on rusted hinges. To keep out the wind, hides plated the other side of the door.

  Inside, the stone-paved floor was dry and warm, thanks to a peat fire he had burning. The whole place smelled of soot and sweat and mutton.

  We sat down at a table made of one large piece of slate with gnarled driftwood for legs, while Grim heated up some lamb stew in an iron pot. The lamb bones rattled around the bottom as he stirred it. He picked one out and sucked at the marrow until it was hollow, then tossed it to the hounds, who cracked the bones to splinters in their jaws.

  Grim set one bowl of stew in front of us and brought out three wooden spoons from a box made of birch bark. We each took turns ladelling up the hot and greasy liquid, washing it down with a bucket of peat-tinted water brought in from a stream behind his house.

  Grim told me his people had come from the mainland. ‘I forget how many years ago,’ he said. ‘We used to keep count, but then we stopped.’ He glanced up at one of the cross beams of the roof, where neat rows of lines had been cut into the wood.

  Grim’s wife had been gone for many years. That was the way he said it. Gone.

  As if suddenly shy to have made this confession, he looked down and wiggled his toes in his worn-out sealskin boots. This movement made the boots look like two small furry animals trying to crawl up his filthy trouser legs.

  I did not know if this meant his wife was dead or if she had left him. Grim kept what he called a picture of her propped up in the corner. It was no more than the outline of a face, scratched onto a piece of slate. But to Grim it was the mirror image of his wife, and he gazed at it with softening eyes.

  There was no talk of business that night, which seemed to be the way of doing things with Grim.

  Olaf
and I slept on his table, while Grim curled up with his dogs beside the fire. The next morning, Grim led us out to his storage sheds, which were crammed with walrus tusks, cord made from seal leather and feathers from arctic birds, all of which Grim had bought from the Lapps. From Olaf’s ship, we brought in wool and sheepkins, and I sat with the hounds while Olaf and Grim bargained back and forth for the remainder of the day.

  By the time we were finished, it was evening. Olaf said we should be going and Grim did not invite us to stay.

  He walked us down to the beach. The tide was going out and he stopped to look in rockpools, stooping over now and then to pick out a mussel, which he cracked on the rocks and ate raw.

  As we rowed out to the Drakkar, Grim raised his hand once, showing the pale web of his palm. Then he turned and headed back to his house, moving with the same stride as the hounds which followed him.

  We sailed towards the mainland, hoping to find the Lapps, so we might trade with them ourselves. As Grim’s island faded into the mist Olaf spoke with great admiration for the old man. He seemed to find nobility in the wretched state in which Grim was prepared to live, despite the wealth he possessed.

  Olaf profited greatly from his visits with Grim, but whenever he could he liked to trade directly with the Lapps. This was not easy, he said. The Lapps were hard to find. They came to the coast only in the summer months. In the winter, they travelled inland, following the reindeer far from any trading route.

  Olaf had arranged to meet the Lapps each year on a certain beach north-west of the Lofotens. In the years before they came to this arrangement, he had only managed to find the Lapps by accident, sailing up and down the coast, searching for signs of their camps.

  The Lapps spotted us first and made signal fires piled with lichen, which gave off plumes of thick, white smoke.

  These Lapps were the most mysterious people I had ever come across. They were stocky, with wide faces, dark hair and deep, untrusting eyes. They smelled of smoke and sweat and their lives revolved around the movements of the reindeer, which they followed back and forth across the tundra. The Lapps worshipped the reindeer, ate their meat, lived in reindeer-skin tents and made clothes of their leather and fur.