by Paul Watkins
The Ytre Moa people lived in quiet fear of that same vanishing. They spoke of these nameless ones who had gone before as having failed somehow, leaving no monuments to themselves, no signs of great prosperity.
But I wondered if it really was a failure. Perhaps those people had not cared to make their mark. Maybe they were not like us, who felt the need to prove to the world that our lives had been well spent. I thought if they could return and see who had taken their places, they might pity us in our struggle to be remembered.
Olaf and I spent that night on the dirt floor of a disused house in the village. I heard no talk from the other houses, no laughter, no singing, not even the lowered voices of argument. When at last I fell asleep, I was plagued by dreams of murder and starvation which did not seem to have come from me, but rather from the ghosts that drifted back and forth through the silent houses and the rustling birch trees.
When we left Ytre Moa the next morning, its people lined up the beach to see us off, strained smiles on their faces. Wind blew the heavy skirts of the women around their legs. As we raised our sail, they turned and trudged back to their houses. They disappeared in the mist rolling down from the mountains, as if we had just spent our time among a tribe of spirits.
*
The remainder of our trip took three days. A cold wind from the north sped us on, speckling our sail with frost. We wrapped ourselves in cloaks and held on while the Drakkar seemed to skim the surface of the water, carrying us south towards Hedeby.
Before long, we saw the smoke which always clogged the sky above that town. We joined a line of ships preparing to enter the port. The harbour was already so crowded that we had to wait beyond it, moving in one at a time, the place of each departing ship claimed by one coming in. It was a hard process of lowering the sail, dropping anchor, raising the anchor again, then moving ahead so as not to lose our place in line.
When we finally dropped anchor in the port, we scouted the broad field which stretched down to the beach, looking among the shelters there for one that might be empty. That was how it went at Hedeby. There were longhouses that had been built and added to over the years, but which belonged to no one. Traders coming in by ship were welcome to move into a longhouse, fix it up if they wanted, and use it as a place of business. Rarely did anyone stay long enough to make any improvements, so most of these shelters were in poor repair.
Craftspeople in the town would come down to the field to buy antler-bone for making jewellery or knife handles. They also came looking for amber, tiny insects marooned inside its honey-coloured stone, gathered on the wind-raked beaches of Jutland. Blacksmiths bought iron ore, particularly the kind called ‘lake ore’ which came mostly from Sweden, since the local variety was of poor quality. They took any silver as payment, even pieces of coins or bracelets which we called ‘hacksilver’. The form of it didn’t matter, only the weight and purity, which was judged by its colour.
Olaf and I left our cargo on the boat, having hired someone to watch it. As we rowed into the shallows, our bow skimmed through pale green weeds slithering in the currents. They reminded me of snakes charmed from baskets by men with flutes in the marketplace at Miklagard.
On the beach, I exchanged dull stares with the crippled men and women whose hands, noses or ears were missing because of some offence for which such cutting was the punishment. They had drifted into Hedeby like the wood of ships wrecked out at sea. Now they loaded boats in exchange for food.
‘Look around,’ said Olaf. ‘They call this place the anvil of the north.’ We made our way through the crowded, muddy streets, looking for an alehouse where Olaf thought he might find a Bulgar with whom he liked to trade. Looking around at the clusters of whispering people who crowded every doorway, it seemed to me that everyone at Hedeby was dealing in one thing or another.
In the town square, a Christian church was under construction. It towered above the smaller, dingy houses that surrounded it. The walls were made from heavy logs caulked with tar, and its steep-sloped roof was already in place. Dragon-headed rain gutters jutted from the corners and interlaced Nordic and Christian signs had been intricately carved around its door. From inside came the raspy panting of saws.
I felt a muddle of anger and helplessness at seeing the church. The last time I had passed through here, the Norse pillars had already been taken down and replaced with a Christian cross. Now here was one more sign that the Christians were settling in for good.
Olaf found his alehouse. ‘Coming in?’ he asked.
I told him I was going to pray.
‘Please yourself,’ he said, ‘but I have no idea where a Norseman prays in Hedeby these days.’
After asking around, I was told that two pillars remained standing, somewhere on the outskirts of the town.
Eventually, I found them on a patch of marshy ground. A walkway made from the branches of a fallen oak tree led to a hump of land, which rose above the level of the swamp. Exposed to the northern breeze, a skim of ice had formed across the murky water, despite the summer sun. In the middle of this little island stood the pillars, with faces carved at the top just like the ones at Altvik and like a hundred others I had seen in the world of the Norsemen. Iron spikes had been driven into the posts at different levels and on these hung offerings of birds, rabbits, flanks of deer. The pillars had not been kept clean. Wind gusted in from the ocean, cutting around my face and ruffling the fur of these dead animals. At least it blew away the smell of rotting meat. Red icicles hung from the offerings. Some of these had broken and lay scattered on the ground in patterns which seemed to spell out words in runes. I thought of the story of Odin, how he had hung himself from the tree of life, sacrificing himself to himself as the highest of the gods. He hung nine days from his noose, twisting in agony but unable to die. His thrashing loosened branches from the tree. They fell on the ground in shapes which formed the alphabet of runes. It was in exchange for his sacrifice that Odin learned the secrets of that language. This was how the icicles seemed to me now, spelling out some message I would never understand.
Standing there, in that backwater of my faith, I wondered what satisfaction the gods could draw from these ragged strips of feathers, blood and fur.
Using a sliver of oak from the branches of the walkway, I traced a double-headed axe in the ground, then tugged loose one of the iron spikes and laid it in the centre of the drawing. Lying down flat on the ground before it, face against the trampled soil, I spread my arms, closed my eyes and prayed to Thor for luck in selling our cargo and for a safe journey home. I could not hide from myself a feeling of hopelessness, as if this place had truly been abandoned, not only by the people who prayed there but also by the gods to whom we prayed.
But I was not completely alone. While I lay there, a few others came to worship, clumping and squelching along the half-sunken walkway.
One man hung an offering of a dead seagull on an iron spike and walked off without saying anything. I watched a woman walk in circles around the pillars, holding a soapstone bowl filled with boiled blood, sipping from the steaming drink as she muttered out her prayers. Another man ran up to the base of the pillars, a cloth pressed to his face to avoid the stench. He pressed two silver coins into the earth, then ran away again.
By the time I stood to leave, the sun had set, bannering the sky red and purple. Strange lights scratched across the evening sky.
A lanky, black-haired dog appeared from the marshes. It sniffed at me, then tore down the remains of a rabbit from one of the spikes and carried the dead thing back amongst the swaying bullrushes.
I set the loose spike back where I had found it and walked away.
When I reached the end of the walkway, my feet stained by the black swamp water that had welled up between the branches, I turned to stare at the pillars. The ball of the moon seemed to balance between their heads, fragile and precarious. The pillars looked so sad and shamed, half-forgotten on their muddy little island. A terrible emptiness surrounded this place.
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p; I shuddered and turned away, then headed quickly to the alehouse. It was only a shack, roofed with an old sail. Strips of frayed cloth hung in the doorway. Through them, illuminated by the fire inside, I saw the misshapen shadows of people moving back and forth. There was laughter and the hum of conversation. Stepping inside, I breathed in the sour smell of old ale and unwashed bodies. A jumble of people sat at long wooden tables, playing games on boards carved into the table tops and using painted bone chips as markers. There were Arabs with silver-bangled arms and thick, embroidered robes who drank goat’s milk instead of ale. I saw Slavs, horses and dragons tattooed on their faces, elbow to elbow with people from the north, long hair braided down their backs and blue eyes bright in weather-beaten faces. In one corner stood a blind boy, his eyes like two peeled eggs. With wooden spoons in each hand, he stirred a tub of ale on one side and a vat of mead on the other. There had been no mead in Miklagard, and by the time I reached the north again, I had no taste for its musty sweetness.
‘There you are!’ shouted Olaf. He waved to me from a table in the corner, where he sat drinking ale with a short man, whose belly flopped over obscenely tight breeches. Untidy grey hair seemed to float around his skull like smoke. He wore a tunic of brown sacking cloth, fastened by green glass buttons and patched with squares of purple silk.
I sat down and reached for one of the overturned ale bowls. They were attached to the table by nails and lengths of tarnished copper chain. I turned the bowl right-side up, which was the sign that I wanted to be served.
‘This is the Bulgar,’ said Olaf. ‘He is heading down to Itil on the Volga, with a dozen slaves to sell. And we will not ask how you came by them.’
‘No, you had better not ask, and I do have a name, by the way.’
‘Yes,’ said Olaf, ‘but I keep forgetting what it is.’
‘Oleg,’ said the Bulgar. ‘My name is Oleg.’
‘You would do better to call yourself Bulgar,’ said Olaf.
I could tell from the way they swapped insults that they knew each other well.
The alehouse owner saw my upturned bowl and came over, lugging a bucket and ladel. He was clearly the father of the blind boy. They looked almost the same, except for the father’s eyes, which were a shining brown mockery of the boy’s pasty white irises. ‘What have you got?’ he asked.
I lifted the leather money bag from around my neck, slid back the bone ring which kept it closed, and poured out some chips of hack-silver. I chose half an Arabic coin and pushed it towards him across the table .
‘I can fill it three times for this,’ he said. ‘That should be enough to chase the spirits from your head.’
‘How much to chase them back again?’ I asked.
‘I am not in that business,’ said the man. He dropped the coin in his apron, then sank the ladel into the bucket and filled my bowl with ale.
I took a sip and winced. It was a hard brew, sharp and metallic in the corners of my mouth. It reminded me of slave days, to drink with the sound of a chain rattling close to my face.
Olaf and the Bulgar continued to trade insults.
‘I fail to see what is so special about that Lapp stuff you bring to market.’ The Bulgar sipped from his bowl, clutching its sides with short-fingered, powerful hands. The copper chain was wrapped around his wrist. ‘I cannot understand why people buy it.’
‘Every time you say that,’ replied Olaf, ‘and every time you buy it anyway.’
‘There is a man down at the water’s edge tells everyone he is a Lapp,’ said the ale man, who had been listening. ‘He can sell you good weather for the journey home.’
‘What do you mean, “sell good weather”?’ demanded the Bulgar. ‘How can you sell good weather? That makes no sense.’
‘Not to you, maybe,’ said the ale man.
Olaf and the Bulgar agreed to do some business. The Bulgar needed to inspect what we had brought, so Olaf swept back the sailcloth door and we stepped out into the dark. Back in the alehouse, fat lamps sputtered as the night wind snaked its way inside.
The Bulgar had unloaded his slaves on the beach. Each one had a heavy iron ring around his neck. The iron was wrapped with old rawhide to stop it from gouging their skin. The slaves were joined one to the other with a length of chain the thickness of a finger but so short that they all had to walk in step. Most of them looked so shocked at what had become of them that they stood as if entranced, patiently waiting for sunlight to wake them from this terrible dream. The week before they might have been traders themselves. If only they had reached Hedeby, they might have been safe. There were laws governing conduct within the limits of the town, but what happened beyond it had no laws. Men killed in arguments were dumped in the bay and left to drift or sink. From the look of the Bulgar, those slaves were lucky to have made it even this far. I doubted whether half of them would reach Itil alive.
‘I have no need of slaves,’ said Olaf. ‘What I need is silver.’
‘Calm down,’ drawled the Bulgar. ‘These are not for you. I am just letting them stretch their legs before I set off down the river.’
As soon as I could row our cargo ashore, Olaf and the Bulgar got down to business. The Bulgar was paying in bars of silver, each bar the double Ore weight. He rummaged through the pelts and sacks of feathers, clucking and shaking his head. The sound you heard more than any other at Hedeby was the clicking of tongues to show disrespect for what another person had to sell. Despite the confusion of different languages, that one sound was common to them all.
I glanced at the slaves again and this time I was shocked to see a familiar face among them. It was Yarl, Godfred’s servant. He had a broken nose and a black eye. He carried a small canvas bag slung over his front, whose flap he dabbed against the dried and crusted blood in his nostrils. Next to him stood Godfred, dazed and miserable, his hair all blown about. Neither one had noticed me yet.
Without thinking, I walked over to the Bulgar. ‘How much for the old man and the scrawny one with the busted nose?’
Olaf glared at me. ‘What? Have you gone mad?’
The Bulgar realised that if he was going to make a deal for those slaves, it had better be before Olaf found the words to talk me out of it. ‘I might sell them. What are you offering?’
‘Gold.’
‘Gold?’ asked Olaf. ‘I am not handing over any gold!’
‘You will not have to.’ I pressed my hands against the sides of my vest, trying to remember how many coins I had left. ‘Ten coins a piece,’ I said.
Olaf stared at me. ‘Where are you going to get twenty gold coins?’
‘Not enough,’ said the Bulgar.
‘Look,’ I told him, ‘The old one will not last a month. You will have to unload him in the first port you come to and even then he will have eaten more than he is worth.’
‘Not if I can help it,’ said the Bulgar.
Godfred saw me now. His eyes grew big. He opened his mouth to speak.
At that moment, Yarl elbowed him in the ribs. He had already seen me and had guessed what I was doing. Yarl knew what it would do to any deal if the Bulgar saw we knew each other.
Godfred seemed to understand. He lowered his head and stared at the ground, lips moving as he mumbled out a prayer.
The Bulgar slapped his hands together. ‘Even if the old man dies, which I grant you he probably will, the bony one is worth more than twenty coins by himself.’
My mind was racing. I drew out my sword.
The Bulgar stepped back in alarm.
I flipped the blade around and handed it to him hilt first.
The Bulgar laughed nervously as he took hold of the sword. ‘What is this engraving?’ he asked. ‘I cannot read runes.’
‘That is the name of the Saxon swordsmith, Ulfbehrt.’
The Bulgar was trying to show no expression, but by the twitching of his lips it was clear he knew the value of this blade. It was pattern-welded from many thin layers of iron pounded together by several men working in shifts, with f
ine steel welded on the cutting edge. The red-hot blade had then been quenched in a vat filled with honey and blood, to harden the metal. I had watched it being made for Halfdan, one sultry afternoon in Miklagard. I recalled the sweet smell of the honey and the blood rising in a cloud of vapour when the burning sword was plunged into the vat. This technique produced wavy lines which seemed to ripple like water on the surface of the metal. ‘It might be worth something,’ he said. ‘Maybe this and the gold, providing the coins are not hacked.’
‘Done,’ I said quietly.
‘Done!’ echoed the Bulgar. He slapped one palm across another, which was a sign that the transaction was complete. While I cut the last coins from my vest, the Bulgar slid the sword into his belt. The pale flesh of his belly pressed against the blade.
In silence, Olaf watched me unfastening the coins.
The Bulgar put the coins one by one into his mouth and rolled each one around, clicking it against his teeth. Then he spat the coin out into his palm, sliming the gold with spit, and announced, ‘Pure.’ When he had finished sucking his money, the Bulgar grinned at me. ‘I cannot see what you want with those slaves. They are just a couple of mangey Christians. They are everywhere these days. Infesting the place!’
I walked down to the water’s edge where Yarl and Godfred were being unchained.
Godfred walked towards me with his arms held out. ‘God has sent you to rescue us!’
The Bulgar heard this and laughed. ‘That is what you get for buying Christians! The fat one never shuts up.’ He waved at his own servants, who hauled the remaining slaves to their feet and sent them shuffling down to the water where the Bulgar’s ramshackle boat was waiting to take them away.
One of the Bulgar’s servants carried a lump of wood tucked under his arm. The Bulgar took it from him and tossed it in the air. With the sunlight behind him, his ears glowed poppy red. The piece of wood turned lazily above his head.
I recognised it then as the strange statue Godfred and Yarl had found drifting out in the middle of the ocean. As the Bulgar threw it high again, I saw the statue’s angry face, twisting in the air. This time, the Bulgar dropped the statue. He kicked it along for a few paces. Then picked it up, stuck it under his arm and headed down to the beach, where Olaf had gone to unload his cargo.
