by Paul Watkins
*
That night, the whole village met at the temple, to discuss what should be done.
Men stood in groups, picking their nails and talking in hushed voices. Women lined the benches or paced back and forth with restless children on their hips. Old people sat by the fire, poking the embers with their walking sticks and leaning into each other as they spoke, like white-topped tufts of cotton grass swaying in a breeze. Guthrun sat among them. He leaned forward over the fire, his hands twisting and turning in front of him as he held court.
I stood before the pillars and asked for silence. When the room had quieted down, I explained what Arneson had told me.
There was silence, as some tried and failed to conjure from their minds a picture of what 120 pounds of silver looked like, or even 70. For the rest, who had seen enough coins measured out in their lives to imagine the mass of so much money, it was as if the weight of that silver had been hooked into their skin like brutal ornaments, dragging them down to the ground.
‘The choice is yours,’ I said. ‘The King’s men will be back in a month. By then, if we have not begun the building of a Christian church, there will be no choice to make.’
‘Seventy or 120,’ said Ingolf, his voice gone suddenly hoarse. ‘It might as well be 1000 pounds because we will never be able to get it.’
I caught sight of Olaf standing at the back. He was studying the faces in the room, as if trying to guess which way the vote would go.
I looked around for Cabal, expecting to see his shaggy head towering above the rest, but he was not there. I wondered why he had stayed away.
Now Guthrun stood, and cast his gaze about the room, seeming to stare at each person in turn. ‘We cannot surrender to blackmail, no matter how much they want. What will be left of this town if we give in?’
‘Its people,’ said Kari.
The crowd turned to look at her. They seemed surprised to hear Kari’s voice.
‘And its houses,’ she continued, ‘and its animals and everything else we can see with our eyes and touch with our hands. Perhaps it is the will of the old gods that we no longer hold them sacred anymore. Maybe we are not supposed to survive. Not as we are now.’
As her words cleaved into my head, I glimpsed us long into the future, so far beyond the boundaries of our lives that the only thing left of us was the dust of our cremated flesh, pitted swords and rotten shields, just silhouettes of rust and bone. We would live on only in stories, like Sasser Greycloak, the truth so patched with lies as to make us strangers even to ourselves.
‘It is about more than just the old faith and the new,’ I said. ‘Without that money, Trygvasson will take everything, and he will become the god we pray to, the one we beg to go on living. Is that the life you want?’ As I spoke, I felt an utter helplessness, knowing the decision did not rest with me.
So I kept silent, hearing the tide of argument ebb back and forth.
Then a voice boomed out, ‘So you have given up already.’
The room grew suddenly quiet, as everyone in it turned to see Cabal filling up the doorway. He must have been standing outside the whole time. He looked dishevelled, as if he had not slept in a long time. He stepped into the room and shut the door behind him. ‘Trygvasson knows you cannot find the money. He wants only to break you, so that you have no choice but to do what he says. And do you think that when he has finished building churches all across this country that he will simply leave you in peace? Give in now, and you will never stop giving in.’
‘So what would you have us do?’ asked Ingolf.
‘I know how you can get that silver,’ he replied, ‘and plenty more besides.’
‘You’re talking about a raid,’ said Olaf. They were the first words he had said.
‘More like a robbery,’ replied Cabal, ‘and if it is done right, no one will be hurt.’
Now Olaf pushed his way forward, until he stood in the centre of the room. ‘A raid? Arobbery? Call it whatever you want. How is it to be done? With one ship which happens to be mine? With our host of warriors?’ He swept his arm around the room. ‘There are barely enough weapons in this town for one person to commit suicide, let alone start a fight.’
‘We may not be warriors,’ said Ingolf, in a rare moment of defiance, ‘but we could try to get the job done.’
‘You could take along that little statue of yours,’ hissed Tola, ‘and throw it at whoever gets in your way.’
Ingolf turned to her. For a moment it looked as if he might say something, but then he just shook his head and fell silent.
‘Are you saying that we go on a raid every time we have to pay these taxes?’ asked Kari.
‘No. All we need is a fair chance,’ said Cabal, ‘to put the past behind us and begin again.’
In that moment, I knew he was talking only to her, and the past he wished to put behind him was his own.
Now Cabal looked around the room. ‘Have you never dreamed of streets paved with stones instead of mud? What about a ship-building yard, a decent foundry and herds to graze the meadow, instead of the few straying cows and goats and sheep you own right now? That is the kind of place that can pay 120 pounds of silver and not be turned into a village of beggars at the same time. If you bring wealth to Trygvasson, he will not meddle in your affairs. No farmer will slaughter a cow that is producing milk. As you are now, you have nothing to bargain with. You live at the mercy of whatever thug comes walking into town to take whatever he wants. Why will you not fight for what you have?’
‘This is not some warring outpost at the end of the world,’ said Olaf. ‘We will fight, just as most people will fight, but only as a last resort.’
‘This is your last resort! If you wait any longer, it will be too late, because of what these Christians are doing to you, and you do not even know it.’
‘What are they doing?’ asked Ingolf.
‘They are writing,’ said Cabal, pinching the air in front of him and raking his hand madly back and forth. ‘Scribbling the history of their time, in which they call you a scourge sent down by their own God to punish them for their sins. You are not even real to them! You are a figment of their God’s imagination. But the silver I can get for you is real. It is ten days sailing from here, maybe less, and stored in a church, a Christian church, in a little village on the coast of my old country. You have two choices now. You can all leave, just pack up and go, so that when those tax collectors return all they find are ruined and abandoned houses. Or you can stay,’ he continued, ‘and get on with your lives, and even make them better than before. If you want that, you come talk to me.’
Then he was gone. The slammed door boxed our ears.
*
I followed Cabal out into the dark. ‘If this is such a simple task,’ I asked, ‘why has another raiding ship not made off with the silver already?’
‘They do not know it is there,’ he replied. ‘Most of the churches that have been raided are those whose spires can be seen from the water. This church is in a village called St David’s. It is impossible to spot the church from the sea, because it was built without a spire, to hide it from the raiding ships that come across from the Norse colonies in Ireland. I know because I was apprenticed to a monk in that place.’
‘And that is where you learned to hate them.’
‘It is,’ he replied.
‘And still you will not tell me why.’
‘Some secrets are meant to be kept,’ he said. ‘You know that much yourself. And the secret those Christians have kept at St David’s is that they have a tunnel beneath the church for hiding their money. I saw them carry chests of money down into that tunnel, even helped to carry them myself. It was all done at night, so that even the townspeople would not know what was hidden there. The village lies upstream from a narrow river which feeds into the sea. I can guide us there. If we go into the town at night, I can lead you straight to the church. I can get us into the tunnel and we will be gone again by sunrise. The two of us alone could do it, if w
e had someone to bring us there and back.’
‘We would need Olaf’s boat, and I do not know if he will agree.’
‘I thought as much myself, and whether Olaf agrees or not, his boat is the one we will use.’
‘But he will have to sail it. No one else has the skill.’
Cabal kneaded the muscles of his neck, setting the bones straight with dull clicks under the skin. ‘You speak to Olaf. Tell him if he refuses, I will see to it that he never sails his boat again, or walks without a stick.’
‘It is a long time since you last saw that church,’ I said. ‘What makes you sure the money is still there?’
‘If the money was safe, why would they move it? Unless you have a better plan, this is our only chance.’
When I walked back inside, all faces turned towards me.
Guthrun stood out in front. ‘We have decided,’ he said. ‘We trust you to do whatever is best for the town.’
I nodded. ‘Cabal and I will leave as soon as we can.’
In twos and threes, the crowd stepped out into the night, the restless children sleeping now on the shoulders of their fathers and the old ones plodding arm in arm along the stony path.
I asked Olaf to stay behind.
When he and I were the only ones left, I closed the door behind us. While I threw some more logs on the fire, Olaf walked over to the pillars. He rapped his knuckles against each one, as if to summon out whatever lived inside. Then he turned and smiled at me. ‘I wonder if I can guess what you want.’
‘I expect you can,’ I sat down by the fire and warmed my hands before the crackling wood.
He knotted his hands behind his back and began to pace in front of me. ‘It seems to me you are out of luck.’
‘Are we?’ I asked.
He spun around to face me. ‘Yes, you are. You, in particular, are out of luck.’
‘Are you going to sail the boat for us or not?’
‘Gladly. I will take you there and bring you safely back again. Is that what you want to hear?’
‘Yes,’ I said cautiously, watching him over the tops of the flames.
‘What I have to say next, you might not want to hear, but you had better listen anyway.’
‘Think carefully before you speak, Olaf. At this moment, we might not be the friends we used to be, but we are not enemies, either. Do not alter that if you can help it.’
‘At this moment, whether we are friends or enemies is of no consequence to me,’ he said. ‘As soon as I have brought you back, you will hand over the temple, saying only that you have had a change of heart.’
I breathed out, shifting the smoke. ‘And if I refuse?’
‘Then you will watch everything you have done for this town, and everything you dreamed of doing, vanish under the floorboards of a Christian church. I told you this was not over, and I told you I would not give up. I have endured a life of ridicule from the people of Altvik because I have never stopped believing that I deserved what I am now going to get. I have waited too long for this chance, and I am not going to wait for another.’
A darkness was moving across my mind, like the shadow of a cloud across a field. ‘Olaf,’ I said, ‘What you want, you will not find by doing this.’
‘From now on, I decide what I want!’ he shouted. ‘Now leave! You do not belong here any more.’
*
I found Cabal waiting for me halfway down the hill.
He was standing on a rock, wrapped in his cloak, which whipped around his legs with a sound like the beating of wings.
It took me a moment to chase from my mind the image of Greycloak. Time and again over the years, I had returned to the memory of myself as I ran out after him, into the crashing jaws of the storm. I would wake from a dead sleep, calling out to myself to stop, to turn back before it was too late, but my old self never heard. It scrambled on until it disappeared into the lightning’s roaring fire.
‘What did he say?’ asked Cabal.
I told him what had happened.
Cabal stared up at the temple, where a sliver of orange firelight flickered through the half-open door. The rest of the temple was hidden in such darkness that the fire seemed to be standing by itself, an almost human shape.
‘Tell him we have agreed,’ said Cabal.
I knew what he was thinking. Olaf would bring us there and back, but he would never live to set foot in this town again. Cabal would snap Olaf’s neck like a piece of kindling wood. Then Cabal would feed him to the fish.
‘You hesitate,’ said Cabal.
‘Of course I hesitate,’ I replied. ‘I have known him since we were children, and even if I despise what he is doing, I cannot help but understand his reasons.’
‘The time for reasoning is past,’ snapped Cabal. ‘From this point onwards, we owe him nothing, not even his life.’ He jumped down from the rock and set one huge, blunt finger against my chest. ‘The man I knew in Miklagard would not have hesitated even for a moment.’
‘I am not that same man, anymore.’
‘Even so, the purpose of your voyage home is still the same. You can no more let him steal from you what is yours by right than we can let these Christains steal what little wealth these peope here possess. Even if you try to forget who we were in the Varangian, you cannot forget the codes by which we lived. Those belong to the present as much as they do to the past.’
I stared at the ground, wrapped in silence. Then I raised my head and looked him in the eye. ‘Why would you lead us in a raid against your own people?’ I asked.
Cabal gave no answer. All he said was, ‘Think no more about it. This is as good as done.’ Then he set off down the hill.
I stood there, alone in the dark. I though about Olaf. In my mind, he was already dead. I imagined his pale and lifeless face, sinking to the bottom of the sea.
Morning fog drifted across the beach, smelling of seaweed and rain.
Olaf, Cabal and I loaded water barrels into the rowboat.
Cabal made no sign that he knew about the deal Olaf had made. There was almost a gentleness in the way Cabal spoke with him now, the way a condemned man is spoken to, with old grudges set aside as he prepares for the last journey of his life.
Olaf himself was quick to smile as he lifted the barrels from the sand and set them in the boat.
We realised that there were not enough weapons even for the three of us. My sword now belonged to that Bulgar trader. Olaf had no shield and his sword was better suited to measuring cloth than swinging in a fight. Only Cabal was fully armed, with an axe, sword, spear and his round, white-painted shield.
Olaf brushed aside our concerns. ‘Hakon will come with me this afternoon, and I will return with all the weaponry we need.’
The first sign of anyone stirring in the town was the creak and thump of the alehouse door as it opened and closed. I knew it was Ingolf without even turning to look, as the door had such a particular sound, like that of a weary person trying to get up out of a chair. Then came Ingolf’s heavy footsteps and the slap of the leather apron against his knees. He carried an old sword in a wooden scabbard, one of his purchases from Olaf. ‘Here I am,’ he said.
‘What of it?’ Cabal sat against the rowboat, one heavy leather bag in each hand. The bags were filled with salt, for seasoning food on the trip.
‘I will come with you.’ Ingolf patted the scabbard. ‘I am ready to go.’
‘And you have been training?’ Cabal nodded at the flimsy sword.
‘I know enough,’ said Ingolf.
‘Draw it then,’ said Cabal.
‘What?’ he asked, his face turning pale. ‘The sword? Now?’
‘Now,’ whispered Cabal.
Ingolf set his hand on the hilt and began to draw the blade.
But the sword had not left its scabbard before Cabal swung one of the salt bags into the left side of Ingolf’s head.
Ingolf tilted over, the sword wobbling out of his grip. He was on his way down when the other salt bag thumped into his right che
ek. For a moment it looked as if Ingolf had steadied himself again. But then he collapsed and lay at Cabal’s feet.
We all stared down at Ingolf in wordless disappointment.
Ingolf groaned and sat up. He lifted his apron and pressed his face against it, and when he let it drop again, the soggy imprint of his cheeks and forehead were smudged into the leather. ‘What happened?’ he asked.
‘You fell over,’ said Cabal. ‘Eventually.’
Ingolf climbed slowly to his feet. ‘Let me come along. What do I have to look forward to for the rest of my life except making ale and wiping those wretched tables fifty times a day? I cannot stay here doing nothing.’
‘What do you have to look forward to?’ Cabal slung the salt bags into the bow of the boat. ‘Old age! To throw away your life proves nothing. Take some advice and stay home.’
‘Ingolf,’ I said, ‘Cabal is right. Give up the alehouse if you cannot stand it anymore, but do not give up your life.’
Ingolf rubbed the side of his head, where the salt bags had slapped against his temples. ‘I told her I was coming,’ he said.
We did not need to ask who he was talking about.
Ingolf sighed heavily. ‘At least promise me you will talk about it.’
‘We will talk,’ said Olaf, and patted him gently on the back.
When Ingolf had gone, Olaf turned to Cabal and me. ‘Is there anything to say?’
We shook our heads.
‘Then here he stays, but that old witch who calls herself his mother will never let him hear the end of this,’ said Olaf. The muscles of his jaw flinched with anger as he spoke.
Olaf and Cabal shoved the skiff out into the bay and rowed towards the Drakkar. All that could be seen of them above the fog was their heads. Their muttering voices reached across the morning mist.
While they were out at the Drakkar, Tola came down to the beach.
I was coiling a length of walrus-hide rope. ‘What is it, Tola?’
‘The things I said …’ She pressed her hand against her mouth and slid her fingers down over her lips. ‘I never thought he would ask to come along. He is not a brave man. You cannot let him go.’
