Blood of the South

by Alys Clare

  ‘She should still be—’ Jack began.

  But Lord Gilbert held up an imperious hand. ‘I appreciate, Jack, that you are doing your job, and I applaud you for it,’ he said. ‘You have unearthed what seems to be a small mystery – what happened to this wretched maid – but I will not permit you to question Lady Rosaria.’

  Jack opened his mouth to protest, as well he might. I wasn’t sure that Lord Gilbert had any right to give him such an order, and I imagine Jack was of the same opinion. And even from where I was standing a couple of paces away, I could sense his furious indignation at the idea of a maid’s disappearance and likely death being so casually dismissed.

  I wondered what he was going to do.

  But then, his expression softening, Lord Gilbert patted Jack’s arm and added, ‘Give her a few days. She is grieving, she is lost and lonely, and her situation must seem to her very precarious.’ He sighed again. ‘We will fulfil our duty, and go on looking after her here –’ his doleful tone revealed how reluctant he was to do that duty – ‘and we shall redouble our efforts to locate the whereabouts of this Harald Fensman’s manor and estate, so that she may be taken to her rightful place as soon as possible.’ He eyed us both in turn. ‘And that,’ he said firmly, ‘is my final word.’

  TEN

  It was a great relief to reach the sanctuary of my aunt’s house. I closed the door behind me, pushing into place along its base the fat, narrow, straw-stuffed sack that keeps out the worst of the wind. Straightening up to greet my aunt, I noticed she wasn’t alone. Facing her across the hearth sat Hrype.

  The events of the past three days had driven all other preoccupations right to the back of my mind. I was tired, dispirited and quietly grieving for the drowned woman whom nobody had claimed. I knew why Hrype was there, and while it was certainly not my place even to think that he was unwelcome in my aunt’s house, never mind say it aloud, he was the last person I wanted to see just then.

  He wanted me to make another attempt with the shining stone. Such was his power that I would do it.

  As if he could see my thoughts as they flashed in quick succession through my mind, he said softly, ‘It is necessary, Lassair. I appreciate that you are weary, but I would not ask this if I did not have to.’

  Without a word, I went over to where my bedding was rolled up, reaching behind it into the recess. My hand closed on the bag, and I drew it out. I sat down cross-legged beside the hearth, and extracted the stone.

  Edild gave a soft gasp. ‘Won’t you eat first, Lassair?’ She sounded anxious, and, in a quick glance, I saw her look doubtfully at Hrype.

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ I said shortly.

  ‘But you’ve been—’

  ‘I said I’m not hungry.’ It was rude, and I’m never rude to Edild. I hold her in far too much respect; awe, even. But I believed, rightly or wrongly, that if I’d pleaded fatigue or weariness of spirit – from both of which I was indeed suffering – as reasons to put the shining stone away again, she’d have sided with Hrype and added her persuasive will to his.

  I was angry.

  Deliberately controlling my movements so that they were smooth and unhurried – also, so that Hrype would not see my anger – I laid the stone, wrapped in its soft sheep’s wool, into the hollow made by my skirts stretched across my crossed legs. Then, still taking my time, I peeled back the wool and took the shining stone in my hands. I rested it in my open palms, delighting in its smooth weightiness. Each time I hold it, I am taken aback at how heavy it is; as if it contains a huge mass of matter, crushed down into an impossibly small, dense sphere.

  Then, focusing my mind on it to the exclusion of all else, I looked into its dark depths.

  I swear that it picked up my fury.

  In that first instant, it felt as if some power within it was looking straight into my mind, detecting my already strong emotions and magnifying them, hurling them back at me so that they throbbed with power. It seemed to force me to look at what I was feeling, and why, and suddenly I wanted to shout out, to rail against a world where so often I do what others want of me, and not what I want for myself.

  I was, I realized, seeing the truth.

  We were communicating, the stone and I, and for an unknown time, I simply revelled in the feeling it roused in me. I felt that my mind was slowly and inexorably being expanded. All sorts of images came roaring up out of memory, many of them unpleasant. Over and over again, I observed myself folding my lips as meekly I hurried to obey some command. I saw myself with Rollo, or, more accurately, yearning for him when I desperately wanted him, yet knowing that he was far away and would not come. A thought rang out in my head, clear as a cry on a still morning: What use is a strong, resourceful lover if he isn’t here when I need him? The same thought had burst in my mind earlier in the year, when I was in terrible danger. Strange, that the stone had picked it out and now threw it up, along with other uncomfortable truths, for my consideration.

  I didn’t want to think about those truths. I stared deep into the stone, concentrating on one of the mysterious bands of green light that swirl through its blackness, and instantly other images – emotions – flew up. I felt comforted; I felt as if someone, or something, understood me, right to my core. Understood, and was there by my side. In a heartbeat of clarity, I thought, The stone is giving me its support. It was; I had no doubt. It was helping me to be strong, giving me the resolve to turn away from my negative thoughts.

  As if it, too, was revelling in our new closeness, I saw a series of scenes, flash, flash, flash, one after the other in rapid succession. I saw a conical hill, or perhaps it was a mountain, and its top had been blasted off in a great convulsion of rock and earth. I saw a wide river of molten glass. I heard a sepulchral voice in my head: Behold, the Hill of the Knives, and I saw dark men with feathers in their long black hair, dancing in the flames as if possessed.

  I was, I believe, seeing my stone’s birth.

  I saw my own ancestor, the man who had first brought the shining stone so far across the wide seas. In another vivid series of images, I saw its recent history, and somewhere within me I knew that the past hundred years were nothing to it; that it was unbelievably ancient, as old as the very fabric of the earth.

  I cradled it in my hands, and an odd feeling of pity for it swept through me. So old, so alone.

  Perhaps it understood. Perhaps it wasn’t used to feeble mortals expressing sympathy. I’m sure I was imagining it, but, just for an instant, I felt it was allying itself to me.

  An intense sense of well-being flooded through me, and I heard myself laugh. Hrype must have been watching me intently, and he said urgently, ‘Skuli! Can you see Skuli?’

  At least, I thought he spoke the words. Perhaps, after all, he just thought them, and in my heightened state of awareness I picked them up.

  Skuli. Miklagard. A long, lean ship. She was very like the vessel called Malice-striker, the vessel which had come to me in her prime in a vision and whose skeletal ghost I had seen on a beach in Iceland. This, though, was Skuli’s ship, and, although he had lost crew members on the long and perilous journey down through the centre of the vast land mass – I knew this; the stone told me – yet there he was, in the Great City.

  And, just as I had concluded the last time I’d been persuaded to look into the stone, his mission was not yet fulfilled.

  I was right! I sang inside my head. I knew it!

  For a moment my concentration wavered. I looked up, staring about me, surprised, somehow, to see Edild’s and Hrype’s anxious, intent faces so close. But then the shining stone called me back.

  I watched as scenes were played out in the flashes of golden light. I did not understand, but I appreciated that it didn’t matter. Others will know, I thought.

  I simply sat and observed. At one point, what I saw touched my heart, and I felt a tear roll down my face.

  After what seemed a very long time, the stone went quiescent. I thought I felt it grow cool in my hands. I wrapped the wool a
round it, then pushed it gently inside the leather bag, drawing up the strings that held it closed. I got up – my legs felt shaky – and put the bag back into its recess.

  I sat down again. I was shivering despite the warmth, and drew my shawl closely around me. Because my sister Elfritha made it for me, before she went away to be a nun, wrapping it round me is a bit like having her hug me.

  Hrype gave me a moment. Then he said, ‘What did you see?’

  Some things – those deeply personal to me – were not for sharing. They had been thrown up purely for me; truths, perhaps, originating within myself, presented for my consideration. Besides, I guessed they were not what Hrype wanted so keenly to hear about. I drew a deep breath.

  ‘Skuli lost crewmen on the journey south,’ I began, ‘but that did not hold him back. There are new names carved in runes on the big stone beyond the rapids, so those men will not be forgotten.’ I heard Edild make a small sound of distress, but in that moment she was not my concern.

  I turned to Hrype, and, for the first time ever, I felt able to meet the power in his eyes without flinching. ‘You have all been lying to me,’ I said calmly. ‘I suspected it before, and now I know for sure. If not lying, you’ve been careful with how much you revealed. My—’ No. I stopped myself. I must not call Thorfinn my grandfather. Granny Cordeilla had told nobody but Hrype, and it was not for me to break the confidence and tell Edild. ‘Thorfinn said, and you let me believe,’ I pressed on, not allowing him to interrupt, ‘that Skuli’s sole mission was to reach Miklagard. Thorfinn told me that Skuli was driven to succeed where his father failed, and that he was convinced he would only complete the journey if he possessed the stone. That, however, is not true.’

  I paused. I was watching Hrype closely – as closely as he frequently watches me – and I sensed that he was deliberately masking his thoughts. ‘Really?’ he asked mildly. ‘What, then, is the truth?’

  ‘I do not yet know,’ I admitted. ‘But Miklagard is not an end in itself, nor was it ever. Skuli is going on, driven towards some goal that is hidden from me, yet which I know to be perilous.’ The stone had revealed a little to me, and I had been very afraid. I’d heard those two galloping horses again, and the ravens had flown out towards me. The stone had whispered reassurance – They do not come for you – and that had given me the resolve not to turn away in abject terror.

  I went on staring at Hrype. ‘You know where he is going, don’t you?’ I said softly.

  He didn’t answer at first. He glanced at Edild, then lowered his eyes so that he was staring into the fire. ‘I suspect,’ he said eventually. ‘We – I believe there is a destination for which he may be bound.’

  We. Before he corrected himself, he’d said we. Did he mean him and Edild? No. I knew for sure he didn’t. Who, then?

  The answer seemed to be leaping up through the layers of my mind. But just then, before I could grasp it, Hrype began speaking again. Well, not exactly speaking; his voice was a soft hum, like the background noise of insects when you stand in woodland on a warm summer’s afternoon. The note rose and fell, apparently at random, and the sound was sweet and hypnotic. I felt my eyelids grow heavy, and the urge to sleep was all but irresistible …

  Then, some time later, there was Edild, kneeling before me, pushing a bowl of hot, fragrant gruel into my hands. ‘Eat this, Lassair, then go to bed,’ she commanded. ‘Hrype’s just going.’ She shot him a look, and I had the impression she was displeased with him.

  Hrype got to his feet, drawing his cloak round him and putting up the hood. He stared down at me, a strange expression on his face. He was obviously pleased with what I had achieved; self-satisfied, perhaps, in that he had made me do what he wanted and, apparently, achieved the desired result. In addition, there was, I believed – although I could very well have been fooling myself – a very tiny amount of respect.

  ‘There you are,’ he said quietly. ‘The lapis lazuli did its job, didn’t it? You kept it close, like I told you, and it helped you to draw the spirits to you.’

  I met his silvery eyes. I experienced a moment of triumph: powerful, joyous. I jerked my head towards my rolled-up bedding. He frowned, then turned to look.

  My precious little piece of lapis was on the floor beside my blanket. Whatever had just happened between the shining stone and me, I had achieved it all by myself.

  It was late when Hrype left Edild’s house, but he did not go home. He hastened his steps, for he had some way to go. He crossed the neck of high ground behind the village, taking the same path by which Lassair and the sheriff’s man had arrived earlier. To divert himself from the damp and the cold, Hrype turned his mind to the Cambridge lawman. Hrype had not met him, but Edild had spent some time in his company, on the morning when the drowned woman had been found.

  Hrype wouldn’t have given the fellow a thought, except that Edild appeared to be preoccupied with him. She believed there was a connection of some sort between him and Lassair; an affection? Friendship? Hrype didn’t know, and Edild had not said. So what if there is? Hrype had said when Edild had voiced her suspicions. He’s a Norman and a man of the law, Edild replied. Instantly Hrype had thought – although just about refrained from saying – that there was little to choose between this new man and Lassair’s other Norman, except this one was here.

  He grinned in the darkness. Had he said as much, Edild would undoubtedly have told him bluntly that he didn’t understand women.

  She’d have been right.

  He strode on, long legs eating up the distance. He passed the wooden bridge where the dead woman had been found, pausing a moment to honour her spirit, whose presence he could feel. Then he hurried on, for she was not his concern tonight.

  Presently he turned away from the fen edge, following the course of a narrow, winding little river running in from the east. It twisted this way and that, and for much of the time the water was hidden behind stands of hazel, alder and willow. The boat, small and lying low in the water, was well-concealed, and it was doubtful anyone who did not know where to look would have happened upon it.

  Hrype stood on the bank and called out, keeping the pitch of his voice low. A heavy covering, supported by a line running from posts at the bows and stern, had been draped across the boat’s sides; briefly it was pushed aside, allowing the soft light of an oil lamp to spill out. A voice said softly, ‘Hrype?’ and he said, ‘Yes.’

  The covering was drawn further back, revealing a big, hairy, bearded man hunched inside a thick fur-trimmed cloak. ‘Come aboard, quick, then I can shut out the night again,’ he said brusquely.

  Hrype did as he ordered, tucking the covering back into place as he sat down beside the man. He had to be careful where he placed his feet, for the boat was crammed with provisions, and two barrels stood in the prow. It was a small craft, of the sort used to row to shore from a larger vessel. The golden lamplight gave an illusion of cosiness, but in fact, Hrype soon realized, it was warmer inside the shelter than he’d imagined.

  The man settled towards the stern, smiling as Hrype sat down beside him, looked around with interested eyes. He patted the sacks padding the narrow bench on which they sat. ‘Stuffed with down and feathers,’ he remarked. ‘They keep our northern geese warm in the bitterest weather, and they perform the same service for me. Now, what news?’

  Hrype stared into the old face, feeling the keen eyes bore into him. ‘She has just tried again. She – there is something different about her. Some new experience has marked her, although I do not know what it is.’

  ‘She has been off trying to trace the kin of the drowned woman, you said.’

  ‘Yes. She met with no success, yet I believe some other matter concerns her; one which she has not shared with her aunt or me.’

  ‘Why should she?’ the old man countered. ‘She is a woman grown, Hrype. She does not need your approbation over everything she does or thinks.’

  There was pride in his voice; the pride of kinship, Hrype reflected. As well there might be, give
n that this was Lassair’s grandfather.

  ‘She is still under tuition,’ he said. ‘Both Edild and Gurdyman have a great deal to teach her yet. It is far too soon for her to think of acting independently.’

  ‘But she has succeeded with the shining stone, has she not?’ Thorfinn said silkily. ‘Come on, Hrype, do not deny it. I know by your presence here that something has happened. Besides –’ he heaved a sigh – ‘do not forget that the shining stone was once in my guardianship. Although I had to part from it, still there is a bond.’ He passed a hand over his face as if he were in pain.

  Hrype watched him in concern. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes,’ Thorfinn said shortly. ‘Now, tell me what happened.’

  Hrype closed his eyes, replaying the scene in his mind. Then, succinctly, he described it to Thorfinn.

  When he stopped speaking, there was a long silence. Finally breaking it, Thorfinn said, ‘Then it is true. What I so feared is indeed about to be enacted.’ His heavy brows contracted in a fierce scowl, and he thumped one huge fist into the palm of his other hand. ‘I should have sent Einar after him,’ he muttered. ‘He would have gone! He and his crew were itching to test themselves on the route from the Varyani to the Greeks.’

  ‘Your son would have risked his ship, his crew and himself had they done so,’ Hrype said, ‘for once they had caught up with Skuli, they would have pursued him on to his final destination. And if you are right—’

  ‘I am right.’

  ‘If you are right, then your Einar, the son who follows most closely in your footsteps, would have been lost to you.’

  ‘He is a skilled sailor and a brave fighter!’ Thorfinn shouted. ‘He could have fought shoulder to shoulder with Skuli, and together they might have stood a chance!’