by Tom Harper
I left Sigurd in his isolation, walking the utmost boundary of the city, and made my way to the house he had described. Though I knew that the passing of time was no ally, I moved listlessly, rebuffing the attentions of the Watch and hating the fact that I would have to tell Aelric’s wife of her husband’s treason and death. All too soon I was at her door, thumping a cold fist against the thick oak. Every stroke sent numb shivers through my hand, but I persisted until at last I heard a suspicious voice within demanding my business.
‘I have come from the palace. It concerns your husband.’ My words haunted the empty street.
Three times I heard the sounds of bolts being drawn. Then the door cracked open.
‘You are not of the Varangians. Have I seen you before?’
All was darkness beyond the door, but the voice bespoke someone old, a woman pinched by a weary life.
‘I am a stranger,’ I admitted, ‘but I knew your husband. He . . .’
‘You knew my husband?’ The door edged open a fraction further. ‘Why is it that you knew my husband? Where is he now?’
‘He is dead.’
I had not meant to say it so baldly, but it was out now and I could curse my carelessness later. I heard a wail arise in the room within, the sound of someone stumbling about, and I pushed in through the door before she could slam it on me. Small fists flailed against my chest, and I raised my arms in defence, though there was little force in her bony blows. The darkness hindered me, but eventually I managed to catch hold of her wrists and hold them away, until the screams of defiance broke down into a forlorn sobbing.
As gently as I could, I steered her backwards, away from the door. She was weeping, calling her dead husband’s name and many other things in a tongue I could not understand.
‘Do you have a candle?’ I asked as she took a choking breath. ‘It would help if I could see you.’
Tentatively, I relaxed my grip a little, testing whether she still aimed to attack me. There was no sudden movement, nor any increase in her sobbing, and so I let her loose.
She moved away. For a second I feared she might be fetching a blade, might assault me in the darkness, but then I saw a shower of sparks in a corner and the flare of a wick. The candle was burned low, crusted with shrivelled knobs of wax, but it gave enough light that I could at last see Aelric’s poor widow.
She was old, at least as old as he, and the deeply-shadowed furrows of her face added still more years. Her ragged hair was grey and untied, hanging in frayed bunches, and her skin shone with tears. Dressed only in a woollen shift, she fell back onto a stool and gestured me to take a bench. I reached out a hand to stroke her arm, but she recoiled in loathing and huddled herself away.
‘Did Sigurd kill him?’ she asked.
The question startled me, so much that I could do little but flounder for a minute before admitting: ‘Yes.’ And then, struggling to impose myself: ‘Why should you think so?’
‘My husband always feared it, that Sigurd would find his secret and murder him in a fit of rage. Every day in the last ten years, since Sigurd joined the Varangians, Aelric feared him.’
She scratched her scalp through her thin hair, and shivered as though a draught had blown over her.
‘Why did Aelric fear him?’ I asked. ‘What secret could he have kept that would have inflamed Sigurd so? Was his purpose with the Emperor always . . . ?’
‘The Emperor?’ Aelric’s wife – Freya, I remembered was her name – gave a bitter laugh. ‘What did Aelric care for the Emperor? Or Sigurd, for that matter?’
‘Sigurd loves the Emperor like a father.’
‘Love?’ Freya spat on the floor. ‘None of you act from love – but from hate. Sigurd does not love the Emperor; he hates the Normans, and with a merciless passion. Why else would he not forgive Aelric, who brought him into the Varangians and was like an older brother to him?’
‘But what had Aelric done?’ I was bewildered; it was like trying to knead oil, reasoning with this woman.
She ignored me. ‘He knew it was returning. So did I. Ever since Asgard appeared at our door three weeks ago it haunted him. Aelric, who served the Emperor long after most of his companions would have hung up their armour and taken a farm in the country. Will Sigurd still be standing his watch when he is as old as Aelric? Never.’
‘Who was this Asgard? Another Varangian?’
‘He came three weeks ago, and Aelric changed. His smile vanished, and his shoulders sagged; he would hardly eat. At first he did not speak of it, but I knew, for what else could Asgard have to talk to him about? Then Asgard called again and took him away: to meet his friends, he said. And now he is dead, the most loyal man who ever carried an axe. My husband.’
I leaned closer, trying to find some thread to guide me through the fog of her babble. ‘And what was this secret of Aelric’s that Asgard wanted to talk of?’
Freya straightened, defiance kindling within her. ‘Why should I tell his secrets to a stranger, the crow who croaks his death?’
‘Because all our safety depends on it – and yours especially. If you do not tell me others will come, and they will not be as gentle as I. Before he died, Aelric betrayed the Emperor and the Varangians, and that will not be forgiven lightly.’ I had not wanted to touch on Aelric’s treachery, and it had been a sound instinct, for Freya plunged her face into her hands at the sound of it.
‘My husband was an honest man who served his masters faithfully,’ she sobbed. ‘If they were devious, or evil, or made him defy his nature, then God will judge them, not him. And you call yourself gentle – you, cursing his name to me while my tears are warm, before he is even laid in the ground. Get out of my house, and allow me my grief without poisoning it.’
‘I cannot. I must know . . .’
‘Out! Out!’
She would not be consoled, certainly not by me, and until then I would get no sense from her. I left her to her tears, and hurried back to the walls. It seemed the night had lasted an eternity, but Sigurd was still there, pacing the ramparts and scanning the dark horizon with vacant eyes. Neither of us offered a greeting.
‘Do you know a man named Asgard?’ I asked. ‘Maybe a Varangian, or someone from the palace.’
Sigurd’s scowl, if it were possible, deepened. ‘I know Asgard,’ he grunted. ‘He was a Varangian, until a few years ago. I expelled him myself for stealing from us, thieving in the barracks.’
‘Did he know Aelric?’
‘They escaped England at the same time, and arrived in the city together: Asgard and Aelric, their wives, a few others. Most are dead now.’
‘But not Asgard?’
Sigurd raised his hands in ignorance. ‘I could not care. I heard that he kept a stall in the fur market, selling mangy pelts and skins that the Rus traders could not persuade any others to take. Maybe he’s still there, maybe not. He was a worm, and we were well rid of him.’
‘He did not keep in contact with any of your men?’
‘They would have spurned him. Stealing from your messmates is like stealing from the church – except that we have no obligation to forgive. Why all this curiosity? Do you want a cheap shawl for your daughter?’
‘He visited Aelric several times in recent weeks. Freya blamed him for a change in Aelric’s mood, and I think he may have carried messages for the monk.’
Sigurd snorted. ‘The monk? The monk is a phantom, Demetrios, an apparition. The sort of man you blame when there are no other excuses.’ He paused, pondering this. ‘Asgard, on the other hand – he’s real enough. Seek him in the market.’
ι θ
The furrier’s market was a dismal place next morning. A fine rain had been falling since dawn, and however hard the vendors tried to keep their wares under awnings the pelts still grew mottled and bedraggled. Only the richer merchants escaped, those whom the guild favoured with places under the eaves of the stoa: they sat shivering at their tables, rarely rousing themselves to tout for custom. The stink of treated hide drifted down f
rom the far end of the market, where the tanners and leather workers kept their stalls, and with the mouldering air of animal carcasses as well it was no wonder there were few buyers.
Rain trickled down the back of my neck and soaked the shoulders of my tunic, while my boots grew ever more like sponges underfoot. The faces of dead animals stared plaintively from every rack and trestle: rabbits and hares hung by their ears, long-snouted wolves piled above each other, deer whose antlers had already been sold to the ivory-carvers, and – on one stall – an enormous bear mounted on a pole.
I stopped at several stalls to ask after Asgard, and received a predictable pattern of replies. He was on the west side of the market, one man claimed; no, the north insisted his neighbour. Perhaps he had given up his stall altogether and abandoned the trade, suggested another, for the quality of his wares was second-rate and he rarely saw his customers twice. Some had seen him but could not remember where, and others knew of him but had not seen him that day. It was a common pattern of response, but on that mournful day, with rain constantly dripping in my eyes, it seemed more than usually futile.
Nor were the merchants amiable company. They say in the provinces that a shepherd comes to resemble his flock, and here the same was true. All the men I encountered were lumbering and hairy, with wide, untrusting faces and thick beards, some smeared with fat to keep them dry. Many must have been the bastard sons of Norse traders, and they fragmented their language with peculiar sounds which seemed to owe more to the tongues of beasts than men.
At last, though, I found my quarry. He did not warrant a shop in the stoa, nor even a covered stall in the square. He huddled in a corner in a rat-eaten fur cloak, his grey hair splayed flat across his skull and his blue eyes squinting almost shut against the rain. A tray bearing the skins of small vermin was laid out before him.
‘How much for a stoat’s pelt?’ I asked, affecting to examine his merchandise.
‘Fourteen obols.’ The line of his eyes became rounder, watching me carefully.
‘Too expensive. Do you have anything else to sell me?’
He blinked. ‘Alas, nothing but what you see. The guild does not allow me any more.’
Wincing slightly at the dank feel, I lifted the dead stoat in my hand and weighed it thoughtfully. As I studied it, my right hand strayed to the pouch on my belt and pulled out a golden nomisma.
‘I do not need your rats,’ I told him, dangling the pelt by the scruff of its neck and discarding it. Asgard’s eyes ignored it, fixed on my right hand. ‘I need knowledge. Information. An observant man in a crowded market must witness many things.’
‘Some things. When I am not occupied with the needs of my trade.’
I picked out another fur and swung it in my hand. ‘Are these local furs?’
I could see that he did not like the meandering direction of my questions, that the doubt in his eyes was turning to suspicion, but he could not keep from reciting his sales chatter. ‘Local? Indeed not. They are brought by the mighty Rus, from the wild forests of the north, down great rivers and across the Euxine sea to grace your garments. You will not find pelts of a higher quality anywhere in a thousand miles.’
Though I guessed the words were seldom used, they still sounded tired and hollow.
‘You clearly know their provenance well. Are you one of these Rus?’
‘No,’ he admitted carefully. ‘But they are my kin. I am from the kingdom of England – Britannia, as some of you call it, an island just beyond the Russian shores.’
‘Where the holy Emperor, may he live a thousand years, recruits his bodyguard?’
‘The same place. In fact, I served the Emperor myself, once, as one of his Varangians, carrying my axe in his service. He chose me for my honesty.’
‘Truly?’ I wiped a lock of hair out of my eyes. ‘I am looking for a man who knows of Varangians. Or rather, a man who seeks to know more of them. A monk who travels the city bargaining with guardsmen past and present. Have you seen such a man?’
The gold coin I had been holding slipped from my fingers and landed noiselessly on a pile of fur. I did not pick it up. It agitated Asgard; he cast his eyes down, then to one side, and fidgeted with the clasp of his cloak. Always, though, his gaze leapt back to the glittering nomisma in his tray.
‘Why should I know that?’ he croaked. ‘There are many Varangians in this city, and many who have left after a lifetime of loyal and honourable service. Who would come to a distant corner of a stinking market, a space which even the whore-born guilds do not value enough to rent for more than an obol, to ask questions of a luckless merchant?’
‘A man who placed great value on what that merchant might tell him,’ I answered. ‘As I do.’
Two more gold coins dropped before him.
‘No,’ the old man whispered. ‘No. I have not seen your monk.’
‘Yes you have. You led him to your old comrade Aelric, and revealed some terrible secret which compelled Aelric to betray everything he valued. Do not deny it.’
Asgard was shuffling back now, glancing about for a path to escape. I followed him, tipping over his tray and scattering his pelts over the wet stone.
I pulled out my knife. ‘I will know what you have said and done, Asgard. You can take either gold for it, or steel. Do you know a Varangian captain named Siguard?’
Asgard’s thin jaw opened wider. ‘Sigurd? He is a berserker, a madman. He would kill his own mother if she stepped too near the Emperor for his liking. I served under him in the guard.’
‘And now, through the treachery you concocted with Aelric, you have ruined him. If you do not tell me what you have done, he will come with his axe to make you answer.’
All this time I had been advancing on Asgard as he retreated; now, he found himself with his back to a broad column. I watched him squirm against it, and stood ready to strike if he tried to run.
But running was no more in Asgard’s character than fighting: there was no strength in his time-ravaged limbs and he knew it.
‘He will kill me,’ he pleaded. ‘The monk swore he would kill me if I told any other.’
‘If the monk has finished with you, he will probably kill you anyway. At least I will give you a chance to live.’
‘But I did no wrong. I did not betray Aelric – he did that himself. I never murdered my countrymen, or put innocent families to death, or burned homes and crops and poisoned wells so that the land would lie empty for a generation. Not I, no. Why do you point your blade at me, when it is Aelric’s neck which should feel its edge?’
‘Aelric’s neck has felt its last blow.’ My words were short, brusque – what were these horrors he ascribed to the genial Varangian? ‘Do not try to save yourself by blackening the names of the dead.’
‘If he is dead, then that is the least justice he was due. A man lives by his loyalties, and he had none.’
‘Then your head should join his, for if you conspired with the monk then you betrayed the Emperor just as much as Aelric.’
‘The Emperor?’ Asgard gave a horrible, cackling laugh. ‘What do I care for the Emperor? For some years he paid me to serve him, and then he did not. But Aelric did not betray some jumped-up Greek – he betrayed his own people. His real kin. The English.’ Somehow, through his obvious fear, Asgard managed to contort a vicious smile.
‘Aelric fought with your king against the invaders.’ I remembered his confusing tales of Normans and Norsemen. ‘Was that a lie?’
The fur-merchant shook his head. ‘It was true enough. But what he did not tell you was that three years after the invasion, when the Bastard conqueror came north to wreck the land, Aelric’s lord supported him, and Aelric with him. There were more than Normans up there – Englishmen turned on their neighbours too. Some say they were the worst, the fiercest. Aelric always held that he did it because his thane ordered him, but who is to tell the truth of that?’
‘Aelric spoke of this? To the Varangians?’
Again that awful sneer. ‘Not to the Vara
ngians. If you so much as admired a Norman whore you’d be out of their ranks with your head cracked open. But he spoke of it to me, on the long nights during our flight from England. He used to wake up crying in the night remembering the things he had done, needing to confess. They were ugly stories, too, but I kept them secret. Then they threw me out of the barracks and he did not raise a word to protect me, after I’d kept him safe all those years. So when the monk came to my stall, asking if I knew any of the guards who were disloyal, or might be, it did not take much of his gold to draw out Aelric’s name.’
‘And then you took this monk to Aelric’s house? You forced him to betray the Emperor?’
‘I forced him to do nothing. I persuaded him to share a drink with me. When he came, I introduced him to the monk. The monk explained that if Aelric served him faithfully, he might die but his wife would live in comfort; otherwise, he would die in ignominy, his past treachery revealed, and his wife would have to whore herself to Normans simply to live. Once Aelric had agreed, and the monk had rewarded me for my work, I left them to their own business.’
‘Where was this meeting?’ So great was my anticipation that I moved closer, almost pricking Asgard with the point of my knife.
He whimpered, and wiped his nose on the sleeve of his cloak. ‘At a tavern near the harbour. He arrived after us, alone. I never saw him after that.’
‘So you do not know where he can be found? Did he not leave instructions in case you thought of another victim from whom he could extort disloyalty?’
Asgard shook his head so violently that I almost believed him.
‘I will take you to the imperial prisons,’ I told him. ‘Then I will find Sigurd and repeat your story. Perhaps he will remind you of things you have forgotten.’
Asgard cowered back in terror, pressing himself so close against the column he might have been carved on it. ‘Do not take me to Sigurd,’ he pleaded. ‘Not to Sigurd.’ A leering hope entered his eyes. ‘Perhaps there are other things I remember.’
