He stuck a spoonful of peas in his mouth, chewed, and swallowed.
“And to be completely honest,” Winston added, “I need to get to work again. Don’t forget that our cover story is that I’m offering the monks my artistic services.”
Alfilda, who was eating salt cod and stewed broad beans, looked up.
“I suppose it’s also about time you find yourself something to do after leaving Halfdan and me to do all the murder investigation work,” she said, turning to smile at me. “Now it’s our turn to loaf around.”
I could see that Winston was about to snap at her, but since his own girlfriend had said it and not me, he kept chewing in silence.
I pushed my bowl away, belched behind my hand, and watched the door open, revealing a well-dressed man who held himself like a soldier although he wasn’t carrying any type of weapon. His hair was freshly washed and tied around the forehead with a blue band. His shirt was of fine linen and his wool breeches were wrapped with wide leather bands. A freeman employed by some nobleman, I thought, wondering whether I ought to request another tankard of ale.
The man scanned the tavern quickly and lit up when he spotted us.
“Winston the Illuminator?” He bowed briefly to my master, who nodded.
“I’m Toste, Thane Delwyn’s stableman.” His voice was courteous and he was speaking in Danish.
It did not surprise me that Delwyn was powerful enough to have a stableman to tend to his horses and other equipment. Winston politely invited Toste to have a seat, which the stableman just as courteously declined.
“My master asks you to accept his gratitude.” For the first time Toste’s eyes fell on me, after which they touched on Alfilda and then returned to me again. “He recalls that you, who must be Halfdan, left it up to your master to decide whether you were going to solve his son’s murder.” He looked back at Winston. “Therefore he has instructed me to give Winston your reward for completing the work.”
Winston shook his head and said, “That’s good of the thane, but there was never any discussion of our being paid for allowing justice to be done.”
“My master knows that,” Toste said with a nod of approval. “But his son now lies avenged in his grave, and it would poorly become a nobleman if he did not show his gratitude that his son doesn’t need to wander around without rest, but can take his seat at the high table in Valhalla with the one-eyed one.”
Toste must have sensed our surprise because he continued with a smile, “My master is as good a servant of the White Christ as anyone else, but prefers to believe that noblemen go to the high halls when their earthly life is over. The thought of wandering around for eternity in a garden doesn’t please him, and he thinks there’s a thing or two the church men have misunderstood.”
Delwyn wasn’t the only one who thought that way, I knew. I had encountered the idea before, that a man who died unavenged was doomed to wander without rest as a shadow of himself.
“Which is why Thane Delwyn asks you to accept this.” Toste set a leather pouch in front of Winston, who regarded it with a furrowed brow.
I knew it was quite plausible that Winston would find a way to turn it down, and I was just about to reach my hand out to secure the pouch when Toste abruptly bid us farewell and left the tavern.
We sat in silence, staring at the pouch. Alfilda broke the silence and said, “There it is. We might insult the thane if we send it back.”
“Do you think . . . ?” Winston began.
We both nodded, and he undid the ties and poured the contents onto the table. The silver coins rolled, clinking across the tabletop; at Winston’s signal, I began to count them.
“Two hundred shillings,” I announced after I’d finished. “A farmer’s wergeld.”
“How fitting,” mumbled Winston, reaching out and dividing the coins into two piles. He pushed one over to Alfilda and one to me. “Split it. You say you’re the ones who did the work.”
We both protested, Alfilda a little more than me, but he wouldn’t budge.
“When I do my illuminations for churches and monasteries, the wages go to me alone, so it is right and reasonable that this is yours.”
He looked up as Sigvald and Sigurd sat down at the table without any ado.
“Did you accomplish what you wanted?” Winston asked.
“Yes,” Sigvald said, looking with curiosity at the stacks of coins Alfilda and I were sweeping toward us.
“Will you pardon us?” Winston said to the farmers before glancing over at me. “Now that you have some company here, Alfilda and I are heading back up to our room. It’s been a long and eventful day.”
I stood up, smiled at Sigvald, and said, “I don’t want to be impolite, but I’m actually meeting someone.”
“So you’re going to do some more skirt chasing, huh?” Winston teased.
“Well, there’s chasing and then there’s catching. Let’s just say I won’t be back until tomorrow morning.”
35
A blue twilight had settled over the town and the marketplace. I heard the murmur of voices from people in the tents and stalls who were trying to squeeze in a good deal on the market’s final day. Many of the merchants had sold out, if not at deep discounts, then at least cheaply enough so that they wouldn’t have to carry their wares back home again.
I had an idea. The coins were clinking in my pouch, and let it never be said of me that I don’t know how to show a girl how much I esteem her. So I strolled past the wool stand, where I was able to confirm that Brigit was still helping her husband with his work, and roamed through the market looking for a silversmith looking to make a good deal.
The first two I found were no good. The silver at the first one didn’t look pure enough, a suspicion I considered confirmed by the fact that the silversmith hadn’t sold much. Maybe I wasn’t the only one who suspected him of mixing too much copper into his silver?
The second refused to haggle for the few items he had left. He said he was going to sell them for his asking price, and if that didn’t happen, there were so few items left that he could easily carry them back to his hometown of York.
But then luck was with me at a stand that was set off on its own a bit, behind a shoemaker’s shop. I liked the jewelry that was out on the counter, and one piece in particular caught my eye. It was a pendant, composed of twisted silver wires curling under and over each other.
The silversmith, who saw me admiring the piece, told me it was an Irish piece he’d bought off a Viking, and then there was no doubt left in my mind. A piece of Irish jewelry had to be the right thing to give Brigit, and after a bit of haggling, the silversmith offered it to me for five shillings, which, he assured me, was less than the actual silver was even worth.
I sucked on my lips hesitantly and negotiated some more, responding that if he threw a chain in with it, I’d give him three and a half shillings.
We settled on four, and I hung the necklace around my neck, but tucked it inside my tunic.
The road to Brigit’s building ran past the wool merchant’s stall, and to my surprise—because darkness had fallen by now and there were no more customers in sight—Brigit was still with her husband.
So I sat down at an ale stand from where I had an unimpeded view of Brigit’s stall, ordered a tankard of their best ale—I could afford to splurge tonight—and waited for her to go home.
It didn’t happen.
My tankard was empty, and her husband had lain down in the cart behind the stand ages ago, but she didn’t seem as if she was planning to leave. To the contrary, I was surprised when I saw her set out a couple of bales of wool and cover them with her cape. It looked like she was going to sleep there.
I got up and realized I was the last customer in the ale tent. As I emerged into the lane, I saw the marketplace was deserted apart from a few merchants who were packing up their stands, presumably so that they could head out of town early and be on their way before the roads were crowded.
I reached the wool merch
ant’s stall, where Brigit was sprawled on her woolen perch. She was lying there with her eyes open, and I thought that she was waiting for me.
I was about to climb over the counter, but she stopped me. Then she stood up silently and walked over to me. I reached my hand out to her, but she didn’t take it.
“What are you doing here?” I asked quietly, despite the anger growing within me.
She glanced over her shoulder at the cart and said, “I’m in my stall.”
“We had a date.”
“A date?” Her eyes shone in the gleam of the waning moon.
“Yes,” I hissed. “We made it this afternoon, remember?”
“No,” she said, surprised. “I don’t recall any date, but I do remember a man telling me to expect him. He didn’t ask what I wanted the way a person requesting a date would.”
The devil with this girl! I felt my throat seize up in anger. “Oh, bollocks . . .”
“No,” she hissed. “I told you. There are plenty of young men willing to make an attractive woman happy. I don’t need to be bossed around by someone like you.”
“Oh for . . .” I grabbed at her irritably.
She evaded me.
“You should leave. Before my husband wakes up.”
“Oh, your husband,” I laughed. “What a threat.”
“Leave, or I’ll scream,” she said, her voice cold. “The reeve’s guards patrol the marketplace.”
I realized I’d lost. I had no desire whatsoever to fight whichever of Turstan’s soldiers showed up. They’d just see things from her side: a virtuous merchant’s wife who had seen her husband off to bed and was then assaulted by a strange man.
I snarled a farewell to her and stomped back down the lane.
I briefly considered seeking out a lady of the night, but put the thought out of my mind. It was Brigit I wanted, not some random, cheap tart. So I headed back to the inn, which fortunately wasn’t locked although the tavern was deserted. Only Willibrord was in there, bossing a slave around to get the place cleaned up so that he could go to bed himself.
I bowed my head as a good-night, took a tallow candle from the counter, and headed upstairs. When I reached the door to my room, I pushed it open.
Someone cried out in fear. Puzzled, I stepped into the room and raised the candle. Its glow revealed two naked bodies in the bed Sigurd and I had been sharing.
Brigit was a beauty, but she had nothing on Rowena, who sat up, striving to cover her breasts, which jutted out at me girlishly and provocatively. Both she and the boy at her side were covered with the sweet sweat of lovemaking, and they both stared at me in speechless surprise.
“What in thunderation is going on in here?” I was in no mood to play nicey-nicey. “Not that I can’t tell what’s going on here!”
Sigurd wrapped the girl in the blanket, but quickly realized that in doing so he’d exposed his own half-erect penis and hurriedly covered that with his hand.
“But you said . . .” Sigurd began. He had to clear his throat before he was able to continue. “You said you wouldn’t be back until early tomorrow.”
I glared at him. Then I looked back at the girl, who was biting her lip and was so marvelous that I felt my own nether rod rising.
“Did I say that?” I grumbled. “If so, that information was for my master, not an invitation to defile my bed with illicit lovemaking.”
Tears suddenly appeared in the wench’s eyes, showing me how foolish I was being. Lord, they had only seized the opportunity when it arose and shouldn’t have to pay for my having been treated poorly by Brigit.
The boy was already getting out of bed when I stopped him.
“Alright, listen, it’s fine. You thought I’d be away all night, but I . . . my plans changed. You just stay here.” I was reaching for the door, when a thought struck me. “You’re going to get married, aren’t you?”
“As soon as Arnulf is buried,” Rowena said.
I reached under my tunic and removed the necklace, which I then handed to Rowena.
“Here, let this be my wedding present.”
I closed the door behind me on their dumbfounded gratitude, which probably had more to do with my leaving them to finish their lovemaking than the gift itself, and trudged back down to the tavern. I told a stunned Willibrord that I was going to sleep on one of his tables and asked him to bring me a blanket.
About the Author
Photo © Ilona Dreve
Bestselling Danish novelist Martin Jensen was born in 1946 and worked as a teacher and a headmaster in Sweden and Denmark before becoming a full-time writer in 1996. The author of twenty-one novels, he has been honored by the Danish Crime Academy twice and was awarded the Royal Library’s Prize for his medieval novel Soldiers’ Whore. He and his wife are botany enthusiasts who also enjoy bird-watching and gathering mushrooms.
About the Translator
Photo © 2006 Libby Lewis
Tara F. Chace has translated more than twenty novels from Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish. Her most recent translations include Martin Jensen’s The King’s Hounds and Oathbreaker (AmazonCrossing, 2013 and 2014), Sven Nordqvist’s Findus Disappears! (NorthSouth, 2014), Jo Nesbø’s Doctor Proctor’s Fart Powder series (Aladdin, 2010–2013), Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis’s Invisible Murder (Soho Crime, 2012), and Johan Harstad’s 172 Hours on the Moon (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2012).
An avid reader and language learner, Chace earned her PhD in Scandinavian languages and literature from the University of Washington in 2003. She enjoys translating books for adults and children. She lives in Seattle with her family and their black lab, Zephyr.
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