Hawk Quest

by Robert Lyndon

  ‘Watch it,’ one of the soldiers said. ‘They’ve been arguing for hours. The old man’s pissed.’

  Wayland parted the drapes. Olbec and Margaret were seated in X-frame armchairs placed on a dais. Drogo paced in front of them, his face like a scalded pig, punching the palm of one hand to drive home some point or other. The strangers had their backs to Wayland, the Frank slouched yet alert, the Sicilian braced in nervous concentration. Wayland spotted Richard sitting alone in a corner.

  ‘I admit it,’ Drogo said. ‘I don’t know a lot about falcons. Hawk — ing’s too namby-pamby for my taste. Where’s the risk, where’s the danger? But I know one thing. Hawks are prey to endless ailments. They die from the smallest slight. Tie a healthy falcon down in the evening and next morning you return to find a bundle of feathers. Buy a dozen gyrfalcons in Norway and you’d be lucky if a single bird survived the journey.’

  Margaret jabbed Olbec. ‘Don’t listen to him. His opinion’s warped by malice.’

  Drogo spread his arms in frustration. ‘For once, my lady, set aside your prejudices and consider the practicalities. What will you feed the hawks on during the journey?’

  Spots of red highlighted Margaret’s cheeks. ‘Pigeons, seagulls, sheep, fish!’

  Wayland had forgotten about the goshawk. Its emphatic rouse attracted everyone’s attention. Faces turned as the hawk took a tentative bite. The taste of flesh dissolved its fear. It began a ravenous assault on the pigeon, tearing off large chunks, gasping and wheezing to force them down.

  Wayland had lived close to nature and judged everything by the degree of danger it posed. The Frank’s gaze, at once piercing and indifferent, showed him to be very dangerous indeed. The Sicilian was no threat at all. His bulging eyes made Wayland think of a startled hare.

  ‘The falconer,’ Olbec announced.

  ‘I expected an older man,’ Vallon said.

  Olbec had perked up. ‘Well built, though, and he has a cunning way with animals. That goshawk, for example. Trapped only a few days ago and already feeding as freely as a pet dove. I swear the boy can bewitch animals.’ The Count slurped his ale. ‘If anyone can bring the gyrfalcons safe to their destination, it’s him.’

  ‘Does he know what a gyrfalcon is?’ Hero asked.

  Drogo uttered a contemptuous laugh. ‘Even if he did, he can’t answer. He’s as mute as a stone.’

  ‘It’s true that he can’t speak,’ Olbec said. ‘Elves or divers stole his tongue when he lived wild in the forest. Walter caught him when he was hunting upriver. The hounds ran him to earth outside a cave. He was clad in skins and feathers, looked more like an animal than a Christian man.’

  Hero’s eyes widened. ‘How long had he been living in the wilderness?’

  ‘God knows. Probably since birth.’

  ‘Suckled by wolves,’ Hero breathed. ‘Do you call him Romulus?’

  ‘Romulus? We call him Wayland because that was the name carved on a cross he wore around his neck. A Danish name, but the writing was in English. He had a dog with him. Ferocious brute, big as a bull-calf. Still got it. First-rate hunting hound. That beast’s dumb, too.’

  Drogo turned on Hero. ‘Because he’d cut its voice strings so that it wouldn’t betray him when he was poaching our deer. If it had been me who’d caught him, he’d have lost more than his tongue.’

  ‘Why did Walter show charity?’ Hero asked, addressing Olbec.

  ‘Ah,’ Olbec said, relishing the tale. ‘Walter said it was like a scene from a fable. When he rode up, he expected to find a wolf at bay. But no, the hounds were seated in a circle around the boy. He’d charmed them.’

  ‘And that dog of his had torn out the throat of the lead hound. He should have been thrown to the pack.’ Drogo’s head whipped round. ‘You see? No matter how much you feed a wolf, it keeps staring back at the forest. By God, show me that face again and I’ll have you flogged.’

  Wayland lowered his eyes. His heart pounded.

  ‘Look at me,’ Hero said. ‘Wayland, look at me.’

  ‘Do as you’re told,’ Olbec ordered.

  Wayland slowly raised his head.

  Hero frowned. ‘He can understand speech.’

  Olbec belched. ‘There’d be no point wasting house space on him if he was deaf as well as dumb.’

  ‘Yes, but if he once had the gift of words, they would have been English or Danish. Yet he understands French, which he must have learned in your household.’

  ‘Where else?’

  ‘What I’m saying is that even though he can’t speak, he possesses the faculty for language.’

  ‘Who cares,’ Margaret snapped. ‘Tell him what he has to do.’

  Olbec held out his cup for a refill. ‘Listen closely, young Wayland. Sir Walter, your master, is held prisoner by barbarians in a foreign land. You must repay his kindness by helping to secure his release. His jailer demands four falcons in return for his freedom. These falcons are larger, paler and more beautiful than any that you have seen. They dwell far to the north in a country of ice and fire, and their nature has been forged accordingly. Each year, a few of these paragons find their way to Norway. This summer you will join an expedition to that land, select the finest specimens, and care for them on their journey south.’

  ‘You’ll be responsible for their survival.’ Margaret added. ‘If they die, my son’s life is forfeit, and you’ll suffer the consequence.’

  ‘Don’t frighten the boy,’ Olbec said, patting her arm. He beckoned Wayland closer. ‘Imagine falcons so noble that only kings and emperors have title to them. White ones, as big as eagles. You’ll voyage further than most knights travel in a lifetime. On your return journey, you might even make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.’ Olbec’s eyes swam. ‘By God, I wish I was going with you.’

  Most of this had passed over Wayland’s head. He tried to imagine a white falcon as big as an eagle and produced a mental picture of a swan with a hooked beak and wings like the angels his mother had described.

  Drogo clapped in mock applause. ‘What an excellent choice: a dumb falconer for a dumb enterprise. Now all we need is a crew to match. Oh yes, and a leader. I know,’ he said, pointing at the figure in the shadows, ‘why don’t we send Richard?’

  ‘I’d go. Anything to get away from here.’

  ‘We’ll commission an agent,’ said Margaret. ‘A merchant adventurer experienced in the northern trade.’

  ‘You’ll lose control the moment he sets sail. The chances are you’d never see him or our money again.’

  ‘Drogo’s right.’

  It took Wayland a moment to work out that it was the Frank who’d spoken.

  Vallon stood. ‘If breath were wind, by now you could have blown a fleet to Norway. But no ship leaves harbour without a captain. What kind of man are you looking for? He would have to be a man you trusted through and through. A man brave enough to cut through the known hazards and resourceful enough to navigate around perils as yet unseen. He would have to be a man who, if he couldn’t find a path, would make his own. You might find a man who has one of these qualities. You won’t find a man who has them all.’

  Wayland sensed crosscurrents swirling about the chamber. Drogo cocked his head in puzzlement.

  ‘For a moment I thought you were proposing to take up the challenge.’

  ‘God forbid. I lack both the qualities and the incentive.’

  Margaret slapped the arm of her chair. ‘He’s a stranger. His words carry no weight.’

  But Vallon’s intervention had tilted the balance. Olbec rapped his stick on the floor. ‘I’d hazard my fortune if I was sure that it would secure Walter’s release, but it seems to me that we’d lose the one without gaining the other. No, my lady, I’ve reached my decision. I’ll send an ambassador to Anatolia and frankly state my position, offering a ransom more in keeping with our station. What do you think, Vallon? You know the Emir; you say he holds Walter in affection. Surely he’s open to reason.’

  ‘He’s a rational man. I’m sure he�
��d consider your offer carefully.’

  Margaret shot out of her chair, her arms rigid by her side. Her eyes raked around the room. ‘Since none of you will help, I’ll make my own arrangements.’ Gathering up her skirts, she ran out of the chamber.

  Drogo clasped Olbec’s hand. ‘Well said, Father. Too many times you’ve let your lady’s passions cloud your judgement.’

  Olbec looked up at him with curdled eyes. ‘Not so clouded that I can’t divine your motives.’

  The screen parted and a soldier rushed in.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Drogo demanded.

  ‘Guilbert went outside for a piss. Didn’t see the dog in the snow. Next moment he’s flat on his back with that hellhound at his throat.’

  Drogo turned on Wayland. ‘I warned you.’

  Wayland stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled. Nailed feet hammered on the floor and moments later the dog loped through the curtain like a creature out of myth or nightmare, its eyes sulphurous yellow, its steely hackles rimed with frost. When it saw Drogo’s threatening stance, its muzzle wrinkled in black corrugations. Wayland hissed. The dog made straight for him, lay down at his feet and began licking its paws.

  Olbec held up his cup for another refill. ‘I’m not wrong, am I? The boy can enchant the beasts.’

  Raul was waiting when Wayland left the hall. ‘Are they going to send an expedition?’ he demanded, trotting alongside. ‘Are you going on it? Is there a place for me?’

  Wayland waved him away. There were too many things to think about. When Raul persisted, the dog rounded on him, grating its teeth in warning. Wayland went into his hut and Raul kicked the door behind him. ‘I thought we were friends.’

  Wayland tied the goshawk to her perch and lay back on his pallet. He watched the hawk in the smoky light. She’d eaten most of the pigeon and her crop bulged. She stropped her beak on the perch, lifted one foot, extended her middle toe and delicately scratched her throat. The movement agitated the bell on one of her tail feathers. She twisted her head about to settle the contents of her crop. Her feathers relaxed and she drew one clenched foot up under a downy apron. She was asleep. Tomorrow he’d cut one stitch from each eyelid. In a week she would be feeding outdoors in daylight. Another three weeks and she would be flying free. He’d won.

  Strange, Wayland thought, how quickly hunger and exhaustion mastered fear and hatred. He was neither jessed nor seeled, rarely went hungry, and could come and go as he pleased. Neither necessity nor affection bound him to the castle, yet at the end of each day, some weakness on his part made him turn his steps back towards the people he loathed. He fingered the cross at his neck. He would escape when spring came, he vowed. He would leave at the same time as the strangers, taking his own path. He blew out the lamp. Turning on his side, he grasped the dog’s ruff and wrapped it round his hand, unaware that he used to do the same with his mother’s hair.

  The dog was his only tangible link with the past, a place he tried to block off. Sometimes, though, it erupted in dreams that woke him in a sweat of horror. And sometimes, like now, it rose up like a picture emerging from a dark pool.

  His mother had sent him and his younger sister to gather mushrooms in the forest. He’d been fourteen, his sister ten, the dog just a clumsy overgrown pup. Three years had passed since King Harold’s defeat, but Wayland had seen his first Normans only in the last month. From a safe distance he’d watched the soldiers in their ringed armour supervising the construction of their castle on the Tyne.

  The farm where he lived lay ten miles upriver, a few acres of clearing in a remnant of ancient wildwood cut by a deep ravine. There were seven in the family. His mother was English, his father a Danish freeman, the son of a Viking who’d sailed for England in the bodyguard of the great Cnut. Grandfather was still alive, a bedridden giant who called on the Norse gods and wore a Hammer of Thor amulet. Wayland had an older brother and sister, Thorkell and Hilda. His little sister was called Edith. At his mother’s insistence, all the children had been baptised, the girls taking English names, the boys Danish.

  It was a good autumn for mushrooms. As Wayland picked, he could hear the rhythmic blows of his father’s axe, a sound as familiar as his heartbeat. When the basket was full, Edith said she wanted to look for a bear. Wayland knew there were no bears left in the forest. Grandfather had killed the last one himself and had one of its teeth to prove it. Wayland wasn’t convinced that the claim was true, but he liked the story and he often asked the old man to tell it. Grandpa told him other stories when his mother wasn’t around — thrilling, pagan tales about treacherous gods and monsters and the battle at the end of the world.

  He found fresh deer slots and began following them to the river, the pup ranging ahead. They could hear water sliding down the ravine. The pup sat and tilted its head on one side, listening with such comic intensity that Edith laughed. The sound of the axe had stopped. Wayland thought he heard a cry. He waited for it to come again, but it didn’t. The dog whimpered.

  Wayland sat his sister down under a tree and told her not to wander away or wolves would eat her up.

  ‘I’m not afraid of wolves. They only cross the river in winter.’

  ‘Trolls, then. Trolls live in the Pot.’

  The Pot was the deepest pool in the ravine, a cauldron of black water walled in by dripping cliffs and overhung by trees that gripped the earth with roots like gnarled fingers. Edith looked towards it through the mossy gloom. She brushed at her cross. ‘Can the dog stay with me?’

  ‘You know he won’t leave my side. I’ll tell you what. While I’m gone, you can think of a name for him.’

  ‘I’ve already chosen one. It’s-’

  ‘Tell me when I get back,’ Wayland said, breaking into a run.

  The pup thought it was a game and bounded ahead before crouching to spring up in mock ambush. Wayland began to feel a bit foolish. His mother would scold him for leaving Edith alone in the darkening wood.

  As he approached the clearing he heard voices and the clinking of harness. He threw himself down, grabbed the pup by the scruff and wormed through the forest litter until he reached the treeline.

  There was too much horror to take in at one glance. Two Norman soldiers held Hilda and his mother outside the house. Another pair had pinned his father face down over the chopping block. Thorkell lay on his back, his face a bloody mask. Then Wayland saw the mounted man at the far end of the clearing. He spurred his horse and charged, slashed down and half severed his father’s arm. Whooping, the rider galloped to the other end of the clearing, turned and pounded back. This time Wayland saw his father’s head roll off the stump and blood squirt from his neck.

  His mother and sister were screaming. They were still screaming when the men dragged them into the house. Their screams grew muffled and then stopped. After a while the man who’d murdered his father came out, his face splattered with blood. He took a pitcher of water and poured it over his head. When he mounted his horse, he reeled in the saddle as if drunk. One by one the other men came out, tying up their breeches. Wayland prayed that his mother and sister would come out. After a while smoke coiled from the door. The killers didn’t leave. Flames began to lick up the thatch. The blaze grew and the Normans laughed and held out their hands to it. Even where Wayland lay he could feel the singeing gusts. The Normans left. One of them carried a deer carcass slung over his horse. Another was draped with live chickens. The others drove two cows, a horse and oxen before them.

  Wayland ran towards the blaze. The heat frizzled his hair and blistered his face before it beat him back. He stood screaming as the roof dropped into the house and a ball of fire rolled into the sky. He watched the walls collapse and then he sank to the ground, his mind numbed by all he had seen.

  He became aware of the dog pushing its head against his legs. His face and hands were scalded and peeling. He registered that it was dusk and remembered his sister. He tried to run, but his legs wouldn’t obey him. He reeled and tripped, staggered into trees.


  The basket of mushrooms was still under the tree, but Edith was gone. He listened. There were only the sounds of the wood settling to rest. He called, softly at first, then louder. An owl shrieked. He found Edith’s trail wandering towards the gorge. The trees were thickest in this part of the wood, spreading twilight even on the sunniest days. The dog was too young and shocked to help. It sidled against him, getting under his feet, while he searched and called until it was too dark to see. He slid down with his back against a tree. A wind sprang up and rain began to spit. For a time he continued to call, his voice growing hoarse. Then he sat still, his eyes vacant, the dog pressed shivering against him as he relived one nightmare while anticipating the next.

  In the dripping grey dawn he tracked his sister through a graveyard of windfallen giants along the edge of the ravine. Her trail stopped at a hole by the base of an old ash. For a moment he thought she might have fallen into an animal den. But when he peered down through the tangle of roots he saw water far below. Edith’s body floated into view, face down, turning in the current, her long blonde hair fanned about her. He climbed down and pulled her out, kissed her white face and held her tight against him. When he let go, he felt something wither and twist inside him. He removed her crucifix, threw back his head and howled at the gods or monsters that had inflicted such hideous cruelties.

  From that day on he never spoke a word.

  VI

  It snowed again and then froze. For a week winter held the country in a deadlock. It froze so hard that shelves of ice formed on the riverbanks and trees split at night with sharp cracks. Inside the great hall the garrison huddled around the hearth like corpses in a prehistoric burial chamber. Fresh food grew short. Men’s teeth wobbled in their gums. Every day Wayland and his dog went out to check traps and snares, traipsing through the ice-encased woods like figures in a woodcut. Sometimes Raul accompanied them, his crossbow slung over his back, a knife tucked into loops at the front of his fox fur hat.

  A week before Lent the wind shifted in the night and the garrison woke to find winter in retreat. Plates of ice spun down the river. By evening it had spilled over its banks and carried away one of the bridges. Next morning Hero saw an uprooted tree surging down the torrent, a hare clinging to one end of the trunk, a fox facing it at the other end.