Kings of the North

by Kings of the North (retail) (epub)

  * * *

  They slept in the inn’s common room; there were some other travelers, but they found a big bench to themselves. As the night deepened Raef told himself he needed rest, not to roam the light field, and he lay down in the rugs as if to sleep. But he knew it was fear of the Lady that kept his mind inside his skull. If he was too afraid to roam he was too afraid to do anything; she had beaten him already.

  He had been lucky to get away the first time. He willed himself to sleep. But the rugs itched. The hall whispered with rats, with birds in the rafters, with strange people sleeping, the dark air murmurous. Leif lay next to him, Leif whom he misused and took for granted and might now lose; Laissa, whom he loved, snuggled against the Icelander’s far side. He could not let go of himself.

  Yet the great ocean of light drew him, irresistible now, his mind slipping out beyond the barrier of his skin. He shut his eyes. He let go, and he drifted out upon the world.

  At first he stayed very close. He felt the familiar bodies around him as thicknesses in one great wheeling and stirring field of subtle color. Sometimes he thought he could hear music in its turning. Sometimes he thought it gleamed of its own, but other times he thought a greater light suffused it. He straggled with his fear, with his need to sleep and his longing for the fight. Finally the shell of fear cracked, and he let his mind stream out, rippling wide.

  Drifting by Leif and Laissa and outward, past people throughout the inn, slaves asleep in the kitchen hearth, grooms yawning in the stable, he spread in a circle, one hand toward the sea, the other inland. There seemed nothing else moving in the blue moonlight. Cold and quiet, the countryside smoothed itself through him. He heard, or felt, a low trill, like the wind singing.

  A smell reached him that frightened him so that before he even put a name to it he plunged back to his body in a great rush. The light vanished. He opened his eyes in the dark and for a swirling drunken moment he felt seasick.

  A fluty whistle came to his ears. Leif was snoring. But he was far away now, and it was a much larger room. The barn. Raef had come back, not to the inn hall, but to the old barn where they had slept the night before.

  Even as he knew this he felt something drawing hard on him, like a current, and he slid backward again into the light, helpless and confused. Fumbling as a baby must fumble in the womb, his mind sank down, contracting, folding into himself, into his body, nesting behind his eyes, looking out, Leif next to him, Laissa beyond that, the big hall full of other snoring people.

  He lay quietly breathing. Somehow for an instant he had jumped backward a day. He wondered what would have happened had he stayed there – could he have stayed there? What would happen if he were stuck somehow out of his right time? He remembered the tidal current pulling him out again, like wrack drawn irresistibly back into the sea.

  He was suddenly very tired. In his mind there was a long stream of music, deep and dark and sweet. He shut his eyes and went to sleep.

  * * *

  By midmorning the next day they were riding over the south rim of a river valley that was like a vast wedge driven into the plain. Below them the river wound its way out of the east through drifts and bars of white sand, lines of drifted leaves and spiky brown reeds, down to the sea. Thirty houses, shops, huts, a stone church, and a squat little wooden tower clustered along the southern high side of the riverbank. The narrow course of the water ran along the front of the town, and a fringe of wharfs reached out into it.

  They rode down off the south rim, and the road bent to follow the river inland; the wide white riverbed stretched out before them. They came to the city gate, where they had to pay a toll. As they stood there, Leif fingering the money, Raef looked down through a lane to the river and saw three big sow-bellied cargo ships moored at the bottom of the hill.

  They went on down to the river street and found the church where the duke had told them to leave the ring. The old priest who came out to meet them on the porch had one eye looking straight and one aimed out to the side. His sparse hair was wispy and grey over his spotted scalp; whiskers framed his humorous mouth. He took the ring, looked curiously from one to the other, and thanked them.

  “We have to find a ship,” Raef said. He started off, Leif on his heels.

  Laissa said, “I’m going to stay here and pray.”

  Leif wheeled, his gaze going to the priest, who said, “She will be safe here, in Jesus’s name.” Laissa went past him into the church.

  The priest came after her. She said, “This is the Church of the Sacred Heart?”

  “Yes, it is.” He made the sign of the cross over her. “Are you troubled, daughter? Please, let Christ our Lord help you find your way.” He smiled and went on past her, toward the altar.

  At the front of the church she kneeled down. On the wall behind the altar a wooden Jesus hung on his cross. She lifted her eyes to the carved face and crossed herself, remembering to do it the right way. Then she covered her face with her hands.

  Raef was looking for a ship to take them to England. He was taking them away from here, before she had found her mother, before she had found out who she was. She bent forward, curling over her pain.

  “Daughter.” The old priest sank down beside her. His voice was mild as milk and the kindness of his smile warmed her. “Tell me why you are suffering.”

  She raised her head, looking into his face – into his good eye. Once again, she told her story. He listened, his patient face puzzled; she told him the name she had just found, Alais, and he gave a little shake of his head. She told him the pitiful handful of words she remembered, and then his one eye narrowed with recognition.

  “Rawn,” he repeated.

  “Rouen, I think,” she said, but remembered where she had heard that and shivered.

  He laid his hands together over his belly. His hands were small and plump, with well-kept nails. “Maybe not Rouen, but Ranuld?”

  She stared at him, her jaw falling open, and a wild hope rising. He said, “Long ago a man named Ranuld stole a child from a woman here and went away and never came back. For years we prayed every Saint Nicholas Day for her, until—”

  Laissa reached out her hands to him, suddenly afraid. “She hasn’t died? Is she still here?”

  “You can find her in the last house on the river street.” He gave a shake of his head. “But wait, my daughter, you may not—”

  She heard none of that. She whirled up and ran out of the church.

  * * *

  “What if she does find her mother?” Leif said. They had taken the horses to the market and sold them; he carried the pack on his shoulder and his hand ax hung from his belt. Raef wore his old cloak in spite of the day’s heat. “We’ll never see her again.”

  Raef walked a stride ahead of him. All this way he had thought, In the end, she would not leave them, whatever happened, but now he was not so sure. He went down a narrow cobbled way where the houses crowded close along the street and the roofs tilted toward him, penning down the dank stinks. Ahead the water glinted. He stood on the edge of the river before the cargo ships.

  Two were clunky French scows, but one was a dansker knarr, thirty feet long, half-decked, her mast stepped and her single sail furled neatly on the yard. She was foul bottomed and leaky, but she could carry them to England, with the wind or on oars. A steady line of shoremen was packing casks and bales of cargo into her hold. Raef weighed the purse in his hand. He passed up the French barges and went straight to the knarr, whose captain was sitting on an upturned barrel on the beach, paring his nails with a fish knife.

  “I want to go to England,” Raef said. “I’ll pay well. Three of us.”

  The captain stuck the knife into its sheath on his belt, his gaze going past him to Leif. He shook his head. “Not this time of the year. The narrow sea’s full of gales, fog, pirates – plus there’s the wind, dead foul for Portsmouth, say.”

  “Anywhere in England,” Raef said. He tossed the purse in his hand, so that the coins jangled. “You could run be
fore the wind up the narrows and, with just a little luck, get across where the two coasts are so close there.” He knew no names for these places, but he saw them in his mind.

  The captain’s eyes followed the purse, up and down. But then he shook his head. “Not me. Not this time of the year.”

  Raef glanced at the French barges; he turned his head and looked up the river bar. There were two more ships beyond, neither of them particularly seaworthy. He fixed his gaze on the dansker captain, sitting on his barrel, supervising the shoremen loading his ship.

  Raef tossed the purse up and down again, and the captain brought his gaze back to him. “I said no.” His voice was curt. But he watched the purse. Raef opened it and turned it over and poured a stream of silver money out onto the sand in front of the barrel.

  The captain looked down at the pile, and his lower lip thrust out. He nudged it with his shoe.

  “Go on,” Raef said. “Count it.”

  “It’s a hard crossing this time of the year,” the captain said. “Any time of the year, actually, east to west.” But he got off the barrel and kneeled on the sand and began to gather up the money, counting as he did.

  Raef watched him patiently; when he got to thirty pence, which was about half, Raef said, “Keep that. The rest when you get us to England.”

  The captain’s fist was full of money. He looked longingly at the heap still on the sand. Raef squatted down on his heels and shoveled the coins back into the purse. The captain’s gaze followed the purse as Raef stood up.

  “I’ll take you out,” he said. “No promise I can get you across.”

  “Good enough,” Raef said. “No more money unless you do, though.” He reached out his hand, and the captain shook it.

  “The tide ebbs in an hour. Don’t make me wait, you understand.” The fistful of coins disappeared into a pouch on his belt.

  “Yes,” Raef said.

  “No promise I’ll get you to England.”

  “Yes,” Raef said, and went back up to the street that ran along the riverbank.

  “Now we have to find Laissa,” Leif said, looking all around.

  “That won’t be hard,” Raef said. “It’s a small town.” He turned onto the river street, walking east.

  * * *

  Laissa had seen them going down toward the ships and circled well away from them. Raef sometimes seemed to know even out of sight where she was. She ran on down the street, dodging through the market, where their horses stood in a line with a dozen others, and onto the last stretch of the white-pebbled street.

  At first she passed houses on both sides of the street, but ahead, at the end, there was the last house. She slowed. It was a long, low shack with a stone wall around the front. Her stomach tied into a knot. Up and down in the street in front of the house, women walked, their hips swaying, their long hair uncovered. Laissa stopped still.

  She knew what this was. She had seen houses like this from Constantinople to Rheims, the women strolling back and forth, and now, from the enclosed garden, she heard the sound of laughter and loud voices and music. This was a tunnel back to a life she had escaped.

  She crept closer. She felt sick to her stomach. At the corner, she slipped into the cover of the garden wall and went along it, away from the street. The wall was only a little taller than she was, and near where it met the house she came across a rock she could stand on to peep over.

  The garden was full of people, men and women, some sitting on benches and some standing. Some standing together, their arms around each other. Kissing. Their hands on each other. Their hands in each other’s clothes. Going in and coming out of the low building, their faces smeared and slack. In one corner, even, two men had a woman between them, their leggings down around their ankles.

  She slid down behind the wall, unable to catch her breath. The lewd laughter and the babble of voices pressed around her, forced itself over her, as if it would drown her. She heard a roared oath, someone howling for more wine, a woman shrieking with excitement. She made herself climb up onto the rock again and peer over the wall.

  Most of the women were young, her age. One walked close by her, the front of her bodice open and her breasts hanging out. The men were all kinds, old and young, many of them also half-undressed. She made herself look from one face to the next, until, on a bench by the door, she saw an old woman shelling nuts.

  She wore no coif, her hair straggling down over her shoulders. Fair hair, like Laissa’s, streaked with grey. She dumped a handful of nuts into her mouth and chewed, then reached down by her feet and took up a jug and drank.

  Laissa slid down into the shelter of the wall again. She could not breathe; her heart beat so hard it shook her. She shut her eyes. Jesus, she thought. Jesus help me. With all her will she forced herself to look over the wall again.

  The old woman saw her. Their eyes met. In that face Laissa saw her own face, seen half a dozen times in water and in glass: the shape of her eyes, her cheekbones, her nose, old, raddled and foolish with drink.

  The priest had tried to warn her. Her chest clenched, her guts churning. The old woman stared at her a moment, spat, and reached down for her jug again, looking away, uninterested. Laissa backed away from the wall, swaying, caught between terror and pity, all her love and longing like a bloody stump. She went back out to the street and trudged back into the town again, her body rigid.

  * * *

  Raef moved over to the side of the street to avoid a wagon trundling toward them. They were nearly to the end of the town and had not found Laissa yet, and he could feel the tide in the river beside them starting to yield toward the sea. He began to regret giving the ship captain so much of the silver. He said, “What will you do, Leif?”

  “What?”

  “Are you coming with me? There are three places on the knarr to England. Fat as you are I think one of them will still be enough for you.”

  Leif gave him an evil look. “Sometimes I believe you’re mad.”

  “Maybe.”

  “But I have come so far with you, how could I stop now?”

  Raef bobbed his head. “Good.”

  “But we have to find Laissa.”

  Then as if the mention of her name had brought her into being she was coming toward them. Raef swore under his breath. She was walking stiffly, blindly down the center of the road. He got Leif by the arm. “There.”

  Leif cried, “Laissa!” and ran toward her. She lifted her head, and her face was streaming tears. She raised her arms and the Icelander gathered her up.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and wept. “I’m sorry.”

  “Come on,” Raef said. “You’ll be more than sorry if we miss that ship.” In spite of the girl’s wretched looks, he could not keep from smiling. Laissa buried her face against Leif’s shoulder. They went quickly back up the street.

  Chapter Three

  Laissa alternately wept in Leif’s arms and vomited over the lee side of the ship. They were sitting on the half deck in the stern of the knarr, bundled in their fur cloaks and sheltered somewhat by a canvas awning. The captain had been right about the weather. They had rowed on the tide down the river, and as soon as they were out of the lee of the coast the south wind hit them like a fist. They raised the sail, and the knarr began to lumber and roll along into the north.

  Raef stood up in the prow, his face wet with spray. He had not sailed these seas in fifteen years. He had tasted the salt tang on his lips now the first time he left the shore, at the far side of this ocean. The harsh edge in the wind made his blood race.

  On the water he always knew where he was. The sway and heave of the sea tumbled through the narrows like a great dance. The bottom rose here, even as the shorelines pinched together toward the north and the wind blew hard from the south-southwest as if into a giant funnel, piling the water up over itself in crosscurrents and rips. The ship skidded across the steep, hard-running seas, the stays groaning and water shipping in green over the gunwales. Amidships in the hold, two of the crewmen
were bailing steadily, to their ankles in slop.

  The ship swooped along the slope of a wave, heavy with her cargo, and wallowed on. Raef went along the ship, past the other crewmen huddled down against the sides, and climbed over the casks that filled the hold, back to where the captain stood at the helm.

  On the steerboard side the coast of France faded down to a blue line on the horizon. The sun shone some of the time. As the day went by the wind was backing around into the east, Raef saw, glad; if they got a little farther north they could run to England on this wind. He leaned against the gunwale, content to do nothing. But as the day wore on, more clouds shut out the sky, and the mast creaked and the stays sang, and finally the captain said, “I’m bringing in the sail. We can row in to Normandy from here.”

  Raef said, “This wind will take us to England. Keep going.”

  The captain grunted at him. “I’m not losing my ship for your sake. I’m putting in for the night. Maybe tomorrow—”

  Raef pulled out his knife and put the tip against the captain’s belly. “Or I could just throw you overboard and go myself.”

  The captain let out an explosion of breath. Raef could tell Leif was watching this from the shelter of the half deck; Laissa had fallen asleep. None of the oarsmen had noticed. Raef was watching the captain’s eyes. He put a little pressure on the knife.

  “How far can you swim?”

  The captain said nothing. His mouth tightened, and he swallowed. Raef said, “I’ll take the helm. You stay right where you are.” He slid past the captain and pulled the tiller bar out of his slackening grip. “Tell them to ease the sheets.”

  The captain said, “This wind will tear the sail to shreds.”

  Raef stuck the knife hard into the gunwale by his elbow. “Tell them to ease the sheets.”

  The captain swallowed again and called to the crew. Two of them crawled out of the shelter of the half deck and over the cargo to let the sail out; Raef leaned on the tiller a little, following the wind northwest.