Kings of the North
Page 12
Raef put his hand out toward the water. Back at the ford he had felt the deep salt tidal tug of the river, silty and mucky and clogged, but far away, still, the sea. His sea. He felt that here too. He turned and led them back in among the houses along the river where people lived.
All that was left of Jorvik clustered around the squat, unfinished stone minster. In a yard, a man splitting wood stopped to squint at them. Smoke came from the roof holes. Two women stood beside the path talking. Their eyes followed the three, but the women chattered on.
The paths between the huts were muddy, stinking of rot, the winter’s ice thawing under their top layer of filth and leaves and dirt. Raef steered to the side, out of the ditch down the center. The shadow of the minster fell over them. A man drove a pig around the corner. Dogs skulked away from them. Within a few steps they were out of the village.
Laissa leaned on him. She was round now with the baby, and her face was drawn and white. He glanced past her at Leif and saw the Icelander watching him. He had to find them somewhere to shelter. They had a little food left, but it was going to rain sometime soon. They passed along a withy fence that separated a broad yard from the street, a low three-sided barn at the far edge. The mud inside the yard was trampled and speckled with blood. The place smelled of dead animals. A shambles. He climbed the street, aimless, unwilling to stop. They passed more mined, old, crumbling houses, what was left of the city he remembered here.
“We could stay in one of these houses,” Laissa said, clinging to him.
“No,” he said. He did not know what he was looking for. He could not rest here. He slid his arm around her and half carried her along. At the top of the street a big old oak tree stood. The tree looked dead, its galled branches like knobbed claws, its trunk split down the middle. Beside it was the barren hilltop, oddly flat, overgrown with weeds.
He set Laissa down under the oak tree and went out onto the flat hilltop, wading through the dead stalks of weeds. The place reached deep back into his memory. Looking up, he could see across the fields, over a little creek, down to the city wall, which was a great stone circle around the green and empty slopes, the mins and wreckage of the overgrown city. The village was away to his left, and directly below him stretched a low meadow, what these people called a sway, crisscrossed with sheep paths. Beyond that the river ran.
He had seen that city thronged with people. That river once had dragons drawn up all along the bank. This hill had been—
He kicked at the weeds around him, scraping them back with his heel, and his foot struck something solid and even. He walked along it, here and there kicking away six inches of dirt and fallen leaves and overgrowth to expose the flagstone floor beneath. In the middle of the flat space, he came to a mounded bramble.
Heedless of the thorns, he wrenched the vines apart. Under them was a circle of set stones, two feet high, blackened, still half full of char. It was a fire pit. He cleared the rest of the vines from it. Leif and Laissa had come out after him onto the hilltop; Laissa was looking around, alarmed, and Leif had his arm around her. Raef turned back to the fire pit.
It was whole, all the stones still fitted together, except for one place, one gap, like a missing tooth. A shiver went down his spine. He stooped, groping in the weeds, and found the stone that belonged there and put it back.
Laissa said suddenly, “We could go down to one of those houses we passed before. Just for now.”
Leif said, “It’s going to get cold tonight if it rains.”
Raef shot him a hard look. “We’re staying here. We’ve stayed in worse places.”
“Not when there was someplace better.” Laissa pushed up before him, holding her belly out between them like a weapon. “Are you going to make me have my baby in the cold and the wet and the open like some kind of animal?”
“The baby won’t be born for—”
“I don’t care,” she said, her eyes hot with temper. “I want to sleep under a roof, with walls around me and a fire to keep me warm.”
“We will build a hall here, walls here, a roof here.” He set himself. “I’m not going, Laissa.”
Leif said, “Hold. Look.”
Raef swiveled around. Laissa had begun to rail at him again, but her voice fell still. From the center of the fire pit a tendril of smoke was rising.
Laissa said, “Sweet Mother Mary.”
Raef sank on his heels before it. Beneath the smoke the first few tongues of a little fire licked up from the blackened stones. He put his hands out to it, and the heat kissed his palms.
“Get wood,” he said. He stood, turning to Laissa, standing there with her mouth open, staring at the fire. “Sit down here. I’ll make you warm. And we have something to eat and we’ll find more.” He kissed her face. “Sit.” He went to fetch wood for the fire.
* * *
They lay together that night under their cloaks. Raef wrapped his arms around her, his legs around her legs. Within her, between them, he could feel the baby asleep also, curled like a new leaf. The baby astonished him. Not him and yet him all through, and her too, and not her. He knew the baby was a girl; he sang to her sometimes, no words, only some old old song. His mother must have sung it to him. Or Benna. The child had no name to him yet. He longed to hold her in his arms.
As real as the baby, as unseeable, he felt the hall around them, as it had been, as it would be again, the walls, the thatch above, the beams, the high seat, the benches for their people to sleep on. He felt the people going back and forth, the haunch turning on the spit, the girls weaving, children playing, someone singing. He imagined it as if he saw it while he sat on the high seat, king of this place.
He thought he had always wanted this. He thought of the baby to be born into this hall, of his wife sitting beside him, his men around him, and his work before him, and thought, I have always wanted this.
* * *
In the morning he and Leif began uncovering the stones of the old hall’s footing and putting them back into place. Many were gone; somebody would have tried to build a house out of them, which likely had not gone well. Laissa sat by the fire for a while, eating the last of their cheese. A boy bareback on a pony stopped under the dead oak tree to watch them work.
Laissa said, “I am going down to the minster.”
“Go,” Raef said. He was heaving a big square stone into place at the northwest corner of the footing. They were going to have to look for wood to build the walls too.
Breathless, Leif said, “Why do you let her – she’s out to here, Raef – do you ever look at her—”
Raef said, “She’s just going down the street.” He took off his shirt and wiped his sweating face and chest. Laissa had gone away before Leif could decide to go with her. Glancing over his shoulder, Raef noticed a few more people had joined the boy under the oak tree. He thought it was a good idea to have Laissa out of the way anyway. “One of us can go get her if we have to.”
“If she’s even there,” Leif said. He bent to another vine-covered heap of stone.
* * *
Laissa walked down the street, across a dirty little square with a heap of mossy rubble in the middle, and then around to the front of the minster. It was a tall square building made of stone, and the stone looked new, sharp edged, recently hewn. It had no bell tower. A yard full of graves stood around it, and she went up the walk and in through the front.
The inside was so big she took several steps into the middle of it, down a row of columns, before she thought to find out if there was anybody else here. She turned, looking, and straining her ears.
“Hello?”
No one answered. The place seemed empty. The air was full of dust. She went on up the main aisle of the church, which led straight from the door to a big altar of stone. Drifts of leaves lay against the altar rail. On the wall behind it a Jesus hung, made of wood, with open eyes and a thoughtful mouth. She kneeled down at the altar, crossed herself, and said some prayers; it had been a long while since she was in a church.
The Jesus needed his hair painted, and his mouth was chipped. She liked his big sad eyes.
She asked him for help. She only wanted a place to live, a place she did not have to leave, where she could have her baby. All her mind was on the baby now, even Raef an annoyance, something prickly, off to one side. She needed a home for her baby.
“It’s not a real church, you know,” a voice said behind her. “They won’t even give us a priest.”
Laissa thought, Why do you need a priest? But she did not speak; she rose to face the woman behind her. Only then she realized the woman was speaking dansker.
She said, startled, “Are you a Dane?”
“No, I’m from Jorvik,” said the woman, amused. “Are you a Dane? My name is Miru, I’m the wife of the butcher here, Goda. But you’re a stranger. I know everybody.”
“My name is Laissa,” she said. “We just got here. I was expecting a city here.”
“There was once.” Miru’s mouth turned unhappy. “The King hates us, so everybody left.”
“Where did they go?”
Mini shrugged. “To London, mostly. Nottingham. Lincoln.”
Laissa thought of Arre, who was from Jorvik, and swallowed. She wondered if the King’s vengeance against Jorvik was over with. Miru sat down next to her. She was not tall but square and strongly made, a fit butcher’s wife, with big red hands, dried blood under her fingernails, and a look straight as a knife. “With my husband’s work, we can get by here. You’re not alone, are you?” She put her hand on the mound of Laissa’s belly. “With this baby coming?”
“No – my husband is here. And my – father.” Laissa jerked her head back vaguely toward the wall. “We’re staying up on the hill, by that dead oak tree. There’s a ruined hall there.” She stopped, startled at the sudden intensity of Mira’s look.
The butcher’s wife stood up. “Yes, to be sure there is. Who is your husband? Take me to him, now.”
* * *
The men worked the rest of the morning until they had gone around the whole outside of the hall uncovering fallen stones and moving them back into place. Leif said, “We need to get some more footers.” Straightening, he looked at the great space they had marked out and whistled under his breath.
In his mind Raef could see the hall, the walls straight and true, the door framed and hung but always open. He could feel it there, more and more, the solid shape, the strength, as if it existed whole in some space he could only reach with his mind. He glanced toward the oak tree, where a small crowd of people watched.
“Here comes Laissa,” Leif said, and he turned.
Laissa was walking up the street toward them, and with her came a woman in a blood-stained apron and wooden shoes. Raef let out a yell. He took a step toward her before he even brought to his thinking mind who she was, but she had seen him too and was running toward him.
He caught her in his arms. “Miru.” The name came from deep in his childhood. “Miru.”
She clung to him, sobbing. “I knew you’d come back. I knew you’d come back.” She stepped away, looking up into his face, her hands on his arms, and then turned and looked around. Her eyes were huge with tears. Her mouth trembled. “Where is— is—”
“Miru.” He held her hands in his. “He’s dead. I’m sorry. He died years ago, in the East.”
“Then there’s only me,” she said and sat down on the ground and began to weep. “There’s only me.” She put her hands over her face and cried.
Laissa sat beside her and put her arms around her. Raef sat on his heels before them. “She is my foster sister,” he said, to Laissa. “My cousin. Benna and Corban’s daughter. We grew up together. Miru, where is Aelfu?”
The woman shook her head, streaming tears, her hands lifting and falling limp in her lap. “Dead, in the plague. She’s buried in the churchyard.” She raised her eyes to Laissa. “This is your wife, Raef?” She looked around, as if she were coming out of a fog, at the hall. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at Corban’s old house?”
Raef stood up. “Where is Corban’s house?”
“Just down the street and around the corner,” she said. “Behind where the old high street was.” She waved her arm vaguely. She turned to Laissa. “I’m the only one left, then.”
Raef went off down the street. Miru’s eyes followed him. “He is so tall. Corban was never—” She was overcome again with weeping. Laissa took her in through the space where the door would be and sat her down on the heap of cloaks and dalmatics in the warmth of the fire and brought her the skin of water.
Miru said, “I knew somebody would come back.” She wiped her face on her sleeve. “The King could kill Jorvik with his taxes and blocking the river, but I knew that someday…” She heaved a sigh. “But I thought it would be Conn. My brother. He was sunny as a summer day, my brother; he was afraid of nothing, and I thought he would make everything good again.”
Laissa took her hand. The other woman’s grief tugged at her. She said, “Raef is not sunny.”
“No.” Miru looked at her, frowning. “He is not Corban’s son, either, and that is why you are here and not at Corban’s house. I understand that now.” She licked her lips, and her voice sank, uneasy. “There is more going on here than I can know. My husband will be wondering where I am.”
Laissa slid her arms around her own belly. “You must go home, then. Will you come back? Will I see you?”
Miru smiled at her. “We are cousins, aren’t we?” She leaned forward and kissed Laissa on the cheek. Laissa smelled the strong smell of her body.
“Thank you,” Laissa said, and they hugged again, their arms twining.
Miru said, “Raef was always a little strange. But now, you know, I see we all were. His mother was—” She shook her head, as if words were not enough. “My mother made things. She made drawings, and what she drew came true. Corban wasn’t so strange; he was just the best man in the whole world. It was a small world, and a long time ago. I’m not especially strange now, except I’m married to Goda, which would be a strange thing for any woman. Here.” Tears leaked from the corner of her eyes. She started to her feet. “I have to go. But I’ll send you a joint for your fire.”
She stood, shaking out her apron; turned toward the oak tree, and called, “Peter! Go down to the shambles and fetch up a haunch of mutton. Then get that pony back to its plow. The rest of you – shoo! Shoo!” She flapped her big red hands at them. Under the oak, the twenty-odd people laughed. The boy on the pony was riding away down the street, but the others stayed where they were.
Miru shrugged. “I tried. You’ll have trouble with them.” She dashed at her dribbling eyes with her hand. She glanced at Leif, who was clearing leaves and dirt off the floor. “He looks pretty capable. I’ll see you tomorrow, Laissa, come down to the shambles.” She went off; at the wall she paused a moment, as if she would step across it, but then she turned and walked down to the door and left.
* * *
Corban’s old house lay in ruins, the thatch long blown off or fallen in. Mold and mushrooms grew white as cream on what remained of the walls, the broken beams. It looked dark, even in the sunlight, as if it were falling down into the center of the earth. From the street, looking in, he could see the air crinkle.
He stepped inside, and the air pressed around him as if he were under water, folding around him. He swung his leg forward to take another step, and his thigh passed through a ripple; for a long moment, his shin and his foot did not follow. Finally, he saw the foot touch the floor. He drew in a deep breath, and a shudder passed all through his body.
He stood where he was and looked slowly, carefully through the house. In the laps and coils of the air the light fell strangely sideways, crosswise, pools of shadow trapped where nothing threw a shadow.
He began to move, inch by inch. There seemed nothing left, only heaps of rotten leaves, broken timbers, dust and mold. He saw a metal rim sticking out of the rubbish, and moving slowly he reached out and pulled up an old jug.
It was Corban, not in this moment but in the moment when he had lived here, long before. As if Raef were here both then and now. An instant later, in the place he shared with Corban, he sensed his mother. For the first time, he saw them for the same person, Corban and Mav, the two sides of one person, separate and yet inseparable, half flesh, half light, in and out of the world. He felt them around him; he felt them embrace him.
“Raef. Raef. Raef.”
Up through the deep channel of time an exaltation welled out of him, overflowing like a fountain, enveloping the cosmos.
Dazed, trembling, he sank back into himself. They faded away, back into their time. He realized that he had found what he had come to Jorvik for. Moving slowly, he went around the hall, looking for the other pieces of Corban’s magic.
He found a clot of rotten red cloth, slick with white mold, too small for a baby’s coat. He found a round of leather with a drawstring through it, but the body of the purse was long gone.
Slowly he made his way back out the door and into the street. The jug was still in his hand, and he turned it over, curious: just a piece of battered brass. The purse was empty. The coat was useless.
Now that he was outside, the city around him seemed brighter, the people moving faster, their voices sharper. He walked up to the white stone outline of the hall.
* * *
Leif had gotten the boy with the pony to help him haul a slab of wood in from an abandoned house nearby, and together they set it on some stones for a table. Miru was gone, but Laissa sat by the fire turning a crackling chunk of meat on a spit. Raef put the battered jug down on the table, tossed the other things into a corner, and went to her and sat on his heels beside her.