Bracelet of Bones (15 page)

Then Bergdis rolled down into the hold, and Red Ottar ordered Vigot and Solveig to follow her. The crew surrounded them—all except Torsten, who stayed at the helm.

“Right!” said Red Ottar. “Solveig, you’ve accused Vigot of stealing and selling your glass bead. And yet you’re wearing it . . .”

“If he stole the bead,” Bruni said thoughtfully, “he could have stolen something larger.”

“And you, Bergdis,” Red Ottar went on, “you know something.”

Bergdis bared her teeth and slowly sucked air between them as if she were sharpening them. Then she leveled her gaze at Vigot.

“Scum!” she hissed.

“All right,” Red Ottar told Solveig. “You first. You can’t make accusations without good reason. Not on my boat.”

Solveig took a deep breath and looked up at Edith. Edith pushed out her lower lip, then she slowly nodded.

“When I went to Oleg’s workshop,” Solveig began, “he gave me a glass bead. He said it would be my third eye. It was in my right hand when the dogs attacked me. In the morning, that’s when I missed it . . .”

“She did,” said Odindisa. “Solveig asked me whether she’d been holding anything when Bruni carried her back, but she didn’t say what.”

“And then?” asked Red Ottar.

“I searched on the quay,” Solveig told him, “but it wasn’t there. When I went to the market with Edith and Bergdis, we met Oleg again. He told me he’d seen my bead on a market stall.”

Bergdis’s eyes were glittering like fish scales.

“Did you hear Oleg say that?” Red Ottar asked her.

Bergdis shook her head. “No, no. I’d gone off to buy . . . things. I had work to do.”

“What else did Oleg say?” Red Ottar asked Solveig.

“He said the stallholder told him a tall young man had sold her the bead. ‘A tall young man. Very watchful. Like the blade of a knife.’”

“And Oleg bought the bead and he gave it back to Solveig,” added Edith.

“And today,” Solveig said, “I decided to wear it around my neck so it would see the thief and the thief would see it.”

Vigot didn’t move. He looked quite expressionless.

Red Ottar took a deep breath. “Well, Vigot—” he began, but Edith interrupted him.

“That’s not all Oleg said. He told us the young man had sold the stallholder several things.”

There was a silence aboard the boat. Each of the crew heard their own heart beating, the prow slicing through the water, around them wild birds shrieking.

Bergdis rubbed her hands together. “I stopped at that stall too,” she said slowly. “And what did I find?”

“What?” asked Red Ottar.

“A scramasax,” hissed Bergdis.

Bruni Blacktooth braced his huge forearms and levered himself to his feet. He roared.

“Yes,” said Bergdis. “With your maker’s mark on it.”

Bruni looked as if he were about to hurl himself down onto Vigot.

The skipper raised his right hand. “So, Blacktooth,” he said levelly, “it wasn’t Torsten after all.”

The blacksmith growled.

“And it wasn’t the Bulgars.”

Everyone stared at white-faced Vigot, and he began to clench and unclench his right fist.

“Clench it while you still can,” Red Ottar told him in a bitter voice. “What have you to say?”

“What difference will it make?” Vigot replied. “You’ve ganged up against me since we left Sigtuna. All of you.” Vigot sounded desperate. “All of you!” he yelled.

“Nonsense, Vigot,” Red Ottar said. “What else did you sell?”

“I didn’t sell anything.”

“What was it Mihran said?” mused Red Ottar. “The real danger is inside, not outside . . . The one who’s afraid. The one who falls ill . . . The one who’s a thief.”

“You thief!” Bruni shouted. “Look me in the eye!”

But Vigot didn’t respond.

“It took me a month to make that scramasax,” muttered Bruni between clenched teeth. “A whole month.”

“For a start,” Red Ottar told Vigot, “you will pay Blacktooth whatever the stallholder gave you. And pay Solveig for the glass bead. Where are the coins? In your chest?”

Still Vigot didn’t respond.

“You’ve shamed yourself and dishonored us all.”

“You scum!” growled Bruni. “Hel’s spawn!”

“We have days and days of rowing and portaging ahead of us,” Red Ottar told Vigot in a grim voice. “The truth is we cannot do without you any more than we can do with you. We’ll have to keep you in one piece until we reach Kiev.”

“If he stays aboard,” screeched Bergdis, “he’ll knife us all in the night.”

“Thank you, Bergdis,” Red Ottar said. “When I need your advice, I’ll ask for it.” Then he turned to Vigot again. “And when we get to Kiev,” he said, “by law you will lose your right hand.”

Vigot blinked. “It wasn’t me,” he said. “Anyhow, Bruni can have all the coins for his scramasax, and Solveig’s got her glass bead already, and she can have the coin for that as well. So where’s the justice?” he asked, his voice rising. “Where’s the justice in your taking my hand?”

Red Ottar grimaced. “And from now on you’ll sleep in chains,” he told Vigot, “so you cannot escape or wound any of us.”

15

L
ightning sizzled across the darkening southern sky. And then far thunder bumped and blundered around the horizon.

The old waterman looked up at Torsten. “Go on, then!”

So Torsten, standing at the prow, threw the rope, and the waterman caught it and expertly began to haul the boat in.

Torsten jumped down onto the staithe. “Strong as a tree stump, that’s what you are,” he said approvingly.

“An old one,” grunted the waterman.

“A lesser one would have been dragged in.”

The waterman nodded. “You have to stand right,” he said. “Come on the right day, you have.”

“How’s that?”

“The gods are drawing close. Thor and Perun—we’ve called on them both.”

“Thor and who?”

“Perun!” exclaimed the old waterman. “The god of thunder and lightning.”

“Ah!” said the helmsman. “One god with two names, then.”

“The same but not the same,” the waterman told him.

“Where is everyone?” asked Torsten. “This place looks like a ghost village.”

The old waterman pointed upstream, and Torsten saw a pointed tent pitched on the green fringe between the river and the forest. Several people were walking along the riverbank toward it. “The shaman’s here,” he said. “She’s eaten the mushrooms and gone into her tent.”

As Solveig approached the peaked woolen tent with Odindisa and her children, she could hear the double thump of a big drum: as regular as a heartbeat. She had to duck her head to get inside, and at once she saw that just about everyone living at the little trading post was already crammed into the tent. In the center, a woman wearing a headdress of eagle feathers was chanting and slowly turning around and around. Sometimes she reached out, reached up, up, sometimes she sidled and almost slithered, sometimes she moaned and sometimes screamed.

At length the shaman sank to her knees. She put her head between her hands. She balled herself into a nut and fell silent.

No one spoke or whispered. No one took their eyes off her.

Then the woman began to rise to her feet. She rose like a column of smoke.

“Strangers!” she called out, neither speaking nor singing but something between the two. Not quite a human voice, but not the voice of a bird or an animal either. “Strangers! Who are the strangers?”

Everyone turned around to look at Solveig and Odindisa and her children.

“For you,” the shaman warbled, “for you and your companions I see one new life. I see one dying alive. I see what I see: one new death.”

The drumbeats began again. Double thump. Double thump. They quickened, they began to throb, and Solveig was dry-mouthed.

For a second time there was silence, and outside, the thunder gods took over. The shaman subsided; she drew into herself again.

She’s a woman, thought Solveig, but she’s a sea eagle too, with thrashing pinions and hooked talons. She keeps changing shape.

Brita stood close to Solveig and took her hand.

“One new life.” Edith’s baby? Solveig turned to Odindisa, but she had her arms around Bard and her eyes were closed and her mouth was open—as if she too were in a trance or riding on the back of a dream.

One new life, thought Solveig. She must mean the baby. “One dying alive . . . I see what I see: one new death.” In the stifling tent, Solveig shivered. That can only mean what it means. One of us is fated. One of us is soon to die . . .

Solveig sighed and closed her eyes, and out of the dark she saw a shining woman advancing toward her, step by step, brandishing a huge pair of shears.

“No!” she cried, and then she clamped her left hand over her mouth.

Once again the shaman flowed upward, then reached high above her headdress.

“I see what I see,” she moaned. “I see one who says she’s strong as the sun.”

Me, thought Solveig. Does she mean me?

“Strong as the sun,” repeated the shaman, her voice rising. Then she cupped her hands over her mouth: “But is she strong enough? Is she as strong as she’ll need to be?”

Solveig listened. She listened as if her life depended on it.

“The golden girl!” the shaman moaned. And with that she sank to the ground and into a sleep so deep that no one could have woken her.

Days passed. Around Red Ottar’s boat, summer quickened. The girlish pale green leaves of birch and lime and hazel grew up. The climbing sun beat the bounds and drove the darkness back into its forest kingdom.

One dawn, Slothi imitated the cooing song of a forest bird with his flute, and one early morning, the river unexpectedly grew as bulbous as an onion, so that Torsten was able to hoist the sail; one midday, Vigot grew angry, murderously angry—he howled like a wolf—so Bruni and Torsten tied him to the mast for fear he might harm someone or throw himself off the boat, and only Brita went near him, carrying a bowl of water in case he was thirsty; one afternoon, Solveig and Edith saw a wedding party on the riverbank, the bride and groom garlanded with red and white wildflowers, and they begged Red Ottar to stop, just for a breath, but he wouldn’t; and one blue hour, Solveig and
some of the crew went into the forest mushrooming, and they came back with at least a dozen kinds, some they’d never seen before, but they didn’t eat any of those for fear they might send them into a trance and down on a journey into the always-darkness; one evening, Edith saw the wraith of a mermaid rising from the water, and Mihran told her it was a girl who had drowned herself for love, and she’d been seen before at that place; and one night, Solveig and Edith sat and listened while Mihran told them about the woman made of gold with another woman made of gold inside her who had another gold woman inside her who had . . .

“A girl!” exclaimed Edith, almost laughing. “A golden girl inside her!” She patted her stomach.

“Oh, Edie!” cried Solveig. “Golden and growing!”

When Solveig talked to Odindisa about the shaman and what she’d said, Odindisa told her: “I could have stayed there forever. Everything was alive. The air, the trampled grass, the woolly skin of the tent, they were all alive and somehow connected. I can’t explain it.”

“You are explaining it,” said Solveig.

“I mean,” said Odindisa excitedly, “they’re all part of something bigger than they are, like a thumb and four fingers are part of a hand.”

That made Solveig think of Vigot, though, and she winced.

“It was the same the next morning,” Odindisa went on. “That mist floating above the river—it’s born to change shape, and it’s alive! Then I saw the sun herself caught in a trembling drop of dew, a drop of dew on the grass.”

Solveig smiled and sighed. “You say things,” she told Odindisa, “like I feel them.”

“Sometimes it’s best to say without too much thinking,” her companion replied. “Thoughts can get in the way of words.”

“What did the shaman’s words mean?” Solveig asked her.
“One new life. One dying alive. One new death.”

Odindisa slowly shook her head. “Three prophecies,” she said. “But each could have more than one meaning. And Solveig, the golden girl—didn’t she mean you?”

“I don’t know,” said Solveig.

“I do,” said Odindisa.

“She asked if I was strong enough, strong as I’ll need to be. But I feel stronger than I have all my life.”

“Your journey is making you stronger,” Odindisa reassured her.

“Maybe our journey will tell us what her prophecies mean,” Solveig said. “The drop of dew trembling, and the grunt of the elk, and the satin river. Everything.”

Odindisa smiled. “New life and dying alive and new death,” she said, “they’re all connected.”

“Tomorrow,” said Mihran, “we portage.” He smiled so widely that he bared all his white teeth.

Solveig clicked her tongue. “I keep hearing portage, portage,” she said, “but I still don’t really know exactly what it means.”

“For all your long journey,” the river pilot said, “this boat has carried yous. Now yous carry this boat.”

“Nonsense!” said Solveig briskly. “You can carry a skiff or a small coble, but you can’t carry this boat. We’re not giants or bogatyrs or something.”

For miles and days the river had meandered until she was no more than twenty paces across, but then, rowing around a bend still quite early in the morning, everyone saw a kind of landing stage, a broad wooden ramp.

Almost at once they heard a horn winding, then bellowing, and at least a dozen men and women quickly assembled on the bank.

“Portagers,” Mihran told Solveig. “Old friends.”

Two men came slithering down the slimy ramp, carrying between them a pine roller—it looked like a giant’s rolling pin. They walked straight into the water up to their hips and stood facing each other across the boat’s prow while two more pairs of men stood ready on the ramp with their rollers.

Torsten told the crew to straighten the boat so that it was facing the ramp.

“Bend your backs!” he shouted. “Forward!”

The first pair of men knelt in the water so it came up to their necks, and Red Ottar’s boat glided over their roller onto the second and third ones.

At once the portagers started to tie ropes to the prow and along the gunwales (one of them noosed his line right around the carved stem post), and while the boat was still half in the water, one man heaved himself up over the stern. Mihran was there to give him a hand.

“Foreman,” the pilot told Red Ottar. “Truvor.”

“Truvor?” repeated Red Ottar.

“His name,” Mihran explained.

Solveig stared at him, astonished. The foreman was stripped to the waist, and the upper part of his body and his arms were covered with tattoos. On his upper left arm there was a dragon, and on his left shoulder a large star, on his ribs . . .

Solveig looked a bit more closely, and Truvor laughed. Then he turned to Mihran and said something.

“You want?” Mihran asked Solveig. “He says you want?”

“Want what?”

“Him!”

“Him?”

“No, no!” Mihran waved his hands. “Same with him.” Mihran motioned to Truvor to turn around, and Solveig saw his back was tattooed with an open-armed tree.

“Each tattoo is to mend him,” Mihran said. “Broken arm, broken shoulder, broken rib . . . Truvor has seventeen tattoos, he says.”

The foreman looked quite proud as Mihran enumerated all his wounds, and then he laughed and thumped his chest.

“The only part not broken is his heart,” Mihran told Solveig with a flashing smile. “Truvor says his wife, she has the hammer and pins.”

“Ah, yes,” said Red Ottar. “Generations ago, people in Sweden used to be tattooed for all their aches and pains.”

“What does he mean?” asked Solveig. “Hammer and pins.”

“That’s how you’re tattooed,” Red Ottar said. “Ask Odindisa. She’ll know.”

Solveig flinched. “But—”

“Enough!” said Red Ottar. “We’re not here to discuss tattooing. Truvor, I suppose, wants to talk about payment.”

Red Ottar supposed right. And although he waved Solveig away, she could still hear him arguing and eventually saying, “Well, you’ve got me over your rollers, you have. No choice, have I?”

As soon as Red Ottar and Truvor had agreed on terms, Torsten untied Vigot, altogether calmer now, and the crew disembarked. They jumped down one by one from the prow onto the ramp and helped the portagers push and pull the boat until the hull emerged from the muddy water, dripping and covered with globs and strings of green weed, here and there decorated with barnacle shells.

She looks so strange, Solveig thought to herself. Almost naked.

“Here,” announced Red Ottar, “we wait. My poor boat has to drain and dry out. She’ll be much too heavy otherwise.”

“Even then,” said Torsten, “we may need to unpack our merchandise and carry it.”

The skipper rounded on Vigot. “As for you . . .” he began. “Bruni! Tie him to that tree and make sure he can’t work the binding loose. I’m taking no risks.”

That night, Red Ottar asked Bergdis to give the crew double rations to fortify them for the backbreaking work ahead. They all slept on deck except for Vigot—he slept standing up, and Bruni untied him again soon after dawn.

“Give him bread and water,” Red Ottar told him. “And keep a watch on him, you and Slothi.”

Twelve portagers worked alongside the crew as they started to pull and push the boat up the muddy track and away from the water. As soon as the boat had run clear of a roller, a pair of men picked it up and carried it ahead of the prow again.

While they worked, the portagers joined in a kind of song, repeating it over and over again, until they stopped after noon at the top of the long slope.

There Truvor and his team ate the rations they had brought with them while Red Ottar and his crew devoured the ribs of elk left over from the previous evening, washed down with cloudy ale.

Mihran wiped his mouth and carefully wound the ends of his drooping mustache around his right forefinger. “Behind us,” he told everyone, “all the rivers flow north. Garthar is north! But here . . .” Mihran opened his arms most expansively and smiled. “This is the watershed. You say watershed?

“After here, Garthar is south. River Dnieper flows south. Trees change, flowers change, fruit change. Yous see.”