Scramasax (24 page)

It was waiting for me. Patient. Unblinking. Why has it found me now?

‘Maker's eyes,' came the reply. ‘You have maker's eyes.'

Solveig drew in her breath. It's true. I haven't cut and carved for so long, because there's always so much work to do. It was the same in Sicily. Snorri and I didn't even have time to word and cut the stone for all our companions who were drowned in the great storm. But now I'll carve again as soon as I can.

*

‘They won't attack us again, will they?'

Nico scratched his red neck. ‘Why not?'

Solveig stared at the helmsman, dismayed.

‘Our best weapon is forewarning.'

‘Lookouts, you mean?'

Nico nodded. ‘You showed a clean pair of heels when you shimmied up this mast-stay. Go on!'

Solveig shook her head, and for just a moment she saw herself straddling the spar, and a young man with tousled acorn hair gazing up at her, waving and shouting.

‘No,' she said. ‘If I go up there, I'll see it all again. Every stroke. Poor Priskin.'

‘Priskin!' repeated Nico, wrinkling his nose. ‘What kind of name is that? People's names should … shine. Up you go!'

But Solveig shook her head again. ‘I've got work below,' she told the helmsman. ‘More than enough. Down in the horse-stalls.'

Solveig was kept busy that afternoon, and by evening she was smeared all over with dung and felt exhausted. First she had to groom Alnath, but although she gave of her best, he kept stamping and swishing his tail and giving her mournful looks.

‘Don't be gloomy,' Solveig urged him. ‘Please don't. We must help each other.'

How Solveig wished she knew the secret words to whisper in Alnath's ears, and how she longed to tell him how brave Tamas had been. She laid her forehead against the Arab's brow, as she had seen Tamas do, and put her arms around his neck.

After this Solveig went straight through the open entry into the kitchen in the front part of the hold, only to run into a volley of abuse from Edla and Vibrog.

‘Suit yourself!'

‘She always does.'

‘We've skinned the rabbits already.'

‘And chopped them up.'

‘You're too late, Solveig.'

‘No!' protested Solveig. ‘No! I had to …'

But she was drowned out by more taunts that she was Harald's little darling and deserved a good beating, and threats that they'd chop her up too and add her to the bubbling cauldron.

That evening, several of the guards set aside their portion of stew, complaining that it tasted wrong.

Vibrog planted herself in front of them. ‘Wrong?' she exclaimed.

‘Mine's full of horsehair.'

‘More sinew than flesh.'

‘Thirteen rabbits and a lolloping hare,' Turgeis interrupted. ‘I netted them the day before we left Sicily.'

‘That's normal,' said Karly. ‘Still, it's the meat that's wrong.'

‘Rotten!' exclaimed another guard.

Vibrog glared at them and put her hands on her hefty hips. ‘You … monsters!' she yelled. ‘You wretches! There's nothing wrong with my stew.'

There was, though. Those men who had set it aside and eaten only bread and mashed turnip slept, or did their best to sleep, while around them their companions belched and groaned and farted, and got up in the dark, clutching their stomachs and cursing.

Solveig woke early in the women's quarters, but not as early as Edla, and still lying on their pallets they faced one another.

‘Didn't you eat any?' Edla asked her.

Solveig shook her head.

‘Why not?'

‘Why do you think?'

Edla gave her a slow, spiteful smile. ‘Nothing tastes good to you. Everything tastes of death.'

While many of the guards were still slumped over their oars or lying higgledy-piggledy on the deck, drained by their sorry night's work, Solveig picked her way along the deck to the place just aft of the oarsmen's benches where she'd sat and carved before the pirates had attacked them.

Once more she untied her filthy canvas bag and delved into it. First she drew out the fine gauze the mountain people had given her, and in the sea breeze it trembled and kept changing colour – calm colours, peaceful colours, mauve and olive, almond, woad and amber. Then, just for a moment, keeping a firm hold on the corners to stop it from blowing away, she laid it on the top of her head and at once she felt the same comforting warmth as in the mountain village.

Solveig gazed at the square of material. She squeezed it and pressed it to her heart.

Then she slipped the gauze back into her bag and began to pull out all her bones: the rough hunks of antler and walrus bone and soapstone and the combs and pins and beads she had already half carved.

The blade of white bone – the shoulder blade Solveig had found on the battlefield at Stiklestad – was wedged at the bottom of the sack with only the gold brooch beneath it. Solveig dragged it out into the whisking wind and bright light.

‘One of us?' she could still hear her father saying. ‘One of them?'

And her reply: ‘Any of them … All of them.'

I know I want to carve runes on it for everyone who has died in battle. Tamas! Tamas … That girl we hanged … the woman I killed … Everyone.

Until now the time wasn't right. I wasn't ready. But now I am.

Solveig sat with her long legs stretched out in front of her, and the shoulder blade laid over her thighs, and her fair hair hung like a curtain between the bone and the sun. Then she began to carve.

Very poor company, the guards told each other, the few who had refused to eat the stew. No company at all. Not one word. Not one smile. It's best to leave her on her own.

At noon, Halfdan came and sat on the bench beside his daughter. For some while he watched her carving. Then he gave a deep sigh.

Solveig looked up. ‘All right?' she asked.

‘Remembering,' he told her.

‘It's time I got down to the stables again,' she said, opening the mouth of the bone-bag and starting to stow her bones in it. ‘Remembering what?'

‘Stiklestad. You don't always know it, not at the time, but in each of our lives there are happenings that change everything.'

‘The battle, you mean?' asked Solveig.

‘What happened after. Harald staying in the farm. Our friendship. Life on middle-earth is … so chancy. We try to steer a straight course but can't tell what'll happen from one day to the next.'

‘I think that's why Christians are Christian,' Solveig observed. ‘They know that whether their lives are rough or smooth, long or short, they'll rise to a safe home in heaven. That's what Edwin told me.'

Halfdan fell silent again.

‘Some things do last, though,' Solveig went on. ‘They do, don't they? Not lives, not laws, not kingdoms. But …' Solveig delved down to the bottom of her bag again, fished out the brooch Harald had given her father, and offered it to him.

‘Not now,' said Halfdan, hurriedly looking around him. ‘Put it away, Solva.'

‘A gold brooch,' insisted Solveig. ‘A gold brooch lasts. Carved silver, carved wood, carved stone, carved bone, they last. And what about words? Songs and sayings and stories last. If they're well-made, they do.'

‘Ha!' exclaimed Halfdan. ‘You've reminded me.'

‘What?'

‘Harald says it's time for Grimizo to sing and Snorri to tell stories. Nico too, maybe. And you, Solveig …'

Solveig blew out her cheeks. ‘Only after I've finished in the horse-stalls.'

‘This evening.'

By no means everyone aboard felt well enough to listen to stories and songs, let alone to tell and sing. After eating the rabbit-and-hare stew the previous evening, some of the guards were still loping around as if they feared the worst, while half a dozen lay flat on their backs; and although Edla's insides were as tough as her leathery skin, Vibrog had succumbed and was lying on the deck, wheezing and spouting like a stranded porpoise.

No matter. When Harald had made up his mind, there was no dissuading him and no way of resisting his powers of persuasion.

Solveig felt weary after carving all morning and mucking out the stables and grooming horses all afternoon. But for all that, Harald soon had her telling a story.

‘It's one I've known,' she began, ‘for longer than I can remember.'

And then, below the golden stars appearing one by one in the darkening sky, and above the silver stars glittering in the darkening water, Solveig told everyone
in her light, pretty voice about the young woman whose spirit rode nine days northward and downward from middle-earth to the underworld.

‘Down through swirling mist,' she said, ‘down through freezing mist. She was so ill that she knew she would soon die, so she thought she would go down to the underworld of her own free will.

‘But Hel,' said Solveig, ‘the ruler of the underworld, told the young woman it wasn't time for her to die. He told her to ride back up to middle-earth again.

‘Hel was heart-warmed. She was stirred by the young woman's bravery.

‘“You can take whatever gift you like with you,” Hel told her.

‘Loyalty, the young woman thought. No. Love! Or laughter? Or children? Song?

‘Do you know what she chose?' Solveig asked.

The stars sang their silent songs; wavelets throbbed against the planks of the
ousiai
.

‘There's one gift, the young woman thought, that's made up of all those gifts, and many more besides.

‘“Storytelling,” the young woman told Hel. “I'll take the gift of storytelling.”'

In the dark, the Vikings smiled and nodded.

‘When the young woman came back to her home and her body,' Solveig told them, ‘she found the ravens had already pecked out her eyes. But for the rest of her life, she travelled from village to village, a blind woman, storytelling. Telling stories of loyalty and love and laughter and children and song … Telling this story I'm telling you now.'

After Solveig had finished, Grimizo sang one of his grim little songs that made listeners thankful they were still alive and breathing, and Skarp scared everyone with
a story about a ghost in Iceland, and half a dozen guards sang a bawdy song about a pretty girl and all the loaves in her oven.

‘Ale!' shouted Harald. ‘More ale for everyone!'

But not everyone felt like drinking, and by the time Snorri began his story, many of the guards were unable to stay awake. As best Solveig could remember, it was a story about a man made of ice and fire – a mountain of a man who came from the north.

‘His sword was a blade of ice, his scramasax an icicle. He sailed south and nothing could melt him. Not the warm snare-words of an old empress, not the hot blood of a young princess, not …'

Even though Solveig thought she recognised the hero of this tale, she couldn't stay awake. But sometime later that night she woke with a start and realised that Harald himself was standing right over her and her father.

‘All right, are you?' he growled.

‘I fell asleep.'

‘So I saw.'

Solveig shook her head and yawned.

‘You missed a good story.'

‘I know.'

‘A story without an end.'

‘No stories end,' Solveig said. ‘Once they begin, they last for ever. They never end.'

‘Unfinished, I mean,' Harald replied curtly. ‘An unfinished story.'

Solveig yawned again.

‘Your father – he's all right?'

‘He never says,' whispered Solveig. ‘Not as good as he makes out.'

‘I count on him. I need him.'

Solveig slowly nodded. ‘He knows that,' she replied.

‘It strengthens him.' She yawned for a third time. ‘I was dreaming. About Maria.'

Harald said nothing and, in the dark, Solveig was unable to make out his expression.

‘I'm longing to see her. Are you?'

I
t was almost as if the two servants were awaiting her. Silently they glided her to her own chamber in the palace. They tipped basins of warm water into the circular marble trough in the far corner, and they brought her sweet-smelling unguents, undergarments, sweeping dresses.

Solveig trailed her chafed fingertips over the silken oatmeal bedcover. She picked up one of the little roses strewn all over it, and sniffed it. She pressed her forehead against the shining marble wall. She scoffed one of the marzipan sweetmeats set on a table at the end of her bed, and then a couple more, but not before noticing each was decorated with a crystal flower. She listened to the caged canary in the far corner of her chamber singing, singing …

How could I have forgotten? she thought, wrinkling up her peeling nose. How could I possibly have forgotten all these delights? But I did. They aren't delightful, anyhow. Not for Maria. She's a prisoner. Not for me, either. I don't belong here any more than with an army of braying, brutal men.