Sworn Brother (19 page)

‘Would it not be more sensible for me to arrange for you to vanish permanently?’ Brithmaer said. He was no more emotional than if he was suggesting a money-changing commission.

‘Two wax impressions taken from the striking irons used in the forgery will be delivered to the king’s regent if I vanish mysteriously or fail to report by springtime.’

Brithmaer regarded me thoughtfully. There was a long pause while he considered his alternatives. ‘Very well. I’ll make the arrangements you request. There’s a merchant ship due to visit King’s Lynn in two week’s time. The captain trades from Norway and is one of the very few who makes the winter crossing of the English Sea. I will send you to King’s Lynn with Thurulf. It’s about time he returned to Norwich, which is nearby. If he meets up with any of the king’s officials he will say that you are travelling as his assistant. I will also write a note to inform the ship captain that you are to be taken on as supercargo. It would be hypocritical to wish you a safe journey. Indeed, I hope I never see you again. Should you ever return to England, I think you will find no trace of the conspiracy which you say you have uncovered.’

And with that I left the service of Brithmaer the king’s moneyer, and master forger. I never saw him again, but I did not forget him. For years to come, every time I was offered an English coin in payment or as change in a market place, I turned it over to see the name of the maker and rejected it if it had been minted in Derby or in Winchester.

‘You
Icelanders
really
get around, don’t you?’ commented Brithmaer’s accomplice as he watched the low coastline of England disappear in our wake. The Norwegian shipmaster had not informed the port reeve of our impending departure before he ordered his crew to weigh anchor on the early tide.
I
suspected the harbour official was accustomed to seeing our ship slip out of port at strange hours and had been bribed to look the other way.

I
barely heard the captain’s comment, for I was still brooding on the thought that every mile was taking me further away from Aelfgifu. Unhappiness had haunted me throughout the three-day journey to King’s Lynn with Thurulf. We had travelled on ponies, with two servants leading a brace of packhorses and
I
did not know how much Brithmaer had told his nephew about why
I
had to travel posing as his assistant or the need for discretion. Our servants blew loudly on trumpets and rang bells whenever we approached settlements or passed through woodland, and I had suggested to Thurulf that it might be wiser to proceed with less ostentation, as I did not wish to attract the attention of the authorities.

Thurulf grinned back at me and said, ‘Quite the reverse. If we used the king’s highway in a manner that might be considered surreptitious, people would take us to be skulking criminals or robbers. Then they would be entitled to attack, even kill us. Honest travellers are required to announce their presence with as much fanfare as possible.’

Thurulf had brought me to the quay where the Norwegian vessel was berthed. There he handed me over to her captain with a note from Brithmaer to say that I was to be taken abroad, on a one-way trip, and that it would be wise to keep me out of sight until we left England. Then he had turned back to rejoin his family in Norwich. The gloom of parting from a friend was added to my heartache for Aelfgifu.

‘Know someone by the name of Grettir Asmundarson, by any chance? He’s one of your countrymen.’ The captain’s voice again broke into my thoughts. The name was vaguely familiar, but for a moment I couldn’t place it. ‘Got quite a reputation. They call him Grettir the Strong. Killed his first man when he was only sixteen and was condemned to three year’s exile. Decided to spend part of it in Norway. He asked me to make some purchases for him while I was in England, but they cost rather more than I had anticipated. I’m hoping you could tell me the best way of dealing with him so he’ll pay up without any trouble. He’s a dangerous character, quick to anger.’ The captain was trying to strike up a conversation so he could find out just who I was.

‘I don’t think I know him,’ I answered, but the word outlaw had jogged my memory. The last time I had seen Grettir Asmundarson had been six years earlier in Iceland. I remembered a young man sitting on a bench in a farmyard, whittling on a piece of wood. He had been much the same age as myself, with middling brown hair, freckles and fair skin. But where I am quite slender and lightly built, he had been broad and thickset, though only of average height, and while I am normally self-possessed and calm by nature, Grettir had given the impression of being hot-headed and highly strung. I remembered how the little shavings had jumped up into the air with each slice of the sharp blade as if he was suppressing some sort of explosive anger. Even at that age Grettir exuded an air of violent, unpredictable menace.

‘Troublemaker from the day he was born, and got worse as he grew up,’ said the captain. ‘Deliberately provoked his father at every turn, though his parent was a decent enough man by all accounts, a steady farmer. The son refused to help out with the farmyard chores. Broke the wings and legs of the geese when he was sent to put them in their house in the evening, killed the goslings, mutilated his father’s favourite horse when he was asked to look after it. Cut the skin all along the animal’s spine so the poor creature reared up when you laid a hand on its back. A thoroughly bad lot. His father would have thrown him out of the house, but for the fact that his mother was always asking that he should be given a second chance. Typical of a mother’s spoiled pet, if you ask me.’

‘What made him kill a man?’ I asked.

‘Quarrelled over a bag of dried food, would you believe. Hardly a reason to attack someone so viciously.’

I remembered the jumping wood shavings, and wondered if Grettir Asmundarson was touched in the head.

‘Anyway, you’ll soon have your chance to make your own judgement. If this wind holds steady on the quarter, our first landfall will be the place where he’s staying with his half-brother Thorstein. Quite a different type, Thorstein, as even-tempered and steady as Grettir is touchy and wild. Got the nickname “the Galleon” because he has a rolling stride to his walk, just like a ship in a beam sea.’

I saw what the captain meant when we dropped anchor in the bay in front of Thorstein’s farm in the Tonsberg district of Norway three days later. The two brothers met us on the beach. Thorstein, tall and calm, was waiting for us, feet planted stolidly on the shingle; Grettir, a head shorter, tramped back and forth nervously. He was a squat volcano, ready to erupt. But when our eyes met, I felt that shock of recognition I had experienced half a dozen times in my life: I had seen the same look in the eyes of a native shaman in Vinland, in the expression of the mother of the Earl of Orkney who was a noted sibyl, in the glance of the wife of King Sigtryggr of Dublin, whom many considered a witch, and in the faraway stare of the veteran warrior Thrand, my tutor in Iceland, who had taught me the rune spells. It was the look of someone who possessed the second sight, and I knew that Grettir Asmundarson saw things hidden from more normal people, as I do. Yet I had no premonition that Grettir was to become my closest friend.

We began by treating one another warily, almost with distrust. No one would ever call Grettir easygoing or amiable. He had a natural reticence which people mistook for surliness, and he met every friendly remark with a curt response which often caused offence and gave the impression that he discouraged human contact. I doubt if the two of us exchanged more than half a dozen sentences in as many days as we sailed on along the coast towards the Norwegian capital at Nidaros. Grettir had asked if he might join our ship as he intended to present himself at the Norwegian court and petition for a post in the royal household, his family being distant relatives of the Norwegian king, Olaf.

Our passage was by the usual route, along the sheltered channel between the outer islands and the rocky coast, with its succession of tall headlands and fiord entrances. The sailing was easy and we were in no hurry. By mid-afternoon our skipper would pick a convenient anchorage and we would moor for the night, dropping anchor and laying out a stern line to a convenient rock. Often we would go ashore to cook our meal and set up tents on the beach rather than sleep aboard. It was at one of these anchorages as the sun was setting that I noticed a strange light suddenly blaze out from the summit of the nearest headland. It flared up for a moment as if someone had lit a raging fire in the mouth of a cave, then quickly extinguished it. When I drew the skipper’s attention to the phenomenon, I was met with a blank look. He had seen nothing. ‘There’s no one living up on that headland. Only an old barrow grave,’ he said. ‘Burial place for the local family who own all the land in the area. The only time they go there is when they have another corpse. It has proved to be a lucky place for them. The current head of the family is called Thorfinn, and when he buried his father Kar the Old, the ghost of the dead man came back and haunted the area so persistently that the other local farmers decided to leave. After that, Thorfinn was able to buy up all the best land.’ Then he added tactfully, ‘You must have seen a trick of the light. Maybe a shiny piece of rock reflecting the last rays of the setting run.’

The rest of the crew looked at me sideways, as if I had been hallucinating, so I let the matter drop. But after we had finished our evening meal and the men had wrapped themselves in their heavy sea cloaks and settled down for the night, Grettir sidled across to me and said quietly, ‘That blaze was nothing to do with the sun’s rays. I saw it too. You and
I
know what a fire shining out from the earth means: gold underground.’

He paused for a moment then murmured, ‘I’m going up there to take a closer look. Care to come with me?’

I glanced round at the others. Most of the crew were half asleep. For a moment I hesitated.
I
was not at all sure that I wanted to go clambering around the dark countryside with a man who had been convicted of murder. But then my curiosity got the better of me. ‘All right’ I whispered. ‘Let me get my boots on.’

Moments later Grettir and I had left the camp and were picking our way between the black shapes of the boulders on the beach. It was a dry, clear night, warm for that time of year, with a few clouds moving across the face of the moon but leaving us enough moonlight to see our way to the base of the headland and begin our climb. As we moved higher,
I
could make out the distinct humpbacked profile of the grave barrow up ahead of us, curving against the starry sky. I also noticed something else: each time clouds covered the moon and darkness suddenly cloaked us, Grettir would hesitate, and
I
heard his breath come more quickly.
I
felt his sudden onset of panic, and I realised that Grettir the Strong, notorious murderer and outlaw, was desperately afraid of the dark.