The Buried Giant (7 page)

That would have been the picture Axl and Beatrice saw below
them as they paused to catch their breaths during their descent down the hill. The sun was setting over the valley now, and Beatrice, who had the better sight, was once more leaning forward, a step or two in front of Axl, the grass and dandelions around her as tall as her waist.

“I can see four, no five men guarding the gate,” she was saying. “And I think they’re holding spears. When I was last here with the women, it was nothing more than one gate-keeper with a pair of dogs.”

“Are you sure there’ll be a welcome here for us, princess?”

“Don’t worry, Axl, they know me well enough by now. Besides, one of their elders here is a Briton, regarded by all as a wise leader even if he’s not of their blood. He’ll see to it we have a safe roof tonight. Even so, Axl, I think something’s happened and I’m uneasy. Now here’s another man with a spear arrived, and that’s a pack of fierce dogs with him.”

“Who knows what goes on with Saxons,” said Axl. “We may be better seeking shelter elsewhere tonight.”

“The dark will be soon on us, Axl, and those spears are not intended for us. Besides, there’s a woman in this village I was wanting to visit, one who knows her medicines beyond anyone in our own.”

Axl waited for her to say something further, and when she went on peering into the distance, he asked: “And why would you be after medicines, princess?”

“A small discomfort I feel from time to time. This woman might know of something to soothe it.”

“What sort of discomfort, princess? Where does it trouble you?”

“It’s nothing. It’s only because we’re needing to shelter here I’m thinking of it at all.”

“But where does it lie, princess? This pain?”

“Oh …” Without turning to him, she pressed a hand to her side, just below the ribcage, then laughed. “It’s nothing to speak of. You can see, it hasn’t slowed me walking here today.”

“It hasn’t slowed you one bit, princess, and I’ve been the one having to beg we stop and rest.”

“That’s what I’m saying, Axl. So it’s nothing to worry about.”

“It hasn’t slowed you down at all. In fact, princess, you must be as strong as any woman half your age. Still, if there’s someone here to help with your pain, what’s the harm in going to her?”

“That’s all I was saying, Axl. I’ve brought a little tin to trade for medicines.”

“Who wants these little pains? We all have them, and we’d all be rid of them if we could. By all means, let’s go to this woman if she’s here, and those guards let us pass.”

It was nearly dark by the time they crossed the bridge over the trench, and torches had been lit on either side of the gate. The guards were large and burly but looked panicked by their approach.

“Wait a moment, Axl,” Beatrice said quietly. “I’ll go alone to speak with them.”

“Don’t go near their spears, princess. The dogs look calm but those Saxons look foolish with fear.”

“If it’s you they fear, Axl, old man that you are, I’ll soon show them their great error.”

She walked towards them boldly. The men gathered around her and as she addressed them they threw suspicious glances towards Axl. Then one of them called to him, in the Saxon language, to step closer to the torches, presumably so they could see he was not a younger man in disguise. Then after a few more exchanges with Beatrice the men allowed them through.

Axl was puzzled that a village which from a distance looked to be two orderly rings of houses could turn out to be such a chaotic labyrinth now they were walking through its narrow lanes. Admittedly the light was fading, but as he followed Beatrice, he could discern no logic or pattern to the place. Buildings would loom unexpectedly in front of them, blocking their way and forcing them down baffling
side alleys. They were obliged, moreover, to walk with even more caution than out on the roads: not only was the ground pitted and full of puddles from the earlier storm, the Saxons seemed to find it acceptable to leave random objects, even pieces of rubble, lying in the middle of the path. But what troubled Axl most was the odour that grew stronger and fainter as they walked, but never went away. Like anyone of his time, he was well reconciled to the smell of excrement, human or animal, but this was something altogether more offensive. Before long he had determined its source: all over the village people had left out, on the fronts of houses or on the side of the street, piles of putrefying meat as offerings to their various gods. At one point, startled by a particularly strong assault, Axl had turned to see, suspended from the eaves of a hut, a dark object whose shape changed before his eyes as the colony of flies perched on it dispersed. A moment later they encountered a pig being dragged by its ears by a group of children; dogs, cows and donkeys under no one’s supervision. The few people they met stared silently at them, or else quickly vanished behind a door or shutter.

“There’s something strange here tonight,” Beatrice whispered as they walked. “Usually they’d be sitting in front of their houses or perhaps gathered in circles laughing and talking. And the children would be following us by now asking a hundred questions and wondering if to call us names or be our friends. Everything’s eerily still and it makes me uneasy.”

“Are we lost, princess, or are we still going toward the place they’ll be sheltering us?”

“I’d been thinking we’d visit first the woman about the medicines. But with things the way they are, we may be better going straight to the old longhouse and keeping out of harm’s way.”

“Are we far from the medicine lady’s house?”

“As I remember it, not far at all now.”

“Then let’s see if she’s there. Even if your pain’s a trivial thing,
as we know it to be, there’s no sense in feeling it at all if it can be taken away.”

“It can wait till the morning, Axl. It’s not even a pain I notice till we’re speaking of it.”

“Even so, princess, now we’re here, why not go and see the wise woman?”

“We’ll do so if you particularly wish it, Axl. Though I’d have happily left it for the morning or maybe the next time I’m passing through this place.”

Even as they were talking, they turned a corner into what appeared to be the village square. There was a bonfire blazing at its centre, and all around it, illuminated by its light, a large crowd. There were Saxons of all ages, even tiny children in their parents’ arms, and Axl’s first thought was that they had stumbled upon a pagan ceremony. But as they stopped to consider the scene before them, he saw there was no focus to the crowd’s attention. The faces he could see were solemn, perhaps frightened. Voices were lowered, and collectively came through the air as a worried murmur. A dog barked at Axl and Beatrice and was promptly chased away by shadowy figures. Those among the crowd who noticed the visitors stared their way blankly before losing interest.

“Who knows what concerns them here, Axl,” Beatrice said. “I’d walk away except the medicine woman’s house is somewhere near. Let me see if I can still find my way to it.”

As they moved towards a row of huts to their right, they became aware of many more people in the shadows, silently watching the crowd around the fire. Beatrice stopped to talk to one of them, a woman standing in front of her own door, and after a while Axl realised this was the medicine woman herself. He could not see her well in the near-darkness, but made out the straight-backed figure of a tall woman, probably in her middle years, clutching a shawl around her arms and shoulders. She and Beatrice went on conferring
in low voices, sometimes glancing towards the crowd, sometimes at Axl. Eventually the woman gestured for them to enter her hut, but Beatrice, coming up to him, said softly:

“Let me speak with her alone, Axl. Help me take off this bundle and wait out here for me.”

“Can’t I be with you, princess, even if I hardly understand this Saxon tongue?”

“These are women’s matters, husband. Let me talk with her alone, and she’s saying she’ll examine my old body carefully.”

“I’m sorry, princess, I wasn’t thinking clearly. Let me take your bundle from you and I’ll be waiting here as long as you wish.”

After the two women had gone inside, Axl felt a great weariness, especially in his shoulders and legs. Removing his own burden, he leaned against the turf wall behind him and gazed over at the crowd. There was now a growing restlessness: people would stride from the darkness around him to join the crowd while others hurried away from the fire, only to return a moment later. The blaze illuminated some faces sharply, while leaving others in shadow, but after a time, Axl came to the conclusion these people were all waiting, in a state of some anxiety, for someone or something to emerge from the timber hall to the left of the fire. This building, probably some meeting place for the Saxons, must have had a fire of its own burning inside, for its windows flickered between blackness and light.

He was on the verge of nodding off, his back to the wall, the muffled voices of Beatrice and the medicine woman somewhere behind him, when the crowd surged and shifted, letting out a soft collective growl. Several men had emerged from the timber hall and were walking towards the fire. The crowd parted and quietened for them, as though in expectation of an announcement, but none came, and soon people were pressing around the newcomers, their voices building again. Axl noticed that attention was focused almost entirely on the man who had come out last from the hall. He was probably no
more than thirty but had about him a natural authority. Although he was dressed simply, as a farmer might be, he did not look like anyone else in the village. It was not just the way he had swept his cloak over one shoulder, revealing his belt and the handle of his sword. Nor was it simply that his hair was longer than any of the villagers’—it hung almost down to his shoulders and he had tied some of it with a thong to prevent it swaying over his eyes. In fact the actual thought that crossed Axl’s mind was that this man had tied his hair to stop it falling across his vision
during combat.
This thought had come to Axl quite naturally, and only on reflection did it startle him, for it had carried with it an element of recognition. Moreover, when the stranger, striding into the midst of the crowd, allowed his hand to fall and rest on the sword handle, Axl had felt, almost tangibly, the peculiar mix of comfort, excitement and fear such a movement could bring. Telling himself he would return to these curious sensations at some later point, he shut them out of his mind and concentrated on the scene unfolding before him.

It was the bearing of the man, the way he moved and held himself, that so set him apart from those around him. “No matter that he tries to pass himself off as an ordinary Saxon,” Axl thought, “this man is a
warrior.
And perhaps one capable of wreaking great devastation when he wishes it.”

Two of the other men who had emerged from the hall were hovering nervously behind him, and whenever the warrior drifted further into the crowd, both men tried their best to stay near him, like children anxious not to be left behind by a parent. The two men, who were both young, also wore swords, and in addition, each was clutching a spear, but it was evident they were quite unaccustomed to such weapons. They were, moreover, stiff with fear and seemed unable to respond to the words of encouragement their fellow villagers were giving them. Their gazes darted about in panic even as hands patted their backs or squeezed their shoulders.

“The long-haired fellow is a stranger arrived only an hour or two before us,” Beatrice’s voice said close to his ear. “A Saxon, but one from a distant country. The fenlands in the east, so he says, where he’s lately been fighting sea raiders.”

Axl had been aware for some time that the voices of the women had grown more distinct, and turning, saw that Beatrice and her hostess had come out of the house and were standing at the door just behind him. The medicine woman now spoke softly, for some time, in Saxon, after which Beatrice said into his ear:

“It seems earlier today one of the village men came back out of breath and his shoulder wounded, and when prevailed upon to calm himself told of how he and his brother, together with his nephew, a boy of twelve, were fishing at their usual spot by the river and were set upon by two ogres. Except according to this wounded man these were no ordinary ogres. Monstrous and able to move faster and with greater cunning than any ogre he’d ever seen. The fiends—for it’s by that name these villagers are talking of them—the fiends killed his brother outright and carried off the boy, who was alive and struggling. The wounded man himself got away only after a long chase along the river path, the foul grunts coming closer behind him all the while, but he outran them in the end. That would be him there now, Axl, with the splint on his arm, talking to the stranger. Wounded though he was, he was anxious enough for his nephew to lead a party of this village’s strongest men back to the spot, and they saw smoke from a campfire near the bank, and as they were creeping up to it, their weapons at the ready, the bushes opened and it seems these same two fiends had set a trap. The medicine woman says three men were killed even before the others thought to run for their lives, and though they returned unhurt, most of them are now shivering and muttering to themselves in their beds, too shaken to come out and wish well these brave men willing to go out now,
even with the darkness coming and the mist setting in, to do what couldn’t be done by twelve strong men in broad daylight.”

“Do they know the boy is still alive?”

“They know nothing, but they’ll go out to the river even so. After the first party returned in terror, for all the urging of the elders, there was not a single man brave enough to join a further expedition. Then as fortune would have it, here’s this stranger come into the village seeking a night’s shelter after his horse has hurt a foot. And though he knows nothing of this boy or his family before today, he’s declared himself willing to come to the village’s aid. Those others going out with him are two more of the boy’s uncles, and by the look of them, I’d say they’re more likely to hinder that warrior than be of help. Look, Axl, they’re sick with fear.”