The Reluctant Berserker (4 page)

He didn’t think before grabbing narrow wrists and holding on, but he did twist so that the light of the fire fell on his companion’s face, and he did breathe in, hard, to see he had finally caught the fish for which he had been angling all night. For this young man had the sheepskin bag of a lyre on his shoulder and a bone whistle clutched in his right hand.

Loose curls the colour of Byzantine gold bounced absurdly around a face as thin as his master’s. Hard to see it clearly in the leap and cower of firelight, Wulfstan only got glimpses, enough to believe he saw beauty, sharp and fine. A gazehound of a man, built for speed. In the shifting bars of radiance through the door, his eyes looked full of fire, so that Wulfstan couldn’t tell the colour, though he tried.

The harper breathed out—a sigh that was also a laugh, and the ends of his lips turned up. Wulfstan couldn’t be sure, but he thought the smile mocking. It lit something in Wulfstan that snapped into sparks with a crack.

“I’m waiting for your apology, churl. Then you may step aside and let me pass.”

The laugh was a little louder this time, and the mockery more certain. “You ran into me. It’s you who should apologise.”

He couldn’t believe it. The creature had only an eating knife at his belt. He was as frail and thin as straw, and a beggar in the hall. Wulfstan had never been so affronted in his life. “Men like you get out of my way.”

He really thought the man’s eyes were that colour—all madder red and gold with fire. The thin mouth twisted up, and underneath the laughter there was pride like a coiled snake. The snap of it took Wulfstan by surprise, no more so than the shove in the centre of his chest. At some point he must have let go of those sinewy wrists, for now he found himself pushed back into the join of door and joist and pinned there, all the other man’s weight crowded against him.

He saw stars over the harper’s shoulder shining down on him like spear tips, and he knew he should push back—that this man didn’t have either the weight or the training to hold him. He should push back, and hit and hit again until the little nobody was taught how to deal with his betters. A profound helplessness seemed to have come over him. The man was beautiful in the darkness, and his body and his anger were hot against Wulfstan, and the thin fingers with their calluses that had risen to yank at his hair in childish spite were slowly ungripping and sliding down to bracket his face.

Here there was less light, their combined weight holding the door shut, the fire inside. The harper’s eyes were dark now, but they were wide open, fixed on Wulfstan’s, and everything behind them was sharp and hard and proud, demanding. Though slight, he was taller than Wulfstan.

He pulled at Wulfstan’s face, angling it, and Wulfstan let him. Just at that moment, Wulfstan would have let him do anything. He felt that someone had taken his bones out and replaced them with honeycomb, and that as long as he didn’t frighten this away, if only he didn’t move, he might burst into puddles of gold, sticky sweet.

“Huh.” That small laugh again, surprised, delighted, and the harper leaned in a touch more and the mocking lips closed hot over his own.

Breath against his mouth and the tentative press of a very daring tongue, and Wulfstan’s mind and scruples joined the wash of thick liquid gold that was oozing out of all his pores, making his heart thud slow and heavy and his loins ache deep. All the resistance in him, false as it was, melted into warm oil and left him boneless, compliant, waiting for the other man to take the lead, wanting him to.

Who knew where it would have led, but just as the young harper had shaken off his surprise, taken back his long hands and might have done something more interesting with them, the door bounced against them both, and a determined pressure began to grind it open.

Someone was coming through. The thought knocked at the gates of Wulfstan’s mind once and was ignored. The second time it battered them down. Someone would see! Someone would see him, surrendering his body to another man’s use, like a slave—but worse, because he was doing it willingly. Heaven’s Warden! How they’d laugh. How they’d despise him, all of them. How his lord would mourn, his father too, and his mother would weep. No man in all of the kingdoms of the Angles, nor anywhere in the world, would ever look again on him without contempt.

Wulfstan’s hands, which had been powerlessly clutching at the wall behind him, came up, grabbed ahold of the scop’s tunic. He lifted the man off his feet and threw him bodily backwards. The harper twisted, cat-like, in the air, so that he would not fall onto his back and crush the lyre he carried. He came down heavily on his shoulder, knocking cheek and chin against the portico’s other wall. Wulfstan had stepped forward, grabbed him by the collar and raised his fist to land a punch in that trespassing mouth, before the door opened wide to let through a burly fisherman and his sons. Behind them stood the boy’s master, bent and frail as last winter’s leaf left on the bough.

The old man could move fast enough, mind. He had thrown himself at Wulfstan’s feet in a breath, clutching in supplication at his knees.

“My lord! Please, whatever the boy’s done, leave him able to sing and to play. They are baying for music in there and I am an old man, and tired. He must earn our bread, or we shall go hungry. I beg you, lord…” Tears stood in the rheumy eyes, making Wulfstan feel like a monster atop all of the raging confusion of this moment. “I beg you. He’s a foolish child, and I have indulged him too much. I will punish him myself. I have no doubt his wicked words deserve a whipping. Only please don’t—”

“He deserves…” Wulfstan stopped himself. The harper had drawn himself together in a tangle of long limbs against the wall, and looked shaken, perhaps even penitent. Struggling with his thick head—he hadn’t regained the power of thought—Wulfstan remembered what it was that the young man deserved, for suggesting that one of Ecgbert’s warriors could possibly want to yield to him. Death. If Ecgbert would let him kill Manna over the suggestion—Manna who was a shoulder-companion, the son of a man of rank—he would positively demand it for this nobody.

The younger man wiped blood from his nose and came to his master’s side, which left him kneeling too, his blond head bent and his gaze fixed on the floor. Wulfstan was left looking down on the elder’s entreating face, the bowed nape of the younger man’s neck. “He deserves…”

What did he deserve, for taking advantage of Wulfstan’s weakness and giving him what he hadn’t really known he wanted until that moment? What did he deserve for being a more natural man? “He deserves a good hiding. He was disrespectful to me and is fortunate that I am a merciful man. With another he would not have been so lucky. That mouth of his will get him killed, if you do not teach him to shut it.”

Without letting go of Wulfstan’s knees, so—unless he wished to kick the frail ancient off—he was pinned in place, the old man nudged the younger, who scrambled to his feet and eeled back inside among the crowd without a backward glance. “I will teach him so, my lord.” He bowed, until the ends of his long moustache trailed on Wulfstan’s shoes, and shed warm tears on his feet. “Thank you. Where I travel, I will tell of your kindness. I will link your name forever with—”

“No.” Wulfstan’s skin crept. “Let me earn my reputation in battle and not for forgiving little slights. There is no glory in beating a scop, so where is the glory in refraining? Silence will serve.”

It was an age-worn smile he got in return, soft as an old cloak. “As you wish, lord.” Creakily, wincing as his joints straightened, the old man struggled to his feet. “I am Anna, my lord. Anna of Cantwarebyrig. Though I have very little, what I have is yours to command, in gratitude for your generosity.”

Give me your boy.
Wulfstan’s heart spoke, or perhaps it was a devil speaking directly to his soul. This day had been cursed from its beginning, and he was suddenly weary for it to end.

He inclined his head, accepting the offer of service, but didn’t open his mouth to say anything more for fear of what might come out. Anna withdrew, and Wulfstan stood gulping for breath, his prick bruised with need and his mouth full of the taste of another man’s spit.

When he came back in, making the flames of the fire bow as he passed, the hall seemed suddenly bright as day. He felt every man’s eye on him.

Wulfstan knew what he looked like from the many times he had lost his temper and seen sudden fear spark in the eyes of his playmates and friends. He was tall and broad and heavy with muscle, and when he chose to show it, everyone took notice. Now, some of his confidence returned, sure those who watched him saw only a warrior proud in battle. No one looked beneath the skin to the turmoil within. He was safe.

Servants scurried out of his way, and the local townsfolk either bowed their heads or averted their eyes as he climbed back onto the dais, into the whirling pool of light from the hanging bowls of fire, into the glitter of gold and the bright colours and clean cloth of his rank.

The scops were both there before him, the older man on his stool, the younger cross-legged beside him on the floor. Not part of the high world, but permitted to occupy the same space—and therefore not quite part of the lower either. The bruise had begun to show on the cheek of Wulfstan’s angelic-looking young man, and there was a streak of blood yet behind his ear, where a hasty cleaning of his bloody nose had smeared it. He looked down sharply when he noticed Wulfstan watching him, but somehow his deference had an air of mockery.

Now Wulfstan felt again that everyone must know. He felt on show, stripped, waiting for judgment. Pushing past the two as they tuned their harp-strings, he walked to his seat, trying not to make it look as though he fled.
They don’t see it. None of them see it. They never have, they never will.

Putting a hand on Aelfsi’s shoulder to steady himself, he hitched one leg over the bench, then the other. His companions’ faces lifted to him without alteration, as though they had no idea his world had changed in the brief time he had been apart from them. He sat, and as he did so the sound of the ripest, fattest fart ever let loose by man echoed off the walls of the hall. There was a silence, and then everyone began to laugh as though they were possessed.

Wulfstan whirled and caught the young harper taking his fingers out of his mouth, joining in with the laughter, the older one clouting him on the ear, though he smiled. The poisonous little bastard! He’d done it on purpose. By some harper’s magic, he had made the sound appear to come from Wulfstan, though actually produced elsewhere.

Humiliation boiled up from the soles of his feet to the roots of his hair and lifted him off his seat as though a giant had hauled him up by the collar.

From his place by the Port Reeve’s side, Ecgbert said sharply, “Stop him,” and Aelfsi on his left, Cenred on his right caught an arm each and with some struggling forced him back onto his bench. He made two more attempts, almost unseating them, before the rage drained off, leaving him cold and sick and miserable.

Familiar with his moods, Aelfsi patted the arm he had been holding and let go, and Cenred thrust a full beaker of mead into his hand, watched as he downed it and called for it to be refilled.

Awareness came back slowly. At some point the young man had begun to sing, and it was a voice of bronze—powerful but subtle, beautiful but strong, its measured cadences and striding beats sweeping the listener along as if galloping on a spirited horse. As the humiliation faded, Wulfstan noticed with grudging thankfulness that no one was looking at him. They were all taken up in the rush of the song, reliving a well-known story, hearing it afresh as though they’d never heard it before.

The mingled voices of harp and lyre—the gut strings of the harp mellow and rounded, the metal strings of the lyre silvery, shivery, triumphant—filled the firelit shades, wound up the pillars of the hall and pooled like the smoke in the ceiling, and everyone in that place quietened and stilled under its influence.

Ecgbert leaned forward in his place. “You feel that?” he murmured, low enough to pass beneath the spell of the music. “They have no weapons because theirs is a strange magic. One that can soothe a hall full of men or drive them mad. One that can bring immortality or eternal condemnation. Whatever a man truly is, he is remembered only as the scops choose to remember him.” He passed Wulfstan a dish of apple dumplings drenched in honey and smiled.

“It is better to be remembered as a gracious man, one who knows when to laugh, than it is to avenge a harper’s hurt. They are like priests. It’s easy to think they are of no consequence because they pose no physical threat. Their power is no less real than ours for all it lies in other things than steel.”

Sullenly, knowing he was being sullen and hating himself for it, Wulfstan spooned a couple of the dumplings onto his trencher and ate, and the high, shrill sweetness of them joined the melody and worked a little miracle of calm. After a while he was able to put the spoon down and sigh, “Yes, lord.”

Yes, lord. And if you had told me this an hour earlier, I might have been saved. I might not have run my ship quite so hard onto the rocks of fate. I might have stayed sinless all my life, a proper man.

That was a lie too, as all his thoughts today had been lies. He was a creature made up entirely of pretense. What else was there but to pretend to be what he wished to be in the hopes that in time pretense became habit, and habit by degrees became the truth?

Chapter Two

“As you see.” The hall warden smiled at Leofgar defensively as he gestured to the floor, where bedding had been brought out and stretched in one unbroken line from wall to wall. “We have no space to house you for the night.”